My, what a double face the Bush administration puts on when it comes to its phony "war on terror." Here we have a real terrorist guilty of having masterminded the bombing of a Cuban airliner that murdered 73 innocent people, but of course, since he's "one of our own," having formerly been on the CIA's pay, he's set free.

It's the same with Bin laden who was a "freedom fighter" when his terrorism served U.S. purposes during the Cold War and Saddam Hussein was also given a wink and a nod when he committed all of his atrocities because he was "our man."

And now Posada, a well-known international terrorist, is set free while how many innocents languish in Guantanomo, deprived of fundamental human rights such as habeous corpus, guilty only of having been in the wrong place at the wrong time or else the victim of rival tribes sectarian strife.

Or maybe they were merely guilty of defending their country against a foreign invader and occupier.

So, where are the high minded principles and self-righteous justifications when it comes to freeing Posada?

I guess it just depends on whose terrorist you are.


April 21, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
A Terrorist Goes Free
By BERNARDO ÁLVAREZ HERRERA
Washington

AFTER the attacks of Sept. 11, President Bush forcefully argued that it was every country’s duty to fight international terrorism. He made the case that sponsoring terrorism or simply looking the other way when it happened were equivalent acts, and the United States would stand for neither. But holes have started appearing in that principle, courtesy of a single Venezuelan terrorist, released this week from a New Mexico prison on bail.

In early 2005, Luis Posada Carriles, a Venezuelan with a long history of violent attacks in Latin America, sneaked into the United States and was soon arrested. Mr. Posada had escaped from a Venezuelan prison while awaiting trial in the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed 73 people, including all 24 members of Cuba’s youth fencing team and several Guyanese medical students. This was the deadliest attack on a civilian airliner in the Western Hemisphere in history — until 9/11.

Upon Mr. Posada’s capture, the government of President Hugo Chávez demanded his extradition. But the Bush administration has refused to extradite Mr. Posada to Venezuela or Cuba, claiming that it fears he will be tortured in those countries. In fact, Washington’s reluctance is more likely linked to Mr. Posada’s history as a Central Intelligence Agency operative and a darling of extremist sectors of the powerful Cuban-American community in Florida (he tried to assassinate Fidel Castro with C-4 explosives placed in an auditorium packed with students in Panama in 2000). Twenty-two months have passed since Venezuela formally asked for his extradition, offering 2,000 pages of documentary evidence to substantiate its claim, yet the State Department has not even acknowledged receiving the request.

Nor has Mr. Posada been charged with the 1976 attack, even though declassified Central Intelligence Agency documents indicate that his role has long been accepted as fact. Instead, he faces charges of immigration fraud, a travesty that could be equaled only by charging Osama bin Laden with entering and leaving Pakistan without a visa. Finally, Mr. Posada was released on bail on Thursday, even though he is an obvious flight risk and a violent terrorist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/op...html?th&emc=th

Bernardo Álvarez Herrera is Venezuela’s ambassador to the United States.

Hypocrisy: Thy Name Is Bush

By Robert Parry (A Special Report)
April 21, 2007

George W. Bush likes to present the “war on terror” as a clear-cut moral crusade in which evildoers who kill innocent civilians must be brought harshly to justice, along with the leaders of countries that harbor terrorists. There are no grays, only blacks and whites.

But evenhanded justice is not the true core principle of the Bush Doctrine. The real consistency is hypocrisy: violence which Bush favors – no matter how wanton the slaughter of innocents – is justifiable, while violence that goes against Bush’s interests – even an insurgency against a foreign military occupation – must be punished without remorse as “terrorism.”

In other words, if Bush hates the perpetrators, they are locked up indefinitely without charge and, at his discretion, can be subjected to “alternative interrogation techniques,” what most of the world considers torture. The rule of law is out the window. Wild West hangin' justice is in. Even the ancient fair trial right of habeas corpus is discarded.

However, when the killers of civilians are on Bush’s side, they get the full panoply of legal protections – and every benefit of the doubt. Under this Bush double standard, therefore, right-wing Cuban terrorists Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, though implicated in a string of murderous attacks on civilians, get the see-no-evil treatment.

On April 19, the 79-year-old Posada was released on bail from federal custody for an immigration violation and allowed to fly to Miami where he will live at home while his case winds its way through the U.S. courts. Bosch, too, has been allowed to live out his golden years in south Florida with the help and protection of the Bush family.

But the evidence in U.S. government files is overwhelming that Posada and Bosch were the architects of the 1976 mid-air bombing of a civilian Cubana airliner, killing 73 people, including young members of the Cuban national fencing team.

For more see:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/042107.html

Our Foreign Service operates under rules that basically say, we "Act in the best interest of the United States."

The CIA operations were normally previously covert, until such time that some goody goody decided that everything must be detailed and out in the open.

We must still protect our operatives if it is "In the best interest of the United States."

And that's what we do. Of course, terrosism is in the eyes of the beholder.

What did you expect? Every story has, at a minimum, two sides!

I'll stand on the side of my country. If you disagree, Delta is ready when you are!

Isn't it amazing that people who live in the United States, hate the United States? Kaf if you had the chance to kill President Bush, would you?

__________________
Visit USFK Classifieds, the FREE classifieds in Korea!

I'll settle for impeachment.

http://tcrnews2.com/impeacheditorial.html

http://www.impeachbush.tv/args/index.html

I don't think that Impeachment will fly. If Bush was wrong initially, he didn't know it. He acted on the best information availabe to him at the time. Wait and see.

Kaf I am impressed! Your sources went from looking like a 6 year old built them from looking like an 8-year old built them. Your moving up!

And you use the most unbiased source on impeaching Bush, impeachbush.tv. Was the .com taken?

__________________
Visit USFK Classifieds, the FREE classifieds in Korea!

I'm sorry I wasted 8 seconds of my life reading your post, Kaf. I won't ever make that mistake again. EVER.

Mr. Joe,

Go where the facts lead you. Read Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command. The evidence does not support the statement that Bush didn't know himself. Hersh provides a great deal of detail from sources within the Penatgon and the intelligence community to show that Bush (and especially) Cheney stovepiped and cherry picked intelligence to support and bolster the Bush Administration's predetermined decision to attack Iraq. The pre-war Downing Street memo also states that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." (http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html)

In other words, the neocons saw intellingence as merely fodder to use as propaganda against the American Congress and American people. That's why, as Hersh reported, they pounded and pounded on the intelligence community to give RAW intelligence that had not yet been validated as authentic. Then they took this unverified raw intellligence, much of it from unreliable sources or else squeezed from people under torture, and then fed it to the ever-willing lapdog corporate media to propagandize the American people, which they found an easy task to do in the aftermath of 911. Thus, they kept repeating the mantra that Saddam was somehow connected to 911 and al qaeda, and the lapdog corporate media sat up, wagged its tail, barked, lapped it up, and then spat it out with relish.

A lot of facts about that have since surfaced. The case for impeachment is stronger than any previous U.S. president. The lies about the justification for the Iraq invasion are only one reason for impeachment. There are several others because the criminal nature of the illegitimate Bush regime has repeatedly broken and attacked the U.S. Constitution. However, usually an authentic investigation comes before impeachment, but the Republican-controlled Congress never allowed authentic investigations. Instead, the foxes did sham investigations of henhouse crimes; they died slow deaths as a tactic to cover-up the truth rather than investigate it, even while new facts came out that revealed how the Bush Administration lied to the American Congress and the American people, an impeachable offence. Here are the simple, uncontested facts that were never investigated and (except for the Joe Wilson article in the New York Times) never told to the American public:

*Bush asked the intelligence community for anything they could possibly provide that supported war with Iraq. Intelligence operatives reported that they knew any information that did not support Bush's agenda would be igniored.
*The July 2002 Downing Street Memo that detailed a meeting with Tony Blair, describes how Bush was intent on war with Iraq "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD " but "the case was thin" so " intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy".
*In March of 2002, Joseph Wilson reported that there was no evidence Niger sold uranium to Iraq. Bush was warned repeatedly by the CIA and foreign intelligence that the documents of sale were probably forged and unreliable. But Bush used the story in his January 2003 State of the Union speech to scare the public.
*In October of 2002, the DOE concluded that the infamous aluminum tubes were unsuitable for use in uranium gas centrifuges and were probably intended for use in conventional rockets. But in his January 2003 State of the Union speech Bush said "Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."
*Immediately after 9/11, Bush and Cheney started linking Iraq and 9/11 in so many speeches that a majority of Americans actually believed there was a connection despite a complete lack of evidence. Sadly 85% of US troops in Iraq still believe this is the reason they are there. Bush admitted that there was no connection in 2003 but continues to link them in his speeches.
*Bush setup a team in the Pentagon called the Office of Special Plans whose purpose was to distort intelligence to support justification for war.
*Bush set up WHIG, the White House Iraq Group, to mold public opinion on Iraq and to justify war.
*Senator John Rockefeller describes a Senate report saying that Bush misled Congress about Iraq.

More details at http://www.impeachbush.tv/args/iraqlies.html

Impeachment is the #1 Cure for Restoring Trust in Government
Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2006-05-24 16:20.
Impeachment
By Bob Fertik, www.democrats.com

Zogby released a new poll exposing the extraordinarily high levels of public mistrust of government and business. Only 24% trust George Bush, only 11% trust the media, only 7% trust corporate leaders, and only 3% trust Congress.

When asked "What 2 or 3 specific changes would have to take place in order to improve your trust in government today?", the winner by far was "personnel changes/impeachment proceedings."

So the next time the pundits (and Democratic leaders) say "Americans don't want impeachment," tell them they're absolutely wrong.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/11055