George W. Bush knew Guantanamo prisoners were innocent

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantanamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times. The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantanamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration. Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell's chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defense Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantanamo in 2002 were innocent, but believed that it was 'politically impossible to release them'. General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson's declaration. (Please read the REST of the story by clicking on the title of this entry)

Nuclear Peace in our Time

Many years ago, Albert Einstein commented about our "human" worship of war:
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, and for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable an ignorable war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
In the spirit of that great and immortal genius, let us think carefully about Iran's call for a nuclear free Middle East, and an end to nuclear proliferation globally.
Instead of singling out Iran, the world should rally behind this effort and give Iran the benefit of the doubt. I find it ironic that the only nation that has ever used its nuclear weapons on an enemy, the US, in tandem with Israel, which refuses to disclose its own lethal 'world-ending' weapons, is leading the charge against Iran's probably tiny and inconsequential effort to protect itself against Israel's preparation to plunge our world into a, as George W. would call a NU-Qular disaster.
Please click on the heading to read the rest of Linda Heard's thoughtful article!

Afghan president Hamid Karzai's 'mental stability' in doubt!

In an interview with a US cable television network, Peter Galbraith, the former UN deputy head of mission in Afghanistan described Mr. Karzai as "emotional" and "off balance", and called for President Obama to vastly limit his power until he proved himself a reliable partner to the US. "He's prone to tirades, and could act impulsively, Mr. Galbraith told MSNBC.
In a related story, Alfred W. McCoy reported that, in ways that have escaped most observers, the Obama administration is now trapped in an endless cycle of drugs and death in Afghanistan, from which there is neither an easy end nor an obvious exit. After a year of cautious debate and costly deployments, President Obama finally launched his new Afghan war strategy at 2:40 AM on February 13, 2010, in a remote village called Marja in southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province.
As a wave of helicopters descended on Marja's outskirts, spitting up clouds of dust, hundreds of US Marines dashed through fields sprouting opium poppies.
Throughout all the shooting and shouting, American commanders seemed strangely unaware that Marja might qualify as our world's heroin capital, with hundreds of laboratories, regularly processing the local poppy crop into high-grade heroin. After all, the surrounding fields produce at least 40% of the world's illicit opium supply, and much of this harvest is traded in Marja.
For the rest of this important story, please click on
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146270

US Special Forces tried to cover up their massacres in Khataba!

Before I served as Advisory Team Leader in Vietnam, I was very impressed by the John Wayne Epic: The Green Berets, and I wanted to contribute my own strength to work for the "freedom" of Vietnam's indigenous population. As we all know, movies do not reflect reality, but are designed from the ground up, to persuade some stupid idiot to work for our "evil" government. Well, they are all evil, as far as I am concerned, but ours, especially President Obama, appears to be motivated by a decidedly evil higher power to break new records in the perfidious exploitation of the genuine patriotic sentiments of our brave soldiers.
After a night raid, our Special Forces tried to cover up their crimes, by digging bullets out of their victims' bodies in the aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened. Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, just outside of Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The precise composition of the force has never been made public, but the original claims by NATO point to a cover-up by our American government and our Afghan allies.
Please click on the title of this post to follow "the rest of the story."

Veterans Group pushes Congress to help Unemployed Vets

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America are pressing for Congress to address the staggering rate of unemployment among veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. For me, this is another illuminating experience with de-ja-vu (the illusion of having already experienced something, which is actually being experienced for the first time.). Truly, as one of my Montagnard friends told me only a few weeks after I served as Civil Affairs Officer for the 1/10 Cavalry Squadron, told me when I first arrived in Vietnam: "All wars are the same, and the only things which remain are the scars." Fortunately, our new veterans have a good friend in Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont), the chairman of the Finance Committee, who has introduced a jobs bill for new veterans. When I returned from Vietnam, there was no-one who decided to speak for us, and we were outcasts in our own country.
Another useful development is a new Army school to boost 'mental fitness'. When I first arrived in America, with a raging case of PSDT, I bought a .45 caliber army pistol, and I walked the most crime-ridden part of our city, hoping that someone would attack me, so that I could "blow him" -(or her) away. Fortunately, no-one did.

Is America Yearning for Fascism?

Cynthia McKinney, who ran for president on the Green Party ticket, says that we are not ruled by two parties, but by one: "It is the party of money and war, and we have to take our great nation away from those who have hijacked it."
The Democrats are so oblivious to the personal and economic despair sweeping our country that they think offering the unemployed the right to keep their unemployed children on their non -existent health care policies is a step forward.
The longer we appeal to the Democrats, who are merely servants of corporate interests, the more stupid and ineffective we become. Only 25 percent of those polled by a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll believed that "their" government could be trusted to protect the interests of the American people, and they are right.
We are bound to a party that has betrayed every principle we claim to espouse, from universal health care to an end to our government's permanent war economy, to a concern for the jobs of the working class.
Please read the entire article, by the former war correspondent, Chris Hedges, in TruthDig, 30 March 2010!