Dignity

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/12/wh-blames-hamas.html

In the White House’s first press briefing since Israel began bombing Gaza over the weekend, spokesman Gordon Johndroe towed the same line we’ve heard from the administration in recent days, blaming Hamas for the outbreak of violence but at no time calling on Israel to stop its retaliation.

While still-President  Bush and President-Elect Obama and their advisors are busy “monitoring the situation” in Gaza–where at least 350 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed in four days of brutal Israeli aerial attacks with American-made weapons–former Congresswoman and Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney again walks the walk, demonstrating what moral courage and human “dignity” really mean.

unflinching, unswerving

Harold Pinter

October 10, 1930 – December 24, 2008

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2005/dec/08/theatre.nobelprize

Clock-Stoppers

http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/collection/record.asp?ID=19

When terrorists flew American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon, the crash nearly took the nearby Pentagon helipad firehouse with it. The concussion caused the ceiling of the firehouse to collapse, temporarily trapping firefighter Dennis Young in the fallen debris. The blast also knocked this clock from the wall, freezing it at 9:32. The airplane actually struck the Pentagon at 9:38 am; apparently the clock was six minutes slow.

That august keeper of US History the Smithsonian Institution betrays no unease in suggesting that the Pentagon helipad clock–a clock that by midday on 9/11/2001 would have timed the arrival of the President himself–had been allowed to become “six minutes slow”.

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a830heliportprepares#a830heliportprepares

Well, it’s just one clock. An oversight, no doubt. Except that there seems to have been a minor wrinkle in time throughout the Pentagon that morning.

http://www.news.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=2480Pentagonclock_BBC

A Clock frozen at the time of impact when a hijacked commercial airliner crashed into the Pentagon on Sep. 11. The terrorist attack caused extensive damage to the Pentagon. American Airlines FLT 77 was bound for Los Angeles from Washington Dulles with 58 passengers and 6 crew. All aboard the aircraft were killed, along with 125 people in the Pentagon.

Another clock stopped at 8:32 a.m. on 9/11 was the watch of one April Gallop. Ms. Gallop was a US Army specialist at her desk in the Pentagon some forty feet from the “point of impact” on 9/11. She was wounded in the attack and her infant son–who had for some reason been allowed to accompany her–suffered brain damage.

http://www.headinjury.com/911ezpeace.htm

Now the heroic Ms. Gallop and her lawyer have filed a potentially explosive lawsuit.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/911_survivor_blasts_Rumsfeld_Cheney_No_1217.html

Career Army Specialist sues Rumsfeld, Cheney, saying no evacuation order given on 9/11

A career Army specialist who survived the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, claims that no evacuation was ordered inside the Pentagon, despite flight controllers calling in warnings of approaching hijacked aircraft nearly 20 minutes before the building was struck.

According to a time-line of the attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration notified NORAD that American Airlines Flight 77 had been hijacked at 9:24 a.m. The Pentagon was not struck until 9:43 a.m.

On behalf of Spc. April Gallop, who served in the Network Infrastructure Services Agency as an administrative specialist, California attorney William Veale has filed a civil suit against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and former US Air Force General Richard Myers, who was acting chairman of the joint chiefs on 9/11. It alleges they engaged in conspiracy to facilitate the terrorist attacks and purposefully failed to warn those inside the Pentagon, contributing to injuries she and her two-month-old son incurred.

“The ex-G.I. plaintiff alleges she has been denied government support since then, because she raised ‘painful questions’ about the inexplicable failure of military defenses at the Pentagon that day, and especially the failure of officials to warn and evacuate the occupants of the building when they knew the attack was imminent” said Veale in a media advisory.

Spc. Gallop also says she heard two loud explosions, and does not believe that a Boeing 757 hit the building. Her son sustained a serious brain injury, and Gallop herself was knocked unconscious after the roof collapsed onto her office.

The suit also named additional, unknown persons who had foreknowledge of the attacks.

“What they don’t want is for this to go into discovery,” said Gallop’s attorney, Mr. Veale, speaking to RAW STORY. “If we can make it past their initial motion to dismiss these claims, and we get the power of subpoena, then we’ve got a real shot at getting to the bottom of this. We’ve got the law on our side.”

Whether or not “a Boeing 757 hit the building”, one can only imagine the platinum defense scrambling to reconcile the official timeline with, say, Norman Mineta’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission.

Forgive and forget…forget…forget

He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.

- George Orwell

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

- George Santayana

That is a do-over that I can’t do.

- George W. Bush

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/18/obama-advisers-torture-pr_n_144540.html

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama’s incoming administration is unlikely to bring criminal charges against government officials who authorized or engaged in harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists during the George W. Bush presidency. Obama, who has criticized the use of torture, is being urged by some constitutional scholars and human rights groups to investigate possible war crimes by the Bush administration.

Two Obama advisers said there’s little–if any–chance that the incoming president’s Justice Department will go after anyone involved in authorizing or carrying out interrogations that provoked worldwide outrage.

The advisers spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans are still tentative. A spokesman for Obama’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

Additionally, the question of whether to prosecute may never become an issue if Bush issues pre-emptive pardons to protect those involved.

Obama has committed to reviewing interrogations on al-Qaida and other terror suspects. After he takes office in January, Obama is expected to create a panel modeled after the 9/11 Commission to study interrogations, including those using waterboarding and other tactics that critics call torture. The panel’s findings would be used to ensure that future interrogations are undisputedly legal.

“I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture,” Obama said Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes.” “Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.”

Obama’s most ardent supporters are split on whether he should prosecute Bush officials.

Asked this weekend during a Vermont Public Radio interview if Bush administration officials would face war crimes, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy flatly said, “In the United States, no.”

“These things are not going to happen,” said Leahy, D-Vt.

Robert Litt, a former top Clinton administration Justice Department prosecutor, said Obama should focus on moving forward with anti-torture policy instead of looking back.

“Both for policy and political reasons, it would not be beneficial to spend a lot of time hauling people up before Congress or before grand juries and going over what went on,” Litt said at a Brookings Institution discussion about Obama’s legal policy. “To as great of an extent we can say, the last eight years are over, now we can move forward–that would be beneficial both to the country and the president, politically.”

What reasonable person could disagree? Certainly not Karl Rove.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/3628402/Karl-Rove-launches-Bush-legacy-project-with-Iraq-war-claim.html

The final mission on behalf of President Bush is reportedly being spearheaded by two trusted members of his Texan kitchen cabinet – Mr Rove, the architect of his two White House election triumphs, and Karen Hughes, his former communications chief.

They have been meeting senior figures in the current Administration to discuss how to “roll out the president’s legacy”, according to Stephen Hayes, a prominent conservative commentator and Vice-President Dick Cheney’s official biographer.

Part of that strategy is to “set the record straight”, a senior Republican strategist told The Sunday Telegraph, and Mr Rove’s assertion on Iraq appears to have been an opening salvo in that campaign. He is the most senior White House insider to state so firmly that the president would not have gone to war had the intelligence been different.

Unhelpfully for Mr. Rove and his associates, sometimes the Memory Hole coughs up an inconvenient scrap or two.

http://downingstreetmemo.com/docs/memotext.pdf

 It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin….Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

Remember this choice scrap?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bush-plotted-to-lure-saddam-into-war-with-fake-un-plane-465436.html

George Bush considered provoking a war with Saddam Hussein’s regime by flying a United States spyplane over Iraq bearing UN colours, enticing the Iraqis to take a shot at it, according to a leaked memo of a meeting between the US President and Tony Blair.

 

The two leaders were worried by the lack of hard evidence that Saddam Hussein had broken UN resolutions, though privately they were convinced that he had. According to the memorandum, Mr Bush said: “The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.”

(That is what is known in ”intelligence” circles as a “false-flag” operation.)

How about this one?

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06EFD61430F931A25752C0A9629C8B63

Mr. O’Neill, who was dismissed by Mr. Bush more than a year ago over differences on economic policy, said Iraq was discussed at the first National Security Council meeting after Mr. Bush’s inauguration. The tone at that meeting and others, Mr. O’Neill said, was ”all about finding a way to do it,” with no real questioning of why Mr. Hussein had to go or why it had to be done then. ”For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap,” Mr. O’Neill said.

And here’s a scrap titled Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nüremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal, 1950.

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/390?OpenDocument

Principle VI

The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

 

 

(a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

  

(b) War crimes:
Violations of the laws or customs of war include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

(c) Crimes against humanity:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connexion with any crime against peace or any war crime.

 

But never mind all that. There is a “legacy” to create.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-bush9-2008dec09,0,4145069.story

In case any Bush administration officials have trouble summing up the boss’ record, the White House is providing a few helpful suggestions.

 

A two-page memo that has been sent to Cabinet members and other high-ranking officials offers a guide for discussing Bush’s eight-year tenure during their public speeches.

 

Titled “Speech Topper on the Bush Record,” the talking points state that Bush “kept the American people safe” after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, lifted the economy after 2001 through tax cuts, curbed AIDS in Africa and maintained “the honor and the dignity of his office.”

 

Maybe it really would be better if we all just closed our eyes and looked forward, after all.