Jon Stewart slams Fox News for hypocrisy and then literally drops the mic.

Click image to play video

Courtesy of Raw Story:

Stewart pointed out that, while Fox hosts have focused all of their attention on a Justice Department report finding no evidence that Michael Brown had his hands up when he was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson last year, they have pointedly ignored that the department also found extensive evidence that Wilson’s colleagues on the Ferguson Police Department systematically targeted the city’s black residents for citations and traffic stops — a pattern of discrimination which lent itself to a flashpoint incident like the shooting. 

Similarly, he said, Fox “used ‘Benghazi’ like a clubhouse password” — right up until the Republican-led House Intelligence Commmittee debunked the network’s favorite talking points. 

“Did Susan Rice go on TV and try to deceive anyone? Report says no,” Stewart explained. “Did the administration ignore credible warnings about that day’s attack? Report says no. Was there a stand-down order or failure to rescue [the victims] and send rescue planes? Report says no. Was there a massive intelligence cover-up? Report says no — not CIA, not FBI, none of them.” 

“They demand accountability for anger and divisiveness whilst holding themselves entirely unaccountable for their anger and divisiveness. For two years, they used Benghazi as shorthand, as a symbol for the whole concept of a corrupt, lying, tyrannical — possibly murderous — Obama White House,” Stewart said. “Kind of how other people used ‘Hands Up Don’t Shoot’ as a symbol for systemic racism. There’s really only one difference between the two phenomena: systemic racism actually exists.”

After making that point Stewart literally dropped the mic.

And well he should because THAT was a thing of beauty. 

The CIA has just now declassified the report that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Guess what? It does not justify the invasion of Iraq.

Courtesy of Vice:  

For the first time, the public can now read the hastily drafted CIA document that led Congress to pass a joint resolution authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, a costly war launched March 20, 2003 that was predicated on "disarming" Iraq of its (non-existent) WMD, overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and "freeing" the Iraqi people. 

A report issued by the government funded think-tank RAND Corporation last December titled "Blinders, Blunders and Wars" said the NIE "contained several qualifiers that were dropped…. As the draft NIE went up the intelligence chain of command, the conclusions were treated increasingly definitively." 

An example of that: According to the newly declassified NIE, the intelligence community concluded that Iraq "probably has renovated a [vaccine] production plant" to manufacture biological weapons "but we are unable to determine whether [biological weapons] agent research has resumed." The NIE also said Hussein did not have "sufficient material" to manufacture any nuclear weapons. But in an October 7, 2002 speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, then-President George W. Bush simply said Iraq, "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons" and "the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program." 

One of the most significant parts of the NIE revealed for the first time is the section pertaining to Iraq's alleged links to al Qaeda. In September 2002, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claimed the US had "bulletproof" evidence linking Hussein's regime to the terrorist group. 

"We do have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad," Rumsfeld said. "We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior-level contacts going back a decade, and of possible chemical- and biological-agent training." 

But the NIE said its information about a working relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq was based on "sources of varying reliability" — like Iraqi defectors — and it was not at all clear that Hussein had even been aware of a relationship, if in fact there were one. 

"As with much of the information on the overall relationship, details on training and support are second-hand," the NIE said. "The presence of al-Qa'ida militants in Iraq poses many questions. We do not know to what extent Baghdad may be actively complicit in this use of its territory for safehaven and transit."

That is just a portion of a much longer article, virtually all of it refuting what we were all told during the build up to the invasion, and Vice also has the actual report embedded for those who want to read it for themselves. 

Here is what really sticks in my craw.

This report was supposedly readily available to both the Senate and Congress to help its members make perhaps the MOST important decision of their careers, and yet still they voted to support Bush and his unnecessary war.

To my mind that makes those who voted in favor partly culpable for the damage that resulted from the decision to move forward even in the face of such unconvincing evidence.

Which also means, and yes I know I'm on thin ice with some of you, Hillary Clinton.

More from the article:

According to the latest figures compiled by Iraq Body Count, to date more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, although other sources say the casualties are twice as high. More than 4,000 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq, and tens of thousands more have been injured and maimed. The war has cost US taxpayers more than $800 billion. 

And as President Obama recently pointed out the fallout from the war is far from over since it was instrumental in the creation of ISIS.

Of course it will not make any difference in the general, especially since it is likely she will run against the brother of the man who started the war in the first place, but it is just one more reason that voting for Hillary in 2016 will feel more like an obligation rather than a privilege.

Majority of Republicans still believe that we found WMD's in Iraq.

Courtesy of Salon:  

Nearly a dozen years after the United States invaded Iraq on the false pretext that Saddam Hussein’s regime harbored weapons of mass destruction, a majority of Republicans incorrectly believe that the U.S. found WMDs in the country. 

According to a Farleigh Dickinson University poll released Wednesday, 51 percent of Republicans believe that it’s “probably” or “definitely” true that the U.S. uncovered an active WMD program following its March 2003 invasion. Among Fox News viewers, 52 percent held that incorrect belief. Meanwhile, 32 percent of Democrats, 14 percent of MSNBC viewers, and 42 percent of respondents overall believe the U.S. found WMDs in Iraq. 

Remember these people are driven by faith more than fact. 

This is what they fervently want to be true so it is almost impossible to dissuade them with mere facts.

However the indisputable facts are that the Bush administration willfully accepted questionable intelligence, while rejecting overwhelming evidence to the contrary, in order to convince themselves and leaders in other countries to attack the people of Iraq, Which has led to at least half a million Iraqi deaths since the beginning of the invasion. (Personally I think the death toll is much larger than that.)

The war also resulted in 4,489 American deaths, and unrest in the Middle East that has resulted in the death of thousands who never set foot in Iraq.

This is why it is of utmost importance to make sure that a Bush NEVER sets foot in the White House ever again. Or any other Republican for that matter.

Iraqi woman files class action lawsuit against President Bush over his "war of aggression." Oh PLEASE let this be successful!

Courtesy of Yes magazine:  

George W. Bush keeps a low profile these days, making the rounds on the public speaking circuit, engaging in a bit of philanthropy here and there, occasionally sharing his dog paintings or offering an unsolicited opinion on the immigration debate or national security. 

Given his role in the current media landscape, it may be easy to forget that just 10 years ago he led an invasion of a foreign country that many in the international community saw as criminal. 

Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother of three, has not forgotten. The violence and chaos that engulfed Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 had tragic consequences for her family and ultimately forced her to flee her homeland for an uncertain future. She has left Iraq, but she is determined to make sure the world hears her story and that someone is held accountable. 

Saleh is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit targeting six key members of the Bush Administration: George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Paul Wolfowitz. In Saleh v. Bush, she alleges that the Iraq War was not conducted in self-defense, did not have the appropriate authorization by the United Nations, and therefore constituted a “crime of aggression” under international law—a designation first set down in the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. The aim of the suit is simple: to achieve justice for Iraqis, and to show that no one, not even the president of the United States, is above the law.

I don't have muhc faith in this actually going anywhere, but an anti-war liberal can dream can't he?

New BBC report details how MI6 and the CIA both knew in advance that Iraq did NOT have WMD's well before the invasion.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

Fresh evidence is revealed today (Yesterday) about how MI6 and the CIA were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction. 

Tony Blair told parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was “active”, “growing” and “up and running”. 

A special BBC Panorama programme tonight (Last night actually) will reveal how British and US intelligence agencies were informed by top sources months before the invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programme, and that the information was not passed to subsequent inquiries. 

It describes how Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, told the CIA’s station chief in Paris at the time, Bill Murray, through an intermediary that Iraq had “virtually nothing” in terms of WMD. 

Sabri said in a statement that the Panorama story was “totally fabricated”. 

However, Panorama confirms that three months before the war an MI6 officer met Iraq’s head of intelligence, Tahir Habbush al-Tikriti, who also said that Saddam had no active WMD. The meeting in the Jordanian capital, Amman, took place days before the British government published its now widely discredited Iraqi weapons dossier in September 2002. 

Lord Butler, the former cabinet secretary who led an inquiry into the use of intelligence in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, tells the programme that he was not told about Sabri’s comments, and that he should have been. 

Butler says of the use of intelligence: “There were ways in which people were misled or misled themselves at all stages.” 

When it was suggested to him that the body that probably felt most misled of all was the British public, Butler replied: “Yes, I think they’re, they’re, they got every reason think that.”

This broadcast comes on the heels of Rachel Maddow's brilliant documentary "Hubris" which examined how we in the US were lied into believing that Saddam Hussein presented a threat as well.

With so much new information coming out, and the reexamination of that evidence with clear eyes, it is almost making me hopeful that we will finally see some accountability.

Not that I expect to see George W, Bush,. Dick Cheney, or Tony Blair taken away in handcuffs (Though a boy can dream can't he?), but perhaps something will happen that will prevent such an atrocity from EVER happening again.

After all I thought after the Vietnam War that we had learned our lesson about war, but such was not the case.

Make sure you clear your calendars for the premiere of the documentary "Hubris: The Selling of the Iraq War." Which is scheduled for Monday on MSNBC, and will be hosted by our own Rachel Maddow.

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I often call myself a "Bush Democrat" meaning that I was essentially an Independent until George W. Bush was elected, and then I decided it was time to take sides in what I saw as a war against the American people being waged by the Republican party.

I KNEW before the first shot was fired that the reasons given for going into Iraq were false, and I simply could not believe that the media in this country refused to call the administration out on that.

My most constant frustration with President Obama is that he has refused to go after the people that falsified the information that got us into the Iraq War, and the politicians who supported it even though they HAD to have known, or at least suspected, the truth.

I'm not stupid. I have seen the incredibly partisan climate we currently live in, and realize that IF the President had attempted to launch an investigation, or charge the ex-President and his staff with treason, it would have split this country irreparably, and we would right now be fighting that long threatened civil war that some on the Right are itching to start.

Having said that, I for one certainly hope that at some point, with documentaries like this getting the truth out to the American people, the time may soon be right to revisit this criminal enterprise and find justice for the thousands of young Americans who died needlessly in a war that NEVER should have taken place.

Why, despite their election losses, working with the Republicans will continue to present a challenge.

Here is the source for the graphic:

A new poll conducted by Dartmouth government professor Benjamin Valentino found that 63 percent of Republican respondents still believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded in 2003, even though this assertion has been thoroughly debunked. In comparison, only 27 percent of independents and less than 15 percent of Democrats believed in the misinformation. Additionally, 64 percent of Republican respondents believe that President Obama was born in another country. As the Huffington Post’s Dan Froomkin notes, “this latest poll result seems to indicate a refusal — unique to the modern Republican Party — to acknowledge facts.”

I once worked with a little boy who went around telling all of the other kids in the camp that HE was the fastest runner in the world. He was an arrogant little shit who came from a wealthy family and liked to bully smaller children.

I finally got tired of the little snot and, since this was a gymnastics camp, I decided to put a up a chart with their times for the 40 yard dash with the idea that they would then try to beat those times in subsequent attempts.

As you may have already guessed the so-called "fastest runner in the world" finished very near the bottom.  And in later attempts, due to his poor participation in the training portions of the camp, he did not improve hardly at all, while others made significant improvements.

However this fact, which was on clear display for the entire camp, did nothing to dissuade this son of privilege from continuing to brag that he was the best athlete and the fastest runner. As it turned out his ego, and need to be the best, overshadowed anything as insignificant as mere facts.

And so it goes with the majority of the Republican party. That poll referenced in the above data was conducted in April through May of this year, but it is unlikely that the number has changed one little bit.

Which begs the question, how do you work with the party behind failed policies and unnecessary wars, if they refuse to recognize that the policies did indeed fail and that wars were not necessary?

In other words how do you make reality based compromises with a party that lives within their very own reality?

I don't usually watch Hardball anymore, but here Chris Matthews is speaking the gospel.

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

This is why I started this blog back in 2004.  It was to talk about the Bush administration and the lies they told to trick this country into fighting these illegal wars.  I had hoped to someday see George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld charged as war criminals, and for me that dream is still alive.

Mathews has thrown down the gauntlet, do we have the guts to pick it up?

For my fellow Alaskans the e-mail address for Senator Begich is here, while Senator Murkowski's is here.

Don't we owe it to our fallen warriors to get to the bottom of the lies that sent them to their premature deaths, and to make sure no President will EVER be allowed to mislead the American people into supporting an illegal war ever again?

If you would like the opportunity to blame the Iraq war on somebody besides Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the voters. Well here you go.

60 Minutes has identified the man whose fabricated story of Iraqi biological weapons drove the U.S. argument for invading Iraq. It has also obtained video of "Curve Ball," as he was known in intelligence circles, and discovered he was not only a liar, but also a thief and a poor student instead of the chemical engineering whiz he claimed to be.

Curve Ball is an Iraqi defector named Rafid Ahmed Alwan, who arrived at a German refugee center in 1999. To bolster his asylum case and increase his importance, he told officials he was a star chemical engineer who had been in charge of a facility at Djerf al Nadaf that was making mobile biological weapons.

The only people who could have possibly believed this guy were those that desperately wanted what he said to be true. Those people who were looking for a reason to invade Iraq.

And these are the same people who are trying to find a reason to invade Iran. It just makes you wonder who he next "curveball" will be.

What a bunch of amateurs!