Bad Deeds for 11-28-2007

Texas Oilman Was At Center of Corruption in Iraq Oil for Food Program – Texas oilman Oscar Wyatt Jr. paid millions of dollars to Iraqi officials to get an unfair share of contracts connected to the oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996 to 2003. The program permitted the Iraqi government to sell oil primarily to buy food and medicine for suffering Iraqis. It was meant to help Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions, but authorities said the program was corrupted when Iraqi officials began demanding illegal surcharges in return for contracts to buy Iraqi oil.

Political Prisoner in America – For most Americans, the very concept of political prisoners is remote and exotic, a practice that is associated with third-world dictatorships but is foreign to the American tradition. The idea that a prominent politician could be tried on charges that many observers consider to be trumped-up, convicted in a trial that involved numerous questionable procedures, and then hauled off to prison in shackles immediately upon sentencing would be almost unbelievable. But there is such a politician: Don Siegelman, Democratic governor of Alabama from 1999 to 2003. Starting just a few weeks after he took office, Siegelman was targeted by an investigation launched by his political opponents and escalated from the state to the federal level by Bush Administration appointees in 2001. Shortly before the sentencing, however, suspicions expressed by Alabama observers that there was something “fishy” about the case began to reach the national stage. What initially appeared to be merely a whiff of possible political corruption became something stronger, with allegations that Karl Rove and the Bush Justice Department had been operating behind the scenes. Part 2

Iraq Vet Forced to Pay Back Army Bonus – Former Private First Class Jordan Fox was injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq. He suffered a serious back injury, and he lost sight in his right eye. A few short weeks after his honorable discharge from the Army, a letter came by mail from the Defense Department. Was it a letter informing him of local veterans’ clinics where he could receive vocational rehabilitation or counseling? No. A signed “thank you for your service” from the Secretary of Defense, or perhaps the President? No. It was a bill for nearly $3,000. Since Fox was too severely injured to complete his military service, the Defense Department was demanding that he return part of his enlistment bonus. In the Army bureaucracy, his wounds didn’t matter. The Army machine wanted its money back. Sadly, he is not alone. Some troops seriously wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan are being denied their full enlistment bonus by the Pentagon, while others are being asked to return money they have already received.

Bush Committed Federal Crime According to Constitutional Law Professor – The Bush administration has been using the “state secrets” defense in order to have federal law suits challenging their illegal eavesdropping programs thrown out of court. So far, they have been successful; thanks, in most cases, to lazy or partisan judges who have given little or no scrutiny of the validity of their claims which, according to Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley on Tuesday’s Countdown, are nothing more than unconstitutional attempts to cover up their own federal crimes.

Olbermann: “With or without this new law, suppose one of the anti-wiretapping civil lawsuits succeeds, what does that legal victory actually mean then in terms of stopping the government or punishing Alberto Gonzales or any other top officials who were responsible for this?”

Turley: “Well, it can mean a lot and that’s one of the reasons there’s a lot of people, both Democrats and Republicans, who don’t want to see it happen. They don’t want a court to say that the president did something that is a federal crime. That’s why they’re trying to get all these cases thrown out of court because it is rather clear that what the president ordered was a federal crime, clearly defined in federal law. But that causes a problem because many of the Democratic leaders and Republican leaders have promised each other that they would not start impeachment proceedings, but when a federal judge says the president committed a crime, it’s pretty darn hard to ignore that.”

Iraq War Contract Scandal Widens = The apparent suicide last year in Baghdad of Army Maj. Gloria D. Davis set in motion a chain of events that has shed light on the Lee case and others in the web. Before her death on Dec. 12, Davis told Army investigators she had received $225,000 in bribes from Lee in return for granting his company $14 million in contracts to provide warehouses and management services in Iraq.

Media Trumpets Unreliable Poll; Fails to Mention Reliable Poll With Opposite Results – Recently, two polls came out — a Zogby Interactive poll (with questionable methodology) showing Hillary Clinton struggling against the top GOP candidates, and a Gallup poll (with more reliable methodology) showing the opposite. Guess which one got too much attention? While the Zogby poll was mentioned by multiple reporters and pundits, the only mentions the Gallup poll got on TV were from Hillary advisers who had to bring it up themselves on the air in order to inject it into the conversation. Of course, every political reporter, editor, and producer in the country knew that Zogby Interactive results were unreliable, but they trumpeted the results anyway. Wouldn’t responsible journalism require news outlets to a) note why professional pollsters discount Zogby Interactive data; and b) also highlight the Gallup numbers with equal enthusiasm?

Another Incompetent Bush Crony – Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Julie Myers has been criticized as an unfit nominee because of her lack of immigration experience and close ties to the Bush administration. Her performance at that first press conference was panned when she “struggle[d] to pronounce Nuevo Laredo,” a Mexican border town that is a hot spot of criminal activity and drug trafficking into the US. President Bush elevated Myers to the position with a controversial “recess appointment” that subverted the Senate’s ability to confirm the nominee. Critics say Myers’ ascension to the top spot at ICE was another example of Bush’s “cronyism” because she is married to a US Attorney who formerly served as chief of staff DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and her uncle is Gen. Richard Myers, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “This nomination is a monumental political and policy blunder in the wake of the Michael Brown/FEMA fiasco,” wrote conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, a fierce critic of the administration’s immigration policies, before Myers took on her new job. More recently, Myers was forced to apologize after an ICE employee showed up at a costume party in what many thought was a racist costume and she was on a panel that judged the costume “most original.” Lou Dobbs transcript – search for myers   Julie Myers: ICE Princess Holds Court, Acts Like Jester

Giuliani’s Business Contracts Tie Him to the Man Who Let 9/11’s Mastermind Escape the FBI – Three weeks after 9/11, when the roar of fighter jets still haunted the city’s skyline, the emir of gas-rich Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, toured Ground Zero. Although a member of the emir’s own royal family had harbored the man who would later be identified as the mastermind of the attack—a man named Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, often referred to in intelligence circles by his initials, KSM—al-Thani rushed to New York in its aftermath, offering to make a $3 million donation, principally to the families of its victims. “We had a very good meeting yesterday. Very good,” said Giuliani, adding that he was “very, very grateful” for al-Thani’s generosity. Giuliani Partners, the consulting company that has made Giuliani rich, feasts at the Qatar trough, doing business with the ministry run by the very member of the royal family identified in news and government reports as having concealed KSM—the terrorist mastermind who wired funds from Qatar to his nephew Ramzi Yousef prior to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and who also sold the idea of a plane attack on the towers to Osama bin Laden—on his Qatar farm in the mid-1990s. This royal family member is Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani, Qatar’s minister of Islamic affairs at the time, who was later installed at the interior ministry in January 2001 and reappointed by the emir during a government shake-up earlier this year. Abdallah al-Thani is also said to have welcomed Osama bin Laden on two visits to the farm. What’s most shocking is that Abdallah al-Thani has been widely accused of helping to spirit KSM out of Qatar in 1996, just as the FBI was closing in on him. In other words, as incredible as it might seem, Rudy Giuliani—whose presidential candidacy is steeped in 9/11 iconography—has been doing business with a government agency run by the very man who made the attacks on 9/11 possible.

Regards,

Jim