Guy throws 2 shoes, gets 3 years. Idiot lies America into war, gets away with killing million-plus.

[Octafish]

What is wrong with this picture?



The shoe thrower was ticked off, justifiably. The United States is responsible for the death of more than a million of his countrymen, including hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children who had nothing to do with September 11. For throwing his shoes at Bush, he's been tried, convicted and sentenced to three years imprisonment.

The idiot George Walker Bush had no reason to invade Iraq and invented a casus belli. All it did was make the warmonger and his cronies a lot of money. Bush's invasion and occupation have also claimed the lives of 4,257 American servicemen and women, who may've thought they were in harm's way to defend the United States.

I see no outrage about Bush on my television screen over this. The radio says near-zip about it. Outrage over the invasion is not on the Google news page. It's understandable, then, why so few of the people I encounter in daily life say anything about it. The media's masters must want us to think we are alone in being upset about the lies, the hypocrisy and the injustice. Why?

[aquart]

1. Seems unfair to you, too, huh?

Of course, you have to see it from the Iraqi government point of view. If Bush hadn't a done what he did, THEY wouldn't be in power now.

[Octafish]

12. ''Money Trumps Peace.''

Very unfair, aquart. And it bugs me to no end that this warcriminal/warmonger remains a free man.

Money Trumps Peace

From a press conference Feb. 14, 2007:

Q: A lot of our allies in Europe do a lot of business with Iran. So I wonder what your thoughts are about how you further tighten the financial pressure on Iran, in particular, if it also means economic pain for a lot of our allies.

BUSH: It's an interesting question. One of the problems, not specifically on this issue, just in general, that - let's put it this way: Money trumps peace. Sometimes.

In other words, commercial interests are very powerful interests throughout the world. And part of the issue in convincing people to put sanctions on a specific country is to convince them that it's in the world's interest that they forego their own financial interest.

And that's why sometimes it's tough to get tough economic sanctions on countries, and I'm not making any comment about any particular country, but you touched on a very interesting point.

You know - so, therefore, we're constantly working with nations to convince them that what really matters in the long run is to have the environment so peace can flourish.

In the Iranian case, I firmly believe that, if they were to have a weapon, it would make it difficult for peace to flourish, and therefore I am working with people to make sure that that concern trumps whatever commercial interests may be preventing governments from acting.

I make no specific accusation with that statement. It's a broad statement. But it's an accurate assessment of what sometimes can halt multilateral diplomacy from working.

Source:

Guardian UK (article no longer online)

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utRKKOUHA4A

Thanks for reminding me, there is a bright side: Hell awaits.

[livetohike]

2. Amen. I am sick of Bush getting a pass for the miserable job

he did as President. Everything he touched is a failure.

[Octafish]

13. ''All right. You've covered your ass now.''

The crazy monkey received a briefing from the CIA entitled:

Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the United States



Of course, the dysfunctional ignoramus couldn't connect a dot if our lives depended on it.

The Covered-Up Meeting

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, October 2, 2006; 1:12 PM

The "State of Denial" in the title of Bob Woodward's new book describes President Bush's ongoing refusal to see the true consequences of the war he launched in Iraq.

But one of the book's most notable revelations suggests that the Bush White House was in another state of denial more than five years ago, this one about the threat of terrorism before September 11, 2001.

If the omniscient narrator of Woodward's book is to be believed, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice waved off warnings that should by any reasonable standard have put the government on high alert for an al-Qaeda attack.

And in what looks like a potential administration cover-up, Rice and the other participants in that meeting apparently never mentioned it to anyone, including investigators for the 9/11 Commission.

SNIP…

And a month later, as Ron Suskind reported in his book, "The One Percent Doctrine," an unnamed CIA briefer flew to Bush's Texas ranch to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' According to Suskind, Bush heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

CONTINUED…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/10/02/BL2006100200537.html

That touches criminal dereliction of duty. At best.

[Cha]

3. It's sucks but Muntadhar al-Zeidi

is a hero and a martyr to many and bush is a dirty word.

Hope when he gets out in 3 years that he's compensated with a good life..and I'm thinking he'd do it again.

Long Live Muntadhar al-Zeidi~

[Octafish]

14. ''All I can report is it is a size 10.''

Thus sprach Zerobusto.

Should al-Zeidi get out, I hope he runs for office.

Iraqis construct shoe sculpture to honor Bush shoe-throwing incident.

A large sculpture of one of the shoes thrown at President Bush last December by an Iraqi journalist was unveiled this week just outside an orphanage in Tikrit, Iraq — Saddam Hussein’s hometown. The orphans at the complex helped sculptor Laith al-Amiri build the shoe monument. “Those orphans who helped the sculptor in building this monument were the victims of Bush’s war,” said Faten Abdulqader al-Naseri, the orphanage director, adding that it “is a gift to the next generation to remember the heroic action by the journalist.” Al-Amiri praised the journalist, Muntadhar al-Zeidi, calling him a “source of pride for all Iraqis.” The sculpture also includes an ode to al-Zeidi and mentions the virtues of being “able to tell the truth out loud.”

SOURCE w Links: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/30/iraq-bush-shoe-sculpture/

He'd be a shoe-in.

[Cha]

15. I saw that shoe sculpture dedicated to

Muntadhar al-Zeidi! Let's hope he's got a lot of real allies who make sure he gets out.

[ConcernedCanuk]

18. You really think the BFEE and PNAC gang are gonna let this guy live?

.
.
.

The BFEE and PNAC gang are still alive and well,

just not officially in power anymore.

They just didn't all just sit back and say "we lost, so that's that".

Oh no

the BFEE and PNAC gang are still working behind the scenes,

and scheming for their next takeover.

Being "invisible" will actually help them to further their evil ventures.

Mind you - they got a few hundred billion dollars to play around with for the next while -

so they just might party on for a bit

but they will be back

count on it . .

(sigh)

[Cha]

19. I hope he doesn't get made into a

bigger martyr by getting killed.

And, no, I put nothing past the heinous murdering assholes known as the BFEE and PNAC.

[oedura]

4. Maybe they're punishing him because he missed? (nt)

...

[kimmerspixelated]

8. Heh,heh!

[Octafish]

22. ''We both use Colgate toothpaste.''

When asked what he had in common with Tony Blair -- Feb. 23, 2001.

Something else they both have in common:

Blair-Bush deal before Iraq war revealed in secret memo

PM promised to be 'solidly behind' US invasion with or without UN backing

Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Friday 3 February 2006

Tony Blair told President George Bush that he was "solidly" behind US plans to invade Iraq before he sought advice about the invasion's legality and despite the absence of a second UN resolution, according to a new account of the build-up to the war published today.

A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme.

"The diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning", the president told Mr Blair. The prime minister is said to have raised no objection. He is quoted as saying he was "solidly with the president and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam".

The disclosures come in a new edition of Lawless World, by Phillipe Sands, a QC and professor of international law at University College, London. Professor Sands last year exposed the doubts shared by Foreign Office lawyers about the legality of the invasion in disclosures which eventually forced the prime minister to publish the full legal advice given to him by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith.

The memo seen by Prof Sands reveals:

· Mr Bush told Mr Blair that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of "flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours". Mr Bush added: "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach ".

· Mr Bush even expressed the hope that a defector would be extracted from Iraq and give a "public presentation about Saddam's WMD". He is also said to have referred Mr Blair to a "small possibility" that Saddam would be "assassinated".

· Mr Blair told the US president that a second UN resolution would be an "insurance policy", providing "international cover, including with the Arabs" if anything went wrong with the military campaign, or if Saddam increased the stakes by burning oil wells, killing children, or fomenting internal divisions within Iraq.

· Mr Bush told the prime minister that he "thought it unlikely that there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups". Mr Blair did not demur, according to the book.

CONTINUED...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/03/iraq.usa

Of course, they also both happen to be war criminals.

[Karenina]

5. +5

[Octafish]

23. ''The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden.''

Must've forgot that one.

Anyway, Karenina-sama, guess which SMEAR BOAT Liar "helped" defend Plaintiff White?

Why, it's John O'Neil, the same fellow paid to blacken Democratic nominee John Kerry with the Smear Boat Liars.

Bill White, the former business partner of James R. Bath, Dubya's flying and party pal from way back in the Texas Air National Guard Days, retained O'Neill's services in his lawsuit against Bath. No wonder William White -- a Naval Academy grad, fighter pilot and former Bath business partner -- would lose at every turn and it cost him everything. He never knew that playing with Bush-connected folk means the game is fixed. Then again, that's how it always is for the BFEE. From /i]White's CBC interview:

William White CBC Interview

EXCERPT...

CBC: HE QUOTES THE NAME OF GEORGE BUSH?

Bill White: Oh absolutely.

CBC: SENIOR OR JUNIOR?

Bill White: Senior. He said that he would call the politically appointed Judges and I would never get due process. And that really is what motivated me to fight the fight in the courts. I couldn’t believe in the aftermath of all of us risking our lives fighting for the system that we could be denied our rights of due process under law. I just couldn’t believe that. Unfortunately I hought it was a bluff, but it turned out to be true because what he predicted is precisely what happened. I thought it was Bath who was blowing smoke so I resisted and I said: “Jim, I’m not going to sue you, I’m not going to go report these Saudi dealings to the DA’s Office. I just don’t want to be in Business with you anymore.” Then I called my Attorney and I didn’t instruct him to file a lawsuit. I said please look at our partnership agreement and find out how I can become a Businessman independent of Jim Bath. I just don’t want to be involved in all this. Well, I never
had that luxury because Bath and the Bank that was laundering the Saudi money inundated me in lawsuits. I had four criminal charges and I think twenty-eight civil lawsuits that were filed against me concurrently. And it just dominated my life.

Fortunately I was able to get legal representation. The best lawyers in Houston took up my case on a contingency fee basis. They filed counter claims against Bath alleging Saudi influence peddling with the Bush family, although in retrospect when I read my own legal pleadings, the lawyers were very careful to remove a lot of the references to the threats and avoided using the Bin Laden, the Bin Mahfouz the Bush name. And I would ask my own lawyers, why aren’t you stating succinctly the nature of the Bath’s threat?. And they’d say: “Well Bill, you know we don’t want to make the Judges angry. We have to be very careful.”

CBC: AND IT WASN’T THAT THEY DIDN’T BELIEVE THOSE LINKS WERE TRUE, IT WAS JUST THE OPPOSITE. THEY BELIEVED THEM ?

Bill White: They believed the links to be true. They’re afraid of backlash from the Judges. One of my many Lawyers, John O’Neill of Porter and Clements, was actually the campaign manager of one of the Republican judges who poured me out every case - Judge Lewis Moore. And when John found out that my case was assigned to Judge Moore he said: "Bill, we’ve got this case made-in-the-shade.” He said: “This guy - I’m his campaign manager. I raise funds for his reelection. No problem.” And then we’d get into the courtroom and be poured out without a trial. And John would shake his head and comment: “The Judge must have gone crazy. I can’t believe it, he’s never treated me this way.”

CONTINUED (on PDF)...

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/conspiracytheories/white.pdf

Poor Jim's scared for everybody. Including us.

[BuyingThyme]

6. It's illegal to throw a shoe at the guy who's occupying your country?

Freedom is on the march.

[lib_wit_it]

10. Yeah, boy, it was all worth it to bring on this kind of freedom. Sarc 1-5

[Octafish]

25. ''Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere!''

It doesn't matter to Bush. It didn't matter to Poppy Doc and Panama, either.

EXPLORING STATE CRIMINALITY: THE INVASION OF PANAMA

Ronald C. Kramer
Western Michigan University

Title: State Crime, The Media, And The Invasion of Panama.
Authors: Christina Jacqueline Johns and P. Ward Johnson.
Publisher: Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.
Year: 1994.

Title: The Panama Deception.
Director: Barbara Trent.
Writer and Editor: David Kasper.
Narrator: Elizabeth Montgomery.
Released: Empowerment Project, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. A Rhino Home Video Release. (1992) 91 minutes.

One of the most important, yet neglected, areas of criminological inquiry is that of state criminality. The nation-state, through its organizational structures and state managers, has historically engaged in numerous violations of its own criminal and civil laws, as well as various forms of international law. Many of these state crimes have been exceedingly violent, destructive, and costly. Despite the frequency of state criminality and the enormous social harm that it causes, the discipline of criminology has paid scant attention to this form of illegal behavior. Only a few criminologists have undertaken any empirical or theoretical work in this area. And a recent analysis of criminal justice and criminology textbooks shows that "political" crime of any type gets very little coverage. (Tunnell, 1993a).

The neglect of crimes by the state, however, appears to be changing. A number of works dealing with state criminality have appeared in recent years (Chambliss, 1989; Perdue, 1989; Barak, 1991; Kauzlarich, Kramer, and Smith, 1992; Tunnell, 1993b; Kramer, 1992; 1994) and some textbooks now contain a chapter on the topic (Beirne and Messerschmidt, 1991; Sykes and Cullen, 1992). The book and film under review here are part of what I hope will be a growing trend among criminologists and others to explore the nature, extent, causes, and social control of state criminality.

Both the book by Christina Johns and P. Ward Johnson and the Oscar winning film by director Barbara Trent, focus on one specific act of state violence: the illegal invasion of Panama by the United States in December of 1989. State Crime, The Media, and The Invasion of Panama, and The Panama Deception, both cover the same general ground in presenting their case studies of this illegal armed intervention. Both sketch out the broad historical context of U.S.-Panamanian relations, document the shift in U.S. policy toward General Manuel Antonio Noriega, critique the reasons that President George Bush offered for what he called "Operation Just Cause," analyze the complicity of the U.S. media in the affair, reveal the destructive consequences of the attack on Panama and its devastating aftermath, and offer some thoughts about the future of the United States and the region of Latin America.

Along the way, both the film and the book address a number of important criminological concerns. In addition to simply raising the critical issue of state violence and political crime, these works present some critical insights into the political economy of state criminality, the nature of international law and selective criminalization, and the problems of social control concerning institutional and organizational offenders.

Johns and Johnson open their book by sketching out the political and economic context in which the invasion of Panama took place. They use the concept of "rollback" to analyze U.S. foreign policy actions in the postwar period. Rollback is "the determination of U.S. policy elites to return to a precommunist world, with the final goals of eliminating communism in the USSR and establishing free-market capitalism worldwide" (p.6). Rollback emerged as an especially potent force during the Reagan-Bush years and in fact, "the new world order" touted by Bush "was nothing more than a vision of successful rollback with the United States in control" (p. 6).

CONTINUED...

http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol3is2/state.html

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Video: The Panama Deception

[kimmerspixelated]

7. Touche' Octafish!!

Great post! I'm with ya!

[Octafish]

26. ''But all in all, it's been a fabulous year for Laura and me.''

Summing up his first year in office, Dec. 20, 2001.

Bush knew it would be, apparently.

Plot to assassinate Bush – reports

Ashcroft Flying High

Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his former business partner?

Genoa braces for G8 summit



Thank you, kimmerspixelated. Yes, my Friend, we ALL are pixelated.

[peacetalksforall]

9. The guy's sentence should not start until Dick, Don, and George's sentences start.

[Kurovski]

11. K&R.

I hope the guy becomes a freaking world-wide millionaire celebrity.

If George W. Cornstool were not the sociopathic monstrosity of a failure inserted into a steaming turd rotting in the intestines of a deceased orangutan that he is, he would have long ago been pushing to get the guy released from any ridiculous punishment--like, say--three years in prison.

[marshall]

16. Isn't that the society that flogs an elderly woman for speaking to a man she's not married to?

Most of their punishments are harsher than ours.

[AZ Criminal JD]

17. That was Saudi Arabia

You may think they look all alike but they are not the same.

[marshall]

20. That's why I used the word "society" instead of "nation"

Both nations share a common culture.

[AZ Criminal JD]

24. That statement demonstrates you know nothing about either nation.

But you are with alot of people on that.

[Karenina]

27. +1

[marshall]

28. I don't think you understand the use of language

I'm not saying the two countries have a society that are exactly alike. They are more similar to each other in many respects than they are similar to the United States.

[formercia]

21. This whole Planet is fucked-up.

Things haven't changed much since the Dark Ages. Kings are still Kings, no matter what new label a society gives them and the Planet is still crawling with Despots, Genocidal maniacs and their up and coming wannabes.

[Lady Effingbroke]

29. Things are the same as they will ever be.

The only things that ever change are clothing and technology. Other than that, same-o, same-o.