Prosecute the war criminals and take all their assets.

[Mort Zuckerman]

(EXCELLENT GLENN GREENWALD ARTICLE SLAMMING
THE MEDIA WUSSIES, BELOW)

===========================================
Yeah, yeah, yes.
Prosecute the criminals and take their assets.
Start with 911 & Halliburton, Exxon, & Citigroup.
Those are Rockefeller companies.

I don't think the WTC would have gone down unless
David Rockefeller (and his boy Dick) approved. We
got the 911/war-for-oil because of the state of the
US fake petrodollar in the late 1990s. Then, that
failed, so we got the 5-dollars-a-gallon rape job.
Then we had to bail out the banksters.

Kissinger says (bottom of page):
http://www.actionlyme.org/DURHAM_BUSH_CRIME.htm
"We were in the middle of the energy crisis, ***totally unforeseen by
us.*** The last study that had been made in our government said the
oil price might reach $5 by 1980; it had reached $12 at that
point...."

LOL. They - Rockefeller and Kissinger - *created*
that oil-embargo mess.


Prosecute the war crimes and take their assets to save
the country. (I wonder if Dubai would turn over Halliburton
to us though.) Punish them because we need to "send a message"
the message being, "You had no right to ruin this country
or any other with your lies and mass murder crimes."

Kissinger, Rockefeller, and the Bushies. They've
had a massive, global property theft gig going on
since the end of WWII. They used the American
intelligence agencies for their own ends. It started
when the OSS was headquartered at Rockefeller center.
http://www.actionlyme.org/KISSINGER_NAZI_PAPERCLIP.htm

"it was Henry Kissinger's job to seek and find such
Nazi's that might be of service to America"

THAT is the "conspiracy" JFK was talking about.

THAT is why Jay Rockefeller doesn't want a real
investigation into Cheney's world because Cheney is
Rockefeller's boy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1cFwkmSOXg

See it with your own eyeballs.
(Barf-Bag-Alert)


Put yourself in the position of Rockefeller at that
time (just after WWII):

You're the king of the world.

If you are a good king, you are thinking about
how you are going to serve your people.

If you are a bad king, you're consumed with
paranoia. You're AFRAID of losing it all.


Kathleen M. Dickson

======================================
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/24-0
Home > Views
Published on Friday, April 24, 2009 by Salon.com
Media Behavior and the Torture 'Debate'
Three Key Rules of Media Behavior Shape Their Discussions of "the
'Torture' Debate"

by Glenn Greenwald

Karl Rove on torture prosecutions:

It is now clear that the Obama White House didn't think before it
tried to appease the hard left of the Democratic Party.

Gloria Borger on Karl Rove:

When Rove speaks, the political class pays attention -- usually
with good reason.

Chuck Todd on Obama's concession that the DOJ decides whether to
prosecute:

There does seem to be a little bit of a reaction to how this was
received on the left. . . frankly this feels like a political food
fight now. . .. The hard left, the hard right, fighting over this in
the blogosphere.

Chris Matthews on the same topic:

This whole torture debate is likely to tell us a lot about the
kind of president Barack Obama intends to be. Will he buckle to the
left, the netroots, and pursue an investigation into torture having
said he didn't want to? Or will he go post-partisan and leave the past
to the historians?

David Gregory on what he calls (with scare quotes) "the politics of
the 'torture' debate":

What [Obama officials] got on their hands is a highly politicized
and very partisan issue about the treatment of 9/11 prisoners. . . .
At a time when the administration and the President will already be
under scrutiny for being tough enough, is this a fight they really
want to have? I would also point you to, if you haven't see this
already, the Wall St. Journal Editorial Page today, which I think
raises some really tough points about not only what signal you're
sending to the rest of the world, but also to potential Terrorists out
there, about just what it is that U.S. interrogators would do and not
do, but also the point that's raised there is: did the Bush
administration go out of its way to make sure they were adhering to
the law and not crossing over that bridge when it came to getting into
torture?

(By the way: can someone tell me what a "9/11 prisoner" is?; and is
there anything less surprising than the fact that Gregory looks to The
Wall St. Journal Editorial Page for guidance on such questions?)

* * * * *

For years, media stars ignored the fact that our Government was
chronically breaking the law and systematically torturing detainees
(look at this extremely detailed exposé by The Washington Post's Dana
Priest and Barton Gellman from December, 2002 to get a sense for how
much we've known about all of this and for how long we've known it).
Now that the sheer criminality of this conduct, really for the first
time, has exploded into mainstream political debates as a result of
the OLC memos, media stars are forced to address it. Exactly as one
would expect, they are closing ranks, demanding (as always) that their
big powerful political-official-friends and their elite institutions
not be subject to the dirty instruments that are meant only for the
masses -- things like the rule of law, investigations, prosecutions,
and accountability when they abuse their power.

The rules for how media stars behave are vividly evident as they
finally take part in what they are calling The 'Torture' Debate. Here
are three key rules for Beltway media behavior that, as always, are
shaping what they say and do:



(1) Any policy that Beltway elites dislike is demonized as coming from
"the Left" or -- in this case (following Karl Rove) -- the "hard
Left." Media stars recite that claim regardless of how widely
accepted the belief is in American public opinion and regardless of
whether there is anything "leftist" about the view in question. For
years, withdrawing from Iraq was demonized as the view of the "left"
even though large majorities of Americans favored it.

Identically, roughly 40% of Americans favor criminal prosecutions for
Bush officials -- even before release of the OLC memos -- and large
majorities favor investigations generally. The premise of those who
advocate prosecutions is the definitively non-ideological view that
political elites should be treated exactly like ordinary Americans
when they break the law and commit serious crimes. Individuals such
as Gen. Antonio Taguba, Gen. Barry McCaffrey and former CIA officer
Robert Baer advocate investigations and/or prosecutions of Bush
officials. But no matter: the Beltway opposes the idea, and it is
therefore dismissed by media stars as coming from the "Hard Left."



(2) Nobody is more opposed to transparency and disclosure of
government secrets than establishment "journalists." Richard Cohen
wrote of the Lewis Libby prosecution: "it is often best to keep the
lights off." ABC News' Peggy Noonan said this week of torture
investigations: "Some things in life need to be mysterious.
Sometimes you need to just keep walking." The Washington Post's David
Ignatius, condemning Obama for releasing the OLC memos, warned: "the
country is fighting a war, and it needs to take care that the sunlight
of exposure doesn't blind its shadow warriors." And the favorite
mantra of media stars and Beltway mavens everywhere -- Look Forward,
Not Backwards -- is nothing but a plea that extreme government crimes
remain concealed and unexamined.

This remains the single most notable and revealing fact of American
political life: that (with some very important exceptions) those most
devoted to maintaining and advocating government secrecy is our
journalist class, of all people. It would be as if the leading
proponents of cigarette smoking were physicians, or those most vocally
touting the virtues of illiteracy were school teachers. Nothing
proves the true function of these media stars as government
spokespeople more than their eagerness to shield government actions
from examination and demand that government criminality not be
punished.



(3) The single most sacred Beltway belief is that elites are exempt
from the rule of law. Amidst all the talk about how prosecutions
would destroy post-partisan harmony and whether torture "works," it is
virtually impossible to find any media star discussions about the fact
that torture is illegal and that those who order, authorize or engage
in torture are committing felonies. That is because -- other than for
fun sex scandals and other Blagojevich-like sensationalistic acts --
the overriding belief of the political class is that elites (such as
themselves) have the right to break the law and not be held
accountable.

Amazingly, when it comes to crimes by ordinary Americans, being "tough
on crime" is a virtually nonnegotiable prerequisite to being Serious,
but when it comes to political officials who commit crimes in the
exercise of their power, absolute leniency is the mandated belief upon
pain of being dismissed as "shrill" and extremist. Can anyone find an
establishment media pundit anywhere -- just one -- who is advocating
that Bush officials who broke the law be held accountable under our
laws? That view seems actively excluded from establishment media
discussions.



The OLC memos that were released last week reflect a deeply corrupted,
criminal and morally depraved political class (see this video clip for
a strangely affecting demonstration of that fact - linked fixed), but
our media stars are a vital reason why that has happened. It cannot
be overstated the extent to which they are nothing but appendages of,
servants to, political power (as one Twitter commentator said today
about this painfully vapid video from the painfully vapid David
Gregory: when media stars say "my reporting," what they usually mean
is: "this is what I was told to repeat"). These three media rules
repeatedly shape how they talk about government actions, and these
rules are particularly pronounced as the establishment media now is
finally forced to discuss what to do about the fact that our highest
political leaders repeatedly broke our most serious laws.

* * * * *

As a testament to the positive effect media criticisms can have,
Columbia Journalism Review's Charles Kaiser has been tenaciously
criticizing The New York Times for failing to challenge -- and instead
mindlessly adopting -- the claim of Bush officials that torture
"worked" by producing valuable intelligence. Yesterday, a NYT Editor
told Kaiser that he agreed that more attention needed to be paid to
this issue, and today, the NYT published a very potent Op-Ed from an
FBI interrogator at Guantanamo who aggressively disputes the claim
that torture "worked."

Also: I'll be on Warren Onley's To the Point program today at 2:10
p.m. EST (along with The New Yorker's Jane Mayer and National Review's
Cliff May) to debate the question of investigations and prosecutions.
Local listings and live audio feed can be found here (the segment will
be posted to their website later today).

* * * * *

UPDATE: As the recent debate-changing discovery of Marcy Wheeler
demonstrated, one extremely important way to improve media coverage of
these issues is to have independent journalists able to work on them.
Marcy has long been one of the hardest-working and most important
writers on these matters, yet has been doing it all for free, as a
side hobby before and after her full-time job. FireDogLake is now
attempting to raise funds to hire Marcy to enable her to work on her
investigative journalism full-time. For those able to do so,
contributing to that fund is something I'd highly recommend. That can
be done here.



UPDATE II: The link to the video I referenced above was wrong; the
correct link is here. In addition to Generals Taguba and McCaffrey,
the Hard Left has another new member: Sheperd Smith (here and here).
And Greg Sargent makes a key point: whether torture "worked" is,
among other things, entirely irrelevant. As I pointed out more times
than I can count during discussions of the warrantless eavesdropping
debates, we don't have a country where political leaders are free to
commit crimes and then, afterwards, claim that their doing so produced
good outcomes.



UPDATE III: The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates posts video of the Peggy
Noonan comments and writes:

The job of journalists is to challenge the government and to
challenge their readers and viewers. What sort of journalist tells his
readers that some things must be mysterious? What sort of writer
tells her readers, and viewers, essentially, to not ask too many
questions? We have a fine era, when otherwise respected, intelligent,
and well-read people step on a national stage and endorse national
ignorance.

There's nothing unusual about Noonan's mentality; it's the dominant
mindset of our political and media class. The American Prospect's
Adam Serwer notes a column from The New York Times' Roger Cohen today
arguing against prosecutions (of course) and observes:

Cohen's argument simply reflects the consensus among certain
journalistic and political elites that the powerful simply shouldn't
be held accountable when they make mistakes, because, after all, we
all make mistakes. This compassionate attitude naturally doesn't
extend beyond this small group. America has the highest incarceration
rate in the world, fully 1 percent of the population. I'm sure there
are millions of people currently incarcerated who would like it if
Cohen's policy of absolution for crimes was extended to them.

That elite-protecting consensus is the central affliction of America's
political culture. It explains not only how we continuously shield
our elites from the consequences of their crimes, but also explains
the reason such crimes keep happening. If you constantly announce to
a small group of people that they will be able to break the law with
impunity, you are rendering inevitable future rampant criminality.
That's just obvious.
© 2009 Salon.com

Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights
litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times
Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush
administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His
second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy.