Charlie Hebdo suspect said Abu Ghraib torture pics drove him to enlist in Jihad against USA in 2008

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:00 PM

1. Just imagine

If the victims in the Abu Ghraib pictures had been Americans and the perpetrators had been someone else. We would be bombing everyone in sight. We'd probably even go nuclear.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to nichomachus (Reply #1)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:38 PM

sabrina 1 (62,325 posts)

27. Well we didn't go nuclear, but we did use White Phospherous in Fallujah and

bombed everything in sight, torturing and killing in a country that had nothing to do with what drove us there, 9/11.

I'm not sure if your post was intended to be sarcastic or not, but taken at face value it is the truth.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to sabrina 1 (Reply #27)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 07:13 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

105. Depleted Uranium ammo used all over Iraq...

The Responsibility of the US in Contaminating Iraq with Depleted Uranium

By Prof Souad N. Al-Azzawi
Global Research, June 14, 2014
8 November 2009

The following text was presented to the Kuala Lumpur International Conference to Criminalise War, Putra World Trade Centre, 28-31 October 2009.

For two decades, the administrations of the United States of America and the United Kingdom have been waging continuous wars on Iraq to occupy this oil rich country.

The armed forces of those two countries attacked civilians with different kinds of conventional, non-conventional, and banned weapons such as cluster bombs ammunitions, napalm bombs, white phosphorous weapons and depleted Uranium weapons.

Depleted Uranium (DU) is a radioactive and chemically toxic heavy metal. If ingested, inhaled, or it enters the human body through wounds or skin, it remains there for decades.

Within the human body the (DU) particles would be a continuous source for emitting alpha particles. With its toxic effects, published research & epidemiological studies have proved that it causes serious health damages to the human body. Some of the damage to the human body is to lymph tissue, kidneys, developing fetuses, neurological system, the bones, lung fibrosis, and an increase in the risk of many types of cancer and malignancies.

Hundreds of tons of (DU) expenditure have been fired & exploded on Iraqi highly populated areas like Basrah, Baghdad, Nasriya, Dewania, Samawa, and other cities.

Exploration programs and site measurements by Iraqi and non-Iraqi researchers all proved the existence of (DU) related contamination over most Iraqi territories.

Iraq’s Minister of Environment admitted in July 23, 2007 in Cairo that “at least 350 sites in Iraq are contaminated with (DU)”. She added that the nation is facing a tremendous number of cancer cases and called for the international community to help Iraq cope with this problem.

A few years after exposure to (DU) contamination, multifold increase of malignancies, congenital malformations, miscarriages, children leukemia, and sterility cases have been registered in suburb areas of Basrah and other surrounding areas. Similar problems appeared in Falluja, where illegal weapons were also used intensively in the 2004 attack of occupation forces on the city. More than two million of the Iraqi population died since 1991 because of the synergic multiple impact of using (DU) weapons, economical sanctions, and the destruction of the health care systems.

The economical sanction that were also imposed by USA and UK administrations deprived the children and people of Iraq their rights in food, potable water, health care, sanitation and other life supporting necessities.

The USA and UK administrations have subjected the whole nation of Iraq for two decades to torture and slow death through the intentional use of radioactive weapons and the sanctions. The continuous and intentional use of radioactive weapons is a crime against humanity due to its undifferentiating harmful health effects on civilians in contaminated areas tens of years to come after the military engagements. The existence of (DU) radioactive contamination in the surrounding environment is a continuous source of exposure to low level radiation. This exposure can be considered as a systematic attack on Iraqi civilians in an armed conflict, according to Article 4 of the official regulations and Article 7 of the ICC.

This paper is submitted to present the facts and scientific evidences regarding the intentional use of the USA and UK administrations of depleted uranium weapons against the people and environment of Iraq, in addition to the health consequences that have been result from them.

Introduction:

The administrations of the United States of America and the United Kingdom have been continuously waging wars against Iraq since 1991.

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-responsibility-of-the-us-in-contaminating-iraq-with-depleted-uranium/15966

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #105)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 10:36 PM

JEB (4,748 posts)

130. Our heavy handed use of DU

ranks up there with torture in the list of crimes against Humanity committed by our own dear USA. Horrible, horrible stuff.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to nichomachus (Reply #1)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:46 PM

QuestionableC (63 posts)

36. I disagree

We have seen videos of Americans on their knees, a masked man behind them, slowly decapitate them. We have listened to their screams. We have watched the life drain from their eyes.

We haven't gone nuclear.

While the abu ghraib pictures are both degrading and evidence of extreme criminal misconduct, your assessment of our reaction to that hypothetical scenario is as inaccurate as it is irresponsible.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to QuestionableC (Reply #36)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:03 PM

ananda (27,521 posts)

43. Nowadays we drone.

..

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to QuestionableC (Reply #36)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 04:53 PM

Bandit (21,475 posts)

78. Wasn't out mass killing spree in Falluja a direct response to that very thing?

Americans can be the most sadistic bastards on the face of the earth, and it doesn't take much to make them so..

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:03 PM

msanthrope (37,549 posts)

2. And we believe mass murderers now? Look...some people just like to kill, and like to find

excuses for their loser asses.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #2)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:05 PM

still_one (87,267 posts)

4. That is more like it.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #2)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:08 PM

trumad (41,692 posts)

5. You're right

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to trumad (Reply #5)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:13 PM

msanthrope (37,549 posts)

10. Thank you--think these psychos gave a shit about a single 9/11 victim? nt

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #10)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 09:54 PM

NewDeal_Dem (1,049 posts)

117. Like the US leadership gives a rats ass about the millions of civilians they've killed either.

You want to talk psychos, how about the ones who sent us to war over a lie?

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to trumad (Reply #5)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 06:52 PM

Hassin Bin Sober (25,465 posts)

101. They hate us for our freeeeedumbs!!!!!!!!

Not even that, I guess. No motivation.

They are crazed psycho killers bent on destruction!!!! Nothing but a desire to murder!!!!!

Blowback doesn't exist

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #2)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:08 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

6. It's what he said in court.

You are a lawyer. You know they keep records about what people said in court.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #6)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:14 PM

msanthrope (37,549 posts)

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to UTUSN (Reply #7)

Sun Jan 11, 2015, 12:18 PM

bhikkhu (10,648 posts)

205. Atrocities breed atrocities breed atrocities...

The holocaust was the radicalizing foundation behind the ruthless character of the new Israeli state. Watching the Israeli bombing of apartment towers in Beirut is what Osama bin Laden stated as the reason behind his own radicalization, and the beginning of his justification for 911. Plenty of Americans were radicalized by 911, though we don't like to talk about that part (what does "the gloves are off" really mean?). Abu Graib and many other atrocities happened because of that.

In any case, whatever the reasons, the vast majority condemn atrocities rather than repeat or support them. That's as it should be; it takes a stronger character to not give in to hate.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #2)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:34 PM

NewDeal_Dem (1,049 posts)

21. like this guy.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to NewDeal_Dem (Reply #21)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:35 PM

msanthrope (37,549 posts)

24. Damn he looks like Ted Bundy in that picture!!! nt

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #24)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:39 PM

NewDeal_Dem (1,049 posts)

28. ...

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to NewDeal_Dem (Reply #28)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:42 PM

msanthrope (37,549 posts)

32. Wow! I guess I wasn't the only one who thought that! nt

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #32)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:51 PM

louis-t (22,344 posts)

63. I have a photo of the two, caption is "Separated at birth?"

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to NewDeal_Dem (Reply #28)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:15 PM

JaneyVee (19,877 posts)

i'd say georgee.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to NewDeal_Dem (Reply #21)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:42 PM

Long Drive (105 posts)

31. Shit howdy W looks much like Ted Bundy

Another serial killer.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Long Drive (Reply #31)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:57 PM

dead_head (81 posts)

64. Close your eyes and listen the Charlie Manson

Youll think it's Bush.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to NewDeal_Dem (Reply #21)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 10:40 PM

JEB (4,748 posts)

131. Looks like he could use a Depleted Uranium enema.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to JEB (Reply #131)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 10:41 PM

NewDeal_Dem (1,049 posts)

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #71)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 04:42 PM

Rex (65,616 posts)

72. I swore up and down I knew what hate speech was

and was completely wrong. It wasn't just you, the entire DU lawyer division showed up to correct my ignorance. I always thought all 'hate speech' was a crime. If I would have thought about it and not insisted on knowing I was correct, I would have realized I was wrong.

Got my ass handed to me and rightfully so.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Rex (Reply #72)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 04:47 PM

msanthrope (37,549 posts)

76. Oh, shit!!! The DU Lawyer Division showed up? And you survived?

Kudos!

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #76)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 05:05 PM

Rex (65,616 posts)

81. I know, I think you guys felt sorry for me after a while.

Had at least 3 servings of crow that evening.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #44)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 04:07 PM

riderinthestorm (23,272 posts)

66. So you don't think anyone was motivated by the Abu Ghraib tortures and murders?

That MUST be a lie?

FWIW, I believe it. Not because I pretend to be something I'm not but because the US State Dept has said there has definitely been blowback from that torture.

Why not these two as well...

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to riderinthestorm (Reply #66)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 04:43 PM

msanthrope (37,549 posts)

73. I think plenty of people take tragedy and murder and use it as motivator to do the really

bad shit they want to do, anyway.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #73)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 04:52 PM

riderinthestorm (23,272 posts)

77. That's fine but the State department has specifically said there's been blowback

From our actions in Iraq and Abu Ghraib.

That it has lured and created jihadis (and potential jihadis) from all over the world, some of whom have gone back to their native countries to sow mayhem.

Why do you think this particular terrorist is lying about his motivation?

Have you defended so many mass murdering Islamic terrorists before? If so, I'd love to see those cases...

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #73)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 09:56 PM

NewDeal_Dem (1,049 posts)

9/11 happened before we invaded Iraq.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #2)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:46 PM

840high (17,196 posts)

60. ....

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #2)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 04:01 PM

riderinthestorm (23,272 posts)

65. He said this in 2008 @ the American occupation of Iraq

He said it was the motivation for him to be a jihadi.

Not the motivation for the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo office.

This comment precedes him being a "mass murderer".

And FWIW, I believe him.

I believe that many Muslims were motivated to fight against the US because of the tortured and abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #2)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 04:25 PM

BlancheSplanchnik (20,219 posts)

69. this!

We all see abominations against our people (i.e. and especially Women and PoC). Every damned day. But we don't go joining murder clubs.

Violent people will ALWAYS blame their own victims and whoever else comes in handy, for the things they do.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #2)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 05:00 PM

Bandit (21,475 posts)

80. What makes you think he is a mass murderer?

He was convicted of trying to go to Iraq. He never made it there and never killed a soul as far as I can see. He seems happy now he didn't go there and commit murder and that he has a job at a supermarket and likes Rap music.. You seem to have jumped the gun on this one. I hope you don't lawyer like that.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Bandit (Reply #80)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 05:10 PM

msanthrope (37,549 posts)

82. Who are you talking about???? nt

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Bandit (Reply #80)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 05:16 PM

GummyBearz (2,931 posts)

86. Just a guess

It has something to do with the 12 people he helped kill at Charlie hebdo....that's pretty mass murder-esque

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Bandit (Reply #80)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 09:58 PM

NewDeal_Dem (1,049 posts)

Blowback: Paris Terror Suspect Radicalized by Outrage Over American Torture and Invasion of Iraq

Dan Sanchez
AntiWar.com, January 08, 2015

One of the Paris terror suspects was radicalized by outrage over American torture and the invasion of Iraq. The Huffington Post reports:

“The Associated Press said that Cherif Kouachi was tried in 2008 for helping funnel fighters to Iraq and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Kouachi told the court at the time that he was outraged by images that revealed the torture of Iraqi inmates by U.S. guards at the Abu Ghraib prison, according to the AP.”

And The New York Times reports:

“Chérif’s interest in radical Islam, it was said at the 2008 trial, was rooted in his fury over the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003, particularly the mistreatment of Muslims held at Abu Ghraib prison.”

SOURCE w/links: http://antiwar.com/blog/2015/01/08/blowback-paris-terror-suspect-radicalized-by-outrage-over-american-torture-and-invasion-of-iraq/

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #8)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:16 PM

dissentient (861 posts)

14. I believe it, it seems very plausible

But I still condemn the terrorist. He made the decision to do what he did.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to dissentient (Reply #14)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:20 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

18. As do I. Do I need to post that?

I'm feeling a certain pressure -- not from you, dissentient -- but on DU that I am responsible for the news I report.

For some reason, I thought just being a DUer was good enough to get past having to prove where we're coming from.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #18)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:22 PM

dissentient (861 posts)

19. Not at all. I was just making what I thought clear.

I never thought you were saying anything wrong in this.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #18)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:44 PM

MADem (135,425 posts)

34. Why yes, you do--over and over again, in fact!

And even if you do post it, people will accuse you--nonetheless--of being responsible, or of "excusing/condoning/advocating/accepting" mass murder.

It's impossible to have a nuanced conversation -- you'll be met with "So then you think it's 'OK'..." remarks if you even try. Not by everyone, certainly...but it seems there's always one! Oh, well...

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to MADem (Reply #34)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:12 PM

Jefferson23 (30,099 posts)

46. +1. n/t

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to dissentient (Reply #3)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:53 PM

brush (46,891 posts)

39. Right. It's called blowback.

Last edited Thu Jan 8, 2015, 08:48 PM - Edit history (3)

The 'geniuses' in the Chaney/Bush admin thought that they could bomb, invade and kill hundreds of thousands without it coming back at us (the West).

And just think, there are probably many others that became radicalized by those Abu Ghraib photos and our other atrocities, who may be yet to act.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to brush (Reply #39)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:56 PM

dissentient (861 posts)

40. I'm in full agreement with your post. (And with this OP in general as well)

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to brush (Reply #39)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:22 PM

KoKo (84,711 posts)

51. agree...."Blowback."

n/t

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:12 PM

randome (34,845 posts)

9. So...kill some Parisians. Makes sense.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
Leonard Cohen, Anthem (1992)[/center][/font][hr]

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to randome (Reply #9)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:16 PM

msanthrope (37,549 posts)

13. I totally see how you could mistake French cartoonists for US Army reserves. nt

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to msanthrope (Reply #13)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 09:14 PM

cemaphonic (4,138 posts)

114. Especially with the way that the French were so gung-ho to join the war

that we even renamed a beloved side course to "Freedom Fries" in honor of their loyalty in promoting our diplomatic and military goals.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:13 PM

TexasProgresive (11,972 posts)

11. There have been so many recruitment ads paid by us

for extremists; starting with April Glaspie giving Saddam the OK to invade Kuwait which lead to US forces in Saudi Arabia, then the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan with Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Camp X-Ray and assorted black sites. While none of these are an excuse for terrorist acts they are definitely an incentive especially young hot heads, just as much of an incentive as attacks on our nation lead to massive amounts of enlistments in the armed services.

It is hard to believe that the idiots who got us here did not have a clue as to what they were doing to the world.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to TexasProgresive (Reply #11)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:17 PM

arcane1 (38,613 posts)

17. I've always believed that those Abu Ghraib photos were intended to be "leaked"

There's no money in being greeted as liberators. The "War on (some) Terror" was, to paraphrase Bush's words, not intended to end in our lifetime. That gravy train needs a constant supply of angry young men.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to arcane1 (Reply #17)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:36 PM

NewDeal_Dem (1,049 posts)

26. +100 There are more things, horatio....

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to arcane1 (Reply #17)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:42 PM

malaise (254,388 posts)

30. Profound

You may be on to something

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to TexasProgresive (Reply #11)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:51 PM

KingCharlemagne (7,908 posts)

38. "starting with April Glaspie" -- actually, I think you need to go back a bit farther in time, at

least to 1983, when Reagan was selling arms to the Iranians (the arms-for-hostages component of Iran-Contra) while AT THE EXACT SAME TIME dispatching RummyDummy to Baghdad as his 'secret' envoy to re-establish diplomatic relations with Iraq and provide her with military intel about Iranian troop deployments. Oh, yeah, and possibly ink a deal for chemical precursors for chemical weapons.

No biggie, you say, just American capitalism-imperialism at work. But to the people of the Middle East, it appears as if the U.S. was arming and assisting both sides in the brutal Iran-Iraq war. AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME. We may have short memories in this county but I assure you memories in the Middle East are far harder and of far greater duration.

If I, a stupid American, know this shit, you can bet it's common knowledge on the streets of every Middle Eastern capital.

Lest you think I'm imagining things or engaged in wild-eyed CT, here's a little photographic excursion down memory lane to help focus the mind:

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to KingCharlemagne (Reply #38)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:13 PM

Diclotican (5,095 posts)

47. KingCharlemagne

KingCharlemagne

Most of the REST of the world have a greater memory when it come to this than US have - and speically in the Middle east they tend to understand - and rembember the history in lager quantity than US do..

Diclotican

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to KingCharlemagne (Reply #38)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:30 PM

lebkuchen (10,716 posts)

56. How to I "LOVE" this post?

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to lebkuchen (Reply #56)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:35 PM

KingCharlemagne (7,908 posts)

58. Thanks (I think). I'm not sure there's any way to 'love' a specific post the way

one recommends a thread. But your sentiment is still appreciated

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to KingCharlemagne (Reply #38)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 04:43 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

74. How about the 'Safari Club' that drove CIA around Jimmy Carter?

That was how much of the illegal got institutionalized.

The State, the Deep State, and the Wall Street Overworld

By Prof Peter Dale Scott
Global Research, March 10, 2014
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 12, Issue 10, No. 5

EXCERPT...

The Safari Club Milieu: George H.W. Bush, Theodore Shackley, and BCCI

The usual account of this super-agency’s origin is that it was

the brainchild of Count Alexandre de Marenches, the debonair and mustachioed chief of France’s CIA. The SDECE (Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage)…. Worried by Soviet and Cuban advances in postcolonial Africa, and by America’s post-Watergate paralysis in the field of undercover activity, the swashbuckling Marenches had come to Turki’s father, King Faisal, with a proposition…. [By 1979] Somali president Siad Barre had been bribed out of Soviet embrace by $75 million worth of Egyptian arms (paid for… by Saudi Arabia)….95

Joseph Trento adds that “The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations,… With the official blessing of George Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed… the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine.”.96

Trento claims also that the Safari Club then was able to work with some of the controversial CIA operators who were then forced out of the CIA by Turner, and that this was coordinated by perhaps the most controversial of them all: Theodore Shackley.

Shackley, who still had ambitions to become DCI, believed that without his many sources and operatives like [Edwin] Wilson, the Safari Club—operating with [former DCI Richard] Helms in charge in Tehran—would be ineffective. … Unless Shackley took direct action to complete the privatization of intelligence operations soon, the Safari Club would not have a conduit to [CIA] resources. The solution: create a totally private intelligence network using CIA assets until President Carter could be replaced.97

Kevin Phillips has suggested that Bush on leaving the CIA had dealings with the bank most closely allied with Safari Club operations: the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). In Phillips’ words,

After leaving the CIA in January 1977, Bush became chairman of the executive committee of First International Bancshares and its British subsidiary, where, according to journalists Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin in their 1992 book ‘False Profits’ [p. 345], Bush ‘traveled on the bank’s behalf and sometimes marketed to international banks in London, including several Middle Eastern institutions.’98

Joseph Trento adds that through the London branch of this bank, which Bush chaired, “Adham’s petrodollars and BCCI money flowed for a variety of intelligence operations”99

It is clear moreover that BCCI operations, like Khashoggi’s before them, were marked by the ability to deal behind the scenes with both the Arab countries and also Israel.100

It is clear that for years the American deep state in Washington was both involved with and protected BCCI. Acting CIA director Richard Kerr acknowledged to a Senate Committee “that the CIA had also used BCCI for certain intelligence-gathering operations.”101

Later, a congressional inquiry showed that for more than ten years preceding the BCCI collapse in the summer of 1991, the FBI, the DEA, the CIA, the Customs Service, and the Department of Justice all failed to act on hundreds of tips about the illegalities of BCCI’s international activities.102

Far less clear is the attitude taken by Wall Street banks towards the miscreant BCCI. The Senate report on BCCI charged however that the Bank of England “had withheld information about BCCI’s frauds from public knowledge for 15 months before closing the bank.”103

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-state-the-deep-state-and-the-wall-street-overworld/5372843

Then how about the time in Dallas, when the President said we weren't going to go into Vietnam?

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #74)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 05:11 PM

KingCharlemagne (7,908 posts)

83. We could push the starting point back to 1953 when the CIA and FDR's grandson

Kermit helped reactionary forces in Iran overthrow a democratically-elected leftist (Mossadegh) and install a rightist (the Shah). People in Iran haven't forgotten that, nor have most people in the Middle East. Along those lines, JFK's CIA helped Saddam smash the Iraqi Communist Party, killing or jailing most of its leadership cadre on his way to consolidating Baathist Party power. Again, most Americans have forgotten (if they ever even knew this stuff), but it has the fierce urgency of NOW in the Middle East. And who are we to be saying "They should just get over it"? How would we like it if Africans or South Americans told us we should just "get over 9-11"?

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to KingCharlemagne (Reply #83)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 06:09 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

93. Absolutely. It was in Reader's Digest.

Once, when Grandpa Prescott wrote about what Ike would call the “Military-Intelligence-Congressional Complex.”

In 1959, then-U.S. Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush, wrote back in 1959 to brag, rightfully so, for Boeing, General Electric, Westinghouse, Remington, Chevron and the rest of the war profiteers still hogging at the trough of the U.S. Treasury in the present day in one guise or another:

To Preserve Peace Let’s Show Russians How Strong We Are

By Prescott Bush
U.S. Senator from Connecticut;
member of the Senate Armed Services Committee
The Reader’s Digest July 1959

MAN’S GREATEST danger, it is said, is ignorance. In a very real sense, the Soviet Union’s ignorance of our military strength may be the source of her gravest peril—and ours. Kaiser Wilhelm started World War I because he miscalculated Allied power. Hitler, mistakenly thinking he could blitz the world, launched World War II. Kruschev today lacks firsthand knowledge of our country; he may be given what others think he would like to hear—rather than an objective report on our actual military strength. Although it seems impossible that any sane person could start a war, we would be wise to take no chances.

Why not invite the Soviet high command to the United States for a conducted tour of our military might? We are bringing Russians to see our farms and factories, our scientific laboratories and research centers; we exchange dancers and musicians. Why not have their military leaders over for the most beneficial look of all? Our expressed policy, the aim and purpose of our entire defense system, is to deter the Kremlin from starting a war. What better way to deter than to show?

What we could show is nothing more nor less than the greatest military might ever assembled in the history of the world. If the Soviet high command could see what we have, they should be of our mind—that for them to start war today would be an act of insanity.

We could start in a Pentagon briefing room. There, with maps, globes, films and sound-projection equipment to help illustrate our points, we could give them a good hard look at the distribution of American power. Then we could fly the group to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Montana, where bombers of the Strategic Air Command are on 24-hour alert, many ready to take off within 15 minutes. We could see an awe-inspiring line of B-47’s, any one of which can, in a single mission, deliver explosive power equivalent to that of all the bombs dropped by all sides in World War II. We could invite the commander of the Soviet air force to ride in one of these planes, and see it refueled in the air, thus quietly demonstrating that, while most Soviet bombers would have to fly one-way missions, ours can strike any target in the world and return nonstop.

SNIP...

The demonstration at SAC should effectively dismiss from Soviet minds any speculation about the possibility of their gaining an advantage from all-out war any time soon. But we must face the fact that in a few years the Russians may be able to zero in our SAC bases with ballistic missiles. To drive this temptation out of their minds, we could show them other deterrents.

CONTINUES…

The Reader’s Digest
July 1959 pp. 25-30

Prescott Bush detailed how Kruschev and the head of the Soviet armed forces be our guest on nuclear submarines, demonstrations of sea- and land-launched ICBMs, operations from aircraft carriers and a cruise aboard the inter-continental strategic bomber, the B-52.

The guy was on to something. You know how much they get for a B-2 these days? Two billion? Each?

Almost forgot. Prescott also discussed the strategic importance of Iraq –
the very same right next door to Iran, the very place the CIA and MI6 had, five years earlier,
replaced a democratically elected government with a despot, the Shah. For the oil, I’d wager.

It’s fortunate for them that we want only peace with justice. Our entire record attests to that. We have no history of aggression, profess no desire for world domination, as do the Communists. Only by their continued menace have we been forced to take these measures for defense.

I ASK, “Why don’t we show the Russians many of these defense measures?” What I would not show them is any self-satisfaction on our part about the future, any slowing-up of plans to produce the new weapons which must inevitably take the place of the old ones. I believe we are in a continuing struggle to keep on top in this business of declaring war. I think that the Russians are never to be underrated. [font color="red"]I also believe that the Communists are master bluffers that they seek to put us off by arrogant threats to Berlin and to the peace of the far Pacific, and, while our people are preoccupied with these threats, they may try to take over Iraq as the Chinese Reds have conquered Tibet.
[/font color]

So. At least three generations of the Bush Family Evil Empire have had their eyes on Iraq’s oil. Interesting how Prescott mentioned Tibet's destruction by China. How was he to know his namesake would one day become head of the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce? The article also shows how Prescott boosted the Cold War, way back in ’59. It’s not so odd to think that three generations of crazy petrodollar-loving warmongers would rise to the top echelons of American leadership.

This is exactly what Ike was talking about when he mentioned being on our guard against the “Military-Industrial Complex.” The Bushes and their wealthy supporters from both major political parties may think they're American royalty, but, as you know, KingCharlemagne, all they represent is a multi-generational mob of banksters, gangsters, and traitors.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #93)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 10:28 PM

NewDeal_Dem (1,049 posts)

128. prescott's dad sam: war industries board WWI, rockefeller/harriman associate,

federal reserve.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to KingCharlemagne (Reply #83)

Sun Jan 11, 2015, 11:36 AM

sketchy (458 posts)

199. He was Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., Teddy Roosevelt's grandson

not FDR's. Just for the record.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to sketchy (Reply #199)

Sun Jan 11, 2015, 02:28 PM

KingCharlemagne (7,908 posts)

223. Wipes egg off face! Encroaching senility, not a pleasant

thing to contemplate!

Thanks for the annotation and duly noted for all future references.

Much obliged.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:17 PM

reddread (6,896 posts)

16. me too

but it was more like 04, and neither the Democraticans nor the Republicans
would allow the voters to know their tax dollars at works.
another election, stolen wholesale, with methods unsung.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to reddread (Reply #16)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:32 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

20. When Truth Tried to Stop War (Ray McGovern)

When Truth Tried to Stop War

Exclusive: The year 2013 is the one-decade anniversary of the U.S. political/media system’s failure to stop a criminal President from launching a war of aggression on Iraq. It was a shameful time when only a few brave individuals, like the U.K.’s Katharine Gun, did the right thing, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern reports.

By Ray McGovern
ConsortiumNews.com, Feb. 1, 2013

Ten years ago, Katharine Gun, then a 28-year-old British intelligence officer, saw an e-mailed memo from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) that confirmed for her in black and white the already widespread suspicion that the U.S. and U.K. were about to launch war against Iraq on false pretenses.

Doing what she could to head off what she considered, correctly, an illegal war of aggression, she printed a copy of the memo and arranged for a friend to give it to the London Observer. “I have always ever followed my conscience,” she said, explaining what drove her to take such a large risk.

Those early months of 2003 were among the worst of times – and not just because the U.S. and U.K. leaders were perverting the post-World War II structure that those same nations designed to stop aggressive wars, but because the vast majority of U.S. and U.K. institutions including the major news organizations and the nations’ legislatures were failing miserably to provide any meaningful check or balance.

The common excuse from politicians, bureaucrats, editors and other opinion leaders was that there was no way the momentum toward war could be stopped, so why take on the career damage that would result from getting in the way. And if Ms. Gun were made of lesser stuff, she might have hidden behind a similar self-serving excuse or found solace in other comforting rationalizations, like the government must know what it’s doing, or what do I, a Mandarin-to-English translator, know about Iraq.

CONTINUED...

http://consortiumnews.com/2013/01/31/when-truth-tried-to-stop-war/

DU was full of brave people in 2003. Almost all opposed Bush and Blair and their illegal, immoral and unnecessary war on Iraq. Lots stated, specifically, that blowback from the immoral, illegal, unnecessary and disastrous invasion and war would only serve to harm innocent people and create new enemies.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #20)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:19 PM

KoKo (84,711 posts)

50. Recommend Read......

And, agree about Blowback... as others have expressed.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:34 PM

B2G (9,766 posts)

22. They don't need an excuse to kill

They just provide one that will generate consternation and then sit back to watch the global circular firing squad commence.

Funny how none of these groups have claimed their actions were to avenge Bin Laden, huh?

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to B2G (Reply #22)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:44 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

33. Killing Hope

U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II

by William Blum

"

American leaders) are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care ... the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them ... then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home-the ones who make it back alive-with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things."

-- William Blum. Killing Hope

Edited versions

Killing Hope - excerpts from introduction to Original Edition

Angola 1975-1980s
Brazil 1961-1964
Cambodia 1955-1973
Chile 1964-1973
Congo 1960-1964
Cuba 1959-1980s
Dominican Republic 1960-1966
East Timor 1975
El Salvador 1980-1994
Greece 1964-1974
Grenada 1979-1984
Guatemala 1953-1954
Guatemala 1962-1980s
Haiti 1986-1994
Indonesia 1957-1958
Indonesia 1965
Iran 1953
Laos 1957-1973
Nicaragua 1981-1990
Uruguay 1964-1970
Zaire 1975-1978

US government assassination plots since World War II

"It was in the early days of the fighting in Vietnam that a Vietcong officer said to his American prisoner: "You were our heroes after the War. We read American books and saw American films, and a common phrase in those days was 'to be as rich and as wise as an American'. What happened?

An American might have been asked something similar by a Guatemalan, an Indonesian or a Cuban during the ten years previous, or by a Uruguayan, a Chilean or a Greek in the decade subsequent. The remarkable international goodwill and credibility enjoyed by the United States at the close of the Second World War was dissipated country by country, intervention by intervention."

William Blum

Unedited versions

Killing Hope - introduction to Original Edition
Killing Hope - introduction to New Edition

Angola 1975 to 1980s
Bulgaria 1990 / Albania 1991
Cuba 1959-1980s
Ecuador 1960-1963
Haiti 1986-1994
Indonesia 1957-1958
Iraq 1990-1991
Italy 1947-1948
Uruguay 1964-1970

The American Empire: 1992 to present - 2004 edition

SOURCE w/links to details: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/KillingHope_page.html

www.killinghope.org/

Then there's bin Laden and the modern era of terror and the contemporary period, all grotesque and most, if not all, immoral.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 02:34 PM

AzDar (14,023 posts)

23. Blowback.

Bwaaaaaaaaaaaah - not even in their minds.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to malaise (Reply #169)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 04:58 PM

Rex (65,616 posts)

174. I figured I would be nice in 2015.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Rex (Reply #174)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 05:00 PM

malaise (254,388 posts)

176. Too nice

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Rex (Reply #49)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 04:51 PM

SidDithers (44,228 posts)

171. Why do alleged progressives think that right wing homophobes, anti-Semites and racists are credible?

Sid

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to SidDithers (Reply #171)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 04:55 PM

Rex (65,616 posts)

Last edited Thu Jan 8, 2015, 05:15 PM - Edit history (1)

You really do know how to pick your sources, don't you octafish of DU?

Do you spend any time learning about the assholes that you bring to DU? Or do you just regurgitate the first link that google gives you when you're looking for something bad to say about Obama.

I mean, it's bad enough when you use anti-immigrant, white-nationalist Republican Paul Craig Roberts as a source, even after being told of his racist opinion and saying that you'd stop reading him. Obviously you've never stopped.

But Wayne Madsen is far beyond even Paul Craig Roberts. Madsen is a far-right conspiracy theorist who, in 2010, ran a series of articles accusing Obama of being gay, and being secretly married to his Pakistani roommate.

Yup. You read that right.

Excuse the link to rense, but you need to be shown just what kind of asshole you're linking to:
http://rense.com/general95/onemanuel.html

You should be fucking ashamed of yourself, octafish, for trying to give legitimacy to filth like Wayne Madsen.

You've really outdone yourself this time.

Sid

PS - jurors, I'll take the hide, if you think it's warranted, but DUers who use right-wing asshole homophobic racist conspiracy theorists need to be called out on that use. And this poster has a long history of not caring what kind of source they use.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to SidDithers (Reply #75)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 05:13 PM

Rex (65,616 posts)

84. Wow!

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to SidDithers (Reply #75)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 05:43 PM

Vincardog (20,234 posts)

90. On Thu Jan 8, 2015, 12:27 PM an alert was sent on the following post:

Wayne fucking Madsen...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6058472

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

ALERTER'S COMMENTS

He asked for an alert, and he got it. Sid's point about Madsen is true enough. But his personal attack on Octafish (he conducts these every other day or so) is beyond the pale. Please consider a lock.

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Thu Jan 8, 2015, 12:41 PM, and the Jury voted 2-5 to LEAVE IT.

Juror #1 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Well, this was an easy one. Poster is ready to take a Hide, so fine -- I vote Hide for callout and personal attack.
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #7 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Vincardog (Reply #90)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 05:59 PM

SidDithers (44,228 posts)

91. Thanks for posting the results...

Sid

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to SidDithers (Reply #91)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 06:01 PM

Vincardog (20,234 posts)

What an amazing post. I've known about most of it for a long time, but nothing as in depth as that. Thank you ...

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to SidDithers (Reply #75)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 06:17 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

95. The source was ''In These Times.'' You really don't contribute a thing, do you, SidDithers?

So what if Wayne went off the rails with an article or if he insulted the president? The guy tries, which is a lot more than Corporate Owned Media, CON, or Corporate McPravda. Here are details with which you can learn on DU:

The short version: Back in the day when George W was defendin' Texas from the Air Force of North Vietnam, he met a man by the name of James R Bath. They both were drummed off the flight line for failing to take physical exams -- coincidently, no doubt, right about the same time the government starting testing pilots for illegal drugs 'n' such. Note how the Bush White House redacted a proper noun here and there. Here're two versions of the document:

Now this document shows that the House of bin Laden selected James R Bath to be their official U.S. business agent.

Isn't it something? Why no one in the press corpse ask Bush about this is understandable considering the subject must be off-limits to those without the necessary Top Secret clearance. In our day, they've got the media. Got to keep things fresh, Kardashian, and away from anyone suspecting Capitalism's Invisible Army. Right, SidDithers of DU?

zappaman (20,587 posts)

Why do you say that? The article I posted has nothing to indicate that. What it does contain is information demonstrating the close connections between the Bush family and the bin Laden family. Here's more:

The Family That Preys Together

by Jack Colhoun
Covert Action Information Bulletin, Issue No. 41, Summer, 1992

GEORGE JR.'S BCCI CONNECTION

"This is an incredible deal, unbelievable for this small company," energy analyst Charles Strain told Forbes magazine, describing the oil production sharing agreement the Harken Energy Corporation signed in January 1990 with Bahrain.

Under the terms of the deal, Harken was given the exclusive right to explore for gas and oil off the shores of the Gulf island nation. If gas or oil were found in waters near two of the world's largest gas and oil fields, Harken would have exclusive marketing and transportation rights for the energy resources. Truly an "incredible deal" for a company that had never drilled an offshore well.

Strain failed to point out, however, the one fact that puts the Harken deal in focus: George Bush, Jr., the eldest son of George and Barbara Bush of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, is a member of Harken's board of directors, a consultant, and a stockholder in the Texas-based company. In light of this connection, the deal makes more sense. The involvement of Junior-George Walker Bush's childhood nickname-with Harken is a walking conflict of interest. His relationship to President Bush, rather than any business acumen, made him a valuable asset for Harken, the Republican Party benefactors, Middle East oil sheikhs and covert operators who played a part in Harken's Bahrain deal.

In fact, Junior's track record as an oilman is pretty dismal. He began his career in Midland, Texas, in the mid-1970s when he founded Arbusto Energy, Inc. When oil prices dropped in the early 1980s, Arbusto fell upon hard times. Junior was only rescued from business failure when his company was purchased by Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation, a small oil firm owned by William DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds. As part of the September 1984 deal, Bush became Spectrum 7's president and was given a 13.6 percent share in the company's stock. Oil prices stayed low and within two years, Spectrum 7 was in trouble.

In the six months before Spectrum 7 was acquired by Harken in 1986, it had lost $400,000. In the buyout deal, George "Jr." and his partners were given more than $2 million worth of Harken stock for the 180-well operation. Made a director and hired as a "consultant" to Harken, Junior received another $600,000 of Harken stock, and has been paid between $42,000 and $120,000 a year since 1986.

Junior's value to Harken soon became apparent when the company needed an infusion of cash in the spring of 1987. Junior and other Harken officials met with Jackson Stephens, head of Stephens, Inc., a large investment bank in Little Rock, Arkansas (Stephens made a $100,000 contribution to the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980 and gave another $100,000 to the Bush dinner committee in 1990.)

In 1987, Stephens made arrangements with Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) to provide $25 million to Harken in return for a stock interest in Harken. As part of the Stephens-brokered deal, Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh, a Saudi real estate tycoon and financier, joined Harken's board as a major investor. *5 Stephens, UBS, and Bakhsh each have ties to the scandal-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

It was Stephens who suggested in the late 1970s that BCCI purchase what became First American Bankshares in Washington, D.C. BCCI later acquired First American's predecessor, Financial General Bankshares. At the time of the Harken investment, UBS was a joint-venture partner with BCCI in a bank in Geneva, Switzerland. Bakhsh has been an investment partner in Saudi Arabia with Gaith Pharoan, identified by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board as a "front man" for BCCI's secret acquisitions of U.S. banks.

Stephens, Inc. played a role in the Harken deal with Bahrain as well. Former Stephens bankers David and Mike Edwards contacted Michael Ameen, the former chief of Mobil Oil's Middle East operations, when Bahrain broke off 1989 talks with Amoco for a gas and oil exploration contract. The Edwardses recommended Harken for the job and urged Ameen to get in touch with Bahrain, which he did.

"In the midst of Harken's talks with Bahrain, Ameen- simultaneously working as a State Department consultant-briefed the incoming U.S. ambassador in Bahrain, Charles Hostler," the Wall Street Journal noted, adding that Hostler, a San Diego real estate investor, was a $100,000 contributor to the Republican Party. Hostler claimed he never discussed Harken with the Bahrainis.

Harken lacked sufficient financing to explore off the coast of Bahrain so it brought in Bass Enterprises Production Company of Fort Worth, Texas, as a partner. The Bass family contributed more than $200,000 to the Republican Party in the late 1980s and early 1990s. *9 On June 22, 1990, George Jr. sold two-thirds of his Harken stock for $848,560-a cool 200 percent profit. The move was well timed. One week after Junior sold his stock, Harken announced a $23.2 million loss in quarterly earnings and Harken stock dropped sharply, losing 60 percent of its value over the next six months. On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops moved into Kuwait and 541,000 U.S. forces were deployed to the Gulf.

"There is substantial evidence to suggest that Bush knew Harken was in dire straits in the weeks before he sold the $848,560 of Harken stock," asserted U.S. News & World Report. The magazine noted Harken appointed Junior to a "fairness committee" to study possible economic restructuring of the company. Junior worked closely with financial advisers from Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Company, who concluded "only drastic action could save Harken."

CONTINUED...

http://mediafilter.org/caq/BushFamilyPreys.html

I think that's what really bothers you. Otherwise, you'd want people to understand that is the most important point. That, and you wouldn't follow me around for years pointing out irrelevant crapola.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #139)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 12:06 AM

zappaman (20,587 posts)

141. No, I don't know why you link to articles by homophobic, anti-Semites.

I know I wouldn't.
But I guess you have your reasons.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to zappaman (Reply #136)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 08:47 AM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

143. Why do you call ''In These Times'' a ''Holocaust denial site,'' zappaman?

It is a progressive, liberal, DEMOCRATIC magazine.

In These Times, an independent, nonprofit magazine, is dedicated to advancing democracy and economic justice, informing movements for a more humane world, and providing an accessible forum for debate about the policies that shape our future.

SOURCE: http://inthesetimes.com/about

Why you would have trouble identifying it as such is understandable.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #143)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 11:53 AM

zappaman (20,587 posts)

147. He writes for Rense as well, Octafish of DU.

Rense is a holocaust denier site.
Why are you pretending you don't know that?

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to zappaman (Reply #147)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 02:14 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 07:09 PM

zappaman (20,587 posts)

191. So you really are defending this homophobic, anti-Semitic turd?

I don't associate with Holocaust deniers.
Not sure why anyone would bring them to DU and expect DUers to accept them as a source on ANYTHING.

By the way, we agree that Holocaust deniers are turds, right?

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to zappaman (Reply #191)

Sat Jan 10, 2015, 04:22 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

193. Never. That's why I post on the BFEE and the crimes of the national security state.

For example (seeing how you approve of the source as ''Good Info'' in 192):

NEO – CIA Torture Report Ties Cheney/Bout to 9/11 Nukes

by Gordon Duff
Veterans Today, January 8, 2015

Information received this week from the highest levels of US counter-terrorism sources have confirmed that the reputed “Queen of Al Qaeda,” Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a CIA torture victim now serving 87 years in an American “super-max” prison, was a CIA agent when captured and was imprisoned to prevent releasing information that could eventually lead to the arrest and conviction of then Vice President Dick Cheney.

Cheney and his henchmen were silencing critics, eliminating “loose ends” tied to Able Danger and 9/11 and completing the process of dismantling the last vestiges of representative government in the US and Western Europe. The story today ties the Valerie Plame scandal, a CIA agent exposed as retaliation at Cheney’s orders.

Our coup was when we learned that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, termed a veritable “female bin Laden” was not only CIA but an asset for Valerie Plame in an investigation originally aimed at Saddam but that had turned around and was pointing directly at the White House.

The Plame investigation aided by Siddiqui’s proof no “yellowcake/Al Qaeda” plot had ever existed went much further than initially intended. Cheney was revealed to be the “handler” for now imprisoned Victor Bout, revealed by the FBI in a 2007 Bangkok briefing to be greatly responsible for supplying the nuclear weapons nukes used on the WTC and, according to FBI sources, a cruise missile as well that the FBI asserts was used on the Pentagon on 9/11.

Thus, when Libby/Liebowitz was convicted, it was openly accepted that he was protecting Cheney from the fallout of simply “running his mouth.” In truth, as we will establish, even Cheney’s proven role in pushing America into an illegal war is only the tip of the iceberg.

CONTINUED...

Posted by Gordon Duff on January 8, 2015

I, too, am sick and tired of seeing examples of the (far-right) Paranoid Style of American Politics sourced here on DU.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to YoungDemCA (Reply #158)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 04:40 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

167. George Herbert Walker Bush told the FBI he was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

We know this because that is what George Herbert Walker Bush told the FBI.

We also know, from the same FBI report, that Poppy heard someone threaten to kill President Kennedy.

So, why did Bush wait until AFTER JFK was assassinated to come foward with the warning?

Here's the document:

Here's a transcript of the text:

TO: SAC, HOUSTON DATE: 11-22-63

FROM: SA GRAHAM W. KITCHEL

SUBJECT: UNKNOWN SUBJECT;
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY

At 1:45 p.m. Mr. GEORGE H. W. BUSH, President of the Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.

BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES PARROTT has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.

BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in this area. He stated that he felt Mrs. FAWLEY, telephone number SU 2-5239, or ARLINE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of PARROTT.

BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone number is CA 2-0395.

# # #

Here's background:

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

Another FBI memo, from a week later, was unearthed just prior to the 1988 election. In it, "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" was debriefed by J Edgar Hoover himself about the Pro- and Anti-Castro Cuban communities in Miami. 1988 Presidential Candidate Vice President ex-DCI ex-China legation head George Bush said "It wasn't me." Surprisingly and contrary to longstanding policy, the agency even released the name of another "George Bush" who worked at CIA for six months or so. That guy was surprised to find reporters on his doorstep and told them he was a photo analyst on loan from another government department and he never was debriefed by J Edgar Hoover, let alone for the anything to with the assassination of President Kennedy.

Here's a transcript of the above:

Date: November 29, 1963

To: Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State

From: John Edgar Hoover, Director

Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Our Miami, Florida, Office on November 23, 1963, advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in U. S. policy, which is not true.

Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U. S. but to all of Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.

An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau.

# # #

I do remember that GHWB was head of the CIA when the Church Committee was looking into the CIA assassination programs. He made things all friendly-like and turned what had been a serious hunt for truth under previous DCI Colby into another dog-and-pony show.

And the Church Committee represents the last time our elected representatives worked to reign in the Secret Government agencies. That was 1975.

So there's how George Herbert Walker Bush is tied to the assassination of President Kennedy by a pair of official FBI memos. And one wonders why America is in the shape it's in?

Austerity for the majority and a state of permanent war, where "money trumps peace."

PS: You are most welcome, YoungDemCA! Glad to clear up your smear in post 159!

PPS: Come to think of it, those FBI memos really open up George Herbert Walker Bush for questions. I wonder when the Corporate Owned News will get around to asking him about them?

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:09 PM

riderinthestorm (23,272 posts)

45. He said this in 2008 when the US was occupying Iraq.

Why are so many DUers jumping all over Octafish as though he has said or implied that the massacres these brothers did was NOW connected to Abu Ghraib.

The connection to Abu Ghraib is that it was the precipitating factor in turning these guys into jihadis.

Doesn't anyone read the linked articles anymore?

The assumptions around here make DU suck.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to riderinthestorm (Reply #45)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:30 PM

randome (34,845 posts)

55. You could wipe out my entire state and I still wouldn't travel to another country and kill people.

I think that could be said for most people. No one is 'inspired' to kill innocent people.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to randome (Reply #55)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:47 PM

840high (17,196 posts)

61. ...^ that

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to randome (Reply #55)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 04:24 PM

SomethingFishy (4,876 posts)

68. Me neither... I also wouldn't shoot an unarmed black kid,

or murder a bunch of children in a school, bomb an NAACP headquarters, lure Gays to my apartment, kill them and eat them. I wouldn't take food from hungry children, I wouldn't allow veterans or anyone else for that matter be homeless. I wouldn't Drone 28 civilians for every 1 terrorist, I wouldn't invade a country on fake intelligence, and then torture it's citizens to get the connection I need to justify the invasion.

I could do this all day. Those assholes who opened fire in France? No different than The Boston Bombers, The Sandy Hook shooter, Gacy, Bundy Or Dick Fucking Cheney... Assholes with a grudge. Maybe we should put them on TV so they can justify what they did, it's what we do with our Leaders.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to randome (Reply #55)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 04:32 PM

riderinthestorm (23,272 posts)

70. So all those people joining ISIS are being coerced?

Traveling from all over the globe to join the murderous new caliphate, someone is holding a gun to their heads and making them join?

Same thing with Al Qaeda? Or the Muslim Brotherhood?

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to riderinthestorm (Reply #70)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 10:50 PM

randome (34,845 posts)

138. Sure, those hundreds or even thousands of fools out of ten billion.

Anyone care to do the math? All fighting for the 'right' to fight and kill some more in the name of religion. You're right, no one is holding a gun to their heads.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to randome (Reply #55)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 06:47 PM

Rex (65,616 posts)

100. So how are these people innocent if they wipe out your entire state?

Nice try.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Rex (Reply #100)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 06:56 PM

DisgustipatedinCA (12,530 posts)

102. Not a great working definition of innocence, is it?

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Rex (Reply #100)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 10:11 PM

Kaleva (33,998 posts)

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:25 PM

mwrguy (3,245 posts)

52. thanks, US Army

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to mwrguy (Reply #52)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:27 PM

lebkuchen (10,716 posts)

54. thanks, GWB

"Dick," and Rumsfuck.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to mwrguy (Reply #52)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 06:29 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

97. Thank you CIA, all you NAZIs thereabouts, and your puppet, George W Bush.

The U.S. Has a History of Using Torture

by Alfred W. McCoy

Mr. McCoy is J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006).

In April 2004, Americans were stunned when CBS broadcast those now-notorious photographs from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, showing hooded Iraqis stripped naked while U.S. soldiers stood by smiling. As this scandal grabbed headlines around the globe, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the abuses were "perpetrated by a small number of U.S. military," whom New York Times’ columnist William Safire soon branded "creeps"--a line that few in the press had reason to challenge.

When I looked at these photos, I did not see snapshots of simple brutality or a breakdown in military discipline. After more than a decade of studying the Philippine military’s torture techniques for a monograph published by Yale back 1999, I could see the tell-tale signs of the CIA’s psychological methods. For example, that iconic photo of a hooded Iraqi with fake electrical wires hanging from his extended arms shows, not the sadism of a few “creeps,” but instead the two key trademark’s of the CIA’s psychological torture. The hood was for sensory disorientation. The arms were extended for self-inflicted pain. It was that simple; it was that obvious.

After making that argument in an op-ed for the Boston Globe two weeks after CBS published the photos, I began exploring the historical continuity, the connections, between the CIA torture research back in the 1950s and Abu Ghraib in 2004. By using the past to interrogate the present, I published a book titled A Question of Torture last January that tracks the trail of an extraordinary historical and institutional continuity through countless pages of declassified documents. The findings are disturbing and bear directly upon the ongoing bitter debate over torture that culminated in the enactment of the Military Commissions law just last October.

From 1950 to 1962, the CIA led a secret research effort to crack the code of human consciousness, a veritable Manhattan project of the mind with costs that reached a billion dollars a year. Many have heard about the most outlandish and least successful aspect of this research -- the testing of LSD on unsuspecting subjects and the tragic death of a CIA employee, Dr. Frank Olson, who jumped to his death from a New York hotel after a dose of this drug. This Agency drug testing, the focus of countless sensational press accounts and a half-dozen major books, led nowhere.

But obscure CIA-funded behavioral experiments, outsourced to the country’s leading universities, produced two key findings, both duly and dully reported in scientific journals, that contributed to the discovery of a distinctly American form of torture: psychological torture.With funding from Canada’s Defense Research Board, famed Canadian psychologist Dr. Donald O. Hebb found that he could induce a state akin to psychosis in just 48 hours. What had the doctor done—drugs, hypnosis, electroshock? No, none of the above.

CONTINUED...

http://www.hnn.us/article/32497

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 03:47 PM

louis-t (22,344 posts)

"Money trumps peace." -- George W. Bush, Feb. 14, 2007

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 05:15 PM

Dont call me Shirley (10,998 posts)

85. Way to go pnac!

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Dont call me Shirley (Reply #85)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 10:10 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

121. BINGO!

James Risen: The Post-9/11 Homeland Security Industrial Complex Profiteers and Endless War

By Mark Karlin, Truthout | Interview
Sunday, 16 November 2014 00:00

EXCERPT...

Mark Karlin: In your third chapter, you state that the "corporate leaders at its vanguard can rightly be considered the true winners of the war on terror." You refer to these people as post-9/11, corporate entrepreneurs and opportunists. Can you provide a couple of brief examples?

James Risen: In chapter three, I focus on corporate leaders who have largely tried to avoid the limelight, but have nonetheless been among those who have profited the most from the war on terror. People like the Blue brothers, whose company, General Atomics, has produced the Predator and Reaper drones, the signature weapons of the global war on terror.

I also write about J. Philip London, executive chairman of CACI, the huge defense and intelligence contractor that was caught up in the Abu Ghraib scandal but then managed to continue to thrive in the war on terror, and Robert McKeon, a clever Wall Street maven who acquired Dyncorp as it profited from rival Blackwater's problems. McKeon eventually committed suicide, and the sale of assets by his estate after his death provided a glimpse at the massive wealth accumulated by the corporate leaders who benefit from being on the top rung of the war on terror.

Your prologue refers to the "homeland security-industrial" complex (including the related wars since 9/11) costing an estimated $4 trillion. Where did all that money go?

The Homeland Security Industrial Complex operates differently than the traditional Military Industrial Complex. Instead of spending on ships, airplanes and other big weapons systems, much of the money goes to secretive intelligence contractors who perform secret counterterrorism work for the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon and other agencies. Because it is all classified, there is no public debate about the massive amounts of money being poured into these contractors. And with little oversight, there is no way to determine whether these contractors have performed well or poorly. Four trillion dollars is the best estimate for the total price tag of the war on terror, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and much of it has gone to shadowy contractors. It is one of the largest transfers of wealth in American history, and yet it has gone largely unnoticed.

Part III of Pay Any Price is entitled "Endless War." You divide this section into chapters focusing on "The War on Decency," "The War on Normalcy" and the "The War on Truth." That is an inversion of the government-vaunted war to protect Homeland Security into an immoral attack on the nation's moral integrity. How did we arrive at such an abandonment of our ethical standards?

If you recall, just after 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney famously said that "the gloves come off." What that really meant was that the US was deregulating national security, getting rid of the rules and regulations that had governed national security since the post-Watergate reform era of the 1970s. As a result, we have conducted the war on terror in a climate in which there are few rules or limits on American actions. The message was clearly sent throughout the government that nothing should get in the way of stopping any future terrorist attack - and that message created a dangerous climate that we still live in today.

You discuss the relentless and tenacious persecution of whistleblowers under the Bush and Obama administrations (with the pace steadily picking up under the latter). In your many examples, you describe the harassment and shunning of Diane Roark, a staff member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Can you briefly explain what she tried to expose and how she was hounded into retirement and beyond?

I consider Diane Roark to be one of the unsung heroes of the post-9/11 era. A former Reagan White House staffer, at the time of 9/11 Roark was the House intelligence committee staffer in charge of oversight of the National Security Agency. Soon after 9/11, NSA staffers told her about the NSA's new domestic spying operation. She immediately realized that it was illegal, but at first thought it must be a rogue operation. She went to the staff director and minority staff director at the House intelligence committee to warn the chairman and ranking member about the operation, but the word came back that she should keep her mouth shut and stop talking about it. She realized that the chairman and ranking member already knew about it.

She then started to try to warn other senior officials that she knew throughout the government about the program, but found at every turn that they already knew about it and were involved in a massive cover-up. Finally, she had a dramatic showdown with NSA director Michael Hayden about the program, in which she told him that it was illegal. He responded that if it ever became public, the NSA and the Bush Administration could count on the "majority of nine" - meaning the approval of the Supreme Court. She then tried to get a message to the Supreme Court chief justice, but never heard back. She never leaked to the press and retired from the government depressed that she hadn't been able to stop the program.

Years later, after The New York Times disclosed the existence of the NSA domestic spying program, the FBI raided her house, because they wrongly thought that she was the source for the story. She had kept her concerns within the system and was still persecuted. Her case shows that it would have been impossible for Edward Snowden to stay within the system and do what he did.

KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root), at the time it was first contracted as a multibillion-dollar contractor to support the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere), is described in detail by you as a company "too big to fail" in the war on terror. Can you provide some highlights?

KBR was by far the largest military contractor in the Iraq war. It provided food, housing and other basic services to US military personnel in Iraq and throughout the war received about $39 billion in contracts. At the peak of the war, KBR had more personnel in Iraq than did the British Army. The United States simply could not have fought the war in Iraq without KBR. By providing almost all basic services in combat zones for US military personnel, KBR allows the United States to fight wars without a draft.

If the Army doesn't need soldiers to peel potatoes and instead has contractors do it, then it can fight wars of choice with a relatively small volunteer Army, and thus doesn't need to seek the political approval of American voters before it goes to war. So KBR is critical to the war effort; thus the chairman of the largely toothless commission on wartime contracting threw up his hands and wondered aloud whether KBR was too big to fail.

KBR was investigated for a series of problems - including the electrocution of US soldiers in barracks in Iraq with faulty wiring and the use of massive burn pits at US bases in Iraq that allegedly led to lung problems among US military personnel. But despite the investigations, KBR kept its massive contracts.

CONTINUED...

http://truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/27425-james-risen-the-post-9-11-homeland-security-industrial-complex-profiteers-and-endless-war

No wonder so many people in the same crowd who like seeing Siegelman incarcerated also want to see Risen behind bars. The truth hurts!

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #121)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 05:11 PM

Dont call me Shirley (10,998 posts)

181. So the years of the little bush were a massive give-away to the...

Military contractors
"Intelligence" Contractors
Oil Companies
Wall Street
Airline Industry
Pharma Industry
Manufacturing Industries
Gas Guzzling Auto Manufacturers
And many more.

They all came with bottomless pits in the palms of their hands demanding their piece of the national wealth pie, and little w happily handed it to them ribbon and all. No wonder they don't want to pay taxes with the "I'm getting my money from tax money, so why should I have to pay taxes on it" attitude.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 05:21 PM

CJCRANE (18,184 posts)

87. And here we get into something very interesting

(connected to my OP about throwing rocks, in this case throwing rocks at both sides).

What was the real purpose of Abu Ghraib which was well known to Iraqis but hidden from the American people for so long?

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to CJCRANE (Reply #87)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 09:52 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

116. We the People are Public Enemy Number 1.

Keeping Us in the Dark and Under Watch

Public Enemy Number One: the Public

by KEVIN CARSON
CounterPunch JUNE 17, 2013

It’s important, when listening to the official shapers of opinion in the media, to ask ourselves what they really mean by the words they use. As Orwell pointed out in “Politics and the English Language,” those in power use language to obscure meaning more often than to convey it.

A good example is the recurrence of phrases like “endangered our national security” and “aided the enemy,” from people like Eric Holder, Peter King and Lindsey Graham, in reference to leaks by people like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. Now, they certainly intend to evoke certain associations in the minds of listeners with their word choices. If you’re not careful, you may find yourself responding in just the way the users intend — allowing their words to conjure up in your mind homes, families, neighbors, churches, a whole way of life, threatened with invasion and destruction by a nameless, faceless enemy — in the words of Orwell’s Two-Minute Hate, “the dark armies … barbarians whose only honour is atrocity.”

But if you look behind the words, their actual meaning is something entirely different. To the kinds of people who throw around such words, “national security” is a corporate-state world order enforced by the United States, run by people like themselves, which enabling global corporations to extract resources and labor from the people of the world and live off unearned rents. “The enemy” is you. And the danger is that you might figure out what’s going on and disturb their cozy little setup.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/17/public-enemy-number-one-the-public/

They need to keep the pics and news from us. The administration refuses to release the worst of the images.

As for Abu Ghraib, what George Herbert Walker (Conqueror of Panama and the Highway of Death) what Bush told Sarah McLendon, a White House press corps reporter, who'd asked in 1992: "What will the people do if they ever find out the truth about Iraq-gate and Iran contra?"

“Sarah, if the American people ever find out what we have done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us.”

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 05:24 PM

Scuba (53,475 posts)

Any source-no matter how delusional or paranoid or bigoted-is fair game in showing that the "BFEE" are responsible for everything, from the JFK assassination to 9/11 to the Holocaust to faking the moon landing to chemtrails to crop circles -along with the Rockefellers and Rothschilds, of course.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to YoungDemCA (Reply #159)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 03:54 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

162. That's not true and you know it, YoungDemCA.

Both of these guys had ancestors and cronies in the slave trade.

Baron de Rothschild and Prescott Bush, share a moment and some information, back in the day.

The people who tried to overthrow FDR in 1933 had kids.

And their offspring* and connected cronies in crime are the ones* screwing America now.

What's different today, is we don't have Smedley Butler or FDR to stop them.

* Of course, it's not just a few rich families's offspring who screw the majority today. They've hired help and built up the giant noise machine to continue their work overthrowing the progress FDR and the New Deal brought America for 80 years.

Why would the nation and world's richest people do that? Progress costs money. And they don't want to pay for it, even when they've gained more wealth than all of history put together. Instead, whey continue to work -- legally, through government and lobbyists -- to amass even more, transferring the wealth of the many to themselves.

And instead of an armed mob led by a war hero on a white horse, as planned in 1933, their weapon since Pruneface made his first payment to the Ayatollah has been "Supply Side Economics." To most Americans, that means Trickle-Down.

Rothschild and Freshfields founders’ had links to slavery, papers reveal

By Carola Hoyos
Financial Times

Two of the biggest names in the City of London had previously undisclosed links to slavery in the British colonies, documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking family’s 19th-century patriarch, and James William Freshfield, founder of Freshfields, the top City law firm, benefited financially from slavery, records from the National Archives show, even though both have often been portrayed as opponents of slavery.

Far from being a matter of distant history, slavery remains a highly contentious issue in the US, where Rothschild and Freshfields are both active.

Companies alleged to have links to past slave injustices have come under pressure to make restitution.

JPMorgan, the investment bank, set up a $5m scholarship fund for black students studying in Louisiana after apologising in 2005 for the company’s historic links to slavery.

CONTINUED (with registration, etc) ...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c0f5014-628c-11de-b1c9-00144feabdc0.html

Generation upon generation, knowing only service to power and property.

Kevin Phillips called them a ''multigenerational family of fibbers.''

The Barreling Bushes

Four generations of the dynasty have chased profits through cozy ties with Mideast leaders, spinning webs of conflicts of interest

by Kevin Phillips
Published on Sunday, January 11, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times

EXCERPT...

During these years, Bush's four sons - George W., Jeb, Neil and Marvin - were following in the family footsteps, lining up business deals with Saudi, Kuwaiti and Bahraini moneymen and cozying up to BCCI. The Middle East was becoming a convenient family money spigot.

Eldest son George W. Bush made his first Middle East connection in the late 1970s with James Bath, a Texas businessmen who served as the North American representative for two rich Saudis (and Osama bin Laden relatives) - billionaire Salem bin Laden and banker and BCCI insider Khalid bin Mahfouz. Bath put $50,000 into Bush's 1979 Arbusto oil partnership, probably using Bin Laden-Bin Mahfouz funds.

In the late 1980s, after several failed oil ventures, the future 43rd president let the ailing oil business in which he was a major stockholder and chairman be bought out by another foreign-influenced operation, Harken Energy. The Wall Street Journal commented in 1991, "The mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding Harken Energy may prove nothing more than how ubiquitous the rogue bank's ties were. But the number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken - all since George W. Bush came on board - likewise raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son."

Other hints of cronyism came in 1990 when inexperienced Harken got a major contract to drill in the Persian Gulf for the government of Bahrain. Time magazine reporters Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, in their book "The Outlaw Bank," concluded "that Mahfouz, or other BCCI players, must have had a hand in steering the oil-drilling contract to the president's son." The web entangling the Bush presidencies was already being spun.

CONTINUED...

http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kevin_phillips.htm

Of course no one's heard of the BFEE. While they wonder how Saddam got WMDs, Wall Street gets ahead.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 10:26 PM

napkinz (17,199 posts)

127. ...

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to napkinz (Reply #127)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 02:21 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

151. I had been against cruel and unusual punishment until 2003.

"All right. You've covered your ass now."

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #151)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 04:19 PM

napkinz (17,199 posts)

165. "All right. You've covered your ass now."

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 10:48 PM

cwydro (49,009 posts)

137. Sure it did

Uh huh.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to cwydro (Reply #137)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 02:27 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

153. My personal guess is MK/ULTRA with a hint of ARTICHOKE.

Thank you for seeing the big picture, cwydro.

From the good people at the National Security Archives at GWU:

Science, Technology and the CIA

PDF suitable for, ah, framing: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB54/st02.pdf

Not that Capitalism's Invisible Army had anything to do with anything like all that -- but some rogue elements or state might -- just for war without end and resultant profits to infinity and beyond.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Thu Jan 8, 2015, 11:53 PM

Sunlei (22,651 posts)

140. they should have let him go to Iraq and stay there.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Sunlei (Reply #140)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 01:35 AM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

142. Well, there's always Gitmo.

Starting to think there always will be Gitmo.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 02:27 PM

Turbineguy (35,819 posts)

152. Sure.

These clowns live in countries with excellent educational systems and good social safety nets. The don't participate in the educational systems, ensuring thereby that they have no usable skills (for a normal civilized country anyway). They are then open to radicalization and embracing its lowest common denominator, murdering people.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 02:47 PM

blm (111,057 posts)

156. We have been stuck in Bushdiditstan since Poppy Bush grew global terrorism

into a worldwide force that could be manipulated at will for the advancement of the global fascist agenda.

It's horrifying that they will use and abuse every religion they can to achieve their goal.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to blm (Reply #156)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 04:48 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

170. Poppy Bush was Vice President Waiting-in-the-Wings just waiting and waiting.

George Bush Takes Charge: The Uses of ‘Counter-Terrorism’

By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58/Fall 1996

EXCERPT...

NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985

The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.

The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.

[font color="red"]The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.

Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.

CONTINUED...

SORRY, blm. LINK NOW BUSTED BEYOND. If anyone wants a copy, PM me.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #170)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 05:04 PM

blm (111,057 posts)

178. I've run into a number of busted links on this subject - we used to post them

regularly here at DU. Some serious scrubbing has been going on the last few years. Perhaps in preparation for Jeb2016 as some of us predicted in 2009.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to blm (Reply #178)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 05:10 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

179. It's the price of doing journalism.

Pointing out something worth knowing makes it easier for those who benefit from keeping it hidden to find it and destroy/buy/hide/co-opt, etc etc.

What Orwell and Bernays said:

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is Public Relations.” -George Orwell

“Propaganda got to be a bad word, because of the Germans using it, so what I did was to try to find some other words; so we found the words ‘council on public relations.'” -Edward Bernays, Author of the seminal 1928 Propaganda, Father of the PR industry, and Nephew to Sigmund Freud

SOURCE: https://fiftycenturies.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/journalism-and-propaganda-orwell-and-bernays-on-what-is-and-what-is-not-public-relations/

The thing is -- the disadvantages are outweighed by the benefit of truth: IT WANTS TO BE SPREAD.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to blm (Reply #156)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 05:23 PM

CJCRANE (18,184 posts)

182. Everything is unfolding like a huge drama

in the second term of the current administration.

We had a few years of general sanity in the first term. The dark cloud lifted and there was a feeling of freedom again as things gradually got better. The Tea Party of course provided some comic craziness but even that just showed that freedom of speech was back. I was amazed at what they could get away with compared to the Bush years.

But now I feel like we're back in those neocon dark times again where nothing quite makes sense.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 03:56 PM

WinkyDink (51,311 posts)

163. That certainly explains murdering French cartoonists.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 07:06 PM

Donald Ian Rankin (13,598 posts)

190. I never knew the staff at Charlie Hebdo worked at Abut Ghraib... N.T.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Sat Jan 10, 2015, 04:58 PM

Pooka Fey (3,496 posts)

197. Poor sociopath needs a map of the world. He's got the 2 sides of the Atlantic ocean mixed up

:large

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Pooka Fey (Reply #197)

Sun Jan 11, 2015, 11:05 AM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

198. Couldn't if they wanted to as both were on US No-Fly List ''for Years.''

Suspects in Charlie Hebdo shooting were on U.S. no-fly list for years

Said Kouachi's ID card found in 1 getaway car used in shooting

By John-Thor Dahlburg, Jamey Keaten, CBC
The Associated Press Posted: Jan 08, 2015 5:01 PM ET Last Updated: Jan 08, 2015 8:43 PM ET

The two French brothers wanted in the newspaper office bloodbath in Paris were already known to U.S. authorities and had been put on the American no-fly list, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said Thursday.

Another U.S. official said the older brother, Said Kouachi, had travelled to Yemen. Though there is conflicting information about what he did while in Yemen, U.S. and European sources told Reuters he trained with Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, one of the group's most active affiliates.

SNIP...

They were identified as suspects after the older brother's ID card was found in the getaway car, authorities said.

Witnesses said the gunmen in the attack claimed allegiance to al-Qaeda's offshoot in Yemen.

Both Kouachi brothers — the Paris-born offspring of Algerian parents — were already known to French counterterrorism authorities.

Cherif, a former pizza deliveryman, had appeared in a 2005 French TV documentary on Islamic extremism and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2008 for trying to join up with fighters battling in Iraq.

SNIP...

A French security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that American authorities had shared intelligence with France indicating that Said had travelled to Yemen several years ago for training. French authorities were seeking to verify the information, the official said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/suspects-in-charlie-hebdo-shooting-were-on-u-s-no-fly-list-for-years-1.2894432

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #198)

Sun Jan 11, 2015, 11:57 AM

Pooka Fey (3,496 posts)

201. So the "no-fly" list actually serves a purpose,

other than to have made going to the airport a major pain in the ass for the last 14 years. Wish innocent people didn't have to die to teach me that lesson.

I'm always been worried that Agent Mike was going to plant my name on that NO-FLY after I've let loose one of my especially pissed off DU Rants.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Sun Jan 11, 2015, 12:35 PM

jwirr (39,215 posts)

207. We have and still are the driving force behind their recruitment efforts in the ME. We are still

playing their game.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to jwirr (Reply #207)

Sun Jan 11, 2015, 12:45 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

210. Quite profitably.

James Risen: The Post-9/11 Homeland Security Industrial Complex Profiteers and Endless War

By Mark Karlin, Truthout | Interview
Sunday, 16 November 2014 00:00

EXCERPT...

Mark Karlin: In your third chapter, you state that the "corporate leaders at its vanguard can rightly be considered the true winners of the war on terror." You refer to these people as post-9/11, corporate entrepreneurs and opportunists. Can you provide a couple of brief examples?

James Risen: In chapter three, I focus on corporate leaders who have largely tried to avoid the limelight, but have nonetheless been among those who have profited the most from the war on terror. People like the Blue brothers, whose company, General Atomics, has produced the Predator and Reaper drones, the signature weapons of the global war on terror.

I also write about J. Philip London, executive chairman of CACI, the huge defense and intelligence contractor that was caught up in the Abu Ghraib scandal but then managed to continue to thrive in the war on terror, and Robert McKeon, a clever Wall Street maven who acquired Dyncorp as it profited from rival Blackwater's problems. McKeon eventually committed suicide, and the sale of assets by his estate after his death provided a glimpse at the massive wealth accumulated by the corporate leaders who benefit from being on the top rung of the war on terror.

Your prologue refers to the "homeland security-industrial" complex (including the related wars since 9/11) costing an estimated $4 trillion. Where did all that money go?

The Homeland Security Industrial Complex operates differently than the traditional Military Industrial Complex. Instead of spending on ships, airplanes and other big weapons systems, much of the money goes to secretive intelligence contractors who perform secret counterterrorism work for the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon and other agencies. Because it is all classified, there is no public debate about the massive amounts of money being poured into these contractors. And with little oversight, there is no way to determine whether these contractors have performed well or poorly. Four trillion dollars is the best estimate for the total price tag of the war on terror, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and much of it has gone to shadowy contractors. It is one of the largest transfers of wealth in American history, and yet it has gone largely unnoticed.

Part III of Pay Any Price is entitled "Endless War." You divide this section into chapters focusing on "The War on Decency," "The War on Normalcy" and the "The War on Truth." That is an inversion of the government-vaunted war to protect Homeland Security into an immoral attack on the nation's moral integrity. How did we arrive at such an abandonment of our ethical standards?

If you recall, just after 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney famously said that "the gloves come off." What that really meant was that the US was deregulating national security, getting rid of the rules and regulations that had governed national security since the post-Watergate reform era of the 1970s. As a result, we have conducted the war on terror in a climate in which there are few rules or limits on American actions. The message was clearly sent throughout the government that nothing should get in the way of stopping any future terrorist attack - and that message created a dangerous climate that we still live in today.

You discuss the relentless and tenacious persecution of whistleblowers under the Bush and Obama administrations (with the pace steadily picking up under the latter). In your many examples, you describe the harassment and shunning of Diane Roark, a staff member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Can you briefly explain what she tried to expose and how she was hounded into retirement and beyond?

I consider Diane Roark to be one of the unsung heroes of the post-9/11 era. A former Reagan White House staffer, at the time of 9/11 Roark was the House intelligence committee staffer in charge of oversight of the National Security Agency. Soon after 9/11, NSA staffers told her about the NSA's new domestic spying operation. She immediately realized that it was illegal, but at first thought it must be a rogue operation. She went to the staff director and minority staff director at the House intelligence committee to warn the chairman and ranking member about the operation, but the word came back that she should keep her mouth shut and stop talking about it. She realized that the chairman and ranking member already knew about it.

She then started to try to warn other senior officials that she knew throughout the government about the program, but found at every turn that they already knew about it and were involved in a massive cover-up. Finally, she had a dramatic showdown with NSA director Michael Hayden about the program, in which she told him that it was illegal. He responded that if it ever became public, the NSA and the Bush Administration could count on the "majority of nine" - meaning the approval of the Supreme Court. She then tried to get a message to the Supreme Court chief justice, but never heard back. She never leaked to the press and retired from the government depressed that she hadn't been able to stop the program.

Years later, after The New York Times disclosed the existence of the NSA domestic spying program, the FBI raided her house, because they wrongly thought that she was the source for the story. She had kept her concerns within the system and was still persecuted. Her case shows that it would have been impossible for Edward Snowden to stay within the system and do what he did.

KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root), at the time it was first contracted as a multibillion-dollar contractor to support the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere), is described in detail by you as a company "too big to fail" in the war on terror. Can you provide some highlights?

KBR was by far the largest military contractor in the Iraq war. It provided food, housing and other basic services to US military personnel in Iraq and throughout the war received about $39 billion in contracts. At the peak of the war, KBR had more personnel in Iraq than did the British Army. The United States simply could not have fought the war in Iraq without KBR. By providing almost all basic services in combat zones for US military personnel, KBR allows the United States to fight wars without a draft.

If the Army doesn't need soldiers to peel potatoes and instead has contractors do it, then it can fight wars of choice with a relatively small volunteer Army, and thus doesn't need to seek the political approval of American voters before it goes to war. So KBR is critical to the war effort; thus the chairman of the largely toothless commission on wartime contracting threw up his hands and wondered aloud whether KBR was too big to fail.

KBR was investigated for a series of problems - including the electrocution of US soldiers in barracks in Iraq with faulty wiring and the use of massive burn pits at US bases in Iraq that allegedly led to lung problems among US military personnel. But despite the investigations, KBR kept its massive contracts.

CONTINUED...

http://truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/27425-james-risen-the-post-9-11-homeland-security-industrial-complex-profiteers-and-endless-war

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #210)

Sun Jan 11, 2015, 12:49 PM

jwirr (39,215 posts)

211. Yes, out corporations and their stockholders are making bundles off of endless war and they finally

found a foe that just continues to fight.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to jwirr (Reply #211)

Sun Jan 11, 2015, 01:39 PM

Octafish (55,745 posts)

216. In 2009, Gen. Jones reported Al Qaeda was down to less than 100 members in Afghanistan.

President Obama's Secret: Only 100 al Qaeda Now in Afghanistan

By RICHARD ESPOSITO, MATTHEW COLE and BRIAN ROSS
ABC News, Dec. 2, 2009

As he justified sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan at a cost of $30 billion a year, President Barack Obama's description Tuesday of the al Qaeda "cancer" in that country left out one key fact: U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire country.

A senior U.S. intelligence official told ABCNews.com the approximate estimate of 100 al Qaeda members left in Afghanistan reflects the conclusion of American intelligence agencies and the Defense Department. The relatively small number was part of the intelligence passed on to the White House as President Obama conducted his deliberations.

President Obama made only a vague reference to the size of the al Qaeda presence in his speech at West Point, when he said, "al Qaeda has not reemerged in Afghanistan in the same number as before 9/11, but they retain their safe havens along the border."
A spokesperson at the White House's National Security Council, Chris Hensman, said he could not comment on intelligence matters.

Obama's National Security Adviser, Gen. James Jones, put the number at "fewer than a hundred" in an October interview with CNN.

CONTINUED...

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/president-obamas-secret-100-al-qaeda-now-afghanistan/story?id=9227861

Guess six years of bugsplat operations since then served to boost that number. It really is a good time to be part of the Carlyle Group.

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

Response to Octafish (Reply #216)

Sun Jan 11, 2015, 01:43 PM

polly7 (20,582 posts)

219. Bugsplat, signature strikes, double-tapping of family members and rescuers,

http://unmanned.warcosts.com/stream

Reply to this post

Back to top Alert abuse Link here Permalink

224 replies	Author	Time	Post
Charlie Hebdo suspect said Abu Ghraib torture pics drove him to enlist in Jihad against USA in 2008 (Original post)	Octafish	Jan 2015	OP
Just imagine	nichomachus	Jan 2015	#1
Well we didn't go nuclear, but we did use White Phospherous in Fallujah and	sabrina 1	Jan 2015	#27
Depleted Uranium ammo used all over Iraq...	Octafish	Jan 2015	#105
Our heavy handed use of DU	JEB	Jan 2015	#130
I disagree	QuestionableC	Jan 2015	#36
Nowadays we drone.	ananda	Jan 2015	#43
Wasn't out mass killing spree in Falluja a direct response to that very thing?	Bandit	Jan 2015	#78
And we believe mass murderers now? Look...some people just like to kill, and like to find	msanthrope	Jan 2015	#2
That is more like it.	still_one	Jan 2015	#4
You're right	trumad	Jan 2015	#5
Thank you--think these psychos gave a shit about a single 9/11 victim? nt	msanthrope	Jan 2015	#10
Like the US leadership gives a rats ass about the millions of civilians they've killed either.	NewDeal_Dem	Jan 2015	#117
They hate us for our freeeeedumbs!!!!!!!!	Hassin Bin Sober	Jan 2015	#101
It's what he said in court.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#6
Well, shit.....people never lie in court, or come up with excuses for their anti-social behavior! nt	msanthrope	Jan 2015	#12
I thought it was insight to his mind.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#25
Agreed. Like how Dennis MILLER and his ilk claim they turned wingnut over 9-11. n/t	UTUSN	Jan 2015	#7
Yeah---9/11 changed them!! No...9/11 just gave them a good cover story. nt	msanthrope	Jan 2015	#15
Atrocities breed atrocities breed atrocities...	bhikkhu	Jan 2015	#205
like this guy.	NewDeal_Dem	Jan 2015	#21
Damn he looks like Ted Bundy in that picture!!! nt	msanthrope	Jan 2015	#24
...	NewDeal_Dem	Jan 2015	#28
Wow! I guess I wasn't the only one who thought that! nt	msanthrope	Jan 2015	#32
I have a photo of the two, caption is "Separated at birth?"	louis-t	Jan 2015	#63
LOL.	JaneyVee	Jan 2015	#48
Perfect	malaise	Jan 2015	#53
Time for the "Bush & Bundy Show!"	KansDem	Jan 2015	#57
which man killed more?	pansypoo53219	Jan 2015	#67
Shit howdy W looks much like Ted Bundy	Long Drive	Jan 2015	#31
Close your eyes and listen the Charlie Manson	dead_head	Jan 2015	#64
Looks like he could use a Depleted Uranium enema.	JEB	Jan 2015	#131
from your lips to god's ears...	NewDeal_Dem	Jan 2015	#132
Try thinking outside the box. Without the invasion of Iraq, we would not	Rex	Jan 2015	#41
Without the invasion of Iraq, those determined to kill would have to find another excuse.	msanthrope	Jan 2015	#44
Hmmm didn't think of that, yeah I can see that as a defense attorney.	Rex	Jan 2015	#59
Jeez--I don't remember that--what did we tussle on? nt	msanthrope	Jan 2015	#71
I swore up and down I knew what hate speech was	Rex	Jan 2015	#72
Oh, shit!!! The DU Lawyer Division showed up? And you survived?	msanthrope	Jan 2015	#76
I know, I think you guys felt sorry for me after a while.	Rex	Jan 2015	#81
So you don't think anyone was motivated by the Abu Ghraib tortures and murders?	riderinthestorm	Jan 2015	#66
I think plenty of people take tragedy and murder and use it as motivator to do the really	msanthrope	Jan 2015	#73
That's fine but the State department has specifically said there's been blowback	riderinthestorm	Jan 2015	#77
Like george bush with 911 you mean? Like our entire government with 911?	NewDeal_Dem	Jan 2015	#118
I think people willing to do this	qazplm	Jan 2015	#212
The comment was made in 2008 to explain why he wanted to become a jihadist	riderinthestorm	Jan 2015	#213
Exactly.	cwydro	Jan 2015	#133
....	840high	Jan 2015	#60
He said this in 2008 @ the American occupation of Iraq	riderinthestorm	Jan 2015	#65
this!	BlancheSplanchnik	Jan 2015	#69
What makes you think he is a mass murderer?	Bandit	Jan 2015	#80
Who are you talking about???? nt	msanthrope	Jan 2015	#82
Just a guess	GummyBearz	Jan 2015	#86
george w bush made it to iraq though, with divisions. speaking of mass murderers.	NewDeal_Dem	Jan 2015	#120
No, but intellectually curious people are interested in motive.	DisgustipatedinCA	Jan 2015	#89
More "fruits" of our foreign policy	dissentient	Jan 2015	#3
Blowback.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#8
I believe it, it seems very plausible	dissentient	Jan 2015	#14
As do I. Do I need to post that?	Octafish	Jan 2015	#18
Not at all. I was just making what I thought clear.	dissentient	Jan 2015	#19
Why yes, you do--over and over again, in fact!	MADem	Jan 2015	#34
+1. n/t	Jefferson23	Jan 2015	#46
Right. It's called blowback.	brush	Jan 2015	#39
I'm in full agreement with your post. (And with this OP in general as well)	dissentient	Jan 2015	#40
agree...."Blowback."	KoKo	Jan 2015	#51
So...kill some Parisians. Makes sense.	randome	Jan 2015	#9
I totally see how you could mistake French cartoonists for US Army reserves. nt	msanthrope	Jan 2015	#13
Especially with the way that the French were so gung-ho to join the war	cemaphonic	Jan 2015	#114
There have been so many recruitment ads paid by us	TexasProgresive	Jan 2015	#11
I've always believed that those Abu Ghraib photos were intended to be "leaked"	arcane1	Jan 2015	#17
+100 There are more things, horatio....	NewDeal_Dem	Jan 2015	#26
Profound	malaise	Jan 2015	#30
"starting with April Glaspie" -- actually, I think you need to go back a bit farther in time, at	KingCharlemagne	Jan 2015	#38
KingCharlemagne	Diclotican	Jan 2015	#47
How to I "LOVE" this post?	lebkuchen	Jan 2015	#56
Thanks (I think). I'm not sure there's any way to 'love' a specific post the way	KingCharlemagne	Jan 2015	#58
How about the 'Safari Club' that drove CIA around Jimmy Carter?	Octafish	Jan 2015	#74
We could push the starting point back to 1953 when the CIA and FDR's grandson	KingCharlemagne	Jan 2015	#83
Absolutely. It was in Reader's Digest.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#93
prescott's dad sam: war industries board WWI, rockefeller/harriman associate,	NewDeal_Dem	Jan 2015	#128
He was Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., Teddy Roosevelt's grandson	sketchy	Jan 2015	#199
Wipes egg off face! Encroaching senility, not a pleasant	KingCharlemagne	Jan 2015	#223
me too	reddread	Jan 2015	#16
When Truth Tried to Stop War (Ray McGovern)	Octafish	Jan 2015	#20
Recommend Read......	KoKo	Jan 2015	#50
They don't need an excuse to kill	B2G	Jan 2015	#22
Killing Hope	Octafish	Jan 2015	#33
Blowback.	AzDar	Jan 2015	#23
We need a world media run by people who understand Mahatma Gandhi.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#103
Because you see only 'we the civilized can torture people'	malaise	Jan 2015	#29
Remember to Think, Despite the Blood	Octafish	Jan 2015	#145
The issue here is not to excuse, but to comprehend	malaise	Jan 2015	#146
Gandhi. H2O Man got me reading Gandhi.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#149
I've long been of the view that it takes a special kind of insecure	malaise	Jan 2015	#157
That's why it bothers me when someone bothers you.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#161
Thanks Octafish	malaise	Jan 2015	#166
Heartbreaking. Mass murder in service of mineral wealth.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#173
Got lost on his way to USA. n/t	Orsino	Jan 2015	#35
Just think if the BFEE would have stuck to the Afghanistan war and left Iraq alone.	Rex	Jan 2015	#37
Does anyone bring up the CONNECTIONS between the House of Bush and House of Bin Laden anymore?	Octafish	Jan 2015	#42
What is more, why do progressives get mad when we mention the ties	Rex	Jan 2015	#49
I suspect they are defending the status quo, meaning the Military Industrial Complex.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#96
Progressives	malaise	Jan 2015	#169
I figured I would be nice in 2015.	Rex	Jan 2015	#174
Too nice	malaise	Jan 2015	#176
Why do alleged progressives think that right wing homophobes, anti-Semites and racists are credible?	SidDithers	Jan 2015	#171
Why do alleged progressives laugh about the BFEE and try to pretend it doesn't exist?	Rex	Jan 2015	#172
You're just going to ignore the promotion of blatant homophobe shitbag Wayne Madsen?...	SidDithers	Jan 2015	#180
Beside giving your word, you have failed to show where he is any of those things.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#183
Do your own fucking research...	SidDithers	Jan 2015	#184
You've said that a lot over the years, too, siddithers of DU.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#186
Nice to see someone else has noticed.	zappaman	Jan 2015	#188
Blah blah Denmark?	Rex	Jan 2015	#221
Of course you do, you hate Octa that is not anything that is a surprise to anyone	Rex	Jan 2015	#218
That's a "yes", then?...	SidDithers	Jan 2015	#220
I wouldn't do it after what I read in your link.	Rex	Jan 2015	#222
I wouldn't promote Wayne Madsen at DU either.	zappaman	Jan 2015	#224
Wayne fucking Madsen...	SidDithers	Jan 2015	#75
Wow!	Rex	Jan 2015	#84
On Thu Jan 8, 2015, 12:27 PM an alert was sent on the following post:	Vincardog	Jan 2015	#90
Thanks for posting the results...	SidDithers	Jan 2015	#91
Thanks for speaking truth to BS	Vincardog	Jan 2015	#92
So the Bush family and bin Laden family weren't in business together?	Octafish	Jan 2015	#94
Interesting, that same asshole was instrumental if fucking up the BOG when it first started	Rex	Jan 2015	#98
WOW.	polly7	Jan 2015	#99
The source was ''In These Times.'' You really don't contribute a thing, do you, SidDithers?	Octafish	Jan 2015	#95
Do you agree with Wayne Madsen that Obama is gay?	zappaman	Jan 2015	#106
Don't know. Don't care.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#109
Yeah, he's not, but why would Wayne smear him like that?	zappaman	Jan 2015	#111
Why am I not shocked???	zappaman	Jan 2015	#104
Because you have an agenda? What do you think about Bush, Bin Laden and HARKEN?	Octafish	Jan 2015	#107
No. I was not shocked because you never give a shit how loony or disgusting your source is.	zappaman	Jan 2015	#108
That's not true.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#110
yes it IS true.	zappaman	Jan 2015	#112
Vomit all you want. It doesn't change the OP or my posts.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#125
Why would you link to a deranged, homophobic, anti-Semite?	zappaman	Jan 2015	#126
Foreign Policy.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#134
Wayne Madsen is a homophobic, anti-Semite who writes for a Holocaust denial site.	zappaman	Jan 2015	#136
Not as far as I know.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#139
No, I don't know why you link to articles by homophobic, anti-Semites.	zappaman	Jan 2015	#141
Why do you call ''In These Times'' a ''Holocaust denial site,'' zappaman?	Octafish	Jan 2015	#143
He writes for Rense as well, Octafish of DU.	zappaman	Jan 2015	#147
Is that the same rense your Tag Team buddy SidDithers of DU quoted in post 75?	Octafish	Jan 2015	#148
Why are you deflecting from your support of a writer who is a homophobic, anti-semite?	zappaman	Jan 2015	#150
You are acting desperate, zappaman. As the facts aren't on your side, understandable.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#154
The fact is Wayne Madsen is a homophobic, anti-Semite.	zappaman	Jan 2015	#155
Ties Between the Bush Family and Osama bin Laden	Octafish	Jan 2015	#160
Holocaust deniers are turds, wouldn't you agree? n/t	zappaman	Jan 2015	#185
Please explain how Madsen's been "smeared".	tammywammy	Jan 2015	#164
Because what you and they have written is not true.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#168
I know you know how to google:	tammywammy	Jan 2015	#177
Good info!	zappaman	Jan 2015	#192
Not sure why you would defend a homophobic, anti-Semite.	zappaman	Jan 2015	#187
Smearing is your speciality. That guy seems like a friend of Karl Rove.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#189
So you really are defending this homophobic, anti-Semitic turd?	zappaman	Jan 2015	#191
Never. That's why I post on the BFEE and the crimes of the national security state.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#193
So why are you defending Wayne Madsen?	zappaman	Jan 2015	#194
Overlook your bullshit, you mean.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#195
I have no idea why you promote homophobic, anti-Semites	zappaman	Jan 2015	#196
No. Our difference is that I don't give legitimacy to homophobes, racists and anti-Semites...	SidDithers	Jan 2015	#203
Nice smear.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#204
It's the truth, octafish of DU...	SidDithers	Jan 2015	#206
No, that's a smear.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#208
Are you being intentionlly obtuse?...	SidDithers	Jan 2015	#200
You are all over the place, siddithers.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#202
I've never, ever, said rense is OK...	SidDithers	Jan 2015	#209
Nothing disgusting about character assassination, either.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#214
I choose not to use racists and homophobes to support my positions...	SidDithers	Jan 2015	#215
Never-ending war.	polly7	Jan 2015	#217
Thank you so much for this	YoungDemCA	Jan 2015	#158
George Herbert Walker Bush told the FBI he was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#167
He said this in 2008 when the US was occupying Iraq.	riderinthestorm	Jan 2015	#45
You could wipe out my entire state and I still wouldn't travel to another country and kill people.	randome	Jan 2015	#55
...^ that	840high	Jan 2015	#61
Me neither... I also wouldn't shoot an unarmed black kid,	SomethingFishy	Jan 2015	#68
So all those people joining ISIS are being coerced?	riderinthestorm	Jan 2015	#70
Sure, those hundreds or even thousands of fools out of ten billion.	randome	Jan 2015	#138
So how are these people innocent if they wipe out your entire state?	Rex	Jan 2015	#100
Not a great working definition of innocence, is it?	DisgustipatedinCA	Jan 2015	#102
The folks working at Charlie Hebdo had nothing to do with Abu Ghraib	Kaleva	Jan 2015	#122
And they made easy targets for terrorists who were on the No-Fly List for Years.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#129
Exactly.	randome	Jan 2015	#135
Wow, that has nothing to do with what I posted! But you knew that already.	Rex	Jan 2015	#175
thanks, US Army	mwrguy	Jan 2015	#52
thanks, GWB	lebkuchen	Jan 2015	#54
Thank you CIA, all you NAZIs thereabouts, and your puppet, George W Bush.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#97
So it isn't Obama's fault?	louis-t	Jan 2015	#62
Who can say?	Octafish	Jan 2015	#113
I believe that	ann---	Jan 2015	#79
The images are a record of evil perpetuated for profit.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#144
Way to go pnac!	Dont call me Shirley	Jan 2015	#85
BINGO!	Octafish	Jan 2015	#121
So the years of the little bush were a massive give-away to the...	Dont call me Shirley	Jan 2015	#181
And here we get into something very interesting	CJCRANE	Jan 2015	#87
We the People are Public Enemy Number 1.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#116
Spin alert! It wasn't the pics, it was the torture.	Scuba	Jan 2015	#88
Fundamentally, the Golden Rule isn't 'He who controls the gold rules.'	Octafish	Jan 2015	#115
Wayne Madsen is a dangerous, homophobic, deluded, anti-Semite.	zappaman	Jan 2015	#119
At one point I thought the OP was simply oblivious to the fact...	SidDithers	Jan 2015	#123
If it was me, I would have self deleted when shown I was using turds as sources.	zappaman	Jan 2015	#124
The poster in question is (in)famous for this kind of thing	YoungDemCA	Jan 2015	#159
That's not true and you know it, YoungDemCA.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#162
...	napkinz	Jan 2015	#127
I had been against cruel and unusual punishment until 2003.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#151
"All right. You've covered your ass now."	napkinz	Jan 2015	#165
Sure it did	cwydro	Jan 2015	#137
My personal guess is MK/ULTRA with a hint of ARTICHOKE.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#153
they should have let him go to Iraq and stay there.	Sunlei	Jan 2015	#140
Well, there's always Gitmo.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#142
Sure.	Turbineguy	Jan 2015	#152
We have been stuck in Bushdiditstan since Poppy Bush grew global terrorism	blm	Jan 2015	#156
Poppy Bush was Vice President Waiting-in-the-Wings just waiting and waiting.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#170
I've run into a number of busted links on this subject - we used to post them	blm	Jan 2015	#178
It's the price of doing journalism.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#179
Everything is unfolding like a huge drama	CJCRANE	Jan 2015	#182
That certainly explains murdering French cartoonists.	WinkyDink	Jan 2015	#163
I never knew the staff at Charlie Hebdo worked at Abut Ghraib... N.T.	Donald Ian Rankin	Jan 2015	#190
Poor sociopath needs a map of the world. He's got the 2 sides of the Atlantic ocean mixed up	Pooka Fey	Jan 2015	#197
Couldn't if they wanted to as both were on US No-Fly List ''for Years.''	Octafish	Jan 2015	#198
So the "no-fly" list actually serves a purpose,	Pooka Fey	Jan 2015	#201
We have and still are the driving force behind their recruitment efforts in the ME. We are still	jwirr	Jan 2015	#207
Quite profitably.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#210
Yes, out corporations and their stockholders are making bundles off of endless war and they finally	jwirr	Jan 2015	#211
In 2009, Gen. Jones reported Al Qaeda was down to less than 100 members in Afghanistan.	Octafish	Jan 2015	#216
Bugsplat, signature strikes, double-tapping of family members and rescuers,	polly7	Jan 2015	#219