War Criminals Still at Large

From Bill Bonner's blog, Diary of a Rogue Economist:

When the Romans built a bridge, the architect would have to stand under it when the scaffolding was removed. If he did his work badly, the bridge fell down and he was killed.

We'd like to see some feet poking out of the rubble of the Iraq War. Is that too much to ask? Rumsfeld. Bush. Cheney. And all the jackasses in Congress who went along with it. Of course. But how about these war criminals too:

Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby, John Bolton, Eliot Abrams, Robert Kagan, Michael Ledeen, William Kristol, Frank Gaffney Jr. They said our troops would be "greeted like liberators." They claimed the war would "pay for itself" with Iraqi oil.

And let's not forget Thomas L. Friedman. He said an invasion of Iraq would be one of the great "revolutionizing" events of history... and that American GIs weren't really fighting men, but were "nurturing" a great new democracy.

Surely there is some corner of Hell, dark and hot, reserved for these intellectual miscreants. The sooner they get there the safer we will all be.

Full text of article. 

Jagor's comment:  

If they can have an International Criminal Court in The Hague for a handful of hapless African thugs and a couple of sorry Slavs, why can't they set up a court to try some real  criminals--Bush, Cheney and their Dirty Dozen--for war crimes and crimes against humanity?  

Inquiring minds want to know.

The F-35: A Flying White Elephant

The F-35 fighter is the most expensive weapon ever. The entire program is now expected to cost taxpayers nearly $1.51 trillion; Each individual plane is now estimated to cost $160 million - more than double the $74.5 million the DoD initially estimated they'd cost.

Business Insider published today an article entitled,  "Leaked Pentagon Report: The F-35 Won't Stand a Chance in Aerial Combat."

Excerpt:

According to an article published by the Washington Times, the F-35A, the Conventional Take Off and Landing version of the Joint Strike Fighter, would be defeated in aerial combat because of its current shortcomings. 

Mentioning a leaked Pentagon report made available by POGO, the article explains that “out-of-cockpit visibility in the F-35A is less than other Air Force fighter aircraft,” thus limiting a pilot’s ability to see aerial threats surrounding him.
 
And if that's not enough and you need more proof that trillions of dollars are being squandered in the biggest and most costly boondoggle in the history of the Pentagon--which is replete with boondoggles-- read this article entitled, "How the F-35 Turned into Such a Disaster."
 
Now if the American people had not been thoroughly brainwahed and bamboozled by the military-industrial complex, we would be invading the halls of Congress en masse and demanding that our Representatives and Senators defund this insanity immediately. 

But no--too many Americans have been lobotomized into supine passivity and inaction and have swallowed the Republicans' big lie that we have to slash benefits to the poor and middle-class citizens of America in order to "balance the budget" and "pay down the natioal debt."

Baloney!

We need to slash the trillions in corporate welfare going to pay for the flying white elephanat and other military boondoggles. 

Well, just look at the picture below if you want to know what $320 million [2 X $160 million] of your taxes bought.  Ugly little bastards, ain't they?

The Flying White Elephant: "Flawed beyond redemption."

Jagor

Pooped out Pope out

While the mainstream media were pandering to the Vatican and slobbering over Ratzinger's sudden decision to retire for "health reasons", the facts are that "God's Rottweiler," as he was known in Germany,  has suffered a number of colossal and humiliating defeats.

Ratzinger's ferocious opposition to marriage equality  laws has been defeated again and again.  Since 2001, eleven countries and parts of three others, including several American states, allow same-sex couples to marry.  Bills legalizing same-sex marriage have been proposed, are pending, or have passed at least one legislative house in ten countries.

Then Ratzinger's efforts to cover up and downplay the pedophile priest scandal in at least a dozen countries--including his own complicity in the German  coverup--was another colossal and humiliating defeat--a defeat that cost the Catholic church in the U. S. alone $1.269 billion dollars in compensation to victims of the pedophile priests between 1994 and 2009.

Next, lest we forget, Vatican money laundering.  The Vatican has had a decades-long reputation for financial corruption.. In 2010, Italian prosecutors took custody of 23 million Euros belonging to the Vatican after they became suspicious of potential money-laundering.  And, finally, The U.S. State Department  added the Vatican to the list of countries that are possible targets for money-laundering last year, according to the Financial Times. And in the ultimate coup de grace,  Italy's central bank banned credit card use inside Vatican City because of financial irregularities.

But all the above pales when one considers that, because Ratzinger and his henchmen have obstinately opposed contraception and abortion,  they are guilty of crimes against humanity because tens if not hundreds of millions of unwanted children are brought into the world and condemned to a wretched life of poverty, hunger, violence, disease and squalor.

The ultimate colossal defeat for Ratzinger: attendance at Catholic churches worldwide is plummeting as parishioners, disgusted with the Pope and his corrupt amd perverted cronies, are abandoning the Catholic church in droves and stampeding to practice real Christianity elsewhere.

I guess the old fool finally read the handwriting on the walls.  But no matter who replaces him, the movement for Marriage Equality will continue, there will be more revelations and more million-dollar payouts in the pedophile priest scandals and the stampede away from Catholic churches worldwide will accelerate.

Jagor

How Mitch McConnell Profits from His Filibusters

The citiizens of the Commonwealth of Kentucky are eagerly looking forward to ridding the United States Senate of Republican Mitch McConnell, who is up for re-election in 2014.

Already, surveys show that McConnell the most unpopular senator in America, and enormously unpopular back home.

According to a recent Public Policy Polling [PPP] poll, 55% of Kentuckians disapprove of "Senator Filibuster," and only 27% support him.  PPP reports that "McConnell now has the worst favorable/unfavorable rating of any senator, snatching the dubious title from Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE)." S
 
But there's more!

McConnell has broken all records for calling filibusters. Official Senate statistics show that from 1917, when filibusters were first introduced, up until McConnoll's takeover as Senate Minority Leader, there were usually no more than one per year, rising to double-digits in the last third of the 20th century. But starting in 2007 with the 110th Congress, when McConnell became minority leader, the number of filibusters skyrocketed to 139 in the 110th Congress, 137 in the 111th and and 115 in the recently-ended 112th Congress.
 
Now what's the purpose behind these filibusters aside from McConnell's announced--and unsuccessful--goal to prevent Obama's re-election?

The answer: money! Big money!

The Public Campaign Action Fund issued a report whose title explains everything: "Cashing in on Obstruction: How Mitch McConnell's Abuse of the Filibuster Benefits His Big Money Donors" 
 
Highlights:

• On the very day debate began on a bill to repeal subsidies to Big Oil, an astonishing $131,500 in campaign contributions passed from the hands of oil donors in Midland, Texas into Mitch McConnell’s re-election war chest. Three days later the bill failed by filibuster. 

• Companies that lobbied against bringing jobs back to America and ending tax breaks for offshoring have given McConnell one million dollars to win his elections and look out for their interests. Big McConnell donors such as GE, Microsoft, and Exxon Mobil also have billions in untaxed profits stashed overseas.

So now you can start to understand why Mitch "Mr. Filibuster" McConnell is the most hated senator in the nation and why the voters of the Commonwealth of Kentucky are going to throw this corrupt and venal bum out of office on November 4, 2014.

Jagor

Obama Extends his Permanent War to 35 More Countries!

Read these excerpts from a Fox News article entitled, New Pentagon effort will send Army teams to Africa as terror threat grows"

A U.S. Army brigade will begin sending small teams into as many as 35 African nations early next year, part of an intensifying Pentagon effort to train countries to battle extremists and give the U.S. a ready and trained force to dispatch to Africa if crises requiring the U.S. military emerge...

Already the U.S. military has plans for nearly 100 different exercises, training programs and other activities across the widely diverse continent...

"What's really exciting is we get to focus on a different part of the world and maintain our core combat skills," [brigade commander Col Jeff] Broadwater said, adding that the soldiers know what to expect. "You see those threats (in Africa) in the news all the time." 

Comment:
Yeah, isn't war "exciting," Col. Broadwater? Especially when you get your brains blown out.

The announcement came on Christmas Eve and didn't receive much attention.

Of course! Just like last year when Obama signed--on New Year's Eve--the National Defense Authorization Act] with its unconstitutional sub-sections 1021 and 1022, allowing the arrest and unlimited detension of American citizens on American soil without a warrant or any other form of due process.]

So, squandering trillions of dollars in the ratholes of Iraq and Afghnistan isn't enough for the warmongers? 

Now the generals warming their armchairs in the Pentagon and their friends, the plutocrats in the military-industrial complex collecting billions of dollars in juicy no-bid government contracts, have got the whole African continent as their playpen! 

What has America become? A police state waging a permanent war of imperialism across the entire planet.

And "We the People" stand idly by and let all this happen.

Jagor