[NYTr] Bush and Posada have a buddy in Congress: Dana Rohrabacher, Terrorists' Pal Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2007 00:55:22 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Granma International - Nov 30, 2007 http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/noviembre/vier30/48dana-i.html Bush and Posada have a buddy in the Congress hearings BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD Granma International staff writer DANA Rohrabacher, (R-California), the Republican congressman who denigrated witnesses documenting Luis Posada Carrilesb participation in acts of terrorism during the Congressional hearing on his crimes, is a personal friend and fanatic follower of Oliver North, Posadabs ex-boss when he was trafficking arms for drugs in the Salvadoran airbase of Ilopango, under instructions from the CIA. Rohrabacher described former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier, assassinated in the heart of Washington on Pinochetbs orders, as a "Castro agent." He later added that during the cold war the rules were different: assassinating agents of enemy countries was justifiable, thus preparing a way out for Posada Carriles. In his attempt to weaken testimony that might incriminate the international terrorist, the distinguished representative of the Republican Party, a personal friend of Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, failed to mention his links with North and the CIA connection that provoked the ill-named Iran-Contra scandal. Rohrabacher, who spent his youth surfing on Californian beaches, transformed himself from a beach bum into a speech writer for Ronald Reagan. "WE HAVE PEOPLE TO TAKE CARE OF THESE THINGS" Ten years after his seven in the service of that administration, he recalled at a $150-a head banquet dedicated to Oliver North, how he knew the shamed officer, the executor of the most diabolical plans of George Bush Sr., then vice president. "He was just a guy who worked on the upper floor of the White House. We always knew that he toured the whole world doing crazy things.... We had no idea what he did! I remember how, at some point, I went to Ollie during the Contra war to ask him: bWhat can I do to help?b He made a number of suggestions (none of them even close to the legal line), but added: bYou donbt have to do it, we have people to take care of these things,b" the politico from Huntingdon, California related. When the Reagan regime was over, he took advantage of his relationships to get himself a seat in Congress in 1998... using North as the star for collecting his election campaign funds. Rohrabacher is so enthusiastic about "Ollie" North and the gross illegality of his methods, that he recently became a defender of Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater, the U.S. company that hires out thousands of mercenaries and murderers to the U.S. government for its continued occupation of Iraq. Prince is on the way to becoming a U.S. hero like Oliver North was," he said. By chance, Prince was also a buddy from the White House years. SPONSOR OF THE HELMS-BURTON ACT A great admirer of Jesse Helms, Rohrabacher was one of the co-sponsors of the Helms-Burton Act. Inspired by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln DC-az-Balart, Cuban-American congress members of terrorist descent, he never missed a chance to attack Cuba, especially through lies and slander, clearly a specialty he honed in his time at Reaganbs side. In 1999 he even repeated in Congress that China controlled Panama thanks to the aid of "Castro agents" (a bit obsessive?), and, in 2001, he unsuccessfully tried to create a scandal around China which -- according to his highly personal theory -- was supplying weapons to Cuba. Like Mario DC-az-Balart, he continues to defend Jack Abramoff and his misdeeds. In 2000, that scandalously corrupt character used him as a bank reference for buying the Miami SunCruz Casinos. PROPOSING BAN ON FAMILY REMITTANCES Rohrabacher is in himself a collection of the barbarities of the U.S. ultra-right, a man who is in the habit of recalling, not only in tone but appearance, another of his heroes and predecessors, Senator Joe McCarthy. He hates immigrants with a neo-fascist conviction. He was one of those demanding a wall on the border with Mexico; he urges handing over illegal immigrants needing hospital treatment; he proposes that undocumented people not be attended to in emergencies; and has even gone so far as to suggest an absolute ban on sending remittances abroad, a measure that would mean the instant ruin of a number of Central American countries. In addition to being profoundly racist, he is against abortion, attacks sexual minorities, defends possession of firearms, systematically favors U.S. military interventions in the world, and made himself the champion of war "by all means" against terrorism. He is one of the most ardent advocates of the "surrender" of prisoners kidnapped in various countries and transported to indulgent nations in CIA secret flights to be tortured. He is, of course, against any measure in favor of the environment. With his highly particular sense of humor, he joked in a Congressional session on this issue that global warming is provoked by carbon dioxide emissions entering the atmosphere on account of "dinosaur flatulence." That is the personality of the buddy of the Bush clan and the Miami mafia in the Congressional hearing on Posada Carriles, now that the so-called anti-terrorist judges have put the legal proceedings against this criminal to sleep in El Paso and the grand jury investigation in New Jersey seems to have evaporated. North recruited him; the DEA has a file on him IN 1985, shortly after escaping from the Venezuelan jail where he was being held for the sabotage a Cubana passenger plane, Luis Posada Carriles was recruited as logistics chief of the diabolical machinations via which FC)lix RodrC-guez MendigutC-a -- a CIA operative who had ordered the assassination of Ernesto Che Guevara in 1967 -- filled Northbs orders to supply the Nicaraguan counterrevolution with weapons. All of this with funding obtained from highly illegal operations and in violation of an explicit ban on the part of the U.S. Congress. During the whole of that period, the old CIA collaborator directed the maneuvers of a fleet of aircraft from the Ilopango airport in El Salvador, paying the crews with bags of cash from Miami, and supervised the secret arms and drugs store. On October 5, 1986, when one of Posadabs light aircraft, piloted by Eugene Hasenfus, was brought down and the illegal operation was revealed to the U.S. public, it was Posada who removed all traces of the giant conspiracy. Celerino Castillo, an agent from the Drug Enforcement Agency, later testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee that his informants had seen stores of drugs, weapons and money in the Ilopango base. He also stated that many of the Nicaraguan Contra pilots, the beneficiaries of the clandestine operation, were on file as drug traffickers. * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us Our main website: http://www.blythe.org List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr =================================================================