CITIZEN ARREST THIS EXECUTIVE BRANCH… NOW !

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Impeach Bush (and Cheney) for 9/11

For those who do not yet understand that Bush and Cheney have committed impeachable offenses with regard to 9/11, I will provide information to back up the relevant portions of Dennis Kucinich's articles of impeachment against President Bush which deal with 9/11:

Article 2: Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression:

• Here is information justifying this basis for impeachment.

Article 33: Repeatedly ignored and failed to respond to high level intelligence warnings of planned terrorist attacks in U.S. prior to 9/11:

• Please see this, this and this.

Article 34: Obstruction into the investigation of 9/11:

• Read this and this.
  

Article 35: Endangering the health of 9/11 first responders:

• The results from this search provide evidence for this article of impeachment.
  

Posted by George Washington at 3:01 PM

Jail Time for Tenet?

By Ray McGovern
June 11, 2008

President George W. Bush used to complain that being president was “hard work,” but he has gotten over that. Now he says it “has been a fabulous experience.”

Why fabulous? Well, a good part of it has to do with his past.

When Bush screwed up royally – whether in his personal or business affairs – he had to suffer the humiliation of asking his father or his father’s friends (sometimes Arab friends) to bail him out.

But now? Wow! As president, young George has found he can escape accountability altogether.

Now when he screws up royally, he need not call Dad; George W. Bush is himself in control of all the levers he needs to pull in order to bail himself out. Is this a great country or what?

An invertebrate Congress has been a big help. But his greatest asset limiting his liability has been the kind of folk he has gotten to work for him. The kind like Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, whom he has no problem asking to lie for him, when required.

For Bush’s powers are formidable – as he showed when Libby, convicted perjurer and obstructer of justice, was about to go off to prison. The president commuted Libby’s sentence, sending a message to others who might be called on to lie for him to hang tough and count on commutation or pardon.

A president’s unlimited power to pardon serves as the ultimate trump card to keep friends and associates out of jail.

Even so, one key aide, former CIA Director and Medal of Freedom winner, George Tenet, can be forgiven for being somewhat apprehensive these days. For he has lied under oath regarding what Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks and how early Bush knew it.

Concealing pre-9/11 warnings that Bush received might have seemed like the smart play during the president’s first term when his popularity was high and few in Washington dared to stand up to him.

However, if the American voters choose to send vertebrates to the next Congress – or if the Justice Department starts taking seriously its duty to require honest testimony from senior government officials – Tenet may be looking at some jail time.

With the possibility of large changes in the political landscape early next year, all bets might be off.

Tenuous Tenet

As for Tenet’s potential legal jeopardy, let’s leave aside for now the obviously heinous – like running George W. Bush’s global Gestapo complete with secret prisons and torture chambers, a criminal enterprise that Tenet carved out of the operations directorate of the CIA.

Let’s pick a case of simpler, more familiar white-collar crimes – Libby-style perjury and obstruction of justice.

Credit to Rep. Dennis Kucinich, whose 35 Articles of Impeachment against Bush – specifically Articles 33 and 34  relating to the catastrophe of 9/11 – have freshened memories, stirred additional research and demonstrate why Tenet may be looking at some prison time.

Article 33 charges that the president “REPEATEDLY IGNORED AND FAILED TO RESPOND TO HIGH-LEVEL INTELLIGENCE WARNINGS OF PLANNED TERRORIST ATTACKS IN THE US, PRIOR TO 9/11.”

The text contains a devastating run-down of the many times President Bush was warned that an attack was coming and did nothing.

George Tenet did sound the alarm often and loudly. But as a retroactive glance at August 2001 shows, the president, literally, could not be bothered.

Tenet’s own performance was hardly blameless. The 9/11 Commission found numerous screw-ups within the CIA, and Tenet’s discharge of his statutory duty to coordinate the work of the entire intelligence community was abysmal.

It was his responsibility to ensure that the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies were sharing information freely on this priority issue. Sadly, Tenet preferred backslapping to holding the intelligence community to professional standards of work and conduct.

Article 33 of Impeachment shows that President Bush’s inaction in the face of myriad warnings prior to 9/11 constitutes utter failure with respect to his Constitutional duties to take proper steps to protect the nation.

Those who remember Watergate and other misadventures will be aware, too, that the cover-up of wrongdoing constitutes an additional – and often more provable – crime, especially when it involves perjury and obstruction of justice.

That’s where George Tenet comes in. Until now, Bush has managed to escape blame for his outrageous inactivity before 9/11 because his subordinates – first and foremost, Tenet – have covered up for him.

This is what is dealt with in Article 34 of Impeachment: OBSTRUCTION OF INVESTIGATION INTO THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001.

A Faustian Bargain

What did the president know, and when did he know it?

This double question, with Watergate antecedents, is the one that Bush and Cheney had to guard most carefully against.

By all appearances, they had little trouble enlisting a malleable-cum-guilty-conscience George Tenet in this effort at denial and obfuscation. And this helps to explain some of the more bizarre episodes of that time.

Faustian bargain? Call it mutual blackmail, if you prefer the vernacular.

Yes, Tenet gave the president enough warning to warrant, to compel some sort of action on his part. But Tenet’s lackadaisical management of the CIA and intelligence community was at least as important a factor in the success of the attacks of 9/11.

The raison d’etre of the CIA had been to prevent another Pearl Harbor. Yet, 9/11 took more lives than the Japanese attack in 1941.

As before Pearl Harbor, significant pieces of intelligence lay around but analysts failed to put them all together.

It was long since clear to many in Washington that, had George Tenet stayed home long enough to tend to his knitting – his management responsibilities – instead of eternally hobnobbing abroad with kings and other potentates, 9/11 might well have been avoided, even with an indolent president.

Of course, Tenet should have been fired after 9/11. But President Bush needed Tenet, or at least Tenet’s silence, as much as Tenet needed Bush, or at least Bush's forgiveness.

What developed might be described as a case of mutual blackmail disguised as bonhomie. Bush was keenly aware that Tenet had the wherewithal to let the world know how many warnings he had given the president – reducing Bush to a criminally negligent, blundering fool.

Were that to happen, Bush would have to kiss goodbye the role of cheerleader/war president – and so much else. Thus, Tenet had become critical to Bush's political survival.

And Tenet? All he needed was not to be blamed – not to be fired. The bargain: I, George Bush, will keep you on and even praise your performance; you, George Tenet, will keep your mouth shut about all the warnings you gave me during the spring and summer of 2001. Tenet, it seems clear, agreed.

The bargain was no secret to insiders. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, still very much of the Washington scene, commented publicly that Tenet was so grateful that the president let him stay on as CIA director, that he would do anything for him.

Events proved Gingrich right. And there was even a Medal of Freedom in it for Tenet – but, alas, eventual criminal liability as well.

Anatomy of a Deal

On Sept. 26, 2001, the president motored out to CIA headquarters, puts his arm around Tenet and told the cameras, “We’ve got the best intelligence we can possibly have thanks to the men and women of the CIA.”

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, as was so often the case, had not been clued in.

On Sept. 23, Powell had promised a “White Paper” that would make a “persuasive case” that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. His announcement met immediate resistance from the White House, however, and, less than two weeks later, Powell actually apologized for his “unfortunate choice of words.”

There would be no White Paper, he said; rather, the American people would have to rely on “information coming out in the press and other ways.”

It became gradually clear why Powell reneged. The evidence against bin Laden could not be disclosed because there was simply too much of it available for the reading well before 9/11.

To reveal this would bring extreme political embarrassment and vitiate the Faustian bargain with Tenet.

Small wonder that the White House preferred a whitewash to a White Paper.

And this has been a constant since the fall of 2001. Administration obstructionism and intransigence has succeeded in hindering all subsequent investigations into what Bush and Cheney had been told prior to 9/11. Until now, at least.

Perjury, Obstruction of Justice

In his sworn testimony of April 14, 2004, before the 9/11 Commission, Tenet outdid himself trying to honor his bargain with Bush. The commissioners were interested in what the president had been told during the critical month of August 2001.

Answering a question from Commissioner Timothy Roemer, Tenet referred to the president’s long vacation (July 29-Aug. 30) in Crawford and insisted that he did not see the president at all in August.

“You never talked with him?” Roemer asked.

“No,” Tenet replied, explaining that for much of August he, too, was “on leave.”

That same evening, a CIA spokesman called reporters to say that Tenet had misspoken, and that he had briefed Bush on Aug. 17 and 31, 2001. The spokesman played down the Aug. 17 briefing as uneventful and indicated that the second briefing took place after Bush had returned to Washington.

Funny how Tenet could have forgotten his first visit to Crawford, whereas in his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, Tenet waxed eloquent about the “president graciously driving me around the spread in his pickup and me trying to make small talk about the flora and the fauna.”

But the visit was not limited to small talk.

In his book Tenet writes: “A few weeks after the August 6 PDB was delivered, I followed it to Crawford to make sure the president stayed current on events.”

The Aug. 6, 2001 President’s Daily Brief contained the article “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US.” According to Ron Suskind’s The One-Percent Doctrine, the president reacted by telling the CIA briefer, “All right, you’ve covered your ass now.”

Clearly, Tenet needed to follow up on that.

Was Tenet again in Crawford just one week later? According to a White House press release, President Bush on Aug. 25 told visitors to Crawford, “George Tenet and I” drove up the canyon “yesterday.”

Flora and Fawner?

If, as Tenet says in his memoir, it was the Aug. 6, 2001, PDB that prompted his visit on Aug. 17, what might have brought him back on Aug. 24?

I believe the answer is to be found in court documents released at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the fledgling pilot in Minnesota interested in learning to steer a plane but indifferent as to how to land it.

Those documents show that on Aug. 23, 2001, Tenet was given an alarming briefing, focusing on Moussaoui, titled “Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.” Tenet was told that Moussaoui was training to fly a 747 and, among other suspicion-arousing data, had paid for the training in cash.

The FBI arrested him on Aug. 16 on grounds he had overstayed his 90-day visa and the CIA was working on the case with the FBI. This might well have been what led Tenet to go back to Crawford on the 24th.

There is no indication that the president or Tenet ever followed up with senior FBI officials. Then-Acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard has testified that he did not learn of it until the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001.

Things proceeded more quickly at the working level, at least for this discrete part of the problem. Tenet’s analysts had learned about Moussaoui in a back-door message from the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis enlisting CIA’s help in obtaining information on Moussaoui from French intelligence.

The Minneapolis case agent had already telephoned the FBI legal attaché office in Paris, which contacted the French government on Aug. 16 or 17.

With unusual speed, on Aug. 22 and 27, the French provided information that made a connection between Moussaoui and a rebel leader in Chechnya, Ibn al Khattab, and indicated that Khattab had a connection with Osama bin Laden.

Court documents from the Moussaoui case also show that on Aug. 30, 2001, CIA analysts were able to confirm to Tenet that Moussaoui had ties with radical fundamentalist groups and Osama bin Laden. This would have been good grist for Tenet’s briefing of the president on Aug. 31 in Washington.

Nevertheless, in Tenet’s sworn testimony before the 9/11 Commission on April 14, 2004, he said he had not mentioned Moussaoui to the president during August 2001. Tenet further testified that he did not report on Moussaoui at the cabinet-level meeting convened on Sept. 4 to discuss terrorism.

On May 6, 2007, when Tim Russert asked Tenet what the president knew and when he knew it, Tenet replied that “everything went silent” in August 2001.

Russert asked Tenet why he did not go directly to the president in July 2001 after he had warned then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice of the possibility of “spectacular, multiple, simultaneous attacks against US targets with little or no warning” and gotten the brush-off.

Tenet replied lamely “the president is not the action officer.”

Tenet not only was, by statute, the president’s principal foreign intelligence adviser but – by all accounts – enjoyed a backslapping rapport with him. Tenet also briefed the president six mornings a week.

It strains credulity to suggest that Tenet was afraid to go directly to George Bush for fear of appearing to be making some sort of end-run around his national security adviser on a terrorist threat about which Tenet’s hair was said to be “on fire?”

Tenet at Breakfast on 9/11

No one wants to believe that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, could have been prevented, but we do a disservice to our country, and to one another, if we stay in denial.

No one wants to believe that President Bush had considerably more forewarning than he acknowledges, but it is very clear that he did. It is equally clear that George Tenet has been a prime mover in hiding the amount of intelligence available to Bush to act on.

Reviewing the evidence on May 26, 2002, Michael Getler, then-ombudsman for the Washington Post, alluded to one very telling sign leaping out of a conversation between George Tenet and former Sen. David Boren over breakfast on 9/11.

When an aide rushed up to tell Tenet of the attacks, Tenet’s immediate reaction was “This has bin Laden all over it…I wonder if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training.”

Getler notes for his readers that the reference is to Zacarias Moussaoui.

A few months after 9/11, the Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI did not tell the White House about Moussaoui until after Sept. 11. That may be true, particularly if, as noted above, then-Acting Director Thomas Pickard did not learn about Moussaoui until 9/11.

But the evidence is very strong that Tenet told Bush chapter and verse.

The extraordinary lengths to which Tenet has gone to disguise that has the former CIA director skating very close to perjury – if not over the line.

Plus, if Tenet is held accountable after Bush leaves town to go back to Texas for good, there may be no one in the White House willing to pardon him.

Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington, DC.  A CIA analyst for 27 years, he worked on the President’s Daily Brief under presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan.

Pretending That Bush is Not a Tyrant

By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted June 30, 2008.

If you listen to Bush's legal advisors, questions about the limits of his authority might not be hypothetical anymore. http://www.alternet.org/rights/89834/

All over the world down through history, political leaders who have engaged in torture and other grotesque crimes of state have justified their actions as necessary to protect their governments or their people or themselves.

MORE ON OUR TREACHEROUS LEADERS

What Is Michael Mukasey Helping Dick Cheney to Cover Up?
Posted by Emptywheel, Firedoglake at 10:33 AM on June 30, 2008. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/89937/
New questions in the Plame investigation.

Never mind. I know the answer. Attorney General Mukasey is helping Cheney and Bush hide the fact that they played insta-declassification games that may have--though they'll never tell--included leaking Valerie Wilson's identity.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Apparently, DOJ responded to Waxman's subpoena for the Bush and Cheney interview reports by telling Waxman to go fuck himself (h/t WO).

On June 16,2008, having been informed in writing by the Justice Department that it would not produce the interview reports of the President and Vice President, the Committee issued a subpoena for those interview reports, as well as other responsive documents not previously produced, with a return date of June23,2008. On June 24,2008, the Justice Department informed the Committee by letter that it would not comply with the subpoena and would not "provide or make available any reports of interviews with the President or the Vice President from the leak investigation."

Waxman appears to be calling DOJ on whatever grounds DOJ invoked when refusing to comply with the subpoena, because he's asking Fitz for clarification on whether or not there was an agreement between him and the Barnacle Branch that would shield the FBI reports from any exposure.

To assist the Committee in evaluating the Department's position, I request that you produce the following information to the Committee no later than July 3, 2008:

1. Documents sufficient to show the date and terms of all agreements, conditions, and understandings between the Office of Special Counsel or the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the President of the United States, regarding the conduct and use of the interview or interviews of the President conducted as part of the Valerie Plame Wilson leak investigation.

2. Documents sufficient to show the date and terms of all agreements, conditions, and understandings between the Offrce of Special Counsel or the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Vice President of the United States, regarding the conduct and use of the interview or interviews of the Vice President conducted as part of the Valerie Plame Wilson leak investigation.

I'm guessing, but it appears that Mukasey has claimed that Fitz made some kind of agreement with Bush and Cheney, and that agreement prevents him from turning over their interview reports. But, as Waxman notes, these reports were among those that Fitzgerald determined "were not protected by Rule 6(e)."

Mukasey says there are grounds not to turn over the interview reports, Fitz has already said that reason is not grand jury secrecy, so now Waxman is going to the source (and demanding a 4 day turnaround) to find out whether Fitz believes there are other grounds not to turn over those reports.

And I thought I'd be bored during the Fourth of July recess.

Poll: Should Individual States And Cities Indict Cheney/Bush For Murder? GW Bush and Dick Cheney have been let of the hook for impeachment, but that does not mean that we, the citizens of America need to sit idly, impotently, by and let him bully his way out of prosecution. Should we indict them for murder in cities and states all across our nation, thus pinning him down or forcing him to go to war with the states with his mercenaries? By Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo

TREASON BY ANY OTHER NAME !

Libby Links Cheney to Plame Leak

By Jason Leopold
June 4, 2008

FBI documents obtained by a congressional committee indicate that Vice President Dick Cheney may have authorized his former deputy to leak the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

In a June 3 letter sent to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Rep. Henry Waxman, Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called on the Justice Department to release transcripts of interviews that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald conducted with President George W. Bush and Cheney about the leak of Plame's identity.

Waxman said the Justice Department has turned over to his committee redacted transcripts of interviews that federal investigators conducted with former White House political adviser Karl Rove and Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

According to those transcripts, Libby told federal investigators that Cheney may have told him to leak Plame's association with the CIA to reporters, Waxman said in the letter to Mukasey. 

"In his interview with the FBI, Mr. Libby stated that it was ‘possible’ that Vice President Cheney instructed him to disseminate information about Ambassador [Joseph] Wilson's wife to the press. This is a significant revelation and, if true, a serious matter. It cannot be responsibly investigated without access to the Vice President's FBI interview," Waxman wrote.

Waxman's office would not release copies of the Libby-Rove transcripts or describe the contents in any detail. Fitzgerald's investigative interviews with Bush and Cheney -- asking how much knowledge the President and Vice President had about the Plame leak -- have not been disclosed.

The scandal revolves around actions taken in June and July of 2003 when Rove, Libby and other administration officials leaked information to reporters aimed at discrediting Ambassador Wilson, who had challenged the truthfulness of Bush’s pre-invasion claims that Iraq had purchased yellowcake uranium from Niger.

During the investigation, it was revealed that Bush authorized portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s alleged WMD to be disseminated to select reporters as part of the anti-Wilson campaign. Cheney dispatched Libby on that mission.

However, it is still unknown whether Libby was authorized to pass on information about Plame’s work at the CIA or whether he did that on his own. Other administration officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Rove, also served as sources for journalists on Plame’s identity as a CIA officer.

Right-wing columnist Robert Novak blew Plame’s cover on July 14, 2003, in an article suggesting that Plame had helped arrange her husband’s trip to Africa as some kind of junket.

Wilson, a diplomat who had served in Iraq and Africa, was selected by the CIA’s non-proliferation office, where Plame worked, to travel to Niger in early 2002 to examine the Iraq-yellowcake allegations. Wilson returned to the United States and reported to CIA officials that the claims appeared to have no merit, a finding that matched with inquiries from other U.S. officials.

Nevertheless, in January 2003, seeking to dramatize the need for invading Iraq, President Bush cited the Niger claims in his State of the Union speech. That set the stage for Wilson to begin criticizing the misuse of this intelligence. Initially, Wilson avoided giving all the details about his role but finally went fully public in a New York Times op-ed on July 6, 2003.

That, in turn, prompted an intensified White House campaign against Wilson leading to Novak’s article. With Plame's cover blown and her spy network endangered, the CIA sought a criminal investigation into the leak.

Knowing Nothing

As the probe got underway In September 2003, Bush professed to know nothing about the controversy and publicly called on anyone with information to step forward. At the time, however, he was withholding the fact that he had authorized declassification of some secrets about the Niger uranium issue and had ordered Cheney to arrange for those secrets to be given to reporters to undermine Wilson’s criticism.

In other words, though Bush knew a great deal about how the anti-Wilson scheme got started – since he was involved in starting it – he uttered misleading public statements to conceal the White House role. That was followed by denials of involvement from Rove and Libby – issued through then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan.

Fitzgerald indicted Libby in October 2005 on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice. In October 2005, I first reported that Fitzgerald also was investigating whether Cheney played a role in the leak. I reported, too, that Bush and Cheney discussed Plame prior to the leak, undercutting Bush's claims some three months later that he was unaware of nuances of the case.

In February 2007, during closing arguments at Libby's trial, defense attorney Theodore Wells told jurors that the prosecutors had been attempting to build a case of conspiracy against the Vice President and Libby, and that the prosecutors believed Libby may have lied to federal investigators and to a grand jury to protect Cheney.

In his rebuttal, Fitzgerald told jurors:

"You know what? [Wells] said something here that we're trying to put a cloud on the Vice President. We'll talk straight. There is a cloud over the Vice President. He sent Libby off to [meet with former New York Times reporter] Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. At that meeting - the two-hour meeting - the defendant talked about the wife [Plame]. We didn't put that cloud there. That cloud remains because the defendant obstructed justice and lied about what happened."

The jury convicted Libby of four counts, leading to a sentence of 30 months in jail. However, Bush commuted the sentence to eliminate jail time and left open the possibility that Libby might get a full pardon before Bush leaves office.

The way Bush handled Libby’s commutation removed the chief incentive for Libby to cooperate further with prosecutors (to avoid or reduce his jail time) and dangled a possible reward down the road if Libby remains in the administration’s good graces (a full pardon).

Now, according to the transcript cited by Rep. Waxman, it appears that Libby did tell prosecutors in an earlier interview that it was “possible” that Cheney did order him to leak Plame’s identity. Waxman is now pressing to learn what Cheney and Bush said in response to Fitzgerald's questions about exactly what they did or did not order their subordinates to do.

Jason Leopold has launched a new Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.org

KBR / CHENEY / HALLIBURTON POCKET THE MONEY & KILL AMERICANS WITH NEGLIGENCE *

"A Senate panel investigating the electrocutions of Americans on bases in Iraq was told last week by former KBR Inc. electricians that the contractor used employees with little electrical expertise to supervise subcontractors in Iraq and hired foreigners who couldn't speak English. The Pentagon has said 13 Americans have been electrocuted in Iraq since September 2003."

Ordering KBR 'to inspect all the facilities it maintains in IRAQ' is like telling an ASSASSIN TO MAKE SURE THE SAFETY IS OFF or the MURDERER TO WIPE OFF THE KNIFE! This incredibly STUPID story must demonstrate to even the most IGNORANT AMERICAN that KBR C-LEVEL EXECS MUST GO TO JAIL OR AT LEAST SUFFER PAIN!

More pointedly, it has to show even the most ARROGANT, GREEDY, SELFISH & DEVIOUS
WEALTHY WHITE BOY & GOP FASCIST THAT KBR JUST STOLE TOO MUCH OF THE MONEY IN THE CONTRACT TO 'KICK BACK' TO CHENEY & THE PENTAGON THUGS!

Peace Activists Arrested Attempting Citizens Arrest Of Karl Rove

Posted: 26 Jul 2008 05:45 PM CDT

(sorry, I just love that picture)

Reuters:

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Four peace activists were arrested on Friday as they attempted to make a “citizens arrest” of Karl Rove, who was one of President George W. Bush’s top aides before leaving the administration last year.

“It should be Karl Rove in that van. War Criminal!” one of a dozen protestors shouted as the four were put into a police van outside a Des Moines country club where Rove spoke at a private state Republican party fundraiser.

Chet Guinn, a retired Methodist Minister, was among those led away.

“To be silent when major crimes are being committed against all humanity makes us accomplices,” Gwinn told reporters just before his prearranged arrest, which took place when protestors stepped past a gate.

Such is the life of current and former Bush loyalists responsible for so much damage to our country and the world. Auckland police are warning a students group against their $5000 offer to anyone who can carry out a citizens arrest on Condoleeza Rice and who can forget Donald Rumsfeld’s close call in France last October when he abruptly fled to Germany after learning he could be detained by French officials and forced to stand trial on charges he approved torture. 

"The Terrible Reality"
Bush Guilty Of Murder   Must Watch 6 Minute Video   Vincent Bugliosi's opening statements during the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the constitutional limits of executive power.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20400.htm

Humor is the politeness of despair said the optimist ;)

meanwhile...

GOING UP !
Top 1% share of total income
Income gap between rich and poor
Foreign debt as a percent of GDP
Age at which one can receive Social Security
Hunger
Consumer credit debt
Housing foreclosures
Severe poverty rate

GOING DOWN !
Real income
Real manufacturing wages
Percent of single women and mothers in the workforce
The bottom 40%'s share of national wealth
Older families with pensions.
Workers covered by defined benefit pensions.
The savings rate
US manufacturing jobs

ALSO...

Protest restricted/ignored
Dissenter labeled terrorist/traitor
False-flags
Elections suspect
Leaders benefit from wars/disasters
Use of propaganda/lies & partisan mass-media
Claims that War is needed for everchanging false reasons
Secret/extrajudicial/torture camps
Curtailed/suspended civil rights/liberties
Wiretap/intercept/surveillance net
Stealthily expands int'nl influence/power
Judiciary/Opposition ineffective/ignored
Legislation to defy Constitution

BTW, have you noticed that the good guys always win execpt on the news ?

"The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life ... A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors... Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.": George Orwell, 1984

"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty" : Howard Zinn