Peace and War

Obama Peace Shirt
Why Threaten Sweet Delusion
Another Drone Strikes

By David Swanson

George W. Bush has been compared to Curious George the monkey for many years, but the comparison didn’t quite fit until now. Every Curious George story must include these plot elements:

1. The man with the yellow hat shows George something irresistible, asks him to leave it alone, and then wanders off.
2. George resists everything except temptation and causes all kinds of trouble.
3. Someone makes the bizarre claim that George has done more good than harm, gives read more

By David Swanson

Imagine if Spain indicts Gonzales, Bybee, Haynes, Yoo, Addington, and Feith, but the United States fails to extradite them and in fact appears guilty of having harbored and possibly even employed them at good salaries. Then suppose — use your imagination! — that Spain invades and occupies the United States. Now, imagine that seven years later we still aren’t happy with being occupied by Spain, and the people of Spain oppose their own government’s crimes read more

By David Swanson

Dear Producers and Editors,

Now that you’re beginning to talk about the fact that our country tortured people in order to elicit war rationales, can we talk for a minute? I’d like to point a few things out that you can verify without spending a dime on investigative reporting. First, we now know that we tortured in hopes of producing justifications for a war. Let’s suppose that this was done in “good faith” and that the lies al Libi told to stop read more

Check out our friend Mimi Kennedy who has a major role in this:

Mimi may have gotten the part because of her recording of the Downing Street Minutes.

National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance
May 11, 2009

Attorney General Eric Holder
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Sir:

We are writing on behalf of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance. We are concerned citizens who tried to prevent the illegal invasion of Iraq. While we were unsuccessful, we have been devoting much time and energy to convince Congress to end the occupation. Over time we discovered that the Bush-Cheney administration read more

By David Swanson

Imagine that tomorrow you begin to feel ill and rush to the hospital where you are eventually diagnosed with a horribly debilitating and probably incurable disease. Within a week your body and mind have deteriorated drastically. You cannot dress yourself. You have difficulty getting out of a chair or walking at all. You have no control over your bowels. You literally lack the sense to come in out of the rain or not wander into traffic. You are a danger to yourself and require read more

A 900-acre mercenary training compound has been proposed for Shenandoah County, and a citizen group has formed in opposition: RockDem.

Is Michelle Bachman the new Virgil Goode?

Or is Tom Perriello the new Virgil Goode? He once told me he’d cosponsor EFCA, had his staff correct that to say he’d “support” it, and he now says he’s read more

Jay Bybee wrote another memo that nobody has noticed, one purporting to authorize crimes far worse than torture, the same crimes the torture was itself intended to create false justifications for. On October 23, 2002, Assistant Attorney General Bybee signed a 48-page memo to the “counsel to the president” (Alberto Gonzales) titled “Authority of the President Under Domestic and International Law to Use Military read more

By David Swanson

When did recent U.S. torture begin on a major scale? When September 11, 2001, provided a weak excuse to attack Iraq, an excuse that would need some bolstering. When did Bybee send the CIA a recipe for torturing Abu Zubaydah? A week after the Downing Street meeting. When did our government waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times? The same month the bombs destroyed Baghdad. When did the intense torturing of key figures stop, although the routine torturing of thousands of read more

Congressman Jerrold Nadler has just publicly asked that the Attorney General appoint a special prosecutor. Please THANK HIM, and please ask him and ask your congress member to jointly send to Eric Holder the letter that Nadler and 55 other congress members sent to Michael Mukasey requesting a special prosecutor last summer, or an updated version thereof.

Here is a release from Nadler’s office:

CONGRESSMAN JERROLD NADLER
8th Congressional District of New York
Nadler Applauds Obama read more

The official story is that Spain has decided not to prosecute Bush’s torture lawyers. Yet the known facts suggest something else entirely.

1-We know that the prosecutor who initiated this effort wants to prosecute Bush. He wrote about it months ago. We know that he and his colleagues see targeting the lawyers first as a step in Bush’s direction and more likely to move forward than a case that starts at the top.

2-We know from Scott Horton’s reporting that Spain and the Obama read more