Warning! This is one of those diaries with just a couple of links and shamefully little content! But the content is juicy, I promise...see below!
It hasn't been mentioned much around here that John McCain's chief political advisor Charlie Black, lobbyist extraordinaire for over 20 years, and his firm Black, Manafort, is unparalled in his representation of the world's most savage and genocidal dictators.
As detailed brilliantly by Hilzoy yesterday here and here, Black, Manafort has represented everyone from Mobutu Sese Seko, the person most responsible for turning the largest country in Africa into a pit of blood these last few decades, to Ferdinand Marcos, infoplease's second most corrupt world dicator, with $5-10 billion stolen, to Mohamed Siad Barre, the 22-year dictator of Somalia whose genocidal, incompetent rule led to anarchic country depicted in "Black Hawk Down", to Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, dictator of Equatorial Guineau, who in addition to his killings and atrocious human rights record, has managed to steal most of the burgeoning oil wealth of this impoverished nation, and last but certainly not least, Jonas Savimbi, the bloodthirsty head of Angola rebel group UNITAS, who killed his political opponents by hand along with their children, who kept that country in a state of genocidal state of civil war for almost three decades and whose death a few year's ago was greeted with dancing in the streets in Angola's capitol.
Oh wait--I nearly forgot! Ahmed Chalabi, that wonderful fellow who helped lead us into war in Iraq--He too was represented by Charlie Black.
This is in addition to all of Black's corporate clients--The Blackwaters and Phillip Morrises and Chiquitas he also represents. All this looks like fair game to me--If we can look at a man's ex-pastor, we can look at a man's chief strategist, can't we?