is filling out his status report.
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BIOM has been a bit of a run for me. I might cash out quickly, but the volume pick up is to my liking.
A blind man unknowingly walks into an all-womens bar and decides to order a drink. while the bartender is making the drink he turns to the women next to him and says "you wanna hear a blonde joke?" the whole bar freezes and gasps. the woman who he asked the question too turns to him and says "sir i think its only fair, being that you're blind, that you know a few things. The bartender is a blonde woman, the woman to your left is a black belt in Karate and a blonde, I am a professional weight lifter and a blonde, the bouncer is a blonde woman and the woman at the pool table is a 300 lbs heavy weight wrestler and a blonde. So tell me do you still wanna tell that joke?" the man sits for a minute and thinks finally he says "nah not if id have to explain it five times."
A side note here, William Still who has written on The Fed and has videos, and interviewed in this video had consulted with the late Marshall Peters.
With spring fever infecting some folks here (not me as I had to shovel snow this morning), the ones that have ornamental plans should include what zone they are in to make replies more exacting.
http://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/ushzmap.html
My background is horticulture and I have an agricultural development corporation in Malawi (south east central Africa).
easymoney101: years ago, some rather poor folks, that I knew, had not social insecurity numbers for their children. The IRS had listed in their publications that children over two months old were required to have them. The IRS denied the exemptions and deductions for the children; also cancelling the earned income claim. Some advice was given and a letter was sent to the regional head. The request was for the promulgating statutes (Of course, there were none.). The refund was sent.
roguedolphin: I enjoy the author and read the piece this morning from another board. However, I have a problem with making comparisons with the imprisonment of Winston Smith. He ended up simply loving Big Brother after being tortured.
Some have taken that posture while munching on a Big Mac.
rollingrock: the simple solution to win the war against radical Islam is to reel in all the guilty CIA operatives that have brought this about.
The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist. - Winston Churchill
beigledog: then I would suggest well spacing some hemlocks. Yes, they can get big, but they take well to pruning. It will be easy for you to get some 6-7 footers. Be sure to guy them. After about two months, take the leaders out. After taking the leaders out again years later they will pretty much assume a bush habit.
Please do not plant them in a straight row like soldiers. Stagger them and you can plant smaller plants in front of them. With the right choice of plants, you will create a bird haven.
Phil: for something different in zone 7 or above, I truly like Sasaella masamuneana 'Albostriata.'
Phil: what's your zone?
Phil: not all bamboo is invasive. Even the species that are, one can place galvanized root blocks to contain them.
beigledog: first what zone do you live in? If you don't know, then please tell me the general geographical area, if you don't want to reveal too much.
bagwa-john: Hi! We're here from the gumit and we're here to help. That was precious.
iamshazzam: huh? Come and let us slay the messenger and we will see what becomes of the message.
I have that poster membermarked and I could have sworn that he is a constitutionalist, like myself. The major parties are in bed together. We "hate" what recent administrations and Congresses have done to this nation to usurp The Constitution.
As a rule, when I see someone using your code words, I assume that that individual is a statist posing as a "conservative," Virtually all statists are Marxists.
Now, would you like to discuss things civilly or not?
Say what? Halliburton Will Move HQ to Dubai
By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer
2 hours ago
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Oil services giant Halliburton Co. will soon shift its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Mideast financial powerhouse of Dubai, chief executive Dave Lesar announced Sunday.
"Halliburton is opening its corporate headquarters in Dubai while maintaining a corporate office in Houston," spokeswoman Cathy Mann said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "The chairman, president and CEO will office from and be based in Dubai to run the company from the UAE."
Lesar, speaking at an energy conference in nearby Bahrain, said he will relocate to Dubai from Texas to oversee Halliburton's intensified focus on business in the Mideast and energy-hungry Asia, home to some of the world's most important oil and gas markets.
"As the CEO, I'm responsible for the global business of Halliburton in both hemispheres and I will continue to spend quite a bit of time in an airplane as I remain attentive to our customers, shareholders and employees around the world," Lesar said. "Yes, I will spend the majority of my time in Dubai."
Lesar's announcement appears to signal one of the highest-profile moves by a U.S. corporate leader to Dubai, an Arab boomtown where free-market capitalism has been paired with some of the world's most liberal tax, investment and residency laws.
"The eastern hemisphere is a market that is more heavily weighted toward oil exploration and production opportunities and growing our business here will bring more balance to Halliburton's overall portfolio," Lesar said.
In 2006, Halliburton _ once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney _ earned profits of $2.3 billion on revenues of $22.6 billion.
More than 38 percent of Halliburton's $13 billion oil field services revenue last year stemmed from sources in the eastern hemisphere, where the firm has 16,000 of its 45,000 employees.
Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive from 1995-2000 and the Bush administration has been accused of favoring the conglomerate with lucrative no-bid contracts in Iraq.
Federal investigators last month alleged Halliburton was responsible for $2.7 billion of the $10 billion in contractor waste and overcharging in Iraq.
Halliburton last month announced a 40-percent decline in fourth-quarter profit, despite heavy demand for its oil field equipment and personnel.
The Perfect Wal*Mart Greeter
A very loud, unattractive, mean-acting woman walks into Wal*Mart with her two kids in tow, screaming obscenities at them all the way through the entrance. She's dressed in dirty jeans, a greasy T-shirt with holes in it and wearing flip-flops exposing her cracked and filthy toenails. When she yells at the kids, she exposes her yellowed, crooked teeth with more than a few missing.
The Wal*Mart Greeter says, "Good morning and welcome to Wal-Mart. Nice children you've got there. Are they twins?"
The ugly woman stops screaming long enough to say, "Hell no they ain't! The oldest one, he's 9 and the younger one, she's 7. Why the Hell would you think they're twins? Do you really think they look alike?"
"No", replies the greeter, "I just couldn't believe someone had sex with you twice."
"It's not a matter of what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true." (Henry Kissinger)
Marshall Peters passed away 3 March 2007. He was one of the most effective patriots that I ever knew. He kept his ego outside and gave credit to The Lord in everything. His willingness to work with anyone to preserve our liberties was key in the Con-Con battle. He and two handful others worked the "Beau Geste" principle in activism.
He will be sorely missed. He was quite heartened as to the work of this board, in particular.
THE POWs, CIA and DRUGS
Uglier Truths Behind the Sarin Gas Stories
by Michael C. Ruppert
Did the CIA order the use of Sarin gas to kill American defectors in Southeast Asia? The answer to that question opens a black hole of ugly truths about U.S. foreign policy and covert operations. Those truths all lead to a central reality, which is that covert and paramilitary operations, as conducted by the U.S. Government, do not exist without drug trafficking. Equally tragic is the fact that drugs are a main reason why POWs didnÕt come home. The irony on the tragedy is that drugs were also used to fund several sabotaged covert missions to rescue them.
The recent CNN reports on Operation Tailwind (referenced in the last issue of From The Wilderness), their retraction and the object lessons made of CNN Producer April Oliver and Peter Arnett point to much uglier and deeper truths about CIA covert operations than the fact that CIA used nerve gas to kill defectors and deserters in Southeast Asia. As From The Wilderness will show, there is a high probability that Sarin gas was used not only against defectors, but also against unwilling prisoners of war whom the government had decided would be a major embarrassment if they came home alive. Testimony and evidence exists to show that Sarin was in Laos at the time and that it was used at or near known POW camps in Laos. If true, those facts would shed a whole new light on the CNN stories.
Those stories, flawed in their presentation, not only hinted at an ongoing feud between elements of the Navy and CIA, but came dangerously close to far more devastating truths about the CIA's involvement in the abandonment and murder of US servicemen left behind after Vietnam. Those truths undeniably lead back to the drug trade, the Central Intelligence Agency and the covert operatives who have destroyed American democracy.
How does one tie the convoluted pieces together in a coherent manner? And, doing that, how does one stomach wanton betrayal of loyal Americans and values which are the foundation of any government's legitimacy? A government derives its right to exist from its mandate to protect its own people, especially those who risk life to serve it. What legitimacy then, does a government have which betrays and then sentences to death those who stood in the font lines of its exercise of power?
First, let's address the issue of whether or not CIA, MACV-SOG and elements in the Pentagon wanted POW's dead or, at minimum, to ensure that they never came home?
Many of the ugliest truths about deliberate U.S. abandonment or ordered extermination of POWs are extremely well documented in Monika Jensen-Stevenson' s 1990 bestseller, Kiss The Boys Goodbye (Dutton). Stevenson, a former Emmy award winning Producer for CBS News' 60 Minutes, produced mountains of eyewitness statements, documents, and even admissions from Ronald Reagan and other White House officials as well as from intelligence experts in the Pentagon and the National Security Council showing that: the U.S. knowingly left POWs behind in Southeast Asia in 1973; the U.S. government sabotaged at least a half dozen rescue attempts with high probabilities for success; and that, the U.S. government ordered covert operatives to "liquidate" live POWs if sighted.
On Pages 318-323, Stevenson described a failed 1981 POW rescue mission involving the perennial "covert source" (and often hard to fathom) Scott Barnes who wrote a book about the mission entitled BOHICA (Bend Over Here It Comes Again). After passing polygraph and truth serum exams Barnes recounted how he had been issued atropine (nerve gas antidote) injectors as a prelude to entering areas in Laos where POW camps were known to exist. He also states that, once in the region, he was ordered to "liquidate the merchandise. " "Merchandise" was the code word for POWs. (NOTE: Atropine was issued to U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf war to counter anticipated Sarin attacks by Iraq).
If Barnes' statement was not enough, his return from the mission was immediately followed by the alleged violent suicide of Army chemical warfare and Sarin gas expert General Bobby Robinson. Local police doubted the suicide findings of the military.
What's more, Robinson was known to have been involved in moving Sarin supplies into the region at the time. Stevenson confirmed this. Sources postulated a cover story to Stevenson that Robinson had been planting Sarin gas to blame the Soviets for its use and thus motivate Congress to increase chemical warfare budgets. Such operations are not unusual in covert operations and are hardly grounds for a suicide. As one source put it to me. "It's much more likely that Robinson could have exposed the use of his Sarin to kill Americans and he had to be killed - especially if he found out what his precious chemical agents were used for."
Several covert warfare veterans have told me that they absolutely believe that Sarin was used under CIA orders against U.S. personnel using deep cover operatives planted in the "Studies and Observation Group" which had reverted to Pentagon control after a 1968 turf battle.
The turf battle may have put SOG back under nominal Pentagon control but it did not stop members of the shadow government and CIA from infiltrating to protect the deepest of dirty secrets. The OSS faction in CIA has no trouble "sheep dipping" people into the Pentagon or any other U.S. Government agency.
Much of the CNN story fell because the Pentagon found no records of Sarin use. Experts like Special Forces Captain John McCarthy, who ran covert ops for CIA while in Special Forces, were quick to point out that the records would all be at Langley and not at the DoD. A CNN electronic bulletin board with more than 2,500 angry responses from veterans pointing out flaws in the retractions was suddenly removed on July 16.
The can of worms was getting legs that wouldn't go away. It was starting to walk off into cyberspace.
How big was the POW problem? Informed sources place the number of American POW's not returned, in spite of Henry Kissinger's outright lies to the contrary, at near 2,500. Add to that the large number of defectors and deserters remaining in the region and the way these men sometimes became intermingled and we see the first part of the reasons for betrayal. McCarthy told From The Wilderness that in 1968 there were known to be some 3,000 deserters living in the Saigon suburb of Cholon alone. Estimates for the whole of Southeast Asia, including Thailand and Laos rose as high as 8,000 according to other sources. Numbers that high would again have brought the legitimacy of the government, and the military into question.
With the signing of the Paris Peace Accords Richard Nixon, in a secret agreement, promised the Vietnamese government some $4 billion in aid to guarantee the return of POW's left behind. This was after Kissinger's announcement that there were no more POW's left in Asia. With Watergate and the collapse of the Nixon Administration the money was never exchanged and the POW's went from desperate cause to a major potential embarrassment. So goes the cover story.
The best way to explain the connection with drug trafficking is to show the correlation in people and organizations between the two issues.
The names of some of those who have been connected to CIA drug trafficking by a multitude of sources are: Ted Shackley (CIA Station Chief in Laos and later Saigon), Tom Clines (Shackley's deputy), Richard Secord (Air Force/CIA liaison to Shackley after flying many missions as a fighter pilot), General Heinie Aderholt (Chief Air Operations strategist for CIA's undeclared war in Laos), Richard Armitage (former Navy officer and covert operations specialist charged with removing key materiel from Vietnam in 1975), Erich von Marbod (Defense Department), John Singlaub, William Casey, William Colby and Oliver North. Other key figures who turn up throwing monkey wrenches into POW rescue efforts who have not been connected to drugs but who turn up in key positions during Iran-Contra or the Bush Administration are Richard Allen (Reagan National Security Adviser who helped write the Paris Peace Accords), Colin Powell (Joint Chiefs Chairman and National Security Adviser to George Bush) and Col. Richard Childress, a National Security Council staffer under Ronald Reagan.
Key institutions connected to CIA drug trafficking include the Nugan-Hand bank, Hawaii investment firm BBRDW (Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dilingham and Wong) and last but not least, the CIA itself.
How do these connect to the POW's?
As Station Chief in Laos Ted Shackley ran the single largest covert operation in CIA's history, a war financed almost in its entirety on the proceeds of heroin. That war was fought almost exclusively by Hmong tribesmen and a Laotian rebel Army under the command of General Vang Pao, an opium warlord who derived his entire budget from heroin. Legion are the stories of CIA's involvement in drug trafficking to fund that war but one anecdote is telling. Former Air America pilot Bucky Blair, who flew supply missions to CIA's Site 85 in Laos, sitting on a remote mountain top, told me that when he flew in to make his drops he could "see the poppy fields stretching out for miles in all directions." Site 85 was overrun in 1968 and eleven live Americans were captured. Imagine what they might have told under the intense torture of Pathet Lao or North Vietnamese interrogators and how that could have been used as propaganda against an America already disintegrating under the war? Imagine what they might have told other POWs they met as they were moved from camp to camp?
Imagine the damage that might have been done in 1985-6 as some of the most intense rescue efforts were being mounted and as stories of CIA drug trafficking in Central America were starting to circulate in the press and Congress?
Did Air America brief Blair on the opium? "I was briefed one time and told that we were moving small amounts of opium for legitimate pharmaceutical uses," he answered. The world's supply of pharmaceutical heroin is less than five percent of total world production. Shackley's CIA pilots could have supplied the world for a year in about a month. This does not take into account the brave testimony of other Air America pilots like Tosh Plumley and Bo Abbott who have spoken out directly about Air America's direct transport of opium in vast quantities over a period of years.
Shackley and his deputy Clines turn up heavily again in Iran-Contra connected to Richard Secord and Ollie North. A former CIA officer told me in 1995 that Ollie North was leasing office space for his 1995 Senate run from Shackley's company, Research Associates International, in Rosslyn, Virginia.
Estimates of live POWs taken in the undeclared (illegal) war in Laos from POW researchers, families and military sources rise as high as 600 according to Stevenson.
In the Reagan Administration, Richard Armitage as an Assistant Secretary of Defense was the Pentagon's highest-ranking official in charge of covert warfare, arms shipments and POW affairs. Colin Powell, in 1995, referred to Armitage as his white son. Armitage was linked directly to CIA drug trafficking by, among others, the POW's champion, Ross Perot.
John Singlaub, who was quoted in the Sarin gas stories as saying he would have placed a high priority on killing POW's and defectors because they might have compromised military secrets, commanded MACV-SOG during Vietnam and would have had knowledge of SOG operations targeting Americans. He was also a major player in Iran-Contra, dispersing weapons purchased with drug money and engaging in fund raising activities intended to divert attention away from the NSC and Oliver North. I am saving North for last.
The documentation for the involvement of Richard Secord, in Iran-Contra is voluminous and his role in CIA operations in Laos is equally clear as documented by letters from POW family members requesting that Secord be queried about Site 85. Drugs were central to both wars.
General Heinie Aderholt is a mixed bag. While undeniably involved in Laos and as a low-profile operator in Iran-Contra, (connected to the illegal take-over of Bob Fletcher's Florida toy company to establish a front for arms shipments), Aderholt chose to oppose the official line and fight for missing POW's. He confirmed secret intelligence reports revealing the existence of live and obtainable POWs in the region to families and the press.
Bill Colby and Bill Casey need little clarification except to say the Bill Casey was DCI when many of the most intense rescue efforts came into being - and failed. And Colby, who ran the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, was DCI from 1973-6 and on the Board of Directors of the Nugan-Hand Bank.
The Nugan-Hand Bank and its successor firm BBRDW were high rolling investment-banking operations, both of which laundered covert drug profits for CIA. Some of those monies were allocated to POW rescue operations by military elements who refused to abandon their comrades. It is also well documented, however, that millions of dollars were collected by scam artists connected to these firms from hopeful POW families and supporters for rescues, which never took place. That money bought nice vacation homes and went to other unworthy causes.
If we examine the rescue side of the POW issue we come across men like retired Green Beret Lt. Colonel Bo Gritz, Ross Perot and the ubiquitous Oliver North. Gritz undertook two missions into Southeast Asia, both of which were connected in one way or another to the Army's highly secret Intelligence Support Activity (ISA). In Bo's book, Called To Serve (Lazarus, 1991) he talks about a period of time in 1979-80 when he was undercover at Hughes aircraft in Culver City as preparation for his first mission. So, coincidentally, was Oliver North - a fact which Bo neglected to mention. I think I know why. A retired Hughes executive phoned me in 1997 and described the office shared by Gritz and North as having a large picture of a Bengal Tiger on the wall with the caption, "If you can't sleep with the tigers, stay out of the den." He also stated, "You could see them out jogging together every day."
The ISA, which ran Gritz's mission, was created by Army General Richard Stillwell. It has been repeatedly linked to drug smuggling by sources including the daughter of Col. Albert Carone who served as Oliver North's bagman and bill-payer during the eighties. Records left behind after Carone's death in 1990 and eyewitness statements clearly indicate that Carone handled both drugs and drug money for CIA, North and the NSC. Carone's personal phone book contains the home addresses and telephone numbers of William Casey, Gambino crime boss Pauly Castellano and Stillwell. Further hard evidence, in the form of CIA and DIA cable traffic linking to drugs, ISA and DIA operations surfaces in Gary Webb's Dark Alliance (Seven Stories, 1998). These cables and law enforcement records tie Scott Weekly to the drug operations of Norwin Menses, Danillo Blandon and Ricky Ross. Weekly, a firearms master, is Gritz's self-described best friend and went on POW missions to Southeast Asia with Gritz. Coincidentally again, Weekly is an Annapolis classmate of Ollie North.
I have met Bo Gritz twice through my close friend, Mrs. Francis Gary (Sue) Powers. That Bo was, and remains, irrevocably committed to the cause of the POWs cannot be disputed. That Bo brought back utterly damning videotaped interviews with opium warlord Khun Sa in which Khun Sa described the roles of Shackley, Armitage, Clines, and the CIA in heroin trafficking also cannot be disputed. That Bo was a leader in exposing CIA's long standing proprietorship of the international drug trade also is beyond question. But these revelations, taken as a whole, leave wide open the likelihood that, with or without Gritz's knowledge, his own efforts to rescue POWs, as sponsored by elements of the Pentagon, were funded by drug profits. In 1980 the official U.S. Government policy was that cocaine was less harmful than marijuana.
[NOTE: I omit here, discussion of Gritz's alleged white supremacist or racist views because I have never heard him speak or seen him write such views. I will say that if Bo believes in or advocates white supremacy or racism in any form I disagree with him wholeheartedly. ]
Then there is Ross Perot. No man in American history has been more closely linked to the cause of the POW's and their families than the Texas billionaire. In late 1986, after funding one rescue mission and spending years as a thorn in the side of the Reagan Administration as he battled national security roadblocks and the outright deception which ultimately condemned the POW's to death, Ross Perot backed six-foot-four Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage into a corner and confronted him with not only the evidence of Armitage's lying about POW's but his direct involvement in Vietnamese gambling and CIA drug trafficking. After going to then Vice President George Bush, and being summarily dismissed, Perot's efforts leaked to the Boston Globe and TIME Magazine. Armitage then lost his almost certain appointment as Secretary of defense under President George Bush.
I have spoken to Perot twice and I served as the L.A. County Press Spokesman for his '92 campaign. While I, like many, was crushed by his conduct in pulling out of the race, I have absolutely no doubt that Ross Perot is absolutely unbending in his belief that illegal drugs cannot be used to serve a good purpose - anywhere, at any time.
That leaves us with Ollie.
During the Contra years Oliver North contracted with a small British Security firm, KMS, run by a former SAS Major named David Walker, to carry out commando raids against the Sandinistas. AP, the Washington Post and Congressional hearings all brought out the fact that Walker's company conducted a few marginally successful attacks and provided some air logistic support to the Contras. What was not reported was that North, according to sources I have found in the last three months, was using KMS to train mercenaries for a POW rescue mission inside the Soviet Union. That operation was funded with drugs and the payments were made in London, at the St. George Hotel and through channel island banks by Albert Carone. Sources in Britain and former members of U.S. Army Special Forces described to me how North's plan, which involved training of mercenaries in Morocco and the Ivory Coast, neared success as, "his people got close enough to touch" the skilled electronics warfare officers who had been shipped to Russia for money by Vietnam during the war. But, inexplicably, they never came out. The British source added that North, if he had succeeded, "would have become President of the United States."
The Sherlock Holmes clichŽ says, "Once you have eliminated the impossible, the improbable, no matter how unlikely, is the answer." The POWs remain, as unrequited ghosts, an embarrassment of astronomical dimension to the U.S. government. Any reporter asking a POW who, what, where, when and how would inevitably pull the covers on some of the U.S.'s dirtiest secrets. But more than that the question needs to be asked, "Did abandoning the POWs serve a purpose in U.S. foreign policy?" The answer is yes.
In 1993 a former Green Beret officer told me, at the point of tears, of how he had been ordered in 1968-9 to rendezvous with Russian Spetnatz commandos in the central highlands of Vietnam. There, under direct orders from the CIA, he exchanged millions of dollars in hard U.S. currency for Russian diamonds. This was at the height of the Vietnam War. Russia's economy (its ability to support North Vietnam) was on the brink of collapse. The hard U.S. currency salvaged Russia's ability to buy needed imports on world markets.
Bobby Garwood, the heroic Marine who remains the only POW ever to return alive, told debriefers at DIA of the amazement the North Vietnamese, struggling with a stone age economy, had at his ability to assemble a simple gasoline generator and the power of a light bulb. He stayed alive because he could fix American things.
Ted Shackley, in his book The Third Option lays out detailed blueprints for the survival of the military-security- industrial state by means of perpetuation of "low intensity" insurgent wars in which it might be necessary to arm both sides of a conflict to keep the military skills sharp and the war machine going. The fact that major U.S. industrialists armed and financed every enemy from Adolph Hitler, to Ho Chi Minh, to Sadam Hussein is well documented and beyond the scope of this article.
Covert operations in Southeast Asia continued unabated after the fall of Saigon in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. They were all financed by heroin, which remains the largest source of capital in the region. Vietnam is now emerging in a world capitalist economy as a consumer and provider of services. Is it coincidental that Henry Kissinger's associate and later Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger was on the first secret mission to explore rapprochement with Vietnam? Is it a coincidence that Col. Richard Childress, who stonewalled POW families for so long, became a Southeast Asian investment consultant in 1990? Is it a coincidence that President George Bush dispatched Richard Armitage to the former Soviet Union as a special economic adviser or that almost immediately after his arrival there was an explosion of drug use in Russia?
I think that the POWs were commodities who, as one CIA source put it to Stevenson, were "Chosen by God to stay" as a form of plausibly deniable economic assistance to enemies we needed to keep in place until other pieces of a larger plan were complete. That phase of the plan was complete in 1990 when Litton Chairman Roy Ash's prediction of one world under state capitalism would come into being. The Soviet Union was dead and Vietnam.was on its way to becoming a trading partner. Ash made that prediction in 1972.
So why kill them? If covert operatives could get close enough to kill POWs then men like Gritz or Jerry Daniels or Ross Perot could get close enough to rescue them. Defectors, enjoying freedom of movement could have surfaced at any time with POW stories as their imagined ticket back home. And that would have upset The Plan and revealed the U.S. government to be as morally bankrupt as the Third Reich.
© COPYRIGHT 1998 Michael C. Ruppert. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Permission to reprint or excerpt only if the following appears:
"Reprinted by permission, Michael C. Ruppert & From The Wilderness at www.copvcia. com."
Published 7-23-98
jawmoke: a good place to start:
http://www.amazon.com/Life-John-Birch-Robert-Welch/dp/0882791168
jawmoke: yes, as far as I know along with Western Islands Publishing.
jawmoke: I wrote JBS several times about the on-line The New American. It was pathetic. BTW their OKC bombing articles had some holes in it. They used to document every thing so well.
zoro5304: more so since the early 80's, when Congressman Larry McDonald was assassinated. It has become a wuss organization, for the most part.
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." Thomas Paine
echos: the whole left/right designations are really part of an artificial linear chart updated by Bertrand Russell to bring "liberal" to a centrist position via the espoused political philosophies of Thomas Jefferson.
It places communist on the far left, then socialist, with liberal in the middle, then capitalist and fascist to the right. This is one-dimensional forced and farced. It's certainly not even close to accurate in the real world. HOWEVER, THIS WHAT IS TAUGHT AS A POLITICAL SPECTRUM.
Maybe, people are waking up to Putin's Russia or Dubaya's Amerika?
A youtube clip that dumps on almost everyone:
arizona1: the insider role of 9/11 was a classic CIA job. They are masters of misinformation and disinformation. Buckle yourself in, there's turbulence ahead.
todd h: what? I thought you were helping? * smirk *
gp100357: this is who they really are. http://www.coe.int/
If you are not familiar with them, then do a bit of research. In Global Tyranny...Step by Step by William Jasper, there are side by side eerie pictures dealing with The COE. If you feel this didn't answer your question, then let me know.
gp100357: please explain yourself, as I get the feeling that you hate what they have been doing as much as me.
osprey: get back to us when you discover the difference between a chamber and a ventricle. And here's a help: please show us the human foot's own muscles: http://www.innerbody.com/text/musc64-new.html
All muscles in the foot originate at the knee joint.
Please get over your rants, it's very childish and indicative of a losing position.
Lukoil coming to your town, if not already there. Yeppers, keep believing that Big Business and Big Government are enemies or that Soviet communism is dead.
todd h: wow! I just posted that on IHub. We run in the same channels.
The case against Darwin
Posted: February 20, 2001
1:00 a.m. Eastern
by James Perloff
Mainstream Americans have been losing the values battle for many years. Presidential candidates who run on resolutely moral platforms earn only single digits in polls, and often the best we can hope for are "establishment Republicans," whose commitment to values rarely seems to go much beyond their speeches.
Like other Americans, I watched as one scandal after another broke about Bill Clinton over the past eight years. Each time, I said to myself, "This one will be his downfall." But the fall never came -- even though any one of those scandals would have ruined a president 40 years ago. Although the major media were sympathetic to Clinton and did their best to downplay the stories, it was evident that American culture has changed.
Clearly, before we can get the right kind of candidates elected, there must be a transformation in the hearts of the electorate.
Roots of decline
A glance at the rates of divorce, drug use and teen suicide tell us that America is in a serious moral decline. What happened at Columbine High School would have been unthinkable in the '50s, when no one dreamed that school entrances would ever require weapons detectors.
The question is: What is at the root of the decline? Many would say, "Well, we've lost our respect for traditional moral values." OK, where do "traditional moral values" come from? They come mostly from the Bible, which, at least until recently, had been Western culture's central guiding document.
So why have we lost our respect for the Bible? I believe it is no exaggeration to say that it was the widespread acceptance and teaching of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution as "fact."
Darwinism teaches that man came not from the hand of God, but from ape-like ancestors through chance mutations, and that life itself is not from God, but resulted from the chance concurrence of chemicals in an ancient ocean. When this is taught as fact in public schools, God and the Bible become irrelevant in the minds of many children -- and there begins the fall of morality. As a former atheist, I can certainly say it did for me!
Evolution was not heavily underscored in American public schools before the 1960s. But in 1959, the National Science Foundation, a federal agency, granted $7 million to the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, which began producing high school biology textbooks with a strong evolutionary slant. I wasn't raised religiously myself, but once sold on the "fact" of evolution, faith stood no chance with me. And there was a reason why my generation, the baby boomers, bought evolution so easily. Teen-agers usually aren't too hot about biblical morality to begin with. But here was teacher saying the Bible was an old myth. Well, to us that meant the Ten Commandments were a myth. We could make up our own rules! For rebellious teens, that message wasn't too hard to take.
"As were many persons from Alabama, I was a born-again Christian," wrote Harvard professor E.O. Wilson in a 1982 article for The Humanist. "When I was fifteen, I entered the Southern Baptist Church with great fervor and interest in the fundamentalist religion; I left at seventeen when I got to the University of Alabama and heard about evolutionary theory." That's a pretty good summary of what happened to the baby boom generation.
Historically, Darwinism has had some deadly effects, especially beyond our shores. Karl Marx said: "Darwin's book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history." Soviet dictator Josef Stalin murdered millions. In 1940, a book was published in Moscow entitled "Landmarks in the Life of Stalin." In it we read:
At a very early age, while still a pupil in the ecclesiastical school, Comrade Stalin developed a critical mind and revolutionary sentiments. He began to read Darwin and became an atheist.
G. Glurdjidze, a boyhood friend of Stalin's, relates:
"I began to speak of God. Joseph heard me out, and after a moment's silence, said:
"'You know, they are fooling us, there is no God. ...'
"I was astonished at these words. I had never heard anything like it before.
"'How can you say such things, Soso?' I exclaimed.
"'I'll lend you a book to read; it will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense,' Joseph said.
"'What book is that?' I enquired.
"'Darwin. You must read it,' Joseph impressed on me."
While Marx and Stalin saw the "struggle for existence" as between classes, Hitler saw it as between races, and sought to evolve a "master race." As German philosopher Erich Fromm observed, "If Hitler believed in anything at all, then it was in the laws of evolution which justified and sanctified his actions and especially his cruelties." Sir Arthur Keith, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, wrote in the 1940s: "The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution." In his demented way, Hitler was fulfilling this prediction Darwin made in his book, "The Descent of Man":
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. ... The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian [Aborigine] and the gorilla.
This is not in any way to imply that today's evolutionists are racists; and certainly, Hitler's atrocities would have revolted Charles Darwin. But there is no denying that the Darwinist worldview -- which sees man as an animal and God as an irrelevancy -- has had a profoundly negative social impact. Will Durant, author of "The Story of Civilization," was one of the preeminent historians of our time. "By offering evolution in place of God as a cause of history," he opined shortly before his death, "Darwin removed the theological basis of the moral code of Christendom. And the moral code that has no fear of God is very shaky. That's the condition we are in."
Survival of the evidence: Genetics
WorldNetDaily.com received some criticism when it started carrying my book, "Tornado in a Junkyard: The Relentless Myth of Darwinism." Some even considered it embarrassing for a top independent news website to "ally itself" with creation science. Shouldn't WorldNetDaily be busying itself with more important things, like exposing the latest Clinton scandal? And after all, isn't evolution a proven fact?
People who make such comments are unaware of two things: 1) that the current moral climate, which tolerated Bill Clinton, is largely rooted in Darwinism's denial of moral absolutes; and 2) that overwhelming evidence has arisen in recent years discrediting Darwin's theory.
"Overwhelming evidence"? Like what?
We'll start with genetics. Darwin's theory says fish evolved, through many intermediate steps, into human beings. The question thus arises: How did fish acquire the genes to become human beings? A creature cannot be anything physically its genes won't allow it to be.
Genetics was not developed as a science in Darwin's day, and he assumed that animals essentially had an unlimited capacity to adapt to environments -- unaware that no change could ever take place without the right genes being there.
To resolve this dilemma, modern evolutionists asserted that the fish's genes must have mutated into human genes over eons. Mutations, of course, are abrupt alterations in genes.
However, this hypothesis is no longer tenable. Dr. Lee Spetner, who taught information theory for a decade at Johns Hopkins University and the Weizman Institute, spent years studying mutations on a molecular level. He has written an important new book, "Not by Chance: Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution" In it, he writes, "In all the reading I've done in the life-sciences literature, I've never found a mutation that added information. … All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not increase it."
Why is this a problem for evolution? Because if Darwin's thesis is correct, and all life began as a single organism, then chance mutations must have produced nearly every feature of life on Earth, from the remarkable sonar system of the dolphin to the ingenious pacemaker and valves of the human heart. Yet mutations always delete -- never add -- information to the genetic code. And what are mutations actually observed to cause in human beings? Hemophilia. Sickle cell anemia. Cystic fibrosis. Down's Syndrome. Sterility. Death. The genetic code is designed for the perfect running of an organism -- mutations delete information from the code, causing defects.
To advance their view, evolutionists have long pointed out that mutations sometimes make bacteria resistant to antibiotics -- and so, the argument goes, "If mutations can make bacteria stronger, they must be able to do the same for other creatures." Dr. Spetner points out that this is based on a misunderstanding of antibiotic resistance. To destroy a bacterium, antibiotics like streptomycin attach to a constituent of the bacterial cell called ribosomes. Mutations sometimes cause a structural deformity in ribosomes. Since the antibiotic cannot connect with the misshapen ribosome, the bacterium is resistant. But even though this mutation turns out to be beneficial, it still constitutes a loss of genetic information, not a gain. No "evolution" has taken place; the bacteria are not "stronger." In fact, under normal conditions, with no antibiotic present, they are weaker than their nonmutated cousins.
Let's take an analogy. Suppose a country's dictator ordered dissidents to be rounded up and handcuffed. So the police were busy handcuffing dissidents. But one day, they ran into a man born deformed -- with no arms. One could conceivably say that, in this case, the man had an advantage over others, since he couldn't be handcuffed. But it certainly wouldn't represent an evolutionary advance.
Ernst Chain, who shared a Nobel Prize for his work in developing penicillin, obviously knew much about bacteria and antibiotics. "To postulate that the development and survival of the fittest is entirely a consequence of chance mutations, or even that nature carries out experiments by trial and error through mutations in order to create living systems better fitted to survive," he wrote, "seems to me a hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts."
Survival of the evidence: Biochemistry
Biochemistry is also giving Darwin problems. Michael Behe, biochemist at Lehigh University, has written a book entitled "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution." In this book, Behe describes how certain biochemical systems are so complex that they cannot have evolved step-by-step; he calls this "irreducible complexity."
For example, blood clotting swings into action when we get a cut. The formation of a blood clot is a complex, multi-step process that utilizes numerous proteins, many with no other function besides clotting. Each protein depends on an enzyme to activate it. So to paraphrase Behe very simply: What evolved first -- the protein or enzyme? Not the protein; it cannot function without the enzyme to switch it on. But why would nature evolve the activating enzyme first? Without the protein, it serves no purpose. Furthermore, if blood clotting had evolved step-by-step over eons, creatures would have bled to death before it was ever perfected. The system is irreducibly complex.
Behe demonstrates that other human biochemical systems, such as the immune system and vision, are also irreducibly complex -- they cannot have evolved step-by-step -- and give clear evidence that they resulted from intelligent design.
Even larger difficulties arise with the Darwinian idea of life's origin. Charles Darwin and his contemporaries thought cells were rather simple, and that it would thus be feasible for chemicals in a "primordial soup" to come together and form one. However, through advances in microbiology, we now know that even a simple cell contains enough information to fill a hundred million pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Cells consist essentially of proteins; one cell has thousands of proteins, and proteins are in turn made of smaller building blocks called amino acids. Normally, it takes chains of hundreds of amino acids to make up a protein, and these amino acids must be in precise sequence.
According to the evolutionary scenario, then, how did the first cell happen? Supposedly, amino acids formed in a primordial soup, and since millions of years were involved, eventually they came, by chance, into the correct sequences, and the first proteins were formed and hence the first cell.
But Sir Frances Crick, who shared the Nobel Prize for co-discovering the structure of DNA, has pointed out that that would be impossible. He notes in his 1981 book, "Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature," that the probability of getting just one protein by chance would be one in 10 to the power of 260 -- that's a one with 260 zeroes after it. To put this in perspective, mathematicians usually consider anything with odds worse than one in 10 to the power of 50 to be, for practical purposes, impossible. Thus we see that chance couldn't produce even one protein -- let alone the thousands of proteins a cell requires.
Furthermore, suppose there really were some basic organic compounds formed from the "primordial soup." If there was any free oxygen in the atmosphere, it would oxidize those compounds -- in other words, it would destroy them. To resolve this dilemma, evolutionists have long hypothesized that there was no free oxygen in the Earth's ancient atmosphere.
However, geologists have now examined the Earth's oldest rocks and have concluded that the early Earth was probably rich in oxygen. Still, let's say the evolutionists are right -- there was no free oxygen in the early Earth. Without oxygen, there would be no ozone layer, and without the ozone layer, we would receive a lethal dose of the sun's radiation in just 0.3 seconds. How could the fragile beginnings of life have survived in such an environment?
And cells need more than proteins -- they require the genetic code. The genetic code of a bacterium is far more complex than the codes for Window 98. Does anyone think the program for Windows 98 could have arisen by chance?
But wait! Cells need more than the genetic code. Like any language, it must be translated to be understood. Cells have devices that actually translate the genetic code. To believe in evolution, we must be believe that, by pure chance, the genetic code was created, and also, by pure chance, translation devices arose which took this meaningless code and translated it into something with meaning.
Evolutionists cannot argue that "natural selection would have improved the odds." Natural selection operates in living things -- here we are discussing dead chemicals that preceded life's beginning.
But let's say that somehow, by chance, a cell really formed in a primeval ocean, complete with all the proteins, amino acids, genetic code, translation devices, a cell membrane, etc. One would think that this little cell, floating on the waves, would have been very short-lived. But it must have been quite a cell -- because within its lifetime, it must have evolved the complete process of cellular reproduction. Otherwise, there never would have been another cell.
And where did sexual reproduction come from? Male and female reproductive systems are quite different. Why would nature evolve a male reproductive system? Until it was fully functional, it would serve no purpose -- and it would still serve no purpose unless there was, conveniently available, a female reproductive system -- which must also have arisen by chance.
Although we have touched on only a few of the problems of "chemical evolution," we can see that the hypothesis is, at every step, effectively impossible. Yet today, even 1st-grade children are taught the "fact" that life began in the ancient ocean as a single cell -- with the scientific obstacles rarely if ever mentioned.
Boning up on the facts
What about the fossil record? Does it document evolution? According to Darwinism, single-celled organisms eventually evolved into the first invertebrates (creatures with no backbones, such as jellyfish). But invertebrate fossils appear suddenly in the fossil record with no visible ancestors -- in the so-called "Cambrian explosion."
Supposedly invertebrates evolved into the first fish. But despite millions of fossils from both groups, transitional fossils linking them are missing.
Insects, rodents, bats, pterodactyls and numerous other life forms appear in the fossil record with no trace of fossils showing how they developed. As Gareth J. Nelson of the American Museum of Natural History pointed out, "It is a mistake to believe that even one fossil species or fossil 'group' can be demonstrated to have been ancestral to another."
Likewise, Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, wrote, "Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a paleontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. … I will lay it on the line -- there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument."
Many other paleontologists have made equally strong affirmations. Of course, this certainly does not mean that there are no transitional forms claimed today by evolutionists. But in a number of cases -- such as the Piltdown Man, coelacanth, and most recently, the Archaeoraptor -- cited transitional forms have turned out to be errors or even hoaxes.
The main point: If evolutionary theory is true, we should find the innumerable transitional forms Darwin predicted would be in the geologic record. We shouldn't find just a handful, but billions of them. Instead, the fossil record shows animals complete -- not in developmental stages -- the very first time they are seen. And this is just what we would expect if the Bible is right and God created animals whole.
Darwin's developing problem
Corroboration of this comes from yet another scientific sphere. Molecular biologist Michael Denton studied cellular structures from various animals on a molecular level, and found no evidence for the classic evolutionary sequence: fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal. In his book, "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis," Dr. Denton writes, "Instead of revealing a multitude of transitional forms through which the evolution of a cell might have occurred, molecular biology has served only to emphasize the enormity of the gap. … [N]o living system can be thought of as being primitive or ancestral with respect to any other system, nor is there the slightest empirical hint of an evolutionary sequence among all the incredibly diverse cells on earth."
Embryology is a field that evolutionists long used to make a case for Darwin's theory. Most of us have seen those pictures in biology textbooks of developing human embryos next to developing animal embryos, and the human embryos and animals look indistinguishable. This was said to demonstrate that we share a common ancestry with these animals and thus prove the theory of evolution.
These pictures were designed by German zoologist Ernst Haeckel. What few people know is that they were fakes. At Jena, the university where he taught, Haeckel was charged with fraud by five professors and convicted by a university court. His deceit was exposed in "Haeckel's Frauds and Forgeries" (1915), a book by J. Assmuth and Ernest R. Hull. They quoted 19 leading authorities of the day. Anatomist F. Keibel of Freiburg University said, "it clearly appears that Haeckel has in many cases freely invented embryos, or reproduced the illustrations given by others in a substantially changed form." Zoologist L. Rütimeyer of Basle University called his distorted drawings "a sin against scientific truthfulness."
In spite of his conviction for fraud, and in spite of the exposure, Western educators continued using Haeckel's drawings in biology textbooks as proof of the theory of evolution.
The matter has finally been settled by Dr. Michael Richardson, an embryologist at St. George's Medical School, London. He found there was no record that anyone ever actually checked Haeckel's claims by systematically comparing human and other fetuses during development. He assembled a scientific team that did just that -- photographing the growing embryos of 39 different species. In a 1997 interview in The Times of London, Dr. Richardson stated, "This is one of the worst cases of scientific fraud. It's shocking to find that somebody one thought was a great scientist was deliberately misleading. It makes me angry. … What he [Haeckel] did was to take a human embryo and copy it, pretending that the salamander and the pig and all the others looked the same at the same stage of development. They don't. … These are fakes."
And then there is common sense. In a popular evolutionary explanation, here's how reptiles evolved into birds: They wanted to eat flying insects that were out of reach. So the reptiles began leaping, and flapping their arms to get higher. Over millions of years, their limbs transformed into wings by increments, their tough reptilian scales gradually sprouting soft feathers.
But the theory suffers when scrutinized. According to natural selection, a physical trait is acquired because it enhances survival. Obviously, flight is beneficial, and one can certainly see how flying animals might survive better than those who couldn't, and thus natural selection would preserve them.
The problem is, wings would have no genuine survival value until they reached the point of flight. Birds' wings and feathers are perfectly designed instruments. Those with crippled or clipped wings cannot fly, and are bad candidates for survival. Likewise, the intermediate creature whose limb was half leg, half wing, would fare poorly -- it couldn't fly, nor walk well. Natural selection would eliminate it without a second thought.
Let's raise an even more fundamental question: Why aren't reptiles today developing feathers? Why aren't fish today growing little legs, trying to adapt to land? Shouldn't evolution be ongoing?
And why is man so incredibly different than all other animals? What animal can solve math equations? Write poetry? Laugh at jokes? Design computer software? How can we say that man is merely "one more animal, just more highly evolved"?
Truth decay
Americans adhering to traditional values continue to oppose many things -- abortion, pornography, the radical homosexual movement, etc. -- and are constantly losing ground. They are losing ground because these issues are peripheral. These movements do not budge because they are rooted in something deeper: disbelief in God, which leads to moral relativism on all issues. And unbelief is largely stemming from children being massively indoctrinated in the "fact" of evolution. Students are taught that they are simply animals, the products of chance mutations from an ancient slime -- which implies that life is meaningless.
"Why should we care about Clinton's scandals? After all, morality itself evolved by chance -- therefore, there are no moral truths."
But there are truths, and one of them is: Charles Darwin's theory is crumbling under contrary evidence. Americans need to be aware of this, because until the scientific case against Darwinism becomes widely known, our nation's political prospects, like its morality, will continue to decay.
James Perloff is the author of Tornado in a Junkyard: The Relentless Myth of Darwinism, available at WorldNetDaily's online store.
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21776
Rendering The CIA Useless
John Prados
February 16, 2007
John Prados is a senior fellow with the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. His current book is Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA.
This week the European Parliament finished its investigation into the CIA’s use of “extraordinary renditions” to kidnap European citizens and residents and subject them to torture and imprisonment without trial. The EU condemned both the practice and 14 member nations for complying with it, frequently under the direction of non-elected intelligence officials without knowledge or consent from government representatives, let alone the public.
Today an Italian court has decided to grant warrants to arrest 26 CIA personnel allegedly involved in the February 2003 kidnapping in Milan of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. The chief of the Italian military intelligence service and his deputy are defending themselves before courts in the case. German courts in Munich recently issued arrest warrants against 13 alleged CIA officers and contract employees in the January 2004 rendition of German citizen Khaled al-Masri. The German parliament is reviewing its intelligence service’s collaboration with the CIA. There is widespread outrage in both Europe and the Muslim world over these practices.
What is the Bush administration response? Shoot the messengers. General Michael V. Hayden, the current CIA director, was asked a few months ago about the agency’s foreign intelligence partnerships, given the mounting investigations of CIA activities. Without touching the controversial U.S. operations at all, his response was, “If an ally believes—fears—that we can’t keep such activities private, then that ally is going to be much more reluctant to deal with us.”
Much as in the bad old days, the CIA persists in the delusion that what people say—not what it does—is the issue. The agency is riding for a fall. Ham-handed American spooks—who depend, by their own admission, on foreign intelligence services in up to 90 percent of their operations—have muddied the waters even with our best friends. The controversial “rendition” program that is at the centerpiece of Bush counterterrorism efforts has swept up many innocents along with known terrorists and has sparked trouble for our allies.
In Canada, citizen Maher Arar was apprehended in October 2002 while making an airline connection in the U.S.—but then rendered to Syria by the CIA. The chief of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was forced to resign as a result of Canadian security’s contribution to this travesty. And the Swedish intelligence service was appalled at high-handed CIA behavior in snatching two Egyptian nationals in that country in December 2001.
Aside from the U.S. denials and wholesale evasions of responsibility—the Bush people have refused to take Maher Arar off the U.S. terrorist watch list (or even apologize), even though the man has been cleared by a massive royal commission investigation. The effect of these operations can only sour foreign cooperation with the CIA.
A response in the form of a new long-term development plan at the CIA is in progress. The plan has two elements relevant here: First, the agency intends to increase its capability to act unilaterally; second, the procedure for approving covert operations is to be modified. Although it is also true the CIA’s dependence on foreign services is excessive and should be reduced, unilateral efforts bear their own burdens (the Bay of Pigs was such an operation). More important is the Covert Action Review Group, the unit responsible for approving proposed activities, which in the new order would not be answerable to the chief, but to the CIA’s deputy director. Today that person would be Stephen R. Kappes, who, while he is not the top boss and is not invested with the chief’s private vision and knowledge, has experience picking up the pieces after covert disasters—unlike General Hayden, with no covert ops background whatever. Moreover, both Kappes and Hayden are heavily committed to a welter of review boards and progress management committees required by the new strategic development plan.
Above the level of the CIA, covert operations proposals are supposed to be approved by higher authorities, reviews that seem to be cursory in the Bush administration. Tyler Drumheller, former chief of the CIA’s European Division, recounts how he once had to brief Condoleezza Rice on a rendition operation. “Her chief concern,” Drumheller told Der Spiegel earlier this month , “was not whether it was the right thing to do, but what the president would think about it.” There were no deliberations on the value of the target or the potential flap that could be caused by such an intervention.
In addition, the head of the National Clandestine Service—the former CIA Directorate of Operations—which produces the proposals for covert operations, is the same cowboy who presided over the agency’s Counterterrorism Center at the height of the renditions program. It was on his watch that the Masri, Arar and Nasr affairs began. As for the action teams, Drumheller says they “are drawn from paramilitary officers who are brave and colorful ... If they didn’t do paramilitary actions for a living, they would probably be robbing banks.” These officers did courageous things in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they should not be expected to take a broad view of the missions being proposed. When these officers see themselves in danger of arrest in foreign lands, that, too, must have an impact.
The broad international support for the United States after 9/11 has evaporated, and the old Cold War attitudes in America that accepted the use of these techniques are long gone. The Bush administration’s covert operations have been as catastrophic as its conventional military campaign in Iraq, yet it is now posturing itself for unilateral action. This is a disaster waiting to happen. America needs a rational foreign policy. The country cannot be saved by a new posse of covert cowboys.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/16/rendering_the_cia_useless.php