Wasn't in Joan's piece, but in her appearance on Bill Maher's show.

"They couldn't get Katrina right, they can't get Iraq right, it's just beyond them."

In point of fact, Ms. Walsh, they got Katrina exactly right: run the poor black people out of New Orleans and dilute the vote of a concentration of Democrats. Whether or not one believes the US government can manipulate weather patterns, they certainly can treat areas like New York, California, New Orleans, or any concentration of Democratic power, with malignant neglect.

They got Iraq right, too, because the neoconservatives have created a mess that their friends can be paid handsomely to clean up...once the Democrats are elected and are left with an impossible mess to deal with.

The reason why Steven Jones is getting attacked by his university now is because his research has been very thorough and his conclusions a matter of common sense.

Of course it is horrifying to consider the possibility that our government has been overrun by a junta of nefarious intelligence types, but how much information does one need to see before they believe what their eyes are telling them?

1. 1932 -- Marine General Smedley Butler alerts FDR of an attempted coup on the part of a group of pro-Hitler industrialists to include Prescott Bush, our present President's grandfather. Also involved, or highly sympathetic, was Henry Ford, Averil Harriman, the Brown brothers and Charles Lindberg.

2. 1953 -- Frank Olson, former Chief of Special Operations Division (SOD) in Fort Detrick, Maryland is thrown out of hotel window and the incident is made to look like a suicide. The family believes that Mr. Olson had become distraught over US use of WMD's in the Korean War in violation of the law, the "terminal" interrogations of suspected security risks, and the use of WMD agents over populated US metropolitan areas.

3. Project Paperclip -- the importation of the entire Eastern European arm of the Nazi intelligence operation against the directives of President Harry Truman who wanted no Nazis to be brought over. The project involved the scrubbing of all evidence of Nazi affiliation from the records of those brought over, which resulted in the importation of Nazi scientists who conducted experiments on live human beings in the areas of mind control, hypnosis, mass hypnosis, and terminal interrogation. From this project sprang numerous CIA experiments in mind control, terminal interrogation and WMD's.

4. 1963 -- The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Reasons too numerous to explicate here.

5. 1968 -- RFK and MLK, Jr. Both individuals were pioneers in the civil rights movements among blacks and the poor. Their clout among the American people as a result of the JFK assassination aftermath was a key reason, but their willingness to wage a war on the criminal element operating unchecked within the intelligence services was certainly a key factor.

6. 1972 -- The burglaries of Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel using CIA operatives under the direction of Richard Nixon. Nixon was concerned (paranoid) that the Democrats had information about his participation in the conspiracy to murder JFK which was tangential, at best.

7. 1974 -- Nixon resigns in disgrace. Between Nixon's use of China as a means of keeping the increasingly powerful and criminal national security apparatus in check and his attempts to blame the Watergate break-in on their department, the CIA flexed its muscles and gave Nixon no easy way out.

8. 1970's -- Use of the "Radical Pragmatism" paradigm within the intelligence services evolves into a means of conducting foreign policy outside of congressional oversight and the awareness of the American people. The CIA begins running drugs and guns.

9. 1980's -- Iran Contra -- the Radical Pragmatism paradigm gets exposed when it is learned that George H. W. "Poppy" Bush is involved not only in the intelligence business, but also in the arms for hostages business. Bush is able to contain the scandal and keep the rumors of his involvement in the drug trade under wraps.

10. 1990's -- Rise in power of global terrorist organizations as CIA assets and intelligence affiliates begin to realize that the CIA has been operating as a completely separate government and foreign policy arm of the United States. The oppressive, fascist nature of the American national security apparatus becomes apparent to oppressed people occupying areas where valuable natural resources are found, and these people begin to organize as a reaction to what is viewed as American, "terrorism," and fascist policies. This fascist, arrogant and oppressive slant to American national security had its genesis in our absorption of the Nazi intelligence apparatus and the sympathetic response to Hitler that took place among American industrialists during the 1930's.

11. 2001 -- False flag terror operation known as 9/11 becomes the catalyst for waging a global war on terror (GWOT) that is as fond of overstating the goals and power of terrorist organizations as it was of overstating Soviet capabilities during the Cold War. This time, however, the corporatists are taking no chances and pulling out all the stops that were shown to slow them down in the past: civil liberties are rolled back, mass media is controlled and the use of fear and malignant nationalism are evident everywhere.

Class dismissed.