A Little Rough Around The Edges; But This Shit Has Got To Stop!

This Issue Is Enough For Impeachment And Removal Of Nancy Pelosi

Trying To Give A Damn Is Hard These Days

World Can’t Wait (Home Page) http://www.worldcantwait.net/

As speculation becomes more public that the White House gave the orders to destroy the torture tapes, World Can't Wait has been out raising the issue among the public.

Momentum is building for protests against torture on Friday January 11, the sixth anniversary of the first prisoners being sent to Guantanamo. Keep posted on plans here.

World Can't Wait and other organizations, including the ACLU are calling on people everywhere to wear orange that day, everywhere.

This is not protest just because it's our moral obligation. We intend to tear open the cracks in the Bush regime's torture state, and bring out the demand to millions: no torture in our name!

Jill McLaughlin, of World Can't Wait's national Steering Committee writes:

Damn the Tapes, It's Time to Sing the Chorus "We Won't Live in A Torture State"

So there has been a lot of hullabaloo about the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes. There is speculation and prediction. It’s another one of those moments, as in many moments of the past seven years that it appears that Congress can say to the Bush Administration “gotcha”. But sadly and strangely these moments pile up and are swept away through the media (CNN) posing absurd questions to viewers like is “water boarding torture?” and the Democrat led Congress backing off with their investigations most likely because of their own complicity and collusion in this…consider Nancy Pelosi. She’s known of these tapes for quite some time (no wonder impeachment is off the table).

I don’t want to dismiss or underestimate the fact that this has been an ongoing story in the media-it has put torture in the spotlight-the problem is how it is being posed to the people. It gets whittled down to legal terms i.e. was it wrong that the tapes were destroyed? Or how many crimes did they commit if any in destroying these tapes? As long as it’s focused on the destruction of the tapes and not really the torture committed on those tapes then it is easy for the issue that torture is wrong to disappear entirely. Especially if the destruction of the CIA is deemed legal or the investigation of this goes cold.

Under these terms torture becomes an acceptable norm to the people even if in their heart of hearts they think it abhorrent. To add emphasis as to why it is important to how the issue of torture is talked about I’d like to give an illustration. Over a year ago I received a form letter in my email from Barak Obama in response to my inquiry if the passing of the Military Commissions Act (with its rather broad definition of “enemy combatant”) meant that protesters against the war could be deemed “enemy combatants” at Bush’s whim and detained and tortured.

In his response the Senator called the passing of the MCA a political tactic of Bush and the Republicans. And never once was the word torture ever mentioned in Senator Obama’s response. He doesn’t even mention it in his campaign for President unless it rears its head in the media. Same goes for Hillary. The leading Republican candidates want more torture. Nobody talks about the thousands who were swept up, detained, and tortured without ever being charged.

People who had the misfortune of being the object of a neighbor’s vendetta or a neighbor’s greed for reward money, the misfortune of having the same name as a suspected terrorist, or the misfortune of living in countries that were illegally and immorally invaded and now occupied. Torture is not a political tactic. Torture is not a partisan issue. Torture is a moral issue. Torture is a war crime. Torture is a crime against humanity. Torture is wrong.

We also need to look at the hypocrisy surrounding these tapes. Former ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, (D-CA) Rep. Jane Harmon, calls the destruction of the tapes a constitutional crisis. Yet she was given a classified briefing on those tapes and what they contained. She had knowledge of torture. What did she do? She said she found it disturbing and wrote a letter advising that the tapes not be destroyed and then said nothing. Her excuse is that her letter was classified and she couldn’t bring the existence of the tapes to light.

Also when pressed about the interrogation methods used in these tapes she replied that her memory was fuzzy. I don’t know about you, but if I was briefed on the methods used to torture someone and thought it disturbing I’d find it hard to forget. But again, this is the same woman who lent her ear to Brian Michael Jenkins from the Rand Corporation who identifies as a counter-terrorism expert.

Jenkins suggested that there needed to be a center for studying violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism. So she came up with this nifty bill called the Violent Radicalization and Home Grown Terrorism Prevention Act which passed in the House and is sitting in the Senate. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) highlights the precariously broad definitions of what constitutes as a violent radical group or home grown terrorist group in this bill on its website.

Imagine if reactionaries started targeting war protesters and those who engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience. The CCR website quotes Jenkins from his book “In their international campaign, the jihadists will seek common grounds with leftist, anti-American, and anti-globalization forces, who will in turn see, in radical Islam, comrades against a mutual foe.” Harmon sees the destruction of these tapes as a constitutional crisis, yet can’t see that this bill lends itself to the possible detention and torture of innocent people here.

Maybe you think the possibility of torture here or on a U.S. citizen is impossible. But the fact of the matter is U.S. citizens have been tortured. Jose Padilla was detained and tortured here in the U.S. on suspicion that he had ties with terrorists and was planning on making a “dirty bomb”. One of the informants that the government relied on to make their case recanted the story he gave and the other was an active drug addict.

Yet after being held 3 and1/2 years without being charged the government found Padilla guilty. It is said that he is so mentally and emotionally ruined that he is now just a shell. Former Navy man Donald Vance was detained and tortured in Iraq after having begun blowing the whistle on illegal arms trading he observed as security supervisor for Shield Security Group.

After initially reporting it to the FBI they in turn asked him to spy for them. A short while later he found himself detained and tortured for 100 days for the very thing he blew the whistle about. Speculation is that Vance was detained as a cover for those higher up who may have been culpable in the illegal arms trading. Both these cases made it into the mainstream media, but like Harmon, the media seems to have a fuzzy memory and these stories are not covered anymore. And it is almost as if through telepathy this fuzziness barrows its way into the psyche of the American people.

Let me then attempt to clear away the fog for you. Remember Abu Ghraib and how outraged you were about the torture that occurred there. Remember how you thought that this was the “gotcha” moment and remember how it got swept away when it was apparent that no one in the Bush Regime was going to be held accountable for it. And Guantanamo Bay is still open and people are still being tortured there.

The CIA is still conducting renditions of people to black sites where they are surely being tortured. We have been and are living in a torture state six years after Guantanamo Bay ’s opening and two years after the news broke about Abu Ghraib, a year after the Military Commissions Act, a year after George Bush admitted that people were renditioned to black sites, and just weeks after the leak about the CIA tapes. I wonder if the inability or perhaps more correctly the unwillingness of those in a position of power to hold their counterparts accountable for their crimes has shocked you into a fugue state.

Or maybe it isn’t that you have forgotten, but the very fact that our elected officials and mainstream media are doing nothing to stop this that has silenced you and left you thinking that it’s just best to move on. After all you voted. You signed a petition. You wrote and called your Representative and Senator. And with bitter disappointment you see that nothing has changed.

So you are sure that with all that you have done that I’m just preaching to the choir. But here’s the thing the choir isn’t being heard or seen. The reason for this is that the choir is still confining itself to the church of politics as usual and the politics of the possible. We’ve been shown time and again that our politicians and media cannot be relied upon to talk about the issue of torture in any real or meaningful way or to stop the horror of torture.

It matters little what party our next President is affiliated with. Our outrage and heartache over what it is happening and being done in our name matters little to those in power. But, its time to ask the question how much does our outrage and heartache matter to us? What are we the people of this country willing to do to keep the fact that torture is being committed in the spotlight? It is up to us now that we keep it in the light and that we talk about it with family, friends, co-workers, ministers, rabbis, imams, teachers, and students. The revelation of the CIA tapes presents all of us with an opportunity.

We must not let the politicians and the media set the terms of how the issue of torture is addressed. As long as the discourse is confined to the legality of the destruction of tapes or what may or may not be torture the discourse will surely, like so many poor souls, be silenced and disappeared into the dark. It is time for the choir to sing to and for one another! The chorus must be “We will not live in a torture state! We will not accept torture anywhere in our name!” There must be mass sentiment and mass resistance to the use of torture from the people.

In the weeks to come members World Can’t Wait and others will be engaging in street theatre, protests, and nonviolent civil disobedience to build mass sentiment and resistance to torture and other outrage of the Bush Regime agenda. We will be, as we have been, wearing orange in solidarity with those detained and tortured and as the color of resistance to the Bush Regime and its agenda.

Some of you will join us in the streets and we implore you to take up orange in your daily lives and bring it as you join us. For those of you who oppose and are outraged by the torture committed in your name we implore you to wear orange in your daily lives. In doing so you are both showing your opposition and resistance to torture and giving support to those putting their bodies on the line in the streets.

Wear an orange ribbon, button, or bandana. Give an orange ribbon to three others in your life and have them do likewise. In this way mass sentiment and mass resistance is built. In this way we the people are holding the Bush Regime and those colluding with it accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In this way it can never be said that we the people of this country did not know torture was committed in our name. Let it not be said that we knew this and did nothing to stop it. Sing, damn it!

Read this essay and post it everywhere!

Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime

World Can't Wait Joins White Rose Coalition at Rose Bowl Parade - 12/26/2007
http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=20&Itemid=223

JAN. 1, 2008 World Can't Wait joins the White Rose Coalition in historic protest at the Rose Bowl Parade. We have the potential to reach millions at a time when there is growing outrage over the recent leak of the destruction of CIA torture videos. We demand impeachment of war criminals and torturers, an end to the Iraq war, no attack on Iran, and a halt to the fascist trajectory of the Bush Regime! We won't live in a torture state!

Learn more about the White Rose Society, a group of courageous German students who were anti-fascist activists against Hitler's regime.

And join World Can't Wait on New Year's Eve to spread the orange wave of resistance to the people who will be camping out on the sidewalks along the parade route. Wear Orange and be part of spreading it to others. We will not be silent in the face of all of this! We have an opportunity to make our resistance visible to millions!
Contact LA-WCW at worldcantwait_la@yahoo.com or 323-462-4771. Get logistical information

Witness Torture Org. (You Must Go Here)
http://witnesstorture.org/

Pelosi, YOU NEED TO GO !

And as you’re leaving, take Reid with you! The side of my head is about to explode.

I’ve been sitting on the sidelines watching and waiting, waiting and watching for you to do something–anything-- that resembles a leader, but nothing. I have to do this, if not just purely cathartic for myself to let off this steam.

If anyone is averse to seeing a heavily laden profane post then hit your back button now because gosh, heck and golly darn just isn’t what I’m feeling. I’m so angry I only wish I could tell it to your face Pelosi.

And if you don’t think so, just call my bluff and invite me. I don’t care where it is, I’ll be there.

Just who the fuck do you think you are?

Do you think you can hold our constitution hostage? Did you ever go to civics class? Did you take notes? Were you awake? Show me in the constitution where it says you impeach only if you have the votes!

Show me where it says that. When any government figure is suspected of committing high crimes or misdemeanors, it is the duty of the House to bring impeachment.

It’s due process. It’s the airing of the evidence for the public.

Here, they’re not crimes merely suspected, they’re verified by whistle blowers and those directly in the loop ten ways to Sunday.

There is a laundry list of felony crimes almost too long for anybody to comprehend.

The number of misdemeanors is almost laughable.

Impeachment is not the verdict, it’s thefucking TRIAL.

It’s to find out if removal is warranted. It allows the investigations into the facts of what crimes were committed, without a tyrant imperialist cocksucker like Bush being able to use executive privilege to block the investigations and subpoenas needed for the facts.

It’s the ONLY thing that strips away those protections and bullshit tactics that he has used since he took office, to stall and prevent any truth whatsoever from coming out.

Every one of those swastika wearing freedom haters in that oval office mafia, have committed more crimes against the people than possibly all the previous administrations combined. And you know it!

Up to and including Gonzalez. There’s something damn fishy going on when you don’t want those investigations to reveal what the true full blown facts are.

We accomplished what was thought to be impossible and fantasy by virtually every republican last November when we voted in droves and brought you the majority in both houses based on your election promises .

Not only a slim majority, but 18 fucking seats in the House!

There was a reason for that. We wanted true blooded Democrats to go in there to kick ass and take names.

We wanted an end to the cut and paste intelligence trumped up fucking war.

And we wanted INVESTIGATIONS with subpoenas and enforcement backing them with capitulations to no one!! To NO ONE!!

You came in like a lion for the first 100 hours-- fiery and with a little passion appearing to give the impression that you really gave a shit and could be what we voted for.

Then you fizzled like a fourth of July sparkler in a thunderstorm.

Ever since those first 100 hours, you don’t have the impact of a wet pussy willow bud on a Tempurpedic.

We gave you a Royal Flush with the election victories and you lead like all you got in your hand is a pair of fucking deuces.

With you as leader of the House, you can hardly tell the majority from the minority.

In fact the republipricks look more like the majority than we do.

They hand slap you around the room. You couldn’t even drive through a bill requiring the psycho in the oval office to get approval from congress before he invaded fucking IRAN!!

IRAN!!! Iraq wasn’t enough for you? You couldn’t confer that reasoning to those you are supposed to lead?

Congress approval is at 11%. And a president not above 25-30% approval for over two years.

Does that register with you? Do you have a metal plate in your head preventing neurons from firing in your brain?

Do you think 11% means you’re doing a good job? Doing the will of the people? 11%???

The fact is, you don’t give a shit about the wants of the people and you’ve shown it repeatedly.

You had some nerve to say before we handed you the fucking gavel of power-- give us the majority and you’ll drain the swamp.

You? You’re draining the swamp? We’re up to our eyeballs in shit in this swamp because of you.

It’s the size of the Atlantic.

You haven’t brought home a single soldier since you became speaker.

You haven’t even slowed down the funding.

It’s a literal runaway train.

Why don’t you just open the doors of Fort Knox and he can go in there in the middle of the night and empty the fucker.

You don’t even know how the fucking pump works. You have to put it on ‘SUCK’ to drain anything.

Not on OFF!!

A leader coalesces his or her unit and leads.

Hence the root case of the fucking word.

If generals led like you, we’d all be speaking Japanese.

The only house you should be Speaker of is the one you own in San Francisco.

Your one and only function in that House of Representatives is to carry out our will-- the will of the people.

Hence the fucking name.

We have representative government.

Since we can’t all be there to speak for ourselves, you are “elected” to speak for us.

Nobody gives a shit what you think in a vacuum.

You are not there to think as a rebel or ignore what your constituents want. When you speak, OUR words are supposed to come out.

If only 11% approve, according to base ten math that I learned, that’s eighty nine fucking percent of us that are angry with you and disapprove of what you’re doing.

Are you fucking deaf?

What part of representative government don’t you understand?

And if you don’t think that’s how it works-- that you’re supposed to pay attention to the 89%, then step the fuck away from your $170,000 a year paycheck that we give you and get a job in the private sector where you can fund your own goddamn private agenda.

A leader would have gone into every one of those caucuses on these critical votes with that gavel and slammed it on the table and said, “Look, I don’t give a damn if you call yourself a blue dog, a yellow dog or a fucking cross between a Persian and a Siamese.

We were elected with a mandate to stop this war, restore American’s civil liberties and investigate this administration inside out for their crimes. In any way we have to do it!!.

Vote your conscience when it comes to naming post offices.

This legislation goes to the very core of what we are as human beings, and what’s right. And by God as Democrats we’re going to pass it.

If he vetoes it, we’re going to send it back again, and again, and again until he fucking signs it and gets the message.

If you go out there and vote against these literal watershed event bills that will prevent this dictator from continuing his jackbooted assault on our democracy against the will of our constituents, I personally will go out there and campaign against you myself to prevent you from coming back to this congress!!

That’s what a fucking leader would do!.

You can’t coalesce votes on anything.

The splintered factions just walk all over you at will.

You’re just constantly smiling and chortling your “new direction” bulllshit. While the country’s hemorraging with human and economic treasure losses daily in Iraq.

And the loss of faith of the world in us as morally uncorruptable is becoming a literal worldwide fucking joke.

You’re the guard at the castle door we’re trying to get into. If those who threw the tea in Boston Harbor thought like you, the fourth of July would be no different than the 3rd of July.

We would be still be having afternoon crumpets and saluting the Union Jack.

How you could dare put your hand lovingly on the shoulder of that prehensile, war loving, scourge on America motherfucker and cozy up to him like you were taking a family reunion photo with him, when you should be doing the investigations through impeachment to put his neck at the end of a rope in the Netherlands for his war crimes, just speaks volumes.

It shows me all I need to know. Something is epic proportions fishy here. It stinks like a two day old carp rotting in the sun.

I had you pegged when I wrote this...............

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

And except for the few glimmers of far and few between sputters of leadership, I was absolutely right way back then.

I personally think you may be up to your neck in the knowledge of war crimes as defined by the Geneva Convention.

Nothing else explains your steadfast refusal to unveil and prosecute these criminals.

Not even for human torture universally condemned around the world, will you come out of your coma and call for impeachment hearings.

There is no excuse for your silence if you were in those meetings other than your total willingness to be complicit .

No law on this earth prevents you from exposing felony war crimes in the United States of America. None!

And if there was, you should have risked jail to violate it. That’s what American patriots before you did. But you don’t want any doors opened. Something is v-e-r-y fishy here.
Here’s your legacy............. http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c231/r343avanti/anim_give_a_damn.gif


Make a sign out of it and put it on your door. You need to go. SOON.

Get the fuck away from anything that has to do with interpreting and understanding the constitution.

You clearly don’t understand it. Unquestionably, you don’t understand the oath that you swore to on the bible either.

Unlike a Mr. Robert Wexler who does. Take your grandma politics and go do grandma shit. Knit sweaters or booties in the cloak room or something. No leadership skills are required for that and nobody’s life or liberties are at stake.

Do something your soft pedaling is ideal for. FOLLOW a leader. That’s what you’re perfect for. And Reid, you were a boxer?

Who the fuck did you fight–women?? You have less passion than somebody reading tax law to an accountant.

You almost put me to sleep every time you talk. You should be broadcasting Sunday afternoon golf somewhere, not be leader of the most powerful government body on earth.

All you do is...cave, capitulate, buckle, relent, bend, concede, compromise, acquiesce, yield, submit, comply, surrender, kowtow, fold, accede and in general, just give the republipricks everything they want.

They have invoked filibuster FIFTY NINE times since last November. If I’m off on that number, it’s not off by very much. You couldn’t even rally the Democrats one time to filibuster fucking Alito.

Thank you for that lifelong bastard on the bench. And instead of making them stand at the podiums and talk until their tongues swelled up to the size of manatees and they passed out from exhaustion, they don’t have to do a thing.

You just hear the word filibuster and you’re instant jelly giving them everything they want. It’s a wonder you don’t need a steel rod strapped to your back to hold you up.

AND WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT PHASE TWO NOW??? We gave you the same power in the unprecedented election to reverse five fucking seats and make you the leader in your branch. You had the temerity to bring the Senate to a standstill with rule 21 over phase 2 when you were in the minority because you led us to believe you were fed up with all the stalling and the coverups.

So where the fuck is it now? You’re the honcho in charge now unless I’m on some other planet. You control the subpoena power--the witness lists now. You can force depositions.

So where the fuck is it? Does somebody have pictures of you at the Cottontail Ranch in the fantasy room? What are you hiding and why? Nobody could stop you from getting this report out if you wanted to.

A report that will show all the felonies, obstruction of justice and outright lies to frame this fucking war with intelligence bullshit that was exactly contrary to every single thing that was actually true. You could call for that report to be on the Senate calendar every fucking day if you wanted to. And force it to be made public. Something is damn fishy about you here too. I can’t even count the times you appeared in press conferences or on the Senate floor to give the vague appearance that you were finally taking a stand as a leader in your chamber.

Only to shame yourself when you took another dump on us.

You wouldn’t even allow Dodd to put a “hold” on a fucking bill that would let corporate phone company traitors sell our cherished right to privacy up the river in exchange for a fucking government payoff!

You wanted to give them blanket immunity for doing it.

Who the hell’s side are you on?

If Democratic bills in either body–Senate or House, could be held as double blind votes, where republicans wouldn’t know if it was a Democratic or republic sponsored bill they were voting on, I’m convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt they would be all be voting exactly the same way as Democrats .

Because all the vested interests of 99% of everyone in this country are embodied only in the Democratic proposals of every one of these bills. But their sole function is to be dyed in the wool, unibody, crime covering, anti-democrat anything obstructionists.

If the title of president preceded “Clinton” or “Gore” with these same documented crimes, they would be literally red faced with perspiration pounding the drums for impeachment.

That’s how they always were, are, and will be.You’re so busy fawning over these vermin that you’re supposed to be reversing, calling them–my good friend, my longtime colleague and friend, our “friends” on the other side of the aisle–if I hear that one more fucking time, my last gasket is going to blow.

Get it through your heads–every Democrat who has ever said that-- they’re NOT your friends.

They’re your worst fucking enemy!! They’re bought and paid for, corporate owned, rich protecting, war crazy, criminally complicit, universally devoid of moral values, obstructionist, diaper wearing, closet gay, paige fuckers !

They would just as soon load up our eighteen year old kids fresh from their prom like a load of Friday afternoon garbage and put them in a military transport leaving for Iraq and drop them off in the killing fields of Falleujah. For second, third, fourth and even fifth tours!!

Just to keep their treasured fucking Haliburtons and military armament producing monopolies in tall financial cotton and assure they’d be there at the back door with their large payola of election ad money come election time. Banks included.They didn’t even care if our kids had helmets that would give them at least a 50-50 chance of surviving a head shot.

It took Cher.

Sonny and Cher fucking CHER, to start a company that provided the helmets that would possibly save their lives.

Your republican friends found that too trivial to bother with. If you don’t understand that, then read some newspapers. Get on the internet. If you don’t understand 59 filibusters, even against their own constituents interests, then see a doctor because you have rectal cranial inversion.

When you do finally get that through your heads and stop playing election 2008, maybe you will finally start to do what you were hired for. Otherwise just go scooch on over there on your knees and give them all blow jobs. Because that’s the only thing that’s missing. There is no doubt about it. Both of you need to go.

We don’t need sheep in wolves clothing sticking it up our ass when you’re supposed to be the people we depend on to be looking out for us.

It’s a good thing our founding fathers can’t resurrect from their graves and grace those hallowed halls that they bestowed with a sacred Bill of Rights and a Constitution, intended to keep our government–of the people, by the people and for the people.. Not for lies, coverup of lies and trashing of our freedoms by an insanely demented fuck who enjoys invading countries and causing hundreds of thousands of deaths of innocent civilians around the world.

The intentions that they had for truth, justice and inalienable freedoms of America were not red or blue, black or white, optional, negotiable or depending only on whether or not you thought you had the votes.

If they saw what you and Pelosi were allowing to happen, I’d bet their outrage and furor would rival a 20 point earthquake.


And I’d bet a years salary, the first question they would be asking is, why the fuck aren’t we impeaching YOU ?Do the country a favor and resign your leadership posts. You’re both a disgrace to the title.