CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O IS WORKING HARD! IN FACT, HE'LL SPEND 8 OF THE NEXT 13 DAYS . . . .
AT THE WHITE HOUSE WORKING ON UNEMPLOYMENT ISSUES?
WRONGO!
HE'LL SPEND IT ON THE ROAD! RAISING MONEY FOR DEMOCRATS! HE'LL WORK FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY! IF NOT FOR THE COUNTRY!
IN OTHER NEWS, THE WHITE HOUSE LIFTED THE BAN ON . . . .
GAYS SERVING IN THE MILITARY?
NO! FOR THAT, THEY NEED A YEAR-LONG STUDY! TO LIFT THE BAN ON OFFSHORE DRILLING, THEY NEED NO STUDY!
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Well look who crawled out from under his rock, Pockmarks On His Soul Tom Hayden. Tom's suddenly interested in wars again which can only mean one thing: Bob Woodward's new book will be one of the top five best sellers of the year. So Tom shows up at The Nation to write, "Only public opinion and a forceful Congressional bloc can accelerate Obama's slow transition out of Afghanistan." What a brave and helpful little soul. Is there a rest home for useless? Tom wants to show up and immediately cast himself in a leadership role (Boomer White Male Entitlement) and tell us all how the Afghanistan War can be stopped . . . but note how he says nothing about the ongoing Iraq War. That's because the old fool had plenty of advice there and none of that worked out either. In fact, people did what Tom Hayden told them to do, they mobilized opinion against the Iraq War (actually they did that before Tom started saying it needed to be done), they gave Democrats both houses of Congress and the White House. Yet the Iraq War goes on. And instead of apologizing -- let alone calling out the elected Democrats -- Tom Hayden thinks he can brush it all under a rug, pretend like the Iraq War doesn't stil go on and tell us how it's going to be? Tom Hayden sit your ass down. No one needs to hear from you, Pock Marks. No one.
Your bravado is embarrassing. Your silence on Iraq shameful. Just sit your tired ass down because no one needed to hear from you since those who can't take accountability cannot be trusted.
The Washington Post is currently doing an unofficial survey, "The Cost of War: Are Americans disconnected from the country's wars?" Obviously, Tom Hayden is.
And while "Tom Hayden Democrats" (Barack's slur if Tom-Tom has a problem with it) express selective outrage about selective wars, libertarian Brian Irving (Nolan Chart) speaks with Libertarian presidential candidate R. Lee Wrights who states, "Most Americans are untouched by the war, other than having to endure invasions of their civil liberties when they try to get on an airplane. During the Vietnam war, the anti-war movement was galvanized by the images of death and destruction on their television screens. Sadly, today Americans are either numb or indifferent to very similar images coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan."
Numb or indifferent? Tom Hayden's the latter. Completely indifferent. By their actions, they will reveal themselves; by their lies, you will know them.
Doubt it? To grasp the truth on Tom, we need to turn to Bradley Manning. Monday April 5th, WikiLeaks released US military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the assault including two Reuters journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. Monday June 7th, the US military announced that they had arrested Bradley Manning and he stood accused of being the leaker of the video. This month, the military charged Manning. Leila Fadel (Washington Post) reported in August that Manning had been charged -- "two charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The first encompasses four counts of violating Army regulations by transferring classified information to his personal computer between November and May and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system. The second comprises eight counts of violating federal laws governing the handling of classified information." Manning has been convicted in the public square despite the fact that he's been convicted in no state and has made no public statements -- despite any claims otherwise, he has made no public statements. Manning is now in Virginia, under military lock and key and still not allowed to speak to the press. The Bradley Manning Support Network notes that today is day 139 of imprisonment for Bradley. They recap the video he is charged with releasing:
The video, available at www.collateralmurder.com, shows Americans shooting and killing 11 individuals who do not return fire. Two of those killed were Reuters' employees, including 22 year old Reuters' photojournalist Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver, 40 year old Saeed Chmagh.
The video includes an audio recording of the internal commentary by the American soldiers before, during and after the shooting. The soldiers repeatedly request and are granted permission to open fire, encourage one another and joke about the dead and dying civilians. (Full transcript available here)
A total of 11 adults were killed. Two children, passengers in a van that arrived on the scene after the first bout of gunfire had ceased, were seriously injured when the Apache helicopter opened fire on their van.
In 2007, Reuters called for an investigation into the attack. In response, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad stated: "There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force."
Read the Army's report on the death's of two Reuter's employees and the wounding of the two children.
There was no investigation of the nine other deaths.
No charges have been filed against the American soldiers in the Apache helicopter who shot and killed the civilians in the video.
A slaughter in Iraq, captured on video is released and where's the leader of the "Tom Hayden Democrats"? Penning a piece of garbage for The Nation entitled "Despite WikiLeaks Revelations, Congress Votes for War Funding" (July 28, 2010). By their actions, you will know them; by their LIES, they will reveal themselves. In that column -- linked to, read it an see -- Tom-Tom bemoans a Congressional vote.
Never was the case so weak for throwing another $33 billion into the Afghanistan sinkhole, but that's what a defensive US Congress did anyway on Tuesday evening. The vote was 308-114, with Republicans supplying most of the prowar votes.
Let's fact check the whore. New York Times, Carl Hulse and Jackie Calme reporting on that House vote the day it went down, "The House on Tuesday approved and sent to President Obama an overdue measure to pay for combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq [. . .]". Get it? The moneys went to fund the ongoing was in Iraq and Afghanistan but the whore Tom Hayden deliberately lied to Nation readers. Deliberately? Read the entire damn article and watch Tom Hayden take one Iraq detail after another and transpose it to Afghanistan. For example, read this section and try not to laugh at Tom for being such a transparent whore:
The Pentagon also is seeking to muzzle and imprison the American Private First Class Bradley Manning, 22, charged with downloading the documents and sending them to Assange.
What was Bradley charged with? Chris McGreal (Guardian) reported:
A US army intelligence analyst was today charged with leaking a highly classified video of American forces killing unarmed civilians in Baghdad and secret diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.
Private Bradley Manning, who had a top-secret security clearance, has been held in military custody in Kuwait since his arrest in Iraq in May over the video, which caused great embarrassment to the US military establishment. It showed an air strike that killed a dozen people, including two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency. The air crew is heard falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then laughing at the dead. WikiLeaks gave the video the title Collateral Murder.
R. Lee Wrights stated, "Most Americans are untouched by the war, other than having to endure invasions of their civil liberties when they try to get on an airplane. During the Vietnam war, the anti-war movement was galvanized by the images of death and destruction on their television screens. Sadly, today Americans are either numb or indifferent to very similar images coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan." What happens with WikLeaks? Video of an Iraqi slaughter is ignored by Tom Hayden in real time and then, three months later, he uses revisionary tactics to make it about Afghanistan.
That's disgusting and it dishonors the Iraqi dead. Tom Hayden's filth needs to be called out, not published by The Nation magazine. Look it, we all get it. Tired and ugly Tom whored for Barack like no one else in 2007 and 2008. He trashed bi-racials in order to do so (that 2008 'joke' was offensive and he's very lucky that only California papers picked up on it), he trashed the truth. Tom-Tom was forever going to hold Barack's feet to the fire but never did. He did manage to threaten violence in Denver if Barack didn't get the nomination -- poor Tom-Tom, that's the same video footage that features him FORCING his female assistant to stand in front of the camera and twirl around to show how 'pretty' she is, always the sexual harasser -- and he did manage to pimp the lie that Barack would pull all US troops out of Iraq ten months after being sworn in. None of that came to pass, now did it? So the little whore tries to ignore Iraq instead of taking accountability.
As the cry goes: No accountability, no justice. It's past time that faux activists like Tom Hayden were called out. A sexual aggressor who makes his young female assistant 'pose' for news cameras should have been more than in 2008 but he got a pass. Now he gets a pass for taking the pain and suffering of Iraqis and transposing it on Afghanistan. Tom Hayden is the reason that the Iraq War continues -- the inability of those opposed to the wars to hold people like him accountable, to let them continue to think they're 'leading lights' of the peace movement, to refuse to shout him down. Until the movement finds the strength to check Tom, it's not going anywhere. But he will continue to attempt to play the face of the movement before the cameras.
The Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation's Jeff Stack demonstrates (at the Columbia Tribune) that straight talk isn't impossible:
We should promptly and completely end the U.S. occupations/wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and immediately end the drone attacks in central Asia, recognizing these as good first steps toward making our nation and world safer, healthier and more stable economically.
Nine years ago last Thursday, the United States initiated war in Afghanistan with its bombing campaign, now morphed into an occupation in the midst of a civil war. Congress abdicated its constitutional charge the following year on Oct. 10, 2003, "authorizing" President George W. Bush to invade Iraq -- home to, not coincidentally, then the world's second-largest known oil reserves.
The toll from these U.S. interventions is staggering. More than a million Iraqis have been killed (300,000 by U.S. troops, the rest through sectarian violence), according to the British medical journal Lancet. Tens of thousands of Afghans have died.
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