How do you feel about Pres. Obama awarding George H.W. Bush w/ the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

[ZombieHorde]

[Renew Deal]

1. I don't care

:shrug:

Every president between JFK and Reagan has received it except Nixon. Bush 2 couldn't really give it to his dad. I wonder if Obama will get to give it to Clinton in the future.

[Glorfindel]

2. What an EXCELLENTLY worded poll (sincerely)

I was happy to cast my vote in it, and I hope you will post more polls in the future. :toast:

[ZombieHorde]

4. Wow, thanks. nt

[leftstreet]

3. What's it freedom from? Prosecution?

I don't get why these Presidents even get this award

[GreenPartyVoter]

21. +1,000,000

[XemaSab]

28. FTW

:toast:

[ZombieHorde]

46. Good one. nt

[a kennedy]

5. I call it the continued effort of President Obama's bipartisanship.....

:mad: and it won't make one bit of difference.... :cry:

[Renew Deal]

8. I think it's the first step in giving it to Clinton

And Clinton gave it to Ford.

[Better Believe It]

6. Good political move. Will it be followed up with a nice big hug and kiss on the cheek?

:)

Unfricken believable!

[Individualist]

7. Disgusted and not at all surprised.

[treestar]

9. Is this just because he is the Chimp's Daddy?

What did he do wrong? I imagine it is for his work fundraising for Haiti.

[XemaSab]

29. Start by reading about Iran/Contra and Operation Condor

That's the tip of the iceberg.

[superduperfarleft]

30. And people have posted answer after answer to your question. n/t

[frylock]

31. are you 12 years old?!

fundraising for haiti? wtf?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9584606#9585409

[TheWatcher]

37. you keep posting this, and people keep responding with lots of things to try to inform you.

Do you simply just ignore EVERYTHING that does not fit the Bubble World you live in?

How many times are you going to ask this question, get answers, and simply continue to ignore them?

Do you really want to know the truth?

Do you even care?

Honestly, you frighten me.

[bdamomma]

10. this is W's daddy?? why give this guy something?

why because he did not invade Iraq and his son did.

[former9thward]

35. Bush I certainly did invade Iraq in the Gulf War.

Unlike his son he declared a cease fire and withdrew our troops from the country.

[TheWatcher]

40. Was that before or After giving approval for Slaughtering the RETREATING Troops and Personel?

Yes, George herbert Walker "highway of Death" Bush.

Very medal Worthy.

I assume you have no knowledge of Panama and Iran/Contra either.

October Surprise Ring a Bell?

Bueller?

[TexasObserver]

11. George H.W. Bush doesn't deserve the award, but this is a good political move

[jonnyblitz]

12. President Obama is going to put "The Onion" out of business.

:D

[Demoiselle]

15. Yes. +1.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. The Adoph Eichmann Lifetime Achievement Award would have been more fitting.

[EFerrari]

45. I bet there are people here who read that and think you're exaggerating, too.

Unbelievable.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

47. Yep. When we do it, it's "spreading democracy", when others do it it's genocide.

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy.” - Gandhi

[EmeraldCityGrl]

14. The PMF means nothing. Has Carter received this award?

He's the only president in the last several decades that deserves it.
Obama continues to pander to the Right. He must have some great
plans for his post-presidency career.

[durkermaker]

16. Nothing he's done has surprised me

at all

he's exactly what i thought he'd be

[TwilightGardener]

17. No "don't care" choice. More pissed about unemployment benefits

ending than whether some undeserving old fart got some dumb award.

[EFerrari]

19. The widows and the orphans this asshole made all over Latin America

are still alive and presumably, they still care. Here he is defending his murders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dezo8Ds3DDE

[durkermaker]

20. it's impossible to separate him from the 'school of the americas'

the lowest of the low, that probably comes back at us in the form of MS-13

[EFerrari]

43. He was also head of CIA when Posadas Carriles, a terrorist on CIA payroll,

blew up that Cuban flight.

Oct 6, 1976

"A Cuban aircraft from Venezuela with 73 people onboard was blown up on a flight over the Caribbean. Castro blamed the explosion on the US. Luis Posada Carriles, a veteran of the Cuban exile’s war against Castro, was charged and twice acquitted in the bombing. Venezuelan authorities kept him in jail for 9 years until his escape in 1985 when he settled in El Salvador. In April, 2005, Posada sought asylum in the US. In May, 2005, declassified documents were made public that linked Posada to the bombing and indicated he was on the CIA's payroll for years."

http://timelinesdb.com/listevents.php?subjid=34&dayinhist=0&date1=-99999999999&date2=99999999999&words=&title=El%20Salvador&fromrec=0

[ZombieHorde]

36. You're right, I should have included some sort of "don't care" choice. nt

[durkermaker]

18. Last week 'outsourcing creates jobs' this week 'George Bush, great guy'

you cant make this stuff up

i swear he could go to some people's homes and taze them for no reason, and they'd still think he's doing the right thing for progressives

[Arkansas Granny]

22. What level chess is he playing now?

[Solly Mack]

23. Not pissed because I'm not surprised. Sad would be more accurate.

America loves its own myths. Oh well....chickens/home/roost....and the people will pay the price.

[EFerrari]

24. Pissed doesn't even begin to cover it.

George H.W. Bush, the CIA & a Case of State Terrorism

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2459135&mesg_id=2534933

The Panama Deception



http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play?ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-701-s&fr2=tab-web&p=the+panama+deception&vid=319921520640&dt=30114572&l=1833&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts1.mm.bing.net%2Fvideos%2Fthumbnail.aspx%3Fq%3D319921520640%26id%3Dcd30f09139ad21023bc636c50860b01b%26bid%3DuagvvufhiYksJA%26bn%3DThumb%26url%3Dhttp%253a%252f%252fwww.veoh.com%252fcollection%252fpowermongering%252fwatch%252fv242370kemrfTTb&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.veoh.com%2Fcollection%2Fpowermongering%2Fwatch%2Fv242370kemrfTTb&tit=Panama+Deception+1%2F3&sigr=12368hea0&newfp=1

El Mozote
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-86aTPYdd7E

Eliot Abrams, pardoned by Bush the Elder in 1992.

El Salvador

In early 1982, when reports of the El Mozote massacre of civilians by the military in El Salvador began appearing in U.S. media, Abrams told a Senate committee that the reports of hundreds of deaths at El Mozote "were not credible," and that "it appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas."<12> The massacre had come at a time when the Reagan administration was attempting to bolster the human rights image of the Salvadoran military. Abrams implied that reports of a massacre were simply FMLN propaganda and denounced U.S. investigative reports of the massacre as misleading. In March 1993, the Salvadoran Truth Commission reported that 5,000 civilians were “deliberately and systematically” executed in El Mozote in December 1981 by forces affiliated with the Salvadoran state.<13> Also in 1993, documentation emerged suggesting that some Reagan administration officials could have known about El Mozote and other human rights violations from the beginning.<14> However, in July 1993, an investigation commissioned by Clinton secretary of state Warren Christopher into the State department’s "activities and conduct" with regard to human rights in El Salvador during the Reagan years found that, despite the department's mistakes handling El Mozote, its personnel “performed creditably and occasionally with personal bravery in advancing human rights in El Salvador.”<15> Abrams himself claimed that Washington’s policy in El Salvador was a ”fabulous achievement.”<16>
Nicaragua

When Congress shut down funding for the Contras' efforts to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government with the 1982 Boland Amendment, members of the Reagan administration began looking for other avenues for funding the group.<17> Congress opened a couple of such avenues when it modified the Boland Amendment for fiscal year 1986 by approving $27 million in direct aid to the Contras and allowing the administration to legally solicit funds for the Contras from foreign governments<18>. Neither the direct aid, nor any foreign contributions, could be used to purchase weapons.<18> Guided by the new provisions of the modified Boland Amendment, Abrams flew to London in August 1986 and met secretly with Bruneian defense minister General Ibnu to solicit a $10-million contribution from the Sultan of Brunei.<19><20> Ultimately, the Contras never received this money because a clerical error in Oliver North's office (a mistyped account number) sent the Bruneian money to the wrong Swiss bank account.<20>
Iran-Contra affair

During investigation of the Iran-Contra Affair, Lawrence Walsh, the Independent Counsel tasked with investigating the case, prepared multiple felony counts against Abrams but never indicted him.<20> Instead, Abrams entered into a plea agreement with Walsh. Abrams pled guilty to two misdemeanors of withholding information from Congress.<21> He was sentenced to a $50 fine, probation for two years, and 100 hours of community service. However, Abrams was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush, in December of 1992 (as he was leaving office following his loss in that year in the U.S. presidential election).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Abrams

And that's how the "Salvador Option" was born.

Bush's Death Squads (Bush the Younger)
http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2005/011105.html

So far beyond "pissed".

[WI_DEM]

25. I would say that whoever was president right now even Hillary Clinton would have done the same.

[EFerrari]

26. I think that's probably true. Bush the Elder seems to be deteriorating

and it may be that they want to do this while he can still stand upright to accept the medal. Or, that's my impression, any way.

[librechik]

27. the only good news about this is that Bush Sr is getting closer to the Grim Reaper

making sure he gets the medal before he dies, I suppose. Or maybe they are just inventing a new category since it's such a popular achievement, in War Crimes. Right up there with Music, Photography, and Sports.

[Fire Walk With Me]

32. It would be good because Bush would then have to look up the word "freedom", and become ashamed.

[frylock]

33. it's only a two-minute prayer ffs

[haifa lootin]

34. I wonder if anyone else missed the H in the name at first...as I did

not that Poppy deserved it either but it's not quite as bizarre as if it were W.

[EFerrari]

38. It's actually much worse than if it were Junior.

Senior had a long and bloody career raining death on innocent people.

[Starry Messenger]

39. Other: unshocked n/t

[Starbucks Anarchist]

41. Don't care.

[EFerrari]

42. The Truth of El Mozote

In a remote corner of El Salvador, investigators uncovered the remains of a horrible crime -- a crime that Washington had long denied. The villagers of El Mozote had the misfortune to find themselves in the path of the Salvadoran Army's anti-Communist crusade. The story of the massacre at El Mozote -- how it came about, and why it had to be denied -- stands as a central parable of the Cold War.

By Mark Danner

Heading up into the mountains of Morazán, in the bright, clear air near the Honduran border, you cross the Torola River, the wooden slats of the one-lane bridge clattering beneath your wheels, and enter what was the fiercest of El Salvador's zonas rojas -- or "red zones," as the military officers knew them during a decade of civil war -- and after climbing for some time you take leave of the worn blacktop to follow for several miles a bone-jarring dirt track that hugs a mountainside, and soon you will find, among ruined towns and long-abandoned villages that are coming slowly, painfully back to life, a tiny hamlet, by now little more than a scattering of ruins, that is being rapidly reclaimed by the earth, its broken adobe walls cracking and crumbling and giving way before an onslaught of weeds, which are fuelled by the rain that beats down each afternoon and by the fog that settles heavily at night in the valleys. Nearby, in the long-depopulated villages, you can see stirrings of life: even in Arambala, a mile or so away, with its broad grassy plaza bordered by collapsed buildings and dominated, where once a fine church stood, by a shell-pocked bell tower and a jagged adobe arch looming against the sky -- even here, a boy leads a brown cow by a rope, a man in a billed cap and bluejeans trudges along bearing lengths of lumber on his shoulder, three little girls stand on tiptoe at a porch railing, waving and giggling at a passing car.

But follow the stony dirt track, which turns and twists through the woodland, and in a few minutes you enter a large clearing, and here all is quiet. No one has returned to El Mozote. Empty as it is, shot through with sunlight, the place remains -- as a young guerrilla who had patrolled here during the war told me with a shiver -- espantoso: spooky, scary, dreadful. After a moment's gaze, half a dozen battered structures -- roofless, doorless, windowless, half engulfed by underbrush -- resolve themselves into a semblance of pattern: four ruins off to the right must have marked the main street, and a fifth the beginning of a side lane, while an open area opposite looks to have been a common, though no church can be seen -- only a ragged knoll, a sort of earthen platform nearly invisible beneath a great tangle of weeds and brush.

Into this quiet clearing, in mid-October last year, a convoy of four-wheel drives and pickup trucks rumbled, disgorging into the center of El Mozote a score of outsiders. Some of these men and women -- most of them young, and casually dressed in T-shirts and jeans and work pants -- began dumping out into the dust a glinting clutter of machetes, picks, and hoes. Others gathered around the hillock, consulted clipboards and notebooks and maps, poked around in the man-high brush. Finally, they took up machetes and began to hack at the weeds, being careful not to pull any, lest the movement of the roots disturb what lay beneath. Chopping and hacking in the morning sun, they uncovered, bit by bit, a mass of red-brown soil, and before long they had revealed an earthen mound protruding several feet from the ground, like a lopsided bluff, and barely contained at its base by a low stone wall.

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Danner/1993/truthelmoz01.html

[TheWatcher]

44. To which I would now ask the Poster you responded to: "NOW Do You Care?"

[Bluebear]

48. Not surprised.

[Raine]

51. yeah he awarded it to Sandra Day O'Connor

so no suprise that another scumbag gets one too. x(

[somone]

49. Yep, WTF.

[WinkyDink]

50. Old Man Bush. Kissinger. Next on Obama's plate?

[durkermaker]

52. Bush Sr "well, at my age, it cant be for something I'm going to do in the future'

Bush sr 'like your nobel prize, there barrack'

obama ' ha ha ha, no, it wouldnt be prudent'

bush sr 'ha ha ha. ya got me there'

[earth mom]

53. WTF?! First I've heard of this! Anyone have a link to the full story?

:wtf:

[ZombieHorde]

54. Here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9583134


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/11/17/2010-11-17_president_obama_to_award_george_w_bush_the_presidential_medal_of_freedom_.html

[Unvanguard]

55. I really couldn't care less. n/t