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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Marc Rich was wise to hire Jack Quinn. The latter was a well-connected insider. That's the kind of juice you need when you're dealing with the highest levels. And Deputy Attorney General Holder responded to it. (Needless to say, the average citizen--i.e., Joe Sixpack out in Peoria--would never get this kind of friendly, personal attention.)
D.C. is controlled by lobbyists, bribes--er, "contributions"--to politicians, and personal friendships among the political class. K Street string-pullers socialize with politicians at Georgetown cocktail parties, where they mix business with pleasure. They disdain outsiders--i.e., the Great Unwashed.
So far at least, Obama's appointments show no deviation from the Establishment script.
So?
Senators often vote for or against items of legislation for political purposes after the outcome is a forgone conclusion. I have read about that many times.
But even if he wanted the USA to ban these horrible weapons that target kids so well back then, he will say nothing now. He has not up to this point and he is allowed to talk even as president elect.
... In assigning responsibility for the Mumbai horror, we enter a world of murky ambivalence. Lashkar-e-Taiba is said to be affiliated, in some vague way, with "rogue" elements of Pakistani intelligence, which is, in turn, connected to the Taliban, the protector and ally of al-Qaeda. The War Party has its terrorist genealogy down to an exact science, but its precision comes into serious doubt when we look a little closer at this alleged "parent organization" of Lashkar-e-Taiba – which apparently wasn't a terrorist organization when they were working alongside American soldiers and relief workers in aiding victims of the devastating 2005 Pakistan-India earthquake.
The neat little narratives pumped out by war propagandists to rationalize acts of mass murder are an important part of any campaign to spark a conflict, so they have to be minimally convincing, or at least credible. Yet the story coming out of the Indian government is frankly incredible. The terrorists left a satellite phone conveniently placed next to the body of their ship's captain, whose throat they had slit, with the numbers of their handlers stored in memory. Very convenient. Even less convincing, however, is the assertion that even after Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of the terror squad, had been captured, he continued to get messages from his handlers. That little embellishment, I believe, gives the show away. Add to this the oddly unprepared – indeed, criminally negligent – role of the Indian security apparatus, and the whole thing reeks to high heaven. "Fishy" is putting it mildly.
The effect of the Mumbai massacre on Indian politics is another likely analogy to 9/11, which gave the neocons power and catapulted the worst warmongers to the very top of the national security bureaucracy. In the case of India, where voters will soon go to the polls, we are apt to see an electoral victory for the most militantly nationalistic and chauvinistic political movement in the country, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). ... (Justin Raimondo)
click on sig for more ...
The entire piece lays out the fact that we may be in for one hell of a mess in south Asia. Can the USA stay out of it?
No, no spelling error: At the time of the pardon, if I remember well, there were intense efforts by another "lame-duck", very active president to get the Middle East process going again - Clinton almost succeeded. Ehud Barak, then Israeli prime minister, also has been reported as - for reasons of Rich's charities in Israel - heavily lobbying for a Rich pardon. Could it just have been that part of the attention given to Marc Rich was the fact that a vital player in that ongoing international, extremely difficult negotiation was asking the mediator, Clinton, a favor?
And what would that then say about Eric Holder's involvement?
Could it be that the plum sum donated to the Clinton library might have been the thank you note from Rich's ex-wife but not necessarily the prime inducer of the pardon?
Slick Willie should have recused the donation, no doubt, but in my mind there are very few Joe Sixpacks in Wasilla, Alaska that have such a crucial player for peace as Ehud Barak lobbying for their pardon.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2008/12/2/13215/9022
is definitely worth reading.
While it is easy to view Obama's cabinet nominations especially the national security and economic team on a comparative basis with Bush appointments, could you not have put it in context on the fact that it is Bush and his ideology that actually determine the path these cabinet members take? For example, According to the then Treasury Secretary O'Neil, even before Al Qaeda struck, they were thinking about Iraq and Bush's obsession with the fact that Sadam wanted to kill his father. Had that obsession not happened, will we have been to Iraq with all its consequences against which we now view Bush and his cabinte appointments in a fundamentally hostile way?
It is the leader who sets the goal and the vision and whether it takes centrists or those on the right of Obama to implement it inorder to mute the criticism had he chosen all liberals or those on the left to implement that, so be it. Let us wait and see what happens Glenn; you are giving in too much to the same unaccountable beltway media elites whose opinions and opearations you have excellently been exposing.
Nobody determines the standards for pardons which are given to those convicted of crimes and singling out Marc Rich's or whatever as the most egregious is simply political posturing and buying into right-wing crap. Go back to pardons by Presidents and one can find as many depending on your politics to feed upon. Using it to derail Holder appointment as some Republicans and some media elites seem to suggest is childish.
Yeah, I heard those statements by Obama in his press conference re his "security team", and remember similar from his campaign. Worrisome. Afghanistan has always been an impossible quagmire for invaders, and it doesn't seem likely that anything will work out differently for the U.S. A whole different approach (no, I have no bright ideas) is needed. Ignoring Bin Ladin might be as effective as searching him down and KILLing him (I was most uneasy hearing Obama saying *KILL* - how many other people will die to make that happen?), and encouraging Pakistan to root out terrorists on their territory - at least as much a threat to them as to anybody else. Of course, Pakistan isn't exactly a united society standing in unison against the terrorists...
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
