Saturday, January 10, 2009

THIS JUST IN! TOM AND LESLIE'S INTERESTING ADVENTURES!

BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
 
THESE REPORTERS CAUGHT UP WITH BARACK PARTY GIRL LESLIE CAGAN, LEAD SOCIALITE OF UNITED FOR PATHETIC AND JUVENILE, AS SHE PREPARED FOR A BARACK BALL.
 
FROM THE GOODWILL DRESSING ROOMS, SHE HOLLERED AT THESE REPORTERS, "GET AWAY!  I WILL NOT ANSWER WHETHER OR NOT I AM A COMMUNIST!  HOW DARE YOU ASK ME THAT!"
 
WE HADN'T ASKED THE GUILTY BARKING DOG A THING AT THAT POINT.  BUT WE DID HAVE A QUESTION: DID SHE REALLY THINK INFORMING ON OTHERS TO THE F.B.I. DURING VIETNAM WOULDN'T HAUNT HER?
 
LEAPIN' LIZARDS LESLIE SUDDENLY WANTED TO TALK ALL ABOUT WHAT SHE DESCRIBED AS HER "FLIRTATIONS AND, YES, HEAVY PETTING WITH HARD LINE COMMUNISM" -- HARD LINE? --  AS SHE ATTEMPTED TO AVOID ANSWERING THE QUESTION WE'D ASKED HER. 
 
WE OFFERED UP THREE SPECIFIC DATES WE WERE AWARE OF AND ASKED, "WERE YOU SAVING YOUR OWN ASS?  WERE YOU TRICKED AND UNAWARE YOU WERE SPEAKING TO A F.B.I. AGENT?  OR WERE YOU A PAID AGENT?"
 
LESLIE DUCKED OUT LEAVING US WITH TOM HAYDEN STANDING OUTSIDE THE DRESSING ROOM IN HIS SOILED BVDS AS HE WAITED TO TRY ON SOME "GROOVY" LOVE BEADS (IT WAS A CANDY NECKLACE, POPS NEEDS GLASSES IN HIS OLD AGE) AND "THREADS" THAT HE WAS "DYING" TO WEAR AT BARACK'S INAUGURAL.
 
"DON'T BE ASKING ME ABOUT COMMUNISM OR THE F.BI.," TOM JOKED, "BESIDES ARE THEY ACTUALLY THE SAME THING!"
 
AND SOME SAY TOM'S ONLY FUNNY IN BED.
 
AND, ACTUALLY, BED WAS WHAT WE WANTED TO ASK HIM ABOUT.  HE'S WRITTEN HOW MANY 'MEMOIRS' NOW AND WE JUST WONDERED WHEN HE WAS GOING TO GET HONEST ABOUT THE REALLY FREAKY SEX HE WAS PARTAKING IN?  WE DON'T MEAN VANILLA WITH A SPLASH OF GINGER, WE MEAN TOTALLY F**KED UP, OUTRAGE THE WORLD, FREAK SEX?
 
"A LADY NEVER KISSES AND TELLS," SAID TOM DARTING INTO THE FIRST AVAILABLE DRESSING ROOM.
 
WHAT LADY?
 
 
 
 
You Just Need a Dilettante To Know Which Way The Wind Blows.  And Tom Hayden is one -- a greying, dottering one, but a dilettante none the less.  At ZNet (link provided so you can visit the scene of his crime), Tommy list a series of wants: "our new president to succeed, restore hope, and launch a new New Deal at home, not to be distracted by a quagmire abroad."  Tom, you are now as officially nutty as Leslie Cagan and both of you should exit stage right immediately.  These are not the voices of peace, these are the hormonally charged teenagers trying to figure out why their panties and briefs get damp when Barack walks by (as outlined in the year in review). Where in Tom's 'noble' laundry list do you see the least bit of concern for Iraqis?  Poor Iraqis, Tom's all out of hope for them.
 
This is not a voice of peace, it's the sound of a suck-up who's finally spent the bulk of his divorce settlement (we always said, "Give it time, it will happen.").  And Tom's no longer interested in Iraq.  You get that from his praise for Dexter Filkins (the Falluja liar Dexy).  You get that from his 'judgment' (don't bring up his record when it comes to judgments, we'll all be laughing for days and never get a thing accomplished).  His judgment is that Iraq War is, so, like, totally over, you know, and all the way cool kids are sporting Afghanistan these days.  Tom-Tom writes, "The conditions for a massive social movement against the Iraq War are ebbing, for now, unless large-scale fighting suddenly resumes or President Obama unexpectedly caves in to the Pentagon and blatantly breaks his promise to withdraw combat troops in 16 months and all troops by 2011."  Poor Tom-Tom, he always rushed-rushed.  In all areas of life.  And now Tom-Tom ditches Iraq to move over to talking about Afghanistan because he's so very sure it's the next great frontier for the Barack Obama Movement.  Not for the peace movement, mind you.  And what's with 16-months, Tommy?  I certainly haven't forgotten when you took one line of Barack's from that absurd Houston, Texas speech and insisted (in a full column -- fool column?) that Barack needed your votes now (more than ever!) because he'd just offered a new 'plan' -- Withdrawal in 10 months!  Remember that?  "In his victory speech in Texas Tuesday, Barack Obama promised to end the Iraq war in 2009, a new committment that parallels recent [gas baggery] in The Nation."  Remember those words?
 
He's lied for so long and lied so much, he can't even keep it straight anymore.  He's honestly as manic as he was when he was rightly kicked out of the commune.  And that's only more obvious when he decides he wants to 'comfort' readers with his opinion that Iraq will now be "a low-visibility counterinsurgency war like those that ravaged Central America in the 1970s."  And that, apparently, requires no protest and doesn't disturb Tom Hayden.  Poor Iraq War, someone should have told you that Tom-Tom loses interrest in causes as quickly as he does women. 
 
Thanks for playing Tom.  Go form a B-O circle jerk with Leslie Cagan.  The two of you can argue over whether it's better to stare at the seat of Barack's pants or that really tight crotch.  And use the link to laugh.  I haven't laughed so hard since his August piece ("Dreams of Obama") where he used his children as accessories to shore up his faltering image but, somehow, forgot his adopted daughter.  Was no one supposed to notice?  Can we all expect 2009 to bring a Tommy Dearest page turner?  Apparently everyone was too busy dropping their jaws at his slur against bi-racial children in that column to notice how quickly he disappeared family. As quickly as he tries today to disappear Iraq.
 
The Old Sell-Out can't be counted on but thank goodness we have an 'independent' media, right?  No, we have a Panhandle Media and somehow FAIR forgot to call out the little stunt taking place January 20th -- see Third Sunday for more on that.
 
Instead we'll drop back to November 28th when Amnesy International issued this warning, "Thousands of Iraqis detained by US forces are at risk of torture or even execution, following the ratification of a security agreement between the US and Iraqi governments.  Under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which will take effect on 31 December, around 16,000 prisoners held by the US will be transferred to Iraqi custody.  Those at particular risk . . ."  We'll stop right there.  No need to worry because those prisoners will remain US prisoners.  They are not being transitioned.  Yes, the treaty supposedly guaranteed the handover but no one was foolish enough to fall for the treaty masquerading as a Status Of Forces Agreement, right?  Oh, some did.  Anyway, Peter Graff, Ahmed Rasheed, Khalid al-Ansary and Jon Boyle (Reuters) report, "Some prisoners held indefinitely without charge by US forces in Iraq may not be freed or given trials, even though U.S. forces lost the authority to hold them at the beginning of this year, a U.S. military spokesman said. . .  U.S. forces are holding 15,000 prisoners, most of whom have been detained without charge under the authority of a U.N. Security Council resolution which expired on Dec. 31."
 
Earlier this week (Tuesday), US House Rep John Conyers, as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, introduced the "National Commission on Presidential War Power and Civil Liberties" with Jerry Nadler, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Bill Delahunt and Eddie Bernice Johnson among the co-sponsors.  The bill argues for the establishment of "a Blue Ribbon Commission comprised of experts outsdie government service to investigate the broad range of policies of the Bush adminstration that were undertaken by the Bush administration under claims of unreviewable war powers."  Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Patrick Leahy, released three documents [PDF format warning]  from the Office of legal Counsel -- one on the White House authority to use force against Iraq, a second on the UN Security Council from November 8, 2002 and a third entitled "Re: 'Protected Persons' in Occupied Iraq" (March 18, 2004) which is the one we're focusing on.
 
This memo (25 pages plus Appendix) was written by then Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith.  The lie the White House repeated was that Geneva didn't apply to Afghanstian (legally, it should have applied) but Iraq was a war and they were following the Geneva Conventions.  That was a lie.  They were selectively following it.  Goldsmith found, W"e conclude that the following persons, if captured in occupied Iraq, are not 'protected persons' within the meaning of GC article 4: U.S. nationals, nationals of a State not bound by the Convention, nationals of a co-belligerent State, and operatives of the al Qaeda terrorist organization who are not Iraqi nationals or permanent residents of Iraq."  The White House honored Geneva selectively.  They lied to the American people yet again.  Equally disturbing is the legal opinion including pages 22 through 24 where the conditions arguing for the protection of members of a resistance movement are selectively noted by Goldsmith who attempts to impose limitations via revisionary history.  Acknowledging the need for resistance against the Nazis, he does allow Geneve would protect Germans but, by his argument, members of the resistance in Germany or Poland who were French would not be protected.  The Nazis were not limited to Germany and the resistance movement against the Nazis was an European movement -- a fact Goldsmith is either ignorant of or pretends to be.   It's an appalling and shoddy legal opinion.  He distorts or selectively ignores historical facts and when you're dealing with the Holocaust, that is especially offensive. This is a glimpse at just how sick the 'minds' at work in the current White House were.
 
So along with the approximately 16,000 prisoners the US was holding in Iraq that Amensty International was aware of, there are who knows how many others captured in Iraq and taken elsewhere?  And, no, the expiration of the UN Security Council mandate does not mean that any of them are now turned over to the Iraqi puppet government.