When Roger West first launched the progressive political blog "News From The Other Side" in May 2010, he could hardly have predicted the impact that his venture would have on the media and political debate. As the New Media emerged as a counterbalance to established media sources, Roger wrote his copious blogs about national politics, the tea party movement, mid-term elections, and the failings of the radical right to the vanguard of the New Media movement. Roger West's efforts as a leading blogger have tremendous reach. NFTOS has led the effort to bring accountability to mainstream media sources such as FOX NEWS, Breitbart's "Big Journalism.
Roger's breadth of experience, engaging style, and cultivation of loyal readership - over 92 million visitors - give him unique insight into the past, present, and future of the New Media and political rhetoric that exists in our society today.
What we are against:
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THE RESISTANCE
The Daily Show's Jon Stewart slammed Jeb Bush for his flip-flopping answers on the Iraq war, and for the way he's run his "unofficial" presidential campaign, so he can coordinate with his PAC.
There is no quantity of soap and water which can cleanse the stain of his brother's grotesque foreign policy fuck-ups. Bush 43's legacy of bloody preemptive war and supply side debt-based economic chicanery shall resonate for decades, even centuries, assuming there's a USA in which it can resonate. And it shall never be forgotten that it was Jeb himself who aided the installation of his moronic brother into the White House. Hanging Chad reference.
Kelly asks Bush, “Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?”
Bush effectively dodges that question but says that “confronted with the intelligence that [the George W. Bush administration] got” in 2003, he would have authorized the invasion. He argues that the intelligence provided to his brother’s administration left them with no choice but to invade.
The Iraq War, however, was not dictated by intelligence. Rather the administration cherry-picked, manipulated and ignored intelligence to support their predetermined outcome.
This is the view of the CIA official who oversaw Middle East intelligence during that time, Paul Pillar. In 2006, Pillar published an article in Foreign Affairs, writing:
In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made… and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized. As the national intelligence officer responsible for the Middle East from 2000 to 2005, I witnessed all of these disturbing developments.
Pillar concluded that “Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war.”
A bipartisan, if contentious, report of the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the George W. Bush administration “repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.” The report documented numerous statements made by the Bush administration to justify the war that were not supported by intelligence.
Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence under George W. Bush from 2007 to 2009, found the administration “set up a whole new interpretation because they didn’t like the answers” the intelligence community was giving them. Inside the Pentagon, an effort was led by Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith to “reinterpret information” provided to them by intelligence. It was Feith’s group that produced and promoted “false links between Iraq and al Qaeda.”
Bush, however, is unmoved. “if they’re trying to find places where there’s big space between me and my brother, Iraq might not be one of those,” he said.
We theses statements this Bush has declared himself to be unfit for the office of President.
In the last few minutes of her MSNBC show Wednesday night, Rachel Maddow took a look at some of the architects of the Iraq War who have been coming out of the woodwork over the last few weeks to weigh in on the Syria debate. Maddow had a strong message for people like Donald Rumsfeld, who have questioned President Obama’s decision: “Your opinion is no longer required.”
Maddow argued that the reason President Obama is having such a hard time convincing Americans that we should intervene in Syria because Bashar al-Assad has used WMD’s is “because of of the way the other guys broke that argument by misusing it, by lying when they made it.” And now, “the Bush Administration is staging a real time reunion” to weigh in on Syria.
The host proceeded to show how nobody is asking former FEMA chief Michael Brown for hurricane advice or Lance Armstrong to give his opinion on steroid use in sports. “You would not seek their advice, their counsel, their wisdom on the thing that ended their careers,” Maddow said.
She concluded her show with this plea:
“If you’re an architect or a conspirator or one of the primary actors in the Iraq War–in arguably the grandest and most craven foreign policy disaster in American history–your opinion is no longer required on matters of war and peace. Please enjoy painting portraits of dogs or something. Painting portraits of yourself in the bathroom, trying to get clean. Please enjoy the loving comfort of your family and loved ones, and your god. But we as a country never ever need to hear from you about war, ever again. You can go now.”
Hubris: /ˈhjuːbrɪs/, also hybris, from ancient Greek ὕβρις, means extreme pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.
The adjectival form of the noun hubris is "hubristic".
Bill Maher last night attacked former President George W Bus over Bush’s third annual Wounded Warrior 100K with veterans of the Iraq War.
How disgusting is it, that a man that lied his ass off to get the Untied States into the Iraqi war, now has the testicle fortitude to ride bikes with the very lives he put in harms way. Very Aleistar Crowley like!
I have made no bones about my views regarding Dick "Dick" Cheney, and his [compadre- in-arms] sideshow sidekick, and fellow war criminal, George W. Bush.
This bike ride, this would be like Ariel Castro [Cleveland Kidnapper] hosting a barbeque summer party for the victims and their families!
MAHER ON THE BIKE RIDE
Quotes from the clip I found worth noting:
“I found this to be nauseating,” Maher said. “First he sends them off to war to get their limbs blown off, then he has them over for a barbecue".
“I think it’s sort of sadistic when something like that happens,” actress Brit Marling said. “The idea that these amputees—the technology that’s allowing them to do this is somehow something to celebrate? People shouldn't be over there losing limbs in the first place.”
“Well, wait a minute, these guys are certainly celebrating their prosthetic limbs,” said James Poulos, a HuffPost Live producer. “W said ‘I don’t pity these guys, because they don’t pity themselves.’ That doesn't transcend the fact that the Iraq War was a colossal shit show, but it does transcend the fact that there’s kind of this uncomfortable irony between Bush’s relationship and these guys. They’re all out there biking together, and that’s okay.”
“I never know what side you’re on,” Maher told Poulos. “Are you with us or against us?”
“What was really jarring about that interview was the fact that President Bush needed to tell himself that he really tried diplomacy,” said Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress. “It’s sort of a weird thing that he has to look back and make up things that he did.”
“Certainly doesn’t sound like the George Bush I remember,” Maher said.
Listening to the American Taliban defend Bush's concocted WMD Iraqi war, is like Germans still trying to defend the Holocaust. Vets biking with the guy who cooked up intelligence to send them to war - well it sends a clear message to how truly f*cked up this man is.
Let's keep an on eye on the ball here readers, thousands of American soldiers and Iraqis are deadbecause of this one man's hubris. Speaking for myself only- I certainly sleep much better at night knowing that Bush is no longer in office haunted by visions of Gog and Magog.
To commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Iraqi war, we post a letter from a dying soldier to G.W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young
I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.
I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.
You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.
I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.
Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.
I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.
I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.
I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.
My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.
—Tomas Young
While these two heartless souls continue to declare ignorance on the subject at hand, Americans now know that these two bullshitted their way, often and frequently into the Iraqi war.
Read the book "Hubris, the inside story of spin and scandal and the selling of the Iraq war" by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. You can also watch the MSNBC HUBRIS documentary in it's full entirety below:
HUBRIS
“Making up a reason to invade a country is the easy part,” Mr. Cheney said. “Sticking to a pretend story for ten years—that is the stuff of valor.” ~ Andy Borowitz.
This story is compelling, its mind boggling, and disgusting – one third of the pie [housing and banking other two pieces of the pie] – in the tanking of our country; by one G.W. Bush and his deviant underlings. So many plots thickened with this debacle, the outing of a CIA operative [Valerie Plame], the deaths of over 4 thousand soldiers, countless wounded, and a staggering monetary cost unmatched by none, tacked on to this beloved country.
The failings of this President are a plethora, which shall remain unmatched by any of his predecessors, and his followers. This buffoon did everything in his power to undermine the office of the President of the United States, all in one falling swoop, this Einstein lied at every corner and tried to pull the wool over this countries eyes.
“Hubris” - (pron.: /ˈhjuːbrɪs/), also hybris, from ancient Greek ὕβρις, means extreme pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.
While this word seems to apply to all GOPers, it certainly encapsulates and depicts G.W. Bush and his bland brand of banshees.
The documentary below, narrated by Rachael Maddow; the book written by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, is a great look into this satanic, fiendish administration. Every Tea Bagger, American Taliban-er and GOPer should be forced to watch repeatedly until they understand how their beloved political GOD pooched our country.
So without further ado, below are six clips of the documentary, in its entirety, the fascinating story of how Bush, Cheney and plethora of others bamboozled the citizens of the United States of America.
All clips courtesy of MSNBC, Rachael Maddow, Michael Isikoff and David Corn:
