Kids, so sorry, but I’m still feeling craptastic, so I went back to my American Street trough and dug out one of my old favorites. It was originally posted on April 23, 2008. I apologize if some of the links no longer work.

A great big MMMWWAAAHHHHHHHHHH to my dear Raisinettes who have been continuing to visit despite the lack of any new stuff. Hope to be back soon with some new posts and to reply to all of you comments. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy playing Condiland:

A Sweet Little Game for Sweet Little Folks

Hey kids! Are you sick of hearing about Pennsylvania yet? I know I am. I think we need to distract ourselves, and how better than with an old-fashioned board game? I bet the first game that most kids get is Candyland. Well, guess what! There’s a new version out, and I picked one up! Let me share it with you. Welcome to……

Here’s the new board!

I know it’s kinda hard to see, so let me enlarge the different stops along the way. Of course, we start at Start:

From Wiki: Rice headed Chevron’s committee on public policy until she resigned on January 15, 2001, to become National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush. Chevron honored Rice by naming an oil tanker Condoleezza Rice after her, but controversy led to its being renamed Altair Voyager.[27]

She also served on the board of directors for the Carnegie Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the Chevron Corporation, Hewlett Packard, the Rand Corporation, the Transamerica Corporation, and other organizations.

From PBS:
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: Isn’t it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the Aug. 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I believe the title was “bin laden determined to attack inside the United States.”

Oops! I forgot to show you the special game cards!

Condoleezza Rice, September 2002: “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he [Saddam Hussein] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

From the Washington Post: Top Bush aides, including Vice President Cheney, micromanaged the torture of terrorist suspects from the White House basement, according to an ABC News report aired last night.

Discussions were so detailed, ABC’s sources said, that some interrogation sessions were virtually choreographed by a White House advisory group. In addition to Cheney, the group included then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then-secretary of state Colin Powell, then-CIA director George Tenet and then-attorney general John Ashcroft.

Gonzogate, torture, Abramoff, Scooter Libby, etc…….

From the Washington Post:
Total Fatalities: 4,507

Operation Iraqi Freedom: 4,021
Operation Enduring Freedom: 486
(Updated April 22, 2008)

From the Baltimore Sun: It looks like President Bush has achieved a historical mark but it’s certainly one he could have done without.

Gallup says Bush’s 69 percent disapproval rating is the highest it’s ever recorded in history.

From Gawker: So the Gulf Coast has gone all Mad Max, women are being raped in the Superdome, and Rice is enjoying a brief vacation in New York. We wish we were surprised.

What does surprise us: Just moments ago at the Ferragamo on 5th Avenue, Condoleeza Rice was seen spending several thousands of dollars on some nice, new shoes (we’ve confirmed this, so her new heels will surely get coverage from the WaPo’s Robin Givhan). A fellow shopper, unable to fathom the absurdity of Rice’s timing, went up to the Secretary and reportedly shouted, “How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department is warning U.S. diplomats they may be forced to serve in Iraq next year and says it will soon start identifying prime candidates for jobs at the Baghdad embassy and outlying provinces, according to a cable obtained by The Associated Press.

A similar call-up notice last year caused an uproar among foreign service officers, some of whom objected to compulsory work in a war zone, although in the end the State Department found enough volunteers to fill the jobs.

Now, the State Department anticipates another staffing crisis.

You know what kids? This game isn’t as much fun as I remember!

Former US attorney General and former Missouri Senator John Ashcroft campaigned in Johnson County, Kansas Friday.

He’s endorsed Wichita congressman Todd Tiahrt’s bid for the US senate. Tiahrt is facing Western Kansas Congressman Jerry Moran for the senate now held by Sen Sam Brownback. He’s running for Governor.

Here’s the Campaign hand out on Ashcroft: Ashcroft said, “Todd Tiahrt is a principled fiscal and social conservative who understands what it takes to keep this country safe,” said Ashcroft.

“During my tenure in the United States Senate and as Attorney General, I gained a real appreciation for public servants like Todd Tiahrt. Todd fights for the conservative values he believes in and does not waver in the face of tough opposition. And, when Todd gives you his word, you can count on him to do what he says.”

Ashcroft served as Attorney General in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. His Justice Department was responsible for overseeing many new measures that have been credited with keeping America safe through the end of the Bush Administration.

“When this nation was attacked on September 11th, Todd Tiahrt stepped up to the plate and supported the administration’s efforts to make the changes necessary to keep this country safe. Some chose politics; Todd chose principle,” Ashcroft said.

Ashcroft was in town for multiple Tiahrt events, including a campaign fundraiser hosted by several prominent Johnson County residents, business owners and conservative state legislators.”

Sarah Palin’s expert fact-checking service gives us a real doozy today (here)…

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Zacarias Moussaoui was a clown who could not keep his mouth shut, according to his old al-Qaida boss, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. But Moussaoui was surprisingly tame when tried for the 9/11 attacks — never turning the courtroom into the circus of anti-U.S. tirades that some fear Mohammed will create at his trial in New York.

And that wasn’t the only surprise during Moussaoui’s six-week 2006 sentencing trial here — a proceeding that might foreshadow how the upcoming 9/11 trial in New York will go.

Really? This tells us the following (from the conclusion of Moussaoui’s trial in May 2006)…

The twelve anonymous jurors who sentenced Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison Wednesday showed that it is possible to reconcile prosecution of terror with the rule of law. Three of the jurors went to the trouble of writing into their report that Moussaoui, despite his fealty to Al Qaeda, had but “limited knowledge” of the September 11 conspiracy. Nine of them agreed that the extraordinary violence of his childhood weighed against a death sentence. Ordinary citizens, in the shadow of a unique and heinous crime, were still capable of telling the difference between justice and blood vengeance.

For defense lawyers Moussaoui was the client from hell, for four years alternatively denouncing the court and his legal team and demanding his own execution. Yet even Moussaoui’s raving could not disguise the fundamental flaw of the government’s execution demand, which defense lawyers emphasized so tirelessly even against the wishes of their megalomanic client: Whatever his malignant intent, Moussaoui was in jail on 9/11, and even before that was peripheral to the plot.

Some jurors clearly understood that the Ashcroft-Gonzales Justice Department’s decision to press for the death penalty against Moussaoui turned a legitimate criminal prosecution into a show trial. Five years and tens of million dollars in prosecution costs were exhausted to make sure that someone would get the needle for September 11– never mind if he was only marginally culpable.

On one level, the Moussaoui trial has been so exceptional in every way that it would be misleading to read into it too many broader implications. Yet if you strip away the extraordinary circumstances represented by 9/11 and the extraordinary challenge represented by Moussaoui himself, there was much in this trial in common with standard capital trials: an emotional but factually sloppy case for execution; a volatile defendant with a family history of mental illness and extreme violence; survivor families divided by the prospect of a death sentence.

And commenting on the events preceding the trial, Dahlia Lithwick of Slate told us the following in March 2003 (before Iraq War II started – hard to remember such a time existed, but it did)…

The Moussaoui trial, a shambles almost from the first bang of the gavel, is on indefinite hold, postponed for the third time now, pending a Justice Department appeal of a ruling by the trial judge. Part of the problem is that in the year and a half since the war on terror began, the Bush administration has been unable to determine how it wants to treat captured terrorists. Legal analysts have struggled to discern a pattern in the government’s inconsistent treatment of suspects, and finally one has begun to emerge: The truly dangerous criminal masterminds are interrogated indefinitely, the insignificant bumblers are tried as dangerous criminal masterminds, and the rest are left to rot in military jails. It’s an interesting approach, but one can hardly call it justice.

And as ABC News told us here in 2007…

An apparent breakdown in communication at the CIA caused its analysts to submit inaccurate declarations in the case against convicted al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, keeping taped interviews with enemy combatants from being reviewed in the case.

That admission came in the form of a highly redacted letter, classified Top Secret, sent from the federal prosecutors to the trial and appeals judges on the case.

The prosecutors noted that a CIA attorney informed them in September that the agency found one tape pertaining to the case, and after the prosecutors requested a more extensive review, the CIA found an additional video tape and one audio tape.

“The fact that audio/video recording of enemy combatant interrogations occurred, and that the United States was in possession of three of those recordings is, as noted, inconsistent with factual assertions in CIA declarations,” the letter noted.

The CIA had submitted declarations from 2003 to the court, stating that no recordings of interrogations existed. “The existence of the video tape however is at odds with statements in two CIA declarations submitted in this case,” the letter states.

Still, though, a trial in Federal court is the way to go against KSM and the other defendants; as Jonathan Alter of Newsweek noted here on Monday, “this will bring a faster conviction than in the military tribunals because the tribunals are uncharted waters. There’s much more room for appeal. Remember, after tribunal, there’s an appeal up to the Supreme Court and those appeals will take longer than the appeals in this case.”

And as Alter also told us, if Rudy 9iu11ani were still a prosecutor instead of a politician, he would be chomping at the proverbial bit to try the suspects in question instead of fear-mongering about why they should be locked up forever without having their day in court (and does it really need to be pointed out that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg supports having the trials in NYC?).

So all that remains is for our intelligence services and our system of justice to work in concert and bring convictions against the alleged 9/11 plotters. And since we now have grownups in charge who are interested in recognizing the rule of law here, as opposed to incompetent grandstanders interested only in political outcomes, I feel much better about our prospects.

Update 11/19/09: In response to this, I have a question for Rudy! – how do you feel about using the words “stupid” and “demagogue” in the same sentence, then?

I’m too disgusted even to write about it, so I’ll let Greenwald do it for me. Arar was an innocent Canadian with no connections to terrorism now or ever, who while traveling through the US was abducted by the US government, held without communication to anyone, and then shipped to Syria to be tortured for 10 months. The Canadian government publicly apologized to him and paid him $9 million dollars. The US government has never ackowledged it did wrong and now, by way of one of its federal appeals courts, has voted 7-4 to throw his case out. That about sums it up. And go ahead and file Arar under “A” in the book of reasons for people to justifiably hate America forever.

Welcome to Dick Cheney’s America. Where you’re innocent until brutally beaten into guilt. Where, if you won’t admit the crime you haven’t committed, you will when we Rendition you to a country that will get it out of you one way or another. If, despite all of that, you are still found innocent, there will be no recourse for you. No way to make those that caused you great body and psychic harm pay for their mistake. Because, heck, if every innocent person the United States tortured sued for damages, it would fill up our courts from coast to coast! It would take up lots of paper and time that the government simply can’t afford.

Sorry innocent tortured people. But the closest you can come to justice is shooting out your television screen when you see my (Dick Cheney! I’m selling a book!) ugly twisted soul on television lying up a storm about anything and everything and shitting in everyone’s coffee during my book tour. Or shooting out your television screen whenever you see George Bush is headlining – of all things – a seminar on motivation! (George and I both highly recommend shooting out your televisions. That way you’ll have to buy a new one – which will stimulate the economy!)

(For your daily dose of seriously depressing doom, go here: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2009/11/03/arar)

You don’t think I didn’t have this all figured out, did you? Did you really think I would order all these innocent people tortured if I wasn’t sure there was no way I could ever be punished for it? I may be a lot of things, but one thing I definitely am is one hell of a good war criminal. So good in fact that I’m still a fine and upstanding citizen, immune from prosecution, and allowed to practice my free speech on anyone and everyone. Instead of being locked up for all the bad things I like to do, I go on Meet The Press so I can call the President a fairy. That Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme? My idea. I met that guy at a cocktail party and told him I would torture him if he didn’t become a criminal. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely; and, in my case, although I have always been corrupt, it’s so gloriously true! Unless you’re a Canadian. Those fools admit their wrongdoing and make reparations! What a laugh those guys are! If I could I’d extremely rendition that whole country to Syria!

Have you heard about the Arar case? It’s a case study in my lack of any moral bearings whatsoever. And the power I wielded in the White House and the Justice Department – and what I could do with it. Some Canadian software engineer named Arar had the misfortune to go through New York on his way home to Canada from vacation. And that’s when we nabbed him. But he wouldn’t confess to his evil-doing: he kept going on about being innocent and whatnot, so – realizing if we sent him to Syria they would torture him – we put a bag over his head and – next thing he knows – he’s in a Syrian prison along with a whole bunch of questions for them to ask! Where he is repeatedly tortured. He confessed of course. Finally. To something he didn’t do, just so they would stop beating him with cables. On and on and on it went. Various painful forms of torture. Day in and day out – for over a year.  Finally, the Syrians concluded that he was actually innocent. Oh well. Omelettes and broken eggs and all that. Now he’s all pissy about the whole thing. He even sued John Ashcroft – which is fine with me: that guy is a dithering pansy anyway. But, unlike Canada, which actually admitted to their wrongdoing, looked into the matter and published a weighty document detailing how wrong they – and the United States – were, groveled for his forgiveness and gave him 11.5 million Canadian dollars.

As Arar could tell you, the United States doesn’t play like that. Nope. I made sure of that, you see. I’m untouchable, frankly. The way it works is, we just deny it ever happened. After all, the United States doesn’t torture! Ha! Ask me a question and “I don’t recall” the answer. Pretty simple really. You’ve got evidence you say? Well, what is the definition of evidence anyway? You see, when you have a lot of power you can do tricky things like decide what evidence is; and the very meaning of words themselves. If it’s something we don’t want it to be, we’ll just change it. And, if you want to testify in front of a grand jury about all of the punishments the Syrians conducted on you at the request of the United States, well, good luck getting into the country!

Okay, enough about how great my power is. I have a memoir to make up and some paper shredding to do. I also have to celebrate how timid and cowardly this administration is when it comes to my rampant criminality. They protect me at every turn!

Cheers!

Dick

   In what, to date, has been an issueless and unenthusiastic race for Governor of New Jersey, incumbent Governor Jon Corzine, (D) has shaken things up in dramatic ways. Just days before state ballots are prepared for printing, the Governor has gone to court to have his name legally changed.

After a summer of trailing his Republican opponent Chris Christie by double digits, efforts to make the unpopular Governor somewhat more likeable, forced the Corzine campaign to closely associate him to the still popular image of President Barack Obama. The move has worked and the gap has been closed. But with Christie still 3 percentage points ahead of the Governor, Jon Corzine decided that he needed to do more than just compare himself to the President of the United States. Hoping to take the lead over Christie, Governor Corzine took his case to court where he filed papers to change his name to Jonnie Obama.

A spokesman for the Governor called the move “an act of necessity”. Campaign spokesman Jack Kennedy (formerly known as Adolf Mitler) explained “we just have not been able to move our numbers lately and with nothing else for us to add to how we intend to improve the quality of life in New Jersey,  Governor Corzine felt that the people of the state would appreciate having a Governor named after our President”.

In a statement released by now Governor Obama the newly named candidate for reelection focused on what he called his “willingness to go to great lengths to win”. He further stated “if sacrificing some of my personal fortune accumulated by a lucrative Wall Street golden parachute is not enough to get votes, than I am willing to sacrifice my identity and my name for the sake of New Jersey”

Prior to this extreme move, then  Governor Corzine, had sought medical advice regarding the best way to change his complexion. In a process opposite to Michael Jackson’s skin bleaching, the Governor wanted to darken his skin with a political procedure called Obamanizing. In the end strategists decided against the procedure due to fears that a dark skinned Corzine might come across too minstrel show-like and too politically incorrect.

Democrat Lt. Gov. Nominee Loretta Weinberg

Democrat pollster B.J. Clinton, (formerly known as Ernest Madoff) pointed out that the name change has already had a positive impact on Governor Obama’s once static numbers. Analysts from the Jim McGreevy School of Political Ethics believe that the Governor’s name change was a wise move. The schools executive director Patty Pantsdown (aka: Lou Morella) called the name change a stroke of political genius. According to Pantsdown “Oh honey, now after months of trying to associate himself with President Obama in an attempt to deflect the focus off of the Governor’s higher taxes, tolls, unemployment and lower state revenues and job opportunities, changing his name to Jonnie Obama does a number of things. First of all it adds a little spice to an otherwise drab name. Secondly, right away, it brings the voters minds to exactly what the Governor needs to put the focus on, which is anything but the condition that the state is in right now and last but not least, it adds more meaning to the phrase ‘my brutha’ which is how the Governor ends all of his speeches when referring to the President”.

Estelle Getty as fiesty Golden Girl Sophia Petrillo

Kitty Litteur, a spokesman for Governor Obama’s lieutenant governor running mate , Loretta Weinberg, notified members of the press that Senator Weinberg is also going to seek a name change. The state senator who describes herself as a “feisty Jewish grandmother” is exploring the possibility of changing her name to Sophia Petrillo, the name popularized in the role played by Estelle Getty on the hit 80’s sitcom Golden Girls. According to Litteur, “we have the Jewish grandmother vote in the bag, now we’re going after the Soprano vote and Italian grandmothers”.

Meanwhile the campaign of Chris Christie released a statement of their own which made clear that as usual, they would “not go into detail”. They do however claim that the Republican nominee for Governor anticipated this from the beginning. Chris Christie denied that he would try to change his name before the November ballots were printed. “I do not intend to seek a name change that distracts from any of the distractions that I have been working hard to create during the course of this campaign” said the Republican hopeful.

Representatives for his lieutenant governor nominee, Kim Guadagno, confirmed that she too will not have her name changed. Press Secretary Barnaby Jones claimed that no one knows who Kim is or that she is running for anything so we would rather not have to explain who she is, what she is running for and her name change all at the same time.

The Christie camp is dealing with it’s own troubles and does not want to play the name game. The Republican ticket is finding it hard to keep pace with all the spending that Governor Obama has invested in the race. So avoiding the $39.95 legal fee for a legal name change in New Jersey is seen as a cost saving measure. However, the lack of finances in the closing days of the campaign still concerns Christie.

For a quick infusion of cash, the Christie campaign has signed on to two new contracts. One has Chris Christie contracted to be in the cast of next seasons, “Biggest Loser” which is a show that has teams of overweight celebritiy has-beens, compete against one another to see which team can lose the most weight. The other contract is for a string of 15 new ads that will feature Chris Christie along side of Jenny Craig spokeswoman Valerie Bertinelli. Mr. Christie will be used for the “before” pictures used in comparing the dramatic results seen after one has used a new Jenny Craig diet program that is designed for men.

Gubernatorial Cnadidiate and Wannabe Chris Christie

The unorthodox campaign tactics being seen in the race for Governor of New Jersey has many scratching their heads. Shaquida Nelson of Newark said “I thought Jon Corzine was that white boy who hits that doohickey on ice for the New Jersey Devils, I never knew he was a brutha”. Denis O’Shea of Matawan wanted to know why Valerie Bertinelli still has not gotten back together with Eddie Van Halen.

Political analysts claim that the disinterest in the campaign is to be expected when the top two major candidates have upside down poll numbers that indicate more people have unfavorable opinions of them than favorable opinions of them. They add that the lack of any public awareness in the campaign is in large part due to the fact that neither Corzine or Christie have said anything of value during the campaign. That and the state’s unique North-South divide and its disjointed news coverage that relies on New York and Philadelphia, helps to keep New Jersey voters uniquely uniformed.

As for their assessment of Governor Obama’s name change one Quinnipiac pollster who wanted to remain anonymous believes that the biggest difference the name change will make is in the area of billboards. According to him, Governor Obama invested a lot of money in billboards that connect him as close as possible to the President and now the Governor will have to invest some money in having those billboards changed from reading Obama/Corzine to now read Obama/Obama.

Corzine Campaign Billboards Before The Name Change

    The race for Governor of New Jersey is one that has been a truly wasteful political exercise. It is by far the most shallow, useless and pointless race for office to have taken place since Missourians elected their dead former governor, Mel Carnahan to the U.S. Senate over then incumbent Senator John Ashcroft.

Disasterous Governor Jon Corzine

In this case New Jerseyans may as well have two dead candidates on the ballot. As it is, I have firmly concluded that both are brain dead.

In one corner we have incumbent Jon Corzine. He came into office as a financial genius. He was a Wall Street wizard who accumulated a personal fortune in excess of $400 million dollars, bought himself a seat in the United States Senate and then decided to buy the Governor’s Mansion. In just his first six months in office he increased taxes in New Jersey by almost $2 billion dollars. And after promising to “control spending”, not only did he raise taxes at the beginning of his term, now at the end of his term he created a budget deficit slightly larger than the total amount of revenue he raised in tax increases when he first came to office. On top of that Jon Boy increased tolls in the state and tried to pass a plan that would put tolls on roads that do not currently have any and more than triple the ones that currently exist.

He has also raised the state sales tax and created new taxes on everything from gym memberships to landscaping. And let us not even get into the business and corporate taxes that he raised. His assault on business in New Jersey drove them out of the state and is in large part, the reason why unemployment went from 4.3% at the beginning of his term to above 9.3% at the end of his term.

Throw in some of the most crushing state mandates in the areas of housing and other areas of social engineering and scandals involving him, his girlfriend, secret state contract negotiations and the union thathis girlfriend was the head of and Corzine has just been a disaster. He has captained the ship of state and taken us for a ride, a ride on the Hindenburg.

Now faced with a record of ruin, Jon Corzine really does not know what to run on. What does this man have to point to as a reason for why he deserves a second term? Is it because we like a decreased quality of life?  Maybe it is because we hate jobs and the businesses that create them? Or maybe we like to have a Governor who seems to be as corrupt as New Jersey is reputed to be?

The bottom line is that Jon Corzine has nothing to point to that would give anyone a reason to reelect him. Nothing except a state strewn with the wreckage of political liberal policy initiatives that terrorize life in New Jersey and has  gutted business out of the state and emptied the change out of our pockets.

So what is a failed politician to do when trying to get reelected to a job he doesn’t deserve? Well in the case of Jon Corzine you point to anything other than yourself.

Since 45% of the people have a favorable opinion of the Governor and 52% have an unfavorable opinion of him, he needs to associate himself with someone who is liked. For Democrats who else could that be other than the messiah himself, President Barack H. Obama.

Ever since the race for Governor began in earnest in June, all Corzine has done is associate himself with President Obama. He has tried to do everything but darken his skin and change his name to Jonnie Obama, in an attempt to make this election a referendum on anything but himself and hisdisasterous record as Governor.

There has been no campaign ads discussing the Governor’s plans for our future or his successful efforts of the past. There have been no references to more jobs or economic growth. There has only been references to President Obama and attempts to morph his opponent, Chris Christie, into George Bush.

The fact that Corzine has nothing to run on has been quite obvious to me from the beginning, but then, the other day, I was driving in new Brunswick. As I was going down Hamilton Street, there it was, lo and behold, right before my eyes was one of the first campaign signs I have seen in the race for governor. It was a humongous billboard and it featured President Obama prominently placed front and center with the words “KEEP IT GOING“.   And to the right of the President stood none other than Jon Corzine.   Astonished, I had to back up and pullover. I stared at this monstrosity in utter amazement. My first thought was, “what an ass”. My second thought was, “keep what going?” High unemployment? Socialism? Taxes? Tolls? What should we keep going? After a few moments I snapped a picture, got t over my shock and Corzine’s gall,  and continued to drive on, knowing more than ever before, that the Governor’s reelection effort is pitiful and truly embarrassing.

Corzine camapign billboard on Hamilton Street In Somerset, NJ near New Brunswick

But not as embarrassing as his opponent in the other corner though.

Republican Chris Christie had it all. He was one of those rare candidates for statewide office in New Jersey who had excellent name ID. In a state where it is truly tough to get yourself known, Chris Christie was well known. After eight years as the state’s federal prosecutor, he had a perfect record that cracked down on one of the most important issues that concerns New Jersey residents. Corruption.

But after winning the Republican nomination, due in large part to that reputation, Chris Christie has run a campaign that can only best be described as terrible. To put it in plain English, his campaign sucks. There is no coherent theme to it and thus no clear reason why people should vote for him. Just as Jon Corzine is hoping that by making his name synonymous with Barack Obama will get him reelected, Chris Christie is simply hoping that his name not being Jon Corzine is enough to get him elected.

Quite pathetically, the strategy could have worked. For months Chris Christie was ahead of Jon Corzine by double digits. But unfortunately Christie was forced to open his mouth as the campaign progressed. In doing so, people discovered that he really has nothing to say. When pressed for details on anything he says such as “I will get property taxes under control”, Christie stands their as if he does not know what the word “details “ means. Like Jon Corzine, Christie has no clear plans for New Jersey’s future either. As a result Chris Christie’s once double digit lead is now down to 3%. So close is the race between the comatose candidates that the relatively small percentage of votes that independent candidate Chris Dagget is promising to get, could just be enough to keep Jon Corzine in office.

Pointless Republican Candidate for Governor Chris Christie

Like Jon Corzine, Christie’s numbers were once good but now they are upside down. 46% of state residents have a favorable opinion of Chris Christie while 50% have an unfavorable opinion of him. In both cases more people dislike Christie and Corzine than like them. What kind of choice is that for voters? And what kind of optimism does that demonstrate from New Jerseyans? To have to choose between two people that we do not like is not exactly something to be enthusiastic about. But that is what happens when neither candidate can come up with a good reason to vote for them. The apathy so far seen in this election is mainly the result of two men who have done nothing but show themselves to be unworthy of governing.

In the meantime, this week, things finally heated up in the race for Governor. I know because I actually heard it on the news. The race for New Jersey Governor had finally been important enough for mention on the major news networks from the other cities that New Jersey relies on for its news . The topic of discussion was heavy. I mean it. It was really heavy. It dealt with Chris Christie’s weight.  Christie’s feelings were hurt over what he saw as Governor Corzine’s attempt to portray him as being overweight.

He is overweight, but Christie  accused Corzine of trying to use his weight as an issue in the campaign. From my point of view, in a campaign where no issues are being discussed, any issue is a welcome one.  But Chris Christie does not like the issue of his excessive weight.  Apparently he doesn’t like the issue of taxes, regulations or what he would do as Governor either but this one he really did not like.  Of course Governor Corzine denied ever making the rotund Republican’s tipping of the scale an issue. He said, no candidate ever likes the way that the opposition depicts them.

After hearing about this controversy, I could not help but wonder if this campaign was not actually a Saturday Night Live skit being played out for months now. I mean first of all, Jon Corzine has no right to make fun of anyone, especially when it comes to looks. He has been in more than a few embarrassing situations himself and is not exactly the cover model for Mens Health magazine. As for Christie, he is overweight but if his fattiness is a topic that bothers him, as a potential governor I would hope he knows how to solve that problem. Lose a pound or two off of his fat ass! That might help. Put down that pizza pie and cheesecake, run a lap around your campaign bus and pick up a good read about how a real tax deduction plan can be formulated for New Jersey. That might help you to a pound and come up with some details that could give meaning to your attempt to become a Governor.

But really, at this point what difference does it make? Both Corzine and Christie are lightweights when it comes to leadership and problem solving.  As for  New Jerseyans, well, we are just screwed because between the fatheads of both tweedledumb and tweedledumber there is no hope.

At The Huffington Post (HuffPo), leading journalist on Guantánamo Bay and the Bush Administration torture regime Andy Worthington analyzes the full story of Fouad al-Rabiah, a Kuwaiti detainee ordered to be released by a Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last week. Mr. al-Rabiah was believed to be a member of al-Qa’ida or Taliban supporter, based on what he revealed to interrogators: his meetings with Osama bin Laden. His ‘revelations’ was false.

A Truly Shocking Guantanamo Story: Judge Confirms That an Innocent Man Was Tortured to Make False Confessions

by Andy Worthington

30 Sep 09 | HuffPo

In four years of researching and writing about Guantánamo, I have become used to uncovering shocking information, but for sheer cynicism, I am struggling to think of anything that compares to the revelations contained in the unclassified ruling in the habeas corpus petition of Fouad al-Rabiah, a Kuwaiti prisoner whose release was ordered last week by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly [.pdf]. In the ruling, to put it bluntly, it was revealed that the U.S. government tortured an innocent man to extract false confessions and then threatened him until he obligingly repeated those lies as though they were the truth.

The background: lies hidden in plain sight for five years

To establish the background to this story, it is necessary for me to return to my initial response to the ruling a week last Friday, before these revelations had been made public, when, based on what I knew of the case from the publicly available documents, I explained that I was disappointed that the Obama administration had pursued a case against al-Rabiah, alleging that he was a fundraiser for Osama bin Laden and had run a supply depot for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains, for two particular reasons.

The first was because a C.I.A. analyst had interviewed al-Rabiah at Guantánamo in the summer of 2002 and had concluded that he was an innocent man caught at the wrong time and in the wrong place; and the second was because, although al-Rabiah had said that he had met bin Laden and had been present in the Tora Bora mountains, he had provided an innocent explanation for both occurrences. He had, he said, been introduced to bin Laden on a trip to Afghanistan to investigate proposals for a humanitarian aid mission, and he had been at Tora Bora—and compelled to man a supply depot—because he was one of numerous civilians caught up with soldiers of al-Qa’ida and the Taliban as he tried to flee the chaos of Afghanistan for Pakistan, and had been compelled to run the depot by a senior figure in al-Qa’ida.

These appeared to be valid explanations, especially as al-Rabiah, a 42-year old father of four children, had no history of any involvement with militancy or terrorism, and had, instead, spent 20 years at a management desk job at Kuwait Airways, and had an ownership interest in some health clubs. Moreover, he had a history of legitimate refugee relief work, having taken a six month approved leave of absence from work in 1994-95 to do relief work in Bosnia, having visited Kosovo with the Kuwaiti Red Crescent in 1998, and having made a trip to Bangladesh in 2000 to delivery kidney dialysis fluid to a hospital in the capital, Dhaka.

As a result, it appeared to me a week last Friday that Judge Kollar-Kotelly granted al-Rabiah’s habeas petition because neither his meeting with bin Laden nor his presence in Tora Bora indicated that he was either a member of, or had supported al-Qa’ida or the Taliban.

However, now that Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling has been issued, I realize that the account given by al-Rabiah during his Combatant Status Review Tribunal at Guantánamo in 2004—on which I based my account of his activities—was a tissue of lies, and that the truth, hidden for over six years, is that, like torture victims groomed for show trials throughout the centuries, he made up false stories under torture, and repeated them obediently, fearing further punishment and having been convinced that he would never leave Guantánamo by any other means.

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Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.) calls in at 6:05am to talk about health care reform.

Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ) calls in at 6:33am to talk about health care reform.

The Obama administration is planning to push for new sanctions against Iran, targeting its energy, financial, and telecommunications sectors if it does not comply with international demands to come clean about its nuclear program, according to U.S. officials.

The Senate Finance Committee today is expected to consider whether the government should offer its own insurance plan for the middle class in competition with private carriers. A public option is the top goal for Liberals, but it has no GOP support and moderate Dems say the Senate will never go along.

In two cases, judges appointed by GOP presidents have refused at an early stage to dismiss lawsuits against former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former Justice Department official John Yoo. The lawsuits stem from law enforcement and intelligence efforts after 9/11

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating a survey on Facebook that asked whether people thought President Obama should be assassinated. The poll was taken off the site quickly after Facebook officials were alerted to its existence.

You say, Columbus with his argosies
Who rash and greedy took the screaming main
And vanished out before the hurricane
Into the sunset after merchandise,
Then under western palms with simple eyes
Trafficked and robbed and triumphed home again:
You say this is the glory of the brain
And human life no other use than this?
I then do answering say to you: The line
Of wizards and of saviours, keeping trust
In that which made them pensive and divine,
Passes before us like a cloud of dust.
What were they? Actors, ill and mad with wine,
And all their language babble and disgust.

––Trumbull Stickney (June 20, 1874 – October 11, 1904)

Sibel Edmonds has been interviewed by former CIA Officer Philip Giraldi for the American Conservative. Edmonds, who has been twice gagged under the State Secrets Act by Ashcroft and called ‘credible’ by Sens. Leahy and Grassley, and DOJ IG Fine, alleges members of Congress, top Defense and State Dept officials, and RAND employees have colluded with Turkish, Israeli, Pakistani and Saudi agents. Crimes, many of which amount to treason, include espionage, blackmail, bribery, trading political favors, laundering money, trafficking in drugs, arms and nuclear secrets and weapons technology. Edmonds also says there were pre-9/11 discussions with Turkish officials on invading and dividing up Iraq, and that the CIA was aiding and abetting ‘bin Ladens’ and Mujahideen (now called Al Qaeda) right up to 9/11.

Scott Horton Interviews Philip Giraldi & Joe Lauria

In Pursuit of the Facts: Inviting Ms. Schakowsky to Join……. (Sibel Edmonds responds to Jan Schakowsky’s attack)

Who’s Afraid of Sibel Edmonds? Interview by Philip Giraldi

Source: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/nov/01/00006/

Sibel Edmonds has a story to tell. She went to work as a Turkish and Farsi translator for the FBI five days after 9/11. Part of her job was to translate and transcribe recordings of conversations between suspected Turkish intelligence agents and their American contacts. She was fired from the FBI in April 2002 after she raised concerns that one of the translators in her section was a member of a Turkish organization that was under investigation for bribing senior government officials and members of Congress, drug trafficking, illegal weapons sales, money laundering, and nuclear proliferation. She appealed her termination, but was more alarmed that no effort was being made to address the corruption that she had been monitoring.

A Department of Justice inspector general’s report called Edmonds’s allegations “credible,” “serious,” and “warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI.” Ranking Senate Judiciary Committee members Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have backed her publicly. “60 Minutes” launched an investigation of her claims and found them believable. No one has ever disproved any of Edmonds’s revelations, which she says can be verified by FBI investigative files.

John Ashcroft’s Justice Department confirmed Edmonds’s veracity in a backhanded way by twice invoking the dubious State Secrets Privilege so she could not tell what she knows. The ACLU has called her “the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America.”

But on Aug. 8, she was finally able to testify under oath in a court case filed in Ohio and agreed to an interview with The American Conservative based on that testimony. What follows is her own account of what some consider the most incredible tale of corruption and influence peddling in recent times. As Sibel herself puts it, “If this were written up as a novel, no one would believe it.”

* * *

PHILIP GIRALDI: We were very interested to learn of your four-hour deposition in the case involving allegations that Congresswoman Jean Schmidt accepted money from the Turkish government in return for political favors. You provided many names and details for the first time on the record and swore an oath confirming that the deposition was true.

Basically, you map out a corruption scheme involving U.S. government employees and members of Congress and agents of foreign governments. These agents were able to obtain information that was either used directly by those foreign governments or sold to third parties, with the proceeds often used as bribes to breed further corruption. Let’s start with the first government official you identified, Marc Grossman, then the third highest-ranking official at the State Department.

SIBEL EDMONDS: During my work with the FBI, one of the major operational files that I was transcribing and translating started in late 1996 and continued until 2002, when I left the Bureau. Because the FBI had had no Turkish translators, these files were archived, but were considered to be very important operations. As part of the background, I was briefed about why these operations had been initiated and who the targets were.

Grossman became a person of interest early on in the investigative file while he was the U.S. ambassador to Turkey [1994-97], when he became personally involved with operatives both from the Turkish government and from suspected criminal groups. He also had suspicious contact with a number of official and non-official Israelis. Grossman was removed from Turkey short of tour during a scandal referred to as “Susurluk” by the media. It involved a number of high-level criminals as well as senior army and intelligence officers with whom he had been in contact.

Another individual who was working for Grossman, Air Force Major Douglas Dickerson, was also removed from Turkey and sent to Germany. After he and his Turkish wife Can returned to the U.S., he went to work for Douglas Feith and she was hired as an FBI Turkish translator. My complaints about her connection to Turkish lobbying groups led to my eventual firing.

Grossman and Dickerson had to leave the country because a big investigation had started in Turkey. Special prosecutors were appointed, and the case was headlined in England, Germany, Italy, and in some of the Balkan countries because the criminal groups were found to be active in all those places. A leading figure in the scandal, Mehmet Eymür, led a major paramilitary group for the Turkish intelligence service. To keep him from testifying, Eymür was sent by the Turkish government to the United States, where he worked for eight months as head of intelligence at the Turkish Embassy in Washington. He later became a U.S. citizen and now lives in McLean, Virginia. The central figure in this scandal was Abdullah Catli. In 1989, while “most wanted” by Interpol, he came to the U.S., was granted residency, and settled in Chicago, where he continued to conduct his operations until 1996.

GIRALDI: So Grossman at this point comes back to the United States. He’s rewarded with the third-highest position at the State Department, and he allegedly uses this position to do favors for “Turkish interests”—both for the Turkish government and for possible criminal interests. Sometimes, the two converge. The FBI is aware of his activities and is listening to his phone calls. When someone who is Turkish calls Grossman, the FBI monitors that individual’s phone calls, and when the Turk calls a friend who is a Pakistani or an Egyptian or a Saudi, they monitor all those contacts, widening the net.

EDMONDS: Correct.

GIRALDI: And Grossman received money as a result. In one case, you said that a State Department colleague went to pick up a bag of money…

EDMONDS: $14,000

GIRALDI: What kind of information was Grossman giving to foreign countries? Did he give assistance to foreign individuals penetrating U.S. government labs and defense installations as has been reported? It’s also been reported that he was the conduit to a group of congressmen who become, in a sense, the targets to be recruited as “agents of influence.”

EDMONDS: Yes, that’s correct. Grossman assisted his Turkish and Israeli contacts directly, and he also facilitated access to members of Congress who might be inclined to help for reasons of their own or could be bribed into cooperation. The top person obtaining classified information was Congressman Tom Lantos. A Lantos associate, Alan Makovsky worked very closely with Dr. Sabri Sayari in Georgetown University, who is widely believed to be a Turkish spy. Lantos would give Makovsky highly classified policy-related documents obtained during defense briefings for passage to Israel because Makovsky was also working for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

GIRALDI: Makovsky is now working for the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, a pro-Israeli think tank.

EDMONDS: Yes. Lantos was at the time probably the most outspoken supporter of Israel in Congress. AIPAC would take out the information from Lantos that was relevant to Israel, and they would give the rest of it to their Turkish associates. The Turks would go through the leftovers, take what they wanted, and then try to sell the rest. If there were something relevant to Pakistan, they would contact the ISI officer at the embassy and say, “We’ve got this and this, let’s sit down and talk.” And then they would sell it to the Pakistanis.

GIRALDI: ISI—Pakistani intelligence—has been linked to the Pakistani nuclear proliferation program as well as to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

So the FBI was monitoring these connections going from a congressman to a congressman’s assistant to a foreign individual who is connected with intelligence to other intelligence people who are located at different embassies in Washington. And all of this information is in an FBI file somewhere?

EDMONDS: Two sets of FBI files, but the AIPAC-related files and the Turkish files ended up converging in one. The FBI agents believed that they were looking at the same operation. It didn’t start with AIPAC originally. It started with the Israeli Embassy. The original targets were intelligence officers under diplomatic cover in the Turkish Embassy and the Israeli Embassy. It was those contacts that led to the American Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations and then to AIPAC fronting for the Israelis. It moved forward from there.

GIRALDI: So the FBI was monitoring people from the Israeli Embassy and the Turkish Embassy and one, might presume, the Pakistani Embassy as well?

EDMONDS: They were the secondary target. They got leftovers from the Turks and Israelis. The FBI would intercept communications to try to identify who the diplomatic target’s intelligence chief was, but then, in addition to that, there are individuals there, maybe the military attaché, who had their own contacts who were operating independently of others in the embassy.

GIRALDI: So the network starts with a person like Grossman in the State Department providing information that enables Turkish and Israeli intelligence officers to have access to people in Congress, who then provide classified information that winds up in the foreign embassies?

EDMONDS: Absolutely. And we also had Pentagon officials doing the same thing. We were looking at Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. They had a list of individuals in the Pentagon broken down by access to certain types of information. Some of them would be policy related, some of them would be weapons-technology related, some of them would be nuclear-related. Perle and Feith would provide the names of those Americans, officials in the Pentagon, to Grossman, together with highly sensitive personal information: this person is a closet gay; this person has a chronic gambling issue; this person is an alcoholic. The files on the American targets would contain things like the size of their mortgages or whether they were going through divorces. One Air Force major I remember was going through a really nasty divorce and a child custody fight. They detailed all different kinds of vulnerabilities.

GIRALDI: So they had access to their personnel files and also their security files and were illegally accessing this kind of information to give to foreign agents who exploited the vulnerabilities of these people to recruit them as sources of information?

EDMONDS: Yes. Some of those individuals on the list were also working for the RAND Corporation. RAND ended up becoming one of the prime targets for these foreign agents.

GIRALDI: RAND does highly classified research for the U.S. government. So they were setting up these people for recruitment as agents or as agents of influence?

EDMONDS: Yes, and the RAND sources would be paid peanuts compared to what the information was worth when it was sold if it was not immediately useful for Turkey or Israel. They also had sources who were working in some midwestern Air Force bases. The sources would provide the information on CD’s and DVD’s. In one case, for example, a Turkish military attaché got the disc and discovered that it was something really important, so he offered it to the Pakistani ISI person at the embassy, but the price was too high. Then a Turkish contact in Chicago said he knew two Saudi businessmen in Detroit who would be very interested in this information, and they would pay the price. So the Turkish military attaché flew to Detroit with his assistant to make the sale.

GIRALDI: We know Grossman was receiving money for services.

EDMONDS: Yes. Sometimes he would give money to the people who were working with him, identified in phone calls on a first-name basis, whether it’s a John or a Joe. He also took care of some other people, including his contact at the New York Times. Grossman would brag, “We just fax to our people at the New York Times. They print it under their names.”

GIRALDI: Did Feith and Perle receive any money that you know of?

EDMONDS: No.

GIRALDI: So they were doing favors for other reasons. Both Feith and Perle were lobbyists for Turkey and also were involved with Israel on defense contracts, including some for Northrop Grumman, which Feith represented in Israel.

EDMONDS: They had arrangements with various companies, some of them members of the American Turkish Council. They had arrangements with Kissinger’s group, with Northrop Grumman, with former secretary of state James Baker’s group, and also with former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft.

The monitoring of the Turks picked up contacts with Feith, Wolfowitz, and Perle in the summer of 2001, four months before 9/11. They were discussing with the Turkish ambassador in Washington an arrangement whereby the U.S. would invade Iraq and divide the country. The UK would take the south, the rest would go to the U.S. They were negotiating what Turkey required in exchange for allowing an attack from Turkish soil. The Turks were very supportive, but wanted a three-part division of Iraq to include their own occupation of the Kurdish region. The three Defense Department officials said that would be more than they could agree to, but they continued daily communications to the ambassador and his defense attaché in an attempt to convince them to help.

Meanwhile Scowcroft, who was also the chairman of the American Turkish Council, Baker, Richard Armitage, and Grossman began negotiating separately for a possible Turkish protectorate. Nothing was decided, and then 9/11 took place.

Scowcroft was all for invading Iraq in 2001 and even wrote a paper for the Pentagon explaining why the Turkish northern front would be essential. I know Scowcroft came off as a hero to some for saying he was against the war, but he was very much for it until his client’s conditions were not met by the Bush administration.

GIRALDI: Armitage was deputy secretary of state at the time Scowcroft and Baker were running their own consulting firms that were doing business with Turkey. Grossman had just become undersecretary, third in the State hierarchy behind Armitage.

You’ve previouly alluded to efforts by Grossman, as well as high-ranking officials at the Pentagon, to place Ph.D. students. Can you describe that in more detail?

EDMONDS: The seeding operation started before Marc Grossman arrived at the State Department. The Turkish agents had a network of Turkish professors in various universities with access to government information. Their top source was a Turkish-born professor of nuclear physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was useful because MIT would place a bunch of Ph.D. or graduate-level students in various nuclear facilities like Sandia or Los Alamos, and some of them were able to work for the Air Force. He would provide the list of Ph.D. students who should get these positions. In some cases, the Turkish military attaché would ask that certain students be placed in important positions. And they were not necessarily all Turkish, but the ones they selected had struck deals with the Turkish agents to provide information in return for money. If for some reason they had difficulty getting a secuity clearance, Grossman would ensure that the State Department would arrange to clear them.

In exchange for the information that these students would provide, they would be paid $4,000 or $5,000. And the information that was sold to the two Saudis in Detroit went for something like $350,000 or $400,000.

GIRALDI: This corruption wasn’t confined to the State Department and the Pentagon—it infected Congress as well. You’ve named people like former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, now a registered agent of the Turkish government. In your deposition, you describe the process of breaking foreign-originated contributions into small units, $200 or less, so that the source didn’t have to be reported. Was this the primary means of influencing congressmen, or did foreign agents exploit vulnerabilities to get what they wanted using something like blackmail?

EDMONDS: In early 1997, because of the information that the FBI was getting on the Turkish diplomatic community, the Justice Department had already started to investigate several Republican congressmen. The number-one congressman involved with the Turkish community, both in terms of providing information and doing favors, was Bob Livingston. Number-two after him was Dan Burton, and then he became number-one until Hastert became the speaker of the House. Bill Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, was briefed on the investigations, and since they were Republicans, she authorized that they be continued.

Well, as the FBI developed more information, Tom Lantos was added to this list, and then they got a lot on Douglas Feith and Richard Perle and Marc Grossman. At this point, the Justice Department said they wanted the FBI to only focus on Congress, leaving the executive branch people out of it. But the FBI agents involved wanted to continue pursuing Perle and Feith because the Israeli Embassy was also connected. Then the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted, and everything was placed on the back burner.

But some of the agents continued to investigate the congressional connection. In 1999, they wiretapped the congressmen directly. (Prior to that point they were getting all their information secondhand through FISA, as their primary targets were foreigners.) The questionably legal wiretap gave the perfect excuse to the Justice Department. As soon as they found out, they refused permission to monitor the congressmen and Grossman as primary targets. But the inquiry was kept alive in Chicago because the FBI office there was pursuing its own investigation. The epicenter of a lot of the foreign espionage activity was Chicago.

GIRALDI: So the investigation stopped in Washington, but continued in Chicago?

EDMONDS: Yes, and in 2000, another representative was added to the list, Jan Schakowsky, the Democratic congresswoman from Illinois. Turkish agents started gathering information on her, and they found out that she was bisexual. So a Turkish agent struck up a relationship with her. When Jan Schakowsky’s mother died, the Turkish woman went to the funeral, hoping to exploit her vulnerability. They later were intimate in Schakowsky’s townhouse, which had been set up with recording devices and hidden cameras. They needed Schakowsky and her husband Robert Creamer to perform certain illegal operational facilitations for them in Illinois. They already had Hastert, the mayor, and several other Illinois state senators involved. I don’t know if Congresswoman Schakowsky ever was actually blackmailed or did anything for the Turkish woman.

GIRALDI: So we have a pattern of corruption starting with government officials providing information to foreigners and helping them make contact with other Americans who had valuable information. Some of these officials, like Marc Grossman, were receiving money directly. Others were receiving business favors: Pentagon associates like Doug Feith and Richard Perle had interests in Israel and Turkey. The stolen information was being sold, and the money that was being generated was used to corrupt certain congressmen to influence policy and provide still more information—in many cases information related to nuclear technology.

EDMONDS: As well as weapons technology, conventional weapons technology, and Pentagon policy-related information.

GIRALDI: You also have information on al-Qaeda, specifically al-Qaeda in Central Asia and Bosnia. You were privy to conversations that suggested the CIA was supporting al-Qaeda in central Asia and the Balkans, training people to get money, get weapons, and this contact continued until 9/11…

EDMONDS: I don’t know if it was CIA. There were certain forces in the U.S. government who worked with the Turkish paramilitary groups, including Abdullah Çatli’s group, Fethullah Gülen.

GIRALDI: Well, that could be either Joint Special Operations Command or CIA.

EDMONDS: Maybe in a lot of cases when they said State Department, they meant CIA?

GIRALDI: When they said State Department, they probably meant CIA.

EDMONDS: Okay. So these conversations, between 1997 and 2001, had to do with a Central Asia operation that involved bin Laden. Not once did anybody use the word “al-Qaeda.” It was always “mujahideen,” always “bin Laden” and, in fact, not “bin Laden” but “bin Ladens” plural. There were several bin Ladens who were going on private jets to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. The Turkish ambassador in Azerbaijan worked with them.

There were bin Ladens, with the help of Pakistanis or Saudis, under our management. Marc Grossman was leading it, 100 percent, bringing people from East Turkestan into Kyrgyzstan, from Kyrgyzstan to Azerbaijan, from Azerbaijan some of them were being channeled to Chechnya, some of them were being channeled to Bosnia. From Turkey, they were putting all these bin Ladens on NATO planes. People and weapons went one way, drugs came back.

GIRALDI: Was the U.S. government aware of this circular deal?

EDMONDS: 100 percent. A lot of the drugs were going to Belgium with NATO planes. After that, they went to the UK, and a lot came to the U.S. via military planes to distribution centers in Chicago and Paterson, New Jersey. Turkish diplomats who would never be searched were coming with suitcases of heroin.

GIRALDI: And, of course, none of this has been investigated. What do you think the chances are that the Obama administration will try to end this criminal activity?

EDMONDS: Well, even during Obama’s presidential campaign, I did not buy into his slogan of “change” being promoted by the media and, unfortunately, by the naïve blogosphere. First of all, Obama’s record as a senator, short as it was, spoke clearly. For all those changes that he was promising, he had done nothing. In fact, he had taken the opposite position, whether it was regarding the NSA’s wiretapping or the issue of national-security whistleblowers. We whistleblowers had written to his Senate office. He never responded, even though he was on the relevant committees.

As soon as Obama became president, he showed us that the State Secrets Privilege was going to continue to be a tool of choice. It’s an arcane executive privilege to cover up wrongdoing—in many cases, criminal activities. And the Obama administration has not only defended using the State Secrets Privilege, it has been trying to take it even further than the previous terrible administration by maintaining that the U.S. government has sovereign immunity. This is Obama’s change: his administration seems to think it doesn’t even have to invoke state secrets as our leaders are emperors who possess this sovereign immunity. This is not the kind of language that anybody in a democracy would use.

The other thing I noticed is how Chicago, with its culture of political corruption, is central to the new administration. When I saw that Obama’s choice of chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel, knowing his relationship with Mayor Richard Daley and with the Hastert crowd, I knew we were not going to see positive changes. Changes possibly, but changes for the worse. It was no coincidence that the Turkish criminal entity’s operation centered on Chicago. 
__________________________________________

Sibel Edmonds is a former FBI translator and the founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Philip Giraldi is a former CIA officer and The American Conservative’s Deep Background columnist.

BREAKING NEWS:  Orly Taitz, the dentist, real estate agent and attorney has had another of her “birther” lawsuits dismissed. Judge Clay Land of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia has dismissed Connie Rhodes vs. Thomas D. Macdonald which sought to prove that President Barack Obama is not a natural born American citizen. Additionally, the court deemed the case to be frivolous and threatened Taitz with sanctions should she commence another such action in his court. Let’s hear it for the judge.

THIS JUST IN:  Fox News has embarrassed itself once again. This week the Republican voicebox network took out newspaper ads the subject of which was last week’s crazy Tea-Bagger march in Washington D.C. The ads stated, “How did, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN miss this story?” Problem is, nobody missed it. All of the major networks covered the event. Fox News simply cannot be trusted to tell the truth. Now Fox, go wash your mouth out with soap.

BREAKING NEWS:  Rush Limbaugh has just jumped back aboard the racism bus. In fact, he now claims that America should go back to racially segregated buses. Speaking about an incident last week in which a white boy was beaten by black boys while on a bus Limbaugh said, “I think the guy’s wrong.  I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.” Do I see an advertiser boycott coming?

THIS JUST IN:  Tammy Bruce was on The O’Reilly Factor last week and said, “But ultimately, it comes down to his inability to govern, and the fact that he seems to have, it seems to me, some malevolence toward this country, which is unabated.” Honestly, Where does Fox find these morons?

BREAKING NEWS:  A Kentucky high school football coach used a school bus to transport 9 of his players to his Baptist Church to be baptized without seeking consent of their parents. The school district took no action because it insisted the trip was voluntary. Now, there is a case of separation of church and state for you. I wonder what that particular school district’s position was concerning Barack Obama’s speech to school children last week?

THIS JUST IN:  A panel of three federal appellate judges, all Republican appointees, has ruled that U.S. citizens who were held without charge during post-9/11 terror investigations can sue then-Attorney General John Ascroft for unlawful imprisonment. The Court ruled that Ashcroft violated the right s of citizens held on material-witness warrants when the government lacked probable cause to arrest them. The Court sai the detention policy was, “repugnant to the Constitution.” Will Fox News‘ Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck report about and condemn these actual U.S. internment camps or will they continue to simply fabricate a rumor that Obama wants internment camps?

BREAKING NEWS:  CNN reports, ” Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won the Values Voter Summit’s 2012 presidential straw poll Saturday, grabbing nearly 29 percent of the vote in a crowded field.Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Indiana Rep. Mike Pence each won roughly 12 percent of the 597 votes cast.” See the rest of the story, here. Poor Sarah Palin.

THIS JUST IN: The $ 63,500.00 question is, “Who is this Cathy Maples of Huntsville, Alabama, the high bidder in the Have Lunch With Sarah Palin auction on Ebay?” Enquiring minds want to know.

Please remember to click on the song link below to familiarize yourselves with the tune and to have more fun singing along to this Sarah Palin song parody also, too.

Wouldn’t It Be Nice song link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L–cqAI3IUI

WOULDN’T IT BE NICE

(sung to the Beach Boys song “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”)

Wouldn’t it be nice if Sarah Palin
Represents the brand new G.O.P.
And wouldn’t it be nice if daughter Bristol
Becomes the face of teen abstinency

You know that truth can be stranger than fiction
But this grabs me just like a drug addiction

Wouldn’t it be nice if Sarah Palin
Is the Red State candidate anew
The Democrats will win the next election
Then to Sarah, we can bid adieu

And though she’ll feel that life is such a bummer
She can spend her time with Joe the Plumber
Wouldn’t it be nice

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true
Sarah then could find a periodical to subscribe to
She could be learning
Instead of book burning

Wouldn’t it be nice

(bah ba ba ba ba ba bah)
(bah ba ba ba ba ba bah)

You know the more it seems we sing about it
It only makes it worse to live without it
So let’s sing about it
Wouldn’t it be nice

(bah ba ba ba ba ba bah)
(bah ba ba ba ba ba bah)
(bah ba ba ba ba ba bah)
(bah ba ba ba ba ba bah)
(fading)

Former CIA leaders, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, and George Tenet have sent a letter to President Obama asking him to reverse Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to investigate interrogation abuses allegedly committed by CIA personnel. (Joining these three were also former Directors John Deutch, James Woolsey, William Webster, and James Schlesinger.) These seven have expressed concern that the investigation will discourage CIA operatives from doing their job in the future. So I guess torture is ok if you are simply trying to do your job.

From an organizational morale perspective, these former CIA Directors have a legitimate point. Their subordinates are intentional put in the difficult position of gathering intelligence where the rules of the road are not always clear or at a minimum, vary greatly from what US law allows. In these post 9/11 suspected abuses, the CIA had, to its credit, consistently sought clarification from the Administration on what they could legally do. Thanks to patriotic chicken hawks like Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, and Jonathan Yoo, the CIA got the nod to stray way over the line. So there is a certain logic to the genesis of this letter.

Pursuing CIA operatives who may have tortured is pursuing the symptoms and not the disease. The investigation and prosecution should focus upon Goss, Tenet, and Hayden, and those who requested, formulated, or promoted enhanced interrogation. Waterboarding and violations of the Geneva Convention can not be justified as legal by any Executive Branch directive, and Goss, Tenet, and Hayden should have been expected to know this.

So for Goss, Tenet, and Hayden to sign this letter and claim the basis as hurting morale, we are seeing disingenuous words at their best, These three blind mice are really concerned about any investigation and the possibility of being included in the sweep themselves.

Sibel Edmonds testified under oath August 8, 2009. This segment covers her testimony regarding former Attorney General John Ashcroft claim of State Secrets to justify placing two gag orders on her. The first gag order was in response to her First Amendment case, the second when she was subpoenaed by 9/11 families regarding her knowledge of Saudi institutions and Al Qaeda financing.

VIDEO CLIP:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dG8cc-c0rU

http://my.nowpublic.com/world/sibel-edmonds-state-secrets-gag-order

SOURCE: See Video 1 of 5, and pgs 42-46 of the transcript:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7374

http://www.bradblog.com/Docs/SibelEdmondsDeposition_Transcript_080809.pdf

TRANSCRIPT, pgs 42-46:

Q     One of the things that I saw on your blog is something called the State Secrets Privilege gallery.  Do you know what I’m referring to?

A     That is on my personal Website that is public, JustACitizen.com, correct.

Q     Okay.  And when you talk about the State Secrets Privilege, I think I know what you mean by that.  Can you tell us what you’re referring to?

A     State Secrets Privilege is this arcane executive privilege that the government, United States government, invoked in my case twice in order to quash my court case, but also prevent the public knowledge of information I reported to Congress, to the Inspector General’s Office, and to the FBI and the Justice Department itself, and basically it acts as a gag order, and the only justification the U.S. government provided for it was “she may be right with whatever she knows and she believes is important and crucial, but because the information she has may threaten and affect certain U.S. diplomatic relations and national security, we are asking the courts and the Congress as executive privilege called State Secrets Privilege.

Q     Okay, and just to bring me up to date, you filed a lawsuit against the government at some point, correct?

A     Correct.

Q     And that was because of your termination by the FBI, right?

A     And my First Amendment rights, correct.

Q     And if I understand it correctly, the government used the State Secrets Privilege to get that lawsuit thrown out.

A     The first invocation, yes.

Q     Was there a second invocation?

A     Yes.  I was — my deposition was subpoenaed by a law firm called Motley Rice. I think it’s M-o-t-l-e-y, second word R-i-c-e, who represented thousands of 9/11 victims’ family members, and they subpoenaed my deposition, and I believe this was in 2004. That was when the government, FBI and the Justice Department, went to the judge who was sitting on my case, and asked him to quash it based on State Secrets Privilege, and they cited the State Secrets Privilege together with affidavits from the various individuals in the Justice Department, including the Attorney General, and asked the judge to quash that deposition for the second time.

Q     So these are lawyers who are representing families of the 9/11 victims, correct, who wanted to get information from you?

A     The lawyers of the family victims, yes, victims’ families, correct.

Q     And did you understand why they thought you had relevant information?

A     Macro level, yes.  I didn’t know what they were planning to ask specifically, but it has to do with certain Turkish lobby and organizations in the United States who also had certain dealings with Saudi Arabian related financial and lobby organizations in the United States and cases that would have been — that would have involved both Saudi Arabia and Turkey jointly were doing certain things here in the United States, but also outside the United States.

Q     Okay, and I think you said earlier basically the government prevented you from getting that information to the families of the 9/11 victims, correct?

A     Correct.  It’s been five years, but to my best of knowledge, they forced the party who was subpoenaing me to submit questions, and they said all those questions are classified and covered by the State Secrets Privilege and they invoked (inaudible.)

Somehow I missed this. It looks as if then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who went all round-up-all-the-AyRabs after 9/11, could be successfully sued for it:

A federal appeals court delivered a stinging rebuke Friday to the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 detention policies, ruling that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held liable for people who were wrongfully detained as material witnesses after 9/11.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the government’s improper use of material witnesses after Sept. 11 was ”repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history.”

The court found that a man who was detained as a witness in a federal terrorism case can sue Ashcroft for allegedly violating his constitutional rights. Abdullah al-Kidd, a U.S. citizen and former University of Idaho student, filed the lawsuit against Ashcroft and other officials in 2005, claiming his civil rights were violated when he was detained as a material witness for two weeks in 2003. …

The 9th Circuit judges said al-Kidd’s claims plausibly suggest that Ashcroft purposely used the material witness statute to detain suspects whom he wished to investigate and detain preventively.

”Sadly, however, even now, more than 217 years after the ratification of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, some confidently assert that the government has the power to arrest and detain or restrict American citizens for months on end, in sometimes primitive conditions, not because there is evidence that they have committed a crime, but merely because the government wishes to investigate them for possible wrongdoing, or to prevent them from having contact with others in the outside world,” Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. wrote. ”We find this to be repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history.”

The three judges? Were a Reagan appointee and two Bush appointees. Just sayin’.

Now this is significant for a number of reasons. First, government officials, under a concept called “qualified immunity,” have wide-ranging legal rights with respect to how they do their jobs. It’s almost impossible to sue a government official successfully on a misconduct claim. And yet our plaintiff, al-Kidd, appears to these judges to have scaled that particular wall:

”It’s a very big ruling, because qualified immunity is ordinarily a very robust form of protection,” said Richard Seamon, a professor at the University of Idaho College of Law and a former assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General. ”To overcome that immunity, you have to show that the defendant almost deliberately acted unconstitutionally to violate someone’s rights — no innocent mistakes.”

Another important angle is that not only can Ashcroft be sued, he also can be ordered to testify under oath, not only about what he did but perhaps also about the government’s detention plans in general, much of which, I’m sure, still hasn’t seen the light of day yet.

”The mere prospect of that causes a lot of concern for these officials, with the time and secrecy parts of that and all the publicity that this kind of thing attracts,” Seamon said. ”That’s exactly why qualified immunity exists, so these officials can be spared that.”

The judges said they also didn’t intend to dampen the ardor of prosecutors as they carried out their duties, and said they were mindful of the pressures face by the attorney general. But, they said, even qualified immunity doesn’t allow the attorney general to carry out national security functions completely free from any personal liability concerns.

The full 9th Circuit, or even the Supremes, could still overturn this, should the Justice Department continue to pursue it. But apparently it would be quite the legal stretch — dare I say “judicial activism” — for them to do so.

So, perhaps, at long last, someone who held a powerful position in government will be held accountable for blatantly unconstitutional actions. Prison is where Ashcroft belongs, but losing a bunch of money in a lawsuit would be better than nothing.

A 9th Circuit panel of judges ruled Ashcroft violated the rights of citizens held as material witnesses without cause

The ex-attorney general, John Ashcroft, has been denied general immunity from liability for the material witness arrests. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft talks to reporters after meeting with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence about the controversy regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, , at the Capitol in Washington (Thursday, June 21, 2009). A federal appeals court delivered a stinging rebuke Friday, Sept. 4, 2009, to the Bush administration’s detention policies after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, ruling that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held liable for people who were wrongfully detained as material witnesses. Photo: Lauren Victoria Burke/AP (via Miami Herald). Image may be subject to copyright.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that John Ashcroft violated the rights of U.S. citizens by ordering arrests on material witness warrants when the government lacked probable cause. The 3-judge panel also denied the ex-attorney general immunity from liability for his use of material witness warrants in national security investigations.

Related News Links:

• Ashcroft can be sued over arrests, appeals court rules
• Panel Rules Against Ashcroft in Detention Case

When their writers can’t get the facts straight, perhaps even deliberately distort them, who needs them?

A federal appeals court has ruled that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be sued by people who claim they were wrongfully detained as material witnesses after 9/11, and called the government practice “repugnant to the Constitution.”

All three judges on the panel have reputations as politically conservative jurists, with two appointed by former President George W. Bush and the third a Reagan appointee.

The ruling allows Abdullah al-Kidd, a U.S. citizen and former University of Idaho student, to proceed with a lawsuit that claims his constitutional rights were violated when he was detained in 2003 as a material witness in a federal terrorism case.

In 2003, al-Kidd, a Kansas-born father of two,  was arrested by federal agents at Dulles International Airport in Washington. He said he was jailed 16 days in high-security cells that were lit 24 hours a day. He also was strip-searched several times, he said, before he was extradited to Idaho and released to the custody of his wife by a federal judge.

Ashcroft had asked that the matter be dismissed, saying he was entitled to absolute immunity from the lawsuit because his position at the Department of Justice was prosecutorial. If the ruling stands, Ashcroft could be forced to submit to a deposition.

[AP]

Los Angeles Times:

Then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft violated the rights of U.S. citizens in the fevered wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by ordering arrests on material witness warrants when the government lacked probable cause, a federal appeals court said in a scathing opinion Friday.

In a ruling that said Ashcroft could be sued for prosecutorial abuses, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the former attorney general immunity from liability for how he used the material witness warrants in national security investigations.

Members of the panel, all appointees of Republican presidents, characterized Ashcroft’s detention policy as “repugnant to the Constitution, and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history.”

Read more

Washington Post:

A Muslim man who was detained for weeks as a material witness in a terrorism case can sue former attorney general John D. Ashcroft, a federal appeals court in California ruled Friday as it rejected a bid for absolute legal immunity by the onetime Cabinet official.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit gave a green light to the case filed by Abdullah al-Kidd, a U.S. citizen who was taken into custody at a ticket counter at Washington Dulles International Airport in 2003, while he was on his way to Saudi Arabia to study Islamic law and Arabic.

Read more

And this is not even for the song he wrote and for some reason performed (“Let the Eagle Soar”) but do not watch the video if you have just had a meal.  Or if you are planning on eating, or.. you know what, watch the video if you are having trouble staying on a diet, because you won’t be hungry afterwards.

But that crime against humanity aside, Ashcroft looks to be in a bit of hot water for saying that we should arrest people that essentially just looked suspicious, no real reason was needed to arrest and hold a number of people on the material witness statute.  Ashcroft is being sued, but has claimed immunity and that he should not be held responsible since he himself did not arrest everyone that was picked up, he merely told law enforcement to go pick people up.   Sort of like when you hire a hit-man, you are of course absolved of any responsibility in the murder that takes place after.

From The Washington Post:

by Carrie Johnson

At the heart of the lawsuit is a strategy launched by the Justice Department and the FBI after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Ashcroft, the attorney general at the time, asserted that authorities would take “suspected terrorists off the street” and engage in “aggressive detention of lawbreakers and material witnesses” to disrupt possible al-Qaeda plots. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III cited al-Kidd’s detention in testimony to Congress about the bureau’s success in protecting national security.

Al-Kidd and his attorneys argued that Ashcroft knew or should have known that the material witness statute was being used in a sweeping and abusive manner. Ashcroft, who is being defended by the Justice Department, maintained that the case should be dismissed because he had no personal involvement in al-Kidd’s detention. He also argued that as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer at the time, he enjoyed broad protection from lawsuits.

But Judges Milan D. Smith Jr. and David R. Thompson disagreed, writing that Ashcroft was not entitled to absolute legal immunity and that authorities had detained al-Kidd in part to conduct an investigation of his activities, without probable cause. Judge Carlos T. Bea wrote a partial dissent. All three judges were appointed by Republican presidents.

_________________________________________________________

Good heavens, you mean immunity actually has limits?  Well who would’ve known that.  We all thought that arresting American citizens without probable cause was just the way things were.

And people worry about the new President being a dictator.