This Week's Best Description of the Bush Strategy

From Matt Taibbi over at Rolling Stone:

Up until now this president's solution to everything has been to stare into the cameras, lie and keep on lying until such time as the political problem disappears. And now, unable to comprehend that while political crises may wilt in the face of such tactics, real crises do not, he and his team are responding to this first serious feet-to-the-fire Iraq emergency in the same way they always have -- with a fusillade of silly, easily disprovable bullshit. Bush and his mouthpieces continue to try to obfuscate and cloud the issue of why we're in Iraq, and they do so not only selectively but constantly, compulsively, like mental patients who can't stop jacking off in public. They don't know the difference between a real problem and a political problem, because to them, there is no difference. What could possibly be worse than bad poll numbers?

Right on the money. The money shot, so to speak.

Someone Who Knows About War Crimes

Last night I watched a rerun on C-SPAN of a panel presentation at Georgetown Law School regarding the Nuremberg Trials after World War Two. What particularly struck me were some of the fundamental principles that had been set down in 1945-46 for the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court, to which agreement there are now over 100 nations. The United States, however, is not one of them.

Mr. Benjamin Ferencz, one of the prosecutors at Nuremberg, has a terrific website, and has devoted his life to international law. If you don't yet subscribe to the idea of the Bush regime as a collection of war criminals, I would ask you to consider that the invasion of Iraq was done without United Nations authorization (unlike the 1991 Gulf War) and on the basis of "pre-emption." Here's what Mr. Ferencz has to say about that after he had obtained convictions for war crimes of Nazis by their own admission

The twenty-two defendants in the Einsatzgruppen case were selected on the basis of high rank and education. Many held doctor degrees -- six were SS Generals. The principle defendant, General Dr. Otto Ohlendorf, patiently explained why his unit had killed about 90,000 Jews. Killing all Jews and Gypsies was necessary, said Ohlendorf. as a matter of self-defense.

According to Ohlendorf, it was known that the Soviets planned total war against Germany. A German preemptive strike was better than waiting to be attacked. It was also known, said Ohlendorf, that Jews supported the Bolsheviks - therefore all Jews had to be eliminated. But why did he, the father of five children, kill the little babes -- thousands of them? The bland reply was that if the children learned that their parents had been eliminated, they would grow up to be enemies of Germany. Long range security was the goal. He lacked facts sufficient to challenge Hitler's conclusions. It was all very logical -- according to General Dr. Ohlendorf.

Please note how a kneepad press might contribute to the dissemination of such beliefs.

I had not called for the death penalty, although I felt it was richly deserved. I simply asked the court to affirm the right of all human beings to live in peace and dignity regardless of race or creed. It was "a plea of humanity to law." The three experienced American judges concluded that a preemptive strike as anticipatory self-defense was not a valid legal justification for mass murder. If every nation could decide for itself when to attack a presumed enemy, and when to engage in total war, the rule of law would be destroyed and the world would be destroyed with it.

As to those 100 nations who do support the International Criminal Court, the signatories include our European allies from WWII as well as Germany itself. Mr. Ferencz makes this final point that is perhaps what should have the Bushits running scared most of all:

Aggression, according to the Nuremberg judges and other precedents, is "the supreme international crime" since it includes all the other crimes. There can be no war without atrocities and unauthorized warfare in violation of the UN Charter is the biggest atrocity of all.

I encourage you to visit this site and look over Mr. Ferencz's writings in which he lays out a convincing case of the ICC, the UN, and the need for law instead of war. When we, as a nation that spends more on its military than all other nations combined, fail to adhere to international law, then it is clear that our ideas need reexamination, paricularly regarding the means by which we wish to spread these ideas.

Question of the Day

Joe Conason, one of the true journalists still standing, poses a question worthy of speculation in this paragraph posted today in an article on the requirement for impeachment of Bush:

Why would the President instruct the Attorney General not to seek warrants from the FISA court, as the statute requires? What did he and his aides fear from that court's conservative judges -- appointed by the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist -- who have routinely approved all but a tiny percentage of the warrants presented to them by this and other administrations over the past quarter-century? Which wiretaps did he expect those pliable judges to reject?

Wiretaps on people from his enemies list? Wiretaps on journalists who badmouth his administration? You have to wonder that when a FISA warrant can be obtained after the wiretap has been ordered, and when the FISA court has rejected almost none of the 19,000 requests made since the law was enacted, just how outrageous were the wiretaps that El Presidente wanted?

At home my telephones sport stickers that say "This phone is tapped," and it was originally meant as a joke. Little did I expect that it would turn out to be an accurate assessment of the violation of the Fourth Amendment by the criminals that continue to assault the Constitution in the name of security.

Assault on the First Amendment

Those-who-wish-to-be-tyrants despise a free press. Of course, if we really had a free press, I wouldn't be to worried about what is happening when Bushito summons New York Times and Washington Post editors for some strongarming on truths they might care to tell. You see, although the First Amenedment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to a free press, it does not guarantee the existence or availability of a free press, particularly within an environment so controlled by strictly commercial interests (GE owns NBC, Disney owns ABC, Viacom owns CBS, etc.) whose leadership hobnobs and begs favors from the political establishment. So this revelation is all the more chilling by its secrecy.

Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, would not confirm that he, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman had an Oval Office sit-down with the president on Dec. 5, 11 days before reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that Bush had authorized eavesdropping on Americans and others within the United States without court orders.

But the meetings were confirmed by sources who have been briefed on them but are not authorized to comment because both sides had agreed to keep the sessions off the record. The White House had no comment.

You see, now we not only have to depend on leakers to get the truth out about what goes on in the White House, we have to have leakers to find out what goes on in the press when it deals with the White House.

If these meetings had occurred three years ago, or even one year ago, do you think that Keller and Taubman would have had the courage to run the stories Bush was trying to suppress? Well, we already know that the Times sat on the NSA domestic spying case for a year.

Free press my fucking ass.