The above dialog(ue) has restored my faith in the human potential and the redemptive power of a sense of humor.
Thank you all.

Good night and good luck!

-30-

The right is terrified that an actual trial will focus attention on Bush's torture, rendition and surveillance programs. As a matter of fact, there may not be much evidence against "the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks" that can be used in court as it is 'the fruit of a poisoned tree', i.e. evidence that cannot be used because it was obtained illegally.

There is also the possibility that the introduction of evidence obtained prior to 9/11 would show, like the August 6th 2001, presidential daily briefing entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US", how badly Bush & Company screwed up.

Remember to support the troops as the good Nazis did theirs.

Don't you know that you have to give up your freedom if you want to fight those that hate us for our freedom?

Don't you know that the public needs to be protected from liberty, because it is liberty that makes us less safe? If everyone were free, why, someone might use that freedom. Heck, any one of us could just flip out and go postal at any time. Who can chance something like 'trust', and where is there room for knowing or respecting a neighbor who might shoot you? We need the policy of preemption, and we can't allow public scrutiny of evidence and testimony in a public trial, because we might let our crim... I mean our means and methods be exposed. And if we let terrorist criminals have a fair and public trial, much less rights to a defense, discovery of evidence, or freedom from self-incrimination, they might get away with it by tricking a jury into believing them.

Well, that's about as much sarcasm as I can muster at this time of the morning.

God Damned Chickenshits fear liberty, because they've been so shitty to their fellow men that they fear getting their just deserts at the hands of the same. They don't believe in a free society where free people have to give other free people the benefit of the doubt that we can live in a predominantly benevolent society, and take care of each other like adults. They think so little of others (because they judge everyone by the standards they set for themselves) that they assume everyone is out to harm them. They are terrified at the empowerment of the commons, and see it only as a loss of their own personal power, because they only understand power as it concerns that which they can exert over others, rather than the power to subsist and express yourself. If we didn't have to live amongst such people I would say that just being them is punishment enough.

These are all good examples of nations which differ from the U.S.A. in this article.

Let's turn it around.

What nations have behaved similarly ; Sweep up people who belong to a particular group, assume they are a terriible threat, isolate them from the rest of society, make the society think those swept up are THE cause of the decline of the social fabric, torture them, take their money and any other valuables, proudly denounce anyone who questions what you are doing, and use the accused group as THE reason to invade other countries?

Totalitarians.

We tried it under the guise of the Native American threat, the Mexican threat, the Black threat, and we tried it against the Communists and Socialists threat, now we have gone back to a medievil source.

Al Qaeda? The Taliban? Islamic terrorists? The Hamas? The Hizbolla? The Russians? The Chinese? Canadian $nowbirds? Cancer cell phone motorists?

I fear not these groups. It is the willful ignorance (a.k.a.: stupidity) here in Amerika that I fear. I don't think well of the Democrat-rat whores present-lie wallowing in $ewertown... but voting (alleged-lie) for a Republican or their cousins, KKKristian Zionist $upporters, would be like voting for $omebody to cut my throat.

Wow! I can hard-on-lie wait for the stupid, fat ass consumer citizens in corp-rat fascist Amerika to $ellect Jeb Bush in 2012. Whoa! President Jeb! Give that some thought!

If George W. Bush was a dry drunk $ociopath, then Barack Obama is a feckless and vainglorious narcissist. Apparently... it does not matter who $quats in the oval orifice. The Goldman $achs banksters are still running things. I suspect this is giving somebody in a Timothy McVeigh franchise the incentive to strap on fifty pounds of $imtec plastic explosive... and walk into Goldman $ach's lobby to make a flesh deposit... before sending the entire building to the moon.

Old Coyote Knose... there is a seething rage out here. Bread an' circus footballing is NOT going to mollify that rage. And praying to Jeeezass ain't gonna save our butts either.

The first thing that struck me in this article was the listing of the various other countries where terrorist attacks have occurred and the regular criminal trials of terrorism suspects in Britain, Indonesia, Spain, and India. ALL of those crimes happened far LATER than 9.11.01 yet all those trials are done and justice meted out long ago. Hmmmm. Our country-- at least in this aspect-- is looking more like a dictatorship than a civilized country.

In this case, my sense is that John Boehner doesn't really believe what the says. He uses the "they're weakening us" theme against Democrats and progressives to bring out the rage of his followers, primarily those Americans emotionally troubled enough to have their self-esteem rest on being "tough". For Boehner it is a cynical manipulation for power and the corrupt money that power can bring.

"America's Right" surrenders nothing in undermining American principles of justice, for those principles have no value for them (or for America's Left, if that means the Democratic party). They value their personal wealth and power, but these are not threatened (at least in their view) by their calls to deny alleged terrorists the right to trials in American courts.

"R.A. Altemeyer, a psychologist who has extensively studied people with right-wing beliefs, has observed:
[Right-wing authoritarians] see the world as a dangerous place, as society teeters on the brink of self-destruction from evil and violence. This fear appears to instigate aggression in them. Second, right-wing authoritarians tend to be highly self righteous. They think themselves much more moral and upstanding than others - a self perception considerably aided by self-deception.... This self-righteousness disinhibits their aggressive impulses and releases them to act out their fear-induced hostilities.
George Will seems steeped in that fear. To illustrate that point the authors quote this passage from an essay by Will: "Conservatives know the world is a dark and forbidding place where most new knowledge is false, most improvements are for the worse." Psychological studies back Will up. People with right-wing personalities hold more pessimistic views and left-wing personalities hold more optimistic ones. And that pessimism and optimism appears to inform how conservatives and liberals view their fellow humans. A 1984 survey of "emotional reactions to welfare recipients" found that conservatives "expressed greater disgust and less sympathy" than liberals.
While this propensity of conservatives to be threatened and fearful does not appear to induce neurotic behavior, one study of dream lives discovered that Republicans had three times as many nightmares as Democrats, indicating that fear, anger and aggression might be a factor in the subconscious motivations of conservatives.
The authors speculate that this susceptibility to fear "may help explain why military defense spending and support for national security receive much stronger backing from conservative than liberal political leaders."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Society/Conservatives_Deconstruct.html

Excellent article,,,,

America has 72 fusion centers and 1 million right wing spies thanks to the rebulican fear/war mongering machine.

I wonder how many private contractors have gotton millions from the Bush/Chenney regime to spy on Americans with immunity.

I am a victim to 24/7 fusion center gang stlaking torture controlled at the community watch level and desgined to drive me crazy so no one will believe what I have endured and witnessed.

I can tell you without a doubt that the terrorist fear mongering is being played out to keep government contract money flowing and to hide from the American public just how intrusive, wide spread ,and desperate this fear/torture stazi machine has become.

They needed Mccain to win in fear of the democrats gaining power and exposing this uncontitutional treasonous bunch and thier activites.

Much to my great disappointment , Obama has not thrown out the patriot act, or removed iummunity.

So I will have no redress of grievences this year.

Bornfreemen,,,

Victim of community watch group gang stalking due to fear mongering from the unconstitutional right wing fake christian republicans.

ONE MILLION SPIES AND GROWING!!!!

"Politics is the entertainment branch of industry," F Zappa

Republicans scare themselves to death. Democrats win all future elections.

Mideastern terrorists aren't the only ones who use fear.

There's so much blah-blah about Afghanistan, nearly all of it having to do with Kandahar, Kabul or Karzai, and this here and that there.

My solution is abolish the death penalty in American society except for anybody who shows tendencies to discuss the Afghan war without examining its central premise-- repeatedly.

Bad enough when political scientists on talk shows do it along with armchair generals and quacks of every stripe all full of pretension and airs to make themselves sound important or as if they know what they're talking about.

But when heads of state do it-- Obama, Brown, Bush, Blair, Merkel-- the ugly, brainless process gets magnified.

That would be, specifically, the disassociation of sensibility that characterizes human beings caught in or self-immersing themselves in all and any war.

The soldier, typical of everybody else, comes to believe: YOU FIGHT TO WIN. YOU FIGHT TO STAY ALIVE. YOU FIGHT TO DIE. THAT'S ALL THERE IS. (From the World War II novel THE WHITE TOWER by James Ramsey Ullman.)

The part about fighting to die is self-explanatory of its own basic unhealthiness: powerful self-indulgence and self-irresponsibility suggesting Brian Turner's recent poem "Here, Bullet" about Iraq.

Obama, Brown, Bush, Blair, Merkel share a tendency toward self-indulgent quagmire. And when they examine central premise of the Afghan war, it's never for long, and they never present much evidence of immediate, pending attack coming from the mountains of Pakistan, supposedly to repeat 9/11 in almost every minute detail. Nor do they present much evidence that our presence is doing good. Or is not doing horrendous harm.

They invoke the fear people associate with their recollection of 9/11, in other words-- a course of action identical with the invocation of some pending attack among Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia in 1984 by George Orwell. You invent propaganda, in other words, to manipulate the larger public and thus justify whatever cause you happen to espouse just at the moment.

If there was disassociation of sensibility even in World War II with its perfectly clear, unchanging premise which all decent people could agree upon, then what happens with something as unclear as our Af-Pak involvement?

Speaking to the world recently, the rather bull-headed British prime minister Gordon Brown listed "Fortress Great Britain" as one option which he glibly dismissed.

Preemptive war may be the death knell of American and world democracy. You just don't go around killing people who MIGHT kill you later-- which process is complicated when you're not good at telling people apart.

We have to be more mature than these world leaders, have to adopt a more passive, less incendiary method of dealing with world terrorism.

President Obama is young enough still to change. If he opts to continue preemptive war right now, however, will not his behavior then become predictable and hardened for the rest of his life?

Perhaps some see more than just the obvious in regards to terrorism. I'm sure a terrorist would love nothing more than a platform to explain his 'reasons' and 'issues' which led him, in his own mind, to be a terrorist. After all, the goal of the terrorist is alter policy towards his own ends. What better way is there but to imply that its all gonna stop if you just get out the trampoline whenever the terrorist says jump? Smarter people not only see through this 'good cop, bad cop' routine they also recognize its inherint dangers. Nothing succeeds like success, and if marginalized groups the world over saw on group succeed with a set of tactics than others will be inspired to follow suit.
The best way to stop terrorism is to exacerbate the hopelessness of those who employ it as a strategy. Only when there is no hope that terrorism will ever pay off will terrorism cease.

"People Of The Lie."

Coined by Christian psychiatrist and theologian M. Scott Peck in his book The People of the Lie: an examination of the nature of human evil:

Since the primary motive of evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church.

Utterly dedicated to preserving their self-image of perfection, they are unceasingly engaged in the effort to maintain the appearance of moral purity. They are acutely sensitive to social norms and what others might think of them. They seem to live lives that are above reproach. The words "image", "appearance" and "outwardly" are crucial to understanding the morality of the evil.

While they lack any motivation to be good, they intensely desire to appear good. Their goodness is all on a level of pretense. It is in effect a lie. Actually the lie is designed not so much to deceive others as to deceive themselves.

We lie only when we are attempting to cover up something we know to be illicit. At one and the same time "the evil" are aware of their evil and desperately trying to avoid the awareness.

Peck's material, I feel, has great potential for analyzing and deconstructing the nature and behavior of the wing of the Republican party that has captured our government. With the caveats, that Peck raises, that evil is very dangerous to analyze--since we are, after all, all vulnerable to it.

- Lexicon of Liberal Invective

The Right is terrified of terrorists.

The entire psychology of the Right, as it is now constituted, is founded in their own terrified state of being (one aspect of which is that they are terrified of seeing/learning that they have been lying to themselves).

It would seem that, like any mammal who feels threatened, the rage emanating from the Right (which is more immediately visible to us) is a function of a deeper emotion --- terror.

Good article - maybe. Greenwald is pointing out inconsistencies the Right's rhetoric and action in the GWOT. However, the problem, as with most of the Right, is in the framing. The failure of Greenwald's article is that he accepts the "War on Terrorism" frame. There is no "War on Terrorism." The US ruling class and MIC need an enemy, they had to replace the "Evil Empire" with something. The came up with the GWOT. Creating some real terrorists along the way certainly wouldn't hurt. That brings realism to the deadly charade - just as the MSM will tell a little truth to maintain their credibility.

"Terrorism is a psychological weapon and is directed to create a general climate of fear."

Terrorism, terrorists, whatever, it not about some bearded guys with IED's. Our ruling class' goal is to create a climate of fear domestically, so that they can consolidate their power, increase profits, and justify resource wars.

GOP House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) isn't scared of terrorists. He's just cynically trying to instill fear of them in the electorate. He is a slimeball.

He is quoted above as saying the Obama' administration's "...decision to prosecute the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in New York City puts the interests of liberal special interest groups before the safety and security of the American people."

This is patently absurd. What "liberal special interest groups" could possibly be served here? Unless it's people who believe in Due Process... but how would that be a "special interest group"? It ought to be everybody. And isn't it a bit presumptuous of Mr. Boehner to call someone the "mastermind of the 9/11 attacks" when no evidence to that effect has been formally presented? Hell, in recent days even the MSM are referring to the "alleged" Ft. Hood attacker despite the presence of many eye witnesses.

There is no limit to what Boehner will say for a perceived political advantage.

-30-

When someone who has, after 180 waterboardings, "confessed" to being responsible for 9/11 "from A to Z" is carefully questioned by competent trial lawyers, his "confession" would certainly fall apart.

It's more difficult to keep embarrassing (for the Right) aspects of a trial from an interested public when the trial is on home turf.

Nearly every single person alive is a terrorist, we've all used fear to manipulate others for our own benefit, it's such a horrible way to define a crime.

Perhaps if people grew a pair and stop living in their delusional state of perpetual anxiety, they wouldn't be so easily scammed into all this bullsh*t and we could actually progress as a species. I'm probably preaching to the wrong crowd anyways.

9-11 was an inside job.

Trying the Fall-Guys is ultra-dangerous; one piece of info could make "Building Number Seven" something every single American knew ALL about.

One meeting w/ the cia, one bit of inexplicable potentiating of a nothing plot into what happened. One Mossad agent (to add to the busted 6,) and Pandora's box bursts open.

Could Khalid could bring down more than buildings? Oh yes.

AMERICAN RIGHT ---- UPPER 50% OF SOCIETY

Looking at statistics we see that the upper 50% of society has more
wealth then debt, while the lower half on the average is deep in debt.

Likewise the upper class 50% is virtually free of unemployment,
while the lower half has over 20% unemployment.

And considering that Empire USA has plundered half the wealth
on earth, rightly so should our upper class want government to
protect them and their excessive wealth.

Bring America Back !!!!

***Greenwald as usual is right on track with the radical
right wingers.

***Except that we have not had any "core values' in this Nation for at least 9 yrs. That Constitutional "piece of paper" has been burning in the trash bin ever since.
Remember 'Privacy' ? remember habeus corpus? remember separate but equal branches of Govt ?? Remember the Geneva
Convention ?

***You simply cannot tortue and waterboard human beings, then throw them into any civil or military court system to be convicted of the crimes they admitted to during Torture!
Perry Mason would turn over in his literary grave!

***All of those detainees were victimized at Gitmo under the Military Commissions Kangaroo Courts. Naturally, they soon were enamoured with confessing to being "Masterminds" in quotes, of 9/11 !==a lot better than getting all those multiple waterboardings, etc, and a great time to be proud of Jihad and demanding martyrdom as their final reward with their 40 Virgins in Islam heaven !!!!

***One of our National figures, Sen John McCain admits to cracking under torture when he was a POW in North Vietnam.
So prosecuting John McCain for revealing US secrets is exactly tantamount to what they now want to do with the
Gitmo Detainees. Would McCains defense be that He was
tortured beyond comprehension ?? Absolutely it would !! No trial, no nothing!

***The right winger Neocons and some of the 9/11 Victims Families are vocally concerned that trials in NYC would
re-open old wounds and memories. Mostly, it would remind the 'Families' that before they were allowed to tap into the multi-million $$$$ 9/11 Victims Fund==they had to sign off on any future litigation suing the USA or anybody else in country for liabilities concerning the Attacks !!!

**Most of the Families indeed signed off, a few did not.
Perhaps putting these so called Muslim extremeists on Trial in NYC will remind them why they should have Never signed
those liability documents and Waivers.

***Perry Mason, and maybe even Glen Greenwald would postulate that it is patently illegal to Force any US citizen to waive or sign off on future legal rights !!
Make no mistake, if held, these trials will give evidence showing US Culpability and that the 9/11 Victims had Rights against the USA they were not aware of, when they signed off and cashed into their Funded millions $$$$$

**These are indeed sore wounds, scabs, and Truth buried at Ground Zero !

Awesome! Love reading stuff like this. My only critique is the use of the word "Right". Defining our problem on the left/right liberal/conservative frame is its own form of surrender.

Nancy Pelosi, our leader on the "left" voted for the Patriot Act, took the Constitution "off the table"... This is not the "Right's Surrender to Terrorism" or the "Left's Surrender to Terrorism", this is "Our Surrender to Terrorism".

I see light at the end of this tunnel - more and more people are WakingTFU and less willing to surrender - I even see it here in deep-deep-red western South Dakota.

US'ns surrender to terrists? Awready bin der, done dat; to the Bushists, aught one thru aught three!

Ask any soldier that has been to war and they will tell you that George Bush's statement to " BRING THEM ON" is the statement of a coward that hides behind the troops in combat. My nephew who is in Afghanistan with the stryker brigrade would never make a statement like that and is just hoping to get back alive! It is like saying let me hold your coat while you fight this bully for me. These right wing,pueriles are telling Americans to be scared of the booga booga terrorist trials because they are cowards, that are cheerleaders for the wars as long as they do not have to fight them. They are really afraid of what may come out at those trials and that is why people like Billo say it will be a circus, yeah it may show who the real clowns are!

America must deal with its paranoia about terrorism, which was enshrined into law (Public Law 107-40, aka the DAFT law) by Congress on 9/18/01 when it panicked and succumbed to the Bush administration's lies, deceits and political blackmail.
This paranoia is stoked by hopeless Regressives who have nothing but fear of fear itself to sell to the public.

Every country deals with future terrorism but only America declared war against it.
And that's DAFT.
I again suggest that Progressives show Americans how DAFT this terrorism-mongering is.

Solve the terrorism problem and Afghanistan & Iraq can then be solved.

Well of course the righties are too frightied of the terrists, it's not like they've ever wanted to put their own lives in peril.

It's other people who should work hard, fight hard and not be allowed to play hard. But they're special, far to special to be allowed to fight for their country, far too special to be forced to pay taxes to support their country, heck they're even too special to be forced to pay a living wage to the people who work for them.

One thing you can say about them is that they are not actually cowards. A person who is or becomes a coward actually had the stones to think that he/she might be brave enough to face danger but failed to be brave when it mattered. These righties are craven, they're cringers, hypocrites and fools, useless parasites and weasels, but they're not real cowards. I'll respect a person who's a coward for at least being willing to try to be brave, but those righties will never have my respect.

Of course they don't want trials. Trials consist of evidence and reality, discussed among adults. It's so much easier just to make up reality for these authoritarian thugs

Another toxic legacy from the Bush error: the slow motion takeover of the GOP by what The Economist terms as "Southern Fried Conservatives" with Fascist tendencies is complete and on display. Luckily for progressives, the majority of their deluded minions willing to be their Sturmabteilung / Camicie Nere are too obese and elderly for it.