1. Now we know why Obama picked Jones as National Security Advisor:
“Petraeus Leaked Misleading Story on Pullout Plans
The political maneuvering between President Barack Obama and his top field commanders over withdrawal from Iraq has taken a sudden new turn with the leak by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus – and a firm denial by a White House official – of an account of the Jan. 21 White House meeting suggesting that Obama had requested three different combat troop withdrawal plans with their respective associated risks, including one of 23 months.
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Obama is obviously treading warily in handling Petraeus. His concern about Petraeus’ political ambitions may have been a factor in the decision to bring four-star Marine Corps Gen. James Jones in as his national security adviser.
“I’ve been told by a couple of people that one of the reasons for Jones being chosen was to have him there as a four-star to counter Petraeus,” says one Congressional source.“
http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=14222
2. “Biden Vows to Continue Bush Policy Towards Iran
So far, the Obama administration has offered little in the way of evidence that it represents a significant “change” from the previous administration. Headlines proclaiming a “shift” and statements declaring a “departure” and “a new tone”, however, serve as useful propaganda to lull the public into a sense of accomplishment and optimism in order to ease public pressure on the government to press for substantial and measurable changes in policy.
The fact that Obama’s stated policies match almost exactly those of his predecessor are inconvenient to that end, however, and therefore must be rendered down Orwell’s memory hole.“
3. Why isn’t being a conscientious objector more acceptable?
“When I joined the Army shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, my friends and family raised many serious questions that, after almost four years on active duty and two years of college, I have only now started addressing.
As an 18-year old, I deferred answering morally charged questions like “are you ready to kill human beings?” and “what if you change your mind?” partly because the Army recruiters claimed that I would not kill in my chosen occupation. As easy, however, as it is to blame faulty recruiting practices for the dysfunctional ethics of my past, honesty dictates a more thorough self-disclosure now.
As a high school senior I was unaware of the potency of the moral dilemmas to which my community was attempting to alert me. Neurobiology tells us that the capacity for reasoning is not fully developed in the human brain until the mid-twenties or later. It was illogical for my elders to expect me — as an 18-year-old — to be capable of comprehending the moral complexities of the war I was eager to join; just as today it is unreasonable to expect any teenager to be capable of understanding death, violence, the codes of military justice, or military obligations. It is an irresponsible society that binds its sons and daughters to a lifestyle of military discipline and the rigors of combat without acknowledging the imminence of their natural cognitive and moral development.
Considering this, as well as our nation’s foundational principle of individual self-determination, it is profoundly hypocritical that we refuse to recognize the natural rights of the war resister. In an “all-volunteer” military, refusal to serve for any reason should be honored and recognized as the milestone of a mature mind, just as refusal of any voluntarily violent civilian occupation would be honored.
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In the years since I was first asked those challenging questions, I have come to a hard-won conclusion that conventional values do not follow the rules of conventional wisdom. I believe now that the mistaken equation of war-resistance to cowardice is an outdated and primitive notion, as barbaric and uncivilized as racism and patriarchy. In fact, true cowardice often hides behind a weapon, a flag, a uniform, or a particular shade of skin, and rarely behind matters of conscience.
I know now that there is no ethics that can balance the right of individual self-determination with the subjective pragmatics of military law. It is illogical to believe that an Army that does not recognize the right of its soldiers to object can defend the right of dissent at all. I did not earn the prerogative of social protest, as some tell me, through my service. It was there all along.
Until our country accepts and affirms the rights of war resisters, teenagers will continually be forced (as I was) into choosing between the unjust consequences of breaking the silence, or committing injustices themselves. Our young soldiers deserve better than this catch-22.“
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/399345_evanonline10.html
4. “Rep: Punish Those Who Lie Us Into War
U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., has introduced legislation that would impose fines or prison time on presidents or executive-branch officials who “knowingly and willfully” mislead Congress to gain authorization to use U.S. military forces.
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The act calls for fines or up to 10 years in prison for leaders found guilty of misleading Congress in order to get authorization to go to war.
The five-year statute of limitations on prosecuting any such crime would not begin until the end the presidential term during which the alleged crime happened, according to the legislation.
Jones invoked the words of Abraham Lincoln to explain his own reasoning for supporting the legislation.
“Lincoln famously said, ‘I have faith in the people. … The danger is, they are misled. Let them know the truth and the country is safe,’” Jones said. “Our country is safest when the people and their elected representatives in the U.S. Congress can make decisions based on hard evidence and facts.”
http://www.military.com/news/article/rep-punish-those-who-lie-us-into-war.html?col=1186032310810
5. “FBI Believed that Bombs Were Used on 9/11
On 9/11, the FBI believed that bombs were involved in the attacks.
How do I know that?
Because, according to the FBI’s website:
Following the massive terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, the FBI dedicated 7,000 of its 11,000 Special Agents and thousands of FBI support personnel to the PENTTBOM investigation. “PENTTBOM” is short for Pentagon, Twin Towers Bombing.
Indeed, a reporter for USA Today was told by the FBI believed that there were bombs in the Twin Towers.
Similarly, the Washington Post believed that bombs were involved, as reflected in a September 21, 2001 article containing the following phrase:
In the hours after Tuesday’s bombings . . . .
Many firefighters and policemen also said there were bombs in the Twin Towers.
And perhaps “the premiere collapse expert in the country”, who 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer referred to as a “very, very respected expert on building collapse”, the head of the New York Fire Department’s Special Operations Command and the most highly decorated firefighter in its NYFD history, who had previously “commanded rescue operations at many difficult and complex disasters, including the Oklahoma City Bombing, the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, and many natural disasters worldwide” thought that the collapse of the South Tower was caused by bombs, because the collapse of the building was too even to have been caused by anything else (pages 5-6).“
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/02/fbi-believed-that-911-involved-bombs.html
6. “Nobody — not the ACLU or anyone else — argues that the State Secrets privilege is inherently invalid. Nobody contests that there is such a thing as a legitimate state secret. Nobody believes that Obama should declassify every last secret and never classify anything else ever again. Nor does anyone even assert that this particular lawsuit clearly involves no specific documents or portions of documents that might be legitimately subject to the privilege. Those are all transparent, moronic strawmen advanced by people who have no idea what they’re talking about.
What was abusive and dangerous about the Bush administration’s version of the States Secret privilege — just as the Obama/Biden campaign pointed out — was that it was used not (as originally intended) to argue that specific pieces of evidence or documents were secret and therefore shouldn’t be allowed in a court case, but instead, to compel dismissal of entire lawsuits in advance based on the claim that any judicial adjudication of even the most illegal secret government programs would harm national security. That is the theory that caused the bulk of the controversy when used by the Bush DOJ — because it shields entire government programs from any judicial scrutiny — and it is that exact version of the privilege that the Obama DOJ yesterday expressly advocated (and, by implication, sought to preserve for all Presidents, including Obama).
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It doesn’t take much time or energy to understand why that instrument is so pernicious. It enables a Government to break the law — repeatedly and deliberately — and then block courts from subjecting its behavior to any judicial accountability, and prevent the public from learning about the lawbreaking, by claiming that its conduct generally is too secret to allow any judicial review. Put another way, it places Presidents and their aides beyond and above the rule of law, since it empowers them to break the law and then prevent their victims — or anyone else — from holding them accountable in a court of law. “
7. “Lives Have Been Destroyed by the Federal Government
One of the hardest things to deal with in the current economic depression is the disgusting hypocrisy of the U.S. congress, the new president, and the members of the Federal Reserve System. It is one thing to be told, as we all are, that we must hand over fat wads of our hard-earned money to these warmongering and thieving snakes or face jail terms, but one feels a whole new level of revulsion when these people make statements to the effect that they, and they alone, are in a position to “save the economy” by “creating jobs.” These statements are made by people who have done virtually everything in their power to destroy the American economy over the last few decades, but who have now proclaimed themselves to be our saviors. Only the most naïve and unlearned among us could possibly be falling for the idea that a bunch of self-serving politicians, bureaucrats and bankers are going to “save” us from problems they have caused.
On its face, the idea that politicians, bureaucrats, and bankers could “save” the economy is laughable. These are people, after all, who live exclusively at our expense. That is, these are people whose entire livelihoods are dependent upon taking money away from productive people and spending it on themselves and their favorite wasteful projects. It’s true that they do not all share the same ideas about how to spend the money they take from us. Some prefer to use it to blow up innocent people in foreign lands, while others simply want to take our hard-earned money without our consent and hand it over to other people. The bankers, on the other hand, merely content themselves with printing vast amounts of new money out of thin air that they either hand over to the Treasury Department, or gift to their other banker-buddies to lend out at a profit at our expense. Nevertheless, it should be crystal clear that these people do not actually produce anything themselves (except the bankers, who are very skilled counterfeiters of money). They take money from us through taxation and inflation, (and threaten us with severe punishments if we refuse to obey), and then spend every last penny of it – and more – on war, socialized boondoggles, and welfare. These are the people who would have us believe that they can “save” the economy? How exactly would they accomplish such a thing? More taxes, more idiotic socialized projects, more war, and more newly-printed green paper? Do these actions really seem likely to produce a vibrant and healthy economy, or do they seem more like the actions undertaken by the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.?
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article21963.htm
8. “A few days ago, Noam Shalit, the ‘father of’ slammed the Hamas for holding his son for no real reason. Miraculously, he managed to forget the fact that his son Gilad was actually a combatant soldier who served as a post guard in a concentration camp and was captured in a fortress bunker overlooking Gaza.Father Shalit called upon Hamas to: “stop holding us as hostages of the symbols of yesterday’s wars”. He also claimed that the Hamas is engaged in no less than ‘imaginary resistance’. Seemingly, these are some very bold statements from a father who is supposed to be very concerned with his son’s fate.
Gilad Shalit saga is no doubt an exemplary case-study of Israeli identity. In spite of the fact that Gilad Shailt is a soldier who was directly involved in the Israeli military crime against a civilian population, the Israelis and Jewish lobbies around the world insist upon presenting him as an ‘innocent victim’. The leading slogan of the Shalit campaign reads ‘Gilad Shalit, Human being, JEW’. And I ask myself is he really just an ordinary a ‘human being’ as the slogan suggests or rather a chosen one as implied by the ‘Jew’ predicate? And if he is just a human being, why exactly did they add the ‘Jew’ in? What is there in the ‘Jew’ title that serves the Free Shalit campaign?
Apparently the usage of the predicates ‘Human being’ and ‘Jew’ in such a proximity is rather informative and meaningful. Within the post-holocaust Jewish and liberal discourses ‘human being’ stands for ‘innocence’ and ‘Jew’ stands for ‘victim’. Accordingly, the Shalit’ campaign slogan should be grasped as ‘FREE Gilad Shalit the innocent victim’.
One may wonder at this stage, what does it take for a combatant soldier serving as a post guard in a concentration camp to become an ‘innocent victim’? Apparently, as far as Israeli discourse is concerned, not a lot. It is really just a matter of rhetoric.”
