McCain, Charlie Black, Chalabi and Kuwaiti incubators.

[bushmeister0]

We all know John McCain's "straight shooter" image is a little tattered these days. It's not news to point out that his dealings with PR firms and lobbyists is just a scosh seedy. But, besides the normal you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours type of thing going on in Washington, McCain's name always seems to come up when war in Iraq is on the agenda. Every time you turn around someone who worked with or for McCain is involved in starting a war in Iraq, from the Gulf War on.

Note that his political guru Charlie Black founded BKSH, the firm that took up Iraq exile Ahmed Chalabi's cause in the run up to the latest Iraq war. McCain said of Chalabi in 2003, "He’s a patriot who has the best interests of his country at heart." McCain also co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act which helped Chalabi great deal to make a lot of $$ off the US taxpayers.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/09/chalabi-mccain/

Note also that Francis Brooke, who is working for free for McCain, once worked for the Rendon group, the firm that not only brought us the Iraqi informant "curveball" but also the Kuwaiti "nurse" Nayirah, whose shocking tales of Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators outraged congress and made selling that war a lot easier. Of course, it turned out later that Nayirah was actually Nayirah al-Sabah, daughter of Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US. Surprise, surprise the incubator story was a total fabrication, just like all of Curveball's fairy-tales.

http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html

John Rendon, the founder of the Rendon Group, is a very interesting person. James Bamford, wrote for the Rolling Stone that in 2001:

"Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as 'perception management,' manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help 'create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power.' Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and 'senior adviser' as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam."

Another funny connection with McCain and the first Gulf War is Victoria Clarke, the former pentagon spokesperson who help lie us into the second Gulf War. After working with McCain from the very beginning of his congressional career, she moved on to Hill and Knowlton, the PR firm that did all the leg work in the incubator baby testimony to congress.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1262688

The list just goes on and on. I see why McCain wants to stay in Iraq for a hundred years, he's spent most of his political life getting us in there.