Iran-Contra Figure Poindexter Now Heading New Pentagon Office

I'll start digging and see if I can't come up with something to pierce the 5th Amendment, executive and judicial protections already afforded Poindexter such that he can rotate back in with all due impunity without being tarred as a racist conspiracy theorist of some sort. =)

Without MY being tarred, that is ...

Well, let's not tar anybody until we're reasonably sure of what we're talking about. ;)

Let me start by saying that I'll call the stuff you culled from FAS as a reasonable characterization. This is law, not mathematics, so there is no "right" answer, but the FAS bit highlights some of the problems with Iran/Contra.

The problem is as more or less stated - the Dems in Congress wanted another big splashy Watergate-style hearing where they brought down Reagan. Mouths watering and eyes gleaming, they sharpened their knives at the prospect of a nice, big Republican turkey dressed and roasted on their table.

Now, I can make an excellent case that they shot themselves in the foot from the beginning, by passing that stupid, stupid Boland Amendment in the first place. Remember that the effect of the Boland Amendment was to essentially criminalize what otherwise would have been a simple difference of policy. That strikes me as a bad idea - declaring that your political opponent's preferred policies are to be illegal.

But that's not the case I want to make. After shooting themselves in the foot, they then, with great deliberation and care, amidst great fanfare, turned the gun around and proceeded to shoot themselves directly in the head. You see, when you're prosecuting a conspiracy, the best way is to get one of the conspirators to roll over on the rest, and rat them out. But the Demmies weren't content to just roll up Poindexter, Casey, North, and the other obvious players - no, they wanted Reagan's head on a platter. So to get that, they essentially immunized everyone in the hopes that they could sway someone into providing the "smoking gun" that would tie Reagan in. It was so perfect - they bring down Reagan, smear Bush Sr. on the side, and - bang - you've got President Dukakis in '88 (shudder) and Demmy control of Congress for another 60 years or so.

Except that they forgot the basic rule of such things - if you're going to let the small fish go so they can bring you the big fish, you better be damn sure they can bring you the big fish. Otherwise, you get nothing.

And, of course, they didn't get the big fish. Reagan was damaged, but not brought down. Can't have that - time for Walsh to punish the players they did have.

No way. Can't do that based on their immunized testimony - I know that they got into the recollections of other witnesses based on immunized testimony they might have heard, but don't be fooled. The issue was whether the 5'th Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination still means anything, and worse, whether someone else's hearsay testimony based on what they heard you say when you were immunized could be used to nail you to the cross. Happily for all of us, they can't. And that's a good thing - immunized testimony from co-conspirators happens every day in thousands of courtrooms around this country. If that had been allowed to stand, it would have been much easier for "The Man" to send any old body they like off to the pokey - just pull him in, immunize him, make him confess, and then yank that immunity away and convict him. Nice for the prosecutors, except that now the 5'th Amendment no longer exists, in any meaningful sense.

So, you wanna assign blame? Blame the Dems for not paying attention to their ideological masters - whatever the shortcomings of the Soviets may have been, they at least knew how to conduct a proper show trial.

These rules will have obvious practical consequences. They will make almost impossible the prosecution of any case involving public immunized statements that requires testimony by persons sympathetic to the accused, such as co-conspirators or other associates. And the dangers of abuse and manipulation are magnified by the court of appeals' view, expressed in North, that a witness inclined to assist the defense may become disqualified from testifying at trial by the simple expedient of soaking himself in the defendant's immunized statements.

And here's where the bias of FAS begins to show through. It means no such thing, that it will make such prosecutions impossible. What it means is that Congress will have to take the 5'th Amendment seriously for a change, and not plan on having big splashy show trials and convictions. If you want criminal prosecutions of public officials, shut the hell up and prosecute them. No double trials - one for the public where they brand you with a big scarlet "A", and another in the Star Chamber where they really sit down to do you in.

You'll pardon me if I don't lose any sleep over the thought that this is no longer an option for Congress, Republicans or Democrats.

So let's get back to the original question for a moment. Poindexter and North got off because the prosecution and Congress muffed it. This is not the same as them actually being innocent. As I said, Poindexter's hands are pretty obviously dirty.

Should he be named to some position in the second Bush White House? It at least looks bad, doesn't it? You obviously object. I think, if for no other reason than the reaction it has and will engender, it is not such a good idea either. There are undoubtedly other qualified candidates without the political baggage of Poindexter, and perhaps it would have been better to name one of them.

But this is a bit less ambitious of a conclusion than what I am asked to believe - I am asked to believe that this is evidence of an ongoing government conspiracy. Is it? Is it really?

I think a conspiracy is hardly the only possible explanation, but is it the most likely explanation? Well, based on what you've given me, not so far - not to me, or to many others, I think. We have at least one other possible explanation - there is no grand conspiracy tying all these things together. We could just judiciously apply Occam's Razor and call it a day, but the Razor is a useful rule of thumb, not a law of nature. So I'll ask you - what is it about all these things that ties them all together? What is it that conclusively convinces you that there is some ongoing conspiracy operant in the current and former adminstrations?

It's not enough to just juxtapose a bunch of odd facts and draw conspiratorial insinuations and allegations from them. It's not enough. You need to show me, and everyone else, that your conclusion logically and necessarily follows from the facts you present, for anyone to believe in conspiracies. Otherwise, there's no reason to believe.

Do government conspiracies really exist? Assuredly so - Iran/Contra was a conspiracy to violate the law, whatever we may think of the worth of that law. Watergate was a government conspiracy. The Bay of Pigs was a government conspiracy. So, can you show me that this conspiracy is real? Can you tie it all together, or is there really nothing to tie together?

I don't ask out of some desire to "set you up", or make you look silly, really. But this is what you have to do if you really want anyone to believe you, starting with me.

I want to be nice about this, and it's easier to do with you than with Belle - she has a special acid-based font for her posts that always makes me reach for my long knives when I'm in the wrong mood. Lower vitriol levels go far with me ;)

So, is there a there, there?

Bump- you are right.

You raise some interesting points and even hand me some avenues for logical arguments I think I could make once I continue reading along the lines of today's pickings. (You need to remember I have catching up to do as a rule where anything before 1996 -- or whenever it was Clinton's advance man got shot in a New Orleans project -- is concerned.)

Can you tie it all together, or is there really nothing to tie together?

Well, when it's tied to damned tight, it's sometimes hard to pull it apart enough to see connections, don't you think?

If you're looking for me to produce a map of names and dates fleshed out with photos, you might be disappointed. What I'm better at is listening to words and watching actions in terms of the Long-Range Plans and decided similarity of view which their speak suggests.

I think that when the message folks are sending is essentially the same -- on abortion or China or Security or the impunity with which they rotate back in the same damned Public Servants from enrichment furloughs in the defense or bio-tech or transnational private sectors where they rack up the bucks that tend to ease a conscience -- there's a connection there.

'Course ... I'm one of those who believes in a connectedness that goes beyond a handshake. Meaning, in other words, that each man's decision For or Against a principle or objective naturally makes him the de facto co-conspirator of those who may well have ulterior purposes of personal or ideological gratification at stake.

Like Bush says, it's an "your either with us or against us" sort of thing.

I've done good detail work on the Blood Trail and elsewhere in the past. I can do trial prep with the best of them. But, ask the libertarians, I'm forever "moralizing" and it through that Either/Or prism I'm likely going to view folks as One way or Another regardless the myriad inconsistencies a part of each man's individual personality or ability toi actually remain true to a "personal" conviction in the process.

Anyway ... I'm totally fascinated by the idea of Poindexter's heading up the Pentagon's Ministry of Information (who'll tell US the truth, sorta, I guess ... just 'cause it's the American way =)

I'll keep reading and will give your post some more thought.

It depends on how you define.."evil doers".

Excellent post.

THE NORTH NOTE BOOKS AND 1,500 KILOS
On many of the pages, the material adjacent to the drug references was blacked out before the pages reached the subcommittee. A few cryptic references remained, scrawled in North's shorthand:
July 9, 1984. Call from Clarridge -- Call Michel re Narco Issue -- RIG at 1000 tomorrow (QO384)
-- DEA Miami -- Pilot went talked to Vaughn -- wanted A/C to go to Bolivia to p/u paste -- want A/C to p/u 1500 kilos -- Bud to meet w/Group (QO385)
Ollie North's notebooks contain numerous references to contra-related drug trafficking, including a July 12, 1985 entry: "$14 million to finance [arms] came from drugs."

I know it's an article of faith among a lot of people, but I haven't seen any proof the CIA was involved in smuggling drugs into the U.S. Maybe the Contras were, maybe they weren't. I do believe Ortega and the Communists were and that Castro still is.

Look, I hate to be a broken record, but we were at war. If it can be proven that CIA agents did these things, prosecute them. If not, stop saying that we were in the wrong when we helped the Contras.

we were at war

Like World War II or like every "war" we've fought since then?

I am glad to see this. Thanks for the post. I wish Oliver North was in the Congress. We need these patriots in our goverment. And Al Haig would be a vast improvement over Colin Powell.

Before I get on to anything else, let me start by saying that that's a great pic you have on your profile page. Very cute ;)

You raise some interesting points and even hand me some avenues for logical arguments I think I could make once I continue reading along the lines of today's pickings.

This is a good thing, yes? If you were completely stumped, that would be a bad sign, anyway ;)

If you're looking for me to produce a map of names and dates fleshed out with photos, you might be disappointed.

No, that would obviously be a rather difficult standard to meet, wouldn't it? If such a conspiracy exists, evidence like that would be hard to come by, unless you wanted to put on your "Mission: Impossible" hat and swing in there like Tom Cruise.

What I'm better at is listening to words and watching actions in terms of the Long-Range Plans and decided similarity of view which their speak suggests.

I think that when the message folks are sending is essentially the same -- on abortion or China or Security or the impunity with which they rotate back in the same damned Public Servants from enrichment furloughs in the defense or bio-tech or transnational private sectors where they rack up the bucks that tend to ease a conscience -- there's a connection there.

And that's what you have to watch out for. The human brain is excellent at finding patterns - it's one of the things we do so well that it will be a long time before computers can match us. For example, we're wired to recognize faces, and we're good at it - we tend to remember faces far better than we remember the names that go with them. That's not particularly surprising - children who can recognize their own mothers tend to do better in life than those who can't.

But consider this (cock your head to the left a bit if you don't see it right away):

"Have a nice day!"

Now, there's certainly one possible explanation that springs right to mind - there are Martians (that's where this crater is, BTW) and they're seemingly a pretty friendly lot.

Or, maybe this is just a random arrangement of rocks resulting from a meteor strike - an arrangement that's no more or less likely than any other random arrangement. And the only reason it has any meaning is because we, as observers, assign it meaning. It has no meaning other than what we give it.

We're good at spotting faces - so good that we see them even when they aren't really there.

And we train ourselves to find patterns in other things later in life. And, just like the face, we can sometimes fool ourselves into seeing patterns that aren't really there, that have no real, objective meaning - only the meaning we give them. It's not a knock on anyone - if anything, really smart people are more prone to finding imaginary patterns than dumb people. They have the cleverness to tie together unrelated things in really creative ways, which stupid people tend to lack.

And that's what you'll have to watch out for, more than anything else, if that's how you want to proceed - beware the seductive nature of seeing exactly what you want to see, of finding exactly what you expect to find.

Meaning, in other words, that each man's decision For or Against a principle or objective naturally makes him the de facto co-conspirator of those who may well have ulterior purposes of personal or ideological gratification at stake.

Ah, but what if they're all de facto conspirators, who just happen to fall in line? What if none of them are actual, de jure conspirators? Does it make sense to even call it a conspiracy at that point?

Is synchronicity really a conspiracy?

I can do trial prep with the best of them.

I believe you - should I refer to you as "counselor"? ;)

But, ask the libertarians, I'm forever "moralizing" and it through that Either/Or prism I'm likely going to view folks as One way or Another regardless the myriad inconsistencies a part of each man's individual personality or ability toi actually remain true to a "personal" conviction in the process.

"Either/Or" - Søren Kierkegaard lives...

You can sort people however you wish, of course. Just remember that you're the one doing the sorting. And that those sorted categories have whatever meaning you give to them - maybe only the meaning you give to them. In any case, I think that any binary distinction among people is likely to result in some rather strange bedfellows ;)

Anyway ... I'm totally fascinated by the idea of Poindexter's heading up the Pentagon's Ministry of Information...

Absolutely nothing wrong with that. I'm sort of annoyed by it, to tell the truth. Must we have an entire administration of retreads? I'll forgive Rummy - he's at least an animated corpse, but Poindexter and Armitage? Come on - why don't we call John Dean and Henry Kissinger in while we're at it? I'm sure we can dig up someone from the Eisenhower administration if we really try...

I think we're both cynics, just pointing in opposite directions. You seem to tend to see ulterior motives and coherent agendas, hidden behind facades of goodness. IMO, you give them way too much credit - I think that there's a vanishingly small number of people in government who are actually capable of organizing something as complicated as a picnic for more than six people, or, God forbid, a competent junior high-school marching band.

You see a set of clever people with malicious intentions - I see a set of basically well-meaning people who have all the brains of a gang of retarded chimps ;)

You seem to tend to see ulterior motives and coherent agendas, hidden behind facades of goodness. IMO, you give them way too much credit

Oh, you'd be surprised. I'm far more likely to concede they're too busy making money (right place at the right time) to always think twice (much less deeply) on the Expert Groupthink in which they're saturated.

That's how the language and the motive and the profile of those who condition them (by destroying from the inside out the integrity of our universities, thinktanks, agencies and executive-level "Peer Group Collectives" in the corporate governance/legal sector) ends up seeping out.

It's not a making an order out of chaos (seeing a smiley face in a crater) to which my focus is geared. I'm seeking out the telltales signs -- words and syntax, ideals, models and objectives -- of the Thinking Man.

This is another reason why it's absurd ever to think I've got something "personal" against anyone of whom I speak. I suspect plenty of them are decent folks. I know a man whom I admire greatly who knows Dick Cheney well and is adamant that he is a good and decent man. I don't doubt it.

I just think they're Useful Idiots of a sort, that's all. Being pragmatic is not clever, that's an admission the situation's beyond you. Ideas like "co-existence" with communism or the notion that Western Materialism will overcome militant atheism are ludicrous.

The math is all wrong.

Faces in craters can be a delight. I do love watching figures in clouds. But that's the stuff of daydreams.

It's folks' bonds -- with others, with ideas, with their Creator -- that matter. That's what guides their actions and forms their consciences and allows you to tell (by the secret handshake that is a person's take on human life, for example), exactly how far you can trust them to make the right decisions, do the right thing.

That's the math of being human.

My problem is this: It's a tight circle. All of these cats have been around long enough to know better than to keep making the same mistakes. Anyone stupid enough to go around basking in having "won" the Cold War even as they lock us into Perpetual Revolution by declaring a War on the terrorism the SOVIETS and CHINESE instigated around the world and right under our noses in Cuba is an IDIOT.

But, dragging a pipeline before oilmen or a perma-peacekeeping operation before defense contractors, or pharmaceuticals before population control freaks is much like dragging a dollar bill through a trailer park, only different.

Clouds the judgment.

Those are my primary problems. That and it's all the same guys as from when I was a kid and things have only gotten worse. (I've had a hard time blaming Howdy Doody Clinton for anything after Bush and Dole helped preserve him through impeachment to bomb the crab out of Serbia and toss back the Balkan baton ... along with a slew of last-minute regulation that stands.)

Like World War II or like every "war" we've fought since then?

Yes. War. And we were the good guys. Not the perfect guys. Not the angels. Not the saints. The good guys. We didn't have to imprison our people to stop them from escaping to freedom.

We may not have been perfect, but ask the Falun Gong or Christians in China if they'd prefer Communism or freedom before you say we weren't at war.

I used to think that. In fact, I turned my pinko-commie "morality" teacher over 90 degrees when I teamed up with Bao (who could barely speak English as yet, he was still so new to the place) and presented the Good Guy's Guide to the War in Viet Nam ... from a military, political, ideological and purely personal (Bao's) perspective.

I used to wonder why it was that the left didn't seem to care about those they left behind or who were slaughtered en masse as they went from Viet Nam to El Salvador to Nicauraga to Tibet ... always one step ahead as far as the Cause was concerned.

Just as they've been re: Afghanistan, you know. The eco-femmes having been banging the drum against the Taliban in earnest since at least 1995.

But, once the issue of abortion opened my eyes (as well as the fact that all of "our guys" for the next 30 years inhabited the halls of power by the late 60's while all of "their guys" were hanging together in some podunk salon in Arkansas), I realized that while the Left may pave the way for whatever it is the "People's Will" is going to demand, it's really the right who abandons their principles and leaves a trail of serious bloodshed everywhere they go.

The left -- clown car that it is -- can be counted on to screw things up royally where foreign affairs are concerned. Lose hostages, fail to rescue them, let barefoot youths drag our Rangers' bodies through the streets, embroil us in a "moral" war against a genocide that's yet to materialize (in stark contrast to the slaughter in Rwanda -- which a badass troop of boy scouts could have stemmed -- that was "an internal civil conflict into which we cannot possibly intervene").

You tell me, Toddsterpatriot.

David Keene joked that -- given the choice of the Evil or the Stupid Party -- he was proud to be part of the Stupid party.

While I'll agree that ignorance is bliss as far as most of the GOP faithful are concerned, I fail to understand how it is the GOP is the "stupid" party when it's they who made abortion US policy, it's they who preserved Clinton to carry their bags in Serbia and the blame for EVERYTHING, it's the GOP Senate (under Clinton) and a GOP President (by executive order) who are powering through unprecedented growth and empowerment of the federal government under the auspices of some "War on Terror" whose net result to date has been to effect exactly the re-forming of southern Afghanistan to which they agreed with the Russians over a year ago.

Again ... I'm perfectly cognizant of the fact plenty of good people, true patriots and genuinely devout religious are being snowed.

That's not an indictment of them but rather a respect for the forces working on them ... from the inside out and -- in particularly -- from the inside of our very closeknit cadre of leadership ... in both parties and where the very small groups whose membership wields an astounding influence here and abroad by representing key slots in in our government, policy groups and banking associations such as OPIC.

The thinking is not just unfortunately homogenous (thanks largely to agents of influence only a fool pretends have not been at work on behalf of militant atheist communists for the past century).

It is also evil and wrong.

Are you familiar with C.S. Lewis? He does a good job of describing exactly the effect of which I speak. He has an essay entitled "The Inner Ring: On Making Good Men Do Bad Things". It's an excellent read and I recommend it highly even if we're ALL human and we ALL know the temptation to betray our best friends, kill some brain cells, be unfaithful or hurt those who love us if it meant we could be In with the In Crowd.

There are those who've lived this way all their lives. They like exclusiveness and they like calling the shots. Unfortunately, it's exactly that exclusiveness which leaves them prey to an operator of one sort or another. The bad apple who quite effectly can spoil the whole bushel.

I don't think there's any mistaking the increasingly grotesque profile of our ever more deformed nation. I blame those whose faces have been before me since I was in first grade.

In other words ... I blame the GOP more than the Democrats. And why not? We're supposed to be standing on principle, on self-evident truths, for fair play ... in constast to their opponents. So I believe it's not only fair but our obligation to ask why it is The Message They're Sending is Essentially the Same.

Not the perfect guys. Not the angels. Not the saints.

By the way, I'm an Army brat whose father made quite clear from the get-go as we discussed war that desperate circumstances sometimes call for desperate measure and, further, we didn't always do the right thing. Additionally, he drove it home to me that over in that Evil Empire Russia were Colonels and their daughters who were not a great deal different than he and I.

While you'll find no greater defender of a Just War (including the necessary and obligatory evils that must necessarily be a part of prosecuting same), I'm just not as convinced anymore that our "wars" have been terribly just, much less Constitutional.

If, on the really big items, we're no longer anything like a constitutional republic and simply are a oligarchy or dictatorship with a rubber stamp legislative body, I think it's time to rethink the hailing of conservatives as "strict Constitutionalists" and defenders of what once was known as The American Way.

It is ok to lie to Congress? He lied and he covered up and it does not matter w

If this is a free country where the people rule, then why is it a major crime pushishable by hard prison time for a citizen to lie to congress, but it is perfectly legal for a congressmen to lie to the people of this nation.

I'm just not as convinced anymore that our "wars" have been terribly just, much less Constitutional.

Again, I'll defer to the people on the ground. Who would rather live in North Korea rather than South Korea? Why did millions flee Vietnam after the Communists took over?

Again, we're only men, we're not angels. But how dare you say that those were only "wars" or that they weren't just. You sound like a college peacenik blame America firster.

Don't worry ... the whole world's going to be Americanized.

We'll talk again then.

Don't worry ... the whole world's going to be Americanized.
We'll talk again then.

What does that mean?

That's how the language and the motive and the profile of those who condition them (by destroying from the inside out the integrity of our universities, thinktanks, agencies and executive-level "Peer Group Collectives" in the corporate governance/legal sector) ends up seeping out.

Hmmm. I just can't help but see "those who condition them" as being indicative of an even more shadowy...thing. Now the players we see aren't even the real players - we've abstracted it away from what we see and know further still.

But the problem is, the further we abstract it away, the more we end up insulating it from any sort of proof or disproof. It becomes a thing that we can neither prove nor disprove, but not because we simply don't have evidence - it's because there can be no evidence one way or the other. No matter how deeply we penetrate in our search for truth, we can always posit some ever-more elusive shadowy lurker, always moving in the wings and pushing props into place for us. "We don't know" devolves into "we can't know." And what help is that?

I will freely admit that I know next-to-nothing about you - what sort of person you are, what you're like. But what little I see tells me at least a little bit. My snap-judgement first-impression (hey, don't knock it - most people go their entire lives on nothing else) tells me that you're awfully level-headed to want to be a modern-day Cassandra. The fact that you're at least reading my posts instead of dismissing me outright says that maybe you haven't really drunk all the Kool-Aid just yet - are you fully committed to this, beyond the point of no return, or is it still possible for you to believe that there is no shadowy force pulling the strings of our lives?

I don't want to sound arrogant. I'll freely admit that I am intensely skeptical of such things. I don't walk into this cold, either - these are things I've considered on my own also. But I'll also say right up front that I'll listen, and if the evidence is there, I'll accept it as truth.

My standards are high, no question - I'm not a pushover. But they're not impossible. Can I say the same for you?

I'm seeking out the telltales signs -- words and syntax, ideals, models and objectives -- of the Thinking Man.

Phew. I've come to think that there is a critical shortage of those. Good luck to you - they're rarer and more valuable than diamonds these days...

Faces in craters can be a delight. I do love watching figures in clouds. But that's the stuff of daydreams.

I know that. You know that. Now tell me how we can convince the thousands and thousands of people for whom this...

...is direct, concrete evidence of a government conspiracy.

My first face picture wasn't chosen completely randomly - there's an analogy lurking in here, if you care to find it. There are many, many people who see that face there. And for some, when they've seen something so apparently self-evident, then anyone who denies it must have some ulterior motive. If NASA disputes that it is a representation of a face, why, the government must be covering up the truth. After all, just look at it - any fool can plainly see it's a face. Why would the government try to deny something so obvious?

Why, indeed. And the answers to that question are rarely of the sort that posits government as a benevolent, or at least benign, force. When we proceed from what appears to be a self-evident truth that the government denies, the only conclusion we generally reach is that the government lies, because we don't want to believe that they're a pack of fools.

But this whole house of cards comes tumbling down if it isn't really a face in the first place...

My problem is this: It's a tight circle. All of these cats have been around long enough to know better than to keep making the same mistakes.

Oh, how I wish I could believe that. You have no idea how much I want to believe that ;)