Yesterday marked the ten-year anniversary of the start of the invasion of Iraq. Oddly, there was little public celebration or commemoration from the war’s architects, with the exception of Donald Rumsfeld via his Twitter account. Is there any hope that Rumsfeld along with Bush and Cheney can be airlifted and dropped into the rubble that was once Fallujah so that everyday Iraqis give their thanks in person?
On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin talks about the threat against indigenous sovereignty and the growth of the Idle No More movement beyond Canada; calls out the corporate media for their obsession with supermodels and instead highlights a successful lawsuit against defense contractor L-3 Services for torture at Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib Prison; talks to whistleblower and lawyer, Jesselyn Radack, about recent developments in the cases of ex CIA official John Kiriakou, and PFC Bradley Manning; BTS wraps up the show with a look at the Cuban Five, a group of Cuban intelligence agents who have been incarcerated in the US since 1998 as the forgotten political prisoners of the Cold War.
Proof that Rummy is lying his ass off again. Here as well he attempts to revise history.
Keep in mind that “Freedom Watch,” Judge Napolitano’s TV show, is now cancelled (though there is a massive influx for support calling for its reinstatement — click here to add your voice).
Two U.S. citizens were arrested, detained, held in captivity for months and tortured by the military after blowing the whistle on the now defunct private contractor they worked for. An Illinois court has upheld a motion to allow the pair to sue Donald Rumsfeld and other unnamed officials, but expect fierce resistance from the Obama administration. Aaron Cynic writes at Chicagoist:
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled Monday two men can move forward with a civil lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The Tribune reports the Court upheld a decision from a federal judge allowing a lawsuit which holds Rumsfeld personally responsible for the torture of Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, two former defense contractors in Iraq.
In 2006, while Vance and Ertel were working in Iraq for Shield Group Security, a private contractor, they began to suspect their employer of involvement in illegal arms trading, bribery, and other activities.
From WASHINGTON’S BLOG:
We’ve been told that 9/11 changed everything.
Is it true?
Let’s look:
- The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11. Indeed, former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and inserted “crap” in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill – who sat on the National Security Council – also says that Bush planned the Iraq war before9/11. And top British officials say that the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change one month after Bush took office
- Cheney apparently even made Iraqi’s oil fields a national security priority before 9/11
- The Patriot Act was planned before 9/11
- Cheney dreamed of giving the White House the powers of a monarch long before 9/11
- Cheney and Rumsfeld actively generated fake intelligence which exaggerated the threat from an enemy in order to justify huge amounts of military spending long before 9/11.
Charlotte Dennett, author of The People V. Bush: One Lawyer’s Campaign to Bring the President to Justice and the National Grassroots Movement She Encounters Along the Way, writes in Huffington Post of at least one dictator that is going to jail. Guess who she wants to be next…
The growing accountability movement got a major shot in the arm recently when it learned that on April 19, an Argentinian judge sentenced the last of Argentina’s dictators, Reynaldo Bignone, age 83, to 25 years in prison. Bignone’s crime: kidnapping and torturing 56 victims in a concentration camp during the reign of terror known as the “dirty war” that gripped Argentina from 1976-1983. This is huge, surpassing the arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in his hospital bed back in 1998. (Pinochet died before justice could be done). The conviction of a former head of state for crimes he committed while in office sends a powerful message to all those suspected war criminals still on the loose, including some of the top leaders of the Bush administration.
