The Pope kisses the Qu'ran

"Here is a photo of the Pope at the end of an audience with Patriarch Raphael I of Iraq where "the Pope bowed to the Muslim holy book the Qu'ran presented to him by the delegation and kissed it as a sign of respect".

Elmer Gantry Alive and Well in America

	Elmer Gantry -- Alive and Well in America
	Religious fundamentalism's roots drive deep into American culture, but only now does Elmer Gantry's surreal ambition sit in the Oval Office. By Mike Reizman Some people have the knack for religion, others don’t. Sinclair Lewis, the author of Elmer Gantry, had the knack, though he wasn’t a “gospel-peddler,” just an obsessive researcher. In Kansas City, where Lewis did the most research for his book, he “not only preached to get the ‘real feeling,’ but investigated the practices of all the churches in the city.” So wrote Mark Schorer in his voluminous biography of the novelist, noting that Lewis’ “most useful ‘research,’ however, came from what he called -- and was widely publicized as -- ‘Sinclair Lewis’s Sunday School Class.’” This Sunday School Class was actually held on Thursday afternoons. Each week, 13 clergymen, a rabbi, and the head of the Rationalist Society, met in Lewis’s hotel room for an interrogation on a pre-selected religious topic. They all paid for their own lunches. Most of the time, Lewis was on the offensive, but “every now and then he would begin to preach in all sincerity, and then he would pause and say, ‘I have to stop this! I could have been a preacher.’” At their last meeting, Lewis proclaimed, “Boys, I’m going up to Minnesota, and write a novel about you. I’m going to give you hell, but I love every one of you.” If you haven’t seen the movie with Burt Lancaster, or read the book, Elmer Gantry is a preacher with a weakness for women and drink. He’s a self-centered scoundrel, yet not without charm (a great hand shaker). He’s a go-getter with an outsized capacity to preach. Elmer Gantry Was Drunk Garage sales are my bookstores. As a result, chance usually guides my reading. Elmer Gantry was a recent find. Uncannily, the book seems to draw forth its first line. I showed my old paperback to a few friends. Among those who had read it, every one said, “Elmer Gantry was drunk.” Try it. I suggest a double-blind study. Have the book shown to randomly selected individuals. It’s my guess that “Elmer Gantry was drunk” cannot help but come forth from almost everyone who has read the book. Elmer Gantry, God’s Cop In an interesting essay on Sinclair Lewis from 1930, the Italian poet, novelist, and translator, Cesare Pavese, declared that America is “a country, if ever there was one, of impertinent moralists.” Or put another way, there is Carl Sandburg’s description of the famous evangelist Billy Sunday as a “slimy bunkshooter.” In the later part of the novel, Sinclair Lewis’ bunkshooter has worked his way up the ecclesiastical ladder. Elmer is pastor of a Methodist church in Zenith, the fictional city Lewis first used in Babbitt. For publicity, he starts a crusade against vice. Gantry declares from the pulpit “that he could give the addresses and ownerships of sixteen brothels, eleven blind tigers, and two agencies for selling cocaine and heroin, along with an obscene private burlesque show so dreadful that he could only hint at the nature of its program.” He attacks the police for protecting the guilty. In a newspaper interview, the man of God proclaims that if the chief of police would only give him temporary police powers and a squad, he could find and close five dives in one evening “-- any evening save Sunday.” The chief of police relents. Elmer becomes a living recruiting poster for a livid mob, in a scene unfortunately not used in the movie: At least a thousand people were trying to get near the Central Police Station on the evening when a dozen armed policemen marched down the steps of the station-house and stood at attention, looking up at the door, awaiting their leader. He came out, the great Reverend Mr. Gantry, and stood posing on the steps, while the policemen saluted, the crowd cheered or sneered, and the press cameras went off in a fury of flashlight powder. He wore the gilt-encircled cap of a police lieutenant, with a lugubrious frock coat and black trousers, and under his arm he carried a Bible. After the vice raids, and the attendant publicity, the chief invites Elmer “to use a police squad at any time.” Elmer doesn’t bother with the offer, but he uses the notoriety to increase his influence and power. Finally, he becomes megalomaniacal. Prime Time Evangelicals On a steamer returning from Europe, his soul soars with a “Great Idea.” “He would combine in one association all the moral organizations in America -- perhaps, later, in the entire world. He would be the executive of that combination.” Elmer reasons that the combined organizations “would have such a treasury and such a membership that they would no longer have to coax Congress and the state legislatures into passing moral legislation, but in a quiet way they would merely state to the representatives of the people what they wanted, and get it.” It’s the Moral Majority, et. al. Yet in 1927, the year Elmer Gantry was published, evangelical Christians were starting to retreat from the public sphere. The current Christian right didn’t get going until the late 1970’s. Its ascendancy today probably has pulled all evangelicals into view. “We're Prime Time, Baby!” is the headline of a recent editorial in Christianity Today. Except in a few cases, it declares that “evangelicals can no longer complain about a media conspiracy against them. We're no longer overlooked, persecuted, discriminated against, and misquoted in the mainstream news media.” Elmer Gantry, of course, would have loved prime time television – especially, a planet-wide feed. While musing on his plans, he imagines his future role as “the super-president of the United States, and some day the dictator of the world.” (Roll over, Pat Robertson.) But his plans are almost tripped up by a sex scandal. On the last page, he’s on his knees sobbing in front of his cheering congregation. They believe in his innocence! He’s been saved through the shrewd efforts of his friend, the lawyer T.J. Riggs. Inwardly, Elmer pledges “utter purity and the prayer-life” to God. He turns to the choir. He sees the “charming ankles and lively eyes” of a new singer. Predictablely, the reverend, unchanged, decides to become “well acquainted” with her. Yet his thought is “so swift that it did not interrupt the paean of his prayer.” The book ends with Elmer’s prayer: “Let me count this day, Lord, as the beginning of a new and more vigorous life, as the beginning of a crusade for complete morality and the domination of the Christian church through all the land. Dear Lord, thy work is but begun! We shall yet make these United States a moral nation!” Yikes! Let us hope that crusade remains fictional. Buy this book! Click Here! Order the Elmer Gantry DVD Movie! Mike Reizman is a writer, photographer, and web-based bookseller based in California.

What Would Rick Say?

As an American running his bar in Casablanca during turbulent times, Rick managed to create a neutral oasis while being buffeted by the local authorities and political refugees. Hiding his social and political beliefs behind a cynical exterior, he didn't encourage controversy - especially in his Cafe. Remember his response to Major Strasser's political posturing in front of Rick and French Police Prefet Renault: "If you'll excuse me gentlemen, your business is politics, mine is running a saloon." But when political situations became significant in ways that touched him personally, he spoke up.
Rick also had a way of dealing with people that revealed the compassion and loyalty that were under his gruff exterior. Remember the young Bulgarian couple trying to buy exit visas and the young woman's entreaties to Rick for counsel - his response: "Take my advice, go back to Bulgaria." He then passes by the roulette table and through winks to the croupier ensures that the husband wins enough to buy the exit papers.

Rick's toughness and inherent idealism would be tested in today's environment. Rick chose an expatriate lifestyle (Captain Renault asks why: "Did you abscond with the church funds. Did you run off with a senator's wife? I'd like to think you killed a man, it's the romantic in me." "It's a combination of all three," Rick wryly replies.), and maybe it was because he could better appreciate the good of his country by living outside it than in. Contrarily, the negative aspects are more clearly revealed if one's vantage point is outside the U.S. - the perspective changes. It helps to access the international press to see more discussion about global warming, criticism of the vote to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge or the ramifications of controversial appointments to the U.N. and World Bank. Or something almost unheard of now in the U.S. - an investigative press exposing plans for the disposal of Iraq's oil reserves even before the 9/11 attacks.

The Bush administration has manipulated and in some cases paid the national press to achieve their objectives to the extent that it is not surprising to see the American people willingly distracted by baseball players testifying on steriod use, various celebrity trials or "reality TV" programs. The reality of substantive news and commentary is too grim for people to take.

Rick wouldn't have much patience with American escapism, though

as an expatriate, he'd be resigned to his inability to do much about it from so far away and as a lifelong liberal, he'd be accustomed to defeat. Still an optimist, he'd wonder what it was going to take to expose this dangerous agenda. He'd remember how long it took the U.S. to join the war against fascism during the time "Casablanca" was being filmed, and how long it took for the full implications and transgressions of Watergate to be taken seriously. How long will it be before there is a reaction against the extremist tendencies within the U.S.?

I know Rick would greet warmly all those Americans who found their way to his bar in Casablanca - just making the trip would open up new perspectives for visitors who might not otherwise have thought of the impact U.S. policies in Iraq and the greater Middle East have on other countries in the region. Rick tried to be cynical - "The problems of the world are not in my department" - but in the end he says to Ilsa, "I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." I think if Rick were here today he'd do his best to send visitors home inspired to tell the Rick's Café story to their friends and family as an illustration that the spirit of "Casablanca" is as true today as it was in 1942.


Kathy Kriger March 19 2005

London mayor says West fuelled Islamic radicalism

LONDON, July 20 (Reuters) - Western foreign policy has fuelled the Islamist radicalism behind the bomb attacks which killed more than 50 people in London, the British capital's mayor Ken Livingstone said on Wednesday.

Livingstone, who earned the nickname "Red Ken" for his left-wing views, won widespread praise for a defiant response which helped unite London after the bombings. But he has revived his reputation for courting controversy in recent days.

Asked on Wednesday what he thought had motivated the four suspected suicide bombers, Livingstone cited Western policy in the Middle East and early American backing for Osama bin Laden.

"A lot of young people see the double standards, they see what happens in (U.S. detention camp) Guantanamo Bay, and they just think that there isn't a just foreign policy," he said.

Police say they believe there is a clear link between bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the four British Muslims who blew up three underground trains and a double-decker bus on July 7.

"You've just had 80 years of Western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of a Western need for oil. We've propped up unsavoury governments, we've overthrown ones that we didn't consider sympathetic," Livingstone said.

"I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s ... the Americans recruited and trained Osama bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs, and set him off to kill the Russians to drive them out of Afghanistan.

"They didn't give any thought to the fact that once he'd done that, he might turn on his creators," he told BBC radio.

ANGER OVER IRAQ

Prime Minister Tony Blair's government has insisted the bombings have no link to its foreign policy, particularly its decision to invade Iraq alongside the United States.

But an opinion poll this week showed two-thirds of Britons see a connection between the Iraq war and the bombings. A top think tank and a leaked intelligence memo have also suggested the war has made Britain more of a target for terrorists.

That did not stop the right-wing Daily Telegraph castigating Livingstone, a maverick member of Blair's Labour party who was celebrating London's selection as host of the 2012 Olympics just hours before the bombers struck.

Wednesday's edition of the paper featured a picture of the mayor between photographs of two radical Muslim clerics under the headline: "The men who blame Britain".

Livingstone has made clear he condemns all killing, including suicide bombing. But is also a long-standing critic of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians.

"If you have been under foreign occupation, and denied the right to vote, denied the right to run your own affairs, often denied the right to work, for three generations, I suspect if it had happened here in England, we would have produced a lot of suicide bombers ourselves," he said on Wednesday.

Israel's ambassador to London Zvi Heifetz accused the mayor of expressing sympathy for Palestinian militants.

"It is outrageous that the same mayor who rightfully condemned the suicide bombing in London as `perverted faith', defends those who, under the same extremist banner, kill Israelis," he said in a statement.

The men who blame Britain

By George Jones, Political Editor
(Filed: 20/07/2005)

Critics of Tony Blair's policy in Iraq and Afghanistan claimed yesterday that Britain must share some of the responsibility for the Underground and bus bombings in London.

While moderate Muslim leaders agreed to try to dissuade disaffected youths from turning to terrorism, radical clerics blamed the Government - and even the public for re-electing Mr Blair - for making the country a target.

	Omar Bakri Mohammed: 'I blame the Government'

Mr Blair was forced on the defensive by the leaking of a top secret intelligence report saying that events in Iraq were fuelling "terrorist-related activity" in Britain, while an opinion poll found that two thirds of Britons thought there was a link between the London bombs and the Iraq war.

Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, suggested that decades of western intervention in the Middle East and the Iraq war could have influenced the bombers.

"I suspect the real problem was that we funded these people as long as they were killing Russians. We gave no thought to the fact that when they stopped killing Russians they might start killing us."

The suggestions that the Government and even the voters must share some of the blame angered Mr Blair and overshadowed talks at No 10 between representatives of the Muslim community and leaders of the main parties.

After what were described as "robust and frank" discussions, Muslim leaders agreed to set up a task force to confront radical clerics who were preaching extremism.

	Ken Livingstone: 'We funded these people'

Mr Blair told them it was time to defeat "this evil ideology" while Michael Howard, the Tory leader, said that Muslim leaders had to prevent "the merchants of evil" from influencing young people in their communities. But the Muslim leaders made clear their concern that the Iraq war could have played a part in radicalising young Muslims.

After the talks, Imam Ibrahim Mogra said that, as Muslims, they felt the "pain and suffering of our brothers and sisters around the globe every day". The war had been a "successful recruitment sergeant for people who wish to preach hatred for our country and our Government".

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, condemned the bombings as an "act of criminality" but said the leaders had made clear that Mr Blair could not "simply shun the issue of foreign policy".

Radical Muslims who did not take part in the talks said they would not be silenced by warnings of new legislation making it a crime to glorify or condone terrorism.

Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed said that support for America over Afghanistan and Iraq and the re-election of Mr Blair had all contributed to the attacks.

	Anjem Choudary: 'The real terrorists are the police'

"I blame the British Government, the British public and the Muslim community in the UK because they failed to make the extra effort to put an end to the cycle of bloodshed which started before 9/11 and on July 7 was devastating for everybody," he told the Evening Standard.

Anjem Choudary, the British leader of the militant Islamist group al-Muhajiroun, said that Muslim leaders should not meet Mr Blair for talks while Muslims were being "murdered" in Iraq.

Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, he declined to condemn the London bombings, which killed 56 people, and said there was "a very real possibility" of a repetition.

"The British Government wants to show that they are on the side of justice and of truth, whereas in reality the real terrorists are the British regime, and even the British police, who have tried to divide the Muslim community into moderates and extremists, whereas this classification doesn't exist in Islam."

Mr Blair used a press conference with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, at No 10 for separate talks, to dismiss the suggestions that Britain's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan had provoked the attacks.

"Of course these terrorists will use Iraq as an excuse," he said. "But let's be clear: if it wasn't that, it would be something else and nothing, but nothing, justifies what they are doing.

"They will use whatever is going on in foreign policy to justify what they do, whether it is Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine, or just generally the fact that Britain is an ally of America." The Prime Minister acknowledged that terrorists were trying to use Iraq as a recruiting tool and a justification for their atrocities but said that to accept that would be to give way to their "perverted logic". He denied that the war on terrorism was being lost but said it would take some time to win. Victory would depend as much on the force of democratic ideas as on military strength.

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George Bush the Pig

Jesusland

Deir Yassin Remembered

Novak "They came to me"

Columnist Names CIA Iraq Operative

By Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce
New York Newsday
July 21, 2003.

Washington -- The identity of an undercover CIA officer whose husband started the Iraq uranium intelligence controversy has been publicly revealed by a conservative Washington columnist citing "two senior administration officials."

Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday Monday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity -- at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak.

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's employment, said the release to the press of her relationship to him and even her maiden name was an attempt to intimidate others like him from talking about Bush administration intelligence failures.

"It's a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we'll take your family and drag them through the mud as well," he said in an interview.

It was Wilson who started the controversy that has engulfed the Bush administration by writing in the New York Times two weeks ago that he had traveled to Niger last year at the request of the CIA to investigate reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium there. Though he told the CIA and the State Department there was no basis to the report, the allegation was used anyway by President George W. Bush in his State of the Union speech in January.

Wilson and a retired CIA official said Monday that the "senior administration officials" who named Plame had, if their description of her employment was accurate, violated the law and may have endangered her career and possibly the lives of her contacts in foreign countries. Plame could not be reached for comment.

"When it gets to the point of an administration official acting to do career damage, and possibly actually endanger someone, that's mean, that's petty, it's irresponsible, and it ought to be sanctioned," said Frank Anderson, former CIA Near East Division chief.

A current intelligence official said that blowing the cover of an undercover officer could affect the officer's future assignments and put them and everyone they dealt with overseas in the past at risk.

"If what the two senior administration officials said is true," Wilson said carefully, "they will have compromised an entire career of networks, relationships and operations." What's more, it would mean that "this White House has taken an asset out of the" weapons of mass destruction fight, "not to mention putting at risk any contacts she might have had where the services are hostile."

Deputy White House Press Secretary Claire Buchan referred questions to a National Security Council spokesman who did not return phone calls last night.

"This might be seen as a smear on me and my reputation," Wilson said, "but what it really is is an attempt to keep anybody else from coming forward" to reveal similar intelligence lapses.

Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

Wilson and others said such a disclosure would be a violation of the law by the officials, not the columnist.

Novak reported that his "two senior administration officials" told him that it was Plame who suggested sending her husband, Wilson, to Niger.

A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.

But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. "They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can't figure out what it could be."

"We paid his air fare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you'd have to pay big bucks to go there," the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said he was reimbursed only for expenses.

Timothy Phelps is the Washington bureau chief.

Thank you Bush and your Filthy NeoCons

Mariam Ghassan, a three-month-old girl, is treated for injuries after one of the Baghdad bombs( PHOTO: MOHAMMMED URAIBI/AP)










Weekend of slaughter propels Iraq towards all-out civil war
From James Hider in Baghdad

Mariam Ghassan, a three-month-old girl, is treated for injuries after one of the Baghdad bombs( PHOTO: MOHAMMMED URAIBI/AP)


IRAQ is slipping into all-out civil war, a Shia leader declared yesterday, as a devastating onslaught of suicide bombers slaughtered more than 150 people, most of them Shias, around the capital at the weekend.

One bomber killed almost 100 people when he blew up a fuel tanker south of Baghdad, an attack aimed at snapping Shia patience and triggering the full-blown sectarian war that al-Qaeda has been trying to foment for almost two years.

Iraq’s security forces have been overwhelmed by the scale of the suicide bombings — 11 on Friday alone and many more over the weekend — ordered by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“What is truly happening, and what shall happen, is clear: a war against the Shias,” Sheikh Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a prominent Shia cleric and MP, told the Iraqi parliament.

Sheikh al-Saghir is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme Shia spiritual leader and moderate who has so far managed to restrain powerful Shia militias from undertaking any outright attack on Sunni insurgents. His warning suggests that the Shia leadership may be losing its grip over Shias who in private often call for an armed backlash against their Sunni assailants.

The sheikh also cautioned Sunni clerics supporting the insurgency against American forces and the Shia-Kurdish Government elected in January. “I am very keen to preserve the Sunni blood that would be shed due to the irrational acts of some of their leaders, who do not see that they are leading the country into civil war,” he told the national assembly.

On the streets of Baghdad, al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda organisation in Iraq unleashed one suicide bomber after another and promised no respite.

“The Hassan Ibrahim al-Zaidi attack continues for the second day in a row, with rigged cars, martyrdom attacks and clashes,” an al-Qaeda internet statement said. “We warn the enemies of God of more to come.” One of the suicide bombers, a Libyan, was arrested at the mass funerals of 32 Shia children killed last week by a car bomber.

But the worst attack occurred in the mixed town of Musaib, in the area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death, when a fuel tanker blew up in a crowded market near a mosque on Saturday evening. The death toll rose to 98 yesterday, making it one the deadliest attacks yet.

Relatives searched the shattered market for the body parts of missing loved ones. “I saw a lot of burnt bodies after the explosion and many people throwing their children from the windows and balconies because the buildings were on fire,” Ammar al-Qaragouli said.

Iraqi soldiers have set up checkpoints to try to rein in the bombers, only to become sitting ducks. Two dozen more people died yesterday in four suicide bombings targeting US and Iraqi security forces.

At least one desperate parliamentarian called for the population to form local militias to defend their neighbourhoods — a move that many see as prelude to a sectarian war.

“The plans of the Interior and Defence ministries to impose security in Iraq have failed to stop the terrorists. We need to bring back popular security committees,” Khudair al-Khuzai, a senior parliamentarian who claimed that 50 fellow MPs supported him, said. But with the streets of Baghdad seething with fear, anger and rumours of impending conflict, confidence in anything that the Government says has plummeted. A poll in the state-sponsored al-Sabah newspaper indicated that 51 per cent of Iraqis see the Government’s performance as weak, while only 32 per cent approved. Fuelling the sectarian tension, leaflets are being distributed in southern Baghdad threatening named Shia “collaborators” with execution. Increasingly hardline Shia militias, such as the outlawed Mahdi Army of the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, are patrolling large parts of Baghdad, often rounding up suspected Sunni insurgents and imprisoning or even killing them. With the country in turmoil, much of the Government, including Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shia Prime Minister, was on a landmark trip to try to repair relations with Iran, where President Khatami hailed a “turning point” in relations between the neighbours. He promised that his country would do all in its power to rebuild Iraq. But closer ties with Iran’s Shia theo- cracy has alarmed Iraqi Sunnis, who accuse Iran of interfering.

John Reid, the British Defence Secretary, told CNN yesterday that Britain could start to reduce its troop levels in Iraq over the next 12 months. He said that neither Britain nor America had any imperialist ambitions and were anxious that Iraqi forces should assume responsibility for security.

Mr Reid spoke as a report issued yesterday by Chatham House and the Economic and Social Research Council, two British think-tanks, said that British lives had been lost in Iraq and elsewhere because it was seen as “riding pillion” with the United States.

The Iraq war “gave a boost to the al-Qaeda network’s propaganda, recruitment and fundraising, caused a major split in the coalition, provided an ideal targeting and training area for al-Qaeda-linked terrorists and deflected resources and assistance that could have been used to . . . bring (Osama) bin Laden to justice,” it said.

72 HOURS OF VIOLENCE

Friday 10 suicide car bombers kill 26 people and wound more than 100 in apparently co-ordinated attacks on US and Iraqi forces

Saturday At least 107 people killed and 185 injured in 5 suicide bombings, including the fuel tanker explosion that left 98 dead

Sunday Bombers kill 19 and wound more than 14 in 4 suicide attacks around Baghdad

Hello People... We've been duped AGAIN !!!!
Why did Collin Powell suddenly quite?
Why has Dick Cheney not been seen or heard from since this shit hit the fan?

Are we that blind?


Dick Cheney ordered the Memorandum be made to answer questions He had about Wilson's trip to Africa. The Memorandum was produced as requested.

WHEN DID DICK GET THAT MEMORANDUM ???

Since we all know that Rove and Novak have been bed buddies since Georgie Senior's campaign. And it is a FACT that Rove was FIRED by George Senior for a COVERUP... Rove and Novak are one in the same just like Rove and Georgie are one in the same...


Collin Powell saw the Memorandum when flying to Africa with Georgie jr. Do you think for one minute, Collin Powell didn't already hate how he is being directed to mislead the American People for the purpose of the Administration's Grand Plan to go to War.

Now, if you are a PISSED OFF Collin Powell, do you think he stormed into Georgie's office, like IMMEDIATELY??? And since Georgie can't do squat without Karl moving his lips, Georgie gets his Brain on the phone to protect him from Collin's TIRADE..

Little did Karl know that Dick Cheney, upon seeing the memo, spoke with his pal Novak, and unintentionally (?) Dick Cheney leaked the contents of the Memorandum to Novak.

Novak then inturn called Rove and told Rove all about Plame and Wilson. Upon hearing this, Rove reacted with a statement that she is with the CIA.

Novak gets word that Wilson is preparing a Op-Ed to shoot down the President's statement to the American PEOPLE that we could be looking at MUSHROOM CLOUDS.

Upon hearing this from Novak, Rove then calls Novak back and directs Novak to unleash this information right after Wilson's article comes out in order to suppress the public's opinion of doubt on the President's reasoning for going to WAR.

Rove, in order to protect DICK Cheney, who originally leaked the Memorandum to Novak, then agrees with Dick, Georgie, and Novak, that he will take the fall on this situation and frame the scenario so that NO ONE SUSPECTS DICK CHENEY....

HELLO ????

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't DICK Cheney out to get the CIA just prior to going to WAR because they were not cooperating with Dick Cheney's beliefs???

HAS ANYONE SEEN DICK CHENEY ???

I want to hear your thoughts on this... Come on, think about it...

We know we are being played

Frankie
Long Beach, CA
Frankie | 07.17.05 - 3:21 pm | #

Rove-gate: Who Leaked to the Leakers? This isn't about Karl Rove

by Justin Raimondo

What if Karl Rove isn't guilty of knowingly leaking Valerie Plame's name as a covert CIA agent involved in nuclear proliferation issues? What if Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, is correct when he says that he's been assured by prosecutors that his client is not a target of the ongoing investigation into Plame-gate? I'm going to swim against the tide, here, and against the expectations of my readers, by suggesting that this investigation isn't about Rove – and, furthermore, that Rove is a victim, in an important sense, someone who was used and abused by the real culprits. And who are these mysterious culprits? We'll get to that in a moment, but first some background… One thing that has always struck me as odd about this whole affair – and I wasn't the only one – is a seemingly minor detail: why did Novak's original column, which started all this brouhaha, identify Valerie Plame by her maiden name? After all, most married women – even in this era of Women's Liberation – defer to the tradition of taking their husband's name, but I have to admit that, even after wondering about it for a brief moment, I shrugged and moved on. As it turns out, however, this is an important detail, because now we have Rove's lawyer saying that he at no time gave out Valerie Plame's name: but if Rove identified her as Joe Wilson's wife, what the heck is the difference? The difference is that, as Valerie Plame, Mrs. Wilson was affiliated with a CIA front company, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, engaged in tracking and stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons. As soon as her name was made public, the implications for U.S. national security amounted to a grave breach – far more of a crime than merely violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which has only had a single prosecution since its passage in 1982. As the Washington Post reported when the Plame scandal broke: "A former diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said yesterday that every foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities. 'That's why the agency is so sensitive about just publishing her name,' the former diplomat said." The publication of her maiden name not only endangered Valerie Wilson, but also blew the cover of a CIA front and imperiled anyone she might have come in contact with during her stint overseas. This isn't just a matter of of violating a statute that, at most, entails a 10-year jail sentence and a fine – this is a question of possible espionage. What also seems fairly clear is that Karl Rove would not have had direct knowledge of Plame-Wilson's covert activities on behalf of the CIA, and that only a very few people high up in the national security bureaucracy had the clearance to get access to her name. So who was it? If Rove leaked to Novak, and half a dozen Washington reporters, then who leaked to the leakers? This isn't about Rove. It's about a cabal of war hawks inside the administration who passed on this information to others without telling them about Plame-Wilson's deep cover status, perhaps suggesting that she was just an analyst working at a desk rather than a covert operative involved in a vitally important overseas operation, the knowledge of which was highly compartmentalized and only dispensed on a need-to-know basis. When Rove and his shills blabbed to reporters and anyone who would listen, they didn't realize that they were aiding and abetting an elaborate ploy to stick it to the CIA. Seen against the backdrop of the fierce intra-bureaucratic war that broke out in the administration in the run-up to the Iraq war – with the CIA and the mainline intelligence and diplomatic communities pitted against civilian neoconservatives in the upper echelons of the Pentagon and the Office of the Vice President – the outing of Plame and her colleagues amounts to an act of espionage committed out of a desire to exact revenge. The leakers meant to retaliate not just against Joe Wilson, through his wife, but against the "old guard" that was resisting the campaign to lie us into war. When the CIA wouldn't go along with the neocon program and "spice up" their analyses with Ahmed Chalabi's tall tales and the outright forgery of the Niger uranium documents, the War Party struck back at them with the sort of viciousness for which the neocons are rightly renowned. The neocons had a fix on their target; now the question was how to get someone else to pull the trigger. The leakers, in order to protect themselves, "laundered" the leak through journalists (Judith Miller, one of their favorite conduits) and Bush operatives – Rove. In his book, The Politics of Truth, Joe Wilson says as much: "Apparently, according to two journalist sources of mine, when Rove learned that he might have violated the law, he turned on Cheney and Libby and made it clear that he held them responsible for the problem they had created for the administration. The protracted silence on this topic from the White House masks considerable tension between the Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President. "The rumors swirling around Rove, Libby, and Abrams were so pervasive in Washington that the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, was obliged to address them in an October 2003 briefing, saying of Rove: 'The president knows he wasn't involved. … It's simply not true.' McClellan refused to be drawn into a similar direct denial of Libby's or Abrams's possible involvement, however." Suddenly, the complacent – and often complicit – American media seems to be waking up. Reporters are now publicly pillorying White House spokesman Scott McClellan: "QUESTION: You're in a bad spot here, Scott… "(LAUGHTER) "… because after the investigation began – after the criminal investigation was under way – you said, October 10th, 2003, 'I spoke with those individuals, Rove, Abrams and Libby. As I pointed out, those individuals assured me they were not involved in this,' from that podium. That's after the criminal investigation began. Now that Rove has essentially been caught red-handed peddling this information, all of a sudden you have respect for the sanctity of the criminal investigation. "MCCLELLAN: No, that's not a correct characterization. And I think you are well aware of that." Reporters who heard McClellan's assurances back in October 2003 weren't being deceived so much as lulled to sleep, and that really didn't take much of an effort on the part of the administration, now did it? They were basically asleep anyway, and weren't really listening to what was being said. Some people were paying attention, however, and taking notes, Joshua Marshall for one: "So, when McClellan was asked to be more clear, he opted for a meaninglessly vague statement and then fell back on the 'leaking of classified information' dodge. Can we all take note of this now? That denial wasn't what it seemed to be. In fact, I doubt it was a real denial at all. "There's more there. Why not find it?" Patrick J. "Bulldog" Fitzgerald is now in the process of finding it – and Rove is not his real quarry, although he and some others in the White House could wind up as collateral damage. By all indications, Bulldog's real target points more in the direction of the Office of the Vice President. Ambassador Wilson knows who his enemies are, and he pointed to them in his book and in an interview with Joe Conason in Salon: "Gleaned from all those crosscurrents of information, the most plausible scenario, and the one that I've heard most frequently from different sources, has been that there was a meeting in the middle of March 2003, chaired by either [Cheney's chief of staff] Scooter Libby or the vice president – but more frequently I've heard chaired by Scooter – at which a decision was made to get a 'work-up' on me. That meant getting as much information about me as they could: about my past, about my life, about my family. This, in and of itself, is abominable. Then that information was passed at the appropriate time to the White House Communications Office, and at some point a decision was made to go ahead and start to smear me, after my opinion piece appeared in the New York Times." "Salon: You mention two other names: John Hannah, who works in the Office of the Vice President, and David Wurmser, who is a special assistant to John Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control and national security. Last Wednesday, their names both appeared on a chart that accompanied an article in the New York Times about the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and the war cabal within the Bush administration. Did these people run an intelligence operation against you?" "Wilson: I don't know if it's the same unit, but it's very clear, from what I've heard, that the meeting in March 2003 led to an intelligence operation against my family and me. That's what a work-up is – to try to find everything you can about an American citizen." After the War Party met in solemn conclave, and the command went out from Cheney: "Bring me the head of Joe Wilson!", there was only one logical place for Cheney's minions to go. Who in the administration would've had access to the specific information regarding Plame-Wilson's role in a deep-cover CIA operation involving nuclear proliferation? Why, the man who was the State Department deputy secretary in charge of "weapons of mass destruction" – the somewhat irritable if not downright reckless John Bolton, would-be ambassador to the UN, who played a central role in promulgating the Niger Uranium Myth. Conveniently, two of Bolton's assistants, David Wurmser and John Hannah, also worked in Cheney's office. A story by UPI's Richard Sale, published last year, points at Cheney's office and specifically at Hannah as having played a key role in all this: "Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said. "According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, were the two Cheney employees. 'We believe that Hannah was the major player in this,' one federal law-enforcement officer said. … The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to Hannah 'that he faces a real possibility of doing jail time' as a way to pressure him to name superiors, one federal law-enforcement official said." Hannah is Cheney's Middle East policy point-man, and before that was director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). Middle East expert Juan Cole shines his reportorial flashlight on what's under that particular rock: "Libby and Hannah form part of a 13-man vice presidential advisory team, sort of a veep NSC [National Security Council], which helps underpin Cheney's dominance in the US foreign policy area. Hannah is a neoconservative and old cold warrior who is really more of a Soviet expert than a Middle East expert. But in the 90s he for a while headed up the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank that represents the interests of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC). Hannah is said to have been behind Cheney's and consequently Bush's support for refusing to deal with Yasser Arafat. But he was also deeply involved in getting up the Iraq war.…" The AIPAC connection should raise a red flag: AIPAC is already at the center of a case involving espionage conducted by Israel against the United States, with Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin indicted [.pdf] for passing classified information on to longtime AIPAC leader Steve Rosen and his aide Keith Weissman, with an Israeli embassy official, chief political officer Naor Gilon, directly involved. In both cases, which involve the unlawful dissemination of sensitive U.S. secrets, the defense is claiming that "everyone does it" and that the classified information they're accused of leaking – or, in AIPAC's case, directly handing over to the Israeli government – is supposedly "common knowledge." Treason is nothing to these people, because their real allegiance is not to the U.S., but to their own cause, which is perpetual war. Libby and Hannah were the enforcers who made sure that the lies put out by this administration to bamboozle us into war with Iraq were strictly adhered to within the government. Libby was a frequent visitor over at CIA headquarters, along with his boss, and, as Juan Cole writes: "[H]annah had fingers in all three rotten pies from which the worst intel came – Sharon's office in Israel, the Pentagon Office of Special Plans (for which Hannah served as a liaison to Cheney), and fraudster Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. Hannah had probably been the one who fed Cheney the Niger uranium story, triggering a Cheney request to the CIA to verify it and thence Joe Wilson's trip to Niamey in spring of 2002, where he found the story to be an absurd falsehood on the face of it." In short, Hannah was at the center of that vortex of deception that swept us into a disastrous war. When Ambassador Wilson came out with his famous debunking of the infamous "16 words," Hannah was well positioned to go after the heretic. If we look at the passing of this leak as we would a ball game, as "super smart commenter Sara" pointed out on Digby's blog, the probable trajectory of the ball as it makes its way to the goal goes something like this: "Bolton to Wurmser and Hannah, to Cheney (and/or Libby) to Rove." In this case, however, unlike soccer or basketball, possession of the ball is not an asset: according to the rules of this game, the last man holding it loses. I do not believe for a moment that this lengthy and increasingly controversial investigation is centered around alleged violations of a rarely invoked statute, incurring a penalty that hardly seems proportionate to the energy expended to get a conviction. It is extremely hard to prove that someone has violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act; there are all sorts of conditions and sub-clauses that provide a legal escape route for anyone so charged: that can't be what all this is about. If, however, Fitzgerald can prove there was a conspiracy inside the government to collect and selectively reveal classified information in order to crush political opponents, and shape U.S. policy, then the charges could be much more serious. By all accounts, the Plame investigation is said to be widening, and I would venture to say that by this time it is wide enough to include charges of espionage. The mere existence of a highly placed cabal that was engaged in collecting and utilizing highly sensitive information – a kind of intelligence bank that existed outside of normal governmental channels – would be of great interest to the FBI's counterintelligence unit, and word is out that they've been plenty busy lately. Who made withdrawals from this IntelligenceBank, and did any of these account holders include foreign governments – such as Iran, which received an intelligence treasure trove from neoconposter boy Ahmed Chalabi, and Israel, which is already under suspicion because of the Franklin affair, and has close links to several of the suspects in the Plame-gate investigation? And then there is the question of the Niger uranium forgeriesthemselves: who forged the documents that fooled a president? Wilson's exposure of the Niger uranium ploy angered whoever introduced those documents into the U.S. intelligence stream – it was Hannah and Libby, by all accounts, who fought to keep these allegations in the president's speech, in spite of opposition from the CIA and the State Department. The same crowd that pushed this phony intelligence must have known something about the murky origins of what turned out to be a crude forgery. Forging "evidence" that helped get us into a war – what are the penalties for that? The fast developing scandal seemingly centered around Rove and a few journalists has only begun to unfold. By the time it is over, we'll have the War Party – or, at the very least, a few high profile representatives – in the dock, and then the fun will really begin. So forget "Rove-gate" and get ready for "Cheney-gate." I'll gladly forgo the pleasure of seeing the president's chief political advisor frog-marched out of the White House for the prospect of seeing our vice president, along with his top staffers, led out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in handcuffs. –Justin Raimondo

Bush and his Turkey

Follow the Uranium

By FRANK RICH
New York Times

"I am saying that if anyone was involved in that type of activity which I referred to, they would not be working here."
- Ron Ziegler, press secretary to Richard Nixon, defending the presidential aide Dwight Chapin on Oct. 18, 1972. Chapin was convicted in April 1974 of perjury in connection with his relationship to the political saboteur Donald Segretti.

"Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the president. They wouldn't be working here at the White House if they didn't have the president's confidence."
- Scott McClellan, press secretary to George W. Bush, defending Karl Rove on Tuesday.

WELL, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because of Matt Cooper's e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove's own history. Trashing is in his nature, and bad things happen, usually through under-the-radar whispers, to decent people (and their wives) who get in his way. In the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain's wife, Cindy, was rumored to be a drug addict (and Senator McCain was rumored to be mentally unstable). In the 1994 Texas governor's race, Ann Richards found herself rumored to be a lesbian. The implication that Mr. Wilson was a John Kerry-ish girlie man beholden to his wife for his meal ticket is of a thematic piece with previous mud splattered on Rove political adversaries. The difference is that this time Mr. Rove got caught.

Even so, we shouldn't get hung up on him - or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.

To see the main plot, you must sweep away the subplots, starting with the Cooper e-mail. It has been brandished as a smoking gun by Bush bashers and as exculpatory evidence by Bush backers (Mr. Rove, you see, was just trying to ensure that Time had its facts straight). But no one knows what this e-mail means unless it's set against the avalanche of other evidence, most of it secret, including what Mr. Rove said in three appearances before the grand jury. Therein lies the rub, or at least whatever case might be made for perjury.

Another bogus subplot, long popular on the left, has it that Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, gave Mr. Novak a free pass out of ideological comradeship. But Mr. Fitzgerald, both young (44) and ambitious, has no record of Starr- or Ashcroft-style partisanship (his contempt for the press notwithstanding) or known proclivity for committing career suicide. What's most likely is that Mr. Novak, more of a common coward than the prince of darkness he fashions himself to be, found a way to spill some beans and avoid Judy Miller's fate. That the investigation has dragged on so long anyway is another indication of the expanded reach of the prosecutorial web.

Apparently this is finally beginning to dawn on Mr. Bush's fiercest defenders and on Mr. Bush himself. Hence, last week's erection of the stonewall manned by the almost poignantly clownish Mr. McClellan, who abruptly rendered inoperative his previous statements that any suspicions about Mr. Rove are "totally ridiculous." The morning after Mr. McClellan went mano a mano with his tormentors in the White House press room - "We've secretly replaced the White House press corps with actual reporters," observed Jon Stewart - the ardently pro-Bush New York Post ran only five paragraphs of a wire-service story on Page 12. That conspicuous burial of what was front-page news beyond Murdochland speaks loudly about the rising anxiety on the right. Since then, White House surrogates have been desperately babbling talking points attacking Joseph Wilson as a partisan and a liar.

These attacks, too, are red herrings. Let me reiterate: This case is not about Joseph Wilson. He is, in Alfred Hitchcock's parlance, a MacGuffin, which, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a particular event, object, factor, etc., initially presented as being of great significance to the story, but often having little actual importance for the plot as it develops." Mr. Wilson, his mission to Niger to check out Saddam's supposed attempts to secure uranium that might be used in nuclear weapons and even his wife's outing have as much to do with the real story here as Janet Leigh's theft of office cash has to do with the mayhem that ensues at the Bates Motel in "Psycho."

This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit - the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes - is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair.

So put aside Mr. Wilson's February 2002 trip to Africa. The plot that matters starts a month later, in March, and its omniscient author is Dick Cheney. It was Mr. Cheney (on CNN) who planted the idea that Saddam was "actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time." The vice president went on to repeat this charge in May on "Meet the Press," in three speeches in August and on "Meet the Press" yet again in September. Along the way the frightening word "uranium" was thrown into the mix.

By September the president was bandying about the u-word too at the United Nations and elsewhere, speaking of how Saddam needed only a softball-size helping of uranium to wreak Armageddon on America. But hardly had Mr. Bush done so than, offstage, out of view of us civilian spectators, the whole premise of this propaganda campaign was being challenged by forces with more official weight than Joseph Wilson. In October, the National Intelligence Estimate, distributed to Congress as it deliberated authorizing war, included the State Department's caveat that "claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa," made public in a British dossier, were "highly dubious." A C.I.A. assessment, sent to the White House that month, determined that "the evidence is weak" and "the Africa story is overblown."

AS if this weren't enough, a State Department intelligence analyst questioned the legitimacy of some mysterious documents that had surfaced in Italy that fall and were supposed proof of the Iraq-Niger uranium transaction. In fact, they were blatant forgeries. When Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said as much publicly in the days just before "shock and awe," his announcement made none of the three evening newscasts. The administration's apocalyptic uranium rhetoric, sprinkled with mushroom clouds, had been hammered incessantly for more than five months by then - not merely in the State of the Union address - and could not be dislodged. As scenarios go, this one was about as subtle as "Independence Day" and just as unstoppable a crowd-pleaser.

Once we were locked into the war, and no W.M.D.'s could be found, the original plot line was dropped with an alacrity that recalled the "Never mind!" with which Gilda Radner's Emily Litella used to end her misinformed Weekend Update commentaries on "Saturday Night Live." The administration began its dog-ate-my-homework cover-up, asserting that the various warning signs about the uranium claims were lost "in the bowels" of the bureaucracy or that it was all the C.I.A.'s fault or that it didn't matter anyway, because there were new, retroactive rationales to justify the war. But the administration knows how guilty it is. That's why it has so quickly trashed any insider who contradicts its story line about how we got to Iraq, starting with the former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill and the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke.

Next to White House courtiers of their rank, Mr. Wilson is at most a Rosencrantz or Guildenstern. The brief against the administration's drumbeat for war would be just as damning if he'd never gone to Africa. But by overreacting in panic to his single Op-Ed piece of two years ago, the White House has opened a Pandora's box it can't slam shut. Seasoned audiences of presidential scandal know that there's only one certainty ahead: the timing of a Karl Rove resignation. As always in this genre, the knight takes the fall at exactly that moment when it's essential to protect the king.

Gen U.S. Grant's 'War' On Jewish Civil War Carpetbaggers

REFERENCE:

OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS OF THE WAR OF THE REBELLION

(OFTEN REFERRED TO AS THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR)

COMFORMATION

THE INFAMOUS UNSCRUPULOUS AND UN-PRINCIPLED VULTURES KNOWN AS "CARPET-BEGGERS" THAT INVADED THE SOUTHERN STATES DURING AND AFTER THE CIVIL WAR WERE IN FACT JEWISH MERCHANTS.

*****************

THE

WAR OF THE REBELLION

A COMPILATION OF THE OFFICIAL RECORDS
OF THE UNION AND CONFEDERATE ARMIES

________


PREPARED, UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE SECRETARY OF WAR,

BY

Lieut. Col. ROBERT N. SCOTT, Third U.S. Artillery,

and

PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO ACT OF CONGRESS APPROVED JUNE 16, 1880.

SERIES I - VOLUME XVII - IN TWO PARTS.

PART II - CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.

[TOTAL OF 26 VOLUMES]

WASHINGTON:

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

1887

====

[CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. - UNION]

DOCUMENTATION:

49TH CONGRESS, }HOUSE OF REPRESESTATIVES. {Mis. Doc.

2d Session. } {No.53

===

WAR OF THE REBELLION

PAGE 330

QUOTE:

LA GRANGE, TENN., November 9, 1862.

Major-General HURLBUT, Jackson, Tenn. :

Refuse all permits to come south of Jackson for the Present. The Israelites especially should be kept out.

What troops have you now, exclusive of Stevenson's brigade ?

U. S. GRANT,

Major-General

===

PAGE 337

QUOTE:

LA GRANGE, TENN., November 10, 1862

General WEBSTER, Jackson, Tenn,:

Give orders to all the conductors on the road that no Jews are to be permitted to travel on the railroad southward from any point. They may go north and be encouraged in it; but they are such an intolerable nuisance that the department, must be purged of them.

U. S. GRANT,

Major-General.

===

PAGE 421-422

QUOTE:

HDQRS. THIRTEENTH A. C., Dept. of the TENN,.

Oxford, Miss., December 17, 1862

Hon. C. P. WOLCOTT,

Assistant Secretary of War, Washington, D. C..:

I have long since believed that in spite of all the vigilance that can be infused into post commanders, the speice regulations of the Treasury Department have been violated, and that mostly by the Jews and other unprincipled traders. So well satisfied have I been of this that I instructed the commanding officer at Columbus to refuse all permits to Jews to come South, and I have frequently had them expelled from the Department, but they come in with their carpet-sacks in spite of all that can be done to prevent it. The Jews seem to be privileged class that can travel everywhere. They will land at any wood-yard on the river and make their way through the country. If not permitted to buy cotton themselves they will act as agents for some one else, who will be at a military post with a Treasury permit to receive cotton and pay for it in gold.

There is but one way that I know of to reach this case; that is, for Government to buy all the cotton at a fixed rate and send it to Cairo, Saint Louis, or some other point to be sold. Then all traders (they

are a curse to the army) might be expelled.

U. S. GRANT,

Major-General

===

PAGE 424

QUOTE:

GENERAL ORDERS, } HDQRS. 13TH A. C., Dept. of the TENN.,

NO 11 } Holly Springs, December 17, 1862

The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.

Post commanders will see that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters.

No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application for trade permits.

By order of Maj. Gen. U. S. Grant:

JNO. A. RAWLINS,

Assistant Adjutant-General.