Month: October 2005

I do not know
what will happen after I die
I do not want to know.
But I would like the Potter to make a whistle
From the clay of my throat.
May this whistle fall into the hands
Of a cheeky and naughty child
And the child to blow hard on the whistle continuously
With the suppressed and silent air of his lungs
And disrupt the sleep
Of those who seem dead
To my cries.

Anonymous, Baxter Immigration Detention Centre, Australia.

This diary is dedicated the voiceless and powerless around the world.

Read More

Most of Iraq is in a state of anarchy, with insurgents controlling parts of Baghdad just half a mile from the so-called Green Zone, an Independent debate was told last night….

He said that the “constant, intensive involvement” in the Middle East by the West was a recurring pattern over centuries and was the reason why “so many Muslims in the Middle East hate us”. He added: ” We can close doors on history. They can’t.”

Read More

by Larry Johnson

The Richard Cohen piece in today’s Washington Post was outrageous. Here are the facts. – LJ

Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald understands very well that something beyond a crime was committed when Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and other White House operatives spread the name of undercover CIA officer, Valerie Plame, around Washington as part of a coordinated effort to discredit her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson.

Someone needs to alert Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen that he is a nitwit and moron for trying to advance White House supplied talking points that no real crime occurred.

Update [2005-10-14 17:4:26 by Larry Johnson]: See also: Richard Cohen on the Self Interest of the Press by Col. Patrick Lang, who often posts on my blog. …………………………. Biography: Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm that helps corporations and governments manage threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism (as a Deputy Director), is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC’s Nightline, NBC’s Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications, including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world. Further bio details.

Here are some of the facts that will come out when Fitzgerald ends his investigation:

1. Valerie Plame was still a non-official cover officer in July 2003 when her identity was revealed by colostomy bag Bob Novak.
   

   
   

2. Valerie Plame had traveled overseas on secret missions using that cover as required under the statute in question.
   

   
   

3. Valerie Plame’s exposure also almost compromised the identity of other non-official cover officers.
   

   
   

4. Valerie Plame did not have the authority to send her husband on the Niger mission and in fact did not make the decision.

Other mental midgets like Cohen, such as Victoria Toensing, continue to insist that no crime could have been committed because Valerie Plame, “worked at a desk job”. Newsflash for these so-called Washington insiders who have proven they know nothing about the intelligence community–at least 40% of the people working at CIA Headquarters are working undercover. Just because they may physically go to the CIA building in McLean, Virginia everyday does not mean that their relationship with the CIA is acknowledged.

During my four years of sitting at a desk at CIA I was undercover. My position with the CIA was not even known by my own parents. Only my wife was privy to that secret. Many of the undercover folks still working at CIA are at headquarters on a temporary basis. Some travel overseas on temporary assignments that last less than a month. Others await a semi-permanent posting for a two or three year stint overseas.

The point that Cohen and the other White House hacks have missed is that protecting the identities of intelligence officers, whether they are working under official or non-official cover, is part of national defense. To compromise these identities is to commit an act of treason.

Patrick Fitzgerald understands that he must prosecute within the confines of the law. However, he also understands that what was done to the wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson was more than a rough game of inside the beltway hardball. Karl Rove told Chris Matthews that “Wilson’s wife is fair game”. Not only was she an unfair target, but in going after her the White House political crew unwittingly exposed several intelligence assets and caused the loss of intelligence assets overseas.

Richard Cohen is dead wrong to argue that the best thing Patrick Fitzgerald can do is leave town. To the contrary, the best thing Patrick Fitzgerald can do is a send a clear message to politicians in both parties that when it comes to political hardball intelligence assets must be kept out of the game. At the end of the day our nation’s security is no game, it is a matter of life and death.

Read More

As blksista informs us in her diary, New Orleans beating incident only one example of abuse and forced labor since Katrina”, AP has released a full-length version of video of the arrest of 64 year old Robert Davis in New Orleans.

Warning: The video is very difficult to watch.

Faced with that video tonite on CNN’s Aaron Brown show NewsNight, responding to some very tough questioning by Brown and Anderson Cooper (transcript), the NOPD officers’ lawyer Frank DeSalvo continued to assert that the officers acted properly given the situation. The only point that he conceded was the fact that, contrary to what he has maintained to this point – that the fall to the ground caused Davis’s bleeding – the video shows otherwise.

more on the flip…

Read More

Sadaam will be executed soon. So will many others who were part of his government…

There are so many lies about Iraq. There are so many lies about why the United States invaded Iraq. But there are still more, lesser known lies. Lies that still live under the assumption that Sadaam Hussein was, in so many words, simply evil and on par with a Hitler. What if he was not what we all seem to assume, simply evil. What if our assumptions about him as a person of evil, are like the assumptions of WMD, drones, mobile biological labs, simply not true?

Read More