Calls Get Louder for Declassification of 9/11 Files RE Hijacker Links to Saudi Gov

Update: Even Murdoch’s NYPost Today Backs Michael Moore Bush-Saudi Claims from Fahrenheit 911

What was so surprising was that those whom we thought we could trust really disappointed me. I cannot go into it any more than that. I had to sign an oath that what I read had to remain confidential. But the information I read disappointed me greatly

Declassifying the redacted 28 pages of the 9/11 report would be embarrassing to Saudi Arabia. So what?

The Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001 should be public in our democracy. Full disclosure and truth ... just for the hell of it.

Writes Jamie Reno:

Since terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, victims’ loved ones, injured survivors, and members of the media have all tried without much success to discover the true nature of the relationship between the 19 hijackers — 15 of them Saudi nationals — and the Saudi Arabian government.

Many news organizations reported that some of the terrorists were linked to the Saudi royals and that they even may have received financial support from them as well as from several mysterious, moneyed Saudi men living in San Diego.

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied any connection, and neither President George W. Bush nor President Obama has been forthcoming on this issue.

But earlier this year, Reps. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., and Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., were given access to the 28 redacted pages of the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry (JICI) of 9/11 issued in late 2002, which have been thought to hold some answers about the Saudi connection to the attack.

"I was absolutely shocked by what I read," Jones told International Business Times. "What was so surprising was that those whom we thought we could trust really disappointed me. I cannot go into it any more than that. I had to sign an oath that what I read had to remain confidential. But the information I read disappointed me greatly."

The public may soon also get to see these secret documents. Last week, Jones and Lynch introduced a resolution that urges President Obama to declassify the 28 pages, which were originally classified by President George W. Bush.

GOP Goes Bat-Crazy, Enjoy It

Update: See Media Matters - Fox News openly advocates against Democratic Congress, White House and watch Beck's Witch Hunt: The New McCarthyism.

Democratic strategists are enthralled by the 9-12 project, Rep Joe Wilson (R-SC), deathers, birthers and the GOP as the hatred of our black president becomes apparent, branding not President Obama but rather the Republican Party.

The last time the GOP went this crazy, actually impeaching a president after the GOP was trashed in the November 1998 election, President Bill Clinton’s approval ratings spiked upward. Look for more of the same.

Democratic strategists, if they were inclined, do not need to craft a straw man.

The GOP is building its own: Themselves, and apparently are not aware of this development as they scream how much they love America and want America back from the black man who took it a short eight months ago.

Rush, Glenn Beck and company are offending not only the fastest-growing demographics of our electorate, but also are turning off independents and firing up Obama’s progressive base.

And make no mistake. Beck, Rush and Fox are mainstream Republicans.

A Madison business owner with whom I often talk politics — an activist Republican and respectful, old-school politico — assures me that the 9-12 movement is mainstream in the GOP.

Even as President Obama delivers a message of inclusion, service and respect as we honor 9/11 this weekend, the GOP and the tea-bag types are drinking deep of McCarthyite hate. Reports David Paine in the Huffington Post:

This past August, a few months after the 9/11 community finally secured passage of bipartisan legislation that established 9/11 as a National Day of Service and Remembrance, a writer for the American Spectator published an article entitled ‘Obama's Plan to Desecrate 9/11.’

The opening sentence read this way:

‘The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry.’

Add to this bizarre but typical reprise of McCarthyism an even stranger development: The old-time segregationist religion is being openly revived with such enthusiasm that one wonders if the GOP knows that the 1950s-60s civil rights movement actually occurred.

The ignominious gloom of Ronald Reagan who championed foes of the civil rights movement by kicking off his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi — the site of the 1964 murder of civil rights workers Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney (depicted above)— by calling for "states rights" and other anti-civil rights initiatives is casting its fetid vapor today.

As Ed Kilgore writes in Tim Pawlenty Climbs Aboard the Crazy Train:

The ‘state sovereignty movement’ is not, it's important to understand, just a group of people who think the federal government has too much power. Its central feature is the crackpot nineteenth century theory, revived most recently to resist civil rights legislation, that states have the inherent right to nullify federal legislation and court rulings that fall outside the enumerated constitutional powers of the federal government. And Pawlenty knows its extremist provenance: that's why he identified himself with Rick Perry, who's flirted both with nullification and with secession as part of his high-minded contributions to the ‘state sovereignty movement.’

Most Americans find open displays of racial hate and McCarthyite lies genuinely disturbing and indecent.

But we can watch and enjoy the GOP digging its political grave in one of the most outlandish moments of modern American political history.

'Gagged' FBI Whistleblower Says American Media Blacks Out 'Security of Americans' Story

Update: What The Heck is the Sibel Edmonds Case Anyway? And Why Should You Care About It?

Via Brad Blog

Risking jail, gagged FBI whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds keeps trying to tell her story.

Edmonds was an FBI translator after 9/11 and was and remains gagged by the rarely-invoked "States Secret Privilege," invoked by the DoJ.

As the Brad Blog reports, "Her extraordinary story was first aired by CBS' 60 Minutes in 2002 (and re-run twice thereafter), and (run) via a detailed 2005 exposé in Vanity Fair."

Edmonds (pictured above-right) says the American corporate media has refused her offer to disclose classified information not before reported that includes allegations of criminal negligence and information concerning the "security of Americans," among other government crimes and incompetence.

Edmonds says several mainstream publications have been informed of the "full story" of administration and FBI misconduct and incompetence regarding 9/11 by other FBI leakers, but have killed stories on the matter.
The Brad Blog has been all over the story, and is running an exclusive interview with Daniel Ellsberg on the affair.

Writes Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog:

The BRAD BLOG spoke recently with the legendary 1970's-era whistleblower in the wake of our recent exclusive, detailing Edmonds' announcement that she was prepared to risk prosecution to expose the entirety of the still-classified information that the Bush Administration has "gagged" her from revealing for the past five years under claims of the arcane "State Secrets Privilege".

I'd say what she has is far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers," Daniel Ellsberg told us in regard to former FBI translator turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds.

"From what I understand, from what she has to tell, it has a major difference from the Pentagon Papers in that it deals directly with criminal activity and may involve impeachable offenses," Ellsberg explained. "And I don't necessarily mean the President or the Vice-President, though I wouldn't be surprised if the information reached up that high. But other members of the Executive Branch may be impeached as well. And she says similar (things) about Congress."

See more of the interview and links to other aspects of the story at:
Brad Blog
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Bin Laden Is Not Important, Republicans Now Say

The Republicans invent their own reality: About the imminence of a Shia caliphate (Islamic state) taking over the world, about the Sunni bin Laden changing everything about America so that George W. Bush must have special powers to fight him and our Constitution changed to prevent attacks from him.

But when bin Laden gets on tape demonstrating the idiocy not just of Bush's military policy, but Bush's competence, Republican reactions change fast:

Via Steve Benen at Crook and Liars:
Fred Thompson’s reaction to today’s Osama bin Laden tape:
“Bin Laden is more symbolism than anything else,” he said.

Mitt Romney on bin Laden: [Romney] said the country would be safer by only “a small percentage” and would see “a very insignificant increase in safety” if al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was caught because another terrorist would rise to power. “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person,” Romney said.

George W. Bush on bin Laden: “I truly am not that concerned about him.”

Benen asks, "At what point did the GOP decide that bin Laden no longer matters? And how would the right respond if Dems made similar comments?"

Here's a good one by Greg Saunders at This Modern World:

These Colors Sorta Run

What happens when a grandstanding fool whipped into a patriotic fervor makes a sucker’s bet that George W. Bush would do a good job?

Bob Flournoy swore after 9/11 that he would wear the same patriotic tie until the day Osama bin Laden was captured or killed.

He figured that it would take the USA a couple of weeks to find the notorious terrorist leader. Despite that miscalculation — it’s been almost six years — the city attorney has kept his word. He’s been wearing the same red-white-and-blue necktie since the attacks on America.

“It looks like Francis Scott Key’s Star-Spangled Banner,” Flournoy tells The Lufkin (Texas) Daily News. “It is faded, worn and tattered. It has been reworked, patched and pieced together. Velcro has been added around the neck because it is too fragile to tie and untie. It is smaller and even a little smelly, but it is still a grand old flag. Betsy Ross would be proud. . . .

“If Bin Laden is alive, I challenge him to prove it by Sept. 11, 2007,” Flournoy says. “If he does not come forward with some proof, I am personally going to declare him dead, and I will be able to take off my tie and give it a proper burial.”

Poor guy just wants to take off his smelly tie and in a few more days…
Crap. Osama just messed with the wrong Texan.

Flournoy said he has had enough of waiting for proof of bin Laden’s death. He thinks his friends and those around him every day will be very happy once he stops wearing the tie.

“Flies kind of gather around me, and I don’t have quite as many friends,” Flournoy said.. . .

“If by chance Bin Laden is not dead and proves it by Sept. 11th, I offer to meet him, man to man, at the park at City Hall and fight him to the death of one of us,” Flournoy said. “He just can’t kill Americans and get away with it.”

Flournoy doubts his challenge will reach Tora Bora, but wants a way to put his tattered old flag tie to rest once and for all.

“It’s been fun, but the fun’s about to end,” Flournoy said.

Writes Saunders: "That’s right, Osama. You’re about to get your ass kicked by somebody wearing a disgusting tie. Let’s Roll!"

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