Reclaim America's Moral High Ground by Prosecuting Bush & His Cronies
By Thom Hartmann A...
For almost a decade and a half, the people behind the Bush administration's shameful treatment of terrorism suspects have avoided punishment for their crimes.
But that may be about to change.
The courts have had their say and have ruled that former Bush administration officials can, in fact, be sued for how they conducted the War on Terror.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals made that pretty much official on Friday when it refused to hear a challenge to its earlier ruling in the case of Turkmen v. Ashcroft.
That case involves hundreds of Arab, Muslim or South Asian men who were detained and then abused by our government in the weeks following 9/11.
Some of them were beaten by security guards and kept in solitary confinement, which the United Nations considers a form of torture.
After they were released, these men sued the people they say authorized their detentions, people like former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former FBI director Robert Mueller.
A district court initially blocked their claims, but in June the Second Circuit Court allowed them, saying that Ashcroft, Mueller, and company could be sued.
The government then made one more last ditch push to protect the Bushies, but that Hail Mary effort failed on Friday when the Second Circuit rejected it.
Everyone else who authorized and participated in the illegal roundup of hundreds of innocent men after 9/11, from high-up government officials on down, is now fair game for a lawsuit.
This is great news.
Although President Obama has done some things for some of the worst abuses of the Bush administration, we’ve never had a true national reckoning with what actually went on from 2001 to 2009.
Bush, Cheney and company took us into some very, very dark places after 9/11, and the detention of hundreds of innocent people solely on the basis of their race or religion is just the tip of the iceberg of what the Bushies did.
They lied us into illegal wars that killed thousands of Americans and millions of Iraqis and Afghan civilians.
They also tortured terrorism suspects, many of whom turned out to be innocent, in violation of international AND America law.
Oh yeah, and they also created the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which to this day remains one of the best recruitment tools in the world for groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The list goes on.
Obviously, the Obama administration doesn’t exactly have a stellar record when it comes to the War on Terror either, the drone wars being just one example.
But even so, the Bush administration still bears the ultimate responsibility for taking our country down the path we’re still on a full decade-and-half after 9/11.
It’s the "original sin," if you will, in America’s fall from grace in the first part of the 21st century.
And that’s why we need to prosecute everyone in Bush administration who participated in these crimes -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft, I mean everyone -- right now.
Like any self-proclaimed democracy, the United States can and should be a moral force for good in the world.
But it can’t be one when it lets the biggest criminals in its history get off scot-free.
If we want to reclaim America’s moral standing in the world, we need to hold the Bush administration accountable for it its many, many crimes, starting with the illegal detention of hundreds of innocent men after 9/11.
Friday’s decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals allowing lawsuits against people like former Attorney General John Ashcroft is a step in the right direction.
It opens up a new path for our country, a path that offers us the chance for a national redemption of sorts.
Let’s take that path before America’s loses whatever moral standing it has left.
Let’s prosecute Bush, Cheney, and their partners in crime.
Comments
#2
And... then Obama pardons them
Americans allow that... for some strange reason
Here we go 'round the mullberry bush... dah dah, dah dah, dah dah!
Britain is NOT charging blasted Blair with anything I know of
He's a serpent with legal qualifications remember... and, now not without growing influence
THE snide!!!!
#3
Thank you Tohm for keeping us informed. For those who suffered I do not think there is much satisfaction in such delayed opportunity for possible restitution. All People have the government they deserve.
#4
Phoenix Five Earth Changes Bulletin
2014, by Michael Wells Mandeville
Bulletin Item: Climate Change (Global Governance Takeover) talks in Paris starting a day early. (Nov 29) 2015
http://phys.org/news/2015-11-paris-climate-conference-day-early.html
I have decided to sit with this to summarize the machinations and the fundamental critiques to produce a serious document which will hold throughout the next few years on the topic.
The reason is very simple. Quite a few perspectives have finally brought together enough data and empirical observations to be very clear about the fundamentals.
Global Warming is not happening
All the claims and charts and reports about such are contrived exercises of extreme quackademery.
There is no significant "climate change" in the sense of a transformation of natural processes.
There are natural solar driven processes which are clearly "cycling" the planet into a "cool phase"
The concept of "extreme weather" now being reported widely has been induced by the same jackasses pushing global warming as a concept. We are more aware of extreme events because of increased reporting and weather analysis and an induced hyper-sensitivity to the issue. Somewhere a local record is ALWAYS being broken. ALWAYS.
Tornadoes and Hurricanes are actually at lower levels overall than in previous decades.
Physicists (real ones) prove that co2 levels cannot alter the average heat of the earth. The idea that CO2 levels of any kind are causing climate changes of any kind is mathematically impossible. The claim is nothing more than a phony scam for manipulating gullible people.
The fundamental long term perspective which is easily proven is that the Earth is in a major "cool phase" compared to the millenniums and geological ages of the past. There was a recent warming up (slight) during the last half of the 20th century along with an increase in average solar activity which spanned most of the same decades.
The Sun is now less activity and appears or "looks" like it may get less active like previous "cool periods" during the past 1000 years.
Mirroring this decline, almost all glaciation is increasing on all continents. Polar ice at both ends is increasing. Greenland is colder, Canadian Arctic is colder, Antarctica is at record levels of growth.
2+2=4, it really does, draw the obvious conclusion.
So called sea level increase is decreasing. (BTW this measurements avoid the phenomenon of coastal uplift and coastal submergence in the great subduction zones, which is a ceaseless change - measuring a change in sea level at a place probably indicates little more than the rate of uplift or downwarp OF THE LAND at that particular spot).
In any event, the hysterical claims still being pushed by the Alarmists about a major rise in sea level is nothing but a hobgoblin to freak the "kids". There simply is not enough available ice to melt to create ANY average rise in sea level beyond a few centimeters. It would take a temperature change of 100 degrees on the South Pole to melt enough ice to change coastlines. It isn't going to happen by CO2. If if does so because of a huge change in solar output, melting ice would BE THE LEAST OF OUR PROBLEMS.
Everything has been debunked. EVERYTHING HAS BEEN DEBUNKED. EVERYTHING HAS BEEN DEBUNKED.
THE ISSUE OF CLIMATE CHANGE, AS PREDICTED DECADES AGO, IS NOTHING BUT POLITICAL THEATRE TO GRAB POWER FOR FREAKS WHO WANT TO IMPOSE DIKTAT OVER EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE. At the core of it are Bolsheviks who want to remake you in their image, and their image is not pretty, and their sponsors, the hereditary aristocracies whose cabals are busily re-creating neo-feudal estates for themselves to control all resources on Earth.
So actually the news is quite uplifting. They haven't a leg to stand on. They are a sick, sorry, and fairly stupid crew. They can and will be easily driven off the state of history. We will see some of that this next two weeks. There are major contentions and splits going on in the political elites, they will not be able to seal the deal the Bolsheviks want.
Just call the BS on all that they do and say. Every opportunity. Somebody mentions global warming? Look strangely at them and simply say, "Dude", it is simply not happening, It's all a big fat lie...haven't you noticed that winters are colder than the past?". That's the universal message, the universal meme which unlocks the scam and frees people from the hypnosis of the mass media.
Enjoy Thanksgiving. Give thanks especially that we can now decisively free ourselves from this hobgoblin. Later today or tomorrow I will send a compilation of U tube videos by experts who will march you through all the graphs and charts which document every aspect of what I have just said above.
Also wind energy
John Miller <mountainhomesteadofme@live.com> wrote:
Wind Energy is not a valuable source of electric ..and the way that the Companies get local towns to buy into it is wrong at every level. There are a few websites I would like for you to see and a movie called windfall http://windfallthemovie.com/index_1.html and that is there tactics towards people .all I want to do is try to create jobs for this hard economic area as many as possible ..With the current structure I have a slim chance but will continue to try .Here are is a website http://www.windtaskforce.org/ that has great information about the downside of wind and if you want to make an investment These guys at MIT are the wind Future mans name is Alan Rein http://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/article/altaeros-team-builds-its-first-prototype-airborne-wind-turbine they had there first launch in April of this year .........
Besides the Creature From Jekyll Island movie ...any more that you have I would like to learn more
The godfather of global warming lowers the boom on climate change
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/06/22/green-drivel
Eighteen months ago, James Lovelock, the godfather of global warming, gave a startling interview to msnbc.com in which he acknowledged he had been unduly “alarmist” about climate change.
The implications were extraordinary.
Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory.
Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honored working scientist and academic.
His inventions have been used by NASA, among many other scientific organizations.
Lovelock’s invention of the electron capture detector in 1957 first enabled scientists to measure CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and other pollutants in the atmosphere, leading, in many ways, to the birth of the modern environmental movement.
Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the millennium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models predicted, Lovelock acknowledged, “the problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.” Now, Lovelock has given a follow-up interview to the UK’s Guardian newspaper in which he delivers more bombshells sure to anger the global green movement, which for years worshipped his Gaia theory and apocalyptic predictions that billions would die from man-made climate change by the end of this century.
Lovelock still believes anthropogenic global warming is occurring and that mankind must lower its greenhouse gas emissions, but says it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect.
He responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike many climate scientists who fear a loss of government funding if they admit error, as a freelance scientist, he’s never been afraid to revise his theories in the face of new evidence. Indeed, that’s how science advances.
Among his observations to the Guardian:
(1) A long-time supporter of nuclear power as a way to lower greenhouse gas emissions, which has made him unpopular with environmentalists, Lovelock has now come out in favour of natural gas fracking (which environmentalists also oppose), as a low-polluting alternative to coal.
As Lovelock observes, “Gas is almost a give-away in the U.S. at the moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me very cross with the greens for trying to knock it … Let’s be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it.” (Kandeh Yumkella, co-head of a major United Nations program on sustainable energy, made similar arguments last week at a UN environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro, advocating the development of conventional and unconventional natural gas resources as a way to reduce deforestation and save millions of lives in the Third World.)
(2) Lovelock blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion.
“It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion,” Lovelock observed. “I don’t think people have noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use … The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.”
(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines.
As he puts it, “so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can’t stand windmills at any price.”
(4) Finally, about claims “the science is settled” on global warming: “One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it.”
#5
Great! Now can we prosecute the evil doers on Wall Street?
#6
INAUGRATION DAY 1-20-09 after OBAMA took the oath - I so much wanted PotUS OBAMA to have the secret service arrest bush and dicktator dick for their crimes.
dicktator dick claimed to have a "bad back" and needed to be wheelchaired to the ceremonies - i think that is exactly what he was afraid of - I think - cheney thought - it was a good excuse not to attend the ceremony - hated to turn over his crown and scepter to anyone - especially a black man.
#7
Not my fault! I'm afraid the blame will be deflected down the chain of Command and stick at some lower level.
#8
So, I guess all you Lib/Progs who champion legal remedies against abuses of non-citizens by the Bush admin. are equally outraged that Obama's summary executions of American citizens, including a 16 year old boy, by drone, goes unpunished?
http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2012/07/mr-president-did-you-sign-kill...
http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2012/07/mr-president-did-you-sign-kill...
Quote mjolnir:Quote mjolnir:The American people deserve to know.
"Let's start there. He was an American boy, born in America. Though he'd lived in Yemen since he was about seven, he was still an American citizen, which should have made it harder for the United States to kill him.
It didn't.
It should at the very least have made it necessary for the United States to say why it killed him.
It didn't."
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/abdulrahman-al-awlaki-death-10470891
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/04/05/al-au...
"Judge Rosemary Collyer (District Court of DC) yesterday dismissed a damages lawsuit filed by families of Anwar Al-Aulaqi, his son Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi, and Samir Khan, who were US citizens killed in US drone strikes. This was a Bivens suit for damages against individual US government officials alleged to be responsible for violations of the 4th and 5th amendments. After finding that the case is not precluded by the political question doctrine, Judge Collyer found that the 4th amendment was not at issue and focused her discussion on the 5th amendment instead; she then dismissed, with some hesitation, finding that cautionary principles attached to Bivens actions, counseling against judicial encroachment on the political branches, urged dismissal. The 41-page ruling is here and the national security and law website Lawfare has coverage of the oral argument from last July here and discussion and links to thebriefs here."
#9
If our nation's laws were propertly enforced, those high ranking Bush Administration torturers would still be serving life sentences in jail.
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I've been wanting to see that happen for YEARS. But I'm not holding my breath. Hopefully though, Great Britain is setting a good example with Tony Blair.