Argh! I can't stand the U.S. Government (Rant)

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Wot's all this then, about this Scooter chap ?? I thought he was supposed to walk away from the charges ?? Isn' yer PM Bush able to pull the apropriate strings to get the judge to dismiss the charges??And wot's with calling a growm man 'scooter' ???

oh no, guys what are you doing to me?

I was thinking of starting a topic re: the "Scooter" Libby Trial but I couldn't think of how to develop it precisely.

Basically.

This man:


Joe Wilson

Wrote an op-ed for this newspaper


The New York Times

In which he accused these men


Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush

of having lied about Saddam Hussein's intelligence service attempting to gain uranium from this country


Niger (Leading Export: Uraniam, Second Leading Export: Onions)

It was soon revealed through a leak that, Mr. Wilson's wife,


Ms. Valerie Plame, is a CIA analyst.

The press, most notably MSNBC host,


Chris Matthews

begins spinning insanely that the exposure of this allegedly covert CIA "agent" was made by this man


White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove in an effort to punish Wilson for revealing the "lies" of the Bush adminstration.

Under immense pressure, President Bush names an independent counsel:


Patrick Fitzgerald who

quickly realizes finds out who the real leaker is


Former Deputy Secretary of State (and Iraq War critic) Richard Armitage.

Armitage, who it quickly because apparent has not commited a crime in leaking Plame's name because she was not a covert agent, is granted immunity. However neither he nor Patrick Fitizerald tell anyone that the initial leaker has been found and Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney's names continue to be savaged in the press.

Meanwhile...


The United States House of Representatives, the Senate Intelligence committees, the CIA, and the UK's Butler committee all reject Wilson's claims in the New York Times as false.

Finally...

Lacking a clear purpose for his existance, Special Prosecutor Fitzerald charges


Special Assistance to the Vice President "Scooter" Libby


with Perjury and Obstruction of Justice over what Fitzgerald alleges were intentionally false statements, and Libby claims were lapses in memory (similar to others that witnesses had without getting charged with felonies). He is convicted on four of the five counts brought, and could recieve major jail time although it is unlikely.

Prosecutor Fitzgerald has signaled this is the end of the investigation.

CORRECTION: The country that Iraq sought uranium from was Niger, not Nigeria, and has been noted. I am not sure why I put Nigeria (especially putting the map and everything) since I knew it was Niger...ugh. Well, it's fixed.

ADDENDUM:

-BeldarBlog

Last edited by jimservo on 08 Mar 2007, 1:51 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Thank you for the primer. It's certainly complicated.
I hope the blonde lady is doing OK. She's pretty.

When it came up that Ollie North was running guns, drugs, laundering money, lieing to Congress, so who wouldn't, buying hostages from Iran, the whole investigation then focused on Fawn, his secretary, who told of smuggling supenaed evidence out of the White House celler in her underwear. She was a looker and every member of congress wanted to investigate her in private chambers. Ollie beat the rap, Fawn got a lot of phone numbers.

We call it, The American Way.

The United States House of Representatives, the Senate Intelligence committees, the CIA, and the UK's Butler committee all reject Wilson's claims in the New York Times as false.


Hey WAIT a MINUTE! WILSON'S claims were TRUE!!

THERE WAS NO YELLOW CAKE BEING SOUGHT IN NIGER!

AND BECAUSE OF THE OUTING OF THE BLONDE LADY WHO WAS A COVERT AGENT AND VERY HIGH UP IN THE AGENCY THAT DETECTED WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRUCTION, WHO KNOWS HOW MANY PEOPLE DIES AND THE WHOLE CHAIN OF SPIES?



jim servo opined:

Lacking a clear purpose for his existance, Special Prosecutor Fitzerald charges

SPECIAL PROSCUTOR FITZGERALD EXPOSED THE WHOLE THING, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?

JIM SERVO DAZZLES YOU WITH THE PICS BUT JIM SERVO SERVOS HIM SELF WITH DISTORTING THE STORY.

Merle

I wanna have an isolationist united states again

Yeah, I think we have peaked as a nation, Haliburton has finally gone to Dubai, that LasVegas on the Gulf. The I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial has ripped off the facade of the 'moral' administration that stole the 2000 Election. The Times showed what "supporting the troops' was just fluff and rhetoric to the people that run the Army. Lies and spin and more lies.

And who do we have coming up? As female as I am and as much as I would LOVE to see Bill Clinton as the first "First Gentleman" I just can't vote for another American Dynasty.

and that Irish Guy. . you know, O'Bama? well someone is going to put a bullet into that handsome skull of his, you can just feel it.

I live in the woods, I have a telephone dial up and can't see the videos and I blew out my speakers on my second hand computer so I don't even have any sound.

I live up here because I saved the world once back when Johnson escalated the police action in Viet-Nam and I did a lot of street action. I have ostioarthritis this time around and can't march like I used to. . .

I wish we could just reboot America.

Merle

Actually, unless america is brave enough to nuke s**t out of the rest of the world, it is f****d. Kaput.

I can always see a way to make a buck on a going out of business sale. Now that your jobs have been sent to China, or Mexico, your children have no future.

Europe has a declining population, and is rich, as they gamed both the east and west during the cold war.

They import guest workers by the millions, religious differances make it a problem.

I propose selling them American children. Think of the money we would save raising them to seven or so, two years of German in school, and they would ready to put on the block for bids. Growing up as a servant in a German home they would earn their keep, and then could be let out for wages.

America would solve it's education problem, Europe it's guest worker problem, and the kids would grow up and have jobs.

Now THERE'S a bumper sticker to put on your FORD ! !!

No kidding.

And I don't think the "three finger salute" is going to work, I think it's going to take the reset switch.

Unfortunately, with the way we're antagonizing the world, America may get the "blue screen of death."

It's worth keeping in mind that America (the nation/the foreign policy) has been unpopular like this before. In the 1980s there were huge marches in Western Europe against the installation of Pershing medium range nuclear missiles* in Europe. These marches, sponsored by Communist front organizations (much like the current anti-war marches in the United States sponsored by International A.N.S.W.E.R.) were larger then current day anti-war marches. At this time the idea of a nuclear freeze (which would effect the free world, and not the Soviet block) was popular and endorsed by 1984 Presidential candidate Walter Mondale.

You can't really base a foreign policy based on making yourself popular with the world. This isn't to say that George W. Bush is a particularly good international statesman (unlike his father, although their is a European bias against his Texan "cow-boyish" accent in additional to the normal problems). The United States, which is the most unpopular country in the world, except for Israel (which is utterly absurd if you think about it reasonably), and behind Iran. To make itself try to make itself popular, it would have to initiate policies that would be of questionable ethics, such as abandoning both Israel and (probably) Taiwan, as well signing onto a UN human rights council dominated by tyrannical dictatorships. These are, perhaps, extreme examples, but it reminds one that the popular policies of the world are not necessarily the ethical policies of the world (keep in mind most of the world are not "liberal democracies" that are socially tolerant" and much of the world does not share a "progressive" mindset).

It also must be stated that trying to make yourself popular is not a sure fire way of making yourself popular. An example of this is the often-demonized liberal democracy of Israel. Israel's Kadima (meaning forward party) forced Israeli settlers out of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. This was a controversial inside of Israel. Many of the settlers had to be forced out militantly. This action was taken partially with the idea it would say to the world: Look we taking hard difficult actions to make it clear our willingness to compromise. The Israelis had effectively had effectively isolated themselves and turned over governance to the Palestinians. However, it soon became clear the vast majority of the world could care less. Israel was condemned for building a wall (something that countries do all the time without criticism) to protect against infiltrations by suicide bombers. Israel was then condemned for launching an offensive campaign into Lebanon despite that fact under international law they had every legal right to initiate the assault (rockets were being fired into their territory). I should note that on occasion I do have individual criticisms of Israel and I am not fan of the current government so do not take this as some kind of broad endorsement. But it is clear that often the international community will ignore attempts to appeal to it due to it's own biases.

*The Soviet Union placed medium range nuclear missiles in Eastern Europe. The United States proposed that medium range nuclear missiles be placed in Western Europe to counter them under the auspices of NATO, with the offer to be placed on the table to the Soviet leadership for the "zero-option"=the elimination of all medium range nuclear missiles from Europe. Massive protests, organized by Soviet sponsored Communist parties, were held throughout Western Europe. The placement of the missiles was hugely unpopular. The missiles were eventually placed anyway. The Soviet leadership before the rise of Mikael Gorbachev refused the the "zero option," but eventually it was accepted as part of the historic arms reductions agreements of the late 80s between the US and USSR. Declassified internal Soviet transcripts reveal that Gorbachev felt in retrospect that the placement of the Soviet missiles was a critical error.

Usually I'm apolitical because all governments (yes even the mighty and wonderful EU) are corrupt, greedy, heartless, murdering, tax and spending entities. But in this case I would have to ask, if the US sucks so badly (usually so judged by people who have never lived here), why do millions upon millions risk life and limb to get here? Howcome there is a waiting list for people from EU countries if they hate it so bad? I have lived in other countries, including Britian, the Czech Republic and Mexico and I once left the US becasue I was so disgruntled with it. Now you couldn't pay me enough money to cross either border, outbound, for even 5 minutes.

And I would also ask those judging US foreign policy to go back in time just a touch and examine their own history in regards to Vietnam (France and Britain) the middle east and it oil sheikdoms (Britain), slavery (Holland, Britain, Portugal and SPain), the subdivisions of India and Pakistan... well anyway, try it!

I'd guess that the vast majority want money. Most of the people who want to immigrate to the US are not from Switzerland or Sweden, they are from third world countries that are pretty destitute and generally screwed up. Which isn't a very high standard for comparison.

We take the opposite position. I've had ancestors here since the Mayflower, but have been interviewing for jobs in Canada for a while. We've been there half a dozen times or more, and absolutely love it. If I ace a final interview next week, we're gone, and we won't be looking back.

Canada's not perfect either, nothing is perfect. Like any decision in life, it's not a matter of finding an impossible ideal, it's a matter of deciding what compromises you're most comfortable with. And I am much more comfortable with Canada's compromises.