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SITE PASS : The Abu Ghraib files

279 photographs and 19 videos from the Army's internal investigation record a harrowing three months of detainee abuse inside the notorious prison -- and make clear that many of those responsible have yet to be held accountable.

Fiscal Fool McCain: It’s The Economic Stupidity, Stupid!
By impeachthem
Fiscal Fool McCain: It’s The Economic Stupidity, Stupid! • McBUSH • McBUSHNew York Times — 20 July 2008 — by Frank Rich — This is fantasy political baseball, not reality. Mr. McCain, sad to say, hung up his old maverick’s spurs the day ...
New Jersey Impeach Groups - Saving... - http://impeachthem.com

Veterans for Peace president asks for impeachment help
By Mikael
John Conyers (D-MI) to deliver VFP's 23000 impeachment signatures, we politely informed the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, in writing, that we would drop by his Washington office with them. And we would sit there until he met ...
Impeach Bush For Peace - http://impeachforpeace.org/impeach_bush_blog

Revolution Never Comes with a Warning

This Time You Have Been Warned!

America Wake UP ... !!!

Big Brother

Naomi Wolf @ Revolution March & Rally July 12, 2008 Pt 1

Naomi Wolf @ Revolution March & Rally July 12, 2008 Pt2

The human rights violations of the Bush regime now make all other 21st century governments pale by comparison. Illegal war leading to the deaths of at least hundreds of thousands of innocents, and the shameful torture clearly documented in the following piece by national security officers of integrity. Corporate media enable it all by covering up the massive movement for impeachment, nationwide –Jack

Justifying' Torture: Two Big Lies (This Is Making The Rounds)

By Coleen Rowley and Ray McGovern

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/coleen-rowley/justifying-torture-two-bi_b_113726.html

(Excerpts...A MUST Read!)

One can assume that former Attorney General John Ashcroft didn’t mean it to be funny, but his testimony on Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee might strike one as hilarious, were it not for the issue at hand — torture.

Ashcroft is the Attorney General who approved torture before he disapproved it, but committee members spared him accusations of flip-flopping.

He explained that he initially blessed the infamous torture memoranda drafted by Justice Department lawyer John Yoo and others in mid-2002 because he (Ashcroft) believed it imperative to afford the President “the benefit of genuine doubt” regarding how to protect American lives in the “war on terror.”

But Ashcroft added that, despite this, when concerns about that earlier guidance for interrogations were brought to his attention, changing his mind “was not a hard decision for me.” A very flexible Attorney General.

“The benefit of genuine doubt?” Perhaps Ashcroft thought that this genteel way of looking at things would appeal to the poorly led, motley group calling itself the House Committee on the Judiciary, chaired by Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan.

But the rest of us, whose time does not expire in five minutes, cannot buy his defense of torture. For it is based on two demonstrable lies.

Lie Number One…

According to Ashcroft, “The administration’s overriding goal…was to do everything in its power and within the limits of the law…to keep this country safe from terrorist attack.”

How painful it is to watch as the Bush administration’s witnesses quibble about semantics, make sweeping assertions of executive privilege, and run out the five-minute clock on each congressman’s questions.

Impeachment is what the Founders envisioned for the situation we face at present.

Quick, someone download for Congressman Conyers the President’s Action Memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002, which provided the loophole through which George Tenet and Donald Rumsfeld drove the Mack truck of torture.

That memo is all you need, John. It is signed at the bottom with felt-pen strokes one and half inches high. If that’s not good enough for the Judiciary Committee chairman, then please let members and staff go home for an early vacation and spare all of us further humiliation.

Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She retired at the end of 2004, and now writes and speaks on ethical decision-making and balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation. Ray McGovern, a former Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for 27 years, now works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. Both serve on the Steering Committee of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

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The Closer: The AT&T Convention in Denver (Glenn Greenwald)

What's most striking about the Convention bag -- aside, of course, from its stunning design -- is how the parties no longer bother even trying to hide who it is who funds and sponsors them. But -- an earnest citizen might object -- just because AT&T is helping to pay for the Democrats' convention and having its logo plastered all over it the way a ranch owner brands his cattle doesn't mean that they will receive any special consideration when it comes time for Congress to debate and pass our nation's laws.

With regard to the important question, let's hear from financier and lobbyist Steve Farber, the Chief Fundraiser for the Democratic National Convention:

Although he is a Democrat, Mr. Farber's firm draws political talent from both sides of the aisle. Its lobbyists include Jim Nicholson, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee; former Senator Hank Brown, Republican of Colorado; and Judy Black, wife of Charlie Black, Senator John McCain's chief adviser, and a major bundler of donations for Mr. McCain.

But then there's this: "In raising money for the convention, Mr. Farber said he was not selling access to the many politicians attending the event, but promoting regional pride and the chance to participate in a historical event." Everyone can decide for themselves which scenario they find more plausible.

None of this is new, of course. And it should be emphasized that the McCain campaign is shamelessly drowning in lobbyist influence, while the Obama campaign -- to its credit -- has been applying its ban on associating with lobbyists so meticulously that it actually disinvited Obama loyalist Max Cleland from an Obama fundraising event last week merely because Cleland is a registered lobbyist for a company that designs products for soldiers recovering from war injuries. As symbolic and hedged as it might be, Obama's policy -- along with Obama's pledge to ban any lobbyists from working in the Obama White House -- is at least a very mild step towards acknowledging how tawdry all of this is.

Also Here:

As I documented last week, the idea that the Rule of Law is only for common people, but not for our political leaders and Washington elite, is pervasive among the political and pundit class, in both parties. While common Americans should be imprisoned in record numbers when they break the law, the worst that should happen to the political elite when they commit crimes is that they should be voted out of office. That's the dominant mentality governing how our political system works.

For all the talk about how radical and lawless the Bush administration has been, this widely-shared view that our political leaders should be immune from consequences for lawbreaking is the administration's defining belief. After the 2004 election, President Bush held a news conference and was asked about the failures in Iraq, and this is what he said:

QUESTION: Why hasn't anyone been held accountable, either through firings or demotions, for what some people see as mistakes or misjudgments?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, we had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election.

On December 16, 2005 -- the day after the NYT revealed that Bush was breaking the law in spying on Americans without warrants -- Digby noted that exchange and wrote:

He, like Nixon, believes that the president has only one "accountability moment" while he is president. His re-election. Beyond that, he has been given a blank check. And that includes breaking the law since if the president does it, it's not illegal, the president being the executive branch which is not subject to any other branch of government.

But it isn't only the Bush administration that believes that. That was why Gerald Ford was widely praised for pardoning Nixon (Ford said "he acted to restore harmony and move on"). That's the same argument used by Bush 41 to pardon Iran-contra lawbreakers, and it's what the Washington Establishment said when -- liberal and conservative pundits alike -- they defended those pardons of Casper Weinberger and the other Iran-contra lawbreakers: