Tag: Terrorism

Did Mole on 9/11 Commission Tattle to Rove?

Trish

I smell a rodent. ABC News is quoting WashingtonDeCoded’s Max Holland about a soon to be released book that exposes the former executive director of the 9/11 Commission as a Bush White House insider.

“[Zelikow] had laid the groundwork for much of what went wrong at the White House in the weeks and months before September 11. Would he want people to know that?”

9/11 Commission co-chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton hired former Condoleezza Rice aide Philip Zelikow to be executive director, (sic) Zelikow failed to tell them about his role helping Rice set up President George W. Bush’s National Security Council in early 2001 – and that he was “instrumental” in demoting Richard Clarke, the onetime White House counterterrorism czar…

“[Zelikow] had laid the groundwork for much of what went wrong at the White House in the weeks and months before September 11. Would he want people to know that?” [“The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation author Philip] Shenon writes, according to Holland.

Zelikow denied that was the case. “It was very well-known I had served on this transition team and had declined to go into the administration. I worked there for a total of one month. I had interviewed Sandy Berger, Dick Clarke and most of the NSC staff.” He noted he recused himself from working on the section of the panel’s report addressing the NSC transition, and that other staffers had held conflicting positions in the Clinton administration.

Did you get that? Clinton, Clinton, Clinton!

Not only did Zelikow work for Rice, he seemed to remain a tad too loyal to her as well.

Holland reports that Shenon discovered some panel staffers believed Zelikow stopped them from submitting a report depicting Rice’s performance as “amount[ing] to incompetence, or something not far from it.”

He also kept in close contact with Karl Rove whose business the 9/11 Commission should have been none of.

In his book, Shenon also says that while working for the panel, Zelikow appears to have had private conversations with former White House political director Karl Rove, despite a ban on such communication, according to Holland. Shenon reports that Zelikow later ordered his assistant to stop keeping a log of his calls, although the commission’s general counsel overruled him, Holland wrote.

The book comes out on Feb. 5, the same day as Super Tuesday, when the newsers will be consumed in the minutiae of the Clinton/Obama contest. Chances are good it will be lost in the din. We’ll try to keep an eye out for it, though, and keep you posted.

Muslimism: Questions of Obama’s Faith are Really Motivated by Racism

Buck Banks

muslim-protest-1.jpg
According to an Associated Press story published today, Barack Obama has come out preaching about his Christian faith in the wake of a pesky Internet chain letter that tries to characterize him as definitely a Muslim and probably a terrorist in disguise. As the race in South Carolina heats up, Obama is waving his Bible — not the Koran, mind you — in response to nasty and false rumors:

“I’ve been to the same church — the same Christian church — for almost 20 years,” Obama said, stressing the word Christian and drawing cheers from the faithful in reply. “I was sworn in with my hand on the family Bible. Whenever I’m in the United States Senate, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. So if you get some silly e-mail … send it back to whoever sent it and tell them this is all crazy. Educate.”

Obama is referring to a debunked chain e-mail circulating widely on the Internet that suggests he is hiding his Islamic roots and may be a terrorist in disguise. It says he was sworn into the Senate on the Quran and turns his back on the flag during the pledge.

There are some truths in the e-mail’s details. Obama’s middle name is Hussein. His father and stepfather were Muslim. And he spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, a largely Muslim country. But he attended secular and Catholic schools, not a radical madrassa.

Both co-editor Trish and I have received the e-mail, and both from people who, as Trish says, “should know better.” The letter is so mean, nasty and false that the motivation behind sending it can only be racism.

Sure, some would argue that the motivation is fear of terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists, but I would argue that it’s a much older fear — the fear of the black man, of the Other — but in today’s post-9/11 world it can masquerade as something else. I call it Muslimism.

Muslimism says it’s OK to be wary of anyone in a turban or burka because they might be out to kill you, or better yet, kill all of us. They hate us and want to take over our country and convert or kill us — every last one of us — because that’s what Islam teaches them. Muslimism provides a socially acceptable platform from which to launch an irresponsible smear campaign because the normal rules of engagement are off when it comes to people who are willing to blow themselves up to kill Americans.

So people who would never consider commenting on Obama’s blackness are more than happy to criticize him and spread false rumors that he’s — gasp! — a Muslim! And that’s OK, according to the new rules of political engagement. An e-mail that, if the N-word were substituted for “Muslim,” would shock the very people who so uncritically read this offensive letter and then sent it on to 10 more people.

And they could feel good about that because everyone should know that this uppity nig… uh, Illinoisan, running for president is actually a Muslim terrorist in a charcoal suit who can’t wait to win the election and then turn our own nuclear weapons against us in the biggest suicide bombing imaginable.

Muslimism — all it takes is that old familiar mixture of fear and hate.

Campaign Changelings Need to Change the ‘Change’ Message

Buck Banks


Change Management theory for a perfect world

change vt., to put or take (a thing) in place of something else; substitute for, replace with or transfer to another of a similar kind (to change one’s clothes, to change jobs)

Barak Obama started it by saying he had the audacity to do it. Hillary Clinton says she’s been doing it for 30 years already, and John Edwards says he’s the only one who knows the best way to do it to benefit the average Joe. But when Mitt Romney started saying it, you knew it was just over for change. Poor change is now the most over-used and most meaningless word in the campaign for the presidency.

It’s just the word du jour, the phrase o’ the moment, an iota for Iowa, a mantra for Manchester.

The problem with change is, it’s inevitable. Short of a quickie constitutional amendment orchestrated by Karl Rove, the Worst President Ever will leave office next January, leaving a slime trail of abuse, arrogance and excess in his wake. And whether (heaven forfend!) a Republican or (praise Jesus!) a Democrat swears on the Bible to uphold what’s left of the Constitution, there will be some kind of change.

So what do the candidates mean by change? Nothing. It’s just the word du jour, the phrase o’ the moment, an iota for Iowa, a mantra for Manchester. It plays on the campaign trail because the news scribblers and talking heads dutifully repeat it every time it’s said, the crowds clap for it and the candidates can all pronounce it.

But it doesn’t mean anything. Come next January, not much will have changed, except more soldiers will have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, the economy will probably suck even worse than it does now, the housing crisis will be worse still and Britney Spears or her sister still will probably be making headlines.

Fast forward to 2010, and there’s a slim chance that we will be in the process of withdrawing our troops from Iraq, the economy will likely still suck and the United States will still be on the bottom of the world’s popularity list, no matter who gets elected.

My point here is that the change meme is so over before it even starts that if the candidates continue to hammer on it, we should all just boycott the election and let Dennis Kucinich win by default. Now that would herald some real change.

Rudy Rolls Out Terror Ad – a Disgusting Attempt to Enflame Fear Among GOP Sheeple

Jon Ponder

Are you scared yet?

If you are a liberal, a Democrat or a sensible moderate independent, this ad probably won’t scare you. Good for you for being able to see through Rudolph Giuliani’s cravenly manipulative attempt to terrify dim-witted folks into voting for him.

But even if you are a wise consumer of this sort of propaganda, this ad should scare you nonetheless — because it probably will be effective in scaring the votes out of the terror-addicted Republican base, who have been softened up by the terror politics of Bush and Rove since September 2001, and are now fully converted into what may be America’s first generation of cowards — rivaling in the inverse the Greatest Generation that fought World War II.

Republican pols like Bush and Giuliani depend on the fact that when people are terrified they don’t think rationally. Like drug pushers in the bad old days, the neocon-nationalist wing of the GOP has fed Wal-Mart shoppers,” “security moms,” “NASCAR dads” and their other key voter demos a steady diet of fear and now millions of them are completely hooked on terror.

The more consumed they are by fear, the less they notice that the same politicians who routinely scare the bejeebus out of them are simultaneously sending their jobs overseas, forking over billions of their tax dollars to giant corporations and fomenting the decline of democracy in favor of Mexican-style oligarchy and even fascism.

It worked in 2004, and there is no reason to believe it won’t work in 2008.

So… Are you scared yet?

At the End of the Day, Throw Me Under the Bus

Buck Banks

Since 1975, Lake Superior State University has published a list of misused and overused words and phrases, nominated by people like us who have an intimate and meaningful relationship with the English language — we use it to communicate.

The list began this year by returning truthiness — coined by Stephen Colbert — to the list of approved words. Seems there just is no substitute for it in the lingua franca.

Here’s this year’s list. For explanations about why they nominated them from those who nominated the words, go here.

Perfect storm
Webinar
Waterboarding
Organic
Wordsmith/wordsmithing
Author/authored
Post 9/11
Surge
Give back
Blank is the new blank or X is the new Y
Black Friday
Back in the day
Random
Sweet
Decimate
Emotional
Pop
It is what it is
Under the bus

To which we would add:

At the end of the day — meant to be a kind of summation, but mainly used as a place-holder when someone has nothing better or more intelligent to say
Drill down — used in marketing speak to mean to get down to the nugget of whatever it is that’s currently under consideration
Blogoshpere — just a stupid-sounding word
Social media — is there any other kind?
Web 2.0 or anything 2.0 — duh
Lassitude — a perfectly fine word that no one uses

Do you have some words or phrases that just grate on your ear like fingernails on a blackboard? Let us know. Leave a comment.

BREAKING: Benazir Bhutto Assassinated in Pakistan

Jon Ponder

CNN:

Pakistan former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has died after a suicide attack, according to media reports.

Geo TV quoted her husband saying the politician had died following a bullet wound in the neck.

The suicide attack left at least 14 dead and 40 injured, Tariq Azim Khan, the country’s former information minister, told CNN in a telephone interview.

The attacker is said to have detonated a bomb as he tried to enter the rally where thousands of people gathered to hear Bhutto speak, police said.

Bhutto is said to have been leaving the rally when the attack occurred and was taken to a hospital in an unconcious state, the Geo TV report said.

Addicted to Fear – Cowardice Has Become the Source of Republican Power

Jon Ponder

The Republican Party’s macho bluster and apparently endless appetite for war makes it seem counter-intuitive to think of them as cowards. And yet, seven years into the Bush regime, it is clear that the GOP has become dependent on fear to keep itself in power — and to support this addiction the party leadership has converted its rank and file members into America’s first generation of bona fide yellow-bellied chickens.

After the GOP took over the government in 2000 and ran all three branches for six years, the truth about the conservative movement was finally revealed. After years of unctuous claims that they were for family values and lower spending and against corruption, Republicans demonstrated that the exact opposite is true. They were caught engaging in a wide range of sleazy activities, both personal and financial, and Bush and the GOP Congress ran the Treasury into the ground, racking up more debt than all the presidents since Washington, combined. Now, with that record fresh in voters’ minds, all they have left to run on is the politics of fear.

Nearly every day, a subtle or not-so-subtle message of fear — about terrorists, Moslems, Iran, whatever works — is transmitted from the bully pulpit of the White House press room podium out to the public via the seemingly unwitting mainstream media, Fox News and rightwing talk radio. The government’s fear propaganda is mostly just noise in the background to normal people, but rank and file conservatives gobble it up like ravenous dogs.

9/11 Did Not “Change Everything”

The Republican culture of fear was born out of the 9/11 attacks — which we are told “changed everything” because they were an “attack on America.” But when the World Trade Center was bombed in February 1993 by rightwing Islamic terrorists very like the ones who would take the towers down eight years years later, no one suggested that our response to this “attack on America” should be invading and occupying Iraq.

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GOP’s Boehner, Who Said U.S. Troop Deaths Were a ‘Small Price’ to Pay, Led Censure Move Against Pete Stark Over Anti-Bush Remark

Jon Ponder

Last month, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the lives of U.S. troops were a small price to pay in the U.S. occupation of Iraq and its intervention in the Iraqi civil war:

Stark was wrong, of course, troops aren’t dying for the president’s amusement. The reality is much worse. They are dying so that Bush and his cronies can control Iraq’s oil.

BLITZER: Mr. Leader, here’s the question. How much longer will U.S. taxpayers have to shell out $2 billion a week or $3 billion a week as some now are suggesting the cost is going to endure? The loss in blood, the Americans who are killed every month, how much longer do you think this commitment, this military commitment is going to require?

BOEHNER: I think General Petraeus outlined it pretty clearly. We’re making success. We need to firm up those successes. We need to continue our effort here because, Wolf, long term, the investment that we’re making today will be a small price if we’re able to stop al Qaeda here, if we’re able to stabilize the Middle East, it’s not only going to be a small price for the near future, but think about the future for our kids and their kids.

Boehner has never apologized, nor did the Democrats attempt to censure him for denigrating the sacrifice of American soldiers.

Yesterday, however, Boehner led the charge to censure Rep. Pete Stark over these comments:

First of all, I’m just amazed that they can’t figure out — the Republicans are worried that we can’t pay for insuring an additional ten million children. They sure don’t care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you gonna get that money? You gonna tell us lies, like you’re telling us today? Is that how you’re going to fund the war? You don’t have the money to fund the war or children, but you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people, if we could get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President’s amusement.

Stark was wrong, of course, troops aren’t dying for the president’s amusement. The reality is much worse. They are dying so that Bush and his cronies can control Iraq’s oil.

Election Surprise: Is Osama bin Laden in Custody?

Jon Ponder
Imagine how those numbers would change if Bush bagged bin Laden. The shift among conservative independents could flip the mid-terms.

He’s baaack: My tinfoil hat has been snap-crackle-and-popping all week over the sudden return of Osama bin Laden. Starting Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, the president launched his campaign of political terror with a series of speeches intended, apparently, to terrify swing voters and security moms into voting for the GOP in the fall elections. The speeches were unremarkable, except for a surprising number of references to the world’s most wanted terrorist. Coincidentally, a new video of bin Laden that was taped in September 2001 also appeared this week.

Where has Osama been? After the attacks in 2001, President Bush said he wanted the terrorist mastermind “dead or alive.” But as months passed and bin Laden eluded capture — and with the distraction of the president’s misadventure in Iraq — poor Osama became a non-person of interest to the White House political team. I think we can assume that bin Laden went from being wanted dead or alive to Osama been-forgotten because the CIA and the Pentagon simply could not find him.

Flash forward to this week: Conversely, they would only begin referring to Osama again if they’ve got him — he’s sitting in a cell in a secret prison in Uzbekistan. (I hope they’re torturing him by forcing him to watch Bush’s speeches end to end.)

Consider this:

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