Benghazi Again? Investigate the Damned NSA!

Speaker of the House John Boehner on Friday announced that the Republicans will soon be setting up a special investigative tribunal to once again flog that long dead horse that is the Benghazi scandal. Now that the corporate scam that is the Affordable Health Care Act aka Obamacare is pretty much dead as a campaign issue the GOP is going to count on once again going back to the future in rolling out the blatant election year scam of yet another investigation into what it is that happened in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. You have to give it to the sleazy Republicans, they are predictable to a fault and whether it be hundreds of symbolic votes wasting taxpayer money to nullify Obamacare or exhuming the rotting corpse of Ronald Reagan to drag around as a prop like a Weekend at Bernie's sequel they never change which is why they keep losing presidential elections. This is by no means to excuse the equally rotten (although smarter and less overtly fascist) Democrats because when it comes to systemic corruption it is a bipartisan con that is run down on the American people.

In the  latest conjuring of Benghazi from the grave it is only more evidence at the party's complete bankruptcy and thorough selling out because there has NEVER to this day been any effort made by that party to mount a serious and concerted attempt to hold hearings - including special investigative committee ones - over the ongoing travesty of the unconstitutional surveillance and data-mining programs of the NSA Stasi. The cover-up continues over what the hell exactly has been going on for years at Ft. Meade, the secret courts and the bowels of both the Obama and the Bush-Cheney White House regimes and the inevitable and the worst is yet to be revealed if you believe journalist Glenn Greenwald and former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. You would think that this gross violation of the civil liberties of Americans at least deserves SOME attention from Boehner and the oily Darrell "Congressman Grand-Theft Auto" Issa but nothing doing there. It is always best to just set up their smoke and mirror machines and whip out shovelfuls of bloody red meat to the Fox News lobotomized party base to get them to the polls in November. Total horseshit but that is standard for the GOP in their desperation to gain more control in the House and retake the Senate before the Hillary Clinton tidal wave washes it all away for good with the massive female voter turnout in 2016. What a pack of fucking idiots.

I do not however completely discredit that there was something seriously wrong going on in Benghazi the day that the embassy was attacked and Ambassador Christopher Stephens and others killed. It just isn't what Boehner, Issa and their fellow liars and swine will be focused on. I would love to see an investigation based on what Seymour Hersh wrote about in his banned from the US media article "The Red Line and the Rat Line" from which I excerpt:

The full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a ‘rat line’, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida. (The DNI spokesperson said: ‘The idea that the United States was providing weapons from Libya to anyone is false.’)

In January, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the assault by a local militia in September 2012 on the American consulate and a nearby undercover CIA facility in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three others. The report’s criticism of the State Department for not providing adequate security at the consulate, and of the intelligence community for not alerting the US military to the presence of a CIA outpost in the area, received front-page coverage and revived animosities in Washington, with Republicans accusing Obama and Hillary Clinton of a cover-up. A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities. Retired American soldiers, who didn’t always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer. (A spokesperson for Petraeus denied the operation ever took place.)

The operation had not been disclosed at the time it was set up to the congressional intelligence committees and the congressional leadership, as required by law since the 1970s. The involvement of MI6 enabled the CIA to evade the law by classifying the mission as a liaison operation. The former intelligence official explained that for years there has been a recognised exception in the law that permits the CIA not to report liaison activity to Congress, which would otherwise be owed a finding. (All proposed CIA covert operations must be described in a written document, known as a ‘finding’, submitted to the senior leadership of Congress for approval.) Distribution of the annex was limited to the staff aides who wrote the report and to the eight ranking members of Congress – the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, and the Democratic and Republicans leaders on the House and Senate intelligence committees. This hardly constituted a genuine attempt at oversight: the eight leaders are not known to gather together to raise questions or discuss the secret information they receive.

The annex didn’t tell the whole story of what happened in Benghazi before the attack, nor did it explain why the American consulate was attacked. ‘The consulate’s only mission was to provide cover for the moving of arms,’ the former intelligence official, who has read the annex, said. ‘It had no real political role.’

Washington abruptly ended the CIA’s role in the transfer of arms from Libya after the attack on the consulate, but the rat line kept going. ‘The United States was no longer in control of what the Turks were relaying to the jihadists,’ the former intelligence official said. Within weeks, as many as forty portable surface-to-air missile launchers, commonly known as manpads, were in the hands of Syrian rebels. On 28 November 2012, Joby Warrick of the Washington Post reported that the previous day rebels near Aleppo had used what was almost certainly a manpad to shoot down a Syrian transport helicopter. ‘The Obama administration,’ Warrick wrote, ‘has steadfastly opposed arming Syrian opposition forces with such missiles, warning that the weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists and be used to shoot down commercial aircraft.’ Two Middle Eastern intelligence officials fingered Qatar as the source, and a former US intelligence analyst speculated that the manpads could have been obtained from Syrian military outposts overrun by the rebels. There was no indication that the rebels’ possession of manpads was likely the unintended consequence of a covert US programme that was no longer under US control.

If Hersh is in any way correct what we may really have here is Iran-Contra II and it could bring down the entire Obama administration - which the Republicans really don't want because they have gotten immense political mileage out of demonizing the "Kenyan" in the WHITE House to the knuckle-dragging dregs of society that is their base. If they really want Obama's head on a stick then investigate based on Hersh's story - or even better on the NSA and the ongoing abuse of power that Obama is deeply involved in. Don't hold your breath though because Jesus will return and $100 bills will rain from the sky before anything like that ever happens.

Only in America circa 2014 can you continue to serve up crazy and have people begging for seconds.. or as far as the Republican Benghazi farce goes hundredths.

The Fat Man Grovels for Shelly Adelson's Dirty Money

The signs of our now fully decayed system of democracy are evident just about everywhere that one looks the days. From the ongoing travesty of the Obama administration and the neocon forced march into the jaws of what could be World War III with their ongoing pursuit of the head of Russian leader Vladimir Putin to the garish displays of greed and political fixing that has now overtaken anything that occurs in the voting booth. The latter of these would be the disgusting orgy of political fecklessness that was the Republican Jewish Coalition parade of political whores that is taking place in sin city. The parade of aspiring Republicans jostling for the money of the grand chiseler that is casino magnate Sheldon Adelson in which they prostrate themselves in front of a man whose true loyalties lie outside of our domestic borders is a shameful exhibit of garishness of which there are few equals.

Adelson, the ultra-right wing Zionist billionaire who counts among his personal friends the lunatic Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is right up there with the phony libertarian Koch Brothers and Wall Street bloodsucker Paul Singer when it comes to Republican party sugar daddies. I by no means undertake this diatribe without blame for the equally disgusting Democrats who have their own money machine to which they similarly prostitute themselves out to but the for sheer spectacle it just doesn’t get any worse than the GOP. Desperate to repel the likes of Rand Paul and Justin Amash as well as the growing libertarian influence within the ‘big tent’ the gaggle of aspirants to engage in the coming political scrum with the queen in waiting Hillary Rodham-Clinton to claim the office that will be vacated by the hated Barack Obama come January of 2017 is a carnival of perversion without equal in America.

Adelson pissed away a fortune gambling on Republican losers in 2012 including plowing tens of millions into the always futile presidential run of one Newton Leroy Gingrich, the philandering fascist dwarf whose big ideas including going to the moon turned him into a mockery. Adelson then continued to gamble heavily on the doomed horse Mitt Romney, he of the White Horse Prophecy who in a winnable election against a loser like Obama still managed to crap the magic Mormon underwear.  Adelson is nothing if not tenacious but as there is no such thing as immortality that fat Hebrew toad might as well spend as much of his loot as possible before taking the dirt nap.  Other than dodging accountability for his casino gambling empire there is one thing that old Shelly wants most of all and that is to have the US do Israel’s dirty work by attacking Tehran and turning it into the largest glass surface on Earth. The line of those who crawled up on their bellies to the kingmaker was filled with the undignified types who would gladly do exactly that if they could land the support of the rotten old bastard. 

Shelly and the Shellbacks

I recall a certain vomit-inducing exercise from back in my days when I served in the United States Navy – during a thing that was called military service that none of those fucking vile pricks on display can claim to have participated in – becoming a Shellback. This refers to the rite of passage of sailors who have been on a ship that has crossed the equator and despite the thoroughly disgusting and repulsive nature of the festivities is a thing which puts one in an exalted status.  I excerpt the following from Wikipedia:

The two-day event (evening and day) is a ritual in which previously inducted crew members (Trusty Shellbacks) are organized into a "Court of Neptune" to induct the Slimy Pollywogs into "the mysteries of the Deep".[citation needed] Physical hardship, in keeping with the spirit of the initiation, are tolerated, and each Pollywog is expected to endure a standard initiation rite in order to become a Shellback.[citation needed] Depending on the Ocean or Fleet AOR, there can be variations in the rite. Some rites have discussed a role reversal as follows, but this is not always a normal feature, and may be dependent on whether a small number of Shellbacks exist to conduct the initiation.

The transition flows from established order to the controlled "chaos" of the Pollywog Revolt, the beginnings of re-order in the initiation rite as the fewer but experienced enlisted crew converts the Wogs through physical tests, then back to, and thereby affirming, the pre-established order of officers and enlisted.

The eve of the equatorial crossing is called Wog Day and, as with many other night-before rituals, is a mild type of reversal of the day to come. Wogs—all of the uninitiated—are allowed to capture and interrogate any shellbacks they can find (e.g., tying them up, cracking eggs or pouring aftershave lotion on their heads).  The wogs are made very aware of the fact that it will be much harder on them if they do anything like this.

After crossing the line, Pollywogs receive subpoenas [4] to appear before King Neptune and his court (usually including his first assistant Davy Jones and her Highness Amphitrite and often various dignitaries, who are all represented by the highest ranking seamen), who officiate at the ceremony, which is often preceded by a beauty contest of men dressing up as women, each department of the ship being required to introduce one contestant in swimsuit drag. Afterwards, some wogs may be "interrogated" by King Neptune and his entourage, and the use of "truth serum" (hot sauce + after shave) and whole uncooked eggs put in the mouth. During the ceremony, the Pollywogs undergo a number of increasingly embarrassing ordeals (wearing clothing inside out and backwards; crawling on hands and knees on nonskid-coated decks; being swatted with short lengths of firehose; being locked in stocks and pillories and pelted with mushy fruit; being locked in a water coffin of salt-water and bright green sea dye (fluorescent sodium salt); crawling through chutes or large tubs of rotting garbage; kissing the Royal Baby's belly coated with axle grease, hair chopping, etc.), largely for the entertainment of the Shellbacks.

Once the ceremony is complete, a Pollywog receives a certificate [5] declaring his new status. Another rare status is the Golden Shellback, a person who has crossed the Equator at the 180th meridian (International Date Line). The rarest Shellback status is that of the Emerald Shellback (USA), or Royal Diamond Shellback (Commonwealth), which is received after crossing the Equator at the prime meridian. When a ship must cross the Equator reasonably close to one of these meridians, the ship's captain will typically plot a course across the Golden X so that the ship's crew can be initiated as Golden or Emerald/Royal Diamond Shellbacks.

When my US Navy ship, a Hull Class destroyer went through this traumatic yet ultimately cathartic ceremony I recall that our version of the "Royal Baby" was the nastiest, dirtiest senior petty officer on the ship and that the pollywogs were forced to suck a nut out of the fat slob's belly button I was able to skip that part only because when I got there I vomited all over the obese bastard and it was such a mess that there was a good deal of confusion until they got it all cleaned up. I do still have my Shellback card though which along with an x-rated business card from the legendary Subic City brothel "Marilyn's" is a prized possession to this day.

Leading the parade of those who would suck the peanut out of Shelly’s obese hairy navel was one New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who was fresh off of being “cleared” of any involvement in the Bridgegate controversy by his own internal investigation. It was the equivalent of Paulie Walnuts and Silvio Dante doing an internal audit of the Bada Bing Club but the lickspittle media will swallow it whole. Porky Soprano had to apologize profusely for having once dared to refer to the land which Israel has stolen from the Palestinians as “occupied territories”, such is the aversion to the truth in this country circa 2014. After his renouncing his most horrid transgression of telling the truth Christie waddled back into the good graces of Adelson and assumed his place with the rest of the con artists crawling through the swill to the foot of his throne. Another prominent governor joining Christie is the union-busting Koch whore Wisconsin kingpin Scott Walker, not sure how well that his dallying with Adelson will go over with the brothers Charles and David but an opportunistic piece of shit like Walker covers all of his bases and like a snake is possessed of zero loyalty.

One of the more troubling aspect of American politics in the neocon dominated era of post September 11, 2001 is the fixation on what benefits the state of Israel – or more appropriately that extremist element that has manifested itself in their government – to the detriment of what is good for America. It is not arguable that the Middle East wars of aggression undertaken in consistence with the PNAC/Clean Break neocon doctrines as well as the ongoing US defense of Israeli human rights abuses only serves to create more enemies for America. Former George H.W. Bush administration Secretary of State and Chief of Staff  James Baker once infamously remarked "fuck the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway" and while this was probably just a bit too inclusive it was back in the day when the Republican party didn't turn the recognition of the state of Israel into a cheap and perilous partisan issue. This may be good business for the surveillance security military industrial complex that is just drooling over the prospects of ‘another 9/11’ for wealth beyond their wildest dreams but it is bad policy and dangerous as well. It serves neither America or Israel wall and there will come a day when those who like Adelson and the neocons who have sowed the seeds of discontent will reap the whirlwind.

As the late H.L. Mencken once pegged it: "Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods" and it was ALL for sale at the Venetian Resort over the weekend.

(Image: Reuters)