Proof of Markos Moulitsas Involvement with the CIA After Forming Daily Kos

Upon closer examination of the audio tape it appears that Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas says in fact he was speaking to the CIA up until 2003 about employment and long after he started Daily Kos in May of 2002.

Please listen to the tape for verifiication

He states that in 2001 "I was underemployed, between jobs so I applied to the CIA" and later in reference to ANOTHER POINT IN TIME ...he made a decision to work for Howad Dean instead of working for the CIA. That decision could only have taken place in 2003. That is when he went to work for Howard Dean.

Moulitsas discloses to the Daily Kos community that he had decided to work for the Dean Campaign in June of 2003

http://www.dailykos....

I've been on the road a lot the past few months. Some of it was for my day job as a web developer. But the bulk of it was for my new political consulting firm (alongside my partner).

I spent this weekend in Burlington, VT, where we officially accepted work on behalf of presidential candidate Howard Dean. Dean joins a Senate candidate in our still small but hopefully growing roster of clients.

Here we see Moulitsas is saying his decesion to join the Dean campaign is made final and the time is June 2003, NOT ANYTIME IN 2001.

In January 2003 he formed a political consulting partnership with Jerome Armstrong. Sometime later in 2003 he joined the Dean campaign.

Moulitsas says he talked to the CIA about his website. His website was begun in May of 2002.

By his own account, MarKos Moulitsas at least  interviewed with the CIA AFTER he formed Daily Kos, not (only) before.

It may be he began the interview process in 2001 and that it continued (or training continued) to just before June 2003.

He says he went "all the way to the end". Does this mean he had compeleted training? If he started a 6 month interview process in 2001 it would have long ended by late June of 2003 when he made his decision to work for the Dean campaign.

He formed his partnership as a political consultant in January 2003 with Jerome Armstrong.

In January of 2003, Markos Moulitsas joined Jerome Armstrong in a political consulting partnership called Armstrong Zuniga, before being formally dissolved in December 2004. Howard Dean hired them for a time as technical consultants in 2003.

It would be interesting to know more about Jerome Armstrong ( he was indicted for securties fraud). He went to work for Dean after forming the partnership...so it must be at THAT point that he made the decision he discusses to work not for the CIA but for Howard Dean and that occurs in June 2003.

If he starts an interview process in 2001 that lasts 6 months and he is making his decision in or around June 2003 there are at least 12 months in which his relationship with the CIA continues but is not defined.

Therefore, according to his own statements, we can conclude that while Markos Moulitsas was proprietor of Daily Kos, he was also involved in at least discussions with the CIA for employment. Those "discussions" according to his statements, lasted from 2001 to 2003. This is not a 6 month period.

And that it seems to me is significant.

Once again these are his words.

Marcos Moulitsas and the CIA

Marcos Moulitsas: Man of Mystery

Marcos Moulitsas spent 6 months in 2001 interviewing with the CIA. He was accepted by the CIA, went through the entire interview process (talking to dozens of people including “psychologists and people in the leadership” ) and given his first assignment to work in clandestine services. His assignment, he says was to act as a “spy” in Washington D.C. for the CIA. He was told by the CIA that this particular assignment in Washington D.C. would last for at least 6 years before he would be given the overseas assignment he preferred. Moulitsas spoke to the CIA about his “blog”.

Moulitsas had been an active blogger at the time of his 6 month CIA interview process with My DD. He discussed his blogging with the CIA and the viewpoints he expressed in posts in what he referred to as “his blog”. He said he found the CIA receptive, and in general, in agreement with his views.

Moulitsas started Daily Kos on May 26th, 2002.

Mouitsas believes that the CIA is a “liberal” organization. An organization made of up liberals who are opposed George W. Bush

Moulitsas commenting on the CIA says, ”Of course they have their dirty ops and this and that right? ...But as an institution itself the CIA is actually interested in a stable world, that’s what they are interested in… and stable worlds aren’t created by destabilizing regimes and by,...by starting wars... they  (The CIA) have done so by other methods…. assassinating labor leaders…..no, I’m kidding….....but that was really surprising to me”…(that the CIA was liberal) and of course I think a lot of conservatives would take that as evidence that the CIA was out to undermine Bush because they (the CIA) are a bunch of liberals”…Keep in mind that I came to this country in 1980…so a lot has to do with historical hostility to the CIA by the left…but it’s before my time so….I… maybe I’m missing nuances…. but from a modern perspective, obviously things are a little different.

All of the above quotations are Moulitsas's own words quoted from a speech he gave to the Commonwealth Club of California on June 7th 2006. It is available HERE under the title: Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People-Powered Politics and his discussion of his association with the CIA begins at 13:08.

Several early contributors to MyDD became prominent in politics on the Internet. Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the most-visited political blog in the world, Daily Kos, began commenting on MyDD before starting his own blog in May of 2002, and refers to MyDD as his "blogfather.”

Moulitsas decided not to take the assignment to be a spy in Washington. Moulitsas says he did not want to work in Washington D.C. He hated Washington D.C. he says.

Moulitsas says he was between jobs and wondering how he would pay his bills. It was during this time he applied for work at the CIA. 

Moulitsas says that “every single person I talked to in the CIA (during the 6 months he was being interviewed) was liberal, every single one”.

Moulitsas says: As an organization, “their hearts in the right place”.

Moulitsas lived in El Salvador from age 4 to age 8 or 9. He is 35 years old. He has lived in the United States for about 30 years and El Salvador as a small child for 4 or 5 years.

From Democracy Now we read how the U.S. and the CIA may be setting up El Salvador type Death squads in Iraq here and here

ALLAN NAIRN: In El Salvador and not just Salvador, but about three dozen other countries, the U.S. government, in an integrated effort involving the C.I.A., the Pentagon, and the State Department, backed the creation of military units that targeted civilian activists. In Salvador, I interviewed many of the officers involved in running these squads. For example, General “Chele” Medrano, who was on the C.I.A. payroll, described how they picked their targets. He said, they targeted people who speak, and these are his words: “…against yankee imperialism, against the oligarchy, against military men. These people are traitors to the country. What can the troops do, when they found them this he kill them. …I was given a chance to see the archives of the Salvadoran National Police, the intelligence archives and you could see they have filed marked, union, student, religious….Something on the order of 75,000 Salvadoran civilians were killed by the Salvadoran military, most of them during the 1970's. And the majority of these were targeted by these death squad type forces. So one point is, these were not combatants who were being killed. These were not armed guerrillas. They were sometimes engaged by the Salvadoran military in combat, but the death squad operations, which the Pentagon according to Newsweek is now talking about using for Iraq, these went after civilians.

The war in El Salvador is said to have begun in 1980. But according Nairn around 75.000 had been killed prior to that. Nairn seems to be saying that many more deaths occurred prior to 1980 than were reported.

One of the people Moulitsas has most admired is Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was central to American involvement in El Salvador.

Noam Chomsky

The Reagan years was a period of devastation and disaster in El Salvador. Maybe seventy-thousand people were slaughtered. The decade began with the assassination of the archbishop. It ended, rather symbolically, with the brutal murder of six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, by an elite battalion, trained, armed, run by the U.S., which had a huge, bloody trail of murders and massacres behind it. The priests are also shown in the picture along with their housekeeper and her daughter, who were also murdered by the same elite battalion, and in between tens of thousands of the usual victims. That was El Salvador. And, as I say, people south of the border know what it is; people north of the border haven’t a clue.

[From common dreams
  http://www.commondre...]

What began as an odd remark by Dick Cheney in the vice presidential debate has now become a pattern. Conservatives have repeatedly cited the Central American nation of El Salvador as a model for building democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan…. and drawing a parallel to Iraq, the secretary echoed the comments of Cheney in his Oct. 5 debate with John Edwards. The vice president argued that in 1980s El Salvador "a guerilla insurgency controlled roughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead. And we held free elections. I was there as an observer on behalf of the Congress. ... And as the terrorists would come in and shoot up polling places as soon as they left, the voters would come back and get in line and would not be denied their right to vote. And today El Salvador is ... a lot better because we held free elections."

This kind of “understanding” of the conflict in Iraq and El Salvador seems to be shared by many.

One of Marcos Moulitsas heroes is Archbishop Oscar Romero who was allegedly killed on orders from Roberto D'Aubuisson, one time head of intelligence in El Salvador and the founder of death squads in El Salvador.

D'Aubuisson was funded and supported by CIA. The CIA was fully aware of his activities and described him as a disturbed personality in their own evaluations. The CIA continued to work with him however.

From Democracy Now

ALLAN NAIRN: Archbishop Romero was killed as part of the -- according to later investigations, he was killed by an offshoot of the operation of Roberto D’Aubuisson who ran the ARENA party, which was one of the death squad operations or one of the smaller one, actually. The larger came from the regular Salvadoran armed forces and police. He also had U.S. backing. In fact, D’Aubuisson launched his career as a major figure in Salvador by going on TV and making a speech. He had a video role as he spoke with an illustrated death list of union people and religious figures and others who he said should be killed as traitors to the country. And the data for the list were supplied to him by American intelligence, again according to the officers there I interviewed.

Markos Moulitsas says in his speech before the Commonwealth Club, “I have never had a problem with the CIA which is why I’d have no problem working for them.”

In an interview with Brian Lamb, Moulitsas says he was born in Chicago and the family moved to El Salvador and stayed there for “about 5 years”. The family returned to the U.S. in 1980. So it seems he moved from “Chicago” in or around 1975 when he would have been 4 years old and stayed in El Salvador until he was 9 years old when he returned to “Chicago”.

Moulitsas says “I was raised in El Salvador and lived there until civil war forced our family back to the states in 1980.”

Moulitsas often speaks of himself as a “war refugee” and as a person who “came to this country (U.S.A.) in 1980”.

From Hispanic Magazine

When diehard Democrat Markos Militias Zuniga was just a kid, long before he became the political writer behind Daily Kos (www.dailykos.com), the world’s most popular political blog, he sat in front of his television set in El Salvador and watched armed men take over a local university. They lined up professors and students, and then began shooting them. “I remember the bodies, sort of flopping around as they were being executed. I was seven, I think,” remembers Moulitsas, who was born in Chicago, but moved briefly with his parents to El Salvador. It was the now 34-year-old’s first political memory and one that has colored his view of politics long after his parents took him back to Chicago to escape the civil war in the country of his mother’s birth. “I learned very early on,” he says via phone, “that politics wasn’t just a game.”

Marcos in response to an attack from advertisers upset over his comments about having no sympathy for U.S. contractors who were killed in Iraq says:

"I actually grew up in a war zone," he wrote. "I witnessed communist guerillas execute students accused of being government collaborators. I was 8 years old, and I remember stepping over a dead body, warm blood flowing from a fresh wound. ... Dodging bullets while at market. I lived in the midsts of hate the likes of which most of you will never understand (Clinton and Bush hatred is nothing compared to that generated when people kill each other for politics or race or nationality). There's no way I could ever describe the ways this experience colors my worldview.

The implication from the above statement is that he may have been an eyewitness to the communist guerillas killing students. But in Hispanic Magazine and in Guernica the authors of the article states that Marcos is saying he saw this murder on TV. He was around 7 or 8 years old. Under most circumstances an 8 year old usually receives an interpretation of such a grisly event with the assistance of an adult.

This nationally televised murder of students and professors by communists is an event for which I can find no record. There are a number of videos on U-tube that show violence in El Salvador. Since it was shown on national TV, presumably it would have been video readily available and historically notated. This event presumably would have occurred perhaps in 1978, 1979 or 1980. At that time Moulitsas would have been around 8 years old having been born in 1971. During and around this time Universities were often heavily guarded by police and army. Police and army often monitored entrance and exits to the Universities. There ARE records of the government invading the university and killing students and professors.

Joan Didion, who traveled to El Salvador during this time and interviewed students and teachers, writes in her book “Salvador”:

“In 1980 Duarte moved troops onto the campus (National University of El Salvador) of 30,000 leaving 50 dead, offices and laboratories smashed.

Didion writes about meeting in secret many teachers and students. Their stories about other students and professors who  have been disssapeared and the fear of the few remaining teachers and intellectuals who feared any comments they made might get them arrested.

Marco Moulitsas says his uncle was part of the government at some time as Education Minister. It's not clear when.

Moulitsas says the army “protected my family”. The Washington Monthly describes the situation in which his family is on the right wing side of the war between the government and the communist rebels. Moulitsas does not dispute this characterization of his family. He did dispute other items in the interview.

The family moved back to El Salvador when Moulitsas was four and was on the right-wing side of the Cold War proxy fight there. But as that war's intrusions became unbearable—Moulitsas talks about stepping over dead bodies—the family returned to Chicago, where he grew up, in his own words, “a loudmouthed nerd.”

The Center for Justice and Accountability states that the government committed 95% of the war crimes committed in El Salvador. 3.5% to 5% of the crimes are attributed to the guerilla forces.

An Education Minister in El Salvador is a cabinet level position. The role of an Education Minister during the years of repression by various Juntas and right wing governments was, among other things, to monitor leftist activity among students and professors and to report that to the government, a government that utilized death squads.

Antonio Herrera Rebollo" Minister of Education was killed by rebels in revenge after 37 people were killed by government forces in May 1979. (El Salvador: The Face of Revolution by Robert Armstrong)

The most famous Education Minister in 1980 was Salvador Samayoa. He was a professor of Philosophy. He quit the cabinet and joined the guerilla movement in protest of government injustice.

One of the civilians, Minister of Education Salvador Samayoa, in front of the TV cameras, simultaneously announced his resignation and his enlistment with a guerrilla group.

Moulitsas refers to his experience as a 4 to 8 year old in El Salvador as being central to his current world view.

From the San Francisco Chronicle

The experience actually made him a hawk, he said, because he appreciated how the military "protected my family." After returning to Chicago in the early 1980s and enduring his "humiliating" high school life, he joined the Army at 17. The idea was partly to improve his self-esteem and serve his country and partly to burnish his resume for a career in politics.

Ronald Reagan promoted U.S. involvement in all of Central America during the 1980's.

The United States was supporting the government of El Salvador, said President Ronald Reagan, because it was trying "to halt the infiltration into the Americas, by terrorists and by outside interference, and those who aren't just aiming at El Salvador but, I think, are aiming at the whole of Central and possibly later South America and, I'm sure, eventually North America."

Moulitsas claims he was a Reagan Republican and he worked for the campaign of Henry Hyde who was honored by the Jesse Helms center before his retirement.

While supporters and many longtime aides to Hyde mingled before dinner, David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, described Hyde as "one of the giants, not just of Congress and the Republican Party but of the conservative movement."

The tribute was sponsored by the Jesse Helms Center, a conservative foundation set up as a legacy of the former North Carolina senator. Hyde aides said private tributes also are planned, including a breakfast arranged by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

While he is most widely known for his role in the Clinton impeachment, Hyde has played a leading role in conservative causes for decades. .

Mouitsas says he voted for George Bush in 1992 but became a "liberal" shortly there after. He, as mentioned above attemped to join the CIA in 2001. His comments about the CIA are from 2006.

From Guernica

Moulitsas’ family was upper-middle-class in a country with virtually no middle class, and so had little sympathy for attempts to overthrow the corrupt ruling party. “I’m still the family communist,” he says. At the time, though, Moulitsas was politically in line with his folks. The family fled back to Chicago when Moulitsas was nine, and he became a fanatical supporter of Ronald Reagan (who backed El Salvador’s government as part of his anti-Communist strategy), even working as a Republican Party precinct captain in high school.

At 17, he enlisted in the Army — partly to pay for college (after leaving El Salvador, Moulitsas’ father worked as a janitor, his mother as a secretary) and partly because he harbored political ambitions and believed military service was a moral prerequisite if one planned on potentially sending others into battle.

Moulitsas, speaking of himself as a teen says, “I was a mess of a human being. I was 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighed just 111 pounds, and didn't have a shred of self-confidence. In high school, I had been the short, skinny, Salvadoran war refugee with the funny accent who looked half his age (still do) and read books in the (then) lily-white Chicago suburb of Schaumburg. A deadly combination.”

From Wikipedia:

The racial makeup of the village (Schaumberg) was 78.78% White, 3.35% African American, 0.10% Native American, 14.19% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 1.73% from other races, and 1.78% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 5.29% of the population.

Schaumberg is about 45 minutes to one hour from the Downtown Chicago by car and one of the wealthiest suburbs in America. With a median income of $60, 941.00. It is part of Dupage County  ranked 19 out of 20 of America wealthiest counties with a median income for the county of over $70.000.00.

Marcos says he like so many others could not have gotten the money to pay for college without the army.

From the American Prospect article “The Soldier in Me: 5/4/06

“It was January 1989, during my senior year in high school. My family was sitting at the dinner table when my mother turned to me: "I was talking to some mothers today, and their kids are all applying for colleges. When are you going to get to it?"

I stared back, "I already told you. I'm joining the Army."

Until that moment, my parents apparently thought my plans for military service were a form of youthful rebellion. Or stupidity. But that night my plans suddenly became real -- the start of a months-long battle to convince them that I knew what I was doing and would not be deterred.

Normally, I wouldn't care what my parents thought. I was a teenager. But at 17, I needed parental approval to enlist, a battle I eventually won. Six weeks shy of my 18th birthday, I reported to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to train as an MLRS/LANCE Operations/Fire Direction Specialist, managing operations and logistics for a missile platoon.”

Moulitsas mentions that it was the army that allowed him to go to college, as his family could not have afforded to send him there.

http://www.dailykos....

I've often talked about my story -- how my Army service served as a springboard for my life. It gave me discipline, pride in myself and my country, strength, and self-confidence. Then, as if that wasn't enough, it allowed me to go to college despite coming from a family who never could've afforded that expense.

He came from a family that could not have afforded the expense of sending him to college, but nevertheless his family living in one of the world’s wealthiest suburbs in the United States had urged him to apply to colleges. All the other mothers of the high school he attended were developing their children’s college plans.

Marcos refers to himself as a “war refugee” and being forced back into the United States due to civil war in El Salvador.

The year 1980 in El Salvador was marked by rampant human rights abuses, forced disappearances, arbitrary detention and murder. The Security Forces, working as or with plainclothed "death squads", carried out widespread atrocities against civilians, including opposition political figures, members of labor unions, and people who provided care and education to the public, such as teachers, doctors, rescue workers and priests. Experts estimate that 10,000 to 12,000 unarmed civilians were killed in 1980 alone, including revered Salvadoran Archbishop Romero. CJA filed a separate case against one of the conspirators in the Romero assassination in September 2003.

There is a thread. It seems to be a consistent thread. And it runs consistently throughout this story. It is a conservative thread, not a liberal thread. And that's putting it mildy, very mildly.

U.S. Military Betrays Humanitarian Lt. Colonel Steele

It is not Lt. Colonel William Steele who is a traitor. It is the U.S. Military. The U.S. Military has betrayed Lt. Colonel Steele.

Lt. Colonel Steele is being Set Up. The Preliminary Investigation is over. A judge will decide on Tuesday if Lt. Colonel William Steele should be tried for Aiding the Enemy and then possibly given a death sentence (for letting child prisoners call their parents with his cell phone to let them know they had been arrested)…Read on…..

The charges if read carefully really amount to this:
1). He let some children who were arrested by the occupation forces and who were being detained and imprisoned at Camp Cropper use his cell phone to call their parents to tell them where they were. He did not monitor the children's phone call.

Under questioning from the defense, Nocella said he did not record his initial conversation with Steele and that the only people Steele identified as having used his cell phone were three juvenile detainees. Nocella said as far as he knew, the juveniles phoned their families.

2). He had a number of CD's in his office. Some apparently contained classified information. They were not all labeled.

Another witness, Special Agent Thomas Barnes, said Steele was found with "extremely sensitive" classified information regarding the Army's mission in Iraq.

"I was shocked by the classified material we found" during a U.S. military search of the defendant's living quarters in Iraq, Barnes said. "I'd never seen that amount of classified material not properly stored, not properly labeled and not properly protected."

3). He sympathized with the plight of the detainees, many of whom were in fact children separated from their parents.

He testified Steele empathized with high-value detainees, including Hussein and other key figures from his regime.

"Did he tell you he was a humanitarian and he felt compelled to make their lives better?" asked prosecutor Capt. Michael Rizzotti.

"Yes, he did," Nocella replied.

4). There is no allegation that he had sex with any Iraqi. Only that his relationship with a female related to a detainee and a translator was "improper". He allegedly gave one or both a gift…. Was it a Norah Jones or Motor Head CD?

5). Detainees and The Red Cross upon examination of Camp Cropper had positive comments about Lt. Colonel Steele.

Earlier, Army Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner, who was deputy commanding general for detainee operations when Steele oversaw Camp Cropper, said that based on what he knew at the time, Steele's performance was worthy of a top job evaluation. Gardner told Capt. Yolanda McCray, one of the defense attorneys, that Steele received "positive comments" from detainees as well as from Red Cross officials who came to Camp Cropper to check detainee conditions.

He is also accused of giving Sadaam Hussein some Cuban Cigars.

Not mentioned in almost all American news articles is the fact that Sadaam Hussein was being given Cuban Cigars before Steele came to Camp Cropper and after Steele left Camp Cropper to go to a new assignment at Camp Victory. I found this only in the LA Times. Also there is almost no mention that the Cell phone use by detainees was for children to call their parents. So the impression given by the disgusting American press is something different from what actually occurred. Even left wing blogs are poking fun at Steele, assuming that he is guilty.

The real story behind this may be that of Vance and Ertel. Two American men who were arrested by the U.S. Military for aiding the enemy and brought to Camp Cropper where they were held for months. Lt. Steele worked at Camp Cropper during this time. Vance and Ertel both worked for an Iraqi Security Company called Shield Security. (Is this one of the companies that Seymour Hersh alleges to have been selling arms to Sunni Insurgents with U.S. military approval?) One of the men Vance blew the whistle on Shield Securtiy and worked for the FBI upon their request after he informed them Shield Security was receiving weapons from the U.S. Military personnel in exchange for alchohol. The FBI was investigating the heavily funded (U.S. tax dollars) Shield Security and by implication, the U.S military. The U.S. military may not have liked being investigated.

In a lawsuit now pending against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and "other unidentified agents," Vance and Ertel both accuse their US government captors of subjecting them to psychological torture day and night. Lights were kept on in their cell around the clock. They endured solitary confinement. They had only thin plastic mattresses on concrete for sleeping. Meals were of powdered milk and bread or rice and chicken, but interrupted by selective deprivation of food and water. Ceaseless heavy metal and country music screamed in their ears for hours on end, their legal complaint alleges.

They lived through "conditions of confinement and interrogation tantamount to torture," says the lawsuit filed in northern Illinois US District Court. "There interrogators utilized the types of physically and mentally coercive tactics that are supposedly reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants."

One company employee (Of Shield Security) regularly bartered of alcohol with US military personnel in exchange for ammunition they delivered, Vance said.

"He called it the bullets for beer program," Vance claimed while relating the incident during an interview this week at a cigar bar just walking distance from the White House.

But his interrogators at Camp Cropper weren't impressed. Instead, his jailers insisted that Vance and Ertel had been detained and imprisoned because the two worked for Shield Group Security where large caches of weapons have been found -- weapons that may have been intended for the possible distribution to insurgents and terrorist groups, Vance said.

  It appears the Pentagon did not like the FBI snooping on its turf. _THE TWO MEN MET WITH STEELE BEFORE THEY WERE RELEASED. So it is possible to speculate that Lt. Colonel Steele may have given them information or statements (either intentionally or unintentionally) which could be used in their suit against Rumsfeld.

But darker allegations also are included in the complaint over false imprisonment. By working with the FBI, Vance contends that U.S. government officials in Iraq decided to retaliate against him and Ertel. These officials conspired to jail the two not because they worked for a suspicious security company they suspected of selling weapons to insurgents, but because they were sharing information with law enforcement agents outside the control of US officials in Baghdad.

"In other words," claims the lawsuit, "United States officials in Iraq were concerned and wanted to find out about what intelligence agents in the United States knew about their territory and their operations. The unconstitutional policies that Rumsfeld and other Unidentified Agents had implemented for `enemies' provided ample cover to detain Plaintiffs and interrogate them toward that end." It may take some time to sort out the allegations as the legal process grinds forward, but, in the meantime, Vance is raising new questions about his detention. He still wonders why his jailers didn't just call the FBI and have him cleared. They had access to his computer and cell phone to determine if his claims were true. "When I told them to do that, they just got angry and told me to stop answering questions I wasn't being asked," Vance said.

It seems clear that in a war that is in itself illegal and in which rapes and mass murder of innocent civilians are covered up regularly that these allegations are a smokescreen. Lt. Colonel Steele will make a plea deal whereby in exchange for having no charges brought against him he will make a statement that will nullify whatever actions or statements he has made in the past. He will be neutralized. He will be unable to speak or testify. He's being pressured.

I predict a plea deal, a reprimand and no charges against him.

Unless of course, Lt. Colonel Steele is an unsually, perhaps unreasonalby,  principled person. Then he will go to trial.

In an era when no one is speaking out against the madness, this seems unlikely.

Sources:

http://news.google.c...

Vance and Ertel

http://news.google.c...

Lt. Colonel Steele is Being Set Up by the Military

The Army tells NBC News that military police arrested Lt. Col. William H. Steele several weeks ago and that he is being held at a detention facility in Kuwait.

I don't know anything about it... except it reeks.

It sounds like this "warden" was possibly going to be a whistleblower might have been gathering information on mistreatment of prisoners and was not sympathetic to the past or present torture and mistreatment on detainees.

From MSNBC:

Army warden charged with `aiding the enemy'

Lieutenant colonel faces multiple charges for alleged misconduct in Iraq

By Jim Popkin

NBC News Investigative Unit

Updated: 12:10 p.m. PT April 25, 2007

WASHINGTON - NBC News has learned that the commander of Camp Cropper, the massive U.S. Army detention center in Baghdad, has been charged with aiding the enemy.

The Army tells NBC News that military police arrested Lt. Col. William H. Steele several weeks ago and that he is being held at a detention facility in Kuwait. He now faces an Article 32 hearing, the military's equivalent of a grand jury investigation, to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute him.

An Army statement listed these charges against Steele: "One specification of a violation of Article 104, aiding the enemy; one specification of a violation of Article 134, retaining classified material; two specifications of violations of Article 133, conduct unbecoming an officer, for relationships involving an interpreter and another Iraqi female; five specifications of a violation of Article 92, failure to obey lawful orders for wrongfully storing classified materials, improperly marking classified materials, failing to obey an order from a superior officer, possession of pornography and dereliction of duty as an approving official for the expenditure of government funds."

The Army said no other U.S. military personnel are believed to be involved in the case.

Lt. Col. James Hutton, an Army public affairs officer, said he could not explain how or why Steele allegedly aided the enemy. An e-mail to Steele's wife was not returned, and Hutton said he did not yet have the names of Steele's lawyers.

Camp Cropper, located near Baghdad International Airport, is the Army's main holding facility for Iraqi insurgents and detainees. Several thousand people are held there now. Saddam Hussein was held there prior to his execution in December.

Having sex with Iraqi interpreters and the use and storage of classified materials is very similar to accusations that are consistently leveled against whistleblowers. (Scott Ritter, Mary McCarthy, Muslim Chaplain Yee at Guantanmo and  many others.)

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. He is essentially being accused of being a TRAITOR and aiding the insurgents.

Isn't that punishable by death?

He was apparently not a warden... but is a LT. Colonel, a commander in charge of Camp Cropper which is known for having been a torture center.

newstandardnews.net

Could it be he is being used as an example for those soldiers dissatisfied with the war to keep their mouths shut?

How do the soldiers feel about the lies revealed by Jessica Lynch and the Family of Tillman that were put out by the U.S military?

Are U.S. soldiers in Iraq beginning to rebel?

This is the kind of arrest and detention that could easily backfire into the faces of the military and George Bush, should it be revealed he was arrested for political reasons.

After watching the brother of Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch speak about the military lies on national broadcast this may serve as a warning to others. Steele was arrested 2 weeks ago... but the announcement of his arrest is just being made now, a day after the hearings which incriminated the military.

The government is turning on the military... those in the military who won't go along with the program. This has all the track marks of a set up. I am willing to be that is exactly what it is. Perhpas Lt. Colonel Steele had an affair with an Iraqi interpreter and she asked him to do her a favor in regard to one of the detainees. Perhaps Lt. Colornel Steele was symathetic to the plight of the detainees...to a point which the Military found uncomfortalbe. Perhaps Commander Steele threatened a torturer with exposure. The threat of exposure is most likely the reason for his arrest. He may have been gathering evidence against someone and that is what is being called his mishandling of classified information.

Watch. It will all come out in the coming weeks.

Put it together.

Update May 3rd

This might be related to an ongoing suit by two Americans who were illegally held at Camp Cropper, Vance and Ertel.

They are suing Donald Rumsfeld for their illegal confinement. One of the gentleman was working for the FBI and investigating the military and an Iraqi company thought to be funneling arms to Insurgents. The military traded arms for beer with the Iraqi company. Vance and Ertel met with Lt. Colonel Steele before they left. The FBI investigation was a whistleblower investigation of the military. IF Steele was in anyway helpful to the FBI, it may be that this is the Militaries revenge.

War With IRan Begins Around June 2007

AIR WAR WITH IRAN AROUND JUNE

The U.S. will probably be ready to attack Iran by or around June 1st.  I believe an attack by Israel or the United States will begin around that time.

Here's why the attack seems imminent:

You don't go through all of the following if your intention is NOT to go to war:

1). Extend tours of Duty for ALL soldiers. Sending "surge" troops to the Iranian border.

2) Send 3 aircraft carrier groups to the Persian Gulf. This is unprecedented.

3). Torture Iranian intelligence and diplomatic officials

U.S Troops are all being given an extended tour.

the aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, and its strike group are now sailing toward the Persian Gulf. They will arrive around the end of April, they will join  the strike groups of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (which it is officially replacing) and the USS John C. Stennis.

I don't believe there has ever been 3 aircraft carrier groups in the Persian Gulf at the same time. There were two only during the Gulf War. After arriving in late April, it will be interesting to see the Eisenhower does in fact leave or is left in a position from which attacks can be carried out.

Getting Iranian Target Information for Bombing through Torture and Kidnapping

The U.S. (and or Israel) has been kidnapping and torturing Iranian diplomats

TEHRAN, Iran - An Iranian diplomat freed two months after being abducted in Iraq accused the CIA of torturing him during his detention, state television reported Saturday. The United States immediately denied any involvement in the Iranian's disappearance or release.

Someone has also kidnapped the former head of Iranian Intelligence, an Iranian military general, Ali Reza Askari.

Arab newspapers are hinting that the Mossad and/or the CIA could be behind the disappearance of an Iranian general, Ali Reza Askari, who was last seen February 7 in Istanbul, Channel 10 reported Sunday evening.

Askari is a former general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and served in the cabinet of former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami.

Baztab, a Web site linked to the Revolutionary Guard, first reported that Askari may have been kidnapped. Baztab recently reported that Askari's name was one of 20 appearing on what "appeared…to be a CIA hit-list [of former Guard officers]."

Askari reportedly arrived in Turkey, where he was visiting for personal reasons, on a flight from Damascus. According to reports, he checked into the Hotel Ghilan, and has not been seen since.

There are two reasons for these and many other unreported abductions currently being carried out by U.S. forces. One is to gain any information they may have in a general sense regarding Iranian Revolutionary Guard activity in Iraq. And two is to gather TARGET information for the upcoming bombing of Iran.

The President has said on numerous occasions the HE was the victim of Bad Intelligence provided to him by the CIA. The CIA has been discredited for gathering much of its intelligence from people like Ahmed Chalabi and a comic book like character called "Snowball".

In order to circumvent this problem of alleged unreliable intelligence, the Vice President's office is getting it's information directly from Iranians who have been kidnapped and tortured.

IRAN is threatening to retaliate in Europe for what it claims is a daring undercover operation by western intelligence services to kidnap senior officers in its Revolutionary Guard.

According to Iranian sources, several officers have been abducted in the past three months and the United States has drawn up a list of other targets to be seized with the aim of destabilizing Tehran's military command.

An entire bus of Revolutionary Guards was blown up killing at least 11 revolutionary guards

An Iranian official was quoted anonymously by IRNA saying the attack was carried out by a US-backed group, "based on evidence gathered." The report said five suspects have been arrested.  "A group which has been on the spotlight of US media propaganda was responsible for the blast," the official said

Governor Hassan-Ali Nouri of Zahedan said the attack was perpetrated by "saboteurs" who parked a bomb-laden car on the side of a road. When the bus passed, two armed men on motorcycles sprayed both the bus and the parked car with bullets, setting off the explosion. .

Russian military intelligence services are reporting a flurry of activity by U.S. Armed Forces near Iran's borders, a high-ranking security source said Tuesday.

"The latest military intelligence data point to heightened U.S. military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran," the official said, adding that the Pentagon has probably not yet made a final decision as to when an attack will be launched.

Additionally the U.S. is now accusing Iran for the failure in Afghanistan and supporting the Taliban.

Brussels- A leading US official on Wednesday warned of unhealthy" Iranian involvement in Afghanistan, saying Tehran was meddling in the country's political affairs and providing weapons to a resurgent Taliban. Richard Boucher, US Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asian Affairs, also said Washington was not aiming to "wipe out" the Taliban but wanted to stop the insurgents from disrupting the political development of Afghanistan. Boucher, who met EU officials in Brussels, said Iran was a developing issue of concern." his comments come only a day after Pentagon's top general Peter Pace said coalition forces in Afghanistan had intercepted Iranian-made mortars and explosives destined for the Taliban.

General Pace said today;

Iranian-made arms bound for the Taliban were intercepted by coalition forces in Afghanistan within the past month, General Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today.

However, Condoleezza Rice has said the Iran is:

"the state hub for technology and money and lots for other goodies to radical fundamentalist groups, some will say as far-reaching as the Taliban."

But Iran's Shiite regime and the Taliban's radical Sunni mullahs were blood enemies, and Iran actually sent arms and money to Ahmed Shah Massoud, to aid his war against the taliban. Challenged by a reporter, Rice insisted that the Iranians were "sending stuff to the region that fell into the hands of bad players in Afghanistan and Pakistan." She did not explain what players. Asked about her statement once again, she said that of course she was aware of the enmity between Iran and the Taliban. [Coll, Ghost Wars; page 539]

The Taliban have never been friends with Iran to my knowledge, but the U.S. is accusing Iran…not Pakistan of supporting the Taliban. The Taliban are said to be a creation of Pakistani ISI intelligence and of course were supported previously by the U.S. The U.S. can always be found to having once supported the people it currently is fighting all over the world.

That shifting of alliances (which is totally self destructive) is why we will see the U.S supporting the Sunni Arabs it is now fighting against the Shiites. This is already happening and has been reported by Seymour Hersh.

The point here is that the American Public is being told that Iran is to blame for the failure in Iraq and Afghanistan by "the "most powerful military force in the history of the world". Iran is the enemy. Iran is the enemy.

THE WAR WITH IRAN HAS ALREADY BEGUN

America is killing innocent Iranians, in hopes of provoking a response. They will get it.

The U.S is currently at WAR WITH IRAN at least by proxy. This report from MSM Brian Ross

A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.

The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.

It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.

One former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.

There have also been reports of direct U.S. involvement with U.S. troops on the ground in Iran as far back as two years ago.

The capture and torture of Iranian diplomats, soldiers and generals receives almost no press in this country. The press reports the capture of 14 British sailors on an espionage mission against Iran. The sailors are released in exchange for on high level Iranian diplomat.

But the press is not reporting with any real coverage the secret war against Iran that is currently going on. It's a serious war. Iranian soldiers and diplomats are being kidnapped,  killed and tortured by American forces whether they be proxy or direct. What else can Iran do but to counter attack at some point. This will be reported in the press as a "provocation". It won't be a provocation. It will be a response to the brutal torture, killing and murder of innocent Iranians by American forces.

Russia Stops Work on Iranian Nuclear Reactor...Why?

Russia has stopped work on the Iranian nuclear reactor and will not send fuel as previously agreed upon.

Knowing that the reactor will be probably be bombed, the Russians and the Iranians are probably fighting over payments. Certainly the Russians would want to be all paid up before the reactor is bombed. Iran will not likely pay for a reactor that has been destroyed.  That's one possible scenario as an explanation for the work stoppage and the "dispute" over payments.

Why work on a reactor ....why pay for that work....is in all likelyhood it's going to be bombed.

Meanwhile, the American press reports almost nothing about the beginnings of this already started war in Iran.

Leading Democrats Call for War Against Iran

There is no way to sugar coat or interpret in any other way the fact that Democrats are calling for war against Iran without actually saying it directly.

And Barack Obama, Hilliary Clinton and John Edwards, the so callled opposition party are more Anti Iranian than most of their Republican counterparts.

John Edwards says that the American people, if educated will support their president with what needs to be done with Iran. He is calling for the bombing of Iran. He is saying the American people will be reticent to do so because of what has happened in Iraq. But once the American people realize how dangerous Iran is, they will support the President in his bombing of Iran. Here are his exact words.

"Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons The vast majority of people are concerned about what is going on in Iraq. This will make the American people reticent toward going for Iran. But I think the American people are smart if they are told the truth, and if they trust their president. So Americans can be educated to come along with what needs to be done with Iran."

Iran will be bombed.

November 8th, 2006

This Diary Was Originally Published on September 14th, 2006 on [My Left Wing http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=11756].

November 8th 2006

The Unimagined

On this day the process will begin of making the war in Iraq a permanent war. And a new Security State will emerge. The majority of newly elected Democrats and Republicans will not oppose sending more troops to Iraq. Southern Iraq is becoming a satellite of Iran. Iran is said to be an enemy of the United States. Will America allow Iran to be the victor in Iraq? The answer is no. We must expand the war, increase the number of troops.

American forces are now fighting "Al Queda", Sunni Insurgents and Shiite Militia. The U.S. military is in essence, fighting almost everyone in Iraq.

Newly elected Democratic representatives like Harold Ford will vote to further restrict the freedom of so called “ordinary” Americans. The Security State will secure Americans against terrorists and an increase in the numbers of troops in Iraq will further secure Americans by fighting those same terrorists who would come to America rather than Iraq to kill Americans. America sends its troops to Iraq to be killed to make it more convenient for the terrorists that America nutures to kill Americans.

The corrupt, disdainful, racist, violent incompetent U.S. military is made up of soldiers who have been trained to see Iraqi’s as inferior people. The objective visual truth is the opposite. The U.S. Military is not only culturally, psychologically, spiritually and educationally inferior to the general Iraqi population, it is also inferior on the battlefield having lost the so called “War on Terrorism” in Iraq to a more competent fighting force, the Iraq insurgency.

The U.S. Military does not kill its enemies; it develops and nurtures them into greater and greater numbers. The United States does not fight terrorism. The United States is in the business of planting the seeds of terrorism and then cultivating it. 

The policy of the United States after November 8th will be in character with the personality of it's president. A stubborn policy. A policy that does not recognize failure. Bush will never leave Iraq. Instead the United States government will give approval for sending more troops and the military will be forced to make adjustments by shifting troops from other nations to Iraq or by instituting a draft to get those troops. The idea of a draft has bipartisan support already.

Here’s what William Kristol (who is the voice of those who direct U.S. policy) had to say yesterday in the Washington Post.

Harvard Law School's William Stuntz recently made the core point powerfully: "The territory over which we fight is among the most strategically important in the world. Victory will place the most dangerous regime on the planet, Iran's fascist theocracy, in serious peril. Defeat will leave that same regime inestimably strengthened. If there is any significant possibility that the presence of more American soldiers on the ground would raise the odds of success, not putting those soldiers on the ground is a crime."

Americans forget that there have been up to 100,000 contractors in Iraq doing the jobs that the Military would ordinarily do. So the U.S. force in Iraq is really about 250,000 personnel. Yesterday a U.S. general estimated he would need 10 to 15 thousand more troops to regain control over the Anbar Province, which contains Ramadi and Baghdad.

The intelligence report and Major General Zilmer's comments were some of the first times the military has said publicly that more troops would be needed to defeat the insurgency in Anbar, the volatile province in western Iraq that is the heart of the Sunni Muslim-led insurgency.

Paul Bremer and Colin Powell have suggested that at least 500,000 troops would be needed before the invasion and after.

In January, Pentagon officials acknowledged that Paul Bremer, the senior U.S. official in Iraq during the first year of the war, told Rumsfeld in May 2004 that a far larger number of U.S. troops were needed to effectively fight the insurgency, but his advice was rejected.

Bremer said his memo to Rumsfeld suggested a half-million troops were needed – more than three times the number there at the time.

The new strategy after November will be to send more troops. Many democrats, new and old will support this. Democrats like Harold Ford.

Harold Ford this month made his fourth trip to Iraq, the country he and three other Black congressmen voted to give George Bush powers to invade. On his return, Ford wrote a letter to George Bush, a man he says he loves "personally" and considers a "friend."  Ford virtually begged Bush to resist pressures to withdraw any troops, any time soon. "Don't withdraw prematurely" from Iraq, said Ford. He went on: "We've made great progress there. General Eikenberry and the team are doing a great job….

Britain announced yesterday it is sending in more troops, not withdrawing more troops.

The silly idea that electing democrats will have any impact on President Bush in terms of foreign policy will be amply demonstrated after the November elections. There will be no phased withdrawal. There will be a phased increase in the number of troops in Iraq. Hillary Clinton has suggested repeatedly that we do not have enough troops in Iraq and John McCain has said unequivocally we need to send more troops and “get the job done.” 

There is no job to get done. It’s over. The war has been over for years. The U.S. controls nothing in Iraq. The U.S. promotes chaos. And it is going to institutionalize chaos in the Mid East by remaining in Iraq and bombing Iran. There is a permanent war being institutionalized against an imagined enemy whose victims will be real, not imagined people.

After November 8th, The United States will become more of a security state than ever before. Restrictions on American citizens freedom will be increased, wages will not.

Things are not going to get better. It doesn’t matter who they elect. The Democratic candidates up for election are not real people. They, like our enemies in Iraq, are a product of our imagination.

An Example of U.S. Iraninan Escalation Toward War

Reports from January 11 th: U.S. Arrests Iranians in their Consulate:

Reports from January 12th U.S. Embassy attacked in Athens.

How are these stories related? I believe the Iranians fired the shot at the U.S. embassy in Athens. It was a message that they will respond in kind. They needed to do this outside of Iraq in order to demonstrate that it was the iraninans and not Iraqis fighting Americans. This is typical of how nations operate. They send messages to each other. These are violent messages.

U.S. Arrests Iranians in their Consulate:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi foreign minister said today that the five Iranians detained by U.S.-led forces in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq were working in a liaison office that had government approval and was in the process of being approved as a consulate.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, also said U.S. forces tried to seize more people at the airport in Irbil, 220 miles north of Baghdad, prompting a confrontation with Kurdish troops guarding the facility that was resolved without casualties.

U.S. Embassy attacked in Athens.

Attackers have fired a rocket at the US embassy compound in the centre of the Greek capital, Athens.

The rocket, fired from street level into the front of the embassy, caused minor damage to the building but no-one was injured.

The US envoy condemned the "very serious attack", as fire engines and police cordoned off the area.

Greece's Public Order Minister Vyron Polydoras said it was "very likely" a domestic group was behind the attack.

He said police were investigating claims that a left-wing radical group, Revolutionary Struggle, was responsible.

The final sentence that the Revolutional Struggle group is responsible for the attack on the U.S. embassy is probably a lie.

These are not coincidences.