Code Pink heckled President Barack Obama with a plea to free "Free Bradley Manning." Manning now goes by the female first name of Chelsea . Unsurprisingly, the media has given little coverage of the Code Pink protest.
I'm glad the Young Turks are covering the Code Pink protest and Manning story. The problem is they do their usual uninformed job. What evidence does Michael Shure have that President Barack Obama secretly sympathizes but can't pardon him because he is president. Nice theory but no evidence. If anything, Obama's aggressiveness pursuing legal charges against former CIA operative John Kiriakou and Edward Snowden proof otherwise.
I continue to marvel at how Code Pink gets past Secret Service and police security. The drone campaign has been a major cause for Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin. She has written the book "Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control." Benjamin and Code Pink traveled to Pakistan to raise awareness on President Obama's drone campaign.
Here is Obama's response to Benjamin. Whatever you think about Obama (and I have my misgivings), he is a skilled politician. He doesn't get rattled when he's heckled.
Spencer Ackerman took this picture before the start of the John Brennan confirmation. There is already a huge crowd of protesters.
Update: Politico reports that the hearing was temporarily suspended because of the Code Pink protest. How those women are able to sneak into high security places continues to amaze me.
If Joe Scarborough doesn't know how to use Google than Politico should fact-check his columns. Scarborough rightly comes out against President Barack Obama's use of drone strikes. Scarborough uses his column to attack the Left for being against President Bush's torture policies, but supporting drone strike. I agree that there are people on the Left that have been silent on the drone strike issue. Scarborough veers off in his column and picks an unlikely target.
"Where are the ladies of Code Pink?" Scarborough wrote.
Well Joe, Medea Benjamin published the book "Drone Warfare: Killing By Remote Control." You can buy it on Amazon.com. Another Google search reveals that Code Pink staged several anti-drone strikes protests in Pakistan. Below is a video of Medea Benjamin being interviewed in Islamabad.
Code Pink has been in Pakistan. Scarborough could have found that out if he bothered to use Google. Scarborough is too intellectually lazy to fact-check his own work.
Scarborough spends the rest of the article defending torture. I can feel my brain cells exploding reading the rest of Scarborough's prose.
As I have said repeatedly, Americans should continue to debate the moral dilemmas caused by interrogation techniques but there is no debate that the techiques used on the Al Qaeda terrorists not only worked, but also been used on thousands of our own military members in SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) courses run by various services. Any graduate of basic training at Paris Island or Fort Benning will probably tell you that what many now consider "torture" (harsh treatment, sleep deprivation or dietry manipulation) is simply a day in the life of a U.S. military basic trainee.
The SERE program was created to teach military personal how to survive against torture. Scarborough fails to understand that simple fact. The techniques used by the CIA "a day in the life" of a soldier. Manadel Al-Jamadi was tortured to death in Abu Ghraib. A Google search would have provided Scarborough with that information. Al-Jamadi's dead body is where Lynndie England took the infamous thumbs up photo. Does ending up in a body bag look like a day in the life of a military trainee to you?
I first heard that CODEPINK was going to Pakistan protest the drone strikes, when I was covering the Republican National Convention. CODEPINK was literally everywhere during the convention. Pakistan is the country where the late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was murdered. Pakistan is a very unfriendly place for Westerners.
Threats of violence do not deter CODEPINK. These women have been arrested seceral times. They alway have a high level understanding about security. CODEPINK was able to break into a Condoleezza Rice speech, in Ybor City, that was protected by the Secret Service. CODEPINk demanded Rice's arrest for war crimes.
Medea Benjamin and Rae Abileah of CODEPINK talk about Mitt Romney's acceptance speech. Benjamin and Abileah sneaked into the Tampa Bay Times Forum to protest the influence of money in politics. CODEPINK have been able to sneak into and protest several Republican National Convention events. Money quote:
Medea Benjamin: We have actually been going into the convention every single night, Amy. It's amazing with the $50 million they spend on security that they are not able to keep CODEPINK out the insides of the convention. Where we have disrupted the speeches of Rick Santorum, Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, and last night Mitt Romney with four of us.
The CODEPINK women are ninjas. I got frisked and wand search going to the screening of Occupy Unmasked. (Horrible movie.) CODEPink got into the screening. The film is highly negative of CODEPINK. Did the Breitbart filmmakers not recognize the lefty protest group they dissed in their own film? It was hysterical to hear CODEPINK cheer when they were first mentioned in the movie.
The Republican National Convention had the Woman Up Pavilion. The GOP thought the top concerns of women was getting their hair done and getting fresh coffee. (The coffee is good.) Woman Up had a panel on national security. Claire M. Lopez, of the conservative the Intelligence Summit, made the bizarre assertion that Sharia law was infiltrating the United States legal system. Lopez also claimed that North Korea will use fishing boats to launch an EMP bomb over America.
Lopez is the redhead in the blue blazer. She is sitting next to Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll. Florida's Lt. Governor complains that we are being too mean to corporations. Code Pink is sitting on the sofa to the left and are told to be silent. I member of Code Pink was kicked out of the panel discussion earlier.
Side note: Forgive me for my crappy vlogging skills.
I saw Code Pink the two days I helped TheContributor.com cover the Republican National Convention. Code Pinks was able to sneak into The Tampa Bay Times Forum and disrupt Paul Ryan's speech.
Code Pink managed to sneak into Condeleezza Rice's speech in Ybor City and stage a mock arrest. I wasn't even allowed to stand outside the entrance of the building. Code Pink gets in. These women are ninjas.
My favorite Code Pink protest is the members dressed as vaginas. You can tell how comfortable people are with their own sexuality by how they deal with seeing women dress as giant vaginas. I find it clever and amusing. Conservatives are repulsed.
