By David Swanson

The director of U.S. national intelligence told the House Intelligence Committee the government has the right to kill Americans abroad.

Here are 10 problems with this:

1. Acts that are crimes under national and international law don’t cease to be crimes because you cross a border.

2. Acts that are crimes under national and international law don’t cease to be crimes because you engage in them frequently. Assassinating non-Americans is just as illegal as assassinating Americans. read more

By David Swanson

Add Congressman Bill Delahunt to the list of misrepresentatives who claim to oppose wars when a Republican is president but agree to support them when a Democrat moves into the White House.

When Bush was president, Delahunt sometimes voted for war funding bills and sometimes voted against them. The inclusion in the bills of lipstick measures, such as relief for hurricane victims, etc., was not a decisive factor. Delahunt appears to have voted No when the Democratic leadership read more

By David Swanson

Last June we were handed an opportunity to block the funding of our illegal, murderous, counterproductive, catastrophic, and hated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president insisted on an off-the-books “emergency supplemental” bill, and the Senate added an IMF bailout to the bill, leading all the Republicans in the House to commit what for years they’d called treason: they all voted No on war money.

So, we only needed 39 Democrats to vote No, and we could have read more

An Appeal on “Closing Gitmo”

Given that human rights organizations and activist groups want rights restored, not abuses moved from one location to another,

Given that said organizations are independent of and not legally bound in subservience to the Democratic Party,

Given that the funding to close Gitmo and move that particular illegal death camp to Illinois will be included in the “emergency war supplemental”,

Given that this will likely lead all the Republicans in the House read more

Congressman Payne: I Won’t Oppose War Money Because Obama’s President

Congressman Donald Payne (D., N.J.) has voted against war funding bills for years. Last summer he was one of 32 heroes to vote No under intense pressure from the White House to vote Yes. When I asked him a couple of years ago to sign onto impeaching Bush he immediately said “Sure!” and he did it.

Today I asked him if he would commit to voting No on the next $33 billion for war. I asked him privately, read more

Patrick Coburn, whom I’m about to follow on Ian Master’s radio show on KPFK, writes that Tony Blair is more incompetent than dishonest. Examples: he didn’t know toppling Saddam Hussein would benefit Iran’s government. He didn’t know the occupation of Iraq would fail. He didn’t know Zarqawi went to Kurdistan and does not constitute a link between Iraq and 9-11. He didn’t know the Americans were just as incompetent as himself.

But we know that Blair agreed read more

Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr.

We do remember that you said this:

"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift read more

By David Swanson

Silly me. I thought I could comment on something that was in the news without proving that it was in the news. Maybe this will help:

UN says Afghans slain in troop raid were students
By DUSAN STOJANOVIC, Associated Press Writer, Thu Dec 31, 1:26 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091231/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan_un

KABUL – The United Nations said Thursday that a weekend raid by foreign troops in a tense eastern Afghan province killed eight local students and warned against nighttime read more

By David Swanson

The occupied government of Afghanistan and the United Nations have both concluded that U.S.-led troops recently dragged eight sleeping children out of their beds, handcuffed some of them, and shot them all dead. While this apparently constitutes an everyday act of kindness, far less intriguing than the vicious singeing of his pubic hairs by Captain Underpants, it is at least a variation on the ordinary American technique of murdering men, women, and children by the dozens with read more

By David Swanson

After two stolen elections by Bush-Cheney, an election of Grandpa John “Bomb Bomb Iran” McCain and his sorority president sidekick — whether honest or blatantly stolen and tolerated — would have said something hugely depressing and debilitating about the American people. But arguably it could have saved a great many lives around the world. Here’s how.

Premise number 1: Presidents will fight as many and as large wars as they possibly can. Presidents read more

1. You’ve got no documents. You immigrated here. You sign up to go kill people in Iraq or Afghanistan. You’re promised citizenship. You manage to survive. You’re deported.

2. You sign up. You do your required time in Iraq. You survive. You’re stop-lossed. … But, wait, that’s not new. This is: You produce a song about your stop-loss. You go to jail.

3. You sign up. You do your required time in Iraq. You have sex there. You’re court martialed.

Be read more

By David Swanson

The U.S. House of Representatives approved on Wednesday another $130 billion for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and (it goes without saying) Pakistan, money that will be used to continue the wars and to escalate the war in Afghanistan. In the spring, they will try to pass another $30 billion or more, labeled as funding for the escalation, but 4 out of 5 spineless warmongering congress members will tell their constituents at that point that they can’t vote against something read more

Listen to audio clip here mp3.

By David Swanson

The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote today, Wednesday, December 16th, on a war funding bill that will pay for the escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Nobody will tell you that. They’ll tell you it’s a “defense” bill, and that a small part of it — a mere $130 billion — is for wars (which therefore have something to do with “defense”). They’ll tell you the $130 billion was approved in June before the announcement read more

More war and more money for war—so what else is new? This time the war-funding bill includes money to extend unemployment benefits for the many Americans who have lost their jobs from the economic meltdown.
At a time when so many Americans are desperately seeking employment, others have lost their homes or are about to, and still others are seeing their wages cut back, the US government is about to authorize $130 billion more to spend on the futile effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan, despite the overwhelming opposition to it.

And they will likely get away with it, in part because the bill includes funding to extend unemployment benefits making it less likely that Congress members will vote against it.

Tell Congress, Vote Yes to extended unemployment benefits — No to more money for war. Click here to take action.

Congress members will soon break for the holidays. They will return to their districts to celebrate with their friends and families while many of their constituents have lost their jobs, their homes, their read more

By David Swanson
Speech at White House, December 12, 2009

video below

Can you imagine the outcries of national shame from liberal commentators if George W. Bush had accepted a peace prize by advocating for war and announcing his right to launch wars of aggression? What an embarrassment that would have been!

But Bush would have made such a speech with fewer troops in the field, fewer mercenaries in the field, a smaller war budget, a smaller military budget, bases in fewer nations, the imperial read more