The current president’s chief credentials for office are his fantastic personal wealth, his larger-than-life personality and his genius at branding himself a “winner” in spite of an impressive body of evidence to the contrary. The president’s current chief adviser, his son-in-law, Jared, tasked with ending the opioid epidemic, negotiating peace in the Middle East and revamping the federal government, among other duties, has similar impressive credentials, minus the personality. Jared, a Harvard graduate, is the son of, perhaps, not the most ethical billionaire. Charles, his father, donated $2,500,000 to Harvard as an offset against the boy’s undistinguished private school grades and test scores. The donation to Harvard was made years before Charles was imprisoned for a couple of years in connection with his guilty plea to 18 felony counts in a case prosecuted by then federal prosecutor Chris Christie. You could look it up. [1]
Chelsea Manning, who Obama had prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act, served a portion of the thirty-five year sentence she received after being acquitted of aiding the enemy, in a long and largely secret trial. Manning is still reviled by many as a traitor while the soldiers involved in this incident, revealed by Manning, and dubbed “Collateral Murder” by Wikileaks, have never been prosecuted.
Manning felt the public had a right to know about incidents like “Collateral Murder”, where Reuters reporters and other civilians (including at least one child) were gleefully machine gunned along with their would-be rescuers, also fired on by the U.S. helicopter crew who got orders to “light ’em up”, or, in civilian-speak, riddle their bodies with machine gun fire. Civil liberties types were horrified by the protracted, aggressive, largely non-public prosecution of Manning under the rarely used Espionage Act, under which motive is irrelevant. [2]
A soldier, who wrote to everyone in the government without response, finally reported the massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers at My Lai to reporter Seymour Hersh. [3] The publicity was the only reason the government’s cover-up failed and anyone was ever tried for that atrocity (only one served jail time, three years, for allegedly ordering the rape and killing of as many as five hundred unarmed civilians).
Soldiers who served in Viet Nam said there were other massacres like the one at My Lai. We will never know. Shit happens, particularly during war. Nothing to see here. Unless some damned traitorous trouble maker makes it a problem.
Nothing to see here. Have a very nice day!
[1] Or let me save you the trouble, c/o Wikipedia:
In the summer of 2004, Kushner was fined $508,900 by the Federal Election Commission for contributing to political campaigns in the names of his partnerships when he lacked authorization to do so.[12] In 2005, following an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey,[13] U.S. Attorney Chris Christie negotiated a plea agreement with Kushner, under which he pleaded guilty to 18 counts of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering.[14] The witness-tampering charge arose from Kushner’s act of retaliation against William Schulder, his sister Esther’s husband, who was cooperating with federal investigators; Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, arranged to record an encounter between the two, and had the tape sent to his sister.[15][16][17][14]Kushner was sentenced to two years in prison[15] and served 14 months at Federal Prison Camp, Montgomery in Alabama[18][19] before being sent to a halfway house in Newark, New Jersey to complete his sentence.[18][19][20] He was released from prison on August 25, 2006.[21]
As a result of his convictions, Kushner was disbarred from practicing law in New Jersey,[22] New York,[23] and Pennsylvania.[24]
[2] “When a soldier who shared information with the press and public is punished far more harshly than others who tortured prisoners and killed civilians, something is seriously wrong with our justice system,” said Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. “This is a sad day for Bradley Manning, but it’s also a sad day for all Americans who depend on brave whistleblowers and a free press for a fully informed public debate.”
The situation becomes even more grotesque when those who authorize torture, rebrand it as “enhanced interrogation” and design the torture program are fantastically rewarded… and the “high road” president who “looks forward” and not backward and declines to investigate or prosecute anyone for these war crimes… and is well on his way to becoming a self-made billionaire for consistently taking the “right” side on such matters of conscience, well, you get the idea… the torture never stops, as Frank Zappa observed.
Obama is praised by some for belatedly granting “clemency” to the soldier he prosecuted under the draconian World War One law that did not allow that whistelblower to defend herself in a virtually secret trial. God bless my man the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
[3] The coverup continued until Ron Ridenhour, a soldier in the 11th Brigade who had heard reports of the massacre but had not participated, began a campaign to bring the events to light. After writing letters to President Richard Nixon, the Pentagon, State Department, Joint Chiefs of Staff and several congressmen, with no response, Ridenhour finally gave an interview to the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the story in November 1969.
gratuitousblahg 