Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

"A lot of people," Matt Lauer began, "now say the surge is working."

"Anybody who knows the facts on the ground say that," Senator McCain interjected.

"If it’s now working, Senator," Matt Lauer continued, "do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?"

"No," answered McCain. "But that’s not too important. What’s important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea. Americans are in Japan. American troops are in Germany.

"That’s all fine. American casualties and the ability to withdraw. We will be able to withdraw. General Petraeus is going to tell us in July when he thinks we are. But the key to it is we don’t want any more Americans in harm’s way.

"And that way they will be safe, and serve our country, and come home with honor and victory – not in defeat, which is what Senator Obama’s proposal would have done. And I’m proud of them, and they’re doing a great job. And we are succeeding. And it’s fascinating that Senator Obama still doesn’t realize it."

And there is the context of what Senator McCain said.

Well… not quite, Senator.

The full context is that the Iraq you see is a figment of your imagination.

This is not a war about "honor and victory," sir.

This is a war you, and the President you support and seek to succeed, conned this nation into.

Yes, sir.

You.

Posted by AzBluemeanie:

Our local yokel political reporters in Arizona and/or the editors of their newspapers continue to refuse to publish any investigative news reporting that is remotely critical of "Saint" John McCain.  They prefer to report the same crapola you get from the talking heads on network and cable news and talk radio all day who will only discuss the "horse race" and opinion polls which agree with their own opinion and narrative of the campaign, entirely devoid of any substantive discussion of important issues.  The corporate news media has entirely failed its constitutionally prescribed role as the publics watchdog over the government.

Thankfully, there is still excellent political reporting being done by independent reporters.  A recent example of good journalism is the 3-part investigative report by researcher and writer Mark G. Levey.  I will provide a link to each of his reports and snippets from each report in a series.

John McCain was a patron of Ahmad Chalabi, the exiled leader of the Iraqi National Congress (and a fugitive from justice in Europe) whom Neoconservatives like McCain supported and thereby lent his credibility.  Chalabi and his protege "Curveball" provided U.S. intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense with falsified information that the Neoconservatives relied upon to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Part 1 of the investigative report by Mark G. Levey explores "McCain’s Role in the WMD Cover-up, John McCain and Charlie Black’s War, How a senator and a lobbyist led the deception campaign that tricked the U.S."  Read the full report here Election Fraud News & The Money party. Snippets from the report:

"Who’s responsible for the “intelligence failure” that plunged the U.S. into the Iraq War? As much as anyone else, that distinction is shared by two Americans who discovered and nurtured Ahmad Chalabi and “Curveball”, and pushed their fortunes in Washington.

"One of those men is currently the presumptive Republican candidate for President of the United States, and the other is his chief political fixer.

This is the story about how they did it, and then shifted the spotlight of intelligence failure, political scandal, and criminal conspiracy off themselves.

* * *

Iraq War: Made in the USA

The conventional telling of the Iraq War story starts and stops with a motley group of exiled Iraqi businessmen, dissident scientists and professional conmen associated with the Iraqi National Congress (INC).

Most Americans instantly recognize only two names in connection with the Iraq WMD “intelligence failure”: Ahmad Chalabi, the group’s leader and “Curveball”, an engineer who claimed to have been working inside Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons programs at the time of his defection to Germany in 1998.

The INC exiles are often portrayed as masters of deception who by their own home-made ingenuity cooked up the raw intelligence that tricked much of the Washington establishment. We are expected to believe that, they alone, made Senators and spies believe – incorrectly — that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, and “mushroom clouds” would soon be seen over American cities.

* * *

The truth is, the Iraq “intelligence failure” was more than anything else a case of deliberate and willful self-deception and bullying by a group of powerful Washington insiders – led by Vice President Dick Cheney, along with John McCain on Capitol Hill, and Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon — who wanted to demonstrate that they, rather than the professional military and CIA, knew best how to start, fight, and (they thought) quickly and easily win wars in the Middle East.

* * *

Ranking GOP Senators and Congressmen, along with their aides and allies in the network of conservative Republican dominated think-tanks and lobbying shops were instrumental in creating INC, and keeping it generously funded during the 1990s until the disaster in Iraq was fully realized in 2005.

* * *

In 1997, after a failed uprising and incompetent coup attempt launched by Chalabi’s orders, against the advice of U.S. officials, the CIA cut-off INC As Robert Baer, who was the CIA officer on the ground in Iraq, Chalabi essentially sacrificed the Kurdish resistance in defiance of Clinton’s National Security Advisor Anthony Lake.

The response of the Washington political establishment was passage in 1998 of the Iraq Liberation Act, which mandated even greater spending on INC and six other opposition groups. During hearings on the Iraq Liberation Act, a parade of ranking U.S. military and intelligence officers led by Gen, Anthony Zinni clearly warned Congress of the dangers and futility of the plan to overthrow Saddam’s government by “regime change”.

Leading the charge on Capitol Hill was Senator McCain, along with his colleague, Joseph Lieberman, both vociferous advocates of regime change, focusing from an early date on the danger they described about Iraq’ arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

* * *

That’s the political background against which one may understand, why, from Day One, the incoming Bush-Cheney White House was obsessed with invading Iraq.

* * *

Where Cheney and others could not find sufficient justification in intelligence findings to sell Congress and the UN on invading a sovereign country – a legal nicety that still could not be ignored, even after 9/11 – these officials were quite happy to have evidence manufactured for them by Chalabi’s network, and to loot the U.S. Treasury to pay for it. Those intelligence officers who questioned the construction within the Pentagon and CIA of elaborate stovepipes and “cells” generating falsified data were pushed aside, and those career officers, such as CIA officer Valerie Plame and Lt. Col. Karen Kwaitowski at DIA, who visibly resisted, had their programs and careers destroyed.

But, the story about the INC-OSP-OVP pipeline has been often told. What still needs to be examined – what avert their eyes from – is the part played by key Members of Congress, including John McCain, in laying the groundwork and funding the Iraq intelligence deception.

John McCain was certainly at the center of this. During the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, he was Chairman or Ranking Minority Member of the Senate Commerce Committee, as well as a sitting Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee. He used his particular credibility and influence with the U.S. military to sell a fraudulent intelligence product.

* * *

Among public office holders, the chief sponsors for Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress in the years leading up to the 2003 invasion was a group of GOP leaders and Congressional Committee heads, including Tent Lott, Newt Gingrich, and John McCain.

In October, 1998, after the CIA cut its funding of Chalabi’s group because it was producing unreliable intelligence and a series of disastrous failed rebellions inside Iraq, Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, handing the INC $97 million to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The funding attached to this Bill, which John McCain co-sponsored, was based on little more than a vaguely defined plan to carry out “regime change”, a plan that Chalabi scratched out with a group of neoconservatives working at Washington and Jerusalem think-tanks.

* * *

McCain, among others in Congress, repeated without reservation that Saddam Hussein threatened the American heartland with WMD. McCain read the classified version of the October 2002 CIA NIE on Iraq, yet never even hinted at the fact that U.S. intelligence was far from unanimous that Iraq had mobile bioweapons trailers and uranium enrichment facilities claimed by the Bush Administration.

* * *

Posted by AZBlueMeanie:

Remember the BCCI bank scandal?  Charles Keating and the Savings & Loan scandal?  Ken Lay and the Enron scandal?  These scandals have all but disappeared down the memory hole for our local yokel political reporters who apparently suffer from amnesia.  John McCain is hoping that voters also have a short memory or suffer from amnesia.

Part 2 of the report by Mark G. Levey explores "McCain’s 30-Years of Service to Saudi Bank Raiders and Junk Bond Kings."  Read the full report here  Election Fraud News.  Snippets from the report:

"From BCCI, to Milken’s Junk Bond Kings, to Jack Abramoff, Senator John McCain has long provided the clean All-American face to the dirty job of cleaning up after the looting of America.

Senator John McCain has made a career out of serving the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its army of lobbyists, bagmen, and corrupt bankers during the last three decades.

In the process, he has done his part to cover-up BCCI’s looting of American banks and S&Ls… and more than anyone else, limited the public’s awareness of Jack Abamoff’s wholesale foreign buyout of the GOP, activities that individually have killed the careers of other Washington luminaries. Yet, somehow, John McCain remains the last man standing. He even appears to keep his hands clean.

The Saudi-Manchurian Candidate

The Senator’s patented role as All-American influence peddler to the world now includes the latest flap over his national campaign finance co-chair’s lucrative deals as a Saudi lobbyist and revelations about possible violations of federal campaign laws.

Tom Loeffler, McCain’s finance co-chair received $15 million from Saudi clients since 2002, is just part of a long conduit in the petrodollar pipeline from Riyadh to the Senator from Arizona. The Loeffler Group, which he founded, has also represented the People’s Republic of China.

Under Loeffler, the campaign has brought in more than $50 million for McCain so far this year, far more than was raised during all of 2007 when the GOP candidate faced a weak field of primary competitors. OpenSecrets.com shows that Loeffler and his wife, Nancy, have made a total of fifteen $2,300 maximum personal contributions to McCain during the past year.

* * *

Loeffler last month told a reporter "at no time have I discussed my clients with John McCain." But lobbying disclosure records reviewed by NEWSWEEK show that on May 17, 2006, Loeffler listed meeting McCain along with the Saudi ambassador to "discuss US-Kingdom of Saudi Arabia relations."

Another potential problem: Loeffler’s firm started paying $15,000 a month last summer to one of its lobbyists, Susan Nelson, after she left to become McCain’s full-time finance director, said a source familiar with the arrangement (who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters). Campaign officials were told the payments were "severance" for Nelson and that they ended by November. But in "February or March," Loeffler rehired Nelson as a consultant to "help him with his clients" while she continued on the McCain payroll, according to a campaign official who asked not to be identified talking about personnel matters. Federal election law prohibits any outside entity from subsidizing the income of campaign workers.

* * *

McCain is, indeed, in good favor among the Saudi and Gulf elites. Bloomberg reports: Bloomberg.com: Politics ("McCain Iraq, Iran Policies Make Him Favored Candidate to Saudis," By Hans Nichols and Janine Zacharia)

* * *

Like the Bush Family, McCain had his Hand in the BCCI and S&L Scandals

McCain claims that his involvement in the Keating S&L scandal wasn’t really much to worry ourselves about. He was all but exonerated by his Senate colleagues, he says, let off with the political equivalent of a warning at a traffic stop. In fact, the Senate Ethics Committee was rather lenient with all five caught up in the scandal. But, that says more about the nature of the Senate than it does about the actual damage done to the American public by the financial crimes that led to the S&L collapse, itself.

The S&L crisis was all about oil, junk bonds, and deregulation that allowed the two to mix. That volatile brew is still actively bubbling over, and taxpayers are still paying $30 billion annual installments toward the trillion dollar bailout.

Here’s how you got stuck paying the bill, courtesy of the Bush family and John McCain.

In the mid-1980s, world oil prices plunged which set off a long series of bankruptcies and financial takeovers when overvalued Texas and southwestern land prices collapsed. The financial panic of 1988 also followed the “reform” of federal banking rules that had allowed bank managers to trade in risky new derivatives and junk bonds.

* * *

Huge bank holding companies scooped up looted banks and S&Ls (along with their land deeds and oil rights), bought out for pennies on the dollar after they went belly-up. The federal government even subsidized many of these purchases. The American taxpayer was left with an estimated $1 trillion bailout cost. The epicenters of this late 20th Century white collar crime wave were in Houston and Phoenix, home base for two highly ambitious GOP politicians. One was named George H. W. . Bush, and the other John McCain, III.