Perle-y Wisdom OPEN THREAD

I keep getting Richard Perle confused with Douglas Feith.

Which one was it who was described as the “stupidest fuck” in the world?

But if Time Magazine were to publish a special edition honoring the “stupidest fuck” in the world by plastering their mug shot on the outside for all to see, would they have enough room on their front cover for all the contenders for “stupidest fuck” in the world in the Bush administration?

Alan Weisman is the author of the first biography of Richard Perle, “Prince of Darkness — Richard Perle: The Kingdom, the Power, and the End of Empire in America.”

And I’m getting Perle confused with Novak. Now, tell me again, which one is the *real* Prince of Darkness?

OMG! Farid Ghadry, the Syrian Chalabi wannabe!

You know what is really sad? Real reform was possible with Bashar Al Asad until….

Well, what’s the use?

Anyone have any good info on this:

CIA Operation “Pliers” Uncovered in Venezuela

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7475

Same stupid pet tricks. The world is wise to this now.

Keep up with the news here

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/

More on this nonsense

Risk of Deceptions in Venezuelan Referendum, CEPR Warns
November 28th 2007, by Venezuelanalysis.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. – There is a significant risk that fraudulent polls and other deceptions will be used to challenge the results of Venezuela’s referendum, if proposed constitutional reforms are approved this Sunday, according to Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) economist and Co-Director Mark Weisbrot.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/2916

I follow Syrian news here. Good information on Ghadry. People in Syria should run for their lives!!

http://joshualandis.com/blog/?p=202

The next step in Ghadry’s plan is to create change on the model of Iraq, where a safe zone for Kurds was carved out of the mainly Kurdish north following the 1991 Gulf War. Meanwhile, the opposition factions inside Syria are first working for a peaceful change or “a Jasmine revolution” against the Baath regime on the model of the Ukrainian “Orange Revolution” and the Czech “Velvet Revolution.” But both Ghadry and the internal dissidents lack a solid vision for a post-Assad Syria to avoid the fate of Iraq, which is still mired in factional fighting and is suffering from nonstop attacks by Islamic extremists and Hussein loyalists.

I have to add this. Continue to run for your lives if these people don’t follow Abe to indictment and jail.

Abramoff Supported Farid Ghadry as well as Militant Israeli Settlers

Farid Ghadry, it turns out, is attached to Jack Abramoff. Quotes below.

http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-1/syriablog/2006/01/abramoff-supported-farid-ghadry-as.htm

Why is anyone listening to Richard Perle anymore . Who anointed him the middle eastern God of all wisdom?Unless your bat shit crazy you don’t take advice from someone who proven was so wrong already. his track record is a shit sandwich.

My friend ( a former musician buddy of mine) is from Maricaibo Venezuela, he told me when i visited there 2 years back that the elections were totally rigged. He said that when he went to bed the night before Chavez was elected that Chavez was way behind in the polls. Something like %30 to %70 for the other candidate. When he woke up the world was upside down. he still doesn’t know how Chavez pulled off that win. he also told me that because their elections are electronic that anyone who voted against Chavez is on a electronic blacklist. Even if your highly qualified for a job and the guy next to you is an incompetent boob, because he voted the way chavez wanted, he’s is getting the job. So my friend said” i do not vote because i want to work and support myself”. What a messed up place.

As far as ever attacking that place to protect ourselves from Chavez, that is a joke. That place is just poor people and more poor people and in total disrepair. They need aid, not bombs.. it is definitely a country with tremendous un-tapped potential.

OPEN THREAD POST about the GOP debate last night. I actually listened to it, which surprised me since it’s pretty hard to take, but they didn’t get into bomb-bomb-bomb Iran much, for once.

MY favorite moment: When John McCain tore into Mitt Romney for his reprehensible answer on waterboarding. (Although I wish McCain had fought Bush on adding a signing statement to his senate torture bill.)

Here’s what MSNBC has to say about the debate:

*** A Big Night For Huckabee: At a debate where many voters were looking at him in a different light, thanks in large part to his rise in the polls and the dramatic increase in attention the press has given him, Huckabee delivered. Big time. Unlike previous debates, he didn’t open with a joke but instead sounded very presidential in his first answer. He had his share of one-liners — the best being the one about Jesus would never have run for higher office — but he seemed to balance the funny with more presidential rhetoric. Huckabee definitely stepped up his game last night. Surprisingly, he didn’t get attacked too much. Romney took a shot at him on immigration, but nothing too harsh (Iowa nice, right?). Most important for Huckabee, he’ll likely be declared the winner of this debate by every member of the Amtrak Corridor media elite, and that should get him some serious buzz. The question for the rest of the field: When will others begin to take him as a more serious threat? And how happy will Romney and Rudy be once December 12 passes and there aren’t anymore debates where Huckabee will once again overperform before Iowa?

*** Sanctuary Mansions? Giuliani was not at his best last night. He started off slow as his “sanctuary mansion” line, which was not delivered very well, seemed to fall flat. (How many viewers realized that Rudy was talking about illegal immigrants working on Romney’s yard? It took us a while to notice that’s what he was referring to.). Also, someone in his campaign should help him learn to give a MUCH shorter answer when talking about guns. The best part of Giuliani’s performance was his YouTube video; it was the funniest of the bunch.

*** Mitt The Lightning Rod: Romney had an uneven night as well. At some moments — like in his first exchange with Rudy over immigration — he was outstanding. And at other times — on the Confederate flag, black-on-black violence, and waterboarding — he was just awful. It was THAT uneven of a performance. He seems to be struggling with getting very aggressive against Giuliani and trying to softly jab at Huckabee. It’s not easy position. What also isn’t easy is how Romney seemed to take flak from all the other candidates. Rudy went after him on “sanctuary mansions”; McCain blasted him on torture; Fred went after him on his shifting abortion views; and Huck even whipped out the class card during their showdown over college scholarships for illegal immigrants. Mitt has certainly become a lightning rod in the GOP field, somewhat reminiscent to Dean in 2004. Can he withstand all the slings and arrows? And is Romney any current presidential candidate’s second choice for the White House
http://www.FirstRead.MSNBC.com/

How about a update on the proposed North American Union similar to the European Union and the new currency the amero…heard about it???

Read here…

http://www.infowars.com/articles/nwo/nau_media_hoax_attempts_hide_advance_of_nau.htm

I don’t understand Ashcroft’s offer. For one thing, if I were in charge of the “exercise,” I would refuse to waterboard a man who has a medical history of serious problems, and is his age (not sure how old he is, but he must be at least 60+ years old).

Besides, he already has a Justice Dept. attorney who had himself waterboarded to see if it’s torture. Oh, okay, now I get it, I think? — that attorney’s opinion wasn’t acceptable so he wants to do it to prove it’s not torture?

What do you think of Cofer Black advising Romney?
Romney’s answer was exactly that of the current AG when he testified during his confirmation. I relize Cofer Black has a long record in the CIA and State Dept. but I am curious wwho else is whispering in Romney’s ear.

Yes, that got my attention too. I wish Larry would comment on that since he knows about Cofer Black.

Rudy’s been attacked unfairly:

Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has called a story raising questions about the accounting of his security expenses while he was mayor of New York a “hit job.”

Late Wednesday, Politico.com reported city records show Giuliani billed New York City government offices for at least $34,000 in security and travel costs on trips to the Hamptons in his last year in office, with charges spread around departments under his control.

In its report, which Giuliani says might have been fueled by opposition research, Politico said it obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. CNN was also able to obtain the same records.

“I thought the way the story was presented was like a hit job,” Giuliani told CNN after the CNN/YouTube debate Wednesday night.

“Coming two hours before this debate, I kind of got the idea that it was not a legitimate story.” …

– Giuliani: Web site report a ‘hit job’

Those meanies! ‘course, I have a question as to why he billed the DISABILITY dept. for NYC for some of those security expenses. But, that’s just me — a meanie.

I finished reading Blackwater recently and from the notes I took, his exit from the Bush Admin came across as odd, having read accounts of him in other books and his interviews.

OH to be the Mayor of “The Naked City”. I remember being 16 floors up on Riverside + 83rd a month after
9/11 and smelling the acrid smoke blowing up the Hudson from ground 0. I will never forget it.

Hit job ? Very funny. I never saw him out at Hot Dog Beach.

Fascinating — if you have time, I’d be very interested in your sharing your notes or a quote from the book about Black.

By the way, are you referring to Jeremy Scahill’s book? What is your opinion of his book? I’m asking because I’ve long watched him on Democracy Now! and find him incredibly bright and doggedly hard-working, with amazing recall of details, but do have to acknowledge that he has a definite left political bent…. so, despite his leanings, do you think he accurately and fairly depicted Blackwater in his book?

Giuliani had to go five days more or less between weekend trysts, so he may have classified himself as handicapped. No one in the “handicapped”/“disabled” community would object, surely.

Hey, I’ll take that job as long as I am granted immunity just in case my lack of training in the, err, procedure should result in you know some kind of collateral damage. It would all just be pretend. I would pretend not to be torturing him and he would be pretend not to be tortured. Good, clean fun for everyone!

Yes, I am referring to Jeremy Scahill’s Blackwater and did not realize his definite left political bent until reading the Acknowledgements in the back. My notes mainly added to the “list” of “contractors” I have been collecting as part of a larger project. I’m getting to the point where the books I have read are becoming an echo chamber of one author quoting another. I would recommend reading it if only for the reference material he used.
I did not find it a “rant” and from the stand point of Constitutional lines of accountability, worth the money since Blackwater is a visible part of what the future portends.

Bills and laws concerning electronic and telephonic surveillance and IT-tooled investigations, along with the terms and acronyms that pertain, can be hard to keep unscrambled. I think that EFF’s Deeplinks Blog can help to sort some of it out—not that I expect to ever get beyond all the ambiguous and vague language.

I bought an acronym dictionary once…It was only good for about a year….long enough to BS my way through a phone interview.

Here is a pitch I got from Moveon…

Dear MoveOn member,

Have you seen the headlines? President Bush is quietly negotiating an agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to keep our troops there indefinitely–an agreement that could include permanent bases and a massive military presence for years!1 Bush is trying to tie the hands of the next administration to keep us in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

Of course this is a good point and I dutifully signed their petition.

I replied to them..

I have a question for you.

Why won’t you concentrate all your power on one issue and that is Impeachment of Cheney and Bush?

You are the strongest political force for change in this country and yet you continually dance around the only way we will ever get rid of all the bullshit that Bush/Cheney has done for the past 7 years. One word..

Impeachment.

An impeachment hearing in the House would make the Watergate hearings look like child’s play and so much shit would come out which even the deaf dumb and blind mainstream media would be hard pressed to ignore. Nancy Pelosi would become President and then and only then could you get some real things done.

All of the Presidential candidates except for Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul who don’t stand a chance unless you get behind one of them, will just be Bush lite or more of the same.

Please do not give me just a canned answer or if you do you will have one less member.

So I ask you members of the NQ community was I wasting my time?

Is impeachment not only “off the table” but is it something that shouldn’t even be discussed?

I sincerely appreciate all the subjects are discussed here but are we all just dancing around the campfire waiting until Hillary gets elected and then we can relax while she puts everything back to the way it was 7 years ago?
Can you make me believe that is what she will do?

Am I the only one who thinks that virtually everything that Bush/Cheney have done is not only wrong for this country but for the world and the future of the whole planet?

Maybe I am missing something here and that is a lot of you don’t believe we should roll everything back to the way it was before Nov 2000 and 9/11.

Could any of you mention just one thing that was done by Bush/Cheney that was good for the country and should be kept in place if the Democrats re-take the WH next year?

I will finish my rant with something that a lot of you are not going to like and it is partly why I have not blogged here for several weeks.

I get tired of hearing day after day about more bullshit that the Bushies are doing because its just plain depressing. I love this blog and the ppl on it, but
I don’t understand what can be accomplished by just hashing new stuff and rehashing old stuff they they are doing. Why don’t we use our community clout to create some change or at least dwell on some positive stuff a little more…hmmmm???

That would be Feith

Tommy Franks in Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack, in which Franks calls Feith “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.” ..

Here is a great article by Wayne Madsen with Perle, Feith and Stephen Cambone in it. Remember these quotes

Some quotes recently picked up from two and three-star generals and bird colonels: “I took an oath to the Constitution, not Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld;” “If the Pentagon were being overrun by the enemy and I had one bullet left, I’d use it on Stephen Cambone” (the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence); “Too bad they missed Wolfowitz!” (a reference to the October 2003 Iraqi insurgent bombing of the Al Rashid hotel in Baghdad where Wolfowitz was staying). And this from a National Guard Colonel, “The Governors are ready to revolt if any more of their Guardsmen are sent to Iraq.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen06042004.html

IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY FOR BLOWING THEIR JOBS. PICK A CRIME ANY CRIME THAT THEY HAVE COMMITTED.

I was visiting two of my daughters in Boulder Colorado and attended the Ashcroft talk. Marcy/EW was so kind to post what I reported on her incredibly informative website after I asked the question that Emptywheel/Marcy suggested I ask.(there were so many I would have like to ask)

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/11/i-was-under-se
d.html

After thoughts.

Thanks for the question Marcy. Mine were o.k. but yours was far more interesting. Of course I thought too late about how I should have immediately responded “but your wife was not under sedation” Or should have followed up with how James Comey described Ashcrofts amazing speech that night when he sat up and hammered both Gonzales and Card. Comey described that scene in great detail during his testimony. Ashcroft was not too sedated then.

You know I really expected more honesty out of Ashcroft based on what Comey had said about him. Instead Ashcroft did the Bush administration jig talking about how great they are, stirring up and how history will tell a different story (that is if Perle, Cheney,Feith and Bolton are writing the history books), he even tried to link 9/11 with the invasion of Iraq and really tried hard to stir up more fear.

I thought he might rise above party politics, but instead he looked foolish doing the Bush administration lying jig.

I really expected more honesty out of Ashcroft

sorry donovan but i suggest you question your friend a bit more closely. chavez won the election because the poor know he is their best chance … it is really quite simple, no matter what anti-progressive types will try to tell you. as for jobs, doesnt the same thing happen here in america … i refer to the gop wunderkids who were sent to rule iraq who were terribly unqualified. this is only one example of bush/gop patronage.

well stated susan but let me add this: if he “ashcroft” disagrees with the initial assessment on waterboarding why doesnt he go all out … have himself keelhauled … i mean after all waterboarding is just the modern version of this old practice.

Many people on this site express a similar concern as yours….sounding frustrated at the inability to make positive / corrective change happen. Apathy, ignorance and being single issued are not going to do it. (a general observation; not directed towards people at this site) Nor is sacrificing one’s self on the alter of principles. History is replete with those noble souls and to them we owe much.

If I hear one more candidate or constitutional scholar say this president has broken the law and not explain how a US person gets standing to file a bill of impeachment I am going to puke.

The question I have had on my mind for the last 8 years is how to get inside the “decision cycle” of this behemoth that has evolved over many decades and make a difference. I ask myself, “Others have made the ultimate sacrifice, what have I done?” It maybe in the end, that the only positive action I can take is to “pay it forward”. Until then I will continue to ask myself, “What have I not done?”

I watched the Republican debate with my 80 year old mother last night. She noticed that most of the You tube questions that made it through were from white males. They sure seemed to be.

We also watched Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman together. She (MaryAnn) mentioned that it seemed
that the campaign had all ready been going on for a year and that she was sick of it. She had noticed like I had that the MSM seems to not want to give John Edwards any air time. Chris Matthews barely ever mentions John Edwards. We both are asking who has John Edwards pissed off by not taking Pac money or something else.

Last night Keith Olberman was ripping on Giulianni for meeting with

Last night Olberman sounded like a neo-con calling Iranian President Ahmdinejad and Hamas full on terrorist.(has Olbermann always been on this bandwagon?) He sounded as if he came directly out of the Bush administration with his rant last night about who Giulianni has been hanging out with. Looking for the link to Olbermann’s focus on Guilianni last night

Here is the article that Olbermann was reporting about,

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0748,barrett,78478,6.html

but I am unable to find the clip of Olbermann ranting about Iranian President Ahmajinedad and Hamas. Keith Olbermanns rant could have been coming out of the mouths of John Bolton or Richard Perle last night.

so, despite his leanings, do you think he accurately and fairly depicted Blackwater in his book?

To be honest, I am not able to answer that with any degree of certainty

Ashcroft “I was under sedation”

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/11/i-was-under-sed.html

So what ever happenned to the investigation into Richard Perles “conflict of interest” issues. Why was it he stepped down.

http://home.earthlink.net/~platter/neo-conservatism/perle.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2091198/

RICHARD PERLE

Role In Going To War: Richard Perle, the so-called “Prince of Darkness,” was the chairman of Defense Policy Board during the run-up to the Iraq war. He suggested Iraq had a hand in 9-11. In 1996, he authored “Clean Break,” a paper that was co-signed by Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, and others that argued for regime change in Iraq. Shortly after the war began, Perle resigned from the Board because he came under fire for having relationships with businesses that stood to profit from the war. [Guardian, 9/3/02, 3/28/03; AFP, 8/9/02]

Where He Is Now: Currently, Perle is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he specializes in national security and defense issues. He has been investigated for ethical violations concerning war profiteering and other conflicts of interest. [Washington Post, 9/1/04]

Key Quote: “And a year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they’ve been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation.” [Perle, 9/22/03]

Perle still busy reshaping the middle east. These folks just do not care how many people are killed in while they continue to try to implement their regime change plans. Sick mother, father, children killers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4493638,00.html

Unfinished business
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/dailybriefing/story/0,12965,924728,00.html

Marcy Wheeler’s/EW’s latest
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/

Perle likes to think that he hasn’t been discredited, and disgraced, when in fact he has.

He is still plenty dangerous

John Deans latest. Important
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20071130.html

Perle and the rest of them, bu$hCo, will continue on in their right little universe of lies. They’ll NEVER admit otherwise. To do so would drive some to the logical reckoning for treason: suicide.

Naaah, they don’t have consciences.

So Rudy is a supporter of state sponsored boffing?

I’m glad Keith brought this up. He seems to be the only one.
Why isn’t anyone else talking about Rudy’s Saudi business partner who is ALLEGED to have helped KSM escape?
Hello? Anyone?

Oh Perle is dangerous alright – heck he has blood on his hands as it is. He’s a sociopath.

Shouldn’t there be a DC Player/Pundit license, which, like a driver’s license, can be suspended for a sufficient number of violations?