October 29, 2007

IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

REPUBLICANS LOVE BOOGEYMEN

I bet Republicans love Halloween. Halloween is about scaring people and being scared. Ever since the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the Bush administration has done everything it can to keep us scared all the time. In the meantime, we don't notice things like the rotten economy, the shredding of civil liberties, the incredible corruption, or the failure to address global crises like AIDS or global warming. Them big bad terrorists are out there trying to get us. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.nytimes.com:

Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination — have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns.

Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.”

Mr. Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a founding neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the “main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11.” The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating a world “shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes.” Indeed, “Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.”

THE CRIMES OF THE PROFESSIONAL CLASS

This is an interesting article talking about the crimes of professionals who make the crimes of "great" leaders possible. No politician/mass murderer could do his or her dirty deeds without lots of help. There are the lawyers who find ways to make murder or torture "legal." There are the scientists who, in the name of "pure" science, develop weapons that can kill millions of people, including biochemical weapons. There are the engineers who design killing machines and computer programmers who write programs that can launch death and destruction. This article by Zbignew Zingh is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

We already know about the attorneys who split hairs over the definition of torture, who plead for indefinite detention without charge or trial, who argue for retroactive immunity for those who illegally monitored our communications, or who plead “state secrets” as a bar to the redress of government crimes. These lawyers (and the judges who approve their specious arguments) might themselves be accessories to crime. It is not a defense to argue that every party is entitled to zealous representation when that misguided zeal facilitates the crime itself.

We already know about the so-called doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists who help keep kidnapped captives “alive” so that they can be tortured and interrogated again and again. These are not health care professionals but accessories to crime. They have not sworn a Hippocratic Oath, but a Hypocritical Oath, and they should be held accountable.

We already know about the economists and the money managers who boost profits by devising schemes to break unions, curtail jobs, cut wages, cut benefits and “externalize” the detritus of private enterprise. These professionals, as criminal enablers, share the responsibility for the death and pollution and despair caused by their principals.