The [expletive] running dogs of the media

Selling us imperialist wars 24/7
In any decent society, warmongering should be regarded as serious felony or worse.

UPDATE: Read the addendum, by Stephen Lendman, detailing the full-dress campaign for war on Syria being provided, once again, by the utterly filthy US mainstream media. Is there anything more repulsive than these propagandists for war against weaker nations? —PG

Ward: Beware of toxic reporting.

Many naive people marvel that the all-powerful American corporate state, unlike the totalitarian behemoths of the past, does not seem to have a real propaganda arm. The simple answer—as practically our entire audience knows—is that the US ruling class does not need a formal propaganda apparatus (although it does have that, too, of course, with multiple organs of disinformation operating covertly and semi-covertly all over the place), for it needs none. It has something far better than that, the gianormous globe-girding oxymoronic “Free Press” with countless careerist running dogs falling all over each other to do all the propagandizing and truth-twisting that the American state thinks necessary.

Face the Nation, CBS flagship “news & commentary” show hosted by Bob Schieffer is a standout in this crowded category. Besides being immensely boring given its inalterable rule to present only establishment worthies with their predictable scripts, FTN is one of those media platforms where, with a bit of education on the wiles of consciousness manipulation, you can easily spot the naked hand of propaganda. By any standard of “objectivity” which these folks pretend to observe, this fatuous show is simply scandalous. The 4/28/13 edition is a good example. Featuring excrescences from the South like the inevitable big mouth Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose ego won’t tolerate a single major issue to slip by without injecting some poisonous opinion, and colleagues like Saxon Chambliss and Claire McCaskill who, as loyal members of the political class unambiguously incarnate the idea the US has the God-given right to meddle anywhere for whatever reason it deems advisable (reasons which it routinely fabricates anyhow), it also includes the usual “impartial” opinion gallery, with reactionary stalwarts like Peggy Noonan and the abysmally ignorant Norah O’Donnell. Not to mention foreign correspondent Clarissa Ward (more on her below).

Watch carefully how each of the voices, in their own way, form a chorus decrying the US government supposedly “pusillanimous” response to the “Syrian regime crimes.”

P. Greanville

_______
Intro by Schieffer

ADDENDUM

Creating a Pretext for War on Syria

by Stephen Lendman

What’s ongoing now bears eerie resemblance to events preceding Bush’s Iraq war. Obama’s replicating a familiar scenario. Waging war requires a pretext to do so. When none exists, it’s invented. It’s easy. Lies substitute for truth. Claims about Syria using chemical weapons don’t wash. Repetition gets people to believe them. We’ve seen it all before.

Colin Power’s infamous February 5, 2003 Security Council speech led to war. It was shameless deception. Later he admitted WMD claims were false. It was too late to matter.

Plans were set. The die was cast. Weeks later, America bombed, invaded and occupied Iraq. The cradle of civilization was destroyed. No WMDs existed. It was well-known but ignored. More on that below.

Powell lied claiming them. US media scoundrels repeated what demanded renunciation. A New York Times editorial headlined “The Case Against Iraq,” saying:

“Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the United Nations and a global television audience yesterday with the most powerful case to date that Saddam Hussein stands in defiance of Security Council resolutions and has no intention of revealing or surrendering whatever unconventional weapons he may have.”

A (no longer available online) Washington Post editorial headlined “Irrefutable,” saying:

“….it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.”

Months later, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report titled “WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications” said the Bush administration “systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile programs.”

Asked about the report, Powell stood by his Security Council testimony, saying:

“I am confident of what I presented last year. The intelligence community is confident of the material they gave me. I was representing them.”

“It was information they presented to the Congress. It was information they had presented publicly and they stand behind it, and this game is still unfolding.”

Powell’s speech was bald-faced deception. He willfully lied, saying:

“The material I will present to you comes from a variety of sources. Some are US sources. And some are those of other countries.”

“Some of the sources are technical, such as intercepted telephone conversations and photos taken by satellites. Other sources are people who have risked their lives to let the world know what Saddam Hussein is really up to.”

“….Iraq’s behavior show(s) that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.”

“We also have satellite photos that indicate that banned materials have recently been moved from a number of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction facilities.”

“The Iraqis have never accounted for all of the biological weapons they admitted they had and we know they had. They have never accounted for all the organic material used to make them.”

“And they have not accounted for many of the weapons filled with these agents such as there are 400 bombs. This is evidence, not conjecture. This is true. This is all well-documented.”

He claimed Saddam stockpiled “between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agents.” He added that “(t)here can be no doubt that (he) has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more.”

In August 1995, Saddam’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, defected to the West. He headed Iraq’s weapons programs. US intelligence officials debriefed him. He said “All weapons – biological, chemical, missile and nuclear were destroyed….Nothing remained.”

The New York Times and other US media sources reported his comments.

CNN’s Brent Sadler asked him: “Can you state here and now – does Iraq still to this day hold weapons of mass destruction?”

He responded: “No. Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction. I am being completely honest about this.”

In the run-up to March 2003, media misinformation replaced earlier headlines. It’s standard practice. It repeating again now. Obama appears heading for full-scale war on Syria. Big lies launch wars. In “The Art of War,” Sun Tzu said “All war is based on deception.” Fear, misinformation and duplicity enlist public support. Naked aggression is called humanitarian intervention.

Libya 2.0 looms. Fabricating chemical weapons use looks like pretext for full-scale war. Secretary of State John Kerry claims Syria launched two chemical weapons attacks. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said using them “violates every convention of warfare.”

On April 25, the Los Angeles Times headlined “US lawmakers call for action on Syria’s chemical weapons,” saying:

They want quick action. [The lynch mob is, as usual, bipartisan. It’s an establishment thing.]

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D. CA) warned that without decisive action, “President Assad may calculate he has nothing more to lose.” He might “further escalate this conflict.”

“It is clear that ‘red lines’ have been crossed and action must be taken to prevent larger scale use,” she added. “Syria has the ability to kill tens of thousands with its chemical weapons.”

Senator John McCain (R. AZ) said “(i)t’s pretty obvious the red line has been crossed.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D. CA) believes Assad’s testing the international community. “The administration has said (chemical weapons use is) a game changer, but it’s not clear what that new game will look like.”

“I think it is incumbent on the international community to take strong action.”

A same day LA Times editorial headlined “A ‘red line’ on Syria,” saying: “If the Assad regime has indeed used chemical weapons, the US must honor its commitment to act.”

“(U)se of chemical weapons would represent a reckless escalation of Assad’s war on his own people.”

“Yes, the president must be sure before he acts; but if it is proved that Assad has crossed the ‘red line,’ Obama must respond.”

Chicago Tribune editors headlined “The pink line,” asking: “If Assad used chemical weapons, what will Obama do?”

He “drew a clear red line last August….(He) ‘put together a range of contingency plans,’ but he didn’t spell them out.”

“Now there’s mounting, though not yet conclusive, evidence that if Assad hasn’t stormed across that red line, he may be tiptoeing on it.”

Tribune editors want more decisive action. “We’ve long argued that the US should directly arm the rebels.”

Operating covertly from southern Turkey, CIA operatives have been doing it all along. It’s handled through a network of intermediaries. Weapons are also entering from Lebanon, Jordan and Israel.

Tribune editors urge more. Impose a no-fly zone “to ground Assad’s air force.” Doing so is an act of war.

“(B)omb access roads where chemical weapons are transported, to make moving (them) difficult if not impossible.”

Bombing anywhere assures doing it everywhere considered strategically important. Tribune editors urge war. They’re not alone.

On April 25, Wall Street Journal editors headlined “Chemical Weapons and Consequences: Syria calls President Obama’s bluff on WMD,” saying:

“As President of the United States, I don’t bluff,” said Obama.

He “famously said (it) in March 2012, warning Iranian leaders that he would not allow them to acquire nuclear weapons.”

Last month he said:

“I’ve made it clear to Bashar al-Assad and all who follow his orders: We will not tolerate the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people, or the transfer of those weapons to terrorists.”

“The world is watching; we will hold you accountable.”

“Or not,” said Journal editors. “Israel will have to consider its own military options to secure the stockpiles if the US won’t act….”

“Presidents who are exposed as bluffers tend to have their bluff called again and again, with ever more dangerous consequences.”

Official accusations are familiar. So is heated rhetoric that follows. Obama heads closer to full-scale intervention. Reports say around 20,000 US troops will be deployed in Jordan.

On April 26, Obama hosted Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Washington. Perhaps they discussed invasion plans.

A Final Comment

While meeting with King Abdullah, Obama stopped short of saying Assad crossed a “red line.” Earlier he warned doing so would unleash “unspecified consequences.” Likely he meant direct US intervention.

“Horrific as it is when mortars are being fired on civilians and people are being indiscriminately killed, to use potential weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations crosses another line with respect to international norms and international law,” he told reporters.

“That is going to be a game changer. We have to act prudently.”

“We have to make these assessments deliberately. But I think all of us….recognize how we cannot stand by and permit the systematic use of weapons like chemical weapons on civilian populations.”

Sorting things out requires “increased urgency,” he stressed. White House spokesman Jay Carney said “(h)e retains all options to respond.” Further reports will explain more.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached atlendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The same motive for anti-US ‘terrorism’ is cited over and over

Ignoring the role played by US actions is dangerously self-flattering and self-delusional

By Glenn Greenwald | guardian.co.uk

A banner reading ‘United We Stand For Peace on Earth’ outside the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photograph: Allen Breed/AP

(updated below – Update II – Update III)

News reports purporting to describe what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told US interrogators should, for several reasons, be taken with a huge grain of salt. The sources for this information are anonymous, they work for the US government, the statements were obtained with no lawyer present and no Miranda warnings given, and Tsarnaev is “grievously wounded”, presumably quite medicated, and barely able to speak.

That the motives for these attacks are still unclear has been acknowledged even by Alan Dershowitz last week (“It’s not even clear under the federal terrorism statute that this qualifies as an act of terrorism”) and Jeffrey Goldberg on Friday (“it is not yet clear, despite preliminary indications, that these men were, in fact, motivated by radical Islam”).

Those caveats to the side, the reports about what motivated the Boston suspects are entirely unsurprising and, by now, quite familiar:

In the last several years, there have been four other serious attempted or successful attacks on US soil by Muslims, and in every case, they emphatically all say the same thing: that they were motivated by the continuous, horrific violence brought by the US and its allies to the Muslim world – violence which routinely kills and oppresses innocent men, women and children:

Attempted “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab upon pleading guilty:

Attempted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, the first Pakistani-American involved in such a plot, upon pleading guilty:

When he was asked by the federal judge presiding over his case how he could possibly have been willing to detonate bombs that would kill innocent children, he replied:

Emails and other communications obtained by the US document how Shahzad transformed from law-abiding, middle-class naturalized American into someone who felt compelled to engage in violence as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, drone attacks, Israeli violence against Palestinians and Muslims generally, Guantanamo and torture, at one point asking a friend: “Can you tell me a way to save the oppressed? And a way to fight back when rockets are fired at us and Muslim blood flows?”

:

“Your Honor, during the spring and summer of 2008, I conspired with others to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban and fight against the U.S. military and its allies. . . . During the training, Al Qaeda leaders asked us to return to the United States and conduct martyrdom operation. We agreed to this plan. I did so because of my feelings about what the United States was doing in Afghanistan.”

Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan:

“Part of his disenchantment was his deep and public opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a stance shared by some medical colleagues but shaped for him by a growing religious fervor. The strands of religion and antiwar sentiment seemed to weave together in a PowerPoint presentation he made at Walter Reed in June 2007. . . . For a master’s program in public health, Major Hasan gave another presentation to his environmental health class titled ‘Why The War on Terror is a War on Islam.'”

Meanwhile, the American-Yemeni preacher accused (with no due process) of inspiring both Abdulmutallab and Hasan – Anwar al-Awalaki – was once considered such a moderate American Muslim imam that the Pentagon included him in post-9/11 events and the Washington Post invited him to write a column on Islam. But, by all accounts, he became increasingly radicalized in anti-American sentiment by the attack on Iraq and continuous killing of innocent Muslims by the US, including in Yemen. And, of course, Osama bin Laden, when justifying violence against Americans, cited US military bases in Saudi Arabia, US support for Israeli aggression against its neighbors, and the 1990s US sanctions regime that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, while Iranians who took over the US embassy in 1979 cited decades of brutal tyranny from the US-implanted-and-enabled Shah.

It should go without saying that the issue here is causation, not justification or even fault. It is inherently unjustifiable to target innocent civilians with violence, no matter the cause (just as it is unjustifiable to recklessly kill civilians with violence). But it is nonetheless vital to understand why there are so many people who want to attack the US as opposed to, say, Peru, or South Africa, or Brazil, or Mexico, or Japan, or Portugal. It’s vital for two separate reasons.

First, some leading American opinion-makers love to delude themselves and mislead others into believing that the US is attacked despite the fact that it is peaceful, peace-loving, freedom-giving and innocent. As these myth-makers would have it, we don’t bother anyone; we just mind our own business (except when we’re helping and liberating everyone), so why would anyone possibly want to attack us?

With that deceitful premise in place, so many Americans, westerners, Christians and Jews love to run around insisting that the only real cause for Muslim attacks on the US is that the attackers have this primitive, brutal, savage, uncivilized religion (Islam) that makes them do it. Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan favorably cited Sam Harris as saying that “Islamic doctrines … still present huge problems for the emergence of a global civil society” and then himself added: “All religions contain elements of this kind of fanaticism. But Islam’s fanatical side – from the Taliban to the Tsarnaevs – is more murderous than most.”

These same people often love to accuse Muslims of being tribal without realizing the irony that what they are saying – Our Side is Superior and They are Inferior – is the ultimate expression of rank tribalism. They also don’t seem ever to acknowledge the irony of Americans and westerners of all people accusing others of being uniquely prone to violence, militarism and aggression (Juan Cole yesterday, using indisputable statistics, utterly destroyed the claim that Muslims are uniquely violent, including by noting the massive body count piled up by predominantly Christian nations and the fact that “murder rates in most of the Muslim world are very low compared to the United States”).

As the attackers themselves make as clear as they can, it’s not religious fanaticism but rather political grievance that motivates these attacks. Religious conviction may make them more willing to fight (as it does for many in the west), but the motive is anger over what is being done by the US and its allies to Muslims. Those who claim otherwise are essentially saying: gosh, these Muslims sure do have this strange, primitive, inscrutable religion whereby they seem to get angry when they’re invaded, occupied, bombed, killed, and have dictators externally imposed on them. It’s vital to understand this causal relationship simply in order to prevent patent, tribalistic, self-glorifying falsehoods from taking hold.

[pullquote]”I am part of the answer to the US terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people. And, on behalf of that, I’m avenging the attack. Living in the United States, Americans only care about their own people, but they don’t care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die.”[/pullquote]

Second, it’s crucial to understand this causation because it’s often asked “what can we do to stop Terrorism?” The answer is right in front of our faces: we could stop embracing the polices in that part of the world which fuel anti-American hatred and trigger the desire for vengeance and return violence. Yesterday at a Senate hearing on drones, a young Yemeni citizen whose village was bombed by US drones last week (despite the fact that the targets could easily have been arrested), Farea Al-Muslimi,testified. Al-Muslimi has always been pro-American in the extreme, having spent a year in the US due to a State Department award, but he was brilliant in explaining these key points:

He added that anti-American hatred is now so high as a result of this drone strike that “I personally don’t even know if it is safe for me to go back to Wessab because I am someone who people in my village associate with America and its values.” And he said that whereas he never knew any Yemenis who were sympathetic to al-Qaida before the drone attacks, now:

He added that drone strikes in Yemen “make people fear the US more than al-Qaida”.

There seems to be this pervasive belief in the US that we can invade, bomb, drone, kill, occupy, and tyrannize whomever we want, and that they will never respond. That isn’t how human affairs function and it never has been. If you believe all that militarism and aggression are justified, then fine: make that argument. But don’t walk around acting surprised and bewildered and confounded (why do they hate us??) when violence is brought to US soil as well. It’s the inevitable outcome of these choices, and that’s not because Islam is some sort of bizarre or intrinsically violent and uncivilized religion. It’s because no group in the world is willing to sit by and be targeted with violence and aggression of that sort without also engaging in it (just look at the massive and ongoing violence unleashed by the US in response to a single one-day attack on its soil 12 years ago: imagine how Americans would react to a series of relentless attacks on US soil over the course of more than a decade, to say nothing of having their children put in prison indefinitely with no charges, tortured, kidnapped, and otherwise brutalized by a foreign power).

Being targeted with violence is a major cost of war and aggression. It’s a reason not do it. If one consciously decides to incur that cost, then that’s one thing. But pretending that this is all due to some primitive and irrational religious response and not our own actions is dangerously self-flattering and self-delusional. Just listen to what the people who are doing these attacks are saying about why they are doing them. Or listen to the people who live in the places devastated by US violence about the results. None of it is unclear, and it’s long past time that we stop pretending that all this evidence does not exist.

Dirty Wars

Several weeks ago, I wrote about the soon-to-be-released film, “Dirty Wars”, that chronicles journalist Jeremy Scahill’s investigation of US violence under President Obama in Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere. That film makes many of the same points here (including the fact that many Yemenis never knew of any fellow citizens who were sympathetic to al-Qaida until the US began drone-bombing them with regularity). Scahill’s book by the same title was just released yesterday and it is truly stunning and vital: easily the best account of covert US militarism under Obama. I highly recommend it. See Scahill here on Democracy Now yesterday discussing it, with a focus on Obama’s killing of both Anwar Awlaki and, separately, his 16-year-son Abdulrahman in Yemen. He also discussed his book this week with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Morning Joe (where he argued that Obama has made assassinations standard US policy).

UPDATE

The incorrect day was originally cited for Goldberg’s column. It has now been edited to reflect that it was published on Friday.

UPDATE II

I was interviewed at length this week by the legendary Bill Moyers about Boston, US foreign policy, government secrecy and a variety of related matters. The program will air repeatedly on PBS, beginning this Friday night (see here for local listings). You can see a preview for the show they released today – here – as well as one short excerpt from the interview on the recorder below:

UPDATE III

Here’s one more excerpt released today by the Moyers show, this one pertaining to exactly the questions raised in today’s column:

German media, politicians praise Obama for military-police lockdown of Boston

By Johannes Stern, wsws.org

Commentary in the German media and by leading political figures on the events in Boston throw a spotlight on the undemocratic character of the ruling elite in Germany.

There has been virtually no critical coverage in the German media of the massive deployment of military, police and intelligence forces, which placed an entire city under a state of emergency and its people in a state of terror and fear. Barely a single bourgeois journalist has questioned the appropriateness of the police methods used or criticized the crass violations of basic democratic principles which took place. On the contrary, most of the comments in the liberal mainstream media gushed praise for US President Barack Obama.

There is no precedent in American history for what took place in Boston in the wake of the horrific April 15 bombings that claimed the lives of three people and injured more than 170. The Obama administration mobilized thousands of security forces to establish a state of siege in the Boston area with its more than one million inhabitants.

Pictures from the scene resembled a city under occupation or in civil war. Thousands of heavily armed police and National Guard units patrolled the streets. They were accompanied by armoured vehicles equipped with machine guns while military helicopters circled over the city. Virtual martial law reigned throughout the city. Residents were ordered to stay in their homes, while heavily armed special forces scoured houses to find the 19-year-old youth suspected of being responsible for the bombing.

On behalf of the liberal establishment, the Süddeutsche Zeitung commented in its Monday edition: “What began on Monday with a terror attack ended on Friday night with a triumph for the police: One bomber was dead and the other seriously injured and arrested. Boston, its proud citizens, celebrating their victory over fear. And America has once again won out against terror.”

The comment ended with the statement: “Barack Obama has now again said that America is the greatest nation in the world. But he did not mean this as a hollow phrase. The President meant it as a patriotic mission to constantly improve the country—and as a call to track down everywhere the causes of the hundred hours of terror. Abroad and at home. And on time.”

The glorification of Obama and the events in Boston by the SZ make clear that the German media is just as prepared to function as an extended arm of the political establishment as the US media. The latter played a decisive role in the past few days in the efforts by the US ruling class to exploit the Boston bomb attacks to promote the establishment of a military dictatorship in the United States. The American media fomented fear and hysteria, spread ungrounded rumors and justified the police state measures of the Obama administration.

The fact that the German media has remained almost unanimously silent on the significance of the massive police operation in Boston while praising the president responsible, indicates that the ruling elite in Germany is preparing to employ similar methods.

Karsten Voigt, a leading member of the Social Democratic Party and its coordinator for German-American relations, spoke to the German radio station Deutschlandfunk on the Boston events. When asked how the city’s population was coping with such a “gigantic-scale police action,” he replied: “I think in this case very well, because it was successful. There was one dead, the other caught alive and now the background can be checked out and recreated. And I think, overall, although this reaction seems so out of proportion, its success enables the American president to show he was a successful president in this situation, which he brought to a successful conclusion in a quiet and determined manner.”

It is no coincidence that this repulsive glorification of Obama’s military action comes from the camp of the SPD. On the pretext of the struggle against alleged terrorism the former SPD-Green coalition government led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder undertook massive attacks on democratic rights. Under the auspices of Federal Interior Minister Otto Schily (SPD), several packages of so-called anti-terrorism legislation were enacted, and the powers of the police, security forces and intelligence agencies enhanced to an extent unknown since the days of the Nazi dictatorship.

The current conservative coalition government led by Angela Merkel has used the events in Boston to further advance the beefing up of the German state. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich (Christian Democratic Union), is seeking to expand police surveillance of the population. “The events in Boston once again show how important the surveillance of public spaces via video cameras is for the reconnaissance of serious crimes,” he said.

Last year the Federal Constitutional Court gave a judgement permitting the German army to intervene inside the country’s borders. This ruling not only allows the Bundeswehr to reinforce police operations, but also provides for the use of military ordnance such as combat aircraft and tanks. It has created the conditions to “legally” carry out actions in a German city similar to those carried out in Boston.

The Karlsruhe ruling allows the Bundeswehr to intervene when “damage of catastrophic dimensions” is imminent. The criterion is formulated in a deliberately vague manner to justify military interventions such as the one in Boston, which are completely disproportionate to the actual threat.

The preparation and conduct of military operations inside Germany itself is a direct response by the ruling class to growing social antagonisms and the risk of broad social and political protests. In recent years, the German bourgeoisie has organized a massive social redistribution from the bottom to the top inside Germany and throughout Europe, thereby establishing conditions that are incompatible with democratic rights.

The reaction of the German media to the events in Boston demonstrate that, in common with the US media, they too would justify military action as “necessary” and “legitimate”.

One of the most cynical justifications for the military occupation of Boston was published by the co-editor of the weekly Die Zeit, Joseph Joffe. His commentary began with the heading “Never give way: America does not bow to terrorism. The nation defends the values of solidarity and free society.”

Joffe goes on to declare that every president “at some time experienced his moment of destiny which he could not evade”. He then ranks Obama’s response to the events in Boston alongside a series of historical turning points in recent American history. He writes: “For Roosevelt it was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, for Truman, the North Korean invasion of the south in 1950, for Kennedy the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, for Carter, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, for Reagan the Soviet challenge of setting up medium-range missiles, for Bush senior and son, the wars against Iraq.”

Joffe goes on to argue that certain historical situations require drastic measures. He continues: “It is not pre-ordained that Obama must be a gentler, peace-mongering president. If it were Islamic terrorists [behind the Boston attacks] he will resort to violence, and shake off peace-mongering in favor of a war president. This pattern runs throughout American history. And the Republicans, irrespective of their power struggles, will gather around him—in the short term anyway.”

Joffe’s argument should be taken as a warning. In a situation in which social divisions are reaching the breaking point, journalists like Joffe are willing to junk all democratic principles in order to defend the capitalist system.

Annals of Filth: Obama is Comfortable with Bush’s Inferno

A Lawless Legacy

by RALPH NADER

G.W. Bush: Not just still at large unindicted war criminal, but a celebrated figure in the complicit corporate media.

ABOVE THE LAW—G.W. Bush: Not just an unindicted war criminal happily strutting around, but a celebrated figure in the complicit corporate media.

George W. Bush is riding high. A megamillionaire, from the taxpayer-subsidized Texas Rangers company, he makes $150,000 to $200,000 per speech, receives a large presidential pension and support facilities and is about to dedicate the $500 million George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on April 25.

President Obama will be at the dedication, continuing to legitimize Mr. Bush, as he did from the outset by announcing in 2009 there would be no investigations or prosecutions of the Bush officials for their crimes.

In an interview with the New York Times, Mr. Bush continued to say he has no regrets about his Presidency. “I’m comfortable with what I did,” he said, “I’m comfortable with who I am.” He added, “Much of my presidency was defined by things that you didn’t necessarily want to have happen.”

But he and Dick Cheney made them happen, although Mr. Bush attributed some military events to Providence. One of the “things” he is comfortable with was his criminal, unconstitutional invasion and occupation of Iraq, which took over one million Iraqi lives – children, women and men – created 5 million refugees and committed overall sociocide on that country which posed no threat to the U.S. The carnage continues to this day by a militarized al-Qaeda-in-Iraq that didn’t exist before his invasion.

Apparently, Mr. Bush is “comfortable” with the price paid by the U.S. soldiers and their broken families – over 5,000 fatalities and suicides, 200,000 injuries, illnesses and traumatic syndromes – and by U.S. taxpayers, who over time will pay an estimated 3 trillion dollars according to Nobel Laureate and economist, Joseph Stiglitz.

Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has said repeatedly that Bush and Cheney “lied us into invading Iraq.” Such an understatement. Bush and Cheney not only lied about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, they also deceived, covered-up, corrupted or intimidated the mass media [which don’t take too much intimidating to toe the line], bullied an abdicatory Congress [ditto], and delivered a false address to the United Nations with the now regretful Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Two secretary generals of the UN subsequently declared Bush’s war of aggression against Iraq to be a violation of international law.

The Bushes have received fawning coverage by the networks, with NBC leading the pack. Former President George W. Bush has become a grandfather. One of his twin daughters, Jenna Bush Hager, gave birth to her first child, a daughter, on Saturday night in New York City. The former president announced the birth in a statement Sunday. The baby's name is Margaret Laura "Mila" Hager. The former president said the baby was named for her grandmothers. Jenna Bush Hager is a contributing correspondent for NBC's "Today" show. She's married to Henry Hager. Bush said, "We met our beautiful granddaughter today. Jenna and Mila are healthy. And our family is elated."

The Bushes have received shameless fawning coverage from the networks, with NBC leading the pack. This item is typical. “Former President George W. Bush has become a grandfather. One of his twin daughters, Jenna Bush Hager, gave birth to her first child, a daughter, on Saturday night in New York City. The former president announced the birth in a statement Sunday. The baby’s name is Margaret Laura “Mila” Hager. The former president said the baby was named for her grandmothers.
Jenna Bush Hager is a contributing correspondent for NBC’s “Today” show. She’s married to Henry Hager.
Bush said, “We met our beautiful granddaughter today. Jenna and Mila are healthy. And our family is elated.” (Source: NBC’s Dallas/FW affiliate)

Bush suffers no qualms about the brutal realities of his war and his recidivist violations of our Constitution, federal statutes and international treaties. “One of the real challenges of life is when you complete a chapter, you don’t atrophy, that you continue to find ways to contribute,” said Bush in an interview with The Dallas Morning News. Army veteran Tomas Young is atrophying from his massive wounds in Iraq. Before he decides to end his devastated life, possibly this month, he summoned his moral energy to write Mr. Bush a poignant lettercalling him to account for his war crimes. Bush, however, never responds. After all he’s “comfortable” and that bloody “chapter” is closed.

The American people have yet to come to terms with the reality that presidents are above the law. Presidents can commit repeated crimes in an outlaw presidency so long as they can invoke, however falsely and vaguely, national security.

Were presidents to engage in personal crimes or obstruction of justice, like Nixon with the burglary of the Democratic Party’s Watergate offices, the law and Congress can hold them accountable. But Bush and Cheney had bigger fish to fry with their destruction of justice. As the ancient Roman historian Tacitus wrote: “The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more, and tolerated by all.”

Fortunately, for our fragile democracy, there were dissenters. After 9/11, leading civil liberty groups objected to provisions in the Patriot Act that allowed searches of your home and businesses without telling you for 72 hours. And, the muzzling of librarians and custodians of your financial medical records from even telling you that the feds are retrieving them. And warrantless snooping on millions of Americans.

In the months leading to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, more than three hundred retired generals, admirals, high ranking officers, national security officials and diplomats spoke out against any invasion.

Retired General and former Director of the National Security Agency Bill Odom called the invasion the most strategic military blunder in our history. Bush’s father was privately opposed to the invasion, urging his top retired advisors, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft to speak and write against the pending invasion.

The venerable, conservative American Bar Association weighed in with three White Papers declaring Bush’s many signing statements – that he was not bound by legislation – domestic surveillance and treatment of enemy combatants were unconstitutional actions. Bush never acknowledged these reports. And this week, a bipartisan report by the Constitution Project concluded that Bush/Cheney approved torture practices at Guantanamo.

All the above plus mass anti-war rallies in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere did not slow the march to war. The protests were not strong enough to penetrate the political and electoral systems. Until that happens, criminal unconstitutional actions regularly conducted at top levels of our government will not, as a practical matter, trigger either the application of the rule of law or the impeachment authority of the U.S. Congress. To the contrary, each succeeding President feels free to push the illegal, unconstitutional envelope further.

So the lawless legacy of George W. Bush continues under Obama – sometimes worse, sometimes not. Indefinite detention, arbitrary use of military rather than civil tribunals, secret evidence and secret laws, war crimes, secret courts, immunity from judicial review, continual snooping on citizens, extraordinary renditions to foreign countries and, for the first time, President Barack Obama claims to have the right to assassinate an American citizen, far from the battlefield, in his sole secret judgment as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. All shame the Obama Administration.

The above list comes from the great law professor, Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, who published a chilling article in the Washington Post on January 15, 2012.

The Presidential outlawry continues as a bipartisan dissolution of our constitutional system because the vast majority of the “we the people” are not demanding our constitutionally sovereign power.

They give truth to Tacitus’ dictum.

On April 25, George W. Bush will bask in the fawning media sunlight of his presidential library and museum. The devastated people of Iraq and the soldiers of America, sent to kill and die in Bush’s illegal, boomeranging war, may have some exhibits, pictures and artifacts to suggest for the museum’s collection.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition.

The Big Nausea: Waking Up With an Obama-Ache

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Who will defend the indefensible Obama? Answer: There will be fewer and fewer Obamapologists, as each day passes. “For the monumentally dysfunctional Black Misleadership Class, the winding down of the Age of Obama is cause for frantic repositioning, and for the revising of their own histories.”

“Black folks have been forced to come to grips with the finality of Obama’s second term.”

The Obama Hangover has begun. The drunken delirium that descended on Black America after the pale Democratic caucuses of Iowa endorsed a brown-skinned corporatist just after New Years Day, 2008 – conveying white “viability” on a Great Black Hope – is definitively over. It’s the morning-after in Black America, a scene of economic and political ruin bathed in the searing daylight of Obama’s second term and umpteenth betrayal.

It would be easy to say that the Great Nausea of 2013 was occasioned by Obama’s blunt object assault on Social Security and the whole array of entitlements. However, the First Black President’s obituary is not written in his budget. The onset of post-Obamaism has more to do with the calendar than anything else. Since Election Day, November 6, Black folks have been forced to come to grips with the finality of Obama’s second term – the impending emergence from the dream. There is the sound of a finger snapping. “In a few moments, you will wake up.”

The awakening will be uneven and, for many, dreadful: a dreamscape dissolving into the rubble-strewn nightmare left by the Great Recession, a catastrophe that set African Americans back as much as two generations, but which was notsubjectively experienced as such by huge segments of the Black community. Instead, reality was subsumed by the mere presence of a Black person in the White House.

“The awakening will be uneven and, for many, dreadful.”

It was a narcotic effect so potent in Obama’s first term, African Americans imagined themselves to be better off than five and ten years before – when the truth was exactly the opposite. Black imaginations took flight amid the desolation. Studies by the Pew Research Center – substantially confirmed byother reputable pollsters over the course of Obama’s first term – showed that Blacks were the most optimistic constituency in the country regarding their personal and family prospects and those of African Americans as a group. Moreover, they believed that their condition was improved under the Obama presidency – coterminous with the debacle – when in fact Blacks had been hardest hit of all major U.S. populations. Meanwhile, every other ethnic constituency correctly understood that their economic situation had deteriorated.

Back in January of 2010, I wrote:

“Although African Americans contributed 19 out of every 20 of their votes to Obama’s reelection, there was no escaping that this was the last act in the ritual. One cannot blame the people for having their Mardis Gras – even if it is a five-year bacchanal. However, it is unforgiveable for so-called “leaders” to allow the whole town to burn down during the festivities.

“There’s a lot of historical re-writing to do, if the poseurs are to include themselves in a movement from which they have been effectively absent for four years.”

For the monumentally dysfunctional Black Misleadership Class, the winding down of the Age of Obama is cause for frantic repositioning, and for the revising of their own histories. Black politicians and “movement” personalities who, for four years, could not bring themselves to articulate a single “demand” of the administration in power, now claim to be working on a “Black Agenda” – having discarded the old and unfinished Black historical agenda on peace and social justice in deference to the First Black President. Now that Obama’s days are numbered, these misleaders must hustle to readjust history to show that they have, indeed, been “on the case” since 2008, when the bottom fell out of the Black American economy. They must renew their peace and pan-Africanist credentials, having watched as Obama waged war against international order and deployed AFRICOM to militarily occupy the continent. There’s a lot of historical re-writing to do, if the poseurs are to include themselves in a movement from which they have been effectively absent for four years.

Revisionism becomes the order of the day. Yesterday’s cheerleaders for Obama are now scrambling to find harmless niches of simulated protest from which they can rebuild their resumes as defenders of the people’s interests. Previously compliant members of the Congressional Black Caucus will decide that it’s time to regurgitate, rather than swallow, Obama’s “Satan Sandwiches.”

But some of us have kept a record, and kept the faith. And we will not forget who did what in the Age of Obama.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted atGlen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.