Friday, May 29, 2009

One Good Thing To Do This Weekend Is Sign This Petition

VoteVets sent me this petition this morning. I signed it. Now I'm asking you to sign it. I'm told it might be a touchy link.

This is a YouTube clip and hopefully guidance to the petition. If all else fails, google VoteVets.org. That should get you there. Sign up. It's free. Get their email updates. It's a really good organization. And if you still aren't convinced that the Bush/Cheney Administration needs prosecuting, read this:

**Please circulate widely to friends and on social-networking sites*

Torture Photos Show Rapes of Detainees, Former Officer Confirms
The real reason Dick Cheney has become so loud: he's afraid

Each week brings shocking new revelations. The U.S. mass media is not reporting on the most explosive story of the week.

The world now knows why President Obama reversed his earlier decision to release the 2,000 photos of prisoners barbarically tortured, abused, and humiliated under the direction of the Bush/Cheney gang.

Some of the photos of the prisoners show U.S. personnel torturing, sexual assaulting and raping male and female detainees, including children. The existence of these photos was confirmed by former Major General Antonio Taguba. Taguba had earlier been in charge of the inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

On May 21, Cheney went on national television to defend torture and sickeningly attacked Obama for sacrificing "innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things." We'd like to hear him explain how rape and sexual assault are just "unpleasant things" that have spared innocent lives. The last few months has proven that the abuses, the sexual assault, and the most barbaric violations of human rights cannot be attributed to a few bad apples. Such tactics were commonplace, officially sanctioned and elevated to the level of government policy.

The torture methods, like the war itself, have never been about saving lives. A recent column in the Nation echoed what IndictBushNow reported last week: "The Bush administration, hellbent on justifying its forthcoming invasion of Iraq, was ransacking the intelligence bureaucracy to find or produce two things that, it turns out, did not exist: weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq and cooperation between Al Qaeda and the regime of Saddam Hussein."

The Iraqi people have never waged war on the United States and no Iraqis took part in the attacks of 9/11. Bush & co. wanted to go to war, and were just looking for an excuse.

So why, given the recent revelations, has Dick Cheney responded so publicly in defense of the Bush administration's war crimes? He's afraid! He's not just concerned about preserving the administration's "legacy" -- he's concerned about preserving his own neck.

Don't believe us? Take it from Cheney's daughter, Liz, who recently explained her father's outspokenness on CNN: "He certainly did not plan when he left office to be doing this... Then when [Obama] suggested in the Oval Office itself that he would be open to the prosecution of former Bush administration officials including many who weren't political appointees potentially, you know really, I think, made my dad realize this was just fundamentally wrong. We had to speak out."

Our argument for prosecution is becoming irresistible. The fact is that every revelation lays bare a whole new level of criminality. The more details come about the Bush administration's heinous acts and deliberate deception of the American people, the more people are starting to talk about justice. Already, many people who once said, "we need to move forward" are beginning to reconsider: no one can move forward until we have come to terms with the country's past. That means accountability: the indictment of the criminals.

23 comments:

PENolan said...

Done
And posted the link on my facebook.
Happy Friday

Anonymous said...

Dude, the link won't work. FUCKING FIX IT!!!

-Angela

Utah Savage said...

PEN, thank you!

Angela, sorry. I'll get to work on it right now.

Utah Savage said...

I think I fixed it. If you have trouble opening the link, please let me know and I'll fix it again. It works for me, but I have no way to know if it's working for you unless, like Angela, you tell me it's not working.

La Belette Rouge said...

I am off to see if it works. If I don't come back that means it worked.
xo

La Belette Rouge said...

Nope, it didn't work.:-( I'll be back.

Anonymous said...

worked for me.....

Utah Savage said...

It seems to be a touchy site for some of you. I'll keep trying to fix it. Hang in there; this is important.

PENolan said...

It is important - especially in light of the information regarding the photos.

As for the link - when I clicked on the word "petition" in the body of your post, it worked fine. When I first tried to click, though, I clicked on one of the post labels which, being a label not a link, didn't work at all.

Life As I Know It Now said...

Done! Thanks for the heads up.

Utah Savage said...

Thank you guys. I'm having a really hard time tonight. My oldest best friend--we were early admissions students together at the U of Utah and have been friends all this time (she has power of attorney for me if I go off the rails) just got the news that she probably has lymphoma and it might have been diagnosed too late to treat her. I have been nagging her for months about the dry cough and the hoarse voice. Her doctor wanted to admit her today and keep her in the hospital until a new biopsy is done on Monday. She refuses to go into the hospital on the grounds that it costs too much. The reason her doc wanted her admitted was that she's been having trouble breathing. He wants her monitored so they can interviene. She says, "What can they do if I can't breath?" I tell her at least four things they can do that she can't do at home. She says, "It'll cost too much and I'm going to die anyway." I want to throttle her and I want to take care of her. But I believe in western medicine and she believes in eastern medicine and homeopathy. She plans to treat this cancer with a juice diet. She's been a vegetarian for forty years. I've always been a carnivore. All this to say, I'm going mad with worry.

PENolan said...

Sounds perfectly awful, Utah. Hang in there

Sherry Pasquarello said...

i've always signed things for them.

: )

Sherry Pasquarello said...

people believe what they want as to health, but she should try it her doc's way.

you've had a really tough time of it lately. i feel bad, sending good vibes!

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

If it can be proved that Democratic legislators were briefed on these particular "techniques" (water-boarding, especially), will they in fact be prosecuted, too?

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

And what about Obama preserving renditions as one of our "counter-terrorism" tools? Is that not in and of itself worth a petition or two?

Fran said...

You can't sweep this kind of atrocity under the rug....
truth is in order to move forward, it HAS to be dealt with.

Wow! You are right-- Dick Cheney roars because he is afraid. Turnabout is fair play, Dick.

They should all spend the rest of their days imprisoned in Gitmo. Why Dick himself once said the prisoners there are "lucky", all of their needs are met.

May he be so lucky himself!

Paul said...

One of your best posts ever.

Thank you.

Paul said...

Utah,

We have only just found out our father's serious prostate cancer has not spread to his bones or lymph areas (I don't even know what lymph area or glands (?) are). But there is some lump or growth near his ribs that has to be further checked out. His prostate comes out next week and also something has to be done for his bladder during that procedure.

I know something of what you must be going through now. Take care.

I am grateful my father does not question Western medicine and surgery etc for something like this.

Vigilante said...

Signed!

Anonymous said...

Oh my god....I feel these word so deeply...in a palce that I have never shared, never been allowed to share, thank YOU for sharing with ME Jojo

Anonymous said...

let me just correct...I refer to your poems and short stories... just feel it so much that it brings tears.... The pain is so real, and i know it intimately...WOW ...really awesome....I've never been affected by poetry before, not in this way...your voice and your emotion comes right off the page at me....are you published at all...is there somewhere I can buy a collection of poems??
Anyway...Thank you for sharing and allowing me to ahare too ...some of the pain and confusion of a child who has been made into an object for the pleasure of an adult (my father no less)who is supposed to be the very one to protect you,and a mother who looks the other wat because these things just aren't "talked" about in good familys, GOOD FAMILY? who is really deceiving themself? I am sure You know what I mean....no?
Thank you again...so much JoJo

Utah Savage said...

Joannity, I tried to follow you home. I wanted to email you or find a way to contact you to thank you for the kind words about the poems and short stories. I want you to know that we share the same kind of father experience. I understand and will be happy to have an email conversation with you should you care to email me, since I have no email address for you. And no, I have never published anything. I still have hopes that I will get off my ass and work on that. But I blog and neglect my creative work. Please email me. Maybe it's your encouragement that will make me want to try to publish something.