Obama is the new Winston Smith and rewriting history
Rewriting History & Rehabilitating George W Bush
To hear Barack Obama now making the claim that Bush was committed to the rule of law and human rights is just the latest betrayal of a Democratic Party that has systematically prevented a reckoning for the crimes of the 43rd president, a party that is clearly uninterested in truth or accountability, and is more than willing to rewrite history to advance its political goals.
The liberal rehabilitation of George W. Bush is now virtually complete, with his successor Barack Obama declaring this week that the 43rd president was committed to the rule of law, despite all evidence to the contrary. In an online fundraiser for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden Tuesday night, Obama stated that Bush “had a basic regard for the rule of law and the importance of our institutions of democracy.”
Obama, who ran for president in 2008 with promises to restore habeas corpus and uphold the rule of law, went on to claim that when Bush was president, “we cared about human rights” and were committed to “core principles around the rule of law and the universal dignity of people.”
Obama’s comments surely came as a shock to anyone who still has a functioning memory of the Bush years and hasn’t succumbed entirely to the effects of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Rather than being a champion of democratic principles, when Bush left office, he left behind a shameful legacy of upended human rights norms including due process and the legal prohibition against torture.
If 2008 Obama could speak today with 2020 Obama, he might remind himself that Bush had started a “dumb war” in Iraq in violation of the UN Charter, launched a warrantless surveillance program of Americans and that he had established a penal colony in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
As Obama himself said in said in 2013, during the Bush years, “we compromised our basic values – by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule of law.”
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He dismissed provisions of the Geneva Conventions as “quaint” and offered legal rationales that justify torture in cases of “military necessity.”Bush’s approach to the “war on terror” was in fact a steady descent into the “dark side,” as Vice President Dick Cheney had called it. A subsequent Senate investigation found that the torture program instituted by the Bush administration following 9/11 employed gruesome techniques such as near drowning, forcing detainees to stand on broken legs, threatening to kill or rape detainees’ family members, forced “rectal feeding” and “rectal hydration.” It also offered disturbing details on a medieval “black site” prison in Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit, where at least one detainee froze to death.
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But considering that 6-in-10 Americans now have a favorable view of Bush, almost twice as much as the 33 percent who gave him a favorable mark when he left office in 2009, it should be appreciated how impressionable Americans are and how damaging comments such as Obama’s can be. Much of Bush’s ascent to popularity has come from Democrats, 54 percent of whom now approve of the Bush presidency. Democrats’ change of heart appears to be primarily motivated by Bush’s opposition to Trump, which apparently has absolved him of his many failings while president.
Just a reminder of the power Obama left Trump:
Comments
NDAA is clearly unConstitutional
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Written by Nat Parry. Is he a son of Robert Parry? /nt
https://www.euronews.com/live
Yes
Nat Parry is indeed Robert's son.
NonnyO (whom I remember from TOP): why NOT to vote for Biden
https://www.reddit.com/r/Kossacks_for_Sanders/comments/hgwzzj/why_not_to...
NonnyO is taking a lot of guff at Reddit for her views — full credit for her courage, honesty, and tenacity, enduring disingenuousness so thick you can cut it with a knife.
https://www.reddit.com/user/nonnyO
Nonny O is a friend of mine online. She's awesome!
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
I’m sure I’m not the only one here at c99 who wouldn’t mind
at all if you would see fit to pass on to her our collective bundled, well-deserved regards.
I used to ask her to stop by here again
but I lost track of her. She used to write here before she moved on. Lots of people did who are now over at Reddit.
I totally agree with what she says about voting for Biden. Just what will change if he gets to play president? Maybe new wars . Or maybe if Biden decides to end the Afghanistan war people won’t say he’s doing it for Putin’s benefit?
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Done!
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
I left her a message on K for Sanders
and asked her to stop by and say hey. She wrote a few outstanding essays way back when then felt she didn't have enough time to be on too many sites. Here's hoping.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
This administrations excesses
will be the next administrations givens. It's all about power now. We are only useful to show up for elections.
I have one reservation about this
We cannot allow them to redefine "power". They HAVE NO POWER without us. The very idea of defining "power" as "social authority" is brick-stupid, because no form of "power" is more UTTERLY ILLUSORY.
It's not about "power". It's about sustaining the unsustainable...and why we continue choosing to suffer these fools.
"You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself."
- Leonardo da Vinci
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
So sick of being right.
"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
So sick of being Right
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
That too.
This is the paradigmatic image of the current politics:
"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
Obama - the worst president in my lifetime
Now that we can all see him for what he is, a complete fake, I can't stand to see him or hear him. His long pauses when he speaks are due to the process in his brain. He's trying to figure out which lying words will impress (himself) the most. He stole all of the energy of the progressive side of the democrat party and used it for his advancement. He is in fact no better than GWB, that's why he says such kind, lying words about him. GWB was too stupid to realize how evil his actions were, not so with Obama. I hereby pass the crown of worst, most evil president in my lifetime to Barack H. Obama, well deserved. He is so in love with himself that he can't see the naked evil in praising a scumbag like Bush. Perhaps in that he is being more honest than usual...that they are made from the same mold and are in the same club.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Top comment
I agree and it is incredible that people cannot see that he was just as or worse than Bush. How is it a scandal free administration when you deported more immigrants than any other president? When 56% of them were not the 'hardened criminals' he promised he would only deport, but family members? Or when he dropped over 26,000 bombs during his last year? Prosecuted more (8) whistleblowers than all presidents combined? He helped the Saudis with their genocidal war in Yemen and he will be known as the 1st black American president that brought slavery to Libya where blacks are sold on the open market for around $400 a pop. Evil indeed.
And now he is giving Bush a pass for torture and war crimes and....... and people are wetting themselves trying to outdo their praise for him whenever he utters a word.
"I wish you were still my president!!"
Damn idiots. And if Biden gets elected we are going to get the same damn policies of the Obama admin that led to Trump's election.
Obama put the left to sleep. They are still asleep on Trump's policies when it comes to war and will go into a coma if Biden gets elected.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
"I hereby pass the crown of worst, most evil president ..."
Exactly. The reason that Obama is unwilling to ever mention crimes against humanity in the Bush administration is that that would open himself and his administration to scrutiny on worse crimes.
You're right about the big Zero putting 'the Left' to sleep
Right after tRump got elected I watched the Democracy Now!show and the guest was Alec Baldwin, who talked about the reactions "of all his friends". It appeared that they were all anxious to organize against tRump, to be politically active which they hadn't previously doing because it was like everyone, including himself, were "asleep".
Why pay attention with 'O' at the helm everything was alright except for evil Republicans constantly working to thwart every effort by 'O'.
So in effect all in his circle of friends slept,comfortably,without any concerns in the world while the big Zero moved us from two wars to seven, killing innumerable men women and children in Drone strikes, immunizing those guilty of some of the worst war crimes while at the same time prosecuting more whistle blowers than all previous Presidents combined. Also stripping the citizens of this country of Constitutional rights, and deporting several million immigrants, with some waiting in cages at the border.
There are so many more examples to give, and Snoopydawg I've bookmarked your great list of his crimes but instead of naming things most here are aware of I want to name three more examples that still bother me daily.
#1 Julian Assange who has been tortured for nearly a decade, now sits slowly dying in the UK's version of GITMO and now a kangaroo court will most likely see to it that if he does survive the current prison he will spend the rest of his life in the torture of a Super Max prison.
Yes it is tRump pushing Assange's extradition to the US, but '0' put the whole thing in motion in 2010 and on his way out of office he could've shut down the Grand Jury or allowed Assange to safely leave the Embassy in London to safety and his family, but no he set Julian up on a tee for tRUMP and the intelligence agencies.
#2 Chelsea Manning whom 'O' allowed to be tortured, then moved to Leavenworth prison with a sentence of 35 years, more time that almost anyone convicted of the same offenses, and where she was driven to the point of attempting to kill herself.
Even tho' just to polish his halo 'O' commuted her sentence on his way out of the Presidency, she still had served more time, and in harsh circumstances, than almost anyone else with the same conviction.
She's still paying for exposing war crimes that happened under 'O', like others whose livelihoods were also stripped from them while 'O' smiled to the fawning cameras of the media lapdogs and slobbering sycophants.
#3 Edward Snowden exposed the crimes of mass surveillance but with the help of Julian Assange and Wikileaks lawyers Snowden escaped the clutches of 'O' in Hong Kong but by suspending his passport while he was in transit to Latin America Snowden got trapped in Russia. However his wife did join him and his life is a world apart from the misery 'O' brought to the other two and their family and friends.
Say what you will about Putin he wouldn't extradite Snowden, and with Eric Holder feeling he had to add a promise Snowden would not be tortured is very revealing about the nature of the beast.
Still Putin said they would not extradite Edward Snowden even tho that would beneficial for the US relations towards Russia, and who knows what 'off the record' gifts were promised as I'm sure the US didn't just give up after the first 'no' from Russia.
I wonder how often Julian has thought of how things might have been had he escaped to the Russian embassy instead that of Ecuador, forget what the US lapdog media would say, just compare his present life to that of Edward Snowden's.
Lastly, if I were only a helluva lot younger I might have had the pleasure of pissing on the grave (probably a monument) of 'O', but that is very unlikely.
Big Zero is damn right
Guess Alex and his friends didn’t mind when 9 million people got thrown out of their homes. Or lost their jobs and pensions.
Also spot on about Julian Assange. If Obama hadn’t set that in motion before he decided that he didn’t want to be the president known for killing the 1st amendment maybe Trump wouldn’t have gone after him. But because Zero helped cook up Russia interference and Herheinous blaming them for giving them to Julian and his releasing her emails people wouldn’t be giving Trump a pass for going after him because they blame him for Her loss. I see too many people being glad that Trump is doing this while in their next breath pissing and moaning about his war on the press.
Of course Trump going after him led to Chelsea being thrown in prison just because she wouldn’t testify against him. And again because of Obama’s actions they didn’t support her like they did when she was exposing Bush’s war crimes.
And because Snowden exposed Obama’s war crimes he is person non grata too. Same thing with Greenwald. Obama, Herheinous, Pelosi and other democrats including Joe Manchin are all off limits to criticize. Grrr.
.
Heh I’m hoping to have the pleasure of watering Obama’s grave too. And his saying this about Bush has not even crossed their radar. I wish I could understand that.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
worst President
I don't know about that, at least with respect to my own lifetime. That's because he's still got to compete with Ronald Reagan, who created the Bush nightmare by anointing George H.W. Bush his Presidential "heir". All the rest of it, the wars, the lies, the misrepresentations, etc., Reagan did it all too; and Obama is a mere piker by comparison.
And we aren't in it!!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
His long pauses
reflect his contemplation of how splendid his measured thoughts and responses will look in the history books. Surprised there's not a Little Blue Book from Chairman 'O' in the works.
Can hardly even listen to his voice anymore.
That virtual fundraiser with Biden was pathetic... on the part of both of them.
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
Obama is a snake oil salesman
From “hope and change” to Obamacare to fake drinking the Flint water to GWB. The only difference between Obama and Trump is Trump doesn’t give a damn if you know he’s trying to rip you off.
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
To Biden's Nope and "nothing will fundamentally change" /nt
Also I think the universe is sending me a message
Every single time I have just about resigned myself to holding my nose and voting for Biden, without fail, something like this happens to remind me that a vote for Joe will be a vote for more competent evil and nothing more.
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
Winston Smith was the hero
I doubt you intend to call Obama a hero
Probably not
I was just thinking about how he had to change history to whatever the new news was each day. It’s been awhile since I read the book.
But that’s just what Obama is doing with this bullshit.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.