[Peace-discuss] [sf-core] One may smile, and smile, and be a villain

[C. G. Estabrook]

The poets often get there first. Michael Corleone was a fictional  
killer before he was incarnated as our 44th president.

'The Godfather' is our post-WWII national epic.

On May 31, 2012, at 8:21 PM, David Johnson wrote:

> What is also interesting Carl, in relation to this posting about  
> Obama making " easy and final decisions about murdering U.S.  
> Citizens, is the fact that I read somewhere several months ago that  
> one of Obama's favorite TV shows is the HBO gangster series
> " Boardwalk Empire ".
> Over twenty-five years ago, Jesse Jackson called U.S. foreign  
> policy....
> " Gangster Diplomacy " !
>
> David J.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. Estabrook" <cge at shout.net>
> To: "Peace-discuss List" <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Cc: "sf-core" <sf-core at yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2012 6:52 AM
> Subject: [sf-core] One may smile, and smile, and be a villain
>
>
> [US presidents take an oath to uphold the Constitution. The present
> president has betrayed his oath, subverted the Constitution, and
> committed multiple murders, including US citizens and children. Not
> only does he admit his crimes in a propaganda article in the NY Times,
> he brags about them: even the dictators of the last century didn't do
> that.]
>
> ...Obama ... according to a lengthy leaked insider account in The New
> York Times, hurls death-dealing drones at anyone who threatens the ...
> USA. Including children.
>
> ...it reveals is the mindset of a political cynic whose seductive
> words cloak the moral indifference of a methodical executioner ...
> Truman ... obliterated the civilian populations of Hiroshima and
> Nagasaki ... Johnson ... carpet-bombed millions in Vietnam. The
> Democrats have got themselves another killer...
>
> The story obviously was planted in The New York Times to benefit the
> Obama political campaign...
>
> Pfc. Bradley Manning was held for many months in solitary confinement
> for allegedly disclosing information of far lower security
> classification. The difference is that the top secrets in the news
> article are ones the president wants leaked in the expectation they
> will burnish his “tough on terrorism” credentials. This is clearly not
> the Obama whom many voted for in the hope that he would stick by his
> word, including the pledge he made on his second day in office to ban
> brutal interrogation and close the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
> “What the new president did not say was that the orders contained a
> few subtle loopholes,” the Times now reports concerning the early
> promises by Obama...
>
> The word “realist” is now identical to “hypocrite,” and the
> condemnation of immoral behavior addresses nothing more than
> “rhetoric” that only the “fervent” would take seriously. The Times
> writers all but thrill to the lying...
>
> "...Obama had preserved three major policies—rendition, military
> commissions and indefinite detention—that have been targets of human
> rights groups since the 2001 terrorist attacks.”
>
> ...When Obama wanted to kill “an American citizen, in a country with
> which the United States was not at war, in secret and without the
> benefit of a trial,” the Times tells us, “[t]he Justice Department’s
> Office of Legal Counsel prepared a lengthy memo justifying that
> extraordinary step, asserting that while the Fifth Amendment’s
> guarantee of due process applied, it could be satisfied by internal
> deliberations in the executive branch.” Obama approved, and two
> American citizens were assassinated, including Samir Khan, who was not
> on any official list of targeted terrorists. “This is an easy one,”
> Obama told his chief of staff.
>
> What makes such decisions particularly easy is that Obama does not
> have to release any details of drone attacks or the legal rulings of
> the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that justify the assassinations—
> exactly the practice that Bush followed in regard to the OLC briefs
> that he cited for the legality of his torture policy. Michael Hayden,
> a director of the CIA under Bush and now an adviser to presumptive GOP
> nominee Mitt Romney, accurately described the danger that this poses
> to a democratic society: “This program rests on the personal
> legitimacy of the president, and that’s not sustainable. I have lived
> the life of someone taking action on the basis of secret O.L.C. memos,
> and it ain’t a good life. Democracies do not make war on the basis of
> legal memos locked in a [Department of Justice] safe.”
>
> But imperial plutocracies do. [Robert Scheer]
>
> ------------------------------------
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