Some weeks ago, I posted a Diary, The Abramoff 64 + 34 Competitive Races = BIG GOP Trouble. At the time I feared that I was missing somebody.
I was.
I forgot Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
Now it is The Abramoff 65.
Turns out that Abramoff billed the Mariana Islands for two meetings with little Ricky in 1996, then his team billed the CNMI for an event, hosted by Santorum’s PAC just before the 1996 GOP convention. This was the meeting where Team Abramoff introduced the sweatshop owners to the Republican Conservatives. Attending for the Tan Family was Willie Tan, Ben Fitial and Eloy Inos. And as a gesture of gratitude, the sweatshop owners of Saipan gave Santorum’s PAC a $10,000 donation. . .
After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans — restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O’Beirne’s office in the Pentagon.
[. . .]
O’Beirne’s staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .
Many of those chosen by O’Beirne’s office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance — but had applied for a White House job — was sent to reopen Baghdad’s stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget, even though they didn’t have a background in accounting.
No wonder we’re now digging trenches around Baghdad. . .
But the way the administration went about creating the CPA illustrates everything you need to know about the childlike sciolism of these so-called grown-ups. They insisted on invading a well contained country of 25 million people, ripped its society to shreds, and then put a bunch of low level cronies and inexperienced schoolkids in charge of creating a Club for Growth wet dream in the desert. And they spent billions and billions of dollars failing to do anything but lay the groundwork for civil war. I don’t know if it’s possible to screw up on a grander scale than that.
Update: The director of the ad showed up on Eschaton and had this to say:
I’m glad there’s so much positive reaction to the video I made with Howie’s music. If you know of a campaign out there that wants a version have them contact me and I’ll make it for the same low low price I did this one…free. Let’s follow the bouncing ball as it kicks the Republicans out of Congress. If you like the video, please donate to Coleen Rowley’s campaign. Maybe they can buy some airtime to run this on TV.
Mike McIntee | 08.28.06 - 12:06 am | #
If Democratic politicians know what is good for them, they’ll hit him with a deluge of email. . . and cash.
Leaking the names of CIA agents is not politics; it is a crime. Lying to congress about evidence for a war is not politics; it is a crime. Failing to tell a grand jury that you met with a reporter and talked about the CIA agent is not forgetfullness; it is a crime. Deceiving your entire nation and frightening children and adults with images of nuclear explosions in order to get them to support a bloody invasion of another country is not politics; it is a crime.
Two other important reads, also via ASZ: Firedoglake, for continuing analysis of the documents released today, and Senator Kennedy’s powerful statement, posted on Eschaton.
Philadelphia City Councilman Rick Mariano (right) is assisted by his spokesman, Frank Keel, as they arrive today at federal court for Mariano’s arraignment on federal fraud and bribery charges. (Philly.com)
Ron Edmonds/AP
Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, walks into the White House, Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2005, using crutches. Lawyers representing key White House officials expect Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to decide this week whether to charge Libby and top presidential political adviser Karl Rove in the leak of a CIA officer’s identity. (Yahoo)
Reuters reports that an arrest warrant has been issued for Tom DeLay:
“To any sheriff or peace officer of the state of Texas, greetings, you are hereby commanded to arrest Thomas Dale DeLay and keep him safely so that you have him before the 331st Judicial District Court of Travis County,” the warrant said.
Can we make a citizen’s arrest? How amazing that would be . . .
Guest blogging can plunge one into strange waters. Wanting to live up to Matt, I decided to take advantage of an opportunity to hear David Ray Griffin, a well-known process theologian (no, I didn’t know what that was until I looked up) who is currently better known for his book The New Pearl Harbor and his work with the 9/11 Truth Movement .
The 9/11 Truth Movement could be said to embrace everyone who still has questions about what really happened on 9/11 (which includes me and almost everyone I know), so I found this article helpful in surveying the range of beliefs and the disagreements within the movement. I went to the speech believing that we don’t know everything about 9/11, and that there are legitimate questions still to be answered. I had not seen much in Dr. Griffin’s interviews or comments that convinced me his approach was likely to yield reliable information, but since many articles said he was a persuasive speaker, I thought hearing him “live” might be fascinating or at least challenging. I was disappointed.
My original plan was to respond, not so much to Dr. Griffin’s theories as to his thinking process in arriving at those theories (though he often claims not to have a theory, but just questions). I can’t do it. He spoke for an hour and a quarter, and practically every other sentence involved a reasoning error. He concentrated on one topic (and one certainly worth further investigation): how was it that none of the four hijacked planes was intercepted on 9/11? His conclusion – that NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) had to have been ordered either to stand down or “slow down” in order to permit the 9/11 attacks to occur was based largely on the rather shaky premise that the FAA and NORAD regularly function at such high levels of efficiency and cooperation that the errors and confusions documented simply could not have occurred in the absence of such an order.
I agree that failing to intercept even one of four hijacked flights within a span of a few hours, in a relatively limited geographical area, on a single day, is astonishing, disgraceful, and worthy of further investigation. What I can’t rely on is the belief that only an extraordinary order could cause confusion, inefficiency and error among many people in different government agencies. Dr. Griffin, let me murmur two words in your ear: Hurricane Katrina. (Yes, I am indeed truncating Dr. Griffin’s lengthy arguments, but I am also truncating what would have been my equally lengthy responses. Be thankful. Be very thankful.)
No, this post isn’t really about Dr. Griffin’s work or the larger issue of exposing all the truths about 9/11. I left Dr. Griffin’s speech feeling that he was a distraction – seductive, glittering, and convoluted – from the sad, repetitive truth about the all too obvious crimes of the Bush administration. We know this administration could and should have known enough to prevent much, if not all, of what happened on 9/11. We know that someone, possibly several someones, leaked the name of a CIA agent – endangering her, and everyone she had contact with in her work abroad. We know intelligence was “fixed” to lead a shamefully compliant Congress to support an illogical and illegal war. We know there was never a credible plan for that war past its initial attacks. We know that the money to provide health care, education, housing and food to many who desperately need all these things has been sucked up by the war. We know our economy is foundering on an incredible deficit built on the theory that “to [them] that hath, more shall be given.” We know that four years, a new cabinet-level agency, and huge amounts of money after 9/11, our government could not manage the most basic tasks in response to a long-anticipated natural disaster – even with a week’s notice. And we know that all these crimes – whether of omission or commission – are the result of a corrupt response to the contract our government makes with us: that our officials, and the people they put in positions of power and responsibility are here to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”
Elaborate conspiracy theories are compelling: they involve our creative thinking and mine our deep fears. Corruption is boring: it happens so often, on so many levels, for such tawdry reasons. We are tired of vigilance, investigation, the slow process of the judicial system and the indifference of the mainstream media. Why not focus on something that really grabs attention?
We have forgotten the oldest meaning of corruption: “decomposition as a consequence of death.” Matt posted disturbing pictures of Katrina’s dead to remind us. The results of the illegal, unethical, immoral actions of this administration — the cronyism that gives the incompetent and uncaring the power to let helpless people die — the eagerness to “drown in a bathtub” the governmental services promised to protect us? Thousands of rotting bodies. A mound of putrefaction. An ineradicable stench of death. And it’s not over.
We will not — we cannot — get an unfettered investigation of 9/11 while George W. Bush or any of his cohort hold power. Surely our first obligation, our focus now, must be to arrest the death and destruction caused by this indifferent, incompetent and malevolent administration. Yes, I want to know what happened on 9/11. But first I want to be sure that our government is not still sending more victims to join those already sacrificed.
David Safavian, who until Friday headed the “obscure but extremely important” federal procurement office in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), was arrested yesterday, accused by federal agents of “lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s dealings with the federal government.” In his position at the OMB, Safavian set purchasing policy for the entire government, and “had recently been working on developing contracting policies for the multibillion-dollar relief effort after Hurricane Katrina.” His arrest — the “first criminal complaint filed against a government official” in the ongoing Abramoff probe — exposes a thicket of corruption involving Abramoff, leaders of the right-wing movement like Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, and public officials at the very highest levels of government, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX).
Corruption? Greed? Lying? Foul play? No one could have have foreseen this disaster. I think it calls for an expansion of federal powers, a repeal of the estate tax, and a no-bid contract for Haliburton.
Only a firm with experience in disaster management can handle a mess of this magnitude.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
– T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Rick Bowmer/AP
Some will see these photographs as an exploitation of tragedy; others will see them as unduly macabre;
and some will recognize that only when we are willing to look at what our nation has wrought can it be saved, if it still can be saved.
Found via Talk Left and Pam’s House Blend, they are graphic and disturbing. Click on them at your own risk:
In an essay that appeared in an 1863 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote about Matthew Brady’s photographs of the Civil War dead — the first wartime photographs that brought the reality of war to American breakfast tables. Holmes wrote:
Many people would not look through this series. Many, having seen it and dreamed of its horrors, would lock it up in some secret drawer, that it might not thrill or revolt those whose soul sickens at such sights. It was so nearly like visiting the battlefield to look over these views, that all the emotions excited by the actual sight of the stained and sordid scene, strewed with rags and wrecks, came back to us, and we buried them in the recesses of our cabinet as we would have buried the mutilated remains of the dead they too vividly represented.
There are too many stories yet to be told. We need to hear them. We need to see them.
But even that is not enough.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: ‘Stetson!
‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
‘O keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
‘You! hypocrite lecteur! –mon semblable,–mon frere!
– T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Clearly, the federal officials purportedly in charge of the disaster recovery efforts bear the heaviest burden for these deaths. The President who appointed them, and those who continue to support him, have revealed themselves for the callous, inhumane, immoral creatures that they are.
But I can’t help feeling that we are part of the problem, too. By continuing to participate in this corrupt and morally bankrupt society, we all bear some measure of the burden.
We live in a country whose President openly wonders “what didn’t go right?” as FEMA orders 25,000 body bags.
He will never know, because he will never face these dead.
But we can, and we must.
The last five posts I’ve written, and then deleted, have all been titled “What’s the Point?” In the face of our failed efforts to make a change before this disaster, I’m still trying to figure out the answer to that question, but the one thing I do know is that everything is different now. After Katrina, things cannot continue to go on as they did before. Something has to change. Everything has to change.
We need action. We need to open the doors of this cabinet of horrors, this grotesque nation of repulsive privilege and old bigotry.
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