Obama is not a Democrat

2015-11-24T18:25:17-05:00

On the banking and housing crisis, he bailed out the banks without extracting any meaningful concessions, such as a moratorium on foreclosures or a 25 percent write-down of the principal on all existing mortgages. He failed to prosecute the banksters.

On taxes, he caved on the Bush breaks for millionaires.

On labor, he sat on the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill to make it easier for workers to organize themselves into unions.

On civil liberties, Obama continued the Bush policies, extending the Patriot Act claiming it was absolutely necessary to fight terrorism , not modifying the Military Commissions Act or the NSA spying act, holding suspects indefinitely at Bagram Air Force Base and actually increasing the numbers held there by a factor of three. He did not shut down Guantanamo Bay prison.
Obama continued to carry out assassination via Predator drones anyone that he deems a threat, and act of war, and continuing to use Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) (be the world policeman) even though a “WAR” is only Constitutionally done ONLY against another nation’s incumbent government and military. He continued the nation building that is not authorized by the half-baked AUMF. He escalated the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and pressed for keeping some troops in Iraq. Waged a war against Syria, ISIS and Ukraine without a declaration of war or a new AUMF.

He has dramatically increased the number of troops in Afghanistan, adding 30,000 more soldiers to the fight in 2009. There have been over 1,000 troop deaths in Afghanistan since Obama has been president, compared to 575 under Bush.

And he signed Subtitle D, to the NDAA which authorized the denial of a writ of Habeas Corps to US persons suspected of being terrorist and authorized their detention by the US military indefinitely.

On foreign policy, his State Department backed the coup makers in Honduras.

While he has been critical of Netanyahu in Israel, he hasn’t backed up his threats with any reduction in the billions in foreign aid.

Intelligence Was Cooked in Israel and Rumsfeld’s DoD, Office of Strategic Influence faked the Iraq threat . The entire cooked intelligence picture was "Made in Israel." It was cooked up at a right-wing think-tank complex notorious as a hotbed of radical Likudnik propaganda, and with links to the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney, via his Chief of Staff Lewis Libby and his former client, Marc Rich. In fact, at least 11 of the 16 pages were lifted, verbatim, from an Israeli journal, Middle East Review of International Affairs, whose sole proprietor is Dr. Barry Rubin. The 11 pages were drawn from two articles, by Ibrahim al-Marashi and Robert Rabil, that appeared in the September 2002 edition of that journal. Dr. Barry Rubin, an American-born Israeli citizen.

Obama dropped espionage charges against two officials of America's most powerful pro-Israel lobby group accused of spying for the Jewish state because court rulings had made the case unwinnable and the trial would disclose classified information. On May 1, 2009 case that began four years ago the United States Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, VA, and in consultation with the at Justice Department headquarters, dropped espionage charges against two American-Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spies.

The two accused, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, worked for AIPAC. They were accused of providing defense secrets to the chief political officer at the Israeli embassy in Washington, Naor Gilon, about US policy toward Iran and al-Qaida in league with a former Pentagon analyst who has since been jailed for 12 years.

Officials from the FBI’s Washington office who investigated the case made their final pleas to keep the case alive, arguing that there was enough evidence to persuade a jury to find the two men guilty. FBI agents poured substantial resources into the case, and the decision to seek a dismissal infuriated many within the agency. The case has been further complicated by a scandal revealed last month by a political publication, Congressional Quarterly, around a member of Congress, Jane Harman, who was secretly taped telling an Israeli agent that she would pressure the justice department to reduce spying charges against the two former AIPAC officials. In return, the Israeli agent offered to get a wealthy donor who helps funds election campaigns for Nancy Pelosi, the then-minority leader in the House of Representatives, to pressure Pelosi to appoint Harman to a senior position on the congressional intelligence committee.

Response by CW3 Dick McManus made Nov 24 at 2015 6:25 PM

2015-11-24T18:25:43-05:00

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan) were briefed from 2002 to 2003 in about 30 private briefings, about the planned use of cruel, unusual and inhuman treatment, to include water-boarding, by former President George W. Bush and his subordinates. These Congress people had a Constitutional and legal duty to go public about the planned or on-going use of torture, ghost prisoners, secret jails, and kidnapping and rendition to proxy nations that torture, (all war crimes), not withstanding that these activities were classified.

And he launched an illegal air war against Libya, supporting extremist Muslims who over threw Gaddafi. During Gaddafi's reign, there was very little poverty in Libya. The country had the best living standards in Africa. Libya had free healthcare, free education, free farmland, a house and seeds, free energy bills, $50,000 housing money for just married couples, and interest free loans. Libya was a debt free country (unlike most African states befriended by the West), had near free gasoline prices, plus the government paid half the price for your car, among other benefits. Oh, and the women? Libyan women enjoyed more freedom than their counterparts in the Arab world. In fact, Libyan women enjoyed the same freedom with their Western counterparts. They enjoyed free education, and enjoyed rights that saw them driving cars when the women in the Arab world were jailed for daring to get behind a car wheel. Gaddafi with his revolutionary idea that a woman should be trained in the art of war, walked his talk by employing female bodyguards.

Since the day President Obama took office, he has failed to bring to justice anyone responsible for the torture of terrorism suspects — an official government program conceived and carried out in the years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Obama did allow his Justice Department to investigate the CIA's destruction of videotapes of torture sessions and those who may have gone beyond the torture techniques authorized by President George W. Bush. But the investigation did not lead to any charges being filed, or even any accounting of why they were not filed. He refused to prosecute the higher ups who ordered the torture.

Americans have known about many of these acts for years, but the 524-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report erases any lingering doubt about their depravity and illegality: Scores of detainees were water boarded, hung by their wrists, confined in coffins, sleep-deprived, threatened with death or brutally beaten. In November 2002, one detainee who was chained to a concrete floor died of “suspected hypothermia.”

These are, simply, crimes. They are prohibited by federal law, which defines torture as the intentional infliction of “severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” They are also banned by the Convention Against Torture, the international treaty that the United States ratified in 1994 and that requires prosecution of any acts of torture.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch are to give Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. a letter Monday calling for appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate what appears increasingly to be “a vast criminal conspiracy, under color of law, to commit torture and other serious crimes.”

But any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington; the former C.I.A. director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos. There are many more names that could be considered, including Jose Rodriguez Jr., the C.I.A. official who ordered the destruction of the videotapes; the psychologists who devised the torture regimen; and the C.I.A. employees who carried out that regimen.

Starting a criminal investigation is not about payback; it is about ensuring that this never happens again and regaining the moral credibility to rebuke torture by other governments.

Obama has embraced the vast bulk of AWOL Bush's terrorism policies and adopted the defining Bush/Cheney policy of indefinite detention without trial for accused terrorists who had been subjected to torture.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan) were briefed from 2002 to 2003 in about 30 private briefings, about the planned use of cruel, unusual and inhuman treatment, to include water-boarding, by former President George W. Bush and his subordinates. These Congress people had a Constitutional and legal duty to go public about the planned or on-going use of torture, ghost prisoners, secret jails, and kidnapping and rendition to proxy nations that torture, (all war crimes), not withstanding that these activities were classified.

And he launched an illegal air war against Libya, supporting extremist Muslims who over threw Gaddafi. During Gaddafi's reign, there was very little poverty in Libya. The country had the best living standards in Africa. Libya had free healthcare, free education, free farmland, a house and seeds, free energy bills, $50,000 housing money for just married couples, and interest free loans. Libya was a debt free country (unlike most African states befriended by the West), had near free gasoline prices, plus the government paid half the price for your car, among other benefits. Oh, and the women? Libyan women enjoyed more freedom than their counterparts in the Arab world. In fact, Libyan women enjoyed the same freedom with their Western counterparts. They enjoyed free education, and enjoyed rights that saw them driving cars when the women in the Arab world were jailed for daring to get behind a car wheel. Gaddafi with his revolutionary idea that a woman should be trained in the art of war, walked his talk by employing female bodyguards.