Another WSJ Reich Hack Gets 'Bay of Pigs' Wrong As She Attacks Bernie's Socialism

Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady I sometimes read on Mondays, if I've nothing else pressing.  I read her usually lurid, anti-socialist tirades to see how far off the beam she is on a given day. That is,  in covering Latin American and Caribbean politics, issues.  Yesterday, her piece 'Bernie Rewrites Cuban History' (p. A15) caught my attention because I wondered how another hack from the WSJ's stable of  neoliberal, capitalist defenders (including Holman Jenkins Jr., Dan Henninger, William McGurn et al) would respond to Bernie Sanders' rise.

All I will say here is that her screed is every bit the indoctrination twaddle and propaganda she accuses Fidel Castro and the Cuban government of.  (A gov't by the way, which was among the few to dispatch medical specialists to Barbados when it desperately needed help in the 70s and 80s owing to a dire shortage of health care workers and medical specialists.)

It was also interesting reading her agitprop how - while she indulged in all the Castro regime's transgressions -  she mentioned none of the atrocities of the U.S.   For example, the well-documented Operation Northwoods plot - conducted outside JFK's purview - to foment a full scale war and invasion of the island. We actually have the documents that confirm  the extent of it, e.g.                                                           


In Operation Northwoods the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military planned a campaign of terror, to include the sinking of refugee boats (carrying Cuban refugees) on the high seas, as well as the killing of innocent citizens on American cities’ streets, plus random bombings carried out in Washington, DC, Miami and other places. What was the  motivation? Author James Bamford shows (Body Of Secrets, pp. 82-83) it was to incite an invasion and war against Cuba and enable the U.S. to invade and overthrow Fidel Castro.

But the documents to support suspicions of this (failed) conspiracy were only released years later – though many smelled a ‘rat’. When I first heard of Northwoods, I had trouble processing how any U.S. government agency or entity could remotely conceive of such foul deeds, far less carry them out. Then I quickly recalled the blowing up of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 over Barbados, on October 6. 1976 by Luis Posada, Freddie Lugo and other renegades sponsored in the extremist Alpha 66 enclave by the CIA.

 As former federal agents Warren Hinckle and William Turner noted in their excellent book, ‘Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK’ (p. 384, Thunders Mouth Press, 1992):

“Two men who had deplaned in Barbados, Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo Lusano, were interrogated after joking about the bombing in a Barbados taxicab. The two were employed by Luis Posada…and confessed that Posada and (Orlando) Bosch had supplied them with two bombs, which they planted on the Cubana aircraft.”

Luis Posada  Carriles - state-sponsored  (by the U.S.) Venezuealan terrorist, who was allowed U.S. sanctuary by George Bush Jr. and never extradited for trial in Venezuela.

According to a secret CIA cable dated Oct. 14, 1976, intelligence sources in Venezuela relayed information about the Cubana Airlines Flt. 455 bombing that tied in  Alpha 66 terrorist Orlando Bosch, who had been visiting Venezuela, and Posada, who then served as a senior officer in Venezuela’s intelligence agency, DISIP. On his arrival, Bosch was met by a CIA operative and Posada, according to the report. Later, a fundraising dinner was held in Bosch’s honor. “A few days following the fund-raising dinner, Posada was overheard to say that, ‘we are going to hit a Cuban airplane,’ and that ‘Orlando has the details,’” the CIA report said.

Those of us living in Barbados at the time had no remote notion of the bloody act to come, nor of the U.S. complicity in it, or that the same right wing Cuban renegades - whose associates conspired in the JFK assassination -  were part of it.  The CIA Report went on to read:

“Following the 6 October [1976] Cubana Airline crash off the coast of Barbados, Bosch, Garcia and Posada agreed that it would be best for Bosch to leave Venezuela. Therefore, on 9 October, Posada and Garcia escorted Bosch to the Colombian border, where he crossed into Colombian territory.”

Meanwhile, Venezuelan police began rounding up suspects. Two right wing Cuban exiles, Hernan Ricardo Lusano and Freddy Lugo, who got off the Cubana plane (Flight 455) in Barbados, confessed that they had planted the bomb and they named Bosch and Posada as the architects of the attack. A search of Posada’s apartment in Venezuela turned up bomb-making instructions, some materials as well as Cubana Airlines timetables and other incriminating documents.

Posada and Bosch were charged in Venezuela for the Cubana Airlines bombing, but the case soon became a political tug-of-war, since the suspects were in possession of sensitive Venezuelan government secrets that could embarrass President Andres Perez. Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison where he was awaiting trial in 1985. In his autobiography, Posada thanked Miami-based Cuban activist Jorge Mas Canosa for the $25,000 that was used to bribe guards who allowed Posada to walk out of prison. Another Cuban exile who aided Posada was former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez, who was close to then-Vice President Bush.  More details on the worst  terrorist act in the hemisphere to that date are provided below:

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba/2016-10-06/bombing-cuban-jetliner-40-years-later

http://www.loopnewsbarbados.com/content/watch-cubana-air-bombing-remembered

https://www.theguardian.com/world/1976/oct/08/cuba.fromthearchive


In the last link we learn that Right wing Cuban exiles, the lot Ms. O'Grady extols, were responsible.  Subsequent documents have confirmed the role of these terrorists and U.S. CIA complicity (via Luis Posada) as well. So in the midst all her outrage about Bernie Sanders and Fidel Castro ("a megalomaniac"), O'Grady mentions none of this.  Convenient memory lapse or selective attention to rewrite Cuban history?  I.e. rewriting the history of the Bay of Pigs, and JFK's involvement:

"Around 2,800 Cuban men trained for the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. They had been promised U.S. air cover but President Kennedy reneged at the last minute and the Communists easily defeated them."

Now the truth: Little known by Americans, “Operation Zapata” (aka 'The Cuba Project') was actually initiated and developed during the Eisenhower administration and pushed on Kennedy. (Telling him it was "in the national security interest” to do it). Awed by the conviction and national security patter of an elder president with 8 years in the Oval office, (while he himself was a new-be), JFK took Ike at his word and paid the price.   Most of this didn’t come to light until the discovery of an internal CIA Report on the “Cuba Project”, which had been kept hidden for over 35 years.  The results were released under ‘The Bay of Pigs Declassified’.  It was actually based on the agency’s own internal audit and assessment of its behavior in respect of the event.

According to the declassified report, the Agency committed at least four extremely serious mistakes:

i)                Failure to subject the project, especially in its latter, frenzied stages to a cold and objective appraisal by the best talent available before submitting the final plan to Kennedy

ii)              Failure to advise the President, at an appropriate time, that the mission’s success had become dubious- and to recommend the operation therefore be canceled.

iii)            Failure to recognize the project had become overt and that the military effort had become too large to be handled by the Agency alone

iv)             Failure to reduce successive project plans (dating back to 1959) to formal papers and to leave copies with the President and his advisers, to request specific written approval, confirmation thereof.  

The section goes on to note (p. 53):

“The timely and objective scrutiny of the operation in the months before the invasion – including study of all available intelligence- would have demonstrated to Agency officials that the clandestine paramilitary preparations had almost totally failed and there was no responsive underground Cuban force ready to ally with the invaders.”

The commentary is even more critical of the CIA after noting (ibid.) that the United States Intelligence Board, the Office of National Estimates, and Office of Current Intelligence all provided clear warning that a careful reappraisal was needed.

RE: Cancellation (p. 55):

“Cancellation would have been embarrassing. The Brigade could not have been held any longer in ready status, probably not held any longer at all. Further, its members would have spread their disappointment far and wide. Because of multiple security leaks in the huge operation, the world already knew about the preparations, and the Government’s and nation’s embarrassment would have been public”

Re: The Choice (ibid.)

“The choice was between retreat without honor and a gamble between ignominious defeat and dubious victory. The Agency chose to gamble, at rapidly decreasing odds.”

The consensus position of the National Archivists is that JFK was misled by the Agency’s hubris and incompetence. Depending on the CIA for guidance as to intelligence about this operation – in preparation for more than two years-  the Agency blew it and big time. JFK took the blame, yes, but the CIA ultimately was responsible for not advising cancellation when they knew the near zero chances of success, had the opportunity to do so.

As per a Baltimore Sun piece on the above named Report findings ('Internal Probe Blamed Bay of Pigs Fiasco on CIA', p. 6A, Feb. 22, 1998), it was noted:

"The 150-page report, released after sitting in the CIA Director's safe for nearly three decades, blames the disastrous attempt to oust Fidel Castro not on President John F. Kennedy's failure to call airstrikes, but on the agency itself."

"The CIA's ignorance, incompetence, and arrogance toward the 1,400 exiles it trained and equipped to mount the invasion was responsible for the fiasco, said the report, obtained by the Associated Press yesterday."

"The document criticized almost every aspect of the CIA's handling of the invasion: misinforming Kennedy administration officials, planning poorly, using faulty intelligence and conducting an overt military operation beyond 'agency responsibility as well as agency capability'."

In the wake of the Bay  of Pigs fiasco, and learning how badly he’d been played, JFK fired Allan Dulles – the then CIA Director  -  and asserted his willingness to “smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” He also fired Charles Cabell, the deputy CIA director at the time and unwittingly laid the basis for the national security state to act against him.  Indeed, many serious JFK assassination researchers (including me), are convinced that at least one team of mechanics for the Dallas hit were comprised of surviving Bay of Pigs Cubans - with axes to grind against JFK.

Maybe it's time Mary O'Grady take an early retirement and write some children's fantasy books instead.  Especially as she has so much more talent for bunkum and distortion of real world events.  (As well as ignoring many others).  

See also:

Peter Bloom

Capitalism

The Real Global Threat to 21st Century Freedom Is Authoritarian Capitalism Not Democratic Socialism

And:

Class: The Little Word the Elites Want You to Forget

And:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/03/what-maddow-left-out-in-her-segment-on.htm

Former Nazi and S.S. War Criminals Receiving Social Security? What Gives?

The account in yesterday's Denver Post was blunt (p. 13A, 'Probe Sought in U.S. Payments to Nazis/'):
"Former Auschwitz Guard Jakob Denziger lived the American Dream. His plastics company in the Rust Belt town of Akron, Ohio thrived. By the late 1980s he had acquired the trappings of success: a Cadillac DeVille and a Lincoln Town car and investments in oil and real estate.  Then the Nazi hunters showed up. In 1989, the U.S. government prepared to strip him of his citizenship. Denziger packed a pair of suitcases and fled to Germany. He later settle in a pleasant town on the Drava River - where he lives comfortably, courtesy of U.S> taxpayers.

He collects a Social Security payment of about $1,500 a month, nearly twice the take home pay of a Croatian worker. Denziger, 90, is among dozens of suspected war criminals and S.S. guards who collected millions of dollars in Social security payments after being forced out of the United States, an Associated Press investigation learned."

How could this be? Why aren't all these swine rotting in their unmarked graves after being hung by the neck?  I mean, think about it! Among those receiving benefits were armed SS troops who guarded the network of Nazi camps where millions of Jews died; and a Nazi collaborator who engineered the arrest and execution of thousands of Jews in Poland. Is this an abomination? Yes indeed it is! Every American ought to have veins popping from his head in outrage. (Ok, there's plenty of stimuli for outrage now I admit, but c'mon! Nazis getting Social Security with your taxpayer dollars and not long after a "Debt Commission" had been formed to parse cuts to Social Security?)

According to an earlier Post report Sunday we learned there "are at least four living beneficiaries. They include Martin Hartmann, a former SS guard at the Sachsenhausen camp in Germany, and Jakob Denzinger, who patrolled the grounds at the Auschwitz camp complex in Poland."

Hartmann moved to Berlin in 2007 from Arizona just before being stripped of his U.S. citizenship. Denzinger fled to Germany from Ohio in 1989 after learning that de-naturalization proceedings against him were underway. He resettled in Croatia and now lives in a spacious apartment on the right bank of the Drava River in Osijek, Croatia - near where we had originally planned to visit this fall - then changed our minds opting for Switzerland (Good thing!).

How could this travesty occur? By what fell mechanisms and duplicitous horse manure could our government - which fought the Nazis in WWII - turn to supporting them in their  old age using taxpayer money? Any of those Nazi helpers ever heard of the prime moral directive? (The ends never justifies the means.) But how often have we seen expediency trumping morals? Way too often! (Such as Reagan dispatching arms - including poison gas- to Saddam in the 1980s, to gain leverage against Iran)

Internal U.S. government records obtained by the AP revealed that during the Reagan Administration his  Justice Department used a special branch, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) , to skirt lengthy deportation hearings and increased the number of Nazis it expelled from the U.S.   Social Security benefits became the lure (or leverage)  to secure agreements in which Nazi suspects would accept the loss of citizenship and voluntarily leave the United States.

Since 1979, the AP analysis found, at least 38 of 66 suspects removed from the country kept their Social Security benefits. The four who are still alive are living in Europe. In newly uncovered Social Security Administration records, the AP found that by March 1999, 28 suspected Nazi criminals had collected $1.5 million in Social Security payments after their removal from the U.S. Since then, the AP estimates the amount paid out has reached into the millions.

Legislation that would have closed the loophole failed 15 years ago. The Social Security Administration expressed outrage in 1997 over the use of benefits, the documents show. Blowback in foreign capitals reverberated at the highest levels of government.Austrian authorities were furious upon learning after the fact about a deal made with Martin Bartesch, a former SS guard at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria.  In case you may not recall this camp - let me show a photo - taken after the Russians uncovered its horrors:

Neal Sher, a former OSI director, said the State Department cared more about diplomatic niceties than holding former members of Adolf Hitler's war machine accountable.  This is beyond disgusting and spits on the memories of the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who died fighting the Nazi filth. Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder and head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said the loophole should be closed.

"Someone receiving an American pension could live very well in Europe or wherever they settled. We, in effect, were rewarding them. It didn't make any sense."

Amid objections, the practice known as "Nazi dumping" stopped, but the benefits loophole wasn't closed. Why not?  Maybe for the same reason the Nazi Wartime Disclosure Act was shot down in 1999 so never became law.

According to a Baltimore Sun article ('Government May Soon Open Files on Nazi War Criminals', Aug. 2, 1998, p. 20A):

"Under pressure from Congress, the Justice Department and other agencies may be forced to declassify tens of thousands of top-secret documents describing the U.S. intelligence community's dealings with Nazi war criminals in the Cold War years. Legislation to open most of those files has already passed the Senate and could come up for a vote in the House this week. Some historians suspect that the opened files could cause 'tremendous embarrassments' for the United States."

Less than one year later the GOP congress voted against passage, and that was it. No one has heard much about it since.  

Does any of this really surprise any attentive American who’s not got his or her nose buried in some smart phone texting …or sending tweets? Recall then O.S.S. (precursor to the CIA) head Allan Dulles (later to become head of the CIA) officially implemented the policy of importing former Nazi spies via Operation Bloodstone . This was done to help the U.S. set up its own intelligence service to spy on the Soviet Union.

Interested readers can learn more here:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Bloodstone_B_CS.html

I also don't find it unusual or odd that these giveaways to the Nazis occurred under a Republican administration. (None of the press reports mention this, good ol' Neolibs that they are, but it doesn't take much to trace the dates).   Also, the GOP  was very big on Nazi links back in the day....around the Reagan and pre-Reagan era.  For those of us in deep politics, the history of the Nazi-backed Republican Heritage Groups is well -known. All this is well documented  by Russ Bellant, in his book 'Old Nazis, The New Right and the Republican Party' ( South End Press, Boston, 1991, p. 77). Bellant painstakingly documents how Nazis, and former S.S. infiltrated the Republican Heritage Groups and Council from the time of Reagan's ascension in 1980. He provides actual letters written and received as well as how their agenda is spelled out. He also notes a key figure who had established connections many decades earlier, i.e.

"Philip Guarino helped establish the ethnic division of the GOP in 1952. He was vice-chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council from 1971-75."

By April 8, 1980, Guarino "was a senior member of the Republican Party National Committee, which at the time was concentrating all its efforts on getting Ronald Reagan elected President." (Recall Reagan also gave a nod to these vermin when he visited the grave site of a Waffen S.S. in Bitburg, W. Germany. The PR at the time was that it was "an accident", but don't buy it for a second!) The "ethnic division of the GOP" refers to Ukrainian and Latvian assistants and associates, or members of the extension group affiliated with the German Waffen S.S. which had helped carry out pogroms during WWII- usually butchering Jews and communists in their own nations. (Recall, Hitler often conflated the Jews with Marxists, communists based on the fact Karl Marx was a Jew.)

There isn't much to be happy about but at least one gutsy lawmaker is paying attention. U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, a senior Democratic member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. She said she plans to introduce legislation to close the loophole. As she stated:

"It's absolutely outrageous that Nazi war criminals are continuing to receive Social Security benefits when they have been outlawed from our country for many, many, many years," 

The problem, of course, is that she will need Repub votes in order to get it done.

Given how these guys love the Nazis, I wouldn't hold your breath!

The Bowe Bergdahl Case: Let The Biggest Hypocrites Cast The First Stones!

This revolting, disgusting display of hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy, is this what we’ve finally become?

Are we now so filled with foul bilious hatred, are we now so consumed with soul-destroying fear, do we now despise our own selves so much that we would actually protest the return of one of our own? Is that it?

Is that what we’ve become? - Jim Wright, today on smirkingchimp.com

First it was Benghazi, then it was the eruptions against Edward Snowden's justified whistle blowing (and the ninnies and cowards in the country calling him a "traitor") and now - in the wake of a POW release, we have the Bowe Bergdahl hair on fire screeching that "Oh my god, no! This guy DESERTED! How can any town hold a celebration for him!! He's a TRAITOR! BWAAAHAHAHAHA!"

Ok, let's get a grip and kick some lamo, defunct and defective ass here. It seems as soon as the most minor informational conflict comes into play now ('Hero released, no wait, deserter!'), half the fucking country goes nuts, as is occurring now with Bergdahl.   Was he a deserter? We don't know. That remains to be ascertained. Should he have been left in Afghanistan if he was? NO! Because we as decent Americans -as opposed to walking turds - leave no soldier behind, and we certainly don't pre-judge a man before he's had his day and say in a proper judicial venue - NOT the court of public opinion. (Of course, if Steve Rattner had his way, even a proven war hero would have been left behind rather than make the trade for 5 Taliban. Though Rattner did say this a.m.- in response to Eugene Robinson's question-  that if it was "a Senator, or even Joe Scraborough" we'd make any deal necessary. Hmmmmm.....so you really don't respect any of our serving soldiers, eh Steve?)

Let's accept ab initio as a proposition to work with that any war, even a minor,  localized conflict (compared to WWII - which my dad fought in),  is likely to lead to clusterfucks and the proverbial fog of war, not to mention so much propaganda you don't know who's telling it straight. The military can't be relied on for the truth because they themselves have left a long trail of bullshit behind, and from the time they launched these two wars of choice, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For the sake of memory jog, anyone recall the Jessica Lynch story? We were fed the line that she was rescued in Iraq while on some mission and was a "heroine". Lynch herself exposed the bullshit some time later when she said she never even fired her weapon and was knocked unconscious - and remained so - for most of the time any firefights went on. The whole Jessica Lynch rescue story was a Pentagon 'dog and pony' show to appease the masses - make 'em feel good.

Anyone recall Pat Tillman?  The former NFL star (Arizona Cardinals)  like so many - promptly signed up for God and country in the wake of 9/11. Some time later, in Afghanistan, he was killed - we were told this occurred while bravely engaged in a firefight with the "enemy".  This soothed many minds until the truth came out that he was killed by friendly fire. The Pentagon - as in the case of Jessica Lynch -  tried to bury the real story and push a phony PR one.

My point is that you need to exercise caution when confronted with "hero stories" or "traitor stories" - especially the latter since they are most likely to arouse screeching and accusations. As sober citizens we therefore don't respond to network dog whistles but instead let the truth find its way out ....as it will in the Bergdahl case. For those that pre-judge and have screamed "Traitor!" - they themselves need a wake up call from our own history (which too many of our countrymen either forgot or never knew in the first place.)

What is a traitor, after all? Is it a young, disillusioned kid who probably - once he was in theater- saw Afghanistan for the stupid, money-wasting fiasco it was and wanted to back out?  OR - might it be an actual government or political party,  that does business with the enemy - to the extent of taking them on for service in a government agency (CIA)? You get my point? For example, the CIA in cooperation with the Vatican helped thousands of Nazis escape to South America along the infamous “ratlines” set up just before the end of World War II. This is all thoroughly documented in a number of books, especially Aarons and Loftus’: Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and the Swiss Banks, 1998, St. Martins Press)

In addition, then O.S.S. head Allan Dulles (later to become head of the CIA) officially implemented the policy via Operation Bloodstone to import former Nazi spies to help the U.S. set up its own intelligence service to spy on the Soviet Union (Never forget – despite the lunatic tea party portrayals – the Nazis were the mortal enemies of the Marxist –Socialists in the Soviet Union!)

Readers can learn more here:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Bloodstone_B_CS.html
Much of this would have been fully revealed to Americans' eyes in the Nazi Wartime Disclosure Act, but it was shot down in 1999 so never became law. According to a Baltimore Sun article ('Government May Soon Open Files on Nazi War Criminals', Aug. 2, 1998, p. 20A):

"Under pressure from Congress, the Justice Department and other agencies may be forced to declassify tens of thousands of top-secret documents describing the U.S. intelligence community's dealings with Nazi war criminals in the Cold War years. Legislation to open most of those files has already passed the Senate and could come up for a vote in the House this week. Some historians suspect that the opened files could cause 'tremendous embarrassments' for the United States."

Less than one year later the GOP congress voted against passage, and that was it. No one has heard much about it since. Perhaps the GOP Neocons and their fellow travelers knew then, as they do now, they didn't want to let the "cat out of the bag"  The primary ones who voted against it were, of course, the Repukes and their right wing reactionary confederates - the same  Foxite drones screaming for Bowe Bergdahl's head now (to the extent they won't even let Bergdahl's hometown in Idaho celebrate his return in peace.)

Maybe these characters would do well to recall that their favorite party, the GOP, was very big on Nazi links back in the day....around the Reagan and pre-Reagan era.  For those of us in deep politics, the history of the Nazi-backed Republican Heritage Groups is well -known. All this is well documented  by Russ Bellant, in his book 'Old Nazis, The New Right and the Republican Party' ( South End Press, Boston, 1991, p. 77). Bellant painstakingly documents how Nazis, and former S.S. infiltrated the Republican Heritage Groups and Council from the time of Reagan's ascension in 1980. He provides actual letters written and received as well as how their agenda is spelled out. He also notes a key figure who had established connections many decades earlier, i.e.

"Philip Guarino helped establish the ethnic division of the GOP in 1952. He was vice-chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council from 1971-75."

By April 8, 1980, Guarino "was a senior member of the Republican Party National Committee, which at the time was concentrating all its efforts on getting Ronald Reagan elected President." (Recall Reagan also gave a nod to these vermin when he visited the grave site of a Waffen S.S. in Bitburg, W. Germany. The PR at the time was that it was "an accident", but don't buy it for a second!) The "ethnic division of the GOP" refers to Ukrainian and Latvian assistants and associates, or members of the extension group affiliated with the German Waffen S.S. which had helped carry out pogroms during WWII- usually butchering Jews and communists in their own nations. (Recall, Hitler often conflated the Jews with Marxists, communists based on the fact Karl Marx was a Jew.)

It then may also be no coincidence that neo-Nazis have been observed and documented amongst these proper "democracy" protestors in the Ukraine, overturning statues, harassing those who disagree with them and in general carrying on like rogues and thugs. But how much do you hear of that in the Western Press?  To make a long story short, part of the GOP agenda dating from the original Nazi infiltration, evolved to overturning elected governments that didn't meet the Reagan- Far Right "smell tests".  (The mistake of Obama was in allowing too many of these GOOps to remain at State where they could cause havoc.)

Let's also note Bellant's claims re: associations, groups - apart from establishing direct ties of former S.S. affiliates to the GOP, were also well substantiated in the Newsweek article ('The Right Wing Web', February 22, 1999, p.34).  The reason for reinforcing Bellant's book is that the putative basis for widespread former Nazi use and recruitment (including in our intelligence agencies, e.g. CIA) would have been laid bare....but it seemed evident to me even then that the GOP congress wished to cover its party tracks and all possible links to Nazi interests.

SO tell me now: Can a political party which has knowingly harbored known Nazis - even allowing them to be integrated into its "Heritage" groups, be trusted  when its lackeys and pols scream "traitor" - directing it at a forlorn, confused kid who likely never knew what the fuck he was getting himself into in the first place?  WHO are the REAL enemies here?  I submit they're not immature kids who sign on to something they later find out is BS, but mature, cynical fuck-faces that enlist the services of the most wretched, dastardly murderers the world has ever known.

I say let the biggest hypocrites - namely the ones who voted down the Nazi Wartime Disclosure Act and belonged to the Republican Heritage Groups when known Nazi-S.S. links were established - to get their asses out there and toss the first stones at Bowe Bergdahl when he lands in the US of A. I am betting they won't have the balls to even show their faces, but instead will push their foolish, FOX- brainwashed pawns out front to do it for them. You know the ones, the same types that responded to the Clive Bundy dog whistle in Nevada- and beat their chests senseless while declaring themselves "patriots" and everyone else scumballs or "traitors".

While we're at it we can add the Reepo blowhard Saxby Chambliss to the list too! This is the dirt bag from Georgia who never served a day himself, but had the nerve to try to slime the (Vietnam) service bona fides of Max Cleland in the 2002 election- by trying to link him to Osama Bin Laden and Saddam. Shitheads like Chambliss have no right to mouth off at all about "security" or "traitors" and they definitely need to STFU about Bowe Bergdahl.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-boehlert/56249/when-fox-news-declared-war-on-a-military-family

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/ted-rall/56267/going-after-bergdahl


http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jim-wright/56250/negotiating-with-terrorists

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/dave-lindorff/56230/the-us-military-is-a-terror-organization-a-nation-of-cowards-fears-freeing-taliban-pows

and:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-baker/56243/what-would-afghan-spending-buy-at-home

Tina Brown: “Grassy Knoll Craziness”? How About Tina Brown IDIOCY?

Tina Brown looks like at least a halfway intelligent woman. Editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast, she's often called to weigh in on whatever new sensational news has erupted and put in her two cents. Naturally, if she really is intelligent, the rational skeptic expects her to speak intelligently as opposed to releasing a "shoot from the hip" idiot blip that forms part of the moron corpora-media consensus.

Such occasion transpired this morning for Brown, on 'Morning Joe' (yes, I admit, not exactly a repository of intellect - but still a forum millions watch) when in discussing a re-opened Scotland Yard inquiry into Princess Diana's death- and the 'theories' surrounding it-  she blurted out : they were “just like the grassy knoll craziness” .

Uh, no it isn’t,  you conflationist dope -  spinning this exposed trope! But this shows just how much the woman has studied anything concerning the grassy knoll, or the shots fired - - including their acoustic impulses – far less the assassination as a whole. In short she’s either a patented moron or an ignoramus. Sadly, despite the fact the woman clearly lacks the physics background to assess the acoustic record that led the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA)  to conclude "96 percent probability of conspiracy" - she pisses on JFK as well as the researchers who've diligently put in decades of work to uncover the facts. Not "theories" but facts, irrespective of what the mainstream media morons try to assert.

Look, obviously Tina is a bit exercised over the recent re-opening of the Diana case (by Scotland Yard) and as even others have admitted, millions loved and cherished her.   Other cognoscenti are also nonplussed, but they have the good sense not to expound on proven conspiracies of which they know nothing.  But, with Tina, she just couldn't withhold flapping her gums. Unable to sensibly compare the Diana conspiracy with anything else, say the truly crazy belief that the Moon landing was all "fixed"  and "filmed on an Area 51 sound  stage" (despite laser ranging experiments that proved its reality)  she decided to pick up on the grassy knoll in the JFK assassination.  Bad idea!

If any of Tina's DB staff happens to pick up this blog post, which I admit is less likely than Tina passing a basic test on the assassination, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/05/basic-test-on-kennedy-assassination-can.html

then please show her this image (below) comparing the actual autopsy photo with the fake one, that the Warren Commission tried to put over on an unwary, still shell-shocked, public. (And bear in mind the WC wasn't any official government investigation but a creature of Lyndon Johnson in which he actually put the CIA chief (Allan Dulles) that Kennedy fired after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, on the freaking commission. Fox guarding the henhouse, anyone? Anyone?
 
Now seriously, I'd like Tina to use even basic common sense here and tell me how in Hades a blown out back of Kennedy's head, as shown on the right, could have been caused from any rear shot.  Anyone who's fired a high powered rifle at an object or prey, knows the major blowout occurs with exit, not entry. Hence, the Warren Commissioners used the fake photo without a blown out rear skull, to try to make people believe the shot came from behind, i.e. the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald allegedly was. (In fact, he was in the 2nd floor lunch room of the TSBD at 12: 28 p.m. and numerous trials by researchers have shown there's no way he could have covered the distance to the 6th floor in the time - to deliver a class A kill shot to Kennedy, by 12.30 p.m.

If Tina's brain is still too indisposed to see that then she can examine the composite image below (left) - taken (top) at the instant of the head shot and (below) right after the head shot. Also shown is the fictitious depiction from a Warrenite artist on how the rear shot allegedly occurred. This was later exposed as a fraud by ballistic-savvy JFK assassination researchers (including former VietNam vet John Ritchson- on the newsgroup alt.conspiracy.jfk), since the actual rear shot hit Kennedy in the middle of the upper back. (Bullet hole in suit coat to prove it, but the suit coat was destroyed. Go figure! Conspiracy? Aw,  nooooooo!  Just a wee "coincidence" (among thousands) or ....Duppies or fairies must have done it!)


In the bottom image, Jackie is thrusting herself over the trunk of the limo. In her (secret) Warren testimony she testified she was attempting to retrieve a part of JFK's skull that had been blown off. Blown off backward from a rear shot? No way in hell. Any shot that blows off a skull fragment backward, according to the Newtonian laws of motion and linear momentum transfer, must occur from the FRONT. I.e. the grassy knoll!


But this crap isn't new, as author Michael Parenti, author of The Dirty Truths, has noted. Case in point:  the Oliver Stone movie (1991),’ JFK’ – which saw more know -nothing troglodytes emerging from the woodwork to comment than perhaps any other movie in American history. WHY? If they don't know diddly squat or dogshit why are they firing their yaps off? As Parenti puts it in an essay on ‘The Gangster State’ (which also appeared in his book)


“The movie could not simply be ignored because it was reaching a mass audience. So the press savaged it. As far as I know, JFK is the only movie in film history that was attacked, six months before it was released, in just about every major broadcast and print outlet. The Washington Post, for instance, gave George Lardner Jr. the whole front page of its Sunday "Outlook" section (5/19/91) to slam Stone for "chasing fiction." Lardner was an interesting choice to review this particular movie, being the Post reporter who covered the CIA and who never wrote a critical word about that agency.

The media's ideological gatekeepers threw restraint to the wind when dealing with Stone's film. Conservative news columnist George Will, not known for writing movie reviews, penned a rant against JFK, calling it "a cartoon history" and "a three hour lie." Will describes Stone as "an intellectual sociopath, combining moral arrogance with historical ignorance . . . a specimen of the sixties' arrested development. . . . Intellectually, Stone is on all fours . . . part of a long fringe tradition . . . banally venal, reckless, cruel" (Washington Post, 12/27/91). By relying on invective, Will avoided the more difficult task of rebutting the points made in Stone's film.

Shoulder to shoulder with conservatives like Will stood liberal centrists like Daniel Schorr, the NPR radio commentator who attacked Stone three times on the air, always in sarcastic and general terms, without ever coming to grips with the information proffered by the movie. “


I recall  being appalled at the time when I first saw the film (January, 1992) that so many of these media rats had evidently crawled from their rat holes to pillory the film when they weren’t even marginally familiar with the assassination at even the most rudimentary level. Did these jackasses even know that the weapon first found at the depository – as reported by an NBC News broadcast I still have, was a Mauser – not the defective Mannlicher-Carcano which couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn? 

Did they know that the Warren Commission's own test trials using the alleged purported rifle produced negative results? At the end of the test trials, these Master Marksmen each fired two series of three shots each (18 rounds in all) at 3 stationary targets placed at distances of 175’, 240’ and 265’ (the last coming nearest to the distance from the Texas School Book Depository to the head shot). Just one of the three expert riflemen was able to get off three shots in under 5.6 seconds – the designated time interval for total shots declared by the Warren Commission. And most to the point: none of the total 18 shots fired struck the targets in the head or the neck. In other words, from a technical standpoint of duplicating Oswald’s alleged shots- this trio of experts failed. Does the blow hole yapping Tina Brown even know any of this? Nope, didn't think so!

Does Brown even remotely know that the "craziness" she so stupidly dismisses was actually based on the acoustic tests performed by a team of MIT physicists? It was that test which led the only legit government investigation (the HSCA, in 1979) to conclude for a 96 % probability of conspiracy. Is Ms. Brown going to tell us she knows more than these august HSCA members, or the MIT physicists? Give me a break!

Yes, it is true we who have seriously researched the Kennedy assassination for many decades are short on patience with dolts, morons, and ignoramuses that we must continually try to keep educating year after year regarding the details of the event. But like the pack of dunces at the back of the class, these miscreants are more invested in disruption than learning.  They have only one agenda, and that’s to keep the American people bamboozled, in much the same way the NSA miscreants want to keep Americans uninformed on what they’re doing.

Parenti again:

“Then there was Tom Wicker, a syndicated columnist who also had never done a movie review, but when JFK came out, he wrote one that covered a whole page, complete with photos (New York Times, 12/15/91). In it, Wicker said something revealing:

'If the wild assertions in Oliver Stone's movie are taken at face value, Americans will have to accept the idea that most of the nation's major institutions conspired together and carried out Kennedy's murder. In an era when mistrust of government and loss of confidence in institutions--the press not the least--are widespread and virulent, such a suggestion seems a dubious public service' ”.


In so many words Wicker was disclosing the basic reason why such a merciless attack had been launched against Stone's movie. A full exposure of the assassination conspiracy would invite serious discredit upon the legitimacy of the dominant institutions of state and class. Playing before mass audiences, 'JFK' did not accuse a cabal of malevolent perpetrators, but pointed to the national security state itself, inviting millions of viewers to question the kind of state system under which they lived. "

Of course, this is why these rats always come out almost like clockwork, as they will this October and November, as the 50^th anniversary (Nov. 22nd) approaches. American citizens, real ones, need to be aware of the PR anti-Kennedy conspiracy blitz that's in store for them, and be able to read it and dismiss it for the codswallop it is. As Parenti has noted, this issue is important - indeed critical - and the longer it festers without full national exposure the more at risk we are as a nation.

Intelligent Americans should also be aware of the  (often subtext) use of propagandist meister Edward Bernays'  PR dictum in all of this. Bernays prime objective was also clearly set out in his work 'Propaganda':

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country.”

The "true ruling power of the country", eh? So the rest of us are left over dog turds, effectively, or perhaps chopped dog livers? Oh, I guess we're just "conspiracy BUFFS"? Parenti again:

"JFK investigators have been described as "assassination buffs." The term "buff" is a diminishing characterization, describing someone who pursues odd hobbies. For the same reason that we would not refer to "Holocaust buffs," so should we not refer to these serious investigators as "assassination buffs." Their efforts reveal a conspiracy to assassinate the president and an even more extensive conspiracy to hide the crime. "

Bingo!  Readers, whatever else baloney comes over the airwaves about the JFK assassination, here is Parenti's most salient point (p. 156, Dirty Truths):

"To know the truth about the assassination of John Kennedy is to call into question the state security system and the entire politico-economic order it protects. This is why for over thirty years the corporate-owned press and numerous political leaders have suppressed or attacked the many revelations about the murder unearthed by independent investigators like Mark Lane, Peter Dale Scott, Carl Oglesby, Harold Weisberg, Anthony Summers”


My blog will be 'loaded for bear' when all the assassination dissemblers come out in the fall, including Mr. Tom Hanks. Get ready, you lone nut charlatans!