‘Wasn’t that, like, the Bay of Pigs thing?’

[Octafish]

Dana Perino, White House press secretary, was stumped on NPR’s “Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me” quiz show. She didn’t know the difference between the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

"Oh, Dana"

By Tim Grieve
Salon.com
Monday, Dec. 10, 2007 12:18 EST

At a White House press briefing on Oct. 26, a reporter asked Dana Perino about Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that a U.S. plan to base parts of a missile shield in Europe was similar to the events that led to the Cuban missile crisis.

Perino’s response: “Well, I think that the historical comparison is not -- does not exactly work. What I can say is what President Putin went on to say, which is that the president and President Putin have said that we can work together on this.”

SNIP...

Appearing on NPR’s “Wait, Wait ... Don’t Tell Me” over the weekend, Perino said she “panicked” when she got the Cuban missile crisis question because she wasn’t exactly sure what the Cuban missile crisis was. “I really know nothing about the Cuban missile crisis,” Perino said. “It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure.”

Perino said she went home that night and asked her husband, “‘Wasn’t that, like, the Bay of Pigs thing?’ And he said, ‘Oh, Dana.’“

― Tim Grieve

SOURCE

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html

Hear her on Crooks and Liars.com:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/09/npr-dana-perino-dont-know-much-about-history/



Here’s the point of this post:

Bay of Pigs revisionism in the press

Often we hear and read people say: “Kennedy did not send in air support. That is why the invasion failed. Worst, he abandoned the freedom fighters on the beach.”

No. That is not the truth.

Before giving the invasion his approval, President Kennedy said that he would not – under any circumstances, provide any official U.S. government support, including air cover by the Navy or Air Force and he would not be landing the Marines or any other branch of the armed forces.

The CIA said, “No problem. We won’t need them.” Which was a lie. Dulles and Cabell and the rest of those in-the-know thought they could later pressure JFK into sending in the cavalry. For details, read “Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years” by David Talbot.

Dulles and the CIA were wrong. That didn’t stop them from blaming JFK, though, and spreading the word that he was a coward who abandoned the brave freedom fighters on the beaches.

Truly worst of all is the most important part of the history, which gets left out of the story whenever ABCNNBCBSFauxNoiseNutwork tell it: It is the fact the operation was compromised. The Cubans and the Soviets knew when and where the invasion was slated to take place. Let me repeat: THE CUBANS AND THE SOVIETS KNEW WHEN AND WHERE THE INVASION WAS SLATED TO TAKE PLACE.

The CIA didn’t tell JFK that inconvenient truth, though.

Soviets Knew Date of Cuba Attack

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 29, 2000; A04

Shortly after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, a top CIA
official told an investigative commission that the Soviet Union had
somehow learned the exact date of the amphibious landing in advance,
according to a newly declassified version of the commission's final report.

Moreover, the CIA apparently had known of the leak to the Soviets--and
went ahead with the invasion anyway.

CONTINUED…

http://www.jfklancer.com/jfk1bop.html

Now if Perino’s boss had been the occupant of the Oval Office in 1961, when the Bay of Pigs happened, or 1962, when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred, the odds are history would have taken a very different course. I believe there is an extremely good possibility that Bush would’ve ordered the Marines to invade. In that case, there’s a good possibility that the invasion would escalate to problems in Berlin. And things easily could escalate to open war with the Soviets.



Knowing the itchy nook-yoo-ler trigger finger on monkey (like his Poppy and Ol' Unka Tricky Dick and Grampa Prescott), it’s a good bet he’d have unleashed the whole arsenal on the Soviet Union. And that would have spelled the end of civilization.



That is speculation. Now here are some more facts to ponder.

Perino described “The Bay of Pigs Thing.” According to H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, was how Nixon referred to the assassination of President Kennedy.

The Texans Bay of Pigs Thing

H. R. Haldeman, in his book, "The Ends of Power," cites several conversations where Nixon expressed concern about the Watergate affair becoming public knowledge and where this exposure might lead. Haldeman writes:

"In fact, I was puzzled when he told me, 'Tell Ehrlichman this whole group of Cubans is tied to the Bay of Pigs.' After a pause I said, 'The Bay of Pigs? What does that have to do with this ?' But Nixon merely said, 'Ehrlichman will know what I mean,' and dropped the subject."

Later in his book, Haldeman appears to answer his own question when he says, "It seems that in all of those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination."

In taped conversations with Haldeman, Nixon is obviously worried about what would happen if Hunt's involvement in the Watergate burglary came to light. Nixon says, "Of course, this Hunt, that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab, there's a hell of a lot of things, and we feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further...But, you can say, this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again."

http://dirtypolitics.50megs.com/dirty.htm

And that’s the truth. If that’s not ironic, I don’t know what is. I seriously doubt Dana does.

[mod mom]

1. Isn't it insulting to the press corpse (exclude Helen when adding an "e"), that they

believe they can get away with putting a pretty face in front of reporters regardless of her obvious substandard level of education?

[0007]

3. Beauty is only in the eye of the beholder'

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote: ‘Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.’

[insanad]

7. Child of the 80s, blame tv

Dana Perino was not even born when the Cuban Missle Crisis was taking place. I was a newborn but didn't learn about it until my college history classes and then it was touched on so briefly that it barely registers to most people under 40. That didn't stop me from watching the History channel, reading books, and researching it for myself and it was a pivotal important event in the history of the U.S. and it's relationship with the (then) Soviet Union. It's amazing that a position as important as hers in the White House would overlook the value of an education in American politics, policy, and history and place such a person as the slightly smarter bobble head before the President performs his chimp act. She's the opening act to the comedy routine, not as funny, not quite as stupid, but gets the audience dumbed down so the main attraction can jump on stage and scratch, goof around, and throw feces at the press. I too am glad Helen is there to fling it right back.

[DS1]

10. That kind of coddling is unacceptable

I'm 34 and know enough about the two to answer how two entirely separate incidents are different from each other.

And I'm not a spokesperson for the White House of the United States of America, who should be smart enough to know key names and dates of the top of their heads.

[insanad]

12. Title readers are not researchers!!

Thanks for reading the title and responding but if you would have read the whole post (not long by my usual writing standards) you would have had a better view of my complete thoughts on the issue. I invite you to go back and finish the research before you jump to conclusions. I know you can do it!!

[DS1]

13. I read it

It's you, for the second time in this thread, who is leaping to conclusions. I'll just lump you in with Dana now, see ya later.

[AuntPatsy]

49. I agree it's unacceptable, and as always someone pops up with what they

believe to have merit when finding a way to excuse this obvious ignorance from someone who holds such a high position, welcome to Bush's world..ignorance is acceptable on all levels.

[Octafish]

75. ''Ignorance is Strength.'' ... Perfect mindset for Bush's press secretary.

More crimethink: "Dishonest" and "Unreliable."

Revealed: George Orwell's Big Brother dossier

The story of how George Orwell compiled a list of "crypto-Communists" and how it came to be sent to a secret government department reads like some lost episode from Nineteen Eighty-Four.

by Michael Shelden
Electronic Telegraph, Saturday 27 June 1998

The tale begins not with politics but with the author's love of a beautiful young woman. In the 1940s, Celia Kirwan was a bright and vivacious personality widely known and liked in London literary circles. Her twin sister, Mamaine, was married to Orwell's friend and fellow campaigner against totalitarianism Arthur Koestler.

After the war Celia Kirwan was employed by a shadowy organisation in the Foreign Office known as IRD. Until the 1970s, very few people knew that the Information Research Department was an anti-Communist propaganda section responsible for undermining Soviet attempts to sway public opinion in the West. At some point in the late 1940s, Kirwan made it clear to Orwell that his vast political knowledge might be of some use to her bosses.

If she had not been involved with the IRD, it is doubtful that the author would have agreed to give it assistance. He was naturally suspicious of all such agencies, having learnt to distrust them as a young servant of the Empire in the Indian Imperial Police. But he was eager to help a woman to whom he had once proposed marriage and whose friendship he valued immensely. He wrote some of his most revealing and intimate letters to her - declaring in one that the touch of her body against his had sent an electric sensation of pleasure through him. He reluctantly accepted her friendly refusal to become his wife; but her romantic image haunted his thoughts as Julia's haunts Winston Smith's in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The situation was also inevitably influenced by Orwell's fears that he would die soon from tuberculosis. He put up a brave and determined fight against his disease, submitting to the latest experimental treatments and enduring great pain. His friend the newspaper editor David Astor went to heroic lengths to obtain for him the new American drug streptomycin, but nothing seemed to work. Weak and bedridden, he worried that death would deny him the chance to expose the threat from Stalin's "dishonest" friends in Britain and America. He wanted to leave something behind to set the record straight if no one else was going to step forward to attack the evasive, but effective, "fellow-travellers" and "crypto-Communists".

This desire is partly reflected in Winston Smith's desperate efforts to save the truth from being destroyed or perverted by his enemies. Nineteen Eighty-Four was originally called "The Last Man in Europe" because of Orwell's hope that the war against totalitarianism would not be lost so long as one person remained to fight. Acutely aware of his own limited time, he composed his list and gave parts of it to Celia Kirwan as one way of continuing his fight beyond the grave. If matters worsened and the Stalinists gained greater influence in the West, the list would continue to stand as a warning against certain people who might want to disguise their true intentions.

"Dishonest" and "unreliable" are the most frequent charges Orwell levels against the names in his blue notebook. It is not a hit-list or blacklist, but a record of those whom Orwell considered deceptive - and thus a collection of people whose influence needed to be resisted and whose offers of help needed to be carefully scrutinised. He was not out to suppress Communism or Communists, but merely to level the playing field by identifying the sympathies of those who tried to hide them. If such people "could get inside the Labour Party as an organised body," he warned, "they might be able to do enormous mischief."

CONTINUED...

http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/articles/col-dossier.htm

According to Dickens, as far as the world goes, ignorance is worse than want.

[Chovexani]

62. I'm 26, have a GED

And know the difference.

[tabasco]

28. No, I blame Bush

He has surrounded himself with loyal, incompetent stooges.

The government has been packed with idiots from top to bottom.

[Evoman]

33. Dude, I'm 28 and I knew what the Cuban missile crisis was by the time I was 12.

What the fuck do they teach in the American schools that this woman doesn't know about one of the most important issues in the freakin' 21st century. It boggles the mind.

[insanad]

73. What the F---K and other useful terms

We didn't learn "Dude" or "What the Fuck" as generic expressions until your generation made them so universally useful. We were studying spelling and writing and some of the better schools had the funding to teach history, but in the 70's and early 80's, we were too caught up in the Reaganomics to notice anything in the past. I don't know much about Dana Perino, but she surely should not be in such an important position as an advisor or press agent for the Doofus President if she doesn't know some of the basic catastrophic events of the last century and how they shaped our present fears of nook-u-lure weapons. Maybe she'll need to "Spend more time with the family" like the other folks exodussing Bush's staff.

[CTyankee]

50. There was even a relatively recent movie called "Thirteen Days."

It was quite good and quite a chilling account of what happened and how serious it was.

I'm sure you have read Elie Abel's book, "The MIssile Crisis," published in the mid sixties. If not, I urge to to read it. I read it last summer when I was laid up from surgery and found an old paperback of it. JFK's statesmanship and his judicious use of U.S. naval power (he purposely didn't called it a "blockade" since that is considered an act of war. He called it a "quarantine") shows how masterful he was at the job of president. I wanted to weep just thinking about how far we have come from this kind of great presidential governance...

[insanad]

56. I'll have to check it out on Netflix

I grew up LDS (Mormon). I've since been emancipated and enjoy the freedom of thought and information that my choice has given me. In the LDS history is the dark Mountain Meadows Massacre event that consumed the church and was held in dark secrecy for over 100 years. The books written about this event and other Mormon secrets are numerous and I finally tackled a huge one (over 600 pg) that documented every nuance and piece of information available.

The Cuban Missle Crisis and Bay of Pigs were similar in the secrecy surrounding them and the misinformation that prevailed. It was so twisted and complex and dangerous that I think most of the history teachers just avoided it in hopes it would eventually go away. It was brushed over in my school history classes but in my adult years I was able to glean a pretty good share of info that I consider respectable and balanced, but I have no doubt there is a ton more out there that would be very damning to both sides.

At the end of the baby boomer generation I feel a little torn between the information age and the old school thoughts of the hippie and post War generations. There once seemed a life of innocence and trust between the American people and their govt. but in the subsequent years, it's become quite apparant that our govt. has been corrupt from early on, susceptable to every kind of vile manipulation we're seeing on such a massive scale today. Granted, George Bush is far more corrupt and evil than any in our past, but with the information age, computers, the net, television, etc. it's so much more in the forefront of the peoples minds. They're held to a higher standard now than when Kennedy was president.

What he did then was probably the best thing any leader could have done with the information and situation he was faced with. It's silly to hold present day expectations and values against past leaders, partly because it does no good, and is unfair to the actual situation. Revisionist history aside, Kennedy was a great president, an admirable diplomat, and an innovative and creative man.

He was killed when I was just over a year old. I can't say I knew anything of him other than that he was held in great reverence and almost a martyr for most of my younger years. The exposees that have subsequently surfaced present a far different picture, but do not negate the good that he did in his short life or impacted in his short time as President. I'll look up that book that you recommend. It sounds interesting.

[CTyankee]

58. Abel was an esteemed journalist. His account is riviting but of course

we don't know everything. However, I lived through this crisis, having a baby and living in NYC and scared to death we would go up in a mushroom cloud.

There is another book coming out on the missile crisis (I forget the title) and it should be great.

The movie was more centered on one person's experience, altho it did treat the story of JFK and RFK's relationship during the crisis. RFK was the "crisis" manager for his brother and did a magnificent job of managing the experts summoned by JFK to offer their best ideas about solving the crisis in a short amount of time.

I shudder to think what Bush would have done...

[insanad]

61. Connecticut Yankee

He would have the Red Phone on speed dial voice recognition as he rides his mechanical bull hollering "Bring Em On" and sending the massive arsenal of nook-you-lure bombs built up by his hero Reagan into the skies over the mid-east. We'd all be dust and he and the other roaches in Washington would be left scurrying around looking for food among the charred rotting carcasses left of the American people.

[CTyankee]

64. jeez, Insanad! Didja have to do that? Aaargh!!! n/t

[insanad]

65. Acronym illiterate

ok, I've finally figured out what K & R mean but I'm unfamiliar with n/t. I've gotten that response whenever I get a bit graphic so I assume it's something referring to my crass words. I'll spare your sensitive ears next time but don't get me started on Rush Limbaugh or I'll get so foul you'll need borax & acid to wash your ears out.

[CTyankee]

66. n/t means "no text" so don't expect to see a message. Oh, and if you are ever

responding to me about Rush Limbaugh, go ahead! I'm as rabid as you are about him! I love company when it comes to bashing that !@#!@$!@$ asshole!

[insanad]

69. Corpulent Bloated Gas Bag

While browsing at a neighborhood yard sale I saw a stack of books written or inspired by the bloated corpulent gas bag known as Rush Limbaugh. I laughed at the large stack, selling for .25 cents per book and I mentioned that his books were cheaper than one-ply toilet paper, but that I would not want to wipe my nether region with anything so full of rancid acid and poisonous methane fumes that would deposit more feces on my arse than it may remove. My husband laughed and then a local shrew piped up proclaiming how much she enjoyed Rush's show, "Otherwise, how would I know what was going on in the world?". I judiciously responded, "Your devotion to his program reflects much more about the listener than the purveyor of such tripe.". She snorted, slowly processing the jibe, and then nodded, "I guess it does. uhe uhe.".

The piece of all this that haunts me to the point of distraction and frustration is that the ignorant, underemployed, easily duped, and incredibly bigoted people in this nation seem to nod in unison to the noxious waves of sewage that spew so freely from the mouth of this grotesque primate. Some could not blame such a blob from capitalizing on the stupidity and ignorance of so many foolish Americans with the free press that he manipulates and prostitutes, but I am grossly ashamed that so many of my fellow citizens give any listening time or allow such nasty filth into their homes. These are the same kind of people who would decry pornography, abortion, or other sad reflections of peoples choices, but they willingly allow and welcome this toxic rubbish to fill their homes, their cars, and their thought processes. Then, to add to the cloud of fatal fumes, they extol those same opinions, narrow bias, bigoted mis-representations that they hear from him, in some unifying flood of dumb blind lemmings, all happily flowing to the cliff that leads to bitter contention, cruel judgement, and twisted manipulation of information and ideas.

Their devotion to anything from such a vile slob as Rush Limbaugh only causes intelligent, creative, thoughtful and pro-active people to disrespect them and everything they stand for. I'm embarrassed for them. I'm completely disinterested in their excuses for listening to him, (i.e. "he's funny, or I only listen to see what Hilary Clinton is doing wrong, or He has some good ideas"). Whatever the excuse, it's shameful and reflects their own bigotry, their own ignorance, and especially lack of creativity or ability to think for themselves.

The only action necessary to shut this ass up is to turn off his program. click- JUST DO IT!!!

Put him on an ice floe off the coast of Alaska, without his teeth
I've heard that theres an old Inuit tradition that when someone is really old and can no longer contribute, that in a gesture of kindness they are placed on an icefloe and sent adrift. In short order they sleep and freeze to death and are left to return to the sea.

I say that Rush Limbaugh is certainly past any usefullness to the world and should be placed on an icefloe without his teeth. Unfortunately he'd still be able to vocalize his hot noxious gaseous bloated opinions and the methane would escape to the ionisphere causing an even bigger hole in the ozone, possibly adding to the global warming in the Northern Hemisphere and raising the sea levels, flooding even more towns and villages along the coasts.

Perhaps it's time that someone put him on the pig hoist and made bacon and pork rinds from him to feed to the redneck idjits that listen to him. Smoke him and Serve him up!!!

[Octafish]

4. Press Corpse indeed. They miss stories and make us look the other way. Take Jeff Gannon...

That guy's job, ostensibly, was to ask questions that helped Monkey out.
Who knows what all his "assignments" were?

Dana certainly respects him more than she does Helen Thomas. Here's Crooks and Liars -- the website of record -- take on a recent exchange:

Give Helen Thomas a Raise!

[BrklynLiberal]

2. What a stinking mess...from top to bottom.

[Octafish]

6. Press missed Prescott's involvement in the 'Coup against FDR'

I believe this may be old news to you BrklynLiberal, but please allow me to point out a major story Corporate McPravda missed, from David Swanson and our friends at Smirking Chimp:

Bush Fulfills His Grandfather's Dream

by David Swanson | Jul 28 2007 - 2:01pm |

It's remarkably common for a grandson to take up his grandfather's major project. This occurred to me when I read recently of Thor Heyerdahl's grandson taking up his mission to cross the Pacific on a raft. But what really struck me was the BBC story aired on July 23rd documenting President George W. Bush's grandfather's involvement in a 1933 plot to overthrow the U.S. government and install a fascist dictatorship. I knew the story, but had not considered the possibility that the grandson was trying to accomplish what his grandfather had failed to achieve.

Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895 to 1972) attended Yale University and joined the secret society known as Skull and Bones. Prescott is widely reported to have stolen the skull of Native American leader Geronimo. As far as I know, this has not actually been confirmed. In fact, Prescott seems to have had a habit of making things up. He sent letters home from World War I claiming he'd received medals for heroism. After the letters were printed in newspapers, he had to retract his claims.

If this does not yet sound like the life of a George W. Bush ancestor, try this on for size: Prescott Bush's early business efforts tended to fail. He married the daughter of a very rich man named George Herbert Walker (the guy with the compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, that now belongs to the Bush family, and the origin of Dubya's middle initial). Walker installed Prescott Bush as an executive in Thyssen and Flick. From then on, Prescott's business dealings went better, and he entered politics.

Now, the name Thyssen comes from a German named Fritz Thyssen, major financial backer of the rise of Adolph Hitler. Thyssen was referred to in the New York Herald-Tribune as "Hitler's Angel." During the 1930s and early 1940s, and even as late as 1951, Prescott Bush was involved in business dealings with Thyssen, and was inevitably aware of both Thyssen's political activities and the fact that the companies involved were financially benefiting the nation of Germany. In addition, the companies Prescott Bush profited from included one engaged in mining operations in Poland using slave labor from Auschwitz. Two former slave laborers have sued the U.S. government and the heirs of Prescott Bush for $40 billion.

Until the United States entered World War II it was legal for Americans to do business with Germany, but in late 1942 Prescott Bush's businesses interests were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Among those businesses involved was the Hamburg America Lines, for which Prescott Bush served as a manager. A Congressional committee, in a report called the McCormack-Dickstein Report, found that Hamburg America Lines had offered free passage to Germany for journalists willing to write favorably about the Nazis, and had brought Nazi sympathizers to America. (Is this starting to remind anyone of our current president's relationship to the freedom of the press?)

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee was established to investigate a homegrown American fascist plot hatched in 1933. Here's how the BBC promoted its recent story:

"Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy."

CONTINUED...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/9012

USMC Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler reported the coup plotters told him "they owned the press." Gee. Things have gotten a lot more concentrated since then.

[BrklynLiberal]

11. I have heard this story, and heard of Smedley Butler and his heroism.

Too damn bad the press was not doing their job and exposing this crap when shit-for-brains was seeking his first elected office in Texas, much less while looking to be President!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The MSM did not even reveal the full extent of dimster's failures in Texas while he was campaigning for the White House.
Scary stuff!! REAL scary. There seems to be no modern day version of Smedley Butler to save us.

[kenfrequed]

52. Yeah

But the term "conspiracy theory" or "conspiracy nut" had not become so powerful a dismissive at the time of FDR.

[Octafish]

57. CIA analysts willing to ‘go to jail’ to ensure NIE’s release...

The good people in government -- from Washington to the local scene -- are on to the gangsters who've hijacked America. More and more are stepping up and stating they won't go along with the criminality any more. I understand a whole bunch were willing to go to prison and that is why the NIE got released.

CIA analysts willing to ‘go to jail’ to ensure NIE’s release.

Retired Col. W. Patrick Lang, a former official in the Defense Intelligence Agency, reveals that senior CIA analysts pushed for the NIE’s key judgments on Iran to be released, threatening to speak to the media if they weren’t:

The “jungle telegraph” in Washington is booming with news of the Iran NIE. I am told that the reason the conclusions of the NIE were released is that it was communicated to the White House that “intelligence career seniors were lined up to go to jail if necessary” if the document’s gist were not given to the public. Translation? Someone in that group would have gone to the media “on the record” to disclose its contents.

SOURCE: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/07/cia-analysts-willing-to-go-to-jail-to-ensure-nies-release/

Here's more on the Coup against FDR:

Mike Thomson and the BBC investigated why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.

"The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

DuPont and Morgan and the rest were worse than real turds. They were traitors. Just like their heir, George W Bush today.

The Great Dave Emory recently interviewed Jules Archer, now 90 or so, who first published a history on this treason:

http://wfmu.org/playlists/DX

Scroll down to FTR #602: The Plot to Seize the White House - Interview with Jules Archer, PLUS FTR #448: The Coup Attempt of 1934 | Listen (RealAudio) | Listen (MP3 - 128K)

May we all see the traitors who’ve benefited from their evil face justice.

There are more good people than crooks. Too many crooks have big jobs, though.

[Bright Eyes]

5. She and Bush*, proves the edu-ma-cation in the country SUCKS

[Octafish]

8. Keeping We the People as ignorant as possible is the way of the Bushes

...otherwise we would, eh, not put up with it.



What a good liberal President had to say on the subject:

"Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource." -- John F. Kennedy

Dirty Politics--

Nixon, Watergate, and the JFK Assassination

by Mark Edwards

EXCERPT...

Other facts linking Nixon to the JFK assassination emerged years later during the Watergate scandal, some of which were revealed by Nixon’s former chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman. In his book, “The Ends of Power,” Haldeman cites several conversations where Nixon expressed concern about the Watergate affair becoming public knowledge and where this exposure might lead. Haldeman writes:

“In fact, I was puzzled when he told me, ‘Tell Ehrlichman this whole group of Cubans is tied to the Bay of Pigs.’ After a pause I said, ‘The Bay of Pigs? What does that have to do with this ?’ But Nixon merely said, ‘Ehrlichman will know what I mean,’ and dropped the subject.”

Later in his book, Haldeman appears to answer his own question when he says, “It seems that in all of those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination.”

If Haldeman’s interpretation is correct, then Nixon’s instructions for him to, “Tell Ehrlichman this whole group of Cubans is tied to the Bay of Pigs,” was Nixon’s way of telling him to inform Ehrlichman that the Watergate burglars were tied to Kennedy’s murder. (It should be noted that many Cuban exiles blamed Kennedy for the failure to overthrow Castro at the Bay of Pigs, pointing to Kennedy’s refusal to provide U.S. military support for the invasion.)

Haldeman also links the CIA to the Watergate burglars and, by implication, to the Kennedy assassination. Haldeman writes, “...at least one of the burglars, Martinez, was still on the CIA payroll on June 17, 1972--and almost certainly was reporting to his CIA case officer about the proposed break-in even before it happened .”

One of the Watergate burglars was E. Howard Hunt whose relationship with the Cuban exiles traces back to the early 1960’s, to his days with the CIA. As a political officer and propaganda expert, Hunt helped create the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC)--a militant anti-Castro organization under CIA control. Hunt would later resign from the CIA (at least ostensibly) to become covert operations chief for the Nixon White House.

CONTINUED...

http://dirtypolitics.50megs.com/dirty.htm

As if talking to us today about Dana and her ilk...

"A child miseducated is a child lost." -- John F. Kennedy

[formercia]

17. No child left behind

onward to the Childrens' Crusade.....

Joan of snark.

[Octafish]

25. No child left a dime

And we know who took it.

They've looted the Treasury and now these turds aimed to cheat us into penury -- those they did not kill in World War III, that is.

This is old news to you, formercia my Friend:

Permanent War Age and Iraq

By Ron Ridenour

"The rulers’ definition of terror is so broad that it fits most anything or anyone, except the ruling class’ governments and their military officials."

The Permanent War Age (PWA) is the post-September 11, 2001 US government political and economic strategy both domestically and internationally. Upon declaring "War against Terrorism" (October 7, 2002), George Bush ordered his military chiefs to calculate the costs of a long-range war against as many as 40 countries. War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld got $48 billion on top of what had been planned for military expenses, an increase of 11.6%. A constant increase in military expense is now a permanent aspect of the warlord's policies. Since 9/11 the military expenditure increase has been 41%.

Within the context of the PWA, the CIA received TEN times the amount of usual funds to bribe foreign public officers and other informers. Official restrictions on the CIA against use of murderers and torturers were lifted. <1>

United States capitalism has been partly dependent upon huge military appropriations since long before World War II, but Big Business has been busy extracting even greater profits by expanding its warmongering over the entire world since that war. The weapons industry is the basis for maintaining the empire's foreign interests and for keeping the domestic economy thriving.

In the half century since WWII, the US has sent out its military forces 63 times, to 44 different countries.

The Norwegian peace researcher at Gutenberg University, Jørgen Johansen, has concluded that in just two centuries the US has surpassed the Roman Empire, which existed for nearly one thousand years, in the number of its military interventions. And that:

"Of the 220 times, in round figures, the United States has used military might against other states the majority have been against international law, as well as the ruling conventions and laws concerning the use of military power." (2)

Even before the 9/11 terror attack the US stood for 40% of the world's military expenditures. Its sum was 20 times that of China (2nd in use of military funding), which has four times as many inhabitants. Just three years after 9/11, the US was responsible for HALF the entire world’s military expenditures. In 2004, the world sum was $1.03 trillion. Officially, the US used $524 billion, including "extra" funding for their wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.

In 2006, the entire national budget is proposed to be $2.57 trillion with $424 billion for military expenditures. But on top of that official funding, "extra" appropriations for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq must be added: at least $100 billion for 2006. Yet that sum ($524 billion) is only the official one. Hidden within the overall budget is approximately $450 for former war costs: for war veterans' pensions and enormous medical expenses for the wounded - which includes many poisoned by their own military biochemical weapons of mass destruction - and for interest on war debt.

CONTINUED...

http://www.stateofnature.org/permanentWarAge.html

And we know where all that money went.



Zum der Schweiz.

[AntiFascist]

24. Felix Rodriguez is a key (CIA) person to know about...

Involved in the anti-Castro efforts he was also involved in Iran/Contra and had ties to Poppy (and the Clintons?). Note also that his colleague in Operation 40 included Frank Sturgis. Note also that the CIA began working with the mafia in recruiting assassins to take care of Castro.

http://www.jfklancer.com/cuba/castroplots.html

[formercia]

38. Whiteout

Felix Rodriguez, torture, Gladio, Cocaine,and just about everything else rolled into one.

Read it and weep:

http://books.google.com/books?id=0KufJkIplgsC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=felix+rodriguez+che+barbie&source=web&ots=e7_injsDP5&sig=xNnQs6Mo2w1X14FBPqN16zN15gQ#PPA177,M1

[KharmaTrain]

9. Repugnican History "Home Schooling"

I'm definitely not surprised at Perino's ignorance. She looks like she grew up in a "fine" Repugnican home...most definitely raised on kool-aid and a view of the world most of us don't see. That's because in the Repugnican world, it's all revised history.

It all starts at 1980...life really didn't exist before St. Raygun. Prior to that there were the golden ages of the Red Scare of 1919 and the McCarthy era of the 50's. All ills in the world began with F D Roosevelt and those damned "libruls"...without them we wouldn't have had the all the "problems" (civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, medicare, social diversity and so on). This world is strictly black and white...good vs. "evil"...and any historical references along the way are only picked up for partisan purposes.

I'll bet Dana sure knows all about Chappaquiddick or Monica Lewinski than she does any American history prior to 1980.

[Octafish]

14. ''Raised on Reagan,'' was how I once dismissed them. They never heard about ''CIA and the Media.''

I'd bet Dana's home growing up was filled with a lot of educational TV, like "The Price Is Right" and "Brady Bunch." She never heard of something all Americans need know, courtesy of Carl Bernstein:

Originally published in Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977.

How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

THE CIA AND THE MEDIA

BY CARL BERNSTEIN

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.

The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception for the following principal reasons:

■ The use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence‑gathering employed by the CIA. Although the Agency has cut back sharply on the use of reporters since 1973 primarily as a result of pressure from the media), some journalist‑operatives are still posted abroad.

■ Further investigation into the matter, CIA officials say, would inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships in the 1950s and 1960s with some of the most powerful organizations and individuals in American journalism.

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.

By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.

CONTINUED...

http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/cia_press.html

Thanks for giving a damn, KharmaTrain. The truth will set We the People free. May it land these traitors all in prison.

[progressoid]

15. They chose her because she makes W look like a genius.

[Octafish]

40. Poppy was Phi Beta Kappa. CIA must've known when they helped his oil venture in Vietnam in '68.

Big news from Real News Network:

CIA Helped Bush Senior In Oil Venture

A Real News exclusive, first published on The Huffington Post
By Russ Baker | January 7, 2007

NEW YORK — Newly released internal CIA documents assert that former president George Herbert Walker Bush's oil company emerged from a 1950's collaboration with a covert CIA officer.

Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford. At the time, he described his appointment as a 'real shocker.'

But the freshly uncovered memos contend that Bush maintained a close personal and business relationship for decades with a CIA staff employee who, according to those CIA documents, was instrumental in the establishment of Bush's oil venture, Zapata, in the early 1950s, and who would later accompany Bush to Vietnam as a “cleared and witting commercial asset” of the agency.

According to a CIA internal memo dated November 29, 1975, Bush's original oil company, Zapata Petroleum, began in 1953 through joint efforts with Thomas J. Devine, a CIA staffer who had resigned his agency position that same year to go into private business. The '75 memo describes Devine as an “oil wild-catting associate of Mr. Bush.” The memo is attached to an earlier memo written in 1968, which lays out how Devine resumed work for the secret agency under commercial cover beginning in 1963.

“Their joint activities culminated in the establishment of Zapata Oil,” the memo reads. In fact, early Zapata corporate filings do not seem to reflect Devine's role in the company, suggesting that it may have been covert. Yet other documents do show Thomas Devine on the board of an affiliated Bush company, Zapata Offshore, in January, 1965, more than a year after he had resumed work for the spy agency.

CONTINUED with links to documents...

http://www.realnews.org/stories/2007-06-01_bushcia.html

If that don't take the rings off boomer, I don't know what will.

[BREMPRO]

16. The United States of Amnesia...

Inconvenient truths brushed under the rug because they don't fit the squeaky clean all American myth of America as the beacon of "freedom" and "democracy" in the world. The bay of pigs is just the tip of the iceberg of what really happened (cia/jfk rivalry anti-Castro militant camps, bush's zapata oil, jfk assassination etc..). When is our country going to collectively learn and face our past of self-interested elite corporate tyranny, cia sponsored coups and assassination, and right wing coup of our own government. We can't move on until we publicly acknowledge this dark past and revive the ideals that the country was founded on.

[Octafish]

42. ''Card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U.''

For our democracy -- our republic -- to survive and thrive requires the Truth. That is why the Founders ammended the Constitution of the United States. A free people need a Free Press. The press is the only business named in that document.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It's no wonder why in 1988, Poppy Bush labeled Michael Dukakis as a "Card-carrying member of the ACLU." The turd and his ilk do all they can to slam the American Civil Liberties Union: The organization helps preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and the ideals it represents, chiefly freedom.

First Bush-Dukakis Presidential Debate

EXCERPT...

BUSH: Well, I don't question his passion. I question - and I don't question his concern about the war in Vietnam. He introduced or supported legislation back then that suggested that kids of Massachusetts should be exempt from going overseas in that war. Now, that's a certain passion that in my view it's misguided passion. He - we have a big difference on issues. You see, last year in the primary, he expressed his passion. He said, "I am a strong liberal Democrat" - August, '87. Then he said, "I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU." That was what he said. He is out there on out of the mainstream. He is very passionate. My argument with the governor is, do we want this country to go that far left. And I wish we had time to let me explain. But I salute him for his passion. We just have a big difference on where this country should be led, and in what direction it ought to go.

(Applause)

LEHRER: Peter, a question? Question for the vice president, Peter.

JENNINGS: I'd actually like to follow up if I may on this mention you've made of his card carrying membership in the American Civil Liberties Union. You've used the phrase "card carrying" so many times since Governor Dukakis first acknowledged that he was a card carrying member of the ACLU that some people have come to believe that you've used it to brand him in some way, to identify him as people were identified in the 1950's as less than patriotic. I'd like to know why you keep repeating the phrase, and what's the important issue here? What is so wrong with the governor being a member of an organization which has come to the defense of, among other people, Colonel Oliver North?

BUSH: Nothings wrong with it. But just take a look at the positions of the ACLU. But, Peter, please understand, the liberals do not like me talking about liberal They don't like it when I say that he says he's a card carrying member. Now, if that quote was wrong, he can repudiate it, right here. I've seen it authoritatively written twice, and if I've done him an injustice, and he didn't say it, I'm very, very sorry. But I don't agree with a lot of - most of the positions of the ACLU. I simply don't want to see the ratings on movies. I don't want my ten year old grandchild to go into an X-rated movie. I like those ratings systems. I don't think they're right to try to take the tax exemption away from the Catholic Church. I don't want to see the kiddie pornographic laws repealed; I don't want to see "under God" come out from our currency. Now, these are all positions of the ACLU. And I don't agree with them. He has every right to exercise his passion, as what he said, a strong, progressive liberal. I don't agree with that. I come from a different point. And I think I'm more in touch with the mainstream of America. They raised the same thing with me on the Pledge of Allegiance. You see, I'd have found a way to sign that bill. Governor Thompson of Illinois did. I'm not questioning his patriotism. He goes out and says the man is questioning my patriotism. And then all the liberal columnists join in. I am not. I am questioning his judgment on these matters, or where he's coming from He has every right to do it. But I believe that's not what the American people want, and when he said, when he said at the convention, ideology doesn't matter, just competence, he was moving away from his own record, from what his passion has been over the years. And that's all I'm trying to do, is put it in focus. And I hope people don't think that I'm questioning his patriotism when I say he used his words to describe his participation in that organization.

LEHRER: Governor, a response.

DUKAKIS: Well, I hope this is the first and last time I have to say this. Of course, the vice president is questioning my patriotism. I don't think there's any question about that, and I resent it. I resent it. My parents came to this country as immigrants. They taught me that this was the greatest country in the world. I'm in public service because I love this country. I believe in it. And nobody's going to question my patriotism as the vice president has now repeatedly. The fact of the matter is if the Pledge of Allegiance was the acid test of one's patriotism--the vice president's been the presiding officer in the United States Senate for the past seven and a half years. To the best of my knowledge he's never once suggested that a session of the Senate begin with the Pledge of Allegiance.

(Applause)

SOURCE: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showdebate.php?debateid=13

Thanks for getting it and giving a damn, BREMPRO. While belated: A most hearty welcome to DU!

[hootinholler]

18. The thing I can't get is

How did Prescott and tricky Dick keep all the set up activity quiet during the Eisenhower VP years?

I mean Ike seems the kind of guy who would dismantle this crap if he caught wind of it. So you have Prescott, Dulles, Nixon and most likely Poppy Bush as a bag man / manager setting this stuff up and Ike doesn't know? I would have thought that J. Edgar would have filled him in.

There may be some stuff in the national security archives by now that relate if they haven't been scrubbed, like the stuff that was scrubbed from the Scoop Jackson library a couple of years back.

-Hoot

[Octafish]

43. Nixon was described as the CIA ''White House Action Officer''

Agree with you Hoot, Ike was pretty much a straight shooter. The guy may've accepted a ranch or two from his friends, but the worst thing he did was to allow Nixon to be foisted onto the ticket.



From "The Taking of America 1-2-3":

Chapter 4

How It All Began - The U-2 and the Bay of Pigs

To understand the origins of the Power Control Group, it is necessary to return to the last years of the Eisenhower administration and examine what was going on in the Cold War.

Eisenhower had suffered several strokes and a heart attack. He was partially immobilized, and entrusted a major share of the coordination of clandestine activities being conducted by the CIA against the "Red Menace" to Richard Nixon, his vice president. While Ike was warning against the military-industrial-complex's domestic influence, and attempting to move toward detente with the Soviets through a summit meeting, he was being sabotaged by the plans section of the CIA and by Richard Nixon.

A part of the CIA arranged for a U-2 with Gary Powers as pilot to go down over Russia, thus giving Khrushchev a chance to expose American spying and to cancel the summit meeting. This was one of the earliest moves of the nucleus of what later evolved into the Power Control Group. In the spring of 1960, with Ike nearly senile and pressured by Nixon, he approved the plan for the invasion of Cuba and the assassination of Castro. Nixon was the chief White House action officer for what later became the Bay of Pigs invasion.

The Power Control Group was beginning to organize itself with Nixon as part of it. The cold warriors and strong anti-Communist "patriots" in the Plans or Operations part of the CIA formed the original nucleus.

Their plan was to make Nixon president in 1961 and to launch a successful takeover of Cuba. John Kennedy came along to upset the plan. Not only did he make the takeover impossible but he soon discovered the evils lurking in the hearts and minds of the CIA clandestine operators and laid his own plans to destroy them. The assassination of John Kennedy essentially became an act of survival for some of these individuals.

Many citizens of America have forgotten that Richard Nixon was Vice President of the United States in 1959 and 1960. As an old anti-communist from the Alger Hiss and Khrushchev debating days, Nixon was in the forefront of pressure for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. What is also forgotten is that Nixon was largely responsible for the covert training of Cuban exiles by the CIA in preparation for the Bay of Pigs. (He stated this in his book, Six Crises.)

Nixon's Lies -- October 1960. Mr. Nixon's capacity for truth is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than by the deliberate lies he told during the election campaign on national TV on October 21, 1960. He said in his book that the lies were told for a patriotic reason -- to protect the covert operations planned for the Bay of Pigs at all costs. The significance of this is that Mr. Nixon considers patriotism to be, in part, the protection of plans and actions of individuals that he considered to be working for the United States' best interests.

The similarities between the actions of Everette Howard Hunt, Jr., James McCord, Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis, and others in the 1960 planning for the Bay of Pigs invasion and in the 1972 planning for the re-election of Richard M. Nixon are very striking. In both cases, what the plotters themselves considered to be patriotic, anti-Communist actions were involved. In 1960 the actions were directed against Fidel Castro, a man they hated as a Communist. In 1972 the actions were directed against Edward Kennedy, Edmund Muskie and George McGovern. Bernard Barker stated the group's collective belief when he said after his arrest that, "We believe that an election of McGovern would be the beginning of a trend that would lead to socialism and communism, or whatever you want to call it."

Nixon admitted lying to the American people to protect Hunt, Barker, Sturgis, and McCord in 1960. The likelihood that he lied to protect them again in 1972 seems to be quite good. There is some likelihood that he actually hired the same old crew he trusted from the Bay of Pigs days for the 1972 Watergate and other espionage activities.

Here are the facts:

Nixon's Statements in Six Crises

Richard Nixon stated in Six Crises: "The covert training of Cuban exiles by the CIA was due in substantial part, at least, to my efforts. This had been adopted as a policy as a result of my direct support."<1> "President Eisenhower had ordered the CIA to arm and train the exiles in May of 1960. Nixon and his advisors wanted the CIA invasion to take place before the voters went to the polls on November 8, 1960."<2>

While the Bay of Pigs operation was under the overall CIA direction of Allen Dulles, Richard M. Bissell, Jr. was the CIA man in charge, according to Ross & Wise.<3> Charles Cabell,<4> the deputy director of the CIA, and a man with the code name Frank Bender, were also near the top of the operational planning.<5>

CONTINUED...

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToAchp4.html

The entire book is available for download:

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToA.html#TOC

While Ike may've preserved Nixon, so to speak, he did warn us of the Military Industrial (Congressional) Complex. And because he put the Constitution and the People ahead of the gangsters, I consider him the last good Republican president.

[Initech]

19. I seriously wonder how these events would have been unfolded had Nixon been in charge.

I bet nuclear winter would have come sooner than later. :scared: :nuke:

[DearAbby]

22. According to the tapes..it would have been a blast

:nuke:

[Octafish]

59. (Nuclear war is winnable)... With Enough Shovels

Nixon threatened to nuke Vietnam.

Know your BFEE: Nixon Threatened to NUKE Vietnam

I can only guess what The Trickster would've done as president in 1962.

Here's some light from Robert Scheer, based on what he found out about the mentality of these superhawk turdballs:

With Enough Shovels

from Robert Scheer, With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), pp. 18-26.

Its the Dirt That Does It

by Robert Scheer

VERY late one autumn night in 1981, Thomas K. Jones, the man Ronald Reagan had appointed Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces, told me that the United States could fully recover from an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union in just two to four years. T.K., as he prefers to be known, added that nuclear war was not nearly as devastating as we had been led to believe. He said, "If there are enough shovels to go around, everybody's going to make it." The shovels were for digging holes in the ground, which would be covered somehow or other with a couple of doors and with three feet of dirt thrown on top, thereby providing adequate fallout shelters for the millions who had been evacuated from America's cities to the countryside. "It's the dirt that does it," he said.

What is truly astounding about my conversation with T.K. is not simply that one highly placed official in the Reagan Administration is so horribly innocent of the effects of nuclear war. More frightening is that T. K. Jones's views are all too typical of the thinking of those at the core of the Reagan Administration, as I have discovered through hundreds of hours of interviews with the men who are now running our government. The only difference is that T.K. was more outspoken than the others.

After parts of my interview with T. K. Jones ran in the Los Angeles Times, a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee demanded that Jones present himself to defend the views that Senator Alan Cranston said went "far beyond the bounds of reasonable, rational, responsible thinking;" Meanwhile Senator Charles Percy, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had confronted Jones at a town meeting in the senator's home state of Illinois and was sufficiently troubled by the Deputy Under Secretary's relatively complacent views of nuclear war to pressure the Pentagon for an accounting.

But by now the Administration had muzzled Jones, and he missed his first three scheduled appearances before the Senate subcommittee. It was at this point that a New York Times editorial asked: "Who is the Thomas K. Jones who is saying those funny things about civil defense?" Elsewhere Jones's espousal of primitive fallout shelters was dismissed easily and properly by editorial writers and cartoonists as a preposterous response to what nuclear war was all about. However, what these dismissals ignored was that Jones's notions of civil defense, odd as they may have seemed, are crucial to the entire Reagan strategic policy.

Reagan's nuclear arms buildup follows from the idea that the United States is vulnerable to Soviet nuclear weapons, an idea that rests in part on calculations made by this same T. K. Jones before he joined the government, when he worked for the Boeing Company. It was Jones's estimates of the efficacy of Soviet civil defense that provided much of the statistical justification for the view that the Soviets could reasonably expect to survive and win a nuclear war while we ourselves, without a comparable civil defense program, would necessarily lose.

And it was Jones's celebration of the shovel and primitive shelters as the means to nuclear salvation, once it was exposed to public debate, that helped to call into question the Reagan Administration's claim of American vulnerability. Jones had become fascinated with digging holes and with the powerful defensive possibilities of dirt only after he had read Soviet civil defense manuals that advocated similar procedures. In fact, it was from the Russians that he borrowed the idea of digging holes.If Jones's evacuation and sheltering plans were absurd on the face of it for the United States, how then could any observer take the Soviet civil defense program seriously? And if the Soviets are not capable of protecting their society and recovering from a nuclear war, how can anyone genuinely believe that they are planning to fight and win such a war?

Jones has been obsessed with the Russian threat ever since he served as a consultant for Nixon's SALT I negotiating team. An illustration of this obsession was offered by Roger Molander, a former staff member of the National Security Council under three Presidents. Molander, who left the government after the Carter Administration to found Ground Zero, the nuclear war education project, recalled that in 1973, he and Jones decided to accept an invitation to leave the SALT I talks in Geneva and visit the Paris Air Show, an elaborate event at which military contractors show their wares. As luck would have it, they ended up at a party sponsored by a U.S. defense contractor at a restaurant on the Eiffel Tower and met what Molander described as "an attractive American brunette and a beautiful Norwegian blonde." "It's a June night in Paris," Molander told me, free champagne, hors d'oeuvres, the lights of Paris—not bad, right? I'm a very aggressive bachelor at the time, T.K. is too, and we meet a couple of young women. At eleven o'clock we all go out to dinner, T.K. and I and these two girls. We find a beautiful little bistro, I remember running up the steps of Montmartre, feeling the effects of the champagne and a June night in Paris. An hour into dinner I am deep in conversation with one of the girl about who knows and who cares? It is Saturday night in Paris, I'm sitting at Montmartre, I'm eating canard a l'orange, and the last thing I'm thinking about is nuclear war.

Wafting across the table comes T. K. Jones, seriously talking to this Norwegian girl who is nodding, but who knows what is going through her mind? T. K. Jones is saying to her, "...and because the Soviet Union is threatening our ICBM force, we have to have mobile ICBM systems that would move around—" I'm thinking, "What? I've got an appointment back on planet Earth. Is this a human being? Does he understand why life is worth living?" We are in Paris on a Saturday night in Montmartre, off the Eiffel Tower with a couple of delightful young women. It is midnight, we don't have to be home until who knows what, and he is talking about mobile ICBM systems. I could not believe it! T.K. was still doing it when the evening ended.

T.K. is nothing if not consistent. Since his days as manager of program and product evaluation at Boeing, after he returned from the SALT I talks in 1974, he has been a major proponent of the view that we are vulnerable to a Soviet first strike unless we emulate the Soviet civil defense program. At Boeing, Jones had led a team that conducted tests attempting to simulate the effects of a nuclear blast on persons huddling in civil defense shelters and on machinery buried in the ground. On the basis of those tests, he argued later, both persons and machinery would have emerged barely scratched, even if the explosive had been nuclear rather than TNT. His colleagues from the Boeing project have recently been awarded contracts by the Reagan Administration to determine how to fight and survive a protracted nuclear war. In his new job at the Pentagon, Jones himself is one of the key officials in charge of coordinating the planning and acquisition of equipment for such a protracted nuclear war.

CONTINUED...

http://www3.niu.edu/~td0raf1/history261/nov2616.htm

I thank Goodness we had President Kennedy in charge in 1962.

[Initech]

74. Yikes!

Man, these people are fucking nuts. There's no other explanation for it. :scared: :nuke:

If only there was like someway we could ritualistically strip them of their American citizenship and kick them out of the country.

[seafan]

20. Octafish, I can't find adequate words to thank you for your contributions to our knowledge.

Your threads are crucial to our understanding.


I'd like to see a major film depicting the 1934 overthrow attempt of FDR by these wealthy right wing elitists, accompanied by Prescott Bush. God only knows how this truth will ever come out in time to Americans otherwise.


And because of General Smedley Butler, we may (I fervently hope) still have a chance to take our country back from the descendants of this litter of criminals.

[Octafish]

68. JFK Saved the Planet.

Thank YOU, seafan. It's my duty to bring up certain truths, like

'"President Kennedy Saved the Planet."

For that alone, his administration should be remembered for as long as there is history.

JFK also accomplished the "impossible." He got America to the moon.

Something else that's true: Prescott and his ilk are nothing but kakistocratic warmongers.

Here's why President Kennedy's administration was so important:

JFK put the reigns on the warmongers long enough to give peace a chance.



Know your BFEE: At every turn, JFK was opposed by War Party

Here's more on the Coup against FDR:

Mike Thomson and the BBC investigated why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.

"The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

DuPont and Morgan and the rest were worse than real turds. They were traitors. Just like their heir, George W Bush today.
The Great Dave Emory recently interviewed Jules Archer, now 90 or so, who first published a history on this treason:

http://wfmu.org/playlists/DX

Scroll down to FTR #602: The Plot to Seize the White House - Interview with Jules Archer, PLUS FTR #448: The Coup Attempt of 1934 | Listen (RealAudio) | Listen (MP3 - 128K)

It worked. This year we saw the Pentagon and the government stand up to the evil turds and say "No more."

[DearAbby]

21. Strange, I stayed up Last night watching "NIXON"

...In the movie, the character Nixon mentioned a special unit of the CIA that was supposed to assassinate Castro...are you aware of this or is this part fiction? That Ike had approved of it, or at least Nixon, claimed to handle it, via the white house.

[AntiFascist]

55. You should check out the JFKLancer website...

I believe there are documents submitted to the committee investigating the Kennedy assassination that show that mafia hitmen had been recruited to assassinate Castro (part of Operation 40). Various key former mafia have since confessed involvement, and in the case of former agent Files the actual killing, in the JFK assassination. There have also been various other deathbed confessions by right-wingers claiming there was a conspiracy led by LBJ, but they seem to leave out any mention of Nixon or mafia involvement.

[Octafish]

70. Operation 40

The group was charged with getting rid of Castro. They used their "talents" throughout Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa and much of the rest of the world.



Here's a rare photo of the group at dinner. Former Congressman and former CIA Director Porter Goss is in profile on the left side.
Behind him is Barry Seal. Porter's hand is on Bay of Pigs veteran, Watergate burglar, Iran-contra drug boss, andveryclosefriendofPoppyBush Felix Rodriguez.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKseal.htm

[Kurovski]

23. K&R. (nt)

[Swamp Rat]

26. It literally pays to be stoopid in the Bushler administration.

¿Todo bien, amigo? :hi:

[Octafish]

32. 9 out of 10 sentient beings agree: Bush is the stupidest president ever.

Including "Les Croices Imbeciles," my guffaws and howls of laughter leading to spills, spits, drools, etc. after opening your posts are worth every penny -- check that, every thing.

The Misunderestimated Man

How Bush chose stupidity.

By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Friday, May 7, 2004, at 9:54 AM ET

Was he born that way?

Adapted from the introduction to The Deluxe Election-Edition Bushisms, published by Fireside Books/Simon & Schuster. Reprinted with permission; © 2004 Jacob Weisberg.

The question I am most frequently asked about Bushisms is, "Do you really think the president of the United States is dumb?"

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is yes and no.

Quotations collected over the years in Slate may leave the impression that George W. Bush is a dimwit. Let's face it: A man who cannot talk about education without making a humiliating grammatical mistake ("The illiteracy level of our children are appalling"); who cannot keep straight the three branches of government ("It's the executive branch's job to interpret law"); who coins ridiculous words ("Hispanos," "arbolist," "subliminable," "resignate," "transformationed"); who habitually says the opposite of what he intends ("the death tax is good for people from all walks of life!") sounds like a grade-A imbecile.

And if you don't care to pursue the matter any further, that view will suffice. George W. Bush has governed, for the most part, the way any airhead might, undermining the fiscal condition of the nation, squandering the goodwill of the world after Sept. 11, and allowing huge problems (global warming, entitlement spending, AIDS) to metastasize toward catastrophe through a combination of ideology, incomprehension, and indifference. If Bush isn't exactly the moron he sounds, his synaptic misfirings offer a plausible proxy for the idiocy of his presidency.

In reality, however, there's more to it. Bush's assorted malapropisms, solecisms, gaffes, spoonerisms, and truisms tend to imply that his lack of fluency in English is tantamount to an absence of intelligence. But as we all know, the inarticulate can be shrewd, the fluent fatuous. In Bush's case, the symptoms point to a specific malady—some kind of linguistic deficit akin to dyslexia—that does not indicate a lack of mental capacity per se.

Bush also compensates with his non-verbal acumen. As he notes, "Smart comes in all kinds of different ways." The president's way is an aptitude for connecting to people through banter and physicality. He has a powerful memory for names, details, and figures that truly matter to him, such as batting averages from the 1950s. Bush also has a keen political sense, sharpened under the tutelage of Karl Rove.
What's more, calling the president a cretin absolves him of responsibility. Like Reagan, Bush avoids blame for all manner of contradictions, implausible assertions, and outright lies by appearing an amiable dunce. If he knows not what he does, blame goes to the three puppeteers, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld. It also breeds sympathy. We wouldn't laugh at FDR because he couldn't walk. Is it less cruel to laugh at GWB because he can't talk? The soft bigotry of low expectations means Bush is seen to outperform by merely getting by. Finally, elitist condescension, however merited, helps cement Bush's bond to the masses.

But if "numskull" is an imprecise description of the president, it is not altogether inaccurate. Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What makes mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family connections.

SNIP...

Richard Perle, foreign policy adviser: "The first time I met Bush 43 … two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much."

CONTINUED...

www.slate.com/id/2100064

MORE FUN:

http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com

Gee. It's like channeling Bosch and Heartfield and everybody who ever gave a damn about the fix we're in, Palustris rattus.

BTW: I used to have a crown like that one, from Burger King. It was the coolest thing in the world for a 7-year-old.

¡Compay! ¿Como handas? Aqui, en la lucha.

Y t'ol mundo bien.

¿Y aya, Maestro-sando? Como van?

[Swamp Rat]

34. Here ya go:

I made dis pic jus' fo' dis thread! :evilgrin:



Acabo de terminar el Maestro. :bounce: Estoy muy feliz porque sacé buenas notas este semestre. :hi:

[Octafish]

71. I am honored and humbled by your creation, Don Swamp.

That work tells the story:

The greatness of America hijacked by warmongers who have been exposed for what they are by their own words and actions and characters.

Tu trabajo son cosas tremendas. Totalmente serio, Compay: Son cosas de otro level.

Unas cosita pa' ti, Herman':

En la nave, what we all should be doing:



We all would've been coursing the stars by now, were it not for Dallas.

http://www.astronautix.com/

http://www.rocketry.com/

http://www.weeklyuniverse.com/links.htm

Gracias, hermano! Eres un Galan!

No sabes cuantas veces al dia lo agradesco!

Estoy serio totalment: Es hun honor, verdadero, Bro-dur.

[tabasco]

27. You have got to be shittin' me.

The level of incompetence is simply mind boggling.

The republicans have truly lowered the bar for all future US governments.

[Octafish]

76. Incompetent traitors is about the nicest thing I can say about her warmongering bosses.

What DUer Peace Patriot wrote:

The WMD-planting theory of Treasongate.

(I'm cross-posting from the other thread on this new revelation--the basics of the WMD-planting theory, as follows:)

-------------

These may be the teams whose plans to plant WMDs in Iraq were foiled.

Edited on Thu Jan-05-06 12:51 PM by Peace Patriot

There were several reports in the Islamic press in March 2003 of foiled US attempts to plant WMDs in Iraq, one in Basra involving a covert WMD shipment that had false Red Cross labels on it, and another at an unidentified location that met with "friendly fire." There may have been other efforts later on. If true, these are the ones that got noticed.

The WMD-planting theory of Treasongate is that there is a connection between these highly deceitful and dangerous, off-the-record Rumsfeld projects, and the outing of Valerie Plame and the entire CIA Brewster-Jennings counter-proliferation network--which disabled all the above-board WMD-monitoring projects and put all of its covert agents/contacts at great risk of getting killed. The theory also posits a possible connection to the death of the Brits chief WMD expert David Kelly, in the same week. Here's the time-line:

Late May 2003: Kelly starts whistleblowing anonymously to the BBC about exaggerated pre-war WMD intel.
Mid-June 2003: Judith Miller meets with Scooter Libby (about Plame).

Late June 2003: Kelly is mysteriously outed to his bosses, interrogated at a safe house, and threatened with the Official Secrets Act in an effort to find out what ELSE he knows.

July 7, 2003*: Tony Blair is informed that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things"--not had said, COULD say. (Hutton report.)

July 14, 2003: Plame outed (by Novak).

July 18, 2003: Kelly found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances; his office and computers searched.

July 22, 2003: CIA/Brewster-Jennings entire counter-proliferation group outed (also by Novak).

------------------

IF the "uncomfortable things" that Kelly "could say" had to do with a Bushite plot to plant WMDs in Iraq, one thing he might have known was who foiled that plot.

The WMD-planting theory of Treasongate goes back to the creation of the "crude" Niger forgeries, which were so "crude" that they may have been INTENDED to be exposed as forgeries, in order to draw the CIA into a public position of no nukes in Iraq--and then, Part 2 of the plot, would have been the phony "find" of the planted nukes in order to discredit the honest part of the CIA and make it more purge-able by Bushites, as well as reaping enormous political benefit for Bush/Blair and the cause of slaughtering innocent Muslims to get their oil.
Another part of the theory: Rumsfeld positioned Judith Miller to enact the "find" of the nukes in Iraq, giving her a special "embed" contract signed by himself to accompany the US troops who were "hunting" for the WMDs. (She seemed to have extraordinary authority in that effort--for a reporter.)

Kelly was an old hand at Iraq, and a top scientist, who believed in his work of non-proliferation. He supported the invasion--he wanted Saddam ousted--but something turned him around about the war in spring 2003, after the invasion, and he began whistleblowing about the war's false premises. He had friends in Iraq. He was in a good position to hear about a WMD-planting plot (and its foiling), and there were Islamic news reports about it. Discovery of such a plot seems like a good candidate for what turned him around.
*July 6. July 7. Wilson published his article about the phony Niger claims on July 6. This appears to be the trigger for Treasongate (the outing of Plame). But is it? There is evidence that the Bushites EXPECTED his article. (He'd been talking to them, trying to get them to back off that claim, for months.) But what they may NOT have expected is Kelly's whistleblowing and (if true) his knowledge of their dirty scheme to actually plant the nukes. If the WMD-planting schemes were the "uncomfortable things" that Blair was apprised of on July 7 (that Kelly "could say"), and Blair told Bush (they were in close communication at that time), then we may have the real cause of the apparent panic among the Bushites that week--for instance, their calls to at least SIX reporters (six journalist witnesses to treason) in the week of July 6-12, in what looks like a very rushed and foolish effort to find a patsy newsman to immediately out Plame/Brewster-Jennings, an effort that put numerous top Bushites at maximum risk of treason charges, and for which Rovian revenge against Wilson was a cover story.

On the day he died, July 17, David Kelly emailed Judith Miller (yup, they were old buds), stating his concern about the "many dark actors playing games." She wrote his obit news article for the NYT a couple of days later, and failed to mention this email, or her close connections to Kelly.
He had been through a rough couple of months--big media controversy in England (black-holed news story here)--but thought it would all blow over. He was looking forward to his daughter's wedding and returning to Iraq. His "dark actors" comment may have had to do with the mystery of how he got outed (a guess). He had promised his bosses he wasn't going to reveal any "state secrets." After interrogating him and threatening him, they outed his name to the press, and sent him home without protection and apparently without surveillance (!?). He went for his normal afternoon walk, and, according to the official story, sat down under a tree, out in the cold and the rain, took some painkillers (not enough to kill him), slit one wrist, and bled to death outdoors all night.

The Hutton inquiry ignored: 1) reports by paramedics of not enough blood at the scene for the method of death; 2) body was moved; 3) unlikely method of suicide for a top scientist (and a man--a notable "tough guy"); 4): no note, no evidence of despair (on the contrary, he was forward-looking); 5) many forensic experts objecting to the conclusion of suicide.

The facts just don't add up for a conclusion of suicide. But if, upon a real inquiry, it could be determined with good certainty that it was, what drove him to it could have been what he had found out about his government (profound disillusionment--no sign of it though), or their threats against him or his family. Simply being in the midst of a media/gov't controversy does not seem sufficient to drive Kelly to kill himself. He was an experienced hand at media relations (as well as at WMD inspections in Iraq and Russia). But gov't bullying and threats could conceivably have led him to feel trapped or despairing (again--no sign of it).

Whether he was assassinated (likely), or committed suicide (unlikely), is not critical to the WMD-planting theory of Treasongate, except as to the level of desperation of the people who were outing Plame/BJ. Their reason for outing Plame/BJ could be to cover up their WMD-planting scheme, whether or not Kelly was killed, and even whether or not he knew of their schemes. (Also, possibly he knew something ELSE.)
One of the Islamic press articles said that the whistleblower (a person named Nella Rogers) was a Pentagon debriefer who had heard descriptions of an effort to plant WMDs in Iraq that met with "friendly fire." She assumed that it was a CIA operation that had been foiled. But, given all of the above, it seems far more likely that it was Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans, operating contrary to CIA and US policy, and engaging in proliferation in an effort to deceive the public.

I've wondered about the "Rome group"--the ones who probably cooked up the "crude" Niger forgeries, and the presence at that meeting of the notorious Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. I suspect that they were cooking up more than easily detectable forgeries.
This theory of Treasongate is just a theory, but it continues to hold up well as new information has emerged. I would treat it as a plausible and useful working hypothesis.

There are other theories of why Plame/BJ was outed--that the BJ network was getting close to Saudi/Bush/9/11 money connections, dirty Cheney arms dealings, or other Bush Cartel crime. It's quite possible the Bushites had multiple reasons for getting rid of honest CIA operations. However, the coincidence of Plame/Kelly dates, and the matter at hand when those events occurred, the thing on everybody's mind--the big "hunt" for WMDs in Iraq--and the feel of rush and panic in the way Plame/BJ was outed, all point to a specific trigger that week, and the choice (apparently) is between the Wilson publication (July 6), and Kelly's whistleblowing and subsequent interrogation (July 7).

That Valerie Plame's career was ruined and her life's work destroyed--with some of her agents/contacts possibly killed, or at the least disabled--and David Kelly, working on the same issue, in the same kind of controversy, ended up dead, all in the same week, seems a bit much of a coincidence. TWO of our top non-proliferation experts--the very people we need most--swept off the scene in one week, within the two governments who claimed to be so concerned about WMDs that they had to kill tens of thousands of innocent people because of it.
It's an old saw, I know, but it sure rings true here: sometimes we fail to see the forest for the trees.

Original DU Thread, started by Robert Paulsen:

PLAME/AIPACGATE UPDATE: OSP tried to plant WMD in Iraq.

And to think these treasonous turds wanted to pre-emptively (now THERE's a NAZI term) attack Iran.



Now THAT is some seriously crazy warmonkey shit.

[lonestarnot]

29. The twit talks fast and lies at the drop of a hat, she's hired.

[tridim]

41. I bet she lied on her resume and at her interviews too

Wonder if the WH knew that?

[lonestarnot]

63. Of course they did, you have to be a liar to qualify for any position in that stink'n buncha

thiev'n trash heap.

[upi402]

30. We've yet to insist that our government untangles that Kennedy knot

in our history. I wonder what will be the fate of all the high crimes and misdemeanors from the Republican/corporatist era that has undone our Republic? I have little hope of even one real investigative journalism piece getting broadcast.

[madeline_con]

31. “It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure.”

wow. That's amazing!

[Octafish]

46. ''The most dangerous moment in recorded history.''

Harvard sponsored a conference where two principles spoke at length, Ted Sorensen and Robert McNamara:

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:ilyrEUZRFYsJ:www.iop.harvard.edu/pdfs/transcripts/cuban_missile_crisis_10.18.02.pdf+nixon+%2B+cuban-missile-crisis&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us

PDF:

http://www.iop.harvard.edu/pdfs/transcripts/cuban_missile_crisis_10.18.02.pdf

At a conference in Cuba in the 1990s, McNamara discovered Soviet sub commanders may've believed they had authority to use nukes if the island were invaded.

http://www.theblackvault.com/wiki/index.php/Cuban_Missile_Crisis

We really were close to losing everything, then. Of course, that is lost on Dana today.

[Rex]

35. Why should she learn anything about history?

Her boss doesn't give a shit about the future, why should she care about the past? Nobody will hold her accountable.

[Disturbed]

36. Perino presented this as if it was a joke.

She thought it was funny that she is ignorant of a part of American History that could
have ended in a Nuclear War with the USSR. She is pathetic.

The CIA fucked up really badly so they blamed it on John Kennedy.
This is one of the many reason that all US Govts have kept harsh policies toward Cuba &
still punish the Cuban people.

[Imagevision]

37. Bush is stupid? when he's cornered he merely tells a lie and continues on then

send out the "Perino types" and dances away. -->Perino; "The president would never knowingly lie to the American people" need I say more?!?

[Le Taz Hot]

39. Could somebody send the first part of this post

to the Miami Cubans who keep siding with the Republicans? Thanks.

[Mika]

44. CIA's Bay of Pigs operation name? Operation Zapata

http://www.tarpley.net/bush8b.htm

According to reliable sources and published accounts, the CIA code name for the Bay of Pigs invasion was Operation Zapata, and the plan was so referred to by Richard Bissell of the CIA, one of the plan's promoters, in a briefing to President Kennedy in the Cabinet Room on March 29, 1961. 7 Does Operation Zapata have anything to do with Zapata Offshore? The run-of-the-mill Bushman might respond that Emiliano Zapata, after all, had been a public figure in his own right, and the subject of a recent Hollywood movies starring Marlon Brando. As J. Hugh Liedtke had observed, he was the classic figure for the revolutionary-cum-bandit. A more knowledgeable Bushman might argue that the main landing beach, the Playa Giron, is located south of the city of Cienfuegos on the Zapata Peninula, on the south coast of Cuba.

Then there is the question of the Brigade 2506 landing fleet, which was composed of five older freighters bought or chartered from the Garcia Steamship Lines, bearing the names of Houston, Rio Esondido, Caribe, Atlantic, and Lake Charles. In addition to these vessels, which were outfitted as transport ships, there were two somewhat better armed fire support ships, the Blagar and the Barbara. (In some sources Barbara J.) 8 The Barbara was originally an LCI (Landing Craft Infantry) of earlier vintage. Our attention is attracted at once to the Barbara and the Houston, in the first case because we have seen George Bush's habit of naming his combat aircraft after his wife, and, in the second case, because Bush was at this time a resident, booster, and Republican activist of Houston, Texas. But of course, the appearance of names like "Zapata," Barbara, and Houston can by itself only arouse suspicion, and proves nothing.

[edbermac]

45. The Bay of Pigs thing was 20 years after that Holocaust thing.

Dana is vaguely aware that a few Jewish people were seriously injured. :sarcasm:

[Octafish]

77. George W Bush, at Auschwitz, revealed himself to be a ''Holocaust Denier.''

When he toured Auschwitz, Dana's boss asked the tour guide if people challenged "the accuracy of what you present?"

Press Gaggle on Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau

Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary

Krakow, Poland
May 31, 2003

EXCERPT...

MR. FLEISCHER: Oh, that probably extended some 30, 40 feet behind glass, and you just see hair. Women's hair. The guide talked about in the next room that Auschwitz was also a site of plunder because as the Jews were rounded up and sent there, they brought their belongings with them so they had their suitcases. They didn't know they were going to their death, so they carried their life's possessions with them, which was then quickly plundered, the guide explained.

The President saw the Jewish prayer shawls that were hanging. And then another deeply moving part, he saw artificial limbs, actual artificial limbs, prosthesis, legs that were there and which she explained to the President, even these were plundered after people were killed, and then used back in Germany.

The President would say things such as "Powerful." I just wrote down as I listened to him -- "powerful." When he saw the suitcases, he said, "So sad." And then at one point when he went by another display where there were teeny little shoes, the President looked at it and said, "All the little baby shoes." He told the guide, "You've done a good job recording history."

The President talked about the current context of it, how many people come each year. He asked, where do they come from. He asked, "Do people challenge the accuracy of what you present?" And one cell --

Q: And what did the guide say?

MR. FLEISCHER: She explained where people come from. They come from all over, she said. A lot come from Poland, from the United States, from Israel, from Germany.

Q: Did she answer his question, do people challenge --

MR. FLEISCHER: I didn't get it. If she did, I don't remember, I didn't write it down.

Then he saw some cells where the prisoners were kept. Now, these are not -- at Birkenau he saw the bunk cells. But this were actual prison cells with doors that swing open and bars, very, very small rooms. And in one small room, the guide explained, there were 39 people in a small cell with a teeny, teeny little bit of air that came in from a window up top. And this cell was very small. And she said to him, on the doors you can see signs on how to scratch the door to survive. And you could see it -- on the door they would just scratch to get air into the room. They tried to claw their way through a very thick wooden door.

CONTINUED...

http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/2003/21131.htm

By his own words we see the Coward from Crawford to a "Holocaust Denier."

[Enrique]

47. wasn't there a Kevin Costner movie about that?

"Waterworld" I think?

[Hippo_Tron]

48. Reminds me of the West Wing Episode where Toby and Josh are talking about how dumb Rob Ritchie is

"He thought Chamberlain led England during World War II. I don't mind that he doesn't know history. I mind that he hasn't seen a movie."

[Felix Mala]

51. Wasn't it about that time that 18 minutes were accidentally erased?`

Just as Nixon is discussing the CIA, Hunt, Bay of Pigs... then nothing... What were they talking about? Assassination?

[yurbud]

53. If Bush had been president, we'd be dead or having this conversation 300 feet underground

[CTyankee]

67. You are so right! I was petrified at the time, as a young mother with a little baby, in NYC.

I thought I would be vaporized any minute by a nuclear flash cloud!

[donkeyotay]

54. No wonder a favorite GOP meme has been "we're looking forward"

"I don't want to dwell on the past." I should think not. Dots might get connected. It might start to look like a pattern or something.

Thanks, Octafish. What a fine public service you have provided to citizens trying to figure out what's wrong with our country.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

60. Maybe Chimp and Chimpette are stupid

or maybe they're smart enough to cultivate images of themselves that border on the moronic, so they can dodge questions with "I don't knows" and "I don't remembers", or "I'm have no idea what you're talking about because I'm an uneducated dunce", or "mmm, unnhh, oook, banana" and the public will accept that and not want to dig too deep.

[Contrary1]

72. Cuban Missile Crisis : “It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure.”

Geez...next; she'll be "pretty sure" as to how the Korean War had to do with Korea and War.

Someone tell me please. What did she do to get this job? We know it had nothing to do with experience or intelligence.

[rosetta6]

78. You make excellent points Octafish

And you have a boffo sig line.

Furthermore I believe that in 1954 the NSC initiated rules that precluded known armed services from assisting in covert CIA operations in peacetime. This meant that President Kennedy could not have ordered air strikes to bail out the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 even if he wanted to. Given that this was the law of the land the President was following, it was understood at the time that he had that restriction, and I don't know how President Kennedy could legitimately been expected to send in air force planes to cover the operation.

This is just one of many many many reasons why I believe the Bay of Pigs was a big ol' CIA frame up, either to force him his hand or make him look bad or both.

[ConsAreLiars]

79. Thanks as always - you put more American history in one thread

than 100 corporate-approved HS or college texts combined. The story behind the "story." There is a truly ruthless tale that never gets told by those who murdered democracy. Thank you.