President George W. Bush has been re-elected with a plurality. As part of the campaign his team demonized the media (except for the housebroken Fox Cable Network) and the “intellectual elite.” Herbert Block, the exceptionally talented Washington Post cartoonist, gave Richard Nixon a clean shave at the beginning of his first term as President. It was Herblock’s way of giving Nixon a fresh start. I think we have an obligation to be fair to President Bush. I also remind everyone that the media cheer lead us into Iraq. The unforgivable reporting on weapons of mass destruction by The New York Times demonstrates that we reporters have plenty of soul searching to do. I pray that the President has the intestinal fortitude to face up to his problems with Saudi Arabia. Our intelligence apparatus has determined they are now funding the insurgency in Iraq. This raises very serious questions about the Royal Family and their real intensions in the region.
My colleague David Armstrong continues to do ground breaking work on how Pakistan exported its bomb program to some of the most dangerous countries in the world with the full knowledge of United States Intelligence officials. Elsewhere on this site you can catch-up with David’s look for New Republic on how the United States was not given access to Kahn. The President should be held accountable for his misleading performance on the issue of AQ Kahn. No American official has had access to Kahn since he was placed under “house arrest.” Armstrong’s new reporting on how U.S. officials allowed Pakistan to sequester Khan while the White House gave the impression that Pakistan had cooperated and even given us access to Kahn is a very serious matter.
The Taliban are back…
I have been talking to some high level sources on Afghanistan and the news from that troubled country is not reassuring. The Taliban, with the help of local tribal leaders and Iran are back in business and this is not good news for our very brave troops or security in this new democracy. Our sources tell us a number of additional assassination attempt have been made on President Karzai that have not been announced…
DU and the Pentagon’s Game
Some have made outrageous claims about the amount of radiation the United States has put in the environment by using depleted uranium weapons. The Pentagon has been successfully fending off a long overdue study on DU by using examples of outrageous claims to scare off the mainstream media from covering the issue. I recently was in London attending a Parliamentary Inquiry on DU and learned that the British Government, who had soldiers exposed in the first Gulf War, is behaving with the same lack of candor and seriousness being displayed by our Pentagon. We are getting into this issue because reporters are missing one major issue: Proliferation. Every nation with a nuclear program is getting in the DU business. This means that down the road US troops will be on the wrong end of these weapons. This is a story that impacts on the environment as well as national security arena.
Pinochet May Finally Come To Justice
The disgraceful US policy toward Chile and the CIA’s relationship with Chilean Intelligence may finally get an airing in a Chilean courtroom. 200,000 victims of Pinochet and his thugs in DINA, his US aided intelligence service could be facing a little justice later this year. One can only hope that the US officials who covered this up, including President George H.W. Bush (as DCIA) will take the opportunity to apologize to the Chilean people.
Sarkis Soghanalian Speaks….
Portly, outrageous and a head full of potential embarrassments to US officials sums up Sarkis Soghanalian. The man who took George H.W. Bush to see Manuel Noriega, who armed Saddam and tried to bring Marcos back to power, has been out of the headlines for a while. In 2000 he exposed that the CIA’s hand picked intelligence chief and Peru was supplying guns to the wrong side in our long running war in Columbia. That joint NSNS/La Republic story brought down the Fujimori government.
Now Soghanalian, living by the sea in Jordan, has pulled together his life story as the world’s premier arms dealer…Colonel Joseph Hunt who used to work with Soghanalian at the Defense Intelligence Agency said “No one has more interesting story to tell then this guy…a lot of people are going to be very unhappy.”
Soghanalian has been working on his memoirs as a surrogate for British, US and French Intelligence. Soghanalian was deeply involved in regional diplomatic efforts to prevent the recent war in Iraq as well. Before that he armed Iraw for the Reagan Bush Adminstration. He currently resides in Jordan and is prepared to release details of how Saudi Arabia has funded the insurgency in Iraq as well as protected al Qaeda in the region. There will be a lot more to come on this one including the story of how Soghanalian played a role in hunting down former Soviet nuclear materials and weapons.
