....The crucial segment of the interview begins at about 48 minutes. Hosts Michael Smith and Michael Ratner, both lawyers with long careers in civil and human rights, ask McGovern about the Obama drones speech. McGovern marveled that the Senate granted to Obama “the power to release 86 prisoners” from Guantanamo. “Why doesn’t he do that?” He could release them “at the snap of his finger.”
Ratner then said, “I represent Guantanamo people. I thought the biggest lie in the speech was—’I have tried to close Guantanamo.'” There are half a dozen ways in which Obama “has actually sabotaged the closing of Guantanamo. Straight lie.”
McGovern responded:
Which leads to the question, why would he do all these things? Why would he be afraid for example, to take the drones away from the CIA? Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s afraid. Number one, he’s afraid of what happened to Martin Luther King Jr. And I know from a good friend who was there when it happened, that at a small dinner with progressive supporters – after these progressive supporters were banging on Obama before the election, “Why don’t you do the things we thought you stood for?” Obama turned sharply and said, “Don’t you remember what happened to Martin Luther King Jr.?” That’s a quote, and that’s a very revealing quote.
The other thing is, I’ve always been kind of shocked that when he came into office, not only did he not prosecute the torturers, the kidnapers, the people with the black [unintelligible], even the people who violated our Fourth Amendment rights, but he left them all in place. I suspected at the time, now I’m pretty convinced the president of the United States is afraid of the CIA. That’s why he got John Brennan in place. He thinks John Brennan owes more personal loyalty to him than all those other thugs out there who did the torture and so forth. That’s a questionable thing. But Obama thinks that. And that’s why he fought so hard so that Brennan would be in place.
Now does he have any reason to fear the CIA? Well he sure as heck does. For those of your listeners who have not read James Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable, you need to read that, because it’s coming up on 50 years. The mystery has not been solved in the mainstream press. After reading James Douglass, who took advantage of all the previous studies, plus all the more recent information released by Congress, I’m convinced that John Kennedy was assassinated largely by Allan Dulles whom he cashiered as the head of the CIA after the Bay of Pigs, and a coterie of joint chiefs of staff, FBI, even some Secret Service folks who thought that JFK was being soft on Communism by back channel communications with Krushchev, that he was playing games with Fidel Castro…to repair the relationship, and worst of all he was giving Southeast Asia to the Communists. Now is there evidence for this? There sure as heck is. John Kennedy signed two executive orders just a month or so before he was killed. One of them said we’re pulling out 1000 troops out of South Vietnam by the end of the year, the year being 1963. The other said we’re going to pull out the bulk of the troops by 1965, we’re finished in Vietnam. That’s a matter of record. Was that a unanimous decision? Well if you say the president makes a one person decision, you know it’s unanimous. Everybody else thought he was crazy, especially the joint chiefs of staff.
So you need to read this book, and then you need to reflect on Obama. If he is sort of a wuss or a wimp or a person who just has no real principles but is rather a politician through and through– and he’s got two small kids and he doesn’t want to get killed. I have to say I never thought I would hear myself saying this, but it is the only logical explanation for why he is so afraid, unless you say the man is a through and through charlatan, that he actually is acting on behalf of these forces of darkness. I don’t believe the latter. I think he’s just afraid and he shouldn’t have run for president if he was going to be this much of a wuss.
Host Michael Smith, who’s read the Douglass book and found it convincing, agreed with McGovern. Ratner demurred somewhat. “I just think Obama is an accommodator. He’s shown that from the very beginning. The guy is just an incredible accommodator.” Smith said he doesn’t see McGovern’s idea and Ratner’s as contradictory.....
- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2013/06/reneged-progressive-promises#sthash.QSwSipno.dpuf
Topic: “Remember What Happened to Dr. King?” (Read 425 times)
While I'm not a fan of Obama nor Sanders as I whole-heartedly disagree w/ most of their policies, I do agree that these secret government surveillance and covert agencies are more of a threat to the country and the world because they are always focused on expanding their unchecked powers and have seemingly unlimited amounts of money to do their dirty work with. It kind of puts into perspective why Obama purged most of the military commanders that didn't follow his every word in recent times. These agencies are supposedly stacked w/ people that passed deep security clearances so you'd expect them to all be above reproach as far as character is concerned but as they say, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Thanks for sharing.
Obama Reminds Allies: “Remember What Happened to Dr. King?”
By Bill Simpich, Reader Supported News
12 June 15
If there were prosecutions for Bush-era crimes “the CIA, NSA and military would revolt.”
– Christopher Edley, dean of UC Berkeley’s law school and Obama transition team
Ray McGovern knows the terrain – he is a former CIA analyst who has prepared presidential Daily Briefs and has chaired National Intelligence Estimates.
McGovern just wrote the definitive argument on the disappointments of the Obama presidency – and why it will take an older and more independent individual like Bernie Sanders to get this country anywhere near back on track.
McGovern points out that fifty-two years ago this week, John F. Kennedy delivered a speech at American University that called for cooperation rather than confrontation with the Soviet Union.
“Kennedy made an urgent appeal to slow down the arms race, and then backed up the rhetoric with a surprise announcement that the U.S. was halting nuclear testing. This daring step terrified those sitting atop the military-industrial complex and, in my opinion, was among the main reasons behind Kennedy’s assassination some five months later.”
The author of this piece used to think JFK was a Cold Warrior. Then he learned how serious Kennedy was about trying to stop the endless arms race. It is stunning to read about how JFK fought his own military to avoid war in Berlin, in Cuba, and in Vietnam.
Kennedy’s death meant that the American military buildup would continue unabated to this very day. The arms race bankrupted the Soviet Union, and is bankrupting this country as well.
In 2008, people united around Obama with the hope that he would turn the ship of state away from war and toward peace.
Christopher Edley is the Dean of Boalt Hall, the law school at UC Berkeley, and served on Obama’s transition team. Edley provides to all interested a careful description of the transition team’s fears about what would happen if there were prosecutions for Bush-era crimes. The consensus was that “the CIA, NSA, and military would revolt.” Edley sums it up neatly: “Sometimes politics trumps rule of law.”
When Obama tried to close down the Guantanamo detention camp right after the inauguration, he was told by the power elite that it was impossible. In May 2009, while the Democrats held 59 Senate seats, the Senate blocked any attempt to transfer the prisoners to the United States by a vote of 90-6.” Zachary Katznelson, a senior attorney at the ACLU, said that “President Obama has enough control and power that he can get these men out today if he has the political will to do so ... It is a political decision.”
When military leaders got together with Obama to determine the future of war in Afghanistan in 2009, all of the options given to him were to increase the number of troops. Obama went along. Otherwise, as Rolling Stone reported, Obama would “face a full-scale mutiny of his generals.” Obama fired one of these generals, Stanley McChrystal, only after he mocked Obama’s advisors and Vice President Biden right in front of reporter Michael Hastings.
Obama has said he wants to bring an end to nuclear weapons. The states of the former Soviet Union relinquished most of theirs in the years after 1991. Yet Obama continues to invest untold billions into modernizing nuclear weapons, and approves virtually every military spending request.
For three years, Ray McGovern has revealed how Obama reacted when he was confronted with the impact of these decisions, from a story told to him first-hand by a friend at the scene:
Shortly before his re-election in 2012, Obama reportedly was braced at a small dinner party by wealthy donors who wanted to know whatever happened to the ‘progressive Obama.’ The President did not take kindly to the criticism, rose from the table, and said, ‘Don’t you remember what happened to Dr. King?’”
It is, of course, a fair question as to whether Obama should have run for President if he knew such fears might impinge on his freedom of decision. But let’s ask the other question: What did happen to Martin Luther King Jr.? Would you believe that the vast majority of Americans know only that he was killed and have no idea as to who killed him and why?
McGovern finds himself mulling over a 1999 trial in Memphis not far from where King was murdered. In a wrongful death lawsuit initiated by the King family, the 12 jurors, six black and six white, returned after two hours of deliberation with a verdict that Dr. King was killed by a group that included members of agencies of his own government. McGovern concludes:
My hunch is that Obama walks around afraid, and that this helps explain why he feels he has to kowtow to the worst kind of thugs and liars lingering in his own administration – the torturers, the perjurers, and the legerdemain lawyers who can even make waterboarding, which Obama publicly condemned as torture, magically legal.
I am slightly more forgiving than Ray McGovern – not much. I never expected very much. Obama is still a relatively young man, with a wonderful wife and two young daughters. He has a lot to lose.
There have been repeated failures by the Secret Service during his administration. Obama told the Secret Service that he wanted the code name “Renegade.” I think there’s a reason why. I have heard that during the early days there were run-ins between the Secret Service and Obama’s security people.
Journalist Ronald Kessler wrote in his book about the Secret Service that at Obama’s inauguration “the lack of security was absurd.” Kessler felt the same way when the Secret Service ordered that the magnetometer be turned off prior to an Obama rally of 17,000 at the Reunion Hall in Dallas on February 20, 2008. It’s hard to imagine what would have happened if Obama had been killed in Dallas that night.
Why are there so many incidents at the White House involving breach of the security of the president and his family?
When a Washington couple crashed the first State dinner in 2009 because the Secret Service failed to check if they were on the guest list?
Or when Sasha Obama was inside the White House in 2011, a man with a semiautomatic rifle took seven shots at the building? The supervising Secret Service sergeant told his officers to stand down. The claim was the shots were not aimed at the White House. Only when a housekeeper found broken glass and a chunk of cement did the Secret Service acknowledge that bullets were fired at the White House. The president and Michelle Obama were livid.
Or when a fence-jumper ran right inside the White House door unchallenged last year? The security alarm had been disabled because it was “too noisy.” If he had not dashed past the stairway, he could have gone up a half flight and been inside the family’s living quarters.
We need a full investigation of the Secret Service – the list of outrages put together by NBC News is voluminous. We also need presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders who are fearless and focus on the hardest issues right at the very beginning. I remember seeing a YouTube video of the Obamas discussing their fears of assassination. I give them credit for coming forward. They needed to go the last mile.
Heroes and heroines have warned their families from time immemorial that all of us must be prepared to pay the ultimate price. This is not a pleasant topic, but the subject cannot be treated as taboo. Preventive medicine is the best medicine.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/30688-obama-reminds-allies-qremember-what-happened-to-dr-kingq
By Bill Simpich, Reader Supported News
12 June 15
If there were prosecutions for Bush-era crimes “the CIA, NSA and military would revolt.”
– Christopher Edley, dean of UC Berkeley’s law school and Obama transition team
Ray McGovern knows the terrain – he is a former CIA analyst who has prepared presidential Daily Briefs and has chaired National Intelligence Estimates.
McGovern just wrote the definitive argument on the disappointments of the Obama presidency – and why it will take an older and more independent individual like Bernie Sanders to get this country anywhere near back on track.
McGovern points out that fifty-two years ago this week, John F. Kennedy delivered a speech at American University that called for cooperation rather than confrontation with the Soviet Union.
“Kennedy made an urgent appeal to slow down the arms race, and then backed up the rhetoric with a surprise announcement that the U.S. was halting nuclear testing. This daring step terrified those sitting atop the military-industrial complex and, in my opinion, was among the main reasons behind Kennedy’s assassination some five months later.”
The author of this piece used to think JFK was a Cold Warrior. Then he learned how serious Kennedy was about trying to stop the endless arms race. It is stunning to read about how JFK fought his own military to avoid war in Berlin, in Cuba, and in Vietnam.
Kennedy’s death meant that the American military buildup would continue unabated to this very day. The arms race bankrupted the Soviet Union, and is bankrupting this country as well.
In 2008, people united around Obama with the hope that he would turn the ship of state away from war and toward peace.
Christopher Edley is the Dean of Boalt Hall, the law school at UC Berkeley, and served on Obama’s transition team. Edley provides to all interested a careful description of the transition team’s fears about what would happen if there were prosecutions for Bush-era crimes. The consensus was that “the CIA, NSA, and military would revolt.” Edley sums it up neatly: “Sometimes politics trumps rule of law.”
When Obama tried to close down the Guantanamo detention camp right after the inauguration, he was told by the power elite that it was impossible. In May 2009, while the Democrats held 59 Senate seats, the Senate blocked any attempt to transfer the prisoners to the United States by a vote of 90-6.” Zachary Katznelson, a senior attorney at the ACLU, said that “President Obama has enough control and power that he can get these men out today if he has the political will to do so ... It is a political decision.”
When military leaders got together with Obama to determine the future of war in Afghanistan in 2009, all of the options given to him were to increase the number of troops. Obama went along. Otherwise, as Rolling Stone reported, Obama would “face a full-scale mutiny of his generals.” Obama fired one of these generals, Stanley McChrystal, only after he mocked Obama’s advisors and Vice President Biden right in front of reporter Michael Hastings.
Obama has said he wants to bring an end to nuclear weapons. The states of the former Soviet Union relinquished most of theirs in the years after 1991. Yet Obama continues to invest untold billions into modernizing nuclear weapons, and approves virtually every military spending request.
For three years, Ray McGovern has revealed how Obama reacted when he was confronted with the impact of these decisions, from a story told to him first-hand by a friend at the scene:
Shortly before his re-election in 2012, Obama reportedly was braced at a small dinner party by wealthy donors who wanted to know whatever happened to the ‘progressive Obama.’ The President did not take kindly to the criticism, rose from the table, and said, ‘Don’t you remember what happened to Dr. King?’”
It is, of course, a fair question as to whether Obama should have run for President if he knew such fears might impinge on his freedom of decision. But let’s ask the other question: What did happen to Martin Luther King Jr.? Would you believe that the vast majority of Americans know only that he was killed and have no idea as to who killed him and why?
McGovern finds himself mulling over a 1999 trial in Memphis not far from where King was murdered. In a wrongful death lawsuit initiated by the King family, the 12 jurors, six black and six white, returned after two hours of deliberation with a verdict that Dr. King was killed by a group that included members of agencies of his own government. McGovern concludes:
My hunch is that Obama walks around afraid, and that this helps explain why he feels he has to kowtow to the worst kind of thugs and liars lingering in his own administration – the torturers, the perjurers, and the legerdemain lawyers who can even make waterboarding, which Obama publicly condemned as torture, magically legal.
I am slightly more forgiving than Ray McGovern – not much. I never expected very much. Obama is still a relatively young man, with a wonderful wife and two young daughters. He has a lot to lose.
There have been repeated failures by the Secret Service during his administration. Obama told the Secret Service that he wanted the code name “Renegade.” I think there’s a reason why. I have heard that during the early days there were run-ins between the Secret Service and Obama’s security people.
Journalist Ronald Kessler wrote in his book about the Secret Service that at Obama’s inauguration “the lack of security was absurd.” Kessler felt the same way when the Secret Service ordered that the magnetometer be turned off prior to an Obama rally of 17,000 at the Reunion Hall in Dallas on February 20, 2008. It’s hard to imagine what would have happened if Obama had been killed in Dallas that night.
Why are there so many incidents at the White House involving breach of the security of the president and his family?
When a Washington couple crashed the first State dinner in 2009 because the Secret Service failed to check if they were on the guest list?
Or when Sasha Obama was inside the White House in 2011, a man with a semiautomatic rifle took seven shots at the building? The supervising Secret Service sergeant told his officers to stand down. The claim was the shots were not aimed at the White House. Only when a housekeeper found broken glass and a chunk of cement did the Secret Service acknowledge that bullets were fired at the White House. The president and Michelle Obama were livid.
Or when a fence-jumper ran right inside the White House door unchallenged last year? The security alarm had been disabled because it was “too noisy.” If he had not dashed past the stairway, he could have gone up a half flight and been inside the family’s living quarters.
We need a full investigation of the Secret Service – the list of outrages put together by NBC News is voluminous. We also need presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders who are fearless and focus on the hardest issues right at the very beginning. I remember seeing a YouTube video of the Obamas discussing their fears of assassination. I give them credit for coming forward. They needed to go the last mile.
Heroes and heroines have warned their families from time immemorial that all of us must be prepared to pay the ultimate price. This is not a pleasant topic, but the subject cannot be treated as taboo. Preventive medicine is the best medicine.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/30688-obama-reminds-allies-qremember-what-happened-to-dr-kingq
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