FEATURED ARTICLES
- Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy To Attorney General John Ashcroft, June 8, 2004
- Our First Victory Was Zapatero, By Chalmers Johnson
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"I sometimes get emails asking me to propose solutions or make suggestions. Fine. Today's lesson: don't rape, don't torture, don't kill, and get out while you can -- while it still looks like you have a choice. . . . Chaos? Civil war? We'll take our chances -- just take your puppets, your tanks, your smart weapons, your dumb politicians, your lies, your empty promises, your rapists, your sadistic torturers and go."
- - May 7th entry of the "Baghdad Burning" blog, subtitled "Girl blog from Iraq."
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
KNOW YOUR HISTORY - JUNE 11th
1898 -- Cuba: US marines land in Guantanamo during the Spanish-American War. Great place for the military to imprison, interrogate & torture prisoners & not have to answer to US laws.
1990 -- Ronnie Reagan's national security advisor John Poindexter sentenced to 6 months for his conviction on 5 felonies including: 1 count of conspiring to obstruct official inquiries & proceedings, 2 counts of obstructing Congress & 2 counts of false statements to Congress. In November '91 the convictions were overturned on appeal. In December '92, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case.
1991 -- Amnesty International says Kuwait using torture & conducting unfair trials. No invasion by US occurs.
RHINO HERE:
The Rhino gives you just 4 words regarding Ronald Reagan today; "savings and loan scandal."
I've had conversations with several people lately regarding progressive supporters of Ralph Nader for President challenging progressives like myself who will be voting this November for Senator John Kerry. The challenge asks how dedicated anti-war activists could support a man who voted for the Iraq war and the USA PATRIOT Act and all the global trade agreements most progressives oppose, and who, after all, was an accomplice to war crimes and therefore is a war criminal.
My first response went something like, "assuming you know that Ralph will not be president no matter who we vote for, who would you like to end up being president next year? In considering if voting for the lesser of 2 evils (bush or Kerry) is a good idea or not, I think we must assume one of them will be the next president (like it or not). Would your choice be the greater of 2 evils or the lesser?"
In thinking about it more, if too many progressives vote for Ralph, the US could have the same war criminals at the helm of the government that we've had for the last 4 years to the tune of tens of thousands more dead & countless other social costs. I think calling Kerry a Viet Nam war criminal in the context of this election, in spite of his record of having spoken out courageously about the crimes that occurred in Nam when so few others who'd been there were willing to do so, is at best unfair & irresponsible and at worst the perfect strategy to be undertaken by right wing provocateurs.
Rhino thinks it prudent that all we who lean left better be probing our anti-war cohorts to find out which of them are planning to vote for Ralph & having some heated arguments with them. So to my readers out there who think it necessary to keep your karma clean by refusing to cast your vote for a former M-16 toting political compromising skull & bonesman millionaire Democrat Senator, the Rhino offers the following: If you think John Kerry will be as murderous as the shrub gang, you didn't learn the lesson of 2000; that while in many ways the dems & repubs are similar, especially regarding $$$, when it comes to warmongering, the neocon led shrub gang are far & away more vicious than any dem. I speak as a man who voted for Ralph for President in both '96 and 2000.
Today's RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE is by a speech Chalmers Johnson gave to a Democratic Party club in southern California which had asked him to make the best case for voting for John Kerry in November. Johnson is the author of "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic" and of an earlier volume, "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire", among other works. This is a powerful statement which contains lots of excellent talking points, including a simple explanation of why the shrub gang didn't have an exit strategy for Iraq; they didn't intend on leaving. But first is Senator Leahy's recent lambasting of General Asscroft at a Senate Judiciary Committee Oversight Hearing. A dem with spine.
"SEND THIS ARTICLE TO A REPUBLICAN!"
Opening Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy, Ranking Member
Senate Judiciary Committee Oversight Hearing, June 8, 2004
...In the 1000 days since the catastrophic attacks of September 11th, we have learned little from our Justice Department. We know this:
- Osama bin Laden remains at large;
- At least three senior al Qaeda operatives who helped plan the 9/11 attacks, including the suspected mastermind of the plot, are in U.S. custody, but there has been no attempt to bring any of them to justice;
- The Moussaoui prosecution has bogged down because the prosecution refuses to let the defense interview witnesses in U.S. custody;
- A German court acquitted two 9/11 co-conspirators, in part because the U.S. Government refused to provide evidence for the cases;
- Three defendants who you said had knowledge of the 9/11 attacks did not have such knowledge; the Department retracted your statement, and then you had to apologize to the court for violating a gag order in the case;
- The man you claimed was about to explode a "dirty bomb" in the U.S. had no such intention or capability, and because he has been held for two years without access to counsel, any crimes he did commit might never be prosecuted;
- Terrorist attacks on Capitol Hill and elsewhere involving the deadly bioterror agents anthrax and Ricin have yet to be solved, and the Department is defending itself in a civil rights action brought by a man who you publicly identified as a "person of interest" in the anthrax investigation;
- U.S. citizens with no connection to terrorism have been imprisoned as material witnesses for chunks of time -- with an "Oops, I'm sorry" when a "100 percent positive" fingerprint match turns out to be 100 percent wrong;
- Non-citizens with no connection to terrorism have been rounded up on the basis of their religion or ethnicity, held for months without charges and, in some cases, physically abused;
- Interrogation techniques approved by the Department of Justice have led to abuses that have tarnished our nation's reputation and likely given strength and driven hundreds, if not thousands, of new recruits to our enemies
- Your Department turned a Canadian citizen over to Syria who was tortured;
- Documents have been classified, unclassified, and reclassified to score political points rather than for legitimate national security reasons;
- Statistics have been manipulated to exaggerate the Department's success in fighting terrorism; and
- The threat of another attack on U.S. soil remains high, although how high depends on who, in the Administration, is talking and what audience they are addressing...
MORE AT: http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200406/060804.html
7:08:07 AM 
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