Agreement between congressional Republicans and Democrats, authentic bipartisanship, is rarely witnessed today. But there is one part of U.S. policy where the D's and the R's completely agree. Endless war and indefinite detention…even of U.S citizens. Yesterday the Senate passed a $662 billion defense bill 93-7. Nothing passes the Senate by such a wide margin any more. The Senate action is a clear illustration of what our Leadership holds dear. Unquestioned bipartisan approval to fund America's Worldwide Empire…..and to continue, indefinitely, our worldwide "war" against a tactic.

American Leadership stands united on one thing and one thing only….waging endless war against radicalized Islam. "The Long War." A doubling of defense spending has not been enough to bring the unsophisticated and stateless extremists to justice. Ten years of killing, ten years of bombing, ten years of expanding the Empire into many middle eastern nations has not been enough for our Leaders. We must press on to finally destroy the tactic of killing one's self in order to kill and terrify others. An accomplishment that is entirely impossible to attain.

Inside the lengthy defense spending bill, in section 1031, Congress has laid out new detention of detainee guidelines which include indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens without the muss and fuss of constitutional guarantees against depriving U.S. citizens of due process. Guantanamo is not just for foreigners anymore…..

Sen.(Rand) Paul: “My question would be under the provisions would it be possible that an American citizen then could be declared an enemy combatant and sent to Guantanamo Bay and detained indefinitely.”

Sen. McCain: “I think that as long as that individual, no matter who they are, if they pose a threat to the security of the United States of America, should not be allowed to continue that threat.”

Here’s what Sen. (Lindsey) Graham said in the Senate on Nov. 17:

“1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”

For those who actually still believe that our government Leaders are prohibited from depriving citizens of their constitutional rights….as Ron Paul and I do….here's the Doc's take…

Rep. Ron Paul calls this bill “one of the most anti-liberty pieces of legislation of our lifetime.” He says it’s “destructive of our Constitution.”

And Ron's son…

His son Sen. Rand Paul says, “There is one thing and one thing only protecting innocent Americans from being detained at will at the hands of a too-powerful state – our constitution, and the checks we put on government power. Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well, then the terrorists have won.”

Well, Rand…the "terrorist have won". But really…hasn't that been clear for a long time now? Box cutter wielding international criminals have forced the U.S. to take once-guaranteed rights away from every American citizen. Our Leaders over the last 10 years have convinced us that sacrificing our rights is part and parcel of the way we'll "defeat the enemy."

The Pauls, especially Ron, have given the neo-cons in his party and in the Democratic Party a fit. He's a thorn in the side of Empire Expanding Neo-Cons because he keeps bringing up that "goddamn piece of paper" which used to be the American contract, the American charter. But as yesterday's vote proves, our Leaders no longer view the Constitution as binding.

If the Senate bill is reconciled in the House and signed by Obama (he has threatened a veto, probably won't)….any U.S. citizen, on U.S. soil, who the President deems an enemy combatant, and only on his say so….can be taken into custody and transferred to Guantanamo prison and possibly never heard from again. And that's if the President at the time doesn't order that citizen's assassination first. No trial, no charges, no lawyers, no due process…..nothing. Indefinite detention of a U.S. citizen and without any thread of due process as guaranteed under the "goddamn piece of paper."

So while the Village continues to stoke the bogus argument every day that Obama and the Democrats are orchestrating a huge government takeover of all things involving economics…..Democrats and Republicans are working together to…well…orchestrate a huge government takeover of our Constitutional rights.

If TEA Party supporters were as diligent at protecting citizens from the threat of indefinite detention without due process…as they are about protecting citizens from the threat of taking responsibility for their own health insurance…..maybe the TEAs, the ACLU and OWS could have stood together to fend off yesterday's huge governmental power grab.

President Obama's biggest disappointment, at least to progressives, has been his, I guess, "rebirth", as a neo-conservative.

During Obama's campaign for the presidency, he made political hay out of George and Dick's offshore gulags, torture of detainees, unprovoked military attacks and occupations of countries posing no threat to America, eavesdropping on Americans without warrants, secrecy, and much more. Rightfully so. The Bush years were marked by an expansion of presidential powers in violation of the Constitution….and the worst part is, the Bushies got away with all of it…thus setting a precedent.

But now Obama has made the Bushie doctrine, his doctrine. Now, the lawlessness of the neo-con Bush regime has been made into a bipartisan, and probably permanent, national doctrine.

Obama has continued the neo-conservative and lawless foreign policies of his predecessors. What's more, Obama has expanded those lawless powers….with his shiny new lawlessness theory that the President has the power to order the assassination of U.S. citizens on only his say so.

Indeed, all the ususal-suspect neo-cons,….Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Dick Cheney, many others….have heaped high praise on Obama the Neo-con….especially because Obama ordered the assassination of the U.S. citizen, Awlaki. It's worthy of remark that the only policy with which neo-con renegades from the Bush administration agree with Obama is on Obama's embrace of neo-con lawlessness.

That said….and with the understanding that American neo-cons have long ago targeted Iran for takeover…..it's interesting to see the Obama administration, including Obama and Hillary Clinton, hellbent to make something huge out of the recent allegations of an assassination plot by two Iranians against the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.

(AG Eric) Holder called the bomb plot a flagrant violation of U.S. and international law. And Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said, "We will not let other countries use our soil as their battleground."

Behold the double standard. Or is it simply a total lack of self-awareness?

Since 9-11-2001, the United States government has declared that the entire globe is a "battlefield" where U.S. military forces have the perfect right to wage war just about any way they see fit. In other words, at the same time that DOJ officials are claiming that "other countries" cannot be permitted to "use our soil as a battleground"….U.S. officials have claimed the unique right among all nations…to "use the soil" of any country as our "battlefield."

Chalk it up to "American exceptionalism"….or blindness….or whatever. The point becomes: do as we say, not as we do.

Two weeks ago, the United States assassinated one of its enemies in Yemen, on Yemeni soil. If the U.S. believes it has the right to assassinate enemies like Anwar Awlaki anywhere in the world in the name of a "war on terror" that has no geographical limitation, how can it then argue that other nations don't have a similar right to track down their enemies and kill them wherever they're found?

Other than simply chanting very loudly…U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A…..in order to drown out those objecting to such an obvious double standard….the U.S. really cannot argue convincingly that we, of all nations, are the only ones who are allowed to use the soil of foreign countries to conduct military adventures against our "enemies."

Why is it that the U.S., alone, should have the power to wage war against alleged enemies anywhere we choose to wage that war…..yet other nations shouldn't also have that power?

The L.A. Times editor finishes with a huge understatement…

The world is unlikely to accept that the United States has a right to behave as it wishes without accountability all around the globe and that other nations do not.

Ya' think?

If you really want to find out what this alleged Iranian plot to off a Saudi ambassador is about….read Glenn Greenwald's excellent take. Here's a description by folks who knew the alleged plotter which describes him as hapless….just like many of the others whom U.S. officials have coaxed into staging a plot against the U.S., and then later, announced how safe those officials had kept us by breaking up a domestic plot they, themselves, nurtured into existence.

But the ass-kicker of the day on this story goes to President Obama,…

“There’s a great similarity between how Iran operates and how North Korea operates, a willingness on their part to break international rules, to flout international norms, to not live up to their own commitments. And each time they do that, the United States will join with its partners and allies in making sure that they pay a price,” Obama said.

If the similarity between how N. Korea and Iran operate is….."a willingness…to break international rules, to flout international norms…"….then, the United States of America operates in a similar fashion to N. Korea and Iran.

What else could violating the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment(s) be called? I mean other than operating similarly to Iran or N. Korea?

How about Guantonomo? Our offshore, secret, prisons? Isn't there a "great similarity" between the U.S. and N.Korea and Iran concerning gulags?

How about the American violation of international norms prohibiting attacking a sovereign nation (Iraq) which poses no threat to the U.S? Hell, Iran doesn't even do stuff like that….only the U.S.

Obama may think he is standing strong by talking all Cheney-like over this most recent ginned-up emergency. But the rest of the world's occupants who heard Obama's words yesterday recognize the gargantuan double standard and lack of self-awareness contained in his words.

After almost 10 years of battling a stubborn grassroots insurgency financed by shadowy anonymous donors here at home, a somber U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced yesterday that the United States of America would surrender it's rule of law, effective immediately, and await further orders from the insurgency's leadership.

The announcement was not unexpected.

In November of 2009, I announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other individuals would stand trial in federal court for their roles in the terrorist attacks on our country on September the 11th of 2001.

….

Had this case proceeded in Manhattan or in an alternative venue in the United States, as I seriously explored in the past year, I am confident that our justice system would have performed with the same distinction that has been its hallmark for over two hundred years.

Unfortunately, since I made that decision, Members of Congress have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to trial in the United States, regardless of the venue.

…..

Members of Congress simply do not have access to the evidence and other information necessary to make prosecution judgments. Yet they have taken one of the nation’s most tested counterterrorism tools off the table and tied our hands in a way that could have serious ramifications.

Congress and American voters have been waffling on whether there is any further need for a rule of law after the 9-11 event. Critics of the centuries-old U.S. legal framework have relentlessly argued that our federal courts are no longer safe venues for trials…..with reliable guilty verdicts no longer guaranteed. These same critics have said that trials by juries post 9-11 are too high profile, too expensive and unsafe from jihadist attacks.

Furthermore, Congressional insurgents maintain that our stateside maximum security prisons…..the so-called SuperMax prisons, from which no one has ever escaped…..would be easy lock-picking, escape-hatches for our new superhuman enemy.

Even though the U.S. defeated the mighty Axis powers of WW2 without sacrificing it's rule of law…..even though our most dangerous and powerful enemy, the Soviet Empire, was successfully worn down without offshore secret torture prisons or newfangled systems of jurisprudence…..today's shoe and underwear bombing enemy, today's box-cutter-equipped jihadists, pose too much of a threat today for us to rely on some dusty, outdated rule of law.

Holder's announcement yesterday is the natural progression for a nation which has been successfully propagandized by shadowy donors and Congressional insurgents over nearly 10 years. It is most definitely a truth that if something is repeated enough times, that something is eventually believed by a majority. A majority in the U.S. now fully embrace the lie that since 9-11, "everything has changed."

I am embarassed for my country. It is neither "free" any longer, nor "brave."

And so, with Holder's capitulation to homegrown, insurgent political forces…..we proudly acknowledge that we now try international criminals in undisclosed torture centers outside the U.S., in secrecy, by military tribunals akin to those of banana republic dictatorships. Guantanamo stays open…..and America's proud fearmongers celebrate our new symbol of exceptionalism.

With yesterday's announcement to America and to the world…..the often-cited American "winning hearts and minds" slogan enters permanent retirement. Osama has won the battle of the slogans…..a win which will have repercussions for a very, very long time.

First they came for our private electronic communications. It was, indeed, illegal for them to eavesdrop without warrants…..but we allowed it. Then they came for our freedom to travel. Passports required, shoes and belts removed, crotches groped, scanners scanning. And then they gave new powers to the Commander Guy. Powers to order the assassination of U.S. citizens, powers to declare anything and everything a state secret, powers to wage war anywhere, anytime and without the approval of anyone.

Then medieval torture techniques, techniques ruled illegal and unacceptable for over 200 years, were declared useful tools to be used, with doctors standing at the ready naturally, in our new Long War.

And finally, with Attorney General Holder's announcement yesterday, our overlords have declared that the rule of law in the United States has become fully optional. As a citizen of this United States it is no longer true that you have a guarantee to not be cruelly and unusually punished. You no longer have a guaranteed right to a trial by a jury of your peers. You no longer have a right to privacy in your possessions, your papers, or your most intimate of communications.

Regardless of whether Osama Bin Laden is ever brought to justice, America has already lost the ridiculously named "war on terror." The very virtues and values once-cherished by a patriotic people have been freely given up over the last ten years in exchange for some fantastical "24" perception of security.

The insurgents of fear have won.

In December of last year I wrote about the torturing of U.S. Army private Bradley Manning. Held at that point for 7 months without a trial for allegedly stealing and leaking classified information, Manning had fallen victim to the "everything has changed since 9-11" American paradigm.

Today, Manning is still being tortured just as he has been for almost one full year……yet still no trial, no due process.

Who's responsible for this barbaric, unAmerican behavior?

Barack Obama.

Just recently, State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley responded to a question regarding Manning's treatment.

…one young man said he wanted to address "the elephant in the room". What did Crowley think, he asked, about Wikileaks? About the United States, in his words, "torturing a prisoner in a military brig"? Crowley didn’t stop to think. What’s being done to Bradley Manning by my colleagues at the Department of Defense "is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid" .

During the Q&A, Mr. Crowley stated that he felt Bradley Manning, who has been in military custody since May 2010 for his connection to WikiLeaks, is being "mistreated" while in custody.

When Mr. Crowley said that, people in the room applauded. He was later asked by a BBC reporter in the room if everything he said today was "on the record," to which he said yes

And for his candor and honesty, P.J Crowley was promptly fired forced to resign by President Obama.

CNN reports, Crowley has "abruptly resigned" under "pressure from White House officials because of controversial comments he made last week about the Bradley Manning case."

Telling the truth equals "controversial comments."

In his resignation letter, and to his credit, Crowley was blunt and reasonable….

"My recent comments regarding the conditions of the pre-trial detention of Private First Class Bradley Manning were intended to highlight the broader, even strategic impact of discreet actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership.

"The exercise of power in today's challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values,"

Straight talk…..and yet in today's post 9-11 America….forbidden talk. America is now a place, similar to the old Soviet Union, where truth spoken openly never goes unpunished.

What did our Grand Inquisitor President have to say about all this? On Friday, President George W. Obama was asked about Manning's treatment and Crowley's evaluation of that treatment….

Obama revealed that he had asked Pentagon officials "whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of (Manning's) confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards."

In a comment that drew howls of protest from liberals, Obama added that Pentagon officials "assure me that they are. I can't go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Private Manning's safety as well."

As a side note here….it's interesting to see CNN's characterization…"a comment that drew howls of protest from liberals." Were there no protests, or howling from conservative Americans? Why is that?

Obama, like Bush before him, simply regurgitated what Army leaders told him about Manning. Even though military psychologists had determined that Manning was not a suicide threat….Obama repeated the lie that Manning's mistreatment was for his own "safety."

It's a sad state of affairs, especially so after Rumsfeld, Cheney and Tenet had "assured" President Bush there were WMD in Iraq.

The objective of our Emperor here is not the torturing of Bradley Manning….that is simply a means to an end. That end is getting Julian Assange of WikiLeaks…..getting him by hook or by crook. Assange has embarassed U.S. leaders through his release of state department cables and military video. Military authorities believe…but cannot prove….that Manning conspired with Assange to blow the whistle on egregious behavior by branches of Obama's Empire.

Obama's purpose in having Bradley Manning tortured is to coerce a confession…..truthful or not….which implicates Assange with Manning's theft and distribution of previously secret information. Once that confession was extracted….it was Obama's goal to extradite Assange to the U.S. where he most likely would never be seen or heard from again.

All of this is symptomatic of presidential lawlessness. Lawlessness which was rampant following 9-11 has now settled in as our new status quo. The American president can now order torture, eavesdropping, assassination, or the indefinite detention without trial of any one…..U.S. citizen or not….without fear of any legal consequences.

As Commander in Chief, Barack Obama is a miserable failure. A man who campaigned often and loudly about the unConstitutional actions of his predecessors has, by his continuation and expansion of them, institutionalized those same unConstitutional actions.

No change…..and no hope.

In June of 2009 I blogged this….

There's no question now that Obama is pro-actively working to protect the Bush/Cheney criminal syndicate from any and all accountability. If Obama's administration continues down this path, and there's no reason to think otherwise, then Obama, himself, will be complicit in the obstruction of justice coverup of the Bush/Cheney crimewave.

Now, with the latest information dump by WikiLeaks, we learn more evidence of President Obama's conspiracy to coverup for the international crimes of his predecessors.

March, 2009: Spanish human rights group, the Association for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners requests Spain's National Court to indict 6 ex-Bushies for "creating a legal framework that allegedly permitted torture." The six Bushies were Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, Dick Cheney, William Haynes, Doug Feith, Jay Bybee and John Yoo.

The human rights group contended that Spain had a duty to open an investigation under the nation's "universal jurisdiction" law, which permits its legal system to prosecute overseas human rights crimes involving Spanish citizens and residents. Five Guantanamo detainees, the group maintained, fit that criteria.

By April 1st, 2009 the U.S. State Department was involved. The chief prosecutor in the Spanish complaint was Javier Zaragoza. According to David Corn's deciphering of the WikiLeak State Dept. cables, the acting deputy chief of the U.S. embassy in Spain, after speaking to Zaragoza, said in one of those cables…"that this was a very serious matter for the USG."

The Spanish representatives in that meeting with U.S. embassy officials…"expressed their concern at the case but stressed the independence of the Spanish judiciary."

Two weeks later Republican Judd Gregg "raised the issue" with Spanish representatives at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On April 15, 2009 Republican Mel Martinez met with acting Spanish foreign minister Angel Lossada. A WikiLeaks cable reveals what Martinez said in that meeting….."underscored that the prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in the U.S. and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship" of the the two countries.

The very next day, April 16, 2009….

2009, Attorney General Conde-Pumpido publicly declared that he would not support the criminal complaint, calling it "fraudulent" and political. If the Bush officials had acted criminally, he said, then a case should be filed in the United States.

April 17, 2009 from WikiLeaks cable…. "Conde-Pumpido's public announcement follows outreach to [Government of Spain] officials to raise USG deep concerns on the implications of this case."

emptywheel at FireDogLake….

it’s worth noting the timing of the cable: April 17, 2009. That is, the day after the Administration released the torture memos….and said there would be no prosecutions"

From the WikiLeaks dump dated April 17, 2009…..

(Chief prosecutor) Zaragoza has also told us that if a proceeding regarding this matter were underway in the U.S., that would effectively bar proceedings in Spain. We intend to further explore this option with him informally…. while making it clear that the USG has not made a decision to follow this course of action.

Spain would effectively bar proceedings to prosecute the Torture Gang of Six if U.S. "proceedings regarding this matter were underway."

That's where Obama's sleight of hand implicates him in the Bush era crimes. Obama ordered an Office of Professional Responsibility investigation into the legality of the torture memoes which concluded that authors, Yoo and Bybee, committed no crimes. Then, AG Eric Holder ordered the same guy who cleared CIA officials of wrongdoing in the destruction of CIA torture tapes, U.S. Attorney, John Durham,…to…

….recommend to me whether there is sufficient predication for a full investigation into whether the law was violated in connection with the interrogation of certain detainees.

How's that review going after over a year?

That review is ongoing and no decision has been made about launching a full-scale criminal inquiry.

Summary: President Obama wasn't going to "look backward" even if huge conspiracies of international criminality by Bush era goons were obvious to the world and most Americans. To assist his criminal predecessors in the White House, when Spain moved to do what America would not, Obama's administration intervened with actions of international political Kabuki theater.

Obama ordered a review of the "torture memo" authors which cleared Bybee, Yoo and others of any wrongdoing in "legalizing" torture. Obama, then, conspired to stop Spain's investigation into Bush-era war crimes by convincing Spanish authorities that the U.S. would investigate the charges themselves. AG Holder, at Obama's request, appointed the same U.S Attorney who cleared Jose Rodriquez of destroying CIA torture tapes….without ever questioning Rodriquez….to investigate whether anyone ever tortured anybody.

Not a peep has been forthcoming from that investigation, nor will there be.

President Obama, for whatever freaking reason, has purposely made himself an accomplice in the coverup of Bush administration war crimes.

Embarassment isn't a sufficient enough word anymore…..doesn't quite capture the powerlessness one feels as one watches a nation disintegrate into a state of ignorant confusion.

On 9-11, 19 extremist Muslims hijacked planes and crashed them into buildings killing almost 3000 U.S. citizens. We were told by the president at the time that those 19 attackers did the deed because of America's "freedoms." For some unexplained-at-the-time reason, those hijackers, and the leaders who sent them, "hated our freedoms."

In Osama Bin Laden's two fatwahs of 1996 and 1998, he lays out his justifications for conducting extremist acts against America and Americans. Hating U.S. freedoms is not one of the reasons given.

Instead, Bin Laden talks about America's first war with Iraq, the presence of U.S. military forces in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim lands, the devastating sanctions against the Iraqi people during the 90's, and America's unquestioning support of Israel while Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are basically being held hostage.

Here is Bin Laden…..

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.

…….

….if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

Don't misunderstand. In posting Bin Laden's ramblings, I do not defend Bin Laden or anything he has done. Violence is never the answer, and, transparently, Bin Laden has a few religious screws missing.

At the same time, the United States population has never had clearly explained to them the answer to the question, "why do they hate us and want to kill us?"

Whether it's the blindness caused by a misguided understanding of 'American exceptionalism'…..my country, right or wrong stuff…..or whether it's the ignorance of Americans so gullible to believe whatever even a failed and disgraced president utters……whatever the reason…..we're now 9 years into some ludicrously named "war on terror" and Americans are more confused and ignorant than ever.

My point here is that extremist Muslims have been riled up against the actions and non-actions of the U.S. for a good long time. It is only the Americans who refuse to be confronted with the reasons why guys like Bin Laden seek to retaliate.

When Abu Ghraib torture pictures surfaced, we were told that America couldn't see those pictures because our troops would be endangered if they became public. Obama flip-flopped on releasing the second batch of 'America torturing' pictures for just that reason. Our leaders, once again, were being actively dishonest about explaining "why they hate us."

What looked like an attempt to cover up war crimes was explained away as "endangering the troops." Ignorant Americans stayed clueless about "why they hate us."

Now the confusion and stupidity and political manipulation has gotten so out of hand, that we find Defense Secretary Gates calling some nothingburger down in Florida….telling him that if he burns Korans on Saturday…..he will….wait for it….."endanger the troops."

Do you know who has "endangered the troops?" Our leaders. By not educating the American people about "why they hate us", by pre-emptive wars of choice, by opening and keeping open Guantanomo, by continuing renditions, "interrogations" and assassination programs, by escalating the U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan, by the 50,000 occupational troops still in Iraq, by America's continued failure to address the Palestinian problem…….by all of that plus more…..our leaders are "endangering our troops."

Yet, in our current state of ignorant confusion, we find Hillary, Gates, Obama, Petreaus and the usual-suspect Village assh*les all going ballistic over some no-name religious nut down in Florida. We're being told by all the Very Serious people that if a no-name religious nut burns a few Korans tomorrow, then, worldwide Muslims will be inflamed and then guess what? "Our troops will be endangered."

Extremist Muslims who want to kill Americans, like Bin Laden's minions, have been inflamed for a very, very long time. Extremist Muslims in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere don't require any more evidence to be inflamed. Bin Laden made it clear over a decade ago.

9 years out and now it's Americans who are being inflamed to hate all Muslims for stated reasons that even morons could identify as crass political posturing. It's Americans who are ignorant and gullible about why 9-11 happened. It's Americans who are being told that they must give up their rights or our "troops will be endangered."

It's Americans who are becoming self-enslaved by their own ignorance…….and it's ugly to watch.

UGLY UPDATE: Pentagon plans to destroy 10,000 books.

Robert Gibbs throws a Sarah Palin-like temper tantrum….

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

March 12, 2010, Blog of Mass Destruction: Different President, Same Lawlessness:"President Obama, despite his many campaign attacks on the "lawless" Bush-Cheney regime, has continued those same Bush policies."

But you see….saying that the decisions made by President Obama are similar to those made by George W. Bush…..is evidence of illegal drug use, or insanity.

No, not evidence of drug use or insanity…..instead, evidence of some liberals paying attention and stating the facts.

Glenn Greenwald….

…. he (Obama) has claimed the power to imprison people for life with no charges and to assassinate American citizens without due process, intensified the secrecy weapons and immunity instruments abused by his predecessor, and found all new ways of denying habeas corpus.

Drug testing may be in order,….but after looking at Greenwald's links…..I'm thinking those needing to piss in a cup are found inside the White House.

Candidate Obama, rightly, badmouthed the lawlessness of a neo-conservative Bush presidency. President Obama has only continued that neo-conservative lawlessness, and in a few cases, even broadened the lawlessness.

But just calling folks who point out the truth about Obama's presidency, "crazy", or in need of drug testing……wasn't quite enough for Mr. Gibbs. Oh, no. Obama's communication secretary just had to go all full-metal jacket wingnut.

“They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

“They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

That is the kind of stuff the Fox crowd, the Dittoheads and the Palinistas say. Unhinged and untruthful stuff. The truth is…..us "crazy" liberals, who are in need of drug testing, would have been "satisfied" with a simple, not-for-profit, public insurance option in the health care legislation….you know, an unrealistic incremental step like that. A step which I'm sure candidate Obama called "change we can believe in."

By throwing in the phrase "eliminated the Pentagon", Gibbs is playing directly into the phony narrative spun by every conservative cretin who ever stood before a microphone: Democrats, liberals are weak, passive, pansy-asses when it comes to national defense……and our 'real' agenda is to turn the American government into a quivering compound of appeasing and passive Amish.

The fact that Obama cannot convince liberal thinkers that he knows what he is doing in his escalation of the Af-Pak conflict shouldn't translate into Limbaughian exaggerations that those liberals want to "eliminate the Pentagon." But that's how Rush, Glenn, and Sarah do it…..and it seems to work…..so I guess Gibbs was just going to school off of the feces-flinging, wingers.

Throwing Dennis Kucinich's name out as a slam on liberals was just so extra-special. Kucinich is the only elected official who had the spine to introduce articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney. That silly Kucinich thought that even wartime presidents and vice-presidents were not above obeying the law and the Constitution…..quaint notions, I know……but notions which President Obama, just like Bush and Cheney did before him, has rejected entirely in his approach to CIC duties.

What should be the attitude, the mindset of liberals vis-a-vis the mighty and magnificent power of a President Obama? According to Gibbs, liberals should just restrain their criticisms and be….grateful!

Progressives, Gibbs said, are the liberals outside of Washington “in America,” and they are grateful for what Obama has accomplished in a shattered economy with uniform Republican opposition and a short amount of time.

The only word missing was "real"…..you know, like Sarah's "real America."

I am a liberal outside of Washington. I am grateful that John McCain and Sister Sarah were defeated resoundingly in 2008. I am grateful that America elected a president who understands English and can speak it rather fluently. I am grateful that our president isn't considered by the rest of the world to be an embarrassment.

But I'll be damned if I'm going to be grateful, thankful, for baby-step pragmatism, much of which runs contrary to his own campaign promises, and of which, most has been done to appease a non-appeasable Republican Party.

Not going to be grateful for that. Never.

The U.S. corporate media was noticeably muted yesterday about the Israeli terrorist raid on a Turkish humanitarian aid-carrying flotilla late Sunday. A raid in which Israeli soldiers murdered at least 9 unarmed passengers (at least one American) after having commandeered the flotilla, illegally, while it was in international waters.

That's how the U.S. media and the majority of U.S. politicians always respond when credible reports about Israeli war crimes or Israeli terrorist assassination capers leak out.

Nothing unusual about any of it.

However, as Paul Craig Roberts over at Counterpunch writes, what might seem odd to many non-far-right American conservatives, is the fact that far-right American conservatives actually think the U.S.A. should follow Israel's "we'll do whatever we want" example.

Many Christian evangelicals, brainwashed by their pastors that it is God’s will for Americans to protect Israel, will believe the Israeli story, especially when it is unlikely they will ever hear any other. Conservative Americans, especially on Memorial Day when they are celebrating feats of American arms, will admire Israel for its toughness. Here in north Georgia where I am at the moment, I have heard several say, admiringly, “Them, Israelis, they don’t put up with nuthin.”

Conservative Americans want the US to be like Israel. They do not understand why the US doesn’t stop pissing around after nine years and just go ahead and defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. They don’t understand why the US didn’t defeat whoever was opposing American forces in Iraq. Conservatives are incensed that America had to “win” the war by buying off the Iraqis and putting them on the US payroll. Israel murders people and then blames its victims. This appeals to American conservatives, who want the US to do the same.

Exactly right.

And so is this….

No one in the world will believe that Israel attacked ships in international waters carrying Israeli citizens, a Nobel Laureate, elected politicians, and noted humanitarians bringing medicines and building materials to Palestinians in Gaza, who have been living in the rubble of their homes without repairs or medicines since January 2009, without first clearing the crime with its American protector. Without America’s protection, Israel, a totally artificial state, could not exist. No one in the world will believe that America’s spy apparatus did not detect the movement of the Israeli attack force toward the aid ships in international waters in an act of piracy, killing 20, wounding 50, and kidnapping the rest. Obama’s pretense at ignorance confirms his complicity.

Once again the US government has permitted the Israeli state to murder good people known for their moral conscience. The Israeli state has declared that anyone with a moral conscience is an enemy of Israel, and every American president except Eisenhower and Carter has agreed.

I'm not sure why this is, really. Jewish money in American elections? Too much Jewish lobbying inside America? A Judeo-Christian religious hybridization that considers Israel and the U.S. divinely linked in God's plan? Lingering guilt from the Holocaust?

What I am sure about is that Israel can spy on American national security secrets……Israel can unilaterally attack and kill American armed forces….Israel can possess dozens of nuclear weapons without any American acknowledgment….Israel can attack a caged group of Gazans, killing some 600 women and children…..Israel can attack and commandeer an unarmed humanitarian vessel in international waters, murdering an AMERICAN passenger………

…and not one word of condemnation or threat to Israel will be uttered by any American leader of substance.

Is not this dynamic the very definition of dysfunctional?

Barack Obama's campaign theme as he ran for president was "change we can believe in." He delivered that message in a compelling fashion and tens of millions of Americans responded.

After Obama was elected by a clear mandate from the American people, an incoherent, angry astroturf far right movement developed. The Tea Party was born. They primarily screeched about how far left Mr. Obama would take the nation. The stimulus bill passed to avert a rerun of the Great Depression was the first and final straw for patriotic white, middle aged, affluent Republican males who just "wanted their country back." In the eyes of America's far right, Obama was and is a socialist, a destroyer of everything American, so far to the radical left, that there was little difference between him and Joseph Stalin….or Mao.

The reality of Obama's presidency, naturally, runs contrary to Tea Party lore.

Obama pre-emptively caved to conservative forces even in the stimulus bill. He increased the tax cuts in the bill to curry favor with the oh-so-bipartisan right….he received 3 GOP votes in the Senate, none in the House.

Obama escalated the senseless military occupation of Afghanistan much to the pleasure of neo-conservatives. Definitely not a passive, hippy, leftist stance.

In the health care "debate", the socialist Obama, the far leftist Obama, refused to allow single payer to be placed "on the table." He played political rope-a-dope with the "public option", then voluntarily complied with the wishes of conservatives by excluding any such provision from the final bill….a bill which saw zero GOP support.

More recently, the former "most liberal senator in the Senate" pre-emptively caved again to conservative wishes by unilaterally announcing his consent to new offshore oil drilling. A move currently biting his pre-emptively conciliatory ass.

The new president nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Ms. Sotomayor, though a fine choice for the bench, was certainly no liberal…..despite the lunatic ravings of the far right.

The question came early for liberals. If Obama was a progressive, when would he provide the leadership-evidence proving it? Alas, it was not, and is not, to be.

On state secrets, detainee trials, assassination policies, and government transparency….the "liberal" Obama has been further to the right than George W. Bush. Obama has expanded the neo-conservative doctrine, not reined it in.

And so it comes as no surprise this morning to learn that Barack Obama will be nominating Elena Kagan to replace Justice Stephens on the Supreme Court.

Stephens, though nominated by the Republican, Gerald Ford, was the leader of truly progressive thinking on the Court. Ms. Kagan is no Stephens. Her record on diversity is disappointing, to say the least. She has a sure-to-be-exploited-for-theatrical-value-by-conservatives, connection with Goldman Sachs. In the past she has shown support for the Cheneyesque view of an expansive executive branch.

Ms. Kagan's addition to the Court will, as Glenn Greenwald explained a month ago, move the Court further to the right. A Democratic president, one who campaigned on change Americans could believe in, but one who has done very little other than appeasing the failed conservative right, is actually going to take the Supreme Court of the United States deeper into conservative territory.

It very much reminds me of the Democrat, Bill Clinton, passing welfare reform at the gleeful urging of Republicans.

In the past, I have referred to Barack Obama as a pragmatic incrementalist. If "change" was coming via Obama….it was baby step change. With the nomination today of Ms. Kagan….I must re-evaluate even that characterization.

By appointing the blank-slate-with-neo-conservative-leanings-and-a-link-to-Goldman-Sachs, Elena Kagan, President Obama is demonstrating that he is simply an appeaser. The president has decided to take the easy path in an election year. He doesn't want to ruffle the feathers of already-extremely-angry conservatives. For what possible reason….I don't know.

Kagan was previously confirmed for the Solicitor General position by a bipartisan vote in the Senate of 61-31. Republican Senators will put on a show during the confirmation hearings to come…..but they will know today with Obama's announcement that he is appeasing them. They will know that this Supreme Court choice is one made to avoid an ugly fight before the midterm election. Republicans will know that Obama, rather than being a socialist or a leftist, or even a progressive,….is but an appeaser. A pursuer of unilateral bipartisanship to the demise of the nation, an incrementalist, a pragmatist, a centrist…..and now, a seemingly weak appeaser.

Today's announcement, though not totally unexpected, is a huge disappointment.

I caught a piece of the Dylan Ratigan show yesterday afternoon on MSNBC. He played a classified-but-leaked video from Iraq taken in 2007. Kudos to Ratigan for having the testicular fortitude to air such a controversial video. The video was originally leaked to the website, Wikileaks.org.

The video is disturbing. Fair warning and all that.

Wikileaks.org description…..

WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

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I continue to read bits and pieces from the usual suspect neo-con assh*les, the same assh*les who cheerled (and helped the Bushies lie) about the Glorious Liberation of Iraq's Oil…..and those assh*les want the U.S. to attack yet another country, Iran.

What the neo-cons, and their enabling (or is it embedded?), assh*les in media don't want Americans to witness is the cost of those Glorious War Adventures. So…we don't see the cost. What we don't know, you know, can't hurt us. Right?

Barack Obama has endorsed this dynamic, reversing his original decision last year to release photographs of Americans torturing detainees. His excuse for not releasing them was that it would endanger the troops. The real reason for not releasing those photographs was that those pictures might enrage Americans….thus threatening Obama's escalation plans for Our Glorious Wars in the Middle East to Liberate and Protect the Distribution of Our Natural Resources.

Do you think if Americans saw the truth regularly….the butchering and the murdering and the clusterf*ckness that waging war entails…..do you think we would be so quick to embrace it anytime some Codpieced Commander Guy play-acted being president?