Bush's Cabal

The Destabilization of Haiti

"Washington seeks to reinstate Haiti as a full-fledged US colony, with all the appearances of a functioning democracy. The objective is to impose a puppet regime in Port-au-Prince and establish a permanent US military presence in Haiti. 

There were a lot of warnings that were overlooked and a lot of strange things had to line up in order for the attempted bombing to take place and left a lot of questions begging to be answered ... for instance these ten. Then there was the unrelated (?) strange story that Police ‘forgot’ to take explosives off a flight to Dublin

More to come ...

The Yemen Hidden Agenda: Behind the Al-Qaeda Scenarios, A Strategic Oil Transit Chokepoint

On December 25 US authorities arrested a Nigerian named Abdulmutallab aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on charges of having tried to blow up the plane with smuggled explosives. Since then reports have been broadcast from CNN, the New York Times and other sources that he was “suspected” of having been trained in Yemen for his terror mission. What the world has been subjected to since is the emergence of a new target for the US ‘War on Terror,’ namely a desolate state on the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen. A closer look at the background suggests the Pentagon and US intelligence have a hidden agenda in Yemen.

"Don't know much about history"

~ Sam Cooke

Mr. Panetta Needs a History Lesson

CIA director Leon Panetta implied Sunday that the "reality of 9/11" excused the unconstitutional and criminal acts of the Bush administration:

The country was frightened, and political leaders were trying to respond as best they could. Judgments were made. Some of them were wrong.

Panetta makes it sound like all of the illegal decisions were made after 9/11, in response to that horrific event.

But as I've previously pointed out:

* The government's spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here)

* The Patriot Act was written before 9/11 [*note below*]

* The Afghanistan war was planned before 9/11

* The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11

* The decision to launch a war against Iran was made before 9/11

* Cheney advocated strengthening the powers of the White House to the point of monarchy before 9/11

In addition, while the decision to torture appears to have been made after 9/11, it appears to have been made for the purpose of creating a false linkage between Iraq and 9/11 in order to justify the Iraq war. In other words, the post-9/11 decision to torture appears to have been made to rationalize the pre-9/11 decision to invade Iraq.

Moreover, it was known long before 9/11 that torture doesn't work to produce accurate intelligence.

Click the header to read the links

[**] The link for the article on the Patriot Act being written prior to 9/11 is dead, but I found a reprint and will reprint it in it's entirety below

The USA PATRIOT Act Was Planned Before 9/11

>Report: Bush Surveillance Program Was Massive
Friday 10 July 2009 - by: Pamela Hess | Visit article original @ The Associated Press

Washington - The Bush administration built an unprecedented surveillance operation to pull in mountains of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, a team of federal inspectors general reported Friday, questioning the legal basis for the effort but shielding almost all details on grounds they're still too secret to reveal.

The report, compiled by five inspectors general, refers to "unprecedented collection activities" by U.S. intelligence agencies under an executive order signed by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

[I've wanted to do this for a week but haven't had time. And I know this has been covered ... a little bit ... but no where near as much as the Iranian elections which have had wall-to-wall coverage. Wonder why that is? And it's nice that the Peruvian Parliament has "suspended" the disputed laws which caused the protests, but I have a feeling they will go back into place once the US military base at Palanquero, Colombia gets built - what? you haven't heard of it? Hmmm, sounds like one of the next blogs. Anyway click the links for the three articles, and here's another really good one from indymedia Ireland]

Massacre in the Amazon: The U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement Sparks a Battle Over Land and Resources

Raúl Zibechi | June 16, 2009

On June 5, World Environment Day, Amazon Indians were massacred by the government of Alan Garcia in the latest chapter of a long war to take over common lands—a war unleashed by the signing of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Peru and the United States.

Three MI-17 helicopters took off from the base of the National Police in El Milagro at six in the morning of Friday, June 5. They flew over Devil's Curve, the part of the highway that joins the jungle with the northern coast, which had been occupied for the past 10 days by some 5,000 Awajún and Wampi indigenous peoples. The copters launched tear gas on the crowd (other versions say that they also shot machine guns), while simultaneously a group of agents attacked the road block by ground, firing AKM rifles. A hundred people were wounded by gunshot and between 20-25 were killed.

The population of the nearby city of Bagua, some thousand kilometers northeast of Lima near the border with Ecuador, came out into the streets to support the indigenous people's demonstration, setting fire to state institutions and local office of the official party APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana). Several police officers were attacked and killed in the counter-attack, and other indigenous protestors were killed by police. At the same time, a group of 38 police who were guarding an oil station in the Amazon were taken hostage. Some were killed by their captors, while some 1,000 Indians threatened to set fire to Station Number 6 of the northern Peruvian oil pipeline.

The versions are contradictory. The government claimed days after the events that there are 11 indigenous dead and 23 police. The indigenous organizations reported 50 dead among their ranks and up to 400 disappeared. According to witnesses, the military burned bodies and threw them into the river to hide the massacre, and also took prisoners among the wounded in the hospitals. In any case, what is certain is that the government sent the armed forces to evict a peaceful protest that had been going on for 57 days in the jungle regions of five departments: Amazonas, Cusco, Loreto, San Martin, and Ucayali.

The Inter-American Human Rights Commission (CIDH), part of the Organization of American States, condemned the violent acts on June 8 and reminded the Peruvian government of its obligation to clear up the facts and to compensate for the consequences and called on both sides to promote a process of dialogue.1 On June 9, the National Coordination of Human Rights announced that it found a series of irregularities and possible human rights violations in the Bagua area. It denounced the government's refusal to divulge what police are in charge of the investigation of the events, and expressed concern for the situation of 25 detained at the El Milagro base and the 99 arrested since a curfew was imposed in Bagua.2

President Garcia accused the Indians of being "terrorists" and spoke of an "international conspiracy," in which, according to government ministers, Bolivia and Venezuela are involved because as oil- and gas-producing countries they want to keep Peru from exploiting these resources and becoming a competitor.3 Just a few weeks ago, Peru granted asylum to the anti-Chavez leader, Venezuelan Manuel Rosas, accused of corruption, and three former Bolivian ministers from the government of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lazada prosecuted for the death of nearly 700 persons during the "gas war" of October 2003.

[...]

Peru: Battle lines drawn over the Amazon

American Death Squad

Obama inherits Cheney's army of assassins – and promotes their commander

by Justin Raimondo, May 20, 2009

As the story of Bush administration’s war crimes comes out in fits and starts, it appears that torture is only one aspect – and not the worst, by any means – of this horrific history. In an interview in mid-March, Seymour Hersh let slip the following:

"After 9/11 – I haven’t written about this yet – but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen."

Well, yes, that’s hardly surprising. The PATRIOT Act and other legislation [.pdf] passed by Congress gives the government the legal "right" to spy on American citizens and, in the case of Jose Padilla, lock them up without a trial and throw away the key. But, as Hersh reveals, it gets worse. Much worse:

“Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command – JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. …

“Congress has no oversight of it.It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. … Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us."

Well, yes, that’s not too surprising, either, actually. It’s so – what’s the word? – Cheneyesque. Those Rethuglicans! Well, we’re past all that now. The Dear Leader’s in the White House, and it’s time to move on, right? Oh wait…

It turns out the commander of this international order of assassins has just been appointed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. As part of the "fresh thinking" in the Obama administration, epitomized by the COIN crowd, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal replaces Gen. David McKiernan. So who is McChrystal? A 2006 profile in Newsweek put it this way:

"JSOC is part of what Vice President Dick Cheney was referring to when he said America would have to ‘work the dark side’ after 9/11. To many critics, the veep’s remark back in 2001 fostered his rep as the Darth Vader of the war on terror and presaged bad things to come, like the interrogation abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. But America also has its share of Jedi Knights who are fighting in what Cheney calls ‘the shadows.’ And McChrystal, an affable but tough Army Ranger, and the Delta Force and other elite teams he commands are among them."

The dark side includes McChrystal’s overseeing of Camp Nama, a detainee center outside of Baghdad (since renamed and relocated) notorious for its brutality. The very same administration that is up on its high horse about forbidding torture has just elevated one of the chief torturers to direct Obama’s war in Afghanistan. It is hardly inconceivable that what we saw at Camp Nama – beatings, degradation of prisoners, and outright, cold-blooded murder – is going to be replicated on a nationwide scale.

That’s what they call "fresh thinking" over at Obama’s Pentagon.

This is getting pretty sickening; I don't care if he's a Democrat - wrong is wrong. I hammered Bush for these things and let many things go recently because our President was new and possibly didn't know how to proceed - but this is plain wrong!

Click the links for more in the three articles; the first by Glen Greenwald on the continuation and expansion on Presidential power; the second is on the ongoing policies of neglecting and trampling on international law; and the third is on the continued non-transparency into who is getting TRILLIONS of dollars in American taxpayer money and what they are doing with it

Watch the video from Countdown

youtube version

Jonathon Turley reacts

youtube version

Obama, the ICRC Report and ongoing suppression

(updated below)

Following up on the latest extremist Cheney/Addington/Yoo arguments advanced by the Obama DOJ in order to shield Bush lawbreaking from disclosure and judicial review -- an episode I wrote about in detail yesterday, here -- it's worthwhile to underscore the implications of Barack Obama's conduct. When Obama sought to placate his angry supporters after he voted for the Bush/Cheney FISA-telecom immunity bill last June (after vowing the prior December to support a filibuster of any such legislation), this is what he said (h/t notavailable):

[The FISA bill] also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future. It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses.

So candidate Obama unambiguously vowed to his supporters that he would work to ensure "full accountability" for "past offenses" in surveillance lawbreaking. President Obama, however, has now become the prime impediment to precisely that accountability, repeatedly engaging in extraordinary legal maneuvers to ensure that "past offenses" -- both in the surveillance and torture/rendition realm -- remain secret and forever immunized from judicial review. Put another way, Obama has repeatedly done the exact opposite of what he vowed he would do: rather than "seek full accountability for past offenses," he has been working feverishly to block such accountability, by embracing the same radical Bush/Cheney views and rhetoric regarding presidential secrecy powers that caused so much controversy and anger for the last several years.

From Senator Patrick Leahy:

Urge Congress to consider establishing a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the Bush-Cheney Administration's abuses --
Sign my petition at BushTruthCommission.com today.

We have just emerged from a time when White House officials often acted as if they were above the law. That was wrong and must be fully exposed so it never happens again.

That is why I proposed the idea of a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate abuses during the Bush-Cheney Administration. These abuses may include the use of torture, warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, and executive override of laws.

It's the same old story over and over and ...

[These people are nucking futs! I've got a blog coming up (when I can find the time) that'll blow the doors off all this Ronald Reagan / Milton Friedman supply side tax cuts for the wealthy BS that's supposedly great for the economy

In the meantime contact your Congresspeople and tell them NO! on this Centrist / Republican BS if it comes up for a vote]

‘Centrist’ Economic Recovery Package Disproportionately Cuts Programs For Women And Children

Just in case you missed this one...

Monday, January 26, 2009

Conyers Subpoenas Karl Rove: "It's Time to Talk"

(Washington, D.C.) --- Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. issued a subpoena to Karl Rove requiring him to testify regarding his role in the Bush Administration's politicization of the Department of Justice, including the US Attorney firings and the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. The subpoena was issued pursuant to authority granted in H.R. 5 (111th Congress), and calls for Mr. Rove to appear at deposition on Monday, February 2, 2009. Mr. Rove has previously refused to appear in response to a Judiciary Committee subpoena, claiming that even former presidential advisers cannot be compelled to testify before Congress. That "absolute immunity" position was supported by then-President Bush, but it has been rejected by U.S. District Judge John Bates and President Obama has previously dismissed the claim as "completely misguided."

Listen to National Public Radio’s (NPR’s) “Take Away” with John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji and be Mislead, Misinformed, and Propagandized
Andrew H. Dral

On Friday morning December 26, 2008 John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji (I believe) interviewed David Frum. Mr. Frum represents the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a reactionary think tank espousing royalist propaganda. Mr. Frum made a statement that Bush had created jobs during his administration as one of his successes. There was no response from Mr. Hockenberry or Ms. Udoji, just silence. I was astounded. Mr. Frum is the same individual that invented Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” and wrote many of Bush’s early speeches. In early October 2002 Bush gave a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio. In that speech Bush unequivocally asserted Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. Bush indicated Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear facilities. Iraq was purchasing high-strength aluminum tubes with other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, the propagandist in chief said. All of these assertions were lies. Why Mr. Frum would be given full, unfettered access to National Public Radio’s (NPR’s) audience is beyond me. He has a history of lies, deceit, and distortions, yet Hockenberry and Udoji had no problem helping him catapult the propaganda, as Bush would say.

A point of fact, job creation has been extremely weak during the Bush administration, by some measures the weakest on record, four years after the 2001 recession ended the job count increased by only 2.6%, the slowest rate ever recorded, surpassing the previous low of 4% set four years after the 1953-1954 recession. Bush promised his policies – deregulation, globalization, privatization, and free trade – would create 8 million (MM) jobs a year. The best he could do was just over 2MM jobs a year. On average, 189,000 jobs were created every month in 2006, compared to only 111,000 jobs per month in 2007. A matter of fact the first quarter of 2007 was the slowest quarterly rate of job creation ever recorded. You need at least 150,000 jobs created a month to be at equilibrium, i.e., providing jobs to new entrants into the work force. This is a far cry from 1994 to 2000 period when the Clinton administration was averaging creating roughly 300,000 jobs per month. At the time of the Frum interview, the latest year to date non-farm payroll numbers the economy had lost over 1.9MM jobs. For calendar year 2008 we’ve lost 2.6MM jobs. You have to go back to the Great Depression to get these economic numbers. A matter of fact, 2008 was the worst job loss year since 1945.

A recent article in the New York Times by Floyd Norris published on January 24, 2009 indicates during Bush’s term the economy added enough jobs to employ only 14% of the added number of working-age Americans, the lowest proportion of any postwar administration. Employment grew at a compound annual growth rate of 0.3%, half the 0.6% rate that his father had recorded in what had previously been the worst post-World War II performance.

Bush Years: 8 in 8 Minutes

Friday 16 January 2009 - by: Keith Olbermann, MSNBC Countdown

George Walker Bush.

43rd president of the United States.

first ever with a criminal record.

our third story tonight,

his presidency: eight years in eight minutes.

Goldman Sachs cuts taxes to one percent by moving profits offshore

Bank takes $10 billion bailout, then cuts tax rate 33 percent

Say you got a ten billion dollar loan to shore up your finances, and you paid your employees $10.9 billion, and you raked in $2.3 billion for the year.

What would you say you owed in taxes? One percent?

That’s what you’d pay if you were Goldman Sachs, Inc. The high-flying brokerage — and former home of Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson — has announced it’s paying just $14 million in taxes this year.

Last year, their tax bill was $6 billion, or 34.1 percent. That represents a year-over-year drop of 33.1 percent.

Goldman attributed its lower tax rate to “more tax credits as a percentage of earnings” and “changes in geographic earnings mix.”

That means they parked the profits offshore where they knew it wouldn't be taxable while they knew they were getting a taxpayer bailout

Thanks for nothing Henry Paulson! An armed robber couldn't have done any better.

Watch as Iraqi Reporter Throws Shoes at Bush, Calls Him 'Dog'

You can also see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWt3-kPBQ4A

Iraq rally for Bush shoe attacker

By BBC

Thousands of Iraqis have demanded the release of a local TV reporter who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush at a Baghdad news conference.

Crowds gathered in Baghdad's Sadr City district, calling for "hero" Muntadar al-Zaidi to be freed from custody.

Officials at the Iraqi-owned TV station, al-Baghdadiya, called for the release of their journalist, saying he was exercising freedom of expression.

Right-wing nut Sheldon Anderson is CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp. which owns the Venetian and the new Palazzo on the Vegas Strip. I wouldn't suggest spending any money in those casinos...

Freedom's Watch folds
By Reid Wilson - Posted: 12/08/08 04:39 PM [ET]

A once-vaunted independent organization that was supposed to help Republicans make up severe fundraising shortfalls is closing after just one cycle in business.

Freedom's Watch, the 501(c)(4) organization that ran advertisements slamming Democratic candidates, will effectively shut down by the end of the year, according to a source with knowledge of the plans.

The group, which ran television, radio, phone and mail campaigns against dozens of Democrats this year, received most of its funding from wealthy gaming mogul Sheldon Adelson, chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corp.