LOL.. you have a nice point of view… :d good work…

AIPAC, Espionage, and Legal Sabotage

Published on Monday, November 05, 2007.

Now there has been a major development on this front. No one took seriously the defense’s motion, made a few months ago, that they be allowed to subpoena Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, National Security Council chief Stephen Hadley, and a whole platoon of government officials and former officials. The motion was made on the grounds that these officials, too, had transmitted classified information to AIPAC, and that this is proof that such behavior was and is routine, part of the normal way of doing business in the world of Washington lobbyists. The defendants’ case has always been that they have a First Amendment right to commit espionage, and that their indictment amounted to a government assault on their right to “free speech.” Gee, too bad the Rosenbergs never thought of this unique rationalization for treason, although I doubt it would’ve gotten them anywhere. The AIPAC defendants, however, may have more luck in this department…

No judge had ever allowed such a thing, at least in recent memory, and no one expected Judge Ellis to look favorably on this request. That he granted the defense motion in all but a few cases is bad news for the government – and good news for the Israel lobby, which may just be spared the embarrassment of having its essential nature as a fifth column for Israel exposed to the light of day.

In addition to Rice, Wolfowitz, and Hadley, the following can expect to be served with a summons to appear at a trial that may never happen: Larry Franklin’s boss, Douglas J. Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Elliott Abrams, neocon par excellence and Iran-Contra alumnus, who served as Bush’s “deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy”; Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council adviser to Bill Clinton and author of the now infamously influential book The Threatening Storm, which convinced so many liberal Democrats to support the invasion of Iraq; Marc Grossman, former undersecretary of state for political affairs; Marc Sievers, chief political affairs officer at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv and one of Rice’s chief advisers on Iraqi affairs; David Satterfield, a political officer at our Tel Aviv embassy; William Burns, the American ambassador to Russia; Lawrence Silverman, currently a deputy chief at the American embassy in the Slovak Republic; Matthew Bryza, a deputy assistant secretary of state; and Michael Makovsky, a former staff member of the Office of Special Plans, the policy shop where the “intelligence” pointing to Saddam Hussein’s fabled “weapons of mass destruction” was cooked up into talking points. Franklin also served in that policy shop.

The idea that the U.S. government is going to allow this is absurd. Rather than expose the entire Israeli covert operation in its midst and permit testimony that would dramatize how much access the Israelis already have to our officials and the policy-making process, the Bush administration now has an ideal excuse to shut this case down. Rice wouldn’t even show up to a congressional hearing to answer questions about prewar intelligence, and she similarly tried to defy the 9/11 Commission on the grounds of “executive privilege.” In spite of her expressed willingness to “cooperate with our legal system,” I fully expect her to show the same disdain for Judge Ellis’ court.

http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=4707

Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on Waterboarding and Torture [VIDEO]

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/67043/