John McCain would rather you not remember the Keating 5. Like the current financial crisis the S&L scandal of the 1980's was much more than a banking meltdown. Here is part of what Congress' 1991 Executive Summary of the BCCI banking scandal concluded:
Among the unanswered questions: "BCCI's involvement with foreign intelligence agencies; the financial dealings of BCCI directors with Charles Keating and several Keating affiliates and front-companies, including the possibility that BCCI related entities may have laundered funds for Keating to move them outside the United States;"
The Saudi-Manchurian Candidate?
[Senator McCain's] patented role as All-American influence peddler now includes the latest flap over his national campaign finance co-chair’s lucrative deals as a Saudi lobbyist and revelations about possible violations of federal campaign laws. Tom Loeffler, McCain’s finance co-chair received $15 million from Saudi clients since 2002, is just part of a long conduit in the petrodollar pipeline from Riyadh to the Senator from Arizona.
The latest revelation of McCain’s connection to Arab oil money, and corruption within his campaign, came after the May 17 issue of NEWSWEEK reported: "Lobbying disclosure records show that on May 17, 2006, Loeffler listed meeting McCain along with the Saudi ambassador to "discuss US-Kingdom of Saudi Arabia relations. Loeffler's firm started paying $15,000 a month last summer to one of its lobbyists, Susan Nelson, after she left to become McCain's full-time finance director. Federal election law prohibits any outside entity from subsidizing the income of campaign workers."
So let's connect the dots.*McCain's foray into politics begins in the 1980's with his joining the U.S. Council for World Freedom. The USCWF was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe.
*The council's founder, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub confirmed that when Congressman McCain was elected to the House in 1982 he was on the board of the USCWF. At the time, McCain was among Republicans on Capitol Hill expressing support for the Contras, a CIA-organized guerrilla force in Central America.
*Upon taking office in 1981 Ronald Reagan decried the Marxist Sandinista take-over of Nicaragua and greatly expanded the CIA's guerrilla warfare and sabotage campaigns. The aim of the Contras was to use terrorist tactics to stop Nicaraguan development in all areas: economic, education, health services and political organizations. The Contras blew up bridges, civilian power plants and schools, they burned fields of crops and attacked hospitals. Their tactics included rape, kidnappings of peasants and civilians, ambushes and massacres against small rural communities, farms, co-operatives, schools and health clinics.
One survivor of a Contra raid in Jinotega province, which borders Honduras, reported: "Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they cut into her chest and took out her heart. The men had their arms broken, their testicles cut off and their eyes poked out. They were killed by slitting their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit." The human rights organisation Americas watch, concluded that "the Contras systematically engage in violent abuses…. so prevalent that these may be said to be their principle means of waging war."
The Catholic Institute for International Relations summarized contra operating procedures in their 1987 human rights report: "The record of the contras in the field, as opposed to their official professions of democratic faith, is one of consistent and bloody abuse of human rights, of murder, torture, mutilation, rape, arson, destruction and kidnapping."[7]
*Horrified, the U.S. Senate Committee introduced the Boland Amendment, prohibiting the use of tactics "for the purpose of overthrowing the Government of Nicaragua." In 1984, Congress cut off CIA funds for the Contras, however, in defiance of this, the CIA's Contra operations continued. By 1983 the Agency's support for the Contras had risen to $24 million.*The military in Guatemala and Haiti, to which the CIA provided covert support, were known to be involved in the trade of narcotics into Southern Florida. And as revealed in the Iran-Contra and Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) scandals, there was strong evidence that covert operations were funded through the laundering of drug money. "Dirty money" recycled through the banking system - became "covert money," used to finance various rebel groups and guerilla movements including the Nicaraguan Contras and the Afghan Mujahadeen.
According to a 1991 Time Magazine report: "Because the US wanted to supply the mujehadeen rebels in Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the largest US intelligence stations in the World. `If BCCI is such an embarrassment to the US that forthright investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with the blind eye the US turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan', said a US intelligence officer."[ 8 ]
One of the two men is later positively linked to Abdul-Rahman. But apparently the investigation into the people involved fails to make progress. Hauswirth later blames this on a lack of support from higher-ups in the Phoenix office, recalling, “The drug war was the big thing back then, and terrorism was way on the back burner.” Additionally, also in 1994, a key FBI informant will begin monitoring local radical militants (see October 1996). However, terrorism will remain a low priority for the Phoenix, Arizona, FBI office (see April 2000-June 2001). [Los Angeles Times, 5/26/2002; New York Times, 6/19/2002; Lance, 2003, pp. 209-210]
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"The Gang's All Here."
As Pam Marten justly posits in Counterpunch Magazine: "What we’re clearly confronting is the Iran-Contra Alumni Association masquerading as the Executive Branch, replete with domestic spying, dark ops, fake journalists, fake news reels, press intimidation, protester arrests, infiltration and torture. Their latest maneuver is the woman with zero foreign policy experience a heart beat from taking that 3 a.m. call. A call which, of course, they’ll answer for her as they have done for Bush II.
"We need to give the pink slips to the Iran-Contra gang. We need a full blown Congressional Committee on Corruption-- a truth commission with subpoena power. And we need the hearings to air live, for however long it takes, to get to the bottom of this syndication of crime."
"Speak correctly, or build a big bunker"
By Kathleen Parker
the Washington Post, Wednesday, October 1, 2008; A17
"Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself.
Those are a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down.
I'm familiar with angry mail. But the past few days have produced responses of a different order. Not just angry, but vicious and threatening."
By Dana Milbank
"Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."
McCain: "Who Is The Real Barack Obama?" McCain Supporter: "Terrorist!"
By Greg Sargent - October 6, 2008
"[t]he moment is uncomfortably revealing: McCain is now dabbling in the tactics employed in the most viral smears of Obama, if not to the same degree. No honest observer would dispute that McCain's speech today was about sowing fears of Obama as a risky, unknown, and vaguely sinister "other," and this supporter, at least, read the subtext, intended or not, loud and clear."
The Press Should Be Asking: "Who Is The Real John McCain?" And why is it that the lavishly-furnished custom Boeing 727 airliner 727PX that ferried the Arizona senator on four occasions during his Presidential run in 2000 also flew Saudi Royals out of the U.S. right after 9/11?
And is it a coincidence that the Saudis turned to a company that runs “Worship Ministries” and Christian Network, Inc., Paxson Communications, the “Christian broadcaster” to fly their princes out of the country? That Paxson Communications just happens to be a major McCain contributor that repeatedly requested that McCain intervene on its behalf with a pending FCC matter, and that thereafter, McCain personally contacted the FCC to demand that it expedite its ruling on a matter of vital important to Paxson, a contact which prompted a "scolding response" from the FCC Chairman, who called McCain's letter on behalf of Paxon "highly unusual" and inappropriate?
The NYTimes seems willing enough to delve into the background of William Ayres on the flimsiest claim that he "pals around" with Obama. Perhaps it's time the "librul" media put that same microscope on the gang supporting John McCain.
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