"...Karl Rove has told... has said to a reporter -- Miriam Rosen of the
Dallas Observer -- that this is the kind of candidate that a political hack
like me dreams of..."
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/jan-june03/rove_1-28.html
He's America's Joseph Goebbels. As a 21-year old Young Republican in Texas,
Karl Rove not only pimped for Richard Nixon's chief political dirty tricks
strategist Donald Segretti but soon caught the eye of the incoming
Republican National Committee Chairman, George H. W. Bush. Rove's dirty
tricks on behalf of Nixon's 1972 campaign catapulted Rove onto the national
stage. From his Eagle's Nest in the West Wing of the White House, Rove now
directs a formidable political dirty tricks operation and disinformation mill.
http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen1101.html
Let's examine how this creeping coup has progressed since 2000. When Dubya
was defeated in the New Hampshire GOP primary, the Bush deceivers began to
pile on his opponent John McCain and his family. McCain's prisoner-of-war
record was questioned, his wife was accused of being a drug addict, and his
adopted daughter was accused of being fathered by McCain out of wedlock. I
have previously written about how such vicious attacks are the hallmark of
Karl Rove - the star pupil of tricky Dick Nixon's chief trickster Donald
Segretti. After the disinformation campaign by Dubya and company, McCain
was trounced in South Carolina and his campaign died as a result.
Next target: Al Gore. This operation began well before the hanging chad
ballots were counted in Florida's questionable vote counting nightmare.
Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Jeb Bush protégé and
sometime main squeeze, contracted out to DBT, a subsidiary of ChoicePoint,
to scrub Florida's electoral rolls of all ex-convicts. In total, over
57,000 names were excised from the rolls and, of these, 8000 people who
were mostly black and who either never committed a crime or were only
guilty of past misdemeanors, were thrown off the voters' lists. Some
Floridians with common names were accused of committing crimes in Dallas
only because DBT owned the database for Dallas, Texas criminal histories.
Only problem for the disenfranchised voters, many had never been to Texas,
let alone Dallas! Since most of the barred black voters would have opted
for Gore, the margin of victory for Dubya was guaranteed. And then there
were the curious butterfly ballots in south Florida. The placement of names
in Palm Beach Country was designed by an election official who quickly left
her job after the dirty deed was done. But she supposedly was a Democrat
said the media. But no one ever checked. As you will read on - in
perception management campaigns, no one every checks anything. There is no
need, just believe what someone who looks and acts official says. It is all
so very convenient and easy.
So it was with Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan. He evened up the race to
replace the far-out extremist Senator John Ashcroft. But days before the
election, his plane crashed. Carnahan and his son were killed. Rather than
fighting the fact that Carnahan was elected anyway, Ashcroft became
Attorney General under Bush. Carnahan's wife Jean took her husband's place
in the Senate. She voted against Ashcroft's nomination for Attorney
General. She became an enemy of the Bushes. She would be dealt with at the
proper time.
On May 6, 1984, a presidential election was conducted in a country across
the Caribbean from Florida. A man named Nicolas Ardito Barletta was
declared the winner after receiving only 1, 713 more votes than his
opponent. This razor-thin margin was out of a total of 600,000 votes cast.
The opposition cried foul. They said Panama's military strongman Gen.
Manuel Noriega had rigged the election in favor of Barletta by simply
tampering with the vote tabulation computers. The United States expressed
concern at the time but did not do anything to sanction Panama. The reason
was that Vice President George H. W. Bush was using Noriega and Panama to
funnel arms to Nicragua's contras in exchange for looking the other way on
drug shipments. Later, when he became President, H. W. Bush invaded Panama,
arrested Noriega. He knew too much about Bush who was running for
reelection. He had to be dealt with and he was. But that computerized vote
counting tampering would come in handy for another Bush in the future. But
more on that later.
Bush was inaugurated on January 20, 2001 on a Saturday that can only be
described as one of the grayest, coldest, and most foreboding days I have
ever experienced in Washington, DC. Call it an omen, but I had the feeling
something terrible was in store for the country - and it was.
Although I had been writing about Bush administration officials increasing
contacts with members of the Taliban and Pakistan's extreme Islamist
leaders in order to gain a safe footing in Afghanistan to build a pipeline
across the country from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, I had no idea that the
backroom deals involved threats by the United States to attack the country.
Of course, a country that treated women the way it did, that destroyed
ancient and priceless artifacts, and harbored master terrorist Osama bin
Laden should have been attacked for many reasons other than its foot
dragging on a pipeline deal. But it now appears that these threats
emboldened Bin Laden to carry out his long-planned attack against America.
And Bush must have known that from his briefings by CIA Director George
Tenet. After all, it was Tenet who helped arrange the Taliban-Bush
administration liaisons. And it was Tenet who possessed all the foreign and
other intelligence on Bin Laden's plans.
So when Bush was first told about the planes striking the World Trade
Center and we all saw him nod his head as if he already knew and when he
seemed more engaged in listening to a seven-year-old girl talk about her
freaking pet goat, it all now makes sense. He pushed the Taliban and they
pushed back. For this Bush, this war would be worldwide, it would last forever.
http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen1107.html
