Exposing the Libyan Agenda: a Closer Look at Hillary’s Emails

by ELLEN BROWN
CounterPunch, March 14, 2016

EXCERPT...

Mission Accomplished?

Of the 3,000 emails released from Hillary Clinton’s private email server in late December 2015, about a third were from her close confidante Sidney Blumenthal, the attorney who defended her husband in the Monica Lewinsky case. One of these emails, dated April 2, 2011, reads in part:

Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver . . . . This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).

In a “source comment,” the original declassified email adds:

According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:

1 A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,

2 Increase French influence in North Africa,

3 Improve his internal political situation in France,

4 Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,

5 Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa

Conspicuously absent is any mention of humanitarian concerns. The objectives are money, power and oil.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/14/exposing-the-libyan-agenda-a-closer-look-at-hillarys-emails/

Is David Petraeus Dirty? Ted Westheusing Said So, and Then He Shot Himself

By Melina Hussein Ripcoco, Brilliant at Breakfast
Alternet.org
April 8, 2008

Ted Westhusing, was a champion basketball player at Jenks High School in Tulsa Oklahoma. A driven kid with a strong work ethic, he would show up at the gym at 7AM to throw 100 practice shots before school. He was driven academically too, becoming a National Merritt Scholarship finalist. His career through West Point and straight into overseas service was sterling, and by 2000 he had enrolled in Emory University to earn his doctorate in Philosophy. His dissertation was on honor and the ethics of war, with the opening containing the following passage: "Born to be a warrior, I desire these answers not just for philosophical reasons, but for self-knowledge." Would that all military commanders took such an interest in the study of ethics and morality and what our conduct in times of war says about our development as human beings. Would that any educational system in this country taught ethics, decision making, or even political science that's not part of an advanced degree anymore.

Ted Westhusing, the soldier, philosopher and ethicist, was given a guaranteed lifetime teaching position and West Point by the time he had finished with his service and his education. he felt like he could do more for his country by trying to shape the minds coming out of the academy that were the ones that would be military commanders. He had settled into that life with his wife and kids, when in 2004 he volunteered for active duty in Iraq, feeling like the experience would help his teaching. He had missed combat in his active duty and it seemed like an important piece for someone who not only philosophized about war, but who was also preparing the military's future leaders.

But more than that, he was sure that the Iraq mission was a just one; he supported the cause and he bought the information that was put in front of him. Considering that vials of powder were being tossed around hearings by the highest level of military commanders how could he not? This was a man who was so steeped in the patriotism of idealistic military fervor that he barely could fit in regular society. His whole being was dedicated to this path, and he was proud to serve his country.

Once in Iraq, he found himself straddling the fence between a questioning philosopher and an unquestioning soldier. Westhusing had thought he was freeing a country in bondage, keeping America safe from a horrible threat, and spreading democracy to a grateful people. But the reality of what was happening in this out of control war was too much for him. His mission was to oversee one of the most important tasks left from the war; retraining the Iraqi military by overseeing the private contractors that had been put in charge of it.

As the assignment went on he found that everywhere he looked he was seeing corrupt contractors doing shoddy work, abusing people, and stealing from the government. These contractors were being paid to do many of the jobs that would normally be done by a regulated military, and they bore out the worst fears of those who don't believe in outsourcing such vital work. He responded to the corruption that he saw by reporting the problems up the line, but the response from his commanding officers was disappointing. He had, for much of his career, idolized military commanders, and in that assignment he found himself with some of the military's most famous faces, doing the most important job, but he was terribly disappointed and alarmed to realize that they were greedy and corrupt themselves.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/81678/is_david_petraeus_dirty_ted_westhusing_said_so,_and_then_he_shot_himself

COMPLETE ORIGINAL ARTICLE: http://www.ripcoco.com/2008/04/is-david-petraeus-dirty-ted-westheusing.html

Hillary Clinton Pitched Iraq As 'A Business Opportunity' For US Corporations

BY DAVID SIROTA AND ANDREW PEREZ
International Business Times, Sept. 30, 2015

When then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton voted to authorize the war against Iraq in 2002, she justified her support of the invasion as a way to protect America’s national security. But less than a decade later, as secretary of state, Clinton promoted the war-torn country as a place where American corporations could make big money.

“It's time for the United States to start thinking of Iraq as a business opportunity," she said in a 2011 speech.

The quote was included in an email released by the State Department on Wednesday that specifically mentioned JPMorgan and Exxon Mobil. JPMorgan was selected by the U.S. government to run a key import-export bank in Iraq and in 2013 announced plans to expand its operations in the country. Exxon Mobil signed a deal to redevelop Iraqi oil fields. JPMorgan has collectively paid the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation at least $450,000 for speeches, and Exxon Mobil has donated over $1 million to the family’s foundation.

SNIP...

In the aftermath of the Iraq War, the Bush administration pushed to privatize wide swaths of the Iraqi economy. Many prominent political voices charged that the conflict was not about national security or a humanitarian mission against a dictator but was instead an attempt to use military force to open up Iraq’s closed economy to foreign corporations -- including oil giants like Exxon Mobil.

CONTINUED...

http://www.ibtimes.com/campaign-2016-hillary-clinton-pitched-iraq-business-opportunity-us-corporations-2121999

Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary Clinton's State Department

BY DAVID SIROTA AND ANDREW PEREZ
International Business Times, May 26, 2015

SNIP...

These were not the only relationships bridging leaders of the two nations. In the years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contributed at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, the philanthropic enterprise she has overseen with her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Just two months before the deal was finalized, Boeing -- the defense contractor that manufactures one of the fighter jets the Saudis were especially keen to acquire, the F-15 -- contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to a company press release.

The Saudi deal was one of dozens of arms sales approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department that placed weapons in the hands of governments that had also donated money to the Clinton family philanthropic empire, an International Business Times investigation has found.

Under Clinton's leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IBTimes analysis of State Department and foundation data. That figure -- derived from the three full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012) -- represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.

The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period.

American defense contractors also donated to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and in some cases made personal payments to Bill Clinton for speaking engagements. Such firms and their subsidiaries were listed as contractors in $163 billion worth of Pentagon-negotiated deals that were authorized by the Clinton State Department between 2009 and 2012.

The State Department formally approved these arms sales even as many of the deals enhanced the military power of countries ruled by authoritarian regimes whose human rights abuses had been criticized by the department. Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar all donated to the Clinton Foundation and also gained State Department clearance to buy caches of American-made weapons even as the department singled them out for a range of alleged ills, from corruption to restrictions on civil liberties to violent crackdowns against political opponents.

CONTINUED...

http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187

Book Review:

The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger and A Forgotten Genocide

by Gary J. Bass

Winner of the 2014 Lionel Gelber Prize for Foreign Affairs, The Blood Telegram chronicles how Nixon and Kissinger supported Pakistan’s military dictatorship as it brutally quashed the results of a historic free election. Gary J. Bass argues that the United States’ embrace of the military dictatorship in Islamabad went on to mould Asia’s destiny for decades. This book has the potential to fuel international lawyers to research the legal consequences of the passive stance taken by Nixon and his underlings, writes Lenneke Sprik (for the London School of Economics).

When we think of genocide, the first examples that come to mind are often the holocaust, Rwanda, and Srebrenica. Who would mention the mass murder of up to three million Bengalis in the East of Pakistan in 1971 in this regard? And how many people are aware of the culpable passive role of the United States in this genocide? Gary Bass convincingly unravels the rather shocking truth of the American position in the Pakistan crisis in a well-written narrative that contains a strong condemnation of United States’ bystander role.

When the pro-independence Awami League were elected in 1969, the separation of Pakistan and with that, the independence of the Bengalis living in East-Pakistan, was seen as a threat to the future of the country as a whole. General Yahya Khan, leader of the Pakistani army, took over control before the Awami League could claim its power and started his genocidal campaign against the Bengali population of East-Pakistan in March 1971. Over the course of nine months, millions of Bengalis (mainly Hindus) were killed. International responses to these events were heavily influenced by Cold War rhetoric. Bass’ account of the genocide in Pakistan shows how a precarious balance of power had to be kept in place, which obstructed a united stance against Yahya’s objectionable policies. Ultimately, India – under Indira Ghandi’s leadership – intervened in December 1971, which put an end to the genocide. Nixon and Kissinger have proven to be strategic practitioners of Realpolitik in this matter. Their friendship with Yahya, and their support of the genocide through arms supplies, leads Bass to justly criticise the American role in the Pakistani genocide.

By quoting some of the controversial opinions expressed by Nixon and Kissinger, the author not only provides a detailed overview of the factual happenings in Pakistan in the early 1970s, but more than that he reveals the reproachable attitude of the American statesmen towards the humanitarian crisis in Asia. Specifically striking in Bass’ story is the reflection of the condescending language used by Nixon and Kissinger regarding the Indian people. Their personal sentiments in this matter unequivocally influenced their stance towards the Pakistani crisis. Accordingly, Bass depicts Nixon’s friendship with the Pakistani dictator Yahya as characteristic for Nixon’s foreign policy: he was nothing more than a useful bridge in Nixon’s master plan to get closer to China. It is this picture of the republican president that Bass paints effectively. In doing so, this book raises awareness of how international politics are often governed by national and personal interests rather than moral interests; something that can be considered a timeless phenomenon in times where states are still hesitant to intervene in other states’ affairs to halt mass atrocities.

In his reconstruction, Bass uses the personal experiences of US general consul Archer Blood as a key figure throughout the book, whose dissenting voice was silenced by Nixon. Blood’s telegram asking the State Department for immediate action against the mass atrocities in East Pakistan was neglected and therefore became illustrative of Nixon’s bystander conduct. Bass even cited several sources arguing that this makes them ‘complicit to genocide’. At one point Bass refers to Kissinger’s clear attitude towards international humanitarian crises by referring to one of his comments in which he pointed out that ‘a humanitarian concern is not necessarily an American concern’. Bass could not have made that picture clearer had he not used the sources the way he did.

Throughout the book, the reader wonders why Nixon and the likes took this position towards Pakistan and the Bengali crisis. Bass correctly observes three goals that contributed to the controversial stance taken by the president. First, he explains that Nixon wanted to avoid the destruction of the West-Pakistani army. Second, above all Nixon wanted to maintain his bridge through China (Yahya); and third, the American president feared the collapse of the balance of power if any of the great powers would intervene in Pakistan’s domestic affairs, which he wanted to prevent at all costs.

SNIP...

If there were any doubts that Nixon’s presidency was everything except undisputed, this historical account will convincingly dispel them. That humanitarianism had to give way to the political interests of Nixon and Kissinger is the main conclusion drawn from this revealing account of the US stance in the genocide that took place in East-Pakistan in the early 1970s. Whether interested in American foreign policy, international relations, Asian history, or genocide studies, this book will appeal to a wide audience. In a world that focuses more and more on international legal remedies to fight injustice, it might even fuel international lawyers to research the legal consequences of the passive stance taken by Nixon and his underlings.

SOURCE: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2014/07/27/book-review-the-blood-telegram-nixon-kissinger-and-a-forgotten-genocide-by-gary-j-bass/

The Once and Future Kissinger

As another failed war threatens to tarnish his legacy, Henry Kissinger attempts to clarify his record—by evading, skirting, stretching, hedging, and stonewalling like the diplomatic master he is.

By Joe Hagan
New York Magazine, Oct. 24, 2007

EXCERPT...

You can see why this Iraq business so vexes Kissinger. He hardly needs another quagmire around his neck—especially after he played this one so carefully. When the neoconservatives began driving foreign policy after 9/11, the consummate realist hedged his bets and supported the decision to invade Iraq. There were caveats galore, of course: Kissinger said postwar reconstruction of Iraq would require U.N. involvement and international diplomacy and that he was opposed to occupying a Muslim nation in order to “reeducate the country.” He also said preemptive war as a doctrine was a bad idea, except in rare instances.

His standing on Iraq was so nuanced the New York Times included him in a list of prominent Republicans who objected to the war—only to print a tortured editor’s note amending the report after right-wing critics attacked the paper for misrepresenting his views. “I’m not sure the Times got it wrong,” says Walter Isaacson, the president of the Aspen Institute, a former Time managing editor, and the author of the biography Kissinger. “They just pinned him down when he wanted to stay unpinned.”

At New York dinner parties before the invasion in 2003, Kissinger related to friends that he was “very concerned that there was no plan for what happens after they bring it down and topple it,” recounts one associate. “He predicted to a group of people at a dinner that it would end in civil war.”

SNIP...

In the vetting process, however, Kissinger ran into a snag. Five years after he left office, the former secretary of State had founded the consulting firm Kissinger Associates and established himself as a kind of diplomatic fixer who could work the back rooms of Moscow, Beijing, and Riyadh for corporations needing influence. He charges $200,000 (a reported $50,000 just to walk through the door) to consult for companies like Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., a mining company with assets in Indonesia. As much as Kissinger wanted to be the nation’s healer, he valued his business interests more. When Congress requested that he reveal his consulting firm’s client list, he stepped down from the commission.

Nonetheless, Kissinger remained a favorite administration ally, appointed by Donald Rumsfeld to the Defense Policy Board, the outgoing secretary of Defense’s personal think tank. And Cheney told Woodward last year that George W. Bush is a “big fan.” He’s not alone, of course. Kissinger is, after all, a foreign policy genius emeritus, whose exacting skills as a strategic thinker have made him an indispensable adviser to many leaders of the free world. And he’s certainly the guy you call when you’re planning to wage war in the world’s most complicated geopolitical hot spot.

CONTINUED...

http://nymag.com/news/people/24750/index2.html

Al Haig, The NSC and the White House Spy Ring: The Nixon Story You Never Heard

Joan Hoff
Montana State University, Jan. 2014, M

EXCERPT...

Over three decades ago on December 21, 1971, Richard Nixon approved the first major cover-up of his administration. He did so reluctantly at the behest of his closest political advisers, Attorney General John Mitchell, Domestic Counselor John Ehrlichman, and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman. The public remains ignorant of this seminal event in Nixon’s first term and journalists and historians have largely ignored it. The question is why? A recently released Nixon tape transcribed from an enhanced CD produced by the Nixon Era Center provides the clearest answer to this thirty-year-old Nixon secret.

On that December day Nixon agreed to cover-up a criminally insubordinate spying operation conducted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff inside the National Security Council because of the military’s strong, visceral dislike of Nixon’s foreign policy. In particular, the JCS thought Nixon gone “soft on communism” by reaching out to the Chinese and Russians, and they resented Vietnamization as a way to end the war.

[font color="green"]As early as 1976 Admiral Elmo Zumwalt publicly made these military suspicions and resentment abundantly clear in his book, On Watch: A Memoir. “I had first become concerned many months before the June 1972 burglary,” Zumwalt wrote, “(about) the deliberate, systematic and, unfortunately, extremely successful efforts of the President, Henry Kissinger, and a few subordinate members of their inner circle to conceal, sometimes by simple silence, more often by articulate deceit, their real policies about the most critical matters of national security.” In a word, Zumwalt, like many within the American military elite, thought that Nixon’s foreign policies bordered on the traitorous because they “were inimical to the security of the United States.”[/font color]

This atmosphere of extreme distrust led Admiral Thomas Moorer, head of the JCS, to first authorize Rear Admiral Rembrandt C. Robinson and later Rear Admiral Robert O. Welander, both liaisons between the Joint Chiefs and the White House’s National Security Council, to start spying on the NSC. For thirteen months, from late 1970 to late 1971, Navy Yeoman Charles E. Radford, an aide to both Robinson and Welander, systematically stole and copied NSC documents from burn bags containing carbon copies, briefcases, and desks of Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and their staff. He then turned them over to his superiors.

SNIP...

The most striking aspect of this tape is the passive role played by Nixon–the so-called original imperial president. First, he is out-talked by the others throughout this fifty-two-minute conversation. Toward the end of tape, the president can be heard saying to his advisers in a loud voice that the JCS spy activity was “wrong! Understand? I’m just saying that’s wrong. Do you agree?” A little later he called it a “federal offense of the highest order.” Up to this point, however, John Mitchell told the president that “the important thing is to paper this thing over” because “this Welander thing . . . Is going to get right into the middle of Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

In other words, Nixon would have to take on the entire military command if he exposed the spy ring. Moreover, this expose would take place in an election year and when the president had scheduled trips to both China and the Soviet Union to confirm improved relations with these countries–which the military opposed. Taking on the military establishment with such important political and diplomatic events on the horizon could have proven disastrous for the president’s most important objectives and revealed other back-channel diplomatic activities of the administration. Later in his memoirs the president said that the media would have completely distorted the incident and exposure would have done “damage to the military at time when it was already under heavy attack.”

In contrast, at the time all three men agreed with Nixon about the seriousness of the crime committed by the JCS. Mitchell even compared it to “coming in (to the president's office) and robbing your desk.” However, they advised him to do no more than to inform Moorer that the White House knew about the JCS spy ring, to interview Welander (who was later transferred to sea duty), and to transfer Radford. Moorer subsequently denied obtaining any information from purloined documents, fallaciously claiming that Nixon kept him fully informed about all his foreign policy initiatives. If this had been true there would have been no need for Moorer to set up a spy ring. Welander, for his part according to this tape, had initially refused to answer questions about the spying he was supervising on the questionable grounds that he had a “personal and confidential relationship” with both Kissinger and Haig.

CONTINUED...

http://spikethenews.blogspot.com/2014/01/al-haig-nsc-and-white-house-spy-ring.html

"I didn't know he screened through the thing, but I knew he did carry 'em to me and I just returned from San Clemente and I had been told every damn thing that was in there...I gave the things back to (Alexander) Haig." -- Thomas H. Moorer, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

SOURCE: http://nixontapes.org/welander.html