JFK/RfK/Benghazi - a bloodless coup?

[David S. Brownlee]

In fact, those who failed in their duties prospered the most.

Indeed...this was my primary point...it does seem to be always set up that way..

Edited October 31, 2012 by David S. Brownlee

[David S. Brownlee]

I'll vote reluctantly for Obama but find this episode distressing, requests for additional security were denied by the State Dept and people with in the administration made misleading comments about what happen for about 2 weeks. Do you think Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice were part of the plot?

Additional security requests were obviously mishandled at State if that was indeed the case. Serious - on-the-ground decisions were made by the CIA as far as "standing down" when they were also "under attack" and actually close enough to help.

[Len Colby]

I'll vote reluctantly for Obama but find this episode distressing, requests for additional security were denied by the State Dept and people with in the administration made misleading comments about what happen for about 2 weeks. Do you think Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice were part of the plot?

Additional security requests were obviously mishandled at State if that was indeed the case. Serious - on-the-ground decisions were made by the CIA as far as "standing down" when they were also "under attack" and actually close enough to help.

As noted in a previous post Paneta said he made the call not to send in the cavarly.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-did-not-deny-requests-help-benghazi-aide-182415488--election.html

OTOH Obama seems to be responding very well to Sandy, even the GOP governor of NJ keeps praising him.

[Steven Gaal]

BLACKBOXVOTING

- COLORADO SETS THE STAGE FOR A BOGUS ELECTION -

...

Colorado election integrity and transparency is now officially out the window, with a series of corruption protection rules and new laws.

1. Let's begin with the unflappable Donetta Davidson, who collaborated with convicted embezzler Jeffrey Dean(1) to remove voter privacy, through a contract specification that required him to redo his absentee mail software in order to embed a method to tie voted ballots to the voters. This shifty business, which now includes all absentee ballots cast on Hart eSlate machines, has led to a blockade on ALL Colorado election accounting records (see #4, below).

2. Next, in a move that has most of us scratching our heads, Colorado Sec. State Gessler proposed new rules in December 2011 to remove requirements for continuous video surveillance.(2) Though billed as "cost saving," note that most video surveillance nowadays is simply piped into digital files stored on a Web site. Since cameras are already installed, there is no significant cost savings in allowing non-continuous surveillance.

3. Sec. State Gessler also decided to reduce the number of seals on voting machines,(2) to the chagrin of election integrity groups like Voter Action, whose investigations and litigation demonstrated vulnerabilities requiring the seals in the first place. The "cost savings" in this measure can be counted in pennies.

4. A number of protective accounting measures crucial for evaluating election tampering have been taken off the table though a new law to block election-related public records examination.

Donetta Davidson led the lobbying for this law. Davidson had become a commissioner of the U.S. Election Assistence Commission, then took a step down to take over the Colorado Clerks Association. In this capacity she led a fight to block the media and citizens from examining the ballots. And no wonder: She knew that due to changes made under her administration, private companies had marks embedded on the ballots enabling them to harvest data tying votes to voters.

Thanks to a lawsuit by Colorado citizen Marilyn Marks, of The Citizen Center, sponsored and assisted by Black Box Voting, the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed right to examine ballots. Marks was shocked when she discovered that identifying marks on the ballots allowed her to immediately associate every voted ballot with the voter who cast it. Marks, The Citizen Center, (and Black Box Voting) are now involved in litigation to permanently prohibit this harvesting of personal political information. In the interim, Sec. State Gessler has required that the identifiers be removed for November 2012 only.

With ballot examination affirmed to be in the public domain, Davidson's next move was to block ballot examination until after all remedies had expired. Using her clout, she lobbied successfully for the removal of ballots -- AND OTHER CRUCIAL ELECTION RECORDS, SUCH AS POLL LISTS -- from any access by election watchdogs until 45 days after the election.(3)

One telltale sign of election tampering is when thousands more votes than voters show up. But in Colorado, neither the media nor the public will be allowed to examine the poll lists or the list of names for voters said to have voted absentee, until too late to do anything about discrepancies.

5. And then there is the matter of alleged Romney ties to the second-biggest voting machine manufacturer in America. These connections are being minimized by Internet outlets like Snopes, but the straight truth is that Hart Intercivic, the firm that supplies two-thirds of Colorado counties with their voting machines, is now owned by a spin-off of Bain & Company (H.I.G. Capital).(4)

A majority of Hart's directors are now H.I.G. guys, and the directors of H.I.G. are Romney bundlers and donors who don't hedge their bets by donating to any other presidential candidate.

This isn't the first time Romney has had his buddies in charge of crucial election processes this year. Some weeks after the misreported figures in the Iowa caucus, which incorrectly cited Romney as the winner, Black Box Voting uncovered that Romney staffers had been brought in to run the Iowa Caucus, and the Nevada Caucus too. Besides heading Romney campaign functions, these guys were associated with an odious Colorado political firm which narrowly escaped prosecution for maliciously misleading political ads.(5)

And the Romney affiliation with Hart Intercivic doesn't rule out his buddies -- or Obama's buddies -- or George Soros -- or the Chinese, for that matter -- owning the other companies. Election Systems & Software (ES&S) does not reveal who its owners are, and we don't know who owns Dominion either. ES&S directly handles voting machines in three Colorado counties; it co-produces elections on the old Diebold equipment with Dominion, with ES&S supplying technicians in some U.S. locations and Dominion in others. Dominion owns Sequoia Voting Systems (or does it? No one seems to be quite sure...), used in large metro Denver County and in Pueblo.(6) Confused? American elections are now so far removed from the hands of the people that self-governance is just a memory.

6. Romney's business buddies owning Colorado's main voting machine company demonstrates, at the very least, an appearance of impropriety, but it carries with it something more: Actual opportunity to alter results.

Unlike most Diebold voting machine locations, whose county technicians set up each election using voting company software, Hart has its customers send files directly to Texas, where its programmers and technicians have their way with the files, sending them back to the counties to put in their voting machines. This centralized control point does in fact enable tampering with results from a remote location. Paper ballots? Well, not all Colorado counties even have them, but thanks to Donetta Davidson and her cronies, they are off limits for human examination and will be interpreted only by the Hart machines.

The Hart system has built-in secret functions in its system, discovered by researchers in the Everest Study commissioned by then-Ohio Sec. State Jennifer Bruner. "Undocumented functions" are accessed through the registry, geek territory for most of us but accessible by any administrator. Voting systems are supposed to be certified and they are not supposed to contain "undocumented functions" accessible through sophisticated built-in back doors into the registry. These are certainly not accidental and not even the researchers for the EVEREST study were able to determine what these functions do.(7)

7. Loosey-goosey absentee system combines with obstruction of observation: Half of all ballots in Colorado are likely to be cast absentee, due to the implementation of not only no-fault absentee, but active promotion of "permanent" absentee status by Donetta Davidson's Colorado Clerks Assocation. With "permanent absentee" they send ballots even if they were not requested, and following a tussle, they also send ballots to people who didn't request them who haven't voted for years. Seems like a prescription for insider-driven absentee fraud (where an elections worker exploits names of inactive voters to insert ballots into the pool).

It also seems like it would at least be a good idea to allow extra careful observation of the whole absentee process, to authenticate the ID numbers of voters in whose name ballots are being cast.

Unfortunately, this is not the case.

"We used to stand beside the workers and look to see if the person reading an ID number and the person typing the ID number into the system were doing it properly," [Mary] Eberle said. [Eberle was a watcher for the American Constitution Party who is also a member of the watchdog group Citizen Center] "We could see how well they matched the signatures on a ballot envelope with the voter signature on file in [the state's registered voter database]. Well, we can't do that anymore..." (8)

According to The Colorado Independent: Marty Neilson, Republican Party election watcher, walked out of the Boulder County Clerk's building in disgust as workers there tabulated primary voting results the last week of June. Neilson said she couldn't see anything of substance and felt like she was participating in a sham exercise in oversight.

"[Clerk Hillary Hall] kept us behind [solid] walls and behind glass walls," Neilson told the Colorado Independent. "We are there to view the whole process, which is what the statutes say we're supposed to do, from the time the [election workers] get the ballots to the time they verify the signatures and then count the votes. But it was a charade. I left because why stay? There was no reason to be there."

* * * * *

The core of a true democratic system is the concept of self-governance. If the public is not allowed to see and authenticate essential parts of the election (who can vote - voter list; who did vote - poll lists; the counting of the vote; and chain of custody) -- if the public is left standing in the dark while insiders control the levers of operation and accounting, you don't have self-government at all.

What you are left with is the government choosing itself.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES

(1) Jeff Dean involvement in vote by mail software: http://www.bbvforums...0328/81241.html

Colorado demand to tie votes to voters:

(full transcript: http://www.blackboxv...4kim-v-dean.pdf - 1,007 KB) ; Page 19: ..."okay, if this voter showed up in the subsequent upload, then I need to ... tell them ... what ballot number he was assigned so they can pull it [the voted ballot] back out. It was a fundamental change in the way the program worked. Q When you say Colorado was told that, do you know who told them that the program was capable of doing that?

A Jeff [Dean]

More: http://www.bbvforums.../133/80503.html

(2) Denver Post; Posted: 12/07/2011 02:19:33 PM MST; Updated: 12/07/2011 03:52:07 PM MST; By Sara Burnett

http://www.denverpos...ews/ci_19490338

"Among the changes being considered:

- Eliminate the requirement that video security surveillance of areas where election software is used be "continuous." Video surveillance is required for 60 days prior and 30 days after an election.

- Eliminate requirement that a county clerk or election judge who suspects tampering report it to the Secretary of State. Instead, such investigations would be handled at the county level.

- Reduce the number of tamper-proof seals that must be placed on seams of cases that hold the equipment's electronic components.

(3) New law to restrict access to election records http://www.centerpos...2&story_id=1701

(4) Romney ties to Hart Intercivic: http://truth-out.org...own-your-e-vote

(5) Former Romney staffers run Iowa, Nevada caucuses: http://www.bbvforums...es/8/81900.html

(6) Map of voting machines in Colorado: http://www.verifiedvoting.org

(7) Hart use of registry for undocumented functions: http://www.bbvdocs.o...VEREST-Hart.pdf

"18.3.2 Windows Registry Misuse

The Windows registry is a operating system service that maintains configuration parameters for applications installed on the computer. The Hart system makes extensive use of the registry to enable/disable features of the system. While in general the use of the registry is not a problem, Hart uses it to enable critical functions and security sensitive operations. Issues arise because anyone with the appropriate privileges on the computer can read and change the registry. Thus an attacker without any Hart system passwords or hardware tokens can affect the security and behavior of the system.

"...An interesting characteristic of the registry use in the Hart software is that it (generally) periodically checks registry entries, rather that just checking them at start-up. This has the consequence that triggered features can be turned on and off without restarting the software.

"We found references to many dozens or more of registry entries used by the Hart EMS applications. We were only able to investigate a small number of these. The vast majority of registry entries are undocumented, and their purpose is often unclear.

(8) Blocking meaningful observation of absentee processing: http://coloradoindep...hor/johntomasic

The public must be able to see and authenticate these four essential steps for an election to be public, democratic, and valid: (1) Who can vote (voter list); (2) Who did vote (3) The original count; (4) Chain of custody.

#####################

BEV HARRIS

map of Hart locations in Colorado:

Green = Hart Intercivic

Red = ES&S / Diebold

Yellow = Sequoia / Dominion

For full map of voting systems in USA by vendor, see page 3 of this document:

http://www.blackboxv...rust-Letter.pdf

The public must be able to see and authenticate these four essential steps for an election to be public, democratic, and valid: (1) Who can vote (voter list); (2) Who did vote (3) The original count; (4) Chain of custody.

Edited November 1, 2012 by Steven Gaal

[Len Colby]

BLACKBOXVOTING

- COLORADO SETS THE STAGE FOR A BOGUS ELECTION -

I’ve long said that Gaal intentionally diverts threads, I’m in good company.

I would like to file a formal complaint that Mike Rago has - five times, stepped on my Valkyrie thread posts - without good reason, and if he continues to do so, after I have politely requested him to stop - I would like to have him placed on moderation so that his posts will be read by moderators before they can be seen to prevent him from engaging further in this childish behavior.

I agree this is a problem with this Forum. Steven Gaal also does this. If you remember, Tim Gratz used to do this. It is a difficult one to deal with. Is it bad enough to put them on moderation? I would be interested in what other members think about this.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2243&st=315&p=260337&hl=gaalentry260337

This post raised valid points, but it clearly does NOT belong in this thread, the subject of potential voter fraud in favor of Romney (or any other candidate) never came up here. But that, as well as the role of Hart voting machines in that potential and the company’s ties to the GOP were previously discussed in another thread, but Gaal had some embarrassing set backs on it which he prefers to ignore so reopened the discussion here.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=19389&st=15

[Steven Gaal]

JFK/RfK/Benghazi - a bloodless coup?

to coooooommmmmmplex for some to understand

VOTING MACHINE FRAUD IS A BLOODLESS COUP,happening NOW

Edited November 2, 2012 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

UPDATE / THE CIA SIDE OF EVENTS

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

US Says CIA Sent Security Team to Benghazi Consulate 25 Minutes After Attack, Refuting Claims of Delay

Friday, 02 November 2012 09:01 By Jonathan S Landay, McClatchy Newspapers | Report

Washington — A CIA security team rushed to the U.S. consulate in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi less than 25 minutes after receiving the first call that the mission was under attack, while a second squad was dispatched by air from the capital, Tripoli, according to a timeline released on Thursday by U.S. intelligence officials.

The timeline is the most detailed accounting to date of the U.S. response to the attack on the consulate and was released to rebut news reports that U.S. officials had delayed a rescue.

“The officials on the ground in Benghazi responded to the situation . . . as quickly and as effectively as possible,” said a senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support.”

The timeline also revealed that a nearby CIA annex came under attack twice during the events, with the second assault coming more than seven hours after Islamist extremists first stormed the consulate.

Four Americans died in the assaults: U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and State Department computer specialist Sean Smith, who died at the consulate, and two former Navy SEALs, Tyrone Wood and Glen Doherty, who were working as security contractors in Libya.

The events have become an issue in the U.S. presidential election campaign, with Republicans accusing the Obama administration of failing to provide adequate security to the mission amid mounting threats by al Qaida-linked militants and other groups.

Republican nominee Mitt Romney and others also have questioned the administration’s initial account that the assault was a spontaneous outgrowth of a protest against an online video denigrating the Prophet Muhammad, and not a pre-planned terrorist attack launched to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence later accepted responsibility for the administration’s initial account, acknowledging that the attackers were Islamist militants, including some suspected of having ties to al Qaida’s North African affiliate.

According to the timeline, the first call for help from the consulate was received at the CIA’s nearby Benghazi headquarters – referred to as a diplomatic annex by U.S. officials – at around 9:40 p.m., which is when the attack began.

“Fewer than 25 minutes later, a security team left the annex for the mission,” said the timeline, which added that the group spent about 25 minutes trying to take out militants firing heavy weapons as it fought its way to the walled compound and then entered it under heavy fire.

At 11:11 p.m., according to the timeline, an unmanned surveillance drone arrived over the complex while the CIA security team, which comprised about six officers, rounded up the approximately 30 staff members on the consulate premises and prepared to move them to the annex. The security team at that point had recovered Smith’s body but had been unable to locate Stevens, who local Libyan guards had spirited out a backdoor to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead from smoke inhalation.

The CIA security team and the mission staff drove out of the consulate under fire and returned to the annex, which had come under sporadic small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire.

About the same time, according to the timeline, a team of about six CIA security officers and two U.S. military officers landed at Benghazi airport on a flight from Tripoli and began negotiating for transportation into the city.

After learning that Stevens was missing and that the initial attack on the annex had ended, the second team decided to concentrate on finding the ambassador.

“Still pre-dawn timeframe, that team at the airport finally manages to secure transportation and armed escort and – having learned that the ambassador was almost certainly dead and that the security situation at the hospital was uncertain – heads to the annex to assist with the evacuation,” the timeline said.

Backed by Libyan security men, the second team arrived at the CIA annex at 5:15 a.m., just before mortar rounds began hitting the building in a barrage that lasted 11 minutes. One round claimed the lives of Wood and Doherty.

A heavily armed Libyan military unit arrived less than an hour later and helped escort the U.S. personnel to the airport for a U.S. military evacuation flight.

“At every level in the chain of command, from the senior officers in Libya to the most senior officials in Washington, everyone was fully engaged in trying to provide whatever help they could. There was no second guessing those decisions being made on the ground, by people at every U.S. organization that could play a role in assisting those in danger,” said the senior U.S. intelligence official.

In a related development, Foreign Policy magazine on Thursday published draft memos recovered by its reporters from the ruins of the consulate that said that the compound had been under surveillance the day of the attack by a member of the Libyan police assigned to protecting the mission.

“Early this morning at 0643, one of our diligent guards made a troubling report. Near our main gate, a member of the police force was seen in the upper level of a building across from our compound,” said one memo, which was dated Sept. 11 and was intended for the local police chief, according to a handwritten notation at the top. “It is reported that this person was photographing the inside of the U.S. Special Mission.”

“We submit this report to you with the hopes that an official inquiry can be made into this incident and that the U.S. Mission may receive the full support of the Benghazi police,” it continued.

A second draft memo was marked in handwriting for Mohamed Obeidi, the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Benghazi office. It contained the same information as the first draft memo, but began with a complaint that a U.S. request for additional police to guard the mission during Stevens’ stay had gone unheeded.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a subcommittee chairman, wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking for any documents or emails that reflected the information in the draft memos as part of a panel investigation into the attack.

“The documents paint a disturbing picture indicating that elements of the Libyan government might have been complicit in the . . . attack on the compound and the murder of four Americans,” wrote the pair.

The congressmen, who have led charges that the administration has suppressed information about the incident, said the documents “support a growing body of evidence indicating that the Obama administration has tried to withhold pertinent facts . . . from Congress and the American people.”

Jonathan S Landay

Jonathan S. Landay, national security and intelligence correspondent, has written about foreign affairs and US defense, intelligence and foreign policies for 15 years. From 1985-94, he covered South Asia and the Balkans for United Press International and then the Christian Science Monitor. He moved to Washington in December 1994 to cover defense and foreign affairs for the Christian Science Monitor and joined Knight Ridder in October 1999. He speaks frequently on national security matters, particularly the Balkans. In 2005, he was part of a team that won a National Headliners Award for "How the Bush Administration Went to War in Iraq.'' He also won a 2005 Award of Distinction from the Medill School of Journalism for "Iraqi exiles fed exaggerated tips to news media."

[Len Colby]

JFK/RfK/Benghazi - a bloodless coup?

to coooooommmmmmplex for some to understand

VOTING MACHINE FRAUD IS A BLOODLESS COUP,happening NOW

You're stretching more than Richard Simmons. Even if these topics had not already been discussed in another thread it would have been quite questionable whether your post belonged here.

The question is why did you avoid posting in the appropriate thread? To me the answer is obvious, you wanted to leave your embarrassing blunders behind.

[Steven Gaal]

^{POST # 22 CIA SIDE UPDATE/ THIS POST PENTAGON SIDE UPDATE}

^{Nov 2, 2012 8:50pm ABC NEWS}

^{Pentagon on Benghazi Troop Movements: ‘Swift Action’ on Night of Attack}

^{A day after the release of a new timeline of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the Pentagon has released new details about the military forces moved that night in case they were needed in the region.}

^{The timeline released Thursday by a senior U.S. intelligence official revealed the major role that CIA security forces in Benghazi and Tripoli, Libya, played in responding to the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi.}

^{On Friday, Pentagon spokesman George Little provided new details of U.S. military movements made the night of the attack in case they were needed.}

^{Little said that within a few hours of the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered U.S. military forces to move to Sicily in preparation for an uncertain situation in Libya.}

^{“This department took swift action,” said Little. “It did respond, the secretary ordered forces to move.}

^{“We were prepared for a range of contingencies in the course of this very tragic incident,” said Little. “We were ready for the need to augment security measures at our facilities in Libya, if called upon. We were prepared for the possibility, for instance, of a hostage situation, as well. These were all the things that we were looking at for an event we did not know was going to happen in Benghazi that night. ”}

^{According to Little, Panetta ordered forces to move towards the naval air station in Sigonella, Italy, after conferring with Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Carter Ham, the commander of U.S. Africa Command who was in Washington for regularly scheduled meetings.}

^{Among the units ordered by Panetta on the night of the attack to Sicily, which is less than 500 miles from Libya,were two special operations teams that were moved to Sigonella.}

^{As previously reported, one of the units came from a U.S. military base in “Central Europe.” And Little disclosed that Panetta also ordered another team from the United States to head to Sigonella. Little refused to describe what kind of unit was sent from the U.S., though it was presumably a special operations team trained for hostage rescues.}

^{Little said both the units “did not arrive until after the entire sequence of events was complete. … They were in Sigonella many hours after the attacks.”}

^{The Pentagon spokesman said that it can take hours for troops to be organized and transported to where they might be used. He added that at the time they were ordered to move, policy makers ”did not know when the attacks would end.” Little said that, in theory, a hostage situation in Benghazi could have lasted for days.}

^{“We didn’t have forewarning of this tragic event in Benghazi,” Little said. “The entire U.S. government was starting from a cold start.”}

^{Another new detail disclosed Friday was that Panetta ordered the deployment of not one, but two platoons of specially trained Marines to protect U.S. diplomatic facilities in Libya.}

^{Based in Rota, Spain, the platoons headed to Sigonella for possible deployment to Libya. One platoon was dispatched on Sept. 12 to protect the U.S. embassy in Tripoli. The other platoon was to have gone to Benghazi to secure the consulate compound, but was never sent after it was determined that all U.S. personnel had been evacuated from Benghazi.}

^{Little reaffirmed that no other American aircraft were involved over Libya the night of the attack beyond the unarmed surveillance drone that arrived 90 minutes into the attack. As for reports that an AC-130 gunship could have been dispatched over Libya at the time of the attack, Little was clear that “there was no AC-130 within a continent’s range of Benghazi” that night}

Edited November 3, 2012 by Steven Gaal

[Guest Tom Scully]

.......

EXCLUSIVE: CIA operators were denied request for help during ...

Fox News-Oct 26, 2012

The American special operators, Woods, Doherty and at least two others were part of the Global Response Staff, a CIA element, based at the.....

Remember our Mr. Davis, in Pakistan?

Full coverage - USATODAY.com

www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/.../pakistan22_st.art.htm

Feb 22, 2011 – Davis was attached to the CIA's Global Response Staff, which provides security overseas for agency bases and stations, former and current .

Arrested US Official Is Actually CIA Contractor : NPR

‎

NPR - Feb 11, 2011

Davis was attached to the CIA's Global Response Staff, which provides security ... Working for the agency's GRS comes with risks — sometimes fatal ones.

(NPR has scrubbed the actual Davis article from its website, above is text of a search result.)

In this matter, the Obama administration had been covering for the CIA and other U.S. intelligence operatives It is not what you suspect, but it is an election year and the repub branch of the Obomney campaign includes many zealots indoctrinated in the belief that there are two rival American political parties with wide gulfs between their agendas and visions. Barak Obomney loves Israel and wants to drone attack terrorists 23-1/2/7, Mitt Obomney loves Israel even more and wants to drone attack terrorists 24/7. Barak wants 12 aircraft carriers on line and Mitt wants 13. Barak wants a tiny economic stimulus and health insurance industry controlled insurance coverage for all, and as yet undisclosed cuts to Social Security and medicare, with taxes on the wealthiest and their estates increased to a level 40 percent lower than when JFK was president, and Mitt wants less economic and more military industrial stimulus, and he is an equally good friend to the health insurance industry and opponent to the best interests of the ill, the elderly and the 80 percent of the U.S. population who own just 12 percent of the wealth. Both are sponsored by big oil and opponents of any serious national mass transit plan.

The choice between Obomney and Obomney is enough for most Americans to pick a side and cheer for a team. Americans love bread and circuses as much as the Romans did.

NYT Kisses David Petraeus' Boo Boos To Make Them ... - Emptywheel

www.emptywheel.net/.../nyt-kisses-david-petraeus-boo-boos-to-make...

Posted on November 2, 2012 by emptywheel ... the last three sentences of Scott Shane's 1,500 word “news” piece on how David Petraeus' image has taken a hit because his agency 1) missed that the militias we’re partnering with in Libya were trying to kill us 2) gave poor intelligence that made the Administration look bad 3) asked for drones in response to this massive HUMINT failure.

Mr. Petraeus’s future has inevitably been the subject of rumors: that he would be Mitt Romney’s running mate, or, more plausibly, that he was interested in the presidency of Princeton. In a statement in late September, he did not rule that out for the future, but said that for the time being he was “living the dream here at C.I.A.” That was before the recriminations this week over Benghazi.

So in the interest of rehabilitating Petraeus’ image so he can run for President of Princeton or America, Shane explains, ........................

Today's load of propaganda and manipulation is even more absurd than the misinformation distributed by Scott Shane of the NY Times last week:

http://thehill.com/b...n-libya-attack-

Report: Petraeus will not testify on Libya attack - The Hill

thehill.com/.../267167-report-petraeus-will-not-testify-on-libya-attac...

2 hours ago – Hours after CIA Director David Petraeus officially resigned as the nation's top spy, Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee excused Petraeus from testifying on the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, hours after the former four-star general officially resigned as the nation's top spy.

http://www.slate.com...biographer.html

Petraeus Resigns Over Affair With Biographer By Fred Kaplan | Posted Friday, Nov. 9, 2012,

The woman with whom Gen. David Petraeus was having an affair is Paula Broadwell, the author of a recent hagiographic book about him, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus.

Petraeus resigned as CIA director on Friday, citing the affair. In a letter to his staff, Petraeus wrote:

"Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position as D/CIA. After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours."

Sources tell me that President Obama, who has been getting along with Petraeus very well in the past couple years, agonized for 24 hours over the letter of resignation before accepting it. The move no doubt ends the career of the most famous, and perhaps most strategically astute, American military commander in decades.

Petraeus has attracted detractors—fellow officers and some senior White House aides—who regarded him as a “showboat” and excessively ambitious.

It had long been rumored that something was going on between Petraeus and Broadwell. Her book, co-written with Vernon Loeb, is widely regarded as a valentine to the general. When she was embedded with him in Afghanistan, they went on frequent 5-mile runs together. But Petraeus went on 5-mile runs with many reporters, and few people who knew him took the rumors seriously. In his personal life, he’s always been seen as a straight shooter, a square. Few could have imagined that his end would come as the result of a morals scandal.

http://www.charlotte...close-look.html

Posted: Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012

Charlotte author chronicles Gen. Petraeus' war career

......Broadwell's 400-page biography is a war chronicle that begins as Petraeus takes command of U.S. forces in the Afghanistan war in June 2010. It tracks the general over his yearlong command, as he directs efforts to take back Taliban-controlled territory, rebuild villages and ensure the safety of Afghan citizens.

"I was trying to portray the war through the commander's eyes," she says.

At the same time, she and journalist Vernon Loeb, who helped write the book (Penguin Press, $29.95), tell the story of Petraeus's life, starting with his childhood as the first-generation son of a Dutch sailor raised in a modest home in Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y.

To report the story, Broadwell, 39, visited Afghanistan six times, spending a total of three months there. She embedded with combat troops and interviewed Petraeus for hours, often during runs they took together. She went on patrols, saw enemy fire, got sick during helicopter rides. And she loved it......

Petraeus' biographer Paula Broadwell under FBI investigation over access to his email, law enforcement officials say

NBCNews.com ‎- 53 minutes ago

The biographer for resigning CIA Director David Petraeus is under FBI investigation for improperly trying to access his email and possibly

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/11/04/general-david-petraeus-s-rules-for-living.html

Author

Paula Broadwell

http://www.thedailybeast.com/contributors/paula-broadwell.html

• 
  article
  
  Petraeus’s Rules for Living
  Nov 5, 2012 1:00 AM EST
  Lessons on leadership from General David Petraeus. MORE
  

Edited November 10, 2012 by Tom Scully

[David S. Brownlee]

Interesting...now the Director of the CIA resigns because he says he was having an affair....three days after the election.

I wonder what his choices were?

Edited November 10, 2012 by David S. Brownlee

[Guest Tom Scully]

Posted while watching Erin Burnett on CNN fawn over Petraeus while extremist Rep. Peter King laments over the loss of such a fantastic talent and the potential negative impact to our national security due to the loss of Petraeus's extraordinary leadership and accomplishment.

http://www.thenation...esthusing-story

General Petraeus's Link to a Troubling Suicide in Iraq: The Ted Westhusing Story

Greg Mitchell on June 27, 2011

.......After a three-month inquiry, investigators declared Westhusing’s death a suicide, although some Web writers would charge murder, without a good deal of evidence.

In 2007, The Texas Observer published a cover story by contributor Robert Bryce titled “I Am Sullied No More.” Bryce covered much of the same ground paved by Miller but added details on the Petraeus angle and allegations of murder.

“When he was in Iraq, Westhusing worked for one of the most famous generals in the U.S. military, David Petraeus,” Bryce observed. “As the head of counterterrorism and special operations under Petraeus, Westhusing oversaw the single most important task facing the U.S. military in Iraq then and now: training the Iraqi security forces.”

Bryce referred to a “two-inch stack of documents, obtained over the past 15 months under the Freedom of Information Act, that provides many details of Westhusing’s suicide…. The documents echo the story told by Westhusing’s friends. ‘Something he saw [in Iraq] drove him to this,’ one Army officer who was close to Westhusing said in an interview. ‘The sum of what he saw going on drove him’ to take his own life. ‘It’s because he believed in duty, honor, country that he’s dead.’ ”

In Iraq, Westhusing worked under two generals: Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, and Petraeus, then a lieutenant general. But Bryce continued: “By late May, Westhusing was becoming despondent over what he was seeing.” When his body was found, a note was found nearby addressed to Petraeus and Fil. It read:

“Thanks for telling me it was a good day until I briefed you. [Redacted name]—You are only interested in your career and provide no support to your staff—no msn [mission] support and you don’t care. I cannot support a msn that leads to corruption, human right abuses and liars. I am sullied—no more. I didn’t volunteer to support corrupt, money grubbing contractors, nor work for commanders only interested in themselves. I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored. I trust no Iraqi. I cannot live this way. All my love to my family, my wife and my precious children. I love you and trust you only. Death before being dishonored any more.

“Trust is essential—I don’t know who trust anymore. Why serve when you cannot accomplish the mission, when you no longer believe in the cause, when your every effort and breath to succeed meets with lies, lack of support, and selfishness? No more. Reevaluate yourselves, cdrs [commanders]. You are not what you think you are and I know it.”

Twelve days after Westhusing’s body was found, Army investigators talked with his widow, who told them: “I think Ted gave his life to let everyone know what was going on. They need to get to the bottom of it, and hope all these bad things get cleaned up.”

Bryce concluded: “In September 2005, the Army’s inspector general concluded an investigation into allegations raised in the anonymous letter to Westhusing shortly before his death. It found no basis for any of the issues raised. Although the report is redacted in places, it is clear that the investigation was aimed at determining whether Fil or Petraeus had ignored the corruption and human rights abuses allegedly occurring within the training program for Iraqi security personnel.”

Since then, the corruption and failed training angles have drawn wide attention although the Petraeus’s role, good or bad, has not. .....

http://www.upi.com/T...93721351062000/

CIA chief hails ex-agent's guilty plea

Published: Oct. 24, 2012 at 11:56 AM

CIA chief hails ex-agent's guilty plea

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 24 (UPI) -- The CIA's chief hailed ex-agent John Kiriakou's guilty plea for leaking the name of a covert operative as "an important victory" for the intelligence community.

CIA Director David Petraeus said in a statement that the first successful prosecution in 27 years under a 1982 law making it a crime to disclose the identities of covert U.S. intelligence operatives showed the importance of the oaths they take to preserve the nation's secrets.

"There are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy," his statement said.

Kiriakou, the first U.S. official to confirm waterboarding of al-Qaida captives, pleaded guilty Tuesday to giving the name of former colleague Deuce Martinez to investigative journalist Matthew Cole, formerly of ABC News.

Under the plea deal, all sides agreed the 48-year-old former CIA counter-terrorism operative would likely spend 2 1/2 years in prison, probably at a minimum-security prison camp in Pennsylvania. He will also pay a $250,000 fine.

If he had been convicted in trial, Kiriakou could have spent decades in prison.

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema noted the proposed term was the same given in 2007 to former White House aide Scooter Libby in a separate CIA leak case. Libby's sentence -- for false statements in an investigation into the disclosure of the identity of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson -- was later commuted by President George W. Bush.

Kiriakou, who worked for the agency from 1990 to 2004 and was named chief of counter-terrorist operations in Pakistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, was a leader of the team that located and captured suspected high-level al-Qaida facilitator Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002.

Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded a reported 83 times by government interrogators as part of the Bush administration's "extraordinary rendition" program. He was also subjected to other controversial interrogation techniques, including forced nudity, sleep deprivation, confinement in small dark boxes, deprivation of solid food, stress positions and physical assaults, ABC News and other news organizations reported.

Abu Zubaydah eventually revealed information that led to the arrest of "dirty bomb" plotter Jose Padilla and exposed Khalid Sheik Mohammed as the Sept. 11, 2001, attack mastermind.

Kiriakou is one of six current or former officials to be charged by the Obama administration with leaking -- twice the number of cases brought by all previous presidents combined.

Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department ethics adviser now with the whistle-blower-aiding Government Accountability Project, called the Kiriakou case "a travesty."

She called Kiriakou, who her non-profit organization was assisting, a whistle-blower pointing out alleged wrongdoing in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.

"John didn't feel like he was outing anybody," The Wall Street Journal quoted her as saying. He chose to plead guilty because he wanted "to have his life back," she said.

Kiriakou's financial strains were overwhelming, Radack said. He paid about $110,000 in legal bills and owed about $500,000 more; his wife was pushed out of the CIA, where she had also worked; and the family moved to a smaller house and began receiving welfare and Medicaid benefits, she said.

"Scooter" Libby put the government through the trouble and expense of a full and lengthy court trial and was involved in the political revenge "outing" of

a 20 year veteran CIA agent because the Bush administration objected to an editorial in the NY Times authored by her former acting Ambassador to Iraq, husband. John Kiriakou should have enjoyed the protections provided under law to a whistle blower engaged in exposing war crimes and crimes against humanity performed by conspiring employees and elected officials of the U.S. government!

Edited November 10, 2012 by Tom Scully

[Len Colby]

Interesting...now the Director of the CIA resigns because he says he was having an affair....three days after the election.

I wonder what his choices were?

Supposedly he insisted.

[David S. Brownlee]

Interesting...now the Director of the CIA resigns because he says he was having an affair....three days after the election.

I wonder what his choices were?

Supposedly he insisted.

As did Rommel...

His (previous) good service was likely taken into consideration...the effort that would have to be put into a trial for treason was likely also a factor.

Edited November 11, 2012 by David S. Brownlee

[Len Colby]

Interesting...now the Director of the CIA resigns because he says he was having an affair....three days after the election.

I wonder what his choices were?

Supposedly he insisted.

As did Rommel...

His (previous) good service was likely taken into consideration...the effort that would have to be put into a trial for treason was likely also a factor.

Do you really think that was an apt analogy? Did the latter part of your post apply to both or only the German?