Project Censored Exposes Our Banana Republic

Every year Project Censored compiles a list stories that are, despite their obvious importance, ignored by our mainstream media, our newspapers of record and our nation's sycophantic horde of so-called journalists.

This year's top 25 list is out in the public sphere and, in keeping with a decades-long theme, it will be treated like a leper by the amnesia-afflicted hurdy-gurdy monkeys who populate inceasingly flaccid newsrooms across America.

These monkeys are...wait...no...they are not monkeys.

They are chimps.

Yeah, chimps.

They tucked their tails so long ago that evolution has selected out this now unnecessary trait. And they are trained. At top Journalism Schools. Well trained, in fact. They are well trained NewsChimps.

These NewsChimps come in three varieties:

Hear No, See No, and Speak No.

But Project Censored soldiers on and goes where no NewsChimp has gone before.

Into a strange land of inquiry and awareness so bizarre...so alien...that overwhelmed NewsChimps scurry in the opposite direction, seeking corporate bananas to feed on and, thusly, soothing their suddenly upset stomachs.

Here are some of my favorite stories our NewsChimps ignored on this year's list:

#2 Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran:
See below...

#5 High-Tech Genocide in Congo:
Never again. And again. And again. And again.

#6 Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy:
Too many whistles blowing could confuse and frieghten our NewsChimps. As they quickly scatter, running wildly in different directions, they might inadvertently stumble onto some truth. We can't have that, can we?

#10 Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians:
Our NewsChimps have completely avoided the massive civilian death toll in Iraq. The British medical journal Lancet estimates it to be around 650,000 people.

Their methodology is quite sound. But not reported on.

Oh yes, our NewsChimps mentioned it....but they never investigated it or checked out the veracity of the science. No, they aped the Administration's disclaimer about wild estimates of civilian causalities and ignored the fact that our government ordered Iraqi doctors to stop counting civilian casualties once we controled Baghdad.

#11 Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed:
Monsanto has a pesticide built into corn. Into the genetic structure of the corn. There are serious cross-pollination issues. Corporations are designing crops with "terminator genes" that keep poor farmers from harvesting seeds to grow more cops. Yum Yum! Could someone get our NewsChimps some genetically modified bananas to chew on?

#13 New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup:
But gee, don’t the Joneses have a nice looking yard? Better buy another gallon so we can keep up.

My personal fav:
#14 Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US:
Just look for yourself, this is scary stuff. KBR, by the way, built Camp X-Ray at Gitmo...so at least we know they are the right company for the job. Who those camps are intended for is an interesting question, right?

#22 $Billions in Homeland Security Spending Undisclosed
And our NewsChimps still call this Administration "conservative"?

#24 Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Rose Over 3000 Percent Last Year:
The full and yet untold story is that Cheney drove down the price of the stock while he was CEO of Halliburton. In fact, he acquired a company with a huge asbestos liability during his tenure. That move was widely criticized in the business press and by Wall Street analysts...and it caused a major downward spiral of Halliburton's stock. Right before the presidential campaign of 2000, Cheney's Halliburton was on the verge of bankruptcy (according to Business Week and others). The stock fell below $10.

Now...if you knew that Cheney was going to be in the Veep's office, running the behind the scenes program to maneuver us into a war with Iraq and that his office, as it has now been proven, would be coordinating contracts to his "former" company...you might want to buy up the suddenly cheap stock and sit on it for, say, 6-8 years. You would make quite a bit of money. An obscene amount of money. And your taxes on those profits would go down precipitously because the GOP was planning to approve the President's proposed tax cut on capital gains. A huge tax cut.

Also, doesn't Censored Story #2--Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran--make you wonder if they were helping to build up yet another threat that, should we need to take pre-emptive action, would lead to even more Halliburton profits?

Halliburton, by the way, also made millions off of the Iraq Oil for Food Program. But you didn't hear much about that either.

Once again go to the full list for the details. You'll have to do it yourself because our NewsChimps are too busy feeding themselves from corporate trees to report these stories.

Thanks again, Project Censored. Every year you expose our NewsChimps for what they are...the gatekeepers of our Banana Republic.

A Greenfield of Manure Covering President Ford

"My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over"
-President Gerald Ford

Pardon me? The nightmare is over?

What a statesmen he was, the ever-stumbling "Yes Man" from Michigan. In death, Ford has...according to the countless media-hacked paeans and odes...become President Everyman. A “sound man” who came into the Oval Office during a constitutional crisis and soothed the savage beast of justice in favor of national reconciliation.

That's the take Media Uber-Hack Jeff Greenfield gave those unfortunates who happened to be watching CNN last night. Greenfield positioned himself over the years as a font of historically nuanced perspectives on American politics. He's had a long and, doubtless, remunerative career.

The manure he was spreading last night about the vapid Presidency of Gerald Ford is a fairly strong smelling indication of how he achieved that punditcratic position of commentating wise guy.

Greenfield's argument was that, at a time of great crisis and public unrest regarding President Nixon, his pardon before the fact kept America from descending into the world of “Banana Republics” by having a President face criminal charges. Ford saved the integrity of the Highest Office. Ford kept America from losing its luster.

And Greenfield is keeping us from the truth. From truth and justice. I guess that's the American Way, because the media has failed over and over again since 1963 to ask questions that might expose to the light of day the cloak and dagger of darkness that has enveloped the Presidency.

It is fitting that Greenfield points to Ford's brave and worthy decision to save America from the messy business of prosecuting criminal activities by a high-ranking government official. Watergate wasn't the first event that Ford approached with those paternalistic preconceptions. Ford served on the Warren Commission and, in keeping with Greenfield's axiom, did his part to keep unseemly details from the American people. A quintessential Yes Man, Ford's participation in the Commission presaged the pardon of Tricky Dick.

When high crimes and misdemeanors of constitutional proportions spill over into average Americans' lives, the Ruling Class must protect the fragile fabric of America…even if it means covering up crimes, driving down dead-end inquiries and allowing criminal acts to go unpunished.

That's where our friends in journalism step in. As with so many scandals over the last forty-plus years, journalists and blowhards like Greenfield have done there part to preserve American innocence, both socially and criminally. Since JFK's assassination, the media has bent over backwards to ignore evidence, to ask questions and to listen to the public they serve. While over 80% of Americans consistently poll year after year expressing their belief that the "lone assassin-magic bullet" theory is wrong, media hacks like Greenfield keep spoon feeding us elitist crap discounting any foolish conspiracy theories. They keep giving us black and white snapshots of our collective past. They keep airbrushing out anything that would destabilize The System that sustains them and the Ruling Class they feed off like lampreys.

They determine the mainstream, channeling it away from any destabilizing banks...calming any uneasy eddies.

In the case of JFK's assassination, it was the ultimate nexus of "journalists" and "leaders" setting the scene.

They all bought into the argument that America was teetering on the brink; that the murder of President Kennedy could lead back to Castro and, therefore, another World War. It was all set against the terrible backdrop of the Red Menace and nuclear holocaust

But what it did was let loose decades of criminality. The Bay of Pigs crowd pops up over and over again. They pop up in murder of JFK. Of RFK. And, in a beautiful symmetry of menacing irony, in Watergate. Yes, many of the Plumbers were Bay of Pigs vets.

When Ford took over, he knew the score. Keep the scandal out of the courts and out of politics. Americans will move on, with journalists driving the moving truck. Ford inserted the Bush team...both Poppy's and W's...into the Executive Branch and set in motion much of what we've experienced since. Jim Baker, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld...all came of age under Ford.

Poppy was Chair of the Republican National Committee, managing the Watergate scandal with his Texas friend and Democratic counterpart Bob Strauss. They...the nefarious and seemingly faceless "They"...took it upon themselves to save us from the mucky process of dredging up the deepest parts of the Watergate scandal.

Ford came in and did what he did best...he complied. He rubberstamped the decision to protect us from a longer nightmare. He put in place Poppy's men and they kept the darker parts of Watergate from flowing over onto the public. They, along with a complicit style of journalism, made sure the mainstream didn't drown the Bay of Pigs crowd or upset the ship of state.

So, Greenfield is right. Coming from his perspective as a veteran commentator on politics, Jeff's take on Ford is fitting. He, along with his colleagues, have bought into The System and pledged allegiance to a flagging desire to ask tough questions and dig up skeletons.

The October Surprise, Iran-Contra, CIA drug trafficking, Iraqgate, the Savings and Loan Scandal, the BCCI Scandal...all those stories have been half-told by half-assed "journalists" like Greenfield. The politicians they abet have persisted. The Executive Branch is filled with Iran-Contra vets.

It is any surprise that Ford's inner circle has been in power over and over again?

The Iraq War, and the hundreds of thousands of casualties and the hundreds of billons of dollars that came with it, was just the latest nexus of "journalists" and "leaders" setting the scene. No real questions were asked. We were treated once again to the team assembled under Ford and the journalists who dare not bite the hand that feeds them. They kept us sheltered from the truth.

And there is little being done to explore the criminality of the last six years, or to bring to justice those who perpetrated those high crimes and misdemeanors. Bush the 41st, in a Ford-like move, issued pardons to many of the Iran-Contra crowd. And many came back into the Executive Branch under Bush the 43rd…with mainstream journalism sitting idly by as criminals, pardons be damned, slid right back into the comfortable confines of The System.

Greenfield praised Ford. And he should, because the symbiosis between the Ruling Class and journalism has sustained both through even the most troubling of scandals and constitutional crises.

Wake up, people...our long national nightmare never ended.

Rep. Weldon Got Cooked, and Other Recent Stories on Terrorism

Republican Representative Curt Weldon is out. Swept away. Goose cooked. Gone.

Yes, it was part of a larger rebuke of the GOP in the mid-term elections, but Weldon's story is a bit more nuanced. A popular Congressman known for bringing home crispy bacon, Weldon's re-election campaign got burned in the final weeks leading up to the election.

The FBI announced that they were investigating his daughter for using her political connectivity to make some money. Gasp! That never happens, does it? And when it does...like, say, in the instance of Tom Delay...it requires immediate and thorough investigation.

Not!

While Delay's crimes are massive, even involving a de facto labor camp in the Marianas Islands, those transgressions are not worthy of a thorough investigation.

But Weldon...now he really went overboard. He exposed Able Danger and, in so doing, raised questions about the Pentagon's and FBI's foreknowledge of the 9-11 hijackers.

Now that's a doozie!

Although Weldon was, for the most part, motivated by a political desire to push some of the blame onto the back of Bill Clinton...he asked a trenchant question: What did the government know and when did the government know it? What he found was that the Defense Intelligence Agency and Pentagon had been tracking Mohammed Atta for at least a year prior to 9-11. That the program, called Able Danger, had a chart of names and interconnected relationships that foreshadowed the 9-11 attacks.

Weldon became a thorn in the Pentagon’s side. And those charted relationships...a chart that a Pentagon whistleblower told Weldon and a congressional panel about and was initially said to have been destroyed...sounded exactly like the chart FBI terrorism expert John O'Neill made after investigation the USS Cole bombing. You know, important stuff like the players, who they knew and what they were up to.

Embarrassing stuff to the Pentagon and the FBI respectively.

Particularly since the FBI had agents living next door to two hijackers in San Diego, and by two more in the D.C. suburbs and....thanks to Weldon...we know the Pentagon was tracking Atta.

Lotsa foreknowledge in there.

Weldon was pissed. He put the issue before Congress. He put the issue before the media. And who cares if it started as a way to taint Clinton...he was on to something very important. On to questions that remain unanswered.

But the FBI made certain that his continued tenacity would be rewarded...with an investigation. And it was announced at a crucial time. Weldon lost.

But so did John O'Neill. He was railroaded by the FBI for a briefcase bungle. He, apparently, had some papers he was working with in his briefcase and exposed those papers to possible theft. He was compromising national security, or some such bullshit.

Fighting for his career and to expose the terror network he predicted would attack the World Trade Center; he was offered a job as head of security for the WTC. A highly paid job that, coincidentally, was offered by a company called Stratasec. Stratasec also did the security at Dulles Airport and for United Airlines. Marvin Bush, coincidentally, sat on Stratasec’s Board of Directors.

John O'Neill took the Stratasec job. John knew the attack was coming and thought he could do something to stop it. John O'Neill's body was found in the rubble of 9-11.

So Weldon did okay...lost his job, but not his life.

Like Timothy McVeigh did...executed before the full story of the Oklahoma City bombing could be told.

McVeigh said as much to Gore Vidal in a series of letters. We still have nothing on John Doe #2. Even though an enterprising reporter named Jayna Davis in OKC found and identified him. Even though a police officer responding to the Murrah Bldg bombing claimed to have seen someone not fitting the description of McVeigh.

Some in the building talked about a missile and other explosives being brought into the Murrah Building before the attack. Yeah, years later the US Customs Service admitted that they did bring in a TOW Anti-tank missile, but they it not have a warhead in it.

And there is the story of Officer Yeakey, who responded immediately to the bombing. He saw FBI and ATF agents running around withing minutes of the attack. He saw quite a bit and kept on digging. He is now dead.

McVeigh's involvement is clear, but the network that he was part of remains a mystery. He was living evidence. The evidence was destroyed...much like the Able Danger Chart.

A chart that, coincidentally, may have also predicted the attack on the USS Cole.

The same attack that John O’Neill investigated and, in what is perfect symmetry, led him to create his predictive 9-11 chart.

But, no need to trouble yourself. A congressional investigation determined that Weldon's Able Danger scandal was the 800-pound gorilla who whimpered. Nope, we just found out that there is nothing to the Able Danger story. And now that Weldon has lost his congressional privileges, the Able Danger story is in no danger of being prodded and the investigation is closed.

But the Congress did just say that the FBI blew the investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing. Too bad McVeigh is dead. Yes, there are questions. But, alas, we will never get the answers. It's okay, we are still busy forgetting all those troubling "foul-ups" of 9-11. We don't have time to forget the anomalies of the OKC bombing. Like Hussein Al-Husseini, the John Doe that Jayna Davis found and identified. Davis, interestingly enough, was sued by Husseini before he was ever identified...for defamation of character. A pre-emptive strike of sorts.

Al-Hussein was working at Boston Logan Airport on 9-11, by the way.

He came over after the 1991 Gulf War...part of an entire class of high-level Republican Guard and Iraqi secret police who were given safe passage by Poppy Bush. You know...to have that intelligence at hand...just in case. Just like the Nazi scientists and SS officers the CIA brought over in Operation Paperclip after World War II. Men put into key positions in the Military-Industrial Complex and the Pentagon.

Which is ironic because we are about to destroy more evidence. When Saddam is executed the full story of his alliance with the Reagan-Bush team will die with him. The illegal sales of chemical and biological weapons. The intel we gave him to attack Iran and the Kurds and those other unseemly parts of the long-standing relationship that are known will never be filled out in painful detail. Saddam had a WMD...a WMD of information about his patrons in Washington, D.C.

His WMD will be decertified by a simple noose.

But the other Hussein...Mr. Al-Husseini...remains on the loose. It stands to reason that a high-level operative of Saddam's Iraq would be valuable to US intelligence. But, according the latest investigation, we will never know what we don't know because the FBI "blew it."

Yeah, a presidential commendation and big salary bonus went to the FBI guy who personally stopped the investigation of another piece of living evidence...Zacharias Moussaoui...before his computer could be scanned for plot details.

Sen. Charles Grassley asked questions.

He got no answers. But Grassley didn't persist. And he wasn't up for re-election this time.

But Sen. Mark Dayton persisted...on NORAD and the massive contradictions between the various stories they gave...to the press, to the 9-11 Commission and to the Congress.
He kept asking. No answers were given.

He retired before this latest election.

Unlike Weldon, his exit from Congress closed the door on electioneering vendettas.

Now, clearly there is no excuse for nepotism and trafficking in one's political connections. But the FBI did not hammer former Sen. Frank Murkowski, or the cushy jobs given to the children of Justice Scalia and Justice Rehnquist in 2001, or a dozen other Congressional sycophants who have families who've profited from political connectivity.

No, Weldon's lost his place in the pan. He was dumped into the fire by the FBI. In terms of cooking up cover-ups, this one was well done.

A Poisonous Conspiracy Theory. Are we Russian to Judgment?

It's amazing. Unbelievable. Perhaps it's even crazy.

Put on your tin-foil hat and jump into the rabbit hole on the grassy knoll...we have a real-life conspiracy on our hands. An assassination, no less, using a strange, cloak and dagger weapon--radioactive polonium. Who was murdered? A fierce critic of President Vladdie Putin who, by the way, was himself a former spy for the KGB.

Why was Col. Alexander Litvinenko murdered?

Well, the mainstream media is hot on the trail of a conspiracy to silence him. To punish a man who wrote in 2003 that the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings were, in fact, carried out by the successor to the KGB--the FSB. He claims that the bombings, which were quickly blamed on Chechen terrorists, were used by Putin to invade Chechnya and consolidate his then-tenuous grasp on power. Used to solidify weak public support for his regime.

What a strange idea!

Further, this came on the heels of Anna Politkovskaya's murder...a Russian journalist who was working the same conspiracy angles as Litvinenko. She, too, saw pernicious conspiracy in the apartment bombings and both were making similar claims about the Beslan School Massacre.

In fact, there is quite a bit of evidence to support both of those "theories." Which is why, many have theorized, both of those voices have been silenced...by assassinations that, as it happens, are also widely considered conspiracies.

It's funny how readily the media and commentators and journalists have jumped on board this wild conspiracy theory regarding these assassinations: that people who, themselves, were exposing conspiracies were murdered by conspiracies to keep them silent.

We even have some proposing that they were murdered by yet another hidden force so that the blame could then be placed at Putin's door and, thus, undermine his growing power as Russia's president.

Whoa! Now that's a conspiracy theory.

All acceptable. All mainstream. All treated with "breaking news" updates and journalistic scrutiny.

All completely contrary to the way the media and the press regard the verboten idea on "conspiracies" right here in the U.S. of A.

They happen in Russia, to Russians and by Russians. Or in London...but still essentially a Russian deal.

Not like America.

Nope, America is pure. A land of blind coincidences, oppressive randomness and soul-saving chance. Like so much of the American Way, history and inquiry are closed off by a sense of purity...the American future guided by the glorious simplicity of freedom and clouded by an indisputable fog of fair play.

Our national bird could be...should be...an ostrich. Eagles are known for their keen eyesight. We prefer to bury our heads in the sand.

The conventional wisdom, derides as "wild conspiracy theories" anything that challenges that air of purity.

The assassination of JFK is the Uber-Theory. Although over 80% of Americans consistently in poll after poll believe there was a conspiracy, the media has pulled out all the stops to put a stop to such nonsense. Much admired in death, one of the great peddlers of this elitist obfuscation was Peter Jennings. He gave us his final word on the assassination in 2003...titled "Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy."

That's right folks...we are now "Beyond Conspiracy." Even the House Select Committee on Assassinations was wrong. Only Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger that day, not the two shooters that the Congressional inquiry concluded had to have been there that day.

Still, no one has been able to replicate those three shots on a moving target in Dealey Plaza. Or can answer why Oswald defected to Russia after getting Russian language training as a Marine. Or why Oswald the defector...who, strangely enough, also served at a U2 spy plane tracking station in Japan...returned to the US without being arrested for treason. Or why he was given that job at the book depository by a known CIA asset. Or why he was hanging out with Bay of Pgs vets in New Orleans. And on and on. Look for yourself.

Or not. It's much easier to buy the big lie. At least, that's what Adolf Hitler said was the key to controlling a democracy's masses.

And we've had our share.

The Gulf of Tonkin...a conspiracy to escalate in Vietnam? No way! Ignore that document now prove that there wasn't an attack by Vietnamese forces and that LBJ used the ginned-up "incident" to get the Gulf of Tonkin resolution passed.

No...things like Operation Northwoods are mere fancy, best regarded as objects of ridicule. The Joint Chiefs of Staff would never concoct a fake terror campaign, complete with a shot-down drone masquerading as a civilian flight, just to start a war with another country.

Or how about Bobby Kennedy being shot by Sirhan Sirhan as he was rolling towards capturing the Democratic nomination? Now, the Brits have no problem questioning why the fatal wound was in the back of his head while Sirhan was in front of him. A Brit asked the question...and found three CIA dudes hanging around the Ambassador Hotel...men positively identified by former colleagues and two of which were Bay of Pigs vets.

But c'mon...America is the land of lone gunmen. Speaking of which, watch this excerpt from the first episode of a short-lived series called The Lone Gunmen. Created by Chris Carter of X-Files fame, it was sure to be a ratings hit. It was cancelled after only a few episodes. But that first episode, airing months before 9-11, was eerie...to say the least.

According to an actor on the show, the story for the debut installment was proposed by a CIA agent.

It's just blind coincidence, though.

Just like the Bay of Pigs guys--men like E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis and Felix Rodriguez--popping up in RFK's assassination, Watergate, JFK's assassination and Iran-Contra. Chance and randomness are the only explanation.

Just like Reagan randomly being shot by the son of one of Veep Bush's oil buddies and political contributors. Yup, John Hinckley the son almost put John Hinckley the father's neighbor, business buddy and campaign contributor in the top slot.

Oh, the mysteries of America's divine providence.

And mysteries they remain...at least in the media. Because the media ignores oddities and inconsistencies and ridicules those who do not.

Gary Webb was one journalist who dared. Dared to ask the hard questions about the role of cocaine dealing in Iran-Contra. He was ruined...even though he was mostly right. The crack cocaine epidemic was a by-product of...well...a conspiracy. But forget that...because all those Iran-Contra connections to cocaine dealing and are mere coincidence. Just ask Manuel Noriega! As Poppy said, "No quid pro quo."

No, America...listen to your trusty leader George W. Bush. Shortly after 9-11 he went to the U.N. and told us to not tolerate "outrageous conspiracy theories."

He wouldn't mislead us. And the media would never cower away from trying to make sense of all those strange facts surrounding that event.

Hey, the Russians might carry out bizarre conspiracies and secretive assassinations.

But here...in America? No way.

I mean, the anthrax attacks were pure coincidence. Never mind that the source for the anthrax is narrowed down to two places--Porton Down in the UK and Fort Detrick in Maryland. Both government-run bioweapons labs. Or that Congress is still, years later, asking for answers. Or that White House staff was, according to a public statement by Ari Fleischer, on Cipro before any letters were received. Heck, the fact of randomness is made ever-so more convincing by the fact that the first person to die from exposure to a specifically addressed letter was an editor for the National Enquirer who, as it happens, acquired and ran that photo of the Bush twins drunk.

C'mon now...this ain't Russia. We are exceptional.

Yeah, we were wiretapping Princess Diana, playing games with the Osama and the Taliban in the 1990s, mixed up in the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. Sure we had BCCI, Enron and the California Energy "Crisis."

Oh yeah...and there was the Neil Bush-started Savings and Loan collapse, the fact that John Hinckley, Jr. and Mark David Chapman crossed paths as members of World Vision Ministries, the many single-car accidents that plagued witnesses on JFK's murder...and Willie Brown being called by Condi Rice and warned against flying on 9-11.

No, America. Rest easy. The very fact that we have this obvious conspiracy to poison a former Russian spy shows us that our media is on the job, our press not supine.

They know a conspiracy when they see one.

It's sorta like the exception that proves the rule.

The rule being that we as Americans are excepted from conspiracies. Take off the tin-foil hat and cozy up in front of the tube and watch 24, or Sleeper Cell...and go to bed knowing full well that it's all just make-believe. Nothing happens for a reason in America.

Stopping GOP Corruption? It's a pile of Democrap.

The gates of Hell have been opened.

Or, have been open for decades here in Washington. The Whore of Babylon...open for business...with barbarians at the Gates.

Like Watergate.

Or Debategate (the Reagan-Bush campaign had a mole in Carter's campaign passing along Carter's debate briefing books).

How about Iran-Contragate, sometimes called Irangate.

Remember Iraqgate? Yes, there was an Iraqgate.

Can't blow by Monicagate, can we?

And the latest Gate...Foleygate.

In fact, we should have Jackgate for Abramoff. WMDgate. Gatesgate, although the only "scandal" regarding the confirmation of Robert Gates is that he was confirmed. Scandalous? Yes, but not really a scandal.

Actually, the Democrats' big election victory portends an opening of many new "Gates." At least, that's what the voters want...or said they want according to exit polling. See, the amazing thing about the election was that "corruption," not Iraq, stood out as the number one issue for voters.

Okay, let's try that again...just for kicks.

Corruption beat out Iraq as the issue of greatest concern to voters.

The media, and the blabbering heads that dominate it, have focused on Iraq as the number one issue. They proclaim daily that the vote was a rejection of Bush's Iraq fiasco.

True enough. But imprecise.

Because "the people" actually had corruption on their minds and housecleaning on their agenda. Really, isn't it possible that Iraq is just a subset of the idea of corruption: the lies and propaganda that got us there; the no-bid and cost-plus contracts; the lack of Humvee armor and flak jackets; billions of reconstruction dollars gone missing.

The Iraq war is a study in corruption.

Still, the point is that the angry mood of voters requires some bloodletting, some redemptive retribution. Crime cannot be allowed to pay. And there is some crime to pay for. Hey, if lying about fellatio is worthy of impeachment...how about lying to get into a war?

Enter the Democrats. They've been given the sheriff's badge by the American people and they've been told, "Clean up that town and get rid of those varmints."

They've got subpoena power and a mandate that grows daily in direct proportion to Bush's failing approval ratings.

They won't do it.

Already we have their first, submissive volleys across the stern of the GOP ship of corruption.

Pelosi rules out impeachment, wants to work together for the American people. She may not be able to restrain Rep. Henry Waxman or Rep. John Conyers. But she's set the tone. Move forward.

Funny, that's what W keeps saying about Iraq, "We need to find a new way forward."

Okay, Dems...now you've had a week of so-called "truth-telling" by Gates, Jim Baker and the omnipresent Democratic guide through scandals...Lee Hamilton.

Now what?

Investigate the big lies on WMD and intelligence malfeasance? Stop filling the military-industrial trough with our tax dollars? Stop spreading the American people over a pork-barrel? Follow the trails of corruption from K Street lobbyists of all stripes...trails that lead to every major Department in the executive branch and right into the halls of Congress?

Unlikely. They want to set a positive agenda for the future, not get mired in the past.

But it's the past that gives us the clues to the future.

Iraqgate is a good example...a lesson from history. The lesson being that when given a perfect opportunity to consign to the dustbin of history those scandalous dirty-dealers in the GOP the Dems will do nothing.

After the great, ballyhooed triumph of George the Elder in the Gulf War some disturbing facts started to rear an ugly, opportune head out of a sand of patriotic fervor.

As it happens, the elder Bush's Administration had been illegally funneling weapons to Saddam throughout his tenure in the White House. Weapons that would be used on Kuwait and the American-led forces that expelled him. Illegal cluster bombs and pre-cursor chemicals for nasty WMDs. You know, those WMDs that terrorized the Kurds...that keep Iraq in sanctions for a decade...that provided a phantom menace against which Bush the Younger predicated his invasion.

It's all there in a great, meticulously reported...but widely-ignored...book called Spider's Web:


Congress had moved to curtail and, in some instances, stop arms shipments to Iraq after the cessation of the Iran-Iraq War. Saddam relied on the Reagan-Bush White House to keep up his end of that bloody conflict throughout the 1980s. He was "our" boy in the Middle East...much like Manuel Noriega was "our boy" in Central America. Saddam attacked Iran, urged on by the incoming Administration in 1980. Saddam had come to power with CIA assistance. Remember the infamous video of Saddam at a Ba'ath Party Conference calling out names, the named then being led away for execution? Many were "internal threats" called "Communists." Commies who had been identified by the CIA. Saddam gratefully took that list and eliminated Iraqi pinkos.

And we've all seen that famous handshake...one that led to a decade of sales: military, biological and chemical.


And Saddam gassing the Kurds? Well, our Cold War friends the Turks gave us regional base of operations and had more than a minor problem in there eastern region with Kurdish nationals...rebels who called themselves the PKK. Saddam had Kurds, too. So, he took some of those nasty chemicals we were shipping him and attacked the Kurdish menace. A menace the Turks were failing to control. It was a big help to there drive to crush Kurdish nationalism in Turkey. Which they did.

Coincidence? Perhaps.

But it's the Iran-Iraq War that exposes some of the darkest corners of the American Way in foreign lands.

As Saddam was unleashing hell on Iran with our support, assistance and weapons, Reagan-Bush was covertly selling weapons and spare parts to Iran. They were selling to both sides of the war that, it is strongly suggested, the Reagan-Bushies asked Saddam to start. In fact, they goaded Saddam into attacking before they formally took office and, not coincidentally, we know the arms pipeline to Iran was established in covert meetings before the 1980 election.

Iraq, though, was openly favored...nothing covert about it. Foreign Minister and eventual Iraqi bad-guy Tariq Aziz was welcomed to the White House by the Gipper himself.


The relationship between Washington and Baghdad was strong and rooted in a history of cooperation when Bush the Elder took over. This, despite the fact that Saddam saw the same Iran-Contra reports that showed his ally in DC was also arming his enemy.

Which, by the way, was our "enemy."

When Poppy took the hand-off from the Gipper, he was more than willing to sustain the pipelines between the Whore of Babylon and the ancient home of Babylon...oil in and weapons out. Congress tried to use legislation to stop the weapons side, but Bush knew ways around trifles like "law." He was the "point man" on intelligence in the Gipper's White House. Make no mistake; he was not "out of the loop" on Iran-Contra.

So the weapons and chemicals kept on keeping on, despite its illegality.

There was a problem, though.

The Kuwaitis were slant drilling into Iraq's southern oil fields. This pissed off Saddam. In fact, Saddam and many Iraqis considered Kuwait a geographical fiction. They referred to Kuwait as "Iraq's 19th Province." Little Kuwait...a country created by post-Colonial mapmakers and, coincidentally, saw its oil industry created with the help of a young, enterprising oilman named...George Herbert Walker Bush.

So there is Saddam...an ally of America...beneficiary of our chemical and military technology. He's got Kuwaitis drilling Iraq's oil and, according to Our Boy in Baghdad, driving down oil prices by flooding the market.

Enter April Glaspie...Elder Bush's representative in Baghdad.


She chats with Saddam about oil prices and the issue of Kuwait comes up.


Here's an excerpt from the transcript:

HUSSEIN: Twenty-five dollars a barrel is not a high price.

GLASPIE: We have many Americans who would like to see the price go above $25 because they come from oil-producing states.

HUSSEIN: The price at one stage had dropped to $12 a barrel and a reduction in the modest Iraqi budget of $6 billion to $7 billion is a disaster.

GLASPIE: I think I understand this. I have lived here for years. I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.

Was that the go ahead? Well, if Bush the Elder was still arming Saddam almost to the day of the invasion of Kuwait and then Glaspie says we don't have a dog in your fight with Kuwait...and Saddam had done so much to kill Iranians...why wouldn't he think he had a green light?

That's Iraqgate...because all of this started to come out after victory and the press and Congress began asking questions. Questions that persisted.

Now we get to the problem.

Bill Clinton was elected President. Of course, Poppy pardoned the Iran-Contra gang. Not much one can do about that. But Iraqgate was a unique opportunity to root out the Secret Team, the oil and war profiteers who had manipulated events and flaunted the Constitution since 1980. Clinton was taking control of the Justice Department. The foggy stink of the Reagan-Bush years could finally be lifted and crimes punished.

So, what did Bubba do?

He did George the Elder "a solid."

When asked about investigating Iraqgate at a 1994 White House power party:

Clinton “didn’t feel that it was a good idea to pursue these investigations because he was going to have to work with these people,” Sender told me in an interview. “He was going to try to work with these guys, compromise, build working relationships.”

Robert Parry...intrepid investigator and journeyman journalist...reported on this exchange in his book Secrecy & Privilege.

Given a chance to investigate, prosecute and tarnish indefinitely some of the biggest names in the GOP....to stop the Secret Team and keep them from, say, coming back into government...Bubba passed. He said no. He wanted to work together.

Work and play together.


It's just that simple. Which is why it is hard to have confidence in Congressional Dems. The country has been ravaged, the government corrupted and tax dollars spent wildly by many of Iran-Contra's and Iraqgate's cast of characters...people who slithered right back into the Executive Branch when Bush the Younger got his turn.

The foggy stink is now a toxic cloud.

Already, though, we've seen the bi-partisan inquiry into Foleygate do...nothing. Nothing. Hastert? Nothing. Key players in the cover-up? Nothing.

So, here we go.

We get Lee Hamilton on the 9-11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group. Hamilton stopped Congressional Inquiries into Iran-Contra before they could get to Poppy or the cocaine-dealing Contras working with CIA elements. No, Ollie was enough.

And the language coming from Congressional Dems in leadership positions is all about looking forward, forwarding agendas and moving forward.

Forward, forward, forward.

It's the Great American Dreamworld...forgetting the past and moving forward. And, in so doing, consigning us to infinite repetition.

Democrats should look back to the election that put them where they are today. Just one month ago the American people said, "Enough is enough!"

But here comes Robert Gates...there goes Hastert unpunished...and here we go again...moving forward and forgetting the past.

Iraq Study in Futility Group

It's official: we are "losing" in Iraq. That's right, Robert "Let's not talk about Iran-Contra" Gates got fast-tracked into Rumsfeld's job with only two Republicans dissenting (yeah, Republicans...no Democrats). Why? Mainly on the basis of his "candid assessment" that we are not winning in Iraq.

Oh. My. God. Really?

I can't imagine what would cause him to say such a forward thinking, insightful and courageous thing!

The Democrats kissed his feet and placed laurel leaves on his head. Yup, you know you can count on those Dems to ask the tough questions. Forget the fact that many voted for the Patriot Act and, for the most part, the war authorization that got us into Iraq. Forget Iran-Contra and Gates' history of intel jury-rigging. No, really. Forget it...it helps the medicine go down.

But they get a pass, I guess, on Gates because the "truth" he was telling was intoxicating. They were drunk from "candor-filled" cup Gates served them. But Gates was a mere aperitif.

The main course?

The Iraq Study Group. The ISG.

Weeks of build-up. Hours of blathering by "journalists" and the commentators they have come to resemble. The ISG is bi-partisan dish served piping hot...eand veryone's scarfing down the "truths" like a Thanksgiving dinner. Lots of thanks being given for their "hard work" and "bi-partisan consensus." That's right...both sides agree that the strategy in Iraq has failed. Wow! Revelatory stuff.

To bad it's mostly bullshit. A plateful of cold re-hash, warmed enough to convince the hungry to eat it.

It's even a bit offensive.

The two thrusts of the report are redeployment of American forces and increasing responsibility for the Iraqis.

Redeployment is likely to happen. It was probably part of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld plan all along. Yup, our troops will be "redeployed"...to the permanent bases they've been building near the Iraq-Iran border, to the largest US embassy in the world and to the safety of the Kurdish-controlled area. They'll be redeployed to Qatar and the Central Asian "Stans." Phased out of the quagmire only to remain in the imperial mix.

The civil war, a.k.a. sectarian violence, is not really a problem over the long term. In fact, it keeps Iraqis busy killing each other and makes it impossible for US forces to exit completely. If the Iraqis were a functioning democratic state the first thing they'd do is ask us to leave. Had the Wolfowitz-Rose Petal Scenario transpired, we would've been forced to leave two years ago.

But no, Iraq began it's "democratic period" with the dissolution of internal systems of governance, of security and widespread looting. Initially, Sunnis and Shiites cooperated in their attacks on US forces. Remember that? Yeah, it's true...that was the story. But shortly after Negroponte entered the scene of the crime...the crime being the blatantly illegal invasion...roving death squads appeared and sectarian vengeance eclipsed cooperation between Sunnis and Shiites.

It's merely coincidence that Negroponte is infamous for setting up death squads in Central America. Christ Almighty...it's so hard to get rid of those Iran-Contra bastards.

Then came the mosque bombings. Now, many in Iraq believed that it was not Iraqi Sunnis or Shiites attacking mosques, but an outside force. Many believed the US was behind it. And when you have roving bands in masks...when you have wide open borders unprotected by US forces...and you have British troops caught red-handed conducting "sectarian attacks" in disguise...well, it's something worth considering. Because the sectarian violence has keep the $2 billion per week pipeline open. A pipeline from the American taxpayers that runs into Washington, DC, through Baghdad and back into the bank accounts of US defense contractors.

Is it any wonder that we read this week that there are almost as many contractors in Iraq--100,000--as there are US troops. Blackwater, CACI, Titan, KBR...they are making a killing off of the killing.

The other beneficiaries of the sectarian violence are oil companies and the Saudis. Quarter after quarter of record profits with the second largest oil reserves in the world tied up in chaos. Oil markets get spooked. Oil stays in the ground...so those irresponsible Iraqis cannot pay for our invasion of their country, as Wolfowitz predicted.

Oil markets get spooked and prices rise. Sure they've fallen in the $60-70 range. Isn't that great? Yeah, until you look back to pre-9/11 oil prices down in the $15-$25 range. And if you think oil companies are making a killing, just think about the petro-dollars pouring into the accounts of those Bush-loving Saudis!

By the way, the Iraq Study Group still likes the idea of privatization of Iraq's oil resources and likes the idea of "foreign investment" to rebuild what we've destroyed.

It is notable, though, that the Iraq Study Group did recommend that Bush "assure" the Iraqis that the bases we've built are merely temporary. Sorry, ISG...those bases are there to stay. I guess they ignored the Project for a New American Century's openly secret plan for the Middle East: Rebuilding America's Defenses. It's okay, though...so has everyone else in the media and those oversight overseers in Congress. Oversight has two completely different meanings, by the way.

Ignoring PNAC is an oversight, I guess.

Part of the proposed redeployment, according to the ISG, involves increasingly embedding US troops in Iraqi army units. Which brings us to the great, disgusting lie at the heart of our involvement in Iraq: "Iraq as a Fledgling Democracy."

This is the kind of bullshit that fertilizes half of the farms in Iowa. Rich, fresh and copious amounts of bullshit that is spread far and wide.

Iraq is not a democracy. People "voting" and dipping their fingers in ink means...they voted and dipped their fingers in ink. There is no legitimacy in the system. Iraq did not evolve into a democracy. It did not have a revolution. It did not have a struggle of Iraqi people to create a democratic state. No, it was imposed upon them. The Iraqi leadership's legitimacy comes from...the barrel of a gun and the whims of a foreign power. Hmmmm, does that sound like a democracy to you?

That's why we keep hearing about training the Iraq army...so they can stand up and "take responsibility" for their own future.

Think about it.

The democratically elected government of Iraq needs a large, functioning military to enforce and preserve its legitimacy. Now that doesn't sound like a democracy...not by any definition of the word. We are not splitting hairs here...between a republic or a democracy, between federalism of parliamentarianism. We are talking abut a militarized state that imposes legitimacy for the "elected government."

Hell, that describes many of the communist states we used to battle as enemies of democracy.

No, the idea that Iraqis have to take responsibility for their own future after we decimated their ability to provide even the most basic services to its people...it's a disgusting and immoral idea. Unfortunately, Democrats are increasingly on board with this bullshit idea of Iraqi responsibility. The ISG gives political cover in the guise of bi-partisan statesmanship to those who want a graceful exit from Iraq, who want a way out without accepting blame for the mess they've made...for the awful decision each and everyone involved made, both in the Administration and in the Congress.

As former military man and think tank talking head Anthony Cordesman wrote: "The US in effect sent a bull in to liberate a china shop, and the ISG now called on the US to threaten to remove the bull if the shop doesn't fix the china."

Which brings the issue of the Iraq Study Group front and center. Despite Bush's instant, yet amorphous, intransigence to some of the recommendations, the ISG is doing him a big favor. It is sharing the responsibility. It is bi-partisan. It really isn't anything new. And it is opening up the issue of blame.

Because the responsibility is not on the Iraqis...it's on us. All of us. We destroyed a nation. This is another Afghanistan...or Congo...or Guatemala. A nation that could be a failed state for decades.

It's the issue of responsibility that is at the heart of the Iraq Study Group. Shifting the onus on to the victim and sharing future blame....from the report's issuance forward...in a bi-partisan way.

The ISG says little or nothing that is new, save that it transforms future thinking about responsibility for the crime that is the war in Iraq. In "rebuking" Bush in a bi-partisan way, the GOP has it's exit strategy from association with W's legacy.

And the Dems have now taken a big bite that they'll spend the next two years chewing.

Good.

Because so few stood up before the invasion. Because somehow they didn't see the voluminous reports in both the alternative and European media debunking the Iraq-WMD-Al Qaeda mythos. Because the Senate was empty when Sen. Robert Byrd made his amazing speech before the authorization vote...a speech that warned of the Constitutional crisis and long-term damage that open-ended vote would create. Because they were complicit cowards in the face of outrageous claims and less-than opaque lies.

In the final analysis, unfortunately, Cordesman has it right. The Iraqis will end up be punished the most...punished for not cleaning up the mess we've made.

Robert Gates and the Covert Vampires

We can't stop them. Sure, they retreat to corporate coffins once exposed to a little sunlight, but they rise again once darkness falls. They are the Covert Vampires, the undead bloodsuckers who, it seems, find ways to keep feeding on the lifeblood of our increasingly tenuous democracy. The names are strangely familiar, even if their exploits are scandalously unknown to the masses: Negroponte, Reich, Poindexter, Abrams.

The one thing they all seem to share? Allegiance to, or association with, the great Covert Vampire of our time: George Herbert Walker Bush...who, a wealth of circumstantial evidence indicates, began biting and transforming mere humans in the lead up to the Bay of Pigs.

His first? A guy named Felix Rodriguez who was a Bay of Pigster and was, strangely enough, still on the CIA payroll during Iran-Contra. Felix was doing "something" in Central America. Thanks to a paper-thin investigation of that scandal, we still don't know.

Robert Gates is the latest vampire to crawl out of his coffin, a plumb presidency of at the University of Texas. This time he will stalk the halls of the Pentagon. Gates has a history as a man of action....covert action...which is well documented. Journalist Robert Parry was the Bram Stoker of the Covert Vampire story, shedding enough light on their dark world to open up a crypt-ful of secrets we now know as Iran-Contra. Enough light to keep Gates from being confirmed the first time he was proposed for DCI, Director of Central Intelligence.

But Gates finally made it through, thanks to strong support from Poppy Bush. Now, the reign of Poppy seems like the salad days of American foreign policy...so Gates' fangs look small compared to those we've seen in Rumsfeld's growling mouth.

In fact, we've been a fed a steady diet of Poppy's people as a rational alternative to the Neo-conned administration of his son. Gates is a creature who has had his hand in intelligence jury-rigging, proposed covert bombing in Central America and stuck closely to uber-Covert Vampire Bill Casey during Casey's tenure at the CIA...when Casey was sucking dry our Constitutional lifeblood as he managed Iran-Contra.

It's Gates' knowledge of covert ops in Iran that makes him the logical choice for Secretary of Defense. Iran's throat is target one, and Gates knows the ropes...the "way in" that Poppy and Casey latched onto during the 1980 Presidential Campaign. He knows how to bite the arteries that flowed money and arms, delayed release of the hostages, led to the Iran-Iraq war and, ultimately became an elaborate money-weapons-drugs triangle that keep the Contras illegally supplied.

Now that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has, under the guidance of Rummy, eclipsed the recalcitrants at the CIA, Gates is the perfect man for the job. He is breezing through simply because he's not Rummy. Because he said we are not winning in Iraq. Wow! What an amazing insight. But he remains part of the larger team...a team of Covert Vampires and their Frontman Familiars who've been running things for decades.

When the son entered the White House, there was little talk of those Covert Vampires so loyal to Poppy...even though they quietly took up key positions. Sure, we knew that Cheney and Rumsfeld were Poppy's bloodsuckers. But post-9/11, the talk was all about the Neo-Cons. Pre-emptive strikes, spreading democracy...changing the map of the Middle East.

Neo-con, Neo-con, Neo-con.


Many Neo-cons were also there during Reagan-Bush and the covert antics that typified that presidency. Leeden, Wolfowitz, Perle...and more. Some were involved in Iran-Contra. Wolfowitz began jury-rigging intel way back in 1976, under Poppy's CIA directorship.

Again...Poppy is a common denominator.

But these Neo-cons we've grown to despise are not really in the same class as the Covert Vampires. They are more like Zealous Zombies...operatives who are trotted out into the public sphere to spout their monotone intellectualizations about democracy, freedom and American power.


Like Covert Vampires, they also seem to keep on coming...like Night of the Living Dead extras...stalking and feeding...never dying...a march of undead intellectuals blathering on about rationales, transformations and power projections.


Many of those Neo-cons have been thwarted...at least publicly. The Zealous Zombies are, it would seem, in retreat. But they are the bad cops...and the Covert Vampires look like good cops. Doesn't Gates look like a good cop?

But let me unmix my metaphors.

Because the key ingredient of the vampire metaphor is the Frontman Familiar. In vampire lore the bloodsucker has a minion...a non-vampiric human who "takes care of things" for the master. When there is too much sunshine the familiar takes the lead in covering up the location of the vampire, securing transport and picking out future victims. He acquires coffins and helps the vampire travel.

And we've got some Frontman Familiars on our hands. As if this metaphor is coalescing like a Hollywood script, James Baker and Lee Hamilton, the single greatest Frontman Familiar of all-time, have emerged to "save the day" in Iraq. Timed perfectly with the arrival of Gates, they are going to "shed light" on the darkness of our destruction of Iraq and give us "a way forward."

But really, they are there to provide misdirection. To provide cover in the midst of all that light glaringly exposing the disintegration of Iraq. It's what they do.

When Iran-Contra broke...and, by the way, Veep GHW Bush was the point man on all CIA/Covert Ops matters in the Reagan White House...Familiar Hamilton began a slow, methodical derailing of the investigation. He threw a cover of darkness on much of the scandal and hid from view the worst aspects of Iran-Contra: the CIA-Contra cocaine pipeline into the Los Angeles and the deep politics of the October Surprise...when the covert arms pipeline into Iran was first opened.

Hamilton did it for Bush the Younger when he sat on the 9-11 commission. When the Vampires need darkness as they cower in the light, Lee Hamilton is there to provide plausible deniability...to give the vampires a safe, dark place to hide.

And so it is with Gates. A Covert Vampire taking the reigns of a newly invigorated covert intelligence operation in the Pentagon at the same time the Baker Commission provides misdirection...a misdirection that has entranced our Senate with the idea that things are changing, that policy is changing.

The Bloodsuckers are still in control. Negroponte...Mr. Central American Death Squad...is still there. Eliot...Next Target Iran...Abrams is still there. And the lifeblood of our nation...tax dollars...is still being sucked out of the contractors' artery that is Iraq. The bases are still being built. We just learned that there are over 100,000 contractors in Iraq. The blood is flowing. The vampires are still drinking.

You see, since the toppling of Mossadeq in Iran back in 1953..on through United Fruit in Guatemala (the Bush family had a large share of stock in United Fruit)...then to the Bay of Pigs, the assassination of Idealistic Triad the 60s...to Watergate and Iran-Contra and BCCI and Iraqgate.... Well, you get the picture. It's been a non-stop series of covert ops. And it's been the same damn vampires all along. Although men like Hamilton pose as Van Helsing, we find they are, in fact, familiars.

When people try to drive stakes through their hearts they are ruined, isolated, removed...and some die.

How else could these guys keep coming back, time and again, after they've appeared to have died...to have exited the stage of history. The Democrats certainly haven't driven stakes into their hearts...even when they were helplessly exposed to te light of day.



No, they keep on escaping, retreating to well-paid coffins and then rising again...and feeding.