I Grow Weary of Speaking to My Audience

Well, he's obviously guilty of professional misconduct;

he's demanding evidence and stuff.

MIAMI -- A judge hearing a war crimes case at Guantanamo Bay who publicly expressed frustration with military prosecutors' refusal to give evidence to the defense has been dismissed, tribunal officials confirmed Friday.

Army Col. Peter Brownback III was presiding over the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr. Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, in his role as chief judge at Guantanamo, ordered the dismissal without explanation and announced Brownback's replacement in an e-mail this week to lawyers in Khadr's case.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gitmo31-2008may31,0,6244452.story?track=rss

Let's take stock of your achievements:

1. You got the wrong guys. One would think that bringing 9-11 perpetrators to justice would seem pressing, but whatever.
2. And now that you've waded into a hornet's nest of the wrong guys, you got your asses kicked. It's never a good command decision to invade a country of ten or twenty million armed people and pretend to have a fighting chance. The war was over before it started. Lessee: Two hundred thousand...versus twenty million.
3. So when some guy throws a grenade at you --which he has every moral right to do, by the way-- you somehow come to believe that you have a right to try him for war crimes.
4. So you decide to hold a trial, but nothing that would ever employ what is known in the industry as "evidence." For those not in the know, evidence is how you figure out you got the right guy, which we already know you're not very good at. ...'Cause you got the wrong guys...

"No, Chris, you've got it all wrong. We're fighting the War on Globa Terra. We have to fight 'em there so we don't have to fight 'em here."

That adventure served several purposes: It was a wealth transfer of three trillion dollars, it eliminated one obstacle to That Energy Outpost's expansion, and it drew your forces away from the United States. ...so that you can't defend the United States. ...which is being conquered. THERE IS NO ONE LEFT DEFENDING THE COUNTRY. Mexico could breeze in tomorrow and march all the way to Washington. ...But no need for that; we've got ravenous cops tasing people for talking, we've got a Justice Department that thinks we can somehow pretend that habeas corpus doesn't exist, and we've got Michael Chertoff's Merry Band of Troglodytes getting boogers all over people's laptop computers and baby bottles at the airport.

ALL BECAUSE YOU GOT THE WRONG GUYS.

Do you people even do anything?

And worse than doing nothing, you're willing to ruin a guy's life with a non-trial for doing something that you would have done if you were in his shoes. I don't care who you are; if you invade my town, I will try to kill you. You would do the same.

What weird ethic has captured the minds of today's officer corps?

Iron and Wine - Naked as We Came

It is interesting to note that the artist himself, Sam Beam, directed this video. It is a study in elegant simplicity.

"Chris, we take exception to the coarse language."

"If you would presume to mix with our class, you'll have to speak as we would wish you to speak."

No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. You've got it exactly backwards.

This is not a TV show that you can accidentally happen upon. I'm not coming to you. You're coming to me. You...are in...my...theater.

This is my show. I prosecute my show as I see fit.

When you walk through the entry over there, you agree to check any pretense at the door. That's the only way this show works. Because really, I have nothing unique to offer except for the freedom of running a show completely unconstrained by outside forces; I have no advertisers or network types to report to.

Don't forget to look around now and again: You are seated in the back room of a shit-hole bar. The walls are all painted black and some asshole threw a beer bottle at the LCD projector over there and shorted it out. Now we can't use it.

...Not to mention that only when and if you freeloaders start buying tickets will I curtsy for you. ...before giving you the finger...

...you really wouldn't ask me to lose my edge, would you?...

Boston - Foreplay/Long Time

"So George,"

comes a voice from nowhere at the garden party. Chris rounds a tree nearby, his shoulder pinned to the trunk. He's eating an apple. "When you get fried for launching this war of aggression --which I understand is some kind of crime or something-- what suit of clothes will you wear? ...Will your dark lord save you then? 'Cause you know he was just using you... "

So...

When Jeff Gannon was blowing his load up your ass...

...just moments before you were to meet with the cast of Jesus Camp in the Oval Office...

...did you know that the Future People would be laughing at you for being such a tired old queen?

"This is a part of the pre-frontal cortex. It's responsible for knowing when everyone knows you're a fag."

Thin Lizzy - The Boys Are Back in Town

You see, Mister Bush,

I don't much care for thieves.

You represented yourself as one thing to me eight years ago. But then you pulled a bait and switch. That's fraud.

And further, you chose to attempt to steal my property: my lawful government and my freedom.

It took me four years to get here, but now I've got you seated at the kitchen table, the top of your cranium removed, as I cut out parts of your brain and serve them to you, Hannibal Lecter style. Now that's Psychological Terra!

I decided to destroy your government. It's an abomination, a Frankenstein's Monster, a deformed monster baby. As the new father in an earlier era might have done, concerned about feeding only viable mouths, I smashed that monster's brains out on a rock and heaved it into a ravine. It was fun.

This is not Russia and this is not Germany. This is America. This is how Americans respond to tyranny. We destroy it. Tyranny is not the American way.

So not only did you and your neocon ilk lose so spectacularly in your gambit to turn the United States into a fascist dictatorship, I have collected quite a number of the spoils of war: I am in full possession of my rights to work, travel, and property. You are now left with nothing. You no longer even have territorial jurisdiction. Now that's an achievement among Caesars: the bumbling idiot who extinguished the very notion of territorial jurisdiction. Bravo.

I am a sovereign being subject to the rule of no man. Why? Because that man has proven himself unfit to rule, that's why. See how that works? No man permits himself to be ruled by animals.

The only thing you have left is the chance that you might save your soul. Throw yourself at the feet of the people whose trust you betrayed and beg their forgiveness.

If you do not, I will scoop out the remainder of your brains and throw them into the garbage.

I think you will find that this McClellan book--

provides a lot of evidence that may be used at a war crimes trial for Bush and Cheney.

Any reasonable person would by now conclude that there is sufficient evidence to convict them. Therefore, they may reasonably be regarded as war criminals in waiting of a conviction.

You realize, of course, that that means that they have no legal authority. One does not countenance the orders of criminals in waiting of a conviction; the accused might use any authority to obstruct their being brought to justice. "Chris, that's not how it works. You have to be convicted first." Not really; you see, we don't have trials anymore. Just call someone a terris and be done with it. Well, we can just call someone a war criminal and be done with it. What's good for the goose is good for the gander...

You don't have a President or a Vice President. They've got their names on the door, that's about it.

And, further, those who respond to commands issued by either one become complicit in their crimes.

So let's recap: The United States accidentally caused itself to cease to exist in law. And now you no longer have an Executive branch anyway.

Bravo.

See what a disrespect for Law does?

 

Hey. Gayboy.

Yeah. You.

I was going to lay off you. I figured you'd had enough.

I've changed my mind. You'll still die after your war crimes trial, but I want you to confess your crimes and beg the nation's forgiveness.

If you do not, I will publicly dismantle your mind and refashion it in a form more suited to my needs.

Get started, you assclown.