“Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind” – President John F. Kennedy
By recklessly following up on his unconstitutional decision to commit an act of war (Syrian missile strike) with a reckless exercise in nuclear brinksmanship (North Korea), President Donald J. Trump has brought us to the edge of a precipice.
Unless Congress, currently on an 18-day holiday recess, immediately acts to Censure him for his dangerous usurpations of its exclusive Constitutional power to decide whether we are at war or at peace, our nation, indeed the world, could be plunged into a nuclear abyss…
The Constitution
Our nation’s Founding Fathers could not have been more clear when they explained why the United States Constitution placed the awesome power to take this nation to war exclusively in the deliberative hands of our legislative branch of government:
“Considering that Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war, I have thought it my duty to await their authority for using force in any degree which could be avoided.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1805
Significantly, the framers of the U.S. Constitution arrived at their conclusion that Congress should have the exclusive power to declare war at a time when this nation was led by such intellectual giants as Jefferson, George Washington and John Adams. It was a determination made centuries before a reckless decision to initiate a war could carry with it the prospect of the nuclear annihilation of all life on this planet.
Today our nation is led by a raging narcissist, whom the Los Angeles Times, aptly described as an intellectually challenged and mentally unbalanced “demagogue,” who has displayed a “shocking lack of respect” for the “fundamental rules and institutions” upon which our constitutional democracy is founded; a man who displays an “utter lack of regard for truth.”
Constitutional authority is not ‘use it or lose it’
No doubt many of the proponents of unchecked executive power would argue that it would be unfair to single-out Trump for Censure. After all, there have been multiple occasions, starting with President Harry Truman’s introduction of U.S. troops into South Korea in 1950 to carry out what he euphemistically referred to as a “Police Action,” in which past Presidents have circumvented Congress’s exclusive power to decide if and when this nation should go to war. Yet, none of those Presidents were Censured.
There are three fundamental reasons why that reasoning should be rejected as unsound.
First, on prior occasions, Presidents ostensibly relied on treaty obligations as a source of Congressional authorization — The United Nations, for example, for our incursion in Korea in the 1950’s or NATO for our military response in Kosovo in the 1990’s. Trump, according to Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice during the George W. Bush administration, went well beyond those earlier precedents. If Congress acquiesced to Trump’s impetuous unilateral act of war against a sovereign nation (Syria), it would mean, according to Goldsmith, that there would be “no limit on the President’s ability to use significant military force unilaterally.”
Last week’s Syria missile strike did not fall within the ambit of a legal response to Syria’s alleged violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. The U.N. Charter mandates that Trump first obtain authorization from the United Nations Security Council before resorting to military force. And, unlike the ongoing “war on terror,” a missile strike on Syria’s airfield clearly exceeded the scope of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), which was limited to Afghanistan and terrorists organizations.
Second, Trump’s usurpation of Congress’s broad and exclusive power must be placed within the context of what Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman described as an across-the-board authoritarian “assault on the separation of powers” that in the realm of foreign policy has previously been reflected by Trump’s unprecedented refusal to disclose the levels of troop deployments in Iraq and Syria.
Third, and most importantly, there is simply no validity in the suggestion that past Congressional acquiescence to executive usurpations serves to erase the ability and right of Congress to forcefully assert its exclusive power over matters of war and peace — especially at a time when the reckless whims of a mentally unstable demagogue (Trump) portend to nuclear catastrophe.
War Powers Act
On November 7, 1973, after securing the necessary 2/3 majority in both chambers of Congress to override President Richard Nixon’s veto, Congress enacted the War Powers Act ( 50 U.S. Code §§1541-1548).
In Section 1541(c) Congress expressly delineates the limits of executive power:
These limitations are by no means diminished by the Act’s reporting requirements, which, pursuant to 50 U.S. Code §1543, are applicable only “in the absence of a declaration of war.” In other words, where U.S. Armed Forces are introduced into hostilities either pursuant to a “specific authorization” or pursuant to “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces,” the Act imposes upon the President the additional duty to submit the Speaker of the House and President pro tempore of the Senate, a written report that sets forth “(A) the circumstances necessitating the introduction of United States Armed Forces; (B) the constitutional and legislative authority under which such introduction took place; and (C) the estimated scope and duration of the hostilities or involvement.”
Trump’s twin violations of the War Powers Act
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) did not learn of the strike in Syria until being informed by the Director of National Intelligence after the missiles had been launched. That’s quite significant. As the Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff is a part of the so-called Gang of Eight (the Republican and Democratic leaders in both chambers, as well as the chair and ranking member of each chamber’s Intelligence Committees), which is entitled to be kept fully and currently informed of all U.S. intelligence activities.
Thus, although Trump saw fit to reportedly provide advance notice of the missile strike to Russia — a factor that may have contributed to the strike’s “ineffective” impact on the Syrian airbase — it appears that Trump did not so much as inform Congress, let alone seek its advance approval.
Trump own words in his post strike statement reveal that his attack on the Syrian airbase violated the War Powers Act. The only rationale he offered was his belief that Assad had ordered the chemical weapons attack. As previously noted, the UN Charter does not support unilateral military action sans Security Council approval. If Assad has personally ordered a chemical weapons attack on his own people, that fact would warrant a war crimes investigation and prosecution.
That’s a big IF.
After examining a four-page report released by the Trump administration to support its claim that Syrian aircraft dropped a munition designed to disperse deadly sarin gas and a satellite image of the bomb crater, MIT Professor Theodore Postel, one of the world’s leading rocket scientists and a scientific advisor to the US Chief of Naval Operations, concluded that there was “absolutely no evidence that the crater was created by a munition designed to disperse sarin after it [was] dropped from an aircraft.” To the contrary, the “data cited by the White House is more consistent with the possibility that the munition was placed on the ground rather than dropped from a plane.” If that were the case, and, according to Postel, “no competent analyst” would say otherwise, it raises a serious question as to whether the Syrian government had anything to do with the attack. The crater was located in an area that had been under al Qaeda control.
Even assuming Assad ordered the chemical weapons attack, that’s a far cry from an attack on the U.S., its territories or its armed forces. These are the only War Powers Act justifications that can be cited when a President seeks to engage in an act of war without Congressional authorization.
It is important to note that the War Powers Act also constrains a President’s ability to deploy our armed forces “into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances.” Trump’s North Korea nuclear brinksmanship violates that aspect of the Act. Contemporaneous with its refusal to take “the option of pre-emptive military strikes on North Korea…off the table,” Trump deployed to the waters near North Korea a nuclear-armed Naval strike force — what Trump boasted to be an “armada” — that not only includes the aircraft carrier USS Vincent but also “very powerful” submarines. He did so even after North Korea issued this stern warning:
In other words, a nuclear-armed U.S. President, whom many regard as unhinged, has elected to play a dangerous game of nuclear brinksmanship with a nuclear-armed North Korean dictator who is regarded as so mentally unstable that he threatened all-out war simply because Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) called him a “crazy fat kid” during a television interview.
While it is doubtful that North Korea currently possesses the technological capacity to launch a nuclear inter-continental ballistic missile strike on the Continental U.S., it is clear that by placing the nuclear-armed U.S. Navy strike force in waters off the Korean peninsula, Trump has made both the Naval strike force and U.S. military personnel stationed in South Korea potential targets of a North Korean missile strike, nuclear or otherwise.
Censure
Although the ability of Congress to Censure a President is not expressly provided for by the Constitution and has only been used once in our nation’s history (Andrew Jackson 1834), it is generally recognized as a valid, if not binding, means for expressing the will of Congress. One would hope that, coupled with a threat of future impeachment, a mere debate over a formal Censure Resolution would be enough to persuade our irrational Commander-in-Chief to step away from the precipice.
That may be overly optimistic given the reluctance of a Republican-controlled Congress to hold this President accountable and the repeated failures of the corporate-owned media that have been soundly criticized for “cheerleading” in favor of acts of war. This was exemplified by MSNBC’s Brian Williams description of the missile launch against Syria as “beautiful” and by the utterly unnecessary question postulated on Twitter by his network: “Does the U.S. missile strike on an airbase in Syria constitute an act of war?”
How absurd! If Russia launched a missile strike on an American airbase, would any American journalist question whether that strike amounted to an “act of war?” Indeed, while it differed wildly in scope, rationale and lethality, there was little difference conceptually between Trump’s decision to strike a Syrian airbase and former Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo’s decision to bomb Pearl Harbor.
Despite previous inadequacies in both Congressional and media performance, one would hope that the gravity of this situation would have a sobering effect on the heretofore irresponsible; that we can rely upon both Congress and the media to successfully pull this nation back from the brink of catastrophe.
UPDATE 4/18/17: On April 14, Prof. Postol issued a third report in which the former science advisor to the U.S. Chief of Naval Intelligence alleged that Trump “ordered [the] cruise missile strike without any valid intelligence to back it up,” and that the NSC, led by National Security Advisor, Lt. General H.R. McMaster, then generated a “fraudulent intelligence report” as part of “a dedicated attempt to manufacture a false claim that the intelligence actually supported the president’s decision to attack Syria.”
Ernest A. Canning is a retired attorney, author, Vietnam Veteran (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968) and a Senior Advisor to Veterans For Bernie. He has been a member of the California state bar since 1977. In addition to a juris doctor, he has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science. Follow him on twitter: @cann4ing
To the contrary, Jackson’s censure was expunged from the record in 1837 — made officially never to have existed — and that tool has never been used again, as it violates the separation of powers: the Legislative branch is not the boss of the Executive branch, thus has no business “censuring†its chief; this is why the option to “censure†Bill Clinton was not adopted, and only the choice to impeach or not remained.
Trump’s act of war against Syria is at least (on its face) a violation of the War Powers Act, as well as the war crime of Aggressive War (since he also sought no UN authorization — and would have received none, with Russia holding a veto); when will this GOP-dominated Congress have the will to call a halt by passing an impeachment resolution?
President Donald Trump needs to stop escalating tensions with an unstable North Korea. He seems to be as unstable as their leader. He talks about letting his military leaders decide when to strike back against ISIS when it should be his decision. I would have said Congress, but the delay to get approval could miss targets. I felt that the strike against Syria for using chemical weapons should have come from Congress. If Trump is allowed to continue his tweets about a preemptive strike against North Korea, we will be thrown into World War III and maybe the end of life as we know it.
Total nonsense by “expert” MIT Professor Theodore Postel.
Gas delivery weapons do not explode upon impact as a TNT bomb would. Of course no huge crater.
See the photos from Ghouta, Syria (Damascus)in which the Russian Gas Delivery rockets remain, still sticking out of the earth, their deadly payloads delivered.
However to claim the town has no signs of high explosive bombs dropped on it is just laughable.
Our President Trump had every legal right to retaliate against this Act of Terror by a rogue illegitimate regime focused entirely on Extermination, Genocide or Ethnic Cleansing, take your pick.
As the brilliant Ambassador Haley stated, “When the U.N. consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.”
I condemn Iran and Russia for invading Syria, Iran filling in for the Syrian Army and Russia bombing Aleppo into mile after mile of rubble and entombed corpses.
The derisive placement of the word “expert” in quotes by Irwin Mainway @3 is reminiscent of Trump’s tweet that derided a George W. Bush appointed U.S. District Court Judge as a “so-called” judge.
Theodore Postel is an MIT Professor of Science, Technology and National Security, who previously served as a scientific adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations.
What are your credentials, Mr. Mainway?
Prof. Postol issued three reports.
The first meticulously dissects and debunks the Trump administrations effort to blame the Syrian Air Force for the sarin gas attack. “The data cited by the White House is more consistent with the possibility that the munition was placed on the ground rather than dropped from a plane.”
The second report was an addendum to the first.
In a third report, Professor Postel reveals that the April 11 White House report was fraudulent; that it entailed “a dedicated effort to manufacture a false claim that intelligence actually supported the president’s decision to attack Syria, and of far more importance, to accuse Russia of being either complicit or a participant in the atrocity.”
The mere fact that these conclusions run counter to the Assad is the Devil narrative that Irwin Mainway has been posting at this site for more than a year is an insufficient basis to reject them.
As to comments #3 and #4, please see ABC News, “Analysts identify #SyriaHoax as Russian-fueled propaganda” (4/13/2017): “That hoax story was promoted by a network of Russian social media accounts and ultimately picked up by popular alt-right personalities in the United States….”
Re Raven @5: There is nothing in the reports of Prof. Postol that remotely relates to Russian-generated propaganda.
His analysis is based upon actual photos, videos, etc.
The ABC News story predates the most powerful of Prof. Postol’s report. It makes no mention of either Prof. Postol or any of his reports, and certainly does not set forth any facts to refute his findings.
Indeed, the content of the ABC News story doesn’t reflect whether that network has any awareness whatsoever of his findings.
Ernest @6: Potol’s work is certainly being drummed heavily by RT.com (aka Russian Television), and Sputnik, e.g.:
https://www.rt.com/usa/384520-postol-report-sarin-syria/ – White House claims on Syria chemical attack ‘obviously false’ – MIT professor (VIDEO)
https://www.rt.com/usa/384800-syria-gas-professor-addendum/ – MIT professor exposes ‘egregious error’ & evidence tampering in US report on Syria sarin incident
https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201704131052609162-trump-administration-russia-syria/ – The Astounding Hubris, Incoherence and Dysfunction of the Trump Administration
RT and Sputnik are Russian propaganda to the core: see March 2017’s “How Russia Weaponizes Fake News” from StopFake.org.
TRUMP is Continuing What All US Presidents have Done in the Last 100-years or so, as WAR is Caused Through Economic Enrichment and Greed of the Very Few and why there will eventually be World War 111, where the Majority of Normal People will Pay the Ultimate Price and Humanity Will More or Less become extinct – Fact not Fiction based upon what the History of the World has told us and where the hidden hand of Conflict is NOW Growing Stronger by the Year – https://worldinnovationfoundation.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/war-is-caused-by-economic-enrichment-of.html
Raven @6 writes:
I would respectfully suggest, Raven, that you back away from the U.S. Intelligence Community’s effort to summarily dismiss anything that comes from RT as baseless Russian propaganda.
As I wrote in The Perils of ‘Pubic’ Congressional Inquiry, while critically examining the January 6. 2017 Intelligence Community Report with respect to Russian interference in the 2016 election:
Other credible progressive RT journalists have included former MSNBC commentator Ed Schultz, Larry King and Abby Martin.
Neither the Russian government nor any other government has cornered the market on “fake” news aka propaganda. To the contrary, in the words of that iconoclastic American journalist, I. F. Stone: “All governments lie.”
Recall, as but one example, the Downing Street memo, which served as a “smoking gun” confirmation as to how the George W. Bush administration fixed the intelligence around the policy in order to initiate the unprovoked war in Iraq.
I would respectfully suggest that our own government’s effort to label anything and everything that airs on RT as “Russian propaganda” is itself baseless “U.S. propaganda.”
One additional point in reply to the comment by Raven @6 that Postol’s work has been “drummed heavily by RT.”
Ask yourself, which came first, Postol’s work or RT’s coverage of that work? If an MIT professor who previously served as a science advisor to the Chief of U.S. Naval Operations conducts his own forensic examination of an event and scientifically reaches conclusions that contradict claims made in a White House report, does that scientific assessment become propaganda because RT decided to cover it?
Ernest @9: “Neither the Russian government nor any other government has cornered the market on ‘fake’ news aka propaganda.”
To say ‘they are not the only liars in the world’ is not to say ‘they are not liars’ — which unfortunately is the point you would need to, but fail to, make.
As to “The effort to label RT as a mere propaganda arm of the Russian government amounts to nothing less than a smear…” — Must I quote verbatim and at length the neutral Wikipedia article RT (TV network), or will this quote from Vladimir Putin himself suffice? “Certainly the channel is funded by the government, so it cannot help but reflect the Russian government’s official position on the events in our country and in the rest of the world one way or another.”
@10: “Ask yourself, which came first, Postol’s work or RT’s coverage of that work?”
Even Osama bin Laden had to make videos before al-Qaeda could disseminate them; thus, by your logic, Osama is proven to have been independent of al-Qaeda!
Raven @11 writes:
While Wikipedia is a convenient source of quick information, it is not considered a reliable source for academic research, a point illustrated by the Harvard Guide to Using Sources:
The fact that Russia funds RT justifies a healthy dose of skepticism. The same can be said about the fact that, for example, the military-industrial complex is a major source of funding for NBC, which played a major role in disseminating what proved to be blatantly false pro-war propaganda (WMDs, Saddam/al Qaeda connections) that were used to justify George W. Bush’s illegal war of aggression in Iraq.
You’d do well to note another point I made in the previous article:
The truth is that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), presently this nation’s most popular politician, according to at least one recent poll, has leveled many of these same criticisms. Sanders critiques could hardly be characterized as pro-Russian propaganda.
Raven @11 also states:
Are you really trying to compare the forensic and scientific analysis of an event formulated by an eminent expert — an MIT Professor of Science, Technology and National Security, who previously served as a science adviser to the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations — to the propaganda videos produced by the world’s most infamous terrorist and disseminated by his terrorist organization?
Frankly, Raven, I’m disappointed that you would even try to set forth such a scandalous false equivalency. No doubt bin Laden could have been an original source of propaganda videos, but there was no separation between bin Laden and al-Qaeda when the latter acted to disseminate the videos. He was their leader.
You have not alleged, and research has failed to establish, any prior connection between Postol and his independent scientific assessment on the one hand and RT. Surely you are not suggesting that either Russia or RT hired Prof. Postol to perform these studies. If you are, please furnish a link.
I am not the least bit troubled by the coverage extended to Postol’s scientific assessment at RT, and you shouldn’t be either. That’s precisely what responsible journalists are supposed to do.
Indeed what should concern you and what you should be asking is: Why the same military-industrial complex-funded mainstream networks, who acted as cheerleaders for the Syria strike, have, so far, failed to so much as mention Postol’s devastating analysis.
Ernest @12: “Wikipedia… is not considered a reliable source for academic research” — Then isn’t it nice this wasn’t an academic setting? (Especially because your quote snipped an attribution of a direct quote to Vladimir Putin, making his text look like mine, also an academic no-no.) But the Wiki-article duly and properly footnoted its quote of Putin to the Washington Post’s 6/13/2013 article “In case you weren’t clear on Russia Today’s relationship to Moscow, Putin clears it up”.
And… Bernie Sanders is currently popular, yes. But his critiques of the US government are also founded in his long-term Socialist politics, dating back to well before the fall of the Soviet Union. So if Russia and Sanders both sided against the US government then, and still do today, that’s not strong argument to cite him as independent support for their viewpoint.
@13: “Are you really trying to compare [Postol to Osama]?” — My goodness, you simply cut off, deleted, the rest of that very short reply (“… thus, by your logic, Osama is proven to have been independent of al-Qaeda!”), which showed exactly what I was trying to do: expose the fallacy in your logic.
But by omitting that, you hope to turn it into something else, eh?
Until now, Ernest, I had thought you were better than that.
Sorry, Raven, but your inability to distinguish Sanders’ bottom-up democratic socialism from the top down authoritarian communism of the Soviet Union is so absurd it would make an ideal topic for Saturday Night Live.
If you have something other than blind, paranoid right wing ideology — e.g. verifiable scientific evidence — that would give reason to question Prof. Postol’s solid scientific findings, I’d love to see it.
Until then, stop wasting my time with your silly Security State propaganda.
You should read Bernie’s biography and its links with more care. His intro to Socialism was that while at the University of Chicago 1961-64 he joined the Young People’s Socialist League, which by 1964 “was becoming more radicalized, and tended more toward Trotskyism.” In August it nearly seceded from the main party over that issue, had to be reeled in, and has since kept publicly in line. Sanders has learned how to keep publicly in line.*
*(That is in a sense the Socialist Party of America’s complaint about him: for his own political career’s benefit, Sanders has kept publicly in line with the Democratic Party** in Vermont against the rise of any third party such as, say, a Socialist Party on ballots.)
**(This has included warfare; strange, for such a peace-lover.***)
***(Oddly for such a peace-lover, but again consistent with his own political career’s benefit, Sanders made common cause with the National Rifle Association in order to get elected over an anti-NRA candidate, just as more recently he acted and spoke against the interests of Sandy Hook parents in their lawsuit against gun manufacturers, an issue over which he sparred with Hillary Clinton and misrepresented her comment on the matter.)
There does seem to be a constant cross-current of contradictions between the Senator’s publicly stated principles and how he’ll behave when it benefits him. Perhaps, as you favor “academic research”, we should refer this to one of his local academic institutions for closer study — may I suggest Burlington College?
Ernest @15: “… stop wasting my time with your silly Security State propaganda.”
This, after you’ve just documented your own long-term defense of RT as not “simply a propaganda arm of the Russian government” — even in the wake of having cited to you Vladimir Putin’s own statement:
As though Putin the former KGB officer were not himself running a Security State; the FSB and SVR and GRU were all engaged in collecting butterflies; and Boris Nemtsov and Denis Voronenkov, among other Putin critics, were enjoying well-earned vacations in some pleasant island resorts.
The only thing you’ve written here that I’d agree with “Raven” is that you are not an academic.
I am not the least bit impressed by labels, like your use of the word “radicalized” to describe Bernie Sanders — a form of unintellectual McCarthyism.
No offense, but it appears that you are incapable of sustained and coherent academic reasoning. How else does one explain your jumping from right-wing descriptions of Sanders supposed left-wing radicalism to a Socialist Party critique that claims he’s too mainstream?
Your fallacious and illogical reasoning has led you to absurdity.
Despite my invitation to do so, you have not forth any evidence that demonstrates anything resembling “error” in the science behind Postol’s analysis of the Syrian nerve gas incident — an analysis that you simply dismissed because RT covered it. Once RT covers it, according to your line of unreason, scientific analysis becomes pro-Russia propaganda.
I realize you are not an intellectual, Raven, but perhaps this will help.
RT covered scientific concerns about climate change.
Are we to conclude that, because RT covered the topic, the concept of global climate change is nothing more than pro-Russia propaganda?
Ernest @18: “… your use of the word ‘radicalized’ to describe Bernie Sanders….” — Interesting, this is the second time in the thread you’ve attributed a word or phrase I’ve quoted (in “”) to me as though it were my own, and in this case you insist that it described Bernie Sanders when in fact it referred to “the Young People’s Socialist League, which by 1964 ‘was becoming more radicalized, and tended more toward Trotskyism.'” (YPSL in the 1960s, par. 6.)
It’s become clear that you’re just not a careful reader.
Back to the topic of your post, censure of Donald Trump.
My reply #1 already addressed why censure was abandoned after that one attempt on Jackson (and Jackson’s censure was expunged), as not the Constitutionally proper remedy that impeachment is.
(2) Also note that, between the censure’s issuance and its expunction, it did nothing to stop or slow Jackson down. Still less would it be likely to have any effect were it re-attempted for Trump, since he has shown such contempt for norms in the first place as to disregard the War Powers Act, etc.
(3) From this Senate, McConnell’s Senate, which took the “nuclear option” to discard filibustering to confirm Trump’s appointee to the Supreme Court, can we expect either a censure or a 2/3 vote to convict in an impeachment? Probably not. Nor a resolution to impeach from Ryan’s House as currently seated. … unless their own political careers were at stake, which a censure would not implicate, but an impeachment might. (For one thing, ousting both Trump and Pence over the election scandal would make Ryan President; would he like that? Would McConnell? Would other Republicans? I think so.)
(4) A drive to elect impeachment-minded Democrats in 2018 would offer an impeachment for 2019, true, but also a tremendous incentive for GOP members of Congress to steal the issue by impeaching Trump themselves before the election and leaving a less unpopular President (either Pence or Ryan) in the White House, so they’re not dragged down on Trump’s coattails.
That’s assuming Trump doesn’t start another war to stay popular, which I don’t put past him, or simply overthrow the entire electoral system….
… and, Ernest, please notice that when I say “not a careful reader” that is not being hostile, that is a generous interpretation, far more generous than your #18’s “unintellectual McCarthyism”, etc. By a hostile interpretation, what you engaged in was dishonest quotation, misrepresentation, a violation of academic standards. I knew this; didn’t you? As a lawyer, you can tell me: doesn’t it also violate legal standards?
Now I had just pointed out two cases in this thread, but those were both misattributions of quotes. Here was a third case of misrepresentation, also from your #18: “The only thing you’ve written here that I’d agree with ‘Raven’ is that you are not an academic.”
What I had in fact written, in my #14 [all emphases in original]:
The pattern of misrepresentation, misquotation, is too strong to ignore; “not a careful reader” is as generous as I can be, here in this non-academic setting. In an academic setting, you know there would have been consequences.
The corporatist Congress is not about to act. The corporate world is getting impatient with the wars against 7th Century herders and even more primitive hunter-gatherer societies not successfully colonizing these “nations” for exploitation.
Remember that both the UN and the US Pentagon conducted studies of Afghanistan’s “recoverable” mineral wealth, and each found that value reached into the trillions (with a T) dollars. Such potential profits have certainly attracted the vultures!
Trumps bluster serves this purpose well, and it isn’t a coincidence that the corporate media is touting the alternate facts regarding the sarin gas in Syria. The favored pipeline through Syria MUST be constructed lest Russia earn enough money from their pipeline proposal to successfully withstand American pressure to submit to the Will of Wall St. And if that means Americans must fight in a war for profits, well, we’ll remember them every Veteran’s Day if they live and every Memorial Day if they don’t. Profits Unber Alles!