This is a tightened-up REPOST of a thread I posted on Tuesday night.
That thread got lost in the election horserace frenzy. But, OSP is a real
issue, which must be aired if we are to have meaningful discussions,
instead of bloveating about hairdoos and horseraces.
Many left-wing political activists are afraid that Kerry is the
"corporately-
electable" candidate, who will get rid of Bush without letting the
blame spill onto the greedy corporate bastards who have backed
him to the hilt.
The OSP is a litmus test for how Kerry intends to run his campaign.
If all we get is the
corporate FRAMING of the issue, which is doing
its best to ignore OSP and PNAC, then there will never be an honest
airing of the damage that Bush has done across the board to US
foreign policy and the Defense Department and the Intelligence
agencies.
One more time, is any Kerry supporter able to tell me what Kerry's
position is on OSP? Has he ever mentioned it?
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Kerry people: What is Kerry going to say Re: Office of Special Plans?The scariest thing about the Bush administration is its across the
board implementation of a police state. At DU, we worry about Ashcroft,
Patriot Acts, Police Goon Squads as in Miami FTAA, uncaught Anthrax
bombers, First Amendment Zones, and many other accouterments of
secrecy not for legitimate defense, but for authoritarian domination.
At the moment, the WMD fiasco has exposed them to attack on that front.
Recognizing the danger, the Bush handlers have decided to blame this
ALL on the CIA. The media whores are going along with this, even as
the media itself is now being blamed for its craven war cheerleading.
The corporate media doesn't want to mention yet another embarrasment
to the Bush Cabal, the OSP. Everyone at DU, if they do not know, can
easily find out about the infamous Office of Special Plans. For example:
http://cooperativeresearch.org/wot/iraq/office_of_special_plans.htmlDUers want the OSP to be part of the investigation because it is
the OSP who "stovepiped" phony intelligence cooked up by their
tiny team of PNAC Likudniks straight into the White House, because
OSP is Rumsfeld's bastard child, because Cheney's dirty fingerprints
are all over OSP, because convicted felon Eliot Abrams was appointed
to this little shop of horrors, etc.
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So, since I keep being told how strong John Kerry is on investigating
CIA corruption and knowing his way around the intelligence community,
and since I further keep hearing about how one Rand Beers (formerly
the Bush Jr guy in charge of South American Anti-terrorism) has joined
the Kerry Campaign, I expected to find Kerry blasting away at the OSP.
After all, Kerry has the experience, the expertise, and the team to do
it. So I am told.
Therefore I went to the Kerry website to see what John has to say about
OSP. To avoid suspense, the answer is NADA, ZILCH, ZERO.
At the website, I looked under "John Kerry on the Issues". Two topics
seemed relevant to this: "Foreign Policy" and "Homeland Security".
They say nothing about stopping the TAMPERING with the intelligence process.
They pretend its all just a bureaucracy problem, and offer more useless
rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Why isn't Kerry shouting OSP from the rooftops? This is perfect positioning
for him.
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Now, let me turn to Mr. Rand Beers, who was touted as a guy who
could expose the Bush lies because he was an insider on the Bush
team until last summer.
Because I hadn't heard much from Mr. Beers, I Googled:
campaign + "John Kerry" + "Rand Beers"
I got a grand total of 769 hits. A mere handful.
And what I found was not flattering. Apparently, he hasn't done much
since joining. And, when he joined, he was roundly criticized for his
behavior within the Bush Administration.
Hit # 3 on Google was the admittedly controversial CounterPunch site:
http://www.counterpunch.org/donahue01262004.html January 26, 2004
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers
Kerry's Drug War Zealot
By SEAN DONAHUE
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Hit #6 was from Al Giordano's new website (He used to do Narco News.)
www.bigleftoutside.com/archives/000025.php
(This Al is for real; not to be confused with crypto-spook Al Martin.)
....June 16, 2003
....What Did Rand Beers Know and When Did He Know It?
....The front page of the Washington Post today has a shocker: State Department
....fixer Rand Beers jumped ship days prior to Gulf War II and has now signed up
....with the Kerry campaign as a foreign policy advisor.
....Beers was the administration’s point man in the post-9/11 efforts to confuse
....national liberation movements (that don’t attack targets in other countries) with
....“international terrorists." See Narco News, March 1, 2002: Beers Fumigated in Deposition.
....See also Narco News, September 10, 2002, in which Beers had to file an affidavit to
....correct a dangerously false claim that he made under oath:
....I made the following statement: "It is believed that FARC terrorists have received training
....at Al Qaida terrorist camps in Afghanistan." I wish to strike this sentence.
....It’s all well and good that Beers had what the Post today portrays as an attack of
....conscience, but he has to come clean on what really happened with the lies that –
....in at least one instance – he admitted that he told under oath to frighten the American
....public into supporting un-American policies in Latin America.
....Otherwise, Randall Beers will soon become a deserved millstone around John Kerry’s neck.
....Memo to Beers: go have a heart to heart with Dan Ellsberg, then do the right thing and
....come 100-percent clean. Memo to Kerry: Caveat Emptor.
Just great, the man lied under oath and had to retract it. And we are supposed to applaud
Kerry for having this guy on board? Only if he does something to show he has really
changed sides - something like blasting the OSP.
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Challenge number two:
Where, oh where, is Rand Beers? What does he know about the fraudulent
cooking of intelligence? What does he know about OSP?
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arendt