a day’s work, a century’s map…

Posted on Thursday 4 June 2009


Neither Tel Aviv nor Ramallah held their breaths Thursday as the American president gave a speech in Cairo; the traffic in both crowded cities continued normally. Tel Aviv was indifferent, Ramallah sunk in desperation: Both cities have already had their fill of nice, historic speeches.

Nonetheless, no one can ignore the speech given by Barack Obama: The mountain birthed a mountain. Obama remained Obama. Only the Israeli analysts tried to diminish the speech’s importance ("not terrible"), to spread fear ("he mentioned the Holocaust and the Nakba in a single breath"), or were insulted on our behalf ("he did not mention our right to the land as promised in the Bible"). All these were redundant and unnecessary. Obama emerged Thursday as a true friend of Israel.

The prime minister ordered the ministers to say nothing, but of course they could not help but invade the studios. Uzi Landau said that a Palestinian state is tantamount to an "Iranian state." Isaac Herzog appeared even more ridiculous when he said that the problem with the settlements is one of "public relations." In essence, both were busy with the same problem: How can we manage to pull the new America’s leg as well? Israeli politicians have never before appeared as pathetic, as small as they did Thursday, compared to the bearer of promise in Cairo.

Indeed, there was promise in Cairo, of the dawn of a new age. A U.S. president talking about negotiations with Iran without preconditions or tacit threats, even willing to accept Iran having civilian nuclear capability; a president who talked about Hamas as a legitimate organization that represents part of Palestinian society, but that needs to relinquish violence; who spoke with empathy about Palestinian suffering; who spoke, believe it or not, about security not only for Israelis but also for Palestinians; who said that all the settlements are illegal; who called for nuclear disarmament of the entire region. All are sensational messages, headlines whose significance cannot be exaggerated, even if there are those who desperately tried to argue yesterday that "there was nothing new in his speech."

Not enough? Obama also spoke in Cairo (!) against denying the Holocaust, about the rights of women and Copts, and on the need for democracy tailored to each society’s culture.

This is the thinking of a great leader, who walked with wisdom and sensitivity between the Holocaust and the Nakba, between Israelis and Palestinians, between Americans and Arabs, between Christians, Jews and Muslims. How easy it is to imagine his predecessor, George Bush the Terrible, in the same position: a complete opposite…
Not bad for an Israeli newspaper. They weren’t all this positive – but enough were. Likewise, in the Arab world, there were mixed reviews, but many that were positive, and respectful. Good enough for a day’s work…
Mickey @ 8:56 PM

a grand master of the art of confrontation…

Posted on Thursday 4 June 2009


President Obama today delivered an exemplary speech that has the potential to significantly advance America’s national security interests in the Middle East. He spoke, as he has here at home, over the heads of established political leaders and directly to the Muslim world to marshal the vast majority of Muslims to assist US policy goals in Afghanistan and Pakistan by describing them as Muslim policy goals as well.

President Obama spoke to Muslims, convincingly, as a believer – and opened the door to a reshuffling of loyalties. Instead of Muslims against the West, the President implied a strong Judeo-Christian-Islamic heritage allied with humanist principles. At a minimum he created more political capital for himself and for the United States while buying time for US policy options in the Middle East to be considered.

Although the speech acknowledged past transgressions [colonialism, the US overthrow of the democratic Mosadeq government in Iran in the 1950s, and an implication that the US invasion of Iraq was at least ill-considered if not a violation of international law] it did not apologize for them. He simply noted them matter of factly as a source of our tension with the Muslim world and moved on to discuss what the future might hold, directing a Muslim world that is very alert to past and present grievances toward a problem-solving perspective.

Interestingly, the President’s only mention of a political party was of Hamas. By noting Hamas’ acceptance by part of the Palestinian population, the President was drawing a distinction between those Salafist Islamist forces the US is combating in Afghanistan and Pakistan and those that have political constituencies and accept the legitimacy of electoral processes. Hamas leader Ahmed Yusuf’s first response to the speech was positive, flowery, effusive, and defensive all at the same time.

The President has also done Israel a great favor. No leader – anywhere – has ever presented the Zionist narrative of European oppression as a necessitating factor for a Jewish homeland – to a Muslim audience so directly and with such empathy while linking it directly to the Palestinian narrative of dispossession and oppression under occupation. He firmly linked the right to statehood  for both peoples in one sentence. By contrast, the message from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden yesterday appears self-serving and irrelevant.
During this piece of Obama’s speech, I thought the obvious comparison between the plight of the Jews in Europe and the fate of the Palestinians in the Middle East was simply [and brilliantly] stated in a way that couldn’t be ignored. Later in his speech Obama said, "The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort – a sustained effort – to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings" and "There is also one rule that lies at the heart of every religion – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us."

It hadn’t occurred to me that "No leader – anywhere – has ever presented the Zionist narrative of European oppression as a necessitating factor for a Jewish homeland – to a Muslim audience so directly and with such empathy while linking it directly to the Palestinian narrative of dispossession and oppression under occupation." And Obama’s trip continues with:
Mr Obama travels this morning with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, to the camp where more than 56,000 people were killed by the Nazis [Buchenwald], then to a US military hospital in Landstuhl, western Germany, to visit soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, before heading for the D-Day ceremonies in France.
People talk about Obama as being "cool" or "unflappable." The right wing pundits see him as "weak" or as an "appeaser." But he is, in fact, a grand master of the art of confrontation. In the world of psychotherapists, the term confrontation does not mean getting in someone’s face or getting aggressive. It simply means telling someone something they don’t want to hear – and doing it effectively in a way that might bring about change…
Mickey @ 7:50 PM

here comes the rhetoric…

Posted on Thursday 4 June 2009


In a brief phone interview with The Associated Press, Scott Roeder complained he is "being treated as a criminal" even though he hasn’t been convicted of killing abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. The 51-year-old Roeder called AP today from the Sedgwick County Jail and spoke for about three minutes. He also disputed media characterizations that he is anti-government, saying he is "anti-corrupt government." Roeder has been charged with murder in the shooting death of Tiller in his Wichita church. Roeder told AP he would not discuss the shooting now but would later.

Posted by Michael Winter at 04:49 PM/ET, June 04, 2009
Mickey @ 7:06 PM

not available…

Posted on Thursday 4 June 2009


Why Did CIA Hide Dick Cheney’s Role in Briefing?
By emptywheel on Porter Goss
06/03/2009

Thanks to the WaPo for confirming something I guessed last month. Back then, I wrote,
    I’m going to make a wildarsed guess and suggest that when the CIA lists "not available " in a series of 2005 torture briefings to Republicans in Congress, they really mean "Dick Cheney attended, but we don’t want to tell you that."
Today, the WaPo reports,
    Former vice president Richard B. Cheney personally oversaw at least four briefings with senior members of Congress about the controversial interrogation program, part of a secretive and forceful defense he mounted throughout 2005 in an effort to maintain support for the harsh techniques used on detainees.
    [snip]
    The CIA made no mention of his role in documents delivered to Capitol Hill last month that listed every lawmaker who had been briefed on "enhanced interrogation techniques" since 2002. For meetings that were overseen by Cheney, the agency told the intelligence committees that information about who oversaw those briefings was "not available."
    [snip]
    The CIA declined to comment on why Cheney’s presence in some meetings was left out of the records.
    [snip]
    Several members of Congress who took part in the Cheney meetings declined to comment on them, citing secrecy concerns.
In one of my most unsurprisingly correct wildarsed guesses ever, Cheney was working with the CIA to keep his little torture program, and neither the CIA nor the Republicans he was arm-twisting want to talk about it. But that ought to be worth some closer attention. WTF did the CIA hide Cheney’s role in these briefings [not to mention the date of their briefing with McCain]? It reveals not only a desire to hide the degree to which these "briefings" under Porter Goss became active lobbying in support of torture, but also the degree to which the CIA is working actively, with a former Administration official [Cheney] to hide their collaboration.
Why, indeed? Why in the hell was the Vice President of the United States working with the C.I.A. to brief Congressmen about the C.I.A. Torture Program? Why in the hell was the C.I.A. keeping his participation a secret not available? We all know the answer to those questions. Our queries are ingenuous. He was trying to force his Torture Agenda down the Congressmen’s throats and he had the C.I.A. under his thumb. It’s really not a very hard question to answer ["Why Did CIA Hide Dick Cheney’s Role in Briefing?"]. And if that weren’t enough, he pulled in McNasty to help:
On March 8, 2005 – two days after a detailed report in the New York Times about interrogations – Cheney gathered Rockefeller, Harman and the chairmen of the intelligence panels,  Sen. Pat Roberts [R-Kan] and  Rep. Peter Hoekstra [R-Mich], according to current and former intelligence officials. Weeks earlier, Roberts had given public statements suggesting possible support for the investigation sought by Rockefeller. But by early March 2005, Roberts announced that he opposed a separate probe, and the matter soon died.

Cheney’s efforts to sway Congress toward supporting waterboarding went beyond secret meetings in Washington. In July 2005, he sent David S. Addington, his chief counsel at the time, to travel with five senators – four of them opponents of the CIA interrogation methods – to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On the trip, Sen. Graham urged Addington to put the interrogations at secret prisons and the use of military tribunals into a stronger constitutional position by pushing legislation through Congress, rather than relying on executive orders and secret rulings from Justice Department lawyers.

Subsequent court rulings would challenge the legality of the system, and Justice Department lawyers were privately drafting new rules on interrogations. Addington dismissed the views of Graham, who had been a military lawyer. "I’ve got all the authority I need right here," Addington said, pulling from his coat a pocket-size copy of the Constitution, according to the senator, suggesting there was no doubt about the system’s legal footing.
It’s really sobering to contemplate the extent to which Dick Cheney pervaded government. Here, he is part of the C.I.A. briefings about a C.I.A. initiative relying on Department of Justice memoranda crafted in consultation with his O.V.P. Lawyer, David Addington, using his office to influence the Congress – all in secret. At the time all of this was happening, 2005, we were two years beyond the Invasion of Iraq. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002. So why was there such a fuss about all of this in 2005? Another easy question to answer – to cover up that the technique was being used earlier to get ammo for the case they were making to invade Iraq.

As Dick Cheney continues his almost daily media appearances, the facts are mounting, the lies are becoming clearer, the motives are more blatant, and the "dark side" is getting darker and darker. I’m thinking that the Bush/Cheney notion that they will be vindicated by history is getting pretty remote. This story smells worse every day…
Mickey @ 6:54 PM

thanks…

Posted on Thursday 4 June 2009

All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort – a sustained effort – to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings.

It is easier to start wars than to end them. It is easier to blame others than to look inward; to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There is also one rule that lies at the heart of every religion – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples – a belief that isn’t new; that isn’t black or white or brown; that isn’t Christian, or Muslim or Jew. It’s a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the heart of billions. It’s a faith in other people, and it’s what brought me here today.

We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.

The Holy Koran tells us, "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."

The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."

The Holy Bible tells us, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God’s vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you. And may God’s peace be upon you.

Barack Obama  06/04/2009
Mickey @ 4:28 PM

thinkin’…

Posted on Thursday 4 June 2009

I read with amazement some of the comments about Obama’s speech – comments that he didn’t offer enough "concrete plans" or that he wasn’t "strong enough" on some point or another. Those comments miss the mark. We’ve heard "concrete plans" and "strength without equal" for years, and nothing changed. He spoke to the human and religious values in the best of us all. He spoke to the “isms” that are in the way – here and elsewhere. Until that level of dialog is reached, anything else is simply a waste of time and words. Right now, his job is to point where we need to go and what’s in the way. Getting there is down the road. We’ve been on this road before…

Mickey @ 12:39 PM

more about Roeder…

Posted on Wednesday 3 June 2009


WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Scott Roeder had $10 to his name. A financial affidavit for the Kansas City, Mo., man charged in the killing of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller shows a man with little money and checkered employment.

The 51-year-old Roeder was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder and aggravated assault in Sunday’s shooting death of Tiller. Roeder was required to sign a sworn affidavit to get a court-appointed attorney. In the document filed Tuesday, Roeder stated he had $10 in his bank account and no other property except his 1993 Ford Taurus. The affidavit says he made $1,100 a month working at Quicksilver Airport Delivery — his fourth job in six months. Rent and other monthly bills totaled nearly $470.
As I was saying below, Scott Roeder’s obsession was probably all he really had.
Roeder’s anti-abortion activism scrutinized
By LAURA BAUER and JUDY L. THOMAS
The Kansas City Star
June 03, 2009

When Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller stood trial in March, Scott Roeder was there in the courtroom. And after Tiller was acquitted on charges he had failed to properly justify late-term abortions, Roeder told a fellow activist that the whole process was a “sham.”

“He seemed to be passionate about that,” said Eugene Frye, a Kansas City area anti-abortion activist for the past three decades. “He felt justice had not been served.” Now, Roeder will face his own charges inside the same courthouse. Prosecutors say the 51-year-old Merriam man walked into Tiller’s church Sunday morning while the doctor was serving as an usher and shot him once in the face…

In the days since Roeder’s arrest, his family painted him as a kind man but someone who had suffered from mental illness. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was younger, and court records from a custody dispute in Pennsylvania state that he doesn’t take medication for it…

When he attended protests, “he was a little sheepish,” Frye said. “When he talked he had a quiet gentle speech about him. Never rude or boisterous. … I never heard one comment that would ever lead you to think he would do any type of violence at all”…

At the time of Roeder’s arrest Sunday afternoon along Interstate 35 in Johnson County, a television station captured the vehicle on video. There on the dashboard was a note that read “Cheryl” and “Op Rescue” with a phone number. Cheryl Sullenger, senior policy adviser for Operation Rescue out of Wichita, said Tuesday that she has spoken to Roeder in the past, but she said he would initiate the contact. She said she hasn’t had any recent contact with him.

Sullenger served about two years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic in California in 1988. She has since renounced violent action. She said Roeder’s interest was in court hearings involving Tiller.

“He would call and say, ‘When does court start? When’s the next hearing?’ ” Sullenger said. “I was polite enough to give him the information. I had no reason not to. Who knew? Who knew, you know what I mean?”
The comment about him having Schizophrenia is not accompanied by much information. In recent years, that term is reserved for people who have chronic symptoms. But the things that suggest the diagnosis in his history are his wife’s description of a personality change about 15 years ago, associated with the development of new, compelling ideas about evil in the world, paranoid trends in his thinking, association with fringe groups, and with a deterioration in his ability to function in life. That would suggest the Paranoid form of Schizophrenia.

Delusions are the cardinal symptom of Paranoid Schizophrenia. A delusion is a "fixed, false belief" – "fixed" meaning that the belief is impervious to reason or evidence. So, if an afflicted person believes a Dentist put a transmitter in his tooth while he was in Viet Nam, removing the tooth won’t help. "It’s in another tooth," he’ll say [an actual example]. The delusional idea explains the patient’s internal paranoid fears, thus it transcends the idea itself. One would speculate that Scott Roeder saw Dr. Tiller as the cause of his internal discomfort. But the murder won’t change anything. The discomfort will persist.

People with major mental illness have the same murder rate as the general population; however, when they do kill, it usually has this kind of bizarre and impersonal quality. This does not seem to be a story about Abortion or the Pro-Life Movement. It appears to be about the chronic mental illness of Scott Roeder…
Mickey @ 11:50 PM

“I want to be very careful about how I say this”…

Posted on Wednesday 3 June 2009

I know that President Obama is headed to Egypt to try to begin a long overdue dialog with the Moslem World. But that will be everywhere – Television, Youtube, the Internet. Who needs another blogger commenting on his bravery in walking into the eye of the storm. I’m still back with the last Administration, thinking about how we got here. I’ve collected some of the landmarks along the Cheney Path – specifically related to Saddam Hussein and the Invasion of Iraq. First, there’s his retrospective thoughts about the Gulf War and George H. W. Bush’s decision to withdraw from Iraq. Then there’s the letter from the Project for the New American Century to President Clinton [Cheney was a Founder, but did not sign this particular document himself]. Then I’ve included a few quips from speeches he made while he was C.E.O. at Halliburton. Finally, there are serial comments concerning Saddam Hussein and possible ties with al Qaeda, justifying the Invasion of Iraq.

I found his confluence of American businesses and Foreign Policy in the CATO speech downright eerie – besides being a remarkable rationalization.And in the Petroleum Institute speech, he makes it clear where the future of the oil indistry lies – Middle East. Recall that three years later, he convened the still secret Cheney Energy Conference with Energy Company C.E.O.s probably to divide up Iraq’s Oil exploration [see map from conference below]:

 

I’ve posted these clips and their full links for a reason – maybe not to be read today, but in the future. Dick Cheney is on a trajectory that has everyone curious. Where’s he headed? Lots of people think he’s trying to stave off retribution. Others think he is driven by a colossal arrogance and narcissism. Is he a crook? a madman? a traumatized person? a candidate for president? a fool? a genius? I don’t really know what he’s about for sure. When I went back and read these documents, I wasn’t sure that he knows what he’s about either, other than thinking that whatever he’s doing is right. So, as he continues to dominate the airways, you might want to look back at where he’s been and see if he makes sense to you. One thing for sure. If he was after oil, he blew it big time!

FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: DICK CHENEY

JANUARY 9, 1996 FRONTLINE
CHENEY: We deemed him a legitimate target as the commander of the Iraqi armed forces and the first night of the air war we took down his presidential palace with cruise missiles. We hit a lot of command centers where he might have been expected to be and if he had been in any of those centers he would have been a casualty. That would have been a perfectly acceptable outcome. I don’t think he went near a military facility during the Gulf War. I think he probably hung out in the civilian sections of Baghdad, he knew we’d never attack a civilian area and he was safe. I think in terms of the expectation of the time, as I say there was the view.. belief on the part of many of the experts and others in the region that if you administer a decisive defeat to his military forces that he will not be able to survive politically. There have since the war been a number of occasions on which there have been serious attempts to throw him out but he’s always defeated them because he has a very tight security service. He’s got a security service watching his security service. He’s a brutal, very harsh, tough, individual and so far he’s been able to survive
QUESTION: You find that personally frustrating?
CHENEY: No. I don’t. There’s this line that people use– well, George Bush is out of power and Saddam Hussein is still there– well, we have a democracy in this country, we elect Presidents, we unelect Presidents, people serve for four years or eight years, it’s not a dictatorship. It’s not like Iraq, it’s goofy even to make a comparison. I think if Saddam wasn’t there that his successor probably wouldn’t be notably friendlier to the United States than he is. I also look at that part of the world as of vital interest to the United States for the next hundred years it’s going to be the world’s supply of oil. We’ve got a lot of friends in the region. We’re always going to have to be involved there. Maybe it’s part of our national character, you know we like to have these problems nice and neatly wrapped up, put a ribbon around it. You deploy a force, you win the war and the problem goes away and it doesn’t work that way in the Middle East it never has and isn’t likely to in my lifetime.
We are always going to have to be involved there and Saddam is just one more irritant but there’s a long list of irritants in that part of the world and for us to have done what would have been necessary to get rid of him–certainly a very large force for a long time into Iraq to run him to ground and then you’ve got to worry about what comes after. And you then have to accept the responsibility for what happens in Iraq, accept more responsibility for what happens in the region. It would have been an all US operation, I don’t think any of our allies would have been with us, maybe Britain, but nobody else. And you’re going to take a lot more American casualties if you’re gonna go muck around in Iraq for weeks on end trying to run Saddam Hussein to ground and capture Baghdad and so forth and I don’t think it would have been worth it. I think the, the decision the President made in effect to stop when we did was the right one.

C.E.O. HALLIBURTON: DICK CHENEY
FOUNDING MEMBER – PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY: DICK CHENEY

Dear Mr. President:
We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.
The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.
Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.
Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration’s attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.
We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

C.E.O. HALLIBURTON: DICK CHENEY

JUNE 23, 1998 CATO INSTITUTE
I believe that economic forces have driven much of the change in the last 20 years, and I would be prepared to argue that, in many cases, that economic progress has been a prerequisite to political change. The power of ideas, concepts of freedom and liberty and of how best to organize economic activity, have been an essential, positive ingredient in the developments in the last part of the 20th century. At the heart of that process has been the U.S. business community. Our capital, our technology, our entrepreneurship has been a vital part of those forces that have, in fact, transformed the world. Our economic capabilities need to be viewed, I believe, as a strategic asset in a world that is increasingly focused on economic growth and the development of market economies.
I think it is a false dichotomy to be told that we have to choose between "commercial" interests and other interests that the United States might have in a particular country or region around the world. Oftentimes the absolute best way to advance human rights and the cause of freedom or the development of democratic institutions is through the active involvement of American businesses. Investment and trade can oftentimes do more to open up a society and to create opportunity for a society’s citizens than reams of diplomatic cables from our State Department.
I think it’s important for us to look on U.S. businesses as a valuable national asset, not just as an activity we tolerate, or a practice that we do not want to get too close to because it involves money. Far better for us to understand that the drive of American firms to be involved in and shape and direct the global economy is a strategic asset that serves the national interest of the United States.

C.E.O. HALLIBURTON: DICK CHENEY

Producing oil is obviously a self-depleting activity. Every year you’ve got to find and develop reserves equal to your output just to stand still, just to stay even. This is true for companies as well in the broader economic sense as it is for the world. A new merged company like Exxon-Mobil will have to secure over a billion and a half barrels of new oil equivalent reserves every year just to replace existing production. It’s like making one hundred per cent interest discovery in another major field of some five hundred million barrels equivalent every four months or finding two Hibernias a year.
For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from?
Governments and the national oil companies are obviously controlling about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.

VICE PRESIDENT: DICK CHENEY

SEPTEMBER 16, 2001 MEET THE PRESS
MR. RUSSERT: Saddam Hussein, your old friend, his government had this to say: "The American cowboy is rearing the fruits of crime against humanity." If we determine that Saddam Hussein is also harboring terrorists, and there’s a track record there, would we have any reluctance of going after Saddam Hussein?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No.
MR. RUSSERT: Do we have evidence that he’s harboring terrorists?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: There is – in the past, there have been some activities related to terrorism by Saddam Hussein. But at this stage, you know, the focus is over here on al-Qaida and the most recent events in New York. Saddam Hussein’s bottled up, at this point, but clearly, we continue to have a fairly tough policy where the Iraqis are concerned.
MR. RUSSERT: Do we have any evidence linking Saddam Hussein or Iraqis to this operation?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No.

VICE PRESIDENT: DICK CHENEY

September 8, 2002 MEET THE PRESS
TIM RUSSERT: One year ago when you were on MEET THE PRESS just five days after September 11, I asked you a specific question about Iraq and Saddam Hussein… Has anything changed, in your mind?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I want to be very careful about how I say this. I’m not here today to make a specific allegation that Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11. I can’t say that. On the other hand, since we did that interview, new information has come to light. And we spent time looking at that relationship between Iraq, on the one hand, and the al-Qaeda organization on the other. And there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years. We’ve seen in connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohamed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center. The debates about, you know, was he there or wasn’t he there, again, it’s the intelligence business.
TIM RUSSERT: What does the CIA say about that and the president?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: It’s credible. But, you know, I think a way to put it would be it’s unconfirmed at this point. We’ve got…
TIM RUSSERT: Anything else?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: There is – again, I want to separate out 9/11, from the other relationships between Iraq and the al-Qaeda organization. But there is a pattern of relationships going back many years. And in terms of exchanges and in terms of people, we’ve had recently since the operations in Afghanistan – we’ve seen al-Qaeda members operating physically in Iraq and off the territory of Iraq. We know that Saddam Hussein has, over the years, been one of the top state sponsors of terrorism for nearly 20 years. We’ve had this recent weird incident where the head of the Abu Nidal organization, one of the world’s most noted terrorists, was killed in Baghdad. The announcement was made by the head of Iraqi intelligence. The initial announcement said he’d shot himself. When they dug into that, though, he’d shot himself four times in the head. And speculation has been, that, in fact, somehow, the Iraqi government or Saddam Hussein had him eliminated to avoid potential embarrassment by virtue of the fact that he was in Baghdad and operated in Baghdad. So it’s a very complex picture to try to sort out.
TIM RUSSERT: But no direct link?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I can’t – I’ll leave it right where it’s at. I don’t want to go beyond that. I’ve tried to be cautious and restrained in my comments, and I hope that everybody will recognize that.

VICE PRESIDENT: DICK CHENEY

SEPTEMBER 14, 2003 MEET THE PRESS
MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection.
MR. RUSSERT: But is there a connection?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know. You and I talked about this two years ago. I can remember you asking me this question just a few days after the original attack. At the time I said no, we didn’t have any evidence of that. Subsequent to that, we’ve learned a couple of things. We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organization. We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of ’93. And we’ve learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven. Now, is there a connection between the Iraqi government and the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93? We know, as I say, that one of the perpetrators of that act did, in fact, receive support from the Iraqi government after the fact. With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.
MR. RUSSERT: We could establish a direct link between the hijackers of September 11 and Saudi Arabia.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We know that many of the attackers were Saudi. There was also an Egyptian in the bunch. It doesn’t mean those governments had anything to do with that attack. That’s a different proposition than saying the Iraqi government and the Iraqi intelligent service has a relationship with al-Qaeda that developed throughout the decade of the ’90s. That was clearly official policy.

VICE PRESIDENT: DICK CHENEY

SEPTEMBER 10, 2006 MEET THE PRESS
MR. RUSSERT: You said Saddam Hussein was bottled up.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Mm-hmm.
MR. RUSSERT: And he was not linked in any way to September 11.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: To 9/11.
MR. RUSSERT: And now we have the Select Committee on Intelligence coming out with a report on Friday, it says here, “A declassified report released [Friday] by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S.  intelligence analysts were strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq.” You said here that it was pretty well confirmed that Atta may have had a meeting in Prague, that that was credible. All the while, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee in January and in June and in September, the CIA was saying that wasn’t the case. And then the president…
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, let me, let me—on that—well, go ahead.
MR. RUSSERT: No, go ahead.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No, I want a, I want a chance to jump on that.
MR. RUSSERT: OK, but, but you said it was pretty well confirmed that it was credible and now the Senate Intelligence Committee says not true, The CIA was waving you off.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No.
MR. RUSSERT: Any suggestion there was a meeting with Mohamed Atta, one of the hijackers, with Iraqi officials?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. The sequence, Tim, was, when you and I talked that morning, we had not received any reporting with respect to Mohamed Atta going to Prague. Just a few days after you and I did that show, the CIA, CIA produced an intelligence report from the Czech Intelligence Service that said Mohammad Atta, leader of the hijackers, had been in Prague in April of ‘01 and had met with the senior Iraqi intelligence official in Prague. That was the first report we had that he’d been to Prague and met with Iraqis. Later on, some period of time after that, the CIA produced another report based on a photographer—on a photograph that was taken in Prague of a man they claim 70 percent probability was Mohammad Atta on another occasion. This was the reporting we received from the CIA when I responded to your question and said it had been pretty well confirmed that he’d been in Prague. The—later on, they were unable to confirm it. Later on, they backed off of it. But what I told you was exactly what we were receiving at the time. It never said, and I don’t believe I ever said, specifically, that it linked the Iraqis to 9/11. It specifically said he had been in Prague, Mohamed Atta had been in Prague and we didn’t know…
MR. RUSSERT: Well, I asked you, I said, “is there a connection between Saddam and 9/11 on September ‘03” and you said “we don’t know.”
VICE PRES. CHENEY: That’s right.
MR. RUSSERT: So you raised that possibility.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: It was raised by the CIA who passed on the report from the Czech Intelligence Service.
MR. RUSSERT: All right. Now the president has been asked, “What did Iraq have to do with the attack on the World Trade Center?” and he said “nothing.” Do you agree with that?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I do. So it’s not…
MR. RUSSERT: So it’s case, case closed.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We’ve never been able to confirm any connection between Iraq and 9/11.
MR. RUSSERT: And the meeting with Atta did not occur?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know. I mean, we’ve never been able to, to, to link it, and the FBI and CIA have worked it aggressively. I would say, at this point, nobody has been able to confirm…
MR. RUSSERT: Then why, in the lead-up to the war, was there the constant linkage between Iraq and al-Qaeda?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: That’s a different issue. Now, there’s a question of whether or not al-Qaeda, or whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11. There’s a separate—apart from that’s the issue of whether or not there was a historic relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The basis for that is probably best captured in George Tenet’s testimony before the Senate Intel Commission, an open session, where he said specifically that there was a pattern of relationship that went back at least a decade between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
MR. RUSSERT: But the president said they were working in concert, giving the strong suggestion to the American people that they were involved in September 11th.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. There are, there are two totally different propositions here, and people have consistently tried to confuse them. And it’s important, I think—there’s a third proposition, as well, too, and that is Iraq’s traditional position as a strong sponsor of terror. So you’ve got Iraq and 9/11, no evidence that there’s a connection. You’ve got Iraq and al-Qaeda, testimony from the director of CIA that there was indeed a relationship, Zarqawi in Baghdad, etc. Then the third…
MR. RUSSERT: The committee said that there was no relationship. In fact…
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I haven’t seen the report; I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but the fact is…
MR. RUSSERT: But Mr. Vice President, the bottom line is…
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We know, we know that Zarqawi, running a terrorist camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, after we went in to 9/11, then fled and went to Baghdad and set up operations in Baghdad in the spring of ‘02 and was there from then, basically, until basically the time we launched into Iraq.
MR. RUSSERT: The bottom line is, the rationale given the American people was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and he could give those weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda and we could have another September 11. And now we read that there is no evidence, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, of that relationship. You’ve said there’s no involvement. The president says there’s no involvement.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No, Tim, no involvement in what respect?
MR. RUSSERT: In September 11, OK. The CIA said, leading up to the war, that the possibility of Saddam using weapons of mass destruction was “low.” It appears that there was a deliberate attempt made by the administration to link al-Qaeda in Iraq in the minds of the American people and use it as a rationale to go into Iraq.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Tim, I guess—I don’t—I’m not sure what part you don’t understand here. In September—or in 1990, the State Department designated Iraq as a state sponsor of terror. Abu Nidal, famous terrorist, had sanctuary in, in Baghdad for years. Zarqawi was in Baghdad after we took Afghanistan and before we went into Iraq. You had the facility up at Kermal, poisons facility, ran by Ansar Islam, an affiliate of al-Qaeda. You had the fact that Saddam Hussein, for example, provided payments to the families of suicide bombers of $25,000 on a regular basis. This was a state sponsor of terror.  He had a relationship with terror groups. No question about it. Nobody denies that.
The evidence we also had at the time was that he had a relationship with al-Qaeda. And that was George Tenet’s testimony, the director of the CIA, in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. We also have a—had knowledge of the fact that he had produced and used weapons of mass destruction and we know, as well, that while he did not have any production under way at the time, that he’s clearly retained the capability, and the expectation from the experts was as soon as the sanctions were lifted he’d be back in business again.
Now this was the place where, probably, there was a greater prospect of a connection between terrorists on the one hand and a terrorist – sponsoring state and weapons of mass destruction than any place else. You talk about Iran, North Korea, they’re problems, too, but they hadn’t been through 12 years of sanctions and resolutions by the U.N. Security Council and ignored them with impunity.

FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: DICK CHENEY

JUNE 1, 2009 NATIONAL PRESS CLUB
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he does not believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the planning or execution of the September 11, 2001, attacks. He strongly defended the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, however, arguing that Hussein’s previous support for known terrorists was a serious danger after 9/11.
Cheney, in an appearance at the National Press Club, also said he is intent on speaking out in defense of the Bush administration’s national security record because "a clear understanding of policies that worked [in protecting the United States] is essential." "I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11. We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true," Cheney conceded.
But Hussein was "somebody who provided sanctuary and safe harbor and resources to terrorists… [It] is, without question, a fact."
Cheney restated his claim that "there was a relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq that stretched back 10 years. It’s not something I made up. … We know for a fact that Saddam Hussein was a sponsor – a state sponsor – of terror. It’s not my judgment. That was the judgment of our [intelligence community] and State Department." Cheney identified former CIA Director George Tenet as the "prime source of information" on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. Tenet "testified, if you go back and check the record, in the fall of [2002] before the Senate Intelligence Committee – in open session – that there was a relationship," Cheney said…
Mickey @ 9:02 PM

freedom’s just another name for nothing else to lose…

Posted on Tuesday 2 June 2009

Scott Roeder
Eric RudolphScott Roeder doesn’t look to me like a man who has been chosen to change the world for the better – nor did Timothy McVeigh, or Eric Rudolph, or all the others. After a time, it’s even hard to remember what their issue was. They actually seem to be cut from the same cloth – Freemen, Militia, violent Pro-Life, Waco, Aryan Nation, KKK, NRA, Y2K, bombs, guns, loners with violence on their minds. I’m not sure the topic they choose to fixate on matters so much as the fact that there is one – something to blame for their felt alienation and to focus their rage. But it is interesting that they all seem drawn to the same anarchist fringes of American life.

Scott Roeder’s ex-wife says that he underwent a dramatic personalitry change back in the mid-90’s and she divorced him because he couldn’t deal with life. All he talked about were taxes, and the Freemen, and Abortion. Apparently his now 22 year old son avoided him as much as possible. I can’t find any report of his employment, or where he lived. Just reports about his frequent picketting at Abortion Clinics. And for someone who was an anarchist, he sure was preoccuppied with when he would get to see a lawyer in his arraignment video.

I suspect that when the information about his life begins to percolate out of the ether, there won’t be much there to learn. He’ll just be another empty loner who filled his mind with a single organizing passion. And that’s the whole point. His feelings about the Pro-Life Movement will be debated for as long as the news cycle will allow, but that discussion will make little difference in the future of the issue, nor will it explain very much about Scott Roeder.

Serial killers, rapists, many pedophiles, guys like the rogues gallery above, all share a number of characteristics. They don’t play well with others – so there aren’t successful marriages or good friends. They can’t focus on professional life, so they move from job to job or are underemployed. They don’t have hobbies or avocational interests to speak of. It is said that one measures a life by three parameters – work, love, and play. These people fail in all three categories. You can see them on what I call "bad person t.v." [those shows like Dateline or 48 Hours] where they are running down some serial killer, or bigamist, or rapist – the shows that end up with the tell-tale DNA tests. And what they choose to fill their minds with doesn’t really matter that much. What matters is that whatever their choice of obsession, it occupies their minds. One of the surprising things I found in my psychiatric career was that one might think that interviewing them would be challenging or interesting. Not so. They are very boring people. Very boring.

Maybe Scott Roeder had strong convictions about late term abortion. But that’s not what drives a man with his story. What drives the motor is the emptiness that needs something like that to enliven the inner deadness. In some cases, that deadness is a symptom of a major mental illness like Schizophrenia or some form of Autism. In other cases it’s the result of developmental failures. In McVeigh’s case, it may have been part of a War Neurosis. Such cases are always hard to say much about because they rarely stick around for psychotherapy or even examination. In the old days, they often found their way into mental hospitals for the long haul. With those gone, they gravitate to other institutions – sometimes prison or death row. But as a group, they are people who have no idea how to manage the freedom they claim to desire above all else.

Mickey @ 10:30 PM

about that painting himself into the corner thing…

Posted on Tuesday 2 June 2009


Greg Sargent catches Cheney parsing carefully about whether the two CIA documents he’s trying to get released will prove that torture works.

    The key moment came when his interviewer said: “You want some documents declassified having to do with waterboarding.” Cheney replied:

      “Yes, but the way I would describe them is they have to do with the detainee program, the interrogation program. It’s not just waterboarding. It’s the interrogation program that we used for high-value detainees. There were two reports done that summarize what we learned from that program, and I think they provide a balanced view.”

Greg speculates:

    My bet is Cheney is planning to cite the valuable intel in the docs and say that the program — of which torture was only a part — was responsible for producing it. He’ll fudge the question of whether the torture itself was actually responsible for generating that information. Cheney is as experienced as any Washington hand at using precise language to obfsucate, and this is the game plan. You heard it here first.

Greg’s right–Cheney’s making a key retreat off his claims. That’s because we know the CIA got a ton of intelligence from some of the detainees, particularly KSM. But I’ve shown repeatedly, with my half-completed review of the KSM intelligence used in the 9/11 Report, that the bulk of this information came long after KSM was waterboarded in March 2003…
The way that people are finally catching on to the Rove/Cheney way of distorting is a thing of beauty. This two memo thing of Cheney’s has to be bullshit, no other option really. So why is he putting so many eggs in a basket full of holes. I guess he hasn’t caught onto the fact that there is an army onto his methods.
He’s playing a chess game using a checker-board strategy …
Mickey @ 12:53 PM

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