I was reading along through my news emails the other day and I came across an article talking about Dick Cheney criticizing the appointment of a special prosecutor by Eric H. Holder Jr. What caught my eye was a transcript of Cheney stating, "at his request" the CIA release a document showing whether or not the Bush Administration's interrogation methods were responsible for defeating all efforts to attack our country. Later in the article said something else about the CIA memos released at Cheney's urging.
I have one BIG question. Who the hell is granting Dick Cheney the power to advise the CIA about anything? Hey Dick!, I thought you were a vise president, not only that, but didn't your side lose the last election? What gives Dick the power to be still advising the CIA on anything? Releasing documents?...Dick? Weren't you the one in the last administration that was calling most everything in the form of documents, that were requested by oversight committees, protected by executive privilege?
In your defense of torture you say that it worked, it kept all the evil powers from hurting anyone in the US. What doesn't seem to get through the thick Dick head is it doesn't matter if you think what you did worked, it doesn't even mattered if it did work, breaking the law is breaking the law, and torture is breaking the laws of both the United States and of international treaties we have agreed to. I get jumping up and down, pulling my hair out mad as hell that we have a person like Dick on just about every major television network, if not every major television network, admitting publicly, in the light of day, that he is proud of what he done, and that he'd do it again, he'd still be doing it. Even though it is illegal. Why isn't he arrested already?
Maybe Dick does get it. Maybe he knows that on the merits of law and order he is guilty as sin. That is why he holds that the ends justified the means. It worked, this makes it better than the law. He thinks that if he can paint enemy combatants as sub human, others will commit unheard of acts against them out of fear, and he is right, but does that make it right. Didn't this happen before...hmm...perhaps Nazi Germany with the Jews? This is just the thing that happens when a group of people acquire power with no oversight. It was what we got as a result of a closed door meetings with what was said vailed by the phrase executive privilage.
Still, after all this, Cheney crawls out from under his rock, from the death of his political career, and he still has the power to request and urge the CIA to release documents
Showing posts with label Dick Cheney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dick Cheney. Show all posts
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Let's Applaud Those Who Stand up for What is Right
Dear Senator Feingold,
I just want to thank you for your stand against not only CIA torture abuses, but your outspokenness that the interrogation probe on CIA abuses, does not go far enough and that "The abuses that were officially sanctioned amounted to torture and those at the very top who authorized, ordered or sought to provide legal cover for them should be held accountable,"
I do not know why there are not more people in Washington who will take a stand against this blight that is contrary to the ideals on which our country was founded.
In the past our great country could take the high road in fighting against the tyranny of rulers from other world countries, but now we need to take the high road to fight the tyranny the Bush Administration.
Other countries knew that they could depend on our high morals and honor and even the solders of countries that we have fought against knew that they could have faith in the humane treatment that they would receive if captured fighting us.
The Bush Administration has given our country a black eye that won't heal in the eyes of the rest of the world if we don't honor our international agreements concerning the treatment of our captured combatants.
Our country was instrumental in bringing to justice people from Germany and Japan for the same types of apostrophes that people in the Bush Administration have encouraged.
I can't believe that Dick Cheney can go out in public in the light of day and try to justify breaking of US and International laws by using the ends justify the means argument.
If nothing is done to correct things done during the Bush Administration, history is going to report that not only did people in the Bush Administration do horrendous wrong, but that the following administration was just as horrendous for not making things right.
Please continue to stand up against the wrongs done in the name of our country until what is wrong is right. You, me, our descendants, and our country will be the better for it. Thank you.
I just want to thank you for your stand against not only CIA torture abuses, but your outspokenness that the interrogation probe on CIA abuses, does not go far enough and that "The abuses that were officially sanctioned amounted to torture and those at the very top who authorized, ordered or sought to provide legal cover for them should be held accountable,"
I do not know why there are not more people in Washington who will take a stand against this blight that is contrary to the ideals on which our country was founded.
In the past our great country could take the high road in fighting against the tyranny of rulers from other world countries, but now we need to take the high road to fight the tyranny the Bush Administration.
Other countries knew that they could depend on our high morals and honor and even the solders of countries that we have fought against knew that they could have faith in the humane treatment that they would receive if captured fighting us.
The Bush Administration has given our country a black eye that won't heal in the eyes of the rest of the world if we don't honor our international agreements concerning the treatment of our captured combatants.
Our country was instrumental in bringing to justice people from Germany and Japan for the same types of apostrophes that people in the Bush Administration have encouraged.
I can't believe that Dick Cheney can go out in public in the light of day and try to justify breaking of US and International laws by using the ends justify the means argument.
If nothing is done to correct things done during the Bush Administration, history is going to report that not only did people in the Bush Administration do horrendous wrong, but that the following administration was just as horrendous for not making things right.
Please continue to stand up against the wrongs done in the name of our country until what is wrong is right. You, me, our descendants, and our country will be the better for it. Thank you.
Friday, August 7, 2009
IndictBushNow.org
Congressional leaders demand:
"High-ranking officials and lawyers …
be held legally accountable."
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As hundreds of thousands of people at the grassroots are taking action, leading members of Congress are joining in to demand that the coming prosecution for Bush-era crimes include the high officials who authorized the criminal acts.
The disgusting, outrageous and criminal acts were not committed by a few bad apples. It is Cheney and Bush and Rumsfeld and others who are guilty, and they must be held accountable.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder Tuesday reiterating his calls for a special prosecutor that makes these demands crystal clear. Nadler is chairman of the panel’s subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Committee on the Judiciary.
"There simply is no legal, moral or principled reason to insulate those who authorized the torture of detainees, either through legal reasoning or other policy directive, from investigation," Nadler wrote. "This country has been instrumental in establishing the principle that high-ranking officials and lawyers who use legal reasoning to justify or otherwise authorize war crimes can, and should, be held legally accountable.
"The ban on torture is absolute and we have a legal obligation to investigate torture and all of those who may have been party to its use."
Nadler’s letter is a follow-up to one sent to Eric Holder in April that was signed by other members of the House Judiciary Committee. That letter stated:
"The Geneva Conventions obligate High Contracting Parties such as the United States to investigate and bring before our courts those individuals ‘alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed grave breaches of those Conventions."
There is not a moment to spare in this historic effort to restore the Constitution and to send a message to future officials that no one is above the law. Election to high office can never be seen again as a blank check to torture, to carry out secret assassinations, establish secret prisons, spy on the people and launch unprovoked wars of aggression all in the name of "protecting" the country.
Please make your contribution today so that we can sustain this vital work in the coming weeks and months.
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--From all of us at IndictBushNow.org
Thursday, November 13, 2008
We Continue to Get Fooled Again
Unlike The Who song in the 70s, that states, "we won't get fooled again", it is instead, "we continue to get fooled again".
Remember that $700 billion bail out package for Wall Street financial companies that was supposed to free up money from bad debts for lending to get the economy back rolling? With most of the first half of that money gone or spoken for, it didn't work. A week ago a lame duck president got up on national television and pleaded with financial institutions not to hold on to that money to shore up their financial situation, or buy other failing institutions, but to use it for lending like it was intended. It looks like the original plan which was to buy up "bad" mortgages and eventually sell them at a later date paying back taxpayers when the housing market was higher wasn't really considered too hard to start with. Instead of buying failed mortgages, setting some kind of stipulations on how the money was spent or used to insure that the taxpayer could be paid off, the administration decided that we would just buy up the worthless pieces of paper called stocks from companies that no one else would ever in their right mind buy, because the companies are failing in the first place. It looks like Bush get's his money for his big business buddies one way or another. Now that almost half the money is gone, and they can't get banks to loosen up money for lending, the government is thinking about maybe starting to give the second half of the money to directly help homeowners, let's hope that they come up with a few better rules for regulating that half of bailout money.
Talk about redistribution of wealth? How are the bailed out or soon to be bailed out institutions reacting to the economy downturn? They are paying bonuses in the area of $230,000 to employees making base salaries of $400,000. Makes perfect sense to me. After your upper management loses all your money resulting that your company needs to be bailed out by the taxpayers, your management people need hundreds of thousands of dollars of bonuses to know they are appreciated. What?!! Yes during house hearings I heard that these institutions were paying up to a million dollars a month to people who weren't even working at the company anymore, but who were held on on retainer because the companies were afraid that these people would spill their trade secrets with their competitors. Trade secrets??? Mr. Big Business, you are broke, what is it about your company procedures would anyone want or value? Gee what would these trade secrets be? Something like, "How to Bankrupt Your Company and Get Bailed Out by the Government"? Or maybe, "Screw Your Company and Get a Million a Month for Not Working". And while those guys who make 400 thousand dollars a year and bonuses of 230 thousand dollars are getting paid by the American taxpayer if, God forbid, that taxpayer gets a 1 thousand dollar tax break, it is an evil wealth redistribution plot that will bankrupt the top 1-2% of Americans. While you are thinking about that, think about just how much that health plan or education, or disability is such a drain on society compared to them guys pulling in $600,000 dollars plus a year at your expense.
This is not even touching on all the taxpayer money going towards the war in Iraq or money going to other governments that are fighting wars for us. What about all the money going to the company Dick Cheney has ties to that supplies the instruments of destruction to support the wars around the globe. I bet that is another company that isn't feeling the pinch of the bad economy, the only company other than big oil. It isn't chance that in the movies Batman and Spiderman that more than one multimillionaire's fortune was built up using money from the arms industry, kind of like art reflects reality.
I have a bit of news for them politicians. The market is failing and stalled because the common man, the one that's not in the top 2% of income earners, doesn't have any money to spend on things that aren't absolutely necessary. Hell most of them don't have the money to spend on the things that are necessary. That what happens when you cater to the top 1-2% of the people who make the most, they divvy things up to make the most out of everyone else until everyone else don't have the money to keep the economy going.
These things should make you mad as hell. They should make you want to hold people, corporations, and administrations accountable for the mistakes that make and especially when they do things that either are illegal or should be illegal. The Bush/Cheney administration needs to be held accountable for their deeds while in office, they surely didn't protect the constitution that they swore to protect. They started wars where we had no business, screwed up the economy for their buddies gain, went against Geneva conventions and international law. The first step to fixing things is to find and admit where things went wrong to get to this time in space that we are in, and take steps that these things do not ever have the chance to happen again. Impeach Bush/Cheney. Then prosecute them.
Remember that $700 billion bail out package for Wall Street financial companies that was supposed to free up money from bad debts for lending to get the economy back rolling? With most of the first half of that money gone or spoken for, it didn't work. A week ago a lame duck president got up on national television and pleaded with financial institutions not to hold on to that money to shore up their financial situation, or buy other failing institutions, but to use it for lending like it was intended. It looks like the original plan which was to buy up "bad" mortgages and eventually sell them at a later date paying back taxpayers when the housing market was higher wasn't really considered too hard to start with. Instead of buying failed mortgages, setting some kind of stipulations on how the money was spent or used to insure that the taxpayer could be paid off, the administration decided that we would just buy up the worthless pieces of paper called stocks from companies that no one else would ever in their right mind buy, because the companies are failing in the first place. It looks like Bush get's his money for his big business buddies one way or another. Now that almost half the money is gone, and they can't get banks to loosen up money for lending, the government is thinking about maybe starting to give the second half of the money to directly help homeowners, let's hope that they come up with a few better rules for regulating that half of bailout money.
Talk about redistribution of wealth? How are the bailed out or soon to be bailed out institutions reacting to the economy downturn? They are paying bonuses in the area of $230,000 to employees making base salaries of $400,000. Makes perfect sense to me. After your upper management loses all your money resulting that your company needs to be bailed out by the taxpayers, your management people need hundreds of thousands of dollars of bonuses to know they are appreciated. What?!! Yes during house hearings I heard that these institutions were paying up to a million dollars a month to people who weren't even working at the company anymore, but who were held on on retainer because the companies were afraid that these people would spill their trade secrets with their competitors. Trade secrets??? Mr. Big Business, you are broke, what is it about your company procedures would anyone want or value? Gee what would these trade secrets be? Something like, "How to Bankrupt Your Company and Get Bailed Out by the Government"? Or maybe, "Screw Your Company and Get a Million a Month for Not Working". And while those guys who make 400 thousand dollars a year and bonuses of 230 thousand dollars are getting paid by the American taxpayer if, God forbid, that taxpayer gets a 1 thousand dollar tax break, it is an evil wealth redistribution plot that will bankrupt the top 1-2% of Americans. While you are thinking about that, think about just how much that health plan or education, or disability is such a drain on society compared to them guys pulling in $600,000 dollars plus a year at your expense.
This is not even touching on all the taxpayer money going towards the war in Iraq or money going to other governments that are fighting wars for us. What about all the money going to the company Dick Cheney has ties to that supplies the instruments of destruction to support the wars around the globe. I bet that is another company that isn't feeling the pinch of the bad economy, the only company other than big oil. It isn't chance that in the movies Batman and Spiderman that more than one multimillionaire's fortune was built up using money from the arms industry, kind of like art reflects reality.
I have a bit of news for them politicians. The market is failing and stalled because the common man, the one that's not in the top 2% of income earners, doesn't have any money to spend on things that aren't absolutely necessary. Hell most of them don't have the money to spend on the things that are necessary. That what happens when you cater to the top 1-2% of the people who make the most, they divvy things up to make the most out of everyone else until everyone else don't have the money to keep the economy going.
These things should make you mad as hell. They should make you want to hold people, corporations, and administrations accountable for the mistakes that make and especially when they do things that either are illegal or should be illegal. The Bush/Cheney administration needs to be held accountable for their deeds while in office, they surely didn't protect the constitution that they swore to protect. They started wars where we had no business, screwed up the economy for their buddies gain, went against Geneva conventions and international law. The first step to fixing things is to find and admit where things went wrong to get to this time in space that we are in, and take steps that these things do not ever have the chance to happen again. Impeach Bush/Cheney. Then prosecute them.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Bend Over America
In the latest news of the fleecing of America as reported in the New York Times. Charles M. Smith a former civilian overseer for the Army, overseeing the largest contractor of the Iraq war for food services, KBR, said he was ousted from his job because he refused to pay one billion dollars for questionable charges that were not substantiated by KBR. The Bush Administration must hate the New York Times.
KBR is a Houston-based company that provides food, housing and other services to the troops stationed in Iraq. KBR stands for Kellogg, Brown and Root and is the subsidiary of Halliburton, the Texas company that Vice President Dick Cheney previously served as chief executive. Mr. Smith's position was then given to a colleague and KBR received all the money it was asking for, including the one billion that didn't have supporting records for.
So we have a war that support was gotten from Congress and the American people through the lies and misstatements from members of the Bush Administration, which included Vice President Dick Cheney, who has had strong ties with the KBR company. Doesn't this sound a bit like conflict of interest on the part of Vice President Dick Cheney? Hmmm, can we say kickbacks? For someone that came into a very high level of government from being a chief executive of the company in question, it would be hard to not imagine some kind of benefits coming back Cheney's way in some form or another. I suppose we will learn later, as this story breaks, that this is probably another one of the Bush Administration's no-bid contracts. If we are getting fleeced for at least one billion in food services, what about the other services that KBR supplies like in troop housing and other services? We'll see huh? It's a big surprise,not, that in our failing economy the only businesses doing well, extremely well, are businesses that the president and vice president are/were involved in, oil companies and companies involved with supplying services and weapons for the war in Iraq. Now Bush is pushing for the oil companies to be allowed to drill off shore, something that oil companies have been pushing for for some time, coincidence? I think not.
We can count on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will look into this and find in this case, as it has for other cases in the past, misconduct on the part of the Bush Administration. Yet, Hello Democrats, there will be no push by Democrats to follow through on impeachment proceedings against Bush or Cheney as there are already articles of impeachment that have been sent to the Judiciary Committee that are basically sitting on ice. I agree with Democrats on most things, but when it comes to doing their constitutional duties in regards to protecting the American people against a corrupt administration they are nutless. I can't understand why that is? I can't believe that Democrats are so afraid that people, who voted them into office on their platforms of fixing a corrupt government and getting us out of the Iraq war, are going to chastise them during an election year because they would be doing what the American people put them in office for. Where is the justice? Instead they give lame reasons that they have more important things to do during the remainder of their terms.
What is more important than protecting the Constitution? What's more important than impeaching the people in office, who have done so much damage to the American people's constitutional rights. What's more important than making sure that the people who got us into an illegal war with Iraq which cost over 4 thousand American solders their lives and countless Iraqi lives, costs to the American people of trillions of dollars, a failed economy and high gas prices, are brought to justice. Instead the Democrats are content to piddle with trying to pass bills that have no chance to pass because even if they can get enough support from the House and Senate, the crook of a president we have will veto them. What's more important than fixing that?
Most of this doesn't make sense. About the only way any of this makes sense to me is:
The Democrats don't really want to bring this war to and end as the American public wants. The Democrats think that they will get more support, or more support for a Democratic president, from the American people passing bills that are repeatedly vetoed by a Republican president. The Democrats secretly want to keep the executive powers that President Bush claimed for their own use when they get one of their own in the president's chair. The Democrats are completely clueless as to their jobs in office. What ever their excuses are, they don't make sense. If they don't watch it, it will back fire this fall and the American public will be so fed up with their inaction that they will vote independent or even Republican cause even if the Republican's objectives are different than the people's objectives, they at least know how to get what they want, specially when no one is willing to call them or stand up to them on their illegal procedures and activities.
KBR is a Houston-based company that provides food, housing and other services to the troops stationed in Iraq. KBR stands for Kellogg, Brown and Root and is the subsidiary of Halliburton, the Texas company that Vice President Dick Cheney previously served as chief executive. Mr. Smith's position was then given to a colleague and KBR received all the money it was asking for, including the one billion that didn't have supporting records for.
So we have a war that support was gotten from Congress and the American people through the lies and misstatements from members of the Bush Administration, which included Vice President Dick Cheney, who has had strong ties with the KBR company. Doesn't this sound a bit like conflict of interest on the part of Vice President Dick Cheney? Hmmm, can we say kickbacks? For someone that came into a very high level of government from being a chief executive of the company in question, it would be hard to not imagine some kind of benefits coming back Cheney's way in some form or another. I suppose we will learn later, as this story breaks, that this is probably another one of the Bush Administration's no-bid contracts. If we are getting fleeced for at least one billion in food services, what about the other services that KBR supplies like in troop housing and other services? We'll see huh? It's a big surprise,not, that in our failing economy the only businesses doing well, extremely well, are businesses that the president and vice president are/were involved in, oil companies and companies involved with supplying services and weapons for the war in Iraq. Now Bush is pushing for the oil companies to be allowed to drill off shore, something that oil companies have been pushing for for some time, coincidence? I think not.
We can count on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will look into this and find in this case, as it has for other cases in the past, misconduct on the part of the Bush Administration. Yet, Hello Democrats, there will be no push by Democrats to follow through on impeachment proceedings against Bush or Cheney as there are already articles of impeachment that have been sent to the Judiciary Committee that are basically sitting on ice. I agree with Democrats on most things, but when it comes to doing their constitutional duties in regards to protecting the American people against a corrupt administration they are nutless. I can't understand why that is? I can't believe that Democrats are so afraid that people, who voted them into office on their platforms of fixing a corrupt government and getting us out of the Iraq war, are going to chastise them during an election year because they would be doing what the American people put them in office for. Where is the justice? Instead they give lame reasons that they have more important things to do during the remainder of their terms.
What is more important than protecting the Constitution? What's more important than impeaching the people in office, who have done so much damage to the American people's constitutional rights. What's more important than making sure that the people who got us into an illegal war with Iraq which cost over 4 thousand American solders their lives and countless Iraqi lives, costs to the American people of trillions of dollars, a failed economy and high gas prices, are brought to justice. Instead the Democrats are content to piddle with trying to pass bills that have no chance to pass because even if they can get enough support from the House and Senate, the crook of a president we have will veto them. What's more important than fixing that?
Most of this doesn't make sense. About the only way any of this makes sense to me is:
The Democrats don't really want to bring this war to and end as the American public wants. The Democrats think that they will get more support, or more support for a Democratic president, from the American people passing bills that are repeatedly vetoed by a Republican president. The Democrats secretly want to keep the executive powers that President Bush claimed for their own use when they get one of their own in the president's chair. The Democrats are completely clueless as to their jobs in office. What ever their excuses are, they don't make sense. If they don't watch it, it will back fire this fall and the American public will be so fed up with their inaction that they will vote independent or even Republican cause even if the Republican's objectives are different than the people's objectives, they at least know how to get what they want, specially when no one is willing to call them or stand up to them on their illegal procedures and activities.
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