They are all criminals...sm
Posted By: Democrat on 2006-09-07
In Reply to: The state and local levels are the criminals here - LA resident
I can not believe they voted Nagin back in. I just can't believe it, but they did. In that sense, they get what they pay for. However, many New Orleanians do not plan on going back because of how it was handled on local, state and federal level and more are leaving because of it.
I am more concerned with the *response* because that time was so critical. I feel at that time it became a federal responsibility. I posed the question, and I will again, why can Bush get his boots on the ground in Florida within 24 hours after a huricane with a check in hand for w-h-a-t-e-v-e-r needs to be done. Blank check. Yet, he goes on business as usual Iraq speeches, guitar playing, and everything and not until he is criticized that he shows up for photo ops. In my mind this is criminal as well.
Even though state and local were negligent, to her defense, Blanco did declare a state of emergency and requested federal aid before Katrina. It turned out to be too little too late because the feds were not prepared to handle a disaster either. You would think post 9-11 they would be but then we don't all have PhDs.
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war criminals
The facts..the fall out..the seats beside saddam..
Some soldiers claim that Article 133 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (Conduct Unbecoming), is being used to silence them from leaking information about military atrocities. The commanding superiors argument is that it's meant to suppress dissent in the ranks, but the forced silence of military personnel should not be taken as an endorsement that soldiers aren't in disagreement with the Bush administration. According to a recent Zogby poll, 72% of US soldiers in Iraq want to leave. If more soldiers read the UCMJ, they would be alarmed to find out what....... a by-the-book soldier {knew}, and could, as matters stand, make an assault on their chain of command that would shine light on the illegality of their call of duty in Iraq.
Moreover, Article 133, under section (3), states; committing, or attempting to commit crimes involving moral turpitude, it could be argued that sodomizing Iraqi prisoners, forcing them to masturbate, and raping female Iraqi prisoners meets this criterion of prosecution under military law.
And Article 134 (Assault-indecent) makes it punishable to bring discredit upon the armed forces. This falls under acts of violation of civil and foreign law which brings disrepute or which tends to lower the US armed forces in public esteem.
Military members who willfully disobey the lawful orders of their superiors risk serious consequences. Thus, I was only following orders is commonly used as a legal defense.
An order requiring the performance of a military duty or act may be inferred to be lawful and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate. This inference must not, however, apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime. Thus, the I was only following orders argument can be an unsuccessful defense, most notably by Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg tribunals following WWII.
Military courts hold military members accountable for their actions even while following orders - if the order is illegal.
Article VI of the US Constitution states that treaty obligations of the United States are the supreme law of the land, and the US Supreme Court has held that international law, to include custom, are part of the US law. This means that treaties and agreements the United States enters into enjoy equal status as laws passed by Congress and signed by the President. Therefore, all persons subject to US law must observe the United States' Law of Armed Conflict obligations. In particular, military personnel must consider LOAC to plan and execute operations and must obey LOAC in combat. Those who violate LOAC may be held criminally liable for war crimes and court-martialed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Under the Rules of War The Law of Armed Conflict aims to protect civilians, prisoners of war, the wounded, sick and shipwrecked. DoDD 5100.77 requires each military department to design a program that ensures LOAC observance, prevents LOAC violations, ensures prompt reporting of alleged LOAC violations, appropriately trains all forces in LOAC, and completes legal review of new weapons. LOAC training is the treaty obligation of the United States under provisions of the 1949 Geneva Conventions
The Bush-Cheney administration has carried out the destruction of Iraq violating the UN Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter, the Law of Armed Conflict and patently commissioning through the chain of command violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Laying the Foundation: The Gulf War Crimes
None of this is particularly shocking if we look at the many signals of the Bush dynasty's thirst for global domination. Take for example Ramsey Clark's indictment of 1991 Gulf War Crimes: The United States intentionally bombed and destroyed civilian life, commercial and business districts, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, shelters, residential areas, historical sites, private vehicles and civilian government offices.
General Thomas Kelly commented on February 23, 1991, that by the time the ground war begins there won't be many of them left. General Norman Schwarzkopf placed Iraqi military casualties at over 100,000. The ratio of US soldier's K.I.A. (148) to Iraqi combined military and civilian deaths was well over 1 to 20.
By the time the US military was finished with Desert Storm, seven times the explosive force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (100,000 killed) had been expended upon Iraq, returning their economic infrastructure to a pre-industrial age.
The purpose of the attacks, writes Clark, was to destroy life, property and terrorize the civilian population. On the highways, civilian vehicles including public buses taxicabs and passenger cars were bombed and strafed at random to frighten civilians from flight, from seeking food or medical care, finding relatives or other uses of highways ...
General Colin Powell's response to the extraordinary number of noncombatant deaths was, It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in.
During the ten years of US enforced sanctions in Iraq after Desert Storm, 525,000 men, women and children died from starvation, untreated disease, depleted uranium radiation exposure, and malnutrition.
==========
SOLDIERS NEEDN'T OBEY BUSH!!!!!
Bush and Cheney are War Criminals; disobeying a War Criminal is NOT a crime!!!
Use of Depleted Uranium by Bush and Cheney IS a War Crime!!!
Soldiers can in good conscience disobey the orders of War Criminals.
Please pass on this specific legal information to any soldier you know.
Criminals...
Don't forget Bill's felony perjury, and we should re-open the Vince Foster case. Like I said on the other board....there are some REALLY big skeletons in the Clinton closet. I know Juanita Broaddrick and I believe that Clinton raped her. And as bad as he is...I believe his wife is as bad or worse. There are an alarming number of people who have died around these two.
GOP, bunch of liars and criminals
The GOP's Spreading Plague
By Joe Conason
Salon.com
Friday 30 September 2005
Voters are notoriously slow in voting out politicians accused of corruption, but they may reach the tipping point with the latest revelations.
To be an honest Republican these days must be to wonder what awful revelation is coming next - and how the Grand Old Party, which once claimed to represent political reform, became a front for sleaze, corruption and cynical criminality. Across the country, from the Capitol to statehouses, Republican officials are under indictment, under investigation or under suspicion.
This week's headlines featured the indictment of Rep. Tom DeLay and the probe of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, but the infection of venality among their fellow partisans is now reaching epidemic proportions. So widespread is the plague that keeping track of all the individual cases, and their increasingly baroque variations, has become a distinct challenge.
Consider Jack Abramoff, once the prince of K Street lobbyists and a dedicated right-wing ideologue who boasted of his powerful connections to DeLay, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and the entire Republican apparatus in Washington. Already under investigation by the Justice Department for his influence peddling among House members, including DeLay, and his swindling of Indian tribes, Abramoff was indicted last month for bank fraud in a separate South Florida case involving a casino boat company that he partly owned.
The fraud allegedly committed by Abramoff and his business partner Adam Kidan involved a phony wire transfer they used to purchase a controlling interest in SunCruz from the company's founder, Konstantinos Gus Boulis, in 2001.
Abramoff and Kidan later fell out with Boulis in a bitter business dispute that turned violent. In February 2001, gunmen ambushed Boulis on a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., highway and shot him repeatedly. On Tuesday, Florida authorities arrested three New York men with mob connections for the Boulis killing. Two of the men - Anthony Moscatiello and Tony Ferrari - had received payments totaling more than $240,000 from Kidan and Abramoff. Moscatiello, a longtime associate of the Gambino Mafia family, and Ferrari were supposedly providing food and consulting services to SunCruz - or so Kidan claimed when questioned by prosecutors. There is no evidence, however, that Moscatiello and Ferrari provided any services to the company.
Connecting the dots isn't difficult here: Kidan and Abramoff want to get rid of Boulis, who won't go away. Kidan and Abramoff hire Moscatiello and Ferrari with SunCruz money. Moscatiello and Ferrari allegedly whack Boulis, without any motive of their own. If the Broward County state's attorney has sufficient evidence to win convictions for a capital crime, some people will probably be talking soon in hope of avoiding the hot shot.
The stunning fall of Abramoff, who has yet to hit bottom, is certainly the most colorful tale of Republican depravity. The corporate money laundering to Texas politicians that led to DeLay's conspiracy indictment, and the suspicious insider stock transaction that spurred investigations of Frist by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, seem mundane by comparison. Outrage will be warranted if their misconduct is proved, but everyone sadly knows that these felonies are now common practice in our political and corporate culture.
Corporate misbehavior has also brought down right-wing publisher Conrad Black, neoconservative strategist and former Bush advisor Richard Perle and the entire corporate board of Hollinger Inc., the Republican-friendly media conglomerate formerly controlled by Lord Black - and that he and others are plausibly accused of illicitly looting for their own benefit. Furious shareholders forced Black to relinquish control of the company and are suing him, as well as Perle and former Black deputy David Radler, for $500 million. The SEC is also suing Black and Radler, and the Justice Department is investigating the former Hollinger directors.
Last month, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who also happens to be the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case, accepted Radler's guilty plea to mail fraud and wire fraud. Radler is now believed to be cooperating in the prosecution of what former SEC chairman Richard Breeden, a Republican who investigated Hollinger on behalf of shareholders, termed a corporate kleptocracy.
Kleptocratic morality evidently ruled at least two Republican statehouses in the Midwest as well. Currently under indictment are former Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, whose trial on bribery charges began last week, and Gov. Robert Taft of Ohio, who pleaded no contest last month to charges of accepting illegal gifts from a state contractor.
That contractor is Thomas Noe, a coin dealer who received lucrative investment deals with the state's Workers Compensation Fund and is now at the center of a gigantic scandal known as Coingate. More than $12 million has disappeared from the fund, and former GOP official Noe stands accused of laundering money to various Republican politicians, including the Bush-Cheney campaign. Like Abramoff, Noe is a Bush Pioneer, responsible for raising at least $100,000 for the president last year.
Still another Pioneer is currently under criminal investigation in a celebrated corruption case involving Randy Duke Cunningham, a prominent Republican representative from San Diego with a senior position on the House defense appropriations subcommittee. On Aug. 18, FBI and IRS agents raided the offices of defense contractor and Bush fundraiser Brent Wilkes.
Wilkes is reportedly a former business associate of Mitchell J. Wade, the head of a defense contracting firm called MZM Inc. who is under investigation in San Diego for alleged bribery of Cunningham. According to newspaper reports, Wade purchased a home owned by Cunningham at a price inflated by at least $700,000, and also permitted the congressman to use his 42-foot yacht free of charge. Federal agents searched Wade's offices in July.
Although prosecutors have brought no criminal charges in the case yet, they have filed civil court documents describing the home sale as a violation of federal bribery laws - and Cunningham, who has served in Congress for decades, has already announced that he will not seek another term next year.
The Republican National Committee's new treasurer, Robert Kjellander, is under investigation too. (Naturally, he is also a Bush Pioneer.) Not long after he assumed his new post at the party's Washington headquarters, Kjellander received a federal subpoena for records of his dealings with the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System, a state pension fund, and the Carlyle Group. Federal prosecutors are reportedly looking into alleged corruption at the fund, and have asked Kjellander to provide information about a $4.5 million fee he received from Carlyle for his role in arranging investments by the fund with the huge private equity fund. Carlyle, of course, is closely connected to the Bush administration, including the president's father, George H.W. Bush, who has worked for the firm as a rainmaker and advisor.
In fairness, it should be said that all these pols and parasites may be innocent (except for those already convicted), or at least not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is also true that voters have historically been slow to evict politicians from office because of corruption charges.
But public opinion of congressional Republicans is hitting new lows, and Americans are growing furious about the war in Iraq, the government response to Hurricane Katrina and rising energy prices. The natural impulse to throw the rascals out can only be encouraged by the Gilded Age spectacles now unfolding in Washington and in cities across the country as the indictments continue to come down between now and November 2006.
Joe Conason writes a weekly column for Salon and the New York Observer.
The state and local levels are the criminals here
I'm sick and tired of Bush getting all the blame. The local and state governments diverted pre-Katrina funds to shore up levees and to solidify effective hurricane evacuation to their pet projects. Ray Nagin let thousands of school buses sit in the New Orleans public school bus yard because he could not authorize their use. How, many phone calls would it have taken for him to get to the right person who could authorize it??? Probably less than two. He's one of the most inept and corrupt people in N.O. and yet the lemmings of N.O. voted him back in, because he could whine about the Fed. He didn't give a rip until his city was dessiminated then he did the usual nanny state liberal thing and that was to blame someone else. Don't even get me started on Ms. Air-head governor. She is a complete joke.
The federal government may beeen slow, but the state and local governments were beyond negligent. They are criminals.
What does crooks and criminals have to do with Cynthia McKinney? sm
She is going exactly what I would want her to do - HER JOB! 50% of Americans have asked for this. She is fully aware of the attacks from the media, etc. that lie ahead. See quote below:
From her inquiries into election fraud in 2000 to her calls for a transparent and thorough investigation into 9/11, not to mention the widely covered run-in she had with the Capitol Hill Police, the congresswoman is aware that this resolution will likely be ignored and that she will be ruthlessly attacked upon its filing.
What do you think they are going to do to me this time? she asks her staff. Everyone uncomfortably shifts in their seats, and after no answer comes, McKinney explains: We have to do this because this is simply the right thing to do. The American people do want to hold this man and his office accountable for the crimes they have committed, and if no member of Congress is willing to do it, than I will.
disgusting, lying murdering war criminals are at it again.
"We're so sorry about those civilians." Killers of women, children and elders. Occupation, starvation and now massacre in one of the world's most densely populated areas. US and Israel are the only countries on the planet who think this disproportionate response is somehow justified. The most outrageous nation on the planet on the face of the earth, responsible for so much pain and suffering. Outrageous. Warped evil, brought to you by your tax dollars. Their blood is on all our hands. Flame away. I don't care.
Bush and Cheney are criminals no cheerio about it sm
Bush looked ashamed today at the inauguration. Cheney was in a wheelchair, laying low.
We KILL violent criminals; apparently some think unborn children are the
criminals as they are murdered as well.
Sad.
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