Republican Swine Blast Freeing of Sgt. Bergdahl

You have to give the Republicans one thing in that they are consistently authority worshipping, anti-American, whiny, torture loving, warmongering media whores who no matter what the issue always have their eyes on whipping up the rabble for their next election. Take the just completed swap by the Obama regime of five of the occupants of the American concentration camp at Club Gitmo for captured US serviceman Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The outrage was as fake as it was predictable and just in time for the Sunday morning propaganda shows too. Even the strangely out of the limelight uber-fascist, right-wing talk radio bound Congressman Mike Rogers slithered out from whatever rock that he has been hiding under to appear on CNN's State of the Union with the insipid blathering sow Candy Crowley this morning.

The reemergence of Rogers was inevitable given the all-in National Security State establishment smearing of the patriotic whistleblower Edward Snowden after his NBC interview earlier this week - much of which was left on the cutting room floor including his comments on 9/11 being preventable - and the outgoing House Intelligence Committee boss is a fountain of lies and innuendo on that particular topic. I excerpt the following from the CNN rush transcript of today's appearance with Crowley:

REP. MIKE ROGERS (R-MI), CHAIR, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Well, I mean, obviously, we should be happy for the family. They have gotten their loved one back. That's very, very important.

 The methodology and what we used is very troublesome. Remember, al Qaeda in the Maghreb...

 CROWLEY: And by the methodology, you mean...

 ROGERS: Negotiating with terrorists.

 CROWLEY: OK.

 ROGERS: Remember, this was an individual who was held by a terrorist group in another country, Pakistan. We know that to be true.

Across Northern Africa, the number one way that al Qaeda raises money is by ransom, kidnapping and ransom. We have now set a price. So we have a changing footprint in Afghanistan, which would put our soldiers at risk for this notion that, if I can get one, I can get five Taliban released.

And the problem is, the way we're changing our footprint means we get less intelligence. And that's already starting to happen. And we will get more degradation of the ability to collect intelligence to even stop force protection efforts for our soldiers. That's why so many of us are so concerned about what really is a break with U.S. policy of not negotiating with terrorists.

AND

[following video from Susan Rice)

CROWLEY: Congressman, she said, look, the DOD, the Pentagon went to the Justice Department, asked them if it was OK given the laws surrounding who needs to be consulted about the release of these Gitmo prisoners and the Justice Department said, fine.

ROGERS: Well, there a reason that Congress is involved by law, by statute, by constitutional authority in these decisions prior to the notification has to be -- to keep Congress currently informed, number one. And the reason is you don't want to talk to each other about something as sensitive as this. That's why Congress is involved in these issues. And it happens frequently on some very sensitive issues.

Everything from the Osama bin Laden raid which was briefed to those members of us with the clearances literally months and months in advance and followed up to the day of the raid. So some notion that this was so secretive and so sensitive that it couldn't happen is just wrong.

And you know, she said she notified. I'm mystified by that. They didn't notify Congress appropriately and here is why. Other places that we have let the Gitmo prisoners go to these particular countries, by the way, which we paid them to take them, has been a disaster. It hasn't worked, which is one of the things that last year we brought up to them, it's not working.

So, if we're ever going to continue this, you need to change it. Well, they didn't like the advice and counsel they got from Congress and apparently decided they were going to go their own direction. I always think that's dangerous, just like the secret negotiations with Iran has huge consequences with our allies, this is going to cost huge consequences as well.

And I just don't understand why you wouldn't engage with people who have done this for a long time and bring, I think, good advice and counsel could have alleviated some of the problems that they're going to get into in the next days and months ahead, including the risk to our U.S. soldier.

Just the standard issue horseshit and lip-service to putting American servicemen and women at danger when the REAL thing that puts them in peril are the wars that Rogers and his fellow swine in Congress continue to bring home the bacon for their backers who profit enormously off of death. In any sane country guys like Mike Rogers would not only be barred from holding public office but mocked as the corrupt stooges of the blood barters and military contractors that they truly are. Unfortunately we don’t live in one. The other loudmouths bitching about "dealing with terrorists" are legion and more will be jumping on the bandwagon when Monday's RNC talking points email hits their inboxes. The hypocrites will spend days inveighing against the "Kenyan" in the White House over this one.  

But the biggest fraud in America when it comes to military heroism, Senator John McCain oozed his typical angry and deranged character traits in denouncing Obama for negotiating the release of Sgt. Bergdahl.  The official statement issued by McCain is as follows from his website:

“I am pleased that Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl is finally being returned safely to his family and loved ones after nearly five years of captivity. All Americans share in the joy that the Bergdahl family feels today and for which they have waited so long.

“I have been informed that, in exchange for Sgt. Bergdahl’s release, the Administration is now in the process of transferring five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo to Qatar. These particular individuals are hardened terrorists who have the blood of Americans and countless Afghans on their hands. I am eager to learn what precise steps are being taken to ensure that these vicious and violent Taliban extremists never return to the fight against the United States and our partners or engage in any activities that can threaten the prospects for peace and security in Afghanistan. The American people, and our Afghan partners, deserve nothing less.”

The psychotic old war criminal  loves to have it both ways and in terms of sheer loathsomeness is right up there with his Vietnam era cohort John Kerry. McCain has a long and sordid history of talking out of both sides of his mouth with the most recent example being his palling around with neo-Nazis in Kiev right before the overthrow of the democratically elected leader by such elements. He also has built his career off of exploiting his time in Nam, not that dropping bombs on women and children, getting shot down, taken prisoner and then currying favorable treatment from his captors at the expense of other guests at the Hanoi Hilton whose fathers weren't admirals in the US Navy. His comments about Sgt. Bergdahl also show that the no soldier left behind military code of honor doesn't resonate with McCain, it was he who shamefully worked to sink efforts to find US prisoners of war in Vietnam. I excerpt the following from an article by Sydney Schanberg "McCain and the POW Cover-Up" that was re-published by The American Conservative in 2010:

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain’s role in it, even as the Republican Party has made McCain’s military service the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn’t talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.

The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a special forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington—and even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that “men were left behind.” This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number—the documents indicate probably hundreds—of the U.S. prisoners held by Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.

The article is well worth the time spent reading it although anyone who is awake knows that truth about McCain and his political career built on the myth that he was some kind of war hero but the bigger question on his participation in the POW cover-up is why?

Despite all of the angry bullshit dispersal exercises undertaken by the rancid Republicans all of that squealing and demagoguery about "not negotiating with terrorists" is laughable. These are the same people after all who have no qualms about arming Islamist militants, cannibals and al Qaeda affiliates in Syria nor throwing in with neo-Nazi goons in Ukraine. They are liars and always will be liars. When it comes to liars though, one need not exclude their reigning king who sits upon the throne at 1600 W. Pennsylvania Avenue. Obama could give a rat's ass about the troops and that includes Sgt. Bergdahl but like their more overtly fascist counterparts, Democrats too have elections upcoming in November so this is good public relations on their part, cynical as hell but it plays to the rubes.

In the end it all comes down to the festering boil on the ass of Uncle Scam at Guantanamo Bay - Republicans HATE losing their holy site for torture and Obama won't close it down because despite the power to do exactly that with a simple executive order he is a hypocrite of enormous proportion. The Republicans real problem is that after the trade that they will have five less live bodies to subject to torture - time to get the rest of them out of there close that filthy offshore future penal colony down - forever. 

So good for Sgt. Bergdahl, as much as I am opposed to the ongoing series of money-making, fucking wars launched by both the Democrats and the Republicans the man has done his duty and deserves to come home. The political scrum that the degenerate swine in this country and their bought and paid for media only spits on the troops with their continuing use of them as nothing more than props and political footballs.

Comrade McCain Warns US Corporations on Doing Business in Russia

De facto President of the United States and preeminent warmongering psychotic Senator John McCain has slipped the chain again. On Friday McCain issued a veiled warning to US corporations seeking to do business with Russia in the frenzied reincarnation of the Cold War that the neocons have been so relentlessly pushing through every propaganda organ in the land. With McCain fully invested in the unelected occupying government in Kiev, he spent much time over there palling around with neo-Nazis before the US backed coup d'etat went down he is in this thing to win it.

In an interview given to Bloomberg TV the globe-trotting bloodsucker who feeds on death and destruction took it upon himself to caution major corporations about exactly how and where they are to do business as Cold War II begins. This will surely go over real well with the crazed neocons, after all their ideological roots sprang from Russia and the diktat from the longtime face of bomb them back to the stone age American foreign policy. I excerpt from the Bloomberg piece entitled "McCain Looks to U.S. Companies in Russia If Putin Pushes":

The U.S. should consider forcing major American companies such as General Electric (GE) and Exxon Mobil to suspend business in or pull out of Russia if President Vladimir Putin attempts to take more territory from Ukraine or other neighboring nations, said Senator John McCain of Arizona.

“I know that that’s a tough call and I know that we don’t want to hurt our own economy, but what are the consequences of Vladimir Putin just being able to act?” McCain, a Republican from Arizona who advocates military assistance for Ukraine, said in an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend.

Such a move likely would come through formal sanctions rather than political pressure on individual corporations, McCain said, and “would only be considered” if Putin “went much further.”

In addition to GE and Exxon-Mobil (XOM) Corp., the companies with the largest business interest in Russia include Ford Motor Co. (F), General Motors Co. (GM), Citigroup Inc. (C), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and PepsiCo Inc. (PEP)

Putin, who annexed Crimea from Ukraine earlier this month, has amassed tens of thousands of troops along the border, which McCain says indicates Russia may strike soon.

It takes a serious egomaniac as well as a real set of stones to threaten, even implicitly the profitability of such enormous American corporations and this may effectively be McCain's political death warrant as CEO's of such huge entities do not take kindly in having some foolish ass tell them how and where to do business, let alone to call them out in such a public manner.  The Arizona Republican party has already censured McCain and he has just opened his mouth one time too many which will likely ensure that there will be a biblical sized tidal wave of campaign funding coming to the Grand Canyon state to primary his ass come 2016.

Not that anyone should ever mistake John Sidney McCain III for representing American values with his ongoing crusade to bankrupt the country by involving it in innumerable wars, civil wars and other insurrections, his sheer contempt for what is left of democracy by not just shutting the fuck up and acknowledging that he lost to the black guy in 2008 and now his open contempt for free enterprise.  The cowardly McCain who has hyped himself as a war hero despite dropping napalm on Vietnamese women and children and then being dumb enough to get shot down and thrown into a prisoner of war camp instead of just doing the honorable thing by killing himself to avoid capture has always been one of the biggest frauds in modern American history. He may be wrap all of his bullshit up in old glory but what he is truly preaching with his message to those corporations is nothing short of Communist style centralized planning and enforcement by a corrupt pack of government jackals.

Let's see those corporations put their money into something that would truly benefit this country by funneling several million dollars into Arizona to fund McCain's opponents.

A Narcissist Scorned: Obama Throws Another Tantrum

Despite weeks of saber rattling and threats from our dear leader Barack the Feckless and his bull in a China shop Secretary of State John Kerry, the Skull and Bones pedigreed stammering ass whose brief tenure has now put the US on a path to a war with Russia the referendum in Crimea that they had so desperately wanted to avoid went down on Sunday. With the third body blow to dwindling US prestige now having landed – the first two being Russia’s offer of asylum to former government whistleblower turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden followed by the humiliation of Russian leader Vladimir Putin intervening to prevent the neocon’s splendid little war on Syria the vote in Crimea has assholes puckering this morning. The poor aggrieved star bellied Sneetches in their mighty kingdom inside the DC beltway are apoplectic that the people of Crimea have given Obama the middle finger and voted to rejoin Russia. How is that coup d’etat going for you today Mr. President?

Not that you can blame Crimea considering that the western orchestrated overthrow of democratically elected Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych set the country on a course towards corporate exploitation by the global finance mafia and that fascists and neo-Nazis had key roles in the puppet government. It is not an argument that Putin is any kind of great humanitarian figure but better the devil you know than to be beggared as the new world order carves up your homeland like a Thanksgiving turkey and the US corporate mercenaries such as Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland turn a blind eye to packs of marauding neo-Nazi militias. They got out while the getting was good making the world safe for McDonalds and at a larger level for Monsanto, Cargill and Chevron has nothing to do with that exalted horseshit of “spreading democracy” that is always invoked when it comes to raping an overseas country for its natural resources. Just look at what is going on in Iraq – the neocons were going to bring “democracy” to those who were under the boot of once reliable US puppet Saddam Hussein  and it is a charnel house that far exceeds the worst days of Saddam. Don’t look for any of this in the corrupt US state-corporate media though although there has been some small leakages of the real story as of late.

So what is the pope of hope to do but stamp his feet, hold his breath and launch a wave of economic sanctions against Russia which is as Ron Paul recently said is an "act of war" and this is not going to end well considering the hubris of the arrogant cancer on the Potomac, the think skin of Obama and the imperial hubris of a rapidly declining world power. Russia is not Iraq, Iran or any of the other shitty little countries that can be kicked around by the militarized to the teeth global bully, it is a large nation with a long history and a sense of pride unlike anything that exists in the United States of Dancing With the Stars and it's borderline moron population. This too is going to end up blowing up in the face of the titular President Obama, defacto President John McCain and all of the holier than thou dumbasses and dipshits in their orbit. It is only a matter of how much damage will be done, all of it of the self-inflicted nature that The Homeland has become accustomed to.

Whoever got the idea of a ridiculously conceived overthrow of a democratically elected leader, backed by corrupt western interests and carried out with the help of ruthless gangs of right-wing extremists, fascists and neo-Nazis (from which likely came that sniper fire that provided the impetus for the ouster) during the Sochi Winter Olympic games all to stick it to Putin should just do the honorable thing and perform harakiri. Ritual suicide is an act of honor in Japanese culture and the ongoing clusterfuck in the aftermath of the botched coup demands that there be people held accountable before the weakling Obama and the neocons get all of us incinerated. The way that this thing is unfolding I wouldn't put the ultimate act of stupidity of starting a nuclear war past these imbeciles. Those responsible should just do the right thing and do so quickly. 

Too bad there is neither honor nor accountability in this collapsing house of cards that is The Homeland. 

Provocateur McCain Returns to Kiev

Senator John McCain, the man whose adoration by the US state-corporate media is second only to his proclivity to turn up as an agitator in whichever country happens to be the next stop on the neocon PNAC world domination tour has showed up in Kiev again this weekend. With the massively over-hyped imminent Russian invasion only hours away according to US and western propaganda organs - because Putin is just like Hitler you know - the pathological media whore is hellbent on working the crowds after the western backed coup d'etat that ousted democratically elected leader Viktor Yanukovych. It wasn't that long ago that the Arizona Senator who was recently censured by his own state's Republican party for being too "liberal" (although his warmongering doesn't seem to bother them) was in the Ukrainian capital city where he was pictured schmoozing with the vile facsists and neo-Nazis who provided the muscle for the toppling of the legitimate government. While his public relations staff, including a woman named Elizabeth O'Bagy whose claim to fame was being outed as a paid liar over her credentials as an 'expert' during the selling of the preempted war on Syria will likely not make the same mistake as having the rotten old bastard photographed next to Oleh Tyahnybok of the Svodoba party again.

While setting the stage for what will end up being the greatest US foreign policy debacle since Iraq (another joint venture of the neocons and McCain) the corrupt media in this country has done a masterful job in brainwashing the sheeple into the acceptance of Cold War: The Sequel. According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll a whopping 72 percent of Americans see Russia as an "adversary", a "record" number according to what more of an authoritative source than NBC News. What the low-information types who always swallow the lies of the state and the propagandists that serve it is that when considering that the Wall Street Journal was acquired by unprincipled mogul Rupert Murdoch what the poll essentially is as a joint venture between MSNBC and FOX and we all know what sort of unbiased viewers are attracted to that type of swill.  Still despite the fraudulent narrative that is pumped out Americans are being suckered into another quagmire - it almost worked last summer with the bogus Assad gassed his own people tale coupled with the war porn video of dying children in Syria until Russian leader Vladimir Putin saved Obama and the US from another self-inflicted wound. The neocons were furious over that one being blown up and turned their focus to the destabilization of Ukraine and a proxy war with Putin instead.

McCain seems to revel in particular in showing up wherever he can to cause more problems for the Obama administration and pushing for the renewed animosity between the US and Russia over the Ukraine coup is just the venue of the moment. The dyspeptic one just had a scathing op ed piece published in the New York Times entitled “Obama Has Made America Look Weak” from which I excerpt:

For five years, Americans have been told that “the tide of war is receding,” that we can pull back from the world at little cost to our interests and values. This has fed a perception that the United States is weak, and to people like Mr. Putin, weakness is provocative.

That is how Mr. Putin viewed the “reset” policy. United States missile defense plans were scaled back. Allies in Eastern Europe and Georgia were undercut. NATO enlargement was tabled. A new strategic arms reduction treaty required significant cuts by America, but not Russia. Mr. Putin gave little. Mr. Obama promised “more flexibility.”

Mr. Putin also saw a lack of resolve in President Obama’s actions beyond Europe. In Afghanistan and Iraq, military decisions have appeared driven more by a desire to withdraw than to succeed. Defense budgets have been slashed based on hope, not strategy. Iran and China have bullied America’s allies at no discernible cost. Perhaps worst of all, Bashar al-Assad crossed President Obama’s “red line” by using chemical weapons in Syria, and nothing happened to him.

AND

More broadly, we must rearm ourselves morally and intellectually to prevent the darkness of Mr. Putin’s world from befalling more of humanity. We may wish to believe, as President Obama has said, that we are not “in competition with Russia.” But Mr. Putin believes Russia is in competition with us, and pretending otherwise is an unrealistic basis for a great nation’s foreign policy.

Three American presidents have sought to cooperate with Mr. Putin where our interests converge. What should be clear now, and should have been clear the last time he tore apart a country, is that our interests do not converge much. He will always insist on being our rival.

 The United States must look beyond Mr. Putin. His regime may appear imposing, but it is rotting inside. His Russia is not a great power on par with America. It is a gas station run by a corrupt, autocratic regime. And eventually, Russians will come for Mr. Putin in the same way and for the same reasons that Ukrainians came for Viktor F. Yanukovych.

How does this guy continue to get away with this bullshit? He is out there publicly advocating an overthrow of Putin in what is presented as the nation’s flagship newspaper and he doesn’t get called on it. Why is a Senator with a long history of derangement allowed to hijack the system and become the defacto voice for American foreign policy? Jesus Christ, enough of this American whup-ass militarist garbage already.  While I personally am of the opinion that Senator McCain has truly never gotten over being beaten in the 2008 presidential race by a black man (and an unqualified one at that) he would still be selling more war to a country whose true reason for decline and ultimately collapse is precisely because that we are indoctrinated to believe in a world filled with those who “hate us for our freedoms” (we really are not that free if you take a serious look around) and that military spending must be constantly increased to record levels to finance the fight against the enemy. That enemy is now shape-shifting from the mad mullahs and ayatollahs and the menace of al-Qaeda (thanks to guys like McCain we now arm them again) to the Russians.

The Cold War after all made one hell of a lot of coin for the blood barters and combined with the now oh so close to being back in power neocons there will be plenty of money to be made while the poor dupes on our star-spangled lemming farm will continue to face a declining standard of living to fund the war machine.  In a sardonically humorous sort of way it is actually rather amusing to see how the neocons are now goading Obama into a confrontation with Russia the same way that Cheney and Rummy pushed George W. Bush’s buttons to manipulate into the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires. With Dubya it was always that Oedipal thing and with the narcissist Obama being punked by Putin over the amnesty provided to former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden after he shined a light into the massive nest of cockroaches at American Stasi HQ in Fort Meade is Barry’s weak spot. McCain and the neocons will now keep rubbing salt into the open wound of Obama's violated pride in order to foment that which they lust for which is permanent war.