Quoted from CICERO

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Cheney "Fears Being Tried as a War Criminal"

So does Obama.

Quoted from Box A Rox

Really Cissy?  Do you have a link?  

Quoted from Box A Rox

Is torture by democrats a sin, while torture by republicans is acceptable???
John McCain is a Republican, and opposed to torture of prisoners.  Does he need to
change parties to be anti torture???

(More Backwards thinking by the Right)

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Cheney "Fears Being Tried as a War Criminal"

Quoted from CICERO

Here ya go.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/05/obama-administration-drone-strikes-war-crimes

Quoted from Box A Rox

Quoted from CICERO



So does Obama.

Really Cissy?  Do you have a link?  


Cicero is at it again... Posts a link to non existent information.

I checked your link Cicero.... I didn't find anything even remotely close to
"Obama fears being tried as a war criminal".  
I'm sure it is a mistake on your part, as you wouldn't just INVENT a lie like that would you?
Would you???

So please, this must be a mistake... Since you contend that "Obama Fears Being Tried as
a War Criminal"...
Please post a link, if you can.

Quoted from CICERO

I quickly scan the article you linked, and I didnt read that Cheany feared being tried as a war criminal.  I did read quotes by Wilkerson,  an assistant to Colon Powell, that he believed Cheany "feared being tried as a war criminal".  But then again, I may have missed Cheany's quote expressing his fear.

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Why Haven’t Cheney And Co. Been Charged With War Crimes? LEVERAGE (Op-Ed)
Published On March 11, 2014 |      By Bruce Lindner |

Over the past five years, I bet I’ve had this conversation fifty times: Why didn’t president Obama turn Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush over for war crimes? Not knowing all the behind the scenes details, all we can do is speculate. But here’s my theory based on what we know.

Barack Obama won decisively against John McCain in 2008; a man who held many of the same hawkish positions that Bush and Cheney did. And he got his a** handed to him. The country was ready to move on beyond the wars and the faux warriors, so we elected a man based on his ability to reason, rather than the tough talk of the Dubbya era. We had just completed eight years of the stupidest, most incompetent leadership this nation has ever known, and the people were ready for a thinker. Whether you voted for him or not, Barack Obama IS a highly intelligent man, and he takes time to think things through, rather than shooting from the hip. I know… such a radical concept.

Look back at the 2002 Iraq War resolution. While the House approved the resolution, the House Democrats overwhelmingly opposed it. But in the Senate, things were different. Almost three-fourths of the Senate, for whatever reason, voted to authorize Bush to go after Saddam. Every single Republican Senator (with the exception of Lincoln Chafee, who would soon pay the price for his courage) voted for war. And while twenty-one Democrats opposed the resolution, there were twenty-nine who voted FOR it. And thus, the neocons got their war.

And these weren’t just “Who the hell is he?” Democrats, but some very high profile Democrats… whose reputations are marred for life by that blotch on their record, several of whom had or have political aspirations beyond the Senate. Most notably: John Kerry, who ran against Bush just two years after authorizing the war. And his choice for Veep, John Edwards. Tom Daschle, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton… and Joe Biden.

So along comes Barack Obama in January of ’09, and before he even gets his suitcases unpacked, two opposing camps present him with this quandary: Do we honor International law, and recognize torture for what it is — a war crime? Or do we try to put it all behind us, turn the page and let history be their judge? Maybe I’ll discuss it with my new cabinet, several of whom just happen to have been in on those discussions prior to the war. Kerry, Biden, Clinton, Schumer and Feinstein were all very influential, and as Senators, they held important positions on the various committees. What do you think Hillary Clinton told him? Or John Kerry? Or Joe Biden? Just what *NONE* of them wanted to be reminded of ever again; the most catastrophic vote they ever made. And who knows what they were told of any evidence that contradicted the Bush/Cheney position at the time, but failed to act on it? Such as the reports submitted by Scott Ritter. We know now that there was tons of evidence to the contrary, but due to the pro-war atmosphere of the time, much of it slipped through the cracks, or was squelched by their friends in the media — and I’m looking at you, Judy Miller. If indictments were to be filed against these people for water boarding, for Abu Ghraib, etc., could a document surface that would make one of the aforementioned Democrats regret being born? If Dick Cheney’s legal team had their way, you can bet on it. If that snake had to go down, he wouldn’t go alone.

I can just envision it. John Kerry: “Mr. President, do we really want to rehash this all over again? What’s done is done. Let the Iraq War be THEIR legacy, let’s not allow it to be OUR legacy too, by making us share the spotlight with them as witnesses in some tribunal.”

Or Hillary Clinton: “Well, I for one am opposed to keeping the story alive for another decade. Nothing good can come of putting Dick Cheney on the stand to allow him to share the blame with us for their disastrous war.”  Keeping in mind that 2016 isn’t so far off that the voters will have forgotten the Iraq War.

The bottom line: Cheney knows something one or more of these ex-Senators would just as soon never see the light of day, and he’s leveraged it to assure his freedom.

So, I suspect President Obama made the CORRECT decision, even though it may not have been the RIGHT decision by everyone’s definition. To spare his party, and members of his administration — and possibly even a future candidate for president any further embarrassment, he gave Bush, Rice, Cheney and Rumsfeld a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card. The potential storm that may have ensued had the Bushies been turned over for war crimes investigations were probably outweighed by the harm it might have caused to many who should have known better at the time. And possibly, were up to their necks in it. I’ve always thought, if some ignorant shmo in Portland Oregon could figure out that these guys were lying just by watching them on television, then how was it possible for twenty career Democrats in the United States Senate to not see it?

And the answer was, and still is, politics. The Iraq War resolution put a ton of political capital at risk for these people, and for some — Kennedy, Boxer, Wyden, Graham, Akaka, Durbin, Mikulski, Reed, Leahy, Murray, Stabenow, Dayton, Corzine, Bingamin, Conrad, Byrd, Inouye, Sarbanes, Levin and Wellstone, it paid off handsomely. They never had to make excuses for how they voted, because they had the chutzpah to vote their conscience, rather than to take into account extraneous considerations. But for the other twenty-nine, they’d have some ‘splainin’ to do. And if pushed into that corner, Rummy’s and Cheney’s legal teams would just be tickled pink to turn any such prosecutions into a free-for-all. Subpoena Vice President Biden? Or the Secretary of State… Why not. And at the end of the day, there’s little reason to believe any of them would have been convicted anyway. This is still America, after all… the rich and powerful rarely pay for their crimes. And to make matters even worse, Dick Cheney now feels he has immunity, which explains his belligerence since leaving office.

So that in my humble opinion, is why Barack Obama let these criminals get away scot-free. Because to do otherwise would have unleashed Pandora’s Box. And in his gratitude, Dick Cheney, being the miserable hate-filled son of a b**ch that he is, spends his remaining days going on Sean Hannity’s propaganda hour, lying about this president and taking pot-shots at everything Obama says and does. May those days be few.

Quoted from Shadow

Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images
Declassified
CIA Torture Report: Bush Was Kept in the Dark for Years
1011 Dec 9, 2014 11:13 AM EST
By Josh Rogin & Eli Lake

President George W. Bush was never briefed by the Central Intelligence Agency on the details of harsh interrogation techniques and secret detention of terror suspects for the first four years of its controversial program, and when he did find out the details, he was “uncomfortable” with some of the practices, according to a long-awaited report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.     http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-09/cia-torture-report-bush-was-kept-in-the-dark

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"One of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better," Obama said in a written statement. He showed some sympathy with Bush, saying, "The previous administration faced agonizing choices about how to pursue al-Qaida and prevent additional terrorist attacks against our country."

After six years in office, Obama is still struggling to dismantle some of the steps Bush said he was taking in the name of preventing terrorism.

The most glaringly unfulfilled promise is his pledge to close the Guantanamo prison within his first year in office, a commitment he made the same day he banned the harsh CIA interrogation techniques. More than 130 detainees remain at the detention center, and the pathway for removing most of them is unclear.

Many of Obama's supporters were infuriated when documents made public by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden revealed that the president had maintained and in some cases expanded mass surveillance programs that began under Bush. Obama pledged to make some reforms, but put the onus on Congress for overhauling the most controversial program: Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which authorized the bulk collection of Americans' phone records.

With little pressure from Obama for change, overhaul efforts have languished on Capitol Hill, and Section 215 was renewed again this month.

Quoted from Shadow

Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images
Declassified
CIA Torture Report: Bush Was Kept in the Dark for Years
1011 Dec 9, 2014 11:13 AM EST
By Josh Rogin & Eli Lake

President George W. Bush was never briefed by the Central Intelligence Agency on the details of harsh interrogation techniques and secret detention of terror suspects for the first four years of its controversial program, and when he did find out the details, he was “uncomfortable” with some of the practices, according to a long-awaited report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.     http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-09/cia-torture-report-bush-was-kept-in-the-dark

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The Most Essential Lesson of History That No One Wants To Admit
December 7, 2014Now that's heavy stuff
Ron Paul wrote an eye opening article recently about some legislation that was just signed in Congress, namely H. Res. 758.  In the article Dr. Paul explains the purpose of the resolution.  It’s not a new law but provides a basis of facts that will be relied on for future action.  So essentially the resolution purports that Russia behaved badly in various ways and by way of signing H. Res. 758 each congressman was indicating their agreement that the propositions contained therein are factual.  Now just because a group of obnoxiously arrogant A-holes stand around in a tax-revenue financed chamber and say “yeah” to several assertions does not make those assertions factual, but here in the United Orwellian States of America it kinda does.  Because those assertions that were voted to be fact (similar to the First Council of Nicaea) will now be written as factual history and taught to our children as having happened that way.  The very same way we all attained our ideas of American superiority.

The dishonesty and ignorance it creates is reason enough not to do such things, however, the real stinker of it is, as Dr. Paul so clearly points out, the sole purpose of H. Res. 758 is simply a pouring of the legal  foundation for something much more substantive.  You see this is how wars begin.  And the wheels for this particular war have been in motion for many years now.  We’ve been told our actions heretofore are simply a necessary response to the Ukraine situation.  However, those who can objectively look at the Ukraine situation will realize the US sponsored coup in Ukraine was simply a spark to light the fuse of a much larger detonation.

Now I understand many at this point are thinking “yep another conspiracy theory, why can’t it ever just be the US government thinks what they are doing is best for Americans”?  And it can, it just never is anymore and perhaps ever was.  Lies are told and public opinion is manipulated.  For war must be every bit good theatre in the press, as good strategy on the ground.  It is the theatre that makes war so ugly.  Fighting a war for what one believes in is unfortunate and brutal but fighting for lies and deceit to an end that benefits only those telling the lies is a type of ugliness most of us cannot comprehend.  It is only in the world ruled by sociopaths where such things can happen.  Allow me to offer some facts many don’t know about how it came to be that we invaded Iraq and Syria as the truth is still very much hidden from common knowledge.

We had a tragic start within the first two years of the new millennium.  That event actually seemed to bring the world together.  However, very quickly it turned into a launching pad for war.  One might think well that’s reasonable to expect given the tragedy that took place in New York.  A mighty nation like America is going to bring retribution to those responsible.  And I agree with that.  I was one of the many who wanted to see retribution brought to those responsible.  However, we abandoned the attack on those responsible to initiate a war that had been in the works for many years.

It is pretty common knowledge at this point we pulled out of Afghanistan to push our forces and objectives toward Iraq. Now to get the world onboard with this, as we now know, the US created incredible lies about Iraq not only having some connection to 9/11 but that they were also building enormous stockpiles of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ and that they were hell bent on using those against western nations.  Again, we now know that none of these assertions were true.  And we know our legislators were aware that no credible evidence existed to support such views.  And we know that despite knowing those assertions were false they still made the decision to lie not only to the American people but to the world.  The lies were told in an effort to build support so that parents around the world would see a righteous cause that they were sending their sons and daughters to their potential deaths or to be maimed in unimaginably horrifying circumstances.

Now I want you to think about that for a moment and don’t just read over that and move on.  Because this is the essence of what our government has become in America today.  They knowingly lied to the world so that the world would be willing to sacrifice their children, believing it was a necessary and righteous cause to do so.  And in the end the truth came to light that there was no righteous cause.  That all these young men and women from around the world had been used as pawns to fulfill the ambitions of a few.  It is truly one of the ugliest atrocities to ever have been carried out by an elected government against its own citizens.  And yet today because of our state edited media, most will not acknowledge that such an atrocity took place.

So I want to make very clear that Iraq was not a consequence of poor intelligence or bad decisions in the wake of post 9/11 emotions.  The invasions of both Iraq and Syria were being planned and discussed for many years before 9/11.  It is imperative to understand such things.  Because while we cannot change history, we must use history to change the future.  And I will add a note here because of the complexities of discussing Israel in a public forum.  The immediately following should not be misconstrued as an indictment of Israel for it is America that is responsible for America’s actions.  Now please carry on.

In 1996 the Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyahu, sponsored an ad hoc think tank called The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies’ “Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000.”  From this think tank came a report that was the beginning of a powerful lobby movement.  Let’s take a close look at a few main points that come from the 1996 report.

Israel’s quest for peace emerges from, and does not replace, the pursuit of its ideals. The Jewish people’s hunger for human rights — burned into their identity by a 2000-year old dream to live free in their own land — informs the concept of peace and reflects continuity of values with Western and Jewish tradition.

Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.

Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by:

striking Syria’s drug-money and counterfeiting infrastructure in Lebanon, all of which focuses on Razi Qanan.
paralleling Syria’s behavior by establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces.
striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper.
To anticipate U.S. reactions and plan ways to manage and constrain those reactions, Prime Minister Netanyahu can formulate the policies and stress themes he favors in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the Cold War which apply well to Israel. If Israel wants to test certain propositions that require a benign American reaction, then the best time to do so is before November, 1996.

But who would have authored such a report?  A report that seems to promote the idea of constraining, manipulating and achieving a benign American reaction.  Well have a look at the list of authors/signatories of that report, below.  They should be familiar to most of you as they are US not Israeli policymakers, which is odd because again this is an Israeli state sponsored project with objectives that are clearly focused on the well being of Israel, not the US or the  American people.

Richard Perle, American Enterprise Institute, Study Group Leader

James Colbert, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Johns Hopkins University/SAIS
Douglas Feith, Feith and Zell Associates
Robert Loewenberg, President, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies
Jonathan Torop, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
David Wurmser, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies
Meyrav Wurmser, Johns Hopkins University

Now subsequent to that 1996 report being released there was a letter drafted and sent to President Clinton in January 1998 that provides us some additional clarity on the war policies of the new millennium.  Let’s have a look at that.

Screen Shot 2014-12-06 at 12.51.00 PM

Again we see a very explicit and aggressive lobby effort to persuade the US to invade Iraq.  Now I’m sure you’ll find these authors even more interesting.  Many of the same authors of the 1996 recommendation are also authors of this lobby effort.  Only this time they are acting as benefactors of America.  Odd though that they are pushing the very same agenda that just 18 months earlier these same folks were pushing as benefactors to a foreign nation.  It almost seems as though the authors are indeed attempting to manage and constrain the American people’s reaction, as discussed in the first report, to their desired recommendations that US use its military to engage various nations in war.  I’ve attached the list of authors here as well.



Let’s think about this rationally for a moment.  In 1996 we had a foreign government sponsor a think tank staffed by very prominent US policymakers with the objective to strengthen that foreign sponsor nation.  And then 18 months later we see a follow on letter to the President from many of the same US policymakers that authored the 1996 report and some additional prominent US policymakers.  The recommendation of both the ’96 report and ’98 letter to the President were lobbying for the US to invade and overthrow Iraq and Syria.  However the original recommendation was for the benefit of Israel and the latter recommendation was being sold as necessary for America.  And remember, 9/11 had not happened yet but we already see these very powerful, very prominent policymakers pushing very hard to invade Iraq and Syria.

The problem is Americans didn’t want another Iraqi war.  Times were good in the late 1990′s.  People were happy.  The cold war was over, jobs were a plenty and the world felt safer than it had for decades.  And as such, there was no way Americans were going to war for the benefit of a foreign nation. The US had decided Hussein was actually a stabilizing force there in the middle east and as such we wanted him there.  But then an election happened and little Bush was elected President.  Along with him came all those names we just saw authoring the two dossiers recommending the US invade Iraq and Syria.  The authors were given titles such as Chair of the Defense Policy Board (Richard Perle) and Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld), etc.   And so all of a sudden the same group of people who were championing the invasion of Iraq and Syria back in the late 1990′s were now in a position to make it happen by way of their own authority.  What luck!  Shortly thereafter the worst attack on US soil took place in New York and the rest is, as they say, history.

To believe we went into Iraq because our fearless and integrity driven leaders truly and honestly believed it was the morally and justifiable thing to do based on the tragedy of 9/11 is just ignorance because it does not align with the facts.  There was a small group of men, called Neocons, that had derived these military actions some 10 years prior to operations themselves and some 5 years prior to the events that were used to sell these war efforts to the American people and the world.  None of that can we change.  And so my ultimate point here is to learn from what happened with Syria and Iraq and to show you it is exactly what is happening with Russia today.

Let me introduce a letter written by Bill Kristol and Donald Kagan to the Heads of State and Government Of the European Union and NATO.  The letter was signed by many but of particular interest are many of the same names from the 1996 report and 1998 letter to President Clinton pushing for war against Iraq and Syria.  This 2004 letter does not mince its words.  It is very much pushing for European support of what would obviously be a US led military stand off with Russia.  The letter is sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, which is a neoconservative think tank.  In fact, one of the prestigious awards handed out by the AEI is called the Irving Kristol award.  Irving Kristol (father to Bill Kristol) is known as the godfather of the neocon movement in the US.  So again this is essentially the same crowd from ’96 an ’98, pushing for support of a US military operation, this time with Russia.  This is back in 2004 mind you before the current events in Ukraine had even been imagined (signatories of the attached letter can be found here).



Again we see the aggressive recommendations to back a military operation many years before the catalyst event takes place.  That is the event that is being sold as the moral justification for a military operation.  But this letter tells us that this military objective against Russia has been promoted for many many years now, far before Ukraine was an issue.  This is again, a push from the same folks that lied to us about Iraq and then trained, equipped and funded ISIS in order to get into Syria and are now working hard to create a catalyst for an offensive with Russia.

For years before 9/11 it was determined by those warmongering policymakers that we would be invading Iraq and Syria.  All we needed was a catalyst.  9/11 provided that for Iraq.  ISIS provided that for Syria and now Ukraine has provided that for Russia.  I’m not saying these folks had anything to do with 9/11 because I have no idea.  What we do know is that 9/11 was used as a catalyst to lie to the American people about the need to invade Iraq.  It has also been fully admitted by our government that we did in fact, train, equip and fund ISIS, ‘mistakenly though’.  And finally we have recordings of senior US diplomats discussing our involvement in the coup in Ukraine.

And so one can only conclude here that again Americans are being manipulated to accept the recommendations from a powerful group of warmongering policymakers to go to war with a nation that has posed absolutely no threat to the American people in more than 25 years.  And we are being led down this path by lies and propaganda.  Quite specifically things like H. Res. 758.  And if we do not make a stand against these policymakers we are most certainly headed for what could very well be the war to end all wars.

For the West is clearly looking to fortify its power hold over the world by destroying Russia economically to disable them militarily in an effort to prevent a Sino-Soviet alliance.  I recently watched a presentation by former World Bank President, James Wolfensohn, to a political science class at Stanford University.  The moral to his story (and I use that ironically) was to challenge them to figure out a way, in the face of a rising East soon to control a higher share of the worlds assets than the West, to retain the West’s global control.  He stressed it was something his generation  did not have to deal with but that today’s Western up and coming political class must consider.  You see China is a powerful nation but without an alliance with Russia, China can be contained due its lack of energy.  Because China is both a more difficult opponent and one that has much more trade with the US, Russia is the obvious target to prevent a fully formed Sino-Soviet alliance.

However, I cannot imagine a scenario where China does not clearly identify such a strategy being played out.  And so they will come to the defense of Russian energy, as we’ve already seen with the signings of the world’s largest energy deals between those two nations.   The Chinese defense will not be limited to economic if push comes to shove.  And we will be put in the midst of the most powerful nations in the history of the world fighting for ultimate power.  This small group of horrible people are willing to put the world on the line so their lineage can continue to rule the world while the rest of us struggle to simply stop the financial bleeding that has become a 15 year epidemic.

This all sounds like the stuff of fiction novels but unfortunately the facts tell us this is all too real.  What is hard for me to believe is that we so readily ignore and deny the most essential lessons of history.  Perhaps the foremost being that the political class will always be willing to sacrifice the working class in order to retain its power.  And so we find ourselves again on the precipice of being asked by our political class to offer our young men and women up to be sacrificed for the ‘greater cause’.  However, while the political class is trying to convince you the cause is one of morals and righteousness, in the end, it is the same cause it has been since post WWII and some will argue the same cause it has always been, which is for their interests and their victories, not ours.