WilliamPitt
WilliamPitt's Journal
On the eve of the Manning verdict...
...I give you an abridged list of all the people who will never, ever see the inside of a courtroom for their part in the broad-spectrum slaughter and outright grand theft that was, and remains, the war in Iraq.
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
- Dick Cheney, Vice President
Speech to VFW National Convention
8/26/2002
"There is already a mountain of evidence that Saddam Hussein is gathering weapons for the purpose of using them. And adding additional information is like adding a foot to Mount Everest."
- Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary
Response to Question From the Press
9/6/2002
"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
- Condoleezza Rice, US National Security Adviser
CNN Late Edition
9/8/2002
"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."
- George W. Bush, President
Speech to the UN General Assembly
9/12/2002
"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons. We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons - the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."
- George W. Bush, President
Radio Address
10/5/2002
"The Iraqi regime ... possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."
- George W. Bush, President
Cincinnati, Ohio, Speech
10/7/2002
"And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons."
- George W. Bush, President
Cincinnati, Ohio, Speech
10/7/2002
"After 11 years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon."
- George W. Bush, President
Cincinnati, Ohio, Speech
10/7/2002
"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas."
- George W. Bush, President
Cincinnati, Ohio, Speech
10/7/2002
"Iraq, despite UN sanctions, maintains an aggressive program to rebuild the infrastructure for its nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile programs. In each instance, Iraq's procurement agents are actively working to obtain both weapons-specific and dual-use materials and technologies critical to their rebuilding and expansion efforts, using front companies and whatever illicit means are at hand."
- John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control
Speech to the Hudson Institute
11/1/2002
"Iraq could decide on any given day to provide biological or chemical weapons to a terrorist group or to individual terrorists ... The war on terror will not be won until Iraq is completely and verifiably deprived of weapons of mass destruction."
- Dick Cheney, Vice President
Denver, Address to the Air National Guard
12/1/2002
"If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world."
- Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary
Press Briefing
12/2/2002
"The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it."
- Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary
Response to Question From the Press
12/4/2002
"We know for a fact that there are weapons there."
- Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary
Press Briefing
1/9/2003
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."
- George W. Bush, President
State of the Union Address
1/28/2003
"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."
- George W. Bush, President
State of the Union Address
1/28/2003
"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more."
- Colin Powell, Secretary of State
Remarks to the UN Security Council
2/5/2003
"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction. If biological weapons seem too terrible to contemplate, chemical weapons are equally chilling."
- Colin Powell, Secretary of State
Address to the UN Security Council
2/5/2003
"In Iraq, a dictator is building and hiding weapons that could enable him to dominate the Middle East and intimidate the civilized world - and we will not allow it."
- George W. Bush, President
Speech to the American Enterprise Institute
2/26/2003
"So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? I think our judgment has to be clearly not."
- Colin Powell, Secretary of State
Remarks to the UN Security Council
3/7/2003
"Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute. We know that, based on intelligence, that has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He's had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
- Dick Cheney, Vice President
"Meet the Press"
3/16/2003
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
- George W. Bush, President
Address to the Nation
3/17/2003
"Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly ... all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes."
- Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary
Press Briefing
3/21/2003
"One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites."
- Victoria Clark, Pentagon Spokeswoman
Press Briefing
3/22/2003
"I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction."
- Kenneth Adelman, Defense Policy Board Member
Washington Post, p. A27
3/23/2003
"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
- Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
ABC Interview
3/30/2003
"We still need to find and secure Iraq's weapons of mass destruction facilities and secure Iraq's borders so we can prevent the flow of weapons of mass destruction materials and senior regime officials out of the country."
- Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
Press Conference
4/9/2003
"You bet we're concerned about it. And one of the reasons it's important is because the nexus between terrorist states with weapons of mass destruction ... and terrorist groups - networks - is a critical link. And the thought that ... some of those materials could leave the country and in the hands of terrorist networks would be a very unhappy prospect. So it is important to us to see that that doesn't happen."
- Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
Press Conference
4/9/2003
"But make no mistake - as I said earlier - we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found."
- Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary
Press Briefing
4/10/2003
"Were not going to find anything until we find people who tell us where the things are. And we have that very high on our priority list, to find the people who know. And when we do, then well learn precisely where things were and what was done."
- Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
"Meet the Press"
4/13/2003
"We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them."
- George W. Bush, President
NBC Interview
4/24/2003
"We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so."
- George W. Bush, President
Remarks to Reporters
5/3/2003
"I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now."
- Colin Powell, Secretary of State
Remarks to Reporters
5/4/2003
"We never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country."
- Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
Fox News Interview
5/4/2003
"I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein - because he had a weapons program."
- George W. Bush, President
Remarks to Reporters
5/6/2003
"U.S. officials never expected that 'we were going to open garages and find' weapons of mass destruction."
- Condoleezza Rice, US National Security Adviser
Reuters Interview
5/12/2003
"We said all along that we will never get to the bottom of the Iraqi WMD program simply by going and searching specific sites, that you'd have to be able to get people who know about the programs to talk to you."
- Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense
Interview with Australian Broadcasting
5/13/2003
"It's going to take time to find them, but we know he had them. And whether he destroyed them, moved them or hid them, we're going to find out the truth. One thing is for certain: Saddam Hussein no longer threatens America with weapons of mass destruction."
- George W. Bush, President
Speech at a Weapons Factory in Ohio
5/25/2003
"They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer."
- Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
Remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations
5/27/2003
"For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."
- Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense
Vanity Fair Interview
5/28/2003
"The President is indeed satisfied with the intelligence that he received. And I think that's borne out by the fact that, just as Secretary Powell described at the United Nations, we have found the bio trucks that can be used only for the purpose of producing biological weapons. That's proof-perfect that the intelligence in that regard was right on target."
- Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary
Press Briefing
5/29/2003
"We have teams of people that are out looking. They've investigated a number of sites. And within the last week or two, they have in fact captured and have in custody two of the mobile trailers that Secretary Powell talked about at the United Nations as being biological weapons laboratories."
- Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
Infinity Radio Interview
5/30/2003
"But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them."
- George W. Bush, President
Interview With TVP Poland
5/30/2003
"You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons ... They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two ... And we'll find more weapons as time goes on."
- George W. Bush, President
Press Briefing
5/30/2003
"This wasn't material I was making up, it came from the intelligence community."
- Colin Powell, Secretary of State
Press Briefing
6/2/2003
"We recently found two mobile biological weapons facilities which were capable of producing biological agents. This is the man who spent decades hiding tools of mass murder. He knew the inspectors were looking for them. You know better than me he's got a big country in which to hide them. We're on the look. We'll reveal the truth."
- George W. Bush, President
Camp Sayliya, Qatar
6/5/2003
"I would put before you Exhibit A, the mobile biological labs that we have found. People are saying, 'Well, are they truly mobile biological labs?' Yes, they are. And the DCI, George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence, stands behind that assessment."
- Colin Powell, Secretary of State
Fox News Interview
6/8/2003
"No one ever said that we knew precisely where all of these agents were, where they were stored."
- Condoleezza Rice, US National Security Adviser
"Meet the Press"
6/8/2003
"What the president has said is because it's been the long-standing view of numerous people, not only in this country, not only in this administration, but around the world, including at the United Nations, who came to those conclusions ... And the president is not going to engage in the rewriting of history that others may be trying to engage in."
- Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary
Response to Question From the Press
"Iraq had a weapons program ... Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced with time we'll find out they did have a weapons program."
- George W. Bush, President
Comment to Reporters
6/9/2003
"The biological weapons labs that we believe strongly are biological weapons labs, we didn't find any biological weapons with those labs. But should that give us any comfort? Not at all. Those were labs that could produce biological weapons whenever Saddam Hussein might have wanted to have a biological weapons inventory."
- Colin Powell, Secretary of State
Associated Press Interview
6/12/2003
"My personal view is that their intelligence has been, I'm sure, imperfect, but good. In other words, I think the intelligence was correct in general, and that you always will find out precisely what it was once you get on the ground and have a chance to talk to people and explore it, and I think that will happen."
- Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
Press Briefing
6/18/2003
"I have reason, every reason, to believe that the intelligence that we were operating off was correct and that we will, in fact, find weapons or evidence of weapons, programs, that are conclusive. But that's just a matter of time ... It's now less than eight weeks since the end of major combat in Iraq and I believe that patience will prove to be a virtue."
- Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
Pentagon Media Briefing
6/24/2003
"I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are."
- Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary
Press Briefing
7/9/2003
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14688-the-united-states-of-aftermath
I've been 90% sure Pres. Obama will approve the Keystone pipeline...and then he says stuff like this
Obama: ‘No Evidence’ Keystone XL Would Create Many JobsTPM
President Obama dismissed the Republican claim that the Keystone XL pipeline would do anything to lower unemployment in the country, calling the project a "blip" in terms of job creation in an interview with the New York Times published Saturday.
“Republicans have said that this would be a big jobs generator,” Obama told the Times. “There is no evidence that that’s true. The most realistic estimates are this might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline, which might take a year or two, and then after that we’re talking about somewhere between 50 and 100 jobs in an economy of 150 million working people.”
The rest: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/obama-keystone-xl-wouldnt-really-create-jobs
If he keeps blowing up pro-pipeline talking points, green-lighting the thing is going to get really hard.
No, I'm not exhaling yet, and neither should you...but this is very interesting.
An American Reckoning
Jeff Bauman, who lost his lower legs in the Boston
Marathon bombings, holds a prosthetic leg similar to
the ones he will receive at United Prosthetics in
Dorchester, Massachusetts., May 21, 2013.
(Josh Haner / The New York Times)
An American Reckoning
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Friday 26 July 2013
On Wednesday, one hundred days after the bombs at the Boston Marathon took his leg, broke his spine, ruptured his eardrums and buried shrapnel in his body, the last hospitalized victim to be discharged left the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital for home after 49 separate surgeries. His fiancee and 5-year old son were with him when he left.
For those of us who live in Boston, word of his discharge came as tremendously happy news...happy news most desperately needed. The bombs went off in April, and it is now the end of July, and we're not over it yet. I mean, at all. That much was made abundantly clear when Dzhohkar Tsarnaev's fluffy little face appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, and all Hell broke loose.
I don't know how spirited the debate was where you live, but here in town, it was a one-sided avalanche of rage. A state trooper put his entire career on the line by releasing photographs of Tsarnaev's bloody capture, all because he was offended by the idea that this as-yet-unconvicted little punk got a glory shot on the cover of a music magazine.
This is not the behavior of a people who have come to grips with what happened to them. This is the angry roar of a maddened mob still smarting from the blow absorbed 100 days hence. No, we're not over it, even those of us who thought the Stone cover was no big deal. We think about it every day. It colors everything now. When the Pops played at the Esplanade by the river for our annual Fourth of July celebration, there wasn't a one of us who didn't breathe a sigh of relief when the last note of music was carried off into the air unaccompanied by screams, sirens and the smell of blood.
We may not be over it, but the fact remains that tens and tens and tens of thousands of people went down to the river for that Esplanade concert on the Fourth, because, frankly, fuck you and your fucking bombs. Next year's marathon is going to field the largest group of runners in the history of the race, and the crowds along Commonwealth Avenue and Boylston Street will be thirty-deep from the curb, because fuck you, that's why.
(snip)
In the trembling aftershock of such a thing, there are only two possible avenues of response: revenge, or a reckoning. Revenge is easy, especially for America. After 9/11, we sought revenge against Iraq and extracted a terrible, bloody price for what happened in New York City. The aftermath of that revenge has left Iraq ravaged; 3,000 people have been killed as a result of sectarian attacks there since April, when the bombs went off in Boston. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands more died before April, including thousands of Americans who were sent there as the avatars of our vengeance.
More deaths are sure to follow as that shattered nation descends into civil war, even as it had nothing whatsoever to do with the event that brought down our wrath...and our wrath will beget their wrath, and the wheel of violence will continue to turn. That is the bitter fruit of revenge.
The rest: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/17800-an-american-reckoning
Charles P. Pierce on Obama's Trayvon remarks today...hoo boy.
(snip)
...in making those remarks, and in sounding for one of the very few times like what once was called a Race Man, the president broke what a lot of people assumed was a covenant he'd made with them when they permitted him to be president. That covenant was fashioned for him during his speech to the Democratic convention in Boston, wherein he told a divided country everything it really wanted to hear about itself. He was going to be the living demonstration of the progress the nation had made. His job, in addition to being president, was going to be as a redemptive figure. That was the deal by which the country would allow him to be its president.
I always thought that speech was overrated. I thought it was dreamy utopian nonsense that did not take into account the well-financed virulence that would be brought to bear on him, and on his policies, and on his entire public career. (I think the fact that he bought it has a lot to do with how stuck in the mud his administration has been, and is, on several important issues.) Remember, in his big speech on race during the campaign, he made it a point to mention how his grandmother would tense up when she saw black men on the street. That was the Barack Obama of the 2004 speech. That was the Barack Obama of the redemptive covenant. That was how the country would allow him to speak on race, if he wanted to be its president.
Today, there was none of that. He didn't even obliquely try to justify sidewalk profiling of the kind that set off the chain of circumstances by which Trayvon Martin was made dead. He spoke plain truth, and the reason you know it is so many smart people already are saying how politically unwise it was that he spoke at all. He broke the covenant, once and for all, which ought not to matter, because it was counterfeit all along.
Read it: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/president-obama-trayvon-martin-speech-071913
We interrupt your regularly-scheduled GD discussion to bring you this important announcement:
The SyFy Network will be re-broadcasting "Sharknado" at 7pm EST tonight.
***END TRANSMISSION**
On the Cover of the Rolling Stone
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings.
(Photo: Handout via The New York Times)
On the Cover of the Rolling Stone
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Thursday 18 July 2013
Wanna see our pictures on the cover
Wanna buy five copies for our mothers
Wanna see my smilin' face
On the cover of the Rolling Stone
- Dr. Hook
I awoke on Wednesday morning to the outrage du jour: Dzhohkar Tsarnaev on the cover of the newest Rolling Stone looking like Jim Morrison's little brother after a fight with a Flowbee. As someone from Boston who was personally affected by the Marathon bombing, I am apparently supposed to be all up in arms about this. It glorifies a murderer as if he were a celebrity or a rock star, they should have run a cover with the victims instead, and so forth.
Three things:
1. The outrage over Tsarnaev's face on the cover has everything to do with the fact that there is a puppy-dog cuteness about him which is jarring in the context of his alleged crimes. If Tsarnaev's face looked like the back of an old man's balls, no one would give much of a damn about this. I'm not going to get all worked up about the attractiveness double-standard involved here; this issue of Stone has a huge feature story on the dumb bastard, and so having him on the cover makes perfect sense.
2. The fact that Rolling Stone has excellent journalists like Matt Taibbi working for them means putting newsmakers on the cover is not out of line. Hell, they had Charlie Manson on the cover once upon a time, as well as George W. Bush in 2009. It's not like this is some crazy new thing. Hitler made the cover of Time twice, and I'm pretty sure that had nothing to do with how the middle of the last century shook out.
3. From everything I have read and heard - which is quite a lot given my location in the 617 area code - the victims of the Marathon bombing have no interest whatsoever in gracing the cover of Rolling Stone or any other periodical. They just want to be left alone to heal and recover. As for glorifying Tsarnaev or potentially upsetting the bombing victims, his face has been on the front page of every newspaper in the Western hemisphere more than once, so that horse left the stable so long ago that the oats have germinated and the hay has become straw...and speaking of horses that left the stable, the idea that being on the cover of Rolling Stone is some epic honor belongs to another era when Dr. Hook songs were actually relevant.
(Sorry, Stone, but in the immortal words of Robbie Robertson, it ain't like it used to be)
But perhaps more important than all of that, speaking personally, is the simple fact that I just don't care. There are far larger and more dangerous fish to fry right now than getting all worked up over who is on a magazine cover.
The rest: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/17641-on-the-cover-of-the-rolling-stone
Profile Information
Name: William Rivers PittGender: Male
Hometown: Boston
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 58,179
