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The Smooth Criminal Transition from Bush/Cheney to Obama
by Larry Chin via quin - Global Research Saturday, Apr 4 2009, 6:55am
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Corrupt new administration deepens and expands systemic criminalization and war agenda
To sober, clear-eyed observers of history and political deception, the ascension of Barack Obama held the promise for unprecedented new dangers: a revitalized New World Order, led by the Anglo-American empire’s neoliberal criminal faction and an iconic, deceptive new facilitator; and a continuation of Bush/Cheney criminality and war, under smarter and much more effective management.
Now, just months into their tenure, the Barack Obama administration has more than fulfilled the promises he made to his elite constituency, deepening the mass destruction of Bush/Cheney, while charming its victims all over the world into enjoying their own demise.
'CHANGE'
The empire’s facilitator
Beneath his seemingly boundless charisma and charm, Barack Obama has always been an utterly ruthless politician. He has been a compromiser who has danced with the darkest forces of political and criminal power, while winning over common people; a consensus-abiding chameleon and a “pragmatist”. Obama is the true model of what George W. Bush only claimed to be: “a uniter, not a divider”.
The signs were clear from the early days of the presidential contest that Obama was, like every presidential candidate, a handpicked puppet. His cadre of national security and foreign policy advisors included the most notorious war criminals, intelligence/security “advisors” and corrupt think tank assets in the world. His campaign was bankrolled by Wall Street, and big corporations. His policy agenda was taken from the playbook of the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. Both neoliberal (and neocon) elite power and money coalesced behind Obama, as his political rivals dropped off.
Obama’s record in the US Senate was one of general complicity with Bush/Cheney and the status quo, including enthusiastic support of the consensus "war on terrorism" deception and the big 9/11 lie. Former US congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has described how, in her encounters with Obama, the senator from Illinois repeatedly refused to act in opposition to Bush/Cheney policies. Time again, during his days in the Senate, and throughout the presidential campaign, Obama has not only fully supported the Bush/Cheney administration on the Patriot Act, and the wholesale the militarization and criminalization of the United States. Immediate destabilization
The naïve, the hopeful and the ignorant have continued to harbor fantasies about “change”, even as Obama promptly destroyed every single hope, starting with the composition of his administration. He hand picked a transition team, and then a cabinet consisting entirely of legendary war criminals and corrupt elites, each more malodorous and corrupt than the next. From Iran-Contra participant Robert Gates and war criminal Richard Holbrooke, to Hillary Clinton and an economic advisory team comprised of the architects of Wall Street destruction, including Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
While the people on “Main Street” have continued to suffer a new Great Depression without real assistance from the Obama administration, the New World Order’s financial coffers continue to fill with stolen US taxpayer money. No relief for the impoverished, while the administration “bails out” banks and Wall Street, under such frauds as the "Public Private Partnership Program". Leaving the wolves in charge of the financial henhouse, Geithner and the Obama administration authorized Congress to toss out securities pricing standards on “toxic assets”. (Also see this op-ed, and the piece by Arthur Leavitt, former head of the SEC, and the Carlyle Group.) Essentially, the Obama administration is simply going to let the banks and financial institutions, that created the crisis with their massive Ponzi schemes, determine how they wish to price their own “toxic assets”.
This move, not surprisingly, sparked a huge Wall Street rally. Some even hailed it as the end of the crisis.
A criminal stimulus plan
Obama’s so-called stimulus package is yet another Trojan horse. As exhaustively and incisively detailed by Michel Chossudovsky in “ America's Fiscal Collapse”:
“This is a ‘War Budget’.The austerity measures hit all major federal spending programs with the exception of: 1. Defence and the Middle East War: 2. the Wall Street bank bailout, 3. Interest payments on a staggering public debt.
“The Obama stimulus program constitutes a continuation of the Bush administration's bank bailout packages. The proposed policy solution to the crisis becomes the cause, ultimately resulting in further real economy bankruptcies and a corresponding collapse of the standard of living of Americans.
“Both the Bush and Obama bank bailouts are intended to come to the rescue of troubled financial institutions, to ensure the payment of ‘inter-bank’ debt operations. In practice, large amounts of money transit through the banking system, from the banks to the hedge funds, to offshore banking havens and back to the banks.
“What we are dealing with is the fraudulent transfer and confiscation of lifelong savings and pension funds, the fraudulent appropriation of tax revenues to finance the bank bailouts, etc. To understand what has happened: follow the money trail of electronic transfers with a view to establishing where the money has gone.
“What is at stake is theoutright criminalization of the financial system: ‘financial theft’ on an unprecedented scale.
“The monetary system, which is integrated into the State budgetary process, has been destabilized.”
AIG: Obama strikes back for the empire
The Obama administration’s most telling criminal hand was revealed in its handling of American International Group (AIG), one of the largest beneficiary of the “bailout” frenzy. The Obama-AIG conspiracy, which continues to unfold, is also the least well understood.
While popular “outrage” has been channeled (by the corporate media, Obama, and Congress) to focus on the least important symptoms of the problem---bonuses paid to AIG executives---the greater crime that is AIG itself has gone unnoticed. As was the case with Enron, and with every action of Bush/Cheney, the AIG “outrage” is another “limited hangout” and cover-up.
AIG is not “too big to fail”. It is simply too important a repository of dirty money and dirty secrets to be exposed. Barack Obama and his administration know this.
AIG, one of the largest pools of investment capital on earth, is also one of the largest launderers of drug money and illegal funds for covert operations. Mike Ruppert’s investigation "AIG" ( From The Wilderness, August 14, 2001) exhaustively deconstructed AIG, exposing continuing connections to covert operations, narcotrafficking, money laundering, and AIG’s central role in the Wall Street/Washington power nexus.
AIG’s involvement to US covert operations stretches back to World War II, in its roots as C.V. Starr, the intelligence-related proprietary founded by OSS agent Cornelius Vander Starr. The Starr proprietary was connected to CIA/OSS figures Paul Helliwell and Tommy Corcoran. The notorious CIA fronts connected to C.V. Starr, including Civil Air Transport, Sea Supply, and Air America/Pacific Corp were exposed by Peter Dale Scott in his book Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina.
It is also a huge financial “pass-through”, whose counter-parties include Goldman Sachs and (not surprisingly) the same major financial institutions that are the top recipients of the US government’s TARP bailout.
It is no surprise that Barack Obama is the top recipient of AIG funds. AIG’s money also lines the pockets of other members of the Obama administration, and prominent members of Congress, including Senator Christopher Dodd, who has been accused of a sweetheart deal aiding AIG.
The man in the shadows
AIG’s former CEO, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg remains a pivotal figure connected to the institution, which he has fought against, sued, and publicly lambasts the officials in charge of his former company, his “baby”.
Greenberg is a member of world planning groups (Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission) and the Heritage Foundation, a former candidate for CIA director (1995). He is longtime friend of the Bush family. So well-connected is Greenberg that he was considered as a nominee for CIA director by Bill Clinton in 1995. The profile of Greenberg in the June 20, 2005 edition of Time magazine, "Down But Not Out", details Greenberg’s career as a government asset, foreign policy guru, and strongman.
In 2005, while still heading AIG, Greenberg was the target of multiple investigations into the orchestration of sham transactions, the inflation of reserves, illegal stock trades, deception, and book-cooking in an investigation by Eliot Spitzer, who declared that AIG was “a black box run with an iron fist by a CEO who did not tell the public the truth”. Spitzer’s probes of AIG, and other Wall Street malfeasance, was subsequently and conveniently stopped in its tracks, when Spitzer became entangled in a prostitution scandal. Although Greenberg was forced to resign as CEO and chairman of the AIG board, he remains to this day, the CEO of Starr International (SICO) and C.V. Starr, the private holding companies that control billions in AIG stock. It is the Starr companies constitute the conglomerate’s original roots as an intelligence-related proprietary. In other words, Greenberg remains in charge of the heart of AIG.
Was AIG manipulation behind Wall Street rally?
For the past few weeks, the US stock market has enjoyed a robust rally, despite otherwise nightmarish economic news. One of the factors that sparked this rally was the news that major banks such as Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America---banks that were reportedly on the verge of collapse, and subsequently major recipients of TARP bailout funds---posted profits in January and February 2009.
How was this possible?
A report by Tyler Durden, citing an anonymous insider trader involved with AIG trades, reveals that manipulation fraudulently transferred US taxpayer money to AIG’s counter-parties---the top banks and financial institutions---with AIG as the “pass-through”. The profit report sparked a market rally that comes at the expense of US taxpayers.
The complete report (thanks to Jenna and the Mike Ruppert Blogspot for this find) is damning and startling:
Excerpt:
“AIG, knowing it would need to ask for more capital from Treasury imminently, decided to throw in the towel, and gifted major bank counter-parties with trades which were egregiously profitable to the banks, and even more egregiously money-losing to the U.S. taxpapers, who had to dump more and more cash into AIG, without having the U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner disclose the real extent of this---for lack of a better word---fraudulent scam.
“…What this all means is that the statements by major banks, i.e. JP Morgan Chase, Citi, and BofA regarding abnormal profitability in January and February were true, however these profits were a) one-time in nature due to wholesale unwinds of AIG portfolios, b)entirely at the expense of AIG, and thus taxpayers, c) executed with Tim Geithner’s (and thus the administration’s) full knowledge and intent, d) were basically a transfer of money from taxpayers to banks (in yet another form) using AIG as an intermediary [my emphasis-LC].
“For banks to proclaim their profitability in January and February is about as close to criminal hypocrisy as is possible. And again, the taxpayers fund this “one time profit”, which causes a market rally, thus allowing the banks to promptly turn around and start selling more expensive equity…also funded by taxpayers’ money flows into the market. If the administration is truly aware of these events (and if Zero Hedge [the name of the author-LC] knows about it, it is safe to say Tim Geithner also got the memo), then the potential fallout would be staggering once this information makes the light of day….
“This wholesale manipulation of markets, investors and taxpayers has gone on long enough.”
Bush/Cheney’s war is also Obama’s war
On March 27, 2009, Obama launched his “new strategy for Afghanistan”. This new strategy is a continuation and expansion of the Bush/Cheney war plan, hatched in the wake of the false flag operation of 9/11, utilizing the identical “war on terrorism” and 9/11 lies as justification.
As articulated by Obama:
“I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to prevent their return to either country in the future. That is a cause that could not be more just.
“I remind everybody, the United States did not choose to fight a war in Afghanistan. Nearly 3,000 of our people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001, for doing nothing more than going about their daily lives.”
The consensus "Al-Qaeda" deception is not only alive and well under Obama, it is now the justification for a surge of 21,000 US troops into Afghanistan, massive covert operations throughout Central Asia and the Middle East, and an even more aggressive “war on terrorism”. This is the conquest of the “Grand Chessboard” that the Anglo-American elites wanted to execute after 9/11, but “squandered” due to the Bush/Cheney administration’s “fumble” in Iraq.
Obama, who is making the rounds with the G-20 leadership as this report goes to press, will not fumble with a war that is consistent with the “war on terrorism” goals that he has articulated for years, and promised to deliver (to his New World Order “bosses”) throughout his campaign.
“9/11 constitutes for Obama the main justification for waging a humanitarian war in the Middle East and Central Asia. In this regard, his position does not differ from that of the Bush administration.
“Withdraw from Iraq, but remain in Afghanistan. Confront Iran, challenge Russia…Apart from the rhetoric of ‘bringing the troops home’ from war torn Iraq, which may or may not be carried out, what distinguishes the Democrats from the Republicans?
“A more articulate, knowledgeable and charismatic President?
“A more dignified and diplomatic approach to US foreign policy?
As a pacifying and unifying icon, Obama was positioned to perpetuate the cover-up of the American Empire’s crimes, and retrieve the “squandered opportunity” presented by the false-flag operation of 9/11: a world united behind imperial war.
“An opportunity to the US ruling elite to ‘present a different face to the world that could revive illusions to its democratic pretensions, not only internationally but within the United States as well.’…
“A spurious and counterfeit ‘humanitarian’ approach to Empire, which serves to mask the truth and gain popular support.
“A less reckless Commander in Chief, who has an understanding of geopolitics and is capable of taking foreign policy decisions. A more carefully thought out military agenda than that experienced during the Bush administration? But no substantive shift in direction.
“A means to quelling mounting dissent and opposition to the ruling corporate establishment by providing the illusion that the Democrats constitute a Real Alternative.
“A means to sustaining the illusion that African-Americans can move up the social ladder in America and that their fundamental rights are being upheld.
“A means to undermining real progressive movements by further embedding civil society organizations, trade unions and grass roots organizations, not to mention “Leftist” intellectuals into the realm of the Democratic Party.
“A distraction from the extensive war crimes committed under successive US administrations.
“A ‘human face’ to war and globalization?”
A call to resist
“…the arrival of Obama as the new imperial figurehead of the Anglo-American empire is not a victory of, or for, the people. It will not signify a dramatic upheaval, in any way, and by no means is any sort of revolution at hand. This election was a necessary rotation of management, scripted at the highest levels of the Anglo-American elite.
“The “change” that a Barack Obama presidency will bring to America and the world will be one of style, not substance: a return to the centrist corporate globalism of the Clinton and Carter eras, complete with regurgitated Democratic Party elites from those administrations, and new neoliberal politicians touting similar ideologies.
“…The velvet gloves will be slipped back over the iron fists, but the fists will still be wielded aggressively. Within months, the global conquest that Bush-Cheney started will resume under the vastly more convincing and adored Obama, who has consistently stated his intention to intensify the war in Afghanistan, and “kill ‘terrorists’” across the Middle East.”
For those who have spent the past eight hellish years opposing and resisting the crimes of Bush/Cheney, prepare yourselves for worse: the “friendliest” fascism, and the most dangerous stealth messenger in history.
© 2009 Larry Chin, Global Research
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Cowardice in the Time of Torture
by Ray McGovern via reed - Consortium News Sunday, Apr 5 2009, 10:25pm
I used to take a certain pride by association with prominent Bronxites who have “made it.” Cancel that for Attorney General Eric Holder and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
You might think that as African-Americans, they would be especially outraged by torture, given what blacks have suffered at the hands of white torturers in this country and abroad.
Why is it that they seem to value more their admittance into a privileged white-dominated ruling class than doing the right thing? How else to explain their stunning reluctance to hold torturers accountable and thus remove the stain of torture from our nation’s soul and reputation?
One might say that Attorney General Holder is proving himself to be part of that “nation of cowards” that he called the United States in a different context, i.e. our unwillingness to address the issue of race. What about when the victims of torture are Muslims? Where’s Holder’s courage then?
Surely, I was not the only one stunned by former Vice President Dick Cheney’s public admission that he helped authorize waterboarding of detainees. But, on reflection, there seems to have been a method to his madness; and, so far at least, the method seems to be working.
Have Holder and Colin Powell forgotten from their days growing up in the Bronx the typical reaction of bullies when caught in the act? “Okay, so waddaya gonna do ‘bout it!” It was an attempt at intimidation, and it was generally effective with those who felt not quite up to the challenge.
Looks very much as if Cheney sized up Holder correctly. During his confirmation hearings, Holder manfully agreed with Sen. Patrick Leahy that waterboarding, which subjects a person to the panicked gag reflex of drowning, is torture.
But Holder has been out to lunch since then, no doubt leaving Cheney and his torture-friendly friends smirking at having been correct in taking the measure of the new Attorney General. Call it chutzpah, intimidation, bullying — whatever; it does seem to be working.
Cheney endorsing waterboarding; Holder labeling it torture; and — Hello? Anyone home? Deafening silence.
Never mind that Holder, like President Barack Obama, took a solemn oath to faithfully execute the laws of the land. Why are they still afraid of Dick Cheney, whom even the neo-con editors of the Washington Post in 2005 branded “Vice President for Torture?”
Ain’t Misbehavin’
Holder seems to be taking his cue from the pitiable Colin Powell, now traversing the country giving lucrative speeches on leadership. Powell knew he was welcome into the club, or in this case the White House, only as long as he toed the line and was willing to offer up what was left of his reputation to the Bush/Cheney war effort.
True, in one brief spurt of behind-the-scenes assertiveness, Powell insisted that arch-prevaricator (and former CIA director) George Tenet sit behind him during Powell’s unforgettable/unforgivable speech at the UN on Feb. 5, 2003.
Could he have been so unaware as to think this might somehow shame the shameless Tenet into coming clean with the intelligence?
No way; and he knew it. Powell had already confided to then-British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that the case against Iraq was what in the Bronx we call a “crock.”
I know Powell. In the early 1980s, when he wore but one star as military assistant to the Secretary of Defense – and I was a CIA intelligence briefer – I used to do him the courtesy of pre-briefing him, to the extent I could, on what I was about to discuss during my early-morning one-on-ones with his boss, Casper Weinberger. I found Powell to be anything but naïve.
He and I had a good bit in common — growing up at about the same time a mile from each other in the Bronx, “Distinguished Military Graduates” commissioned via Army R.O.T.C. — he from City College in 1958, I from Fordham in 1961.
Initially, I was blissfully unaware of the many times he had compromised himself — in doing Weinberger’s bidding on Iran-Contra, for example. And so in 1989, I took a certain pride by association when Powell made it to the very top as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
That pride dissipated quickly as I watched Powell bend to those who were bent on launching a war of aggression on Iraq. Republican elder statesman James Baker, who was secretary of state under George H.W. Bush, has referred to Powell as the one person who could have stopped that war. Baker is right.
Caving on Torture
More to the point, Colin Powell betrayed the U.S. Army and the nation on the issue of torture.
When he got a whiff of the tortured reasoning for torture – being urged on the President by the likes of Alberto Gonzales and David Addington to somehow make torture “legal” – Powell took the coward’s way out.
He had his lawyer get in touch with the Mafia-type lawyers in the White House to ask them please, could they please ask the President to reconsider his decision to exempt al-Qaeda and the Taliban from the protections of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
Powell’s gentle demurral appears in a MEMORANUM FOR THE PRESIDENT, dated Jan. 25, 2002, drafted by Addington but signed by Gonzales. They included Powell’s argument in a paragraph at the bottom of a list of “negative” consequences of ignoring Geneva:
“A determination that Geneva does not apply to al Qaeda and the Taliban could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries.”
Powell got that right. Too bad he did not have the courage of his convictions. Too bad he lacked the guts to confront the President directly. Too bad, for he is perhaps the one person who could have stopped the torture and the debasement of the Army to which he owed so much.
Rather than put into play the wide respect he still enjoyed, in order to stop a war he knew to be illegal, Powell decided to trade in that respect for the equivalent of 30 pieces of silver.
As the Executive Summary of the Senate Armed Services Committee report on torture, released on Dec. 12, 2008, indicates, President Bush threw in his lot with the early opinions of Addington and Gonzales.
(What most folks don’t realize is that this was long before everyone’s favorite bête noire John Yoo and associates served up their ex post facto “justifications.”)
Incorporating Addington’s language, the President signed an executive order on Feb. 7 that, in the words of the Senate committee, “opened the door” to torture.
Powell not only acquiesced in this but also allowed himself to be sucked into a series of discussions in the White House Situation Room regarding which torture techniques might be most appropriate to apply to which “high-value” detainee.
Those are the sessions that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft referred to in commenting, “history will not be kind” to us.
What brings this painful flashback to mind is Rachel Maddow’s interview with Colin Powell on April 2. Not surprisingly, he danced around her questions about the White House seminars on torture. Most telling of all, however, Powell could not bring himself to admit, even now, that waterboarding is torture.
Doubling Down
On April 3, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, the fabulous fabricator of the fabled Saddam-al-Qaeda connection, upped the ante in the “so-wattaya-gonna-do-‘bout-it” challenge, and held up to ridicule the timidity of Holder and the President.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Feith pretended to be shocked at the temerity of a Spanish court that seems to be on the verge of bringing criminal charges against Feith, Gonzales, Addington, John Yoo, and two other lawyers who served up the desired opinions on how the White House could make an end-run around domestic and international law and approve the systematic torture of detainees.
Disregarding the provisions of international law that clearly do apply, Feith makes liberal use of reductio ad absurdum to “prove” that Spain has no jurisdiction to put Americans on trial for torture.
More important, Feith is so cocksure of himself that he throws down the gauntlet at the feet of the new administration: “If President Barack Obama and the prosecutors see a crime to be prosecuted, they can act.”
What, I wonder, gives Feith such confidence that he will not one day rue having said that? Has it been his watching of a long line of timid officials – both Republicans and Democrats – who lack the courage of their convictions?
Clearly, the Cheneys and Feiths of this world are betting on Obama being cut of the same cloth. The President will prove them right if it turns out that his oft-repeated “No one is above the law” proves to be just rhetoric.
And it will remain just rhetoric, if Obama delays much longer in ordering the reluctant Holder to appoint a nonpartisan, independent special prosecutor to bring the torturers to justice and end this shameful chapter in American history once and for all.
Author retains copyright.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/040509c.html
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