Rand Paul’s Michael Moore Moment

I'm not a fan of Senator Rand Paul, but occasionally he does get things right and as the lead up to the 2016 presidential contest heats up, one of the most true things Paul has said will hopefully get much more attention: he accusing Dick Cheney of pushing America to go into Iraq to help Halliburton, Cheney's former company in which he continued to hold a great deal of stock in a euphemistically described "blind trust." Halliburton made billions in Iraq and Cheney made out like a bandit by all estimations.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at Rand Paul's accusations and how Cheney's greed lead to the deaths of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.  Cheney is, in my view, nothing less than evil incarnate.  Here are article excerpts:

[I]n the current struggle for the soul of the Republican Party, few skirmishes offer better drama than the ongoing clash of the Cheney and Paul clans. Pick your permutation—Dick firing on Rand, Ron firing on Dick, Rand on Liz, Dick on Ron, Rand on Dick—this display of isolationist Hatfields vs. neocon McCoys . . . . 

[W]ith Rand gearing up for a run at the big chair in 2016, the feud promises to get even hotter as the ex-veep, prodded by fellow hawks, stews over the mere possibility of a Republican POTUS so intervention-averse that he’d make Barack Obama look like, well, Dick Cheney.

Case in point: On March 29, during Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas cattle call for 2016 contenders, Cheney took a slap at “an increasing strain of isolationism” in his party.  . . . . Cheney didn’t bother mentioning Rand’s name. I mean, really, why bother? Safe to say everyone in the audience knew precisely whom he meant by “some candidates.”

But in case anyone failed to make the connection, David Corn over at Mother Jones helpfully stirred the pot, using the ex-veep’s remarks as a hook upon which to hang a four-year-old video of Paul peddling a whopping good conspiracy theory about Cheney and the Iraq War. Specifically, shortly before entering the Senate race in 2009, at an April 7 address to college Republicans at Western Kentucky University, Paul posited that Cheney had pushed for the 2003 invasion of Iraq because it would fatten Halliburton’s bottom line.

As Paul apparently sees it, the timeline makes perfect sense: Back in 1995, Cheney was running around vigorously defending the first Bush administration’s decision not to invade Baghdad during the first Gulf War. But then, ka-boom! (Or rather, ka-ching!) “Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton,” Paul said in 2009. “Makes hundreds of millions of dollars, their CEO. Next thing you know, he’s back in government and it’s a good idea to go into Iraq.”

Lest someone mistake Paul’s college talk as some sort of overly enthusiastic “one off,” Corn points to a second Paul speech, this one at a Montana rally during his dad’s 2008 presidential campaign, in which Rand got even more explicit about his view of Cheney’s conversion:

But, you know, a couple hundred million dollars later Dick Cheney earns from Halliburton, he comes back into government. Now Halliburton’s got a billion-dollar no-bid contract in Iraq. You know, you hate to be so cynical that you think some of these corporations are able to influence policy, but I think sometimes they are.

Forget “No blood for oil.” For Paul, America’s Iraq debacle was a mercenary swap of blood for several billion dollars in federal contracts to Cheney’s former company to do everything from put out oil field fires to provide housing for soldiers.

I enjoy watching Cheney get slapped around on the issue as much as the next gal. But it’s one thing to accuse the former veep of ideologically driven Machiavellianism; ’tis quite another to suggest that he did what he did out of loyalty to his Halliburton cronies. That is a far darker charge . . . 

As Paul moves closer and closer to the presidential trail, however, legions of journalists, oppo researchers, and even garden-variety voters will be rooting around in his past like hogs digging for truffles. These two speeches swiping at Cheney are unlikely to be the only colorful nuggets unearthed. Paul is a passionate, quirky pol who, until very recently, didn’t see much need to watch his tongue. Whatever else it’s doing to prep for 2016, Team Rand had better be bracing for Americans to learn about some of the senator’s fringier thoughts and theories.

Let the cat fight begin.  It should make for great sport and just maybe it will  cause the media to focus on Cheney's self-enrichment at the expense of thousands of Americans and Iraqi lives.  Iraq was a fool's errand and Cheney was Chimperator Bush's principal puppeteer.

Why Was My Son Killed in Fallujah - The Fool's Errand In Iraq?

I nearly lost a son-in-law in Afghanistan, so I know some of the ritual of asking "why?"  Thankfully, he and we were lucky and he survived and he has made a steady recovery.  Far too many young Americans and their families were not so lucky.  And many of these less fortunate struggle to believe that their child's or spouse's life wasn't thrown away for nothing other than the cretinous hubris of George W. Bush and the ego of that megalomaniac known as Dick Cheney.  Sadly, these lives were thrown away for nothing.  At least nothing honorable and meritorious.  It was always about trying to control oil and furthering an insane anti-Muslim jihad.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at one family's struggle to avoid accepting that they were betrayed by the leaders of America who in the final analysis did not care a wit about their son or the thousands of other Americans who needlessly lost their lives.   Here are excerpts:

The sniper was subsequently freed by the Iraqi government and he might even now be back in Fallujah with the Al Qaeda forces that have taken the city where McKenna and Glover and so many other fine Americans died.

Yet, however much she wishes her son’s killer would spend the rest of his days behind bars and however hard it may be to know that Islamic militants now occupy the very place where he was killed, McKenna’s mother believes that what happens now in Iraq is a worry for the Iraqis themselves.

“It is not our war,” Karen McKenna said on Monday. “It is a civil war. It’s their problem. Not ours.”

But she also voices a firm belief that we initially went into Iraq with what she terms a “high minded” purpose.

“Once Saddam Hussein was out of the picture, we really didn’t belong there anymore,” she then adds.

She is equally certain that her son’s life was not wasted.

McKenna was quite literally an Eagle Scout as he grew up on East 2^nd Street in Brooklyn. He demonstrated that he had the makings of a future Marine after his mother sent him on a last minute errand to a nearby deli. He still had not returned a considerable time later.

The doctors later said the boy might very well have died if young John had not aided him until an ambulance arrived.  John went on to Binghamton University, where he rowed crew. He of course wished to serve his country and he was among the first wave of Marines into Afghanistan after 9/11.

McKenna, now 30, was the best kind of combat infantry officer, smart and focused and brave and fair, with a clear and unshakable sense of the right thing to do, big or small. His fellow Marines revered him.

McKenna and everybody else knew that the sniper was just waiting for someone to come to the wounded Marine’s aid. But McKenna was not going to leave Glover sprawled unattended in the street.

McKenna dashed from safety into the most mortal danger. He knelt beside Glover just as he once had by that injured boy back in Brooklyn.

“Ignoring imminent peril from heavy incoming fire, Capt. McKenna ran into the intersection in an effort to save his downed Marine,” reads the citation for the Silver Star that McKenna was awarded posthumously. “Completely exposed to enemy fire, he calmly knelt next to the stricken Marine to assess his condition. As he began to drag the Marine to a covered position, Capt. McKenna was hit by enemy fire and mortally wounded.”

The families of McKenna and Glover were assured that “as long as there is a Marine in Iraq, the sniper will remain in jail.” They learned otherwise only after McKenna’s father wrote a May 16, 2011 letter to then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates. John McKenna III noted in the letter that the sniper who killed his son and Glover had been captured by their fellow Marines.

The unfortunate truth is that thousands of wonderful young Americans died for nothing other than George W. Bush's idiocy and Dick Cheney's greed - Haliburton made billions - and mania.  Worse yet, if Bush and Cheney are never held accountable, we will have made the next Iraq like disaster happen all the sooner.  America truly doesn't learn from the past.  Bush and Cheney are war criminals and need to be tried and punished severely.

Nigeria to Indict Dick Cheney, Interpol to Issue Arrest Warrant

While it would be far better if Dick Cheney - and Chimperator Bush - were facing indictment for war crimes, I'll settle for any threat of arrest if Cheney takes his sorry ass out of the USA. In my view, the man is pure evil and deserves to spend the rest of his life in jail. One can only dream of seeing Cheney in a Nigerian jail which somehow I suspect would not be up to the standards to which he's become accustomed. Related to this story on MSNBC last night, however, is news that the Liar-in-Chief has been involved in strong arming foreign governments and judicial systems to block prosecution of Bush White House operatives for international crimes such as torture. Once again, Obama proves that his entire campaign was a lie and that the American people were played as suckers as rarely before. I for one hope he's challenged for the 2012 nomination and defeated. I am way past done with the man. Business Week meanwhile has details on Emperor Palpatine Cheney's legal problems. Here are some highlights:
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Nigeria will file charges against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and officials from five foreign companies including Halliburton Co. over a $180 million bribery scandal, a prosecutor at the anti-graft agency said.
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Indictments will be lodged in a Nigerian court “in the next three days,” Godwin Obla, prosecuting counsel at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said in an interview today at his office in Abuja, the capital. An arrest warrant for Cheney “will be issued and transmitted through Interpol,” the world’s biggest international police organization, he said.
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Last week, Nigeria arrested at least 23 officials from companies including Halliburton, Saipem, Technip and a former subsidiary of Panalpina Welttransport Holding AG in connection with alleged illegal payments to Nigerian officials. Those detained were all freed on bail on Nov. 29.
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Authorities in the West African nation are probing Halliburton, Saipem and Technip for the alleged payment of $180 million in bribes to win a $6 billion liquefied natural-gas contract. Panalpina is being investigated for illegal payments it allegedly made to Nigerian customs officials on behalf of Royal Dutch Shell Plc.
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The plans to file charges against Cheney were reported earlier today in the Lagos-based Guardian newspaper. Femi Babafemi, a spokesman for the commission, confirmed the plans to file charges when contacted by phone today in Abuja. He wouldn’t comment any further.
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KBR and Halliburton agreed to pay $579 million in February 2009 for bribery payments in Nigeria that stretched from 1994 to 2004.

Gulf Oil Spill Enters "Loop Current" with Florida and East Coast at Risk

The evening news shows on MSNBC have had plenty of coverage of the growing environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. British Petroleum is proving itself as incompetent in stopping the oil gushing into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico as incompetent as it was in making sure that safety rules and procedures were followed before the blowout occurred. Some - and I am one of them - believe that the U.S. government needs to take control of the effort to stop the oil flow and do whatever is needed to blow up the well head and stop the oil flow - even if that means the well and surrounding area are lost completely and BP takes an even bigger financial hit on the lost well. Incredibly, the CEO of BP was delusional enough to previously claim that the damage from the spill would not be a major catastrophe. Now, reports are coming in that not only is the Gulf of Mexico being destroyed - along with the local fishing and seafood industries - but that now the Florida Keys and the majority of the East Coast ARE potentially going to be damaged. The still flowing oil has found its way into the "loop current" that flows clockwise around the Gulf , through the Florida Straits and then up the East Coast via the Gulf Stream. Here are highlights from a BBC report:

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A "small portion" of oil sheen is in the Loop Current, which circulates in the Gulf, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said. Diluted oil could appear in isolated parts of Florida if persistent winds pushed the current that way, it added.
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European scientists warn the spill could reach Florida within six days. Oil has been spewing into the Gulf since the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, leased by oil giant BP, exploded off the coast of Louisiana on 20 April and sank two days later.
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Satellite images released by the European Space Agency (ESA) depict a streak of oil stretching south from the main slick into the Loop Current - a body of fast-flowing water coming from the Caribbean which the agency says is likely to propel oil towards Florida within six days.
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Also on Wednesday, the US said it was having talks with Cuba over the spill. Observers say the rare talks demonstrate a concern that the oil may be carried by currents far from the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
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In Louisiana, a lawyer has asked a panel of federal judges to consolidate more than 100 cases related to the oil spill into a single action. Daniel Becnel asked that the growing number of cases against oil companies BP, Transocean, Halliburton and Cameron be combined and heard in Louisiana, the Associated Press news agency reported. The lawsuits have been filed by commercial fishermen, restaurants, hotels and property owners and others who say the oil spill has cost them income.

Oil Spill to Foul Entire East Coast?

Having spent a couple of years as in-house counsel I have been holding off any verdict on the oil spill catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico until now. The scenario continues to look worse and worse and it increasingly appears that an as yet unexplained policy change during the Bush/Cheney regime may ultimately explain why the shattered well failed to have a costly type of blow out preventer such as is required by many other nations for wells drilled in their waters. A New Republic story looks at this issue as to why the BP well did not have this - in retrospect - incredibly crucial piece of equipment. Here are some highlights:
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Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s terrific reporting last week, there are two important things we already know.
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First, an oil-drilling procedure called cementing—which is supposed to prevent oil and natural gas from escaping by filling gaps between the outside of the well pipe and the inside of the hole bored into the ocean floor—has been identified as a leading cause of well blowouts. Indeed, a 2007 study by the Minerals Management Service (or MMS, the division of the Interior Department responsible for offshore drilling) found that this procedure was implicated in 18 out of 39 blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over the 14 years it studied—more than any other factor. Cementing, which was handled by Halliburton, had just been completed prior to the recent explosion.
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Second, the oil well now spewing large quantities of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico lacked a remote-control acoustic shutoff switch used by rigs in Norway and Brazil as the last line of defense against underwater spills. There’s a story behind that. As the Journal reports, after a spill in 2000, the MMS issued a safety notice saying that such a back-up device is “an essential component of a deepwater drilling system.” The industry pushed back in 2001, citing alleged doubts about the capacity of this type of system to provide a reliable emergency backup. By 2003, government regulators decided that the matter needed more study after commissioning a report that offered another, more honest reason: “acoustic systems are not recommended because they tend to be very costly.” I guess that depends on what they’re compared to. The system costs about $500,000 per rig. BP is spending at least $5 million per day battling the spill, the well destroyed by the explosion is valued at $560 million, and estimated damages to fishing, tourism, and the environment already run into the billions.
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There’s something else we know, something that suggests an explanation for this sequence of events. After the Bush administration took office, the MMS became a cesspool of corruption and conflicts of interest. In September 2008, Earl Devaney, Interior’s Inspector General, delivered a report to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne that has to be read to be believed. One section, headlined “A Culture of Ethical Failure,” documented the belief among numerous MMS staff that they were “exempt from the rules that govern all other employees of the Federal Government.” They adopted a “private sector approach to essentially everything they did.” This included “opting themselves out of the Ethics in Government Act.”
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So here’s my question: what is responsible for MMS’s change of heart between 2000 and 2003 on the crucial issue of requiring a remote control switch for offshore rigs? What we do know is that unfettered oil drilling was to Dick Cheney’s domestic concerns what the invasion of Iraq was to his foreign policy—a core objective, implacably pursued regardless of the risks. Is there a connection between his infamous secret energy task force and the corrupt mindset that came to dominate a key program within MMS?

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As for how bad will the spill get, the Washington Post has a VERY, VERY frightening story that, if the predictions are true, could mean disaster for much of the east coast of the USA. Yes, all the way up to the Virginia coast and beyond. If Bush and Cheney had a hand in allowing this well to be drilled without equipment that could have averted this disaster, in addition to being tried for war crimes, we have another indictment against them. Meanwhile, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell continues to favor drilling off the Virginia coast. Here are highlights:
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[W]ith each day that the leaking oil well a mile below the surface remains uncapped, scientists and energy industry observers are imagining outcomes that range from bad to worse to worst, with some forecasting a calamity of historic proportions.
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Three scientists in separate interviews Tuesday said the gulf's "loop current," a powerful conveyor belt that extends about 3,000 feet deep, will almost surely take the oil down through the eastern gulf to the Straits of Florida, a week-long trip, roughly. The oil would then hang a sharp left, riding the Florida Current past the Keys and north again, directly into the Gulf Stream, which could carry it within spitting distance of Palm Beach and up the East Coast to Cape Hatteras, N.C.
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For the moment, the oil flowing from the blown-out well in what the industry calls Mississippi Canyon Block 252 is still many miles north of the loop current. . . . The oil so far has barely touched coastal islands and hasn't come ashore, but environmentalists are poised for a catastrophic impact that could last decades.
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At a news conference Tuesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) said he had asked federal officials to look for ways to increase the Mississippi River's flow to keep the slick at bay. "Let's make no mistake about what's at stake here," he said. "This is our very way of life."

Was Dick Cheney A Client of Jeane Palfrey’s Escort Service?

Previously, I noted that I would be publishing a guest post by Montgomery Sibley, former attorney for Deborah Jeane Palfrey and author of a new book, "Why Just Her: The Judicial Lynching of the D.C. Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey," that looks at the judicial system which drove her to commit suicide - something I can relate to given my current circumstances. More on the book can be found here. Here's Montgomery's guest post which gives you a flavor for the book:

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This is a question that I have been asked many times. Jeane didn’t know the answer as she never met her D.C. clients as she lived in California and never asked for their real names – unless they were paying by check. Only a few bright men – “Shock and Awe” Harlan Ullman among them – were so clever as to pay the escorts by personal check.
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However, we has strong information that Cheney was a client and thus actively pursued that information by subpoena. For if we could prove that vice-president of the United States was a client, I did think any jury would convict Jeane. On May 7, 2007, I wrote a memo to Jeane’s criminal counsel, Preston Burton stating:
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I had lunch with Wayne today. Basically, he has it from three sources, one Pentagon and two CIA, all of which he considers reliable, that [Vice President Dick] Cheney was a client of the service when he was CEO of Halliburton. . . .Additionally, Bush’s transition team took over the offices of Halliburton in Arlington and hence that number may also be at issue. Last, Ken Starr’s wife, Alice, was the PR person for the landlord. Hence, all those numbers could be quite interesting. Wayne’s take is that GWB wants to oust Cheney, who apparently has many enemies including Karl Rove, in order to put a new VP in place in time to bask in the power of the Presidency during the next presidential election. All this is part of the CIA and Pentagon payback for the last six years of Cheney. Who knows?
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We did confirm later that while C.E.O. of Halliburton, Cheney lived in a townhouse owned by Halliburton at 6613 Madison of McLean Drive, McLean, VA 22101, making him a neighbor of the CIA. Run the address on Google Maps and you will see this address was a few short blocks from CIA headquarters and, thus, subject to CIA CCTV surveillance for security purposes. Hence, I issued a subpoena to the CIA for this information about Cheney.
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Of course, the administration was not going to allow me to get that sort of information from the CIA and in short order the judge who authorized the CIA subpoena was removed from the case. Shortly thereafter, so was I. At the criminal trial, this issue was never raised and Jeane was convicted. For more on this issue, please see the YouTube video.
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Thus to answer the question of whether Dick Cheney was a client, I have to say we may never know because I believe he made damn sure that information would never surface.
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As an attorney who has practiced law for well over 30 years, I have zero faith in the honesty or integrity of the country's judicial system - particularly if the target is someone like Jeane in a business considered immoral - or when the target is an openly gay individual.