FOX Pundit Wishes for Obama Assassination, Laughs

Jeffrey Feldman (Sun May 25, 8:43 PM ET)

During a live interview, FOX Contributor Liz Trotta jokingly wished for the assassination of Sen. Barack Obama.

This latest incident from FOX News continues the trend in violent rhetoric about Sen. Obama from pundits, politicians, and entertainers.

Grinning While Joking About Killing A Candidate
The incident happen in an exchange with the FOX News anchor. When asked her opinion of the recent scandal surrounding some comments made by Sen. Hillary Clinton, which Trotta described by saying that, "some are reading [it] as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama." Hemmer quickly corrected Trotta, having noticed that she had said "Osama" when she meant "Obama." At this point, Trotta said, "Obama. Well...both if we could!" Trotta then laughed gleefully.

(The full interview can be viewed here)

What prompted Trotta to joke about the assassination of Sen. Obama was her apparent inability to differentiate between Sen. Obama and the terrorist leader responsible for the terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001.

Since Sen. Obama first declared his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for president, right-wing pundits on FOX News and a variety of other broadcast outlets have regularly called the Sen. Obama by the name "Osama" in a systematic propaganda campaign to convince the American public that a sitting member of their government has secret ties to terrorists.

As if she were providing a punchline to that long-running propaganda campaign, Trotta made known that the conclusions the public should draw were (1) that Sen. Obama and Osama bin Laden are equivalent, and (2) they both deserve to be assassinated.

Americans Everywhere Are Tired Of This!
There is no question that broadcast pundits "can" make jokes about assassinating a Senator and a Presidential candidate. The United States Constitution protects freedom of expression to the extreme. But that is the wrong question to ask in this situation. The issue is not "can" pundits make jokes about assassinating Sen. Obama, but "should" they?

It is astounding that Americans should even be forced to have such a conversation, let alone on Memorial Day Weekend when we remember with respect the sacrifices of fallen soldiers. But here we are.

I have to wonder how many people there actually are in the U.S. who think it is funny to make jokes about the assassination of Sen. Obama? What percentage of the American population consists of people who think that the assassination of Sen. Obama--or anyone for that matter--makes for a good punchline? Is it 50 people? 75, maybe?

Perhaps I am overly optimistic, but I do not believe there are very many people in our country--or anywhere else for that matter--who laugh or find it remotely funny when broadcast pundits stoop to the level of making jokes about killing an elected leader. It does not feel funny. It feels like someone spitting in our faces.

I believe that the vast majority of Americans--people in every corner of the country and of all political stripes--all react with an equal level of disgust when we hear remarks of the sort that Liz Trotta made on FOX News.

When we hear such "jokes" about assassinating a member of the Senate--a member of our government--we do not laugh, but instead wonder. We wonder what has happened to broadcast media in our country. We wonder to ourselves, to our families, and to our friends: How have we arrived at this point? How has our broadcast media so utterly lost its moral compass?

That same optimism leads me to conclude that the vast, vast majority of Americans do not want this kind of vile, utterly disgusting, "assassination" humor to become a recurrent part of our national debate between now and the general election, nor at any other time.

We do not want it.

That's it.

Enough.

It ends right now.

What Americans want is a guarantee from the whole of the broadcast media industry that whenever we turn on our televisions and our radios we will never again be affronted with this brand of total, unadulterated disrespect in the form of a joke about assassinating our leaders.

And why do we demand this guarantee? It is not because we are sensitive. It is because the free press belongs to us--to the American people. It belongs to us and nobody has a right to debase it.

We do not care how many stations a single corporation owns, how many billions of dollars in revenue a media outlet produces--no corporation has the right to debase the free press in this country.

The reason for a free press--for our free press--is not to degrade our political institutions, undermine our elections, and threaten our politicians, but to strengthen and sustain our deliberative democracy.

If FOX News or any other broadcast media outlet cannot live up to that standard, then they should shut off their lights, sell their equipment, and choose another line of work.

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Bush Plays the Hitler Card

Pat Buchanan (Tue May 20, 3:00 AM ET)

"A little learning is a dangerous thing," wrote Alexander Pope.

Daily, our 43rd president testifies to Pope's point.

Addressing the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's birth, Bush said those who say we should negotiate with Iran or Hamas are like the fools who said we should negotiate with Adolf Hitler.

"As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared, 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement. ..."

Again, Bush has made a hash of history.

Appeasement is the name given to what Neville Chamberlain did at Munich in September 1938. Rather than fight Germany in another great war — to keep 3.5 million Germans under a Czech rule they despised — he agreed to their peaceful transfer to German rule. With these Germans went the lands their ancestors had lived upon for centuries, German Bohemia, or the Sudetenland.

Chamberlain's negotiated deal with Hitler averted a European war — at the expense of the Czech nation. That was appeasement.

German tanks, however, did not roll into Poland until a year later, Sept. 1, 1939. Why did the tanks roll? Because Poland refused to negotiate over Danzig, a Baltic port of 350,000 that was 95 percent German and had been taken from Germany at the Paris peace conference of 1919, in violation of Wilson's 14 Points and his principle of self-determination.

Hitler had not wanted war with Poland. He had wanted an alliance with Poland in his anti-Comintern pact against Joseph Stalin.

But the Poles refused to negotiate. Why? Because they were a proud, defiant, heroic people and because Neville Chamberlain had insanely given an unsolicited war guarantee to Poland. If Hitler invaded, Chamberlain told the Poles, Britain would declare war on Germany.

From March to August 1939, Hitler tried to negotiate Danzig. But the Poles, confident in their British war guarantee, refused. So, Hitler cut his deal with Stalin, and the two invaded and divided Poland.

The cost of the war that came of a refusal to negotiate Danzig was millions of Polish dead, the Katyn massacre, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, the annihilation of the Home Army in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, and 50 years of Nazi and Stalinist occupation, barbarism and terror.

In that same speech to the Knesset, Bush dismissed the idea we could ever successfully negotiate with Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran:

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them that they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before."

But did not Ronald Reagan's negotiations with the Evil Empire, as he rebuilt America's military might, bear fruit in a reversal of Moscow's imperial policy and an end to the Cold War?

Richard Nixon went to China and toasted the greatest mass murderer of them all, Mao Zedong, when Maoists were conducting a nationwide purge: the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Yet, Nixon ended a quarter century of implacable U.S.-Chinese hostility. Was Nixon's trip to China useless?

Three years after Nikita Khrushchev drowned the Hungarian revolution in blood, Ike had him up to Camp David. John Kennedy ended the most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis, by negotiating with that same Butcher of Budapest.

Were Ike, JFK and Nixon all deluded fools? For the dictators they negotiated with — Khrushchev and Mao — were far greater mass murderers and enemies of America than is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Bush's father negotiated with Syria's Hafez al-Assad, the Butcher of Hama, and made him an American ally in the Gulf War.

Was President Bush's father a deluded fool?

The president's own diplomats negotiated an end to the nuclear program of Col. Gadhafi, who was responsible for the air massacre of American school kids over Lockerbie.

Bush's own diplomats are negotiating with Kim Jong-il's North Korea, a state sponsor of terror. Ambassador Ryan Crocker is negotiating with Iranians in Baghdad. Egypt is negotiating on behalf of Israel with Hamas to retrieve a captured Israeli soldier. Are they all deluded fools?

Bush refused to talk to Yasser Arafat because he was a terrorist. But four Israeli prime ministers negotiated with Arafat. Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin shared a Nobel Prize with him. "Bibi" Netanyahu ceded Hebron to him. Ehud Olmert offered him 95 percent of the West Bank.

Were all four Israeli leaders deluded fools?

True, the Chamberlain-Hitler summit at Munich proved a disaster, as did the FDR-Churchill-Stalin summits at Tehran and Yalta, and the JFK-Khrushchev summit in Vienna. But JFK's diplomacy in the missile crisis may have averted a nuclear war. And Eisenhower, Nixon, Gerald Ford and Reagan all met with foreign dictators with blood on their hands, without loss to America, and sometimes with impressive gains.

What has Bush's refusal to talk to Hamas, Hezbollah, Damascus and Tehran done to make either Israel or America more secure?

To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

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OBAMA: THE OTHER WHITE MEAT

By Ted Rall (Thu May 8, 11:10 AM ET)

NEW YORK--I argue with my friends. Some of them thought invading Iraq was a good idea. Almost all believed that Afghanistan was "the good war," the one from which Iraq distracted us. (They're starting to come around.) A few are even bigots. We disagree about these issues, often vehemently. But we're still friends. I would never diss a friend in public (or, in politicalese, "distance myself"). Even a former friend deserves respect.

Crisis reveals character. In politics, it reveals judgment.

Barack "Uniter Not Divider, This Time We Really Mean It" Obama was praised for dumping ("distancing himself from") Reverend Jeremiah Wright. ("What Barack Obama did was a profile in courage," said the Reverend Al Sharpton.) But the McCain campaign's silence indicates that it is quietly editing its fall attack ads. Obama's apology, they'll say, came too little, too late. Obama has fallen for one of the hoariest old tricks in the political playbook: guilt by association.

Republicans are smart. They close ranks behind a senator caught trolling for gay sex in an airport restroom, ignoring the homophobic platform of their own party. Mr. Wide Stance keeps his job; they keep his vote. In contrast, when New York's governor hooks up with a prostitute, the Dems--whose politics, after all, are sex-positive--sell one of their brightest lights down the river.

You'd think Democrats would have learned a big lesson in 1972. It seems quaint in this age of Zoloft, but when it came out that vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton had been treated for depression (with electroshock treatment, standard care at the time), the media went nuts. If George McGovern had stood by his running mate, the issue would soon have died. There were, after all, plenty of other stories to talk about--say, Vietnam and Watergate. But McGovern got spooked. He dumped Eagleton. Voters asked themselves: If a guy throws his own running mate under the bus, how will he defend the United States? McGovern lost by a landslide.

Rule One of political survival: Never, ever apologize. Even when you're wrong. Especially when you're wrong. Rule Two: Don't comment. Defending yourself keeps the story going. Corollary One to Rule One: Stand up for your friends. Especially when they're wrong.

But what if they're right?

"You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you," Reverend Wright said in his appearance at the National Press Club.

Pronouncing himself "offended" by such "ridiculous propositions" as "when [Wright] equates the United States' wartime efforts with terrorism--there are no excuses," Obama said the next day.

What is truly ridiculous is that, six and a half years after 9/11, many Americans still think the attacks were motivated by crazy freedom-haters out to forcibly convert them to Islam. The rise of radical Islam resulted from what Chalmers Johnson termed "Blowback"--CIA jargon for the unintended consequences, in this case of arming and funding Islamist fighters against the Soviet Union. But Wright was right. "America's chickens are coming home to roost," the Reverend said after 9/11.

It wasn't an original thought. Ward Churchill said the same thing. So have countless analysts in other countries. Only in the U.S. is it prohibited to say something so obvious--particularly in a public forum.

Osama bin Laden and the 19 hijackers didn't think flying planes into buildings would make Americans join the local mosque. They were motivated by a desire to bring America's wars home to its people, to ensure that it would suffer the consequences for having "supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans," as Wright said. Like Wright, bin Laden has referenced these issues.

The Al Qaeda founder has also talked about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, one of the greatest war crimes in history.

"Bin Laden has said several times that he is seeking to acquire and use nuclear weapons not only because it is God's will, but because he wants to do to American foreign policy what the United States did to Japanese imperial surrender policy," the Washington Post noted in 2005.

One of Wright's most bizarre statements concerns his "suggestion that the United States might have invented H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS," in the words of The New York Times. There is no evidence to support this accusation. Yet paranoia can reveal truth.

"Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything," Wright told the NAACP last week. (In Tuskegee from 1932 to 1972, illiterate sharecroppers with syphilis were left untreated so that white doctors could observe the progress of the disease.) "In fact, one of the responses to what Saddam Hussein had in terms of biological warfare was a non-question, because all we had to do was check the sales records. We sold him those biological weapons that he was using against his own people. So any time a government can put together biological warfare to kill people, and then get angry when those people use what we sold them, yes, I believe we are capable."

It shouldn't come as any surprise, given what the U.S. government has done and continues to do to African-Americans--a recent study shows, for example, that blacks are 12 times more likely than whites to be sent to prison for the same drug offenses as whites--that many of them consider it "capable of doing anything." What is surprising is that African-Americans--or anyone else--still believes the government.

The Wright controversy offered us an opportunity to talk about the need to create a government that tells the truth, that doesn't torture or kidnap or wage unjustifiable wars--a government worthy of its people and its trust. What we got instead, courtesy of Mr. Change We Can Believe In, was the usual pablum. "They offend me," Obama said of Wright's comments. "They rightly offend all Americans."

Let us all hold hands and be offended. Whatever it takes to stop us from thinking.

(Ted Rall is the author of the book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.)

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ARREST BUSH

By Ted Rall (Tue Apr 29, 7:57 PM ET)

Bush Confesses to Waterboarding. Call D.C. Cops!

NEW YORK--"Why are we talking about this in the White House?" John Ashcroft nervously asked his fellow members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee. (The Principals were Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General Ashcroft.)

"History will not judge this kindly," Ashcroft predicted.

"This" is torture. Against innocent people. Conducted by CIA agents and American soldiers and marines. Sanctioned by legal opinions issued by Ashcroft's Justice Department. Directly ordered by George W. Bush.

An April 11th report by ABC News describes how CIA agents, asked by previous presidents to carry out illegal "black ops" actions (torture and killings), had become tired of getting hung out to dry whenever their dirty deeds were revealed by the press. When the Bush Administration asked the CIA to work over prisoners captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, Director George Tenet demanded legal cover. The Justice Department complied by issuing a classified 2002 memo, the so-called "Golden Shield," authored by Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee. "Enhanced interrogation techniques"--i.e., torture--were legal, Bybee assured the CIA.

Tenet was a good boss, a CYA type. He wanted to protect his agents. So he got the Principals to personally sign off on each act of torture.

"According to a former CIA official involved in the process," ABC reported, "CIA headquarters would receive cables from operatives in the field asking for authorization for specific techniques." Can we beat up this guy? Can we waterboard him?

The Bushies weren't otherwise known for dwelling on details. Osama was in Pakistan; they invaded Afghanistan instead. Two years later, he was still in Pakistan. They invaded Iraq. Bush and his top officials still found time to walk through every step of torment a detainee would suffer in some CIA dungeon halfway around the world.

"The high-level discussions about these 'enhanced interrogation techniques' were so detailed, [Bush Administration] sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed--down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic. These top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top Al Qaeda suspects--whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding, sources told ABC news."

Bush knew.

Not only did he know, he personally approved it. He likes torture.

"Yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue," he confirmed. "And I approved."

When the U.S. signs a treaty, its provisions carry the full force of U.S. law. One such treaty is the U.N. Convention Against Torture, of which the U.S. is a core signatory. As Philippe Sands writes in his new book "Torture Team:" Parties to the... Convention are required to investigate any person who is alleged to have committed torture. If appropriate, they must then prosecute--or extradite the person to a place where he will be prosecuted. The Torture Convention... criminalizes any act that constitutes complicity or participation in torture. Complicity or participation could certainly be extended not only to the politicians and but also the lawyers involved..."

George W. Bush has publicly confessed that he ordered torture, thus violating the Convention Against Torture. He, Cheney, Rumseld, Rice and the other Principals must therefore be arrested and, unlike the thousands of detainees kidnapped by the U.S. since 9/11, arraigned and placed on trial.

Because the torture ordered by Bush and his cabinet directly resulted in death, they must additionally be charged with several counts of murder. Fifteen U.S. soldiers have been charged with the murders of two detainees at the U.S. airbase at Bagram, Afghanistan in 2002. They were following orders issued by their Commander-in-Chief and his Principals.

One of the Bagram victims was Dilawar, a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver. "On the day of his death," reported The New York Times on May 22, 2005, "Dilawar had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days. A guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend... Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time."

At least four detainees have committed suicide at the torture camp created by George W. Bush after 9/11 at Guantánamo Bay. Twenty-five more made 41 unsuccessful attempts to kill themselves. The conditions of their confinement--ordered by Bush and his Principals--constitutes torture. It no doubt prompted their deaths.

If George W. Bush were an ordinary citizen, there can be little doubt that he would face a long prison sentence for the scores of acts of torture he authorized both specifically and generally. Four of the seven white hillbillies charged with the kidnap-torture of a black woman in Logan County, West Virginia are now in jail for at least the next ten years.

If Bush weren't president, he would face murder charges. The maximum sentence in a federal murder case is death.

If Bush and his co-conspirators are not above the law, if the United States remains a nation where all citizens are equal, they must be arrested and indicted. But by whom?

The Supreme Court has never resolved the question of whether a sitting president can be arrested by civilian authorities. Even if he were charged and convicted, many legal experts say he could issue himself a pardon.

However, leaving the presidency in the hands of an self-admitted torture killer is unacceptable. Congress could ask a U.S. Marshal to arrest Bush as part of impeachment charges. But the ultimate outcome--removing him from office a few months before the end of his term--seems woefully inadequate given the nature of the charges. In any case, Democrats have already said that impeachment is "off the table."

Bush could be extradited to one of the countries where the torture and murders were committed--such as Afghanistan or Cuba. But he could claim immunity as a head of state.

There is, however, a person who could begin holding Bush and the others accountable for their crimes.

She is Cathy L. Lanier, the 39-year-old chief of D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department. Chief Lanier, take note: you have probable cause to arrest a self-confessed serial torturer and mass murderer within the borders of the District of Columbia. He resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Go get him.

History is calling, Chief Lanier. Your city, and your country, needs you.

(Ted Rall is the author of the book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.)

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