@103 j, ‘Bush, et al, are bona-fide, convicted war criminals.’
we here all know that. we are yet deep in denial ‘at home’ though. it would be good if bush & the neo-cons were held responsible for their crimes in american courts. shatter the national denial syndrome. ‘hey, our prez was (and the nppl prez is?) a war criminal!’ that makes it hard to imagine he and his cronies being held responsible for their crimes … it seems this is a tort suit, asking for damages. i suppose that’s the only way they could get a court to hear it.

Posted by: jfl | Dec 13 2016 11:31 utc | 104

@page 2 conversation re: Bush
There is some history out there already.
Bush Jr(+Blair+Cheney+Rumsfeld+more) was convicted, in absentia, of war crimes in Malaysian via the Kuala Lumper War Crimes Commission. More of a symbolic act perhaps, but I would personally hold the Malaysian court in higher regard than its Euro based counterpart in The Hague which seems to own the tendency of trying only black africans and overlooking – somehow – legitimised western colonial warlords.
Bush Jr also steers clear of Switzerland after criminal complaints were lodged in that country in regards to torture – sick clown Bush Jr admitted giving the green light to simulated drowning in his memoirs. Legal advice in Bush’s corner keeping him from a Swiss visit some 5 years ago.
Again, maybe more symbolic than substance…but some small comfort for decent human beings to know some freedoms have been stolen from tyrants and psychopaths.

Posted by: MadMax2 | Dec 13 2016 14:55 utc | 106

100
Trump and Ryan are both of the Jesuit persuasion, while Rodham and Pelosi were both of the Yarmucle persuasion. There are no Protestants or Muslims left on the Supreme Court, or in positions of power in USArya now (Pence is a talk show host, pretending to be ‘VP’, an anti-BDS champion place-holder, while Trump is at Mar-a-Lago entertaining the rich Papists and Yarmuclists).
Then Saleh v Bush will be thrown out on a technicality, an inconvenient truth of what happens between Protestants and Muslims stays between Protestants and Muslims, of no further interest, a sideshow and legal precedent that will never be allowed to sully Deep State and the One Party’s Rule of Law.
I can prove that with a single quote, Your Honor:
“I can’t tell you where all the money went!” Benhamin

Posted by: chipnik | Dec 13 2016 15:53 utc | 108

@109 dh
no problem. tee-rump can make a deal with the Russians just as India has done: buy Su-34s to be assembled by LMT in Washington, or wherever they assemble such stuff.
How Much Does an F-35 Actually Cost?

A single Air Force F-35A costs a whopping $148 million. One Marine Corps F-35B costs an unbelievable $251 million. A lone Navy F-35C costs a mind-boggling $337 million. Average the three models together, and a “generic” F-35 costs $178 million.

I get $245.33 million as the “generic” F-35, but I use arithmetic, and that’s never part of the equation when we’re talking military hardware.
anyway …
Sukhoi Su-34 Fighter

[T]he Sukhoi Su-34 is … $36 million.

Such a deal! 178/36 = 4.944, call it 5 for the price of 1! so what’s not to like about that?

Posted by: jfl | Dec 13 2016 16:29 utc | 110

Donald Trump: You Brought Two Too Many
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XkHsinz7oU

Posted by: From The Hague | Dec 13 2016 20:14 utc | 112

@111 bz
yeah, i’d guessed that. the number of interest is
(26*148) + (6*251) + (2*337) = $6,028,000,000 for thirty-four aircraft the LMT way
vs (26*36) + (6*36) + (2*36) = $1,224,000,000 for thirty-four aircraft the Sukhoi way
but the real number of interest is
USAF  A (1763*148) = 260924
USN    C  (260*337) =  87620
USMC B  (340*251) =  85340 + C (80*337) = 26960
================================================
$433,884,000,000 + $26,960,000,000 = $460,844,000,000 the LMt way
vs
USAF  A (1763*36) = 63468
USN    C  (260*36) =  9360
USMC B  (340*36) = 12240 + C (80*36) =  2880
================================================
$85,068,000,000 + $2,880,000,000 = $87,948,000,000 the Sukhoi way, a savings of $372,896,000,000

Posted by: jfl | Dec 14 2016 6:20 utc | 114

@115 hoarse, ‘… if the negative reports I’ve read on the F-35 have any substance then the “Israelis” may be F-35 guinea pigs’
Su-34’s seem to work pretty well.

Posted by: jfl | Dec 14 2016 14:59 utc | 116

Trump is not St Ignatius riding a unicorn farting rainbows, he’s just a guy carrying seven bottles of light in a stone box.

Posted by: chipnik | Dec 15 2016 3:56 utc | 118

US admiral pledges to confront China in South China Sea

Admiral Harry Harris, commander of US Pacific Command, used a speech in Sydney yesterday to warn that the United States was ready to confront China over its activities in the South China Sea. Under the Obama administration, the South China Sea has been transformed into a volatile flashpoint for war between China and the US. Harris’s remarks make clear that those dangers will only rise under a Trump administration.
The Pentagon has used China’s activities as the pretext for stepped-up naval patrols and exercises in the South China Sea, which is immediately adjacent to the Chinese mainland and key military bases on Hainan Island. The US Navy has carried out three so-called “freedom of navigation operations” (FONOPs), provocatively sending warships within the 12-nautical mile territorial limits of China’s islets.
Far from being to counter what Harris described as China’s “assertive, aggressive behaviour,” the US military build-up in the South China Sea is part of its broader preparations for war with China. The Pentagon’s AirSea Battle strategy involves massive air and missile attacks on the Chinese mainland from bases, warships and submarines in the western Pacific, supported by a naval blockade to strangle the Chinese economy.
US news reports this year have repeatedly suggested that Harris has been frustrated with the Obama administration’s failure to make a more “muscular” response to China in the South China Sea. His comments yesterday were certainly encouraged by the prospect of a Trump presidency after the president-elect’s declaration on Sunday that he did not feel bound by the One China policy that has been the lynchpin of US-China relations for more than four decades.
Harris’s speech is an ominous warning of what is being prepared once Trump takes office. It involves the intensification and expansion of the Obama administration’s confrontational “pivot to Asia” that can only accelerate the slide toward trade war and war.

the play seems to be to sideline russia’s nuclear arsenal which could destory the us and to push as hard as they can against china.
china is not going to stand for this. (and neither is russia). china’s an 3000 year empire, coming to from two-hundred years of humiliation and pride is resurgent. the us seems to be walking into something they just don’t (want to) understand.
but they’re neo-cons. they act. understanding is for sissies. something that can be done ‘later’. after they create their ‘new reality’.
no one’s going to like the new reality they create with china.

Posted by: jfl | Dec 15 2016 9:20 utc | 120

121
Remember there is an Atlantic Fleet and a Pacific Fleet, and British owns (sic) Diego Garcia, the Central Asia FOB. Atlantic Fleet Headquarters (COMNAVSURFLANT) is Norfolk, Virginia, and the Pacific Fleet’s (CINCPACFLEET) is in Honolulu, Hawaii. Two different entities. Night and day, the sun never sets on the American Empire. Where am I going with this?
For nearly two decades since ‘What America needs is a New Pearl Harbor’, the idea, or psyop, has been pushed to ‘redeploy Atlantic
forces to the Pacific’, until Obama’s Pentagon codified that as ‘Pivot to Asia'(TM). Sounds sexy, doesn’t it? Invokes images of the
Brave 300 Warriors standing granite against Persians, Hindus and Orientals (sic). Looked at closely, however, the Administration has made promises that no redeployment would be permanent, and no Atlantic bases would be closed. Then ‘Pivot to Asia’ is in reality a NeoCon Cold War 2 scam, and in this realized sense, then, is an illegal and unconstitutional war profiteering arms buildup, largest since WW2. As well, there’s a lot of Viet Nam veterans within the Pentagon who want to keep their day jobs. ‘1000 generals and 1000 admirals’ and all that rot. The rest of the book, … it’s a marketing ploy!
It has nothing to do with your Little Red Book excoriation of USArya’s Age of Colonialism as a ‘bankrupt theology’, …one China has wholeheartedly marched behind since Deng Xiaoping, for 40-years of China’s recent history. Deng’s Market Revolution has spread to China’s colonialization of Tibet, of Taiwan, of Hong Kong, further, by default to Cambodia, to Myanmar, and by defacto market pull, to Thailand and Vietnam and Africa and the Philippines. All are vassal states now to the Chinese’ own Age of Colonialism and their bankrupt (literally) credit-debt fueled Martial Economy of …Capitalism.
‘South China Sea’ is simply USArya’s tax-revenue collapsing war profiteerist ‘Pivot to Asia’, vers China’s credit-debt collapsing market expansionists. It has nothing to do with your Maoist theory of USAryan Colonialism; the whole world is capitalist now, and drowning in credit-debt, and this kabuki play in the South China Sea is just two competing nano-computers, set onto auto-pilot, dollars battling remnimbi, and not worthy of a STRATFOR on MoA, because we’re not privy to its algorithms.
You might as well pontificate on the outcome of a litter box full of kittens. Blah, blah, blah. Monkey brain.

Posted by: chipnik | Dec 15 2016 19:20 utc | 122

Posted by: b | Dec 13, 2016 2:36:35 AM | 46
Clearly, humor-challenged.
Hey, I got repeatedly insulted, so turnabout was fair play. If you banned nonsensical bloviating you’d have a blank page. I least I got a reason before being tossed this time.

Posted by: Jonathan Dough | Dec 15 2016 23:35 utc | 124

I just saw a preview for Sunday’s 60 minutes piece on the White Helmets. The rescuers excavated children from bombed out wreckage like they were picking up a child from a nursery crib. What’s concerning is that the precarious nature of the wreckage the children were being removed from would have put them at high risk of spinal cord injuries which would warrant immobilization on a gurney to preclude subsequent damage to vulnerable nerves nearby unstable vertebrae. I’m not a doctor, but this is absurd. Even if you didn’t understand that risk, you would assume broken bones and thus not whisk the child up like a conquering hero in the hope to not aggravate the child’s physical pain. I hate knowing that people and children are being hurt in this conflict, but those videos were BS or a total band of morons masquerading as first responders.

Posted by: IhaveLittleToAdd | Dec 15 2016 23:57 utc | 126

My my what a bitter and twisted little clintonista this jonathon dough fella is except he’s prolly not so little in physical form just in character – all 300lbs of him labouriously tapping away the cliches of the soon to die of ennui, DNC.
See lame ad hominems come easy, arse features. Do yerself a favour take off to somewhere full of fellow dipsticks, dropkicks & drongos.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Dec 16 2016 1:14 utc | 128

@128,129
I think we all know who our little faeces eating friend at 125 is. A bitter, twisted wreck…unable to accept reality…unable to let go…
…an election cycle that just keeps giving.

Posted by: MadMax2 | Dec 16 2016 2:39 utc | 130