JFK - The George H. W. Bush Connection

JFK was ASSASSINATED BY THE CIA GEORGE HW BUSH was INVOLVED.avi

Dark Legacy George Bush and the murder of John Kennedy Jan 2009

17 Disgraceful Facts Buried In The Senate’s 600 Page Torture Report

CREDIT: AP

by Igor Volsky Posted on December 9, 2014 at 2:11 pm

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s extensive use of torture reveals that the agency regularly misled the White House and Congress about the information it had obtained from detainees and used techniques that are far more brutal than it — or former Bush administration officials — had previously acknowledged.

For instance, President George W. Bush insisted that “[t]his government does not torture people” and claimed that the intelligence it produced was instrumental to preventing terrorism on American soil and capturing high-value targets, including Osama bin Laden. But the Committee’s five year investigation — and examination of more than six million CIA documents — reveals all of those assertions to be false

For its part, the CIA acknowledged that it “did not always live up to the high standards that we set for ourselves” and “made mistakes” in how it ran the program, particularly “early on” when the CIA “was unprepared and lacked the core competencies required.” However, it insisted that “there are too many flaws for [this report] to stand as the official record of the program” and strongly disputed “that the agency’s assessments were willfully misrepresented in a calculated effort to manipulate.”

Republicans are similarly shielding the agency from criticism, claiming that the report is “ideologically motivated and distorted recounting of historical events.” “The fact that the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation program developed significant intelligence that helped us identify and capture important al-Qa’ida terrorists, disrupt their ongoing plotting, and take down Usama Bin Ladin is incontrovertible,” Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement.  READ MORE

How the Deficit Got This Big

Editorial | Deconstruction

By TERESA TRITCH

Published: July 23, 2011

With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here — from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions.

 Despite what antigovernment conservatives say, non-
defense discretionary spending on areas like foreign aid, education and food safety was not a driving factor in creating the deficits. In fact, such spending, accounting for only 15 percent of the budget, has been basically flat as a share of the economy for decades. Cutting it simply will not fill the deficit hole.

The first graph shows the difference between budget projections and budget reality. In 2001, President George W. Bush inherited a surplus, with projections by the Congressional Budget Office for ever-increasing surpluses, assuming continuation of the good economy and President Bill Clinton’s policies. But every year starting in 2002, the budget fell into deficit. In January 2009, just before President Obama took office, the budget office projected a $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009 and deficits in subsequent years, based on continuing Mr. Bush’s policies and the effects of recession. Mr. Obama’s policies in 2009 and 2010, including the stimulus package, added to the deficits in those years but are largely temporary. READ MORE

New book points damning finger at Bush administration saying they were warned about 9/11 earlier than first thought

‘500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars’ asserts White House alerted of imminent Bin Laden threat months before 9/11.
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By Corky Siemaszko / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, September 11, 2012, 12:43 PM

The Bush administration was warned that Osama Bin Laden was plotting the Sept. 11 attacks much earlier than previously thought, according to a blockbuster new book.

But President Bush’s advisers, fixated on bringing down Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein, believed Bin Laden was blowing smoke, reporter Kurt Eichenwald claims in “500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars.”

The result was a national tragedy that left nearly 3,000 dead.

President Bush has said repeatedly that he would have done everything in his power to thwart the terror attacks had he known that they were coming. READ MORE

Spain Proceeding With Bush Torture Case

Detainees at Guantanamo Bay are watched by
military police. (photo: Reuters)

By Carol Rosenberg, The Miami Herald

16 January 12

The Obama administration may want to look forward but but other countries are still interested in determining whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated international law.

Spanish judge on Friday re-launched an investigation into the alleged torture of detainees held at the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, one day after a British authorities launched a probe into CIA renditions to Libya.

The twin developments demonstrated that while the Obama administration has stuck to its promise not to investigate whether Bush administration officials acted illegally by authorizing the use of harsh interrogation techniques, other countries are still interested in determining whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated international law.

In Madrid, Judge Pablo Rafael Ruz Gutierrez handed down a 19-page decision Friday in which he said he would seek additional information - medical data, a translation of a Human Rights Watch report, elaboration on material made public by WikiLeaks, and testimony from three senior U.S. military officers who served at Guantánamo - in the case of four released Guantánamo captives who allege they were humiliated and subjected to torture while in U.S. custody.  READ MORE

Maddow relays censored memo on CIA ‘war crimes’ during Bush Administration

By Eric W. Dolan
Thursday, April 5, 2012 0:05 EDT

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night explained a legal memo that advised the Bush Administration that so-called enhanced interrogation techniques were torture and therefore illegal.
Wired reporter Spencer Ackerman obtained the memo, written by State Department counselor Philip Zelikow, through a Freedom on Information Act request.

Bush told NBC’s Matt Lauer in 2010 that he authorized the use of enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding because his “lawyer said it was legal, said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act.” But Zelikow’s memo warned the Bush Administration in 2006 that the interrogation techniques used on terror suspects by the CIA were “a felony war crime.”

“As a top lawyer at the Bush State Department, Philip Zelikow circulated the memo within the Administration that said, essentially, that the Administration was kidding itself in trying to say that there was some way around the law,” Maddow explained. “They were trying to give a legal green light to CIA interrogator to torture people, but that green light, he said, was a sham.”

In 2009, Zelikow said that the Bush Administration attempted to collect and destroy all copies of the memo.

“If the Republican Party were the still the party of John McCain, this would open up a whole new can of political worms,” Maddow said, “because the Obama Administration, remember, looked into Bush Administration ordered torture and they decided not to prosecute any of it.”   READ MORE
 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

How the GOP Might Try to Steal the 2012 Election

TEN YEARS LATER

Democrats had better hope that the coming elections are not too close because the GOP is honing its vote stealing skills in its own primaries:

GOP state party snafus all have benefited Romney:

As we wrote yesterday, the Michigan Republican Party voted Wednesday night to award its two at-large delegates to the statewide winner instead of dividing up proportionally, as we (and even the Michigan GOP chairman at one time) had assumed. That move gave Romney a 16-14 delegate edge in the state instead of a 15-15 tie, and it has produced a firestorm of controversy. What’s more, it’s the latest GOP state party snafu this primary season that’s benefited Romney.

Consider: The Iowa Republican Party originally declared Romney the winner there (and even once the vote count had changed, it was hesitant to declare Santorum the new winner). In addition, the Maine GOP badly mishandled its caucuses (one county wasn’t counted due to snow, other results got lost in a spam folder), and Romney narrowly won that contest. And now you have the delegate drama in Michigan, which now allows Romney to claim a win there in both the popular vote and delegate count.

It's important to remember that they have two main methods of stealing elections. The first is vote suppression, in which they make it difficult for their opponents to cast votes. This is nothing new historically and it's not been confined to one party. But the modern Republicans have put their very special stamp on the practice by using reverse psychology and whining about non-existent voter fraud to claim they have been the victims of the terrible ACORN conspiracy to cancel out their decent Real American vote. (This was one of the bogus arguments used inBush vs Gore, which serves as a sort of template for their various legal arguments.)

But there's always been a second piece to the puzzle and that is the local and state GOP institutions responsible for counting votes and interpreting the voting laws being trained to use that power for partisan purpose.   READ MORE

Televangelist Pat Robertson joins ‘Obama dictatorship’ conspiracy

Pat Robertson

By Stephen C. Webster
Wednesday, February 15, 2012 15:43 EST

Even though the claim is wildly inaccurate, President Barack Obama’s critics have for years been calling him a “dictator,” and on Wednesday morning televangelist Pat Robertson joined the conspiracy parade by insisting that Obama secretly “wants to take control of every aspect of this nation by the federal government.”

“If you want a dictatorship, then that’s the way to get it because he’s giving it to you,” the 81-year-old said.
It wasn’t clear what exactly Robertson was talking about, other than making rambling allegations, but the claim that Obama wants to become a “dictator” springs from conservative backlash against President George W. Bush’s bailout of Chrysler and General Motors — a policy the Obama administration adopted and furthered to a considerable extent.

Conservatives began hurling allegations of a creeping dictatorship when the government effectively fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner after it had taken a large equity stake in the company to help them avoid complete collapse. In reality, the administration’s move saved tens of thousands of jobs — some say more — and GM has since returned to profit-making, allowing them to begin repaying the massive $49.9 billion given by taxpayers.

But most disappointing to many Republicans: While President Obama definitely owns the auto bailouts, Bush won’t stop taking credit for them.

“I didn’t want there to be 21 percent unemployment,” the former president told an audience in Las Vegas on Monday. “Sometimes circumstances get in the way of philosophy. I said, ‘No depression.’”
READ MORE

Why Do Dangerous Financial Criminals Roam Free?

 Prosecutors like Eric Schneiderman need cops on the beat to put financial crooks behind bars. But thanks to Bush, these cops are missing in action.

February 4, 2012

American Public Media's "Marketplace" had a recent segment focused on why it has taken so long to bring criminal prosecutions related to the financial crisis. Reporters observed that at the beginning of the crisis, the Obama administration wanted to calm the financial industry rather than impose accountability. They speculated, along with Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street participants, many of whom have been calling for prosecutions, that Obama’s creation of a new group to prosecute mortgage fraud led by New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman was likely to be politically motivated. And they indicated that financial crimes are complex and prosecutors need time to develop their cases.

But here's what they didn't say: A major reason the prosecutions don’t exist is that President George W. Bush took the cops off the beat.

Think about street crime. Imagine, for example, a protection racket in which gangs extort payment from fearful shopkeepers. Prosecutors rarely initiate criminal prosecutions; indeed, they may not even know that the crime is occurring. The police pound the beats that keep them aware of the increase in crime, respond to complaints, investigate, determine that a crime may have occurred that warrants attention, create a file and send it to the prosecutor’s office. In routine cases, the prosecution proceeds on the basis of the police report alone. In more complex cases, the prosecutor may supplement the police investigation. But prosecutors rarely initiate cases. Even when a task force is appointed to target crime in a particular sector, it typically involves prosecutors working with the police. The prosecutors simply don’t have the skills or the manpower to detect crime, conduct investigations and make the record necessary to prosecute.   READ MORE

Bush's Faith-Based Gravy Train

By Howard Bess January 25, 2009 Editor’s Note: When the American Right began its dramatic rise in the early 1980s, one of its early slogans was “Defund the Left” — by gutting government-funded social programs managed by liberal organizations. Two decades later, George W. Bush’s administration went further, into “Funding the Right.” In this guest essay, Rev. Howard Bess looks at how Bush institutionalized these political subsidies under the umbrella of his faith-based initiatives: During the presidential tenure of George W. Bush, a very significant, largely unnoticed organizational innovation took place. I am not writing about the Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security is very visual. Anyone who travels is aware of Homeland Security. The agency has become a reluctantly accepted fact of American life. Rather I am writing about the Bush administration’s Faith-Based and Community Initiative. With little scrutiny the U.S. government has fundamentally changed its approach to meeting the needs of Americans who are poor or in need of some sort of public help. READ MORE

Is the Saudi Royal Family Connected to 9/11 Hijackers?

New evidence links the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida, who reportedly had contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the US prior to the attacks.

September 22, 2011

WhoWhatWhy has found evidence linking the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida who reportedly had direct contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the United States just prior to the attacks. Our report connects some of the dots first laid out by investigative author Anthony Summers and Florida-based journalist Dan Christensen in articles jointly published in the Miami Herald and on the nonprofit news site BrowardBulldog.org.

In early September of this year, Summers and Christensen reported that a secret FBI probe, never shared with Congressional investigators or the presidential 9/11 commission, had uncovered information indicating the possibility of support for the hijackers from previously unknown confederates in the United States during 2001.

Now WhoWhatWhy reveals that those alleged confederates were closely tied to influential members of the Saudi ruling elite.
READ MORE

9/11: A Conspiracy Theory In 5 Minutes

Here's a website, operated by Pilots, where you can read and discuss all things 911: READ MORE

Bush's Toronto appearance cancelled

14 Sep 2011 Next week's appearance by former U.S. president [sic] George W. Bush at an event hosted by a local evangelical Christian university has been cancelled. The decision came Wednesday, the same day three former students launched a petition urging the university to cancel the speech. On Tuesday, a class valedictorian and professor publicly spoke out against the appearance following the resignation of another staff member. Bush was scheduled to speak Sept. 20 to about 150 people at an invitation-only breakfast hosted by Tyndale University College and Seminary, home to about 1,400 students at two campuses in Toronto's north end.
READ MORE

FOCUS: George Lakoff | 9/11, Intimidation via Framing

George Lakoff, Reader Supported News George Lakoff begins: "My wife, Kathleen, and I stood gaping at the TV as we watched the towers fall. Kathleen said to me, 'Do you realize what Bush and Cheney are going to do with this?' We both realized very well." READ MORE