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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThey Belong in Prison, Not on Television
From left: former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Secretary of State Condleeza Rice,
former vice president Dick Cheney attend the opening ceremony of the George W. Bush
Presidential Library, April 25, 2013. (Photo: Stephen Crowley / The New York Times)
They Belong in Prison, Not on Television
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Friday 20 June 2014
I wrote my first article on the folly of an Iraq invasion in August of 2002. There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I argued. There are no 9/11 connections in Iraq. There is no al Qaeda presence in Iraq, because Saddam Hussein was notorious for hanging Wahabbists from the nearest available light pole. An invasion would tear the country apart, explode sectarian tensions, and plunge the region into chaos.
Neither I nor the world knew at that time that George W. Bush and Tony Blair had decided four months earlier that the deal was going down no matter what. Neither I nor the world knew at that time that a decision had been made one month earlier to ensure that "intelligence and facts" would be "fixed around the policy" of invasion. I stayed on the no-invasion beat for the next seven months, writing dozens of articles and a book, as the world watched millions of people take to the streets in an attempt to stop something that was, as it turns out, inevitable.
Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith, Condolleeza Rice, and of course, George W. Bush, piled the sandbags high and deep around a decision that had already been made. We know they have these weapons, we know where they are, we don't want the evidence to be a mushroom cloud, plastic sheeting and duct tape, 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11. Save for 23 bold souls, a craven Senate caved to the pressure and delivered the Iraq War Resolution to the Bush administration, and in late March of 2003, the skies over Baghdad glowed orange as the city was turned into a bowl of molten fire.
As the WMD argument fell to ashes, I kept writing. As the 9/11-connection argument collapsed, I kept writing...and then, first in a trickle and then a flood, people started writing me. Mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters of American soldiers who had died in Iraq wrote me letter after letter, email after email, demanding answers. Why? Why did this happen? Why did my loved one die over there?
(snip)
Never mind the fact that I and so very many others spent so much time and energy for so many years trying to stop all this from happening. Never mind the fact that the perpetrators of this enormous fraud, this smash-and-grab robbery, this looting of the Treasury, this act of first-degree murder on a massive scale, all walked away scot-free to pursue new careers and live lives of comfort. Amazingly enough, that's not the worst part.
The worst part is that they're all on my television again, trying to blame President Obama for the circumstances created by their own feckless, murderous decisions.
Tony Blair: "We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that 'we' have caused this. We haven't."
Paul Wolfowitz: "Look, it's a complicated situation in which you don't just come up with, 'We're going to bomb this, we're going to do that.'"
Doug Feith: "This is the education of Barack Obama, but it's coming at a very high cost to the Syrian people to the Iraqi people [and] to the American national interest."
John McCain: "What about the fact that General Petraeus had the conflict won thanks to the Surge and if we had left a residual force behind that we could have - we could, we would not be facing the crisis we are today."
Karl Rove, when asked about the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq: "Yeah, that's an old argument that we waste time on."
Dick Cheney: "He (Obama) abandoned Iraq and we are watching American defeat snatched from the jaws of victory."
(snip)
Let me put it plainly: these people do not belong on my television. They belong in prison, for the crimes of theft, torture and murder. They shattered the lives of thousands of American soldiers and millions of Iraqi civilians. They savaged the American economy paying for it all, and several of them got very rich in the process. They should be in orange jumpsuits and fetters, picking mealworms out of their gruel while shuttered in very small, very grim, very inescapable metal rooms.
I spent the first decade of the 21st century dealing with these blood-sodden bastards. Now, it appears, I will spend a chunk of a second decade watching them run around trying desperately to wash that blood from their hands...and the "news" media, also thoroughly culpable in this ongoing debacle, is all too happy to help them do it.
That, too, should be a crime.
The whole thing: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/24490-william-rivers-pitt-they-belong-in-prison-not-on-tv
onecaliberal
(32,852 posts)randys1
(16,286 posts)disgusting daughter in our political process.
Someone who has no concern for anyone but herself and her disgusting mother and father.
They will live lives of luxury and privilege, nothing will ever change this unless we get real mad.
We are a long way from that though, I can tell by the attitudes here at DU and elsewhere.
napkinz
(17,199 posts)WilliamPitt
(58,179 posts)napkinz
(17,199 posts)SmittynMo
(3,544 posts)to put their ass in jail. What is it going to take to put them there? Forever!!!!!
johnnyreb
(915 posts)Amonester
(11,541 posts)on that $election night in FL when all the hyena-media$ thought "if fux said it, it must be true..."
ffr
(22,669 posts)saidsimplesimon
(7,888 posts)Thank you, especially appreciated the revival of "chickenhawks"...
I've said it before, humans who profit from oil and war seem to suffer from early onset dementia. They don't care what world they leave for the majority. They care only about protecting their crimes from prosecution.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Initech
(100,068 posts)calimary
(81,238 posts)I like them. ALL of them. I wish every one of them would go viral!
warrior1
(12,325 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)It is sickening to see them having the gall to show their criminal faces again and even more so to watch our Corporate media excuses for journalism, treat them with respect rather than taking the opportunity to use their galling presence to educate the public on their crimes. Make them so scared to appear knowing they will be grilled mercilessly by some real journalists, that we won't have to see their infamous faces any more.
erronis
(15,241 posts)Maybe next time he goes in for an organ transplant they can replace that mug. Anything would be better - a baboon's ass (pardons to the baboons!)
calimary
(81,238 posts)As he did on President Obama's inauguration - to attract attention and sympathy to himself. FUCKER. WAR CRIMINAL AND FUCKER. If there's a Hell, there he belongs.
Frank Cannon
(7,570 posts)suffragette
(12,232 posts)Spot on, Will.
antigop
(12,778 posts)Moostache
(9,895 posts)Solly Mack
(90,764 posts)supercats
(429 posts)Thank you for writing it and posting it. There is no punishment too severe for the Bush Crime Family.
smallcat88
(426 posts)including journalists are asking the question, on the air, 'Why are we listening to the people who got everything wrong?' Not nearly enough yet, but hopefully it's a trend.
Best case scenario, they dig their own grave by making themselves so visible and reminding the world how wrong they were (and still are). But since that seems unlikely, I'd reluctantly settle for enough people calling them out on their lies to permanently damage their credibility to give anyone advice about anything. They should have been relegated to irrelevance years ago.
rock
(13,218 posts)pa28
(6,145 posts)Last edited Fri Jun 20, 2014, 01:32 PM - Edit history (1)
Who knows? Instead of blaming Obama maybe the public will turn around and start demanding accountability for those days in 2002 and 2003.
heaven05
(18,124 posts)totally evil people WITHOUT a conscience. Sometimes I wish I really believed in HELL. All three deserve that place along with their little lapdog, the 'artist'.
Beowulf42
(204 posts)Our nation has been permanently tainted by the actions of this cabal, but the resentment toward the U.S. is the logical outcome of too many years of overthrowing democratically elected governments and supporting despicable tyrants in the name of big business and American Imperialism. Our foreign policy should have been the projection of our democratic ideals, but it has been twisted into a single minded force to promote capitalism at the expense of the freedom and liberty of the people of the U.S. and other peoples al over the world. It has been used to perpetuate poverty and starvation, rather than promoting the humane treatment of all mankind. We are not a christian nation, a moral nation, we are egomaniacal agents of death and destruction, slavery and misery. Soplice.
stage left
(2,962 posts)And Yes!
Uncle Joe
(58,355 posts)Thanks for the thread, WilliamPitt.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)a whole bunch.
Martin Eden
(12,864 posts)... instead of giving head in the prison latrine.
11 Bravo
(23,926 posts)at the very least ... just for shits and giggles?
Agony
(2,605 posts)Thank You for being you Mr Pitt.
Cheers.
sinkingfeeling
(51,454 posts)colsohlibgal
(5,275 posts)Chickenhawks, War Profiteers, you name it, who took so many lives and ruined countless others. If they want to go back to fight they should be in the front line, let them get a taste of it.
I'm agnostic but if there is a Hell there should be a special wing for these lower forms of life.
Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)markpkessinger
(8,395 posts)The Wizard
(12,545 posts)of these lying scumbags and war profiteers should be stripped of their assets and be made to spend the rest of their days in a North Korean labor camp.
TBF
(32,056 posts)and deliver them to the Hague.
Bickle
(109 posts)Letting e Confederacy was the start of all this the fact that Lee, and is, et al were not arrested and hung I've the Potomac, and that the treasonous states were not punished as much as humanly possible, forbidding representation until every last person who was part of the treason was dead for starters. Forbidding these gone with the wind fantasies, arrests and sedition charges for anyone flying that flag, and severe punishment, including public beatings for exalting literal, irrefutable treason. Our country would be a far better place
Obama, if he had balls, would have citizens arrested busy the second he stood relieved, and had the entire cartel frogmarched to Marine Ine for transport to The Hague. Nancy Pelosi forced to step doen for her cowardice for refusing to impeach every hour on the hour. It's enforcing the law. Those assholes who love the Constitution so much need to read Article 6, section 2, which expressly forbids disobeying treaties, which include the UN Charter.
WillyT
(72,631 posts)SCVDem
(5,103 posts)I thank 'god' Barack Obama is our President!
Fuck you Rudy!!!
hibbing
(10,098 posts)While Condi serves as a Provost for Stanford. Where had Colin Powell been? Does he actually have enough sense not to show his face on the corporate media these days?
Peace
Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)and behind bars. Negligence was rewarded with medals. It is not too late to get these creatures.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Zorra
(27,670 posts)them all to life in prison without parole would make a great party, a party that would bring all the decent people of the world together in a spirit of peace. love, and friendship
chknltl
(10,558 posts)Over in Italy when the citizenry figured out that they had made a very poor choice, they hung that poor choice up for all to see!
This is America, we say that we believe in the rule of law. We give the accused their day in court and let all who care to see, see the evidence, hear all the arguments, maybe even attend the trial.
When I think of all the hate the misery the bloodshed the deaths and deaths and deaths these rat bastards unleashed upon our planet..... THE ENTIRE WORLD WOULD HAVE BEEN AT THAT TRIAL!
I suspect a great many of the citizens of this planet who were affected 'poorly' by the Bush Family Evil Empire watched in amazement as we who call ourselves American turned our attention elsewhere and there never materialized a trial.
I am KnR-ing this but my words here can not express my bitterness over what has happened in our name and over what will likely not happen to those who did it. Am I nuts for thinking such thoughts?
C Moon
(12,213 posts)Do these freaks seriously think that BS works anymore?
HA HA HA!
tomp
(9,512 posts)How can Obama resist prosecuting these scumbags at this juncture? It wasn't enough he let them off the hook for war crimes and the entire multitude of governmental abuses they carried out. No, they're back now second guessing and defending their crimes.
Unleash the hounds at Justice now, I say.
At least one of the charges should be: criminal arrogance.
imthevicar
(811 posts)NO, DANGLING ON THE END OF A HEMP ROPE, DANCING ON THIN AIR!!!!!