vrijdag 2 juni 2006

De Oorlogsstaat 58

Greg Grandin is author of The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (University of Chicago), The Blood of Guatemala (Duke) and Empire's Workshop: Latin America, The United States and, most recently, The Rise of the New Imperialism (Metropolitan). He teaches Latin American history at New York University.

Voor TomDispatch schrijft hij: 'The Swift Boating of America.
An illegal war, torture rooms, warrantless wiretapping, manipulated intelligence, secret prisons, disinformation planted in the press, graft, and billions of reconstruction dollars gone missing: just when it seemed that the Bush administration had reached its corruption quota comes a new scandal. This one is a bribery case involving defense contractors, Republican congressmen, prostitutes, secret Hawaiian getaways, Scottish castles, and - wait for it - the Watergate Hotel. At its center is the just ex-Executive Director of the CIA, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, whose sole qualification for being appointed to that post by just ex-Director Porter Goss seems to have been his ability, while head of the Agency's Frankfurt post, to hand out bottled-water contracts to friends and show junketing politicians a good time.
Don't fret though if you are having trouble separating this particular crime from other Republican offenses. There's a good reason - they're all one scandal, part of the same wave of militarism, fraud, and ideology that has swamped American politics of late. While this wave of scandal seems now to be heading for tsunami proportions, its first swells date back decades. Just take a look at Dusty's rèsumè.
After his zealotry got him booted from Sears' security and the San Diego police department, Foggo drew on his collegiate Young Republican connections to land a job in the early 1980s with the CIA. His first mission was in Honduras, then the staging ground for Ronald Reagan's secret paramilitary war against Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government. In addition to his official duties, Foggo helped his old college buddy Brent Wilkes - the defense contractor now implicated in the ongoing bribery case involving former Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham - bring conservative cadres down to Central America. There, he introduced them to anti-Sandinista rebels, better known as Contras. It seems that, even then, a lot more than anti-Communist solidarity was on the agenda. Three of Wilkes' former friends now claim that these trips included partying with prostitutes.' Lees verder:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=88057 Of: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060206O.shtml

Geen opmerkingen:

Peter Flik en Chuck Berry-Promised Land

mijn unieke collega Peter Flik, die de vrijzinnig protestantse radio omroep de VPRO maakte is niet meer. ik koester duizenden herinneringen ...