Trump Pardons Three Guilty of War Crimes

Donald Trump continues to destroy American morality as he pardons three U.S. Military members convicted of war crimes.  The pardons came over the protests of the military who said the moves undermined the military justice system.  Sadly, to me, it is representative of Trump's view that if victims are non-white, then it really doesn't matter. Of course, there are also parallels with Nazi Germany where Hitler protected and rewarded those guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, Trump's support among morally bankrupt evangelicals remains firm.  The Washington Post looks at Trump's actions which undermine both military justice and what moral authority America purports to hold in the Middle East and elsewhere.   Here are highlights: 

Trump intervened in three cases involving war crimes accusations on Friday, issuing full pardons to two soldiers and reversing disciplinary action against a Navy SEAL despite opposition raised by military justice experts and some senior Pentagon officials. 

The service members were notified by Trump over the phone late Friday afternoon, according to lawyers for Army Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn and former Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, the SEAL. Golsteyn faced a murder trial scheduled for next year, while Gallagher recently was acquitted of murder and convicted of posing with the corpse of an Islamic State fighter in Iraq.

The third service member, former Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, was expected to be released Friday night from prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He was convicted of second-degree murder in 2013 and sentenced to 19 years for ordering his soldiers to open fire on three men in Afghanistan.

Golsteyn and Lorance received full pardons, while the president will direct the Navy to restore Gallagher to his previous rank before he retires, the White House said. His demotion marked the only significant penalty he received following his acquittal on the murder charge.

[S]ome senior Pentagon officials [tried] to change Trump’s mind, according to three U.S. officials. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said some commanders have raised concerns that Trump’s move will undermine the military justice system. Their cases have been featured frequently on conservative media, as advocates prepared cases for the president behind the scenes.

The military, he said, has “worked for decades to lay the ghosts” of the Vietnam War and war crimes committed during it to rest, and Trump’s decision risks undermining that.

“Executive clemency like this introduces doubt into the chain of command, and creates uncertainty about accountability for breaches of military rules,” said Carter
The facts of the three cases vary.

In Golsteyn’s, the Special Forces officer went from being regarded as one of the Army’s heroes in the Afghanistan war to under investigation in the 2010 death of an unarmed man in a combat zone.

The case first emerged after Golsteyn, who had been awarded a Silver Star for valor on the same deployment, said during a polygraph test while applying for a job with the CIA that he had killed the man and burned his body. . . . He set an ambush for the man, whom he believed to be responsible for the recent death of two Marines, he said. He reasoned that if the man came in his direction, he was returning to activities with the Taliban.

In Gallagher’s case, the Navy SEAL faced a court-martial this summer after he was accused of mortally stabbing a wounded Islamic State detainee in the neck and obstruction of justice for allegedly threatening other SEALs who reported him.

In Lorance’s case, nine members of his unit testified against him, including some under immunity. They said under oath that Lorance, as their new platoon leader, had ordered them to open fire on three Afghan men riding motorcycles even though their intent was not clear, after issuing death threats to local leaders.

The action follows Trump pardoning another veteran, former 1st Lt. Michael Behenna, in May in the 2008 murder of an Iraqi prisoner suspected of being a member of al-Qaeda.  Behenna was convicted of unpremeditated murder and sentenced to 25 years after stripping a detainee naked, interrogating him without authorization and shooting him twice.

And we wonder why America is hated by so many in the Middle East.

Will America Put Morality Ahead of Defense Industry Greed

Today is Thanksgiving and many Americans while giving thanks for their good fortune and families will slide into accepting the myth that since its founding, America has been a force for good in the world.  Buying into this myth requires that one ignore the ugly parts of America's history: slavery, genocide committed against Native Americans, the stealing of Hawaii and the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, the dubious motivations behind the Spanish American War, the Vietnam disaster, and now support for the Saudi Arabian war against Yemen.  Der Trumpenführer this week signaled to tyrants and brutal regimes that if they spend enough money on American arms sales, they have a blank check  to commit murder and atrocities against civilians. The immediate context of Trump's message was Saudi Arabia's murder of a U.S. based journalist and the wholesale slaughter of civilians in Yemen.  Sadly, to Trump's base, since those dying in Yemen are not white, they merit only a shrug of the shoulders.  Having a Yemeni client who has described to me the ordeal of his wife and children trying to escape Saudi attacks on civilians (they escaped the episode described to me, but many women and children in boats did not), the horrors ought to make "godly Christians" demand American support to Saudi atrocities stop immediately. A long piece in the Washington Post looks at the growing support in Congress to take action against the brutal regime in Saudi Arabia and to halt arms sales that facilitate the murder of civilians.  Here are article excerpts:

The powerful U.S. defense industry is facing a rare challenge to its influence on Capitol Hill as support for arms sales to Saudi Arabia has rapidly eroded following the killing last month of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi government operatives.

The defense industry’s typically aggressive lobby has gone quiet as gruesome details of Khashoggi’s death have leaked and American intelligence officials have laid blame at the feet of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Even as President Trump has reiterated his support for continued sales of U.S. weapons to the kingdom, congressional opposition to those sales and to U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen has mounted in recent weeks . . . .

Growing bipartisan support for Senate legislation to cut off the arms sales marks a historic disruption in a seemingly inviolable arms-for-oil trade relationship that stretches back decades and is an unusual setback for one of the most influential lobbies in Washington.

In the coming weeks, key senators are expected to push for a vote on a measure that would impose sanctions on Saudi officials responsible for Khashoggi’s death and suspend many weapons sales to Saudi Arabia until it ceases airstrikes in Yemen that have killed tens of thousands of civilians.

The bill represents one of the first major breaks between congressional Republicans and the White House, which has embraced Saudi Arabia as a key Middle Eastern ally — a strategy driven by Jared Kushner, . . .

Trump’s staunch support for the kingdom in the face of the CIA’s conclusion that Mohammed ordered the assassination of Khashoggi — a Washington Post contributing columnist — has triggered a backlash on Capitol Hill amid intensifying opposition to the war in Yemen.

In an interview Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump confidant who previously opposed efforts to restrict arms sales to Saudi Arabia, suggested lawmakers might tie federal funding to Saudi sanctions. . . . . “When it comes to the crown prince, it is not wise to look away,” said Graham, calling the crown prince “a wrecking ball” on the global stage.

Other lawmakers who have backed arms deals with Saudi Arabia in the past and are now reconsidering their support include Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), according to recent votes and congressional aides.

In the House, lawmakers are signing on to several proposals that would curtail Saudi deals, including one offered by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) . . . . McGovern’s district is home to Raytheon, which sells hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia each year and whose corporate PAC has been a top campaign donor for McGovern in recent years.

“I care very much about jobs,” said McGovern, who was an early critic of the war in Yemen. “But I don’t want to create jobs by selling weapons to governments that murder journalists in cold blood and then lie about it.”

U.S. defense companies have spent between $125 million and $130 million annually on lobbying in recent years, plus tens of millions more on contributions to federal candidates, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Since the start of the war in Yemen, the defense industry — working alongside lobbyists for Saudi Arabia — has successfully beat back congressional efforts, supported by human rights groups, to end or curtail U.S. support for the air war in that conflict.  For now, the defense lobby is keeping a low profile, . . .

Officials from Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics all declined The Post’s requests for comment on the future of arms sales to Saudi Arabia after Khashoggi’s death.  . One executive said defense contractors are waiting to see whether the crown prince will be replaced before determining a course of action.

U.S. defense contractors “are really in a duck-and-cover mode, hoping to tie themselves to this as little as possible,” said a prominent defense executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern that publicly discussing the issue would be bad for business. “To say that we’re going to support this because we have a few thousand jobs at stake . . . we don’t want that,” the executive said.

Intense criticism of airstrikes [in Yemen] on civilians led the administration to halt the sale of nearly $400 million in precision munitions guidance systems to Saudi Arabia in December 2016, at the end of the Obama administration. Three months later, the Trump administration reversed that decision and approved a resumption of weapons sales.

Since then, weapons produced by American companies have been tied to some of the worst episodes of civilian casualties. 

The bomb that killed more than 50 people, including at least 40 children, on a school-bus field trip on Aug. 9 was manufactured in the United States by Lockheed Martin, a CNN investigation found. Raytheon bombs have been blamed for other airstrikes that killed civilians, including an April 23 attack on a wedding that left 22 people dead.

Since Khashoggi’s killing, contacts with key congressional offices by Raytheon lobbyists have dropped, according to aides.  “If I was Raytheon or Boeing or Lockheed, I would keep my damn trap shut and my head low because this is bad for the Saudis,” said a Republican Senate aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid about the defense lobby.

Lockheed has made selling to foreign governments a key target for growth, with Saudi Arabia a major driver of that effort, according to one defense analyst. A photo of the crown prince during his April visit to a Lockheed facility in Silicon Valley remains on the company’s website, even as other corporations have distanced themselves from Mohammed since Khashoggi’s slaying.

n a statement Tuesday, Trump questioned the CIA’s conclusion that the crown prince ordered Khashoggi’s killing . . . . Many congressional lawmakers — including some Republicans — reacted with disgust at his dismissal of the CIA’s assessment.

“I never thought I’d see the day a White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” Sen. Bob Corker (R.-Tenn.) tweeted.

The dynamic is setting up a showdown between Trump and Congress as pressure to curtail Saudi arms deals and the U.S. role in Yemen builds from human rights groups and some conservatives. The Charles Koch Institute, a nonprofit group founded by the billionaire libertarian industrialist, has been warning a bipartisan group of lawmakers about the consequences of continued U.S. involvement in Yemen, foundation officials said. 

As you gather around your dinner table today to feast with friends and families, keep in mind civilians are likely dying in Yemen thanks to American arms and Trump's political fellatio of the Saudis.  Those dying may have brown skin, but they are just as human as you or eye - or our children, nieces and nephews or grandchildren.  Morality and decency ought to count for more that arms merchants' greed. 

Donald Trump’s Favorite Dictators

There are many things to fear about Donald Trump one of the most troubling of which is his apparent love for heinous dictators which suggests that he can see himself in such a role should he win the White House in November (should that happen, I will seriously move to confirm my dual citizenship and have an escape route in place).   Besides being a very sick narcissist, Trump seems to revel in authoritarianism - something that excites equally loathsome evangelical Christians.  And as with all things Trump, The Donald never can keep his mouth shut and keep his thoughts to himself.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Trump's favorites from a list of villains in history.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump’s regular praise for authoritarian governments and dictators has come under fresh scrutiny this week following his latest laudatory comments about the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whose human rights abuses and support for international terrorism made him a top enemy of the United States for decades.

“He was a bad guy, really bad guy. But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good,” Trump said during a campaign event in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday evening. “They didn’t read them the rights — they didn’t talk, they were a terrorist, it was over. 

The remarks have revived worries among Republican lawmakers and members of the party’s foreign-policy establishment, many of whom have become increasingly despondent over Trump’s loose and threatening rhetoric on international relations. Many critics in both parties also say that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is laying out an alarmingly dark worldview that should give voters serious pause.

“This follows a disturbing trend of Trump relating to the way brutal tyrants executed policy in their countries. I do think that there’s something dark about Trump’s view of the world,” said Republican strategist Tim Miller, a former Jeb Bush aide who has played an active role in the anti-Trump movement. “When a person running for president continually compliments brutal, undemocratic dictators and their methods, I think it’s fair to have some concerns that those are methods that they might be interested in deploying if necessary.”

He [Trump] also spoke dismissively in December about Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against the Kurds: “Saddam Hussein throws a little gas, everyone goes crazy. ‘Oh he’s using gas!’ ”

Trump has also repeatedly praised Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as “strong” leaders “unlike what we have in this country,” citing the control they have over their people. When Putin complimented Trump last year, Trump called it “a great honor,” . . . “Trump’s past comments on this were overshadowed by other crazier, wackier, more offensive things, but it stood out yesterday,” Miller said.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who has endorsed Trump, distanced himself forcefully from the candidate’s Hussein comments. “He was one of the 20th century’s most evil people. He was up there. He committed mass genocide against his own people using chemical weapons,” Ryan said on Fox News Channel late Tuesday.

Among other Republicans, Trump’s staunchest backers offered a full-throated defenses while others kept their distance Wednesday.

Trump’s free-wheeling rhetoric on foreign policy has presented tangible problems for his campaign, which has struggled to court respected foreign-policy minds. Many fear that their professional reputations would be damaged if they joined the Trump operation.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Trump’s latest remarks on Hussein. But in a March presidential debate, Trump was confronted over similar comments by CNN’s Jake Tapper, who pressed him on his positive remarks about authoritarian governments in China and Russia. Tapper asked Trump about his assertion in a 1990 Playboy interview that the Chinese government massacre of students in Tiananmen Square “shows you the power of strength.”

 There's more in the piece.  The take away? Be VERY afraid.

Fear Won the GOP Presidential Debate

Overall, there seems to be any consensus as to who won the Republican Presidential debate last night.  Yes, Jebbie Bush got in a few licks against The Donald and reminded the audience that the Geneva Conventions still exist (not that his idiot brother and Dick Cheney let that bother them), but seemingly there is little movement to be seen in polling numbers.  But, as a piece in Politico, there was indeed one winner: fear or perhaps more accurately, fear mongering.  And the overall solution the GOP clown card offered is belligerence, calls for "troops on the ground," and, of course, killing Muslims.  In the process, the would be commanders in chief showed most were not ready for prime time.  Ted Cruz may hay released classified information, Chris Christie talked about talking face to face with the king of Jordan who has been dead for 16 years, and as noted in a prior post, Ben Carson advocated for killing women and children in the fight against ISIS.  Sadly, the mainstream media is doing its best to whip up fear and anxiety and, thus are aiding the GOP.  Here are highlights from the Politico piece:

[I]t’s accurate to say that the debate was all about terrorism—how to fight it, how to keep Americans safe from it, and how much Americans should be freaking out about it. CNN’s panelists asked no questions about jobs, wages, the impending Fed rate hike, health care, energy, infrastructure, the federal budget, the federal deficit, the Supreme Court, financial reform, abortion, race, or any other domestic issue unrelated to homeland security. “Americans are more afraid today than they’ve been at any time since 9/11,” Wolf Blitzer declared, and the main theme of the debate—from the candidates, but arguably from the network as well—was that they ought to be even more afraid.

Immigration was a prominent topic, but mostly in the context of keeping jihadist refugees out of the U.S. Energy came up, but only in the context of reducing U.S. dependence on oil from terror-supporting nations. Guns came up, but only in the context of Obama’s proposal to deny guns to Americans on the terror watch list. The economy barely came up, although Kasich did say strengthening the economy would help defeat ISIS. Rand Paul brought up the federal debt in his closing statement, calling it the greatest threat to U.S. security.

Polls after the Paris and San Bernardino attacks have found that terrorism has become the most pressing issue for the public. It’s a complex issue, worthy of debate, and last night’s focus on terror produced several interesting disagreements among the Republicans—over regime change and foreign entanglements, over domestic surveillance, over Syrian refugees and border security. But CNN’s implicit assumption was that non-terror issues are no longer as important for 2016. “You all have different strategies for keeping America safe and that will be the focus of our debate tonight,” Blitzer said at the outset.

There was little acknowledgment during the conversation that Americans have anything to fear from anything other than terrorists, or that the terrorist threat could be anything but dire. In fact, since 9/11, more Americans have been killed by lightning strikes than by terror attacks—and way more Americans have been killed by car accidents or preventable diseases. But that doesn’t mean Americans feel safe, especially when cable news is wall-to-wall terror coverage. There’s a fine line between covering anxiety and creating it.

Rand Paul also suggested last night that Americans shouldn’t overreact, that “we defeat terrorists by showing them we don’t fear them.” But that was a minority view on the Republican stage, as the candidates generally agreed that our military is in shambles, our president is weak, and ISIS is an existential threat. There was no sense that the U.S. spends more on its military than the next seven countries combined, and little mention of the thousands of bombs the U.S. and its allies are already dropping on ISIS.

Nobody really explained how all that belligerence would defuse a threat that can manifest itself in homegrown Americans, like the health inspector who killed his colleagues in San Bernardino. And there wasn’t much discussion of the potential for military action abroad to create unintended consequences. But near the end of the debate, Trump complained that more than a decade of U.S. intervention in the Middle East has achieved nothing, while costing trillions of dollars that could have been spent upgrading U.S. roads, bridges and airports.

It was a profound attack on the interventionist Republican foreign policy of the 21^st century; Carly Fiorina immediately pointed out, correctly, that Trump’s rhetoric echoed the Democrats. And needless to say, it was the only time anyone mentioned infrastructure.

In truth, other than waging endless war and ignoring huge domestic problems, the GOP clowns offered no real solutions - which is par for the course.

American Sniper - War Porn and False History

While the film "American Sniper" continues to rake in money and tell a false version of the Iraq War - one might think Dick Cheney himself wrote the script - thankfully many are coming forward to condemn the film and the lies it promotes.  Sadly, too few of those who see the "war porn" film will hear the real truth of the horrors done by America and individuals like the late Chris Kyle.  In many ways, Kyle was just as immoral as the ISIS extremists who seem unable to see the common humanity of others.  A piece in Salon has the thoughts of another American sniper who condemns the film in no uncertain terms.  Here are excepts:

Hearing Garett Reppenhagen describe how he felt the first time he shot someone is like listening to an addict talk about his first time injecting heroin. “I leveled my M-4, put him in my iron sights, and took three shots. One of them hit him center mass and he went down in the middle of the road. I had this instant sense of satisfaction, overwhelming excitement and pride. It was really kind of an ecstatic feeling that I had.”

I had just seen the film “American Sniper,” the revisionist propaganda piece of myth-making and nationalistic war porn being sold to us by Bradley Cooper, Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall as an apolitical character study. I wanted to talk with an actual American sniper, and Garett was generous enough to pick up the phone. (He’s also written for Salon.)

Garett has a lot in common with Chris Kyle. Both entered the military at an older age; both spent endless hours on rooftops, in windows or in trash piles in Iraq, “doing their job”; both were in Iraq in 2004 hunting al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; and both spent time after active duty trying to help veterans.  The similarities end there.

[O]ur invasion and occupation of Iraq was not a “kill them or they will kill us” scenario. History has borne that fact out, and that lack of context makes “American Sniper” a dangerous film.

Dangerous because kids will sign up for the military because of this movie. Dangerous because our leaders have plans for those kids. Some will kill. Some will be killed. Or worse. There is no narrative existing outside the strict confines of “American Sniper’s” iron sights that allows for the war on terror to be over. It’s like a broken record looping over and over: attack, blowback and attack. Repeat.

Garett wonders about the mothers of those we killed in Iraq. What aspirations were dashed when an occupying force killed their children, for whom they invested so much of their lives?

He did not keep track of his kills and he hates that I ask him for a number. “I wasn’t keeping track and oftentimes there was no confirmation. I feel it didn’t make me a better soldier and certainly doesn’t make me more of a man.

Garett came home and began speaking out. He still does, in fact.  “I do antiwar talks in high schools and colleges. I stopped telling war stories at these events because no matter how bad and awful it sounds, you can still see the look in kids’ eyes that say, ‘That is the rite of passage, that is how I become a man. I have to go there and live through that horrible shit to know that I am an adult.’”

A lot of people were fighting us because they did not want to be occupied or because they had family members who were hurt or killed and they wanted to get some sort of vengeance. By the end of my tour, it was really hard to justify killing them. We should not have been there in the first place.”

My recovery hinged on the fact that I felt guilt and shame over committing atrocities against an occupied country. We went over there and brutalized and oppressed, and that is part of my psychological and moral injuries. If I can’t talk about it at the VA, then the VA can’t help me.”

Garett’s views are “political,” but the worldview of Chris Kyle as brought to life in “American Sniper” is not. It may be true that it is good for box office for the creators of “American Sniper” to pretend that their movie is not a political one, but if Cooper and Eastwood actually believe that, any narrative not draped in yellow ribbons and billowing red, white and blue flags cannot penetrate the cloak of white imperial privilege they have pulled over their heads.

We are living through a moment in time where a perverse experiment has gone wrong and led to the creation of an out-of-control monster. In this case, the monster itself is the blowback-inducing, homicidal bull in cultural, religious and geopolitical china shops that has been U.S. foreign policy for at least the past 75 years. That concept, personified, is the myth of Chris Kyle that is breaking box office records and marching toward the Oscars with all of the pomp, precision and sense of a rightful place at the head of the line displayed by the Marine Corps Marching Band at the Rose Bowl Parade.

In addition to the outright lies (weapons of mass destruction, a connection between Iraq and 9/11, etc.), the main ingredient of this nightmare is the belief in American exceptionalism: the wind beneath the wings of the 19th century concept of Manifest Destiny. The offspring of that concept, we can call it Manifest Destiny’s child, is a privileged, spoiled, brutal bully on the world stage.

That Chris Kyle, nurtured as he was by the insidious worldview of Manifest Destiny’s child, turned out the way he did makes him common.

Americans' Blindness and Moral Failing

Perhaps growing up gay and in the closet for 37 years made me more sensitive to the plight of others knowing that, like blacks and other racial minorities, for example, I was part of a group hated by many and seen as a "sinner" and somehow less than human.   Those who hate gays, blacks, the foreign born suffer from an inability - indeed, a refusal at times - to see others as equally human. The consequences can be deadly and even extend to failed foreign policy decisions and horrific brutality towards civilians in war.  A piece at Vulture.com by Brian Turner, a former member of the U.S. military and the author of "My Life as a Foreign Country: A Memoir," looks at the American failing in the context of the furor over the film, American Sniper, being embraced and lauded by the likes of Sarah Palin.  Here are the telling excerpts:

The film made me remember something else, too: the oft-repeated phrase We should just drop a nuke and turn this whole goddamn place into a glass fucking parking lot. This was an enlargement of what I’d regularly heard prior to deploying from Ft. Lewis, Washington: I’m going to go over there and shoot somebody in the face. And so, what started as an erasure of the signature of one’s identity, their face, evolved into the complete erasure of a civilization. But the thing is, I don’t think there was any clue about what was actually being erased in the first place. And in that cluelessness lays the problem with American Sniper.

I get American Sniper. I do. But it’s myopic. . . . . Once the dust settles, though, what do we learn from American Sniper?

The biggest problem I have with American Sniper is also a problem I have with myself. It’s a problem I sometimes find in my own work, and it’s an American problem: We don’t see, or even try to see, actual Iraqi people. We lack the empathy necessary to see them as fully human. In American Sniper, Iraqi men, women, and children are known and defined only in relation to combat and the potential threat they pose. Their bodies are the site and source of violence. In both the film and our collective imagination, their humanity is reduced in ways that, ultimately, define our own narrow humanity. In American Sniper, Iraqis are called “savages,” and the “streets are crawling” with them. Eastwood and his screenwriter Jason Hall give Iraqis no memorable lines. Their interior lives are a blank canvas, with no access points to let us in. I get why that is: If Iraqis are seen in any other light, if their humanity is recognized, then the construct of our imagination, the ride-off-into-the-sunset-on-a-white-horse story we tell ourselves to push forward, falls apart. 

If we saw Iraqis as humans, we’d have to learn how to live in a world far, far more complicated and painful than the difficult, painful one we currently live in. Messy, trauma-filled, beautiful, and altogether human; all of us breathing the oxygen of our time. We’d have to learn something more than how to return home and how to reintegrate our warrior class in America — which, to its credit, is a problem that American Sniper acknowledges. We’d have to let go of our fascination with Odysseus and the hero’s return. We’d have to see everyone — not just Americans (or the ones we agree with politically, anyway) — as the family they’ve always been to us. And we’d to have to, as they say, get back to the world.

For the Christofascist and mental midgets like Sarah Palin - and even some people in my own neighborhood - seeing others as equally human and possessing the same innate rights is beyond inconvenient because suddenly things are no longer black and white and one must think and make independent moral judgments.   Sadly, I don't see these people opening their eyes any time soon.  Thinking and not going with the hoard of lemmings as they run for the moral cliff is too frightening.  I will also add that they Islamic extremist suffer from the same moral blindness.  However, two wrongs don't make a right.

Seven Enormous Lies “American Sniper” is Telling America

American Sniper is one movie that I have no plans to see given that in many ways one would think that it had been commissioned by the Bush/Cheney regime to rewrite history to justify the Iraq War and the horrors for which both Bush and Cheney should be facing war crimes prosecution.  For those who are of an "America right or wrong" mindset, I'm sure that these truth deniers will love the film.  For those who value accurate history and an honest look at America's mistakes in the hope we can avoid repeating them, the movie is nothing short of dangerous propaganda.  A picture of the real Chris Kyle is above. A piece in Salon looks at the lies the movie is promoting: 

The film American Sniper, based on the story of the late Navy Seal Chris Kyle, is a box office hit, setting records for an R-rated film released in January. Yet the film, the autobiography of the same name, and the reputation of Chris Kyle are all built on a set of half-truths, myths and outright lies that Hollywood didn’t see fit to clear up.

Here are seven lies about Chris Kyle and the story that director Clint Eastwood is telling:

1. The Film Suggests the Iraq War Was In Response To 9/11: One way to get audiences to unambiguously support Kyle’s actions in the film is to believe he’s there to avenge the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The movie cuts from Kyle watching footage of the attacks to him serving in Iraq, implying there is some link between the two.

2. The Film Invents a Terrorist Sniper Who Works For Multiple Opposing Factions: Kyle’s primary antagonist in the film is a sniper named Mustafa. Mustafa is mentioned in a single paragraph in Kyle’s book, but the movie blows him up into an ever-present figure and Syrian Olympic medal winner who fights for both Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and the Shia Madhi army.

3. The Film Portrays Chris Kyle as Tormented By His Actions: Multiple scenes in the movie portray Kyle as haunted by his service. One of the film’s earliest reviews praised it for showing the “emotional torment of so many military men and women.” But that torment is completely absent from the book the film is based on. In the book, Kyle refers to everyone he fought as “savage, despicable” evil. He writes, “I only wish I had killed more.” He also writes, “I loved what I did. I still do. If circumstances were different – if my family didn’t need me – I’d be back in a heartbeat. I’m not lying or exaggerating to say it was fun.

4. The Real Chris Kyle Made Up A Story About Killing Dozens of People In Post-Katrina New Orleans: Kyle claimed that he killed 30 people in the chaos of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, a story Louisiana writer Jarvis DeBerry calls “preposterous.”  It shows the sort of mentality post-war Kyle had, but the claim doesn’t appear in the film.

5. The Real Chris Kyle Fabricated A Story About Killing Two Men Who Tried To Carjack Him In Texas: Kyle told numerous people a story about killing two alleged carjackers in Texas. Reporters tried repeatedly to verify this claim, but no evidence of it exists.

6. Chris Kyle Was Successfully Sued For Lying About the Former Governor of Minnesota:Kyle alleged that former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura defamed Navy SEALs and got into a fight with him at a local bar. Ventura successfully sued Kyle for the passage in his book, and a jury awarded him $1.845 million.

7. Chris Kyle’s Family Claimed He Donated His Book Proceeds To Veterans’ Charity, But He Kept Most Of The Profits: The National Review debunks the claim that all proceeds of his book went to veterans’ charities. Around 2 percent – $52,000 – went to the charities while the Kyles pocketed $3 million.

Although the movie is an initial box office hit, there is a growing backlash against its simplistic portrayal of the war and misleading take on Kyle’s character. This backlash has reportedly spread among members of the Academy of Motion Picture of Arts and Sciences, which could threaten the film’s shot at racking up Oscars.

 I'm sure Dick Cheney will love the movie if he hasn't already seen it.  That alone speaks volumes about how disturbing this movie is and the lies it perpetuates.

ISIS Claims to Have Beheaded American Journalist

James Foley, in Boston, May 27, 2011. (Credit: AP/Steven Senne)

All fundamentalist religions are, in my view evil.  That said, some are more evil than others and the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, a/k/a ISIS is among the most evil and barbaric.  It's stated goal is to kill or convert all in its way as evidenced by its efforts to engage in genocide against the Yazidi (I've note this in previous posts) who do not adhere to ISIS's horrific and foul religious tenants  Now ISIS claims that it has beheaded American journalist James Wright Foley (pictured above).  Salon has details on ISIS claimed brutal murder.  Here are excerpts:

A video has surfaced purporting to depict American journalist James Wright Foley being beheaded by those who claim to be ISIS rebels. James Wright Foley disappeared in northwest Syria on November 22, 2012.

The video features text saying “Obama authorizes military operations against the Islamic State effectively placing America upon a slippery slope towards a new war front against Muslims.” It then cuts to a clip of Obama announcing airstrikes against ISIS and then to Foley kneeling in orange, next to a man wearing black with his face covered. In it, Foley is forced to read a letter urging Americans to rise up against his “real killer,” the “U.S. government.” I call on my friends, family and loved ones to rise up against my real killer, the U.S. government. What will happen to me is only a result of their complacency and criminality.”

According to Time’s Mirren Gidda:

American airstrikes began earlier this month in an attempt to help thousands of people—members of the Yazidi, an ethnic minority in the region—who were trapped on a mountain range by fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). President Barack Obama formally told Congress on Sunday that he had sanctioned additional air raids, though he said they would be limited. The new strikes, requested by the Iraqi government, were intended to help Iraqi and Kurdish security forces who had been battling the militants for control of the strategic Mosul Dam. Aided by U.S. air support, these troops successfully recaptured it on Aug. 18.

The video also shows a man on his knees who is allegedly Steven Sotloff, a freelance journalist who went missing in Syria on Aug. 3, 2013. According to the video, Sotloff’s fate depends on Obama’s “next decision.”

While ISIS is particularly foul and underscores the reality that religion is a plague on mankind,  it is important to remember that the hate practiced and disseminated by ISIS varies from that of America's own Christofascists only by degree.  Hatred of others and fear of modernity and the right of others to hold differing belief underlies both ISIS and American Christofascists.

U.S. Concealed Troops’ War Crimes in Afghanistan

One of the biggest disappointments for me has been Barack Obama's refusal to subject those who committed war crimes to prosecution.  The list of those deserving of such criminal prosecution includes, of course, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.  Yet there are many others who similarly deserve prosecution.  Sadly, much as the Catholic Church worked for decades to hide sexual abuse by priests and obstructed justice, so too has the Pentagon.  If one wonders why America has inspired jihadists, look no farther than our failure to prosecute those guilty of war crimes.  Here are excerpts from a piece in The Daily Beast of America's coverup of atrocities committed by the U.S. military:

The U.S. military has systematically covered up or disregarded “abundant and compelling evidence” of war crimes, torture, and unlawful killings in Afghanistan as recently as last year, according to a report by Amnesty International published today in Kabul.

The human rights organization alleges that the U.S. military has routinely failed to properly investigate reports of criminal behavior and, in some instances, tampered with evidence to conceal wrongdoing. On the rare occasions when servicemen are held to account, the report found that the compromised military justice system seldom secured justice for the victims of enforced disappearances, killings, and abuse that included torture.

“President Obama has admitted that ‘we tortured’ people in the past—but this is not the Bush administration, this is torture happening under Obama,” said Joanne Mariner, the author of the report.

While torture and other abuses by the CIA and the military were sanctioned by the Bush administration, Obama entered office vowing to end such practices. There have been a number of prosecutions and punishments of military units that have committed crimes and atrocities in Afghanistan under Obama, but Amnesty says the White House has to do more to ensure his policy changes are respected in the field. 

A survivor of one of the most egregious assaults on civilians detailed in the report told The Daily Beast he had been forced to listen to the last gasps and sobs of his dying daughter, who was seven months pregnant, while the Americans threatened to kill anyone who moved. “She was calling out for help, maybe she wanted to share her last words before she left us forever,” said Muhammad Tahir, a civil servant.

“There is a shocking lack of accountability for the killing of Afghan civilians by U.S. forces, including civilians killed in circumstances that raise concerns about war crimes,” said Mariner. “There is very strong evidence that war crimes were carried out.”

The report, titled “Left in the Dark,” includes detailed investigations of 10 incidents in which at least 140 civilians, including 50 children, were killed in dubious circumstances. In the aftermath of nine of these, eyewitnesses and families report that no one was ever interviewed by the U.S. military.

A Pentagon spokesman did not deny the allegations in the report but reiterated U.S. policy on torture and war crimes. “The Department of Defense does not permit its personnel to engage in acts of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of any person in its custody,” said Maj. Bradlee Avots.

When the Americans realized that the pregnant women and children they had killed were unlikely to be insurgents, witnesses said they began to remove the evidence of what they had done. 

“When they understood they had hit the wrong place, they started pulling out the bullets from the dead bodies with their hands and their knives,” Tahir recalled. “America, the killer nation, we will never forgive you.”

In the following days they would go on to brief the press with a series of lurid but inaccurate stories suggesting that there was evidence of honor killings or execution-style murders.

“The immediate effort to cover up what had been done suggested that they realized it was a crime,” said Mariner. “And the changing story over time definitely suggests a cover-up.”

Amnesty says Tahir’s family is just one of thousands who have waited in vain for justice for their missing, dead, or severely injured loved ones.
Among the most disturbing allegations are claims of forcible disappearance, torture, and extrajudicial killings carried out by a rogue unit in Wardak province from the fall of 2012. “We interviewed a former detainee that had a really horrific story of just raw torture,” Mariner said. “It’s not only the testimony of this former detainee but a lot of bodies were found showing horrendous crimes of torture—people missing body parts and people whose corpses were badly mutilated.”

Amnesty says relying on an internal justice system is not conducive to thorough investigations of alleged crimes; the commanders whose duty it would be to report incidents may be implicated, and there is a heavy reliance on the word of the accused and their colleagues rather than independent witnesses.

Stories like this leave me feeling ashamed to be an American.  Just as Israel has created life long enemies in Gaza, so too has America created life long enemies through these unpunished crimes.  Worse yet, jihadists have been give powerful propaganda tools.  

Are We Turning our backs on Syrian Atrocities?

The answer to the question posed in the title of this post is a resounding "yes" - at least in some circles.  In others, the horrors being done in Syria are used to justify a stance of "see, what Israel is doing isn't so bad." Neither approach is right and moral.  Just because one group is committing atrocities doesn't make it OK for a different group to engage in evil.  Michael Gerson, a sometimes Israel apologist, brings needed focus on the murderous Assad regime in Syria through a column in the Washington Post.  While religion plays a role in the nightmare in Syria as in the Israel/Gaza atrocities, in Syria the difference is that Assad is a brutal dictator who seemingly wants to become the Hitler/Stalin of the Middle East.  Here are column highlights:

For every dissident and defector I’ve encountered, there is a moment when observation begins to feel like complicity, when remaining a bystander involves culpability. 

A photographer in the criminal and forensics department of the Syrian military police recently told a group at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “My job on a daily basis was just regular accidents, burnings, drownings, routine things.” In late 2011, as the Syrian uprising intensified, his routine changed. The photographer was sent to the morgue at a military hospital to document the bodies of prisoners arriving from 24 regime intelligence branches and military units. Soon 50 to 60 mutilated, emaciated corpses were coming each day — so many they were kept in storage rooms and parking lots. “Some victims were brought alive to the morgue and killed,” he recalled. 

He was involved in archiving the pictures of corpses taken by all the military photographers. “Pictures of children,” he said, “pictures of the elderly, pictures of women. I saw pictures of my own neighbors, from my own village.” They were images not of terrorists but of a broad, populist movement. 

The photographer decided he “could no longer take part.” But when he approached the opposition to defect, he was urged to stay, continue his work and smuggle out the archive on thumb drives. The result is 55,000 high-resolution photographs taken of more than 11,000 victims between September 2011 and August 2013. The corpses, variously, bear marks from being chained; their eyes have been gouged; there are dark spots left by electric shocks; most are gaunt from starvation.

Why would the Syrian regime keep such meticulous records? The photographer, who goes for security reasons by the name Caesar, describes it as part of a bureaucratic routine in which “the higher-ups got proof their orders were carried out.” It is also the type of practice — witness Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union — employed by a government completely unconcerned with eventual accountability, because it believes it will win. As the Syrian regime assaults Aleppo, the last major city contested by the rebels, this belief is not unreasonable. 

The Syrian conflict will be remembered as a strategic watershed for American foreign policy. When the rebellion was a broad, non-radical uprising — the dead in Caesar’s photos — President Obama did almost nothing to help. When radical groups gained momentum, it became an excuse for further inaction, because America didn’t want to create jihadists. We got the jihadists anyway, who are now causing regional havoc.

Obama embraced the narrowest possible definition of U.S. interests in Syria — the elimination of chemical weapons — which has nothing to do with civilian atrocities by other means. If Obama’s Syria policy is the model or norm for future presidents on atrocity prevention, no atrocity will ever be prevented. And the anti-genocide movement is relatively quiet about it all.

This is the problem with impunity for mass atrocities. It encourages future horrors, which create cycles of terror and revenge, which destabilize whole regions and generate new threats. Which is why atrocity prevention is a core national security interest.

Both Assad and Netanyahu need to be removed from power.

A Mountain Of Evidence Links Russia To The Downing Of The Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

While Vladimir Putin dissembles and uses the state controlled Russian media to spin lies that border on the incredible  (e.g., all those on board Flight 17 were dead when the plane took off), the evidence continues to mount that Putin's finger prints are all over the heinous destruction of a civilian airliner with 298 people on board, including infants and children.  Putin spent billions of rubles putting on the Sochi Olympics in a bid to showcase Russia and the positive aspects of Russian culture and now in a matter of days all of that goodwill is destroyed and world opinion is rapidly shifting against Russia.  A piece in Business Insider looks at the mounting evidence that Russia bore ultimate blame for the death in the skies over Ukraine.  Here are excerpts:

There's a growing body of evidence that has emerged that links Russia to the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine, despite the best efforts of pro-Russian militants to scrub the record.

About 40 miles from Donetsk in pro-Russian held territory, the flight carrying 298 passengers and crew was brought down on Thursday, killing everyone on board. The U.S. believes it was likely shot down by an SA-11 missile fired from a Buk surface-to-air missile system.

Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and pro-Russian militants have deflected, attempting to blame Ukraine for the crash. Later, the top rebel commander put forth a conspiracy theory that the passengers actually died days before, The Washington Times reports.

Pro-Russian militants allegedly discussed the receipt of Buk missile systems just days before.

On July 14, a pro-Russian militant and a man identified as "Oreon," an intelligence officer with Russia, allegedly talk about taking down planes with Buk missile systems, according to audio released by Ukraine's security service.

"Excellent. They [militants in rebel territory proclaimed as Donetsk People's Republic] are avenging for planes today, but we have a couple of days more," Oreon allegedly says. "We already have Buk, we'll be shooting down them to hell."

As The Interpreter notes, at several points in the conversation, separatists talk about the Buk missile system crossing the border, along with Russian crews. The recordings, presented by Kiev as key evidence of Moscow's involvement with the rebels, was confirmed as authentic by U.S. intelligence analysts, AFP reported Sunday.

Video posted online shows a Buk missile launcher traveling through the rebel-held town of Snizhne. 

[A]nother video posted to YouTube on July 17 is much more revealing. It was described as showing a Buk traveling near Snizhne, a rebel-controlled area southeast of the MH17 crash site. While the original video was removed for unknown reasons, Eliot Higgins, a well-respected blogger who specializes in identifying weapons in Syria and Ukraine, confirmed the location as Snizhne through geolocation techniques.

  A reporter with The Associated Press on the ground in Snizhne also observed the Buk missile system

The Buk is a highly sophisticated system that requires specialized training to operate.

In a briefing at the Pentagon on Friday, Rear Admiral John Kirby told reporters that it "strains credulity" to think pro-Russian separatists believed to have shot down MH17 didn't have at least some help from Moscow. Kirby said the Buk is a "sophisticated piece of technology" that would likely require technical assistance from Russia.

"The system is not a simple system to use. You need at least four to six months of training and ongoing training to operate it," Ronald Bishop, a former U.S. Air Force missile expert, told Australia's Warwick Daily News. "To fire this system you need to have highly-specialized military training."

The pro-Russian separatist leader boasted on social media of downing an aircraft shortly after MH17 went down.

Posting on VKontakte, Russia's version of Facebook, the pro-Russian leader Igor Strelkov wrote that "we have warned them — not to fly 'in our sky.'" Strelkov, a Russian citizen who is linked to Russian intelligence, said an AN-26 (a Ukrainian military transport) had been shot down, apparently not realizing MH17 was a civilian airliner.

Pro-Russian militants were reportedly caught on an audio recording talking about shooting down a military transport before realizing they had likely downed a civilian plane.

Shortly after the airliner had crashed, pro-Russian militants were reportedly caught on leaked phone calls, apparently discussing the shooting before eventually realizing they had shot down a civilian aircraft instead of a military target.

"It’s 100% a passenger aircraft,” a militant nicknamed "Major" is recorded as saying, noting that he saw no weapons nearby. "Absolutely nothing. Civilian items, medicinal stuff, towels, toilet paper."

Militants have allegedly tried to destroy evidence and block investigators and reporters from the crash site.

If the pro-Russian militants are confident that it was the government of Ukraine that shot down MH17, it would make sense that they would allow a full investigation and keep the crash site undisturbed so that link could be made. But as many have found out, they have been doing the exact opposite.

"The assumption is they're trying to remove evidence of what they did," a senior U.S. official briefed on the latest intelligence told The Wall Street Journal on Saturday.

In another phone call released by Ukraine's security service, pro-Russian militants sound frantic in their search for the MH17 black box. "I'll try to find out [where the box is]," a militant named "Oleksiy" says. His commander responds, "Do it really quick. Urgently. Moscow asks where the boxes are," while urging the militant to keep the black box out of the hands of the OSCE.

There's more, all of it damning to Putin and Russia.  For the record, I am NOT anti-Russian.  My major in college included a minor in Russian history.  Russia is a great nation and its people have suffered horrifically because the nation's failed leaders.  Sadly, Russia is repeating the worse of its history with Putin at the helm.  If Russians want to achieve greatness, the first step they need to take is to overthrow Putin, strip him of all of the plunder he - and his political cronies - has taken to enrich themselves to the detriment of the Russian people.   If Putin sees himself as  the "new Tsar," perhaps he needs to meet the fate his communist predecessors dealt to Nicholas II and his family.  That would be a very sweet irony.