Could not agree with you more ……….. OPEACH OBAMA

AMERICA’S WAR CRIMES QUAGMIRE, FROM BUSH TO OBAMA

Michael Haas’s “George W. Bush, War Criminal? The Bush Administration’s Liability for 269 War Crimes” was published a few days before Barack Obama took the oath of office. Torture, murder, illegal war, the slaughter of thousands of innocents, abuse of child prisoners—these are only a few of 269 war crimes committed during the Bush administration, which rolled over to the Obama administration on January 20, 2009, to haunt his presidency. The book has the distinction of having inspired a protest in front of the New York Times building because the venerable newspaper refused to publish a review soon after its release.

Although President Obama signed executive orders to stop torture and close Guantánamo, the war crimes have continued virtually unabated ever since. Indeed, the Times Square bomber specifically cited American war crimes as the reason for his action on May 1, 2010.

Newly published “America’s War Crimes Quagmire, From Bush to Obama” identifies how the war crimes of the Bush administration have continued to be documented by the press while politicians and pundits have withheld criticisms. The book consists of forty-seven essays that were originally blogs on the website http://www.USwarcrimes.com. Essays are edited appropriately, with occasional postscripts to bring the narrative up to date.

America’s War Crimes Quagmire, From Bush to Obama concludes that war crimes continue because American leaders have only focused on torture, thereby allowing thousands of victims of more than two hundred other war crimes to suffer. Instead, the term “war crimes” is taboo in the United States. And although some Americans have called for prosecution of war criminals, cries from overseas victims have been muffled. Yet the rest of the world, in contrast, is fully aware of American lawlessness.

The book also identifies how the Georgian republic, Russia, and other countries have copied American post-9/11 war crimes. As a result, there is a new era of international barbarism that serves to aid anti-American terrorist recruitment while repudiating the advances achieved in humanizing warfare by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, by the Red Cross, at the Hague Conventions, at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, and by the Geneva Conventions.

The author, Michael Haas, is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee for his work on behalf of human rights. An academic political scientist, he has taught at Northwestern University, Loyola Marymount University, Occidental College, Purdue University, Stanford University, the University of California (Riverside), the University of Hawai‘i, the University of London, and six campuses of California State University, most recently California Polytechnic University (Pomona).

The 278-page book is available from the Publishinghouse for Scholars (P.O. Box 461267, Los Angeles, CA 90046) for $25 (including postage and handling) per domestic copy and $30 for international purchase payable to “Publishinghouse for Scholars.” The new book “America’s War Crimes Quagmire” has an extensive set of references, and a comprehensive index. The index contains page numbers that apply to each war crime cited in the book.

The 2009 hard-cover book George W. Bush, War Criminal? The Bush Administration’s Liability for 269 War Crimes (published by Praeger) can also be purchased with a simple mouse-click on the website http://www.USwarcrimes.com with a PayPal payment option.

Just because they don’t have your heroes on, they’re not bad people. Maddow spends more time talking about mercenaries, war crimes, and other issues that don’t get much press on the networks than any other talking head. For that I give her credit.

If they were not, they would BOTH have Cindy Sheehan, Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader and the host of other truth speakers on, to rip apart the pro-war, corporate corrupted two party system, on their shows on a regular basis.

They have not and will not.

Because they are BOTH shills for the Democrats. Same goes for Ed Schultz.

Enjoyed Nader’s article and the comments.

One point of correction.

On MSNBC’s Keith Obermann (aka Countdown) Show the night before the speech, Obermann discussed many of Nader’s points. Obermann urged the President to get out of the wars, not escalate them.

Both Obermann, and Rachel Maddow have been courageous on the issue of ending the wars. They are a great credit to “mainstream media”.

Now if they would only have Green Party candidates, and Independent Green candidates on their shows….

Good point.

Have there been attacks on neutral countries that mind their own business and don’t poke their nose into the affairs of “this region”?

you didn’t think that the surge in Iraq would work either.

It didn’t. What “worked” in Iraq was a truce declared by one of the major factions. Iraq is still a boiling cauldron, and very likely to explode again.

the US spent over ten percent of GDP on defense, now it’s around 4.5%.

Those numbers are way off, and there’s nothing defensive about it.

We spent more money, in real terms, on Vietnam in 1969 then we did in the last 8 years of war.

Source? Does that count “homeland security”?

The government spending going into WW2 was benefitial to the overall economy.

Only in the same sense that putting millions of people to work digging ditches and filling them back up is beneficial.

As Radley Balko put it, http://www.theagitator.com/2009/12/02/in-which-the-terrorists-win/

In his thorough history of 9/11 The Looming Towers, Lawrence Wright makes a pretty persuasive case that Osama bin Laden’s goal in planning out terrorist attacks throughout the 1990s was to suck the U.S. into a Soviet-style war in Afghanistan. Bin Laden had no delusions about turning the U.S. into a Muslim country. Instead, he wanted to pull America into an expensive, dispiriting, unwinnable war—the sort of war nearly every power that has invaded Afghanistan has had to extract itself from, tail between legs. Wright writes that bin Laden was initially dispirited at the ease with which U.S. forces removed the Taliban from power.

Of course, we then let bin Laden escape. And then came Iraq. We’ve since given bin Laden more than he ever could have thought possible, and more. Two protracted wars. And our war in Afghanistan is looking more and more like the Soviet war bin Laden was hoping to emulate.

We’re now well into our ninth year in Afghanistan. The Soviets pulled out after 10. With Obama’s surge, we’ll be close to 100,000 U.S. troops in the country next year. That’s about the number the Soviets had deployed at the height of their own war. About the only difference between the two wars is that technology has shifted more of our war casualties from the killed column to the maimed. I guess that’s something.

Here’s a question for the politicians who support Obama’s plan, as well as those to the right of him who think it isn’t warmongery enough: What exactly does “victory” in Afghanistan look like? Certainly no one in his right mind thinks the country is going to look like, say, Iowa in 20 years. Same for Iraq. Are we expending what in the end will be a few trillion dollars and likely the lives of 6,ooo-7,000 troops to create another . . . Saudi Arabia? Another Egypt?

We do have a pretty good idea how bin Laden pictured victory. It looks a lot like what we’re seeing now. He wanted a holy war. We gave him two. We’ve compromised our values, rolled back civil liberties, and let our politicians generally scare the crap out of us whenever they want new powers. Oh, and we’ve let the bastard live to gloat about it all.

This war should have been over the moment we disposed of the Taliban. The military doesn’t build liberal societies. They destroy illiberal ones (and they do it very well). I’ll wager we have at least 50,000 troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan by the end of Obama’s first term. In fact, I’ll bet it’s closer to 75,000. Lovely that this was the anti-war candidate.

There’s no easy way out of either of these wars.

Which is a pretty damned good reason to excercise more discretion about when to get into them.

And if I recall you didn’t think that the surge in Iraq would work either.
So you have been wrong before…

As far the “industrial miltary complex” was quoted back in the 1950′s when the US spent over ten percent of GDP on defense,
now it’s around 4.5%.
We spent more money, in real terms, on Vietnam in 1969 then
we did in the last 8 years of war.
So I take your economic analysis
as so-so and if John Maynard Keynes is right? The government spending going into WW2 was benefitial to the overall economy. Now I don’t particuilarly buy that argument, but Keynesian economics seems to rule our world.

What I do agree with you
is that we should be focusing on the business of America and stop f-ing around in these third world cess pools.