Is time for some plea bargaining rapidly approaching? If members of the military sent memos objecting to torture to the President, and if they were adept enough at bureaucratic gamesmanship to keep copies, will they accept a chance to do some plea bargaining in return for copies of those memos and their testimony against the President or is it likely that they will all decline the offer and display the “take the bullet” attitude to protect a man who apparently bullied them into submission? Sure he was able to make them follow orders they found objectionable then but, now, isn’t it soon going to be time for the former President to learn the truth behind the street wisdom that holds: “Paybacks are hell!”?
October 16, 2009
April 30, 2009
December 26, 2008
Pardons Imply Guilt
Critics of President Bush expecting that he would issue pardons to his staff for any possible war crimes, underestimated the devious cunning of his advisers. Not issuing the pardons may have been their greatest stroke of genius because it provides President Obama with a loose-loose decision.
If President Obama initiates a war crimes investigation, the conservative talk show hosts will unleash a propaganda counter-attack that will be a relentless stream of vitriol that will question Obama’s reasoning, sanity, and patriotism. The attempts to formulate a program of change will become deadlocked in a debate about the need for any war crimes trials.
The Republicans will use the “innocent until proved guilty” dodge to sabotage every step of the investigation process. (Note: by that criteria, Hitler can not be considered a war criminal.)
If President Obama does not conduct a war crimes investigation, then the Republicans can claim that it constitutes a <I>de facto</I> “not guilty” verdict and closes the topic forever.
Imagine that Hitler didn’t commit suicide and that after the Allied victory, Hitler avoided being indicted for war crimes. Wouldn’t his supporters have claimed that the fact he wasn’t put on trial meant that there wasn’t enough evidence for a conviction?
Was there any chance that Hitler would have been given a pass due to good-sportsmanship?
If President Obama wants to form a consensus majority, he has to avoid a divisive trial.
If he advocates “forgive and forget,” then eventually the Republicans can use the fact that no trial was held as the basis for saying “if there were any war crimes, then Obama became an accessory after the fact by not holding any investigations.” At that point the Obama administration will want to avoid any discussions about the possibility that war crimes may have been committed during Bush’s term in office.
Forgoing any Christmas pardons for the advisers who delivered the “weapons of mass destruction” rational for going to war, was clever raised to the third power.
President Bush didn’t issue any pardons and now the next move is up to President elect Obama because any pardons would have been seen as avoiding punishment for some wrong that had been committed. Without pardons to denounce and decry, the next move is up to President Obama and he has other more important issues needing immediate attention.
So who do you think will win this year’s Best Motion Picture Oscar
Ned Kelly said: “Such is life.”
Now, the disk jockey will play AC/DC’s song “Highway to Hell” and we will scram. Have a “no harm, no foul” type week.
Zen and the Art of Hoaxes
(El Paso, TX) America is the home of the “Inconsistency for fun and profit” school of business philosophy. Here’s a good example: Richard Heene says he didn’t know that his kid wasn’t in the balloon and a large part of the USA reacts by crying: “Fraud!” George W. Bush claims he didn’t know that the WMD’s in Iran were a figment of his own imagination and all Republicans respond with this nonchalant reaction: “well, that’s good enough to start a war (even though it contradicts the American philosophy as stated at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials) and let’s let it go at that.” Who, other than the Who, cares about getting fooled again?
Isn’t inconsistency the basis for driving people nuts (as well as the hobgoblin of small minds?)? When Pavlov’s bell rings and the dog doesn’t get the expected treat isn’t that a good way to make the dog begin to manifest schizophrenic behavior?
Don’t Texans, and especially the 43rd President, know that a different term for hoax is to call it a practical joke or to at least use a deceptively exotic label such as: “preemptive strike” rather than calling it a “sucker punch”?
Richard Heene should be held accountable for an expensive prank, and George W. Bush should get a pass regarding any war crimes trials and be hailed as the one who should be getting this year’s Nobel Prize for his efforts to track down rogue weapons of mass destruction. What’s wrong with a little bit of inconsistency?
“You got your mind right, Luke?”
Good patriotic American Christian Republicans have no trouble seeing that a Texan like George W. Bush deserves an “attaboy” for his use of extreme questioning because the results saved American lives. The Geheime Stastspoltzei used the same methods while questioning French citizens (AKA “frogs”) in an effort to root out members of the resistance and they faced charges of war crimes for their dastardly efforts, but if it could have been proven that by doing so, they had saved American lives, then all the expenses involved in the Nuremberg trials could have been avoided.
Can’t the Democrats see that sending American troops to Afghanistan today is in the same commendable tradition as sending volunteers to the Alamo?
When Texas was invited to join the United States, they put a secession clause into the contract and by golly if Americans can’t live up to the contracts they sign, then hellfire, they are getting this capitalism stuff all wrong.
Didn’t some great capitalist say “I don’t want lawyers who will tell me what I can and can not do; I want lawyer who will get done, what I tell them to do!” Wasn’t whoever said that the same fellow who coined the phrase: “Get ‘er done!”? Would he have let some lawyer foil attempts to save American lives by using whatever interrogation methods were necessary to learn what a terrorist didn’t want to tell?
In a capitalistic democracy the bottom line is king.
The big difference between George W. Bush’s search for WMD’s and Balloon Boy’s adventures is that 43 was smart enough to not let a six year old spill the beans on national TV. The Bush bunch knew that once you make up a story, you stick to it and so the search for WMD’s in Iraq has become a sacred American tradition that is not questioned.
Letting a kid commit a blooper that “lets the cat out of the bag,” isn’t a good game plan. If you are going to fool all of the people all of the time, you’d best select a Svengali spokesman who is erudite and eloquent. Shouldn’t Donald Rumsfeld have offered his services to the Heene family?
Online Davy Crockett is credited with saying: “Step down off your high horse, Mister. You don’t get lard unless you boil the hog.”
The disk jockey will now play, Marty Robin’s “El Paso,” Kinky Friedman’s “Proud to be from El Paso,” and Bobby Fuller’s “I Fought the Law (and the Law Won).” Now, it’s time for us to go down to Rose’s cantina. Have a “Just Kidding!” type week.