April 12th, 2008
Great take on this photo of Gen. Petraeus, before the House Armed Services Committee, via BagNewsNotes.com:
[T]he General [represents] the serpentine head of of a military institution which has been cut off but for the one spokesman, who is marginalized and dislocated. Checking out the hands under the table, the school boy quiescence demonstrates that assessment has been silenced. Also noted was the fact that Petraeus’s mug is actually blocking a symbol of one of the service branches on the wall — more evidence that Petraeus has become a branch unto himself.
April 10th, 2008
When will this group of thugs be criminally prosecuted for violation of international and domestic laws, not to mention the irreparable harm they’ve done to the reputation of our country?
Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned.
The officials also took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved.
A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them Thursday to the AP to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday. The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.
Between 2002 and 2003, the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation tactics, including ones that critics call torture.
“If you looked at the timing of the meetings and the memos you’d see a correlation,” the former intelligence official said. Those who attended the dozens of meetings agreed that “there’d need to be a legal opinion on the legality of these tactics” before using them on al-Qaida detainees, the former official said.
[...]
The former intelligence official described Cheney and the top national security officials as deeply immersed in developing the CIA’s interrogation program during months of discussions over which methods should be used and when.
Anyone that still defends this group of thugs is either a sadist, has not been paying attention over the past seven years, or does not believe in the democratic liberal principles that founded America.
April 6th, 2008
This was McCain back then:
The American people want them home…
The criteria should be to bring [troops] home as rapidly as possible…
Date certain is not the criteria… the criteria ought to be immediate and rapid withdrawal…
And if we don’t do that, and other Americans die or are captured because we stayed too long… then I would say that the responsibility for that lies with the Congress of the United States…
The mission has been accomplished…
The American people do not support nation building…
The argument that some how the United States would suffer a loss to our prestige… I think is boloney.
… I tell you what can hurt our prestige… that’s if we enmesh ourselves in a drawn out situation which entails loss of American lives… more debacles… with a failed mission… that then will be what will hurt our prestige…
Of course, that was during a time when a Democratic president occupied the White House.
See the clip in YouTube here, and the Young Turks take on McCain’s hypocrisy here.
November 20th, 2007
Yes, you read that correctly, a Saudi court has sentenced the victim of a gang rape to six months in jail and to 200 lashes:
The judge more than doubled the sentence against al-Lahim’s 19-year-old client because she spoke to the media about the case, a court source told Arab News, an English-language Middle Eastern daily newspaper.
The woman — who was initially sentenced in October 2006 to 90 lashes — had her sentenced increased to 200 lashes and was ordered to serve six months in prison under Saudi Arabia’s strict Islamic law.
And if that weren’t enough, the victim’s lawyer had his license revoked for doing his job and representing his client to his fullest ability:
The attorney, Abdulrahman al-Lahim, had his license revoked last week by a judge for speaking to the Saudi-controlled media about the case, al-Lahim told CNN.
It seems that Bush & Co. should’ve given democracy and human rights to Saudi Arabia, a staunch Bush ally in the region, rather than wasting such a precious gift on the ingrates of Iraq.
November 18th, 2007
BagNewsNotes.com, once again, delivers insightful commentary by taking a closer look at an image that captures our times, this is War Time America:
