Bunch of Nuts…
Privatized Assassins, CIA & Blackwater Connections Expand.
That is the story today from the Nation…
Now the New York Times is reporting that in 2004 the CIA hired Blackwater “as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda.” According to the Times, “it is unclear whether the CIA had planned to use the contractors to capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance.”
The Times reports that “the CIA did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune.” A retired intelligence officer “intimately familiar with the assassination program” told the Washington Post, “Outsourcing gave the agency more protection in case something went wrong.” The Post reported that Blackwater “was given operational responsibility for targeting terrorist commanders and was awarded millions of dollars for training and weaponry, but the program was canceled before any missions were conducted.”
“What the agency was doing with Blackwater scares the hell out of me,” said Jack Rice, a former CIA field operator who worked for the directorate of operations, which runs covert paramilitary activities for the CIA. “When the agency actually cedes all oversight and power to a private organization, an organization like Blackwater, most importantly they lose control and don’t understand what’s going on,” Rice told The Nation. “What makes it even worse is that you then can turn around and have deniability. They can say, ‘It wasn’t us, we weren’t the ones making the decisions.’ That’s the best of both worlds. It’s analogous to what we hear about torture that was being done in the name of Americans, when we simply handed somebody over to the Syrians or the Egyptians or others and then we turn around and say, ‘We’re not torturing people.'”…(more)
Under Oath: Bribery, Sexual Blackmail, & Espionage
Kudos to Bradblog for following the Edmond’s story since it broke out. This FBI translator turned whistleblower has testified under oath to some very interesting scandals…
A few interesting parts…
…Dan] Burton (R-IN), described as basically accepting bribes and involved in espionage for the Turkish government…she could not discuss the extremely illegal activities that Mr. Burton committed against U.S. interests, as she put it.
Also, a current female
Democratic[ed note: I misheard, he later said he didn’t know if she was Dem or Rep] member of Congress who has been blackmailed by the Turkish Government…called a ‘hooking exercise’…she’s apparently bi-sexual and they bugged her apartment, she’s married with children, and they set up a relationship with another female who went in and had sexual relationships with her. And they had all the episodes bugged within this current Representative’s home and they blackmailed her. … She wouldn’t give her name, but her photograph [is the one with the question mark on it in the “Sibel Edmonds Rogue Gallery.” ]
…
Here comes a bombshell or two…
At the venue, Edmonds said that she named names and details on all of the Congress members noted on her “State Secrets Gallery” page. And then some.
She said she told them about “Mr. [Marc] Grossman and Brewster Jennings…And the real story about them, not the crap they got from the media.”
I was unable to follow up that statement with a question, before she got into a cab, but was able to track her down on her cell thereafter.
First, I asked if she specified whether the sitting bi-sexual, married Congresswoman who had been taped sleeping with a woman, without knowing, and then bribed by Turkish interests with the tape, to vote against the Armenian Genocide resolution had been a Democrat or a Republican. She said she is a Democrat, and that she testified to that during her deposition. (See Krikorian’s long statement above for more details on that woman.)
Second, I asked about the “real” story on Brewster Jennings, as opposed to the “crap…from the media” as she mentioned at the venue.
“Basically,” she said, “I told them how [third-ranking State Dept. official in the Bush Admin and former Ambassador to Turkey] Marc Grossman disclosed” that Brewster Jennings was a CIA front company to the target of an FBI investigation. “And it was under oath and that some lives may have been lost.”
“Novak has nothing to do with it. Wilson has nothing to do with it. Valerie Plame has nothing to do with it. The whole operation has to do with something totally different and it had to do with the American Turkish Council and the Turkish clients who were about to hire Brewster Jennings as an analyst … and Grossman found out about it, and tipped off his diplomatic contact who was a target of the FBI counter-intelligence, and that person notified the ISI [Pakistani intelligence agency], etc.”
She says that Brewster Jenning was then “dismantled as soon as the FBI notified the CIA,” after which “FBI requested CIA to do a damage assessment, to see if lives would be lost.”
All of this, she re-iterated, was “long before, three years before,” Novak outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative in his newspaper column.
Brewster Jennings was “absolutely” dismantled in August of 2001.
“Grossman and [Richard] Armitage, they are the only two people involved. Later on Cheney and his people may have used it, but it had nothing to do with those other things, [Brewster Jennings] was completely destroyed and gone by the summer of 2001.”
For those not fully up on Edmonds’ story, her job at the FBI was to listen to wiretaps in the counter-intel department, to translate foreign targets caught on those taps. Presumably, that’s where her details on the destruction of Brewster Jennings comes from. She was hired by the agency shortly after 9/11.
Mad As Hell Doctors & Sara Palin’s Flip-Flop.
Oh, Sara! Were you for those “Death Panels before you were against them. Apparently so…
As ThinkProgress reports today, Sarah Palin was for end-of-life counseling before she was against it.
As governor, Palin declared April 16, 2008, “Healthcare Decisions Day,” signing a proclamation to “encourage medical professionals and lawyers to volunteer their time and efforts to … increase the number of Alaska’s citizens with advance directives.”
Of course, Advanced Directives have nothing to do with death panels or killing old people, but don’t expect most republicans to be able to tell the difference. Most of them don’t realize that when they voted for Medicare overhauls in the Bush Administration that it also funded Advanced Directives (now called death panels apparently, by the chronically stupid).
A new website is now up pushing not for this public option plan, but to discuss an actual single payer plan (which is like medicare, also a single payer plan where government pays, but really does little else). The website is Mad as Hell Doctors.com. Thom interviewed one of the physicians, you can watch the interview HERE:
If you would like to learn more about the insurance companies and CEO compensations, check this website.
Conservatives: Not to Blame for their Paranoia?
My recent post on the Daily Kos..
Why We Can’t Blame Conservatives
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Thu Aug 13, 2009 at 01:24:55 PM EDT
In light of the violent threats, the hanged effigies, the vandalism and the signs, maybe we need to step back and consider what we may really be dealing with from the conservative movement.
Have you seen the paranoia out there from the conservative movement? I mean from the fake line by line analysis of HR 3200, to the town halls, to the “Birthers” and the “Deathers” and even the global warming deniers something has pushed that party not only into the realm of the irrational, the conspiratorial, and the violent. What is that, and is it “their fault”?
I get as flustered trying to discuss rationally issues of politics with those of the conservative bent as the rest of you I am sure. It is like banging your head into the wall, nothing gets through to many of the people of that movement. It makes me wonder, if the past 8 years, the environment of fear and war on “Terra”, has created a “base” of the conservative movement with a paranoid bent form of PTSD? I mean we know of the studies that show conservatives have insecurities which go back to childhood. We know from studies that they are less comfortable with change and differing opinions. And we know that without the fear mongering of the previous administration over 8 years with new tapes and “Terra” alert Orange that paranoia is already a very pervasive emotion on its own. It could also be mentioned, that the same neurotransmitter suspected in schizophrenia, Dopamine, is also implicated in the emotions of paranoia, addiction and dread, according to reports published in Scientific American….(More)
Political Pains & Points of View. 