Yesterday, Bink wrote:
Howard Dean, a long-time friend of this site, has appeared on a list of high-profile Washington Insiders who have been providing material support to an Iranian terrorist group in exchange for cold, hard cash.
I've been in Washington for nearly 30 years. While there are lots of politicians I can readily see exchanging their access for "cold, hard cash," (hello
Heath Shuler!) Howard Dean isn't one of them.
As Mark Twain allegedly said, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." In this case, the truth isn't nearly as interesting as the original story of politicians committing criminal acts.
According to Laura Goldman, who writes the Naked Philadelphian blog, she spoke to a source who was on calls with the State Department when it asked for help with MEK.
Writes Goldman:
This source, who is in a position to know, said, "Every week or two for the last three months, I have been on the calls with Ambassador Dan Fried, who was appointed by the State Department to deal with MEK, asking for our help in moving members of the MEK from the camp in Ashraf to Camp Liberty."
Ambassador Fried's official mandate within the State Department is to relocate Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
So what is the deal with the OFAC investigation of Ed Rendell? According to Goldman's source:
He suspects the Treasury Department subpoenaed Rendell now because of a looming State Department court deadline. For more than two years, the MEK has been suing in federal court to be removed from the terror watch list. The State Department has repeatedly delayed providing their explanation for keeping the MEK on the terror watch list or offered any evidence that they are still terrorists. The judge, fed up with the slow pace of their answers, insisted on a March 26 deadline.
Alan Dershowitz has filed a brief on behalf of the MEK. He has told Goldman that the situation at the camp is "a humanitarian disaster."
In late December 2011, Ashraf residents agreed to move to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base near Baghdad to be interviewed by the UN refugee agency as a prelude to their transfer to third countries. The conditions were little better than a ghetto:
With no running water, no electricity at night, vipers roaming free, no access to doctors or lawyers, and excrement from the broken sewage plant running around the dwellings like a stream, any comparison between Camp Liberty and hell was wholly appropriate.
The residential area of Liberty is surrounded by 4 meters-high concrete walls and Iraqi armed forces roam all over the area around the clock. The place fits the description for a prison perfectly.
Howard Dean's position has always been that
America must keep its word to the MEK.
Goldman's source believes that the pending court case will mandate that the State Department remove the MEK from the terror watch list in the United States, as has been done in European Union. The British and French governments also removed MEK from their watch lists.
Concludes Goldman:
If the MEK is soon removed from the terror watch list, all of the the recent media hullabaloo will have been naught. Rendell and the other politicians helping MEK will have been wrongly smeared.
If that is indeed the case, I hope Glenn Greenwald and everyone else who smeared Rendell, Dean and other politicians as "paid shills" devote as many column inches to apologies as they did to their accusations.
Thu Mar 15, 2012 at 9:24 AM PT: Documents that Show Rendell and MEK Politicos Are Being Slimed
Over at Naked Philadelphia blog, Laura Goldman has posted about documents she received that shed a different light on politicians helping MEK.
The first two documents are the American government promise of protection given to each individual MEK member if he disarmed.
The third document is a letter from Major General Miller, deputy commander of the multinational forces in Iraq, reiterating the US government promise that MEK members are protecting under the Geneva convention.
In her post yesterday, Goldman's source speculated that the OFAC investigation of Ed Rendell was timed because of a March 26 court of appeals deadline. Goldman has linked to the court order, quoting NCIS Special Agent Gibbs: "I don't believe in coincidences."
Read the documents at http://nakedphiladelphian.blogspot.com/...