I'M GLAD I WAS WRONG

ebrown_p, I thiink impeachment talk at this point is not the point. Investigations on many issues are important. Getting at the truth is always important. Especially on national security matters. There are very many millions of Americans who badly want new investigations of 911. Their numbers are growing. They have unanswered questions that deserve to be answered. I'm sure there will be calls in the Senate and House for new 911 investigations along with calls for implementing safety measures called for by the 911 Commission. I think Pelosi is wrong for saying impeachment wont happen over lying us into war or 911 complicity. That's a rush to non-judgement probably politically motivated. But now the election is over. Let fair investigations be held and let the chips fall where they may. If it's those scientists who support the government's theory can prove their case more power to them. If they cant then the scientists who believe the Twin Towers and WTC 7 were demolitions should be allowed to present their case to Congress and the nation. To forbid 911 investigations would be a huge political blunder and Pelosi will be able to figure that out. Should demolition be scientifically proven impeachment may be a life saving measure for Bushie because many Americans would want to tear him limb from limb.

blueflame, I agree with the others that say the dems need to work on "real" issues for the American People. The impeachment of Bush will be a gross waste of their time that must be used to solve major problems for the American People. I believe the dems know that, and will work on issues that will make a difference for the people over revenge.

I agree that as much as seeing bush impeached would give me pleasure, the dems need to make real governing progress and not get sidetracked. HOWEVER...... should bush try to pull some arrogant sneaky **** before the current congress adjourns he needs to be made to believe and understand that impeachment can come to the table and that like it or not the new Congress can, albeit reluctantly, make his last two years a living hell if necessary.

It's a poker game with very high stakes. Bush must certainly know that!

Wow, that's quite the post, nimh. As I suspected, Lieberman had broad-based support in Connecticut and is certainly justified in voting with either party on an issue-by-issue basis.

cicerone imposter, it's entirely possible for the Dems to walk and chew gum at the same time. If possible complicity in 911 is not a "real" issue then there are no real issues. Over 70 million Americans want new investigations and Pelosi will be kidding herself if she thinks she can ignore that and strengthen the hands of her party. Maybe political animals missed the point of this election. The Dems should not misunderestimate the desires of the people for answers. They won solely because they were the only alternative to the Bushies. I'm afraid the Dems dont realize some issues are way bigger than politics. For instance fratricide and crimes against humanity.

By that analysis, would you say that John Kerry was an independent candidate in Connecticult for President in 2004?

Voters who are unenrolled often support establishment candidates. That doesn't say anything about the "independence" of the candidate.

By any note, Bernie Sanders is coming from the outside. He is a socialist for goodness sake. Lieberman's game is to straddle the middle. Sander's is owned by no one.

blueflame, Americans are unhappy about Iraq; they want solutions on "that" issue. Americans do not want to "stay the course." They want to see a change of policy that will return our troops home - some sooner, some later, but home none-the-less. We don't want our troops trying to survive in the civil war.

Revenge should be the last issue; the minimum wage, federal deficit, government openness, illegal immigration, government waste, and many other issues should be way ahead of revenge. If they waste their time on revenge, many now elected will also be replaced in the next election cycle. Americans want progress for America.

For the record, Lieberman won fair and square and I am not contesting the result.

The only thing I am objecting to is the comparison of Lieberman to Bernie Sanders when in truth they are direct opposites.

Lieberman is the insider of insiders. He is playing the game by courting both sides and trying to be BOTH Republican and Democrat. He will take his commitee assignment while cozying up to Bush. Lieberman tried to get his party nomination and was rejected.

Bernie Sanders is his own man. He is the only Socialist in Congress. He is trying to be NEITHER Republican nor Democrat. He won the Democrat party nomination and rejected it.

The Connecticut voters have made their choice as is their right and Lieberman is the rightful holder of this Senate seat for the next 6 years.

But to compare him to Bernie Sanders is a travesty.

One other difference, I would have proudly voted for Bernie Sanders.

I don't think there is anyone who could honestly say they would have voted for Sanders (if in VT) and for Lieberman (if in CT). They are as diametrically opposed as you can get.

Sanders


Sanders would have my vote.

BBB

cicerone, hahaha. The American people are many and varied things. The 70+ million who are demanding new investigations on 911 make a connection to the lies that led to war and the new Pearl Harbor that enabled Bushie to deliberately lie us into war. Dont underestimate the numbers of the 911 Truth Movement. Charlie Sheen dont stand alone by any means. A raise in the minimum wage would be great. But the Dems aint gonna buy a thing with pocket change. By the way what you call "revenge" I call national defense and common sense and prevention. I'm afraid that Pelosi wont be framing the debate. To many Americans concerned about getting betrayed again. Prevention is paramount.

I wish you all would give up the "911 Truth" thing. I have been through this exact type of pseudo-logical arguments with the creationists the moon-landing hoax people.

Of course you won't. Conspiracy theories are too much fun. But this is one of the differences between progressives (working within the system to get real change) and liberals (busy ranting about Jews calling in sick ).

You just make our job of making a better society much more different, even in areas in which we agree.

ebrown, do you mean just me should give it up or the millions upon millions who agree with me also? I'm afraid it aint going away any time soon. In fact it's gonna grow and grow. It's all part of rebuilding America's defenses.

I'm not sure how you get 70+ million demanding an investigation on 9-11. If that's what they want, it seems all they need to do is write their congressmen/women and demand it. That's 23 percent of the US population; I'm not sure of any one issue that has that many "supporters."

Can you provide a link or evidence?

A friend in Australia just emailed this.


As the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives and were on the verge of taking over the Senate, George W. Bush announced Wednesday that Donald Rumsfeld was out and Robert Gates was in as Secretary of Defense. When Bush is being run out of town, he knows how to get out in the front of the crowd and make it look like he's leading the parade. The Rumsfeld-Gates swap is a classic example.

The election was a referendum on the war. The dramatic results prove that the overwhelming majority of people in this country don't like the disaster Bush has created in Iraq. So rather than let the airwaves fill up with beaming Democrats and talk of the horrors of Iraq, Bush changed the subject and fired Rumsfeld. Now, when the Democrats begin to investigate what went wrong, Rumsfeld will no longer be the controversial public face of the war.

Rumsfeld had come under fire from many quarters, not the least of which was a gaggle of military officers who had been clamoring for his resignation. Bush said he decided to oust Rumsfeld before Tuesday's voting but lied to reporters so it wouldn't affect the election. Putting aside the incredulity of that claim, Bush likely waited to see if there would be a changing of the legislative guard before giving Rumsfeld his walking papers. If the GOP had retained control of Congress, Bush would probably have retained Rumsfeld. But in hindsight, Bush has to wish he had ejected Rumsfeld before the election to demonstrate a new direction in the Iraq war to angry voters.

Rumsfeld's sin was not in failing to develop a winning strategy for Iraq. There is no winning in Iraq, because we never belonged there in the first place. The war in Iraq is a war of aggression. It violates the United Nations Charter which only permits one country to invade another in self-defense or with the blessing of the Security Council.

Donald Rumsfeld was one of the primary architects of the Iraq war. On September 15, 2001, in a meeting at Camp David, Rumsfeld suggested an attack on Iraq because he was deeply worried about the availability of "good targets in Afghanistan." Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported that Rumsfeld articulated his hope to "dissuade" other nations from "asymmetrical challenges" to U.S. power. Rumsfeld's support for a preemptive attack on Iraq "matched with plans for how the world's second largest oil reserve might be divided among the world's contractors made for an irresistible combination," Ron Suskind wrote after interviewing O'Neill.

Rumsfeld defensively sought to decouple oil access from regime change in Iraq when he appeared on CBS News on November 15, 2002. In a Macbeth moment, Rumsfeld proclaimed the United States' beef with Iraq has "nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil." The Secretary doth protest too much.

Prosecuting a war of aggression isn't Rumsfeld's only crime. He also participated in the highest levels of decision-making that allowed the extrajudicial execution of several people. Willful killing is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, which constitutes a war crime. In his book, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, Seymour Hersh described the "unacknowledged" special-access program (SAP) established by a top-secret order Bush signed in late 2001 or early 2002. It authorized the Defense Department to set up a clandestine team of Special Forces operatives to defy international law and snatch, or assassinate, anyone considered a "high-value" Al Qaeda operative, anywhere in the world. Rumsfeld expanded SAP into Iraq in August 2003.

But Rumsfeld's crimes don't end there. He sanctioned the use of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, which are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and thus constitute war crimes. Rumsfeld approved interrogation techniques that included the use of dogs, removal of clothing, hooding, stress positions, isolation for up to 30 days, 20-hour interrogations, and deprivation of light and auditory stimuli. According to Seymour Hersh, Rumsfeld sanctioned the use of physical coercion and sexual humiliation to extract information from prisoners. Rumsfeld also authorized waterboarding, where the interrogator induces the sensation of imminent death by drowning. Waterboarding is widely considered a form of torture.

Rumsfeld was intimately involved with the interrogation of a Saudi detainee, Mohamed al-Qahtani, at Guantánamo in late 2002. General Geoffrey Miller, who later transferred many of his harsh interrogation techniques to Abu Ghaib, supervised the interrogation and gave Rumsfeld weekly updates on his progress. During a six-week period, al-Qahtani was stripped naked, forced to wear women's underwear on his head, denied bathroom access, threatened with dogs, forced to perform tricks while tethered to a dog leash, and subjected to sleep deprivation. Al-Qahtani was kept in solitary confinement for 160 days. For 48 days out of 54, he was interrogated for 18 to 20 hours a day.

Even though Rumsfeld didn't personally carry out the torture and mistreatment of prisoners, he authorized it. Under the doctrine of command responsibility, a commander can be liable for war crimes committed by his inferiors if he knew or should have known they would be committed and did nothing to stop of prevent them. The U.S. War Crimes Act provides for prosecution of a person who commits war crimes and prescribes life imprisonment, or even the death penalty if the victim dies.

Although intending to signal a new direction in Iraq with his nomination of Gates to replace Rumsfeld, Bush has no intention of leaving Iraq. He is building huge permanent U.S. military bases there. Gates at the helm of the Defense Department, Bush said, "can help make the necessary adjustments in our approach." Bush hopes he can bring congressional Democrats on board by convincing them he will simply fight a smarter war.

But this war can never get smarter. Nearly 3,000 American soldiers and more than 650,000 Iraqi civilians have died and tens of thousands have been wounded. Our national debt has skyrocketed with the billions Bush has pumped into the war. Now that there is a new day in Congress, there must be a new push to end the war. That means a demand that Congress cut off its funds.

And the war criminals must be brought to justice - beginning with Donald Rumsfeld. On November 14, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, and other organizations will ask the German federal prosecutor to initiate a criminal investigation into the war crimes of Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials. Although Bush has immunized his team from prosecution in the International Criminal Court, they could be tried in any country under the well-established principle of universal jurisdiction.

Donald Rumsfeld may be out of sight, but he will not be out of mind. The chickens have come home to roost.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/11/donald-rumsfeld-war-crimes-case.php

-- Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. Her new book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, will be published this spring by PoliPointPress.

November 9, 2006

Unfortunately I know you are right (except for 'its part of rebuilding'... thing).

The with these conspiracy theories is that they take on a logic of their own. People get so wrapped up in the excitement that reason is left behind.

We had an official investigation with a clear account of what happened supported by evidence. You people aren't accepting the evidence that has already been provided. We also have studies by scientists and engineers and respectable third parties. You people aren't accpeting this evidence either.

Of course finding evidence against the official explanation is easy. The moon-landing-was-a-hoax people do this. The Creationist (anti-evolution) people do this. You simply show what you think are inconsistancies and than stubbornly refuse to accept any explanation. This happens over and over again.

Of course no conspiracy believer ever can give their own complete explanation that can stand up to scrutiny. You people always have qestions, but never complete answers (like what happened to the ticketed passengers whose families saw them enter the 'cruise missle' that struck the Pentagon).

You will say you want an investigation... but what good will that do. We had an investigation and you rejected it. We will have another and you will just do the same.

I think your number of 70 million is a bit high... at least for the true believers (70 million people probably believe we are being visited by aliens).

But you are unfortunately right that this lunacy will be around for a while. It is really sad that there is nothing we can do about it (not even 100 more investigations will keep you from finding evidence to support what you want to believe), even though it hurts progressive causes.

ebrown, one thing about this 911 truth movement is it has largely grown without a lot of coverage from the mainstream corporate press until Charlie Sheen hopped on board. He made a big splash and was imediately attacked Swift Boat style in the same way Scott Ritter was attacked for telling us the truth about Saddam's WMD. Without strong evidence against the plausibility of the government's theory and for some kind of complicity I doubt so many American's would be on board. There are Congresspeople who have pushed for new investigations and were thwarted by the Bushies. They are sure to call again for new investigations and Pelosi would be politically foolish to ignore the fact that they represent millions of real voters. Many of the young people who voted in this election in record numbers are asking 911 questions. The Dems would be wise to recognize their growth. As for a link here's one. NEW ZOGBY POLL REVEALS OVER 70 MILLION VOTING AGE AMERICANS DISTRUST OFFICIAL 9/11 STORY AND SUPPORT NEW INVESTIGATION OF POSSIBLE US GOVERNMENT ROLE IN THE ATTACKS.* http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20060522022041421

Listen, I would have proudly voted for Bernie too - more proudly than for any other Senator I can think of, in fact. But you're flogging a dead horse here, or setting up a straw man, or something of the like (both probably). JPB never compared the political convictions of the two. She even explicitly reiterated this, just a little bit ago:


That seems about as clear as you can be, and yet you keep going on about how the politics of the two are diametrically opposed. JPB never said otherwise.

JPB expressed was her "pleasure in seeing American voters becoming more independent minded and votiing for the candidate of their choice, regardless of their party affiliation". Well, thats true for Sanders, and its obviously also true for Lieberman, who got lots of votes from both Republicans and Democrats, both voting regardless of their party affiliation.


Umm. Kerry was the candidate of the Democratic Party. The national, official, leading candidate of the Democratic Party. Lieberman ran on his own ticket.

JPB's initial post here was that "Lieberman and Sanders have both shown that an independent candidate can, in fact, be elected to national office." Well, thats a plain fact. Both ran on independent tickets (and Lieberman in fact ran against candidates of both major parties, whereas Sanders faced no Democratic competitor). Neither is obliged to answer to either party's leadership. You're playing semantics about whether just running on an independent ticket makes you independent enough to be called independent on a message board. Seems a bit of a waste to me, and way to go to antagonate a swing voter.

posting to say I posted on the wrong thread..

Hah, luckily obliterated.