Glenn Greenwald rightfully takes issue with The Washington Post's Editorial Page lecturing Russia about "the rule of law." As Glenn points out, the US lost the right to lecture anyone on the rule of law long ago:
What we've done over the last seven years -- at least much of it -- isn't a secret. It's worthwhile to state frequently in clear, dispassionate terms what our country has done. Our Government has kidnapped people off the street and from their homes and sent them to places like Syria to be tortured for months (including completely innocent people) and then invoked National Security claims to bar them from holding our Government accountable in a court of law. We've disappeared others into secret prisons beyond even the reach of the Red Cross, or encaged them in a lawless black hole on a Cuban island. We've tortured them, sometimes to death, even with the knowledge that many were innocent. We attacked and completely demolished another country that couldn't attack us even if it wanted to. And our President openly declared that he has the power to break our laws, spy on U.S. citizens with no warrants, and indefinitely imprison even our own citizens with no process of any kind. Those are all just facts that aren't really subject to dispute or debate.
Worst of all, having done all of that -- not for weeks or months following the 9/11 attacks, but for years, still -- we've collectively decided, without much turmoil or debate, that it should all be forgiven, that none of it should be punished or even investigated, that it's best just to keep these crimes concealed and, when accidentally disclosed, to immunize the criminals. And all of that is being done right out in the open, so that our formal human rights reports are self-evident, almost laughable, farces, and even countries like Zimbabwe, when their governments want to engage in tyrannical acts, can and do rationally point to the U.S. as the leading example which they're following.
"A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency" (Glenn Greenwald)
According to Wikipedia, "The Onion is an American 'fake news' organization. It features satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news..."
With that in mind, check out the following satirical piece that appeared on The Onion on January 17, 2001, titled, "Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'":
WASHINGTON, DC–Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."
"My fellow Americans," Bush said, "at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us."
Bush swore to do "everything in [his] power" to undo the damage wrought by Clinton's two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street.
During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.
"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"
On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further...
Turning to the subject of the environment, Bush said he will do whatever it takes to undo the tremendous damage not done by the Clinton Administration to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He assured citizens that he will follow through on his campaign promise to open the 1.5 million acre refuge's coastal plain to oil drilling. As a sign of his commitment to bringing about a change in the environment, he pointed to his choice of Gale Norton for Secretary of the Interior. Norton, Bush noted, has "extensive experience" fighting environmental causes, working as a lobbyist for lead-paint manufacturers and as an attorney for loggers and miners, in addition to suing the EPA to overturn clean-air standards...
"Finally, the horrific misrule of the Democrats has been brought to a close," House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert (R-IL) told reporters. "Under Bush, we can all look forward to military aggression, deregulation of dangerous, greedy industries, and the defunding of vital domestic social-service programs upon which millions depend. Mercifully, we can now say goodbye to the awful nightmare that was Clinton's America."
"For years, I tirelessly preached the message that Clinton must be stopped," conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh said. "And yet, in 1996, the American public failed to heed my urgent warnings, re-electing Clinton despite the fact that the nation was prosperous and at peace under his regime. But now, thank God, that's all done with. Once again, we will enjoy mounting debt, jingoism, nuclear paranoia, mass deficit, and a massive military build-up."...
"We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two," Bush said. "Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there's much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it."
Above, CNN covers the mainstream media blackout of Vincent Bugliosi's new book, "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder".
Of course, there is no such blackout on Hot Potato Mash. You can view my video exclusive of Bugliosi giving a 50-minute talk about his new book here. Also see my video exclusive of Bugliosi calling for the compassionate release of Manson Family member Susan Atkins who is suffering from brain cancer.
"The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder" (Vincent Bugliosi)
On Wednesday, famed Charles Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi spoke to a packed and enthusiastic crowd of more than 350 Angelinos about his new book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.” While Bugliosi’s talk will eventually appear on C-SPAN, you can view it first in its entirety below…
Part 1 (19:45)
In my book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,” I present evidence that proves beyond all reasonable doubt that George Bush took this nation to war on a lie, under false pretenses, and therefore under the law is guilty of murder for the deaths of over 4,000 young American soldiers who died so far in this war.
Bugliosi began the evening by explaining to the Los Angeles audience that George W. Bush is guilty of murder, according to the law, if he brought the country to war under false pretenses. And Bugliosi emphasized the legal aspect of the case in order to fend off likely attackers:
So although Bush supporters can argue that Bush should not be prosecuted because they don’t think he did anything wrong, they cannot legitimately say that he should not be prosecuted if he has done what I say he did. To say that is to admit that you have no respect for our American system of justice and democracy and that you would prefer that presidents have the same rights as tyrannical dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein.
Bugliosi had a similar answer for those who simply believe it is impossible to prosecute Bush for murder:
There’s this sense out there among many that prosecuting Bush for murder can’t be done. Which is the equivalent of saying what - that he is above the law. That ordinary laws simply don’t apply to him.
Bugliosi also had some special words for the American Right Wing which has expressed its disapproval with his book:
The third group of people responding to my book is the nation’s right wing. And they of course have contempt for me and my book. But whatever contempt they have for me, I can assure them and I can assure you I have much much much more contempt for them. There are no more repugnant, hypocritical and un-American – and that’s the word I want to emphasize – un-American people in our society today than the right wing.
Bugliosi, however, made clear that this book was not political for him and even said he would have written the same book had Bush been a Democrat. So fair is Bugliosi that he even offers up some mitigating evidence for Bush and his co-conspirators:
And there is one thing that I should probably say in partial defense of these people that goes in mitigation, arguably reduces their moral culpability. And what I’m talking about is that many of these people are incredibly stupid. And they make up for their stupidity by being extremely ignorant. And when you combine stupidity with ignorance that’s a toxic combination.
Finally, Part 1 ends with the law:
If a conspirator, or anyone for that matter, deliberately sets in motion a chain of events which he knows will cause – that’s the key word – cause a third party innocent agent to commit an act, the defendant is criminally responsible for that act. Bush, in invading Iraq, caused Iraqis to kill American soldiers in much the same fashion that a person causes a gun to fire a bullet that kills someone by pulling the trigger.
Part 2 (17:54)
Part 2 begins with Bugliosi explaining the only way Bush might be innocent of murder:
Bush can only wash his hands of culpability if he did not take this nation to war under false pretenses. If he did, which the evidence overwhelmingly shows, he is criminally responsible for the deaths of all those American soldiers who have died fighting his war in Iraq.
The main issue would be whether or not George Bush went to war, as he always claimed, in self-defense – the so-called pre-emptive strike. Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, alleged as so, therefore he was an imminent threat to the security of this country so Bush had to strike first in self-defense. If the war was not in self-defense but one that the prosecutor can prove Bush took us to under false pretenses than all of the killings of American soldiers in Iraq become unlawful killings and therefore murder.
While Bugliosi's animus was mostly reserved for Bush and his co-conspirators, he did find time to also criticize Ken Starr, The New York Times and the Supreme Court:
I seem to be getting more angry and acerbic and caustic and that’s because I am always in a state of rage. How can I help but be -- the monstrous, grotesque, obscene Ken Starr almost destroyed the Clinton presidency over absolutely nothing while being totally and completely supported and funded by the federal government. They funded his seven year, seventy million dollar effort, the federal government. And the so-called liberal media, The New York Times savaged Clinton on a day to day basis, supported this monstrous, grotesque, obscene figure – one of the most reprehensible figures in American history – Ken Starr.
The US Supreme Court 2000, stopping the recount in Florida which was specifically authorized by Florida law, taking the election away from the American people and appointing George Bush president, one of the biggest crimes in American history.
The heart of Part 2, however, is reserved for Bugliosi's evidence against George W. Bush. And first on the list was Bush's lies to the country that were contrary to the National Intelligence Estimate:
In George Bush’s first speech to the nation on Hussein and Iraq, October 7, 2002 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Bush told Americans that Saddam Hussein was a great danger to this nation either by his attacking us with the so-called weapons of mass destruction or by giving these weapons to a terrorist group to attack us. And Bush said that this attack could happen, ‘on any given day,’ meaning what, that the threat was imminent.
The only big problem for George Bush is that on October the first, six days earlier, the CIA sent Bush its 2002 National Intelligence Estimate – a classified top secret report that represented the consensus opinion of all 16 US federal intelligence agencies on the issue of whether or not Hussein was an imminent threat to the security of this country and on page 8 of that 91 page report it clearly and unequivocally says – and by the way what I’m about to tell you to my knowledge has never been said or never been written or never appeared in any major newspaper or magazine in America – page 8 clearly says that Hussein was not an imminent threat to the security of this country. That he would only be a threat if he feared we were about to attack him.
So we know then, not think but know, that when George Bush told the nation on the evening of October 7th, Cincinnati, Ohio, that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the security of this country, he was telling millions of unsuspecting Americans the exact opposite of what his own CIA was telling him. Now if we had nothing else at all, and there is so much more, that alone shows what, that George Bush took this nation to war on a terrible terrible lie. Therefore all the killings in Iraq became unlawful killings and murder.
But it gets worse! In fact, it gets evil, perverse, sick and criminal:
But it gets worse. It gets worse. October 4th, three days later, Bush and his people had the CIA release an unclassified summary version of the October 1st classified report so that this October 4th unclassified version could be released to the American public and to Congress. This unclassified version came to be known as the White Paper. And in this White Paper that was shown to the American people and to Congress, in which contained the opinion of 16 US intelligence agencies that Hussein was not an imminent threat to the security of this country, that conclusion was completely deleted, completely eliminated. Every single one of these all important words, the most important conclusion in that classified document, was completely deleted from the White Paper. And the question I have of you, is how evil, how perverse, how sick, how criminal can George Bush and his people be?
The next piece of ever damning evidence, according to Bugliosi, is the January 31, 2003, Manning Memo written by Tony Blair's chief foreign policy advisor after a top level meeting in the Oval Office less than two months before the invasion.
He says that George Bush was so worried about the failure of the UN inspectors to find weapons of mass destruction that Bush started to talk about three ways to ‘provoke a confrontation’ with Saddam Hussein. One of which he said was to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft over Iraq falsely painted in United Nations colors and he said if Saddam fires on those planes it would be a violation of UN resolutions and therefore justify our going to war. So here is George Bush telling Americans, telling the world, that Hussein is an imminent threat to the security of this country, but behind closed doors this very small human being was talking about how to provoke Hussein into a war.
Part 3 (15:50)
Part 3 begins with another piece of evidence against Bush. Mainly, how Bush responded to the ever positive testimony of chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix on March 7, 2003, by throwing him and his team out of the country and quickly invading Iraq. Blix had told the UN Security Counsel that the inspectors were getting proactive cooperation from Saddam Hussein and that their investigation would be completed in a few months:
Blix and his people became Bush’s biggest adversaries because if Blix and his people confirm that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that would rob Bush of his main argument for war – a war that he wanted to fight at all costs.
The bulk of Part 3, however, does not concentrate on evidence of Bush's guilt but rather Bush's state of mind. Bugliosi takes great offense to the fact that Bush has often described his days as perfect and that he proclaims himself to be so happy:
Even if George Bush was only guilty of making an innocent mistake in taking this nation to war in Iraq, not murder as I firmly believe, with all of the death, horror and suffering he has caused, what type of a monstrous individual is it who could be happy with his life? What type of a human monster is George Bush?
If I ever killed one person in my life, even accidentally – a car accident – I’d never have another perfect day as long as I lived. George Bush is responsible for the horrible deaths of thousands of human beings and he is talking about having a perfect day. Bush’s plans to have a perfect day right in the middle of all the death and horror in Iraq goes so far beyond acceptable human conduct that no moral telescope can discern its shape, form and nature.
Bugliosi concludes by telling the audience that he will not rest or be satisfied until George W. Bush is prosecuted for first degree murder:
I don’t like to see anyone get away with murder, even one murder. [O.J.] Simpson got away with two murders and I got so angry that I wrote a book - Outrage, the Five Reasons O.J. Simpson got away with murder. If I can get so angry about someone getting away with one or two murders you can imagine how I feel about George Bush who has gotten away with over 100,000 murders and has been smiling and enjoying himself throughout the whole period. It may sound presumptuous of me but I can tell you that while I may not succeed, I’m not going to be satisfied until I see George Bush in an American courtroom being prosecuted for first degree murder.
The first degree murder of over 4,000 American soldiers:
If justice means anything at all in America, if we are not going to forget about those 4,000 young American soldiers who came back from Bush’s war in a box, I say we have no choice but to bring murder charges against the son of privilege from Crawford, Texas.
"The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder" (Vincent Bugliosi)
The Bush administration fights to prevent meatpackers from testing for mad cow disease:
The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.
The Agriculture Department tests fewer than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.
Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.
A quarter-million Koreans protest in Seoul during a 72-hour-long marathon candle vigil against the import of US beef...
How great is this story? Here we once again have the Bush administration whoring for industry to the detriment of the American people. Yet, the mainstream media doesn't cover the story and Americans don't have a clue about it. But 250,000 turnout over three days to protest the sick actions of the American government in KOREA!
Of course the media can't report the ginormous protest because that would mean informing Americans about the disgusting actions of the Bush administration.
(h/t Big Dan)
