Two more US soldiers, and two Iraqi children, died last night in Iraq. For what? A neo-con wet dream, nothing more...MEANWHILE, the Emperor still has no uniform...Despite the best (worst) efforts of the three blind mice (i.e., the "White House correspondents" from AnythingButSee, SeeBS and NotBeSeen), the release of records concerning the _resident's "service" in the
Alabama National Guard is producing some amazing material. For example, www.democrats. com reports the following: On 2-13-04, the White House changed one crucial AWOL document before releasing it to the media: they removed the name of Maj. James Bath from the order that grounded Bush. Bush and Bath were good friends, and it's possible they were grounded on the
same order because they were busted for the same alcohol or drug crime. In 1976, when Bush Sr. became head of the CIA, Bath became a CIA liason. In 1978, when Bush graduated from B-school and started his first business named Arbusto ("shrub"), Bath invested as much as $1 million from funds he managed on behalf of Salem bin Laden and Khalid bin Mahfouz. Salem was Osama's big brother, and died in a mysterious plane crash in Texas in 1988. bin Mahfouz, a powerful Saudi banker, was one of the largest stockholders in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. (Enter "James Bath" and "bin Mahfouz" in our search engine). Is the White House afraid we'll "connect the dots" between Bush, the Bin Laden family, and Saudi money dating back to 1978?
And that's one of several examples. No, it is not over.
MEANWHILE...Here's something from Sen. John F. Kerry's past that Ed Gillespie won't be twisting in any new hit piece...And yes, of course, the story is from America's best newspaper, the Guardian, published in the UK...
Guardian/UK: Kerry led the Senate's investigation into BCCI's multibillion dollar crash, and here's what he had to say: 'The Bank of England delayed unconscionably in closing BCCI, and millions of investors were hurt... It was negligent and costly... I'm saying very directly that the Bank of England had sufficient information in front of it to close BCCI 15 months earlier than it did.'
Damnable Washington insider!!!
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/economics/story/0,11268,1148264,00.html
Old Lady won't be keen on President Kerry
Conal Walsh on how the Democrat was a big critic over
BCCI
Sunday February 15, 2004
The Observer
If John Kerry, the Democrat from Massachussetts, gets
to the White House this November, they won't be
cheering his victory in Threadneedle Street.
He may be riding high in the US presidential race
today, but Kerry first came to Britain's attention as
the senator who accused the Bank of England of turning
a blind eye to fraud at BCCI.
Kerry led the Senate's investigation into BCCI's
multibillion-dollar crash, and here's what he had to
say: 'The Bank of England delayed unconscionably in
closing BCCI, and millions of investors were hurt...
It was negligent and costly... I'm saying very
directly that the Bank of England had sufficient
information in front of it to close BCCI 15 months
earlier than it did.'
That was back in 1992, and it's not something the Bank
needs to be reminded of. But Kerry is probably one of
the few people in the world who know the vast and
complex BCCI affair inside out. He is one of the Old
Lady's sharpest critics and, come New Year, he could
also be the world's most powerful man.
Which can hardly be comforting to the Bank as it seeks
to defend itself against a huge compensation action
brought by BCCI's victims at the High Court in London.
This began last month and will still be going on
beyond Kerry's likely endorsement as Democrat
candidate, and even, probably, beyond his showdown
with George W Bush.
At the time, the Bank tried to dismiss Kerry's
conclusions as 'extraordinary' and having 'no factual
basis'. But later it was also pilloried by the
official British report into the BCCI disaster, and
these days not even the Bank denies that it was at
fault. After all, it was financial regulator when the
London-based finance house collapsed in 1991 with £7
billion of undeclared debts - the biggest banking
fraud in history.
But the Bank strongly denies it was deliberately
negligent. This is the central claim made by BCCI's
creditors in the current London trial, and threatens
to overturn the Bank's legal immunity (as a Government
agency) from being sued.
Lawyers for the creditors, who are demanding damages
of £1bn, have spent the first few weeks of the trial
airing internal Bank memos. They seem to show that
Threadneedle Street long suspected BCCI's involvement
in a range of criminal activities, but chose not to
intervene - allegedly in the expectation that it could
shift responsibility for a messy scandal on to
regulators abroad.
Among the intelligence received by the Bank during the
Eighties were claims - later proved true - that Manuel
Noriega, the Panamanian dictator, and Abu Nidal's
terrorist organisation were using BCCI accounts to
launder money. Bank officials also had long-standing
doubts about BCCI's solvency, but apparently did not
step in.
Further questions are going to be asked about what
Ministers, civil servants and some of the City's top
institutions knew about BCCI before its meltdown.
Meanwhile, BCCI is fast becoming a fashionable subject
again in Washington, too, as the US media pore over
their would-be president's record.
Kerry spent almost two years leading the powerful
Foreign Relations Sub-committee's investigation of the
meltdown, memorably describing BCCI's activities as 'a
panoply of financial crimes limited only by the
imagination of its officers'. He damned the Bank in
his 800-page report, as well as Price Waterhouse,
BCCI's auditor.
Some commentators suggest Kerry 'went easy' at the
time on Clark Clifford, a prominent Democrat and
former US Defence Secretary with ties to BCCI. On the
other hand, one of the (unheeded) recommendations he
made in his report - that US authorities actively
pursue evidence that BCCI was being used to fund an
incipient Pakistani nuclear programme - now seems
prescient, given recent revelations about Pakistan's
role in nuclear proliferation.
Kerry plans to make a crackdown on banking secrecy and
tougher regulation a key component of his campaigning
rhetoric. For the Bank of England, that could yet mean
an unwanted role in America's presidential race.