Howard, Bush: War criminals

As you know, I don't follow Australian politics - or anything to do with Australia (although that will change for a few short weeks when Australia is playing in the World Cup in Germany in June) - but our own Little Hitler John Howard received the royal treatment in DC this past week - and I'm concerned that the mutual gushing portends an invasion of Iran.

I'm not sure if there's any other country that actually supports the invasion. I haven't got a read on where Tony Blair stands - although the jettisoning of Jack Straw suggests that Blair may play along.

Here is how one (of many) story (Murdoch) described the trip:

He was feted in Washington like no Australian leader before.

Howard, the Man of Steel, has displayed iron-willed resolve in support of Bush. He is Mr Reliable when so many others have waivered in support... Howard and Bush were positively gushing in their respective praise. While there is little political upside in being so close to the Bush administration, that does not deter Howard -- and he received the full presidential treatment on Wednesday night...

Nearly 100 of Washington's power elite attended, among them Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and US Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte... Rupert Murdoch sat between Janette Howard and Rice. This was the night that proved Australia, while Howard remains at the helm, will remain the Bush administration's strongest ally."

and another:

"US President George W. Bush, who treated the Prime Minister to an extravagant display of hospitality and backslapping during five days in Washington, says John W. Howard will stay on and outlast him.
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In Washington as a guest of the US President, Mr Howard has received royal treatment — literally.

His lavish ceremonial welcome to the White House, involving hundreds of military guards, a 19-gun salute, brass bands and trumpeters, is more usually given to the head of state of a country, not the prime minister.

The black-tie dinner at the White House in his honour was only the seventh hosted by Mr Bush.

And there was more pomp and ceremony when he was farewelled from the States and welcomed to Canada on Thursday.
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Mr Howard visited Donald Rumsfeld... He met new US Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke
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Much has been made of Mr Howard’s treatment in Washington this week — the wave from the Truman Balcony, the red carpet at the White House..."

disconcerting, huh?

Do they have photos of Howard fucking a goat? an ugly goat? Did Howard get treated to the Azerbaijani prostitutes? Wilkes' prostitution ring? Goss' other prostitute ring? The KGB prostitute ring?

Why did John Howard black-ball weapons-inspector / whistle-blower Rod Barton? :

"Old colleagues at the intelligence organisation have been warned not to have contact with him, not even social meetings. In one act of spectacular pettiness, at the insistence of the Prime Minister's staff, Barton and Gee were dropped from the guest list for last year's 20th anniversary meeting in Sydney of the Australia Group, a forum of intelligence specialists from 38 countries on chemical and biological weapons, which the two had helped set up in 1985."

Meantime, the US can't even get an ambassador in place in Australia. The ambassadorship has long been a plum position for Bush family cronies and the current toss-up is between a crony and a spy.

Bush 41 appointed uber-freak Mel Sembler to Australia (1989-1993). He is otherwise famous for being the ambassador in Italy when the Niger forgeries took hold, and the Franklin, Rhode, Ledeen, Ghorbanifar meetings took place, and for setting up the child-abuse factory STRAIGHT, and is now head of the SaveLibby campaign.

Bush 43 appointed Tom Schieffer, brother of Bob Schieffer, and partner in Bush's Texas Rangers, who served from July 2001 until February 2005 - and the slot has been vacant since then. The acting ambassador is career diplomat Bill Stanton - although he's on his way out.

Bush has nominated Robert McCallum - he's a skull&boneser from Bush's year at Yale. He's also famous for being a former tobacco industry lawyer who jagged a job as Acting US Deputy Attorney General when he 'negotiated' the surprise fine in the anti-racketeering case against tobacco companies of $10bn down from an expected $150bn. Dick Durbin has put a hold on the nomination.

In the meantime, Carol Rodley is going to be acting ambassador:

Ms Carol Rodley, who is the head of the USA State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. That department is the spy agency for America's diplomats. She has access to America's most tightly guarded secrets about Al Qaeda and the global war on terror. Ms Rodley's job will involve liaising with Australian intelligence and law enforcement officers on terrorist threats in Asia and to Australia. She is part of the inner circle of Washington's top spies

From a recent (May) speech in the Australian parliament:

Richard Armitage said that the length of time it has taken the United States Government to appoint a new ambassador to Australia is "unconscionable and unfortunate". Is that indicative of the level of regard the Bush administration has for Australia? Is that how John Howard's new best friend treats him? What high regard has the current USA regime has for its ally in the so-called "Global War on Terror"! Worse than that is the choice of a candidate for the job—an apologist for the tobacco industry who is under investigation by the USA Justice Department. Australia deserves better than a crony of big tobacco, with the alternative a spy.

Our civil liberties are being progressively trashed as our own spy agencies go into overdrive to keep us safe with our belligerent USA-driven foreign policy. It is frankly disappointing who are on offer as ambassadors, but the relationship between John Howard and George Bush is so close and so subservient that perhaps Americans think we are happy with it. Let them note: some of us are not!

On the reverse-commute, this from 12 months ago:

(Australia's) nation's top counterspy is now to be Ambassador to the world's most powerful country.

The Government has announced that the head of ASIO, Dennis Richardson, will move from his office in Canberra to the Australian Embassy in Washington.

The Foreign Affairs Minister has highlighted Mr Richardson's experience in national security, and says he'll be a highly effective Ambassador to the US.

I don't know whether the spy/ambassador career change is common.

Speaking of curious ambassadorships, fascist fruitcakes and war-mongers - Berlusconi sent an ambassador here in the late nineties - Dr Giovanni Castellaneta. Dr Castellaneta was in the news last week (kathleen & don discussed this the other day in the comments):

"Italian journalists and parliamentary investigators are hot on the trail of how pre-Iraq War Italian forged documents were delivered to the White House alleging that Saddam Hussein had obtained yellowcake uranium ore from Niger.

New links implicating Italian companies and individuals with then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi now raise the question of whether Berlusconi received a payback as part of the deal -- namely, a Pentagon contract to build the U.S. president's special fleet of helicopters.
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Two people -- Carlo Rossella and Giovanni Castellaneta -- are at the center of Italian inquiries into the transfer of the yellowcake dossier from the SISMI, the Italian intelligence agency, to the White House.
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A more direct connection to Berlusconi is Giovanni Castellaneta, current Italian ambassador to the United States and Berlusconi's former national security adviser.

According to La Repubblica, Nicola Pollari, the head of SISMI, tried to dispel the CIA's misgivings about the authenticity of the yellowcake papers and failed. Castellaneta then arranged for Pollari to bypass the CIA and meet directly with then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, Rice's chief deputy and currently national security advisor.
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As with the yellowcake dossier, the key figure in the Marine One contract is Gianni Castellaneta. When the Pentagon put the Marine One contract out for bid, Castellaneta was deputy chair of Finmeccanica and national security advisor to Prime Minister Berlusconi. By the time the contract was awarded, Castellaneta had been appointed Italy's ambassador to the United States.

Castellaneta proudly told U.S. Italia Weekly, "At noon President Bush received me for the official delivery of credentials. He didn't make me wait a single day. An exceptional courtesy."

Castellaneta's role in obtaining the Marine One contract has never been examined before, but according to Affari Italiani, Italy's first online daily, and disarmo.org, an Italian arms control advocacy group, Castellaneta has long managed the most sensitive dossiers in U.S.-Italian bilateral relations.
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"Castellaneta's double role as ambassador and corporate businessman has come under scrutiny at various junctures," says Carlo Bonini, an Italian journalist who has extensively investigated the yellowcake affair. "His duality has inspired animated debate in the Italian Parliament, but due to the absolute majority of seats held by Berlusconi, the matter could never be fully discussed."
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For Italians, the main question is whether Berlusconi personally profited from the helicopter deal. For Americans, the question is whether the Bush administration paid the Italians back for providing the false intelligence that helped justify launching the war in Iraq."

Dr Castellaneta apparently jumped from ambassador to Australia, to Berlusconi's diplomatic advisor, to the US ambassador - along the way, he was instrumental in delivering forged documents which started a war and was able to convince the USG to outsource the contract to build presidential helicopters to his own company. Surprise!:

Few industry observers expected the Rome-based company to win the contract, given the widespread expectation the White House would never allow a foreign-designed helicopter to serve as Marine One.

Along the way, Little Hitler Howard was jumping on the 'lets-kill-iraqis' bandwagon - and seems ready to jump on the 'lets-kill-iranians' bandwagon. Perhaps Castellaneta was SISMI when he was in Oz... Perhaps Castellaneta has the photos of Little Johnny with the goat(s)

Paul Thomson has two entries for Castellaneta :

(After October 18, 2001)

Nicolo Pollari, chief of SISMI, is reportedly disappointed with his attempts to communicate with US intelligence. (It is not clear from the reporting what exactly Pollari is dissappointed about. It has been interpreted to have meant that Pollari is disappointed about US intelligence’s refusal to take SISMI’s October 15 report seriously) Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had reportedly asked Pollari to establish closer relations with Washington.
According to La Repubblica, the prime minister’s diplomatic advisor, Gianni Castellaneta, advises Pollari to look in “other directions.” The Italian minister of defense, Antonio Martino, invites Pollari to meet with American neoconservative Michael Ledeen, which he does in December


September 9, 2002

Nicolo Pollari, chief of SISMI, Italy’s military intelligence service, meets briefly with US National Security Council officials.
Present at the meeting are National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice; her deputy, Stephen Hadley; and other US and Italian officials.
This meeting is not reported until 2005, when Italy’s La Repubblica reports that a meeting—arranged through a backchannel by Gianni Castellaneta, the Italian prime minister’s diplomatic advisor—took place between Pollari and Hadley on this date. The report is refuted by Italy which insists it was actually a short meeting between Pollari and Rice. Hadley, Italy says, was present but not really part of the meeting. The Bush administration also insists the meeting was of little importance. Frederick Jones, a National Security Council spokesman, describes the meeting as a courtesy call of 15 minutes or less. He also says, “No one present at that meeting has any recollection of yellowcake [Uranium oxide] being discussed or documents being provided.”

maybe it's all a tremendous coincidence - but i've been dealing with this stuff for 5 years - and i'm sick of coincidence theories. i still dont have a clue why 'we' invaded iraq - but it seems the same people crop up again and again.

murderous bastards.

i hate them all.

I haven't had a chance to look into the backgrounds of Australian ambassadors to Turkey - but i expect i'd find similar entanglements. messers grossman and edelman, i hope you are sleeping uncomfortably this evening. i've got my eye on you.

Messers bush and howard, same. hastert: you too. berlusconi, sleep with one eye open. sembler, rot in hell. Ledeen, Rice, Hadley - dont you rest either.

more to come.