Powerful?

BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE

CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O WAS NAMED THE MOST POWERFUL PERSON IN THE WORLD BY FORBES MAGAZINE TODAY.

THIS LED BARRY O'S FAN CLUB PRESIDENT VALERIE JARRETT TO SNARL, "THEY'RE LYING! I SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER! HOW DARE THEY SAY BARRY O IS 'THE MAN'! WHY HE'S A VICTIM! HE'S A DELICATE FLOWER! HE'S A TOOTHY STARLET READY TO GO TOPLESS!"


FROM THE TCI WIRE:

Each Sunday, Cindy Sheehan does her weekly radio show Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox. This week's guests were Debbie DeNello and Adam Kokesh. We'll note the following section of the broadcast.

Adam Kokesh: I think for the soldiers on the ground who see what Obama is doing, you know, they see troops are being taken out only to be replaced with a greater number of contractors and then for those troops to be put into a surge in Afghanistan and nothing to really change about the kind of abuse? You know, I think that's still a huge, major factor: lack of confidence in the mission. I mean, nobody really believes, no matter what Obama says, that these are wars of necessity --

Cindy Sheehan: Right.

Adam Kokesh: -- or that Afghanistan is the good war. In fact, Obama actually by coming out and saying that Afghanistan is not a war of choice, implying that Iraq is, you know what does that say to the over 100,000 troops that we had in Iraq at that time? 'Hey, you guys don't really have to be there but you're going to keep going out and being shot at and getting killed anyways'? And then to the contractors? I mean the same factor goes with them but at least they're doing it as private citizens with a little more free will -- the impact is not as much. For a soldier who's being told "You're going to go back to this war zone that doesn't have to exist." You can imagine the effect on that. Especially for the
fifth, sixth seventh deployment.
Cindy Sheehan: Well, Adam, you know that I have been, since my son [Casey Sheehan] was killed, actively just calling for troops out now. But when Obama, of course, says that Afghanistan is a war of necessity, he called Iraq "a dumb war" and, like you said, people are still dying in this "dumb war" --

Adam Kokesh: Yeah.

Cindy Sheehan: -- that he has proclaimed "dumb." Well you know, all wars are dumb. Let's tie this, what happened to you in Iraq, what you know, you have the exper -- experiential opinions on this. But tie it in with your Congressional campaign. What is your platform? What will you do in Congress?

Adam Kokesh: Well I'm a Constitutionalist. I'm a non-interventionalist. I'm still a proud member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and I support the mission of Iraq Veterans Against the War. I'm also a proud member of Veterans for Peace and I think that the mission of the organization Veterans for Peace is even more applicable now when we see the kind of hypocrisy of the Democrats. It's almost worse than what we had when the neocons were in charge. The neocons were easy to hate, they were brazen and upfront about it and had this swaggering machismo whereas what we see under Obama now is this really disgusting deceitfulness that has some people with really intense mixed feelings. But one of the things that we're counting on here is that by November 2010 when my election is held and I'm going to be running against -- well I am running against an incumbent Democrat who has said that he is calling for an immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, an immediate request for an exit strategy and yet votes to -- votes for all the funding for Iraq and Afghanistan and all of that and has toed the Democratic Party line and I think people are really going to be fed up with that. And, you know, it's definitely not the Republican Party that has all the answers but there are people within the Republican Party like myself that are trying to make it the party of Big Tent smaller government again and ensure that that includes a very strong committment to this policy of non-interventionism. Not isolationism, but non-interventionism which means free trade and commerce and friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. And unfortunately in the world we live in, having a strong national defense is appropriate at this time. But there's a reason it's in the Constitution that Congress has the power to declare war and when they declare war they're supposed to do it with a specific enemy and a declaration and there's an objective. And then they give the military the mission and then they get out of the way. And this is the way it's supposed to be when it's legitimate self-defense. You go to war, you win, you come home. And when we have these open-ended committments, when we have these world policing opportunities where they are run by Congress, they are run by a political machine, and not by a military with a specific objective, you get this kind of open-ended nation building process that puts so much money into the military industrical complex, concentrates so much more power in the hands of the federal government -- into the executive especially. And that hasn't changed under Obama. You know, we want to see a return to the Constitution because of those principles behind it and make sure we don't engage in these wars because when you engage in war when there's not a declaration you know that the premise is faulty, you know that it is not honorable, you know that it is not righteous in the case of self-defense. And we know that neither Iraq or Afghanistan, in terms of what we're doing there today, qualify for any sort of just war theory. And getting back to that and making sure that that message has -- has an oppotunity to be heard in the 2010 elections is a really important part of this campaign for me. It's not easy, you know? It's really not easy. Talking to the progressive base is a lot easier than talking to the conservative base but it's a really important challenge to make sure that they live up to those values and understand why the Constitution was written the way it was.

Cindy Sheehan: Well, Adam, sometimes I think talking to progressives is harder because of what you said. They want to put all their hope eggs into the basket of Obama and the Democrats and clearly, clearly, they're not the peace party. The Democrats and Republicans, institutional parties, are all the same. They're the War Party and we have to put a big chunk of what's happening now on the shoulders of a Congress in 2001 that gave George -- that abrogated their Constitutional duty and gave George Bush the authority to do what is happening right now.
Adam Kokesh: Well the grass -- well the thing that I've learned is the grassroots of both the Republican and the Democratic parties are totally different from the national leadership --

Cindy Sheehan: Absolutely.

Adam Kokesh: -- and it just so happens that when the Democratic Party's in charge, they're better able to sway their base into being pro-war and supporting big government and supporting interventionism, supporting theft and violence as we see our-our, you know, just so essential to what our federal government is doing these days. But really the base of the Republican Party -- and even here in New Mexico there's a distinct difference between the leadership of the Republican Party and the base -- the grassroots activists and the rank and file members. They're totally receptive to this message. They understand that it's not economically feasible to send so much manpower and material into this nation-building -- these nation-building exercises and not have it hurt people here at home. And when they're forced to consider it like that, you know they realize that what we're doing there isn't worth it. And being able to get them to take that step at this point, it's really satisfying to bring this message to people who haven't heard it because when the Republican Party was in charge for the last eight years, they were getting that propaganda. Now that the War Propaganda is coming from the Democratic machine, they're much more ready to question it --

Cindy Sheehan: Yep.

Adam Kokesh: -- and start speaking out against it.

Cindy Sheehan: Well, Adam, unfortunately we're running out of time. Tell my listeners how they can get ahold of you.

Adam Kokesh: Oh great! This is my opportunity for the shameless plug! Thank you so much.

Cindy Sheehan: Yep, yep.

Adam Kokesh: Kokesh for Congress is the website, K-O-K-E-S-H F-O-R Congress.com, check us out there. You can e-mail me at http://us.mc366.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=adam@kokeshforcongress.com. You can follow me on Twitter at Adam Kokesh. And our phone number here at campaign headquarters is (505) 470-1917.

Cindy Sheehan: And I encourage my listeners to -- I know they all know about your anti-war work but I encourage them to go to your website and don't have a knee-jerk reaction just because you have a "R" after your name, right?

Adam Kokesh: Exactly. Well you know there's a lot of issues that cross party lines and it's been great to know that there are people like you who are also seeing that the Federal Reserve is such an integral issue economically which makes all these wars possible and all the other crimes of our government --

Cindy Sheehan: Yep

Adam Kokesh: -- and our corporations happen because of the Federal Reserve.


Staying with those who make war Big Business, yesterday's snapshot, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen (New York Times) interviewed four former Blackwater execs who stated that, in December 2007, approximately one-million dollars was used to bribe officials in Iraq in order to get them to look the other way in the face of Blackwater's continued assaults. Iraq's Minister of the Interior Jawad al-Bolani spoke to CNN (link has video as well as text) and stated that his ministry had launched an investigation into the assertion that Iraqi officials took bribes.

Jawad al-Bolani (via translator): Blackwater has no new positions to operate in Iraq. Blackwater has a problem and a lawsuit. Some of its employees committed a crime against innocent Iraqi civilians in Nussor Square and this case is an ongoing trial in American courts. Blackwater is a company that caused a major national tragedy. The Nussor incidient was a very difficult one and no Iraqi can ever forget it. But the Iraqi government was committed and acted responsibly for the sake of the Iraqi people and the reputation of Iraq.

James Risen (apparently due to the Times' fear of a Nouri-related lawsuit) rushes to print this morning to proclaim, "The Times article reported that former Blackwater executives who learned of the plans said they did not know whether the money was, in fact, delivered to Iraqi officials." Daniel Barlow (Times Argus) reports US House Rep Peter Welch formally called yesterday for an investigation into the allegations of bribery on Blackwater's part writing the Chair of the House Oversight Committee, "Early reports indicate that Blackwater may have violated the Foreign Corrupts Practices Act and potentially interfered with a grand jury inquiry by issuing these bribes. The United States government simply cannot turn a blind eye to such actions." Oliver August (Times of London) quotes a "relative of a Blackwater shooting victim," Aquil Akram stating, "Everything about them is bad. The victims's families were paid at most a few thousand dollars in compensation but the company is giving a million dollars to some government officials."
Meanwhile Iran's Press TV reports that Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has passed on 'details' to the UN Secretary-General's assistant Oscar Fernandez-Taranco on the August 19th and October 25th bombings: "We provided him with all the information which was not published in the media. We have not accused any country, but evidence asserts that former Baathists and al-Qaeda were involved in the attacks." Which would mean that they infilatrated the Iraqi police and the Iraqi military and, to steal from Annie Hall, "the FBI, and the CIA, and J. Edgar Hoover and oil companies and the Pentagon and the men's room attendant at the White House." The trucks loaded with bombs went through multiple checkpoints.


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