Head-spinning post on TomDispatch - A Journalist Writing Bloody Murder…

[whometense]

And No One Notices

A must read: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=174764

Tomgram: The Seymour Hersh Mystery

A Journalist Writing Bloody Murder…
And No One Notices
By Tom Engelhardt

Let me see if I've got this straight. Perhaps two years ago, an "informal" meeting of "veterans" of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal -- holding positions in the Bush administration -- was convened by Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams. Discussed were the "lessons learned" from that labyrinthine, secret, and illegal arms-for-money-for-arms deal involving the Israelis, the Iranians, the Saudis, and the Contras of Nicaragua, among others -- and meant to evade the Boland Amendment, a congressionally passed attempt to outlaw Reagan administration assistance to the anti-communist Contras. In terms of getting around Congress, the Iran-Contra vets concluded, the complex operation had been a success -- and would have worked far better if the CIA and the military had been kept out of the loop and the whole thing had been run out of the Vice President's office.

Subsequently, some of those conspirators, once again with the financial support and help of the Saudis (and probably the Israelis and the Brits), began running a similar operation, aimed at avoiding congressional scrutiny or public accountability of any sort, out of Vice President Cheney's office. They dipped into "black pools of money," possibly stolen from the billions of Iraqi oil dollars that have never been accounted for since the American occupation began. Some of these funds, as well as Saudi ones, were evidently funneled through the embattled, Sunni-dominated Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to the sort of Sunni jihadi groups ("some sympathetic to al-Qaeda") whose members might normally fear ending up in Guantanamo and to a group, or groups, associated with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.

All of this was being done as part of a "sea change" in the Bush administration's Middle Eastern policies aimed at rallying friendly Sunni regimes against Shiite Iran, as well as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Syrian government -- and launching secret operations to undermine, roll back, or destroy all of the above. Despite the fact that the Bush administration is officially at war with Sunni extremism in Iraq (and in the more general Global War on Terror), despite its support for the largely Shiite government, allied to Iran, that it has brought to power in Iraq, and despite its dislike for the Sunni-Shiite civil war in that country, some of its top officials may be covertly encouraging a far greater Sunni-Shiite rift in the region.

Imagine. All this and much more (including news of U.S. military border-crossings into Iran, new preparations that would allow George W. Bush to order a massive air attack on that land with only 24-hours notice, and a brief window this spring when the staggering power of four U.S. aircraft-carrier battle groups might be available to the President in the Persian Gulf) was revealed, often in remarkable detail, just over a week ago in "The Redirection," a Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker. Hersh, the man who first broke the My Lai story in the Vietnam era, has never been off his game since. In recent years, from the Abu Ghraib scandal on, he has consistently released explosive news about the plans and acts of the Bush administration...

Think that's enough motivation to steal an election?

[TomInTib]

1. Read the complete article, folks.

K&R and off to the Page!

Great find, whometense.

I am going to email that one all over the place.

[blm]

2. This is an overall problem for left media, too. They don't DO groundswell and

saturation over seriously important stories like this.

If the shoe was on the other foot, the RW would have swarmed on such an enormous issue to use against the Dems and the left. Hell - they make up groundswell stories just for practice and can push a lie into the mainstream media with more fervor than the left can push grave truths.

[druidity33]

3. wow

highly recommended article! Should be spread far and wide...

k&r

[babylonsister]

4. Thanks, whometense! nt

[aquart]

5. Israel helped to secretly fund Hezbullah?

Wanna run that by me again?

[_dynamicdems]

6. Unbelievably scarey stuff.

There is pure evil in this administration. I'm going to read every Hersh piece I can find now.

[beachmom]

7. Thanks for the article, Whometense. K & R n/t

[annabanana]

8. Why does it get ignored? Is it still heresy to speak ill of the

Reagan years? Is he still wreathed in swaths of Glory? (Talk about your phoney contructs)

[whometense]

13. Good question.

I think a lot of people can't stand to believe their leaders are capable of criminality on such a mindblowing scale. I think it's so frightening that they don't want to believe it's true. I think it makes people feel truly powerless to hear about it. When I saw Hersh on TV talking about the story I had an instinctive impulse to turn it off - had the same reaction reading the article. Had to make myself listen and pay attention.

And then there's the question of who a person can trust. It's all too easy to say that everyone's involved, what can I do? I believe that cultivating that public cynicism is one of the greatestevils of the Bush administration's many evils. Getting people to throw up their hands in despair, or bicker about sideshows.

[ginnyinWI]

16. that's what I was thinking this morning

When I heard some comments on Washington Journal. It is a natural human response: we don't want to believe that we are being governed by a bunch of thieves and cutthroats. We just don't want to believe it. So we let those sleeping dogs lie.

People on the left feel worn out and powerless because this administration has been around so long and we continue to see a steady parade of bad news every day. We are numb. People on the right are trying desperately to hang onto belief in their heros, and that's getting harder and harder to do. Everybody just wishes this administration was over. We don't want to hear any more bad news, we just want to be able to turn over a fresh page and start over!

[blm]

23. Turning over a fresh page sounds good but allows the dirt and mold to fester and

it will continue to destroy those 'fresh' pages, too, eventually.

Clinton tried turning the page and let BushInc and global terrorism grow stronger because of his decision to protect Poppy and his cronies from any sunshine.

[MGKrebs]

25. Ah, the obligatory Clinton bash.

Every thread has to have one!

[blm]

26. Are 'fresh' pages really a good thing or do they temporarily MASK decay of the entire book?

And can you name a BETTER example than the fresh page turning by Clinton in 1993 when he decided against pursuing all the outstanding matters left to his administration on IranContra, BCCI, Iraqgate and CIA drugrunning?

[blm]

17. Yes. And corpmedia spent the summer of 2004 anointing him as a saint, and

too many Democrats were afraid then, as they were afraid back in the 80s and 90s to spoil that view by allowing the TRUTH to emerge.

It was a lonely battle for those Democrats who worked tirelessly to uncover the truth about the Reagan and Bush administrations. Too many Dems sided with and actively protected both Reagan and Bush.

[LEW]

9. This is too much to digest in one reading

Wow - Gives you alot to think about and answers some of my questions that have never been answered.

[whometense]

14. I know what you mean.

I've read it three times and still can't wrap my head around it. He pulls a lot of info together in a way I haven't seen done before.

[guruoo]

10. k&r

[RedEarth]

11. Folks, if you haven't read Seymour M. Hersh's article, you should.......

It's one of the most mind-blowing articles I've read. If what Hersh is writing is true, it not only should be front page news, but there should be congressional investigations into what this administration is doing in Iraq and the rest of the middle east.....it's an enormous tangled web they're weaving.


...........link to Seymour M. Hersh's article

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh?printable=true

[whometense]

12. Thanks for posting that link -

if that story had been written by almost anyone but Hersh it would strain credulity.

It's why I mourn every day that Kerry was cheated out of his presidency - he's one of the few people who has the background and understanding of this particular tangled web to be able to start teasing it apart.

[karynnj]

19. Not too mention having the honesty and integrity to do it because

it needs to be done. Now that the Democrats have the Senate and the House they at least have the possibility to investigate it.

The question is whether the party as a whole has the strength of character and the honesty to pursue this knowing that the majority of Americans prefer these things swept under the rug.

It may also be that parts of the Democratic party and the media were complicit in hiding much of this for the last several decades. Many Democrats supported backing the Contras - at least legally. There is a fundamental question of what type of country we really want to be - and in 2004, with media help and Republican dirty tricks, we chose the wrong way.

[blm]

27. It's taken DECADES to pull off and the corpmedia HELPED BushInc do it by

always moving away from the big stories that were actually revealing the dirty dealings that were driving our foreign policy and military decisions.

[annabanana]

15. for the Morning Meat Eaters:. . .

(kick)

[Karenina]

18. Red meat!!!

:kick:

[ProSense]

20. Head-spinning is right! Thanks for posting. Here's something

curious.

[donkeyotay]

21. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail

I love Sy, so don't get me wrong, but this reads like a gossip column, like soft porn for teenage game-bots. For all the covert ops, the special forces, the mercenaries, the intrigue - bottom line, does it work? Did all the previous abuses of secrecy get us anywhere, or does it just feed the monster, the men who sit in offices and plan death on a massive scale?

I am disgusted by this. I am disgusted that killing millions of people is our plan. Tell me again, why? Our oil? For Israel? I'm so happy that Washington has completely lost sight of the American citizen. Consume oil, mortgage you children or sell them into this service, and ask no questions. Who benefits? The defense contractors and all the various payrolls of spooks. All the shakers and movers, the planners and profiteers. Who pays? All the people. They are planning on killing millions of people in the middle east, and they are destroying America in order to do so. We lose. Freedom loses. The merchants of death profit.

[whometense]

22. It is disgusting.

I am also thinking of the parade of supplicants to AIPAC. As someone who is jewish, and who has a pack of relatives living in Israel, I find the kowtowing to AIPAC revolting.

AIPAC does not represent the opinion or values of most american jews, and that's a fact.

[LongTomH]

24. Never forget....................

........Iran-Contra was part of a strategy to control South and Central America that included support for repressive regimes and right-wing death squads.

I believe this article, or a similar one, appeared on DU a few weeks ago:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/28/AR2007012801353.html

SAN MIGUEL, El Salvador -- José Wilfredo Salgado says he collected baby skulls as trophies in the 1980s, when he fought as a government soldier in El Salvador's civil war. They worked well as candleholders, he recalls, and better as good-luck charms.

The Reagan administration, fearing a communist uprising, built up El Salvador's military with weapons, training and hundreds of advisers to serve as a surrogate force against what it described as encroaching Soviet and Cuban influence in Central America. To this day, Chica Argueta seethes when he recalls the sight of U.S. planes, knowing that they were there to fight a communist threat that he believes was overblown.

The war's degeneration into senseless malice was seared into Chica Argueta's mind in a tiny mountain town called El Mozote. In December 1981, a U.S.-trained battalion of government troops tortured and executed about 500 villagers there; the names of dozens of victims -- many under the age of 2 -- are now etched on the wall of the rebuilt church.

This guy is now mayor of San Miguel.

Chica Argueta and his fellow guerrillas arrived in El Mozote several days after the massacre and, fearing a return of the soldiers, hurriedly buried the dead beneath a thin layer of adobe bricks. Salgada arrived months later, after rains had unearthed the corpses, and piled skulls into sacks as souvenirs. He had "lost his love of humanity," he recalled, but a kernel of doubt was forming. He was conflicted, as he is today.

[ClayZ]

28. 3. Congress in the Dark:

3. Congress in the Dark: Hersh claims that, with the help of Saudi National Security Adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan (buddy to the Bushes and Dick Cheney's close comrade-in-arms), the people running the black-ops programs out of Cheney's office have managed to run circles around any possibility of Congressional oversight, leaving the institution completely "in the dark," which is undoubtedly exactly where Congress wanted to be for the last six years. Is this still true? The non-reaction to the Hersh piece isn't exactly encouraging.

[byronius]

29. Wow. Read the whole article. Brilliant. Fucking Scary.

[ProudDad]

30. It's so wonderful to hear

that the lessons of Iran/Contra were learned so well by the present administration.

No suprises here... Nothing to see here... everybody just move along...



:sarcasm:



I learned the lessons of Iran/Contra well. If the right-wing capitalist cabal that owns this country (and by extension, the world) wants to fuck us over, they will -- law or no law, right or no right...

[LSK]

31. K&R