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Declassified LBJ Tapes Accuse Richard Nixon of Treason
Hugh Pickens writes writes "After the Watergate scandal taught Richard Nixon the consequences of recording White House conversations, none of his successors has dared to do it. But Nixon wasn't the first. He got the idea from his predecessor Lyndon Johnson, who felt there was an obligation to allow historians to eventually eavesdrop on his presidency. Now David Taylor reports on BBC that the latest set of declassified tapes of President Lyndon Johnson's telephone calls show that by the time of the Presidential election in November 1968, LBJ had evidence that Nixon had sabotaged the Vietnam war peace talks — or, as he put it, that Nixon was guilty of treason and had 'blood on his hands'. It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war that he knew would derail his campaign. Nixon therefore set up a clandestine back-channel to the South Vietnamese involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser. In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris. This was exactly what Nixon feared. Chennault was dispatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal. Meanwhile the FBI had bugged the ambassador's phone and transcripts of Chennault's calls were sent to the White House. Johnson was told by Defense Secretary Clark Clifford that the interference was illegal and threatened the chance for peace. The president gave Humphrey enough information to sink his opponent but by then, a few days from the election, Humphrey had been told he had closed the gap with Nixon and would win the presidency so Humphrey decided it would be too disruptive to the country to accuse the Republicans of treason, if the Democrats were going to win anyway. In the end Nixon won by less than 1% of the popular vote, escalated the war into Laos and Cambodia with the loss of an additional 22,000 American lives, and finally settled for a peace agreement in 1973 that was within grasp in 1968."
Seems to me, Humphrey actually put the good of his Country ahead of personal and party gain. This is a far cry from what we've become as a Nation.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I'm reminded that Clinton's administration created a fairly good email archiving system. Bush's people dismantled it upon taking office because they knew they were there to commit fraud even before 9/11.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Thank goodness someone in the US is picking up on this. This has been news in the UK all week.
Then it is one of the worst crimes of treason ever.
Anything that remains of Nixon's estate (should be traceable still) should be immediately frozen to be used to compensate those affected by this - the families of those who died as a result of this act of treason that continued the war for a further 5 years, and those injured as well.
His entire period of presidency should be blackened (even further?!), his name should be dirt, any offspring should want to change their name to distance themselves from this evil man.
What am I missing these items came out years ago. See http://hnn.us/articles/60446.html for a better indication on what happened then this poor summary.
Let me bang my chest while ignoring the fact that the Democrats do the same thing!!! RAWR!!!!!!
Are you fucking serious? Name the Democrat that did this same thing. Go ahead. One is bad, the other is evil incarnate. Apples to oranges and history will show it.
.
It's a sad symptom of the state of discourse when it's formulated like this. As if the only responsibility of a US president in a war was to not waste American lives.
The bombing set the stage for millennialist national-communist dictatorships in both those states, and one of the worst genocides in the 20th century (and that's saying something).
In light of what could have been avoided, maybe future presidents should take a lesson, and not always "look forward, not backward".
By not exposing treason that ultimately led to the genocide in Cambodia? I can't agree with this "national interests über alles" attitude you're espousing.
This is a completely false equivalency, and you know it. Democrats are terrible, but the republicans are by far the greater of two evils and you should be ashamed of yourself for even half-assedly defending this.
This story only tells part of Nixon's story. Learn how the Bush family is connected to Nazis, how Nixon kept a lid on the "whole Bay of Pigs thing" and more about the United States' sordid past 50 years. Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with this documentary besides wanting to share the insight into this.
What are the odds of a sociopath like him being elected president? Quite good, because being a sociopath *helps you* win elections. In fact it gives you a tremendous advantage. Given how competitive elections are, it would be astonishing if presidents weren't sociopaths.
\u262D = \u5350
But was it for the better? The country might be better off if the criminals are exposed, and the battles fought, instead of festering as conspiracy theories.
But was it for the better? The country might be better off if the criminals are exposed, and the battles fought, instead of festering as conspiracy facts.
ftfy
Peace talks. LBJ escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War, from 16,000 American advisors/soldiers in 1963 to 550,000 combat troops by early 1968. And Johnson wants to blame someone else for sabotaging peace talks. Go sell the Brooklyn Bridge to someone else.
I disagree the way it is worded it sounds to me like he was confident about winning and did not want a a major snafu like Nixon totally derail his future foreign agenda. Going public would have been nasty. Hurt the polical system. But personally I'm tired of people not being held accountable for thier actions because the outcome would be bad. Examples need to be made. Otherwise you set pressidence. Yes I'm looking also throwing big banks into this wonderful group of assholes.
You are totally correct. Two wrongs make a right and Nixon was a swell fella because he wasn't any of those other guys.
If we reduce the argument to tribal squabbles and liberal Democrats vs neo-conservative Republicans, we can happily ignore the real issues of right vs wrong, moral vs immoral and honest vs dishonest. And we don't want to be dealing with those, do we?
Why not expose it after the election?
Relevant:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/25/1988286/wikileaks-how-us-tried-to-stop.html
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
While Nixon's actions certainly border on treason, he was dealing with South Vietnam, an ally. On the other hand, prior to the 1980 election Reagan bargained with Iran, an enemy, to keep Americans imprisoned and subvert the election. It's hard to see that as anything less than treason.
Few who lived through this era will be completely surprised by these revelations. Nixon was elected in part on his assertion that he had "a secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam. Now we know what his plan was.
Al Capone went to jail for tax evasion. Nixon was brought down by the cover-up of the Watergate break-ins. In both cases, the most trivial of their offenses was the cause of their downfalls.
Now if we could also convince you to never vote for a democrat either, we might be getting somewhere.
To accuse Nixon of being a Liberal Democrat in 3.... 2.... 1.....
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Bryce Harlow, former Eisenhower White House staff member, claimed to have "a double agent working in the White House....I kept Nixon informed." Harlow and Henry Kissinger (who was friendly with both campaigns and guaranteed a job in either a Humphrey or Nixon administration) separately predicted Johnson's "bombing halt": "The word is out that we are making an effort to throw the election to Humphrey. Nixon has been told of it," Democratic senator George Smathers informed Johnson. According to Robert Dallek, Kissinger's advice "rested not on special knowledge of decision making at the White House but on an astute analyst's insight into what was happening." William Bundy stated that Kissinger obtained "no useful inside information" from his trip to Paris, and "almost any experienced Hanoi watcher might have come to the same conclusion". While Kissinger may have "hinted that his advice was based on contacts with the Paris delegation," this sort of "self-promotion....is at worst a minor and not uncommon practice, quite different from getting and reporting real secrets."[2] Nixon asked Anna Chennault to be his "channel to Mr. Thieu"; Chennault agreed and periodically reported to John Mitchell that Thieu had no intention of attending a peace conference. On November 2, Chennault informed the South Vietnamese ambassador: "I have just heard from my boss in Albuquerque who says his boss [Nixon] is going to win. And you tell your boss [Thieu] to hold on a while longer."[3] In response, Johnson ordered wire-tapping members of the Nixon campaign.[4] Dallek wrote that Nixon's efforts "probably made no difference" because Thieu was unwilling to attend the talks and there was little chance of an agreement being reached before the election; however, his use of information provided by Harlow and Kissinger was morally questionable, and Humphrey's decision not to make Nixon's actions public was "an uncommon act of political decency."[5] Conrad Black agreed that there is "no evidence" connecting Kissinger, who was "playing a fairly innocuous double game of self-promotion", with attempts to undermine the peace talks. Black further commented that "the Democrats were outraged at Nixon, but what Johnson was doing was equally questionable", and there is "no evidence" that Thieu "needed much prompting to discern which side he favored in the U.S. election."[6] [edit]
There is so much to fix, that we ignore it all in the hopes that it goes away - but only if we are liberal or conservative enough in our ideology...
Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld should be in prison for crimes against humanity.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
22,000 american lives.
How many lives, total.
they all count
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Proof please
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Sadly Nixon isn't around to answer for this but perhaps a few of his cohorts are. Personally anyone who's still around who knew about this and had access to the evidence but didn't act about it either from complicity or because they thought they could use it as a bargaining chip should be stuck up against a wall and shot!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
By long term do you mean 1945 when Ho Chi Mihn approached the US to peacefully get independence from the French? To 1919 when Ho Chi Mihn approached the Versaille convention to peacably get independence for Vietname? Or do you mean going to back to the time the Vietnamese kicked the Mongols asses? Or, like most Americans, do you mean 1965?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
This is a far cry from what we've become as a Nation.
That is, a nation full of people who are willing to give away all of their freedoms to the government so they can feel safe, and who accuse anyone of opposing these measures of being on the Bad Guy Team.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
How is not exposing a presidential candidate's treason putting country ahead of personal and party gain? Just because he would gain politically does not automatically mean that he shouldn't do it "for the good of the country." Those things are not exclusive.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
"Don't be a Dick!"
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
You are so horribly misinformed it's not funny. You probably got most of this from Fox.
One question: do you really think we shouldn't gave entered WWI or WWII?
Note that the US was already in Korea at the end of WWII and war was inevitable.
The Vietnam war was just plain wrong.
It's just a shame Hunter S. Thompson isn't around to read and comment on this.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
as it's pretty much iron clad evidence. Maybe I misunderstood, but these are tapes of LBJ discussing the topic without the slightest question of whether it happened. It's all pretty well documented from what I can tell.
Also, happy to see this story on slashdot. Yeah, it's not tech news and I know that bugs people, but Christ. The way I heard about this was the Mother-lovin' BBC. This is the biggest news since Watergate and the news media is just pretending it didn't happen. Part of me wants to say 'Oh well, that's America' but screw that. I'm sick of saying things could be worse when they could be so much better.
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the bloody recordings of a conversation between then president LBJ and NSA operatives. I love the wiki, but I'm gonna side with the tapes on this one.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If Nixon couldn't hide this, and couldn't cover up Watergate, how could he possibly fake the Moon landings?
That's because you are working with hindsight knowledge of what happened after the decision by Humphrey not to expose Nixon. If you remove that knowledge from the picture then Humphrey did the right thing in that he avoided complicating the election at the last minute and throwing the country into further turmoil. If he won as he was led to believe he would, he could have then prosecuted Nixon via normal channels. After Nixon became president it became infinitely more difficult to prosecute him because he was a sitting president and had all the protections that that includes.
No, it was not for the better. Nixon should have been hanged, as should Bush and Cheney be hanged. Allowing our leaders to get away with war crimes only ensures future war crimes.
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Oh, so you must be an LBJ fan, you know, the Democrat who sent a half million troops into Vietnam. Get a clue.
It's quite funny to say "Lyndon B. Johnson a Democrat President led the USA into the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon a Republican President led the USA out of Vietnam" in a discussion about Nixon PREVENTING the end of Vietnam war 5 years sooner...
Hey! Watch it buddy. Those facts hurt feelings, you know.
Then Johnson and Kennedy should have been hanged for their crimes, just as Nixon should be hanged for his.
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Gawd you leftists are a scream. ... There would have been no need for a peace settlement if that DEMOCRAT [LBJ] hadn't accelerated the war in the first place.
Which probably explains why I've never met a "leftist" who didn't blame LBJ for that. So you (presumably a "rightist") are attacking a straw man.
Oh, the guy who started it was John F Kennedy, another DEMOCRAT.
Well, with the help of Ike's advice, but that's not the point. JFK had not built it up to the elevl where we couldn't easily pull out. Whether he would have is unknown and probably unknowable.
Johnson LIED about the Gulf of Tonkin
Johnson was skeptical of the military's account but wasn't sure it was a lie. In fact it was at least half true. A US destroyer really was attacked in international waters by NV, but it happened once, not twice. The second time was about some jittery sailors making a false report. More importantly, the Gulf of Tonkin incident was an excuse, not a reason. Even the embellished version was a minor affair, with no American casualties and damage amounting to some paint scratches on a destroyer. So level Haiphong harbor because they attacked a US ship in international waters and call it even. No need for a protracted war.
This is called "hearsay".
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Seems to me, Humphrey actually put the good of his Country ahead of personal and party gain. This is a far cry from what we've become as a Nation.
Afaik Humphrey didn't expose Nixon because polls told him he would win anyway and that there was no need to steep that low.
And what would the use have been after having lost.
Better to wait for the rematch and use it then.
So ex-VicePresident Nixon communicated with a foreign leadership, telling them to wait after his "re-election" and that he would be more 'flexible' in his dealings with them. Hmm, where have we heard that treasonous trash talk before? :-|
People everywhere, for all time, have been hoodwinked, lied to, maimed, killed and manipulated to murder others by "leaders" and politicians.
You do not need leaders. You need some liberty and freedom from "leaders."
But, I'm afraid humans will never be free from the tyranny of leaders.
Jesus himself couldn't get elected today.
People would ignore everything, EVERYTHING, else that he did, and focus on just one thing: he hung out with prostitutes and sinners. And didnt try to stone them.
People are so willfully blind and ignorant. They ignore facts that would inconvenience them and their perception of a person, whether its to idolize or villify them.
They only want to see people as all good or all bad.
They refuse to instead look at the whole picture, the good and the bad.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Now beat it, before I get Cambodian on your asses!
I've seen the files.
Disbelieve if you like, I don't care, all the people who matter
with the exception of the children of those involved are gone.
As far as this report indicates, Humphrey BELIEVED he put his nation's interests before his own. That said, your belief in good and evil is different from his and mine. No two parties will ever agree on what the right thing to do is in every circumstance, but I would trade what we have now for good intentions.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
+1 Malevolently Insightful
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
But if this evidence had been made public, even after the election, it might have pressured Nixon to pursue peace rather than escalation in Vietnam.
And, as the article discusses, he was trying to pull them out before the worst of the pointless bloodshed got started.
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
...is (I suspect deliberately) misleading.
The electoral vote was 301-191-46...not really even close.
The subsequent election in 1972 for Nixon was (I believe) the greatest electoral landslide in US history - 520:17 for Nixon, which would suggest it was a pretty strong confirmation of the 1968 results.
The difference between Nixon and Humphrey 1968 was 110 electoral votes, not significantly less than the 126 between Obama/Romney in 2012, and that's considered a pretty clear mandate for Obama.
-Styopa
no need to steep that low.
To steep at all he'd need to have been supported by the Tea Party.
I am officially gone from
And you're probably okay with Obama bombing citizens under NDAA.
In other words, unless you're going to apply your logic to both (D) and (R) equally, then it doesn't matter. Both parties are criminal enterprises.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
No, I'd quite like to see Obama hanged as well.
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Framed differently: The democrat knew the republican was up to no good, but went along with it due to cowardice, stupidity, or because he actually wanted the same thing. You say that's surprising?
Not just a serial killer!
Why is everyone only focusing on his crimes and not on his love or how he was a capable businessman?
Compared to say... Richard Nixon, he is barely guilty of anything!
And he even dressed up like a clown to entertain sick children!
Won't somebody please think of the children!?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
In the US we have a pretty good history of not hanging outgoing politicians for controversial political decisions they made while in office. This is one of the reasons that our politicians are so very willing to leave office. You will notice that there are various regimes in the world where outgoing leadership turns into political prisoners or are executed... you may also notice that the leadership in those parts tends to do rather oppressive things to cling to power: e.g. when people protested Hugo Chavez he brought out snipers.
Western democracies have prosecuted a variety of people for war crimes, but it doesn't take a flaming Republican to notice that there were a variety of very important qualitative differences between the likes of Adolf Hitler's gang and GWBush's...
I contend that your proposed alternative is significantly uglier than the current situation.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
How is bringing a war criminal to justice "stooping low"?
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Yes, yes I would.
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No, we're not. As Mark Twain has famously said:
"Never argue with stupid people. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."
The same goes for trolls.
Yes, Nixon lead the US out of the war....after extended that war for 5 years longer than it should have gone on for.
Way to go, Dick.
Actually, you should get a clue. or even better, some facts:
Johnson escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War, from 16,000 American advisors/soldiers in 1963 to 550,000 combat troops in early 1968, as American casualties soared and the peace process bogged down.
Johnson believed in the domino theory.
Johnson was trying to prevent the hawks from gaining power and demanding a total win.
Johnson's plan worked, until it was sabotaged by Nixon illegal and treasonous act..
we can discuss the impact and weather or not the Domino theory is correct., but if you believe in the domino theory, then Johnson's actions were the smart actions.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
are you kidding me, that's an awesome card game...twice.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Really? "Let us get away with war crimes or we'll go all Chavez on you" That's the best excuse you have? Is the rule of law simply not an option?
Changing presidents in the US is not regime change. We have the same constitution and the same body of laws. The military swears to defend the constitution against foreign and domestic enemies. And a treasonous president trying to illegally hold on to power is a domestic enemy. If we as a country were sensible to hold presidents accountable when they commit treason, we'd also have a military that is sensible enough to know that their allegiance is to the constitution and the rule of law, and not the president and the rule of man.
Is Bush Hitler? No. But he still has more blood on his hands than any free man should. He deserves to hang for his crimes.
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Hopefully Obama would have acted differently after Bush got hanged and if not then he deserves the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
when people protested Hugo Chavez he brought out snipers.
People are still repeating this trash? It was debunked the day after it was first broadcast by the Venezuelan media conglomerates (such as Univision, which backed the actual coup attempt both financially and politically). The only people shot at that protest were the counter-protesters who backed Chavez, none of them hit by rifle fire, just pistol rounds (probably from the bodyguards of the wealthy protesters). FWIW, Univision (based in Caracas) is the Fox News of Latin America.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Kissinger is still around. If anyone in the modern world should be hung for genocide it would be him.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
seems to be history revisionism to suit the current left-vs-right politics of today
Johnson had no qualms with escalating the war in viet nam for all the wrong reasons. He had blood on his hands. So did Kennedy.
Sending thousands of Americans to die in a pointless war and causing hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths in the process is orders of magnitude worse than murdering a few.
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it would be like today, when they all air eachothers dirty laundry, but we would have gotten to seen it all, instead of thinking they were all great people, and blew the cover off the guilden age, and shattered many myths about post-war America
a.k.a. Nixon had worse stuff on the democrats
Worse than treason? If Nixon was ready to screw up a peace deal, if he'd had anything on the Democrats, he would have used it. Nixon sent the plumbers to Watergate to dig up dirt on the Democrats in 72.
Putting pure politicians in charge of military decisions (or anything in need of objective reality) is a problem.
Yeah, we should leave diplomacy to the generals.
No, those of you who think I'm being a partisan hack by singling out the worst war criminal of our time are being knee jerk partisan hacks. Obama has done many bad things, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, violating the war powers act, etc. But none of those come close to causing hundreds of thousands of innocent people to die so your cronies get lucrative war contracts. Obama is a common criminal, Bush is directly responsible for more American deaths than Bin Laden. Get some perspective.
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First off, this tape is old news, it was released years ago, no idea why it's now getting traction. Secondly, in the conversation (IIRC, it was with Everett Dirkson, but might be wrong, haven't heard it for 6 months or so), Johnson states that he is reluctant to release the tape as he is afraid of how the country will react, given the shitstorm we were already living with, but you can hear that he is really pissed and feeling hamstrung. I was never a fan of either of them, but I think he should have released the tape and fuck the consequences. I suggest you listen to the tape before stating that he was stupid, a coward or hoping to sabotage the peace talks his administration had set in motion. Just my opinion.
"Life is not magic." Dr. Ron Weiss - "If we don't play God, who will?" Dr. James Watson
Hear that? That's the "whoosh" of a pun soaring just over your head. I'd say you probably get that a lot. "Some things are just too serious to joke about", right?
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
I have to respond to this as it is the most iditiotic and obnoxious uses of the "argument from hypocrisy" that I have seen.
What is the "argument from hypocrisy"? Well, its my name for what is really a sort of ad hominem, specifically the constant calling of "hypocrite!" to every single political argument I see. If you support the criminal acts commited by Nixon, Bush, or Cheney (this appeal is for everyone, and not just the piece of shit AC I'm responding to) please make your best case why this so. Instead we get personal attacks, and unrelated issues wielded like weapons. Instead, we get conversations like the above:
A: It was bad when Richard Nixon dishonestly prolonged a war for personal gain.
B: So you're against bad things, eh? Well, I had a bad egg sandwich this morning, and yet you say nothing about this. Funny, isn't it? You hypocrite!
Now we have a post P that criticizes GP, and calls him a hyporcrite for omitting a totally different and unrelated opinion, which he even responded to with agreement. Actually, come to think of it maybe this was the plan. Any actual discussion of this crime against humanity is basically impossible now as this comments section has been totally poisoned.
The map is not the territory.
Most people in this discussion seem to forget two things: First, the '68 election was one of the ugliest and bitterest of the 20th century.* Second *Humphrey believed he was winning". (And he very nearly did.)
Releasing this information under those circumstances would have been seen as pouring gasoline on the fire, when there was no need to do so, leading to further division and dissension within the country at a time when it could ill afford it.
* Consider that the campaign had already been marked by Robert Kennedy's assassination, Martin Luther King's assassination, the Tet offensive, widespread violence and protests over racial issues and the war...
There's a very important reason for caution when prosecuting former executives and political adversaries post-election. It sets a precedent for a pattern of payback trials after every President loses an election or a candidate loses in an ugly campaign. We've seen this happen in other countries and the apparent detente between the parties says "no going after the guy who just left office." Unfortunately, a lot of criminals get to walk because of it. In the case of Nixon, he almost got to completely rehabilitate his public image before he died.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
In the US we have a pretty good history of not hanging outgoing politicians for controversial political decisions they made while in office.
...
I contend that your proposed alternative is significantly uglier than the current situation.
I contend that you're wrong to conflate war crimes and treason with "controversial political decisions."
Almost everything that was done to US prisoners, the USA has seen prosecuted as a war crime in earlier wars.
Western democracies have prosecuted a variety of people for war crimes, but it doesn't take a flaming Republican to notice that there were a variety of very important qualitative differences between the likes of Adolf Hitler's gang and GWBush's...
Please explain to us the qualitative differences between full-Hitler and the CIA black sites + Guantanamo.
Because really, I suspect you're arguing about quantity not quality.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Damn, where's the option to moderate Naive
+1
--fatboy
I meant Humphrey.
But if this evidence had been made public, even after the election, it might have pressured Nixon to pursue peace rather than escalation in Vietnam.
Those are a couple really big "if"s and "might"s you've got there. After Nixon became president, thanks to the aforementioned protections included with the package and the perception of elections, it's far more likely that evidence and revelations being made public during his term would've been ignored as a bad case of sour grapes on the part of LBJ, if not silenced entirely by Nixon's cronies with newfound executive powers.
And hang Bill Clinton right next to him. He was quite happy to send missiles to kill brown people in the 90ies.
Coming to think of it: the only president that doesn't need hanging was Jimmy Carter.
20 minutes into the future
Kissinger is still around.
It is unlikely Kissinger was involved in this. In the 1968 presidential campaign, Kissinger was a supporter and adviser for Nelson Rockefeller. He only went to work for Nixon after the election.
Then you need to state that in your original statement in order to have any credibility. Otherwise, you just come off as a knee jerk partisan hack.
Hatta remarked on a few of our most prominent national war criminals. The fact that they're all Republican wasn't anywhere in his post; nor was it relevant. Turn off "fair" and "balanced" reporting (which includes virtually all network news, I feel compelled to add) and try to understand that some things in this world are simply true, and all the spin and fake balance in the world won't change that.
"Opinions differ on shape of World" type reporting is the death of reason and understanding.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
At the time I didn't care for Carter. he botched a few things.
Here and now, we would be lucky to have someone of his character.
The only upside is that Nixon was really saying the same thing publically and privately. "I can win this war, vote for me." Of course he was badly and tragically mistaken, but he really thought he could bomb his way to victory.
Not that unlike the Iraq war in a way.
Paradoxically, the Iran Contra affair was at least more effective in the case of Iran. But then our only intent at the time was to prolong an existing war. That is much easier to do, though inhumane.
There's always Rumsfeld.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
At least, those of us in The Movement did. Mainstream, oh, no, they're just cranks and crazies, no, no, can't happen here, that someone would commit treason to become ruler.
Now, for extra points, what about the report from the released KGB files from 10 or so years ago, that they had an agent IN THE ROOM when George HW Bush, before he and Reagan were elected in '80, offering Khomeini & co arms for hostages - the missles and weapons for them not relesing the embassy hostages until after the elections - wasn't that also treason?
We won't even *start* on Cheney outing Valerie Plame.
mark "the Republicans? Treason in pursuit of power isn't treason?"
The avoidance of short-term turmoil by avoiding accountability for gross misdeeds by the powerful is a recurring trend that encourages overreach and abuse by politicians (both candidates and officeholders), and is in no way "for the good of the country", though that's the excuse that members of the club of the super-powerful use (perhaps even to themselves) to justify not holding other members of that club accountable.
And it hardly takes specific hindsight to recognize that not holding traitors accountable encourages treason.
Clinton did that because his generals enforcing the post Desert Storm sanctions DEMANDED the attacks. And started calling him "dereliction of duty" for not bombing more things.
The main conflict Clinton got us in was UN approved actions to stop several civil wars where people were murdering their neighbors women and children in the streets after Communism broke down. That's hardly "warmongering" which is why the GOP hated it so much.
Even the Monica Lewinsky thing was an unprecedented PERSONAL lawsuit against a sitting President. Prior to Clinton such a thing was unheard of... With Carter, Clinton, and now Obama, the GOP (and followers).keep taking "equivelant" stands... But these aren't equivelant to the things Nixon, Regan, Bush 2... Pulled violating laws put in place on the PRESIDENTS DUTIES.
As for the "bombing Americans" argument, that's the military staffers Bush put in place screwing their boss over with "leaks". Cheney taught them how to do it, and Obama doesn't have the balls to start executing generals for lose lips... Like Bush did to Ambasadors and RETIRED Generals that merely DISAGREED with him.
There's also a very important reason for caution when not prosecuting former executives and political adversaries -- it sets a precedent for a lack of accountability which encourages future abuses by people in similar positions.
I would suggest that the reason that people in positions of power are more likely to cite the grounds for caution you refer to is that they are the beneficiaries of the precedent that favoring that caution over the countervailing one creates.
If TFA's claims are true, Nixon was clearly breaking the law by acting as a private citizen negotiating with foreign government, just as Carter has done more recently. However, the claim that his actions were treasonous are just plain wrong: treason in the United States consists of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and nothing else qualifies. In case you've forgotten, it was North Vietnam that was the enemy.
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I really would not say that the people are so willing to give up freedoms.
To give some examples: the TSA, the Patriot Act, and free speech zones. Oh, and protesting permits.
For example the idea that when in public there is some mystical right of privacy
When in public, I believe I should be free from mass government surveillance.
Do I like cams that blanket my block to keep people from trying to steal my lawn mower? Hell yes.
Since you talked about cameras being placed all over your block, I can only assume you mean cameras owned by the government. This says to me that you enjoy mass surveillance. I hope you don't claim to be for small government (we have too many of those small-government-but-not-really comedians as it is, in my opinion), or claim that your goal is to have a free country.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
You might think differently when your sister comes to visit while your wife is away and you get accused of committing adultery.
Sure, it's easy enough to demonstrate the charge is bogus, but who's going to notice that?
Or better yet, your enemy sends strippers to your house and releases the video of them arriving (and of course leaving out the part where you chase them off).
The "I've got nothing to hide" argument doesn't carry much weight when giving people power they can easily abuse.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
It was LBJ who said it was "treason". I assume he knew the definition.
First definitions I found:
noun: a crime that undermines the offender's government
noun: disloyalty by virtue of subversive behavior
noun: an act of deliberate betrayal
Satisfies those. Maybe not in US law, but this a a description of the acts, not a legal brief.
Multiyear nationwide persecution, enslavement, torture, and murder of millions of Jews. I'm not letting you get away with the qualifier "qualitative".
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More or less.
I've always liked your sig.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
And why might Johnson have been afraid to release the tape? Queries into why people associated with Nixon were being wiretapped? Remember, that's the sort of misbehavior that eventually forced Nixon to leave office.
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president we've ever had.
I did not say I wanted to kill the president. I said it would be justice if the president were lawfully tried and executed for treason. If the Secret Service wants to pay me a visit for that, I would be more than happy to serve them tea.
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But Nixon did go to China.
So now soldiers are directly responsible for the deaths they cause in an illegal war? Don't you support our troops? Every time I try to make the argument that the troops are personally responsible for engaging in illegal wars, I get told that they are only doing their job, and it's the civilian leadership that is responsible. Which is it?
Blaming the troops is a lot like blaming the gun. Armies don't kill people, politicians kill people. The troops themselves are responsible for reducing themselves to "small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power". But it's the unscrupulous man who is responsible for what is done with the weapon. Bush pulled the trigger on the Iraq war, he is responsible for the consequences.
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Except: both those things can be true. LBJ escalated Vietnam from a proxy war into a major conflict that killed 60,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese....AND Nixon could have could have sabotaged peace talks to win an election.
There is no dichotomy.
It's like having to tell the Obots who want to credit Obama with ending the Iraq war that the withdrawal actually went according to the SOFA negotiated by Bush. Bush started the Iraq war based on lies, but he also ended the main occupation. Both of those things can be true.
So, you want to execute most, if not every, American head of state over the last 50 years*.
Well, you should note his original post also said "Allowing our leaders to get away with war crimes only ensures future war crimes." So it can be reasonably argued that as soon as we tolerated one President's war crimes, it would be expected that his successors would be emboldened to (and perhaps even be *expected* to) commit further war crimes.
If you want to argue that Hatta's definition of "war crimes" is flawed, fine. But if you do accept the actions he cites as war crimes, and that execution is the just punishment for said crimes, then to try to paint the idea that most recent Presidents would so qualify as ipso facto absurd is merely genuflecting to authority, nothing more.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
This is the current climate, a kindergartener would be embarrassed to admit this as a thought process:
"Our spending went up 30% in two years. We should cut back a paltry 5% of that."
"WHY DO YOU WANT TO MURDER OLD PEOPLE AND BABIES WITH DRACONIAN CUTS!?!?!?"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Carter sold weapons to Indonesia while they were committing genocide in East Timor. Carter is complicit in the deaths of over 200,000 people, or a third of all Timorese.
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So, you want to execute most, if not every, American head of state over the last 50 years*. You're a big fan of "peace" and "social justice" then? Maybe it's best that you don't have a say.
Yes, I'm in favor of executing most, if not every, American head of state over the last 50 years. And if I got my way, I'd still have less blood on my hands than any one of those presidents.
You don't address Reagan here, but I seem to recall you aren't a "fan," so I trust it would be, "Off with this head!" That leaves Jimmy Carter. Will you be taking his head as well... if only to complete the set? Collect them all?
Yes, Reagan made an arms deal with the Iranians. Giving aid and comfort to our enemies is the Constitutional definition of treason. Carter sold the arms that killed 200,000 East Timorese. That's not treason, but I can't see how supplying arms to a genocide isn't a war crime.
The fact that we never hold our leaders responsible for their crimes means that every president has no reason not to commit crimes. So they do. All of them. Start holding them accountable, and this will change.
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That and treason is the one crime the constitution defines; and it carries with it unusually high hurtles for conviction; two witnesses to an overt act or a confession in open court.
From the sounds of things it does not look like they have that here.
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Interestingly, Madam Chennault was observed on the grounds of the Chestnut Lodge Sanitarium (a highly expensive and private mental health clinic/hospital for schizophrenics in Rockville, Maryland, USA).
That was the same sanitarium where the CIA had their private wing used for their MK ULTRA program. Whether Ms. Chennault was there for mental health reasons, or having to do with MK ULTRA, isn't known.
The economic argument has only gained popularity in the last 25 years. People have been pointing out that communism is economically defective for a century, but the idea that a hot war was an deliberate economic policy is both new and silly.
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Except as you point out Obama violated the war powers act, Bush did not. Bush went to war with a legal authorization from an elected congress; and as far as anyone can prove he believed the intelligence the administration provided them.
So yes you are the partisan hack because you are the guy ignoring the facts. Now were the CIA black sites, extraordinary renditions, gitmo detentions, enhanced interrogations etc started under Bush criminal. I certainly hope so; and regard it as importunity Congress and the Senate are to corrupt or to spineless to find out.
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FWIW, Univision (based in Caracas) is the Fox News of Latin America.
Where do you get your information?
There are a few Venezuelan media companies, but Univision is a USA based network (in Nueva/New York, I think) that does not broadcast in Venezuela.
The only network that (historically) broadcasts in Venezula that seems to fit your imagination is the RCTV (the network that Chavez seized, and turned over to a state run media company). The other big networks in Venezuela that might fit your imagination would be either Venevision or Televen, which both were in the pocket of Mr Chavez after the RCTV was shutdown. There is another network Globovision which had been traditionally anti-Chavez, but Chavez nationalized a bank that owned 25% of the network and replaced it's board of directors... I'm not sure your politics would admit that at this time Venevision, Televen, or Globovison was fox-news-ish (whatever the hell that means)....
None of those presidents were deliberately acting against U.S. interest (except Nixon). Of course, if you allow yourself the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, Carter also did some things that were highly detrimental to the U.S.'s strategic interests—arming the mujahideen, for example:
Of course, Reagan expanded the program significantly, and Bush cut off funds and failed to take any actions to stabilize Afghanistan after the Soviets left. But Bush's decision not to interfere would not have mattered as much had Carter not interfered in the first place.
Then again, I can't think of any time when the U.S. tried to topple a foreign government that didn't come back to bite it in the you-know-where. One of the primary reasons why so many extremist groups exist in the first place is because the U.S. government helped tear down Iran's democratic government and replaced it with a puppet government under the Shah, which it supported for decades.
I'm not saying that we wouldn't have terrorism if the U.S. had not provided material support to people who would probably be called terrorists today, tried to set up puppet governments in Iran and other places, or allowed Afghanistan to degrade into a horrible state of civil war after the Soviets pulled out, but we'd likely have a lot fewer terrorists, and it is quite clear that the terrorists who did exist would not have as much money and would not be as well armed. If nothing else, these are lessons that future Presidents need to learn.
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No, it was not for the better. Nixon should have been hanged, as should Bush and Cheney be hanged. Allowing our leaders to get away with war crimes only ensures future war crimes.
Oh, shut up, you liberal weenies. Don't you know that war is good for business and business means jobs for you little peop... er, you citizens. Nixon was a hero.
Ah. Screw it. Let's hang them all.
What about senators? Are those allowed to live?
20 minutes into the future
Didn't Obama *increase* military presence in Afghanistan immediately after taking office? After running on a platform promising an end to the War? The same War that is still being fought in his second term?
Obama has as much blood on his hands as Bush does.
"Yeah, we should leave diplomacy to the generals." I wouldn't put nuke heads in charge of diplomacy, but backstabbing politicians not that much better. More like they should have heavy input on actual ground conditions and whether escalation would be ultimately productive.
Hello Cruel World
What "illegal war" are you referring to? If you're referring to anything in relation to the War Powers Act, there's still questions on the table about how constitutional it is for Congress to regulate the President's duties as Commander in Chief. It's never been tested, since no Congress wants to be the ones to test it.
Any reason you tried to get away with dodging the quantitative part of his point?
If you're -1, Moran.
Saying politicians should be held accountable for their actions doesn't mean you think they will be any time soon.
Like every other president involved in the Vietnam fight, Johnson wrongly believed that the effort should be limited. No bombing of supply lines, no attacking North Vietnam cites. The result was many more lives lost.
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None of those presidents were deliberately acting against U.S. interest (except Nixon). Of course, if you allow yourself the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, Carter also did some things that were highly detrimental to the U.S.'s strategic interests—arming the mujahideen, for example:
Of course, Reagan expanded the program significantly, and Bush cut off funds and failed to take any actions to stabilize Afghanistan after the Soviets left. But Bush's decision not to interfere would not have mattered as much had Carter not interfered in the first place.
The funny thing is that France and the UK are currently calling for arming Syrian rebels. We've lost count of Syrian rebel factions and now they start shooting at each other. Exactly what the country needs. More guns. Because they will gladly give them back when they are done with Assad...
And people say history doesn't move in circles...
20 minutes into the future
a.k.a. Nixon had worse stuff on the democrats
Worse than treason? If Nixon was ready to screw up a peace deal, if he'd had anything on the Democrats, he would have used it. Nixon sent the plumbers to Watergate to dig up dirt on the Democrats in 72.
Putting pure politicians in charge of military decisions (or anything in need of objective reality) is a problem.
Yeah, we should leave diplomacy to the generals.
Pure politicians? You mean like State Department officials who compete in elections? Or serve at the President's will and are merely confirmed.
Although I don't doubt there are Generals who would have made fine diplomats, it's something you could probably say about them after the fact. There have been some Generals in Iraq 1&2 with very questionable morale, and the entire DoD. Like the man ordering engagement in the highway of death, Schwarzkoff:
The first reason why we bombed the highway coming north out of Kuwait is because there was a great deal of military equipment on that highway, and I had given orders to all my commanders that I wanted every piece of Iraqi equipment that we possibly could destroy. Secondly, this was not a bunch of innocent people just trying to make their way back across the border to Iraq. This was a bunch of rapists, murderers and thugs who had raped and pillaged downtown Kuwait City and now were trying to get out of the country before they were caught.
Now Iraq was leaving because they knew they were hosed and decided it was time to follow the UNSC resolution. But the General already had passed diplomatic judgement on this retreating army. Since they're leaving extra fast, it is time to kill extra fast!
Thinking which I don't doubt would resonate with the likes of Nixon and Kissinger.
It's called accountability, Slick. The first president to be held accountable for his actions (and not some contrived blue dress witch hunt) will make it far less likely that future presidents would skate the law so brazenly. Letting Nixon get away with his crimes encouraged Reagan to engage in criminal actions, which encouraged the Bushes, Obama, and to a lesser extent Clinton. Just like letting the banks get away with massive financial fraud in 2008 encouraged more fraud through 2012, and today.
So why do you hate the rule of law, fjord?
He gave nothing, he didn't own it in the first place. Before it became a national park, it was the property of individuals or states. To claim that citizens own Yellowstone is a laugh, it is owned by the US government and strictly controlled by it through the Park Service. It would be funny, if not so sad, if you tried to exercise any property rights in this park that you think you are part owner of. If you tried to build a house there, you would be locked up. If you tried to defend your actions on the basis that it's your property, you'd end up in a loony bin.
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No, those of you who think I'm being a partisan hack by singling out the worst war criminal of our time are being knee jerk partisan hacks. Obama has done many bad things, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, violating the war powers act, etc. But none of those come close to causing hundreds of thousands of innocent people to die so your cronies get lucrative war contracts. Obama is a common criminal, Bush is directly responsible for more American deaths than Bin Laden. Get some perspective.
How about the forgotten, still living war criminal who's responsibility for war crimes is pretty ironclad and more brazen than Bush/Cheney and orders of magnitude larger than Obama.
Henry Kissinger. Christopher Hitchens wrote an excellent book called "The Trial of Henry Kissinger". I think it can be found free online and there's a video of it on Netflix.
The one minded indifference to suffering is astounding. I can at least entertain the thought that Bush thinks what he did was right, Cheney probably realizes the truth more, and Kissinger, if he had a conscience wouldn't have slept the past forty years.
But Obama has done one thing Bush could never do: not just take the worst of the Bush Imperial Presidency and make it the "New Normal", but (save for torture) expand it. In that respect, Obama could do more long-term damage to both the U.S. and the world than his predecessor ever did.
The US entry into WWI was a disaster. It caused a war that would have probably ended in a draw to become a blowout with severe, punitive and vindictive penalties for the loser. Those penalties were a large part of the ultimate causes of WWII.
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It's that kind of garbage that had the NY Times covering up warrantless wiretapping for the 2004 election.
As is usually the case, this "for the good of the country" crap has, in reality, only harmed us.
Didn't Seymour Hersh blow the lid off this in his book The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House? http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=hersh&sts=t&tn=power
you had me at #!
By your logic, bin Laden was only "indirectly" responsible for the September 11th attacks, and claiming bin Laden was "directly" responsible "is just wrong".
Again, LBJ, and anyone else commenting, were not speaking as prosecuting attorneys. Just because the US constitution defines treason doesn't mean we all have to use that, and only that, definition. If Nixon took deliberate action that prolonged a war unnecessarily, costing many thousands of lives of his countrymen, that's good enough for me.
Let me give you some advice on how to make your posts show up to people who aren't browsing at -1.
Create an account and log in. A lot of people don't give a flying fuck what any AC has to say. If you think that your posts are worthwhile then associate your name to them, or at least a screen name.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The Iraq war.
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I first read this days ago. I have a thought: why not finish the impeachment and prosecutorial jobs we should have started with a few still-living warmongers rather than raging over the spilled milk of a dead one?
Bush is still alive and can still be impeached and indicted. Dennis Kucinich and others in Congress tried to begin the process and failed. Guess what stood in the way? Eric Holder, primarily.
In this context, the definition of "directly" that you are implying is useless. E.g., was it the solider, rifle, bullet, the disruption of basic neural function due to the brain being massively traumatized, the cessation of cardio-pulmonary activity, or the resulting cascade failure of metabolic pathways that "directly" caused the enemy combatant to die when shot in the head?
In this context, a political leader is 'directly' responsible for the consequences of a decision when those consequences were reasonably foreseeable without the benefit of hindsight. Every decision has tradeoffs, so it is expected that a political leader has weighed those tradeoffs and decided that the foreseeable positive/desirable consequences outweigh the foreseeable negative/undesirable consequences such that the tradeoff is acceptable and he/she is willing to accept responsibility for the outcome (i.e., both positive and negative consequences).
On the other hand, a political leader is 'indirectly' responsible for those consequences of decisions which were not reasonably foreseeable due to the limits of the knowledge available to them at the time. This acknowledgement does not and should not, however, always absolve the leader of any accountability related to indirect consequences.
To argue that Bush was not 'directly' responsible for American deaths you have to argue that American deaths were not a foreseeable consequence of going to war. That deaths are a foreseeable and well-understood consequence of war does not, of course, automatically mean that going to war was a bad decision. To make that judgment requires that you decide whether or not the positive consequences of the war outweigh the negative consequences (such as dead American soldiers). To paraphrase one of my old JROTC instructors, a politician should only decide to go to war if, on the 10,000th time he does so, he can still fold up that flag, look that kid's mother in the eye as he hands it over, and still believe that it was worth it. FDR and Churchill would have been able to--and history would agree with them. Would Bush have been able to do the same? I personally do not have an answer to that question, but that is the bar that should be set.
Besides extending the Vietnam war, Dick also kicked the War on Drugs into high gear, and cut the dollar loose from its last ties to gold, setting off the stagflation of the 1970s.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
No bombing of supply lines, no attacking North Vietnam cites.
Huh? What about the bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail and Hanoi?
Good point. Let's get rid of public parks.
Um, you do know that Yellowstone became a park during the Grant administration, right?
So impeachment exists only for very important things like sex with the unpaid summer intern. So treason doesn't qualifies then.
Eh, the word "treason" gets tossed around a lot these days, in the continually escalating shouting match between self-righteous ideologues that is present day politics.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Turmoil is a natural healthy part of democracy (which the US still was back then), especially during elections.
NOTE carefully how the original post talks about a few thousand American lives. Not the millions of asian lives. Americans are mostly amazingly hardcore racists and bigots. Note the similarity of scenes in Shindlers List and Apocalypse Now and the viewing by Americans of the callous killing of a young unarmed woman. One movie is obviously a drama, the other a piece of entertainment. Because in American eyes, other races... well... anyone not-American doesn't matter.
Nixon has always been filth, everyone knew this and that so many still support him just goes to show that America never really emerged from its segregation past.
Queue half a decade from now Bush being exposed the same way. And still the Republicans will continue not to be hanged for anything.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What's illegal about it? Congress may not have approved it, which technically makes it a "Conflict", but last I checked they haven't tried to force a withdrawal by invoking the War Powers Act (which, as I said, may or may not be a Constitutional action).
Or is it illegal because you don't like it or agree with it?
Please clarify...
Makes it sound like Nixon wanted to escalate war whilst offering a good (future) peace deal. Why on earth would a US presidential candidate want to escalate war, one only does these things out of absolute necessity, right!? There must have been stuff he didn't know before he was sworn in that made him renege on his offer.
We were not at war with Iran, so it wasnt treason, though Congress certainly should have kept him on a tighter leash. Simply selling arms to someone is not a war crime, although there were plenty of crimes committed in reference to East Timor and Carter may well have committed some of them. By comparison these criminals appear to be lesser lights and far from equals to Bush and Obomber. I basically agree with the rest of your message though.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Sure, in general, consequences can never be predicted. You can always conjure up bogeymen of what would and would not have happened, and pretend that the disaster in Cambodia was an entirely unpredictable consequence of "bombing it into the stone age". Therefore we should defend our leaders no matter what.
Is that what you're suggesting? Sounds like it.
I say give truth a chance, and quit defending people who cover up (even for their political opponents!) for "our own good".
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
I'm not saying that we wouldn't have terrorism if the U.S. had not provided material support to people who would probably be called terrorists today, tried to set up puppet governments in Iran and other places, or allowed Afghanistan to degrade into a horrible state of civil war after the Soviets pulled out, but we'd likely have a lot fewer terrorists, and it is quite clear that the terrorists who did exist would not have as much money and would not be as well armed. If nothing else, these are lessons that future Presidents need to learn.
I think the situation in Syria today has proven that our leaders are keenly aware of the past mistakes in arming an uprising against our enemies.
In a sense, he's correct. People like Bush and Bin Laden, and even Hitler, only have power by the legitimacy given them by their supporters. If we all decide to obey the crazy guy living in the alley behind my office building, and he orders us to carpet bomb, say, New Zealand, does that make him responsible for the resulting devastation? Just food for thought.
I first read this days ago. I have a thought: why not finish the impeachment and prosecutorial jobs we should have started with a few still-living warmongers rather than raging over the spilled milk of a dead one?
Bush is still alive and can still be impeached and indicted. Dennis Kucinich and others in Congress - and millions of American citizens - tried to begin the process and failed. Guess what stood in the way? Eric Holder, primarily. You should recognize the name of that obstructionist stick-in-the-mud from other news.
The US has ratified the UN charter which prohibits preemptive war. According to Article VI of the Constitution:
Violating a treaty is as illegal as violating an act of congress.
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Guns don't kill people. People kill people. Now that we all have guns, we have peace.
Bush went to war with a legal authorization from an elected congress
Preemptive war is illegal under the UN Charter, which as a properly ratified treaty, is supreme law of the land according to Article VI of the Constitution.
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If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin
Giap has been on the record multiple times that his strategy was to wear out the Americans with one offensive after another. The next offensive was the Easter offensive in 1974.
Yes Giap did say that, but do you call another offensive six years later implementing "one offensive after another"? Entire wars have been concluded in less time than that "pause". The VC and the NVA were so devastated that they dared not launch another major offensive for six years.
I did err in attributing to Giap what I did. I must have had him confused with another NV (perhaps Le Duan). Nevertheless the gist of interval NV politics remains the same. The Tet offensive had been pushed by the militant faction, but it was such a military disaster for NV that they lost power. They were replaced by the moderates who emphasized guerrilla tactics and advocated negotiations.
You also seem to forget that LBJ himself concluded the war was lost when Walter Conkrite came out against the war during the Tet Offensive.
What LBJ said after the Cronkite broadcast was "if I have lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America". That is a political problem but hardly the same as having "concluded the war was lost". It also meant that the American people would have been more willing to accept whatever peace terms we could have gotten.
What you're overlooking is that the Tet offensive was a problem for both sides. For NV it was a clear military loss. In the US it meant most Americans no longer bought the official line that victory was near. As such it's entirely possible that both sides would have been more likely to come to a peace accord.
Michael Moore made more on his movie Fahrenheit 911 in the year it was released than Halliburton made in the same year on Iraqi contracts.
So Haliburton's stock going from $10 to over $40 today had nothing to do with it?
There is no basis for such a claim other than "I think W is evil".
Sounds a lot like the justification for the Iraq war, just s/W/Saddam/
Iraq is better off today than it was 10 years ago. The people are wealthier, live in a more stable society, and have far less violence. Chicago is actually a much more dangerous city than Baghdad, and it's less than 1/3 of the size. Try to refute these simple facts if you can.
And all it took was a few hundred thousand dead. Still doesn't make the Iraq war legal.
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the grownups find your little temper tantrums so cute.
It was authorized by Congress so, by your logic, every member of Congress in 2002 should be held responsible along with former President Bush. It's as much their violation of law as it is his (IF the war is in fact illegal as you have been asserting).
Although there may have been some small inholdings before Yellowstone became a park the land was already owned by the government. High altitude remote land like that had no economic value except for some fir trapping at the time.
Make that fur trapping.
That's a fair point, but I doubt the parent poster would then argue that prosecuting Bush is wrong and prosecuting or otherwise pursuing bin Laden is equally wrong.
I find it gleefully ironic considering your username. You seem to have realized this though so in that case, KEEP REEDING (weave me a basket while you're at it!)
I enjoy most of your posts. Carry on!
reagan also committed treason. He did the October surprise with Iran and then worked quietly helping the Iran Mullahs control and own the Iranian ppl.
Neo-cons and conservative republicans. Just about as bad as it gets.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Although I don't doubt there are Generals who would have made fine diplomats,
I was being ironic. But yes, some generals are less bloodthirsty than some politicians. But as w hole, look at countries like Burma and various Latin American dictatorships to see how military leaders fare. Not well.
Fixed that for you.
It's actually rather scary that our last two Presidential elections both saved us from what would likely have been one the worst foreign policy mistakes in U.S. history. Romney, McCain, and Hilary Clinton all support arming the Syrian rebels. I may not always agree with Obama (heck, I usually don't agree with him), but on this issue, we dodged a bullet the size of a freight train by electing who we did. Just saying.
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Theory is not a dirty word. An idea can be both theory and fact, it just means it is unproven. A conspiracy theory is a theory about a conspiracy. There is nothing wrong with theories about conspiracy. Nixon was also partly responsible for the massive stigma that is currently attached to the word. I am a conspiracy theorist, although only as a hobbyist. All good police detectives are also conspiracy theorists, they do this professionally. Most politicians are required to do some theorising about conspiracies from time to time. Conspiracy theorist is not an insult, and by avoiding the term you are merely playing into the hands of those who work hard to keep the term stigmatised, by re-framing the debate as though thinking about conspiracies makes you insane.
The reality is, if you don't believe in conspiracies you are insane.
"In the US we have a pretty good history of not hanging outgoing politicians for controversial political decisions they made while in office. This is one of the reasons that our politicians are so very willing to leave office."
If leaders can learn at a dog-like level that if they can leave office they wont be punished, they're also capable of learning that if they do nothing illegal in office, they can leave office without being punished, and hence shouldn't do anything illegal like starting illegal wars for example.
Either leaders can come to logical conclusions or they can't, you can't argue that they have the intelligence to recognise that it's okay to leave office because they're allowed to without fear of prosecution, but not intelligent enough to recognise that the only reason they'd be prosecuted in the first place is because they'd done something illegal
Treason is the only crime spelled out in the US Constitution. It has an exact definition, exact requirements, and limits to the punishment allow. The writers wanted to make sure that there would no "son of a traitor" punishment for people found guilty of crimes against the Crown. You can't be found guilty of treason for being a "subversive", or for hating your government, or for speaking against it, etc. If you could there would have been a lot of traitors during the Vietnam War and, regardless of your opinion of the "righteousness" of the actions and motives of those in the anti-war movement, they weren't "traitors".
Section 3: Treason
Clinton did that because his generals enforcing the post Desert Storm sanctions DEMANDED the attacks. And started calling him "dereliction of duty" for not bombing more things.
He's still the head of the executive. He could have told them to FOAD.
The main conflict Clinton got us in was UN approved actions to stop several civil wars where people were murdering their neighbors women and children in the streets after Communism broke down. That's hardly "warmongering" which is why the GOP hated it so much.
UN 1244 did not authorize a military operation against Serbia. It most certainly didn't authorize bombing TV centers, embassies and trains.
Yes, I'd agree with that. The ICC should try all of them.
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They started to hate the U.S. for supporting and prolonging the war but not helping build their country back up afterwards.
They started to hate US long before that, actually. Remember that mujahideen were an Islamic insurgency movement from the get go (mujahideen is a plural of mujahidun, which literally means "person waging jihad"), and their opposition to the DRA government (and, by extension, the Soviets that were supporting it) was largely rooted in religion - DRA, like many socialist governments, was avowedly secular, and was rather aggressively pushing secular values onto a deeply conservative and religious Afghan society. What this meant in practice were things like mixed gender schools, or male gynecologists. The other half of it was the land reform that PDPA has implemented, and that wasn't religious - but things like freedom and democracy never played into that equation.
So mujahideen never had any particular reason to like US "infidels" other than military aid. And because they were curated on the ground mostly by Pakistani ISI, with CIA providing general oversight, ISI agents could (and did) covertly stir up anti-American sentiment from the get go.
That it'll take 35 years for people to be made aware of.
While everybody's busy worrying about mostly irrelevant bullshit.
Excuse me, but it was Johnson who escalated the war, raising troop levels from around 20,000 when he took office to over 500,000 when he left.
Nixon did not escalate the war. He simply changed the commander in charge -- out with Westmoreland and in with Creighton Abrams -- and changed the strategy to one that actually worked.
When the peace treaty was signed in Paris in 1973, it was the result of military victory by the US and South Vietnam. Defeat by the North Vietnamese came later, after Senate Democrats cut off aid to South Vietnam. It was those Democrats who were really the ones guilty of treason, since we're throwing around that term.
If you're going to prosecute private citizens for negotiating with foreign governments, then don't forget to indict Jimmy Carter for meddling with North Korea during the Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama administrations.
You might also find something to charge Jay Rockefeller with, when he advised Syrian president Hafez Assad (father of current dictator) to warn Saddam Hussein that Bush was serious about regime change and that he should get ready for war. That was in early 2002, so Rockefeller was giving more than a year's advance warning to an enemy.
The Constitution specifies that there must be at least two witnesses to a treasonous action.
A wiretapped phone call from Anne Chennault to Bui Diem is hardly evidence against Richard Nixon.
Especially when that phone call allegedly took place on November 2 1968, three days before the election. It could hardly have changed the outcome of the peace negotiations, as had the call not been made there still would not have been an agreement before the election.
Yeah, but he guessed wrong and made the problem worse. His intentions were more noble than anyone else's, but his actions were just as bad as the worst of anyone else. "If the Democrats won, it wouldn't matter" but they didn't. Nixon got to escalate the war until his next treason was uncovered (if you consider deliberate sabotage of the democratic process to be material aid to our enemies, which I think is true enough).
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Sabotaging peace talks materially helps the enemy (North Vietnam) to kill Americans and work against US interests. Nothing else need qualify. He deliberately harmed the South Vietnamese to prolong the killing of Americans (treason) for his political gain.
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Now Iraq was leaving because they knew they were hosed and decided it was time to follow the UNSC resolution. But the General already had passed diplomatic judgement on this retreating army. Since they're leaving extra fast, it is time to kill extra fast!
When the opposition "allows" you to declare war, then, when you call their bluff by attacking, starts retreating, does that undo your start of war? No, if they wanted to live, they should have surrendered. Running is a strategic maneuver that proceeds most all counter-offensives. When you have the advantage in war, you don't stop to ask why, you press on, because, until they surrender, they are enemy combatants.
It's his fault that the defeated army refused to surrender, and instead prepared for a counter-attack?
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I think part of the point is that if we had hanged Nixon in 1969 (from the side of an Atlas rocket sounds like fun), and Bush/Cheney/Rove more recently, then Obama wouldn't have done what he did. He knows he's safe because others have done worse before. That's not an excuse, it's a reality. Maybe if Nixon was hanged, Cheney wouldn't have run, and thus wouldn't have pushed Bush as hard to invade. A sane VP would have prevented it. Bush wanted to invade as revenge for daddy losing a second term (only the second time since Hoover a sitting president lost a re-election bid, IIRC). Cheney didn't mind because it gave his buddies trillions.
Obama may or may not deserve a hanging, but it seems "convenient" that so many think it an issue now, when the same people were apologetic for Bush lying to start a war. Much like there was a massive stink about Obama being eligible to run, when Bush and Cheney were both Texans, making the Bush/Cheney ticket Constituionally invalid, but Cheney changed his residency to a place he didn't live, when H. Clinton did the same thing for the Senate and was bashed for years for it in the "liberal" media, at least until Cheney did the same thing because he was ineligible to run for VP.
It seems very one-sided how the problems aren't an issue until it's a Democrat doing them, then it's the worst, most unconstitutional thing ever done.
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Bush's administration knew at least some of the intelligence they had was false when the specific intelligence was given by the administration as a reason to go to war. Whether GHW Bush was directly lying can't be know. He might have been handled so well he thought he was telling the truth. But "the administration" knew lies were being told to Congress and the public to get the war declared. That's sufficient in my book to consider it an "illegal" war. The illegal act of fraud was used to get the permission to start it.
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Is the rule of law simply not an option?
Not any more. Equal protection would seem to indicate that enforcing the law differently is unfair and illegal. Since the rule of law hasn't been applied since the 1940s or so (unless you can point me to someone tried in the US for the Japanese-American concentration camps), and has been getting worse since then. How do you start living by rule of law, when it's been ignored for 100 years or so?
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And the US (not Bush) had concentration camps for US citizens of Japanese decent in WWII. Was anyone ever held accountable for setting up concentration camps? They since renamed them, after the horrors of the German camps were discovered, but they were called concentration camps at the time.
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Eisenhower started Vietnam. He sent the first Americans to their deaths there, and blocked democratic elections when the polls showed an unfavorable outcome. The Democrat's "sin" was to not immediately surrender in all military conflicts and recall all troops. They don't start them, but they get in trouble for continuing what was started by a Republican.
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If you are unsure, open up the information and let the people decide. He hid treason so that Nixon could break the law again in 1972, with something that didn't kill as many people, but was more directly damaging to the American people.
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Nixon was forced to leave office because he illegally interfered with a federal investigation. If he had just said "I had no foreknowledge of anything" and released the deleted 15 1/2 minutes of tape, he'd have stayed in office. Instead, he mostly protected some bad guys, and was then protected by Ford. Though it wasn't a bad thing. We wouldn't have left Vietnam without a win, unless the president doing so was certain he wouldn't go down in history for being the first Commander in Chief to lose a war. So starting the motions to get us out, and having the only non-elected President quickly pardon him, the withdrawal was not nearly as notable in history.
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Oh, the guy who started it was John F Kennedy, another DEMOCRAT.
Eisenhower sent the first US serviceman to his death in Vietnam, and Eisenhower sabotaged the democratic elections because the polls showed the wrong person winning. Where do people get their history from these days, Texas-approved Republican History books?
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[Truman] started the cold war with Russia.
Maybe the fact that the Americans supported the white army to take on the reds, then pulled out, publicly supporting the whites (pissing of the reds) and abandoning the whites when it came to promised action (pissing off everyone else) helped turn the Russians against the US.
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