What stories did John Mark Karr knock off the Front Page?

[Octafish]

I remember something about someone named Lamont.

[Quakerfriend]

1. Yup.

And, the oil spill on the Lebanese coast.

[Octafish]

12. Lebanon Oil Spill Rivals Exxon Valdez

Clean-up crews recover some of massive Lebanon oil spill

Clean-up crews have recovered about 100 tons of oil along the coast of a historic Lebanese port city after a massive spill caused by Israel’s bombing of a power plant, the European Union indicated last week.

The clean-up by European and Lebanese teams in Jbeil, north of the capital Beirut, represents just a fraction of the 10,000 to 15,000 tons of fuel estimated to have leaked from the Jiyeh plant. The spill has polluted about 200 kilometers of the Lebanese and Syrian coasts, the EU said.

“Up to now, a total amount of recovered oil is close to about 100 tons in Jbeil, where the European team and Lebanese civil defense worked together”, a European Union (EU) statement said.
Lebanese environmental group Green Line has described the spill as the biggest environmental disaster in the Mediterranean basin, but EU officials said the scale of the threat is not yet known.

CONTINUED...

http://www.mmorning.com/ArticleC.asp?Article=3906&CategoryID=2

Thanks for the reminder, Quakerfriend.

More on the subject:

Lebanon Oil Spill Rivals Exxon Valdez

[hootinholler]

29. Yeah, but technically that one

Never made it onto the front page to begin with.

-Hoot

[meldroc]

2. There was also that court ruling about NSA wiretaps...

Nothing big, just an activist judge opining that George W. Bush broke a law with a clause stating violations are felonies punishable by up to 10 years in Federal PMITA prison...

[Octafish]

13. NSA wiretap program ruled unconstitutional

NSA wiretap program ruled unconstitutional

Judge calls a halt to massive survelliance program

Grant Gross

August 17, 2006 (IDG News Service) -- A federal judge has ruled that a U.S. National Security Agency program to wiretap telephone and Internet traffic of U.S. residents is unconstitutional, illegal and must be stopped.

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on Thursday ordered the NSA and "its agents, employees, representatives and any other persons or entities in active concert or participation" with the agency to halt its Terrorist Surveillance Program.

The program allowed the NSA to monitor communications between U.S. residents and people in other countries with suspected ties to terrorist group al Qaeda, without getting court-ordered warrants.

The program, authorized by President George W. Bush in 2002 in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of freedom of speech and association and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures, Taylor wrote in her order. The NSA program also violates the separation of powers clause in the Constitution, she wrote, as well as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which set courts to issue warrants for wiretaps focused on counterintelligence.

"The public interest is clear, in this matter," Taylor wrote. "It is the upholding of our Constitution."

CONTINUED...

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=business_intelligence&articleId=9002522&taxonomyId=9

Oh yeah. I'd forgot that one, meldroc. Thanks for the reminder.

[hootinholler]

30. LOL, I misread the red tag in the 'cover' pic.

I thought it said Frist edition.

-Hoot

[blm]

15. THAT'S THE ONE!!!

And remember, Ramsey is a faithful GOP, Homeland Security was part of the arrest made, and Karr was KNOWN in th epast for his fantasies, but popped only THEN?

[leveymg]

3. Same with the embryo liquid bomb plot that hadn't even lost its tail yet

Wasn't there a war in Lebanon that cost Israel a zillion shekels in lost moral stature?

[Octafish]

14. Why Bush will Choose War Against Iran

Trapped By His Own Rhetoric

Why Bush will Choose War Against Iran

By RAY CLOSE
Former CIA analyst<[br />Counterpunch Weekend Edition
August 26 / 27, 2006

Like many people, I find it extremely difficult to believe that President Bush could actually do anything so crazy as to launch a military attack against Iran, and that even if he wanted to, the Congress, the Pentagon, and the American public would ever countenance such action. But I remember in the spring of 2002 writing a "Dear Friends" memo just like this one predicting that the apparent intentions of the Bush Administration to invade Iraq would certainly turn out to be nothing but a bluff, and supporting that assertion by listing all the reasons why actually doing so would lead to utter disaster. Many of my friends told me at the time that I was missing the point --- regime change was DEFINITELY going to happen, and I was exaggerating the downside consequences. The problem is that today the downside risks of attacking Iran seem even more horrendous ---- and yet? (As George Will said last Sunday to George Stephanopoulos -- "When was the last time this president ever worried about getting approval in advance from the Congress or the public?") It makes me nervous when my president truly believes he is carrying out the will of God.

SNIP...

4. So this is the calculus facing Bush:

a. He has vowed that he will not leave office without first ensuring that Iran cannot become a nuclear power. He has probably given the leaders of Israel a similar promise --- privately and perhaps explicitly. That means that he is effectively committed to attack Iran militarily before January 2009 if all other means of accomplishing the objective fail --- which they will. He believes deeply that Iran poses an existential threat to our ally Israel and an extremely dangerous threat to the American people, as well. Bush also believes that Iran is determined to sabotage American hopes of establishing a "new Middle East" ---- by covert support of anti-American terrorist elements such as Hizballah and Hamas --- backed up by the added power implicit in its eventual possession of nuclear weapons. Given Bush's overarching dedication to "winning the Global War on Terrorism", the neutralization of Iran has become a sine qua non, equal if not higher on his list of priorities than "victory" in Iraq --- another impossibility that he is stubbornly unwilling to recognize, even privately --- much less acknowledge publicly.

b. Bush presently intends (with little faith or sincerity) to exhaust all opportunities to achieve his objectives by diplomatic means or through economic sanctions. Failing those, he will attempt to achieve his purposes by intimidation --- by raising the threat of military attack. This will only stimulate more internal support for the regime inside Iran and more international opposition to U.S. policies, especially in the Muslim world. Without question, moreover, an escalating danger of US-Iranian military confrontation will greatly intensify internal and regional opposition to US objectives in Iraq. (Note: A mystifying disconnect in logic persists on this point in Bush's mind.)

c. The best hope for avoidance of war with Iran (the catastrophic consequences of which are too numerous and wide-ranging even to catalog) will be opposition to the idea from the U.S. military and from American politicians of both parties who have an appreciation of the weakened state of U.S. defense forces. I am told, on the other hand, that Bush has been persuaded by some military advisers that STRATCOM (Strategic Air Command) has a workable plan for a comprehensive attack to be launched almost simultaneously against 1500 targets in Iran that will effectively prevent any Iranian retaliation, and will obviate the need for a major ground operation or post-conflict occupation. (The logic of this strategy apparently depends on the hope that destruction of Iran's nuclear potential and its conventional military capabilities in a spectacular display of shock and awe will trigger an internal revolt against the present government, with moderate pro-western elements standing ready to seize power in the name of freedom and democracy. This must be another fantasy dreamed up in the twisted minds of people like Michael Ledeen and other neocon illusionists.)

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/close08262006.html

Thanks, Mark! What liquid bomb plot?

[OzarkDem]

4. Coingate & Tom Noe trial in Ohio

Watch the GOP controlled news media jump through every hoop to avoid covering Noe's upcoming trial.

Rove and Mehlman have both made several trips to Toledo this summer - where the case is being tried. Toledo Blade seems to be soft-pedaling the story trying to distance Noe from the GOP, every other newspaper in Ohio is trying to bury it.

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=SRRARECOINS2

[Octafish]

16. Politics of ethics play out on trail

Gee. Do you think this is something the Democratic Leadership should be talking about?

In public, I mean.

Politics of ethics play out on trail

Strickland and Blackwell try to put selves on right side of state, national scandals

By Dennis J. Willard
Beacon Journal Columbus Bureau

COLUMBUS - When Ted Strickland focuses on other issues in stump speeches and omits any reference to the culture of corruption and ethical problems in Columbus and Washington he hears about it anyway.

``People come up to me and ask me about it,'' the Democratic candidate for governor said.

They want to talk about Bob Taft, the first governor to be found guilty of ethical charges while in office, or Tom Noe, the Republican fundraiser and the coin collector who received more than $55 million in unbid contracts and is scheduled for trial in October.

Some ask about the $200 million-plus lost through sweetheart deals at the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation or U.S. Rep. Bob Ney, R-Heath, and his golf trip to Scotland with Jack Abramoff, the convicted federal lobbyist. Others raise the specter of the war in Iraq and blame President Bush for misleading the American public.

CONTINUED...

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/nation/15373811.htm

Thanks for the reminder, OzarkDem. We have to forgive our Repuke fiends. They are "complicated" people, subject to a different set of rules. Either that or they're hypocrites, at best; traitors, most likely.

[bullimiami]

5. it also further displayed how purposefully inept and deceptive the msm is

they kept promoting the idea that karr had something to do with ramsey when even 1 minute of critical thinking showed him to be a whacko.

SURPRISE! charges dropped, noone could have ever predicted it.

[Octafish]

17. Ben Bagdikian: 'The Media Monopoly'

Who owns the media? The same people who own Bush.



Bagdikian pegged Corporate McPravda way before it was obvious to Academia or America.

The Media Monopoly

The Man Who Sold the War

Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war

JAMES BAMFORD

James Bamford's November 17th, 2005 profile of John Rendon, "The Man Who Sold the War," (RS988) won the 2006 National Magazine Award in the reporting category.

The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand.

On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting pensively in a padded chair. The officer then stretched a black rubber tube, pleated like an accordion, around the man's chest and another across his abdomen. Finally, he slipped a thick cuff over the man's brachial artery, on the inside of his upper arm.

Strapped to the polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein. For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale. Answering yes and no to a series of questions, he insisted repeatedly that he was a civil engineer who had helped Saddam's men to secretly bury tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The illegal arms, according to al-Haideri, were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, even stashed beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest medical facility in Baghdad.

It was damning stuff -- just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for. If the charges were true, they would offer the White House a compelling reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. That's why the Pentagon had flown a CIA polygraph expert to Pattaya: to question al-Haideri and confirm, once and for all, that Saddam was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.

CONTINUED...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/8798997/the_man_who_sold_the_war/

Thanks for understanding, bullimiami.

The Truth will set us free.

And it will jail the guilty.

[burythehatchet]

6. Does this qualify?

http://www.projo.com/news/content/projo_20060819_battles19.32a5220.html

Judge overturns verdict against Custer Battles

The Rhode Island military contractor had been the first U.S. company convicted of civil-fraud in connection with the war in Iraq.

01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, August 19, 2006

BY MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A federal judge has overturned a $10-million jury verdict against a Rhode Island military contractor accused of defrauding the U.S. government in the initial months of the Iraq war. The verdict, awarded in March against Fairfax-based Custer Battles LLC, had been the first civil-fraud verdict arising from the Iraq war. Custer Battles based most of its operations in Rhode Island.

A former Custer Battles employee filed the lawsuit under a whistleblower statute, alleging that Custer Battles used shell companies and false invoices to vastly overstate its expenses on a $3-million contract to assist in establishing a new currency to replace the old Iraqi dinar used during Saddam Hussein's regime.

The verdict reached $10 million because the law calls for triple damages, plus penalties, fines and legal costs. But U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, in a ruling made public yesteday ruled that Custer Battles' accusers failed to prove that the U.S. government was ever defrauded. Any fraud that occurred was perpetrated instead against the Coalition Provisional Authority, formed shortly after the war to run Iraq during the occupation until an Iraqi government was established.



:bluebox: :bluebox: :bluebox: :bluebox:
Oh yes, the ruling judge in this case also issued this ruling:

On Thursday, May 18, 2006 Ellis dismissed a lawsuit filed by Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen, against the CIA and three private companies allegedly involved with his kidnapping, transport, and torture in Kabul. Ellis explained his belief that a public trial would "present a grave risk of injury to national security"<2>, though acknowledging that:

if El-Masri's allegations are true or essentially true, then all fair-minded people, including those who believe that state secrets must be protected, that this lawsuit cannot proceed, and that renditions are a necessary step to take in this war, must also agree that El-Masri has suffered injuries as a result of our country's mistake and deserves a remedy.<3>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.S._Ellis,_III
:bluebox: :bluebox: :bluebox: :bluebox:

[Octafish]

18. Suicide finding troubles family of colonel who was working on a corruption

This happened before the recent brouhaha, but the death of Col. Westhusing should be front page news. And his killer(s) should be brought to justice.

Officer's death leaves questions

Suicide finding troubles family of colonel who was working on a corruption case

By T. CHRISTIAN MILLER
Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - One hot, dusty day last June, Col. Ted Westhusing was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad, Iraq, airport, a single gunshot wound to the head.

The Army concluded that he committed suicide with his service pistol. At the time, he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq.

The Army closed its case. But the questions continue.

Westhusing, 44, was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics, a professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to teach his students better. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.

So it was only natural that Westhusing acted when he learned of possible corruption by U.S. contractors in Iraq. A few weeks before he died, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that a private security company he oversaw had cheated the U.S. government and committed human rights violations. Westhusing confronted the contractor and reported the concerns to superiors, who launched an investigation.

In e-mail to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. has come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military.

SNIP...

Westhusing's family and friends are troubled that he died at Camp Dublin, where he was without a bodyguard, surrounded by the same contractors he suspected of wrongdoing. They wonder why the manager who discovered Westhusing's body and picked up his weapon was not himself tested for gunpowder residue.

CONTINUED...

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3487227.html

Thanks for understanding, burythehatchet. Oh, yeah. That qualifies.

OTOH...

DIM DRUNK UNQUALIFIED
FOR ANY THING.

[blm]

20. HOLY CRAP - I missed this one completely. TYPICAL mo for the BFEE and

their corporate cronies.

bury and Octa, these articles have GOT to be reposted and combined as a new thread.

[burythehatchet]

21. This will go down as the greatest heist since the S&L job.

Perfectly planned, perfectly executed, the perfect crime.

[electropop]

7. His job was to distract from Judge Taylor's anti-wiretap ruling.

He did a heckuva a job, didn't he?

:grr:

It sure would be interesting to follow the money on this one.

[dogday]

9. My thoughts exactly!

that was the news of the day....

[Octafish]

22. Remember the 'Suicided' Euro telecom guys who discovered bugs?

Gee. Nothing to hear here.

Two Strange Deaths in European Wiretapping Scandal

By Paolo Pontoniere and Jeffrey Klein, New America Media
Posted on August 19, 2006, Printed on August 30, 2006

Just after noon on Friday, July 21, Adamo Bove -- head of security at Telecom Italia, the country's largest telecommunications firm -- told his wife he had some errands to run as he left their Naples apartment. Hours later, police found his car parked atop a freeway overpass. Bove's body lay on the pavement some 100 feet below.

Bove was a master at detecting hidden phone networks. Recently, at the direction of Milan prosecutors, he'd used mobile phone records to trace how a "Special Removal Unit" composed of CIA and SISMI (the Italian CIA) agents abducted Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric, and flew him to Cairo where he was tortured. The Omar kidnapping and the alleged involvement of 26 CIA agents, whom prosecutors seek to arrest and extradite, electrified Italian media. U.S. media noted the story, then dropped it.

The first Italian press reports after Bove's death said the 42-year-old had committed suicide. Bove, according to unnamed sources, was depressed about his imminent indictment by Milan prosecutors. But prosecutors immediately, and uncharacteristically, set the record straight: Bove was not a target; in fact, he was prosecutors' chief source. Bove, prosecutors said, was helping them investigate his own bosses, who were orchestrating an illegal wiretapping bureau and the destruction of incriminating digital evidence. One Telecom executive had already been forced out when he was caught conducting these illicit operations, as well as selling intercepted information to a business intelligence firm.

About 16 months earlier, in March of 2005, Costas Tsalikidis, a 38-year-old software engineer for Vodaphone in Greece had just discovered a highly sophisticated bug embedded in the company's mobile network. The spyware eavesdropped on the prime minister's and other top officials' cell phone calls; it even monitored the car phone of Greece's secret service chief. Others bugged included civil rights activists, the head of Greece's "Stop the War" coalition, journalists and Arab businessmen based in Athens. All the wiretapping began about two months before the Olympics were hosted by Greece in August 2004, according to a subsequent investigation by the Greek authorities.

CONTINUED...

www.alternet.org/story/40485/

[bobthedrummer]

8. Let's recall some of the things reported prior to Mr. Karr.

Israel/Lebanon, Israel/Gaza, Iraq civil war, Afghanistan US led operations against Taliban, Iran and UN re: nuclear program, G8 meeting, US economic state, N. Korea, China, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Japan, France, Italy, Germany, U.K., Cuba, Ukraine, Poland, DR Congo, Sudan, Mexico, Venezuela-well a lot of places were reporting things from outside Homeland...Abramoff, Plame, NSA, OBL, energy price spikes, unemployment, global warming...

[Octafish]

23. They're Even Dumber Than We Thought: The Five Morons Revisited

That's a good start, Drummerman.

They're Even Dumber Than We Thought

The Five Morons Revisited

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Counterpunch August 30, 2006

When the neocons launched the Bush administration's invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and announced plans for invading Syria and Iran, I labeled Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Rice "the five Morons." With the passage of time I see that I over-estimated their mental capabilities.

The "cakewalk" war has now lasted longer than World War II with Nazi Germany, and no end is in sight. It has cost the US taxpayers $310 billion in out-of-pocket costs with many additional hundreds of billions coming due in veterans' medical bills and other expenses yet to be paid.

To carry on the pointless war, which has achieved nothing but death, destruction, and hatred of America, Bush has had to call up inactive reserves who long ago completed their active duty service to their country and have managed to get on with their lives. It is well known that the older one gets the harder it is to find employment or the energy to restart a mothballed business. But Bush is too busy saving us from terrorism to care about people's lives.

Despite the lack of US troops and Bush's inability to prevail in Afghanistan and Iraq, neocons in Bush's government are working around the clock to instigate war with Iran and Syria.

I thought that I had Rumsfeld pegged as the complete dolt, but I was stunned when I read Associated Press reporter Robert Burns account of what Rumsfeld told 200 Navy aviators in a question and answer session at Fallon Naval Air Station on August 28. "The thing that keeps me up at night," said Rumsfeld, is the success of terrorist groups in "manipulating the media."

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08302006.html

I like the way you think, bobthedrummer.

[Catchawave]

10. Plamegate leaker? Armitage?

Sorry, having trouble finding details about this in the media :rofl:

[Octafish]

24. I Am Curious Yellowcake

When was the last time Michael Williams mentioned Michael Ledeen?

The Armitage Confession & the Niger Problem

I Am a Curious Yellowcake

DAVE LINDORFF

August 30, 2006

Now that Dick Armitage has admitted to being the initial source of right-wing columnist Robert Novak's news story outing Valerie Plame as a covert CIA agent and wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, it's important to remember what this story is really all about.

The mainstream media has focused on the scandal as a whodunit, all about White House leaks and journalists' unidentified sources, but the real issue has largely been left unaddressed, namely: Why did the White House go to such lengths to try to attack and discredit Wilson, a career diplomat?

To answer that question we have to go back to 2002 and the march to war in Iraq, and to 2003, when the Bush administration was starting to take the heat for its evident failure to find any "weapons of mass destruction" in the defeated land of Iraq, and for the fiasco of the occupation, which was becoming obvious.

As I wrote in Barbara Olshansky's and my book, The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin's Press, May 2006):

"the Bush-Cheney administration, which had its sights set on Baghdad and `regime change' from the day it took office, was by 2002 well on the way to invading Iraq, and was only looking for ways, to borrow from the Downing Street memo, to `fix the facts' so as to win public support for war. The game plan was to make Saddam Hussein look scary to Americans, and what better way to scare people than to say that this bloody dictator was trying to get The Bomb?"

This propaganda goal was accomplished with the help of a crude forgery of documents which were presented as solid evidence of such an effort. The documents-supposedly signed letters of intent to ship 400 tons of uranium ore from Niger in Africa to Iraq, bearing the signature of Niger's mining minister-had initially been provided to the White House by the sycophantic and obliging Italian Prime Minister, S. Berlusconi, and his chief of intelligence, Nicolo Pollari, back in October 2001. The documents were immediately spotted by the CIA and the State Department's own intelligence office as forgeries-the minister whose signature appeared on the sale documents had been out of office for years by the time of the signing date.

This is where the plot thickens, though. A team of investigative reporters in Italy, working for the respected newspaper La Repubblica, learned that a group of people, allegedly including Michael Ledeen, Defense Department Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, Defense Intelligence Agency Middle East analyst Larry Franklin, Pentagon Office of Special Plans member Harold Rhode and convicted bank swindler and Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, met secretly in Rome. Also present, reportedly, were Pollari and the head of the Italian Department of Defense. The La Repubblica reporters, led by investigative reporter Carlo Bonini, claim that it was at this unusual meeting that a plan was developed to recycle the bogus and discredited Niger documents through British intelligence, so that they would come back to the White House as "new evidence" of Hussein's nuclear ambitions.

CONTINUED...

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m26251&l=i&size=1&hd=0

Thanks for doing Corporate McPravda's job, Catchawave.

[H2O Man]

11. I do not think

that the great crime mysteries being in the news is necessarily a bad thing. It's worth noting that strange crimes have always held a fascination for the general public, from England's infamous Jack the Ripper, to the Lindbergh baby, and the Manson family episode. These crimes reflect their cultural eras. There are, of course, a number of crimes that overlap with the politics of the era, the most obvious being the murders of JFK, Malcolm, MLK, and RFK in the 1960s.

There is always a good and bad potential with the way the public reacts to these crime mysteries, and that can include everything from the way the justice system handles the case, to the way the media of the day presents it. In this specific case, I will admit that I found parts of the current events interesting. I come from an extended family that includes federal and state investigators, including one who has been recognized nationally for his dogged efforts to solve "cold cases" that involved the murder of children. Also, there are a few social workers who have been involved in forensic mental health.

If there is one thing that stands out in my mind, it is that people with an agenda -- let's say, for example, a college professor who is invested in exploiting the case, and who has ties to the family -- can contaminate the process by doing things such as grooming a "suspect" who is a creep, but not the murderer, and placing pressure on an elected official (the DA) to make a decision that isn't supported by the investigator's work, and that compromises that investigation.

[Octafish]

25. The Charmed Life of a Mass Murderer

Bottom line: I know what you mean about the need for Justice, H20 Man.

Friends of Bush seem to escape Justice, time and time again.



The Posada File - Part II

The Charmed Life of a Mass Murderer

Posada Carriles and Bush's Anti-Terror Hoax

By SAUL LANDAU
Counterpunch June 9, 2005

President George W. Bush has emphasized that if one of the myriad of U.S. police agencies even suspect someone of planning, abetting or carrying out a terrorist act, he will, at a minimum, get tossed into a dark hole. Indeed, Bush has thrown the Magna Carta into the garbage heap when it comes to Muslims suspected of pernicious thoughts toward the United States.

But if suspected terrorists turn their rage toward the detested Fidel Castro, these rules don't apply.

Indeed, those who try to bomb Cuban targets, or those related to Cuba, receive special treatment. This double-standard casts a shadow over the president's commitment to fight terrorism.

For example, TV footage showed Homeland Security cops arresting Posada in mid May. But the arresting officers didn't even handcuff the Western Hemisphere's most notorious terrorist. (Remember how Bush's pal Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay ­ ENRON's CEO ­ got handcuffed?) Justice Department spokespeople said they plan to charge the foremost terrorist in the western hemisphere with "illegal entry into the United States."

The FBI has reams of files on Posada, affectionately called "Bambi" by his terrorist friends. Former FBI Special Agent Carter Cornick told New York Times reporter Tim Weiner that Posada was "up to his eyeballs" in the October 1976 destruction of a Cuban commercial airliner over Barbados. All 73 passengers and crew members died. Recently published FBI and CIA documents not only confirm Cornick's statement, but also reveal that U.S. agencies had knowledge of the plot and did not inform Cuban authorities or try to stop the bombing.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/landau06092005.html

Thanks for giving a damn, my Friend. The Truth is out on these so-and-sos.

[H2O Man]

34. I do appreciate

that many are concerned that the potentially positive aspects of the coverage were ;arge;y overwhelmed by media prostitutes. One thing that is worth keeping in mind is that at least one handwriting "expert" was "99.9% sure" the fellow wrote the note. A whore, nothing more, nothing less.

I visited my son at his college during the last week. Being curious, I asked students what they thought about the story. Every single student believed it was primarily an attempt to take attention off those things that are important, witha silly distraction. Several noted that someone identified as being from Homeland Security accompanied Karr on the flight back to the US.

[cascadiance]

19. It's the KKKarl/Karr plan for disinformation!

[Octafish]

27. The truth about the 'Terror Plot'...and the new 'pseudo-terrorism.'

It's not exactly disinfo. It's a false flag op. Probably run by Karl Rove first.

The truth about the "Terror Plot".... and the new "pseudo-terrorism"

By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Sep 1, 2006, 00:39

I am disappointed to say that so far there has been very little serious critical discussion, grounded in factual analysis, of the alleged “Terror Plot” foiled on the morning of Wednesday, 10th August 2006. Except for a few noteworthy comment pieces, such as Craig Murray’s critical speculations published by the Guardian 18th August., the mainstream media has largely subserviently parroted the official claims of the British and American governments. This is a shame, because inspection of the facts raises serious problems for the 10/8 official narrative.

SNIP...

P20G: Stimulating Reactions

So what were the CIA, MI6 and ISI doing? Given the disturbing context here, in which the entire “Terror Plot” narrative has obviously been deeply politicized and to some extent even fabricated, a balanced analysis needs to account precisely for the stated new “counter-terror” strategies of western intelligence services. In August 2002, a report by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board revealed the latest strategic thinking about creating a new US secret counterintelligence organization -- the Proactive Preemptive Operations Group (P20G) -- which would, among other things, conduct highly clandestine operations to “stimulate reactions” among terrorist groups, by infiltrating them or provoking them into action in order to facilitate targeting them. In January 2005, Seymour Hersh revealed in the New Yorker that the P20G strategy had been activated:

“Under Rumsfeld’s new approach, I was told, US military operatives would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists. This could potentially involve organizing and carrying out combat operations, or even terrorist activities.”

Hersh refers to a series of articles by John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, and a RAND terrorism consultant, where he elaborates on this strategy of “countering terror” with Pseudo-Terror. “When conventional military operations and bombing failed to defeat the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the 1950s,” muses professor Arquilla, “the British formed teams of friendly Kikuyu tribesmen who went about pretending to be terrorists. These ‘pseudo gangs,’ as they were called, swiftly threw the Mau Mau on the defensive, either by befriending and then ambushing bands of fighters or by guiding bombers to the terrorists’ camps.” He goes on to advocate that western intelligence services should use the British case as a model for creating new “pseudo gang” terrorist groups, purportedly to undermine “real” terror networks. “What worked in Kenya a half-century ago has a wonderful chance of undermining trust and recruitment among today’s terror networks. Forming new pseudo gangs should not be difficult.” He then confidently observes about John Walker Lindh, the young American lad who joined the Taliban before 9/11: “If a confused young man from Marin County can join up with Al Qaeda, think what professional operatives might do.”

CONTINUED...

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1158.shtml

Thanks for getting "it," calipendence.

[Supersedeas]

26. Article 3 Courts find that Executive Branch VIOLATED law thus a breach

of their oath to honor and obey the US Constitution.

[Beelzebud]

28. NSA wiretapping is unconstitutional.

[bobthedrummer]

31. kick

[WinkyDink]

32. You kidding? MY paper yesterday had a front-page story on a

LOCAL "Swingers' club".

[Blue_Tires]

33. TTT n/t