BFEE Busted! Masden reports Spooks Ratted Out Carlyle Group!

[Octafish]

Wayne Masden has got a bucket full of leaking spooks.

Who're running scared are Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the treasonous slugs and turds.

I'm so glad.

Intelligence Whispers

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA, June 29, 2005 -- More corruption and intelligence fabrication has been revealed in the U.S. intelligence community. In the case of the National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) in Charlottesville, Virginia, the focus is on how imagery intelligence prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom was fabricated as a justification for the attack and occupation of Iraq. In addition, in a violation of White House, intelligence, and U.S. Army directives, intelligence databases were altered to justify expensive weapons programs like the canceled Comanche helicopter and the Crusader mobile artillery system.

According to NGIC insiders, after coming to power, the Bush neo-conservatives in the Pentagon began exaggerating the numbers of Russian combat helicopters. Moreover, Cold War analysts at NGIC began altering intelligence databases to increase the number of Russian helicopters by counting damaged and cannibalized Russian helicopters as fully operational. The more numerous damaged and cannibalized helicopters were then reclassified as "new" and "moved" to Russian military bases near conflict zones like the Trans-Caucusus to give the appearance that they represented a greater threat to U.S. national security. This cooking of threat intelligence was done to justify systems like The Carlyle Group/United Defense Industries' Crusader artillery system. However, Donald Rumsfled disliked the Crusader and canceled the project with a huge contract termination fee going to Carlyle and his friend and Princeton roommate, then-Carlyle head Frank Carlucci.

Other intelligence cooking involved counting Iraqi surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries without radar as fully operational. As one NGIC analyst recalled, "without radar, SAMs are ineffectual."

One NGIC insider recalled how the Bush administration cooked the intelligence on the alleged Iraqi aluminum tubes claimed to be for use in Iraqi nuclear centrifuges: "As the person who briefed Colin Powell , Cheney , and Pete Williams about Iraq's Italian artillery rockets during Desert Storm, I knew those aluminum tubes were Egyptian knock offs of the Italian gun barrels we captured in 1991," the imagery intelligence (IMINT) analyst said. The analyst added that this fact about Iraq's procurement of the Egyptian artillery tubes after Desert Storm was well known to both Cheney and Powell.

The NGIC analyst said that the Pentagon neo-cons went to specialists at NGIC who had expertise on artillery rockets and got them to confirm the aluminum tubes were for nuclear centrifuges. The analyst emphasized that those specialists were not experts on centrifuges and had no place in making such assumptions. However, after the outbreak of the Iraq war, all the NGIC analysts who went along with the intelligence cooking were promoted rapidly. Those who questioned the intelligence manipulation were fired from their jobs and had their security clearances revoked.

CONTINUED...

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/intelwhispers/intel.htm

The case is clear: BuschCo cooked the intel, yet again. And, like before, for profit.

[lonestarnot]

1. What is a spook?

[Enraged_Ape]

2. A spy

I.E., someone in the intelligence community.

[Mythsaje]

3. Spy,

secret agent...

Bond's a spook.

[Swamp Rat]

4. This creature...

... though, it depends on what you mean by "spook." :D

[Just Me]

7. "Spook" is kinda' outdated. The word refers to anyone associated with,...

,...being in the intelligence profession. They are NOT all bad or invasive. There are LOTS of good people in that line of profession. They (the good ones) have been,...uh,...fucked.

[Octafish]

11. People make money off of national security. Big Money.

Take Adnan Khashoggi and Richard "PNAC" Perle. Please.

Within days of 9-11, Perle set up his "Trireme Partnerships" with Henry Kissinger and the backing of the fine folks at Boeing.



Vott are you staringk at?

LUNCH WITH THE CHAIRMAN

Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2003-03-17
Posted 2003-03-10

At the peak of his deal-making activities, in the nineteen-seventies, the Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi brokered billions of dollars in arms and aircraft sales for the Saudi royal family, earning hundreds of millions in commissions and fees. Though never convicted of wrongdoing, he was repeatedly involved in disputes with federal prosecutors and with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and in recent years he has been in litigation in Thailand and Los Angeles, among other places, concerning allegations of stock manipulation and fraud. During the Reagan Administration, Khashoggi was one of the middlemen between Oliver North, in the White House, and the mullahs in Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi subsequently claimed that he lost ten million dollars that he had put up to obtain embargoed weapons for Iran which were to be bartered (with Presidential approval) for American hostages. The scandals of those times seemed to feed off each other: a congressional investigation revealed that Khashoggi had borrowed much of the money for the weapons from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (B.C.C.I.), whose collapse, in 1991, defrauded thousands of depositors and led to years of inquiry and litigation.

Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.

The Defense Policy Board is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of highly respected former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members, who serve without pay, include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country’s strategic defense policies.

Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

The letter mentioned the firm’s government connections prominently: “Three of Trireme’s Management Group members currently advise the U.S. Secretary of Defense by serving on the U.S. Defense Policy Board, and one of Trireme’s principals, Richard Perle, is chairman of that Board.” The two other policy-board members associated with Trireme are Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State (who is, in fact, only a member of Trireme’s advisory group and is not involved in its management), and Gerald Hillman, an investor and a close business associate of Perle’s who handles matters in Trireme’s New York office. The letter said that forty-five million dollars had already been raised, including twenty million dollars from Boeing; the purpose, clearly, was to attract more investors, such as Khashoggi and Zuhair.

CONTINUED...

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030317fa_fact

BTW: A "Trireme" was an ancient Greek warship primarily propelled by three banks of slaves.

[lonestarnot]

49. Thanks for the great deal of information as always Octafish!

Busy planning fw blogg for 3 and 4th, just read this a.m.

[Just Me]

5. They are feeling a bit safer about coming out.

They know there is a growing force of opposition. They needed to know a solid support base was there for them. These are tough times.

Hey, did ya' hear the former intelligence "contractor" on Randi's show? I kinda' wish she would have had the whistle-blowers and Col. Karen's websites on hand.

[BlueStateBlue]

6. I heard that call on Randi's show.

I'd be willing to bet she got some contact info from him off-air. Unbelievable, right?

[Just Me]

8. Naw. A growing force against those who exploit our people,...

,...who exploit the world,...is far from unbelievable. Such things are a show of strength by humanity. That's not unbelievable, it's powerful.

[Karenina]

9. Breaths of fresh air!

n/t

[BlueStateBlue]

34. You're right. And I'm glad. n/t

[Octafish]

13. What did the contractor say?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Speaking of Dr. No:

Perle, Kissinger at Hollinger: the most irresponsible board ever?

by FLOYD NORRIS, New York Times

Was there ever a board as irresponsible as the one at Hollinger International?

A special report of a committee of that board - a panel made up of new directors who were not around when Conrad M. Black and his associates were running the company as a "corporate kleptocracy," according to the report - certainly weighs that case.

The report, released yesterday, harshly criticizes some directors but essentially clears others, saying they were entitled to assume that others were paying attention to what was going on.

The Hollinger board was studded with political heavyweights chosen by Lord Black, a Canadian who became a British peer after Hollinger took control of the Telegraph newspapers in London.

Among them were Henry A. Kissinger, the former secretary of state, and Richard N. Perle, who was assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan and is the former chairman of a Pentagon advisory board. Democrats were not left out, with the board including Robert S. Strauss, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and ambassador to the Soviet Union, and Richard R. Burt, a former United States ambassador to Germany.

The report lets most of the directors off with little more than a mild rebuke for not having shown much curiosity in how the business was run. The members of the audit committee during the years when Lord Black was taking out hundreds of millions of dollars in cash draw harsher criticism for their passiveness, but the director who is excoriated in the strongest terms is Mr. Perle.

CONTINUED...

http://www.reclaimthemedia.org/stories.php?story=04/09/01/7964569

There's a lot of money to be made off war. It ought to be a crime.

[Just Me]

17. I'd really like to get my hands on a transcript 'cause he blew me away!

He spoke of intelligence being completely mishandled and shared a story about being abandoned in a hostile area. The information he was revealing knocked me on my butt. I think even Randi was "WOWed".

[leesa]

15. Yes, I heard it as well. Quite a story he had about being abandoned

and having to fight to get out of country after they had been stiffed on arms and protection.

[BlueStateBlue]

35. After they VOLUNTEERED as Arab language linguists

They were left to fend for themselves in the middle of Yemen because they didn't toe the party line.

[FreedomAngel82]

41. I think so too

They see the poll numbers and everything. I hope this continues.

[DemonFighterLives]

10. Only those in on the take

Can deny the war profitting going on. The taxpayers have been ripped off big time. We pay these aholes to cook up this crap too.
If I were in charge, many heads would roll.
:dem:

[Octafish]

20. Remember Perle on TV, branding Hersh as a "Terrorist" for bringing it up?

Ha. What a nut.

Seymour Hersh Deemed A Terrorist!

by Joe Conason/Salon 11:37am Mon Mar 10 '03 article#20976

Richard Perle gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar -in a major way-and tars the messenger.

March 10, 2003

The latest Perle Jam

In the higher circles of the Bush Administration, investigative journalism is now regarded as a form of terrorism. At least that seemed to be the definition used by foreign policy adviser Richard Perle during an appearance yesterday on CNN, when he described New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh as a "terrorist." Toward the end of a routine war-promoting television appearance for Perle -- during which he debated former Congressman Tom Andrews, national director of Win Without War -- Wolf Blitzer asked him about an article by Hersh that explores Perle's private business activities.

Posed during the final moments of the program, Blitzer's question may have been incomprehensible to many viewers -- but in an era of press subservience the CNN anchor deserves credit for asking it at all. Perle's response was outrageous, even for him:

BLITZER: ... There's an article in the New Yorker magazine by Seymour Hersh that's just coming out today in which he makes a serious accusation against you that you have a conflict of interest in this because you're involved in some business that deals with homeland security, you potentially could make some money if, in fact, there is this kind of climate that he accuses you of proposing.
Let me read a quote from the New Yorker article, the March 17th issue, just out now. "There is no question that Perle believes that removing Saddam from power is the right thing to do. At the same time, he has set up a company that may gain from a war."

PERLE: I don't believe that a company would gain from a war. On the contrary, I believe that the successful removal of Saddam Hussein, and I've said this over and over again, will diminish the threat of terrorism. And what he's talking about is investments in homeland defense, which I think are vital and are necessary.
Look, Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly.

BLITZER: Well, on the basis of -- why do you say that? A terrorist?

PERLE: Because he's widely irresponsible. If you read the article, it's first of all, impossible to find any consistent theme in it. But the suggestion that my views are somehow related for the potential for investments in homeland defense is complete nonsense.

BLITZER: But I don't understand. Why do you accuse him of being a terrorist?

PERLE: Because he sets out to do damage and he will do it by whatever innuendo, whatever distortion he can -- look, he hasn't written a serious piece since Maylie .

Actually, Perle has no reason to complain about Hersh's article. The veteran journalist afforded him every opportunity to respond to questions about the conflicts of interest between his role as chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a secretive group that advises Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and his private business activities as a manager of an entity incorporated in Delaware and somewhat ominously known as Trireme Partners, L.P. (For those who have forgotten their classics, the trireme was the ship of war whose invention allowed Athens to dominate the Mediterranean during the fifth century B.C.) Trireme, which also boasts connections with DPB member Henry Kissinger and Gerald Hillman, a New York businessman who also sits on the Pentagon board, invests in "companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense."

CONTINUED...

http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/03/1581461.php

BTW: I wish you were in DemonFighterLives!



I'd vote for you, even if I had to give up my place as BFEE witchsmeller pursuivant.

[DemonFighterLives]

32. You would never have to give up your position

I would promote you to Atourner General and things would start to happen for the right reasons.
We have had enough of the PNAC thugs that came from terrors past.
Hersch would be highly rewarded through the system that now promotes
journalist shills.
You make DU go beyond the pale. All of the excusers and apologists would be stripped away in the America that I grew up in.

Thanks for the vote though Octafish.
:yourock:

[bribri16]

12. This should be HUGE but will the MSM even report on it once?

More info for the Handbills I say.

www.Justicefornone.com

Have any of you out there in DU land printed and distributed any Handbills? If so, any feedback? I sat in my car and watched as people read some that I left on their windshield. They really read the one with the patriotic borders (flags, liberty bell, Uncle Sam).
They may have thought it was something for the 4th of July.

If you haven't printed and distributed any, the 4th of July week-end is a good time. You can purchase some "patriotic paper" from computer supply stores and print the Handbills and leave them in the Wal-Mart parking lots and other places where people are likely to be out shopping for holiday sales. Grocery stores are another great place.

Happy 4th and don't forget: www.Justicefornone

[Octafish]

19. I like the Handbill Idea.

Perhaps we can fill them with a one-page briefing and then direct them to Demopedia or DU itself. Nice.

Trireme Partners makes a good place to start learning about war profiteering:

Consulting and Policy Overlap

By Ken Silverstein and Chuck Neubauer
Los Angeles Times
May 7, 2003

Last February, the Defense Policy Board, a group of outside advisors to the Pentagon, received a classified presentation from the super-secret Defense Intelligence Agency on the crises in North Korea and Iraq. Three weeks later, the then-chairman of the board, Richard N. Perle, offered a briefing of his own at an investment seminar on ways to profit from possible conflicts with both countries. Perle and his fellow advisors also heard a classified address about high-tech military communications systems at the same closed-door session in February. He runs a venture capital firm that has been exploring investments in that very area. The disclosures in recently released board agendas and investment documents are the latest illustrations of how Perle's private consulting and investment interests overlap with his role on the board, which advises the secretary of Defense. Perle resigned as board chairman on March 27 after published reports that he had been employed as a consultant by bankrupt telecommunications firm Global Crossing Ltd., which was trying to get Pentagon clearance to be sold to Asian investors. The reports also had him soliciting investment money from a Saudi who was seeking to influence U.S. policy on Iraq.

In a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Perle said he was relinquishing the chairmanship because at a time of war, "I am dismayed that your valuable time ... might be burdened by the controversy surrounding my chairmanship." He remained on the board as a member, and denied any wrongdoing. Perle did not return phone calls or e-mails seeking comment. He is considered to be one of Washington's most influential defense thinkers and was a leading supporter of the war in Iraq. He is close to Rumsfeld and his top deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, as well as to Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, who oversees the policy board and who formerly worked with Perle as a consultant to the government of Turkey.

Perle has a broad range of business interests. He serves on the board of several defense contractors and is a lead player in Trireme Partners, a venture capital fund seeking investments in the defense and homeland security industries. In July 2001, Perle became chairman of the 30-member Defense Policy Board, which meets regularly with Rumsfeld. The board's meetings are classified and members are allowed access to top-secret intelligence reports.

On Feb. 27, 2003, two speakers — Henry D. Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and Michael Pillsbury, a Pentagon advisor under Feith — gave presentations to the Defense Policy Board on the risks and prospects of U.S. conflict with North Korea. The same day, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which works for the Pentagon, also briefed the board on North Korea and Iraq among other subjects, according to several people in attendance. Three weeks later, Perle participated in a Goldman Sachs conference call in which he advised investors on opportunities tied to the war in Iraq. Perle's talk was called "Implications of an Imminent War: Iraq Now. North Korea Next?"

SNIP...

'Certainly Questionable'

But another person who attended the Feb. 27 meeting called Perle's subsequent engagement with Goldman Sachs inappropriate. "That bothered me because the title of the talk made it sound like he had the inside track on what we were going to do," said this person, who asked to speak off the record. Retired Rear Adm. Thomas Brooks, who served on the policy board during the Clinton administration, said Perle's actions were "certainly questionable." "It sounds like he's squeezing every nickel out of the Defense Policy Board," he said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/after/2003/0507overlap.htm

Thanks, bribri16! I really like the idea of getting the Truth into the hands of the citizenry. Too bad Corporate McPravda works to do the opposite. Good thing there are good people like you who give a damn.

[JFN1]

27. I sure wish we'd get more attention

We've got 64 different handbills now, and no one - not DU, not Kos, nor any of the big players out there are giving us any real attention! It kind of miffs us, we who work so hard on these handbills FOR FREE (we don't have a single ad anywhere on our site, we don't make a DIME from this, nor do we wish to), yet the folks who could help us in this fight for America, are strangly absent...

But thank you all who are out there spreading the word about the handbills!! Please, keep it up! :)

[Octafish]

50. Post 'em on DU.

First of all: A most hearty welcome to DU, JFN1! Welcome home!

Secondly: There's no law against Truth here on DU! So, please add to what we know about the Bush Crime Family and what we can do to stop their Twin Reigns of Error & Terror.



Father and Son War Criminals.

What Poppy did to Saddam's draftees in 1991:

The Massacre of Withdrawing Soldiers on "The Highway of Death"

by Joyce Chediac

I want to give testimony on what are called the "highways of death." These are the two Kuwaiti roadways, littered with remains of 2,000 mangled Iraqi military vehicles, and the charred and dismembered bodies of tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, who were withdrawing from Kuwait on February 26th and 27th 1991 in compliance with UN resolutions.

U.S. planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. "It was like shooting fish in a barrel," said one U.S. pilot. The horror is still there to see.

On the inland highway to Basra is mile after mile of burned, smashed, shattered vehicles of every description - tanks, armored cars, trucks, autos, fire trucks, according to the March 18, 1991, Time magazine. On the sixty miles of coastal highway, Iraqi military units sit in gruesome repose, scorched skeletons of vehicles and men alike, black and awful under the sun, says the Los Angeles Times of March 11, 1991. While 450 people survived the inland road bombing to surrender, this was not the case with the 60 miles of the coastal road. There for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and it's impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.

"Even in Vietnam I didn't see anything like this. It's pathetic," said Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer. This one-sided carnage, this racist mass murder of Arab people, occurred while White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater promised that the U.S. and its coalition partners would not attack Iraqi forces leaving Kuwait. This is surely one of the most heinous war crimes in contemporary history.

The Iraqi troops were not being driven out of Kuwait by U.S. troops as the Bush administration maintains. They were not retreating in order to regroup and fight again. In fact, they were withdrawing, they were going home, responding to orders issued by Baghdad, announcing that it was complying with Resolution 660 and leaving Kuwait. At 5:35 p.m. (Eastern standard Time) Baghdad radio announced that Iraq's Foreign Minister had accepted the Soviet cease-fire proposal and had issued the order for all Iraqi troops to withdraw to postions held before August 2, 1990 in compliance with UN Resolution 660. President Bush responded immediately from the White House saying (through spokesman Marlin Fitzwater) that "there was no evidence to suggest the Iraqi army is withdrawing. In fact, Iraqi units are continuing to fight. . . We continue to prosecute the war." On the next day, February 26, 1991, Saddam Hussein announced on Baghdad radio that Iraqi troops had, indeed, begun to withdraw from Kuwait and that the withdrawal would be complete that day. Again, Bush reacted, calling Hussein's announcement "an outrage" and "a cruel hoax."

Eyewitness Kuwaitis attest that the withdrawal began the afternoon of February 26, 1991 and Baghdad radio announced at 2:00 AM (local time) that morning that the government had ordered all troops to withdraw.

CONTINUED...

http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-death.htm

To crooks like these, the mass murder of 3,000 people on 9-11 is peanuts. "Bin Who?"

[i miss america]

14. I wish I could share your optimism, but I fear this too will fall into the

black hole of highly relevant, mind-boggling news releases and eye-witness accounts that will never be picked up by the MSM. :banghead:

Thank you yet again though for helping to shine a light on the BFEE cockroaches.
:yourock:

[Octafish]

47. Let's Use the Monomaniac Who Would Be Ambassador

Thanks for the kind words, i miss america. Spreading the Truth is what this Internets thing is all about.

Perhaps working together we can force Corporate McPravda's mailed glove -- it's helped with the DSM. Cooked intel got us into Iraq. Cooked intel helped the country ring up $7 trillion in debt.



Robert Gates, (left) yesterday's BFEE bookcooker extraordinaire. John Bolton, (right) today's BFEE bookcooker extraordinaire.

DUers see that cooked intel enabled 9-11. Here's some more fuel for the reactor from a real American hero:

Monomaniac Who Would Be Ambassador

Bolton Nomination Would Shatter Intelligence Analysts' Morale

By RAY McGOVERN
Former CIA Analyst
Counterpunch, May 26, 2005

Few have more at stake in the expected Senate approval of John Bolton to be U.S. representative at the UN than the remnant of demoralized intelligence analysts trained and still willing to speak truth to power. What would be the point in continuing, they ask, when ­ like so many other policymakers ­ Bolton reserves the right to "state his own reading of the intelligence" (as he wrote to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee)?

Given his well-earned reputation for stretching intelligence beyond the breaking point to "justify" his own policy preferences, Bolton's confirmation would loose a hemorrhage of honest analysts, while the kind of malleable careerists who cooked intelligence to "justify" the administration's prior decision for war on Iraq will prosper. I refer to those who saluted obediently when former CIA director George Tenet told them, as he told his British counterpart in July 2002, that the facts needed to be "fixed around the policy" of regime change in Iraq.

It Has All Happened Before

Bolton's confirmation hearings provide an eerie flashback to the challenge that Robert Gates encountered in 1991 during his Senate hearings in late 1991, after President George H. W. Bush nominated him to be CIA director. The parallels are striking. The nomination of Gates, who as head of CIA analysis had earned a reputation among the analysts for cooking intelligence to the recipe of high policy and promoting those who cooperated, brought a revolt among the most experienced intelligence professionals.

Playing the role discharged so well last month by former State Department intelligence director Carl Ford in exposing Bolton's heavy-handed attempts to politicize intelligence, former senior Soviet analyst and CIA division chief Mel Goodman stepped forward and gave the Senate Intelligence Committee chapter and verse on how Gates had shaped intelligence analysis to satisfy his masters and advance his career. Goodman was joined at once by other CIA analysts who put their own careers at risk by testifying against Gates' nomination. They were so many and so persuasive that, for a time, it appeared they had won the day. But the fix was in.

With a powerful assist from former CIA chief George Tenet, then staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee, members approved the nomination. Even so, 31 Senators found the evidence against Gates so persuasive that, in an unprecedented move, they voted "No" when the nomination came to the floor.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern05262005.html

[blm]

16. KnightRidder reported agents said the books were cooked by BushInc in 2002

but NO NEWS NETWORKS REPORTED IT TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

None.

[fooj]

22. KnightRidder? Isn't that who the journalist that was just killed

in Iraq by an American sniper WORKED FOR?

peace.

[Karenina]

26. Yes.

One bullet through the head.

[Octafish]

46. Was the "journalist" the Iraqi Physician who served as a translator?

This man gave up his career to get more money working as an interpreter for a visiting U.S. journalist.

For Iraqi journalist, a tragic wrong turn

By Trudy Rubin
Fri, Jul. 01, 2005

BAGHDAD - A week ago as I prepared to leave for Iraq, I got a horrible phone message. Yasser Salihee, a wonderful young Iraqi doctor-turned-journalist who was to work with me as a translator, had been shot dead by a U.S. soldier in Baghdad.

The news was almost beyond comprehension. Dr. Yasser, as everyone called him, had left the low-paying medical profession to earn more money as a full-time employee of the Knight Ridder Baghdad bureau. He had translated for me in January, and his enthusiasm and persistence made him a delight to work with. I'd been looking forward to meeting his wife and his beloved 2-year-old daughter.

But Yasser drove down the wrong street at the wrong time. Like so many other Iraqis, he became an innocent victim of war.

According to a military investigation, U.S. soldiers had sealed off three streets leading into an intersection to hunt for a sniper. But the fourth street, the one Yasser unwittingly drove into, had no road block to warn drivers off.

As Yasser drove toward the intersection, a U.S. sharpshooter apparently fired a warning shot at his tire. Perhaps the shooter thought he was a suicide bomber. Yasser couldn't stop fast enough; he put his hand in front of his face as if for protection. Then the shooter fired one bullet through the windshield, hitting his fingers and penetrating his skull.

CONTINUED...

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/12028574.htm

Gee. One less doctor in the world. That means more disease and suffering in the world, so many broken human hearts.

[Karenina]

51. That would be he...

:SIGH:

[Octafish]

53. He reported on Iraqi Death Squads

The good doctor also sounds like he was a good journalist -- a loss for all who believe in Democracy.

Journalist killed after investigating US-backed death squads in Iraq

By James Cogan
1 July 2005
World Socialists Web Site

On June 24, Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi special correspondent for the news agency Knight Ridder, was killed by a single bullet to the head as he approached a checkpoint that had been thrown up near his home in western Baghdad by US and Iraqi troops. It is believed that the shot was fired by an American sniper. According to eyewitnesses, no warning shots were fired.

The US military has announced it is conducting an investigation into Salihee’s killing. Knight Ridder has already declared, however, that “there’s no reason to think that the shooting had anything to do with his reporting work”. In fact, his last assignment gives reason to suspect that it was.

Over the past month, Salihee had been gathering evidence that US-backed Iraqi forces have been carrying out extra-judicial killings of alleged members and supporters of the anti-occupation resistance. His investigation followed a feature in the New York Times magazine in May, detailing how the US military had modeled the Iraqi interior ministry police commandos, known as the Wolf Brigade, on the death squads unleashed in the 1980s to crush the left-wing insurgency in El Salvador.

The Wolf Brigade was recruited by US operatives and the US-installed interim government headed by Iyad Allawi during 2004. A majority of its officers and personnel served in Saddam Hussein’s special forces and Republican Guard—veterans of killings, torture and repression. The unit has been used against the resistance in rebellious cities such as Mosul and Samarra, and, over the past six weeks, has played a prominent role in the massive crackdown ordered by the Iraqi government in Baghdad codenamed “Operation Lightning”.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jul2005/iraq-j01.shtml

Gee. There was that one producer at CNN who got canned for stating the USA was targeting journalists. Bet he's thinking he's lucky all he lost was his life.

[Al-CIAda]

18. Rec'd & kick.

[Octafish]

52. Faked Satellite Photos Used to Justify Gulf War 1.

Lying to the American people to start wars is nothing new to the BFEE. Consider the Gulf of Tonkin Incident: Everyone NOW knows it was an incident that never happened. But LBJ sure as shootin' made it out to be true. Then there's this bit of treason from before Gulf War 1:

No casus belli? Invent one!

As Colin Powell presents evidence to the UN to justify war, Maggie O'Kane argues that the US's justification for the first Gulf war does not bear scrutiny

Analysis
The Guardian
Wednesday February 5, 2003

In 1990 as the US prepared for its first war with Iraq there was heavy reliance on the use of "classified" satellite photographs purporting to show that in September 1990 - a month after the invasion of Kuwait - 265,000 Iraqi soldiers and 1,500 tanks were massing on the border to gear up to invade Saudi Arabia. The threat of Saddam aggressively expanding his empire to Saudi Arabia was crucial to the decision to go to war, but the satellite pictures were never made public.

Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2 1990. The US cabinet met the same day. At that point, war was no more than a possibility. Norman Schwarzkopf recalls the prevailing mood in his autobiography, It Doesn't Take a Hero. He quotes General Colin Powell's remark to him: "I think we could go to war if they invaded Saudi Arabia. I doubt if we would go to war over Kuwait."

Within days the mood at the top had hardened. When Schwarzkopf next met Powell, he was told to prepare to go to Saudi Arabia. "I was stunned," he says in his book. "A lot must have happened after I left Camp David that Powell wasn't talking about. President Bush had made up his mind to send troops."

A lot had changed. By the early weeks of September, America and Britain were leading the march towards war. Somehow, almost without anybody noticing, the agenda was changing. Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait alone was no longer acceptable. New resolutions had been adopted by the UN security council

The photographs, which are still classified in the US (for security reasons, according to Brent Scowcroft, President Bush senior's national security advisor), purportedly showed more than a quarter of a million Iraqi troops massed on the Saudi border poised to pounce. Except, when a resourceful Florida-based reporter at the St Petersburg Times persuaded her newspaper to buy the same independently commissioned satellite photos from a commercial satellite to verify the Pentagon's line, she saw no sign of a quarter of a million troops or their tanks.

Jean Heller, an investigative reporter on the St Petersburg Times, has been nominated for a Pulitzer prize five times and come second twice, so when she asked permission to spend $3,200 (£1,950) on two satellite pictures, the newspaper backed her.

CONTINUED...

http://foi.missouri.edu/polinfoprop/nocasusbelli.html

Thanks to The Freedom of Information Center at University of Missouri and thanks to Al-CIAda for the friendly kick to the pants of the BFEE!

[goclark]

21. DRIP,DRIP, DRIP

I'll have tos start a new DRIP thread soon.

It's raining an it's wonderful!

[i miss america]

23. Kick

:kick:

[Al-CIAda]

24. .

[emcguffie]

25. Wayne Masden is great.

I know some folks here don't trust him, but I do.

[oblivious]

28. "Good guys fired, bad guys promoted rapidly." Did I get that right?

All the things I would never know about if I didn't come to DU.

It's like they know they can do anything they like and no one can do a damn thing about it.

[blm]

30. That's why they worked for twenty years to buy up most of the media.

We have to do what we can to keep the few legitimate news sources alive.

[moof]

29. Right After Jimmy Carter was elected the head of the CIA went to see him.

Went down to Plains Georgia and begged the president elect to keep his job. President Carter turned him down. The little creep would just have to give up signing his correspondence

" Head Spook "

He is now good pals with the person that got NAFTA and Welfare reform passed, something poppy could not get done in the twelve years previous to Clinton.

Interesting, poppy liked to call himself head spook and his spawn likes to think he talks to a head spook.

Maybe head spook is some sort of inside S&K joke.

[goforit]

38. Yes .....this is all unraveling.

[oasis]

31. kick

[Karenina]

33. They're here, they're there

They're EVERYWHERE, so BEWARE! ;-)

http://www.thisislondon.com/news/business/articles/timid401325?source=This%20is%20Money

Predators raise billions for European spree
Jim Armitage,
15 June 2005

VENTURE capitalists will raise a record €46bn (£30.88bn) of funding this year to strike a wave of giant takeover deals in Europe.

American behemoths Carlyle and Blackstone have already gathered new multibillion European funds while many more are currently out on the road getting backing.
Meanwhile, London-based rivals like CVC, BC Partners and Apax are also boosting their financial firepower.

The sheer amount of cash being raised will mean venture capitalists can bid for ever-larger companies. If the forecasts are correct, the market will see a vast increase on the €28bn raised last year. The amount is fuelled by the growing number of €1bn-plus funds aimed at doing FTSE 100-sized company buyouts.

Jamille Jinnah, managing director of fund-raiser Almeida Capital, which owns AltAssets, said: 'Most of the new money is coming from the US. Investors there see good returns to be made in Europe.'

The growth in funds has led to speculation that venture capitalists will overpay to win takeover auctions. However, Jean-Pierre Millet, managing director at Carlyle, which has just raised &euro2.3bn for Europe, said:
"People say there is too much money sloshing around for too few deals, but it's quite the opposite. Having bigger funds means we can go for bigger buyouts than we could never have done even two or three years ago."

Buyout funds will inevitably have to look at traditionally tough countries to do deals, especially Germany, where recent private equity takeovers have triggered local animosity. One German politician recently called venturecapitalists "locusts" for the way they eat foreign companies.

<snip>

Despite the apparent ease of *sucking up cash from pension funds,* big buyout firms face uncertain times. There are growing concerns that they will soon struggle to find banks offering cheap debt to back their highly leveraged takeover deals...

[LightningFlash]

36. Here it comes....

[goforit]

37. Wow................wouldn't this be the straw that broke the camel's back.

[Eloriel]

39. wow -- lookit what I just found

These guys are so bad it's difficult to keep track of just how bad they are. This is something I'd completely forgotten about, so my jaw is on the floor again over their brazen, overt war profiteering:

Carlysle group owns 'robo-soldier" and also Anthrax vaccine co.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=102259#102308

[rumpel]

40. Thanks for the link. * & Co is rotten to the core.

[LittleClarkie]

42. Are the spook leaks

a result of so many out of work spooks? Or are these spooks still employed? I keep thinking about the purge of the "liberal Democrats" in the CIA, the ones who were leaking info was damaging Bush during the election.

[LightningFlash]

43. Bingo...Ones who no longer have a job...

[Karenina]

44. Kick!

:kick:

[Swamp Rat]

45. Bom dia!

:hug:

[oasis]

48. Wake up America. Please wake up.