Scott, I heard you at Wellesley in 2002 and I read you loud and clear now.  My son, a lt. col in the Army was sent to Ethics training at Ft. Dix.  His opinion and about 1/3rd of his fellow officers was that if they tried to practise the ethics they were learning, they would be drummed out of the Army as surely as the generals who have tried to sound the alarm bugle.
Our nation is dying and when we have to look to the military to save us, we are close to the brink.  Power corrupts and armed soldiers , although saving us from the nuclear insanity of Bush, might well destroy us in another way.  But at this point, they may be the only ones, short of revolution.
If it was good enough for John Tilley and John HOwland, Corp. Absalom Ballou and pvt. John Hale, as well as Lt. Henry ....(can’t remember his last name) who fought King George and left King James for freedom on the Mayflower (my ancestors, all), then it’s good enough for me and mine.
Sail for the New World, my children, be it Mars; or some Scandinavian country where civilization still lives.

CY, if you get the chance, read Mark Lane’s “Plausible Denial.” You don’t have to wait until 2063 to get to the truth about the Kennedy assassination.  It jumps out from the pages of Lane’s book.

109556 Actually Cy I think you’re talking about this:

The flamboyant Giancana had ended up running the Chicago Mob in 1957 when Anthony Joseph ( Joe Batters ) Accardo took a back seat and stepped down in his favour. Accardo became consiglieri and continued to be consulted on all major decisions. Giancana decided to deal with Joe Kennedy to obtain the union support in Illinois, along with its’ twenty-seven Electoral College votes, for son Jack.
In 1960 Giancana, along with Johnny Roselli another influential Mafia Boss, became involved in talks with CIA director Allen W. Dulles concerning an attempt to assassinate Castro. The CIA had developed relations with the mob during the Second World War when they asked for the help of the then incarcerated Lucky Luciano prior to the invasion of Sicily.
The Mafia had invested huge amounts of money in gambling houses on Cuba in the forties under the Fulgencio Batista Regime and didn’t want to lose it (Mobsters Meyer Lansky, Santos Trafficante, Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello were the main players). Trafficante became the resident Syndicate Chief in Havana. Following Castro’s takeover he was deported to the U.S. and took up residence in Tampa Florida, becoming one of the most influential Mafiosi in the Southern United States. Trafficante had links with the Bonanno Family in New York but was more closely allied with Sam Giancana in Chicago. Roselli persuaded Trafficante to join the conspiracy in 1961. Various plans including poisoned cigars were put forward but none were implemented. Lansky also became involved, offering $1million for the murder of Castro. Trafficante also worked closely with another CIA officer William Harvey. By 1962 the Mafia conspirators became convinced that Castro’s death would not bring the revolution to an end. They continued to play along with the CIA however, hoping that their cooperation would act as a shield against future prosecution. The plan to assassinate Castro was quietly shelved after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1963. Trafficante however continued his cooperation with the CIA and was even involved in the Iran-Contra affair. His proximity with the Government Agency over the years and his friendship with Giancana probably served to provide the latter with a great deal of inside information.
Giancana was obviously looking for a return on his investment. At the very least he expected to be left to run his empire without fear of prosecution. Instead, Bobby Kennedy pursued Giancana relentlessly and although he could not bring serious charges to bear against him, he publicly humiliated him on TV in a Congressional style questioning.

109583 Nils I couldn’t have said it better myself. Bravo!

CY, I don’t want to go back into it too deeply, but the drug connection I was speaking of was explicitly linked to the covert branches (and actions) of our government, the CIA in particular.  In “Plausible Denial” Mark Lane makes a compelling case that the CIA and CIA-connected, anti-Castro Cubans once involved in the Bay of Pigs killed Kennedy, precisely because he and his brother Robert planned to dissolve the CIA following the 1964 election, withdraw from Vietnam and establish a rapproachment with Castro’s Cuba.  The name “George Bush” surfaced with respect to both the Bay of Pigs and the Kennedy assassination. (It is also intimately linked to the Lettellier assassination). The Bay of Pigs invasion force trained on the oil rigs belonging to Bush’s company, Zapata Off Shore.  The two repainted naval vessels used for the invasion were renamed the “Houston” and the “Barbara.” The top secret code name for the Bay of Pigs invasion was “Operation Zapata.” A J. Edgar Hoover memo later surfaced, revealing that shortly after the Kennedy assassination the FBI and DIA briefed “George Bush of the CIA.”

109523 Ernest I also heard about those drug dealings in the 70’s, again in LA between local cops and the CIA. Even heard the recorded interview of a former LA cop(I forget his name) who played a role in it, on my local university station. He had mentioned that for years no one would believe him but local cops were actually helping the CIA distribute drugs throughout the city. This brings to mind that huge bust of New Orleans cops about ten years ago. They were busting, then forcing drug dealers to sell drugs for them or go to jail. What coercion! Eventually it led to murder and it turned out most of the precinct was involved.

CIA, NSA, and even cops! I see them as the same nefarious animal, especially now that they are under one roof. What better place to sell drugs from then the local police? It seems with all the black budget money they receive, it still isn’t enough.

As for drug distribution, I see it as a way to keep crime levels high in the inner cities of America so the excuse for more laws leading to a police state could be accomplished. My father believed we had become a police state back in the 70’s. From then up till now it had been so subtle, but as you mentioned the events in fascist states in South America, it all makes sense now.

What is also interesting was that recent drug bust at Kennedy International Airport in NYC. The employees working there(and smuggling in the drugs0 were Dominicans. As I recall we helped fix their last election. So much for Airport(and homeland) security too when it comes to hiring ground staff. And we’re worried about Arabs taking over our seaports!

Thanks Ernest for giving us further depth into this.

Michael Shaw, your observation about CIA involvement in drug trafficking during Iran/Contra is spot on, though it predated that.  In “Cocaine Politics” (Univ. Cal. Press 1991) Peter Dale Scott & Jonathan Marshall expose the CIA’s involvement in drug smuggling, gun running, money laundering, and murder within a labyrinthine web of connections during the 70s & 80s involving, among the many, anti-Castro Cubans, Mexican drug lords, Argentina’s former military junta, right wing military governments in Bolivia, El Salvador & Honduras, Klaus Barbie, Manuel Noriega, the Cali Cartel & Oliver North’s Contra supply network.  Joseph Trento’s “Prelude to Terror” provides a significant addition to this account, especially as it pertains to Geo. H. W. Bush, then the Director of Central Intelligence, and his link to Operation Watchtower, a joint CIA/Mossad clandestine placement of portable beacons that would allow cocaine-bearing airgraft to fly undetected across Columbia and into Panama.  Noriega learned of the plot by bribing six NSA communications experts.  “Noriega...went to the CIA and demanded a piece of the drug action.  Bush not only agreed; he went a step further by not notifying the Justice Department of the treasonous acts committed by the six NSA employees.”

While it was aiding the Contra’s terror campaign against soft civilian targets inside Nicaragua with arms purchased by the proceeds of drug sales, the Reagan administration launched a propaganda blitz which attempted to link Cuba & Nicaragua with “narcotics trafficking and terrorism.” As Scott & Marshall note, the word “‘narcoterrorism’...soon became an essential adjunct to the doctrine of national security developed by right-wing Latin American military forces to rationalize their repressive domestic activities and seizures of power.”

When it came to the empire’s narcotics trafficking, interdiction was the last thing the Reagan & Bush I administrations had in mind.  When, in 1983, the DEA began to hone in on the Honduran military’s role in turning that country into a major transit station for cocain bound for No. America, the solution was to simply close the DEA station in Tegucigalpa.  Reports to the FBI by Eastern Airlines pilot, Gerald Loeb, confirmed by the FBI & a DEA informant, together with Loeb’s testimony before a Senate sub-committee implicating senior Eastern Airlines management in a four year operation during which cocaine was smuggled into the U.S. by Eastern “underneath the pilot;s seat in the forward electronics section” produced zero punishments for the perpetrators, though it did result in Loeb losing his job.

106676 Ernest as I recall, the CIA was delivering drugs to major cities like Los Angeles during the Iran/Contra scandal with the help of Manuel Noriega who was on the CIA payroll for years. It was my understanding that Oliver North knew of this and in fact played a role in it. Nothing like selling drugs to our own kids to finance an illegal, unsanctioned war! Especially at a time when the so called war on drugs was in full swing.

With friends like the CIA who needs the Mafia? What on earth has the CIA ever done to protect this nation or its people? Hiring Nazi’s and hiding mass murdering drug peddlers like Klaus Barbie? Launching the Bay of Tonkin deception? Launching the Bay of Pigs leading us to the brink of nuclear war? Training death squads for fascist governments in South and Central America? Where were they on 9/11? Yet again Afghanistan is controlled by the drug lords and the flow of opium continues.

Calling out idiot America is one thing. How about calling out this idiot administration? This is where our biggest problems lie.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102407B.shtml

Actually, CY, as a Vietnam vet one of the things that most troubled me pertains to the CIA’s role in drug trafficking, though I did not learn of it’s extent until relatively recently.  Some of the books that cover the subject include Joseph Trento’s “Prelude to Terror,” Alfred McCoy, “The Politics of Heroin” and Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall’s “Cocaine Politics.”

The involvement began early on, 1949 when the CIA’s Paul Helliwell used a Taiwan based airline to ship weapons to remnants of the KMT army in Burma.  The planes were then loaded with drugs bound for Taiwan, Bangkok and Saigon.  In 1960, the CIA agreed to merchandise opium for Laotian war lords in exchange fore their assigtance in fighting the Pathet Lao.  The Mafia’s Santos Trafficante became the largest customer of CIA-sponsored heroin.  Helliwell helped launder mob money by setting up accounts with Castle Bank in the Bahamas where mob money was commingled with CIA money.

In 1966 Ted Shackley, who would later serve as Geo. H.W. Bush’s assistant in 1975, was appointed the new Chief of Station in Vientiane, Laos in order to carry out what Trento describes as the agency’s covert operations dream--"a means of financing operations without having to depend upon Congressional approval or funding.” (Iran/Contra anyone?).  By 1967, the CIA began shipping kilos of Southeast Asian heroin inside the body bags of U.S. Servicemen.  “Dover Air Force Base...became a Mafia drug pickup point.” (As a Vet it is hard for me to explain the level of revulsion I experienced when I first learned the CIA so defiled my dead brothers-in-arms.  Now I wonder if it is one of the reasons for the secrecy surrounding returning caskets from Iraq.) Using connections with the Sicilian and Corsican mafias in Palermo and Marseilles, the enterprising CIA also facilitated heroin distribution in Europe. 

Shortly after Shackley was appointed chief of the CIA’s Saigon station in 1968, Santos Trafficante toured the Far East, then decided to take control of all the large Saigon nightclubs that catered to U.S. servicement, where Trafficante would then do his bit to “support the troops” by selling them heroin oin the cheap.  So. Vietnam’s Pres. Nguyen Van Thiu and its VP Nguyen Cao Ky were also active in the drug trade.  By 1970 Congress estimated 15% of the American troops in Vietnam were heroin addicts.

“Cocaine Politics” exposes the CIA’s in drug smuggling , gun running, money laundering, and murder during the 70s & 80s in Central and South America including links to drug lords, right wing military governments and Oliver North’s Contra supply network.  Trento directly links the CIA, the Mossad, and Geo. H. W. Bush to the clandestine placement of beacons that would permit drug smuggling aircraft to fly undetected over Columbia.  He linked Bush, Saudi Intelligence, BCCI and Reagan’s “freedom fighters” (the Mujahideen who later morphed into al Qaeda) to the same opium production for arms arrangement while fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.  Opium production dropped off drastically under the Taliban, then returned with a vengeance after the 2001 U.S. invasion.  Now there are reports of U.S. servicemen in Afghanistan getting hooked on heroin.

106314 Ernest you may be right. Amy did mention the bank had never handled such a large bundle of cash before. She only mentioned a semi puling up. Perhaps another one or two were called in once they realized the size of the haul.

Michael, I don’t think you can fit $2.4 billion in $100 bills in just one semi.  The numbers are staggering.  I think CY is right about the C130 transports.  I seem to recall a video that displayed one being off loaded in Baghdad.  But there’s no way to know whether that was part of the $2.4 billion one-day transfer or some of the funds that were transfered at other times.

Sure seems this specific episode warrants a Congressional investigation and wider coverage in the corporate media.

106197

CY Could you direct me to a site? I’d like to read up a bit more on that if I could. Thanks!

106126. Ernest from what I’ve heard on DN, one large semi was packed with the loot.

This comes from Amy Goodman

AMY GOODMAN: Well, they are talking about, in one day, for example, the East Rutherford operation center of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 100 Orchard Street in East Rutherford, a tractor-trailer truck pulling up, and though accustomed to receiving and shipping large quantities of cash, the vault had never before processed a single order of this magnitude: $2.4 billion in $100 bills. But ultimately, again, $9 billion of $12 billion gone missing in Iraq.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/09/1349230

Michael, Perhaps you or someone else more familiar with the dimensions can tell me.  How many semis were need to move $2.4 billion in $100 bills?

105882

And with all the hoopla over misappropriated pentagon funds, the congress is ignoring it!

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101007J.shtml

105882 And to boot it was all in 100.00 bills

105882 PS That shipment of 2.4 million dollars you mentioned was actually 2.4 billion. It was the largest transaction of its kind in FED history.

105882 Hey Ernest, did you hear the Bartlett/Greenspan interviews on DN? Basically Greenspan said he had no idea what had happened and started hyping over Dinars confusing the actual count. Bartlett called that bullshit. Greenspan also said he didn’t know what was going on yet all the information Bartlett got came from the FED while Greenspan was still its boss. Bartlett said it is hard to imagine he didn’t know. He also said that Greenspan has a way with doublespeak that really says nothing. He also said people have let him get away with that for years and he can’t understand why. He basically called the dude a bullshitter, something I had suspected for quite a while now.

As for your free market summary, it seems more like a free for all, all of the thugs Bush has surrounded himself with. Also thanks for clarifying this to other readers. Everybody should take a look at this.

Michael Shaw, let me ad context so that other Truthdiggers will be inclined to follow your link to Democracy Now.  The story deals with the $12 billion in cash that was shipped from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to Iraq, $2.4 million on a single day.  $9 billion of that shipment is now missing.

As Donald Barlett, a co-editor of Vanity Fair which exposed this story notes that during the 1990s Patrick Thompson, a resident of the Bahamas, created a Ponzi scheme mutual fund called Evergreen Security from which more than $200 million disappeared.

The $12 billion “cash” was placed in the hands of a company called NorthStar, which is operated out of home in San Diego and which was created for Thomas Howell, who had turned to Patrick Thomas, the Bahamian swindler from the 90s, to create NorthStar.

The unanswered question is why our government would entrust this enormous transaction to such a disreputable lot--in “cash” no less!  I guess it is a fine example of what Bush and his team have in mind by “free” markets.

105400 Hey Mike here is even more. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/09/1349230

“So you have an accounting firm created by a mysterious La Jolla man by an equally mysterious Bahaman resident who specializes in setting up offshore entities used to launder money, concealing assets, avoiding taxes, a man who presided over a securities firm from which $200 million was disappeared.”

When you have the Pentagon doing business with companies like Northstar it is beyond any idea of government auditing or oversight. It is a matter of out and out government thievery.

105635 I understand what you were talking about Ernest. I can also understand why the Russians are scratching their heads too. One thing perplexing is that since Bush has not complied with the 1993 START 1 program and in fact has decided in making a whole new line of nukes, why are the Russians even bothering to comply? Do they see it simply as a way to get rid of old fissionable material? The fact it’s coming out here to the Livermore Labs is unnerving! Even an accident in transport could cause the effects necessary for Bush/Cheney to declare marshal law. Hell another Katrina could do it.

The question, Michael Shaw, is whether the administration is “hoping” for another 9/11 or “planning” for another 9/11.  I suppose the answer to that question is dependent upon whether Cheney was complicit in the first 9/11.

105584 Well Ernest, I see this as frighteningly as you do! It seems to me this administration is hoping for another 9/11. Why else for example, would they go after PETA and ignore right wing terror groups? They’ve been playing by the Nazi play book from the beginning! I find it extremely suspicious that the transport of Russian nuclear material is coinciding with dirty bomb simulations hitting our cities. I also see the potential in a preemptive strike on Iran. But I think you may be right God help us!

Michael Shaw:  A portion of your link to the “war alert\” bears direct quotation and an observation about context.  Russian “General Nikolai Solovtsove has received an ‘urgent’ communication from his American counterparts...notifying Russan Millitary Authorities that the United States will...go to ‘full war footing’ this weekend.

“The reasons stated...are...their intention to begin transferring all of their weapons grade plutonium to their Savannah River Site located in South Carolina, and...their intention to begin their largest ‘terror exercise’ in history by ‘simulating the explosion of a nuclear armed ‘dirty bombs’ in American cities.”

The context entails a number of articles written by Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, warning that executive orders are now in place for Bush to declare a “national emergency” on the basis of a new “terrorist incident” such as a “dirty bomb” as a precursor to martial law, a suspension of the Constitution and national elections.

The real question is whether these war criminals are planning a final putsch that will bring an end to the Republic and the permanent rule Karl Rove has long advocated.

Speaking of Israel, this comes from Democracy Now. Apparently Desmond Tutu has been banned from the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremonies because of statements he made comparing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to South African Aparteid.

Akiva Eldar on Nuclear weapons in the Middle East

Akiva Eldar is the chief political columnist and senior analyst for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, and he is co-author of a new book; it’s critical of Israeli settlement policy. It’s called Lords of the Land: The Settlers and the State of Israel. I interviewed Akiva Eldar last month and asked him how the so-called “Israel lobby” in the United States is perceived in Israel.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/08/1341205

105426 Well John as far as that money going to MOSSAD for 9/11, that hasn’t been and I doubt it will ever be substantiated. Granted the guy in charge was a Zionist crook, but nothing (at least at this point)can be proved beyond speculation.

US WAR ALERT TO RUSSIA AND WESTERN ALLIES
http://www.nworeport.com/waralert.htm

I guess, Guido, war becomes necessary for the military-industrial complex because it is into profit and not into recycling.

Good points Mike Clark! I’d like to know what happened to that 1.1 trillion Rumsfeld was talking about just prior to 9/11. Once that happened all talk of that vanished.

BLACK BUDGET REPORT

http://www.american.edu/salla/Articles/BB-CIA.htm

Mike Clark--the difference is that when you and I served in Vietnam the U.S. did not find it necessary to hire mercenaries to do our work.  I don’t know how it was in the marine corps, but after I did my time in-country (4th Infantry Div.--Central Highlands) and returned, I got out of the army altogether.  There was no “stop-loss” policy.  Yeah, we may have left some weapons behind, and some pretty well developed air bases as well, but once we pulled out the Vietnamese stopped shooting at us.  (Now they’re our trading partners).  I have a feeling that we will be experiencing blow back from the imperial conquest in Iraq (and possibly from a new insanity of the Bush regime carries out its threat to bomb Iran) for years to come.  (There are similarities.  In Nam they poisoned us with Agent Orange.  In Iraq, it’s depleted uranium.)

Have you noticed that those who evaded service in ‘Nam--Bush/Cheney et al.--are so ready to send others off to fight?  It’s easy to be gung ho when you’ve never been shot at.

Faludi examines the cultural impact of the 9/11 attacks and concludes that the United States has been living in a myth since 9/11.....

This comes from Democracy Now. There’s a great discussion about how “they” used Jessica Lynch(and women in general) to justify the wars both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/04/1355237

#104426 by Ernest Canning on 10/03 at 12:39 pm: “...There are reasons why the Bush administration invaded Iraq..... “imperial conquest,” “never” included bringing democracy or freedom to Iraq and its people.  That is unless you are prepared to accept one of the three major slogan’s from Orwell’s “1984"--

Memorable quotes from “1984” the movie:-

Winston Smith: I don’t mean confessing. Confessing isn’t betrayal. I mean feelings. If they can make me change my feelings. If they can stop me from loving you, that would be real betrayal.
Julia: They can’t do that. It’s the one thing they can’t do. They can torture you, make you say anything. But they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you. They can’t get to your heart......

It is finally revealed that the torture and “reprogramming” have been successful; happily reconciled to his own impending execution, and accepting of the Party’s versions of the past and present (Winston shortly celebrates a possibly fabricated, though accepted as fact, bulletin describing Oceania’s recent decisive victory over Eurasia), he finally accepts love towards Big Brother.

O’Brien: What are your feelings towards Big Brother?
Winston Smith: I hate him.
O’Brien: You must love him. It is not enough to obey him. You must love him.

Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?
O’Brien: Of course he exists.
Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me?
O’Brien: You do not exist.

Winston Smith: Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. I have committed even before setting pen to paper the essential crime that contains all others unto itself......

Democracy is not in the ball park, the intent is to establish the new world order, which does not care the least about the people on both sides of the world.

104426 I’m in lockstep with you Ernest. The Project for a New American Century has nothing to do with democracy, either here or in Iraq. Those permanent military bases in both Iraq and Afghanistan are there for one clear reason. To protect the flow of oil. This of course more than anything else, makes the so called war on terror, so called.