Rumsfeld touring KGB Torture Museum. Looking for hints?
The demonstration seemed harmless enough. Late on a June afternoon in 2004, a motley group of about 10 peace activists showed up outside the Houston headquarters of Halliburton, the giant military contractor once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. They were there to protest the corporation’s supposed “war profiteering.” The demonstrators wore papier-mache masks and handed out free peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to Halliburton employees as they left work. The idea, according to organizer Scott Parkin, was to call attention to allegations that the company was overcharging on a food contract for troops in Iraq. “It was tongue-in-street political theater,” Parkin says.
But that’s not how the Pentagon saw it. To U.S. Army analysts at the top-secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the peanut-butter protest was regarded as a potential threat to national security.
A Defense document shows that Army analysts wrote a report on the Halliburton protest and stored it in CIFA’s database. It’s not clear why the Pentagon considered the protest worthy of attention—although organizer Parkin had previously been arrested while demonstrating at ExxonMobil headquarters (the charges were dropped). But there are now questions about whether CIFA exceeded its authority and conducted unauthorized spying on innocent people and organizations. A Pentagon memo obtained by NEWSWEEK shows that the deputy Defense secretary now acknowledges that some TALON reports may have contained information on U.S. citizens and groups that never should have been retained. The number of reports with names of U.S. persons could be in the thousands, says a senior Pentagon official who asked not be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.
Any Republikans realize how significant it would be if someone found our government doing something to defend the Constitution? Would you be surprised to hear the hacks in Washington did something on behalf of individual liberty? Wouldn’t it seem out of character? Out of place?
Dick Cheney making his Halliburton buddies rich? Why isn’t there outrage in Washington?
A) There is nothing illegal going on.
B) Every politician has a Halliburton in their closet.
Question:
How is it that career politicians from both the Left and Right become millionaires?
Off the subject:
Is anybody paying attention to the indecency hearings in Washington? The suites in DC want to regulate Satellite Radio and Cable Television. Something you have to pay to bring into your home. There is no doubt that there is lots of funny money flowing into the pockets of politicians from both the left and the right!!!!!
We will see what happens when the dems regain control of the whitehouse. Some how I don’t things will be much better, except that it will be their business friends getting all the contracts and big brother will be watching their critics.
I see.
Just because both sides do it we should shut up and fork over our money?
Nick and gquaglia — do you seriously believe that what has been perpetrated by this Administration and the in the Republican lobbyist controlled Congress is *REMOTELY* similar to anything this country has seen in it’s short life?
Your casual observations and simplified understanding of *YOUR* government’s policies and activities are the real threat to national security.
George Bush & Cheney are the worst policial profiteers in history. Every move they make is to enrich themselves and their cohorts. There is no strategy or law-bending too illegal for them to embrace, and then to act astonished afterwards that people are upset.
Ever see a politician who wouldn’t sell his own mother to a Calcutta brothel to get re-elected? They’ll lie, cheat, steal and actually humiliate themselves to keep their jobs. I wouldn’t do that to keep my job, so I’m guessing they’ve got pretty damed good jobs.
RE #5
Clinton/Gore and the China payola.
Clinton/Gore presidential payola pardons (MARK RICH!!!!!!!!!)
Get your UN votes……Oil for food scandal (MARK RICH!!!!!!) WAR
ETC…ETC….
Bubba knows a stand up guy when he pardons him!
Both sides are corrupt!
I think that worst thing about all of this is the idea that the current administration will attack anyone critical of their policies as if they were trying to undermine the security of the nation. Hello! When did protesting the fiscal responsibility of a government contractor constitute an attack on the nation? Thank god they were only protesting food pricing. Can you imagine if it had been the cost of weapons?
Nick, get a grip. The “China” payola had to do with several Chinese businessmen donating to the Clinton/Gore reelection fund. When it became known that it was illegal, the reelection committee returned the money.
Now, lets take a look at say Jack Abramoff, or Tom Delay, or Carl Rove, or Congressman Ney and Cunningham and discuss them. Then we can discuss how much money Bush raised from all those oil companies that turned over $100 BILLION profit last year. Or the Drug companies that wrote the Medicare drug bill that no one can get right. Or how about the Banks and finance companies that wrote the new Bankruptcy law. Or Boeing Aircraft paying Pentagon purchasing agents to buy their planes. Or the Insurance industry rewriting the medical liability laws (while bad Doctors go unpunished).
Yup, that Clinton was a bad fellow. Remember Newt Gingrich? After leading the “Holier then Thou” campaign, he left his wife after having an affair for several years. His replacement who criticized Clinton so well during the impeachment hearing? Ya, Henry Hyde, had fathered a child years ago and never even took the time to see him, though he did provide support and kept up with the mother.
Now, as the report stated, the DOD spied on Americans engaged in peaceful protest. The NSA, nor the President have even denied that the warrantless wiretapping did not include ordinary Americans. They have only claimed that the terrorists won’t sit still while they get a warrant. They evade that question.
The FBI has also spied upon and infiltrated other peaceful groups.
RE #9
Sounds like a slam dunk impeachment of Bush.
Both sides are playing the same dirty game.
Nothing to say about Mark Rich I see.
I have penned this letter to myself and am going to the mailbox to send said letter to me.
I Nick am as wimpy as a Rockefeller, lacking spine and balls, smell a rat in the white house. Should I protest? No I lack said balls and instead of speaking up in said meetings will gaze out the window and count my money.
I look marvelous!
Sincerely Yours
Nick
#4 and #5 you really are clueless, or just a die hard idiologs that thinks “his” side can do no wrong and the “other side” is evil and corupt. I’m a republican, but I KNOW that republicans are just as corupt as democrats. Its the nature of politics, something you must know nothing of. So smoke another dobie and stop insulting us with your ignorant blather.
Folks might be interested in reading about what happened to Scott Parkin (the Halliburton activist quoted in the Newsweek story) while he was travelling overseas last year:
After three lovely months of travelling through Australia and meeting people, one Wednesday afternoon during the second week of September I was called by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, or ASIO, and asked to come in for an interview. I asked if I was required to do so and the woman at the other end of the phone said “No, you are not obliged too.” I then asked if this would affect the remaining two weeks of my time in Australia and she said she couldn’t say. I should have listened with closer attention to that non-answer.
A few days later, walking out of a café in Melbourne, I was snatched off the street by four Australian Federal Police and two Immigration Compliance Officers.
See http://www.scottparkin.org
Nick
Your comparison and insistence that Mark Rich is the evil incarnate is so off base. Let’s cut to the chase here. The Republicans can not find any Democrat “scandal” so they either make up, invent, embelish, distort, or twist events by the Democrats all out of proportion. Did you want White Water as an example? Clinton lost money !!! Did you want to bring up the the impeachment? Pure politics; nobody was killed or hurt EXCEPT the American public that had to endure the blather of the Republicans such as Henry Hyde and Rick Santorum.
Remember Santorum? The guy that hasn’t been in the district for several years yet charged the School Board to send his children to a private Christian school and then to be Home Schooled!!!
Remember all those people that Clinton held incommunicado illegally? Remember all the tendered contracts that Clinton gave to his friends for Billions of dollars? You don’t remember them, because maybe there weren’t any.
Pat, maybe you must be smoking the same thing David and detah are. Mark Rich is a slimy scumbag, who is now funding terrorism overseas. He belongs in jail, but Clinton pardened him for some unknown reason. Clinton was as corupt as they come, but very popular. Which is the reason he is not seen in the same light as Bush.
Saddam kicked out the UN weapons inspectors, daring the USA to invade. WHY would Saddam do that? Saddam had cut side (OIL) deals with France, Germany, and Russia. He had in essence BOUGHT their votes in the UN guaranteeing that the UN would never vote to invade. Marc Rich’s was a key villain in the Oil for food scandal. Marc Rich was pardoned by Bill Clinton. Bubbas buddy I guess.
Please don’t make Clinton out to be this righteous figure in history. Bubba biggest dilemmas were who got to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom. The personal computer thanks to Bill Gates led to a prosperous 8 years of Clinton. Bubba rode the tech wave!
If Mark Rich is the worst you can come up with then the Clinton era is smelling more and more like a whole garden of roses.
Saddam kicked out the UN inspectors because Iraq had complied and destroyed all WMDs and a few others, such as certain missiles. The UN inspectors were, at that point, a lot of American CIA, British M6, and other “intelligence” operatives and NOT inspectors. The “inspectors” wanted to tear apart Saddams private dwellings (palaces) searching for evidence. It was Scott Ritter that revealed this in 1998.
The Oil for Food Program was badly run, by many countries, including the US and even while dubya was in office. This shows more the corrupting influence of the Free Market system then it does about the United Nations or any specific country. Clinton and his administration DID NOT run the program.
I really feel the influence of FOX news with your repeated talking points. I don’t think either of you guys know who Mark Rich is except for what Limbaugh or O’Rielly have blathered about?