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July 2, 2005
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b
the site is acting up today – is that because of the maintenance last night
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 2 2005 17:45 utc | 1
I thought I would move this up to the new open thread as it might interest many…
@Fran, et al
Speaking of control and secrecy, how many here are aware that it was none other than Alberto R. (Geneva Convention) Gonzales among others who were central to the heated dispute of the private vs. public control of Whitehouse records. While the quaint Mr. Gonzales may have recused himself from CIA Leak Inquires, he was the consigliere/enforcer whom called US Archivist, John W. Carlin by telephone to fire him and replace him with a very controversial Bush Cheney appointee /stand-up guy, Allen Weinstein. Democrat, (DINO?) historian Allen Weinstein, was on Reagan’s transition team in the eighties, and was rumored to be the compare/leaker whom gave the tip off to Nixons lawyer that the US National Archives & Records Administration (NARA) intended to release everything.Once installed Weinstein first major act in his new post, was to make a deal with John H. Taylor, the director of the Richard M. Nixon Library that made public most of Nixon’s papers and tapes.
According to informed sources, the administration wanted to (and did) short-circuit the normal confirmation process to see Weinstein confirmed through an “expedited” process, even though he had no experince as a head archivist; a process that had never been done before. Their goal — was to place Weinstein in the position prior to the then November election. NCH.
(National Coalition for History) reported that the hurried action was linked to forthcoming scheduled opening by NARA of records from the George H. W. Bush administration and the transfer of 9/11 commission records to the Archives. I found most of this stuff out while search gov docs on campus, but much of it can be confirmed online too. Finally,Gonzales never gave a reason as to why Carlin was to be replaced which was very much out of the norm. During the hearings when asked for the reason none was forth coming. Disclosure of the odd circumstances surrounding Carlin being asked to step down was never settled.Democrats on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee said it amounted to a forced removal, and Bush should be required to give his reasons for it. The White House had no immediate comment when asked why the president wanted to replace Carlin. White House spokeswoman Erin Healey said only that “Mr. Carlin has submitted a letter stating his intention to resign, and Mr. Bush has a responsibility to appoint someone to fill that position.” He never got a reason.
I also ran across a most provocative book this week entitled: White House E-Mail
President Reagan tried to shred them electronically…
President Bush tried to take them to Texas…
President Clinton tried to put them beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act…
White House e-mail survived, thanks to a six-year lawsuit brought by the National Security Archive and allied historians, librarians, and public interest lawyers.
The most revealing of the e-mail released to date appears in this book and disk set, edited and richly annotated by the Archive’s director.
Here are the highest-level White House communications on the most secret national security affairs of the United States during the 1980s–shockingly candid electronic exchanges you were never meant to see, virtually none of which has ever before been available to the American public.
CHRONOLOGY
1982
– The National Security Council (NSC) staff at the White House acquires a prototype electronic mail system, from IBM, called the Professional Office System (PROFs).
April 1985
– The PROFs e-mail system becomes fully operational within the NSC, including not only the full staff, but also home terminals for the National Security Adviser, Robert “Bud” McFarlane, and his deputy, Admiral John M. Poindexter.
November 1986
– The remainder of the White House comes on line with electronic mail, at first with the PROFs system, and later (by the end of the 1980s) through a variety of systems including VAX A-1 (“All in One”), and ccmail.
November 22-25, 1986
– John Poindexter and Oliver North electronically shred more than 5000 e-mail notes in the memory banks of their computer systems, as the Iran-contra scandal breaks.
November 28, 1986
– Career staff at the White House Communications Agency order the November backup tapes of the e-mail system to be saved instead of recycled as usual. Subsequently, investigators from the FBI and the Tower Commission use the backup takes to reconstruct the Iran-contra scandal.
February 26, 1987
– The Tower Commission issues its report on Iran-contra, reprinting hundreds of PROFs notes exchanged by McFarlane, Poindexter and North.
January 19, 1989
– On the last day of the Reagan presidency, the National Security Archive files a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests together with a lawsuit against President Ronald Reagan, to prevent the imminent erasure of the White House electronic mail backup tapes. At 6:10 pm, on the eve of George Bush’s inauguration, U.S. District Judge Barrington D. Parker issues a Temporary Restraining Order, prohibiting the destruction of the backup tapes to the PROFs system.
September 15, 1989
– U.S. District Judge Charles B. Richey rules that the National Security Archive and its co-plaintiffs, including the American Historical Association (AHA) and the American Library Association (ALA), have standing to sue President Bush, in order to force him to comply with the retention requirements of various records acts which potentially cover the White House e-mail.
January 25, 1991
– After a year-and-a-half of legal procedural wrangling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upholds Judge Richey’s ruling on standing, denying the Bush administration’s attempts to have the case dismissed.
November 20, 1992
– On request from the plaintiffs, Judge Richey adds the White House e-mail from the lame-duck Bush administration to the case, issuing a restraining order preventing the Bush White House from destroying its own backup computer records.
January 6, 1993
– Judge Richey rules that computer tapes containing copies of e-mail messages by Reagan and Bush White House staff must be preserved like other government records, because the electronic versions are not simply duplicates of paper printouts, but contain additional information beyond the paper copies.
January 11 and 14, 1993
– Judge Richey issues specific court orders requiring that the Bush White House preserve its computer records. In press interviews, Judge Richey says that despite his orders, he believes that the Bush administration is planning to destroy its e-mail files.
January 15, 1993
– In an expedited emergency ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upholds and modifies the rulings by Judge Richey, holding that government officials could erase White House and NSC computer files, as long as they preserved, on backup tapes, identical copies of what was being erased.
January 19, 1993
– President Bush signs a secret agreement with Don Wilson, head of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), purporting to grant Bush exclusive legal control over the e-mail tapes of his administration. Working through the night, a staff team from NARA takes custody of thousands of tapes and disk drives, hurriedly removing them from White House offices to prevent incoming Clinton appointees from gaining access to them.
February 16, 1993
– NARA career staff who managed the transfer describe in an internal memo how the so- called “midnight ride” had violated NARA’s own rules for records transfers and how several sets of tapes ordered preserved by Judge Richey had been lost, erased or damaged.
May 22, 1993
– Judge Richey cites the Clinton White House and the acting Archivist of the United States for contempt of court for failing to carry out his order to issue new and appropriate guidelines for the preservation of the computer records of the Reagan, Bush and Clinton White House staff.
August 13, 1993
– The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacates Judge Richey’s contempt orders but upholds his overall decision that the Federal Records Act (FRA) requires that complete electronic copies of e-mail messages be preserved by the White House, and by extension, government agencies in general. The appeals court remands the case to Judge Richey to decide the issue of the dividing line between “agency” records covered by the FRA and presidential records covered by the Presidential Records Act.
March 25, 1994
– In a brief filed in federal court, the Clinton administration declares that the National Security Council is not an agency, and should be accorded the protection from public scrutiny given to the President’s personal advisers. This argument attempts to remove the Clinton administration’s White House e- mail from the reach of FOIA requests and the FRA, arguing that all its documents are subject only to the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and therefore not to court oversight.
December 13, 1994
– The e-mail plaintiffs file suit against the Acting Archivist of the United States to void the Bush-Wilson agreement, in American Historical Association et. al. v. Peterson.
February 15, 1995
– Judge Richey rejects the Clinton administration’s arguments about the NSC’s status as “arbitrary and capricious… contrary to history, past practice and the law,” and declares that the National Security Council is an agency. The government subsequently appeals the decision, and the plaintiffs cross- appeal against a portion of Richey’s ruling that opens a loophole for senior NSC staff giving advice to the President.
February 27, 1995
– In a separate opinion in the lawsuit over the Bush-Wilson agreement, Judge Richey declares the agreement “null and void,” writing that “No one, not even a President, is above the law.” The New York Times subsequently editorializes, under the headline “A Special Place in History for Mr. Bush,” that “No President has the right to corner official records in an effort to control his place in history.” (March 1, 1995, page A18)
September 8, 1995
– The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit hears oral arguments in the case on the issue of Judge Richey’s decision and the agency versus Presidential status of the NSC.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 2 2005 18:46 utc | 2
It was Rove! :
“MSNBC Analyst Says Cooper Documents Reveal Karl Rove as Source in Plame Case”
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 2 2005 18:58 utc | 3
ô uncle
how it would make me sleep better to see rove go down
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 2 2005 19:03 utc | 4
“Just funning, he says. Karl, how could you? Didn’t you think about me and the kids? And just how am I supposed to support myself until you get out? No, he’s not going to help. He’s nothing but a lying bum, said so yourself. So don’t expect me to be here when you get out, mister, and believe me, it’s gonna hurt…”
Posted by: The Mrs. | Jul 2 2005 19:15 utc | 5
I guess it’s not a big thing over there, but Mr. Bush will be visiting Denmark on Tuesday and Wednesday this coming week — this is before going to Great Britain to meet with other big hats at a G8 confereance.
Anyway, the WH, according to the newspaper, Urban, asked that demonstrations be kept far away from where Mr. Bush will be spending his 16 hours in the Kingdom of Denmark. They also asked, according to the paper that the demonstrations be kept away from the American TV news cameras.
Well, the Danish gov’t replied in somewhat miffed tones, that we don’t do things that way here.
Soooo, we’ll see what happens — it looks like a pretty big turn out is expected. And one wonders, how long will the sound bites be in America — 10 seconds?
The Danish airforce is required to have two F-16s up in the air at all times while the fellow is here — to enforce a no-fly zone. This will cost us $10000 an hour per plane…
The people who have to go to work who come from north of Copenhagen have been told to expect extreme traffic problems. Mr. Bush and entourage will be using the motorway to go to and from lunch — and nobody else will be allowed on the freeway at that time.
One thing that I found was interesting (heard this on the DR 1 Danish TV) — the top two floors of this hotel have been taken over by the Secret Service and they are allowed to carry loaded guns and weapons. If for some reason they have to shoot at anything, they cannot be arrested or arraigned for any infringement of Danish law.
But we are so happy! Mr. Bush is coming to visit us as a reward for our valient and consequent efforts as part of the Coalition of the Willing (or whatever it is called now) and we welecome the opportunity to tell Mr. Bush to, well, to go to hell.
Posted by: BarfHead | Jul 2 2005 20:01 utc | 6
O’Donnell on Huffington Post: Rove Blew CIA Agent’s Cover
Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an ‘It’s Rove!’ story and will probably break it tomorrow.
Posted by: Fran | Jul 2 2005 20:03 utc | 7
@Uncle $cam,
well it looks as it is getting more difficult for them to keep things secret, however the sheer amount of leaks might work for them. It is almost impossible to keep up and it is at times just numbing, the flood of leaks and s**t flying aroung – especially the smell can be nauseating and maybe even paralysing.
Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 2 2005 20:13 utc | 8
@Uncle $cam,
well it looks as it is getting more difficult for them to keep things secret, however the sheer amount of leaks might work for them. It is almost impossible to keep up and it is at times just numbing, the flood of leaks and s**t flying aroung – especially the smell can be nauseating and maybe even paralysing.
b, why can’t the name be saved anymore?
Posted by: Fran | Jul 2 2005 20:14 utc | 9
I don’t know if I hold you same enthusiasm about Rovers rggiap, these people are vicious and dangerous and if this thing lead from rove -> cheney -> bolton, the niger docs etc… it could get very very ugly; as Scott Ritter said, if it getS so bad where we have to call for impeachment and war crimes tribunals it could tear this whole country apart. Which would be devastating for everyone, Also, don’t forget the valued tradition of Presidential pardons… it’s not like it would be new and who better than the lame duck Bush. tHE MOTHER FUCKERS COULD GET AWAY W/IT.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 2 2005 20:50 utc | 10
The lies behind the lies
Roy Greenslade salutes Dilip Hiro’s Secrets and Lies, a depressing but magisterial assessment of the reasoning that led to the invasion of Iraq
Saturday July 2, 2005
The Observer
Secrets and Lies: The True Story of the Iraq War
by Dilip Hiro
564pp, Politico’s, £9.99
Millions across the world who marched in the hope of preventing the invasion of Iraq were angered by the fact that their opposition was ignored. If they read this book their anger will be redoubled. But the people who will surely feel even more embittered are those who were taken in, having been persuaded by the arguments of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair to support the war.
Dilip Hiro coolly dismantles the political lies, distortions and obfuscations that allowed the United States and Britain to launch an illegal invasion of Iraq. That he does the job so meticulously – even, arguably, in too detailed a fashion on occasion – makes his overall indictment even more powerful than the scatter-gun approach of other war critics, such as Michael Moore.
Hiro brings to the subject a thorough knowledge of the Middle East, having written extensively about the region in several of his previous 26 books. Here is an author for whom, to paraphrase Bush’s secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, there are no unknown unknowns. He has made it his business to know exactly how Bush’s White House team managed to prosecute a war based on a giant fabrication. That, of course, was the claim that Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had defied the United Nations by holding on to weapons of mass destruction that presented a threat to global stability. In order to support the central lie, to give it the semblance of credibility, there were scores of intertwined supporting lies. Saddam was not linked to al-Qaida and was not, therefore, responsible for 9/11. He did not buy uranium oxide from Niger. Iraq did not have a fleet of unmanned aircraft nor did it have mobile labs to produce chemical and biological weapons. Nor was it operating poison factories.
Hiro is painstaking as he holds up every piece of fake intelligence to scrutiny, revealing both its falsity and the propaganda use to which it was put. Every excuse advanced by Bush and Blair for the invasion is shown to be hollow, as they seek to conceal the main reason for their pre-emptive strike: the desire for regime change. In some of the most telling passages, Hiro reveals the key roles played by the sinister group who surrounded Bush, such as his deputy, Dick Cheney; Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz; the under secretary of defence, Douglas Feith; the defence adviser Richard Perle; the president’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove; and, of course, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. Meanwhile, the senior man, Colin Powell, the secretary of state, was largely isolated from Bush’s gung-ho squad. Despite his policy disagreements however, he performed important tasks on behalf of the warriors, none more so than his lengthy speech to the UN Security Council in the build-up to the invasion. Hiro’s point-by-point rebuttal of Powell’s allegations is masterly.
In similar fashion he destroys the so-called evidence in Blair’s now infamous dossiers on WMD and the far-fetched claim about Iraq being able to deploy such weapons within 45 minutes. Evidently, even the Americans scoffed at the statement, though they grew less concerned themselves about the WMD reasoning because they had successfully convinced their public that Saddam was one of the 9/11 culprits.
Hiro mounts convincing evidence that Bush was determined to invade Iraq on virtually any pretext soon after his first election victory. He also shows how, some seven months before the war, US special forces were operating within Iraq at the behest of Rumsfeld. Their work was specifically linked to an invasion that had not even been raised with the UN and while its weapons inspectors were still carrying out their tasks with what later transpired to be great efficiency.
The geopolitical manoeuvres are certainly riveting, but the more human, and inhuman, story emerges in the passages that tell of the invasion itself. There are several examples of just how badly the civilian Iraqi population suffered as the Anglo-American forces swept through their country. But the haunting moments come, just as they did in the revelations about the reality of the Vietnam war, when one discovers that neither politicians nor military leaders ever tell the truth. For example, the Pentagon strenuously denied that it had used napalm in Iraq, despite an Australian correspondent witnessing its use. That wasn’t napalm, said a spokesman, it was a Mark 77 firebomb. As Hiro observes this statement was “cynical sophistry”, since the Mark 77 is a mixture of kerosene and polystyrene, while napalm is a mixture of jet fuel and polystyrene. The result is just the same: death in a fireball.
There were also official denials about the use of lethal, and indiscriminate, cluster bombs. Yet Hiro is not only able to state that 1,566 cluster bombs were dropped along with more than 20,000 cluster munitions, he also reproduces a map to show exactly where they were used.
In the greater scheme of things it was a small lie, just one among so many. The promulgation of pre-war lies was followed by further lies during the war. Now Bush and Blair tell us that life in post-Saddam Iraq is improving. But why should we believe them?
&£183; Roy Greenslade is professor of journalism at London’s City University. To order Secrets and Lies for £9.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/bookshop
Posted by: John | Jul 2 2005 21:28 utc | 11
I wasn’t going to post the rest of the weekend, buuuutttt, the above post about Rove’s anal retentive bullshit tearing the country apart changed my mind. Jefferson said a little revolution every twenty years or so is good for the country. 24 years ago we had the Ragass revolution, it is time to sweep the remnents of it out the f—ing door.
I hope he (Rove) falls and falls hard. I want shakeup. The kind where everyman is the controller if his world, not the monied interest. Progressives rise up and take the mantle of change. The fall of the corrupt elites is about to take place. Things are moving fast, the rethugs may not be able to stop impeachment even when their in control.
Posted by: jdp | Jul 2 2005 21:58 utc | 12
does anybody else have more information. on publisher & editor – they have a little more saying a journalist from newsweek isikoff has also confirmed it was rove – but the article is also surrounded by a bit of legalese
any other details?
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 2 2005 22:17 utc | 13
There is a fabulous article on the fraud at Lloyds of London, available for the first time on-line. I have been pushing this for five years.
Link
This is the quid pro quo for “poodle” Blair’s unflinching commitment to George Bush. From the British perspective this answers the question “Why?”
My personal nemesis is Jeffrey Archer.
If you pick up a copy of his 1986 “A Matter of Honour” you will find this exchange:
“Not at all, my dear Bischoff,” said Poskonov. “After all these years the honour is entirely mine. And kind of you to open the bank on a Sunday. But now to business. Did you manage to get Romanov to sign the release form?”
“Oh yes,” said Bischoff matter-of-factly. He did it without even reading the standard clauses, let alone the extra three you asked us to put in.”
“So his inheritance automatically returns to the Russian state?”
“That is so, Mr Poskonov, and we in return…”
“…will represent us in all the currency exchange transactions we carry out in the West.”
Archer is a chancer and a convicted criminal. He did a terrible thing to me and two hundred colleagues at Anglia Television.
He is describing what happened to those poor idiot American Names. One of them was Justice Steven Breyer!
Posted by: John | Jul 2 2005 22:22 utc | 15
uncle: …it could tear this whole country apart. Which would be devastating for everyone…”
Uncle I’m anticipating this development (if it happens) with relish. I have a lot to lose but it will be worth it to see Rove go down. You said the mofos could get away with it. No they won’t, not in the longer run; even if it takes a few more years to make it happen, these monkeys are going down.
None of us are getting out of this thing easily but it will be worth it to get out. I’m sitting on the edge of my seat.
Posted by: rapt | Jul 2 2005 22:40 utc | 16
uncle: …it could tear this whole country apart. Which would be devastating for everyone…”
Uncle I’m anticipating this development (if it happens) with relish. I have a lot to lose but it will be worth it to see Rove go down. You said the mofos could get away with it. No they won’t, not in the longer run; even if it takes a few more years to make it happen, these monkeys are going down.
None of us are getting out of this thing easily but it will be worth it to get out. I’m sitting on the edge of my seat.
Posted by: rapt | Jul 2 2005 22:43 utc | 17
@John,
Hiro mounts convincing evidence that Bush was determined to invade Iraq on virtually any pretext soon after his first election victory.
To read a really powerful (imo) reinforcement of this comment see: Thom Hartmann’s They Died So Republicans Could Take the Senate
Writer Russ Baker noted in October, 2004, that Mickey Herskowitz, the man Bush had originally hired to write his autobiography (“A Charge To Keep: My Journey To The White House”), told Baker that George Bush was planning his Iraq invasion – to seize and hold political power for himself and the Republican Party – during his first presidential election campaign.
“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” Herskowitz told Baker. “It was on his mind. He [Bush] said to me:
Posted by: Juannie | Jul 2 2005 22:50 utc | 18
@rapt
I have a lot to lose but it will be worth it to see Rove go down….
…None of us are getting out of this thing easily but it will be worth it to get out. I’m sitting on the edge of my seat.
That’s worth repeating.
Posted by: Juannie | Jul 2 2005 22:59 utc | 19
Thanks for bringing that up again Juannie – I was afraid it had dropped down the memory hole…
Sorry for the dbl post; when the msg was “you are now blocked” I had no idea how to respond.
Posted by: rapt | Jul 2 2005 23:06 utc | 20
ô if missus piggy is going down. am realistic these gangsters share so many crimes like the hoods they are they will protect him. they are so craven they would make carlo gambino & frank sinatra blush
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 2 2005 23:08 utc | 21
Yasser Salihee, Iraqi physician, correspondent for NPR, Knight Ridder
– Death by US Sniper Bullet at neighborhood checkpoint
Jacki Lyden of NPR reports and pays tribute to Salihee, who had been her guide, investigator and translator for all her Iraq reports.
More and more, we are recognizing that it is Iraqis who are taking the greatest risks in the fact-finding business. It is they who go to bomb blast sites, they who talk to insurgents, they who go home late at night after we are safe in our barricaded compounds. At the time of his death, Yasser had been doing byline pieces as a special correspondent for Knight Ridder News Service.
James Cogan at WSWS suggests that Salihee’s reporting may point to the dark explanation for why he was targetted.
Over the past month, Salihee had been gathering evidence that US-backed Iraqi forces have been carrying out extra-judicial killings of alleged members and supporters of the anti-occupation resistance. His investigation followed a feature in the New York Times magazine in May, detailing how the US military had modeled the Iraqi interior ministry police commandos, known as the Wolf Brigade, on the death squads unleashed in the 1980s to crush the left-wing insurgency in El Salvador.
The Wolf Brigade was recruited by US operatives and the US-installed interim government headed by Iyad Allawi during 2004. A majority of its officers and personnel served in Saddam Hussein’s special forces and Republican Guard—veterans of killings, torture and repression. The unit has been used against the resistance in rebellious cities such as Mosul and Samarra, and, over the past six weeks, has played a prominent role in the massive crackdown ordered by the Iraqi government in Baghdad codenamed “Operation Lightning”.
On June 27, Knight Ridder published the results of its inquiry in an article jointly written by Salihee and correspondent Tom Lasseter. The journalists “found more than 30 examples in less than a week” of corpses turning up in Baghdad morgues of people who were last seen being detained by the police commandos.
Salihee’s wife is also a physician. In Iraq, Lyden reports, one can support one’s family better as a translator and stringer for western news services than as a physician.
Posted by: small coke | Jul 2 2005 23:13 utc | 22
Ollie North. Still at large. Poindexter. Still at large. Nixon. Posthumous honours. Summers, president of Harvard. Kissinger. Still at large. Negroponte. Still at large… These guys die “with honours” in their beds, at a ripe old age with all the comforts of money. They are not of the class that does jail time. Even the Church Commission didn’t result in jail sentences and it was a far more courageous and vigorous investigative panel than anything the current regime would permit. I find it hard to believe that our generation of evildoers will suddenly face justice, when no previous generation of their ilk (in the US) ever did.
& their partners in crime the press prove their complicity – not a blip on their screens – fuck them
Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 2 2005 23:13 utc | 24
A character such as Rove requires that I dredge up a word I never thought I’d use -Wicked. Non-fiction doesn’t do him justice. Perhaps RGiap will step into the breach.
But, I think they – and there are big THEY in America who have had enough of this out of control Administration – say Wall Street, the Military that’s wrecked, the CIA that’s gutted – want Bu$hCo. And Rove knows Everything about Everything going back to Bu$h’s Day 1 in politics. Surely he knows enough to force impeachment & conviction. Probably even knows enough to bring about Treason trials. I’d be perfectly delighted for them to let him cop a plea, in exchange for the Beans…All of Them…But no back room deals to let them quietly step down… I want it all out now…then they’ll put in McCain, only a marginal improvement…obscene misogynist reactionary…but vaguely sane & mature…
Maybe I’m dreaming…maybe not…maybe they’ll be allowed to stay around for cosmetic purposes if they agree to certain changes…My extrapolation comes from 2 things: 1) this is the most dangerous administration anyone has ever seen in this country & the most incompetent & delusionary – that’s a lethal combination…the masses are on the point of waking up, something to be avoided by the elite if at all possible…Elite wants to implement it’s regime of turning America into a Third World Country, merging it w/Canada, Mexico & eventually probably the Entire Hemisphere, destroy the Internet, etc. & don’t want bullshit battles over putting theocrats on the Court, not to mention further attacks in the ME w/King Fahd dead, so this is a good time to move…Goddess knows what Hell will be wrought in the ME if they leave these guys in for another few yrs. & how much further to the left & united Latin America will be while they fiddle… 2) they have Rove by the Throat & can use him to bring these guys down ERGO 3) Why not take the opportunity that presents itself to make some much needed changes? (You can talk about the Repugs controlling the Wash DC 535 til the cows come home, but the magnitude of the crimes that can be exposed to the public can easily force their hands & further they can be reassured by basically having one of their own in the WH.) Particularly after BabyBu$h’s delusionary speech the other night, the case for removing them is too strong to be ignored.
Posted by: jj | Jul 2 2005 23:15 utc | 25
i don’t think so r’giap, i think carlo & frank would be proud of them.
Posted by: Juannie | Jul 2 2005 23:16 utc | 26
i am between the devil & hard place
between exaltation – but also deananders more cool reasoned response(& the absence of this news anywhere – promises of a newsweek cover?)
how many scandals have we been through now
i think it was alabama’s view that the plame affair would be the beginning & i truly hope so – but this evil man rove must have known this was coming( re the fact that for all his thuggishness – i think novak sang like a bird to the prosecutors) & he & his brothers in crime will respond to it with their normal contempt for the ‘rule of law’
like their lien – guileo andreotti – mafia servant & political ponce – they will never face justice – real justice
it is at times like this i long for proletarian justice & its finality & absence of legalese
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 2 2005 23:36 utc | 27
it could tear this country apart…
I think the US is already being torn apart, in several senses. Mindless partisan division encouraged, whipped-up by wingnut hate rallies, hate talk radio, etc. Zealous, intolerant religious extremism encouraged and whipped up by various parties (read those Left Behind books if you doubt the hatefulness of this bizarre variant on xtianity) — encouraging some to think of themselves as the Saved and their neighbours as the Damned. Class war and class segregation dividing the income brackets, destroying any sense of common cause, separating the super-rich from the rich and the rich from the plebes further and further. Jingoistic nationalism and security-state paranoia being whipped up to encourage citizen to spy on citizen, mutual mistrust and phobia. And the physical infrastructure of the country being ripped apart by neglect — roads unpaved, schools unmaintained, libraries closing, public lands looted by privateers, natural resources liquidated… not to mention the jurisprudential legacy of the country being shredded and pissed on, from the Constitution to the tradition of common law, habeas corpus and all the rest.
No, the country is already being torn apart, like a large fat ungulate dragged down by dogs, the pack snapping and fighting for the soft juicy bits. Taking down the Cheney regime would introduce different stresses, but they could hardly be worse or more destructive imho.
You sound like an outsider looking in De. We really need to concentrate on what might work here vs negativism, as justified as your pessimism might be.
At the end of your rant there you mentioned taking down Cheney. It is doable. He may be inspired by an evil breed of ETs but he is still human (we assume) and subject to the frailties we all have. So emasculate the motherfucker. It is possible. Details and suggestions to be provided in a later episode…
Posted by: rapt | Jul 3 2005 0:13 utc | 29
Two concepts: sacrificial lamb and presidential pardon.
Posted by: gylangirl | Jul 3 2005 0:43 utc | 30
deanader
your love is strong through this melancholia & you have enough to give to outraged as you have done on another thread & that is the most crucial measure
the force that you & others give is not nothing & your firmness i feel as an arm around the shoulder looking out towards the tempest
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 3 2005 0:43 utc | 31
deanander
your love is strong through this melancholia & you have enough to give to outraged as you have done on another thread & that is the most crucial measure
the force that you & others give is not nothing & your firmness i feel as an arm around the shoulder looking out towards the tempest
& yes rapt
emasculate the motherfucker – that sounds good to me
Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 3 2005 0:44 utc | 32
Damn De, you are pissed and I don’t blame you. I rejoice in your flames for the current regime and I hope the Rovians bite the turf.
As I said above, a little revolution is good for the country.
On a personal note, I really love Michigan in the summer. It was such a wonderfull day today. We are building a grist mill in our community and we celebrated Mill River Days starting today. It was great. The community has a “double camel back bridge” and we had the first annual bridge walk today. What fun. It take about two minutes to walk the bridge, but it was so cool.
Have a nice night people. The MoA crowd is heads above others and I love reading the comments. Have a great fourth.
Posted by: jdp | Jul 3 2005 3:11 utc | 34
COME ON!!!
Do we want to get rid of these creeps or not? Whether or not any of them slip through the net, it is STILL worth the effort to make the truth known, to have the history of this era factor in the opposition…and I am really tired of being the opposistion, you know?
It’s time to lead this nation away from oil dependency, into the future. Enough people in this nation are aware of this issue…and aware that other nations are outcompeting us on this one…isn’t that enough to start a positive direction for this nation, that doesn’t rely upon lies and murder to maintain its way of life as the first and only option????
If there are no dems who have the nerve to lead, then let them step aside to make way for the future, along with the dinosaurs in the Bush administration.
Surely, surely some people who remain in govt learned the lessons of Reagan/Iran-Contra, then BushI / Iraqgate…this group has to be taken out of business…or put into a new one, like making license plates.
Some of the Watergate conspirators went to jail. Nixon has a permanant * by his name as president because of his attempts to accrue more executive power….that’s what ultimately brought him down.
The truth of the “other” side of the Reagan legacy spreads slowly, but it does get told. When Bush is gone, Reagan and Poppy’s papers can be released and history can be examined.
Most of all, I truly think that enough people in positions of power, beyond those of us who have thought this was a fiasco from day one, have realized how totally the decision to go into Iraq has screwed this nation, Iraq, and the stability of the world.
This is no small matter.
How can anyone who has knowledge of their acts refuse to act in the best interests of this country and the world?
rgiap- the Newsweek reporter was all over the Clinton blow job story with the help of information from “elves” as they called themselves…like Ann Coulter. He’s also the one who wrote the article that Newsweek recently “retracted” after the WH went ballistic about reading the truth. If he’s also identifying Rove, I look forward to seeing how many more will come forward.
the issue is not simply that Rove outed Plame. it’s about this entire administration, which runs on politics, not policy. Rove is the architect of that political world that ignores the real dangers when policy is ignored, or is so stupid it makes things worse.
Maybe Rove will have to take the fall on this one or else someone will tell about his buddy, Jimmy-Jeff G.
But there is plenty more where that came from. We need a national investigation into the way the Iraq war came about, the way the torture doctrine came about, the way that no apparent exit or contigency strategy came about…and why, in the midst of a so called WOT, would the executive branch harm intelligence operations concerning WMDs?
This moment of reckoning is just beginning. Yes, we do need a change in direction because the world is not as the Bush Junta has presented it, and the dangers to our country lie as much in political failure to address real issues as they do with pissed off jihadists…
in other words, if we didn’t need what the jihadist’s rulers own, we could let Saudi Arabia, for instance, deal with its disgruntled population instead of exporting terror.
btw, did I see it hear that King Faud is rumored to be dead? That would make sense for Bandar Bush to return to S.A. as the struggle for power plays out there.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 3 2005 3:20 utc | 35
So, where’s the Right Whinge Machine on this one?
Or is it just that they are they waiting on the kerning on the O between the R and the V?
OK–
Is the hangout, just past limited, now being reeled in?
The E&P Story has now been pulled…..for being last year’s news.
Is this a silver lining on the horizon? Seems Bush becoming more and more isolated even in his own party.
From the Indipendent: The Issues: Arnie has taken on Bush. Now it’s your turn, Tony
As the Governor of California calls for the US President to act on global warming, Geoffrey Lean and Andy McSmith look at attempts to secure an agreement ahead of the G8 summit, and at the pressure on Blair to take Europe’s side this time
…
Arnold Schwarzenegger today throws down the gauntlet to GeorgeBush, calling for immediate action on global warming three days before the G8 summit.
Writing exclusively for The Independent on Sunday, the Republican Governor of the largest US state gives robust support to Tony Blair – and contradicts his President – by saying that “we have no choice but to take action” to reduce the pollution that causes climate change. In a direct challenge to the leader of his party he writes: “The debate is over. We know the science. We see the threat posed by changes in our climate. And we know the time for action is now.”
…
Governor Schwarzenegger’s article crowns a series of setbacks at home for President Bush over his hardline stance on global warming. Ten days ago, in a vital shift, the US Senate resisted intense pressure from the White House and voted 53-44 to recognise that global warming was taking place, and that pollution was largely responsible. Senators then called for “a comprehensive and effective national program” of action.
Other senior Republican governors, including Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and George Pataki of New York, have announced programmes to cut pollution, as have the mayors of more than 130 towns and cities across the country. Even the religious right is putting pressure on the President.
…
In the event, the French, who had drawn up a list of six prerequisites for signing any Gleneagles communiqué, claimed yesterday that they had done Britain a favour by setting out such explicit demands. As British officials privately acknowledged, there is no real disagreement among any of the EU governments about the need to combat climate change. The tension was between Tony Blair, who was anxious to reach an agreement acceptable to George Bush, and Jacques Chirac, who appeared to be aiming for an open rift that would have led to six or seven of the G8 leaders signing a communiqué without US support.
Posted by: Fran | Jul 3 2005 5:07 utc | 38
@Fauxreal, yes, I posted that a day or so ago. I’d heard on the radio that he was rumored to be dead – think he’s been in a coma for a number of yrs – but they said that it wouldn’t be made public until his successor had been chosen officially. Then the other day there was art. in IHT saying that according to several sources incl. the Financial Times, Bandar Bush, the Crown Prince’s chosen successor had moved out of DC w/all his stuff & staff. They noted it was prob. ‘cuz Fahd was gone & the succession struggle was on.
Posted by: jj | Jul 3 2005 5:25 utc | 39
One other thing to throw out appropos of the above comments – just wanted to remind everyone that we still don’t know who threw out Nixon or why. The country was torn apart, lost in a war that was ripping apart the Nation…
I think it’s important that the Downing Street Memos were published in a Murdoch paper, not the Guardian or Independent. Personally, it infuriates me that such a to do is being made about them, as it says to me that you just can’t let the masses know how policies are made in the real world …Everything must be kept secret, lest we upset the masses. So, I’d like to see some substantive crimes come out. If you think about it, it’s stunning that they could sell a bill of goods to the masses that you can throw out a President ‘cuz of a burglary…Anybody remember Anthony -I can’t possibly spell his polish name, but pronounced like – Ulasowitz being on Chappaquiddick on that fateful day; or Nixon’s anxiety about his guys being behind shooting of Wallace… but a burglary…
Posted by: jj | Jul 3 2005 5:32 utc | 40
geez, if the media in gb are so far behind that the observer is only now reviewing a dilip hiro book that came out a year and a half ago (while his latest, on iran, came out a month or so ago), most of us probably won’t be around by the time the u.s. media gets to it.
DeA mentioned the church commission so i thought i’d throw in a couple descriptions of what was going on behind the scenes wrt to church, from an intriguing book i finished last week, prelude to terror: the rogue cia and the legacy of america’s private intelligence network by joseph trento. relevant backstory: nixon fired richard helms from his position as dci at the cia b/c of (1) his failures at preventing allende from coming to power in chile, and (2) helm’s refusal to cooperate w/ the wh re watergate (nixon reassigned helms as ambassador to iran.)
The reason Richard Helms had so feared Watergate was because he believed that involvement by the CIA in Nixon’s activities could cause a major Congressional investigation into CIA activities that would lead to an examination of everything that had gone on since 1947.
Helm’s men, still in place at the Agency, sucessfully staved off Senator Frank Church and his investigators. William Corson began advising the Church Committee on how to ask for information from the CIA to avoid the never-ending stonewalling. Corson said, “It was obvious that Frank Church wasn’t really serious when the investigation was turned into little more than a platform for Church to run for president. That was too bad, because, had he not run and just played it straight, there might have been an opportunity to reform intelligence. But when it became political, the Agency people circled the wagons. Outside of the Castro stuff, and talk of poisons, none of the real wrongdoing and screwups made it into the public view.”
For Corson, the most surprising thing was how the CIA turned political. “I blame this on the way Frank Church went about it. By screaming that Congress was conducting a witch hunt on the CIA and enlisting people like George Bush and Ronald Reagan in their defense, they sucessfully avoided having to explain what had gone wrong…”Corson said.
…
The scrutiny began when the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations, chaired by Frank Church, questioned Richard Helms about ITT’s complicity with the CIA in Chile. Helms, as DCI, lied about the CIA’s role. Helm’s testimony laid the foundation for an all-out assault on the spy agency he claimed to admire.
After Watergate deposed Richard Nixon, the news emerged that the CIA had spied domestically since at least the Johnson administration. Congressman Otis Pike of the House Intelligence Committee began to probe publically into the CIA. Newspaper and magazine reporters, in the post-Watergate environment, also began to dig…
[President] Ford felt enough political pressure that he appointed Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to head a commission to look into the CIA – from assassinations abroad to spying at home. The Rockefeller appointment must have brought a smile to many faces at the CIA’s Directorate of Operations (DO): Nelson’s brother David had allowed the Chase Manhattan Bank to be used in the CIA’s anti-Allende Chilean operations. Church and the Democrats, sensing that many clandestine operations from the Kennedy and Johnson days might emerge in the probes, announced their own investigation with the newly appointed Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The Senate investigation coincided with Church’s presidential campaign.
Had Church not tried to muzzle and defame the reputation of Ambassador Edward Korry, a Democrat, the DO might have escaped unscathed. But Church refused to let Korry testify about wrongdoing in Chile starting with the Kennedy years. Instead, Church wanted Korry, a former award-winning newspaper and magazine reporter, to discuss only what was done wrong under Nixon. Korry refused. When he was silenced during the hearings, he wrote a letter to Attorney General Edward Levi asking him to investigate hight U.S. officials for crimes concerning Chile.
Levi, a highly moral man, at once sent the Korry letter to the Criminal Division of the Justice Department for action. The result: the CIA was turned upside down. Korry’s letter had implicated Richard Helms, Ted Shackley, and ITT’s chairman, Harold Geneen. Korry’s letter was a far greater threat to the CIA management than the headlines being grabbed by Senator Church.
[DCI William] Colby was unwilling to cover for the DO on Chile, despite his sponsorship of Shackley. In fact, Colby earned the enmity of his CIA colleagues when he admitted to a House committee that even more embarrassing secrets had not yet emerged….President Ford realised that Colby intended to comply with all requests for information, with the exception of the names of American agents. The establishment – both Republicans and Democrats – now faced serious, embarrassing revelations. From Iran, Helms heard enough about the criminal investigation to issue a threat though his old colleague Tom Braden. Braden remembered Helms saying, “If I am going to be charged, then I will reveal Henry Kissinger’s role in these operations.”
…
Ford fired Colby…
Ford had thought about replacing Colby with Elliot Richardson, the forthright public servant who had stood up to Nixon and resigned as attorney general rather than fire Archibald Cox as special prosecutor during Watergate. But Donald Rumsfeld and others convinced Ford that, with the CIA under siege by Ford’s attorney general, the last thing they needed was a reformer to head the CIA. Henry Kissinger, who needed someone at the CIA to stave off Richard Helm’s very real threat, drafted the telegram to Beijing offering George H.W. Bush the top CIA job. Bush’s appointment was announced on November 3, 1975, along with the surprise sacking of Colby.
…
“The reforms of the CIA started by the Church Committee in its 1975 hearings came to a dead halt under Bush…the goal was to better hide things, not fix things,” said WIlliam Corson. By “taking operations and putting them in the hands of private businessmen and other countries, Congressional accountability could be avoided, and that’s what Bush allowed,” said former CIA associate director Robert Crowley.
well that was longer than i had planned, but i wanted to preserve the parts re chile, for there was a nice little program on our community radio station today of songs of resistance against imperialism and, while the show is normally centered on eastern european folk & traditional songs, the first song in the program was El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido. and the third song was Mikos Theodorakis’ treatment of Neruda’s La United Fruit Co, the notorious cia front in central america, which just happened to be purchased in 1969 by another cia front, zapata-offshore, whose previous owner was none other than george h.w. bush. (it’s a small world after all…)
Posted by: b real | Jul 3 2005 5:36 utc | 41
What I meant by the ‘torn apart’ comment is actually that there is nothing much to lose, so get out the pitchforks and torches, tar and feathers.
I think the US is already so divided, people living in different realities from their neighbours (what someone called “Balkanisation of Information”), that impeachment and a war crimes tribunal couldn’t make things much worse. I suppose there is the possibility of unrest and attempts at civil war — wingnut Bush personality-cult members forming Branch Dravidian-type communities and defending their Beloved Leader to the last, sort of thing. But frankly, the mind of the US public seems infinitely malleable under the solvent of 24×7 media saturation. If the corporado media, smoothly changing sides, report solemnly that the old regime was guilty of many crimes and now we cut to the courtroom, blah blah, what is the prosecutor wearing today, I am sure the public will eat it up as obediently as they do the latest sighting of Elvis, er, Zarqawi. So maybe it wouldn’t make that much of a dent.
Wait, stop presses, I have it! Ahnold emerges at the head of a Reform Republican schism, crying for a clean sweep, throw the rascals out, he’s mad as hell and not going to take it any more. Leveraging his Terminator superhero media aura to the max he convinces loyal Republicans that he will redeem them from the corrupt Bush family influence and save the Party. Having fsck’d up California as much as possible in the short time available, he will sweep into the White House in 2008, assisted by a fantastic photo-op in the Green Zone where, as troops are evacuated by armoured vehicle and cargo plane, he points his monumental jawbone at the cameras and declares “Ve’ll Be Beck!”
OK, OK, time for my dried frog pills.
But ya know, I really do wish the Gannon scandal would erupt into a nightmare of bad PR for the Bushies though — it’s just so deliciously salacious and karmically apt.
DeA–
You might not be joking right, what with The Grope’s recent fondling of the Global Warming issue…..can Stem Cells and Patriot Act Reform be far behind?
____
Wolcott is linking back to the old Ruppert story re: the CIA coup….
Newsweeks Isikoff: The Rove Factor? – Time magazine talked to Bush’s guru for Plame story.
The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper’s sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House. Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with NEWSWEEK, Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article. It is unclear, however, what passed between Cooper and Rove.
Here’s that link to Ruppert via Wolcott, RossK.
When I was reading this, I was reminded of this moment:
from the Associated Press on July 13th.
… [T]he forged Niger government documents, showing attempts by Iraq to purchase yellowcake, were delivered by unknown sources to a journalist working for Italy’s Corriere della Sera which then gave them to the Italian intelligence service. She then reportedly gave them to Italian intelligence agents who gave them to the US embassy. Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker also offered this version indicating that the documents had surfaced in Italy in the fall of 2001.
The fall of 2001. That means that the documents were created no more than three and a half months after September 11th.
..anyway, you have to go to the article to read through the various timelines on the forged documents (alternately said to have come from the Niger Embassy in Italy, as well.
then Hersh wrote that a former CIA person told him the docs were forged by a group w/i the CIA. I remember reading this in the NYer at the time and saying…huh? I still have that reaction, even with the explanation Ruppert gives, because that idea would seem to undermine the importance of the Aramco (BCCI, too) access that Plame had…I mean, why would they forge the docs in an attempt to set up Bush unless they thought the docs would be put forward? Maybe I just don’t get it.
However, reading about this again made me think of the CIA agents who have recently been exposed and tossed out of Italy, along with, it seems, ones in Spain as well. Maybe they’re connected to the Niger forgeries, not former, disgruntled CIA…maybe Hersh was fed disinfo that was close to the truth but not quite, and Bush loyal CIA forged the docs and got them to GB via Italy because, as early as a few months after 9-11, they were already faking intel to match their goals.
Maybe someone can explain to me how the other set up scenario makes sense (to have anti-Bush CIA forging docs. The only part that I could see is the claim that the docs were poor forgeries.
btw, did Chalabi also forge docs?
Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 3 2005 7:01 utc | 45
Interesting – WaPo Help From France Key In Covert Operations
The operation that ensnared him was put together at a top secret center in Paris, code-named Alliance Base, that was set up by the CIA and French intelligence services in 2002, according to U.S. and European intelligence sources. Its existence has not been previously disclosed.
Funded largely by the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, Alliance Base analyzes the transnational movement of terrorist suspects and develops operations to catch or spy on them.
…
Alliance Base, headed by a French general assigned to France’s equivalent of the CIA — the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) — was described by six U.S. and foreign intelligence specialists with involvement in its activities. The base is unique in the world because it is multinational and actually plans operations instead of sharing information among countries, they said. It has case officers from Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and the United States.
…
@ jj
One other thing to throw out appropos of the above comments – just wanted to remind everyone that we still don’t know who threw out Nixon or why. The country was torn apart, lost in a war that was ripping apart the Nation…
I think it’s important that the Downing Street Memos were published in a Murdoch paper, not the Guardian or Independent.
The story of Lloyd’s massive, unresolved fraud, which John links to higher in the thread, suggests all the intrigue and impervious arrogance, emphasizing just how shadowy, just how powerful, and how connected the shadow powers are.
Posted by: small coke | Jul 3 2005 7:34 utc | 47
Rove to liberals.
I hope they use his rectum as a broom closet.
Posted by: Lupin | Jul 3 2005 8:30 utc | 48
Let;s Celebrate the 4th of July the Haliburton-way.
A former manager of Halliburton’s mess halls in Iraq, testified that KBR fed U.S. troops expired food on a daily basis, and fed Turkish and Filipino workers “leftover food in boxes and garbage bags after the troops ate,” while using beef, chicken, salads and sodas intended for the troops to cater parties and barbeques for KBR management and employees.
Posted by: Lupin | Jul 3 2005 8:40 utc | 49
Yes, Hersh saying he heard the CIA manufactured the fake Niger yellow cake docs was exceedingly strange.
E. Burba obtained them from Martino (cover name Giacomo). Martino has said that the Italian foreign intelligence service, the SISMI, had forged the documents and had arranged for them to be passed to him by an official of Niger’s embassy in Rome.
More complications at: Link
I’m not sure I entirely believe these stories either.
The documents themselves are not just incompetent forgeries, they look like a young teenage spoof, produced to look “authentic” and “satirical / funny” at the same time. Some written in ALL CAPS!
cryptome
Note the date from NBC (fax): the day David Kelly died.
and more
Posted by: Noisette | Jul 3 2005 9:25 utc | 50
John Dean.at FindLaw’s Legal Commentary (October 10, 2003):
The White House Need Not Have Leaked to Have Committed a Crime Bush’s press secretary Scott McClellan has chosen his words carefully in denying that anyone at the White House was involved with the leak. To remain credible, a press secretary cannot be caught in either a lie, or a serious misstatement based on ignorance.
McClellan’s response reminded me of the Nixon Administration. Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Zeigler, took the line that no one presently employed in his administration was involved in the Watergate break-in. That was technically correct, but only technically.
It is entirely possible that no one at the Bush “White House” or on the President’s personal staff, was involved in the initial leak to Novak. It could have been someone at the National Security Council, which is related to the Bush White House but not part of it.
In fact, Novak wrote in one of his later columns, that the leak came from a person who was “no partisan gunslinger.” That sounds like an NSC staffer to me. And as Newsweek also reported (you can count on Michael Isikoff to dig this stuff out), Valerie Plame’s CIA identity was likely known to senior intelligence people on the NSC staff, for apparently one of them had worked with Ms. Plame at the CIA.
But even if the White House was not initially involved with the leak, it has exploited it. As a result, it may have opened itself to additional criminal charges under the federal conspiracy statute.
Why the Federal Conspiracy and Fraud Statutes May Apply Here
This elegantly simple law has snared countless people working for, or with, the federal government. Suppose a conspiracy is in progress. Even those who come in later, and who share in the purpose of the conspiracy, can become responsible for all that has gone on before they joined. They need not realize they are breaking the law; they need only have joined the conspiracy.
Most likely, in this instance the conspiracy would be a conspiracy to defraud – for the broad federal fraud statute, too, may apply here. If two federal government employees agree to undertake actions that are not within the scope of their employment, they can be found guilty of defrauding the U.S. by depriving it of the “faithful and honest services of its employee.” It is difficult to imagine that President Bush is going to say he hired anyone to call reporters to wreak more havoc on Valerie Plame. Thus, anyone who did so – or helped another to do so – was acting outside the scope of his or her employment, and may be open to a fraud prosecution.
What counts as “fraud” under the statute? Simply put, “any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing, or defeating the lawful function of any department of government.” (Emphasis added.) If telephoning reporters to further destroy a CIA asset whose identity has been revealed, and whose safety is now in jeopardy, does not fit this description, I would be quite surprised.
If Newsweek is correct that Karl Rove declared Valerie Plame Wilson “fair game,” then he should make sure he’s got a good criminal lawyer, for he made need one. I’ve only suggested the most obvious criminal statute that might come into play for those who exploit the leak of a CIA asset’s identity. There are others.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 3 2005 9:40 utc | 51
just catching up — thanks deA for kind words re: Canada. Awkward country of my birth.
From another thread, my thoughts to rememberinggiap:
BTW – seems to be a disproportionate number of IT people around here. Is it that cutting code or IT in general is so turgid that an escape is necessary?
Posted by: DM
Yes, but we all have Internet connections and time. It has always been thus. Freaking computer geeks talking about information that needs to be free.
i was brought up with marxism -leninism but you could say that what informed it was the gramscian edge of my parents – who understood pessimism of the intellect – optimism of the will
…
i was brought up in poverty with a disproportionate respect for knowledge – so the university became for me a light on the hill.
Posted by: remembereringgiap
I was brought up in the middle class with what you, RG, bring. A library. Yours a living speaking one, mine a serial pile of books brought home on the bus weekly. We are richer for this.
My parents too had what you said, but let me amplify — my feelings reflect that it is a sad knowledge of a better world imagined, a better world. If I could console you I might say that I too heard about the colleges of knowledges, but was offered the simpletons of skimpleton.
That’s why I read avidly your posts, rich with rhetoric and history, why I carefully vet and parse them; why I read and have read slothrop while pondering his nom de plume; same goes for the clarity of our colleagues okie, annie, animist, the properly named outraged; deanander and billmon and alabama and tante aime, rossk and even lenin’s ghost, you are my college of knowledge. X174, Uncle $cam the researcher, blackie/noisette, fran, lupin dans france. I cannot forget fauxreal and beq and vbo and b real and jj. Again fauxreal.
Let’s not forget, ton ame rememberinggiap, the good there is. I will celebrate with joy the next proud or happy post you make! Let us know that you are well, that you woke up today to a sunny sky or without pain … today I felt great as I awoke, A good sleep with a clear dawn.
And hope that I could spend a few hours here in this forum, perhaps inspired to speak.
Posted by: jonku | Jul 3 2005 9:45 utc | 52
ok, so you are asleep. hi also to monolycus, DoDo, A Swedish Kind of Death — how is it there in the land of the evening sun? Gylangirl. Shout outs to 4 legs good. Bernhard with your clear facts. Jerome, how I miss your charts! If I am to inscribe, how can I forget Meteor Blades?
Posted by: jonku | Jul 3 2005 10:22 utc | 54
I’ll doubtless be derided for this – part of growing a thick skin, I suppose. Ive been doing my best to complicate matters for the British for some years. On the matter of the forged Niger documents I wrote to Falconer on 18 June 2003. And believe it or not, because of something else I did, I have an acknowledgement for this.
Queens Bench 1994-c-2024
JP Cleary v Anglia Television
Dear Sir,
So, the august and ancient office of Lord Chancellor is no more, eh? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Let’s see now. Take yourself: appointed by the Queen as…
President of the Second Chamber [LEGISLATIVE], with a
Seat in Cabinet with the “Justice” portfolio [EXECUTIVE], and
Queens Counsel, able to deputise as a High Court judge.
What was it they said about the George Bush (41) tax increase? If it looks like a Lord Chancellor, acts like a Lord Chancellor, defecates on ordinary people and answers to no one like a Lord Chancellor…it’s a Lord Chancellor. Congratulations, Queens Counsel. Irvine was disposed of. You are the latest foreigner selected by the Harlot to serve as senior law officer of England.
Your brief:
“Words mean exactly what she wants them to mean, only force matters (the Law of Thelema). A thousand years of English common law; the Treaty of Maastricht; Human Rights Act; Resolution 1441. It’s all a load of old rubbish to Her Majesty. Just plumbing to be fixed by disposable servants like Blair and Irvine.” The Enemy Within
Now that we’ve cleared up that little deception, let’s get down to the matter at hand. The forged Court documents issued under Lord Mackay of Clashfern (JP Cleary v Anglia Television) and by Lord Irvine of Lairg (Wandsworth Council v JP Cleary), in both cases acting on the orders of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.
I’m sure you know the high significance of the American President’s annual address to Congress, known as the State of the Union. On 28 January this year President Bush cited documentation he claimed “proved” Saddam Hussein had purchased large quantities of uranium oxide ore from Niger. The documentation was “authenticated by the British”, according to the President himself. Your chum Bomber Blair, at it again, waving around his enormous “God-given” Royal Prerogative.
BLAIR LIED AND THOUSANDS DIED BUT THE WINDSORS THRIVE.
So we have forged Court documents issued by the British Crown in February 1995. We have forged Court documents issued by the British Crown in April, June and August 2000. We have forged Government of Niger documents laundered by the British, according to President Bush. That’s quite a record for the “fount of all justice and honour”. So why should anybody believe a word that comes out of the British Junta while the Windsors are in charge? On what grounds do you seek judicial parity with the 24 democracies that comprise the European Union? What has changed in the three years since I warned Jospin and Reno against recognizing that obscenity as a legitimate and trustworthy jurisdiction? Exactly when did the thieving old slag in Buckingham Palace give up her “God-given” right to defecate on whomsoever she wishes by means of the English Court? And who, exactly, will enforce that prohibition against the Sadist Sovereign when that Sadist Sovereign really doesn’t want it enforced?
R.S.V.P.
Yours faithfully,
John Cleary BScMAMBA
Cc Jacques Chirac Jean-Pierre Raffarin 97375
Lady Hillary Clinton Henry Waxman 97376
Kofi Annan Hans Blix
Iain Duncan Smith Charles Kennedy 97377
Enc. Cleary to Peat 16 Nov, 26 Nov, 11 Dec, 14 Dec 2002
Cleary to Reno 29 May 2000
The Enemy Within 25 March 2003
Posted by: John | Jul 3 2005 10:39 utc | 55
I never understood how Wilson, notoriously anti-Iraq-war, and advisor to Billy C and with his fingers in several African, ME, pies, including, according to some, tangential involvement in oil-for-food profiteering, as well as all his French contacts, was sent to check out the Sponge Cake matter. That he would de-bunk it was a given.
Then, the story that a Rovian (or whoever) outed Plame to get revenge on Wilson surprised me. I didn’t consider it credible. You attack a man, not his wife. And if the man says the attack on the wife was an indirect attack on him, he is covering something up. I concluded the outing was directed at Plame herself (for reasons unknown) or possibly because the couple had together connived in Lord-knows-what.
Today I see Cannonfire links to Daily Kos, where such a view point is put forward:
Link
It would be ironical if Rove was brought down by accidental documents, a hasty choice of envoy, and a leak -the outing- that was completely inconsidered.
Yet, it is just all that kind of confusion that makes me suspect that nothing will happen. The mess is unconsciously willed, rests on an adopted modus operandi that has proved its worth (go for it! fine! that bitch!, etc.) as it ensures that absolutely nobody, not even a perspicacious judge, can figure out what really happened.
The outcome is driven by politics, the powerful, and public opinion.
How they interact is beyond me!
But in this case, my guess is Rove won’t fall or even quit.
Posted by: Noisette | Jul 3 2005 16:07 utc | 57
Funny, funny thing about the coming attraction of Mr. Rove’s Yellocake-assisted Frog March….
Even little ‘ol me has been hit by the Whinge Machine’s fertilizer spreader because I dared to suggest caution might be in order given the possiblity that things may not quite be as they seem.
Why is Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States with NO foreign policy task, going to Iraq?
Only possible answer – he wants the Supreme Court nomination, even when the wingnut Bush supporters are against him because he might be too soft for them an abortion and isn´t a “constitution in exile” man.
I hope we can muster up some support for Crisis Pictures. I’m contacting other blogs that know how important this work is.
Do what you can.
Guys,
I don’t know what the news reporting is like over there, but there are HUGE things going on out in the real world.
Chinese and Russian presidents just had a pow wow and issued a joint policy statement where they specifically address the nature of the New World Order and repudiate the PNAC.
“Which side will Europe be on?”
After ten years hand-to-hand combat with these bastards here is my take.
Britain/America are the Scottish Rite, based in London.
“Europe” is the Great Eastern, based in Paris.
On the news today I saw Schroder Chirac and Putin talking together. Putin said words to the effect that the EU – Russia relationship is up for grabs (Germany is fucked without Russian energy).
So I suggest that is EXACTLY the question being decided right now.
Posted by: John | Jul 3 2005 22:21 utc | 63
Holy Shit Kids, look what Scoop just delivered – looks like the Elite is SERIOUSLY considering bringing them down – for real reasons even…Could it really be…. This has the Imprimateur of those who run the National Press club.
ANNOUNCING THE DC EMERGENCY TRUTH CONVERGENCE, JULY 22~24,
2005
TRUTH, VETERAN & MEDIA ACTIVISTS
Come Help Build a Breakthrough Campaign to Expose and Explode the Seamless Deceit behind 9/11, Resource Wars, Troop Betrayal and Constitutional Jeopardy
DC LAUNCH: JULY 22~24, 2005 An unprecedented event series conjoining the power veteran/victim groups, key truth movements and the Indie Media to out the deadly coup now underway and launch a thousand Paul Reveres.
Featuring: the first National Press Club press conference exclusively for indie media & international journalists, Capitol Hill events, a Lafayette Park 911-war deceit rally/march, entertainment, new documentary films & presentations, a Lafayette Park 911-war deceit event, entertainment, and a strategy summit at American University between leaders from diverse truth, p&j and veteran movements as well as the independent and foreign press.
PLANNING ADVISORS AND PARTICIPANTS
afterdowningstreet.org, Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, Dr. Bob Bowman of Veterans for Peace, FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, former HUD Asst. Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts, Dr. David Ray Griffin, Rep. Charles Key of the Oklahoma City Bombing Commission, CIA veteran Ray McGovern, Sunny Miller of Traprock Peace Center, Depleted Uranium authority Dr. Leuren Moret, Jenna Orkin of WTC Environmental Action, Peter Philips of Project Censored, former Bush Labor Dept. Economist Morgan Reynolds, velvetrevolution.us, and many more.
PURPOSE
Whenever citizens working on Iraq lies, elections and/or the ‘missing’ government trillions gather and compare notes, potent insights emerge into the corporate coup d’état we face. This DC Convergence presumes that we now have enough dangerous truths, damning facts, and populist media to deliver the evidence of treachery nationwide. It’s now time to forge a strategy, join with veterans & victim families, and assist media activists in spreading the truth throughout the land.
WOWWWWWWOWWWWWWW
“we now have enough dangerous truths, damning facts, and populist media to deliver the evidence of treachery nationwide” …At the National Press Club…that means the Elite is Declaring Open Season on the Administration…It’s Happy Hunting for Reporters, who’ll fall all over each other racing for Pulitzers…
Posted by: jj | Jul 3 2005 22:37 utc | 64
We’re not all Guys here John, heh heh heh… ;-p
Anywho, your are may be spot on, check out:
Russia to help China oust the USA from Eurasia
Russia de facto loses the status of the world’s center of force, which jeopardizes the global stability
C+ Augustus must have looked into pooty poots soul and saw he own hubrisic narcism’s.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 3 2005 23:02 utc | 65
@jj
I seem to remember, (maybe a urban legend)of how Russia invited many high profile dignitaries and heads of power sphere’s govenors/mayors? of whatever, and then blew it up killing them all. Can anybody, recall something like this?
My point being, it’s not beyond these megalomanics to do something like that at say a gathering such as the press club, what say you?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 3 2005 23:18 utc | 66
US,
Fill me in. When I lived there “Guys” was neutral. I’ve watched one female address a group of females as “Guys”. I thought I was demonstrating my Savoire faire!
Apologies!
Posted by: John | Jul 3 2005 23:45 utc | 67
@DeAnander, LonsomeG, Gylangirl, remembereringgiap, nuttymango, Jonku … thankyou … though …
Compassion and understanding is needed for those who are and have yet to become casualties, hidden and not … yes, even our latest batch of manufactured, demonized, supposed, ‘enemies’ … and most of all the powerless victims we systemically and cynically dismiss as ‘collateral’ … to deny humanity, acknowledgement, responsibility, we even cravenly seek to deny thier identity as fellow human beings … Enough!
Peace.
Posted by: Outraged | Jul 4 2005 0:58 utc | 69
O John, don’t take Uncle seriously – he is clueless as we all know. Guys is a perfectly good call for folks of either gender.
Posted by: rapt | Jul 4 2005 1:26 utc | 70
Rapt is right john, I wasn’t serious, just teasing etc..
Though she maybe clueless, as many here know, her heart is in the right place. Grok that one rapt.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 4 2005 1:51 utc | 71
thank you spills from lips
my appreciation kiss
hiaku for jonku
Posted by: annie | Jul 4 2005 3:28 utc | 72
Am I blocked from posting comments now…? I’ll try this a third time…
Thanks for the shout and one back atcha, Jonku. And, Outraged… I very much agree with your post from 08:58. Anger and outrage are entirely natural… but let’s remain grounded in reality (as unfashionable as that might have become). That goes for all our “enemies”; if we want to see justice done, let’s keep our focus on that. Vengeance is not justice.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 4 2005 5:17 utc | 73
how is it there in the land of the evening sun?
sunny 🙂
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jul 4 2005 7:25 utc | 74
NYT Editorial Hearing the Declaration Anew
We are, as a nation, exceptionally profligate with the symbols of our national identity and with words like “democracy” and “freedom.” The word “freedom” especially seems to have hardened around the edges in the last few years. It has lost some of its ability to suggest the open-ended potential of our lives, the possibility of coming to new terms with the expectations we have been handed by earlier generations. The overtones of discovery the word once had seem to have been put on hold.
Instead, there is a new complacency, a certainty that we know just what freedom means and exactly how it should look. There is an unwelcome comfort with the inequitable distribution of freedom even in our own country. There is a poisonous tolerance for the idea that freedom encompasses only the right to say positive things about America and its mission in the world.
Looks like Canadian workers are more skilled than US workers.Toyota to build 100,000 vehicles per year in Woodstock, Ont., starting 2008
WOODSTOCK, Ont. (CP) – Ontario workers are well-trained.
That simple explanation was cited as a main reason why Toyota turned its back on hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies offered from several American states in favour of building a second Ontario plant.
Industry experts say Ontarians are easier and cheaper to train – helping make it more cost-efficient to train workers when the new Woodstock plant opens in 2008, 40 kilometres away from its skilled workforce in Cambridge.
…
Several U.S. states were reportedly prepared to offer more than double that amount of subsidy. But Fedchun said much of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project.
He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained – and often illiterate – workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use “pictorials” to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.
“The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario,” Fedchun said.
How was that? No child left behind, or maybe all of them?
Posted by: Fran | Jul 4 2005 9:45 utc | 76
Lev Navrozov gives us…A Glimpse Into China’s
Post-Nuclear Super-Weapons:“…President George W. Bush’s “Iraqi stunt” has been intended to divert public attention from the development of post-nuclear superweapons in China.
Interview with Lev Navrozov A Life in the Geostrategically Lobotomized West
This ties in nicely w/ my earlier post :Russia to help China oust the USA from Eurasia
Also see:China Military Nanotech Project 863
Oh, and lets not forget Bush the greater was ambassador to China.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 4 2005 15:17 utc | 78
“There are some who, uh, feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: Bring ’em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation. “ – George W. Bush, July 2, 2003.
Today In Iraq celebrates the Two Year Anniversary
b-
Indeed that was an excellent comment. However, here in the USA what happened in the days before the war was barely mentioned in the media, and never questioned. If a person was otherwise engaged during those few days when the US grabbed all the Iraqi WMD documents, and pulled out the inspectors, while razzing Hussein “too late nyah nyah”, well they could easily have missed the essential nature of the invasion. And this is a thing that is very hard to recreate viscerally. Once it’s done people are resistant to go back. The timeline and the energy cannot really be recreated. I mean, it does come down to stupidity: Mr Powell holds up a picture of a warehouse and some trucks, with circles and arrows, and noone asks “why don’t you have the inspectors take a drive over there?” It was like the twilight zone. The hustle was palpable IF you looked very carefully and added it up. If you didn’t, you would come to a conclusion “we had to look”. Maybe he’ll figure it out.
As I recollect those days, I believe there was an opportunity for Sadaam to avoid war but he waited too long. So there still is some mystery in all of this, and perhaps the USA’s guilt is not so absolute.
Posted by: correlator | Jul 4 2005 18:08 utc | 81
I believe there was an opportunity for Sadaam to avoid war but he waited too long. So there still is some mystery in all of this, and perhaps the USA’s guilt is not so absolute.
I can´t think of any opportunity. Even if he had resigned, left the country or whatever, the U.S. would have invaded. How do you think Saddam could have avoided an invasion?
sorry if this comes up twice –
b-
It was my impression that there was a limit to what the US could have gotten away with, had Sadaam been more compliant with the inspections and documents, sooner.
Posted by: correlator | Jul 4 2005 19:14 utc | 83
clearly coming down from my earlier exaltation that rove would go down – clear today – it will not go anywhere – like every other scandal that plagues this criminal administration
pinochet sicj again – ô why ô why doesn’t some patriotic chilean nurse strangle the old tyrant in his bed or a patriotic doctor make a mistake with the medicine
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 4 2005 23:38 utc | 85
@correlator
Short of accomplishing the impossible task of proving a negative (“Oh, here are the weapons I don’t have.”) there is nothing Hussein could have done. And the events of the past three years, with all the shifting post-justifications, show clearly that an excuse would have been found by the US in any event. One Rove-on-a-mission trumps millions of global protestors, Hans Blix, and reality itself. There was, and seems still is, no “limit to what the US (can) get away with”.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 5 2005 2:46 utc | 86
I have a somewhat contrarian view on the role of Hans Blix. His measured, bureaucratic-speak delivery to the UN on February 2003 did nothing to stave off the invasion of Iraq.
If the man had been as forthright in his speech to the UN as he was subsequent to the invasion, then the do-able might not have been.
He knew enough to stand up and proclaim in clear and concise words that Iraq had no WMD. He knew as much. He did not say so in unequivocal terms. He should have laid down his prepared and vetted speech and said so at a time in history when he could have made a difference.
Posted by: DM | Jul 5 2005 3:38 utc | 87
@DM
I understand your position, but don’t you think that’s a pretty heavy bit of responsibility that you are laying on the shoulders of someone who wasn’t contemplating any illegal actions? The atmosphere at that time was (and continues to be) one of emotional rather than informed arguments. I’m also not sure we can say that Hans was entirely certain that Iraq didn’t have something questionable hidden, in which case he presented the facts as he knew them to be. On top of this, if evidence of WMD were planted in Iraq after a US invasion (as I was convinced must happen), then Mr. Blix’s credibility would be destroyed.
The only one we can say most certainly knew that the WMD story they were peddling was bullshit was Colin Powell when he addressed the UN. I am a bit contrarian with Powell… there are those who argue that he showed integrity with his resignation, but I only see gamesmanship. Like Walter Jones, he may have had a change of heart after the fact, but the damage he helped to do is done.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 5 2005 7:05 utc | 88
b thanks for the link to that brilliant critique of Kunstler. I agree with the commenter 100 percent and it was great reading.
Guardian comment: A fiction as powerful as WMDIt is not withdrawal that threatens Iraq with civil war, but occupation
This propaganda has been more successful abroad than in Iraq. Indeed, Iraqis habitually blame the occupation for all acts of terrorism, not what is fondly referred to as al-muqawama al-sharifa (the honourable resistance). But in Britain and the US many people feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards the mainstream popular resistance.
The occupation’s sectarian discourse has acquired a hold as powerful as the WMD fiction that prepared the public for war. Iraqis are portrayed as a people who can’t wait to kill each other once left to their own devices. In fact, the occupation is the main architect of institutionalised sectarian and ethnic divisions; its removal would act as a catalyst for Iraqis to resolve some of their differences politically. Only a few days ago the national assembly members who had signed the anti-occupation statement met representatives of the Foundation Congress (a group of 60 religious and secular organisations) and the al-Sadr movement and issued a joint call for the rapid withdrawal of the occupation forces according to an internationally guaranteed timetable.
There is now broad agreement in Iraq to build a non-sectarian, democratic Iraq that guarantees Kurdish national rights. The occupation is making the achievement of these goals more difficult.
Every day the occupation increases tension and makes people’s lives worse, fuelling the violence. Creating a client regime in Baghdad, backed by permanent bases, is the route that US strategists followed in Vietnam. As in Vietnam, popular resistance in Iraq and the wider Middle East will not go away but will grow stronger, until it eventually unites to force a US-British withdrawal.
Author: Sami Ramadani, a political refugee from Saddam Hussein’s regime, is a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University.
Monbiot on Africa aid:
Africa’s new best friendsThe US and Britain are putting the multinational corporations that created poverty in charge of its relief
The G8 leaders have seized this opportunity with both hands. Multinational corporations, they argue, are not the cause of Africa’s problems but the solution. From now on they will be responsible for the relief of poverty.
They have already been given control of the primary instrument of US policy towards Africa, the African Growth and Opportunity Act. The act is a fascinating compound of professed philanthropy and raw self-interest. To become eligible for help, African countries must bring about “a market-based economy that protects private property rights”, “the elimination of barriers to United States trade and investment” and a conducive environment for US “foreign policy interests”. In return they will be allowed “preferential treatment” for some of their products in US markets.
The important word is “some”. Clothing factories in Africa will be allowed to sell their products to the US as long as they use “fabrics wholly formed and cut in the United States” or if they avoid direct competition with US products. The act, treading carefully around the toes of US manufacturing interests, is comically specific. Garments containing elastic strips, for example, are eligible only if the elastic is “less than 1 inch in width and used in the production of brassieres”. Even so, African countries’ preferential treatment will be terminated if it results in “a surge in imports”.
It goes without saying that all this is classified as foreign aid. The act instructs the US Agency for International Development to develop “a receptive environment for trade and investment”. What is more interesting is that its implementation has been outsourced to the Corporate Council on Africa.
The CCA is the lobby group representing the big US corporations with interests in Africa: Halliburton, Exxon Mobil, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Starbucks, Raytheon, Microsoft, Boeing, Cargill, Citigroup and others. For the CCA, what is good for General Motors is good for Africa. “Until African countries are able to earn greater income,” it says, “their ability to buy US products will be limited.” The US state department has put it in charge of training African governments and businesses. The CCA runs the US government’s annual forum for African business, and hosts the Growth and Opportunity Act’s steering committee.
…
Few would deny that one of the things Africa needs is investment. But investment by many of our multinationals has not enriched its people but impoverished them. The history of corporate involvement in Africa is one of forced labour, evictions, murder, wars, the under-costing of resources, tax evasion and collusion with dictators. Nothing in either the Investment Climate Facility or the Growth and Opportunity Act imposes mandatory constraints on corporations. While their power and profits in Africa will be enhanced with the help of our foreign-aid budgets, they will be bound only by voluntary commitments: of the kind that have been in place since 1973 and have proved useless.
Interesting take on your SCOTUS versus the Judicial Reich:
Posted by: John | Jul 5 2005 13:00 utc | 93
Sorry. Doesn’t seem to like my link. Martin Kettle in today’s Guardian. These are the people who make decisions for everyone in a Globalised system.
Link
Posted by: John | Jul 5 2005 13:09 utc | 95
over the w/e, spent some time w/ an out-of-town friend who is army, now working retention. first met him in a death-defying episode on a class IV spill on a rain-charged costa rica river. our raft flipped a few minutes into the hours long trip, casting all six of us into the bolder-strewn, churning water, being held underwater by the current for what seemed an eternity. he had just returned from qatar, guarding med facilities. we were the first back into the raft, working desperately to steer the large raft away from the large rocks while locating & retrieving our companions. in an adrenaline surge, he grabbed someone by the life jacket & yanked him straight out of the water right into his face, knocking himself back into the raft, nearly unconscious, broken front tooth. we all survived, a bit beat up & worn down. but that experience created a bond among us & one i don’t take lightly. over the past two years we have met on several occasions & i have witnessed just one example of the affect of this war on those who wage it. at the time in costa rica, there were long conversations about the events transpiring in iraq. a large number of the soldiers, i was told, were aware of the bullshit reasons that sent them there. morale was not high, but they had a job to do. my friend talked of getting out, of fighting against being sent back, of giving up on his goal of completing 20 years service. he & his wife had another child. on two occassions when we met later, it was easy to see how much of a toll this was taking on him. you would be talking to him & suddenly he was somewhere else, staring blankly off into space. nervously chain-smoking. forgetting he had ever been introduced to my girlfriend in previous encounters. i worried for him. later, word came a few months ago that he found a way to stay home by moving into recruiting. actually, it turns out, he’s in retention, which is even tougher, getting soldiers to reup. recruiters, he told me, can get away w/ lying b/c new recruits usually don’t know any better. but those who have been there, well, they have firsthand knowledge of what’s going on, and you can’t bullshit them. the goal for first-timer retention is 65%, 85% for two-termers. recruiters are getting into fist-fights over recruits, he said. the draft is coming, he said w/ certainty. if it was up to the military, they’d prefer an all-volunteer force, but this is impossible now. gone this time were the vacant stares, the nervous chain-smoking, the short attention span. instead of expressing a contempt for the mission, this time it was “i’m totally behind this mission. the reason we got in there was complete bullshit, but we’re there now.” and iran, unlike saddam, really is a threat. and talk of super-soldiers. exoskeletons to enable a man to lift 3x his own weight. optical implants. the navy’s nearly perfected synthetic blood. justifications for the ’91 invasion, the turkey shoot on the highway of death (it’s unfortunate that cnn had to show that), the sanctions, the war on terra. although this was only one individual encounter, i personally felt a setback this w/e at a time when other signs point to increased resistance to the war machine, to the mendacious imperialist idiot-logues. we talked at length about the counter-recruiting movement, u.s. hegemony & militarism, and the more plausible reasons why we are in iraq, but this wasn’t the person i met in costa rica. then, i was told, i would have fit right in in the bull sessions around the barracks. now, removed for two years from the frontlines, i am being told that the mission is rational. i will be sending him two books soon – walden bello’s dilemmas of domination & smedley butler’s war is a racket. counter-brainwashing, if you will.
Posted by: b real | Jul 5 2005 15:52 utc | 96
Journalist killed after investigating US-backed death squads in Iraq
Over the past month, Salihee had been gathering evidence that US-backed Iraqi forces have been carrying out extra-judicial killings of alleged members and supporters of the anti-occupation resistance. His investigation followed a feature in the New York Times magazine in May, detailing how the US military had modeled the Iraqi interior ministry police commandos, known as the Wolf Brigade, on the death squads unleashed in the 1980s to crush the left-wing insurgency in El Salvador.
The Wolf Brigade was recruited by US operatives and the US-installed interim government headed by Iyad Allawi during 2004. A majority of its officers and personnel served in Saddam Hussein’s special forces and Republican Guard—veterans of killings, torture and repression. The unit has been used against the resistance in rebellious cities such as Mosul and Samarra, and, over the past six weeks, has played a prominent role in the massive crackdown ordered by the Iraqi government in Baghdad codenamed “Operation Lightning”.
On June 27, Knight Ridder published the results of its inquiry in an article jointly written by Salihee and correspondent Tom Lasseter. The journalists “found more than 30 examples in less than a week” of corpses turning up in Baghdad morgues of people who were last seen being detained by the police commandos.
…
The Salvdor Option in progress…
@b real
One way to cope when you know what the score is but you’ve decided to stick with your career, is to rationalize it. If he’s doing retention than he HAS to convince himself of ‘the mission’, or he won’t be convincingly sincere when arguing the case to those who’ve ‘heard it all before’ …
Posted by: Outraged | Jul 5 2005 16:44 utc | 98
London Review of Books: Where has all the money gone?Ed Harriman follows the auditors into Iraq
The ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq is the largest American-led occupation programme since the Marshall Plan. But there is a difference: the US government funded the Marshall Plan whereas Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer have made sure that the reconstruction of Iraq is paid for by the ‘liberated’ country, by the Iraqis themselves. There was $6 billion left over from the UN Oil for Food Programme, as well as sequestered and frozen assets, and revenue from resumed oil exports (at least $10 billion in the year following the invasion). Under Security Council Resolution 1483, passed on 22 May 2003, all of these funds were transferred into a new account held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, called the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), so that they might be spent by the CPA ‘in a transparent manner . . . for the benefit of the Iraqi people’. Congress, it’s true, voted to spend $18.4 billion of US taxpayers’ money on the redevelopment of Iraq. But by 28 June last year, when Bremer left Baghdad two days early to avoid possible attack on the way to the airport, his CPA had spent up to $20 billion of Iraqi money, compared to $300 million of US funds.
The ‘financial irregularities’ described in audit reports carried out by agencies of the American government and auditors working for the international community collectively give a detailed insight into the mentality of the American occupation authorities and the way they operated, handing out truckloads of dollars for which neither they nor the recipients felt any need to be accountable. The auditors have so far referred more than a hundred contracts, involving billions of dollars paid to American personnel and corporations, for investigation and possible criminal prosecution. They have also discovered that $8.8 billion that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries in Baghdad while Bremer was in charge is unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it went. A further $3.4 billion earmarked by Congress for Iraqi development has since been siphoned off to finance ‘security’.
b real
thanks? thank you. i reaaly get agreat deal from all our personal narratives – in part because they are all so different – but also that there are many many things we share & they always humanise our other posts here – never ever reducing them – but showing in your case for example the human face of anti imperialism inside the belly of the beast
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 5 2005 19:03 utc | 100