Friday Questions for Diane, May 28, 2008

How can Senator Clinton proclaim herself the voter's advocate in Michigan and Florida -- then sit back while her backers attack Nancy Pelosi for stating her superdelegate vote will support the voter's choice?

***

Kudos are in order again for House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers, Jr. for paying attention to evidence that former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, a Democrat, was indicted and imprisoned on trumped up bribery charges, under pressure from Karl Rove. Conyers's committee will hear testimony from Siegelman personally in May.

Meanwhile, in another Judiciary/White House conflict, it was announced that the White House was not going to bother to try to locate the missing emails, because it was too difficult.

Is there no shame in that fortress?
***

Last Friday the Miami Herald reported that Roger Stone, infamous RNC operator and friend of Karl Rove, admitted to turning over information he'd gathered on Eliot Spitzer to the FBI last November, just weeks after he'd had to step down from his consulting job for the New York State Republican Party after he'd been caught making threatening phone calls to Eliot Spitzer's elderly father.

Stone was previously involved in the phony riot in Miami in November 2000 that shut down the recount, political stunts with Rove in Texas, and is considered by many analysts to be the anonymous messenger who delivered the two Texas National Guard memos to Ret. Lt. Col. Bill Burkett that were then handed over to Dan Rather's team -- thus bringing down Dan Rather, the 60 Minutes II team that revealed Abu Gharab, and discrediting the National Guard officer who witnessed the scrubbing of Mr. Bush's military records.

It seems to me that it is Mr. Stone, not Mr. Spitzer, who is more dangerous to society.

***

Last Friday the International News Service reported that following Vice President Cheney's visit to Saudi Arabia, the Saudis have held meetings to discuss how to deal with nuclear fallout from attacks on Iran.

The national media has reported that Cheney has backed down from his aggressive plans because of U.S. public opinion, but his "SO?" shows us how little regard he has for us.

Can he be stopped?

Know Bush Fact #26

Based on the belief that the truth shall set you free:

I apologize up front for the length of this story. It started with a simple "thanks. . . to the efforts of former Secretary of State James Baker . . . ," said by Bush last week, Monday, May 25, 2004, during his televised speech at the U.S. Army War College.

But why, out of the blue, was he thanking former Secretary of State James Baker?

He continued, ". . .many of Iraq's largest creditors have pledged to forgive or substantially reduce Iraqi debt incurred by the former regime."

Perhaps true. However, in fact, there are many other "efforts of former Secretary of State James Baker" for which Bush might offering thanks, going back many years.

It was James Baker's law firm, Baker & Botts, that wrote the contract for Bush to purchase the Texas Rangers baseball team, paying it off with the funds from his suddenly dumped shares in Harken Oil in 1990.

In 1991, that same lawyer from Baker & Botts, James Doty, was the new General Counsel for the SEC, along with his colleague from Baker & Botts, Richard Breeden, as the President Bush-appointed SEC Chairman, when George W. Bush’s insider trading at Harken Oil was investigated and dropped.

James Baker was also the man Bush called in November 2000, when Florida’s vote came into question, to lead the battle to take the White House. Baker started the spin immediately, declaring that the votes "have not only been counted, they’ve been counted twice" (blatantly untrue), attacking Gore for his "endless challenges to the results" (the recount was required by Florida law), and finally pushing it to the Supreme Court, where he knew there were five Republican appointees who had to answer to no one. Certainly, Bush owes a lifetime of thanks for that.

Baker's enduring value has been as the Senior Counsel for Washington’s Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group was formed by former ranking Republicans in the early 90's as an investment group which took advantage of the end of the Cold War to buy up defense and intelligence businesses cheaply.

Thanks to James Baker, Bush I was immediately hired by The Carlyle Group after his 1992 re-election defeat to be guest speaker at events where big-time investors knew the value of access to the ex-President and all his contacts, inside both U.S. and foreign governments. Bush I then could take his sizeable "speaking fee" and invest it back into Carlyle subsidiaries for his own personal investment as well. Later, when Bush I’s son took power in Washington, it made access to Bush I, and therefore II, even more advantageous for all involved with Carlyle.

In 2001, The Carlyle Group showed $12 billion in holdings. With multiple contracts in Iraq, The Carlyle Group's holdings have grown exponentially, as has Bush I’s stock portfolio in Carlyle. Bush II stands to inherit untold millions/billions from his father now, especially since he made certain the inheritance tax was completely abolished soon after occupying the White House. Thank you, James Baker.

Coincidentally, on September 11, 2001, while the hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Carlyle Group was hosting an exclusive conference in Washington, D.C. Among the guests of honor was a valued investor named Shafig bin Laden, brother to Osama. He soon became one of the 140 powerful Saudis that Prince Bandar arranged to have flown out of the country immediately, despite a nation-wide ban on flights, without even being questioned by the FBI or CIA.

Currently, Baker's law firm, Baker & Botts, is defending Saudi Arabia against the trillion dollar lawsuit filed by the families of 9/11 victims. The families’ suit has forced open accounts that reveal the Saudi government’s role in funneling millions of dollars to Islamic charities that are widely suspected of covertly financing Al Qaeda and other international terrorist groups.

Which brings us back to Bush thanking Baker before the whole world last Monday night – because of his efforts "many of Iraq's largest creditors have pledged to forgive or substantially reduce Iraqi debt incurred by the former regime." Sounds good. But...

The U.S. has no right under international law to handle Iraq’s debts. So in December 2003, when Bush announced that Baker would negotiating the restructure of these debts with its foreign investors (while Colin Powell happened to be in the hospital in surgery), it was said to be "at the request of the Iraqi Governing Council," thus allowing Baker to do his business without answering to Congress or revealing who was paying him.

Thus Bush facilitated Baker’s pre-empting the complete debt write-off the World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development was seriously considering.

It’s worth knowing whose money Baker made sure will still have to be at least partially paid back. Most of the debt belongs to his clients, the Saudis, in the $100 billion range.

Much of this goes back as far as the 1980s, when both the United States and the Saudis covertly built up Saddam Hussein, giving him technology, biological weapons and training in his war against Iran, back when James Baker was President Reagan’s Treasury Secretary and Chairman of the President’s Economic Policy Council, and Bush I’s Secretary of State.
And so we come full circle.

Thank you, James Baker.

To verify/research, start your Google search with "Bush +Baker". You might want to get a cup of coffee first.

- May 30, 2004

Know Bush Fact #2

Based on the belief that the truth shall set you free:


Former FBI Deputy Director John O'Neill was in charge of the investigations into:

• the bin Laden-connected bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993

• the destruction of an American troop barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996

• the African Embassy bombings in 1998, and

• the attack upon the USS Cole in 2000 . . .

told French researchers in the summer of 2001:

"The main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests, and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it...All the answers, everything needed to dismantle Osama bin Laden's organization, can be found in Saudi Arabia."

In a tragic irony, O'Neill quit the FBI two weeks before 9/11 in disgust over the Bush Administration's refusal to investigate Saudi ties to Al Qaeda and went to work as head of security at the World Trade Center, where he was killed in the attack.

- January 28, 2004