Dereliction of Duty! Dereliction of Duty! Dereliction of Duty!

Rumsfeld is the Secretary of Defense and IGNORED the reports of abuse (not to mention the abuses and the caravan of death where Afghanis died in sealed truck trailers just like in Nazi Germnany).

Bush is the Commander in Chief and told them Osama and his boys were wanted "Dead or Alive" - giving a license to use "ANY MEANS NECESSARY" to win the "war on terruh".

THEN Cheney's contractor buddies get the contracts to torture, kill, maim and humiliate the hostage Iraqis and the COMMANDERS BLAME OUR TROOPS!!!

Revolting, disgusting and , in military justice terms: DERELICTION OF DUTY!"

Kerry needs to use these words!

The Press needs to use these words!


We need to use these words over and over and over again until it becomes the MEME in the mind of America.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, ALL GUILTY of dereliction of Duty with respect to OUR TROOPS and with respect to HUMAN RIGHTS and the RULES OF WAR!!!

Say it to yourselves and then say it to everyone who has ears and who has a vote.

THIS is what Bush and his thugs have committed which is indefensible:

Overt acts of dereliction of duty.

(Bush is a master of that having mastered the art when he was "in" the National GuARd but was really boozing and coking his partying ass in Texas OR Saudi Arabia or somewhere in dereliction of his duties)

DERELICTION OF DUTY!

A BUNCH OF derelicts ALL!

AGREED?

THIS is a campaign term that people can sink their teeth into and which every veteran can UNDERSTAND and agree with.

They blame OUR troops instead of THEIR corporate jack the rippers and jackbooted thugs on direct orders from the insane clown posse in Washington.

How dare they?

Officers at the top would run from this meme, but grunts would embrace it wholeheartedly!

As for Joe Sixpack, he can't relate to officer mentality at all.

You've coined a winning meme!

Evenn the officers had to follow Rummy's and Cheney's orders to cooperate with the scary corporate terrorist mercenaries hired by this administration to run the insane clown of death circus.

It reminds me of the bloodsport coliseums of Rome which dot the middle east - where lions devoured the poor and slaves and Jews and Christians and Arabs for the lustful and necrophilic pleasures of the rich Romans and the privilege collaborators before they would set off to the orgy rooms and the vomitoriums.

This is what this prison scene is about. Bloodlust with sexual psychoses played out in a world of death and no limits.

Orgasmic for the impotent spineless cowardly Rummies and Cheneys and Bushes of the world played out by their favorite corporate fascist mercenary sponsors from Apartheid to El Salvador promoting a world of death and shame for the USA.

that responsibility is something bush doesn't understand.

This is a nightmare.

Bush, Rumsfeld and Myers should have known about it. According to an AP story today,

The International Red Cross said Thursday it had repeatedly asked U.S. authorities to take action over reported abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison before the recent revelations. Noting that Red Cross representatives had been visiting the prison and talking privately with detainees, spokeswoman Nada Doumani said in Geneva, "We were aware of what was going on, and based on our findings we have repeatedly requested the U.S. authorities to take corrective action."

If they claim they didn't know, then it's dereliction by incompetence. If they did know, then it's williful dereliction.

The same AP story reports, "the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said in a Thursday editorial that 'Rumsfeld should resign and take his top deputies with him.'"

The top deputies are the neocons. Paul Wolfowitz is Deputy Secretary of Defense, and, reportedly, chief executioner at Gitmo. Wolfowitz on Sepetember 12, 2001, wanted Bush to invade Iraq, not Afghanistan!

Based on the available information, they all should be convicted and given lengthy prison time.

Invasion -- Occupation -- Subjugation

I posted the same thought elsewhere, but they've now used "Didn't Know" for three major issues: the 9/11 warnings, the Niger uranium & WMD claim that gave the whole rationale for invasion, and now this.

Are three of these instances of "didn't know" enough to sink them? If not, how much does it take??

We have too often fallen victim to their terminology. We use their words for the debate, so they automatically win. (i.e. do we debate women's health or baby killing?) It is time to make them defend themselves against OUR words. DERELICTION OF DUTY! It's a HIGH CRIME and definitely impeachable!

I just sent it to someone with contacts on the Kerry blog.

I sure as hell think they ought to say it.

Kerry needs to use these words over and over and over again:

Dereliction of Duty!

DERELICTION of DUTY by acts of commisssion and omission.

(When Kerry says it I hope Y'all give me credit because this meme will sink the Bushwad's boat like a dead weight loaded with millstones)

This is worth a read for some VERY telling remarks (even though in the context of Clinton it gets to the term "dereliction of duty" as ghrounds for prosecution and removal from office) - and the last paragraph specifically mentions the issues of deaths by "contractors" who are agents of the President .

http://www.constitution.org/cmt/high_crimes.htm

Please pass this concept along far and wide. It may be too late for impeachment this term, but it may help beat the devils out of the white house.






Meaning of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors"
by Jon Roland, Constitution Society
The question of impeachment turns on the meaning of the phrase in the Constitution at Art. II Sec. 4, "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors". I have carefully researched the origin of the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" and its meaning to the Framers, and found that the key to understanding it is the word "high". It does not mean "more serious". It refers to those punishable offenses that only apply to high persons, that is, to public officials, those who, because of their official status, are under special obligations that ordinary persons are not under, and which could not be meaningfully applied or justly punished if committed by ordinary persons.

Under the English common law tradition, crimes were defined through a legacy of court proceedings and decisions that punished offenses not because they were prohibited by statutes, but because they offended the sense of justice of the people and the court. Whether an offense could qualify as punishable depended largely on the obligations of the offender, and the obligations of a person holding a high position meant that some actions, or inactions, could be punishable if he did them, even though they would not be if done by an ordinary person.

Offenses of this kind survive today in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It recognizes as punishable offenses such things as refusal to obey orders, abuse of authority, dereliction of duty, moral turpitude, and conduct unbecoming. These would not be offenses if committed by a civilian with no official position, but they are offenses which bear on the subject's fitness for the duties he holds, which he is bound by oath or affirmation to perform.

Perjury is usually defined as "lying under oath". That is not quite right. The original meaning was "violation of one's oath (or affirmation)".

The word "perjury" is usually defined today as "lying under oath about a material matter", but that is not its original or complete meaning, which is "violation of an oath". We can see this by consulting the original Latin from which the term comes. From An Elementary Latin Dictionary, by Charlton T. Lewis (1895), Note that the letter "j" is the letter "i" in Latin.

periurium, i, n,, a false oath, perjury.
periurus, adj., oath-breaking, false to vows, perjured. iuro, avi, atus, are, to swear, take an oath.
iurator, oris, m., a swearer.
iuratus, adj., sworn under oath, bound by an oath.
ius, iuris, that which is binding, right, justice, duty.
per, ... IV. Of means or manner, through, by, by means of, ... under pretense of, by the pretext of, ....
By Art. II Sec. 1 Cl. 8, the president must swear: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." He is bound by this oath in all matters until he leaves office. No additional oath is needed to bind him to tell the truth in anything he says, as telling the truth is pursuant to all matters except perhaps those relating to national security. Any public statement is perjury if it is a lie, and not necessary to deceive an enemy.

When a person takes an oath (or affirmation) before giving testimony, he is assuming the role of an official, that of "witness under oath", for the duration of his testimony. That official position entails a special obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and in that capacity, one is punishable in a way he would not be as an ordinary person not under oath. Therefore, perjury is a high crime.

An official such as the president does not need to take a special oath to become subject to the penalties of perjury. He took an oath, by Art. II Sec. 1 Cl. 8, to "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States" and to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" to the best of his ability. While he holds that office, he is always under oath, and lying at any time constitutes perjury if it is not justified for national security.

Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr erred in presenting in his referral only those offenses which could be "laid at the feet" of the president. He functioned like a prosecutor of an offense against criminal statutes that apply to ordinary persons and are provable by the standards of "proof beyond a reasonable doubt". That is not to say that such offenses are not also high crimes or misdemeanors when committed by an official bound by oath. Most such offenses are. But "high crimes and misdemeanors" also includes other offenses, applicable only to a public official, for which the standard is "preponderance of evidence". Holding a particular office of trust is not a right, but a privilege, and removal from such office is not a punishment. Disablement of the right to hold any office in the future would be a punishment, and therefore the standards of "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" would apply before that ruling could be imposed by the Senate.

It should be noted, however, that when an offense against a statute is also a "high crime or misdemeanor", it may be, and usually is, referred to by a different name, when considered as such. Thus, an offense like "obstruction of justice" or "subornation of perjury" may become "abuse of authority" when done by an official bound by oath. As such it would be grounds for impeachment and removal from office, but would be punishable by its statutory name once the official is out of office.

An executive official is ultimately responsible for any failures of his subordinates and for their violations of the oath he and they took, which means violations of the Constitution and the rights of persons. It is not necessary to be able to prove that such failures or violations occurred at his instigation or with his knowledge, to be able, in Starr's words, to "lay them at the feet" of the president. It is sufficient to show, on the preponderance of evidence, that the president was aware of misconduct on the part of his subordinates, or should have been, and failed to do all he could to remedy the misconduct, including termination and prosecution of the subordinates and compensation for the victims or their heirs. The president's subordinates include everyone in the executive branch, and their agents and contractors. It is not limited to those over whom he has direct supervision. He is not protected by "plausible deniability". He is legally responsible for everything that everyone in the executive branch is doing.

Therefore, the appropriate subject matter for an impeachment and removal proceeding is the full range of offenses against the Constitution and against the rights of persons committed by subordinate officials and their agents which have not been adequately investigated or remedied.

...the failure of the president to take action against the offenders, is more than enough to justify impeachment and removal from office on grounds of dereliction of duty. To these we could add the many suspicious incidents that indicate covered up crimes by federal agents, including the suspicious deaths of persons suspected of being knowledgeable of wrongdoing by the president or others in the executive branch, or its contractors.

The impeachment and removal process should be a debate on the entire field of proven and suspected misconduct by federal officials and agents under this president, and if judged to have been excessive by reasonable standards, to be grounds for removal, even if direct complicity cannot be shown.

I did not kick this at least once

guess not many think this works...

sometimes I wonder if these post sink because they suck or that they just go without saying...

I think we need to say this over and over to make people who are on the fence begin to HEAR it.

Am I just peeing in the wind?

pleas?