My letter to Rep Omar

[James DiEugenio]

This was delivered to her office in Minneapolis yesterday.  I enclosed it as a cover letter to my article on JFK and the Middle East in the first issue of garrison. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     April 18, 2019

Rep. Ilhan Omar

404 3^rd Avenue North

Suite 203

Minneapolis MN 55401

Dear Congresswoman:

I am enclosing an article I wrote recently for a national political magazine.

I have noticed your comments on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict which have caused much controversy in the media of late.  I happen to personally agree with your statements about a two state solution and Palestinian rights.  I also think, like you and Bernie Sanders, that American policy there has shifted too far toward the conservative Likud.

This article shows that President Kennedy was probably the last president who was willing to stand up to the conservative strain in Israel on both atomic weapons and Palestinian rights. To the point that he was threatening to hold up funds.  This apparently caused the resignation of Ben Gurion. 

The reason I am forwarding it to you is that it shows that there is a precedent for your ideas, and it came from the White House. Therefore you can say that what you are saying is pretty much what JFK was saying, and you can prove it.

Sincerely,

James DiEugenio

 

[Michael Cross]

Thanks Jim.  

[James DiEugenio]

Welcome Michael.

I just hope she reads it.

In retrospect, I might have asked to keep my name out of it.

I can just see it now, "Omar is now using conspiracy theorist Jim DiEugenio about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute."

Then they bring on someone like Von Pein or McAdams. 

Edited April 24, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Cross]

Ugh.  The media are predictable.

[Rob Couteau]

What a great idea to pass that along to Omar. I hope she reads it and gets back to you. For me Kennedy's foreign policy remains one of the most interesting things about his presidency. A noble task,  to educate our congressional reps about it. Omar of all people should find it fascinating. 

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Rob.  

Its funny that you would say that about Kennedy's foreign policy.

I started doing this about five years ago.  My first major presentation on it was at Cyril Wecht's symposium in Pittsburgh in 2013.

It was new to everyone since the research community was (and is) obsessed with Vietnam and Cuba only.

But after about the third one I did, someone came up to my and said, "Nice job Jim.  But I would wager that if you did that with all aspects of Kennedy's presidency, you would get the same result."

I would have to say, I tend to agree with that today. 

BTW, now that I have done all this research, and its out there on some platforms, it renders John McAdams' comment during our debate even more ridiculous.  I said that "Kennedy was the most liberal president since FDR."  He said, no, LBJ and Truman were more liberal than he was. 

Truman dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and essentially reversed FDR's policy toward the USSR thus initiating the Cold War, which Kennedy was trying to thaw at the time of his death.

As per LBJ, OMG, there are  three or four million dead Vietnamese who's relatives would disagree. And that does not even consider Brazil, Dominican Republic, Greece, and Indonesia.

Thus are the wages of the Single Bullet Fantasy.

Edited April 26, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Rob Couteau]

On 4/26/2019 at 2:33 AM, James DiEugenio said:

I would wager that if you did that with all aspects of Kennedy's presidency, you would get the same result."

There was such a standard of excellence that he imposed upon himself during his administration (I assume this is what you mean by that statement). You can see it and sense it in everything he did, from big to small, whether it was during a press conference quoting the ancient Greeks or when dealing with complex issues of domestic strife or issues abroad. And that includes how he dealt with, and took responsibility for, his own mistakes. But for me personally, his foreign policy (both in practice and in vision) remains the single most interesting part of the JFK story. There was a real brilliance there. Hopefully at some distant point in the future people will be just as interested in his Tibet policy (and the exciting story of how Galbraith helped to steer his canoe through such troubled waters) or in his innovative work in Africa as they will in his Cuba or Vietnam policy. And I hope too that if the JFK legacy is ever rescued from the historical museum that it is now ensconced in, it will serve as a model for future politicians who also want to think outside the box. But admittedly that is a tall order, as the oligarchy has never seemed more threatening than it is today. This is an amusing quote about JFK that I feel captures something about him: "He had a capacity for backing off and watching himself perform, and later commenting on what he’d seen and heard with a quick, half-sublimated sense of humor that often made him seem like a pillar of sanity in the thieving, swinish chaos of American politics. He seemed like the only man who knew what was happening, and although there was rarely any way to guess what he might decide to do about it, there was always the chance that he might find an opening to do something right." -- Hunter S. Thompson.

Edited May 3, 2019 by Rob Couteau

[James DiEugenio]

 Nice quote by Thompson.

But I also think there is another factor.

We are supposed to believe that for about fifty years after 1963, 99 per cent of all historians somehow missed all of this.

I don't buy it.  How could you miss something as big and important as Congo?  I remember that as a kid. 

IMO, this is part of the MSM game that is played.  What you do is you smear people like Schlesinger as being some kind of court stenographer, and then you pen these bad books that hide everything important about JFK, or discount it.  I know since I fell for that.  I actually used the Herbert Parmet book for my first edition of Destiny Betrayed.  Today I do not even have that book. Its worthless, just like Dallek's books are worthless.

BTW, it is happening with RFK too.  Just take a look at that piece of rubbish by Larry Tye.  (If you want to read a really good book on RFK take a look at President of the Other America by a guy named Schmitt.  In fact, better idea, buy it right now https://www.amazon.com/President-Other-America-Kennedy-Politics/dp/1558499040.  I could have never written my four part series on the Kennedys and civil rights without that book.)

Therefore, what I think the message is is that if one would excavate each aspect of his presidency, one would see what the true facts about them are.Like what Don Gibson did with Battling Wall Street on economics. Once you do that you find out they are not what the MSM says they are.  I mean, hacks and suck ups like Larry Sabato and Nick Bryant and Jeff Greenfield say that JFK was late to civil rights.

Complete and utter BS. Kennedy endorsed Brown vs Board as a senator!  Twice.  Once was in Jackson Mississippi. See if you can find that in (WSJ) Mr. Levingston's book on the subject. You will not.  All of this disinformation is meant to hide the fact of who he really was.  Period.  (And by the time of his death, RFK made JFK look like a moderate.)

This is how bad the MSM is on this.  And its why I say, the facts of who Kennedy really was are more throughly and assiduously concealed that the facts of his murder. For good reason.

 

 

Edited May 3, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Rob Couteau]

 

Just now, James DiEugenio said:

Therefore, what I think the message is is that if one would excavate each aspect of his presidency, one would see what the true facts about them are.... the facts of who Kennedy really was are more throughly and assiduously concealed that the facts of his murder. For good reason.

Excellent points throughout. The real cover up is the cover up of the complete and unvarnished truth. And we are all put through decades of so much brainwashing - from schooling, to television, to book publishing, to Internet, etc. - that it is a virtual miracle that any truth about the really important things emerges at all. Thanks for the Schmitt book - didn't know of it and I'll order it as soon as I finish John Potash's "Drugs Used as Weapons Against Us" (another great book with many hidden truths). You are a great mentor, Jim, and I appreciate your insights.

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks so much Rob.

 I have read a lot of books on both JFK and RFK, but the Schmitt book is really unique.

Edited May 3, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Denis Morissette]

Omar will reply to you: “Somebody got killed on November 22, 1963 in Dallas” She’s a danger to America. She should be deported.

Edited May 3, 2019 by Denis Morissette

[Rob Couteau]

 

21 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

the Schmitt book is really unique.

Just ordered it! BTW, just wanted to let you know that Potash cites your work (from your "Assassinations" book) in seven of his footnotes in "Drugs as Weapons Against Us: The CIA's Murderous Targeting of SDS, Panthers, Hendrix, Lennon, Cobain, Tupac, and Other Leftists."

Potash also quotes a Walter Bowart interview of Timothy Leary from later in life, in which Leary says: "I was working as an intelligence agent since 1962. I was a witting agent of the CIA" (p. 121). Potash adds that 1962 was within a year of Leary's first LSD trip. Hard to know what is real and what is bullxxxx with Leary, but I've always been extremely suspicious of him and his role in the Sixties. In any case, 1962 was a very strange year.

[Joe Bauer]

It seems to me that there is a once a year average of nationally reported articles ( beyond the National Enquirer ) about JFK's extra-marital sexual activities carried by most of the MSM even now 56 years after his death!

AOL in particular is really into this.

I wonder whether most newer generation young people have a first thought image of JFK as a sex addict more than any other image due to JFK receiving more sexual indiscretion press coverage in the MSM for 56 years than any other historical aspect of JFK outside of his actual assassination.

It would be fair to give the same amount of yearly MSM coverage to LBJ's incredible corruption, affairs and end of life breakdown with guards to keep him from open interviews and with Nixon being thrown out of the Presidency and his entire team ( 25 individuals! ) being thrown in prison.

 

 

 

 

[Rob Couteau]

Good point Joe. If the truth were to be told, there would be one presidential impeachment after another. A virtual rogue's gallery. You're right about the annual hit on JFK. It's a regular, cyclical character assassination of the "silver bullet" variety. They must still be really afraid of something ... the truth. Which is just about the only thing our side has going for it.

Edited May 4, 2019 by Rob Couteau

[Ron Bulman]

5 hours ago, Rob Couteau said:

Good point Joe. If the truth were to be told, there would be one presidential impeachment after another. A virtual rogue's gallery. You're right about the annual hit on JFK. It's a regular, cyclical character assassination of the "silver bullet" variety. They must still be really afraid of something ... the truth. Which is just about the only thing our side has going for it.

Maybe Honesty and Integrity in the pursuit of it too?