BY TOM TOMORROW
In a must-read, Dean Baker explains here how the Federal Reserve may have just handed over hundreds of billions of government money to America’s richest banks. He also examines the reasons this is a bad idea, both the obvious and the non-obvious.
This is actually important. It would be nice to live in a country where we were capable of paying attention to important things.
An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.
The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam’s regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.
What the article doesn’t mention is that apparently they also found no evidence that Saddam’s regime attempted to kill George H.W. Bush in Kuwait in 1993. Nor has there been any mention of such evidence anywhere else since the invasion. All this despite the fact that we can be certain if the administration had found it, they would have let us know loudly and often.
Meanwhile, all of Washington has become discreetly mum about this, even though they were yammering about it constantly from fall, 2002 through spring, 2003. It’s almost as though none of it ever happened.
You may have heard the new Esquire article about Admiral William Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command, presents him as a hero for standing up to Bush’s desire to attack Iran. Chris Floyd points out the portrayal of Fallon’s perspective is actually a little more complicated:
Fallon himself has long denied the story which had him declaring, upon taking over Central Command, that a war on Iran “isn’t going to happen on my watch.” And in fact, the article itself depicts Fallon’s true attitude toward the idea of an attack on Iran right up front, in his own words. After noting Fallon’s concerns about focusing too much on Iran to the exclusion of the other “pots boiling over” in the region, Barnett nevertheless keeps pressing the point the point and asks: “And if it comes to war?” Fallon replies with stark, brutal clarity:
“Get serious,” the admiral says. “These guys are ants. When the time comes, you crush them.”
The article makes clear that Fallon’s main concerns about a war with Iran are, as noted, about tactics and timing: Sure, when the time comes – no shuffling on that point – we’ll crush these subhumans like the insects they are; but we’ve already got a lot on our plate at the moment, so why not hold off as long as we can?
Above is a picture of Nguyen Cao Ky huddling with Lyndon Johnson. Ky was one of our main Vietnamese lackeys during the midsixties, first as Air Marshall and then as Prime Minister.
Therefore, from the perspective of the U.S. media, he was someone to gush over. This CBS News segment appears in an obscure documentary about I.F. Stone
CRONKITE: Air Force Marshall Ky is a dynamic man—at 34, said to be one of the best public speakers in Vietnam. He gets to work around 7:30 in the morning, works late at night. He has broken the habits of siestas, there is none here. He doesn’t even go out to lunch, but like an American businessman, he eats off the corner of his desk. Ky is a hero to the Vietnamese people. We had an opportunity to talk to him today.
KY: We need more American troops, allied troops.
From the same period, here’s General Ky speaking in an interview with the London Sunday Mirror:
KY: People ask me who my heroes are. I have only one—Hitler. I admire Hitler because he pulled his country together when it was in a terrible state.
God damn that god damn liberal media!
In any case, this is why I say that Ahmadinejad’s statements about wiping Israel off the map (whether he said exactly that or not) have nothing to do with our policy toward Iran. All that matters is whether you take orders. If you do, you’re free to say or do anything you want. Grow a Hitler ‘stache while eating Hitler-flavored ice cream and screaming “I WANT TO BE THE HITLERIST HITLER OF ALL” and it’s perfectly okay. Knock yourself out.
(The Ky-Hitler quote appears in the documentary, but I was also reminded of it by Rick Perlstein.)
Who is Penny Pritzker?
Pritzker is the national finance chair of Obama’s presidential campaign. She’s from one of America’s richest families, the founders of the Hyatt hotel chain, and is herself the 135th richest person in America.
She also has an ugly history as the former chair of Superior Bank in Illinois, which (1) was created thanks to a giant S&L bailout by the government; (2) then helped invent the securitization of subprime mortgages; and (3) then collapsed in 2001 thanks to massive financial chicanery.
Interestingly, she lives in a fancy Chicago neighborhood just a short stroll away from Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago professor who’s one of Obama’s main economic advisors. It’s really quite wonderful how Goolsbee can maintain his deep admiration for the Free Market while living a few blocks away from billionaires who use massive government power to create and subsidize their businesses.
Background:
Dennis Berstein: “Obama’s Sub-Prime Conflict”
Earl Ofari Hutchinson: “If Obama’s For Real on the Sub-Prime Crisis, He’ll Dump His Campaign Finance Chair”
Bob Feldman: “Obama Campaign’s Pritzker/Superior Bank S&L Scandal Link?”
Flashpoints Radio: “An investigative report into Penny Pritzker”