‘We have a Congress that jumped on the Executive’s
war-making bandwagon and allowed the Executive to go to war without exercising
its own legislative authority by questioning WMD claims that were bushwa. 

We have a Congress that, as
occurred before with Viet Nam, lacks the brains and guts to exercise its own
power to stop the war. 

We have a Congress that has
itself done nothing effective – zippo – to stop the Executive torture that
violates Congress’ own anti-torture statute, that has done nothing to stop
rendering for the purpose of torture or to force the closure of secret prisons
in awful foreign countries, a Congress that wouldn’t even dream of – and surely
does not want to so much as mention – exercising its power to curb these
illegalities by impeaching and convicting their perpetrators. 

‘President Bush’s new nominee for Treasury
Secretary, Goldman Sachs Chairman Henry M. Paulson Jr., not only endorses the
Kyoto Protocol to limit greenhouse emissions, but argues that the United
States’ failure to enact Kyoto undermines the competitiveness of U.S.
companies. 

Here’s a
statement from the Nature Conservancy, where Paulson serves as chairman of the board: 

buzzflash “memorial day” editorial ….. 

Alas, the massacre at Haditha -
in which women, children and men - were executed by U.S. Marines will be the My
Lai for Iraq. 

That means war hawks will argue
that the Marines were under intense pressure - which they were - and these
"sort of things" are to be expected in war. They will excuse the
horrific actions as an inevitable outgrowth of a war without rules. 

 
‘People tell me that Saddam Hussein is a very bad man.
Probably he is. Ok, really he is. He is egregiously immoral and ghastly. Should
he be put on trial? Can such a trial be fair? This is where it gets
complicated. 

If all heads of state who commit
violent acts were to be tried as criminals, we would live in a very different
world. It would be a world without governments as we know them. Let's say that
you like that idea. You might argue that lopping off Saddam's head is as good a
place to start as any.’ 

Is the Howard government
cynically supporting a change in government in East Timor to further avoid
Australia’s obligations to the fledgling democracy? 

The little rodent has no right
to be calling for a “more compliant leader / government” in East Timor. 

Like it or not, Prime Minister
Alkatiri was democratically elected, with the Fretilin Party winning more than
80% of the popular vote at late last year. 

 
‘US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister
Tony Blair, whose public support is waning due to the Iraqi War, admitted in a
Washington meeting that they had made some crucial mistakes during the war but
maintained they “did the right thing” in overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Bush said his biggest mistake was
the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and added that he himself learned some
lessons on “tough talk.” 

‘"At a joint White House press conference May 16 with
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, as the two men stood side by side, Bush
slipped in a couple of zingers about Howard’s bald head and supposed
homeliness," recalls Parry by way of illustration. 

"Bush joshed: 'Somebody said
"You and John Howard appear to be so close, don’t you have any
differences?" And I said, "yes, he doesn’t have any hair."'
Getting a round of laughs from reporters, Bush moved on to his next joke: 'That’s
what I like about John Howard,' Bush said. 'He may not be the prettiest person
on the block, but when he tells you something you can take it to the bank.' 

‘Less than 18 months after U.S. President George W. Bush
declared in his 2005 Inaugural Address his unequivocal commitment to the
"ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world", tyrants, particularly
in the Islamic world, are taking heart. 

From North Africa to Central
Asia, top U.S. officials are busy embracing dictators - and their sons, where
appropriate - even as they continue to mouth the pro-democracy rhetoric that
became the hallmark of the administration's foreign policy pronouncements,
particularly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq failed to turn up evidence of
weapons of mass destruction or ties to al Qaeda. 

‘Fear is a very powerful tool. Powerful enough to cause
human beings to hold a gun to their head and pull the trigger. Fear is powerful
enough, too, to cause an entire society to, figuratively speaking, hold a gun
to their liberty and pull the trigger. John Adams said, "Remember,
democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There
is never a democracy that did not commit suicide." 

Only
fear can cause a democracy to commit suicide. Fear and a group of people so filled
with greed and their belief in their right to rule, that they forsake the
politics of hope and prey on the fears of the people.’ 

‘Amnesty International says President George Bush's
tactics in his fight against terrorists have made the United States comparable
to Augusto Pinochet's Chile and Hafez Assad's Syria in its acceptance of
torture and disregard of legal restraints. 

In its annual report of human
rights conditions around the world, Amnesty included the US alongside China,
Russia, Columbia, Uzbekistan and others as states that claim anti-terrorism to
justify gross violations. 

‘I would emphasize that it's not because Cheney, Rumsfeld,
and Wolfowitz are diabolical creatures intent on doing evil. 

They genuinely believe it's in
the interests of the United States, and the world, that unconstrained American
power should determine the shape of the international order. I think they
vastly overstate our capabilities. For all of their supposed worldliness and
sophistication, I don't think they understand the world. I am persuaded that
their efforts will only lead to greater mischief while undermining our
democracy. Yet I don't question that, at some gut level, they think they are
acting on your behalf and mine. 

‘We have reached a deplorable state where an injured horse
elicits a stronger response than a dead or maimed fellow American. 

Recall for a moment the soldier cited in the film who lost
both legs and an arm. He won’t ever again ride a bike as he did as an energetic
young boy. He won’t be able to take leisurely evening strolls with his wife. He
won’t be able to practice tackling or jump shooting with his son. And he won’t
be able to walk his daughter down the aisle on the most important day of her
life as he "hands" her off to the man of her dreams. 

‘Two years ago, with great fanfare, Egypt's president,
Hosni Mubarak, set up a new organization called the Egyptian Supreme Council
for Human Rights. The aging dictator named Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the former
secretary-general of the United Nations, as the Council's chairman. 

‘The government-backed body was
greeted with widespread skepticism from the Egyptian and international human
rights communities. The Council had no independent authority to investigate
allegations of human rights abuses committed by the government. Its role was
strictly advisory. And it did not report to the president, rather to a body
known as the Shura Council, which is roughly like Britain's House of Lords. 

‘Nothing the Bush administration
ever does is about oil. It didn’t invade Iraq because that country might have
more oil than Saudi Arabia. It isn’t threatening Iran because Iran has a tenth
of the world’s oil and one-sixth of its natural gas. And the United States
isn’t cozying up to autocrats in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan because the Caspian
Sea is a mini-Persian Gulf in the middle of Central Asia, either. 

So it stands to reason, doesn’t
it, that Washington isn’t making a fuss over Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez because
that country is a major supplier of oil to the United States? And that it isn’t
making nice to Libya’s erratic Colonel Gadhafi because of oil, either?