Obama Must Not Stand In the Way Of An International Court Prosecuting the Torturers!

"CIA personnel tortured detainees to confirm they didn't have intelligence - not because they thought they did. Director Brennan and the CIA today are continuing to provide interactive information and misrepresent the efficacy of torture. The CIA has lied to its overseers in public, destroyed and tried to hold back evidence, spied on the Senate, made false charges against our staff, and lied about torture and the results of torture.

And no one has been held to account.

The President needs to purge his administration of high level officials who were instrumental to the development and running of this program. He needs to force a cultural change at the CIA."

- Sen Mark Udall, Colorado

And the response of the Obama White House according to The Hill? It is "standing by the CIA calling the CIA chief a professional and patriot"

Can we say torture culture enablers? Yes, we can! People who'd toss a whistle blower into the clink (see end of last blog) but allow torturing fiends to roam free - including the asshole Cheney - who called the Senate report "a load of crap". No, asshole! YOU are a walking load of crap! This dickhead also stated flatly  "absolutely the ends justified the means" but as the head of Human Rights Watch observed on Chris Hayes 'All In' that is exactly the line of terrorists. So is Obama willing to protect state terrorists too? If so, we are no longer a nation of laws as is so often parroted by Presidents - liberal, conservative, Neoliberal and in between.

On Chris Hayes' show a segment of an interview (compliments of VICE News network) with one of the torturers (psychologist James Mitchell) was actually aired. This fuckhead actually said, I kid you not, that he saw "no problem" with waterboarding. VICE  News ancillary documents also showed he participated in several such water boardings. Why has no one dug this worm out of his Florida lair and hung him after a tribunal?

Well already yesterday, U.N. Secretary Ban Ki -Moon, has stated flatly that he "hopes the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Report is the start of a process toward prosecution."

However, Obama and the Obama-ites have vowed to step in - even in the case of an international push to prosecute-   and save these vermin from righteous justice. Thereby - they have shown themselves to be enablers and on the wrong side of history.  Not only that, but they've disclosed themselves as hypocrites - talking about rule of law on the one hand but allowing the worst vermin - next to the Nazi S.S. - to roam free and yap their hearts out. (Like NY congress critter Peter King who said "we're talking about people made to stand in awkward positions, have water put into their nose and mouth...no one suffered any lasting injuries from this." Hmmm....asshole, well maybe you'd like to try the rectal re-hydration some time - by one of those CIA imps- to see if you can handle it!)

Look, I do get that President Barack Obama lacks any yen for conflict, and often likes to politically split differences to try to keep it mellow and issues non-controversial ("No drama Obama"). . All of those genial, non-confrontational character traits are described in perhaps the best Obama autobiography: 'Barack Obama: The Story' by David Maraniss. The author's story allows us to perhaps get the best look ever into Obama's psyche and we learn that the man almost always hates to get embroiled in battles - political or other.

Fair enough, but this is not the time for Milquetoasts, charm offensives, craven  pandering or ....avoidance of conflict. This is the time for serious, courageous men to take a stand on an era in which consummate evil has been perpetrated by verminous elements in our country. It is time to call these reprobates out- not provide cover-  and allow for maximal accountability. Or else our nation will live with this shame in perpetuity.Worse, we will never again be able to take the world's moral stage and call out truly barbaric regimes - lest the H-word be hurled back at us. For we have ourselves flouted every human right in the freaking book and refused to take responsibility by prosecuting the evil doers. (Or even letting others do it!).

Let me be generous then, and grant that for political reasons and calculations Obama doesn't want to stir up a shit storm by prosecuting the Bushie torture fiends, their henchmen, or even firing his own CIA Director. I understand that he doesn't want to end up like Kennedy did, so okay we leave that hornet's nest alone and allow him the leeway not to have to issue an executive order for immediate prosecution.

But that's where generosity must end! Because even if one allows no action on active in-state prosecution, the same can't hold for the passive, external form. That means that if any international court does wish to prosecute these vermin Obama and his Justice Dept. doesn't stand in their way. Because if they do, they can then be regarded as courting the favor of the torturers and allowing torture - despite having been a signatory to a (1988) U.N.Torture  Convention against it. This Convention, also signed by Reagan, requires that a government not only refrain from torture, but also that it prosecute torture. There are no ifs, ands or buts.

The news, however, that the DOJ and White House plan to interfere in any international case brought against these torture scum is unsettling in the extreme and carries accommodation to the point of being intolerable, lawless and irresponsible. If the U.S. is too hypocritical and unable to stand by the rule of law, okay, then at least allow outside courts to handle it if it chooses not to dirty its hands. But until it does, don't refer to a "nation of laws". No, because Nazi Germany was also a "nation of laws", the Reich laws, when it prosecuted those who insulted Hitler or even criticized him.  A true nation of laws, as Chris Hayes observed two nights ago, executes the law based on equal justice - no special privilege for the powerful, and also in terms of sentences (weighing each by proportion of wrong) and it also follows the rule of international law - especially when it was a signatory to them.

As Hayes observed:

"The law always depends on context, every lawyer will tell you that, but it cannot depend on whether the person is powerful or powerless....Can you anally rape someone with a tube and threaten his mother with the consequences....well, you see, it depends on whose doing it"

Hayes then pointed out that one of the authors of this currently sick chapter actually serves as a federal judge, rendering verdicts and interpretations on the law. He added:

"Does that sound like a nation of laws? Or does it sound like the evil machinations of one of those regimes we so eagerly and rightly condemn? "

Thus, one might go so far as to assert that if the Obama-ites interfere in an independent outside (international) prosecution they are guilty of condoning the torture the U.S. is supposed to prosecute on its own! Double strike against us. Third strike, confirming in Hayes' determination (and mine too) we can't be regarded as any "nation of laws." A nation of laws upholds the law especially for the most vile crimes to which it was a signatory on the international scene. If it is willing to punk out or punt, because of some imagined right wing reaction, then it can't claim the legal (or moral) high ground. This was exactly the problem with the Reich laws and why it took the Nuremberg Tribunal to rightly declare none of them were legit - including "following orders".

Let us recall again ten of the most revolting findings in the Senate Intelligence Report  in the committee’s summary.

1. The CIA misled executive branch officials, members of Congress, and the public about torture’s effectiveness.

While Bush and Cheney steadfastly defended the CIA as the release of the report approached, the committee found that agency officials — including former directors George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden — misled the White House and lawmakers about the effectiveness of U.S. torture techniques like waterboarding and sleep deprivation.

The committee examined 20 reported “counterterrorism successes” cited by agency officials who claimed that the use of torture was essential to thwarting terror plots. In some of the cases, the report states, there was “no relationship” between the counterterrorism success and the use of torture. Meanwhile, in the remaining cases, the information CIA interrogators obtained from detainees either simply corroborated information the CIA already had or was extracted from detainees prior to the use of torture.

2.  Interrogators would deprive some detainees of sleep for more than a week.

According to the report, detainees at CIA facilities would be deprived of sleep for days on end — in some cases for up to 180 hours. During sleep deprivation, the report says, detainees were usually kept “standing or in stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads.”

The CIA Arsala Khan, an Afghan detainee, to 56 hours of sleep deprivation, the report finds. Khan could barely enunciate words by the end of his deprivation, while he was “visibly shaken by his hallucinations depicting dogs mauling and killing his sons and family.”

3. Detainees underwent waterboarding until they were unresponsive.

Among the most notorious torture techniques employed by the CIA was waterboarding, which simulates drowning. The committee report states that 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and that the waterboardings eventually turned into “a series of near drownings.”

Abu Zubaydah, the CIA’s first detainee, also underwent waterboarding, once to the point that he became “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.”

Other detainees experienced “convulsions and vomiting” when waterboarded. According to the report, the CIA used the technique on more than the three prisoners the CIA previously copped to waterboarding.

4. The CIA force-fed detainees through their rectums.

Agency interrogators forced at least five detainees to undergo “rectal rehydration” or “rectal feeding” even in the absence of any “documented medical necessity,” the report finds. Among the most prominent prisoners subjected to rectal feeding was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

5. Interrogators threatened to harm the families and children of detainees.

In at least three cases, CIA interrogators threatened to harm detainees’ families — including threats to harm a detainee’s children, to commit sexual violence against a detainee’s mother, and to slit a detainee’s mother’s throat.

6. An interrogator threatened to sodomize a detainee with a broomstick.

In at least one instance, the CIA chief of interrogation placed a broomstick between the knees of detainee while the detainee was in a stress position — suggesting that the detainee was at risk of being sodomized.

7. The chief of interrogations described one facility as a “dungeon.”

The CIA’s Cobalt facility, one senior officer quoted in the report says, was a so-called enhanced interrogation technique by itself. With detainees often kept in “complete darkness,” loud music blaring, and detainees allowed to use only a bucket to relieve themselves, the chief of interrogations said that Cobalt was a “dungeon.”

8. Agency interrogators forced detainees to stand on broken legs and feet.

At the same facility, some detainees who had sustained either broken legs or feet were made to stand in stress positions, the committee found.

9. Detainees experienced severe psychological problems.

While “[m]ultiple psychologists” warned that by shutting detainees off from human contact, interrogators risked fostering a wide range of mental health problems, the agency often ignored such warnings. Multiple detainees demonstrated severe mental health issues, the report finds, including “hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, and attempts at self-harm and self-mutilation.”

10.  The CIA lied about how many detainees were in its custody.

Even though the agency publicly maintained that it held 98 prisoners, CIA records indicated that 119 detainees were in its custody. A CIA official flagged this inconsistency in a 2008 email, only to be rebuffed by CIA director Michael Hayden.

Hopefully, Obama will at last find a spine on this issue, as he did with immigration and act. Ditch Brennan first, then stand back if international prosecutions ensue and don't  interfere - thereby showing the world his administration actually condones this crap.  Holding vipers accountable means not only allowing a report of their vile acts to go through but acting to prosecute them - or if you're timid, allowing the international courts do it.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/59988/obama-and-the-truth-agenda

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-hamilton/59971/a-brief-history-of-torture

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/59981/torture-has-no-place-in-us-society

YES! Americans Deserve to Know What the CIA Did In Our Name!

Today, the report prepared by the Senate Intelligence Committee is due to be released. Already the national security state fetishists are going bonkers squealing how it will entice attacks and ruin our reputation. They ought to have thought of that, namely the odious Bush-Cheney ilk, before they approved torture in our name.

Look, I seldom agree with Sen. Dianne Feinstein - especially in her yen to go after patriot Edward Snowden- but in this case she is 100 percent correct that Americans need to see this report, if for no other reason to inject a citizen zeitgeist to prevent this from ever happening again - namely by never electing the wrong people to govern them again, as in 2000. (Ok, technically, Bush -Cheney weren't elected but appointed by five radical Supremes who halted the FLA vote count. More technically, Jebbie Bush  - who now wants to run for Prez, had his then Secretary of State Katherine Harris, put tens of thousands of black on Choicepoint Felon Lists so they couldn't vote - thereby stealing the FLA electoral votes for his criminal bro.)

All this is now germane with this report. A bit of backstory for those who forgot. In mid-March of this year the CIA  (according to Feinstein,  in a forty minute tirade on March 11th),  broke into the Senate Intelligence Committee computers and eliminated the key files of the Panetta Report. In this report, the Senate  Intelligence Committee  had the goods on just how vile the CIA torture and rendition program really was under the vermin Bushies.   What we do know now, in retrospect,  is that it was in early December when the Central Intelligence Agency began to suspect it had suffered what it regarded as an embarrassing "computer breach."

Investigators for the Senate Intelligence Committee, working in the basement of a C.I.A. facility in Northern Virginia, had obtained an internal agency review summarizing thousands of documents related to the agency’s detention and interrogation program. Parts of the C.I.A. report cast a particularly harsh light on the program, the same program the agency was in the midst of defending in a prolonged dispute with the intelligence committee. In other words, exposure of the secret internal report would have exposed the spooks as being duplicitous and excessive (and likely unlawful) in their methods of extracting information (well depicted in the film Zero Dark Thirty, btw, which saw the spooks blowing a gasket when it came out, asserting things never went down like that. Now we know they likely did!)

Enraged that their 'cover' was blown, Agency officials began scouring the digital logs of the computer network used by the Senate staff members to try to learn how and where they got the report. Their search not only raised constitutional questions about the propriety of an intelligence agency investigating its congressional overseers, but has also resulted in two parallel inquiries by the Justice Department — one into the C.I.A. and one into the committee.

Feinstein, for her part, maintained the documents were given to the Committee, not pilfered from computer networks, which I am inclined to accept.  And while Obama officially ended the black site rendition and torture program  — which began in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks and expanded into a network of secret prisons in Thailand, Romania, Lithuania and elsewhere — he never followed up by prosecuting the ones that did it, starting with GeeDumbya .  It was left to Leon Panetta to drive an internal review of exactly how far the spooks stepped over the line. 

In the wake of the buzz concerning the report, many European nations vowed again that Cheney and Bush would end up in prison for crimes against humanity if they ever set foot in their countries. In the meantime, these two weasels have remained vocal in defense of the misbegotten program even making rationalizations as recently as last night on the news.

The ABC News segment last night noted that the White House supports the release of the report - which they should - and also that it is "extremely graphic". It includes CIA practices of sexual debasement and torture as well as their waterboarding - which btw, has been regarded as torture since the era of the Inquisition (which used it on heretics and apostates.)  The most vile part is that the torture continued even after the interrogators concluded there was no more useful information to be had. In other words, like the Inquisitors who laughed as they sliced off the breasts of lesbians, these foul insects enjoyed what they were doing to their captives. 

Also equally, the majority Senate Intelligence findings concluded that the CIA "misled the Bush administration about the methods and the results of the coercive interrogations conducted at so-called black sites outside the U.S."

And now that these leaks on the report are known concerning how his bunch was misled, how does Bushie boy see it in retrospect? According to Martha Raddatz reporting in the segment:

"The former President is standing by the CIA"

In other words, he is as complicit as the CIA and likely even knew what they were doing then but approved of it, hence ought to have been prosecuted and thrown in the slammer - or at least shipped out to the International Court in Hague to stand trial with his pal Cheney. Asked for a comment for the news segment, Bush is seen saying:

"These are patriots and whatever the report says, if it diminishes the contributions to our country, it is way off base."

Really? Revealing vile sexual tortures is way off base? I do recall some transcripts sent me from the Nuremberg Tribunal trials by my German friend Kurt Braun back in '85 and how several of the Nazi higher ups made the exact same arguments regarding the methods used by the Gestapo. "These were patriots!"  After all, they found out who was bad mouthing der Fuhrer and who was hiding Jews in their attics.

But, of course, this merely confirmed for me that Bush is as noxious a pig as when I beheld him as President. 

Of course, Cheney isn't far behind in being reprehensible in defense of this torture program and not releasing information about it (why wouldn't a rat want to conceal his evil deeds?)  According to Raddatz reporting in the same segment on how slimeball Cheney also piped up:

"He told the New York Times today that the harsh interrogations were absolutely, totally justified, dismissing accusations in the Senate report that it was a rogue operation as a bunch of hooey"

Raddatz adding "but make no mistake there are things in this report that will shock many Americans"

I want to see them - and YOU should too! Just as I wanted to see the actual autopsy photos of JFK's head wounds after the CIA punks had him offed in 1963..

And btw, if the CIA could stoop to such methods now, don't think for a moment they wouldn't have taken out Kennedy back in 1963. As I showed in my book, 'The JFK Assassination - The Final Analysis',  a direct causal line exists connecting the assassination to what went down in the wake of Sept 11, 2001.  This is further supported by the work of long time researcher Peter Dale Scott, in his book: 'The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11 And the Deep Politics Of War.'

The more we know, the more we can act the part of citizens. 

How and Why Obama Was Led Astray on the Ukraine

Bush, aka Gee Dumbya, ca. 2007-08

It ought to go without saying that instead of bad mouthing or threatening Vladimir Putin, Obama and his White House ought to be glad-handing him for running interference the past two years  - and keeping the U.S. out of two more unnecessary occupations - and thousands more deaths. That refers to Mr. Putin stepping in with the Iran crisis, and then the Syrian crisis. While neocons had boners  to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, and later firing thousands of cruise missiles into Damascus - likely triggering a massive war in either case, Putin's solutions helped put those on the back burner and avert calamity.

In any case, it was incredible to me that a nation that still had 44 million uninsured, and 27 million under -employed or unemployed, with 15.6 million kids who go to bed hungry every night,  and a massively crumbling infrastructure, could remotely contemplate getting involved in two more "wars"-occupations. Had we not had enough, what with 12 year (going on 13) in Afghanistan and ten years in Iraq? No, not by a long shot, not according to the Bushite Neocons. Not according to "National Endowment of Democracy" weasels and their honchos like Robert Kagan.

They and their cheerleaders  have incessantly demanded "regime change" in assorted nations as part of national policy, never mind the costs in blood and treasure. They started with Iraq, and have wanted Syria and Iran to be included too. Putin's "interference" upended their ambitions and they got pissed, then concocted a way to get even - inciting instability right on Putin's doorstep - in the Ukraine. Kagan's wife Victoria Nuland, along with other 'cons, egged on Ukrainian nationalists who took matters into their own hands, to arouse public anger and even fueled it  further by using snipers to shoot over two dozen of the protestors themselves.  See e.g.

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/walter-c-uhler/54626/did-right-wing-protesters-hire-snipers-to-kill-protesters-and-police-at-maidan


Other commentators (e.g. Patrick Smith on salon.com, Robert Parry on smirkingchimp.com) have noted Obama’s weakness in his willingness to assemble a “team of rivals” but who are mainly neocons who’ve taken over his foreign policy. But there is more to it than that.


Robert Parry in a recent blog (‘How Looking Forward Tripped Up Obama’ ) observed:

“A similar question arises over the Ukraine crisis in which neoconservative holdovers, such as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, and the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy were allowed to spur on the violent coup that overthrew democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych and precipitated a dangerous confrontation with Russia.

This Ukraine “regime change” served neocon interests by driving a wedge between President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, disrupting their behind-the-scenes relationship that has proved useful in averting U.S. wars in Syria and Iran, conflicts that the neocons have long wanted as part of their grand plan for remaking the Middle East.

Nuland’s husband, former Reagan administration official Robert Kagan, was a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, which in 1998 called for the first step in this “regime change” strategy by seeking a U.S. invasion of Iraq. After the neocons gained control of U.S. foreign policy under President Bush, the Iraq invasion went ahead in 2003, but the occupation proved disastrous and put off the next stages, “regime change” in Syria and Iran.

Barack Obama’s election in 2008 was, in part, driven by public revulsion over the bloody conflict in Iraq and revelations about the torture of detainees and other crimes that surrounded Bush’s post-9/11 “war on terror.” Yet, after winning the White House, Obama shied away from a clean break from Bush’s policies.

Parry goes on to conjecture it was likely Obama’s “timidity” that prevented him from cleaning house and getting rid of the Bushie Neocons. (Parry suspects he was loathe to be blamed for any attacks that might come on his watch and if he ditched the cons this would more likely happen)

Going back through files the past two years some answers appear to emerge. It seems that in fact -  incredible as it sounds -  Kagan and his neocon cohort had Obama's ear almost from the time he entered office.

As long as two years ago, salon.com sources observed that “as a living embodiment of Washington’s bipartisan foreign-policy consensus, Robert Kagan has few peers.”   They noted his authorship of the best-selling book “The World America Made,”  and most noteworthy:

“He  pulled off the neat trick of impressing the only two men on the planet who have a realistic chance of serving as president of the United States any time soon.”

In a much-noted passage in his State of the Union address in 2012, Obama echoed Kagan’s daft argument that America, despite a decade of war and a near-bankrupt economy, was not a declining or foolish power but the world’s indispensable nation.

 

“Anybody who says America is in decline doesn’t know what they’re talking about,”

 

 

Of course, this is abject nonsense, and as I pointed out last year,  it is Obama who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  "Indispensable" nation? Horse manure!  NO nation is, since any nation can be wiped off the map in a nuclear war- so no nation wins!  Hence, none persists,  so none is "indispensable". This nation IS in decline and has been so since the end of the Reagan years – with over $2.1 trillion squandered on specious defense projects (like 'Star Wars')  turning us into a first class debtor with most of our bonds now owned by China. If Obama didn’t know this, one wonders how he ever became President.  See e.g.

 

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/11/great-american-decline-how-and-why-1.html

 

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/11/great-american-decline-2-globalization.html

 

Make no mistake, it is one thing to assert a falsehood, it is another to believe it, so one must question why Obama evidently believes Kagan's codswallop.    More worrisome: Obama declared,  after letting Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin know he had recommended Kagan’s thesis (as excerpted in the  mesage) to his advisors.  Kagan also served on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board, whose agenda is “shaped by the questions and concerns of the Secretary.”

 

 

In other words, as long as two years ago, Kagan and his neocon poison were infiltrating the administration like earlier with the Bushies.  Did Obama not know of Kagan's history?  Did he not really mean "hope and change" as delivered in his '08 campaign rhetoric, which surely millions of people took as his solemn word? And that meant NO new Bushite, para-Nazi invasions or occupations or starting coups in other places.

 

 

We also know there's no excuse for any ignorance!

 

At the same time that Obama commended Kagan's thesis to his advisors, Kagan’s bona fides as a Republican hawk were indisputable. Only a bozo, a hollow man with no compass or center,  or a historically ignorant person couldn't be aware of them.  We know Kagan got his start in the State Department under Reagan and wrote with Bill Kristol in 1996 “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” the foundational document of modern Republican foreign policy. Unsurprisingly, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. He serves on the board of directors of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a conservative think tank that routinely finds fault with Obama’s leadership. (Kagan advised Romney, saying he had met regularly with the candidate over the years, and doubtless had Romney been elected in 2012, we'd have had to add Syrian and Iranian conflicts to the list at an added cost of trillions. Still Kagan's influence persists, as the Ukraine coup discloses.)

 

Most interesting, in an interview with Salon in 2012, we learned from Kagan:

 

“I actually believe in a bipartisan foreign policy, not for its own sake, but because I think there actually is a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy. There are plenty of neoconservatives in the Obama administration and there were plenty in the Clinton administration, if you would define ‘neoconservative’ as I would. What’s lost on people not in Washington is how close this community really is.”

 

 

Really? How close they really are? Shit, no wonder wars, invasions, occupations, and attacks accompany each new administration, whether Dem or Repuke. It makes no difference! Both are eating from the same poisoned trough - of the Neocons.  So now we know that Obama allowed these vermin into his administration.  He didn't need to have his arms twisted. He did it knowingly and willingly, even passing Kagan's absurd essay on the myth of American decline to advisors! Therefore, he ought to have known that they'd stage a coup at some point as they have in Ukraine, under the cloak of "fighting for freedom". (Funny, because the same freedom- bloviating scumballs have no problem using voter suppression and gerrymandering in the U.S. whenever they desire, especially for black folks!)

 

Kagan in the same interview confirmed this, noting that military interventions have occurred “under Democratic presidents, Republican presidents, idealist realists, you name it,”

 

WTF! WHY?

 

So,  in other words, the toss away terms "hope and change" were always a crock of shit. Pabulum for the masses. Tell 'em anything!  As Kagan went on to say:

 

 

“America keeps returning to these policies. People may be sick of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but polls show support is high for an attack on Iran."

 

BUT why was support high? Could the American people - at least so many as suggested to be 'high' in support of wars- be THAT fucking stupid?  Do they not tie in the decline of the nation to the waste of its resources in futile wars and occupations? Do they not connect the dots between the ongoing wars, occupations and military expansion (including the volunteer army) with a side "jobs program" that implies a decline in the private job market?  And why are they not looking deeper at exactly who are enriching themselves - as on Wall Street- as a result of this regular interference? Are they afraid those interests may somehow turn up in their 401ks?

 

Kagan continues:

 

"So even as the American people tire of one war, they’re getting ready for the next one, If this system is warlike, it’s the tendency that flows from the public.”

 

So, in other words, the blame is on us, according to Kagan! We are the war mongers! If we'd only cease supporting them our noble, saintly leaders wouldn't hurl us into them. TO which I call out HORSE shit and Bull  Pockey!  It is the leaders in congress who are supposed to be able to discern circumstances to justify entry into conflicts that will cost blood and treasure.  That is precisely why the DECLARATION of WAR was invested in congress!  But what our leaders, namely the executive branch,  have done -  is arrogated to themselves the right to start conflicts  - damned the congress  and separation of powers!   What were those infamous words of Nazi honcho Hermann Goering, rendered at Nuremberg in 1946 before the Nuremberg Tribunal?

 

" Why of course the people don’t want war...But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” -

 

Take that and shove it up your ass, Kagan! 

 

And then this disgusting tool has the nerve to add this, in a PNAC  article co-authored with  neocon nut William Kristol (check out his recent appearance on Real Time):

 

“It is precisely because American foreign policy is infused with an unusually high degree of morality that other nations find they have less to fear from its otherwise daunting power,”

 

But I skewered this notion of a unique "American morality" in a blog post last year:

 

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-us-lacks-moral-authority-to-launch.html

 

 

Here, in a nutshell, is how fucked up this country (by which I mean the system that runs it) is:

In Robert Kagan’s reading of U.S. foreign policy, the anti-interventionist tradition is, by definition, outside of the “mainstream” even when, as is the case of Iraq, the mainstream itself came to repudiate the war.

 

Not even a fiasco of an invasion launched on a false premise (that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction) can disturb his comforting notion that military intervention is an expression of America’s essential benevolence.

Even when America is wrong it is right. As it is now, seeking to deny any Russian security interests in its own borders.

 

This way insanity lies. And moreover, this is the wall that the Neocons (and Obama if he buys into their horse shit) dare not cross.  Because unlike Iraq, Iran or Syria, the Russians will employ every last nuke they have before they let the U.S. Neocons drive them out of the Crimea, OR - attempt to deny them exercise of their legitimate interests in the Ukraine - especially after a coup.

 

Beware what you say, Obama, and how you say it and the threats that you make to Putin. And please ....put a muzzle on that spayed Pekingese, Kerry!

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54785/neocons-have-weathered-the-storm

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-swanson/54758/world-has-no-idea-how-u-s-decides-on-wars

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/walter-c-uhler/54786/the-hypocritical-united-states-of-amnesia-and-russia

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54745/how-looking-forward-tripped-up-Obama