those military hardware stuffs won't pay for themselves, doncha know.

I understand at the time Obama took over he had to worry about how he was going to fix this DISASTER bush left him, but the fact no move was ever made to prosecute Bush and his team for war crimes is something that has really hurt this nation. Now we have rethugs holding both houses of congress and the supreme court.

A trial could have exposed everything they did in a forum the whole public would have seen. we've had more testimony of Clinton's blow job than we have on a false war that lead to thousands of dead soldiers and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. and no one seems to care. if the public had seen the true evil of the rethugs on trial we probably could have guaranteed progressive control for a generation. instead they were allowed to all simply get away with it.

Even today... when we have a chance to show how we differ from the rethugs, are leaders are more concerned with protecting the "good name" of the GOP. why? Can you even fathom if the roles were reversed????

released the Saudi pages of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, there would never be a Republican president again and Cheney, Bush, Rummy, and a couple of others would have had to flee to Saudi to avoid prosecution or worse.

Because?

See reply 6.

Couldn't have that, could we?

So imagine you work in a big mansion, and some asshole is the majordomo and you're a lowly toilet scrubber.

Are you going to get the top job by telling the owner of the mansion what an asshole his most trusted servant is or getting that servant hauled off to jail?

That would just get you fired or worse.

Instead, you humbly show that you can perform the same duties competently when given the chance, and in the case of the Democrats, showing that they can do a slightly better job of keeping the peasants from burning down the mansion as well.

When seen in that light, Democrats actions make perfect sense.

They don't work for us and make just enough token efforts at appeasing us to keep us voting for them.

But if it came down to losing an election or losing the trust of the financial elite, they will gladly start writing their election night concession speech.

It would have gotten more Repukes out of the government, and rallied the voters for 2010. An historic mistake (and I use that word loosely).

And, like Bill Clinton, will go on to extraordinary riches in his post-Presidential life for the services, including refusing to prosecute the banksters and the torturers, which he has performed for TPTB. He will be a Made Man.

Say nice things to the proletarii in order to get elected, then once you are elected you use your office to get rich and laugh your way to the bank.

Nor would they allocate money for such a thing. They are willing participants in the GOP fantasy that one the worst things America ever did protected the country.

The propping up of GWB was long before Obama was elected. Pelosi was the mouthpiece of the Democratic leadership and that was the decision.

The party is a joke.

I met Nancy Pelosi just as she had become speaker. I remember the whole place erupted in applause, so excited that things were going to change, the Democrats were going to make things right. That's the promise they used to get into power with no intention of fulfilling any of it. Now I don't believe a word she says. She is corrupt and greedy as all the rest of them. Exhibit A: American Samoa.

But I should quit being so sanctimonious! I mean, they were just scared patriots. Look forward (aka who ya going to vote for?).

While I disapproved of nearly all Bush's policies, I had to give him a grudging respect for his balls to wall, all out approach to getting the policies he wanted passed, and when he ran into obstruction, instead of backing down, doubling down.

Democrats fail to use the constitutional means at their disposal, let alone go to the very limits and dare Republicans to undo popular actions.

I would rather have Democrats get in fist fights on the floor of the Senate and insult the mothers of their opponents if they got more done that way.

If it saved the middle class and ended the corrupt stranglehold of an inbred, wealthy minority on our political system, no one would give half a flying fuck how it was done.

People like strong leaders, they like fighters. Republicans, no matter how crazy or perhaps because of it, look like they will fight to the death. Democrats are always willing to compromise. They are level-headed and keep the peace. This might be effective at times, but when the world is crashing down, when morality itself is outraged, taking the time to call for calm instead of dealing with the issue is ludicrous. And the moment they are elected to power, they start talking about bi-partisanship. So in effect, we get the Republican agenda no matter who wins.

Our centrists call all those who criticize Democrats all too willing to run to the right as wanting a pony, or not knowing how politics works. As if it is inevitable. As if there is no other way. I find them rather quiet on this issue.

I even experienced a very prominent DU poster tell me the US government would have melted down if Bush wasn't allowed to walk free. It's mind blowing and numbing at the same time. As if justice for the worst crimes that humanity can imagine would crash our system. But no one wants to acknowledge that they are in fact afraid of the Empire crumbling which is more to the point.

the fear is not that our government would come crashing down, but the right for certain very wealthy individuals to dictate policy up to and including war crimes to advance their personal financial interests will come crashing down, or at least be hobbled briefly.

There is never accountability for top government officials in the US and hever has been. The closest anyone has come in the last 50 years was the forced resignation of Tricky Dick Nixon.

Nixon and Kissinger committed crimes against humanity on a much more vast scale, and HRC pals around with ol' Hank like he's her long-lost uncle.

THere are different sets of rules for people In The Club.

And remember, Obama told us the torturers were "patriots"!!! Go America!!

that dramatically reduced world tensions and probably cut into some defense contractors profits.

that I have read is that the Trickster was scared to death that there were documents floating around out there from his VP days that directly tied him to attempted hits on Castro, which documents also directly tied him to Mafia figures involved in those plans, the planning for the Bay of Pigs and related unsavory and illegal activities involving Mob/low-level CIA entanglements. Nixon was apparently on good terms, albeit indirectly, with a number of major mobsters and his BFF Bebe Rebozo was a Mob associate.

Nixon thought that Larry O'Brien, then head of the Democrats and a friend of the Kennedy family, might have copies of the documents mentioned above. Nixon, being the paranoid he was, decided he needed to get those papers back - at least if O'Brien had them. Which is why a spook like E. Howard Hunt was involved and an ex-FBI guy like Gordon "Heil!!!" Liddy, not to mention CIA affiliated Cubans.

The burglars got caught, the WH and the Nixon campaign tried to cover it all up, and the rest is history.

I am currently reading John Dean's "The Nixon Defense" which is THE comprehensive history of what went on in WH during Watergate. Dean located, listened to, and had transcribed countless hundreds of hours of Nixon's Watergate related tape recordings. Fascinating reading.

So your theory would not have his support. Involved in the coverup of course.

about the planning, but he was a relative latecomer to the WH. The Nixon WH was pretty compartmentalized and given to vague orders - see what you can find out about X - with the recipient knowing what was really meant, and methodologies and operatives were not discussed at high levels. Ehrilchman was directly responsible for the break-in on Ellsberg's psychiatrist. And only WH conversations were recorded.

I have been fascinated by Watergate for 40 years and still am.

the mob ties, and attempts on Catro's life were par for the course in the 60's, and before and since our government has offed foreign leaders when they don't toe the line without any legal or political repercussions at home whatsoever.

trying to help people. It should be no problem getting them to file suit against former government officials for harming people. Right? And the GOP hates government officials anyway, right?

Oh, i guess we should just rather attack the current administration., right?

since we voted them into office.

Let's not be so daft as to think that the CIA stopped its torture programs the day Barack obama was sworn into office. And let's also not pretend he was unaware of it all.

it lets the repugs off with no accountability ever

what is going on at GITMO and other operations pertaining to foreign policy to be torture. Not a form of torture. Torture. Not enhanced interrogations. Torture. I haven't changed the way I view things because of who is in the White House. How can they stick to their guns? They are part of the club. One must truly believe the US isn't currently torturing people in order to not understand the current administrations view with respect to W.

Opinion polls are one thing, but actions are another. No government did anything to stop Bush - not one. France prevented UN approval, but never did anything that would have impacted their bottom line. When you really care that someone is a murdering, marauding rogue state, you do a little more than just refuse to actively encourage it. Everyone else was either equally hypocritical, accomplice to the crime, or itself a brutal state that could at most laugh at US hypocrisy rather than take any kind of credible moral stance.

And the same webs of global interest make war crimes prosecutions on any level unlikely. Have you noticed how no one was ever prosecuted for the vast, unimaginably horrific crimes of the Soviet Union even after its total collapse? No one cared enough to pay the geopolitical price for such a thing, either internally or externally; far easier and more profitable to simply exploit its successor states. The US GOP is far stronger than the wreckage of the Soviet state was after its collapse, and likely to exact considerable economic and diplomatic revenge on any state that appeared serious about prosecuting Bush's war crimes - and that's if any of them actually internally cared enough to try, which they don't.

The fact is, we don't either. We right here on DU and the broader activist left in America don't care enough to try. We're a bunch of cause-heads and intellectuals who enjoy taking positions more than doing anything with them. Are we going to stop the civil rights protests prompted by Ferguson and Garner in order to take up this subject? Or just write two different slogans on opposite sides of the protest signs (until a third issue comes up, and then we just go home?). Circulate petitions, just like all the others on the issue?

That's why it won't happen. But there is a small keyhole through which justice may occur - one that sometimes happens in history, to the bafflement of cynics: A discerning political animal somewhere may find it advantageous to seriously advance the issue. The reaction from the US GOP may be overwrought and cause blowback that paradoxically creates enemies of people who would otherwise not care. A spiral of similar events could develop. This is basically how Nixon was brought down, by a Congress that otherwise would have been content to look the other way on Watergate.

But it's not worth expecting such a thing. Never expect evil to be stupid at convenient times.

for a reason.

We have to look for leadership in those sectors. Everyone else is just running their mouths, or indifferent, or actively supporting the crimes.

I have a feeling torturing is still being used and will continue to be used and if they went after Bush then they know the next President that comes into the White House can come after them.

And, as horrid as it is, we still have NOT seen the worst of it, because
that got redacted ... 90% of the report to be exact, or 5,670 of 6300 pages.