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Peace Patriot's Journal
If you had asked me, before I read this OP, which election or elections Ted Kennedy had run for president in, I would not have been able to say 1980 against Carter, but now I remember.
It was only 12 years, at that point, from the second Kennedy assassination--of Robert, just as he had won the California primary and was clearly on the road to the White House. One of Robert Kennedy's primary opponents had been Eugene McCarthy, whom I voted for in the California primary because he was the one who had stood up and challenged LBJ on the Vietnam War (early on, in New Hampshire--driving the incumbent LBJ out of the race). RFK had been more cautious, more political about it--gauging his chances. I knew that RFK would win California and go on to the White House. He was as charismatic as his brother John, and was riding a wave of American revulsion at the Vietnam War and an amazing American awakening on social justice. I voted for McCarthy to "send RFK" a message to keep his word about ending the war. I think now that he would have, and that's why... Bang, bang, shoot, shoot. Please read James Douglass' book, "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters." He makes an overwhelming case that the CIA assassinated JFK and the issue was war. JFK was initially a typical "Cold Warrior" but soon began to change as he faced the awful reality of nuclear warfare. He was the first and only president who faced that decision--who came within a hairsbreadth of "pushing the button." The Joint Chiefs believed they had the advantage of Russia on nuclear weapons in 1962 (during the Cuban Missile Crisis) and very much wanted to use them, and angrily pressured JFK to do so. They thought that hundreds of thousands of casualties here would be a 'win' because Russia would be totally annihilated. JFK refused and made his own deal with Krushchev, pulling US missiles out of Turkey, to avoid Armageddon. He opened back-channels to Krushchev and Castro, to get around CIA/Pentagon warmongering. The CIA was meanwhile instigating a proxy war in Vietnam. JFK had sought to counter the CIA after the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, early in his term. He vowed to smash the CIA "into a thousand pieces" after the Bay of Pigs, and fired the CIA Director. To counter the CIA in Vietnam, he began seeking neutral status for Vietnam, like Laos, with the CIA sabotaging him every step of the way. He was also the first president to propose limitations on nuclear weapons (the Test Ban Treaty), again totally opposed by the Joint Chiefs and the CIA. Bang, bang, shoot, shoot. JFK had been counting on a big win--the American peoples' desire for world peace--in 1964, to finally deal with the CIA and the war profiteers. And he was not wrong. After he was killed, the American people gave LBJ one of the biggest landslides in history, in 1964, running as the "peace candidate." (Oh God, the bitter memories!) (That was my first vote for president. I voted for peace.) RFK was his brother's only ally within the top echelons of the US government on the matter of world peace. (I did not know this when I voted for McCarthy in the 1968 California primary.) The American people wanted peace. It was too late. The "military-industrial complex"--which Ike warned about--was already entirely out of control, and assassinated a president and a presidential candidate, to enforce their will. And we have been an increasingly nazified, war-mongering country ever since. Douglass is a doing a trilogy. His second book is going to be on RFK. And I think he is going to say that the CIA assassinated RFK as well. The RFK assassination was more cunning. The JFK assassination had CIA fingerprints all over it. (Really, the case is shut--they did it.) RFK's murder has more mystery to it, and is much harder to penetrate. (My guess: the CIA learned more about how to create adequate cover within the US, in the five years between the two assassinations.) But the timing of the RFK assassination could not speak more eloquently of the motive and the perpetrators. He was "JFK on steroids" from their point of view. We were at THE critical juncture in the history of war and peace, and in the history of our country, when RFK was assassinated: Would the American people consent to becoming the new Nazis--the militarized global empire that Hitler dreamed of--or would we fulfill our promise of democracy, generosity and peace, so evidently within our power as the victors of WW II? Would JFK's "new generation of leadership" turn back the monster of war, and seek a world of fair competition, and even some cooperation, between the capitalist and communist systems, and would the US recognize legitimate aspirations for social justice in countries like Cuba and Vietnam (as JFK evidently privately wished), or would we become...? The Bush Junta, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent people to steal their oil... 1968: Bang, bang, shoot, shoot. Yup, they did RFK too. Twelve years later, when Ted Kennedy challenged Carter--whom I viewed as one of the "acceptable" Democrats, like Humphrey, who had resigned themselves to the "US as war machine"--we were a bitter people, with these profoundly disturbing wounds inside of us, of both of our best leaders having been assassinated, and their murders covered up, because the assassins were within our own government. Most of us had not quite made this reality conscious. We were a sick people, in many respects--like individuals in families with covered up secrets. And I remember now that I thought Teddy Kennedy shouldn't run, because he would be assassinated and we just couldn't take any more. Martin Luther King had also been assassinated a few months before RFK (that will be Douglass' third book). Bang, bang, shoot, shoot x 3. All dead. I may have voted for Teddy in the primaries in 1980. I can't recall. I probably did. (Was he still in the race by the California primary? Memory blank.) I was bewildered and alienated (though I never stopped voting). And, looking back on the events in 1980, from the perspective of post-Bush Junta, I can only figure that the corpo/fascists who now run our government, not yet having the capability to directly miscount our votes with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code throughout an electronic voting system, with no audit/recount controls--as they have now--used all their other powers over us to destroy even a mildly progressive government such as Carter's, in order to begin the Great Looting (Reaganism), which preceded the Great March To Corporate Resource Wars (Bushwhackism). I think Carter's demise was wholly manipulated--by the far rightwing, through the oil corps, the financial corps, the 'news' monopolies and the Pentagon (which permitted Reagan's thugs to commit goddamn treason in Iran--bargaining with the Iranians to keep hold of the US hostages until after the 1980 election). And we must also not forget Reagan's reign of terror in Latin America--which included the slaughter of two hundred thousand Mayan villagers in Guatemala, in addition to the wars on Nicaragua and El Salvador and other "dirty wars." I don't think Jimmy Carter--clearly a man with a conscience--would have let all that happen. Part of my judgement of how Carter was ousted derives from Carter's activities since 1980. It's hard to see politicians through the thick fog of the corpo/fascist press. Out of the limelight, he has shown some amazing visionary qualities. For instance, the Carter Center's work on honest elections in Latin America has been one of the transformative elements of the region. It has resulted in the present, amazing reality: leftist governments elected in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay (!), Uruguay, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. So, thinking back to why Carter got "rabbited" by the corpo/fascist press (rather like "Swift-boating" or "scream taping"--obsessive focus on irrelevant issues or incidents, to destroy a progressive leader; Carter said he encountered a giant rabbit while he was on vacation fishing--and the corpo/fascist press went wild), it was likely because of this tendency of Carter's to promote good government, with the rich and corporate lusting after the Great Looting, which requires bad government. In short, I had lost hope by the time Teddy Kennedy ran against Carter in 1980. There were still a few good guys in our government--Teddy was one; and others in Congress (those who did investigations of Iran/Nicaragua, and the banking scandals, or who investigated and debunked the "lone gunman" bullshit about the JFK assassination). But I, like everyone else, was brainwashed into thinking that the American people had "chosen" Ronnie Raygun as president--which just added to my state of depression and alienation. I no longer believe that, after seeing how the corpo/fascist press covered up Bush Jr.'s election thefts. I think Ronnie Raygun's 'election' was as manipulated as Bush Jr's in 2000 (pre-'TRADE SECRET' code voting systems). With the power to "Swift-boat" and to "scream tape," and the EASY power, now, to directly miscount the votes, they don't have to assassinate good leaders. Good leaders cannot be elected here (except for a few tokens) unless they agree to corpo/fascist rule and the Forever War. We are seeing that with Obama (whom I think won by a bigger margin than we know, on the issue of the Iraq War, and also on the projection of hope onto him of real reform, whose mandate was shaved to curtail his reformist tendencies, and who was vetted by the Corporate Rulers and made deals with them in order not to be Diebolded. One of the deals was immunity for the Bush Junta principles. Another may have been giving Clinton and the Bushwhacks a free hand in Latin America, where they are setting up Oil War II.) By 1980, I and my country's political establishment were at very great odds. I had lost my country by that time, and it was little more than a curiosity to me that Teddy Kennedy was running for president. Why would he do that, and be killed? --I remember wondering. John Lennon was assassinated that year--late 1980. The door on change had closed. We were now a venal, greedy, bloodthirsty, militaristic empire. Our great opportunity to be something better was over. I am an American patriot. I love my country and its people and our greatest ideals of democracy and social justice very, very much. I think we are the greatest experiment in democracy that has ever occurred, with our astonishing mix of cultures abiding in peace together, across this vast landscape. But I have been in a state of trauma, from all of those assassinations, all these years. Two things have begun to heal me. One is James Douglass' book on JFK, which directly addresses the spiritual wound to our country of that assassination. The other is the heartening success of the leftist democracy movement in Latin America. I am grateful to Carter for his part in that. That is likely among the reasons he was ousted. He wanted peace with Latin America. Another was the peace he brokered in the Middle East. But the main one was the preliminary to the Forever War--destroying the great, progressive American middle class, and utterly devastating the poor--by the Great Looting. On our backs now, from the Great Looting, we have no defenses against the "military-industrial complex." They can do with us as they will. They even achieved direct, 'TRADE SECRET' control of our vote counting system! Obama is out, in case you were wondering. And the next war will be against South America, for their oil. Unless we rise up peacefully, like the South Americans are doing, and reclaim our democracy.  |
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The reason Fitzgerald hasn't indicted anyone on the Plame/Brewster-Jennings outingS--though he has a number of the outers by the short hairs--Cheney, Libby, Rove, Armitage, Novak--COULD be that he is either suspicious of the story (political revenge) or already knows that it is a cover story. And that points to Rumsfeld, in my book. Office of Special Plans. Look at this way: This conspiracy--if it was, indeed, a conspiracy to plant the nukes in Iraq after the invasion--would have two tracks, political and operational. Cheney in the charge of the political end. Rumsfeld in charge of the operational end. Cheney segues the forged docs into a full-scale allegation against Iraq on nukes, and insures that it gets into Bush's SOTU speech (against advice from several agencies). He continues to adamantly defend that charge no matter how often it is totally and completely debunked. Why doesn't he temper it--show a bit of caution (considering the evidence)? Nope. It has got to be THAT charge--over and over. In addition, the whole Junta goes into summer '03 still maintaining that WMDs will be found (--although many will soon switch to "Iraqi freedom" as motive for the war). It's all set up for the phony "find"--and a triumphant Bush-Blair announcement that will smother all criticism, and all talk of "sexed up" prewar intel, and will cement their political positions with their FIRST and foremost justification for the war: WMDs. Rumsfeld (if this theory is true) has meanwhile got several black ops teams (possibly connected to the notorious Iran/Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, who was present at the Rome meeting of Pentagon Neo-Cons and SISMI in late 2001, where many suspect the Niger forgeries were cooked up) moving nukes illicitly into (or on their way to) Iraq. He's got NYT WMD propagandist Judith Miller "embedded" with the U.S. troops who were "hunting" for WMDs (and, according to reports, actually directing, or trying to direct, their efforts), ready to get the "big scoop" of a WMD "find." (She said she had an "embed" contract signed by Donald Rumsfeld. Whether it's true or not, why would she claim it? It's like saying: "...but they TOLD me there WOULD BE a story"! She had Rumsfeld's word--or the word of someone speaking for him.) And Rumsfeld furthermore permitted the creation of chaos in Iraq--in his failure to stop the looting and the breakdown of all order (in fact laughing at). Civil chaos was a prime condition for planting WMDs in Iraq and then "finding" them. It was also a prime condition for setting up a puppet government to sign the oil contracts, giving away Iraqis' interest in their only resource (--and for massive looting by corps like Halliburton). Anyway, that's how it would be: Cheney covering the political front--and scrambling to cover up the "incompetence of others" (as he put it in his memo on not wanting Libby to be the fall guy) when the shit started hitting the fan. No WMDs. Nuke allegation based on forgeries. Wilson calling them out on the false allegation. And David Kelly, in England, whistleblowing to the BBC about the "sexed up" prewar intel. It would have been RUMSFELD's responsibility to get those WMDs planted and "discovered." What we are seeing may be the political fallout of his failure to do so. (We are also seeing him gone--with no change in Iraq War policy. Was it the midterm elections? Or was it that he was operational head of this attempted massive deceit--a phony "find" of weapons--which Cheney in now having to cover for--politically and legally?) Back in early July 2003, Kelly, under interrogation at a "safe house" --after he had been outed to his bosses (late June 2003)--revealed that he knew something MORE (--Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things," is how it was reported to Tony Blair on July 7, 2003 (Hutton report))-- but he promised not to speak of it publicly ("I wasn't about to give away any government secrets" is how Kelly put it). I suspect that THIS was the trigger for the Plame/B-J outingS. Not Wilson's article of July 6, but rather the report to Blair on July 7 that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things." (He was already whistleblowing, so it wasn't something that he HAD said--i.e., the "sexed up" the prewar intel--it was something that he COULD say. What ELSE did he know?) He had friends in Iraq--from his visits there as UN weapons inspector. He had told them that if they cooperate with the UN inspections, there would be no invasion. (And he then told a friend that if there WAS an invasion, he would be "found dead in the woods"--a truly haunting prefiguration.) IF there was a scheme to plant the weapons, he was in a good position to hear about it (--and my distant judgment of his character--excellent scientist, true believer in his mission of stopping WMD proliferation--is that he would have been offended by it; this could even have been the trigger for his own whistleblowing--it pissed him off that such deception was attempted or planned.) IF the WMD-planting theory is true, the Blairites discovery that Kelly knew about this nefarious scheme would have put tremendous pressure on the Bushites (and the Blairites), because it would appear to them that the plot was in imminent danger of being exposed--whether it was or not. How far had it gone? Who all knew? There were a couple of reports in the Islamic press about botched US efforts to plant WMDs in Iraq (--and what happened to THOSE people (local observers)--Abu Ghraib?). Was the CIA itself about to expose them (contrary to their tradition of secrecy)? But mainly, WHO ELSE knew? If the Brits couldn't keep a lid on it, how many people, from how many directions, could come at them, with facts and evidence about this audacious effort to deceive? So, in their panic, they outed EVERYBODY--the entire network of deep cover foreign agents and contacts, built up over the years, of friends of the US and friends of humanity, whose job it was to keep us all safe from illicit traffic in weapons of mass destruction. The multiple-outing was because they DIDN'T KNOW--who had foiled them, and who knew. Their purpose: 1) to punish and disable anybody who had foiled their scheme (including getting them killed by their own governments or by other bad actors); or (if they were still trying to plant the nukes or other WMDs, in July 2003) to destroy the network of WMD detectors and foilers that was slowing things up. By fall 2003, with the CIA enraged at the assault on its own agents, and calling for an investigation, they had to give it up--and switch to "Iraqi freedom" as the motive for the war (which is just about the time that that "talking point" was brought forward). Someone upthread asked, why did they kill Kelly, and not Wilson and Plame? I imagine that Wilson and Plame have lived with that fear. But the critical difference between Plame and Kelly may be that Plame, as a NOC and a high-placed CIA operative, is sworn to a lifetime of keeping government secrets, and Kelly was not. He was a scientist on loan to different agencies (including the UN weapons inspection team). He was not a spy (that we know of). He was already whistleblowing. He was "off the reservation," and could not be trusted, when he promised, under interrogation, not to disclose "government secrets." Also, she has the protection of the CIA--which, if it kills its own, likes to make that decision itself, I would imagine. And Kelly did not have any such protection. The Blair government and British intel agencies cut him loose. They outed him to the press, and sent him home without protection and apparently without surveillance. And if he WAS under surveillance, they let him bleed to death all night under a tree near his house. (--doesn't add up--none of it adds up). As for Wilson, he, a) comes under CIA protection as the husband of a NOC, I would imagine, and b) sought the protection of widespread publicity for his dissent. Kelly, too, was the subject of a blazing public controversy in England--one caused by his government's deliberate outing of him to the press. He did not seek publicity. In fact, he backed down somewhat under the kleig lights. It may have been his fatal mistake, allowing the "many dark actors playing games"* around him to spin a web of deceit around his assassination. If he had stuck to his allegation 100% (re: the "sexed up" prewar intel--which turned out, of course, to be 100% true), and had not tried to backpedal a bit, and get himself out of the way of the Blairites' pointed guns, his murder might have been significantly more difficult to cover up, and the plan to kill him abandoned. It also may be a measure of the how dangerous he was to the Bushites/Blairites that they had him killed in the midst of the publicity. One more thought: Kelly's murder may have saved the Wilson's. Three WMD-related murders in one week was too much to cover up. ---------- *(On the day he died, Kelly wrote an email to none other than Judith Miller--an old colleague of his--in which he expressed concern about the "many dark actors playing games." She had emailed him, stating that a "fan" of his had told her that he did well in the hearing that week (note: by all accounts, except this one, he did NOT do well--he was severely stressed during the parliamentary hearing at which he backpedaled on his whistleblowing accusations). He wrote back to her that he would know more by the end of the week, and that there were "many dark actors playing games." He added "thank you for your friendship and support at this time." I've recently begun to wonder if that was an ironical tag. Did he suspect her of being one of the "dark actors"? Of how he got outed to his bosses? His emails to other friends of his that day were upbeat and forward-looking--about his daughter's upcoming wedding, and plans to return to Iraq. He may have been worried about "dark actors," but he was not suicidal. He thought the storm had blown over.) (Note: Miller had used him as a major quoted source in her book "Germs" about bioweapons, published just after 9/11.) *(Notably, Miller has refused to disclose the OTHER topics of conversation between her and Libby (besides Wilson/Plame and the NIE). Fitzgerald had to agree to this, to get her testimony against Libby on his perjury/obstruction. A week after her first conversation with Libby (mid-June) about Wilson/Plame and the NIE, Kelly was outed to his bosses (as the BBC whistleblower)--initiating the train of events that led to his death several weeks later (three days after Plame was outed). And the other thing that Miller has been secretive about is the "dark actors" email itself. She wrote the NYT news obit on Kelly's death, and did not disclose this email, or her close connection to the subject of the article. It was his family who later disclosed the email.) --------- So--does Fitzgerald suspect or know that there is something much worse behind the Plame/B-J outingS, beyond Cheney and the political coverup, that has caused him to grant immunity to the actual outers (political operatives), and to be digging deeper into this onion, in his stated purpose of understanding WHY these outings occurred? And is it this--that the Niger forgeries were just Part 1 of a yet more nefarious scheme to plant the weapons--a scheme hatched out of the Pentagon, by Donald Rumsfeld, that Cheney is now covering up? Dunno. And Rumsfeld name hasn't come up at all, so far, in this case (that I know of). Fitzgerald appears to be building a conspiracy case against Cheney. But when you add up all the people whom Fitzgerald has NOT indicted--and the lack of indictments on the outing crime itself (despite a lot of evidence against certain people, just in the available info)--you have to wonder if he isn't trying to go deeper. The non-indictments (so far) could be part of the strategy of nailing Cheney for conspiracy. But the WHY of that conspiracy is still not known, except on a superficial level (effort to silence dissent--political motive). -------------------------------------- Originally posted by Peace Patriot in General Discussion Thu Feb 08th 2007, 01:52 PM Comment #150 at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu... Visitor Tools
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