In other words, someone has sold Obama on Pakistaning the Libyan War, i.e., pursuing a military strategy of relying on drone attacks to a destroy an adversary hiding in the environmental background. What is astonishing is that Obama took the cape, despite the fact that only 12 days earlier, a report in the Los Angeles Times by David Cloud illustrated once again the absurdity of Cartwright's and Gates' claims.
CIA Decides Not to Get Serious: Memories of a Lost Time and Place
“These documents remained classified for nearly a century until recent advancements in technology made it possible to release them,” CIA Director Leon E. Panetta said. “When historical information is no longer sensitive, we take seriously our responsibility to share it with the American people.” The Director released this statement on the occasion of CIA’s declassification of a handful of WWI documents describing the use of invisible ink for secret messages. CIA originally claimed that these documents had to be classified because they contained information that could be used to identify sources and methods used today (2011)! This whole affair demonstrates to me that CIA has ceased to be a serious intelligence organization.
With triple-A rated toxic CDOs, for many, it became purely a matter of the fees & commissions on the transactions and doing as many as possible. There were reportedly $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDO transactions done during the bubble … with trillions in fees & commissions disappearing into various pockets.”
Scoop Independent News, Monday, 18 April 2011, 12:22 pm
Interview by Kourosh Ziabari
Kevin Barrett is a renowned American journalist, writer and former university lecturer. He has taught English, French, Arabic, American Civilization, Humanities, African Literature, Folklore, and Islam at colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay area, Paris, and Madison, Wisconsin. Being a Muslim convert, Dr. Barrett is a founding member of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance (MUJCA) and member of the Scientific Panel for the Investigation of 9/11 (SPINE).
It is a question asked repeatedly across America: why, in the aftermath of a financial mess that generated hundreds of billions in losses, have no high-profile participants in the disaster been prosecuted?
To me the moral of this story is that Washington has created a vast immoral hazard. We are all truly in a world of peril when regulators and law enforcers believe our financial institutions are too big to be brought to justice—and when our leadership in Washington is so gutless that its response is to let these same institutions emerge bigger and more beyond challenge than ever.
Tip of the Hat to Lynn Wheeler at LinkedIn for the clean links.
Phi Beta Iota: It is our view that the President, the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Treasury, and most Senators and Representatives are immediately impeachable for failing to uphold their oaths to the Constitution and failing to represent the public interest in the face of massive legalized fraud on the part of Wall Street.
The first six days of Odyssey Dawn, the US war in Libya, cost an estimated $400 million, according to a new report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service.
“Using operational details provided by DOD and DOD cost factors, a ‘bottoms-up’ estimate of the cost of initial operations suggests that in the first six days of operations, DOD has spent roughly $400 million,” the report said.
“U.S. participation in Operation Odyssey Dawn and NATO operations around Libya raises a number of questions for Congress, including the role of Congress in authorizing the use of force, the costs of the operation, the desired politico-strategic end state, the role of U.S. military forces in an operation under international command, and many others,” said the CRS report, which fleshed out many of those questions.
