The Sibel Edmonds v. Department of Justice saga continues as the year 2005 draws to a close. The only breaking news to come from the ongoing drama is the implication, published in Vanity Fair, that Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House of US Representatives, was the recipient of campaign contributions and assorted bribes from the Turkish-American community. That another US politician is on the take comes as no surprise. But more on that later. Sibel’s story may have quietly died from the suffocating oppression of the US government had it not been for very recent revelations that the US sanctions and operates interrogation/torture facilities in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s and Vice President Dick Cheney’s New Europe (Poland, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, etc.). While the buzz is all around the Plame-Wilson-Libby-Woodward-Rove-Hadley affair, and the lies that got the US into Iraq again, the real news is that military and non-military torture chambers stretching from Mexico to Asia have become standard operating procedure for the US. Further, the response of official Washington to the torture expose was not disgust, but a call to prosecute the whistleblower that leaked the awful news.
Within the remarkable public revelation from the Washington Post and Human Rights Watch, is the imprimatur of Rumsfeld and Cheney—the two crusty Nixon Administration buddies—and perhaps the most ruthless and dangerous Americans ever to hold office in the corporate/government world. They and their disciples share the view that “conduct unbecoming” does not exist. No law, no boundary, no moral code, no amount of lives or an outdated parchments like the US Constitution and Bill of Rights will be a barrier as they push forward their foreign and domestic agenda for some of the US population, Turkey and Israel. They hide behind the veil of “the national security of the United States of America” and label Top Secret/Special Compartmentalized Information the data that would implicate them, not save a US soldier in a Humvee, or they slap a State’s Secret order on the likes of Sibel Edmonds mainly to protect balance sheets and business deals.
Me Ne Frego!
There is a name for this kind of government-corporation and the society it creates and it is Fascism, pure and simple. There just isn’t any other way to describe people like Rumsfeld or Cheney. To that we must add the name Brent Scowcroft. US. Wikipedia reports that fascism’s appearance in Italy in the 1920’s (rooted in the term fascio from the 1800’s) marked a new political and economic system that combined corporatism and nationalism in a state designed to bind all classes together under a capitalist system. Dissent was discouraged, political discourse of the time was highly inflammatory, and the society overly militaristic. Under Mussolini’s dictatorship, from roughly 1925-1945, the effectiveness of its parliamentary system was virtually abolished though its forms were publicly preserved. The opposition was ferried to remote islands far from Italy proper where they would be tortured and sometimes killed. Mussolini was an active proponent of preemption. In 1923, he bombed Corfu and later established a puppet regime in Albania (according to the FBI in 2003, the Albanian Mafia is the most feared) .
Rumsfeld and Cheney have been able to push their fascist doctrine into mainstream America and into every decision making element in the US government. Their spokesman and head buffoon is George Bush II, who recently stated on his trip to Asia that criticism of his War in Iraq was irresponsible and unpatriotic, and is also on the record saying “we do not torture”. One sure sign of fascism is when the elected chief speaks to his minions almost entirely from the safe confines of a US military base. These strangely American fascists have adopted the motto of the Mussolini’s Black Shirts who were the enforcement arm of his government.. “Me Ne Frego”, or I do not give a damn, they’d say as they went about brutalizing dissenters, union bosses, journalists, et al. It’s the kind of attitude that produces “freedom is messy”, “bring ‘em on” and “people are fungible”.
Italian Fascism was based on state control of financial/commercial interests and public thought. American Fascism has done the reverse, outsourcing its mandate, protecting and defending the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, to corporations and powerful ideological domestic and foreign interests. These groups make the key decisions on US domestic and foreign policy. The actors in the stage production called “the three branches of US government”, give the public audience a sense that they are somehow involved in staging the production.
Fascists don’t see a distinction between legitimate and semi-legitimate organizations. Front companies, informants, pundits, mafia’s, consultants, retired generals, drug dealers and junkies, arms traders, spies, assassins, associations, politicians, lobbyists, judges are all just tools to advance the national and foreign interests.
It’s this kind of madness that Sibel Edmonds and those like her are fighting against. They are trying smash the mirrors and blow away the smoke that clouds the minds of so many who refuse to acknowledge that the US is rapidly becoming a reflection of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy.
How Wars are Conducted
A little known news piece by Bill Conroy of narconews.com takes us to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. There we get a glimpse into how US officials conduct themselves in the War on Drugs and, in all likelihood, the War on Terror. According to Conroy, from 2003-2004 twelve people were brutally tortured and murdered in what came to be known as the House of Death case. Agents from the US Department of Homeland Security-Immigration and Customs Service (ICE) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) were attempting to capture Heriberto Santillan Tabares, apparently a top dog in Vincente Carrillo Fuente’s Juarez drug operation. The US agents successfully dropped an informant into Tabares’ operation. Problem was that the informant ended up gleefully taking part in the torture and murder of all twelve people. The bigger problem was that the then Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, the head of the DEA, and the US government prosecutor wanted to maintain the informant’s undercover status and his fine torture and murder credentials so that they could bag Tabares and, later, other drug dealers. Former DEA agent Sandalio Gonzalez was appalled at this activity and sent an internal letter to Department of Justice officials. Their immediate response was to drum him out of the DEA, according to Conroy.
The head of the DEA said that Gonzalez’s action was “inexcusable” and in testimony lets on that incompetence and inter-agency squabbling was the real issue, not the fact that twelve apparently innocent people were murdered with the approval of the US government. Tandy stated that “there was a substantial issue between DEA and ICE over the use of the informant…And the jeopardy that DEA agents and others had been placed in as a result of ICE’s handling of an informant that the DEA had previously blackballed…It was such a sensitive issue that…I went personally to brief the Attorney General…”
This bit of news leads us to Rumsfeld’s Death Star in Arlington, Virginia–the Pentagon–and there into the offices of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. Known simply as The Policy Organization, it is the former home of the notorious neo-con Douglas Feith. But that’s not the interesting part. Under organizational titles like Policy, International Security, Homeland Defense, and Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, exist operational elements like Counternarcotics, Detainees, Combating Terrorism, Homeland Security Integration, Stability Operations and the Defense Policy Board. Its leaderships boasts Kissinger and Cheney protégés, stridently pro-Israel and Turkey supporters, and a former US Phoenix Project operative.
And this is where the guidelines for the Wars on Terror, Drugs, and Weapons of Mass Destruction are developed and implemented in the field, more than likely by former special operations operatives under contract. The Policy Organization has no problem dealing with psychopathic killers, buying and selling drugs, dropping white phosphorous on women and children, using the global black-market to help a “critical” country upgrade its nuclear capability, or selling out the American people for the sake of profit. The lives of 12 or 1.2 million human beings are inconsequential—nothing more than expendable extras in the big show. “Sensitive” matters must be classified or not discussed at all.
Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman (Cheney’s pick) runs The Policy Organization. Not surprisingly, he’s the former Ambassador to Turkey.
Gobble, Gobble
“Turkey’s long term commitment to the principles of democracy and their commitment to undertaking the reforms Europe demanded before even the first round of accession negotiations — have produced economic opportunity, stable political institutions, and the peaceful rule of law. Turkey is proof that our strategy of spreading democracy in the Islamic world can work”, said Edelman. Lofty and duplicitous words that are not to be believed. For the real story, listen to Brent Scowcroft. As head of the American Turkish Council, he speaks on behalf of US corporations and the Turkish government.
In September 2005, Scowcroft sent a letter to Hastert that stated, according to the Armenian National Committee of America “even discussion of the Armenian Genocide on the floor of the US House of Representatives would be counter-productive to the interests of the United States”. Indeed, the letter states in no uncertain terms that Turkey is at the “center of American’s current and long term interests…The genocide resolutions encourage those who would pull Turkey away from the West. The careless use of genocide language provides and (sic) excuse to do so, delivering a direct blow to American interests in the region…I strongly urge you to oppose floor deliberation…of this highly sensitive issue”.
It should be an eye-opener when former US general and presidential advisor—now the spokesman for US businesses and the Turkish government–asks the “people’s house” to remain silent on a matter, thoroughly documented in American and British newspapers of the day, that involved the systematic slaughter of 1.2 million Armenians. If the issue is that important-after all, we’re not talking about a puny drug war–then it is likely that Scowcroft told his Turkish Council members to fill the campaign coffers of the Speaker, former majority leader Tom DeLay, and current majority leader Roy Blount. And Scowcroft may have suggested to the Turkish government that it contract with former US congressmen Stephen Solarz and Robert Livingston (members of the ATC) to lobby on behalf of the Turkish government in the US House and Senate. The Turkish newspaper Sabah reported that Hastert was pressured by AIPAC to defeat another House resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide back in the year 2000. Trade associations in Washington, DC frequently unite on issues and, so it seems, Scowcroft’s ATC and AIPAC worked together to get rid of the Armenian matter.
Intrepid reporter Jason Vest writing in the Nation in 2002, noted that Richard Perle and Douglas Feith worked as foreign registered lobbyists for Turkey back in the late 1980’s and into the 1990’s. They “quietly and deftly kept the {American] arms sluice to Turkey open” said Vest. Feith had hired former executive director of AIPAC, Morris Amitay, to assist in the task. The new Feith and Perle, Solarz and Livingston, have picked up where the largely disgraced Perle and Feith left off. One thing is for certain though; during Feith’s reign over The Policy Organization, the ATC and AIPAC had their operative well-placed and, perhaps, under control.
Black Market Bingo
The ATC and the Turkish Consulate in Chicago had been under the watchful eye of the FBI since the late 1990’s and one suspects it still is. But that’s about it since FBI field agents were told/are told to follow but not arrest suspected Turkish operatives. The ATC was/is also being monitored by the CIA. For example, Valerie Plame had attended a number of functions at the ATC and took several trips to Turkey. The newspaper Hurriyet confirmed that she was hunting for WMD’s, more likely their components, in a country well-known for its expertise in pushing products through the black market. This brings us to some excerpts from the PBS program Frontline: “Oscilloscopes and oscillators manufactured by Tektronix (equipment used to build missiles and nuclear weapons); and triggered spark gaps manufactured by PerkinElmer (small cylindrical devices that can be used to spark nuclear explosions). Asher Karni [Israeli businessman in South Africa] writes Zeki Bilmen [Turkish businessman] of Giza Technologies, a New Jersey-based company that, according to its Web site, provides “procurement services for state of the art electronic, electro-mechanical and mechanical components, systems, and other products related to the Electronics Manufacturing Sector. Karni asks Bilmen for an update on the EG&G order [triggered spark gaps]. Bilmen replies that the Tektronix equipment has arrived in New Jersey, but that he will wait until additional equipment arrives to ship them on, and that EG&G order has been processed. Bilmen adds in a separate email: “One Good News regarding the EG&G order [the triggered spark gaps]. NO EXPORT LICENSE REQUIRED to South Africa. I thought you might want to know.”
These excerpts are from transactional emails made between Karni, Bilmen and Humayun Kahn, a Pakistan operative for the Pakistani military. They are meant to illustrate the ease with which these products traverse the globe and that, in all likelihood, are allowed to until a really big fish can be caught. Turkey’s role in the illicit nuclear transactions and selling off classified US military data to the highest bidder have been frequently reported. As far back as 1981, the US quietly complained to the Turkish ambassador about the sale of nuclear triggering devices to Pakistan. They would ultimately be used to launch Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Of course there is another country that operates the same way—Israel.
Shining Beacon of Democracy?
Would it be a surprise that The Policy Organization, the Attorney General and assorted US government operatives tracking these activities would turn a blind eye to Turkey and Israel’s trade in these types of goods? No. Why? Again, if Turkey and Israel are so “damn” critical to the USA’s interests, then they can operate around the globe with impunity, protected by names like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Hastert, Scowcroft, Edelman, Bush and, once upon a time, Doug Feith.
Meanwhile, back in Turkey, the Turkish Press reported in August of 2005 that the military there continues its top officer purges of Islamists, or those with questionable religious connections, from the Army and Navy. That has been done with the approval of Recip Tayip Erdogan who back in 1997 was banned from politics for being overly Islamist. Turkey’s atrocious treatment of its Kurdish population and it’s threat to invade Kurdistan—now located in Northern Iraq, go unnoticed in the US. Turkey has purchased 30 “Cobra-type” armored vehicles from Otokor, a unit of Koc Holdings to bolster its fight against a growing domestic Kurdish insurgency. And the Turkish military-industrial complex has expanded by 30 percent since 2004.
John Stanton is a Virginia-based writer specializing in political and national security matters. He is the author of America 2004: A Power But no Super, and co-author of America’s Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II. Reach him at [email protected]
