WSJ Spins Hunt Oil Deal, But Can't Fool Jason Leopold

The spin is almost invisible when the Wall Street Journal describes Henry Waxman's reaction to recent news pertaining to the Hunt Oil deal with Kurdistan:

House baron Henry Waxman [...] is upset with a separate contract that the Kurdistan Regional Government has signed with Texas's Hunt Oil. Mr. Waxman thinks the Bush Administration didn't do enough to stop the deal. Then again, this is old news, as the contract was signed last year. And while the Baghdad central government wasn't pleased the Kurds had moved on a contract without national approval, the deal hasn't impeded Iraq's broader progress.

Fortunately for the cause of truth and justice (not to mention personal sanity), Jason Leopold wasn't fooled; here he explains what Waxman is really upset about:

Ray Hunt, the Texas oil man who landed a controversial oil production deal with Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, has enjoyed close political and business ties with Vice President Dick Cheney dating back a decade – and to the Bush family since the 1970s.

Despite those longstanding connections -– and Hunt’s work for George W. Bush as a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board [PFIAB] -– the Bush administration expressed surprise when Hunt Oil signed the agreement last September.

At that time, administration officials said Hunt Oil’s deal with the Kurds jeopardized delicate negotiations among competing Iraqi sects and regions for sharing oil revenues, talks seen as vital for achieving national reconciliation.

“I know nothing about the deal,” President Bush said. “To the extent that it does undermine the ability for the government to come up with an oil revenue sharing plan that unifies the country, obviously if it undermines it I’m concerned.”

However, on July 2, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released documents showing that senior administration officials were aware that Hunt was negotiating with the Kurdistan government and even offered him encouragement.

Hunt also personally alerted Bush’s PFIAB about his oil company’s confidential contacts with Kurdish representatives.

In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, committee chairman, complained that the administration’s comments last year were “misleading.”

“Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that contrary to the denials of Administration officials, advisors to the President and officials in the State and Commerce Departments knew about Hunt Oil’s interest in the Kurdish region months before the contract was executed,” Waxman wrote.

Waxman said the Hunt-Kurdish case also raised questions about the veracity of similar administration denials about its role in arranging more recent contracts between Iraq and major U.S. and multinational oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron.

Plus, there’s the longstanding suspicion that oil was a principal, though unstated, motive behind the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, which sits on the world’s second-largest oil reserves.

Administration officials -– and much of the mainstream U.S. media –- have ridiculed the oil motive charge as a conspiracy theory.

It's a conspiracy, that's for sure. But it's no theory. And the connections with Hunt go way, way, back.

Many of the oil companies now stepping forward to benefit from Iraqi oil were instrumental in both supporting Bush’s political career and giving advice to Cheney’s secretive energy task force in 2001.

For instance, Ray Hunt’s personal relationship with the Bush family dates back to the 1970s as Hunt, the chief of Dallas-based Hunt Oil, helped build the Texas Republican Party as it served as a power base for the Bushes rise to national prominence.

The Hunt family donated more than $500,000 to Republican campaigns in Texas, while Hunt Oil employees and their spouses gave more than $1 million to Republican causes since 1995, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Ray Hunt also had strong ties to Dick Cheney during his years at the helm of Halliburton, the Houston-based oil-services giant. In 1998, Cheney tapped Hunt to serve on Halliburton’s board of directors, where Hunt became a compensation committee member setting Cheney’s salary and stock options.

In 1999, when Texas Gov. George W. Bush was running for the Republican presidential nomination, Bush turned to Hunt to help fund his presidential campaign efforts in Iowa, according to Robert Bryce’s book, Cronies: Oil, The Bushes, And The Rise Of Texas, America's Superstate.

“By the summer of 1999, Bush had already raised $37 million but he wanted to conserve his campaign cash so he turned to a Texas crony, Ray Hunt, to help fund the Iowa effort,” Bryce wrote. “In July of 1999, Hunt was among a handful of Bush supporters who each donated $10,000 to the Iowa Republican party.”

In May 2000, Bush appointed Hunt finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. Hunt also donated $5,000 to the Florida recount battle and spent $100,000 on Bush’s inaugural party.

Leopold fills in some more background on Hunt Oil and its Bush connections, before describing the newly released evidence in this case (which the WSJ calls old news):

The new evidence suggests that Hunt Oil at least benefited from the administration’s wink and nod in striking the Kurdish oil deal.

In a July 12, 2007, letter to PFIAB, Hunt disclosed that Hunt Oil was “approached a month or so ago by representatives of a private group in Kurdistan as to the possibility of our becoming interested in that region.”

Hunt described a visit of a Hunt Oil survey team and stated, “we were encouraged by what we saw. We have a larger team going back to Kurdistan this week.”

In a second letter to PFIAB, dated Aug. 30, 2007, Hunt revealed that he would travel to Kurdistan in early September for meetings with the Kurdistan regional government, including its president, prime minister and oil minister.

Those meetings led to the oil agreement between Hunt Oil and the Kurdish leaders -- and now have raised questions about Bush’s denial that he had any advanced knowledge about the deal.

“State Department officials similarly disavowed involvement in the contract,” Waxman said in the letter to Rice. “Department officials claimed that to the extent they were aware of any negotiations, they actively warned Hunt Oil not to enter into a contract because it was contrary to U.S. national security interests.

“Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that contrary to the denials of Administration officials, advisors to the President and officials in the State and Commerce Departments knew about Hunt Oil’s interest in the Kurdish region months before the contract was executed.”

See? Wall Street Journal readers may believe that Henry Waxman is upset because he "thinks the Bush Administration didn't do enough to stop the deal".

But now you know better.

Stream Of Unconscious

If you turn off your mind, relax and float downstream ... and just read for a while ... the Wall Street Journal can explain how the Democratic primary in South Carolina just might change the face of racial politics in the South forever, since Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are trying such different strategies.

Clinton is using an old-style political machine, trying to scoop as many endorsements as possible from political leaders and media types and preachers; Obama is using a grass-roots campaign to mobilize an entirely different group of people, or so the WSJ wants me to believe.

They may be right. But they lost me when they started talking about poor blacks looking to their preachers for "both spiritual and political guidance". White people don't do that, of course. Not since 2004, anyway.

Meanwhile, in an effort destined to earn even more ... um ... credibility ... said Journal carries a piece from Norman Podhoretz called "Stopping Iran", in which he argues -- quite falsely -- that hardly anybody disputed the 2005 NIE which said Iran was racing to build nuclear weapons.

Podhoretz also asserts that Iran has no need for nuclear power since it has all that oil.

Let's see, now: If I had all that oil, and it was selling for $100 a barrel, with no sign of a price decrease ever ... Would I rather sell it ... or burn it? Hmm, that's a tough one. Podhoretz would burn it, obviously. Apparently he doesn't understand the value of money. So he argues that Iran must be stopped from obtaining nuclear technology.

And it seems to me I've heard that one before. Have you? It's funny how Podhoretz doesn't seem too concerned about the entirely credible allegations made by Sibel Edmonds, who says US government insiders were selling nuclear secrets to the highest bidder on the black market, and much more.

Actually, no one in the US media seems much concerned about that; they're more interested in a hypothetical threat than evidence of any actual crimes, especially with crimes as serious as these -- crimes committed by powerful people who could ruin your reputation!

Naturally, the Democratically controlled Congress can't find time to look into it either, since their feckless leader, Henry Waxman, is so busy chasing down a chump who last played in the big leagues five years ago so he can find out what the chump knows about some illegal injections of steroids.

Illegal injections of cash are far less interesting to our bought-and-sold friends in the political/media circus, who don't give a damn about a million dead Iraqis but can't stop writing about one dead Marine.

So this is post-democratic America in its embryonic form: stupid; distracted; cut adrift from reality; corrupt to the bone; fighting a one-sided war of choice and bragging about it; and torturing people until they get mad at us.

And then, if they get mad enough to want to hurt us, we're morally obliged to torture them again, aren't we?

Report Says State Department Covered For Blackwater

A report released Monday to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform says

guards working in Iraq for Blackwater USA have shot Iraqi civilians and have sought to cover up the incidents, sometimes with the help of the State Department

according to David Stout and John M. Broder in the International Herald Tribune.

Their article, "Blackwater security firm assailed for Iraq killings" (mirrored here) also says:

The report, based largely on internal Blackwater e-mail messages and State Department documents, depicts the private security contractor as being staffed with reckless, shoot-first guards who were not always sober and did not always stop to see who or what they hit with their bullets.

In one incident, the State Department and Blackwater agreed to pay $15,000 to the family of a man killed by "a drunken Blackwater contractor," the report says. As a State Department official writes, "We would like to help them resolve this so we can continue with our protective mission."

How many more innocent people are going to be killed by our protective mission?

Nobody knows. Nobody will ever know.

The timing of the release may be significant:

The report was compiled by the Democratic majority staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is scheduled to hold a hearing on Blackwater activities on Tuesday. That hearing is sure to be contentious now that the chairman, Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, and other members have the staff's findings to study.

More excerpts from Stout and Broder:

Blackwater guards have engaged in nearly 200 incidents of gunfire in Iraq since 2005. In the vast majority of cases they fired weapons from moving vehicles without stopping to count the dead or help the wounded, the report says.

The shootings logged by Blackwater were more than those by the other two private military contractors in Iraq combined, the report says. Blackwater has more than twice the number of contractors than the other two combined. Those two are DynCorp International and Triple Canopy.

"Blackwater also has the highest incidence of shooting first, although all three companies shoot first in more than half of all escalation-of-forces incidents," the staff report says.

And the State Department's own documents "raise serious questions" about how its officials responded to reports that Blackwater employees killed Iraqis, the report says. "There is no evidence in the documents that the committee has reviewed that the State Department sought to restrain Blackwater's actions, raised concerns about the number of shooting incidents involving Blackwater or the company's high rate of shooting first, or detained Blackwater contractors for investigation," the committee staff writes.

Moreover, contrary to the terms of its contract, Blackwater sometimes engaged in offensive operations with the American military, instead of confining itself to its protective mission, the report says.

The report raises questions about the cost-effectiveness of using Blackwater forces instead of U.S. troops. Blackwater charges the government $1,222 a day per guard, "equivalent to $445,000 per year, or six times more than the cost of an equivalent U.S. soldier," the report says.

The incident involving "a drunken Blackwater contractor" arose when the employee killed a bodyguard for the Iraqi vice president, Adil Abd-al-Mahdi, in December 2006. State Department officials allowed Blackwater to take the shooter out of Iraq less than 36 hours later.

The State Department charge d'affaires then recommended that Blackwater make "a sizable payment" and an "apology" in an effort to "avoid this whole thing becoming even worse," the report goes on. The State Department official suggested a $250,000 payment to the guard's family, but the department's Diplomatic Security Service said that was too much and could cause Iraqis to "try to get killed." In the end, $15,000 was agreed upon.

The sentiment highlighted in the previous paragraph leaves me speechless.

The New York Times is running a much abbreviated version of the same article (mirrored here), thus alerting its readers to the release of the report but sparing them most of the speech-defying details.

But the NYT does provide a link to the report, which is is available as a PDF file here.

~~~

Bob Parry does a good job of putting this depravity in context. Please read his piece, "Bush's Global 'Dirty War'".

Eric Schmitt fills in a few more gaps for the New York Times with "Report Describes Drunken Contractor’s Killing of Iraqi" (mirrored here).

Waxman Weasels, Kos Is Spooky, Sibel's Still Gagged, And Democracy Is BS

The Hollywood Liberal grabbed a half hour of Henry Waxman's time the other day (Waxman's district includes Hollywood) and the interview touched on a great many subjects, including Sibel Edmonds. As regular readers will remember, Sibel was thrown overboard, then gagged, when she told credible and verifiable tales of treachery in the FBI and elected and appointed officials who seem allied to a foreign country.

Luke Ryland, aka Lukery, who by my reckoning has done more than everyone else on the planet combined to keep Sibel's astonishing yet credible tale from going down the memory hole, picked up on the conversation and reposted the segment having to do with Sibel.

In addition to his fistful of blogs, Luke regularly posts Sibel-related material at Daily Kos, where not so long ago her story was viewed as tin-foil-hat material. But lately Luke has been making sense to the Kossacks and they've been getting behind the drive to pressure Waxman into holding hearings for Sibel, and allowing her to speak -- in public, for the record, and without fear of imprisonment -- of all the things she learned in her short time working as a language specialist for the FBI.

Considering that her story involves international terrorism, illicit trafficking in drugs and nuclear technology, undeniable signs of treason, and much else, she would certainly be an interesting witness. Waxman's office knows her whole story, that it's been confirmed repeatedly by thoroughly reliable people, and that thousands and thousands of Americans want her to be allowed to speak.

After Waxman spoke to HL about Sibel (no opinion of the case, no plans to hold hearings), Luke posted about it at Daily Kos, and some of the Kossacks have been a bit unhappy. Rightfully so, in my opinion, and clearly Luke feels the same way. No doubt Sibel does as well.

I've been itching to blog about this, but I've been busy dealing with all sorts of zaniness elsewhere (such as Washington, Islamabad, Iraq, Philadelphia and Phoenix, to summarize yesterday's headlines), so I've just been reading and waiting and reading some more ... and now HL has augmented the story with a post drawing on My Left Wing and talking about the spooky pre-DK history of the King Kossack himself, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who -- get this! -- "grew up" as a Reagan Republican, and was fully trained by the CIA!

I'll give you the most important links again and in my opinion you should click all of them and read them carefully, because there's a lot more that I haven't mentioned, but I can't resist quoting the final paragraph of HL's most recent post:

The “Kossacks” as they are called were all waiting for Henry to schedule the hearings about a case that involves drug running, trading state secrets, trading nuclear information with Turkey, and Israel, and involving both Democrats and Republicans. They all thought Henry was just biding his time. When they heard Waxman tell me in the interview that he had no opinion about Edmonds, and no intention of scheduling hearings for a state department employee and FBI whistleblower, some of the Kossacks began to have meltdowns proclaiming that this was the last straw, and they now finally see that Democracy is BS, and the whole thing was just a joke. That’s because they have been buying into that whole Kos mindset of working within the system, of lets just sit back and wait for the democrats to save us while the Republicans run roughshod over the US treasury, and the American people for 8 years. Welcome to the world of reality people.

No kidding.

HL: The Hollywood Liberal Interviews Henry Waxman

Luke Ryland @ DailyKos: Henry Waxman finally speaks out on Sibel Edmonds Case!

HL: More on the Daily Kos-CIA Connection

Francis L. Holland @ The Truth About Kos (DailyKos): Markos Alberto Moulitas ZÚÑIGA "Worked" at the CIA in 2001

~~~

PS:
speaking of BS, here's a special weekend bonus three-pack from the vaults...

On the "Historic Challenge" to the 2004 "Presidential Election":
The Triumph Of Bullshit

The one-year anniversary of the "liquid bombers" bust went by with nary a mention, so here's a reminder:
An Avalanche Of Bullshit

Not necessarily the same sort of stuff, but not necessarily very much different either:
Bring On The Horse Manure, It's Time For Another SOTU

Time To Help Sibel Edmonds -- Please Call Waxman's Office!

Here's Luke Ryland, from his latest post at Wot Is It Good 4:

Henry Waxman's House Government Oversight Committee has been doing great work lately with various hearings and investigations, and some have argued that we shouldn't pressure Waxman on Sibel's case given that he undoubtedly has a full schedule. I have a two-fold response:

a) We are simply asking that Waxman announce that he will have hearings, we can argue about the timing later.

b) All of the background work on this case has been completed. Sibel's claims have already been investigated, and confirmed, by a number of other bodies - Congress, FBI, Department of Justice.

Of course, given the nature of Sibel's work as a translator, all of her claims are easily verified by the source material that she translated. As she says in Kill The Messenger:

"Put out those tapes. Put out those wiretaps. Put out those documents. Put out the truth. The truth is going to hurt them. The truth is going to set me free."

It was Whistleblower Week in DC last week - and Sibel's case highlights a number of important issues regarding whistleblowers. Not only do we have the dereliction of Congress and the media, but also the chilling effect on other whistleblowers, and more importantly, whistleblowing.

As Sibel says in a new interview:

"What kind of example is my case presenting to those other people who may want to do the right thing and come forward? They would say it doesn’t make a difference at the end, because I pursued every channel possible. I went as high as I could go with the courts, including the Supreme Court, and as you know, they issued a gag order on me several times and invoked the State Secrets Privilege... I’m prevented from discussing whether or not I’m right. And I went all the way to Congress, I did the right thing. I was not what they call a “leaker” who goes straight to the media and starts divulging classified documents. I went to the appropriate committees, the Judiciary Committee and the Intelligence Committee, too, by the way, and the House and Senate... I went through the other legitimate channels — the courts, the Inspector General’s Office, which is the executive branch. I tried the media. So I don’t blame those people that get pessimistic and say it doesn’t make a difference, or think they’ll lose their job or possibly go to jail. "

Think about that. Even if you don't know anything about Sibel's case (there's a primer here), I urge you to call Waxman's office and demand public hearings into her case because if Sibel can't get hearings into her case, why would anyone with incriminating evidence step forward to assist Waxman, or anyone else, with any of his other hearings?

As Sibel said in the same interview:

"They make an example out of you. Because if one case, let’s say my case, would really bring justice and accountability, you would see so many people doing the same thing. And how many times — let’s just look at the past decade — have you seen a legitimate whistleblower from any of these agencies come forward and prevail? I don’t think you can name one case."

Again, if you have hope in Waxman and in the investigations that he will hold (as many of us do), I urge you to call his office and demand public hearings into Sibel Edmonds' case - if only because it will help facilitate investigations into the things that you most care about.

For whistleblowers, there are 'knowns' and 'unknowns' - the 'knowns' include the fact that you will be retaliated against, lose your job, and probably your career, and often your family and your home. The 'unknowns' include whether there will be any upside, any accountability, any justice, to mitigate against the known, guaranteed, downside.

How can we ask potential whistleblowers to stand up and be 'patriotic' and disclose wrong-doing if people like Sibel Edmonds, with documented proof of corruption, espionage, and treason by high-level US officials, validated by multiple investigations by Congress, FBI & DoJ, can't get any resolution or accountability?

Here's Sibel, again from the same interview:

"So you have this case which for the past five years has been confirmed by Congressional sources, and people familiar with my case, and the Department of Justice’s Inspector General’s Office, and has never been contradicted or denied by the Justice Department or the FBI, and still nothing has been done.

There has been no hearing and nobody has been held accountable. We are basically where we started and I find that really appalling."

Seriously, if we don't stand up for Sibel, and demand public hearings and accountability into her case, then we can't reasonably expect anyone with incriminating evidence to come forward regarding Waxman's other investigations - the Global Warming propaganda, the Niger caper, the Plame Wilson caper, war profiteering etc.

Please call the offices of Congressmen Waxman - (202) 225-3976 demanding open hearings into Sibel Edmonds' case. (Capitol switchboard number - 800-828-0498)

We'll have more from Luke and Sibel later in the week, but for now: Please make Waxman's phone ring ... and ring and ring and ring!

Let Sibel Edmonds Speak!

Sibel Edmonds is the most gagged person in US history. The government has repeatedly invoked the State Secrets Privilege in her case - not for reasons of "national security" but to hide ongoing criminal activity.

Thus writes Luke Ryland, the Tasmanian journalist who has done more than anyone to keep us up to date on developments in the Sibel Edmonds story. Ms. Edmonds, as you may know, is a former FBI Language Specialist who joined the Bureau shortly after 9/11 in an attempt to use her considerable skills to enhance our National Security.

The FBI quickly learned that Sibel was more interested in National Security than "going along with the program", and they got rid of her as soon as they found out that they couldn't shut her up.

She's been trying to enhance our National Security ever since.

The things Sibel Edmonds saw, and the documents she translated, in her few months with the FBI are enough to make your head spin. It's all so incredible! And yet, according to one expert after another, every word is true!

As if her story hadn't been sufficiently confirmed, a document released Monday -- a report written by a former FBI Special Agent (for whom Ms. Edmonds once worked) -- lends even more support to her accusations.

What exactly is her story? That's what we don't exactly know. We do know that it involves Turkey, heroin smuggling, money laundering, illegal weapons trafficking, terrorism, and corruption of US government officials.

We know that Sibel Edmonds is gagged -- according to a so-called State Secrets Privilege -- and that her formerly public testimony has been retroactively classified -- because otherwise the information she revealed would jepoardize important business ties and sensitive diplomatic relations!

Did you read that right? I think you did. Sibel Edmonds' public testimony has been retroactively classified -- as if that made any sense! -- because the information is damaging ... but to what?

Why can't we find out all there is to find out -- about Turkey, about terrorism, about 9/11 and all the circumstances surrounding it!! -- and then decide for ourselves which business ties and which diplomatic relations deserve to be damaged?

How can we hope to protect ourselves against "another 9/11" if we don't even understand what caused the "first" one?

9/11 is far from the only issue here. Sibel Edmonds' story is not exclusively -- or even mainly -- about 9/11. It's about the environment: the severely compromised "National Security" environment within which 9/11 happened.

I don't believe Sibel Edmonds needs any more corroboration. The fact that she's been gagged shows how dangerous she is. If she were a nutcase telling a fruitcake tale, they'd let her speak and then they would ridicule her. This ain't that, as they say.

How do you know who to believe? When do you decide whether or not to believe somebody? I think it's different for everybody. One size certainly does not fit all. Personally, I've thought she sounded credible ever since I first heard of her, but I became firmly convinced that she must be telling trying to tell us the truth -- and a very dangerous truth at that -- in the spring of 2005, when I learned about her hearing at the U.S. Court of Appeals, from which she was evicted!

That's right. Sibel Edmonds and her attorneys were evicted from the courtroom -- and guards were placed at the doorway so they couldn't even listen in! -- as the judge conferred with attorneys representing the federal government. When they finally opened the doors again, the judge had a ruling: case dismissed!

Under the terms of her state secrets gag order, Ms. Edmonds cannot speak freely, but she has been quite artful in speaking less-than-freely. There've been games of will-you-deny-this? disguised as interviews; there have been all kinds of things.

Among recent things, one of the most excellent has been a short article in the American Conservative. According to Ms. Edmonds, this piece, by Philip Giraldi, is 100% accurate: (space and emphasis added)

Sibel Edmonds, the Turkish FBI translator turned whistleblower who has been subjected to a gag order could provide a major insight into how neoconservatives distort US foreign policy and enrich themselves at the same time.

On one level, her story appears straightforward: several Turkish lobbying groups allegedly bribed congressmen to support policies favourable to Ankara. But beyond that, the Edmonds revelations become more serpentine and appear to involve AIPAC, Israel and a number of leading neoconservatives who have profited from the Turkish connection.

Israel has long cultivated a close relationship with Turkey since Ankara's neighbours and historic enemies -- Iran, Syria and Iraq -- are also hostile to Tel Aviv. Islamic Turkey has also had considerable symbolic value for Israel, demonstrating that hostility to Muslim neighbours is not a sine qua non for the Jewish state.

Turkey benefits from the relationship by securing general benevolence and increased aid from the US Congress -- as well as access to otherwise unattainable military technology. The Turkish General Staff has a particular interest because much of the military spending is channeled through companies in which the generals have a financial stake, making for a very cozy and comfortable business arrangement.

The commercial interest has also fostered close political ties, with the American Turkish Council, American Turkish Cultural Alliance and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations all developing warm relationships with AIPAC and other Jewish and Israel advocacy groups throughout the US.

Someone has to be in the middle to keep the happy affair going, so enter the neocons, intent on securing Israel against all comers and also keen to turn a dollar. In fact the neocons seem to have a deep and abiding interest in Turkey, which, under other circumstances, might be difficult to explain.

Doug Feith's International Advisors Inc, a registered agent for Turkey in 1989 - 1994, netted $600,000 per year from Turkey, with Richard Perle taking $48,000 annually as a consultant.

Other noted neoconservatives linked to Turkey are former State Department number three, Marc Grossman, current Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, Paul Wolfowitz and former congressman Stephen Solarz.

The money involved does not appear to come from the Turkish government, and FBI investigators are trying to determine its source and how it is distributed. Some of it may come from criminal activity, possibly drug trafficking, but much more might come from arms dealing. Contracts in the hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars provide considerable fat for those well placed to benefit.

Investigators are also looking at Israel's particular expertise in the illegal sale of US military technology to countries like China and India. Fraudulent end-user certificates produced by Defense Ministries in Israel and Turkey are all that is needed to divert military technology to other, less benign, consumers.

The military-industrial-complex/neocon network is also well attested. Doug Feith has been associated with Northrup Grumman for years, while defense contractors fund many neocon-linked think tanks and "information" services. Feith, Perle and a number of other neocons have long had beneficial relationships with various Israeli defense contractors.

Quite a witch's brew going on there, isn't it?

I want to know more about all of these things.

I want to know more about 9/11. I want to know more about Turkey, Israel and the USA. I want to know more about the connection between drug smuggling and terrorism (although some of the connections are obvious) and I want to know about the weapons trading too.

I am told we are talking about the sale of restricted nuclear weapons technology on the international black market. I want to know more about that.

If you would like to know more about all these things, I may have some good news for you. Finally, finally!, there may be something we can do about it.

The Democrats supposedly control both houses of Congress. They definitely control the House of Representatives. They won't talk about impeachment but they will talk about oversight. This is a case demanding oversight, if ever there was one.

A coalition representing Americans on both sides of the political divide has presented a petition to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asking for open public hearings in this case and asking Congress to re-examine the so-called State Secrets Privilege. The key individuals on this committee are Henry Waxman and John Conyers.

Please phone, write, email, fax or visit the offices of Congressman Henry Waxman and Congressman John Conyers.

Please do it soon: This week! Today!! Right now!!!

Please demand open public hearings into Sibel Edmonds' case and the State Secrets Privilege.

And please enjoy this very short clip -- from the speech Ms. Edmonds gave when she accepted the 2006 PEN Award.

~~~

[contact]

Congressman Henry Waxman:
2204 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-3976 (phone)
(202) 225-4099 (fax)

Congressman John Conyers:
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax
John.Conyers@mail.house.gov

~~~

[see also]

Sibel Edmonds' website:
Just A Citizen

Luke Ryland's blog:
Wot Is It Good 4

A blog focused on the documentary about Sibel Edmonds called "Kill The Messenger":
Kill the Messenger: Sibel Edmonds

A blog focused on generating support for new hearings:
Let Sibel Edmonds Speak

[articles]

David Rose in Vanity Fair:
An Inconvenient Patriot

Miguel at Kill The Messenger:
The Incredibly, Credible Sibel

Sibel Edmonds at NSWBC:
The Hijacking of a Nation -- Part 1
The Hijacking of a Nation -- Part 2

Tom Flocco via WP:
Sibel Edmonds Won’t Deny It: Intelligence Intercepts Tied 9/11 Drug Money To U.S. Election Campaigns

[listen]

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton:
Luke Ryland
Sibel Edmonds and James Bamford

[more from Winter Patriot]

Sibel Edmonds and the PEN Newman Award for 2006
Sibel Edmonds Holds The Keys

If You Don't Like The Audit, Get Rid Of The Auditors

From the New York Times: Congress Tells Auditor in Iraq to Close Office

Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.

And tucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks ago is what some of Mr. Bowen’s supporters believe is his reward for repeatedly embarrassing the administration: a pink slip.

The order comes in the form of an obscure provision that terminates his federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, on Oct. 1, 2007. The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation.

Surprise and outrage! Ho hum. Once again we have clear evidence of the Republican method of legislation: write a bill, get everybody to read it, then just before they vote on it, make substantial changes, and poof! It works like magic.

Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who followed the bill closely as chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, says that she still does not know how the provision made its way into what is called the conference report, which reconciles differences between House and Senate versions of a bill.

Neither the House nor the Senate version contained such a termination clause before the conference, all involved agree.

“It’s truly a mystery to me,” Ms. Collins said. “I looked at what I thought was the final version of the conference report and that provision was not in at that time.”

“The one thing I can confirm is that this was a last-minute insertion,” she said.

How typical.

“It appears to me that the administration wants to silence the messenger that is giving us information about waste and fraud in Iraq,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform.

“I just can’t see how one can look at this change without believing it’s political,” he said.

Yep.

Massive News Dump

At the Memory Blog, the amazing Russ Kick has recently posted a huge News Dump, of which the following story lines form only a small sample:

Bush asked to explain UK war memo that proves he lied US into war

Appeals court lets Cheney keep his corporate energy task force secret

US won't declassify 9/11 documents for German trial

"The new stance reverses repeated assurances from Washington in recent months that the evidence would be forthcoming…. The US decision represents a serious setback for German prosecutors, who are having difficulty finding incriminating evidence against Motassadeq, now being tried a second time after his first conviction for terrorism was overturned on appeal."

Declassified documents: MI6 protected Nazi who killed 100 British agents

Head of Abu Ghraib Prison Speaks Out

US 'backed illegal Iraqi oil deals'

Luis Posada Carriles: The Declassified Record

No Court-Martial for Marine Taped Killing Unarmed Iraqi

NGO report: Egypt conducting torture for the US

Rep. Waxman introduces Restore Open Government Act

Disclosure of Grand Jury Info to Intel Agencies

Is Justice Department trying to put FOIA beyond appeal?

All this and more, here.

I hope you'll bookmark and visit the remarkable Russ Kick's amazing websites, the Memory Blog and the Memory Hole.