Iraq: Situation Whose Time Has Come

For some time now there has been a call for those people in the Bush admin to stand for their decisions to invade Iraq…..to answer for the lies and misinformation……

There is a situation brewing in the UK that could be a template for any such investigation…..

Tony Blair should stand trial on charges of war crimes if the evidence suggests he broke international law over the “illegal” Iraq war in 2003, the Labour leadership frontrunner Jeremy Corbyn has said.

Corbyn called on the former prime minister to “confess” the understandings he reached with George W Bush in the run up to the invasion.

Asked on BBC Newsnight whether Blair should stand trial on war crimes charges, Corbyn said: “If he has committed a war crime, yes. Everybody who has committed a war crime should be.”

The veteran MP for Islington North was a high-profile opponent of the war and became a leading member of the Stop the War coalition. He said: “It was an illegal war. I am confident about that. Indeed Kofi Annan [UN secretary general at the time of the war] confirmed it was an illegal war and therefore [Tony Blair] has to explain to that. Is he going to be tried for it? I don’t know. Could he be tried for it? Possibly.”

Corbyn said he expects the eventual publication of the Chilcot report will force Blair to explain his discussions with President Bush in the runup to the war.

He said: “The Chilcot report is going to come out sometime. I hope it comes out soon. I think there are some decisions Tony Blair has got to confess or tell us what actually happened. What happened in Crawford, Texas, in 2002 in his private meetings with George [W] Bush. Why has the Chilcot report still not come out because – apparently there is still debate about the release of information on one side or the other of the Atlantic. At that point Tony Blair and the others that have made the decisions are then going to have to deal with the consequences of it.”

Read More…

Please weigh in…….should those that lied us into war be held accountable?

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There’s No Class Like NO Class

For thirty years Jimmy Carter has been a punch line for the no class politicians on the right.  There has not been a gathering of conservs that does not eventually lead to some rancid humor at Jimmy Carter’s expense……since the hostage thing in 1979 and the election in 1980 he, Carter, has been a punching bag and the butt of every lame joke thinkable……..

Recently Carter let it be known that he is battling cancer of the brain…….

Jimmy Carter addressed his recent cancer diagnosis very specifically today, outlining the history of his recent medical condition. A very bad cold in May led him to get an exam; an MRI showed a cancer growth on his liver, and about a tenth of his liver was removed in early August. A biopsy revealed it was melanoma. “They had a very high suspicion that it started somewhere else … only 2% of melanoma is internal. They found there were four spots of melanoma on my brain”; they’re small, about 2 millimeters. He’ll get his first radiation treatment this afternoon and will have four treatments at three-week intervals while also taking a drug for melanoma.

When asked about his reaction to learning about the cancer on the brain, he says, “I just thought I had a few weeks left. But I was surprisingly at ease. I’ve had a wonderful life, thousands of friends, and an exciting, gratifying, and adventurous existence. I was surprisingly at ease, more than my wife is. Now I feel it’s in the hands of God.” He said for a number of years he and his wife thought about reducing their work at the Carter Center; he intends to dramatically cut back now and said the center has a $600 million endowment to support it. “I can’t anticipate how I’ll be feeling honestly and will have to defer to my doctors,” he says. But for now, “I feel good. I haven’t felt any weakness. The pain has been very slight.”

After the announcement the NO Class bunch from the 2016 election field had to show their complete lack of any class…..Christie and Cruz…….

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz both took shots at ailing former president Jimmy Carter on Saturday while on the campaign trail for the 2016 Republican nomination.

Christie said that we have the “weakest” president on foreign policy, and that, “[Obama] makes Jimmy Carter look strong,” while addressing an Iowa State Fair crowd from a soapbox.

Cruz, speaking at the Koch-backed Americans For Prosperity event, Defending the Dream, in Columbus, Ohio, repeated a similar version of an attack he delivered Friday at the Iowa State Fair, when he compared the Obama and Carter administrations’ “same failed domestic policies, same misery, stagnation and malaise, same feckless and naïve foreign policy.”

Instead of showing a little class and dignity they went on the same lame attack they always have……these two d/bags will NEVER be half the man that Jimmy Carter is………neither has any idea what it means to be president……and neither could possibly live the pious life that Carter made for himself……we need more Americans that are cut from the same cloth as Carter…..people that care about humanity, all humanity.  Carter accomplished more as president after his presidency than either of these two clowns will ever accomplish in their lifetimes.

These people demonstrate what is wrong with this country…..the lack of true leadership during sensitive situations.

I wish Jimmy Carter good fortune and a successful completion of his cancer fighting program.

Now You See ‘Em, Now You Don’t

Is North Korea playing a game of hide and seek?

I do not usually follow the happenings in Asia very closely…..I spend my brain energy trying to cope with the Middle East and North Africa……but from time to time there is a story that catches my eye and I will wait to see if the media covers it and other bloggers also….if not then I feel I must bring it to my reader’s attention.

VIOLA!  We have one of today’s posts.

For the last couple of months now there has been a wealth of stories coming from the Korean Peninsula…… the shots fired across the border or the music played by the South to drive the North batcrap crazy…….most of the stories are mostly fleeting…..usually on slow news days…..like weekends……

I waited a couple of days to see if the story I found would make it to the news…….I figured that the liars in the media would have all kinds of theories about the incident……so far I got nothing……

Let me enlighten you………

Top government officials from the Koreas met over the weekend in the border town of Panmunjom to discuss keeping the peace, Reuters reports. But North Korea seems to be hedging its bets after a South Korean military official said that 50 of its northern foe’s submarines have disappeared, the Yonhap news agency reports. “Seventy percent of North Korea’s submarines left their bases, and their locations are not confirmed,” an official told reporters yesterday, adding, per Chosun Ilbo, “Scores of subs that have left their bases on the eastern and western coasts are off our radar, which is an unprecedentedly serious situation.”

The main concern is that the subs could cross the Northern Limit Line (the maritime line in the sand between the two countries) or take on South Korean Navy vessels in surprise attacks from the rear, the paper notes. It adds that although North Korean submarines—described by the National Post as” largely outdated and technically obsolescent versions produced in the 1960s for the Soviet Union”—make a lot of noise (meaning they should be easy to find), there are so many missing it would be hard to keep track of them all. Also worrisome, per the military official: North Korea has apparently doubled its number of artillery troops along the DMZ since Friday, per Chosun Ilbo. “They seem ready to shoot,” the official says.

50 missing subs from a country that has nuke weapons……any thoughts?

While I was writing this news came out about a deal (of sorts) in Korea…….

South Korea says it has agreed to halt propaganda broadcasts in a matter of hours after North Korea expressed regret over a recent land mine blast that maimed two South Korean troops, and CNN reports that it will lift its “semi-state of war.” South Korean national security adviser Kim Kwan-jin made the announcement in a televised briefing, after more than 30 hours of talks with North Korea ended. The talks were the second round of negotiations the rival Koreas began Saturday after events at their heavily guarded border pushed them to the brink of a possible military confrontation. Kim says the two Koreas have also agreed to hold talks to improve their ties soon in either Seoul or Pyongyang.

Now that the Koreas are making nice…..will the missing subs reappear?

Thoughts?

Testing……1…..2…..Testing……Anyone out there?

 

Race in the US: Know your history

Last summer the question of race once again crept into the dialog of America…..it began with the killing of Mr. Brown by a police officer……

The situation spilled out of control as more and more killings were reported…..

We as a country need to have the honest racial dialog…..but there is the rub….HONEST….something in short supply in the good old US of A……

Before that conversation can take place we all have to know what it is we are talking about…..ignorance just feeds the hate and the misinformation…..if we understand history then we would be able to see why the killing of Brown became the “boiling” point……..

This article is well written and should be read……and read by everyone……

 

Race in the US: Know your history – Al Jazeera English.