gaah!

[lapsedmodernist]

i can't believe this! i mean, reading the news every day is like watching some bizzarre surreal soap opera where the plot keeps getting more and more jaw-dropping.

from NY Times

President Names Kissinger to Lead 9/11 Commission
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

[W] ASHINGTON, Nov. 27 — President Bush today named Henry A. Kissinger, a Republican who has been one of the most respected but polarizing figures in foreign policy and Washington for more than three decades, to lead an independent investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In choosing Mr. Kissinger, 79, the president selected a person whose reputation as a towering intellect in foreign policy is matched by the passions he has aroused among critics of his role in the Vietnam War, relations with the Soviet Union and the exercise of American power in Latin America. Mr. Bush made the appointment as he signed legislation creating the commission, a step he came to support after opposing the bill for much of the year partly on the ground that it could divert attention from the war on terrorism.


passions? the PASSIONS he aroused? i am guessing even though with a stretch that could apply denotatively, and be accurate in the way of archaic usage, the connotation is pure orwellian. well, i guess since chile does not need another external coup d'estat this very second, and his public image as a war criminal needs some PR tweaking, sure, why not?

Comments

[angryjonny.livejournal.com]

If you think that's bad (which it is) you should see the plans for this new Homeland Security dealy Bush has dreamed up. It makes Big Brother look like a pansy. I don't much like the way this is going. I'm wondering if/when the line between terrorism and dissent will be blurred

[(Anonymous)]

"most respected"? by whom? toadies in the media? how about "most revilved machiavellian of our time"? how about "most secretive and arrogant secretary of state in history"?

if you don't want anything about what the gov't knew about the terrorist threat before 9/11/01 and were incompetent in judging and reacting to, then he makes a sensible choice.

once upon a time, republicans liked to complain that there weren't any "grownups" in the white house. let's not let them find out there are bozos there now. oops! too late! it's already been discovered that there's a "moron" there. let's not report that in the u.s. media.

[nuncstans.livejournal.com]

Here's an excerpt from Christopher Hitchens's response to the appointment... but I think this is just a case of flaunting the transparency of evil, Caligula-style, BECAUSE THEY CAN. It might be like the handicap principle in evolutionary psychology (is that what it's called?? you know what I'm saying...), where appointing Kissinger to head the 9/11 investigation is the equivalent of pregnant Kate Moss wearing sweatpants and flip flops and smoking for the cameras...showing off the total power. AT this point, W has been showing off for a while, because before Kissinger it was Poindexter, and Otto Reich, and Negroponte... next it's gonna be ... you know, I really can't think of anyone worse than Kissinger to be heading up the investigation into intelligence failures of 9/11. I can't. I was going to say, Arnold Schwarzenegger or something, but I think that would be an improvement.


Why is a proven liar and wanted man in charge of the 9/11 investigation?

By Christopher Hitchens


The Bush administration has been saying in public for several months that
it does not desire an independent inquiry into the gross "failures of
intelligence" that left U.S. society defenseless 14 months ago. By
announcing that Henry Kissinger will be chairing the inquiry that it did
not want, the president has now made the same point in a different way. But
the cynicism of the decision and the gross insult to democracy and to the
families of the victims that it represents has to be.
[...]
When in office, Henry Kissinger organized massive deceptions of Congress and public opinion. The most notorious case concerned the "secret bombing" of Cambodia and Laos, and the unleashing of unconstitutional methods by Nixon and Kissinger to repress dissent from this illegal and atrocious policy. But Sen. Frank Church's commission of inquiry into the abuses of U.S. intelligence, which focused on illegal assassinations and the subversion of democratic governments overseas, was given incomplete and misleading information by Kissinger, especially on the matter of Chile.
Rep. Otis Pike's parallel inquiry in the House (which brought to light Kissinger's personal role in the not-insignificant matter of the betrayal of the Iraqi Kurds, among other offenses) was thwarted by Kissinger at every turn, and its eventual findings were classified. In other words, the new "commission" will be chaired by a man with a long, proven record of concealing evidence and of lying to Congress, the press, and the public.

[...] In his second career as an obfuscator and a falsifier, Kissinger appropriated the records of his time at the State Department and took them on a truck to the Rockefeller family estate in New York. He has since been successfully sued for the return of much of this public property, but meanwhile he produced, for profit, three volumes of memoirs that purported
to give a full account of his tenure. In several crucial instances, such as his rendering of U.S. diplomacy with China over Vietnam, with apartheid South Africa over Angola, and with Indonesia over the invasion of East Timor (to cite only some of the most conspicuous), declassified documents have since shown him to be a bald-faced liar. Does he deserve a third try at presenting a truthful record, after being caught twice as a fabricator?
And on such a grave matter as this?

4) Kissinger's "consulting" firm, Kissinger Associates, is a privately held concern that does not publish a client list and that compels its clients to sign confidentiality agreements. Nonetheless, it has been established that Kissinger's business dealings with, say, the Chinese Communist leadership
have closely matched his public pronouncements on such things as the massacre of Chinese students. Given the strong ties between himself, his partners Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft, and the oil oligarchies of the Gulf, it must be time for at least a full disclosure of his interests in the region. This thought does not seem to have occurred to the president or to the other friends of Prince Bandar and Prince Bandar's wife, who helped in the evacuation of the Bin Laden family from American soil, without an interrogation, in the week after Sept. 11.

[...]

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