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TBR News May 26, 2008

The Voice of the White House Washington , D.C. May 24, 2008 : “The son of a top CIA official has laid his hands on a thick file of transcribed conversations between a writer and a retired senior CIA man. I have read through them and find them to be very entertaining (if you like black humor) and very enlightening. What old men with fond memories will say to a good listener is absolutely amazing. Now we can expect CIA officials, retired and active and a number of the Washington in-crowd to play the Joe Lieberman card and demand that these be removed from the internet. Joe, who is a congenital asshole, wanted some pro-Arab postings taken down because they offended him. Wait until McCain reads what this ex-CIA boss has to say about him! You will hear him in Georgetown with the windows shut. The CIA are still torturing people but are being very careful about it. We now know that the FBI agents working with them, were horrified by their brutality and reported their illegal actions to their senior officials in Washington . None of the agents, to their credit, would dirty their hands with this perverted and sadistic behavior but I note that their seniors sat on this. Having read over period reports on some of this, all of it highly classified, it is my feeling that some of these perverted shits should be arrested and put on trial so the rest of the world can see the genuine filth and evil that the worthless Bush has deliberately unleashed. We ought to try Bush and give him a fair trial before we find him guilty, but that will never happen. “ Conversations with the Crow On October 8th, 2000 , Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA's Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer's Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley 's widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley 's CIA files. Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal , Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment. Three months before, July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley , died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda , Md. After Corson's death, Trento and a well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson's bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled 'Zipper.' This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley 's involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever. The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento 's house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished. When published material concerning the CIA's actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA's horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA's activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious 'Regional Interrogation Centers' in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy.. A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid "historians" and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world. The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley 's survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files our of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement , secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career. Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks,”: Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago , Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in military intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations. One of Crowley ’s first major assignments within the agency was to assist in the recruitment and management of prominent World War II Nazis, especially those with advanced intelligence experience. One of the CIA’s major recruitment coups was Heinrich Mueller, once head of Hitler’s Gestapo who had fled to Switzerland after the collapse of the Third Reich and worked as an anti-Communist expert for Masson of Swiss counterintelligence. Mueller was initially hired by Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA, who was running the Gehlen Organization out of Pullach in southern Germany . Crowley eventually came to despise Critchfield but the colonel was totally unaware of this, to his later dismay. Crowley ’s real expertise within the agency was the Soviet KGB. One of his main jobs throughout his career was acting as the agency liaison with corporations like ITT, which the CIA often used as fronts for moving large amounts of cash off their books. He was deeply involved in the efforts by the U.S. to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile , which eventually got him into legal problems with regard to investigations of the U.S. government’s grand jury where he has perjured himself in an agency cover-up After his retirement, Crowley began to search for someone who might be able to write a competent history of his career. His first choice fell on British author John Costello (author of Ten Days to Destiny, The Pacific War and other works) but, discovering that Costello was a very aggressive homosexual, he dropped him and tentatively turned to Joseph Trento who had assisted Crowley and William Corson in writing a book on the KGB. When Crowley discovered that Trento had an ambiguous and probably cooperative relationship with the CIA, he began to distrust him and continued his search for an author. Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. . In 1996, Crowley , Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley ’s story but only after Crowley ’s death. Douglas , for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publications. In 1998, when Crowley was slated to go into the hospital for exploratory surgery, he had his son, Greg, ship two large foot lockers of documents to Douglas with the caveat that they were not to be opened until after Crowley ’s death. These documents, totaled an astonishing 15,000 pages of CIA classified files involving many covert operations, both foreign and domestic, during the Cold War. After Crowley ’s death and Trento ’s raid on the Crowley files, huge gaps were subsequently discovered by horrified CIA officials and when Crowley ’s friends mentioned Gregory Douglas, it was discovered that Crowley ’s son had shipped two large boxes to Douglas . No one knew their contents but because Douglas was viewed as an uncontrollable loose cannon who had done considerable damage to the CIA’s reputation by his on-going publication of the history of Gestapo-Mueller, they bent every effort both to identify the missing files and make some effort to retrieve them before Douglas made any use of them. All of this furor eventually came to the attention of Dr. Peter Janney, a Massachusetts clinical psychologist and son of Wistar Janney, another career senior CIA official, colleague of not only Bob Crowley but Cord Meyer, Richard Helms, Jim Angleton and others. Janney was working on a book concerning the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, former wife of Cord Meyer, a high-level CIA official, and later the mistress of President John F. Kennedy. Douglas had authored a book, ‘Regicide’ which dealt with Crowley ’s part in the Kennedy assassination and he obviously had access to at least some of Crowley ’s papers. Janney was very well connected inside the CIA’s higher levels and when he discovered that Douglas had indeed known, and had often spoken with, Crowley and that after Crowley’s death, the FBI had descended on Crowley’s widow and son, warning them to never speak with Douglas about anything, he contacted Douglas and finally obtained from him a number of original documents, including the originals of the transcribed conversations with Robert Crowley. In spite of the burn bags, the top secret safes and the vigilance of the CIA to keep its own secrets, the truth has an embarrassing and often very fatal habit of emerging, albeit decades later. While CIA drug running , money-launderings and brutal assassinations are very often strongly rumored and suspected, it has so far not been possible to actually pin them down but it is more than possible that the publication of the transcribed and detailed Crowley-Douglas conversations will do a great deal towards accomplishing this. These many transcribed conversations are relatively short because Crowley was a man who tired easily but they make excellent reading. There is an interesting admixture of shocking revelations on the part of the retired CIA official and often rampant anti-social (and very entertaining) activities on the part of Douglas but readers of this new and on-going series are gently reminded to always look for the truth in the jest! Date: Saturday, January 27, 1996 Commenced: 11:02 AM (CST) Concluded: 11:25AM (CST) EC: Hello? GD: Mrs. Crowley. This is Gregory. Is Robert available? EC: I think he’s upstairs. Greg was supposed to come over….let me call him for you. GD: Thanks (Pause) RTC: Gregory! How are you? GD: Emily says you’re expecting your son… RTC: He’s probably not coming. Never mind. If he comes, I’ll tell you and we can talk later…in the afternoon. GD: I talked to Corson about a foreword for the next Mueller book. I know we mentioned this but are you willing to contribute? RTC: Certainly. Have it out in a few days or I can work it up and fax it to you. OK? GD: Fine. Thanks a lot for this. RTC: It’ll just make me more popular, that’s all. How are you coming with the next one? GD: About halfway through. I’ve decided to put in the counterfeiting business and probably do a hit on the Gehlen mob… RTC: That ought to frost Critchfield’s worthless balls! GD: And I was there, don’t forget, and I know where the bum hid the money. I was thinking about doing a number about Willi (Krichbaum). He was Critchfield’s top recruiter. Wait until they find out good old Willi was a Gestapo colonel and Mueller’s top deputy in the Gestapo! RTC: More fun and games. You really do like to twist the nuts, don’t you? GD: Only if they don’t come off in my hands. RTC: Lois would never miss them. What else goes in? GD: Well, I owe Corson the thing on Kronthal. He goes in for sure. Maybe Wisner too. RTC: Remind me to tell you about the time Frank got caught in Rock Creek giving a blow job to a black exchange student. Fine thing for a southern gentleman to get caught at. GD: Mississippi or something. RTC: Originally one of the New York Gardiners. Gardiner’s Island . Old family. They had holdings in Montana , if memory serves me…of course names elude me…but holdings in Mississippi too. Poor Frank was a first class nut case. You know about blowing his brains out all over the garage roof? Yes, I told you that, didn’t I. Couldn’t follow through on his promises to the Hungarians of our military intervention if they rose up against Stalin…. GD: But Stalin died in 1953 and that business was in 1956… RTC: Yes, yes, of course but I meant the Stalin empire. GD: Understood. Theory and practice. RTC: What else new and exciting to drive them bats? GD: Wallenberg… RTC: Who cares about that hebe? GD: Well, the gits started the story that the Russians got him… RTC: We made that one up… GD: But Mueller said the Gestapo bagged him and offed him in some farmyard.. RTC: Had it coming. Listen, Gregory, what do you want to do about the Kennedy business? I guess there’s still interest in it. God…fifty thousand books and all of them fuller of shit than a Christmas turkey. GD: How many did your people write, sponsor and publish? I mean to deliberately drag carmine herrings across the path? RTC: Lost track. Hundreds. One thing Wisner did was to build up a very cooperative media and that includes book publishers. GD: I could consider that. RTC: Maybe after I’m dead and gone. It would be better. GD: Fine. Question here? RTC: Shoot. GD: Was Oswald a patsy? RTC: Sure. He worked for us once in Japan … at Atsugi…and also for ONI. Not high level but he was a soldier after all. GD: How would I handle that? RTC: Let’s claim he worked for Hoover ! Why not? GD: I mean, did he actually? RTC: Christ no. Poor idiot. Jesus, what a wife! First class bitch. Thought Lee was a millionaire and when she came here, she would strike it rich. Turned out she lived in a slum and she had to put up with a loudmouth husband and then got stuck with a kid. No wonder she did what we told her. GD: Women are not easy to deal with. They are either at your feet or your throat… RTC: Oh, the truth of it all! Emily is a lovely person but I tell her nothing. And let me ask you that when you talk with her, for God’s sake, don’t talk shop with her. It would just stir her up. Most Company wives are a pack of nuts. Did I mention Cord’s wife? GD: I don’t think so. I…no, I don’t remember. Cord Meyer? RTC: Right, the Great Cyclops. Or the One-Eyed Reilly. GD: In the center of his forehead? RTC: Lost it in the Pacific. Glass. GD: The wife? RTC: What? GD: You mentioned his wife… RTC: Ah yes. He married the daughter of Pinchot just after the war… GD: Gifford? RTC: Correct. The governor. Very attractive woman but her sister was even better. She married Bradlee who is one of the Companies men. He’s on the ‘Post’ now. Cord’s wife was what they call a free spirit…liked modern art, runs around naked in people’s gardens and so on. Pretty but strange and unstable. She and Cord got along for a time but time changes everything….they do say that, don’t they?…They broke up and Cord was so angry at being dumped, he hated her from then on. She took up with Kennedy. Did you know that? GD: No. RTC: Oh yes indeed. Kennedy had huge orgies out at 1600 with nude women in the pools and all that. Even had a professional photographer come in and take pictures of him in action. Old Jack loved threesomes, the occasional dyke and God knows what else. It was Joe’s money that shut people up, including his nasty wife… GD: I thought she was a saint. Old family… RTC: Bullshit! Family is Irish, bog trotters, like Kennedy. Not French at all. A greedy, lying and completely nutty woman. Never liked her. One generation here and they give up washing clothes and put up the lace curtains in the family parlor. What was I saying? GD: About Cord’s wife… RTC: Oh yes. After Mary…that was her name…Mary. You haven’t heard about her? GD: No. RTC: After Kennedy bought the farm, ex-Mrs. Meyer was annoyed. She became the steady girlfriend and he was very serious about her. Jackie was brittle, uptight and very greedy. Poor people usually are. Mary had money and far more class and she knew how to get along with Jack. Trouble was, she got along too well. She didn’t approve of the mass orgies and introduced him to pot and other things. Not a good idea. Increased chances for blackmail or some erratic public behavior. But after Dallas , she began to brood and then started to talk. Of course she had no proof but when people like that start to run their mouths, there can be real trouble. GD: What was the outcome? RTC: We terminated her, of course. GD: That I didn’t know. How? RTC: Had one of our cleaning men nail her down by the towpath while she was out for her daily jog. GD: Wasn’t that a bit drastic? RTC: Why? If you knew the damage she could cause us… GD: Were you the man? RTC: No, Jim Angleton was. And Bradley, her brother-in-law was in the know. After she assumed room temperature, he and Jim went over to Mary’s art studio to see if she had any compromising papers and ran off with her diary. I have a copy of it… GD: Could I see it? RTC: Now, Gregory, don’t ask too many questions. Maybe later. GD: Did anyone get nailed? RTC: Some spaced out nigger was down there but he had nothing to do with it. Our people came down on that place in busloads to help out the locals but they were searching for the gun. Our man was supposed to have tossed in into the water but it never made it in and one of our boys found it in some bushes, half in and half out of the water. Beat the locals to it by about ten seconds. Very close. See, it was one of our hit weapons that never had serial numbers. Not made that way. GD: Ruger made a silenced .22 during the war for the OSS . No numbers, parkerized finish. RTC: Same thing. GD: Couldn’t they have talked sense into her? RTC: What did Shakespeare say about angry women? GD: ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ RTC: Exactly. GD: She had children? RTC: Some. One was killed by a drunk driver. Caused all kinds of friction in the family as I remember. GD: Mayer. He was tied up with Alan Cranston? RTC: Yes. The one-world crap. GD: I knew Cranston and his family. United World Federalists. He married into the Fowle family and I was a friend of one of the members. Ultra left-wing. Was at his house by the golf course one time and the bedroom bookshelf was jammed with Commie books…Debray, Mao, Lenin, Marx, Engels, Kautsky and on and on. RTC: Cord was under investigation by Feebie for that. GD: Phoebie? RTC: Slang for FBI. We’ll have to talk about Cranston …he left the Senate.. GD: I know. I nailed him. The savings and loan business. I got inside skinny on this and tipped off the media. ABC people. It went on from there. RTC: Good for you. Cord was tied up. GD: You didn’t like him. RTC: Nasty, opinionated, loud and a general asshole. GD: What did he think about doing his wife? RTC: Ex-wife. Let’s be accurate now. Ex-wife. When Jim talked to Cord about this, Cord didn’t let him finish his fishing expedition. He was in complete agreement about shutting her up. Gregory, you can’t reason with people like her. She hated Cord, loved Kennedy and saw things in the Dallas business that were obvious to insiders or former insiders but she made the mistake of running her mouth. One of the wives had a talk with her about being quiet but Mary was on a tear and that was that. GD: Yes, I think there’s something there. RTC: But not while I’m breathing, Gregory. Not until later. And it wasn’t my decision. I was there but Jim and the others made the final decision. You know how it goes. GD: Oh yeah, I know that one. But to get back to the foreword. No problem? RTC: None at all. GD: I don’t think Tom Kimmel will like that. RTC: I’ve heard from him on that. He doesn’t like the idea that Bill and I approve of you. I wouldn’t tell him too much if I were you. You can tell me things and sometimes you can tell Bill but Kimmel has a mouth problem. GD: I helped him with the Pearl Harbor matter… RTC: Don’t bother. What else is going to be in the next book? GD: Something on the Duke of Windsor . RTC: Gregory, I think my son is about to come up here so perhaps we can get together later today. Call me after 6 tonight if you wish. Sorry but weekends can be busy here. GD: Understood. (Concluded at 11:25AM CST ) SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Volume 2008, Issue No. 50 May 23, 2008 INTEL SURVEILLANCE COURT GETS TWO NEW JUDGES Two new judges were named to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court this week, Secrecy News has learned, one a Clinton appointee and one a Reagan appointee. Judge Mary A. McLaughlin of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and Judge James B. Zagel of the Northern District of Illinois were appointed to seven year terms on the secret court by the Chief Justice to replace Judge James G. Carr and Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton, whose terms expired on May 18. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is responsible for reviewing and approving government applications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for domestic electronic surveillance and physical search of suspected foreign intelligence agents or terrorists. But it does more than that. The Court also reinterprets the terms of the Act in an undisclosed fashion, producing in effect a body of "secret law," a matter discussed at an April 30 hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The FISC has in fact issued... legally significant decisions that remain classified and have not been released to the public," observed Judge John D. Bates, a member of the FIS Court , when he denied an ACLU motion for disclosure of portions of those decisions last December. The appointment of new judges to the FIS Court assumes particular importance today because of a proposal pending in Congress that would refer existing lawsuits alleging illegal warrantless surveillance to the secret FIS Court in what would likely be a severely constrained adjudicative process. The proposal is being considered as an alternative to granting outright immunity to telephone companies that allegedly cooperated with the President's surveillance program. Judge Mary A. McLaughlin was appointed to the bench in 2000 by President Clinton. She was formerly an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia , and a special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on terrorism during the Ruby Ridge hearings in 1995. Judge James B. Zagel was appointed in 1987 by President Reagan. Judge Zagel is "an intelligent, tough-minded jurist," said the Chicago Council of Lawyers, a public interest association, in a 1991 evaluation. However, "some lawyers are concerned that he will bring a political agenda to bear in certain classes of cases." The new appointments were confirmed for Secrecy News today by Sheldon L. Snook of the administrative office at the D.C. District Court. A new appointment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, an appeals court, has not yet been formally announced, he said. But the Providence Journal (RI) reported on April 14 that Judge Morris Sheppard Arnold of the 8th District had been named to the Review Court . An updated roster of the membership of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is here: http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/court2008.html "During calendar year 2007, the Government made 2,371 applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for authority to conduct electronic surveillance and physical search for foreign intelligence purposes," the Justice Department told Congress in the latest annual report on FISA activity. http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/2007rept.pdf HPSCI: CLASSIFICATION OF CYBER SECURITY PROGRAM IS "EXCESSIVE" The National Cyber Security Initiative, which is "the single largest... and most important initiative" in next year's budget, is being conducted under "excessive classification," the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) said in its new report on the 2009 intelligence authorization act. For the cyber security program to function as intended, "it will require a partnership with industry unlike any model that currently exists. The excessive classification of the [Initiative], however, militates against the collaboration necessary to achieve that partnership." That view coincides with the recent assessment of the Senate Armed Services Committee regarding overclassification of the cybersecurity program (Secrecy News, 05/15/08 ). The 121-page House Intelligence Committee report is full of grist for the intelligence policy mill. The Committee flexed its oversight muscles by imposing a limit on spending for covert action to no more than 25 percent of the allocated funds until each member of the Committee has been briefed on all covert actions. "The obligation to report to the committees is not negotiable," the report declared. "It is not an obligation that the President can ignore at his discretion. It is not an obligation that can be evaded by claiming that briefing the congressional intelligence committees will require other committees to be briefed. It is not an obligation that can be evaded by broad assertions of executive power." The Committee would establish a new Inspector General for the entire intelligence community, and would impose new limits and new reporting requirements on intelligence contractors. The Republican minority said that more should have been done to combat unauthorized disclosures of classified information: "We are disappointed that the Committee has held no hearings and conducted little to no substantial oversight on this issue during this Congress. In addition, we are concerned that the issue is becoming increasingly politicized, sometimes under the false premise that there are 'good leaks' and 'bad leaks'. The Committee should take a firm and clear position that no unauthorized disclosures of classified information should be tolerated." The minority also insisted that "the United States does not torture," a view that is increasingly hard to reconcile with the public record, including a new report from the Justice Department Inspector General that catalogued many abusive forms of interrogation by U.S. military and intelligence personnel. See the House Intelligence Committee Report on the 2009 Intelligence Authorization Act, H.Rep. 110-665, May 21: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2008_rpt/hrpt110-665.html AN ONLINE INDEX TO AIR FORCE HISTORICAL RECORDS A new searchable index of hundreds of thousands of documents held by the Air Force Historical Research Agency has been created by private researchers and posted online. http://www.airforcehistoryindex.org/ The index does not provide access to the underlying documents, which must be requested from AFHRA. Nevertheless, it has several interesting features. For one thing, it represents a step forward in improving accessibility to declassified government records. The new Air Force index provides a simple illustration of what can be done to alert the interested public to the existence of particular records, and suggests how much more still needs to be done, including providing online access to the records themselves. Second, the new index represents an unusual, implicit public-private partnership. Researchers gained access to the Air Force bibliographical data and installed a search engine on top, then posted it online in the public interest. The researchers said they preferred to remain anonymous. NARA ESTABLISHES "CONTROLLED UNCLASSIFIED INFO" OFFICE The National Archives and Records Administration today announced the establishment of a new Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) Office that is intended to lead the implementation and oversight of a new White House policy on CUI, which is unclassified information that is deemed to require protection from disclosure (Secrecy News, 05/12/08). The CUI Office, to be headed by Information Security Oversight Office director William J. Bosanko, is tasked with developing implementation guidance, training, and oversight of the new government-wide policy. http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2008/05/cui052208.html CHINA 'S ECONOMIC CONDITIONS, AND MORE FROM CRS Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service, obtained by Secrecy News, include the following. " U.S. Nuclear Cooperation With India : Issues for Congress," updated May 20, 2008 : http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL33016.pdf "Nuclear Weapons: The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program," updated May 19, 2008 : http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL32929.pdf "Suits Against Terrorist States By Victims of Terrorism," updated May 1, 2008 : http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/RL31258.pdf " Syria : Background and U.S. Relations," updated May 1, 2008 : http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33487.pdf " China 's Economic Conditions," updated May 13, 2008 : http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33534.pdf The Forgotten Dead May 26, 2008 by Brian Harring brianharring@yahoo.com May 23, 2008, Lt. Jeffrey A. Ammon, 37, of Orem , Utah , died May 20, as a result of injuries suffered from an improvised explosive device in the Aband District, Afghanistan. The sailor was attached to Commander Navy Region Northwest, Bangor , Wash. , and serving in Afghanistan as a member of Provincial Reconstruction Team Ghazni. Pfc. Howard A. Jones, Jr., 35, of Chicago, died May 18 in Chicago from injuries sustained when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver while on leave from the Iraq theater of operations. He was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley , Kan. May 21, 2008, Lt. Col. Joseph A. Moore, 54, of Boise , Idaho , died of natural causes May 20 in Djibouti . He was assigned to the 124th Wing, Idaho Air National Guard, Gowen Field , Idaho . 1st Lt. Jeffrey F. Deprimo, 35, of Pittston , Pa. , died May 20 in Ghazni , Afghanistan , of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 103rd Armor Regiment, Pennsylvania Army National Guard, Williamsport , Pa. May 20, 2008 , Cpl. William J. L. Cooper, 22, of Eupora , Miss. , died May 19 while supporting combat operations in Helmand Province , Afghanistan . He was assigned to 1^st Battalion, 6^th Marine Regiment, 2d Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune , N.C. Pvt. Branden P. Haunert, 21, of Cincinnati , Ohio , died May 18 in Tikrit , Iraq , of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky. Master Sgt. Davy N. Weaver, 39, of Barnesville, Ga., died May 18 in Qalat, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Georgia Army National Guard, Macon , Ga. May 16, 2008 Soldier Sgt. John K. Daggett, 21, of Phoenix , Ariz. , died May 15 in Halifax , Canada , of wounds suffered May 1 in Baghdad , Iraq , when a rocket-propelled grenade struck his vehicle. May 14, 2008 Soldier Sgt. Victor M. Cota, 33, of Tucson , Ariz. , died May 14 in Baghdad , Iraq , of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device in Kadamiyah , Iraq , May 13. May 12, 2008 Soldier Cpl. Jessica A. Ellis, 24, of Bend , Ore. , died May 11 in Baghdad , Iraq , of wounds suffered when her vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device. Soldier Pvt. Matthew W. Brown, 20, of Zelienople , Pa. , died May 11 in Asadabad , Afghanistan , from injuries suffered in a non-combat related incident. Soldier Spc. Joseph A. Ford, 23, of Knox , Ind. , died May 10 in Al Asad, Iraq , of injuries suffered in a vehicle accident. May 11, 2008 Soldier Pfc. Ara T. Deysie, 18, of Parker, Ariz. , died May 9 in Paktia Province , Afghanistan , of wounds suffered when his unit came under rocket-propelled grenade fire. May 10, 2008 Soldier Spc. Mary J. Jaenichen, 20, of Temecula , Calif. , died May 9 in Iskandariyah , Iraq , of a non-combat related injury. Soldier Sgt. Isaac Palomarez, 26, of Loveland , Colo. , died May 9 in Kapisa Province , Afghanistan , of wounds suffered when his patrol encountered an improvised explosive device and came under small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire. May 9, 2008 Soldier Pfc. Aaron J. Ward, 19, of San Jacinto , Calif. , died May 6 in Al Anbar, Iraq , of wounds suffered when his unit came under small arms fire while conducting cordon and search operations. Soldier Spc. Alex D. Gonzalez, 21, of Mission , Texas , died May 6 in Mosul , Iraq , of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered small arms fire and a rocket-propelled grenade attack. May 8, 2008 Two soldiers died May 7 in the Sabari District, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when their vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device: Spc. Jeremy R. Gullett, 22, of Greenup, Ky., who was assigned to the 4th Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky. Staff Sgt. Kevin C. Roberts, 25, of Farmington, N. M., who was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky. Four Marines died May 2 in Al Anbar province, Iraq , supporting combat operations: Lance Cpl. Casey L. Casanova, 22, of McComb , Miss. Cpl. Miguel A. Guzman, 21, of Norwalk , Calif. Lance Cpl. James F. Kimple, 21, of Carroll , Ohio Sgt. Glen E. Martinez, 31, of Boulder , Colo. May 5, 2008 Soldier Pvt. Corey L. Hicks, 22, of Glendale , Ariz. , died May 2 in Baghdad , Iraq , of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device. May 4, 2008 Soldier Spc. Jeffrey F. Nichols, 21, of Granite Shoals, Texas , died May 1 in Baghdad from wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device. May 3, 2008 Soldier Sgt. 1st Class Lawrence D. Ezell, 30, of Portland, Texas, died April 30 in Baghdad of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his unit during combat operations. Soldier Sgt. Jerry L. DeLoach, 45, of Jackson , Ga. , died July 7, 2007 , at Fort Knox , Ky. He had been medically evacuated from theater, and died of a non-combat related injury. Soldier Staff Sgt. Chad A. Caldwell , 24, of Spokane , Wash. , died April 30 in Mosul , Iraq , of injuries sustained while conducting dismounted combat operations. May 2, 2008 Two soldiers April 30 in Baghdad , Iraq , from wounds suffered when their vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device: Cpt. Andrew. R. Pearson, 32, of Billings , Mont. Spc. Ronald J. Tucker, 21, of Fountain, Colo. May 1, 2008 Soldier Staff Sgt. Bryan E. Bolander, 26, of Bakersfield , Calif. , died April 29 in Baghdad from wounds suffered when his vehicle struck an improvised explosive device. Marine Sgt. Merlin German, 22 of Manhattan , N.Y. , died April 11 at Brooke Army Medical Center , San Antonio , Texas , from wounds he suffered while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq , on Feb. 22, 2005 . He was medically retired Sept. 28, 2007 , as a result of his injuries. Soldier Staff Sgt. Clay A. Craig, 22, of Mesquite , Texas , died April 29 in Baghdad , Iraq , from wounds suffered when he received small arms fire during combat operations. . Source: http://www.defenselink.mil/Releases/ Is The World About To Be Running On Empty? May 23, 2008 by Stephen Foley in New York The Independent/UK In France , fishermen are blockading oil refineries. In Britain , lorry drivers are planning a day of action. In the US , the car maker Ford is to cut production of gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles and airlines are jacking up ticket prices. Global concerns about fuel prices are reaching fever pitch and the world’s leading energy monitor has issued a disturbing downward revision of the oil industry’s ability to keep pace with soaring demand Yesterday’s warning from the International Energy Agency sent the price of a barrel of oil to a new record for the 13th day in a row. The latest high - $135 for a barrel of light sweet crude - was reached in New York barely five months after the price hit $100. Experts in London and on Wall Str politicians. It is simple economics, they say: supply and demand. The former is eet predict that prices will rise to $200, regardless of the protests of consumers and the complaints of short, the latter growing. Consumers are feeling the pinch in almost every area of their daily lives The pain is felt most obviously at the pumps. In Britain , the price of petrol has risen to an average of 114p for a litre of unleaded - £5.15 per gallon. In the US , where drivers pay much lower prices, gasoline is more than $4 (£2) a gallon. Beyond that, energy bills are rising for households across the globe, hitting the poorest the hardest. British Gas, the nation’s biggest gas and electricity supplier, is mulling further price rises, on top of the 15 per cent average increase it introduced in January. Airlines which once limited fare increases to temporary “fuel surcharges” are now raising ticket prices and - as American Airlines did this week - starting to charge for checked baggage. Meanwhile, manufacturers are putting up the price of goods to compensate for higher energy bills at their factories, ending many years of price deflation that began when firms started transferring production overseas. “The high-priced energy environment is being driven by the fact that demand has outstripped supply,” President George Bush’s Energy Secretary, Samuel Bodman, told the US Congress yesterday. “We have sopped up all the available spare oil production capacity in the system … and there is no silver bullet that will immediately solve our energy challenges or drastically reduce costs at the gas pump.” The world uses about 87 million barrels of oil a day, about a quarter of it in the US . Saudi Arabia is the only country thought to have the capacity to pump oil faster. Meanwhile, China is in the throes of an industrial revolution that demands ever greater supplies of crude, yet global production has stagnated for two years. The Saudi government rejected a recent appeal from Mr Bush to increase production, saying there were no oil shortages at present. Economists worry, though, that shortages are around the corner, as mature oilfields wind down. The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) said yesterday that it might have overestimated the capacity of oil-producing nations to open new fields to keep up with growing demand over the next decade. Global production, which the IEA previously reckoned could reach 116 million barrels a day by 2030, might not even make 100 million. Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist, said the oil industry had entered “a new energy world order” where it was harder to keep supply and demand in equilibrium. “When the price went up as a result of the Iranian revolution, demand went down,” he added. “But what has happened in the last few years has not been in line with economic theory. The price of oil went up sharply between 2004 and 2006 and demand actually increased. That may seem bizarre but it is the result of new buyers coming in, such as China and the Middle Eastern economies where fuel is subsidised by government and rises are not reflected on the consumer side.” Some politicians in the US rail against nationalised oil companies in the developing world for failing to invest in new production that might alleviate stresses in the market. And at every turn, Mr Bush and members of his administration insist that environmentalists should yield to the public hunger for oil and Congress should authorise drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska . However, the investment bank Goldman Sachs said this month that the oil price could rise as high as $200 over the next year and *would remain consistently above $100* until there was a significant fall in US demand. There are small signs of that happening. Yesterday, Ford said it was cutting vehicle production by more than it announced earlier this year. It will make the deepest cuts in its SUV and pick-up truck businesses because US customers are increasingly switching to lighter, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Alan Mulally, the chief executive, said pick-up sales now accounted for 9 per cent of the market compared with 11 per cent a few weeks ago. . Hollywood Is Becoming the Pentagon's Mouthpiece for Propaganda May 22, 2008 by Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com. In the new film Iron Man, the people cast as terrorists take the fall for what the U.S. has done in the real world. "Liberal Hollywood" is a favorite whipping-boy of right-wingers who suppose the town and its signature industry are ever-at-work undermining the U.S. military. In reality, the military has been deeply involved with the film industry since the Silent Era. Today, however, the ad hoc arrangements of the past have been replaced by a full-scale one-stop shop, occupying a floor of a Los Angeles office building. There, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and the Department of Defense itself have established entertainment liaison offices to help ensure that Hollywood makes movies the military way. What they have to trade, especially when it comes to blockbuster films, is access to high-tech, tax-payer funded, otherwise unavailable gear. What they get in return is usually the right to alter or shape scripts to suit their needs. If you want to see the fruits of this relationship in action, all you need to do is head down to your local multiplex. Chances are that Iron Man — the latest military-entertainment masterpiece — is playing on a couple of screens. For the past three weeks, Iron Man --a film produced by its comic-book parent Marvel and distributed by Paramount Pictures — has cleaned up at the box office, taking in a staggering $222.5 million in the U.S. and $428.5 million worldwide. The movie, which opened with "the tenth biggest weekend box office performance of all time" and the second biggest for a non-sequel, has the added distinction of being the "best-reviewed movie of 2008 so far." For instance, in the New York Times, movie reviewer A.O. Scott called Iron Man "an unusually good superhero picture," while Roger Ebert wrote: "The world needs another comic book movie like it needs another Bush administration... but if we must have one more... 'Iron Man' is a swell one to have." There has even been nascent Oscar buzz. Robert Downey Jr. has been nearly universally praised for a winning performance as playboy-billionaire-merchant-of-death-genius-inventor Tony Stark, head of Stark Industries, a fictional version of Lockheed or Boeing. In the film, Stark travels to Afghanistan to showcase a new weapon of massive destruction to American military commanders occupying that country. On a Humvee journey through the Afghan backlands, his military convoy is caught up in a deadly ambush by al-Qaeda stand-ins, who capture him and promptly subject him to what Vice President Dick Cheney once dubbed "a dunk in the water," but used to be known as "the Water Torture." The object is to force him to build his Jericho weapons system, one of his "masterpieces of death," in their Tora Bora-like mountain cave complex. As practically everyone in the world already knows, Stark instead builds a prototype metal super-suit and busts out of his cave of confinement, slaughtering his terrorist captors as he goes. Back in the U.S. , a born-again Stark announces that his company needs to get out of the weapons game, claiming he has "more to offer the world than making things blow up." Yet, what he proceeds to build is, of course, a souped-up model of the suit he designed in the Afghan cave. Back inside it, as Iron Man, he then uses it to "blow up" bad guys in Afghanistan , taking on the role of a kind of (super-)human-rights vigilante. He even tangles with U.S. forces in the skies over that occupied land, but when the Air Force's sleek, ultra high-tech, F-22A Raptors try to shoot him down, he refrains from using his awesome powers of invention to blow them away. This isn't the only free pass doled out to the U.S. military in the film. Just as America 's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to bring various Vietnam analogies to mind, Iron Man has its own Vietnam pedigree. Before Tony Stark landed in Afghanistan in 2008, he first lumbered forth in Vietnam in the 1960s. That was, of course, when he was still just the clunky hero of the comic book series on which the film is based. Marvel's metal man then battled that era's American enemies of choice: not al-Qaedan-style terrorists, but communists in Southeast Asia . Versions of the stereotypical evil Asians of Iron Man's comic book world would appear almost unaltered on the big screen in 1978 in another movie punctuated by gunfire and explosions that also garnered great reviews. The Deer Hunter, an epic of loss and horror in Vietnam , eventually took home four Academy Awards, including Best Picture honors. Then, and since, however, the movie has been excoriated by antiwar critics for the way it turned history on its head in its use of reversed iconic images that seemingly placed all guilt for death and destruction in Vietnam on America's enemies. Most famously, it appropriated a then-unforgettable Pulitzer prize-winning photo of Lt. Colonel Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam 's national police chief, executing an unarmed, bound prisoner during the Tet Offensive with a point blank pistol shot to the head. In the film, however, it was the evil enemy which made American prisoners do the same to themselves as they were forced to play Russian Roulette for the amusement of their sadistic Vietnamese captors (something that had no basis in reality). The film Iron Man is replete with such reversals, starting with the obvious fact that, in Afghanistan , it is Americans who have imprisoned captured members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban (as well as untold innocents) in exceedingly grim conditions, not vice-versa. It is they who, like Tony Stark, have been subjected to the Bush administration's signature "harsh interrogation technique." While a few reviewers have offhandedly alluded to the eeriness of this screen choice, Iron Man has suffered no serious criticism for taking the imprisonment practices, and most infamous torture, of the Bush years and superimposing it onto America 's favorite evil-doers. Nor have critics generally thought to point out that, while, in the film, the nefarious Obadiah Stane, Stark's right hand man, is a double-dealing arms dealer who is selling high-tech weapons systems to the terrorists in Afghanistan (and trying to kill Stark as well), two decades ago the U.S. government played just that role. For years, it sent advanced weapons systems — including Stinger missiles, one of the most high-tech weapons of that moment — to jihadis in Afghanistan so they could make war on one infidel superpower (the Soviet Union), before setting their sights on another (the United States). And while this took place way back in the 1980s, it shouldn't be too hard for film critics to recall - since it was lionized in last year's celebrated Tom Hanks film Charlie Wilson's War. In the cinematic Marvel Universe, however, the U.S. military, which runs the notorious prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan where so many have been imprisoned, abused, and, in some cases, have even died, receives a veritable get out of jail free card. And you don't need to look very closely to understand why — or why the sleek U.S. aircraft in the film get a similar free pass from Iron Man, even when they attack him, or why terrorists and arms dealers take the fall for what the U.S. has done in the real world. If they didn't, you can be sure that Iron Man wouldn't be involved in a blue-skies ballet with F-22A Raptors in the movie's signature scene and that the filmmakers would never have been able to shoot at Edwards Air Force base — a prospect which could have all but grounded Iron Man, since, as director Jon Favreau put it, Edwards was "the best back lot you could ever have." Favreau, in fact, minced no words in his ardent praise for the way working with the Air Force gave him access to the "best stuff" and how filming on the base brought "a certain prestige to the film." Perhaps in exchange for the U.S. Air Force's collaboration, there was an additional small return favor: Iron Man's confidant, sidekick, and military liaison, Lt. Col. James "Rhodey" Rhodes — another hero of the film — is now an Air Force man, not the Marine he was in the comic. With the box office numbers still pouring in and the announcement of sequels to come, the arrangement has obviously worked out well for Favreau, Marvel, Paramount — and the U.S. Air Force. Before the movie was released, Master Sergeant Larry Belen, the superintendent of technical support for the Air Force Test Pilot School and one of many airmen who auditioned for a spot in the movie, outlined his motivation to aid the film: "I want people to walk away from this movie with a really good impression of the Air Force, like they got about the Navy seeing Top Gun." Air Force captain Christian Hodge, the Defense Department's project officer for Iron Man, may have put it best, however, when he predicted that, once the film appeared, the "Air Force is going to come off looking like rock stars." Maybe the Air Force hasn't hit the Top Gun-style jackpot with Iron Man, but there can be no question that, in an American world in which war-fighting doesn't exactly have the glitz of yesteryear, Iron Man is certainly a military triumph. As Chuck Vinch noted in a review published in the Air Force Times, "The script... will surely have the flyboy brass back at the Pentagon trading high fives — especially the scene in which Iron Man dogfights in the high clouds with two F-22 Raptors." Coming on the heels of last year's military-aided mega-spectacular Transformers, the Pentagon is managing to keep a steady stream of pro-military blockbusters in front of young eyes during two dismally unsuccessful foreign occupations that grind on without end. In his Iron Man review, Roger Ebert called the pre-transformation Tony Stark, "the embodiment of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned against in 1961 — a financial superhero for whom war is good business, and whose business interests guarantee there will always be a market for war." Here's the irony that Ebert missed: What the film Iron Man actually catches is the spirit of the successor "complex," which has leapt not only into the cinematic world of superheroes, but also into the civilian sphere of our world in a huge way. Today, almost everywhere you look, whether at the latest blockbuster on the big screen or what's on much smaller screens in your own home — likely made by a defense contractor like Sony, Samsung, Panasonic or Toshiba — you'll find the Pentagon or its corporate partners. In fact, from the companies that make your computer to those that produce your favorite soft drink, many of the products in your home are made by Defense Department contractors — and, if you look carefully, you don't even need the glowing eyes of an advanced "cybernetic helmet," like Iron Man's, to see them. Christian fundamentalism and Zionism- Time To Terminate This Unholy Alliance ? May 24, 2008 by Alan Hart Information Clearning House In the light of the revelation (divine or not) about Pastor John Hagee’s assertion that Hitler was God’s agent, is it too much to hope that Jews everywhere, and Jewish Americans especially, will insist that Zionism terminate its unholy alliance with Christian fundamentalism? This alliance has always seemed to me to be the greatest madness and also the biggest obscenity in the continuing story of conflict in and over Palestine . Historically speaking, Christian fundamentalists were classic Jew haters on the grounds, they said, that the Jews were the “Christ killers”. So what explains Christian fundamentalism’s support for Israel right or wrong - support which today includes much of the money to fund Zionism’s on-going colonisation of the occupied West Bank ? The evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell gave this answer. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was the most crucial event in history since the ascension of Jesus to heaven and “proof that the second coming of Jesus Christ is nigh… Without a State of Israel in the Holy Land , there cannot be the second coming of Jesus Christ, nor can there be a Last Judgement, nor the End of the World.”. Another answer is that provided by Yakov M. Rabkin, the Jewish Canadian Professor of History at the University of Montreal . In his book A Threat From Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism, he writes: “The massive support extended to the State of Israel by millions of Christian supporters of Zionism is overtly motivated by a single consideration: that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land will be a prelude to their acceptance of Christ (when he returns) or, for those who fail to do so, to their physical destruction.” Simply stated, Christian fundamentalism’s only interest in the Zionist state of Israel is in assisting it to become the instrument for bringing about, as foretold by the Christian Bible, the end of the world in a final battle at Armageddon between the forces of good and evil. In this scenario the Jews will have a choice - either to junk their Judaism and become Christians, in which case they will be beamed up to heaven, or to be annihlated… It seems to me that there’s a case for saying that *Christian fundamentalism is, potentially, a far bigger threat to Jews and Judaism than all the Arabs and other Muslims of the world put together,* including a nuclear-armed Iran ! So why is Zionism in alliance with Christian fundamentalism? The short answer needs only two words - political expendiency. On its own and in its various manifestations, the Zionist (not Israel !) lobby is awesomely powerful. It is even more influential, in America especially, in association with Christian fundamentalism. In May 2002, the BBC’s admirable Stephen Sackur presented a remarkable radio documentary, A Lobby to Reckon With. It was honest, investigative journalism at its very best. The programme explained why it was no longer accurate to talk about the Zionist lobby (which in my view was wrongly called the Israel lobby) as the main influence on American policy for the Middle East . There was now a more powerful lobby, one that had been formed, effectively if not institutionally, by the Zionists joining forces with Christian fundamentalism. As Sackur observed, “It is an alliance of the two best organised networks in the U.S. ” Another way to put it would be to say that America’s elected representatives, almost all of them including their Presidents, are frightened of offending Zionism too much and sometimes at all, and terrified of offending Zionism in alliance with Christian fundamentalism. A truth about Zionism is that it’s always been ready, willing and able to use or be used by any power or interest when doing so advanced its own cause. It has never needed a spoon, long or short, to sup with the devil. Those who are familiar with the most intimate details of Zionism’s history know that in 1940 there was a Zionist offer to collaborate with Nazi Germany - to participate in the war on Germany ’s side and to assist the establishment of Hitler’s New (totalitarian) Order in Europe . To this day Zionism and all supporters of Israel right or wrong deny there was ever a Zionist proposal for collaboration with Nazi Germany, just as they deny Zionism’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948/49 and on-going; but 45 years after the offer was made in writing, Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel’s longest serving director of Military Intelligence, made the following observation about it in his book, Israel’s Fateful Hour: “Perhaps, for peace of mind, we ought to see this affair as an aberrant episode in Jewish history. Nevertheless, it should alert us to how far extremists may go in times of distress, and where their manias may lead.”. It could also that there was a financial consideration in Zionsm’s decision to use and be used by Christian fundamentalism. At some point in the future it’s not impossible that the more American and European Jews realise that Zionism is their enemy, the less they will be willing to pump money into the Zionist state.. In that event, Zionism may have calculated, it will need Christian fundamentalist money more than ever. I’ve never believed that enough Americans would be stupid enough to put Senator John McCain in the White House, and hopefully his better-late-than-never rejection of Hagee’s endorsement will guarantee his defeat. The only “end of times” I wish for is the termination of the unholy alliance between Christian fundamentalism and Zionism. Amen.