The foundation of John McCains Presidential bid is his foreign policy experience and judgement. The motive engine of his candidacy is his stated ability to protect America from its enemies, and as he has repeatedly said, first among those who threaten us are the rulers of Iran. McCain recently claimed that Obamas willingness to engage Iran in dialogue shows "naivete' and "inexperience and lack of judgement". According to ABC News McCain will make the issue "front-and-center in the upcoming election. In response, Barack Obama expressed an eagerness to engage McCain "anywhere, anyplace" on this central concern of voters. Recent events have shed light on how McCains judgement and his own naivete may be his downfall.edition of Time magazine is reporting from two U.S. officials that Americas diplomats and military liasons have been ordered to cut all relations with Amad Chalabi. http://www.time.com/... This action was taken in the wake of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki removing Chalabi from the Baghdad Services Committee. Chalabis extensive and on-going contacts with Iranian officials becoming too repugnant for Maliki to ignore any longer. A brief survey of John McCains relationship with Ahmed Chalabi, and Chalabis role in the making of the Iraq war leads to the inescapable conclusion that John McCain has been unwittingly manipulated by Iranian Intelligence Services since 1997. The entire story of the realtionship between McCain, Chalabi, and Iran spans fifteen years, three administrations and two wars. In the interests of conciseness, I will restrict the discussion to the two salient points: the close relationship of John McCain and Chalabi; and Chalabis identification as an Iranian Intelligence agent. John McCain was one of Chalabis first patrons, dating their relationship to 1991, when McCain offered unqualified support to Chalabi and his International Committee for a Free Iraq, and was Chalabis man in the Senate to push for funding. In 2000, Chalabi endorsed McCains Presidential bid, knowing that McCain was working to free up 97 million in funding for Chalabis new group, the Iraqi National Congress. In 1997, despite opposition from the Pentagon and the State Department, McCain co-sponsored The Iraq Liberation Act, whicht--McCain co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act, which committed the United States to overthrowing Saddam's regime and to funding opposition groups. McCain welcomed Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), to Washington and pressured the administration to give him money. When General Anthony Zinni cast doubt upon the effectiveness of the Iraqi opposition, McCain rebuked him at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. On November 24, 2003, Sally Quinn, on the pages of the Washington Post, quoted McCain as saying:
"He's a patriot who has the best interests of his country at heart," says Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Six months later, the Pentagon cut off funds to Chalabi, arrested Chalabi's aides, and raided Chalabi's house....as part of an investigation into the complete compromise of virtually all U.S. intelligence networks in Iran. Some patriot, huh? Chalabi sold us out....and he's the guy McCain--with all his "National Security" experience--went and championed." Then, on May 23, 2004, Bob Drogin broke this story in the LATimes: MORE CHALABI SPIES....A couple of months ago, the LA Times broke the story of "Curveball," a key Iraqi informant who showed up in a German refugee camp and claimed that he had built biological warfare trucks for the Iraqi army. Only later did the CIA learn that he was actually the brother of one of Ahmed Chalabi's top aides and had probably been coached to provide false information. Ahmad Chalabi, the onetime White House favorite who has been implicated in an alleged Iranian spy operation, sent Iraqi defectors to at least eight Western spy services before the war in an apparent effort to dupe them about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's illicit weapons programs, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said. Because even friendly spy services rarely share the identities of their informants or let outsiders meet or debrief their sources, it has only in recent months become clear that Chalabi's group sent defectors with inaccurate or misleading information to Denmark, England, Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden, as well as to the United States, the officials said.
...."We had a lot of sources, but it was all coming from the same pot," said a former senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They were all INC guys. And none of them panned out." Chalabi was central to the dis-information campaign that led this country to invade Iraq. This was known back at least as far as 2004, when a State Department counter terrorism official told reporters: "When the story ultimately comes out, we'll see that Iran has run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in history - it persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest enemy." A recent article by the Council of Foreign Relations President Lester Gelb acknowledged in hindsight that Chalabi "played us like the proverbial violin." So there is this large body of evidence and a concensus of professionals, that Chalabi was the source of the disinformation that got us into Iraq. Until 2005, however, although Chalabi furthered the interests of Iran, there wasn't any evidence linking him directly to Iranian intelligence. That changed when highly classified accurate information was found to be relayed to Tehran from Chalabi. Only a hand full of US government officials knew that we had broken Iranian military communications coding, and intercepts proved Chalabis role.
Sidney Blumenthal informs us:
"At a well-appointed conservative think tank in downtown Washington and across the Potomac River at the Pentagon, FBI agents have begun paying quiet calls on prominent neoconservatives, who are being interviewed in an investigation of potential espionage, according to intelligence sources. Who gave Ahmed Chalabi classified information about the plans of the U.S. government and military?"
Vince Cannistraro, formerly at the CIA and the Pentagon, was so "very, very sensitive" that only a few U.S. government officials had access to it:
"The evidence has pointed quite clearly, not only the fact that Chalabi might be an agent of influence of the Iranian government and that [Chalabi's intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib] may be a paid agent of the Iranian intelligence service, but it is shown that there is a leak of classified information from the United States to Iran through Chalabi and Karim and that is the particular point that the FBI is investigating. In other words, some U.S. officials are under investigation on suspicion of providing classified information to these people that ended up in Iran." Senior Bush aides described the evidence at the time as "rock solid." Bush cut off relations with Chalabi and the FBI investigation as to who tipped Chalabi, was unresolved. So how was it that Chalabi was re-born as head of Bagdhad Services Committee and charged with reconstructing vital services in Iraq? As recently as October, the Bush administration called him a "central figure in the latest US strategy." Why was Chalabi, a known Iranian intelligence agent, made a central figure in the surge? A person in a position to know would be Charles Black, the Repub strategist who is and has been for years, head of the PR firm that represents Chalabi. Black is also McCains senior campaign advisor. Story is still unfolding as Obama and McCain begin debate. The Arizona Senator is bringing a slingshot to a gunfight.
It should be noted by the Israeli Knesset as well as the electorate, that while Barack Obamas granfather was marching in Europe, George Bushes grandfather was having his assetts seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act in 1942.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
In a rapidly aging population, it goes without saying that healthcare is a pivotal election issue. There have been proposals of a vague nature, and all of the candidates seem to shy away from confronting the big pharmaceutical companies whose rapaciousness is matched only by the energy consortiums. It is the right and proper role of government to take a more active and involved stance, as it is articulated in the Constitution; to promote the general welfare of the people.
Since 1985, an intensive lobbying campaign has allowed pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to the consumer with only minimal restrictions imposed by the FDA, FCC and other government bodies. Going directly to the public to promote sales has resulted in the dysfunctional
health care system that has benefited insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies and resulted in a decline of the quality of Americans healthcare, as well as rises in obesity, autism, and infant mortality rates. Yet candidates remain silent on what was a trial program, one that has gone horribly wrong. The bloated ad budgets have contributed to grossly inflated health care costs as well as a decline in most every parameter of societal public health. We have the specter of the government actively working against Americans buying prescription medicines from Canada or buying generic. We also see pharmaceutical companies insuring and expanding their profits at taxpayers expense. If this was a truely free society, why couldn't the market power of government be broght to bear in institutional purchases for medicare and veterans programs?
Legal councils for big pharma hides behind free speech, a right not extended to liquor or tobacco on televison. In the twenty three years since prescription ads were allowed we have seen a meteroic rise in costs as well as a proliferation of treatments for illnesses that hadn't previously existed.
The sole reason of restless leg syndrome, for instance, is a cash cow. Research increasingly indicates that cholesterol rates have no bearing on heart disease, yet lipitor and other statins rake in billions. Two examples in a panalopy of hundreds. Direct advertising has also led us to the place where prescription drug abuse is the number one narcotics problem in the nation. I implore Barack Obama to put this issue on the table when examining the health care future. No one is addressing it as yet, and I fear that the power of drug companies is too vast and too intrenched.
This month Rolling Stone is publishing an article by the son of E. Howard Hunt. CIA agent Hunt was one of the Watergate burglers and leader of Nixons dirty tricks team and the article is a preview of a forthcoming book. It is also a deathbed confession of a man that was intimately involved with the assasination of John Kennedy. It is available online, the reading of which floods the memory with the trauma that the whole world endured as a community, and the tragedy that myself and contemporaries suffered as individuals in a time of youth, hope and innocence.
It was a fundamental event in which the tragic component was the birth of cynicism and a turning away from political participation by those who were born after World War Two. Since that day in Dallas, rhetoric by those aspiring to office rang hollow and idealism seemed, well, naive. It was with great interest and a kind of macabre fascination that I poured over the article and its incumbant verifications of the dark suspicions we have held since November 22, 1963. After many hours of website visits about the asassination, its participants and victims, sadness numbed me to any more diabolical, conspiritorial connections . As I was about to trudge into the bedroom, I came across parts of a speech that Kennedy gave in 1959 to supporters. The word 'resonate', like much hackneyed new age buzzterms, has been used so frequently that it loses much of its capacity to buzz, but this paragraph from JFK being read from the perspective of one who is is drawn to a political candidate for the first time in forty plus years, ..resonates:
"Perhaps we could afford a Coolidge following Harding. And perhaps we could afford a Pierce following Fillmore. But after Buchanan this nation needed a Lincoln-after Taft we needed a Wilson-after Hoover we needed Franklin Roosevelt. . . . And after eight years of Eisenhower, this nation needs a strong, creative Democrat in the White House."
His words are powerful, relevent and of vast import after eight years of the Reichian Presidency of George Bush and his minions. Obama for President...our last, best chance at wholeness.
