Flipper McCain Calls for NSA Commandant's Resignation Then Denies It

He was for it before he was against it. In what would have been a huge breakthrough in the fight against Obama’s Stasi Senator John McCain of Arizona gave an interview to Der Spiegel in which he called for the head of NSA Commandant General Keith Alexander.  The statement, on being asked by the German publication of the NSA and in particular it’s head: “Should Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, resign?” and I quote crazy train McCain from the article: “Of course, they should resign or be fired. We no longer hold anybody accountable in Washington.” It would have been yet another fork in the ass of the dying state-corporate propaganda machine that is the domestic media with said media’s longtime love object to go off in the foreign press. It could have been devastating coming in the aftermath of the 60 Minutes Benghazi fraud, a shot to the head delivered to a corrupt and fraudulent press that would resonate for quite some time and herald the arrival of the recognition that the only truth in media lies outside the star spangled lemming colony.

But alas, it was not to be. In a vintage McCain move the straight talk express has been thrown into reverse and the tires are smoking. This never would have happened on David Gregory’s Sunday morning show in that no such combination of questions would have been directed at “the maverick” therefore befuddling the old man, he sounded as confused as Reagan used to when confronted in his later years in power. The McCain camp will of course blame it on the Germans and launch into another ridiculous diatribe as he did when Putin pissed on the gauche and laughable concept of American exceptionalism a few months back from the New York Times editorial page. While I despise McCain simply because he is charlatan, media whore and human windsock whose comments change sometimes by the hour when it happens to be politically expedient I was stunned to see any such comments and ready to actually give the man some props for going all “mavericky” again.

Hell even a broken clock is right twice a day and the additional comments aside from the call for Alexander’s head there were several other salient points within the Der Spiegel piece which I now excerpt:

SPIEGEL: Are the intelligence services out of control?

McCain: There has not been sufficient congressional oversight, and there has been an absolutely disgraceful sharing of information that never should have taken place. For many years, we had an absolute provision that any classified information, which was going to be shared, is based on need-to-know information. I was a Navy pilot and had Top Secret clearance because I was in a squadron that in case of war with Russia would carry nuclear weapons. But that did not mean that I was privy to everything to do with all of our war plans in case of a nuclear war.

SPIEGEL: That means that you only knew what you absolutely had to know.

McCain: Yes. Then along came 9/11 and we said, "Oh, one of the reasons why we didn't know about 9/11 is that we didn't do enough information sharing." So now we have a private in the Army with access to most secret cables.

SPIEGEL: You mean Private First Class Bradley Manning, now Chelsea, who leaked thousands of secret documents to Wikileaks.

McCain: And now we have a contractor employee, not a government employee, who has access to information which is, when revealed, most damaging to the standing prestige of the United States and our relations with some of our best friends. Why did Edward Snowden have that information? And what are we doing as far as screening people who have access to this information? It's outrageous, and someone ought to be held accountable.

SPIEGEL: Who must be held accountable?

McCain: The head of the NSA, the president of the United States, the Congressional Intelligence Committees, all of these contractors we pay that were responsible for performing the background checks. There should be a wholesale housecleaning.

Now if I am reading this correctly, the ultimate Pentagon Rolodex man is actually expressing more than a bit of dismay over the tens of thousands of “contractors” who have descended on Washington as a swarm of money-eating locusts post September 11, 2001.  This is spot on but again, more than a bit peculiar from a man like Manchurian McCain who has been a key defender of the privatizing of military/intelligence functions for years. The amount of taxpayer money that is utterly wasted by this sort of crap is an abomination and should have mobs of pitchfork bearing peasants marching on D.C.  While it was awhile ago but not that long ago that I myself served in the armed forces we had actual military personnel cooking meals, doing laundry etc. as a part of their jobs. Then there is the case of “contractor” access, it is no small bug up the asses of the beltway establishment that Edward Snowden gathered his materials on the obscene degree of NSA overreach while employed by government “contractor” Booz Allen Hamilton. There are just some jobs what should not be entrusted to outsiders and Christ knows what sort of monstrous abuses have been undertaken in the name of profit from “contractors” who unlike Snowden did not have a conscience nor a respect for patriotism. And the money that is extracted from taxpayers at the expense of the needs of real Americans is far worse than the proverbial $500 screwdriver. Ike was so dead on when he warned of the rise of the Military Industrial Complex in his 1961 farewell address.

But then the influence peddlers began to fornicate with insiders like McCain, Lindsey Graham, Dick Cheney and others to turn those run of the mill jobs performed by actual American servicemen and women into lucrative sources of campaign funds that could be siphoned off. The whole privatizing of the basic functions of the military, whether it be mess cooks or mercenaries is an outrage but when McCain is asked tomorrow (if he hasn’t been already) he will accuse the German press of taking his words out of context. This is the key problem for our swinish political class, the pocket media has their back here in The Homeland while the concept of investigative journalism has not been turned into a near criminal activity in other parts of the civilized world.

When will Senator McCain just go away, resign, be committed to a mental institution or just simply kick the bucket and remove himself from a position of influence. He actually for a very brief time made some sense with his comments but once again flip-flopped – how the American media gives this man any respect or credibility is a textbook example of the greater problem the presstitues. McCain is a fool who has become a cartoon of himself and it is just not amusing any longer. Then what can be expected from a deranged, senile old bastard whose idea of “country first” was to put the Wasilla nincompoop Sarah Palin within a heartbeat of the nuclear launch codes.  This man is the strongest argument for term limits that I have ever seen.

"Thank God For France": Iran Talks Torpedoed

There will be no Neocon mockery of the French as “cheese eating surrender monkeys” nor will the House cafeteria rename their greasy fried spuds as “freedom fries” this time. With a stick save on behalf of  the western war machine the French delegation harpooned this weekend’s Iran talks. Despite years of being the butt of jokes this endeared them to the blood thirsty American hawks, the right-wing Netanyahu regime in Israel and a certain fork-tongued serpent that goes by the name of Prince Bandar. The warmongers even got the predictable endorsement by the Palmetto State princess Lindsey Graham from his normal Sunday morning perch on one of the loathsome Sabbath talk shows form which the coming week’s establishment talking points are launched.

Not to be bothered with doing anything but doubling down on his ridiculous press conference that came on the heels of the now discredited 60 Minutes Benghazi scoop, Graham lisped in his finest Gomer Pyle singsong that his tantrum would continue over Barry’s nominees. Not that I expected much from the inhabitants of the Fox-mosphere but when do any of these vitriolic assholes ever get called on any of this, especially when pushing one of their trademark silly snits behind a propaganda vehicle that has been exposed as a total crock of shit? On CNN's State of the Union Graham continued to stand upon the wall of his Benghazi house of cards as if he were defending the Alamo all while the bloated sow of a hostess Candy Crowley refused to put him on the spot. Graham then rapidly segued from the absurd into the standard talking points by shifting the topic to Iran again, leading the Israeli-Saudi domestic advocacy for Middle East Armageddon by announcing that more sanctions were coming, squawking "you can't trust the Iranians" repeatedly as though he were some gaily festooned parrot propped upon Captain Ahab Netanyahu’s beefy shoulder.

Despite efforts to defuse the Iranian nuclear situation (which is bogus) and move on towards better international relations with an energy rich nation that could once and for all allow us to slice off the festering sore on our national ass that is the House of Saud the agitators continue to sell WW III. Don’t expect to see any of the pathetic corporate-state media in this country to offer up anything but the same stale talking points, note that last week the shameless Richard Engle was still bemoaning the foiling of the attack on Syria, this is rich from an NBC dispatch with no disclaimer that Engle’s employer also happens to be owned by an enormous defense contractor which would profit extravagantly from more war:

CAIRO -- Bashar Assad got away with it.

Only a few months ago, Syria's president was a widely-condemned rogue leader whose police state had just launched poison gas on commuter villages outside Damascus. Fourteen-hundred people, including hundreds of children, were choked to death, their nervous systems shut down by the gas that seeped into their homes. And the world watched it happen in unprecedented detail. Images of the attack seeped into even far corners of the Internet.

It took more than a year to determine the extent of the vicious shelling in the Syrian city of Hama in 1982 by Assad’s father. The death toll from that massacre remains disputed, but estimates from news agencies and non-governmental organizations put the total at around 20,000. This time, however, cellphones, tablets and social media exposed the horrors of what happened outside Damascus, almost in real time. Syrian activists posted live updates as bodies were buried in rows in mass graves. The hours of graphic videos of dead babies on hospital floors are accessible for free to anyone with an Internet connection.

Yet, somehow, Assad not only got away with the gas attack, but appears to have also emerged stronger after it. How is that possible?

Russian President Vladimir Putin had a lot to do with it. By stepping into the standoff between Syria and the U.S., he tossed Assad a lifeline that also allowed President Barack Obama to forgo intervening in a conflict most Americans wanted no part in after a decade of costly wars in distant Muslim lands.

Assad’s price for the monstrous attack, his punishment, was to give up his chemical weapons in an internationally-supervised process. Destroying the weapons is a net positive for the world -- fewer deadly tools in the hands of a dangerous regime -- but it’s not much of a price for Syria to pay. It’s like getting away with mass murder with only a fine.

In exchange for destroying the poison gas and the factories that make it -- a process that’s almost impossible to verify -- there would be no U.S. military strike. Assad would get to stay in power and continue his war with "conventional weapons," including artillery and Scud missile attacks on civilian areas, napalm dropped on schools, and starving the opposition into submission. Even more shocking is that Assad has weathered the crisis appearing to the world as reasonable, rational and ready to compromise.

While Putin threw Assad -- and Obama -- a lifeline, it was the rebels themselves who helped the Syrian president rehabilitate his image. The rebels are increasingly associated with al Qaeda fanatics who have hijacked their revolution. The al Qaeda rebels kidnap journalists who want to tell their story, and aid workers who try to bring food and medicine.

Assad’s government says it will take part in peace talks. The rebels refuse.

Assad says he’s fighting terrorists. Some of the rebels make him look like he has a point. This Ramadan, Assad should send Putin and al Qaeda fruit baskets.

Now there is some serious manure slinging. You just have to love the talking point about “fruit baskets” for the hated Putin and al Qaeda. Engle would never bother to admit that the U.S. is indirectly funding the organization through support for the fanatical rebels who are ransacking churches and openly boast of barbaric actions including cannibalism. Hell, why bother with something as small as a fruit basket when you can send the terrorists the biggest motherfucking fruit basket ever in the form of weapons deals to induce the sabotage of the Iranian negotiations. That is reportedly what Bandar Bush offered to the “cheese eating surrender monkeys” in order to bribe French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius to sink the talks and save the day for Graham and the rest of the blood barters.

"Thank God for France", chirped Lindsey as Candy gazed like a cow at a passing train. 

CBS Retracts Benghazi Report: Another Black Eye for State-Corporate Media

It is Rathergate redux, another ugly retraction of a highly inflammatory political story by the CBS news program that presents itself as the gold standard of American journalism. In fast-breaking events the network was forced to repudiate its recent report on what really happened at Benghazi during that ugly night of September 11, 2012.  The tale told by Lara Logan was based on the account of a private security contractor (translation: a mercenary) named Dylan Davies who conveniently happened to have just had a book published by a CBS subsidiary Simon & Schuster under the product line of Threshold Editions which primarily peddles right-wing rot. The book entitled The Embassy House written under the pseudonym of Sergeant Morgan Jones was the basis for the 60 Minutes piece where the exploits of Jones/Davies were given a legitimate forum for a shocking eyewitness account that was a fantasy.  The “contractor” claimed to have been on the spot that night, engaged in some Jason Bourne style fighting with the attackers, allegedly killing one and then sneaked into the hospital to view the body of the murdered U.S. ambassador Christopher Stephens, according to the promo for the book which was described by the  publisher as an insider account where: “the embassy’s secret access that no one but Jones knew about – and that allowed him entry as the savage firefight raged on” and promises readers “Jones’s discovery of the murdered ambassador’s body and his confirmation that the killing was indeed targeted and sadistically brutal”. It was all hogwash and tepid hogwash at that.

The inconsistencies between the Jones/Davies account that CBS was pimping were so blatant that one wonders how such a ‘reputable’ news program could have made such amateurish blunders in vetting the damned thing prior to airing it. The book and CBS report both ignored accounts that contradicted the story by the merc’s employer Blue Mountain (he said that he lied to them) as well as an account that was provided to the FBI. Whoops, game over. On Friday morning Lara Logan appeared on the program CBS This Morning to personally apologize for the false story and the network has since issued a retraction, an apology and will reportedly air a corrected version this Sunday. Simon & Shuster/Threshold has also announced that it is pulling the book and requesting that stores return their copies which likely will be pulped and dumped into some toxic landfill where such garbage belongs. Another shining example of just dismal that the media has become in this desecrated country.

It will be interesting to see whether the FOX News, red state fascist, Republican dead-enders will own up to the lies of the 60 Minutes Benghazi ‘scoop’ now that it has been debunked and retracted. It wasn’t really that long ago when they pranced around with the scalp of a bowed and beaten Dan Rather on a stick after the notorious 2004 piece on how then president George W. Bush weaseled his way out of Nam into a National Guard unit in Alabama and rarely bothered to show up and his records "scrubbed" was similarly retracted. I would imagine that there will just be some sort of conspiracy theory floated that the Obama administration threatened CBS to pull the story and quite honestly given the Nixonian nature of Barry's war on journalists I can see how this could be believed by some outside of the normal right-wing media bubble. As much as I detest the false equivalence that so thoroughly permeates the corrupt mainstream media I am not just trying to kick Republicans and conservatives in the balls as the entire national media is complicit when it comes to selling the lies of the state, pushing for wars and engaging in political chicanery. This is why I avoid the American media like it were the black plague and get my news from foreign sources, aggregator websites that have proven reliable over the years and only use the domestic press for context and to see what the propaganda meme of the day is.

But as far as 60 Minutes goes, whether it was Dan Rather getting burned on forged documents about Dubya’s National Guard service or  a scandal merchant with a pseudonym pimping a book about the murder of ambassador Christopher Stephens CBS’s flagship program has now been punked again and no matter how many apologies, retractions and rebroadcasts it engages in the credibility is done and to anyone with any sense it’s not coming back. I can remember when the show used to be relevant instead of a forum for celebrity worship, the burnishing of the image of war criminals like Dick Cheney and a vital piece of the neocon Lie Factory. Back in the day the show actually WAS a great example of serious investigative journalism but that was before actually news reportage became subservient to corporate profits. The Michael Mann movie The Insider with Al Pacino and Russell Crowe is an excellent portrayal of how CBS began to stray from legitimacy when a report by tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand was censored by network management. It’s well worth the two hours spent to watch it.

Logan is probably doomed at CBS but there is always hope for recycled hacks who were caught pushing right-wing propaganda. Maybe  she can join disgraced Syrian war shill Elizabeth O’Bagy in a second act on Senator John McCain’s staff.  This all probably will work out in her favor rather than her main claim to fame being that she was gang-raped in Egypt during the Arab Spring uprising she now can hang her hat on the discredited 60 Minutes Benghazi story.  CBS, as it did in the aftermath of Rathergate will need to offer up a blood sacrifice for this latest debacle which as described by top executive Jeff Fager is "as big a mistake as there has been" in the history of the program.  This puts a huge ding in the (undeserved) credibility of the program and will need to be addressed in order to keep the advertisers and investors placated. When the heads eventually roll and the resignations are tendered it will be surprising of Logan isn't among the casualties.

The next question is will Senator Lindsay Graham, the princess of the Palmetto State  also retract his latest bitch fit threatening to filibuster all Obama nominations as he did when he called a press conference the day after the October 27^th ‘bombshell’ story?  Not likely, he will just slither onto the Sunday morning propaganda shows again tomorrow with the usual liars and scumbags, spin the CBS retraction to his benefit and begin the jeremiads against any deal with Iran to normalize relations with the U.S. It has already been well promulgated that Israeli megalomaniac Bibi Netanyahu has blown his stack over an impending deal and likely now plans to muster all of his congressional cat paws to torpedo any such agreement. It is bad enough to live in a country that is totally controlled by corporations, predatory financial gambling houses and a fascist element intent at eradicating privacy for all but it is even worse when foreign countries have become power brokers that are able to use their payrolled whores in D.C. to trump the will of American citizens by pushing for more wars that only they benefit from.

It sucks to be us in these sordid times of imperial collapse and tainted institutions and the worst is yet to come.