I know this is not directly related to 9/11 truth but I hope it'll be posted anyway as I think it ironic that this Iraqi journalist gets 3 years for throwing a shoe at a former president who should be on trial (and ultimately in jail) for war crimes.

Iraqi who threw shoes at Bush jailed for 3 years

By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer Hamza Hendawi, Associated Press Writer

Thu Mar 12, 5:27 pm ET

BAGHDAD – A court convicted an Iraqi journalist of assault Thursday for hurling his shoes at George W. Bush and sentenced him to three years in prison, prompting an outburst from his family and calls for his release from Iraqis who consider him an icon for a nation decimated by war.

Muntadhar al-Zeidi, 30, defiantly shouted, "Long Live Iraq!" when the sentence was imposed, according to defense lawyers. Some of his relatives collapsed and had to be helped out of the courthouse. Others were forcibly removed by guards after shouting "Down with Bush!"

"This judiciary is unjust," al-Zeidi's brother, Dargham, said tearfully.

Other family members shouted insults against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who like al-Zeidi is a Shiite.

http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_seymour_hersh_describes_executive_assassinati...

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination ring'
By Eric Black | Published Wed, Mar 11 2009 11:17 am

At a “Great Conversations” event at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an “executive assassination ring.”

Hersh spoke with great confidence about these findings from his current reporting, which he hasn’t written about yet.

In an email exchange afterward, Hersh said that his statements were “an honest response to a question” from the event’s moderator, U of M Political Scientist Larry Jacobs and “not something I wanted to dwell about in public.”

Other articles by Margie Burns:

Why did Bush abolish information sharing and route all national security information to him, via Condoleezza Rice? (This one is not available anymore at onlinejournal.com, and at the moment is not available at archive.org either. I couldn't find the entire text anywhere online, though a number of blogs linked to the now dead link. This is a great example of why it's a good habit to take a sec, hit ctrl+s and save any important story you see to your hard drive- storage keeps getting bigger and cheaper. Nafeez Ahmed quotes from this article in The War on Truth (247-250)
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http:/www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/080203Burns/080203burns.html

9/11 and the ‘second Pearl Harbor’
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_78.shtml

TRIMMING THE BUSHES: Family Business at the Watergate
http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20050215bushes_1.cfm

Latest article:

Politicized Justice Department Firings Are Not the Only Investigation Needed by Margie Burns on Thu 05 Mar 2009 11:28 AM EST
http://www.margieburns.com/blog/_archives/2009/3/5/4113130.html

I'm Not a Lawyer But I Know How To Read

The Charges are Obstruction of Justice and Treason Concerning the Attacks of 9/11

The Charge of Obstruction of Justice:

"Law Encyclopedia: Obstruction of Justice
n.
The criminal offense, under common law and according to the statutes of many jurisdictions, of obstructing the administration and due process of law."

"This entry contains information applicable to United States law only."

"A criminal offense that involves interference, through words or actions, with the proper operations of a court or officers of the court."

"Obstruction of justice in the federal courts is governed by a series of criminal statutes (18 U.S.C.A. §§ 1501-1517), which aim to protect the integrity of federal judicial proceedings as well as agency and congressional proceedings. Section 1503 is the primary vehicle for punishing those who obstruct or who endeavor to obstruct federal judicial proceedings."

(This was in the NYT on Friday. Although Krugman doesn't mention 9/11, of course the same arguments apply, particularly inasmuch as the war in Iraq was a direct result. Orig. is at http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=19427087 .)

Last Sunday President-elect Barack Obama was asked whether he would seek an investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration.

"I don't believe that anybody is above the law," he responded, but "we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards."

I'm sorry, but if we don't have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years - and nearly everyone has taken Obama's remarks to mean that we won't - this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don't face any consequences if they abuse their power.

(Don't miss the comments at the end - the ones STILL defending Bush . . .)

http://www.truthout.org/010709J

THURSDAY 8 JANUARY 2009

The Greatest Greatness of George W. Bush
Wednesday 07 January 2009

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Take me down little Susie, take me down
I know you think you're the queen of the underground
And you can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flowers by the mail
Send me dead flowers to my wedding
And I won't forget to put roses on your grave ...

- The Rolling Stones

To: George W. Bush
From: Your biggest fan
Re: Your imminent unemployment

Greetings, Mr. Bush.

I was sorry to hear about the passing of your cat, India. Eighteen years is a long time for a cat - my mother has one that's 20 and still going strong, if you can believe it - and I'm sure India had a comfortable, caring life with your family.

Hans Blix Would Testify Against Bush-Cheney War Crimes

Submitted by Bob Fertik on December 21, 2008 - 2:05pm. Bush Prosecution

http://www.democrats.com/hans-blix-would-testify-against-bush-cheney-war-crimes

On their History Rewrite Tour, Bush and Cheney insist the pre-war intelligence about Iraq's WMD's was bad and they were innocent dupes.

Of course we all know the truth from the Downing Street Memos and dozens of other sources, which is that "the intelligence and facts were fixed" around the policy of invasion. And here's one more damning piece of evidence, courtesy of Roads to Iraq. (The Aljazeera link is in Arabic - someone needs to translate it.)

Pls see (in Arabic) : http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/EXERES/5E375469-466D-47CF-B004-A588C4E3103E.htm

In an interview with Aljazeera today, former Chief of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq told the TV that he and the Head of the IAEA “Mohamed Al-Baradei” were subjected to direct threats from Dick Cheney before the war.

Blix said that Cheney threatened to defame both men’s reputations if they didn’t came with the “required” answers.

Bush Insider Who Planned To Tell All Killed In Plane Crash, Non-Profit Demands Full Federal Investigation

PRNewswire
Sunday, Dec 21, 2008

http://www.prisonplanet.com/bush-insider-who-planned-to-tell-all-killed-in-plane-crash-non-profit-demands-full-federal-inv...

Flashback: Rove Threatened GOP IT Guru If He Does Not ‘Take the Fall’ for Election Fraud in Ohio, Says Attorney ( http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6214 )

Michael Connell, the Bush IT expert who has been directly implicated in the rigging of George Bush’s 2000 and 2004 elections, was killed last night when his single engine plane crashed three miles short of the Akron airport. Velvet Revolution (”VR”), a non-profit that has been investigating Mr. Connell’s activities for the past two years, can now reveal that a person close to Mr. Connell has recently been discussing with a VR investigator how he can tell all about his work for George Bush. Mr. Connell told a close associate that he was afraid that George Bush and Dick Cheney would “throw [him] under the bus.”

In the final year of his presidency, even as his approval rating steadily declined to historic lows, most Americans continued to say Bush's anti-terror policies deserve at least a fair amount of credit for preventing more terror attacks.

http://www.legitgov.org/shulman_iraq_wmd_shoe_151208.html

IRAQ DID HAVE WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION AS SHOE BARELY MISSES PRESIDENT BUSH
Satire by R J Shulman

BAGHDAD – (PTSD News) – It took his farewell tour of Iraq to find the weapons of mass destruction he always suspected were there, but today, President [sic] Bush personally discovered the dangerous missiles in Iraq. "They were size 10 and they were coming straight at me," said President Bush, speaking of the two shoes thrown at him by Iraqi television journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi. Zaidi tossed his shoes, saying they were a good-bye kiss from the Iraqi people.

"They say that Zaire guy called me a dog," said Bush who ducked just in time, "but everyone else must have dyslexia, because I heard him call me a god."

Showing a sole of a shoe in the Arab world is generally considered to be a sign of disrespect. However, Zaidi, who was wrestled to the ground before being shipped off to Guantanamo, said he threw the shoes at the President because, "Bush has no soul and I thought he could use one."

Where was this committee when they were torturing prisoners at Abu Gharib... but it's about time somebody laid some some blame at Bush's feet.

From the AP:
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – The physical and mental abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was the direct result of Bush administration detention policies and should not be dismissed as the work of bad guards or interrogators, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Thursday.

The Senate Armed Services Committee report concludes that harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA and the U.S. military were directly adapted from the training techniques used to prepare special forces personnel to resist interrogation by enemies that torture and abuse prisoners. The techniques included forced nudity, painful stress positions, sleep deprivation, and until 2003, waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning.

End Presidential Pardons and Clemency

An Amendment -

The president shall not have the right to
grant pardons or clemency.

Michael Collin

The prospect of the criminal in chief, George W. Bush, issuing pardons to his co-conspirators is repugnant to all citizens who've paid any degree of attention over the last eight years.

He neglected his duty prior to 911 resulting in a devastating attack on the nation.

He started an illegal war based on lies that caused injury and death to tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and the deaths of over 1.2 million Iraqi civilians.

He ordered the illegal wire tapping of citizens, a clear violation of law.

Hyperlinks here:

Media Matters Catalogues Gibson-Bush Interview Spin, Omits PNAC!
http://911reports.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/media-matters-catalogues-gibson-bush-interview-spin-omits-pnac/

Bush gave an interview to ABC's Charlie Gibson, in which Bush referred to the "intelligence failure" about WMD as his "biggest regret". MediaMatters.org, supposedly a right-wing spin watchdog, ignores PNAC and pre-Bush Administration Iraq War plans, but notes the corporate media's failure to point out that there are many instances in the public record that make it clear that the Bush Administration was planning to go to war with Iraq after 9/11. The ones Media Matters notes include as the "Downing Street Memo”, Richard Clarke's statement in his book that Bush asked him the day after 9/11 to find a link to Hussein, his report to Condi Rice a week later that there was none, the Senate Intelligence WMD Inquiry, and other media reports.

news.ReOpen911.info by Spotless Mind
Translated by DJDaveMark
December 1st, 2008

The administrators at Change.org have deleted the idea for a new investigation into 9/11.

They declared that a new investigation into the attacks – which gave the Bush Administration the power to spy on it's own citizens, to torture, to launch two preventative wars based on lies and more generally to trample all over the Constitution – was "outside the scope" of the site's stated mission and therefore didn't meet their criteria for "specific policy solutions". It doesn't matter how many people want to know the Truth about 9/11, they refuse to have the idea promoted and discussed on their site.

Because of this censorship, the Change.org site has shown that it isn't a "social platform" but, rather, just another gatekeeper of 9/11 Truth.

When the idea was pulled, it was by far the most popular, comfortably occupying the top spot, totaling at least 660 votes (twice the amount of the next best rated idea) only 48 hours after being submitted. On a side note, the other proposed ideas had a 3 week head start, and the 9/11 Truth idea was only just warming up.

Why (pretend to) ask the citizens for ideas then simply delete the most popular? It seems like all of this is more of a joke than a wishful expression for democracy…

Here is the e-mail received by everyone who voted (and to whom we thank for voting):

by Justin A. Martell

Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) took one of the first steps in holding the Bush Administration accountable when he introduced House Resolution 1531 on Thursday.

The official title of HR 1531, which was introduced to the House Judiciary Committee, is "Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the President of the United States should not issue pardons to senior members of his administration during the final 90 days of his term of office."