Thanks Obama!

I'm sure that's what the Orange Monster with tiny hands occupying the oval office is thinking to himself right now. How could he not?

I lay the blame for Trump's blatantly illegal assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and seven others at Baghdad’s international airport in the early morning hours of Friday, squarely at Obama's feet. Sure Trump ordered “the hit”, but Obama made it established doctrine, ie “normal” to drone murder “suspects”.

Specifically, Obama's refusal to prosecute the Bush administration for the illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as all the illegal renditions, the illegal NSA spying programs, the illegal torture programs that our CIA / Military and PMC (private military contractors) ran and carried out, not to mention his dramatic increase in the use of target assassinations via drone murder.

Most specifically, Obama's refusal to uphold and defend the constitution from ALL enemies, both foreign, and especially domestic, is by far the most single reason Trump currently occupies the white house, and has used Obama's dictatorial powers to assassinate Soleimani. (Obama's policy was to look forward not backward. Yeah right...)

When Obama was elected, he had a mandate from the public, a super majority in congress, not to mention all his campaign promises of change, transparency, and pulling our troops out of these regime change wars, but, what ultimately happened, as seems to always happen with US presidents, he not only expanded GWB's two illegal wars into seven, but doubled down on the use of “targeted assassination”, via drones.

Even invoking the dictatorial right to assassinate US citizens without any due process what so ever, and assassinated two American citizens in this way, one even a child of just 16. Kill List Tuesdays anyone? But hey, he bailed out Wall Street, saved GM, got Obamacare, and added 5 more illegal regime change wars, and the normalized power to assassinate anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world.

Case in point. From the Columbia Journalism Review,

"President Barack Obama has authorized 193 drone strikes in Pakistan since he took office in 2009, more than four times the number of attacks that President George W. Bush authorized during his two terms, according to the New America Foundation, a Washington-based public-policy institute."

Snip

"Three days after Obama was sworn in as president, his administration launched its first drone strike, according to numerous news reports. A missile reportedly hit a house in Koresh Kot, a village in South Waziristan that was believed to be a Taliban hideout."

Gee, Obama resisted the desire to kill for three whole days.

More from the article.

"The news articles mentioned only briefly the most disturbing part of the story: the drone struck the wrong target. Rather than being a militant, the homeowner had been a tribal elder who had attempted to organize a peace movement and was just the kind of person that CIA operatives had been hoping to encourage in their efforts to fight extremism. The supposed Taliban hideout was actually an eight-bedroom house that had cost $21,000 to build, a fortune in a country where the average annual income is roughly $500. The deaths of the father and others, along with the property destruction, left the family, including an eighteen-year-old son, destitute. The teenager called for revenge."

Of course there's this from the same article.

"Ignatius, of the Post, explained that Obama administration officials are sometimes willing to discuss drone operations in an attempt to promote the White House’s counterterrorism strategy. In February 2010, for instance, Ignatius was able to write a detailed account of the escalation of drone strikes because officials were eager to demonstrate that Obama was more aggressive in his pursuit of al Qaeda than Bush was."

This is what gets me...” because officials were eager to demonstrate that Obama was more aggressive in his pursuit of al Qaeda than Bush was”.

And by that super logic, Trump is just demonstrating he's more aggressive than Obama was, which of course you can see the tweets by Trump claiming that Obama was using war with Iran to get re-elected, is probably doing the very same thing.

From Fox 10 in Phoenix,

“In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran,“ Trump tweeted on Nov. 29, 2011."

Snip

“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran,” Trump said in the video, that has since been re-posted by a Washington Post video editor.

https://twitter.com/RiegerReport/status/1212928617518419968?ref_src=twsr... "

Why would anyone think Trump is doing anything different, ie launching a war with Iran to get re-elected? So much for that hopey, changey thing...

The one good thing Trump has done, I guess, is display for all the world to see, the constitution, and our own laws, international laws, not to mention our many slogans like “Equal Justice Under Law”,”Democracy”, are woefully rendered meaningless.

Stop and think for a moment, by Trump's stable genius logic for launching this targeted assassination, “to prevent a war”, could be the justification from any other leader, dictator, president of any other country, to do the same thing against the US, which by the way has illegally launched more “wars” than any other country on this planet, except maybe the British. (I'll have to “fact check” that hyperbolic statement, so...)

In other words, what is to stop Putin from selling one of his new supersonic weapons to another country, like say North Korea, to use to “take out” a top US general or even Trump himself as a means to “prevent a war”. Hell, the entire planet would be justified using Trump's stable genius logic, by turning the entire world against the US and bombing us back to the stone age, to prevent more “illegal regime change wars” conducted by the US MIC.

Good heavens, just look at the history of regime change waged by the US, chronicled by William Blum in his book, “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since WWII”, https://williamblum.org/books/killing-hope .

Chapter nine is especially relevant, which is about the US and British governments working together and succeeding in overthrowing the democratically elected prime minister of, you guessed it, Iran in 1953. There is a direct line from today's developments in Iran to that 1953 coup d'etat.

Thanks Obama, you've left the latest spoiled brat playing with your expanded dictatorial powers, and the nuclear launch codes, to kill with impunity, on a fucking silver platter to the Orange Monster with tiny hands. Obama, you could have stopped this, but you choose to expand the dictatorial powers of the US presidency.

Both of you shithole people should be rotting in jail for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet, I'm sure Israel is pleased.

(PS: Fuck Israel thank you very much.)

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Comments

Best commentary I have read this week.

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RantingRooster's picture

@Linda Wood Gosh thank you. Drinks

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gulfgal98's picture

@Linda Wood it is good to see Ranting Rooster to post here again.

Just as Trump's election did not occur because of "deplorables," Trump's use of expanded Presidential powers trace directly back to Obama and the Congress which abdicated its responsibility for acting as a check against a rogue MIC and the narcissistic President who is now implementing the MIC's biggest wet dream.

The NDAA had an amendment in it that would prevent the use of US military force against Iran without express approval of Congress. The amendment did not pass and the vote against it was bi-partisan. Every member of Congress who voted against this amendment has the blood of both Americans and Iranians on their hands.

Apparently Trump informed Israel and Saudi Arabia in advance of the assassination, but no one in Congress was informed. This was an act of war and it will not end well for the United States. Even our allies are not backing us fully. If this comes to an all out war, it conceivably could be the US,Saudi Arabia, and Israel facing off against Iran, China, Russia, and perhaps even India. This is a war we cannot win. It is also a war that may reach US home soil, something I doubt most Americans are prepared for.

I know I am sounding of doom and gloom, but I do not see a positive side to this foolhardy assassination of the #2 man in Iran who was highly revered by the Iranians.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

RantingRooster's picture

@gulfgal98 @gulfgal98 I'm not sure we're going to make it to the end of the week...

We truly are in the age of the absurd. Legal notice not required? Gee, I though the 1973 War Powers Act made that explicit, not to mention only congress can actually "declare" war, which, this numb nerd just fucking started.

My only question at this point, will he try the MOAB (Mother of all Bombs) or say fuck it and go nuclear, as "a disproportionate manner".

Of course we have the dumber part of dumb & dumber claiming (from USA Today)

In a Friday Twitter post, Vice President Mike Pence claimed top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani assisted the 9/11 hijackers in traveling to Afghanistan.

In a thread laying out Soleimani's "worst atrocities," Pence included how Soleimani "assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States."

By Friday, assuming we're still here, I'm sure half the country will now think Iran committed the 9/11 attacks.

Holy shit, Batman!

(edited "Or" to "Of", Wacko )

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CB's picture

in #Insanity: US Hot War on Iran; the assassination of Qassem Soleimani

The US doesn't recognize foreign law in any event unless it is beneficial to it's interests.

Extra-judicial secret assassinations of foreigners on foreign soil, started during the Bush Dubya term. Obama made them legal and put them on steroids to also allow the assassination of US citizens on foreign soil.

All quite legal - don't even need any proof of guilt. Obama was warned that this dangerous power could be used by future presidents.

Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ
...
But of course, when this memo refers to "a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida", what it actually means is this: someone whom the President - in total secrecy and with no due process - has accused of being that. Indeed, the memo itself makes this clear, as it baldly states that presidential assassinations are justified when "an informed, high-level official of the US government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the US".

This is the crucial point: the memo isn't justifying the due-process-free execution of senior al-Qaida leaders who pose an imminent threat to the US. It is justifying the due-process-free execution of people secretly accused by the president and his underlings, with no due process, of being that. The distinction between (a) government accusations and (b) proof of guilt is central to every free society, by definition, yet this memo - and those who defend Obama's assassination power - willfully ignore it.
...

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RantingRooster's picture

@CB I saw that, good job! Drinks

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@CB

The spirit of Henry VII lives on.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

TheOtherMaven's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@TheOtherMaven

minor obsession with the Tudors, I guess.

Over time, I've discovered that the first King Henry Tudor was a real piece of work. People tend to forget him because his crimes disappeared in the glare of his son's more gaudy and dramatic atrocities.

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3 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

edg's picture

@CB

Amazing. Good comment. I suspect the diary on the other place is good as well but I no longer go there.

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CB's picture

@edg
I was labelled a Russian mole who was planted in DKos many years previous in order to interfere with the election of her Heinous. I finally got the boot in the early part of 2017. Of course, having over 13 thousand posts against the Libyan, Syrian and Ukrainian fiascos combined with showing that the Russians were no longer a "service station masquerading as a country" and actually had a new military that could outmatch the US in many ways.

It was too much. My cover was blown and I had to go.

I did get a fine complement on the way out. They said my English was much too good to be an ordinary Russian so I most likely was a professional Russian undercover operative sent in specifically to discredit and undermine DKos.

When I returned to Russia, Volodya gave me this nice reward:

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snoopydawg's picture

@CB

over there. Of course Trump snuffed the general because Putin told him to. Why? Putin wants to break up this country and NATO. Putin wants higher gas prices. And lots of other reasons that shouldn't make sense to anyone with a functioning brain.

No matter what the topic is there in every thread someone will bring up Putin's nefarious plans that Trump is doing. Every. Thread.

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9 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

this is probably a clever move. Risking war with Iran will predictably fire up his base, but unless the Democrats stand up as anti war absolutely - which they will certainly not - the anti war half of the party will be even more disillusioned than it is and stay home in disgust. If Bernie wins the primaries the pro MIC Dems will have even more of an excuse to sabotage him, and if Bernie loses it will be even more obvious the primaries were fixed and the Berniecrats will stay home.
It'll be as good as repealing the voting rights act.

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19 users have voted.

On to Biden since 1973

CB's picture

@doh1304
It came direct from his masters.
The Revenge For The Assassination Of Qassem Soleimani

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@CB

....for many decades. Since 2000, they've been calling the shots round the clock and are untouchable in their destructive madness. On that note, I've long predicted that Israel won't last a full century. They should all pack up and move to the US. We should give them Utah. They can turn it into a separate nation, sort of like the Vatican. Disney can build them a Holy Land. They will be safe, at last. Isolated and buffered from the outside world.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic

And I'm bringing Charlie with me. Umm..where do you live?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@CB

I think, despite everything, I'd rather have a real president who was bad than a fake president, whether he was bad or good.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Pricknick's picture

You do know that he is a god to many?
He got his and that's all that matters.

Righteous Rant!

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

gulfgal98's picture

@Pricknick Obama is jet setting and jet skiing around the world with the likes of Richard Branson. Whenever I see his smug face, I want to puke.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

PriceRip's picture

 

          The lack of accountability is tacit acceptance that the behavior is normative and slightly sub normative becomes the new norm. It is funny how long it takes for people to start seeing the decline. In fact there are many still that do not fully comprehend.
          There are those among us that carry the curse of Cassandra. They speak but they are ignored.

RIP

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@PriceRip

"The whole house reeks with spilt blood."

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

snoopydawg's picture

Will anyone in congress have the guts to say this?

Here's the tweet in this essay.

Remember when Iran stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took hostages? Here is a back story to why they did it.

How a Chase Bank Chairman Helped the Deposed Shah of Iran Enter the U.S.

The fateful decision in 1979 to admit Mohammed Reza Pahlavi prompted the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran and helped doom the Carter presidency.

IMG_3150.JPG

"Guess I'm good at killing."

Ditto again!

(PS: Fuck Israel thank you very much.)

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RantingRooster's picture

@snoopydawg Thanks for getting that tweet to work properly. Drinks

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@snoopydawg

"I targeted terrorists" my ass.

Did you target terrorists when you pulled us out of that blind canyon in Afghanistan to go chase oil in Iraq, you fucking cowardly murdering puppet?

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16 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

"For the sake of balance, here is a list of Saint Obama’s unique achievements:

Obama is the first President in American history to be at war for every single day of an 8 year presidency.

Obama has carried out 10x more drone strikes than Bush ever did. Every Tuesday a military aide presents Obama with a “kill list”, and the “decent, gracious” Obama picks a few names off a list…and kills them. And their families. And their neighbours. These illegal acts of state-sanctioned murder have killed hundreds of civilians in 5 different countries in 2016 alone. The only reason that number isn’t higher, is that the Obama administration re-classified all males over 18 as combatants, regardless of occupation.

After declaring he wanted to build a “nuclear free world”, Obama committed to spending $1 TRILLION dollars on rebuilding America’s nuclear weapons.

Under Obama, the NSA et al. were able to spy on, essentially, the whole world. When this was revealed, not a single intelligence officer or government official was prosecuted. Instead…

Obama’s administration declared a “war on whistleblowers”, enacting new laws and initiating what they call the “Insider Threat Program”. Manning was prosecuted, Snowden sent into exile and Assange was set-up, discredited and (they hoped) extradited. It has never been more dangerous to be a government whistle-blower, than under Barack Obama

In terms of foreign policy, despite his press-created and non-sensical reputation as a non-interventionist, American Special Forces are currently operating in over 70% of the world’s 195 countries. The great lie is that, where Bush was a warmonger, Obama has sought to avoid conflict. The truth is that Obama, in the grand tradition of the CIA and American Imperial power, has simply turned all America’s wars into covert wars.

Before Obama came into office, Libya was the richest and most developed nation in Africa. It is now a hell-hole. Destroyed by war, hollowed-out by corruption. The “liberal” press allow him to agonise over this as his “greatest mistake”, and then gently pardon him for his good intentions. The truth is that Libya was not a mistake, or a misjudgment, or an unforeseen consequence. Libya is exactly what America wanted it to become. A failed state where everything is for sale, a base to pour illegal CIA weapons south into Africa and east into the ME. When war is your economy, chaos is good for business. When secrecy is your weapon, anarchy is ammunition. Libya went according to plan. A brutal plan that killed 100,000s and destroyed the lives of millions more. Libya, like Iraq, is a neocon success story. Syria on the other hand…...."

MORE..https://off-guardian.org/2017/01/15/the-beatification-of-barack-obama/?f...

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RantingRooster's picture

@aliasalias All valid points, thanks for including them. Drinks

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snoopydawg's picture

Good place to repost this.

When you say that you miss Obama do you mean this:

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

RantingRooster's picture

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg What else is a poor billionaire to say? I'm sure his MIC stock holding just shot through the roof! Drinks

(edited "is" to "his")

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assassinated was done to thwart a lawsuit by the 16 for the murder of his father a couple of weeks prior. Given that the father did not receive a trial and was not convicted of any crime the 16 son might have been able to garner the attention of civil rights groups and lawyers, and maybe even have the basis for a lawsuit. He would certainly have had an interesting story worthy of a book, movie and TV/radio interviews.

Even invoking the dictatorial right to assassinate US citizens without any due process what so ever, and assassinated two American citizens in this way, one even a child of just 16

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RantingRooster's picture

@entrepreneur I would submit another possibility, that is was done to "prevent" the child from revenge bombing(s) later on American targets / military personnel in Yemen. He certainly would have a good recruiting story for jhadist or ISIS fighters. People in the ME I've heard can hold on to grudges for quite some time, like centuries... Drinks

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CB's picture

@entrepreneur
his 8 year old sister.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@CB

How many people does the CIA have to kill in order to get sufficient revenge for the terrible crime of saying that the U.S. is a terrible country that people should oppose militarily?

Not that I agree that terrorist bombings are the way to do anything, but the father of these murdered kids never was proved to have done anything but talk. Being assassinated without trial seems an outsized (as well as unconstitutional and illegal) punishment. Are they now going to pursue his descendants to the seventh generation?

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12 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Shahryar's picture

It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard and under enormous pressure, and are real patriots.

faced with a choice about coming down hard against torture and torturers he went with scolding people opposed to torture.

aw screw it. I was gonna post a bunch of other examples (pretending to drink Flint water, pretending to swim in the Gulf after BP's line went all bust, etc...) but it's a long list and you all know it, and could easily list a few hundred more of your own.

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25 users have voted.

@Shahryar I am not shocked.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

gulfgal98's picture

@on the cusp was Panama City, Florida which sits east of midway along the Florida panhandle coast. This area and to its east were relatively untouched by the oil spill. It was a publicity stunt by a self serving con man.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@on the cusp and the only way that could be true is if had been the restaurant's freezer from before the disaster.
My guess is that was just another lie.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Shahryar

Lies, the Bethlehem Doctrine, and the Illegal Murder of Soleimani

In one of the series of blatant lies the USA has told to justify the assassination of Soleimani, Mike Pompeo said that Soleimani was killed because he was planning “Imminent attacks” on US citizens. It is a careful choice of word. Pompeo is specifically referring to the Bethlehem Doctrine of Pre-Emptive Self Defence.

Developed by Daniel Bethlehem when Legal Adviser to first Netanyahu’s government and then Blair’s, the Bethlehem Doctrine is that states have a right of “pre-emptive self-defence” against “imminent” attack. That is something most people, and most international law experts and judges, would accept. Including me.

What very few people, and almost no international lawyers, accept is the key to the Bethlehem Doctrine – that here “Imminent” – the word used so carefully by Pompeo – does not need to have its normal meanings of either “soon” or “about to happen”. An attack may be deemed “imminent”, according to the Bethlehem Doctrine, even if you know no details of it or when it might occur. So you may be assassinated by a drone or bomb strike – and the doctrine was specifically developed to justify such strikes – because of “intelligence” you are engaged in a plot, when that intelligence neither says what the plot is nor when it might occur. Or even more tenuous, because there is intelligence you have engaged in a plot before, so it is reasonable to kill you in case you do so again.

I am not inventing the Bethlehem Doctrine. It has been the formal legal justification for drone strikes and targeted assassinations by the Israeli, US and UK governments for a decade. Here it is in academic paper form, published by Bethlehem after he left government service (the form in which it is adopted by the US, UK and Israeli Governments is classified information).

The concept of what constitutes an “imminent” armed attack will develop to meet new circumstances and new threats

This is worth a read.

The truth of the matter is that if you take every American killed including and since 9/11, in the resultant Middle East related wars, conflicts and terrorist acts, well over 90% of them have been killed by Sunni Muslims financed and supported out of Saudi Arabia and its gulf satellites, and less than 10% of those Americans have been killed by Shia Muslims tied to Iran.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg Using the Bethlehem doctrine, I am next. I have engaged in lawful protests from time to time.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Shahryar

They were patriots
They cared and they fought
What the contractors sold
They bought

So we rendered some Arabs
With help from the blokes
Like it or not
We tortured some folks

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10 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Ranting Rooster.
We cannot stop the madness, but there is at least some benefit or solace to clear eyed vision and understanding of our demise, no?
Gives us a little time to plan our way out.
Hell, death row inmates get to order their last meal.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Situational Lefty's picture

She and her flank deserve as much blame as they can get for our current state of affairs.

They seem to somehow escape any blame for the happenings of the past few years in the so called "liberal" blogosphere.

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"The enemy is anybody who is going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on." Yossarian

@Situational Lefty from Bush to Obama to Trump, they’ve done nothing but expand presidential powers, write blank checks for the MIC and refuse to hold anyone accountable. Everyone is clutching their pearls over Trump not going to congress before this assignation but no one says how that would have changed a thing.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Specifically, Obama's refusal to prosecute the Bush administration for the illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as all the illegal renditions, the illegal NSA spying programs, the illegal torture programs that our CIA / Military and PMC (private military contractors) ran and carried out, not to mention his dramatic increase in the use of target assassinations via drone murder.

Most specifically, Obama's refusal to uphold and defend the constitution from ALL enemies, both foreign, and especially domestic, is by far the most single reason Trump currently occupies the white house, and has used Obama's dictatorial powers to assassinate Soleimani. (Obama's policy was to look forward not backward. Yeah right...)

Oh, wait. What am I thinking? Of course you're just saying all this because you're racist!

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11 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

RantingRooster's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

Oh, wait. What am I thinking? Of course you're just saying all this because you're racist!

You forgot, I live in Texas so I'm a covert republican... at least that's what one user at DK said about me... Drinks

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@RantingRooster

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal @Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
Glenn Greenwald: Trump will have vast powers. He can thank Democrats for them.
Liberals liked executive authority as long as Obama wielded it. Now they've set a precedent.

"“This administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide,” he said in 2007. Listing an array of controversial Bush-Cheney policies, from warrantless domestic surveillance to due-process-free investigations and imprisonment, he vowed: “We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers.”

Yet, beginning in his first month in office and continuing through today, Obama not only continued many of the most extreme executive-power policies he once condemned, but in many cases strengthened and extended them. His administration detained terrorism suspects without due process, proposed new frameworks to keep them locked up without trial, targeted thousands of individuals (including a U.S. citizen) for execution by drone, invoked secrecy doctrines to shield torture and eavesdropping programs from judicial review, and covertly expanded the nation’s mass electronic surveillance."

Read the whole thing but I gotta highlight this part for those that may not read the whole article...

"....The president-elect frightens them, so they are now alarmed. But if they want to know whom to blame, they should look in the mirror.

Obama’s approach to executive power flipped so quickly and diametrically that it is impossible to say if he ever believed his campaign-era professions of restraint. As early as May 2009, Jack Goldsmith, a Justice Department official under George W. Bush, celebrated Obama’s abandonment of his promises to rein in these authorities, writing that “the new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit.” He added that the “Obama practices will be much closer to late Bush practices than almost anyone expected in January 2009.”

By putting a prettier liberal face on these policies, and transforming them from a symbol of GOP radicalism into one of bipartisan security consensus, the president entrenched them as permanent fixtures of the American presidency. As Goldsmith put it, Obama’s actions were “designed to fortify the bulk of the Bush program for the long-run.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/11/glenn-greenw...

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11 users have voted.
Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@aliasalias

Couldn't have said it better myself:

By putting a prettier liberal face on these policies, and transforming them from a symbol of GOP radicalism into one of bipartisan security consensus, the president entrenched them as permanent fixtures of the American presidency.

Just cut and paste in any of the Bush administration's disgusting policies and, in most cases, you'll find the same pattern. Bush does a horrible, terrible thing...Obama normalizes it and makes those who question it themselves questionable characters.

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6 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

snoopydawg's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal .

Obomber was Bush on steroids and Trump is his legacy. I think the best thing for the end of the Obama presidency was to see Trump following it. This tells Obama that Americans rejected every damn thing he stood for. And stood against. Now if Bernie could win and do the things that Obama promised to do I could die happy.

By putting a prettier liberal face on these policies, and transforming them from a symbol of GOP radicalism into one of bipartisan security consensus, the president entrenched them as permanent fixtures of the American presidency. As Goldsmith put it, Obama’s actions were “designed to fortify the bulk of the Bush program for the long-run.”

Bingo and well said. Just like Clinton's job was to fortify the bulk of the Reagan Bush,policies. Both of them destroyed every thing that the left once stood for. And against. I'm seeing people writing about how every time we have a republican president they start wars. It's like Bill and Barack never started any wars. To some people Libya and Syria were righteous actions. Why? Centrists reasoning. BTW..Hillary wasn't a warmonger..pass it on.

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9 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@snoopydawg

Just start with the unshakable premise that the leader must be good and everything else follows.

I never could get along with authoritarians.

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6 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

. Rather than being a militant, the homeowner had been a tribal elder who had attempted to organize a peace movement and was just the kind of person that CIA operatives had been hoping to encourage in their efforts to fight extremism.

No, that's just the kind of person that CIA operatives (at least the ones at the top) want to kill.

Who thinks that the CIA wants to stop these wars?

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15 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

WaterLily's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

WAKE UP!

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JrlKcoD1Qw]

(Stumbled across this cover recently and holy $h!t is it good).

Come on
Uggh

Come on, although ya try to discredit
Ya still never edit
The needle, I'll thread it
Radically poetic
Standin' with the fury that they had in '66
And like E-Double I'm mad
Still knee-deep in the system's shit
Hoover, he was a body remover
I'll give ya a dose
But it'll never come close
To the rage built up inside of me
Fist in the air, in the land of hypocrisy

Movements come and movements go
Leaders speak, movements cease
When their heads are flown
'Cause all these punks
Got bullets in their heads
Departments of police, the judges, the feds
Networks at work, keepin' people calm
You know they went after King
When he spoke out on Vietnam
He turned the power to the have-nots
And then came the shot

Yeah
Yeah, back in this...
Wit' poetry, my mind I flex
Flip like Wilson, vocals never lackin' dat finesse
Whadda I got to, whadda I got to do to wake ya up
To shake ya up, to break the structure up
'Cause blood still flows in the gutter
I'm like takin' photos
Mad boy kicks open the shutter
Set the groove
Then stick and move like I was Cassius
Rep the stutter step
Then bomb a left upon the fascists
Yea, the several federal men
Who pulled schemes on the dream
And put it to an end
Ya better beware
Of retribution with mind war
20/20 visions and murals with metaphors
Networks at work, keepin' people calm
Ya know they murdered X
And tried to blame it on Islam
He turned the power to the have-nots
And then came the shot

Uggh
What was the price on his head?
What was the price on his head

I think I heard a shot
I think I heard a shot
I think I heard a shot
I think I heard a shot
I think I heard a shot
I think I heard, I think I heard a shot

'He may be a real contender for this position should he
abandon his supposed obediance to white liberal doctrine
of non-violence...and embrace black nationalism'
'Through counter-intelligence it should be possible to
pinpoint potential trouble-makers...And neutralize them,
neutralize them, neutralize them'

Wake up wake up wake up wake up
Wake up wake up wake up wake up

How long? Not long, cause what you reap is what you sow

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12 users have voted.
Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@WaterLily

Amazing.

Just for those who don't know, here's the original:

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6 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver