Lieberman's Obsession

Mr. Lieberman has an obsession - and it's to bomb the living hell out of Iran.

Mr. Lieberman spoke about on the sanctions imposed on Iran which were “not about Iran’s nuclear weapons program” but rather, human rights. He then proceeded to bring it up THREE times during the press conference.¹

The headlines light up from Lieberman’s suggestions:

“US Ready to Strike Iran” (2010) & “Bomb Iran If It Doesn’t Stop” (2007)

“We hope this threatens the abusers in Iran and we hope this legislation says to the protestors, your struggle is difficult but as has been the case for those who have fought tyrannies throughout history, that ultimately the cause of freedom and justice will prevail.” – February 11, 2010 joining John McCain on an Iran Human Rights Bill

On “Face the Nation” with Bob Schieffer June 10, 2007

“I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq…and to me, that would include a strike into…over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers.”

“I think you could probably do a lot of it from the air, but they can’t believe that they have immunity for training and equipping people to come in and kill Americans.”

If the U.S. does not act against Iran, he added, “they’ll take that as a sign of weakness on our part and we will pay for it in Iraq and throughout the region and ultimately right here at home.”

In September of 2007, John Kyl co-sponsored an amendment with Lieberman to basically declare the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a global terrorist group. The initial intent was to identify Iran’s influence in Iraq to ratchet up the military response.

He told the Jerusalem Post: (aim of air strikes in Iran would be) “to delay [the nuclear program] to deter it hoping that you set the program off course so that by the time they catch up back to where they were there’s been a change in government. That’s the limited objective that I would see” – April 18, 2006

In December of that year he paraphrased he was opposed to a sit in direct talks with Iran because it was like “your local fire department asking a couple of arsonists to help put out the fire. These people are flaming the fire. They are extremists.”

In 2004 Joe Lieberman help for the Committee on Present Danger (CPD) claiming the aim of the group was “to form a bipartisan citizens’ army, which is ready to fight a war of ideas against our Islamist terrorist enemies, and to send a clear signal that their strategy to deceive, demoralize, and divide America will not succeed.”

Then all the way back to 2003, in an interview on FOX News:

I think it would be in the interest of the world, and most particularly of the Iranian people, to have a regime change in Iran.

I’ve actually been saying that for quite a while, that we’ve got to begin to look at Iran the way we looked at the Soviet Union for a long time, which is the people are on our side. Every poll says that. Every time they get a chance to vote, the Iranians vote for reform.

There is a small group of extremists at the top of the Iranian government, very much like the small group of communists at the top of the Soviet Union, who will not deal with us.

Of course, the Iranians even are more detached from us, and more extreme than the Soviets were. And I think what — we want to have a policy that looks for the Lech Walesas and Vaclav Havels of — and in some senses the Gorbachevs — of Iran, and encourage them in every way we can.

For nearly a decade Joe Lieberman has been beating the drum for us to blow up Iran.

“We can tell them we want them to stop that, but if there’s any hope of the Iranians living according to the international rule of law and stopping, for instance, their nuclear weapons development, we can’t just talk to them,” Lieberman said. “If they don’t play by the rules, we’ve got to use our force, and to me that would include taking military action to stop them from doing what they’re doing.” – On “Face the Nation” with Bob Schieffer June 10, 2007

While we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States… This bloodshed, moreover, is not the inevitable product of ancient hatreds. It is the predictable consequence of a failure to ensure basic security and, equally important, of a conscious strategy by al-Qaeda and Iran, which have systematically aimed to undermine Iraq’s fragile political center… On this point, let there be no doubt: If Iraq descends into full-scale civil war, it will be a tremendous battlefield victory for al-Qaeda and Iran… One moderate Palestinian leader told me that a premature U.S. exit from Iraq would be a victory for Iran and the groups it is supporting in the region. – December 29, 2006 Washington Post

And you thought that Joe Biden was gaffe prone?

Internet Kill Switch

Meanwhile, while you were watching soccer...

A US Senate committee has approved a wide-ranging cybersecurity bill that some critics have suggested would give the US president the authority to shut down parts of the Internet during a cyberattack.

Senator Joe Lieberman and other bill sponsors have refuted the charges that the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act gives the president an Internet "kill switch." Instead, the bill puts limits on the powers the president already has to cause "the closing of any facility or stations for wire communication" in a time of war, as described in the Communications Act of 1934, they said in a breakdown of the bill published on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee website.

The committee unanimously approved an amended version of the legislation by voice vote Thursday, a committee spokeswoman said. The bill next moves to the Senate floor for a vote, which has not yet been scheduled.

Goodbye free speech. It was fun while it lasted.

Guess Who Voted to Limit the Liability of Oil Companies?

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Man, people are pissed about that oil spill. But some of that blame is (rightfully) bouncing back to the congress-persons who voted for the Oil Pollution Act. Many believe that those who voted for it are directly responsible for the oil spill in the Gulf. That's a stretch... But they did enable British Petroleum to loosen their safety procedures, to operate without redundant oil spill prevention systems, to take risks, and be, you know, capitalist pig dogs. The argument is that this is why they're using the same oil spill clean up technologies used the in the late 70’s are still in place today.

The Oil Pollution Act diluted (heh heh) any motivation for improvement in oil spill safety, prevention and oil spill containment procedures by removing the penalties for neglect.

Many congress-persons who voted for this act are still in office today. The cry for these people to be removed is getting louder... and yes, I agree, but not for this. What we really should be outraged is that government, which demands obedience to protect us from these things, accepts no liability when they happen.

But anyway, here are their names (these congress-persons voted for the Oil Pollution Act of 1990):

United States Senators – [source]

Richard Shelby – Alabama

John McCain – Arizona

Barbara Boxer – California

Chris Dodd – Connecticut

Joe Lieberman – Connecticut

Joe Biden – Delaware (currently Vice President)

Tom Carper – Deleware

Daniel Inouye – Hawaii

Daniel Akaka – Hawaii

Dick Durbin – Illinois

Richard Lugar – Indiana

Chuck Grassley – Iowa

Tom Harkin – Iowa

Pat Roberts – Kansas

Jim Bunning – Kentucky

Mitch McConnell – Kentucky

Olympia Snowe – Maine

Ben Cardin – Maryland

Barbara Mikulski – Maryland

John Kerry – Massachusettes

Carl Levin – Michigan

Thad Cochran – Mississippi

Kit Bond – Missouri

Max Baucus – Montana

Harry Reid – Nevada

Frank Lautenberg – New Jersey

Jeff Bingaman – New Mexico

Chuck Schumer – New York

Kent Conrad – North Dakota

Byron Dorgan – North Dakota

Jim Inhofe – Oklahoma

Ron Wyden – Oregon

Arlen Specter – Pennsylvania

Tim Johnson – South Dakota

Orrin Hatch – Utah

Patrick Leahy – Vermont

Robert Byrd – West Virgnia

Jay Rockefeller – West Virginia

Herb Kohl – Wisconsin

U.S. House – [source]

Don Young – Alaska

Jon Kyl – Arizona

Howard Berman – California

David Dreier – California

Elton Gallegly – California

Wally Herger – California

Jerry Lewis – California

George Miller – California

Nancy Pelosi – California

Dana Rohrabacher – California

Henry Waxman – California

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen – Florida

Cliff Stearns – Florida

Bill Young – Florida

John Lewis – Georgia

Jerry Costello – Illinois

Dan Burton – Indiana

Pete Visclosky – Indiana

Hal Rogers – Kentucky

Barney Frank – Massachussetts

Ed Markey – Massachussetts

Richard Neal – Massachussetts

Steny Hoyer – Maryland

John Conyers – Michigan

John Dingell – Michigan

Dale Kildee – Michigan

Sander Levin – Michigan

Fred Upton – Michigan

Jim Oberstar – Minnesota

Gene Taylor – Mississippi

Frank Pallone – New Jersey

Chris Smith – New Jersey

Donald Payne – New Jersey

Gary Ackerman – New York

Eliot Engel – New York

Nita Lowey – New York

Charles Rangel – New York

Jose Serrano – New York

Louise Slaughter – New York

Ed Towns – New York

Howard Coble – North Carolina

David Price – North Carolina

Marcy Kaptur – Ohio

Peter DeFazio – Oregon

Paul Kanjorski – Pennsylvania

John Spratt, Jr. – South Carolina

Jim Cooper – Tennessee

John Duncan – Tennessee

Bart Gordon – Tennessee

John Tanner – Tennessee

Joe Barton – Texas

Ralph Hall – Texas

Solomon Ortiz – Texas

Lamar Smith – Texas

Frank Wolf – Virgnia

Jim McDermott – Washington

Nick Rahall – West Virginia

Alan Mollohan – West Virgninia

Dave Obey – Wisconsin

Jim Sensenbrenner – Wisconsin

and

Newt Gingrich

Now what ought to REALLY anger you is how many of these jokers are still incumbents TWENTY years after. That is greater of incumbents that existed under one party rule in China and the Soviet Union. I think only Castro has outlived these lifetime Congressional 'leaders'?

And since we're on the issue, weren't these the same idiots who were against liability caps for medical malpractice just a few months ago, pointing to the increased cost of business that are incurred as a result of doctors taking great pains to avoid litigation? If you didn't support the doctors in that case and then turn around and yell they didn't put big enough caps or should have unlimited liability in the case of Big Oil Spill, perhaps you can share why? Also, do you consider a cap on medical liability an intrusion of government? Why would your opinion change so radically, and so quickly?

Well, Bayh

Now Evan Bayh is retiring from the Senate for thoroughly nonsense reasons -- the EXACT kind of thing that drew laughter and ridicule when Sarah Palin made the same resignation from her Alaska governor's seat. [you know, cash]

This isn't really all that interesting; the Democrats have been dropping like flies lately. What's worth noting, though, is the predictably self-defeating response of many on the left to the news that an admittedly centrist Democrat is quitting Congress.

The left is jumping for joy -- tweeting unmitigated crap like "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Evan!" If there's a better example of how the left has been running to self extinction, I can't find it. Bayh may have been a gutless little dog mess and occasionally an obstructionist of the highest order, but he was a Democrat, which means that he was ostensibly on the same side as those who are now gleefully jumping on his political grave. Who does the left think is going to replace Bayh in Indiana? A more liberal Democrat? Not likely.

This all-or-nothing, Utopia-or-bust stance that my friends on the left continue to adhere to will be the death of the progressive agenda. Hell, it probably already is. The funniest part is, they're completely oblivious to it.

Also of note, Bayh was considered top of the list for Kerry and Obama as a running mate. What is it with Democrats and their VP choices? A couple years later they're treated worse than Republicans?

Face of Evil

Soldier's mom says Fort Hood jihadist scared her

Mom of soldier says Fort Hood doctor Nidal Malik Hasan scared her, by Joanna Molloy for the New York Daily News, November 9:

He was supposed to help her hero son - but all she saw in Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's eyes was evil.

The mom of a soldier who received psychiatric treatment from the accused Fort Hood gunman said she was frightened of the psychiatrist from the very beginning of her son's stay at Walter Reed Medical Center.

"I looked into his eyes, and he scared me," Cindy Gagnier told the Daily News. "He made some comments to me that made me feel very uncomfortable, and I don't become uncomfortable very easily."

The New York-born mother of four was at her son Christian's bedside constantly after he suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2005 while fighting in Iraq.

The young veteran, who also is dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder, spent 18 months at Walter Reed, where Hasan spent six years on staff....

Gagnier virtually lived at Walter Reed during a difficult stretch of her oldest son's care.

During that time, she recalls Hasan as "not very empathetic."

"[Hasan] said it was all right for my son to leave the hospital, but it wasn't," Gagnier said....

She doesn't buy reports that Hasan simply woke up one day and snapped.

"I don't think he flipped out," she said. "I think what he did was an act of terrorism."

Interesting. And since I'm on the religious nut/right wing side of the argument that Major Pile was a terrorist sleeper agent (Sen. Joe Lieberman and Rush Limbaugh agree with me, damn it), let's add some gasoline to the fire...

Jesus, from the sermon on the mount;

The light of the body is the eye: if therefore your eye be sound, your whole body shall be full of light.

But if your eye be evil, your whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness!

Open Letter to Joe Lieberman

Dear Mr. Lieberman~

Unlike many other residents (and in my case former resident) of Connecticut, I will not lie to you. You, sir, are a disgrace to the United States of America. Not to a political party, mind you, but to the country you profess to serve.

I did not vote for you in the 2000 election. I did not vote for one of my favorite candidates (Mr. Gore) because of you and his wife Tipper. At the time I did not think you a dangerous warhawk, I thought you dangerous for your desire to take away American's rights of free speech and freedom to share information. I was opposed to the censoring of music, television, movies, and video games that you were advocating.

You continue to do this even now, at the same time you demand freedom and democracy for the Middle East. Iran already censors their information, Senator, they do not need your help to do it. I understand that war is fun. They show the cool night-eye vision goggles on CNN and things go BOOM Their are bright colors and fires and chaos and cool weaponry for the History channel. I understand. What I think you are failing to grasp is that their are human beings involved in this war. Real breathing (or formerly breathing) people. And they are dying on both sides in the tens of thousands.

I know you were and continue to be for the war for your own personal religious reasons. I have read and re-read the Old Testament and have yet to find the "blow the shit out of your enemies" section of the text. I did see the "turn the other cheek" part but that assumes that you were hit on your cheek in the first place. I read the "love your enemies" part and the "be kind to your fellow man" area but something probably got lost in the translation.

Recently, you encouraged the president to not only continue in Iraq but to expand the war into Iran.

"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," Lieberman said. "And to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

You were able to come to this conclusion by traveling to Iraq and speaking with the soldiers. Sir, these men are soldiers. There job is not to give you answers but to protect our country and our people. In turn, they ask for honesty and for you to look out for them. With armor, weapons and necessary equipment to fund a war and the best care available if they are injured while fighting for the country. You took their answers to your questions and parlayed them to us falsely then had the gumption to act shocked that they are not happy.

During Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) trip to Iraq two weeks ago, McClatchy published an article highlighting how several soldiers who met with Lieberman had wanted to ask him, "When are we going to get out of here?" Others told McClatchy, "We’re waiting to get blown up," and "We’re not making any progress," but said they didn’t feel comfortable telling Lieberman their true feelings. One said he thought he would be demoted if he spoke openly.

This morning on CNN, Lieberman was asked about the article and appeared to blame the soldiers for not being honest with him. "I was really upset about it," he said, because "I sat at a table with a bunch of our soldiers there" and "was asking them to speak to me from their heart."

I also have issue with your reaction to the politicalization of the Department of Justice. You recently voted against cloture in the lack of confidence vote against Alberto Gonzalez. You claimed that you voted against ending the discussion claiming "[i]t is an expression of opposition to spending any more time on a resolution that will accomplish nothing, instead of going ahead with the next item of business, which is energy legislation." You realize the irony in that statement, right? You voted against ending the discussion of the no confidence vote because you did not want to talk about it. There were more important things ahead.

Well, the politicalization of the Justice Department is one of the most crucial items that our Congress should work to fix. The basis of our democracy rests on it. This is not a political stunt. This is defense of our constitution.

In the past year, there has been an increase of defendants claiming that the charges brought against them are political ploys and not true charges.
The controversy has drained morale from U.S. attorney offices around the country. And now, legal experts and former Justice Department officials say, it is casting a shadow over the integrity of the department and its corps of career prosecutors in court.

There has long been a presumption that, because they represented the Justice Department, prosecutors had no political agenda and their word could be trusted. But some legal experts say the controversy threatens to undermine their credibility.

"It provides defendants an opportunity to make an argument that would not have been made two years ago," said Daniel J. French, a former U.S. attorney in Albany, N.Y. "It has a tremendously corrosive effect."

Defense lawyers in political corruption cases often argue to juries that the prosecution was motivated by politics, especially when the prosecutor happens to be of a different political party than the defendant.

Let me decipher this for you because you seem to have issues doing it yourself. There are three branches of government. Each with separate and independent powers, They are the Executive, Legislative, and the Judicial. This is Separation of Power. The founding fathers thought that with human nature being the way it is one day we just might elect a person because we would want to have a beer with them rather than by who would do the best job. In turn by having others make sure that they don't do anything like start an unfounded war or turn the government of this country into a Corporate Branch.

The most important of these is the Justice Department. It's job is to ensure that whatever else happens, there will be a non-political set of eyes on the issue and it will be resolved fairly. Congressman, you are trying to put an end to a fair and just criminal system.

You have recently said about Alberto Gonzalez, "... Attorney General Gonzales is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, and it's time for him to really look into his own heart and soul, as tough as it is, and ask whether he should continue in this job. And it is time for the Senate to move on right now..."

Unreal. You, sir, should look into your heart and soul and decide, as tough as it is, and ask if YOU should keep your job. You should decide now if you are with America or against her. Decide well. Our country depends on it.

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