Anwaar
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Speak the truth and keep on coming.
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Post by Anwaar on Nov 16, 2005 8:14:41 GMT 4
Our Man Cheney
By Anwaar Hussain
William I was King of England from 1066 to 1087. He was also known as William of Normandy, William the Conqueror and William the Bastard. He earned the last title due to the fact that he was the illegitimate and only son of Robert the Magnificent, Duke of Normandy, and Herleva, the daughter of Fulbert, a tanner. William succeeded to the throne of England by right of conquest by winning the decisive Battle of Hastings in 1066 and suppressing subsequent English revolts, in what has become known as the Norman Conquest.
Following the Norman Conquest, the machinery of government developed further, producing long-lived national institutions including Parliament. Four Norman kings presided over a period of great change and development for Britain. The Domesday Book, a great record of English land-holding, was published; the forests were extended; the Exchequer was founded; and a start was made on the Tower of London.
Also sown were the seeds of the later day British Empire that, till its demise, oppressed more people on larger swaths of planet earth than any other country in the history of mankind.
Among William's soldiers during the Battle of Hastings was one Ralph de Chesney, Sire of Quesnay, who helped win the battle thus contributing to the formation of the later day British Empire.
Ralph de Chesney is also the earliest known ancestor of one Richard Bruce Cheney.
Richard Bruce Cheney, a.k.a. Dick Cheney, was born on January 30, 1941 and is currently the 46th Vice President of United States of America under President George W. Bush. From this lofty position, and in true tradition of his earliest known ancestor, he today is helping America turn into the mightiest Empire the world has ever known. He is the most ardent aspirer and executor of the Empire dream.
Dick Cheney is the real driving force among the pack of zealots whose collective brain spawned the idea of New American Century, who were once known as “the crazies” for their weird beliefs and who ultimately manipulated the American nation into the ongoing Iraq fiasco. He is also the man entrusted with adult supervision of the current child President of the United States. His profile, therefore, merits a quick going over.
Like the president that he serves, Cheney too was of military age during the Vietnam War but he did not serve in the war. Cheney was initially classified as 1-A "available for service" by the Selective Service. Later, the Selective Service lifted the constraints on drafting childless married men. However, after his daughter was born, Cheney applied for and received a reclassification of 3-A, making him unlikely to be drafted. Although he was served five draft notices, he claimed during his 1989 defense secretary confirmation hearings that he would have been happy to serve if only he'd been asked. Today, however, he ships other Americans' children overseas to put their lives online, a sacrifice he deems necessary for realizing his empire building dream.
Also like the President that he serves, Dick Cheney too was convicted of drunk driving. It happened twice during an eight-month period in the early 1960s in his home state of Wyoming. Since that second Wyoming arrest, Cheney has kept his nose clean as far as drunk driving is concerned. He went on to do greater things.
Along the way he made powerful connections and landed himself many cushy jobs with the government. His real money making stint, however, came as the CEO of Halliburton--that most reviled, frightening and unstoppable corporate entity since the days when AT&T was widely understood to run the world.
Since then, his reality sensors started corroding at an alarming rate.
Consider the following.
Cheney continues to declare his former oil company Halliburton as a guiding light of corporate ethics, even though the company is on record for swindling taxpayers and mistreating U.S. troops in Iraq.
Cheney likes to watch Fox News Channel, that whore of journalism, as the apex of objective reporting and “ends up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they’re more accurate than any other media outlet.”
Cheney also thinks of Wal-Mart as “one of our nation’s best companies,” and claims that the company “exemplifies some of the very best qualities in our country—hard work, the spirit of enterprise, fair dealing and integrity.” Wal-Mart is known for ignoring its poverty-level wages, exploitation of workers and repeated violations of environmental law. There are 60 federal complaints against the company for workplace violations. Wal-Mart executives, along with the Fox News magnates and certain others, had bankrolled the Bush-Cheney campaign.
Cheney calls Donald Rumsfeld as "the best Secretary of Defense the United States has ever had” despite Rumsfeld’s dismal failures to plan for post-war Iraq, the ever rising American casualties, the Abu Ghraib scandal and his dishonest statements about Iraq’s non-existent WMDs.
The trail of torture and prisoner abuse too has finally been traced and leads straight to Dick Cheney’s office. The policies on the treatment of prisoners emanating from Cheney's office triggered the abuse and torture, according to Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff.
He is a strong proponent of torture and supports a string of secret prisons all over the world in which suspects are held and tortured indefinitely, without trial, without lawyers, without the right to confront their accusers, without knowing the evidence or the charges against them, if any. "We do not torture," he says in unison with the child President that he serves.
Only the other day, Dick Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to Republican senators. In a closed-door session, he asked them to allow CIA exemption to a proposed ban on the torture of terror suspects in U.S. custody. Cheney told his audience the United States “doesn't engage in torture” but said his administration “needed an exemption” from any legislation banning cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
During the reelection campaign, he jet setted around the country raising millions for election funds while stating: "We have a record of accomplishment".
Before the George Bush and Dick Cheney combo happened to America, it was once a shining beacon on a hill, a citadel of refuge and freedom, a country born amidst the most splendid ideals of freedom and fairness, the greatest political legacy ever given to any people anywhere. Together with this President, Dick Cheney is responsible for turning America into a purveyor of dark dungeons around the world where cries of pain are muffled only by further pain and where human rights now come a definite second to animal rights. Weighted heavily with the gravity of the greedy souls of these two gentlemen, America has gone into a dizzying spiral towards murky depths—gaining momentum as time goes by. Dick Cheney dismisses this gigantic tragedy by saying, "sometimes you gotta play rough."
The Vice President of United States, a distant offspring of one Ralph de Chesney (Sire of Quesnay) who fought in the Battle of Hastings for William the Bastard, now sends other Americans’ children overseas to do battle for President George W. Bush Junior, the 43rd President of United States of America, to actualize an American Empire the like of which the world has never before seen. Richard Bruce Cheney, a.k.a. Dick Cheney, has come a long way since his two DWI convictions.
He is also on a fast track of total divorce from reality.
What else could one conclude about a Vice President who relies on Fox News for facts, Wal-Mart for economics, Halliburton for business morals and Donald Rumsfeld for national defense, boasts of his government’s hideous deeds as “a record of accomplishments” and who “does not torture” but wants exemption for his minions from legislation banning cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners?
Our man Cheney? Indeed.
Anwaar Hussain
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Nov 18, 2005 18:12:08 GMT 4
GIVE 'EM HELL HARRY!!!!!Reid: We Need Answers and a Way Forward in Iraq, Not Another Cheney Attack Speech Senator Harry Reid t r u t h o u t | Statement Wednesday 16 November 2005 Washington, DC - Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid gave the following speech on the Senate Floor tonight. Remarks as prepared for delivery: Tonight the Vice President has come out of his bunker and is speaking at a gathering of Washington DC insiders, which is closed to the press. Unfortunately, he brought his bunker mentality with him. He is repeating the same tired attacks we've heard from administration officials over the last two weeks. In the last 24 hours, 10 of our brave soldiers have been killed in far off Iraq. On such a night, you would think Cheney would give a speech that honors the fallen and those still fighting by laying out a strategy for success. Instead we have the Vice President of the United States playing politics like he's in the middle of a presidential campaign. Yesterday, a bipartisan majority of the United States Senate gave the administration a vote of no confidence for its Iraq policy. We said the era of their "No Plan, No End" approach is over. Apparently, the White House didn't get the message. The Vice President's speech tonight demonstrates once again that this Administration intends to "stay the course" and continue putting their political fortunes ahead of what this country needs - a plan for success. Our troops and the American people deserve better. The White House needs to understand that deceiving the American people is what got them into trouble. Now is the time to come clean, not to continue the pattern of deceit. So again, I ask Vice President Cheney to make himself available and answer the American people's questions. If he has time to talk to DC insiders... oil executives... and a discredited felon - Ahmad Chalabi - who is under investigation for giving this nation's most sensitive secrets to Iran, he has time to answer the questions of the American people. The Vice President needs to stop stonewalling and hold a press conference. Finally, I would urge the members of the Bush administration to stop trying to resurrect their political standing by lashing out at their critics. Instead, they need to focus on the job at hand - giving our troops a strategy for success in Iraq. Just this week, we've seen Stephen Hadley... Donald Rumsfeld... President Bush... and Vice President Cheney lash out at their critics....yet they all remain silent when it comes to giving our troops and the American people a plan for success in Iraq. Tired rhetoric and political attacks do nothing to get the job done in Iraq. America can do better. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fact Sheet Follows: Tonight, it's Dick Cheney's turn to deliver the same old tired attacks. Cheney Goes with the Same Old 'Same Intelligence' Fiction: "These are elected officials who had access to the intelligence, and were free to draw their own conclusions." [11/16/05] But, members of Congress did NOT have access to the same intelligence. "Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material." [Washington Post, 11/13/05] Cheney Goes with the Same Old 'Criticism Hurts the Troops' Fiction: "The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out." [11/16/05] But, Senator Hagel says the delay in the Senate's investigation into the misuse of pre - war intelligence has been frustrating and that it's the Senate's responsibility to get answers. Hagel: I think the Democrats had a valid point," he said. "This has been frustrating. . . . There are very legitimate and critical questions that need to be answered. That is the responsibility of governance. That's part of leadership. And we don't have answers for all those things." [Omaha World - Herald, 11/11/05] Cheney Goes with the Same Old 'They're Trying to Rewrite History' Fiction: "The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone - but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history." [11/16/05] But, it's members of the Bush Administration who are trying to rewrite history. Here's Cheney in 2003. "And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." (Vice President Cheney, Meet the Press, 3/16/03) Too bad America gets stuck with the same old Dick Cheney. www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111705A.shtml
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DT1
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You know, it's not like I wanted to be right about all of this...
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Post by DT1 on Nov 20, 2005 3:17:52 GMT 4
This is a message from impeachbush.org,an organization which I am proud to represent. The stage has been set for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Their lies have been laid bare. The popular sentiment in the United States has turned dramatically against the administration. As their war crimes and attempted usurpation of Constitutional government are continuously revealed, more and more prominent people are joining the movement, and taking the step of publicly calling for impeachment. Bush and Cheney are hoping that they can escape accountability because of the shameful timidity of their Congressional critics. But even this fact won't save them as the people of the United States become convinced that the government lied to them about its plans to wage a naked war of aggression. What is needed is a final groundswell of popular support demanding that Congress act in accordance with the Constitution to hold the President, Vice-President and other high officials accountable for their commission of high crimes and misdemeanors. When we began this movement - with tens of thousands coming together across the country to take back the Constitution - we were told that while the principled position was commendable, it was unrealistic. Now, you cannot turn on the television or open a newspaper without running across someone talking about the need for impeachment. Together we have made an incredible difference and now is the time for us to get into gear for the next steps. The ImpeachBush.org / VotetoImpeach movement is undertaking a six-month action plan that includes full-page newspaper ads, radio and television 60-second commercial spots, an internet based publicity campaign and a huge manifestation of the impeachment movement in the streets during the locally coordinated anti-war demonstrations on March 18-20 marking the third anniversary of Bush’s criminal invasion of Iraq. We need your help today - please make the most generous contribution that you can by clicking here. What is the situation today? The people are speaking out for impeachment and demanding action. An Ipsos Public Affairs poll released on October 11 found 50 percent favoring impeachment if Bush lied about the reasons for going to war. The recent Zogby poll put the number favoring impeachment at 53 percent if Bush lied. This number is significant because so many people do indeed believe that Bush, Cheney and the others lied. Bush and Cheney are desperately trying to counter their critics. Recognizing that their ship is sinking, Cheney in those free moments when he is not lobbying for the right to carry out torture is going out in attack dog mode. He is trying to tear apart their critics, but it is backfiring. The people have had enough. Even the sit-on-their-hands Democrats cannot ignore the fact that half of the signs at recent mass anti-war demonstrations supported impeachment. The Republicans impeached Clinton for relatively minor offenses when his administration had an approval rating of 60%. The Democratic Party big-wigs have stayed safely on the sidelines trying to hold back the motions for impeachment even though Bush’s approval ratings have slipped to 38%. Rep. John Murtha came out two days ago with a scathing attack on the administration and its war in Iraq. Yet the leadership of the Democratic Party has distanced itself from Murtha's position calling for prompt withdrawal of U.S. troops. The moving force behind impeachment, and behind ending the war in Iraq, will be the pressure of the people. That is what the ImpeachBush.org movement represents. I have no intention of waiting for the Congressional elections-there is too much at stake.Can you?Look into your children's eyes!We are asking you to do whatever you can to stop this genocide. WE WANT OUR COUNTRY BACK, AND WE WANT IT NOW!!!!
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on May 28, 2006 20:30:03 GMT 4
Cheney's Secret ClassificationsOriginally posted: May 26, 2006 Posted by Mark Silva at 2 pm CDT The government slowed down somewhat last year in the classification of top secret and confidential information, and it also declassified slightly more documents than had been opened up the year before. But the numbers still rank among record-levels: With 14 million decisions made last year to classify information, a slight decline from the 2004 record, and 29.5 million pages declassified last year -- far fewer than the 100 million pages declassified in 2001. And once again, Vice President Dick Cheney, who has refused to report on his office's classification activities since 2003, is missing from the count.Despite an executive order signed by President Bush in 2003 requiring all agencies or “any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information’’ to report on its activities, the vice president’s office maintains that it has no legal obligation to report on its classification decisions.Cheney’s office told the Chicago Tribune in an April report on the administration’s propensity for secrecy that it is under no duty to report this information. The vice president maintains that his office is not an agency, and is also unique in serving both an executive role and legislative role - the vice president is president of the Senate.But monitors of government secrecy maintain that the vice president is flouting his own president’s authority in this matter.“It undermines oversight of the classification system and reveals a disdain for presidential authority,’’ Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said today. “It’s part of a larger picture of disrespect that this vice president has shown for the norms of oversight and accountability.’’A spokeswoman for Cheney, asked for response, reiterated the vice president’s stance on the issue. “These reporting requirements are not applicable to (the office of the vice president),’’ Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said today. “This has been thoroughly reviewed and it’s been determined that the reporting requirement does not apply to (the office), which has both legislative and executive functions.’’Since the beginning of Bush’s presidency, agencies and other entities each year had reported increasing numbers of decisions to classify information as top secret, secret or confidential. These numbers rose from 8.65 million classification decisions reported in 2001 to 15.65 million in 2004, a record number. Last year, agencies made 14.2 million decisions - a 9 percent decrease from the record-level reported in 2004, and slightly less than what had been reported in 2003 - according to a new report of the National Archives Information Security Oversight Office. Agencies also declassified 29.5 million pages of documents in 2005, the report shows. This marked a 4 percent increase from the 28 million pages of documents declassified the year before. This represents a turnaround from the annual scaling back of documents declassified during Bush’s presidency - with 100 million pages declassified in 2001 and 44 million declassified in 2002. Combined, the National Archives office that monitors these decisions calls last year’s increases in declassification and decreases in classification “a positive step.’’ “It’s incrementally good news,’’ Aftergood said. “The numbers are down from record-high levels to second record-high levels… It’s hard to get excited about that, but it’s better than increases.’’ With some 80 agencies and other entities taking part in the National Archives’ annual accounting of activity, the report notes that only the Office of the Vice President, the president’s Homeland Security Council and the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board failed to report on its activities. The vice president’s office last reported on its activities in 2002, the agency says.
In the past, the Archives report notes, the vice president’s activities “historically have not reported quantitatively significant’’ numbers. But Aftergood suggests there is no way of knowing what the vice president has done since 2002 because he isn’t reporting.
“The reality is that until 2002, they did report,’’ he said. “Somebody made a decision that they don’t want to do what they used to do… They have to explain why they stopped doing it, and they haven’t done that.’’Source: tinyurl.com/jv9cf
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on May 30, 2006 17:18:28 GMT 4
Cheney aide is screening legislation Adviser seeks to protect Bush powerBy Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | May 28, 2006 WASHINGTON -- The office of Vice President Dick Cheney routinely reviews pieces of legislation before they reach the president's desk, searching for provisions that Cheney believes would infringe on presidential power, according to former White House and Justice Department officials.The officials said Cheney's legal adviser and chief of staff, David Addington , is the Bush administration's leading architect of the ``signing statements" the president has appended to more than 750 laws. The statements assert the president's right to ignore the laws because they conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution.The Bush-Cheney administration has used such statements to claim for itself the option of bypassing a ban on torture, oversight provisions in the USA Patriot Act, and numerous requirements that they provide certain information to Congress, among other laws. Previous vice presidents have had neither the authority nor the interest in reviewing legislation. But Cheney has used his power over the administration's legal team to promote an expansive theory of presidential authority. Using signing statements, the administration has challenged more laws than all previous administrations combined.``Addington could look at whatever he wanted," said one former White House lawyer who helped prepare signing statements and who asked not to be named because he was describing internal deliberations. ``He had a roving commission to get involved in whatever interested him." Number of new statutes challenged: www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/05/28/number_of_new_statues_challengedKnowing that Addington was likely to review the bills, other White House and Justice Department lawyers began vetting legislation with Addington's and Cheney's views in mind, according to another former lawyer in the Bush White House. All these lawyers, he said, were extremely careful to flag any provision that placed limits on presidential power.``You didn't want to miss something," said the second former White House lawyer, who also asked not to be named. Cheney and Addington have a long history. Addington was a Republican staff member on the congressional committee investigating the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s, while Cheney was the ranking GOP House member. When Cheney became defense secretary under President George H. W. Bush , he hired Addington as Pentagon counsel.
After Cheney became vice president in 2001, he again hired Addington as counsel. Addington played a major role in shaping the administration's legal policies in the war on terrorism, including a 2002 memo arguing that Bush could authorize interrogators to bypass anti torture laws. In October, when Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis ``Scooter" Libby , was indicted for perjury and resigned, Cheney replaced Libby with Addington.
A spokeswoman for Cheney's office, asked to comment on Addington's role in reviewing legislation, said, ``We do not comment on internal deliberations."
Addington, through the spokeswoman, declined to be interviewed.But Martin Lederman , who worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush , said that Addington is simply doing the day-to-day legwork for Cheney and that he is influential within the administration because of the vice president's desire to enhance executive power and Bush's willingness to endorse Cheney's views. ``In every administration, Democratic and Republican, there are officials with strongly held constitutional views, including somewhat idiosyncratic views," said Lederman, now a law professor at Georgetown University. ``What is new is that the extremely idiosyncratic and aggressive constitutional views are being adopted by the vice president and, therefore, by the administration."
Previous administrations left the reviewing of legislation to the White House counsel's office and the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.``What's happening now is unprecedented on almost every level," said Ron Klain , who was chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore from 1995 to 1999. ``Gore was a very active policy maker in the Clinton administration, but that didn't include picking through bills of Congress to find things to disagree with." The administration insists that Bush's use of signing statements is not unprecedented. Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said, ``President Bush's signing statements are lawful and indistinguishable from those issued on hundreds of occasions by past presidents." The use of signing statements was rare until the 1980s, when President Ronald W. Reagan began issuing them more frequently. His successors continued the practice. George H. W. Bush used signing statements to challenge 232 laws over four years, and Bill Clinton challenged 140 over eight years, according to Christopher Kelley , a political science professor at Miami University of Ohio. But in frequency and aggression, the current President Bush has gone far beyond his predecessors. All previous presidents combined challenged fewer than 600 laws, Kelley's data show, compared with the more than 750 Bush has challenged in five years. Bush is also the first president since the 1800s who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments.Douglas Kmiec , who as head of the Office of Legal Counsel helped develop the Reagan administration's strategy of issuing signing statements more frequently, said he disapproves of the ``provocative" and sometimes ``disingenuous" manner in which the Bush administration is using them. Kmiec said the Reagan team's goal was to leave a record of the president's understanding of new laws only in cases where an important statute was ambiguous. Kmiec rejected the idea of using signing statements to contradict the clear intent of Congress, as Bush has done. Presidents should either tolerate provisions of bills they don't like, or they should veto the bill, he said. ``Following a model of restraint, [the Reagan-era Office of Legal Counsel] took it seriously that we were to construe statutes to avoid constitutional problems, not to invent them," said Kmiec, who is now a Pepperdine University law professor. By contrast, Bush has used the signing statements to waive his obligation to follow the new laws. In addition to the torture ban and oversight provisions of the Patriot Act, the laws Bush has claimed the authority to disobey include restrictions against US troops engaging in combat in Colombia, whistle-blower protections for government employees, and safeguards against political interference in taxpayer-funded research. Cheney's office has taken the lead in challenging many of these laws, officials said, because they run counter to an expansive view of executive power that Cheney has cultivated for the past 30 years. Under the theory, Congress cannot pass laws that place restrictions or requirements on how the president runs the military and spy agencies. Nor can it pass laws giving government officials the power or responsibility to act independently of the president. Mainstream legal scholars across the political spectrum reject Cheney's expansive view of presidential authority, saying the Constitution gives Congress the power to make all rules and regulations for the military and the executive branch and the Supreme Court has consistently upheld laws giving bureaucrats and certain prosecutors the power to act independently of the president.One prominent conservative, Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School, said it is ``scandalous" for the administration to argue that the commander in chief can bypass statutes in national security matters. ``It's just wrong," Epstein said. ``It is just crazy as a matter of constitutional interpretation. There are some pretty clear issues, and this is one of them." Laurence Tribe , a prominent liberal at Harvard Law School, said: ``Nothing in the text and structure of the Constitution, or Supreme Court precedents, supports the Bush-Cheney assertion that Congress cannot limit or direct what government officials may or must do."Nonetheless, Bush has demonstrated that he is willing to put his legal team's claims about his authority into action. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush authorized the military to eavesdrop on Americans' international phone calls without a warrant, bypassing a surveillance law that requires warrants. Passed in 1978, the warrant law is one of a series of policies enacted after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The laws sought to prevent future abuses by regulating how the president can use his national security powers. In December 2005, shortly after the warrantless wiretapping program was exposed, Cheney gave a rare press conference to explain why he believed the program was legal. Offering an early view of the administration's argument that the warrant law is unconstitutional, Cheney recalled the period in which it was enacted as a time of congressional overreach. ``A lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam, both, in the '70s served to erode the authority, I think, the president needs to be effective, especially in a national security area," said Cheney, who served as White House chief of staff to President Gerald Ford . Cheney also offered a roadmap to his thinking about presidential power. He told reporters to read a 1987 report whose production he oversaw when he was a leading Republican in the House of Representatives. The report offered a dissenting view about the Iran-Contra scandal. ``If you want reference to an obscure text, go look at the minority views that were filed with the Iran-Contra Committee," Cheney said. ``Nobody has ever read them, but . . . I think [they] are very good in laying out a robust view of the president's prerogatives with respect to the conduct of especially foreign policy and national security matters." The Iran-Contra scandal involved efforts by Reagan administration officials to bypass a law cutting off funds to anti-Marxist rebels in Nicaragua. The officials secretly sold arms to Iran, sent the proceeds to the rebels, and lied to Congress to cover it up. A congressional committee issued a 427-page report concluding that a ``cabal of zealots" in the administration who had ``disdain for the law" had violated the statute.But some of the Republicans on the committee, led by Cheney, refused to endorse that finding. They issued their own 155-page report asserting the real problem was Congress passing laws that intruded into a president's authority to run foreign policy and national security. ``Judgments about the Iran-Contra affair ultimately must rest upon one's views about the proper roles of Congress and the president in foreign policy," Cheney's report said. ``The fundamental law of the land is the Constitution. Unconstitutional statutes violate the rule of law every bit as much as do willful violations of constitutional statutes." Cheney's report includes a lengthy argument that the Constitution puts the president beyond the reach of Congress when it comes to national security. Some 18 years later, the Justice Department would repeat these same arguments in a 42-page memo arguing that Bush's warrantless wiretapping program is a lawful exercise of presidential power. Despite legal scholars' skepticism about the expansive theory of presidential power Cheney has long promoted, Bush's legal team has used the theory to target every law that regulates the military or the executive branch. Kmiec, one of the only scholars who has testified that Bush might have the authority to set aside the warrant law, said he thinks the administration's use of signing statements has gone too far, needlessly antagonizing Congress. Arlen Specter , Republican of Pennsylvania and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, recently announced hearings into the matter. ``The president is not well served by the lawyers who have been advising him," said Kmiec. © Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company. Source: tinyurl.com/ojq6b
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jun 6, 2006 15:47:42 GMT 4
Cheney Starts New Cold War Over OilCheney's brazen oil grab strategy in Central Asia has launched a new Cold War with Russia -- and this time we're losing.By Mark Ames, The eXile. Posted June 1, 2006. SNIP:[Editor's note: Mark Ames' essay is a lucid overview of what the Bush administration has been up to in Central Asia and former Soviet republics since 9/11. No, not fighting "terror" -- they've been working on a long-term oil grab by supporting dictators and gaming democratic elections in their favor, all while publicly bemoaning Russia's "slide" back to a dictatorship. Ames' lively writing style turns a heavy story into one of the best articles you'll read this month.]One of the oddest reactions to Vice President Cheney's now-infamous speech in Lithuania, the one which many Russians believe officially heralded the start of a new Cold War, came from the mainstream American media. What was so strange? They actually did their job. Instead of simply parroting the Administration's latest pieties, they actually allowed themselves to smell a rat. And what a putrid, bloated, rotting-in-a-flooded-Manila-gutter rat odor it was! You'd have to have been literally brain dead not to have smelled it. The rat of course was the insane hypocrisy of a foaming fascist like Dick Cheney suddenly getting all Amnesty International righteous over a bad regime that does bad things. The fact that Cheney flew straight to Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan right after squirting over Russia's human rights problems turned the rank hypocrisy into a bad black comedy routine, barely fit for even a Tom Green. Kazakhstan is a country where opposition politicians and media aren't merely jailed, exiled or cowed as they are in Russia, but are shot and dumped in forests, Miller's Crossing-style, on behalf of a despot whose family runs the country like its own fiefdom. Azerbaijan is even worse, if such a thing can be imagined not only because the Azeri authorities brutally suppress pro-democracy protests, but because it is the first and only post-Soviet state to officially create a despotic family dynasty. After former leader Heydar Aliyev died in office, he passes power (along with control over the country's vast oil wealth) to his son, Ilham Aliyev, in 2003, a dynastic transfer that was then "legimitized" by rigged elections that the Bush administration somehow manages each time to view as a democracy cup 1/100 full rather than 99/100 empty. READ IT ALL: www.alternet.org/story/36881
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DT1
Moderator
You know, it's not like I wanted to be right about all of this...
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Post by DT1 on Feb 13, 2007 14:32:15 GMT 4
(Mod's note:I'm reluctant to clutter up this vital thread,but here is a great recap of the Libby trial... From The Associated Press,of all places.Thanks to the fine folks over at truthout.com).Libby Trial Sheds Light on White HouseThe Associated Press Sunday 11 February 2007 Washington - Sworn testimony in the perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has shone a spotlight on White House attempts to sell a gone-wrong war in Iraq to the nation and Vice President Dick Cheney's aggressive role in the effort. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald rested his case against Cheney's former chief of staff on Thursday in a trial that has so far lasted 11 days. The defense planned to begin its presentation Monday. The drama being played out in a Washington courtroom goes back in time to the early summer of 2003. The Bush administration was struggling to overcome growing evidence the mission in Iraq was anything but accomplished. The claim about weapons of mass destruction that was used to justify the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 had not been supported. Insurgent attacks were on the rise. Accusations were growing that the White House had distorted intelligence to rationalize the invasion. Trial testimony so far - including eight hours of Libby's own audio-recordedd testimony to a grand jury in 2004 - suggest that a White House known as disciplined was anything but that. What has emerged, instead, is: a vice president fixated on finding ways to debunk a former diplomat's claims that Bush misled the U.S. people in going to war and his suggestion Cheney might have played a role in suppressing contrary intelligence. a presidential press secretary kept in the dark on Iraq policy. top White House officials meeting daily to discuss the diplomat, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, and sometimes even his CIA-officer wife Valerie Plame. Libby is accused of lying to the FBI and the grand jury about his talks with reporters concerning Plame. Libby got the White House press secretary to deny he was the source of the leak. He says he thought he first heard about Plame's CIA job from NBC's Tim Russert. But after checking his own notes, he told the FBI and the grand jury Cheney himself told him Plame worked at CIA a month before the talk with Russert, but Libby says he forgot that in the crush of business. Cheney already was helping manage the administration's response to allegations that it twisted intelligence to bolster its case on Iraq when Wilson's allegation - in a New York Times op-ed piece on July 6, 2003 - came into his cross hairs. Cheney told Libby to speak with selected reporters to counter bad news. He developed talking points on the matter for the White House press office. He helped draft a statement by then-CIA Director George Tenet. He moved to declassify some intelligence material to bolster the case against Wilson. Cheney even clipped Wilson's column out of the newspapers and scrawled by hand on it: "Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an ambassador to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?" Cheney and Libby discussed the matter multiple times each day, according to Libby's grand jury testimony. A former Cheney press aide, Cathie Martin, testified she proposed leaking some news exclusives but was kept partly in the dark when Cheney ordered Libby to leak part of a classified intelligence report. Later she arranged a luncheon for conservative columnists with Cheney to help bolster the administration's case. "What didn't he touch? It's almost like there was almost nothing too trivial for the vice president to handle," said New York University professor Paul Light, an expert in the bureaucracy of the executive branch. "The details suggest Cheney was almost a deputy president with a shadow operation. He had his own source of advice. He had his own source of access. He was making his own decisions," Light said. Wilson had written that he had not discovered any evidence that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa. Wilson also asserted that the administration willfully ignored his findings. Bush mentioned the unsubstantiated Africa connection in his State of the Union address in 2003. The White House and the CIA disavowed the 16-word assertion shortly after Wilson's criticism appeared in print. A week after Wilson's article, his wife's CIA employment was disclosed in a column by Robert Novak, who wrote that two administration officials told him she suggested sending the former ambassador on the trip. The disclosure led to a federal investigation into whether administration officials deliberately leaked her identity. Her job was classified and it is a crime to knowingly disclose classified information to unauthorized recipients. Libby, 56, is not charged with that. He is charged with lying to the FBI and obstructing a grand jury investigation into the leak of Plame's identity. Libby is the only one charged in the case. Cheney was upset by Wilson's suggestion that his trip was done at the vice president's behest and that the vice president had surely heard his conclusions well before Bush repeated the Niger story in his speech. The CIA later said Wilson's mission was suggested by his wife but authorized by others. The agency said Wilson's fact-finding trip was in response to inquiries made by Cheney's office, the State Department and the Pentagon. Testifying for the prosecution, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said he was surprised to find the administration was backing off the 16 words that he had been defending. He said it wasn't the first time he spoke of the administration's position with great certainty, only to find it had changed and nobody had bothered to let him know. Fleischer acknowledged passing along Plame's identity to two reporters. But he testified he did not know at the time that her CIA job was classified. According to prosecution testimony, Libby had conversations about Plame's identity with Cheney as well as with a Cheney spokeswoman, a undersecretary of state and two CIA officials before he talked to Russert. In addition, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller and former Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper testified that Libby discussed Plame's CIA employment with them. Russert, the final witness for the prosecution, flatly denied Libby's assertion that the two had discussed Plame before Novak's column appeared. On the grand jury tapes, Libby also described steps that Cheney took to use parts of a 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a classified assessment of Iraq's weapons capabilities, to rebut Wilson. Among those not informed about this Cheney maneuver, according to the Libby tapes, were then-White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr., then-CIA Director George J. Tenet and then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. "What was interesting to me was what appears to be the total involvement of the vice president," said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar who worked in the Eisenhower and Nixon White Houses. "If he's down to micromanaging news leaks and responses at that level, I found that quite astounding." Meantime, it's become clear that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the first to disclose Plame's work to reporters - Washington Post editor Bob Woodward and then Novak. Armitage says it was a mistake, claiming he didn't know her job was classified. Ultimately, he, Fleischer and special presidential adviser Karl Rove all have acknowledged talking to reporters about her. According to testimony, at least six reporters were privately told by top administration officials of Plame's connection with the CIA. ----------------------------------------------- Mod's note:Mr.Cheney has done more damage to this nation,and the world, than his imbicile boy-king"boss"ever dreamed of. Since he cannot (for 748 more days)be stuffed into a well-deserved,offshore dog-kennel of his own making, becouse of his Ill-gotten (P)residential status,I hope to see him made to take the witness stand.His paranoid delusions and rotten temper will cause him to screw up,"big time"...Let this sad sack tie his own rope.His rabid puppet will go down with him. He dares to accuse war opponents of giving aid and comfort to the enemy.The American People are not stupid,and are well aware that the smear belongs to the Matrix Media...At the moment,Cheney and Bush are well aided,and quite comfortable. Three things come to mind when I see an image of this man... Digusting Avarice Reckless Power Sheer Evil If I must remind,I will gladly do so:War proffitteering is Treason. One thing,and one thing only keeps his sorry ass out of shackles and an orange jumpsuit..
Money. Fucking Blood Money. 3,124 pieces of silver,and counting...
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DT1
Moderator
You know, it's not like I wanted to be right about all of this...
Posts: 428
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Post by DT1 on Feb 24, 2007 13:59:25 GMT 4
Mod's note: this post,from truthout.org,is rather lengthy,yet many critical issues are covered. There is nothing else that would aid the recovery of this Nation more profoundly than the immediate removal of Neocan't,5-time Chickenshit,Kill'EmAll Cheney from the Office. Why is he so feared?Shine the light on him- His staggering wealth is treasonously unjust,and deserves massive scrutiny,whether he wants it or not... This war proffiteering bastard is currently in Japan,thanking thier troops (who were withdrawn last year).Notice He gets protested wherever he goes?He could care less. He'll go anywhere to keep ducking Federal Prosecuters,except Walter Reed.... He should come back to shackles and an orange jump-suit. I'd let Bush go scott-free,if it meant seeing R.B.Cheney dragged kicking and screaming to Justice. Think about it...dt1 The People vs. Richard Cheney By Wil S. Hylton GQ March 2007 Issue Resolved, that Richard B. Cheney, vice president of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and that these articles of impeachment be submitted to the American people. When the Founding Fathers crafted the U.S. Constitution, they wanted to be sure that the president, vice president, and other ranking officials could be evicted more easily than the British monarchy. To ensure that the process would be swift and certain, they made it simple: Only two conditions must be met. First, a majority of the House of Representatives must agree on a set of charges; then, two-thirds of the Senate must agree to convict. After that, there is no legal wrangling, no appeal to a higher authority, no reversal on technical grounds. There is not even a limit on what the charges may be. As the Constitution describes it, the cause may be "treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors," but even these were left deliberately vague; as Gerald Ford once pointed out while still serving in the House of Representatives, the only real definition of an "impeachable offense" is "whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history." To the credit of this nation, despite the relative ease of impeachment, only seventeen officials have sunk to such ignominious depths that the process has been invoked. The reasons for impeachment have ranged from the outrageous to the banal: from putting political enemies in jail (Judge James H. Peck, 1830) to cheating on taxes (Judge Harry E. Claiborne, 1986); from being rude to Congress ("unmindful of the harmony and courtesies which ought to exist and be maintained between the executive and legislative branches," President Andrew Johnson, 1868) to being a drunkard ("a man of loose morals and intemperate habits," Judge John Pickering, 1803). One president was even impeached for having the good taste to keep his sex life private (concealing "the nature and details of his relationship with a subordinate Government employee," President William Jefferson Clinton, 1998). In the case of George W. Bush, there may be any number of reasons not to add an eighteenth name to the list. These range from the moderate (that two consecutive presidential impeachments would do more harm than good to the nation) to the provocative (that while Bush has been wrong about a staggering number of issues, he is too hapless to be held accountable for it) to the pragmatic (that even if Bush were impeached, we would still be stuck with Vice President Cheney). There is even, for those inclined to such things, an argument by design: that the president is the president, and therefore God designed it that way. But none of these apply to Vice President Cheney, and not only because it was Cheney (and not God, or George W. Bush, or anybody else) who selected himself as vice president back in 2000. With Cheney, there are also no lingering questions about capacity, motive, or malice. Over the past six years, as the country has spiraled into military misadventure, fiscal madness, and environmental meltdown, the vice president has not merely been wrong about the issues; he has been duplicitous, deceitful, and deliberately destructive to the American democracy. These things can no longer be denied by rational minds: That in the buildup to war in Iraq, the vice president, lacking confidence in the true casus belli, conspired to invent additional ones, misrepresenting the available intelligence, crafting new "intelligence," and then spreading these falsehoods to the public, perverting the democratic process that he is sworn to uphold. That as the war devolved into occupation, the vice president again sabotaged the democratic system, developing back channels into the Coalition Provisional Authority, a body not under his purview, to remove some of the most effective staff and replace them with his own loyal supplicants - undercutting America's best effort at war in order to expand his own power. That in his domestic capacity, the vice president has been equally reckless with the trust of his office, converting the vice presidency into a de facto prime ministership, conducting secret meetings with secret policy boards to determine national policy and then refusing to share the details of those meetings with the other branches of government. Finally, that the vice president has repeatedly promoted the interests of a corporation, Halliburton, over the interests of the nation, causing untold harm to American economic, military, and public health. For these and other offenses against the nation, Vice President Cheney, clearly, is guilty of crimes against the state. Herewith, in the absence of action for the past six years by a timid Republican Congress and a refusal to act by the new Democratic leadership, we, the Fourth Estate, take the mantle of indictment unto ourselves and present these Articles of Impeachment, to be adopted by the United States House of Representatives and voted upon by the United States Senate, at their earliest possible leisure: Resolved
That Richard B. Cheney, vice president of the United States, be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors; that the evidence hereinafter set out sustains six articles of impeachment justifying immediate removal from office; that said articles shall be adopted by the House of Representatives; and that the same shall be endorsed by the Senate, to wit:
Article I In his conduct of the office of the vice president of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, contrary to his oath to faithfully execute the office of vice president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws of this nation be upheld, has deliberately obstructed the nation's intelligence-gathering capacity, in that: (1) During the several months preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the vice president endeavored to bypass the role of the Central Intelligence Agency as the nation's principal filter of raw intelligence, directing subordinates within the agency to "stovepipe" raw intelligence directly to his office. (2) As a result of this policy, the vice president became privy to unanalyzed, unverified data that should not have been available to him, including documents that seemed to indicate that Saddam Hussein may have attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium from the African country of Niger in February 1999. (3) Relying on these documents, and ignoring the CIA's assessment that they were most likely fabrications, the vice president proceeded to publicize the Niger documents and encouraged the president to refer to them in his 2003 State of the Union address, deliberately obstructing the role of the CIA and promoting known forgeries to bolster his case for war. (4) At the same time, acting personally and through his subordinates, the vice president conspired with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to create a substitute intelligence agency within the Pentagon, known as the Office of Special Plans, with instructions to contradict unfavorable information emerging from the CIA. (5) Under this mandate, the Office of Special Plans sought to undermine the authority legally vested in the CIA, cultivating intelligence sources known to be discredited and embarking on extralegal "missions" to Iraq without consulting the nation's legitimate intelligence services. (6) In these distortions of the nation's intelligence-gathering process, the vice president, acting personally and through subordinates, has obstructed the democratic institutions of the nation and undermined the rule of law. In all of this, Richard B. Cheney has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as vice president and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office. Article II Using the powers of the office of the vice president of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, contrary to his oath to faithfully execute the office of vice president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws of this nation be upheld, has personally deceived the American people, in that: (1) During the several months preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, and thereafter, the vice president became aware that no certain evidence existed of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a fact articulated in several official documents, including: (a) A report by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, concluding that "there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has - or will - establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities." (b) A National Intelligence Estimate, compiled by the nation's intelligence agencies, admitting to "little specific information" about chemical weapons in Iraq. (c) A later section of the same NIE, admitting "low confidence" that Saddam Hussein "would engage in clandestine attacks against the U.S. Homeland," and equally "low confidence" that he would "share chemical or biological weapons with al-Qa'ida." (d) An addendum by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, asserting that Hussein's quest for yellowcake uranium in Africa was "highly dubious" and that his acquisition of certain machine parts, considered by some to be evidence of a nuclear program, were "not clearly linked to a nuclear end use." (e) A report by the United States Department of Energy, stating that the machinery in question was "poorly suited" for nuclear use. (2) Despite these questions and uncertainties, and having full awareness of them, the vice president nevertheless proceeded to misrepresent the facts in his public statements, claiming that there was no doubt about the existence of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq and that a full-scale nuclear program was known to exist, including: (a) March 17, 2002: "We know they have biological and chemical weapons." (b) March 19, 2002: "We know they are pursuing nuclear weapons." (c) March 24, 2002: "He is actively pursuing nuclear weapons." (d) May 19, 2002: "We know he's got chemical and biological...we know he's working on nuclear." (e) August 26, 2002: "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons... Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." (f) March 16, 2003: "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." (3) At the same time, despite overwhelming skepticism within the government of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda - resulting in the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission that "no credible evidence" for such a link existed, and the CIA's determination that Hussein "did not have a relationship" with Al Qaeda - the vice president continued to insist that the relationship had been confirmed, including: (a) December 2, 2002: "His regime has had high-level contacts with Al Qaeda going back a decade and has provided training to Al Qaeda terrorists." (b) January 30, 2003: "His regime aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda. He could decide secretly to provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against us." (c) March 16, 2003: "We know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda organization." (d) September 14, 2003: "We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s, that it involved training, for example, on biological weapons and chemical weapons." (e) October 10, 2003: "He also had an established relationship with Al Qaeda - providing training to Al Qaeda members in areas of poisons, gases, and conventional bombs." (f) January 9, 2004: "Al Qaeda and the Iraqi intelligence services...have worked together on a number of occasions." (g) January 22, 2004: "There's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government" (h) June 18, 2004: "There clearly was a relationship. It's been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming." (4) Through all of these misrepresentations, the vice president knowingly skewed the public's perception of reality, clouded the nation's ability to weigh evidence, and willfully disrupted the function of American democracy. In all of this, Richard B. Cheney has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as vice president and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office. ARTICLE III In his conduct of the office of the vice president of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, contrary to his oath to faithfully execute the office of vice president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws of this nation be upheld, has deliberately embraced and sheltered a known criminal, to the great detriment of American policy, in that: (1) During the months preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the vice president, acting personally and through his subordinates, granted special access to the Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, relying on Chalabi for intelligence about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction, despite an outstanding warrant for Chalabi's arrest on charges of bank fraud in the nation of Jordan, grave concerns from the CIA about Chalabi's credibility, and a 2002 British assessment that Chalabi was "a convicted fraudster." (2) As the initial stage of the war concluded and Chalabi's claims proved false, the vice president nevertheless continued privately to champion Chalabi as a leader for the new Iraqi government, ignoring a litany of troubling accusations and events, including: (a) May 19, 2004: The Department of Defense discontinues monthly payments to Chalabi, pending charges of fraud. (b) May 20, 2004: U.S. troops, along with Iraqi forces, storm Chalabi's home, seizing documents and computers for a criminal probe. (c) June 2004: The New York Times reports that Chalabi has disclosed U.S. secrets to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (3) When an employee of the Coalition Provisional Authority named Thomas Warrick voiced concerns about Chalabi to his superiors, the vice president intervened to demand that Warrick be fired, causing Warrick's unique contributions to the occupation - including a series of prescient written warnings about the rise of insurgency - to be lost, and the nation's ability to function at war compromised. (4) As late as November 2005, the vice president continued to offer public support and safe harbor to Chalabi, inviting him to visit the White House and providing personal welcome to a known criminal. In all of this, Richard B. Cheney has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as vice president and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office. ARTICLE IV In his conduct of the office of the vice president of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, contrary to his oath to faithfully execute the office of vice president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws of this nation be upheld, has maintained an improper and unethical relationship with his former employers at Halliburton and has promoted its agenda and interests over those of the American people, in that: (1) In September 2003, the vice president claimed to have "severed all my ties with the company" and to have "no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind," where in truth he did, at that time, continue to earn more than $150,000 per year in delayed compensation from Halliburton, as well as a portfolio in excess of 230,000 stock options of the company, worth more than $10 million. (2) Bolstered by this economic incentive to promote the interests of Halliburton, the vice president did choose to remain silent as the company was exposed in a series of financial scandals at the expense of the American people, including: (a) February 2002: Halliburton is forced to pay $2 million after being charged by the Justice Department for fraud committed against the Pentagon during the vice president's tenure as CEO. (b) May 2002: The company is investigated by the SEC for fraudulent accounting practices and inflation of its stock price during the vice president's tenure as CEO. (c) March 2003: The company is investigated by a congressional committee for receiving favorable contracts from the Pentagon, outside normal review processes. (d) May 2003: The company admits to having bribed a Nigerian official with millions of dollars in exchange for tax exemptions. (e) December 2003: The company is found by the Defense Contract Audit Agency, a unit of the Pentagon, to have overcharged and defrauded the government of more than $100 million. (f) January 2004: The company admits that its employees have accepted $6 million in kickbacks from a Kuwaiti company in exchange for a portion of U.S. government contracts. (3) Through his silence on these and other scandals involving his former employer and source of several million dollars in assets, the vice president exhibited not only a failure of leadership but a lack of integrity that has tarnished the office of the vice president. In all of this, Richard B. Cheney has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as vice president and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office. ARTICLE V Using the powers of the office of the vice president of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, contrary to his oath to faithfully execute the office of vice president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws of this nation be upheld, has granted improper and unlawful influence over national policy to an anonymous cabal of corporate lobbyists, in that: (1) In January 2001, the vice president did oversee a secret task force composed of corporate lobbyists and executives from the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear-energy sector, known collectively as the National Energy Policy Development Group, instructing them to meet regularly and develop the nation's energy policy. (2) By conducting these meetings in secret, the vice president did endeavor to impart influence to corporate interests without public knowledge, eclipsing not only the oversight function of Congress generally but the specific role of the energy committees in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. (3) During the course of these secret meetings, the vice president allowed lobbyists representing the oil, coal, gas, and nuclear-energy industries to compose, word-for-word, the national energy policy adopted by the Department of Energy, in gross violation of the public trust and all ethical norms. In all of this, Richard B. Cheney has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as vice president and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office. ARTICLE VI In his conduct of the office of the vice president of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, contrary to his oath to faithfully execute the office of vice president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws of this nation be upheld, has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice, in that: (1) On March 25, 2002, and thereafter, the vice president did willfully disobey court orders to identify the members of the National Energy Policy Development Group. (2) In September 2002, and prior thereto, the vice president did also refuse requests by Representatives Henry Waxman and John Dingell, as well as the Government Accountability Office, to release transcripts and papers produced by the aforementioned group. (3) In both of these cases, the requested names and documenting papers were deemed necessary to resolve by direct evidence fundamental, factual questions relating to the vice president's reliance on special interests and corporate lobbyists in the formation of national policy, and the release of said papers was ordered by the United States District Court and upheld by the United States Court of Appeals. (4) In refusing to produce said names, transcripts, and papers, and by continuing to keep the deliberations of the National Energy Policy Development Group secret, the vice president, substituting his judgment for the authority of the federal courts and ignoring the doctrine of congressional oversight, did assume to the office of the vice president authority, functions, and judgments forbidden by the United States Constitution. In all of this, Richard B. Cheney has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as vice president and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office. --------- Wil S. Hylton is a GQ correspondent. Any questions?
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DT1
Moderator
You know, it's not like I wanted to be right about all of this...
Posts: 428
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Post by DT1 on Mar 7, 2007 14:04:30 GMT 4
Libby Verdict Puts Focus On Cheney WASHINGTON (AP) - Campaigning in 2000, George Bush promised he would swear on the Bible to restore honor and dignity to a sullied White House and give it "one heck of a scrubbing." The conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby gave the White House a scrubbing - but not the one Bush had in mind.
The case laid bare the inner workings of a presidency under siege and the secretive world of Vice President Dick Cheney.
It showed the lengths to which Cheney went in early summer 2003 to discredit administration critic Joseph Wilson. The former ambassador's assertions had cast doubt on the administration's justification for having taken the country to war in Iraq. And the Libby case showed the president assisting Cheney in the leaked attacks on Wilson.
Libby, who was Cheney's chief of staff, was found guilty on Tuesday of four of five counts of obstructing justice, lying and perjury during an investigation into the administration's disclosure of the identity of undercover CIA official Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife.
The verdict "does great damage to the Bush administration," said Paul C. Light, professor of public service at New York University. "It undermines the president's pledge of ethical conduct. But the most serious consequence is that it will raise questions about Cheney's durability in office. It may be time for Cheney to submit his resignation."
But don't count on it. Bush in the past has repeatedly come to the defense of his vice president.
The trial, which included a month of testimony, is also relevant as the U.S. seeks to build a case that Iran is providing sophisticated munitions to Shiite insurgents in Iraq who are using them against U.S. troops. Administration critics have suggested the administration is trying to lay the groundwork for isolating or even attacking Iran - using flawed intelligence, like in Iraq.
Wilson, a retired career diplomat, had accused the administration of manipulating intelligence to build its case to invade Iraq.
The trial leaves a trail of unanswered questions leading to the doorsteps of Bush and Cheney.
Testimony and evidence did not clear up whether they directed the leaking of Plame's identity to the news media.
But the trial did show Bush declassified prewar intelligence that Libby leaked to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, a plan carried out in such secrecy that no one in the government except Bush, Cheney and Libby even knew about it.
Testimony showed the vice president was aware early on that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and told Libby about it. Cheney even scribbled a note to himself a week before Wilson's wife was exposed asking whether she had sent her husband on the CIA mission to Africa that triggered the controversy.
Cheney also directed Libby to speak with selected reporters to counter Wilson's accusations. Cheney developed talking points on the matter for the White House press office. He helped draft a statement by then-CIA Director George Tenet. And he moved to declassify some intelligence material to bolster the case against Wilson.
Lanny Davis, a lawyer who worked in the Clinton White House during several investigations, said Tuesday that, while Libby was the defendant, "it was Vice President Cheney who was on trial today and who has the responsibility for what Libby did. The vice president has a personal and moral responsibility to take responsibility for what Mr. Libby did at his instruction - and to apologize to Valerie Plame."
Cheney said in a statement that he was "very disappointed with the verdict" and that Libby had "served our nation tirelessly and with great distinction." Cheney said he would withhold further comment because Libby was seeking a new trial or, if necessary, an appeal.
Prosecutors said Libby concocted a story to avoid losing his job for disclosing classified information to reporters without authorization. Libby's attorneys said any errors resulted from memory flaws.
The White House refused to comment on the possibility that Bush would pardon Libby. He was the only one charged in the case, and he was not charged with deliberately disclosing Plame's identity, which can be a federal crime, but with lying to investigators and a grand jury. Testimony showed there were other leakers, including adviser Karl Rove, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
The White House has never corrected the denials it issued in the fall of 2003 saying neither Rove nor Libby was involved in the leak of Plame's CIA identity. Political observers doubt any correction will be made.
"What's really focused people's attention is the loss of American troops in Iraq and it's allowed Bush, Cheney and Rove - once he wasn't indicted - to kind of be pushed off the radar screen" regarding the Plame affair, said presidential historian Robert Dallek.
Democrats used the verdicts to attack Cheney. "Lewis Libby has been convicted of perjury, but his trial revealed deeper truths about Vice President Cheney's role in this sordid affair. Now President Bush must pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino would not characterize the verdict as embarrassing for the White House. "I think that we have been able to continue on in moving forward on all sorts of different fronts," she said.
It's not the administration's first ethics-related conviction. Two former Bush administration officials have been convicted in investigations related to jailed Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Last June, a former White House aide, David H. Safavian, was convicted of lying to government investigators about his ties to Abramoff. He faces an 180-month prison sentence. Roger Stillwell, a former Interior Department official, pleaded guilty in August to a misdemeanor charge for not reporting tickets he received from Abramoff.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE - Tom Raum has covered national and international affair for The Associated Press since 1973. Associated Press Writer Pete Yost contributed to this article.
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on May 15, 2007 9:56:40 GMT 4
PLEASE take action [see end of post] and ask your Congress member to co-sponsor H.R. 333, Articles of Impeachment against Vice President Cheney......Michelle“The Color of Blood, the Color of Resistance, the Color of Iraq.”Mike Whitney "If I ever get married again…..I don't want any of this white dress business. I shall wear red. Bright red. The color of blood, the color of roaring, erupting volcanoes, the color of a dying sun, the color of passion, the color of Resistance...The color of Iraq". Layla Anwar; Arab Woman Blues, "A Bed of Roses, A Bed of Thorns"May 13, 2007 I wonder what goes through Cheney’s mind when he visits Baghdad. Does he ever look out the window of his armor-plated limmo and see the wasteland he’s created---the burned out buildings, the pock-marked streets, the wretched orphans sorting through the garbage for something to eat? Al Arabiya news says that there may be as many as 100,000 orphans in Baghdad now. These are Cheney’s kids, aren’t they--the Vice President’s gift to the "New Middle East"? The next generation of terrorists? What a horrible legacy. What a horrible man. Iraq is in a shambles and it’s mostly Cheney’s doing. He was the chief architect of invasion. It was Cheney who convinced his buddies in the banking and oil industries that Iraq would be "easy pickins". And, it was Cheney who figured out that the American people could be duped into attacking a defenseless nation. And he was right. For 6 years, Cheney has worked the levers behind the scenes to keep the American people in a constant state of fear. That gave him the time to move his armies into place and transform the government into a "one party" police state. For the most part, things have gone smoothly—the criminal activities of the state have been concealed behind the smokescreen of the "war on terror", the biggest public relations swindle in history. Nevertheless, the overall plan worked like a charm. The public ate it up, the congress caved in, and the United Nations looked the other way. Now, Iraq is in tatters---the schools are closed, the children are malnourished and traumatized, unemployment is soaring, the lights are out, the water is toxic, and every day another 35 or 40 civilians are blown to bits in a conflict that seemingly has no end. Every part of Cheney’s plan has failed. Four years after "Mission Accomplished", the "second most powerful man on earth" still has to slink into Iraq under the cover of darkness and be quickly whisked off to the safety of the Green Zone by a security-entourage the size of a small army. There’s no "progress" in Iraq and there’s no security. The US military is trying to impose its will on a civilian population through force of arms and the Iraqis are flatly refusing. America is hated in Iraq and that won’t change. That’s why Cheney has to strap on a Kevlar vest and hunker down in the Green Zone whenever he comes to town. Americans are not welcome. Cheney’s "surprise" visit comes just one week after Condi Rice passed through the region trying to drum up support for an Iraqi security plan. What a joke. Iraqis won’t have security until US troops are withdrawn and the political situation sorts itself out. That’ll take years if not decades. The (real) purpose of Condi’s mission was to open a dialogue with Syria and Iran to see if they’d help to stabilize Iraq. Up to now, the Bush team has rejected the Baker Commission’s advice to talk to the two countries. But that’s all changed now. Bush has put aside his ego long enough to address the "grave and deteriorating" situation on the ground and see what can be salvaged of the mission. Rice managed to corner the Syrian Foreign Minister and appears to have made some progress diplomatically. But she got nowhere with Iran. In fact, Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki used the conference at Sharm al-Sheik to further humiliate the United States by blasting American foreign policy and the Bush administration’s flaunting of international law. Mottaki’s speech was another black-eye for America. But that makes no difference. What’s important is that the administration is trying to talk directly with its enemies. That gives us some reason to hope. But it also gives us some idea of how badly the war is going. After all, if Bush is talking to Syria, the situation must be really desperate. Perhaps, they’re beginning to see that--as Harry Reid said— "the war is lost." In his brief stay, Cheney never poked his nose beyond the 18 inch cement walls of the Green Zone. If he had, he might have seen "the hell that is Iraq". As Patrick Cockburn said in his latest article, "A Small War Guaranteed to Damage a Superpower": "The extent of the military failure over the previous three-and-a-half years is extraordinary. The foreign media never quite made clear how little territory the U.S. and the Iraqi army fully controlled – even in the heart of Baghdad." Cockburn makes an important point that’s normally papered-over in the media--- that after 4 years the US still doesn’t control ANY ground beyond the Green Zone. And, now, even the Green Zone is increasingly coming under fire. Cockburn also adds this: "America blithely invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein to show its great political and military strength. Instead it demonstrated its weakness. The vastly expensive U.S. war machine failed to defeat a limited number of Sunni Arab guerrillas." How true. Big military, but nothing to show for it. Just a long, protracted bloodbath and the looming prospect of defeat. Cheney’s plan for a "New American Century" depends heavily on the $500 billion US war machine. But the military has flopped in Iraq. Bombs don’t produce political solutions and the use of excessive force has only alienated the public and strengthened the resistance. The army is ineffective in urban warfare. Its advantages in weaponry and firepower are lost in an environment where guerillas can strike at will and then vanish without a trace. Still, Cheney and Company "soldier-on" impervious to the lessons of the last 4 years and unwilling to change their basic strategy. If the definition of insanity is: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results---then, the Vice President should be institutionalized. The occupation has just been one dismal blunder after the other; like Abu Ghraib and Falluja. Both suggest the moral superiority of the resistance, and both have been used to enlist new recruits. Falluja was a particularly stupid error. The siege was an extension of the same muddled thinking that produced "Shock and Awe". The Bush Team appeared to believe that Iraqi fighters would cower at the first sign of American firepower and simply throw down their weapons. What nonsense. Instead, it rallied the resistance and intensified the fighting. Fulluja was attacked on November 8, 2004 in Operation Phantom Fury. The city of 300,000 was surrounded by concertina wire and a 6 ft high mound of dirt. The townspeople were forced to evacuate without food, water or shelter. Many still haven’t returned to their homes three years later. The city was leveled. The Dresden-type bombing continued week after week---hospitals, schools and mosques were destroyed, civilians who left their homes for food or water were shot by snipers, bodies were left to rot on the streets, and corpses were deposited in makeshift graves in the local soccer field. From beginning to end, Falluja was a war crime---illegal incendiary bombs and other "unidentified" chemical ordinance was dropped on civilians. The BBC reported that 65 to 70% of the city was in ruins. Falluja was a turning point in Cheney’s war. It should be regarded as the milestone for when the war was lost. The resistance has steadily grown in strength ever since. The Iraqis now understand that there can be no negotiations with people who are willing to flatten entire cities to achieve their imperial ambitions. To fully understand what happened in Falluja we refer to a statement made by Vietnamese General Tran Quang Co who met with ex-Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara in the 1990s. Co was trying to explain to MacNamara when exactly he knew that America would lose the war in Vietnam. He said: "When the US bombed the North and brought its troops into the South, well, of course, to us these were very negative moves. However, with regard to Vietnam, US aggression did have its positive use. Never before did the people of Vietnam, from top to bottom, unite as they did during the years that the US was bombing us. Never before had Chairman Ho Chi Minh’s appeal---that there is nothing more precious than freedom and independence—go straight to the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people as at the end of 1966" Falluja united the Iraqis against American occupation. This fact is evident in all the surveys that have been conducted since the time of the siege. The overwhelming majority of Shiites and Sunnis now want the US to leave. Public support for the resistance continues to mushroom. The neocon plan to "teach the Iraqis a lesson" by creating a humanitarian catastrophe has backfired spectacularly. After Falluja, a political solution is no longer possible. The US must either "pacify" the population by increasing the level of violence or withdrawal. The middle ground has been cut away. The War Drags OnCheney’s trip coincides with a number of stories that are being suppressed in the western media. Currently, the Iraqi city of Samarra is under siege—a cordon surrounds the city, the entrances have been blocked and food, water and medical supplies have been cut off. Similar to Falluja, the media has been banned and the city’s people are left to left to survive as prisoners in there own country. Also, there are reports that the US is building another Guantanamo-type facility in southern Iraq in Dhi-Qar province. It’s clear that the crimes perpetrated at Abu Ghraib have not deterred the authors of the war from continuing the brutalizing of Iraqi prisoners. Also, author and activist Sarah Meyer has also reproduced a map showing the location of permanent" US bases in Iraq---all of them conveniently located in the main oil fields. ("The Iraq Oil Crunch: Index Timeline") It’s a useful primer for those who care to grasp the real objectives of the war. There’s also a new report from the child’s advocacy group Save the Children that confirming that "The infant mortality rate in Iraq has increased by a shocking 150 percent since 1990—the highest such increase recorded for any country in the world…According to the report, one in eight Iraqi children—122,000 in all—died before reaching their fifth birthday. More than half of these deaths were recorded among new-born infants, with pneumonia and diarrhea claiming the greatest toll among Iraqi babies". Save the Children’s report comes on the heels of earlier surveys which show that Baghdad orphanages are teeming with 100,000 orphans of the conflict most of whom are severely traumatized by the increasing levels of violence. Finally, there’s the tragic story of the young Marine who was involved in the massacre of Iraqi civilians at Haditha---and who expressed his rage by urinating on their corpses as they lay in a pool of blood on the street. This is the "democracy" Cheney has brought to Iraq. In an impromptu press conference, Cheney casually dismissed the suffering of the Iraqi people by saying that Baghdad is still "a dangerous place". This is about as close to an admission of guilt as the V.P. will ever get. That’s why he adroitly shifted the topic to the failings of the al-Maliki government--America’s new stooge in Baghdad. Al Maliki has become the convenient scapegoat for everything that has gone wrong in Iraq. After his short visit to Baghdad; Cheney zoomed off to the Gulf where he delivered a predictably threatening speech on board the aircraft carrier U.S.S. John C. Stennis. He said: "With two carrier strike groups in the gulf, we’re sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike. We’ll keep the sea lanes open. We’ll stand with our friends in opposing extremism and strategic threats. We’ll disrupt attacks on our own forces. We’ll continue bringing relief to those who suffer, and delivering justice to the enemies of freedom. And we’ll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region." Cheney’s fiery rhetoric was mainly intended to soothe the Saudi Royal family, which are increasingly nervous about the rise of a Shiite-dominated Middle East with Iran as the de facto superpower. Still, Cheney’s shameless saber rattling cannot be entirely ignored. There are signs that the more-hawkish members of the administration are still considering an unprovoked attack on Iran. Such an attack would ensure that the entire region would be consumed in a decades-long conflagration. The administration has upset the fragile balance of power in the region by toppling the largely secular Sunni regime in Baghdad. The unintended consequence of this is that Islamic fundamentalism is progressively on the rise and bound to be a major factor in Iraq’s political evolution. Lt. General William Odom cautioned that invading and occupying Iraq would not serve America’s strategic interests. He said, "We cannot win a war that serves our enemies interests and not our own. Continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq makes no sense. We can now see that it never did." But Cheney doesn’t heed the advice of the experts. He knows everything about war---except how to win. Now, he’s trying to mollify the allies in the Gulf by assuring them that the chaos in Iraq won’t spill over into other countries and set the whole region ablaze. But how would Cheney know? He’s been wrong about everything so far; so, why would anyone trust his judgment now? With 2 million Iraqis refugees in Jordan and Syria (Many of them wealthy Ba’athists) the prospect of a larger regional conflict is certain. In fact, the real prize for the Iraqi resistance is not Baghdad at all, but Riyadh. If fighting breaks out in Saudi Arabia, then oil futures will shoot through the roof and wreak havoc with energy supplies across the planet. It’s the quickest way to bring the industrial world to its knees---and don’t think these groups don’t know it! That’s probably why the Saudis rounded up 172 "terror suspects" without any evidence of wrongdoing just last week. The Saudis know that their widely-reviled regime is now squarely in the crosshairs of terrorist organizations. Is this the war that Cheney wants? If so, he’s crazy! This conflict is perfect-fit for decentralized guerilla cells that can independently carry out operations on vital pipelines, tankers and oil facilities. It's a "no-win" situation for the rest of us. There’s just no way to protect sensitive infrastructure or resource transport in a free market. Suppression of the population alone will not work. Just look at Nigeria, Somalia, Afghanistan, of course, Iraq. This is not a war that can be won by military means. We must look for political solutions and stop the recriminations and violence. Iraq has been the biggest mistake in American history. Bush kicked open Pandora’s Box and now we’re all going to pay the price. If the war spreads beyond Iraq; the era of cheap oil will come to a swift and decisive end. Our job now is to force the administration to rethink their strategy, change directions and work for "regional stability". The present course will end in catastrophe for the entire world. The world is changing quickly and America will soon be on the outside looking in. Its benign-sounding institutions (the World Bank, IMF, UN) are already in trouble and new alliances in Latin America and Asia are crystallizing into power-centers for the new century. America’s "soft power" and moral authority have been discarded and coercive diplomacy is no longer working. America is treading on quicksand while the Chinese Phoenix continues to rise in the East. The exorbitant cost of the war, the ballooning deficits and the falling dollar have all contributed to the steady wearing away of American power. These long-term problems are only exacerbated by the fanatical dependence on militarism. Victory was never possible in Iraq. It was just the fantasy of armchair warriors who never served in battle and never understood the realities of war. Wars are not won by superior firepower alone. Cheney never understood this simple point. Did he really believe that we could put a Christian army of occupation in the center of the Muslim world? What arrogance. The plan was doomed from the very beginning. Countless thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed or maimed in Cheney’s war---innocent victims shot down or bombed in their own cities, on their own streets or in their own homes! Iraq has become the greatest humanitarian disaster of our time---and its a long way from over. America’s reputation is in ruins. The good faith we received after 9-11 has dried-up and been replaced with suspicion and rage. As former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski says in his new book, "Second Chance": "Barely fifteen years after the wall came down, the once proud and globally admired America was widely viewed around the world with intense hostility, its legitimacy and credibility in tatters, its military bogged down…. its formerly devoted allies distancing themselves, and world-wide public opinion polls documenting widespread hostility toward the United States… The Middle East is fragmenting and on the brink of explosion. The world of Islam is inflamed by rising religious passion and anti-imperialist nationalisms. Throughout the world, public opinion polls show that U.S. policy is widely feared and even despised." America is headed for a fall. Everywhere we look we see the telltale signs of U.S. aggression---the partial remains of bombed-out buildings, the scattered piles of wreckage and debris, the bloated corpses of dead victims being eaten by dogs. This is Cheney’s dark vision of the future—a "through the looking glass" world where people are slaughtered without cause and entire nations are pounded into dust. This nightmare-scenario threatens to swallow up the entire planet if a global resistance doesn’t quickly materialize. If Cheney is stopped, millions of people will die. That's a fact. Source: www.uruknet.info?p=32841--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [glow=red,2,300]Action Alert [/glow] Ask your Congress member to co-sponsor H.R. 333, Articles of Impeachment against Vice President Cheney. The bill, drafted by Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), bases impeachment on Cheney’s manipulation of intelligence to launch the Iraq invasion and on his threats of aggressive action against Iran. The bill is now co-sponsored by William. Lacy Clay (D-MO) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL). We need co-sponsors for this bill impeaching Cheney first! Email your Congress member: capwiz.com/pdamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=9672446&PROCESS=Take+Action
or call them at 202-224-3121.The antiwar movement understands better than Democratic leaders in Congress that the best way to subdue Team Bush/Cheney and prevent further deepening of U.S. involvement in Iraq and Iran is by putting the White House on the defensive through serious investigations, accountability and impeachment. It was the threat of impeachment that curtailed further Nixonian aggression in Southeast Asia. Impeach Cheney First! Ask your Rep, to support H.Res. 333 On Tuesday April 24, Rep. Dennis Kucinich acted. Late in the afternoon, Kucinich filed Articles of Impeachment against Vice President Richard Cheney citing three reasons:Manipulating intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that misled us into war with Iraq, Manipulating intelligence about Al Queda’s connections to Iraq, which contributed to leading us into the war in Iraq, Openly threatening aggression against Iran, and in so doing undermining our national security. This is not about politics or the next election, it is about wrongdoing at the highest level of our government and it should be punished -- beginning with Vice President Cheney. No one is above the law. Now is the time to act. Tell your Congress member to support H. Res. 333.Read the Articles of Impeachment and supporting documents:kucinich.house.gov/UploadedFiles/int3.pdf [glow=red,2,300]Take Action:[/glow] capwiz.com/pdamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=9672446&PROCESS=Take+Action
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jul 3, 2007 11:38:18 GMT 4
Oooooh....Newsweek's gettin' tough on Cheney....Give me a break....Of all that they could have said in this article, what exactly have they said? A BIG FAT NOTHING! Wait a minute...they did manage to pump up some sympathy for the Bush family....Poor daddy....poor boy king led astray.....plenty of more sons to become president though.....Now that the mainstream can't ignore what's busting from the seams, ya think they'd give us something better than this....nah, why start now?....MichelleWashington's Zelig A longtime confidant of the Bush and Cheney families describes the dangerous influence of the vice president.Web-Exclusive Commentary By Eleanor Clift Newsweek Updated: 1:40 p.m. ET June 29, 2007 June 29, 2007 - Dick Cheney is like “Zelig,” the Woody Allen character with the uncanny ability to turn up everywhere. We always suspected his dark influence throughout the government, and now it’s been documented chapter and verse in an exhaustive series in The Washington Post. Cheney operates largely in secret, and because he is such a skilled bureaucratic infighter, he’s able to do end runs around everybody, including President Bush, who does nothing to rein in his evil twin. Under the guise of national security, Cheney has gotten away with curbing civil liberties, condoning torture and launching an unnecessary war. He’s also chipped away at environmental regulations and done myriad favors for his friends in the business world. His stealthy intervention undermined former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman and led to her resignation. He shapes tax policy and energy policy and whatever else strikes his fancy, installing himself as president of Corporate America. Cheney’s above-the-law arrogance finally met its match this week, when he declined to give national archivists who oversee the handling of classified data in the executive branch access to his papers. Cheney’s argument: that he’s not part of the executive branch because he also serves as president of the Senate. The claim was ludicrous on its face and opened up Cheney to ridicule. Democrats can’t muster the votes to cut off funding for the war, but when House leader Rahm Emanuel threatened to cut off funds for the vice president’s operation, Cheney backed down. I had lunch with Vic Gold, an old friend of the Cheney’s, on the third day of the Post series. I asked him how he felt reading about Dick’s dark adventures. “A tremendous feeling of validation,” he said. In a recent book, Gold described Cheney as a “mega-maniacal paranoid” whose secret empire within the government had captured the Bush presidency and helped bring the Republican Party to the brink of ruin. Gold’s book, published in April, is titled: “Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP.” (It was originally titled “How the Neo-Cons Took Over the GOP,” but midway through the process, Gold got so angry he changed the verb to “Destroyed.” ) [ that's tellin' em, Vic, hit 'em with a really strong verb! ]This is a huge turnabout for Gold, 78, a veteran Republican operative. Close to the Bushes and the Cheneys, he once shared office space with Lynne Cheney and in 1996 was prepared to support Dick Cheney for president. When he decided not to run, Cheney told Gold, “I don’t want to spend three quarters of my time running around raising money.” That sounded rational to Gold, who’d been kicking around politics for a long time, having worked for a string of Republicans from Barry Goldwater, his hero, to the disgraced Spiro Agnew and finally “the old man,” George H.W. Bush. Unlike others who’ve known Cheney for 30 years, Gold doesn’t think his erstwhile friend has changed. “Men do not change, they unmask themselves,” he says, quoting a Swiss writer. What happened to Cheney is “opportunity,” says Gold. Pushed forward by George and Barbara Bush, who had no confidence in their eldest son, Cheney was supposed to serve as the ghost of Bush Senior hovering around the White House. Cheney took on the job and with, George W.’s acquiescence, made himself the locus of power. What nobody anticipated is the extent to which the quiet man with the lopsided mouth would insinuate himself into everything--and the devastating consequences of his influence, particularly the Iraq War. Gold, a slight man with wispy white hair and a hair-trigger temperament calls Bush “President Dodo.” He’s known Bush since the ’80 campaign, and while he doesn’t really think he’s dumb, he knows he can be manipulated. “He’s playing the role of president, strutting around,” says Gold. “He’s the weakest president in my memory.” The Bushes prize loyalty, but about a year ago, Gold had reached a point where his respect for the elder Bush, whose autobiography he had helped write, was not enough for him to keep quiet. The administration in his view had become a danger to the Constitution and what America stands for in the world. He wrote to tell 41 about the book he was writing, and he got a letter back saying, “We’ve been friends a long time and we’ll continue to be friends. I am sure I will not like what you say about our son.” And then in a grace note typical of the old man, “but I don’t think too much of the neocons myself.” Cheney’s great selling point was that he did not plan to run for president, setting him apart from most vice presidents who harbor personal ambition. He didn’t have to worry about being popular. But the idea was flawed. In the end, Cheney’s lack of viability as a political figure became his license to do whatever he wants, an outcome nobody foresaw, least of all his unsuspecting patron, George H.W. Bush. © 2007 Newsweek, Inc. Source: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19507575/site/newsweek/------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's a meatier article from across the pond. But again, I'm amazed at what's being reported in the news. It's like watching a cartoon episode of Pinky and the Brain where high level cabinet members, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the US Supreme Court, the powerful Senate judiciary committee, and Congress are helpless to stop the evil Brain [VP] as he "Takes Over The World!"...MHow Cheney abused his power in war on terrorDick Cheney now looks like a 'comic book villain'By Tim Shipman in Washington, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 2:01am BST 02/07/2007 Vice-President Dick Cheney was personally responsible for American policies that subjected terrorist suspects to cruelty and denied them the right to a fair trial, according to revelations from senior US government officials. The details have laid bare more than ever before the remarkable influence of Mr Cheney in shaping the prosecution of the war on terror which led to the scandals at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The claims that Mr Cheney manoeuvred to circumvent both American and international law came as the vice-president last week faced three new congressional demands that he release information on his activities. Even his supporters admitted that the disclosures have left Mr Cheney looking like a "comic-book villain" whose contempt for process, including within the White House, has undermined public support for President Bush. A year-long investigation by The Washington Post uncovered details of how in November 2001 - two months after the September 11 atrocities - Vice-President Cheney went behind the backs of the secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to deny foreign terrorist suspects access to a court. In a private dinner with President Bush, Mr Cheney presented him with an order written by his own lawyer, David Addington, denying suspects a civilian trial or a court martial and ordering that they could be confined indefinitely without charge. Within an hour of the meal, the document had been signed by the president, having been whisked straight to his desk on Vice-President Cheney's orders, without being seen by senior White House staff. Miss Rice was described as "incensed" and when Mr Powell learnt of the decision from television news he snapped: "What the hell just happened?" Mr Cheney then ordered his legal team secretly to draw up orders for intelligence agencies to intercept letters, telephone calls and electronic communications to and from America, without a warrant - something forbidden by federal law since 1978. Last week, the powerful Senate judiciary committee issued subpoenas to Mr Cheney and the White House, demanding access to documents relating to that decision. Then, in January 2002, Mr Cheney decided that America must abandon the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of enemy prisoners, which outlawed torture. He personally commissioned legal opinions that would maintain a ban on torture but permit "cruel, inhuman or degrading" interrogation methods. A document drawn up by Mr Addington was adopted, verbatim, by President Bush. In August that year, the vice-president's lawyer inserted a paragraph into a memo of instructions for the CIA on torture which claimed that laws forbidding any person to "commit torture do not apply" to the president because that would be a restriction of his right to wage war. The US Supreme Court has since given three rulings contradicting Vice-President Cheney's view of the president's powers, culminating in June with a demand for the Guantánamo inmates to face trial. But Mr Cheney is accused of continuing to try to bypass international law. When the Senate voted in 2005 to support the Geneva Conventions, Vice-President Cheney - defying opposition from the CIA, the Pentagon, and state and justice departments had a clause inserted into the bill, which meant that the US military is bound by it but not the CIA. The revelations paint a picture of a man obsessed by secrecy and the accumulation of power. The vice-president keeps even routine papers in a safe in his office, refuses to disclose the names or the size of his staff and has ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs. He has even created his own security designation, stamping "Treated As: Top Secret/SCI" (special compartmented intelligence) on mundane papers, in an attempt to protect what are in fact unclassified documents. The classification suggests that their disclosure could cause "exceptionally grave damage to national security". He even put the Top Secret stamp on a paper detailing talking points for officials to use with the press - information he actually wanted to be made public. Mr Cheney also ordered that images of his official residence be pixelated on the Google Earth website, which features satellite photographs, while the White House and Capitol remain fully visible. He is now under investigation by the House of Representatives committee on government oversight for refusing to follow a long-standing directive ordering his office, among other government agencies, to hand over to the National Archives details of how he uses classified information. When challenged, he recommended abolition of the archive office. Last week Mr Cheney and Mr Addington tried to argue that he was not bound by the rules, claiming that he is not part of the executive branch of government because he also acts as president of the Senate. They abandoned that position when congressional Democrats threatened to strip him of his executive funding. "He's saying he's above the law," said Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the oversight committee. Vice-President Cheney has previously claimed executive privilege - the opposite excuse - in refusing to hand over details of which oil companies he consulted when drawing up American energy policy. The Washington Post series also detailed how he ordered the diversion of a river to irrigate farms in Oregon, in pursuit of farmers' votes, despite scientific evidence that this would endanger two protected species of fish. The move killed 80,000 salmon. Last week that issue became the subject of an inquiry by another House committee. Allies say Mr Cheney is unrepentant. "The only person in Washington who cares less about his public image than David Addington is Dick Cheney," said a former White House ally. "What both of them miss is that in times of war, a prerequisite for success is people having confidence in their leadership. This is the great failure of the administration - a complete and total indifference to public opinion." Source:www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/01/wcheney101.xml------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ See recent posts on VP, Big Dick, here at the forum: Re: Constitutional Law « Reply #47 on Jun 22, 2007, 5:34pm » Cheney Power Grab: Says White House Rules Don't Apply to Him Re: Constitutional Law « Reply #49 on Jun 28, 2007, 4:01pm » Color me happy! Cheney's in the spotlight tap dancing his way around lie after lie. You can refer to « Reply #47 on Jun 22, 2007, 5:34pm » Cheney Power Grab: Says White House Rules Don't Apply to Him for more background info on the VP's staring role of a lifetime.....MichelleDems force Cheney to flip-flop on secret docs Go to: tinyurl.com/2q5acjAlso See:
Re: Destruction of the U.S. « Reply #15 on Jun 29, 2007, 4:33pm » Cheney probed over salmon die off Go to: tinyurl.com/2lzgd4
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jul 20, 2007 23:27:59 GMT 4
Bush to cede power to VP during colonoscopyUh-oh, this can't be good for us! What the heck; it's not like the procedure is life threatening to Bush. I wonder what chaos/act of terrorism/microbial strain/[or pick your own set of conditions] is being cooked up to give the Executive Branch absolute power?!....MBush To Undergo Colonoscopy; Cheney To Assume Presidential AuthorityJuly 20, 2007 President Bush will undergo a medical procedure tomorrow that will require him to temporarily transfer his presidential authority to Vice President Dick Cheney.White House press secretary Tony Snow delivered the news that Bush was having a colonoscopy in his noon press briefing. The procedure, which involves a snake-like probe of the large bowel through the rectum, requires sedation and can last up to an hour. Regular colonoscopies to check for signs of colon cancer are recommended for men and women over age 50 every five years. Snow said that Bush, who just turned 61, would have the colonoscopy tomorrow but wouldn't specify the time. Cheney will have "full capabilty to respond" to any crisis from his beach house on the Eastern Shore, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate pro tempore Robert Byrd, second and third in line to the presidency respectively, had been notified earlier in the day.Snow is currently undergoing treatment for colon cancer. He said he was doing "fine," and has three more chemotherapy sessions to go in this round of treatment. Posted at 12:14 PM Source:thegate.nationaljournal.com/2007/07/bush_to_undergo_colonoscopy_ch.php------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bush to cede power to VP during colonoscopy‘The president has had no symptoms,’ Snow says before Saturday procedure BREAKING NEWS Updated: 2 hours, 44 minutes ago WASHINGTON - President Bush will undergo a routine colonoscopy Saturday and temporarily hand presidential powers over to Vice President Dick Cheney, the White House said.Press secretary Tony Snow told reporters Friday that Bush will have the procedure done at his Camp David, Md., mountaintop retreat. He last underwent colorectal cancer surveillance on June 29, 2002. "As reported at the time and in subsequent physical exams, absent any symptoms, the president's doctor recommended repeat surveillance in approximately five years," Snow said. "The president has had no symptoms." Polyps found Two polyps were discovered during examinations in 1998 and 1999 while Bush was governor of Texas. That made Bush a prime candidate for regular examinations. For the general population, a colonoscopy to screen for colon cancer is recommended every 10 years. But for people at higher risk, or if a colonoscopy detects precancerous polyps, follow-up colonoscopies often are scheduled in three- to five-year intervals. "Although no polyps were noted in the exam in 2002, age and history would suggest that there's a reasonable chance that polyps will be noted this time," Snow said. "If so, they'll be removed and evaluated microscopically." He said results would be available after 48 to 72 hours, if not sooner. The procedure will be supervised by Dr. Richard Tubb, the president's doctor, and conducted by a multidisciplinary team from the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md. Because the president will be under the effects of anesthesia, he has elected to implement Section 3 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, making Cheney acting president until Bush indicates he is prepared to reassume his authority.Cheney held power in 2002 In 2002, Bush transferred presidential powers to Cheney for more than two hours.
It was only the second time in history that the Constitution's presidential disability clause was invoked. President Reagan was the first to invoke the Constitution's 25th Amendment since its adoption in 1967 as a means of dealing with presidential disability and succession.The earlier colonoscopy for Bush also was done at the well-equipped medical facility at Camp David near Thurmont, Md. Bush felt well enough afterward to play with his dogs and take a 4 1/2-mile walk with the first lady and then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and his wife. He then went to the gym for a light workout. The 2002 procedure began at 7:09 a.m and ended at 7:29 a.m. Bush woke up two minutes later but did not resume his presidential office until 9:24 a.m., after Tubb conducted an overall examination. Tubb said he recommended the additional time to make sure the sedative had no aftereffects. Source: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19872260/
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jul 22, 2007 6:00:35 GMT 4
This week, on July 17th, Bush signed an Executive Order blocking property of anyone who threatens "stabilization efforts in Iraq." I would assume that means anyone who opposes his policies and you, united States citizens, would not be exempt from this. Perhaps that is why he ceded Presidential power to Cheney today, this Saturday, during a routine colonoscopy....Michelle
See today's post at:Re: Wake up and smell the fascism « Reply #22 on Today [07/22/07] at 5:28am » Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq Go to:airdance.proboards50.com/index.cgi?board=america&action=display&thread=1130151594&page=2
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jul 27, 2007 17:21:34 GMT 4
Put Your Name in the Congressional Record in Support of ImpeachmentRep. Dennis Kucinich wants to put the name of everyone who supports Dick Cheney's impeachment in the Congressional Record! [see info below] The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session and is fully searchable. Every day that Congress is in session, Rep. Kucinich will submit 5 single-spaced pages of names with states, which is the daily limit under House rules. To be included, all you need to do is submit this petition.www.democrats.com/impeach-cheney-congressional-recordThis proposal came about on Thursday when representatives of Democrats.com and ImpeachforPeace.org spent the day on Capitol Hill meeting with Congress Members and their staffers. ImpeachforPeace.org has collected hand-written memorials in support of impeachment, following a precedent detailed in the Jefferson Manual. The individuals who have submitted these memorials will also have their names entered into the Congressional Record. Our lobbying efforts found Congress edging closer and closer to impeachment. Congressional offices expressed growing awareness of citizen demand for impeachment - and citizen dissatisfaction with steps short of impeachment, such as issuing more disregarded subpoenas or passing meaningless censure resolutions. Let Congress know you want nothing short of Impeachment. Be a part of history: www.democrats.com/impeach-cheney-congressional-recordCongressional Record: Main PageThe Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. GPO Access contains Congressional Record volumes from 140 (1994) to the present. At the back of each daily issue is the "Daily Digest," which summarizes the day's floor and committee activities. The current year’s Congressional Record database is usually updated daily by 11 a.m., except when a late adjournment delays production of the issue. Documents are available as ASCII text and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. From:www.gpoaccess.gov/crecord/index.html_______________ Friday July 27:[glow=red,2,300]Declare It Now - Wear Orange![/glow] We launched our "Orange Revolution" on Monday with the march from Arlington Cemetary to the office of Rep. John Conyers led by Cindy Sheehan. Friday July 27 is the start of "Orange Fridays" when we urge impeachment supporters to wear orange and gather in public places, including Honk to Impeach events: communitywalk.com/impeach Impeachment supporters are wearing bright orange shirts, bandanas, ribbons and buttons, wrapping trees and cars in orange tape, and holding bright orange signs. Kickoff events on July 27 are being held across the country in Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York City, Charlotte, Atlanta, Detroit, Kalamazoo, Chicago, Houston, Reno, Walla Walla, Seattle, Bakersfield, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Details here: tinyurl.com/36r7o3Speakers at Friday’s rally in New York City include Cindy Sheehan, Colonel Ann Wright, Jonathan Tasini, Victor Toro, Rev. Billy, and Elaine Brower. More Information: www.worldcantwait.net_______________ July 31: Cities for Peace DayJuly 31, 2007, is Cities for Peace Day in Washington DC. Cities for Peace is a campaign that has helped people all over the country persuade 255 city and state governments to pass resolutions calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq. Democrats.com asks you to help us speed up the end of the Iraq occupation by participating on July 31 in DC. We will march to the White House and deliver resolutions, petitions, and referenda. And we will accompany locally-elected officials to Capitol Hill where they will give testimony on the Local Costs of the Iraq War. www.citiesforpeace.orgAlso on July 31 in DC: People's peace delegation to Iran returns!One day after their return, a five-member delegation of U.S. citizens will present a report on their 12-day, 1,750-kilometer journey through the Islamic Republic of Iran. WHERE: BUSBOYS AND POETS — 2021 14th Street NW, Washington, DC, The Langston Room WHEN: 10:00 a.m., Please arrive between 9:30 & 9:50 a.m. WHO: Delegation members consist of anti-war activists, war veterans and environmentalists; they are from Richmond VA, Norfolk VA, Washington DC, and Milwaukee WI and represent various local, regional and national social justice and anti-war organizations. The trip was funded by the members of the delegation personally, the sponsoring organizations and through public fundraising events. afterdowningstreet.org/node/25138Finally on July 31 in DC: Concert for ImpeachmentThe day's events will be followed by a concert for impeachment at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. with Immortal Technique. Click to play PSA: See: www.hiphopcaucus.org _____________ August: Congress Members Come Home to Hear from YOUFrom August 4 to September 4, Congress will abandon Washington to the evil intentions of the Bush-Cheney administration and come home to hear what you think of the job it's doing. Now is the time to plan to let your Congress Member hear your opinions loud and clear. August 9, 2007, will be the anniversary of the day President Nixon resigned. We encourage you to start now planning creative actions for that day drawing the comparison between Nixon's crimes and those of the new Dick in town. Wearing Nixon masks might make a nice touch. We will soon announce a video contest with two categories: the best comparison of Nixon and Cheney, and the best documentation of an action taken on 8/9/2007. Resources to help you plan a variety of types of events are here: afterdowningstreet.org/eventresourcesHonk to ImpeachOne of the most effective actions you can take is called Honk to Impeach. It works! Rep. Robert Brady (D., Pa.) just signed onto H Res 333 (that makes 15 Congress Members in support of that bill and 17 in support of impeachment). Brady's district office is just on the other side of Philadelphia City Hall from where a group of citizen activists held a "honk to impeach" event during rush hour on Tuesday, the same day Brady signed the bill. A participant reports: "The honking never ceased - it was one steady stream of noise - the people want it! An idea for others who plan rush hour impeach 'honk fests,' I had on hand pre-printed impeach postcards for people to sign and send to their reps. Most drivers were very eager to take them." Also carry signs that read: Text IMPEACH to 30644 Pass ResolutionsThe list of cities and towns and political parties passing resolutions for impeachment continues to grow. Here's a video of Takoma Park Mayor Kathy Porter discussing her town's action on MSNBC: afterdowningstreet.org/node/25109Here's how you can make this happen where you live:afterdowningstreet.org/resolutionsProtest Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine, on August 25thPlease join INDIGO GIRLS, Melida and Carlos Arredondo, Geroge Paz Martin, war resister Augustin Aguayo, retired Colonel Ann Wright, Ashley Smith, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Eugene Puryear, Bruce Gagnon, Charlie Clements, Doug Rawlings, and others, along with Iraq Veterans at a rally and march to the Bush Family Compound: www.kportprotest.orgCarpools and accomodations: www.kportprotest.org/travel.html------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, see this post at: Re: Breaking News : Iran Attack Plans « Reply #4 on Jul 23, 2007, 6:47pm » False Flag Pretext for War on Iran White House preparing to stage new September 11 Parts 1 and 2 of 2 From Michelle
Go to: airdance.proboards50.com/index.cgi?board=news&action=display&thread=1172002422
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Aug 2, 2007 14:15:25 GMT 4
Dick Cheney is Out of Touch (Or a Sociopath)Wednesday, August 1, 2007 Mike Kuykendall A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must, in practice, be a bad government. -Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833 The interview with Preside.. er- I meant Vice-President Dick Cheney on Larry King Live yesterday yielded a lot of ammo for those of us who think he is the worst thing to happen to America since the Teapot Dome scandal under Harding. To start let's all peer back to the halcyon days of 2005 (emphasis, and utter disgust, mine);KING: When do we leave? D. CHENEY: We'll leave as soon as the task is over with. We haven't set a deadline or a date. It depends upon conditions. We have to achieve our objectives, complete the mission. And the two main requirements are, the Iraqis in a position to be able to govern themselves, and they're well on their way to doing that, and the other is able to defend themselves, and they're well on their way to doing that. They just announced that in the last day or two here, there've been stories about a major movement of some 40,000 Iraqi troops into Baghdad to focus specifically on the problem there. KING: You expect it in your administration? D. CHENEY: I do. KING: To be removed. It's not going to be -- it's not going to be a 10-year event? D. CHENEY: No. I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time. But I think the level of activity that we see today, from a military standpoint, I think will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency. We've had reporting in recent days, Larry, about Zarqawi, who's sort of the lead terrorist, outside terrorist, al Qaeda, head of al Qaeda for Iraq, may well have been seriously injured. We don't know. We can't confirm that. We've had reporting to that effect. Here's the infuriating follow-up last night (emphasis once again mine); Q Okay. Let's go back. On this program, May of 2005, you said the Iraq insurgency was in the last throes. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right. Q Why were you wrong? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think my estimate at the time -- and it was wrong; it turned out to be incorrect -- was the fact that we were in the midst of holding three elections in Iraq, elected an interim government, then ratifying a constitution, then electing a permanent government; that they had had significant success, we'd rounded up Saddam Hussein. I thought there were a series of these milestones that would in fact undermine the insurgency and make it less than it was at that point. That clearly didn't happen. I think the insurgency turned out to be more robust.Robust? Per iCasualties.org, in the 27 months of fighting preceding Dick's comment, there were 74 U.S. casualties. In the 25 months since then, 1928 U.S. troops have died. By my rough math that is about an average of 74 deaths monthly prior to his ridiculous and dangerous statement, and 77 afterwards. Take into account the first part of the war had the most sustained troop numbers and includes the casualties from the time proceeding the infamous "shock and awe" bombing sorties at the beginning of the invasion. This fool has repeatedly denied this statement was incorrect- see it here: www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060910.html and here: www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/23/cheney.interview/When will the American people realize they have been hoodwinked and put this liar away for good? You tell me- does 1,928 American deaths deserve the label "robust"? If we're spinning up labels I think Cheney deserves "warmonger." Maybe even "mass-murderer." Source:indigentahole.blogspot.com/2007/08/dick-cheney-is-out-of-touch-or.html
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