Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been widely denounced for rampant corruption, including reportedly huge amounts of money funneled to his family and particularly his powerful brothers. Now, he has dispensed with any semblance of neutrality (and honesty) and has fired his most senior prosecutor Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar for his insistence on investigating corruption. The United States is in a poor position to criticize. Not only have we long turned a blind eye to billions stolen in corruption but it was recently revealed that the CIA is bribing various members of Karzai’s government.
Faqiryar claimed that Karzai had “obstructed investigations and prosecutions of 25 or more senior officials — including cabinet ministers, ambassadors and provincial governors.”
Recently, Karzai intervened to order the release of senior aide Mohammad Zia Salehi after he was arrested for soliciting a bribe to impede an American-backed investigation of a money-laundering company called New Ansari.
In the meantime, similar findings of rampant corruption and waste have been found in Iraq.
The only country that could force such reform is the United States, but we are now viewed as so hopelessly hypocritical on the issue that protestations would only produce international laughter. Thus, we continue to pour billions into the country because we need Karzai to claim the country is stable and a symbol of the success of democratic rule. It is enough to make John Gotti blush.
Source: Examiner
I’m thinking Batista, the dictator overthrown by Castro. There is a scene in the Godfather where he bids farewell to his dinner guests as the heads for the presidential airplane … uh oh.
Well aside from anything else the situation in Afghanistan is another argument in favor or naming the invasion of Iraq the most insanely stupid act by an American government since … Vietnam? Actually, Iraq was insaner and stupider, imho.
It’s just like Hitler on “the night of the long knives”.
(gratuitous Hitler comparison)
Blouise::=)))))))))))))))))
eniobob
1, August 30, 2010 at 12:13 pm
AY:
Not to put my self to far out there,I had a paper route at the time.:=))
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whippersnapper 😛
Media Troll,
“…I then woke up, what does that mean?”
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Bad pepperoni on that midnight pizza?
I had a dream last night and Dick was in it. He scared me, he came back to life. I was running. I was running for my life. I was scared. Then I stopped and looked back, everyone had a Nixon Mask on and I was in the Oval Office, the joint chiefs of staff were all present. The mantra was, I am not a crook, I am not a crook, I kept hearing this over and over. I then woke up, what does that mean?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejvyDn1TPr8&fs=1&hl=en_US]
Buddha,
Funny clip!
**********
The comments here evoke some of my fondest memories of Tricky Dick!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh163n1lJ4M&fs=1&hl=en_US]
AY:
Not to put my self to far out there,I had a paper route at the time.:=))
For his next impersonation, Karzai is going to pretend to be a legitimate ruler . . .
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lj056ao6GE&fs=1&hl=en_US]
AY,
lol
Damn, I was either too young or too stoned..it was the 70’s after all……I don’t recall….
The Saturday Night Massacre was the term given by political commentators[1] to U.S. President Richard Nixon’s executive dismissal of independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus on October 20, 1973 during the Watergate scandal.[2]
Richardson appointed Cox in May of that year, after having given assurances to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he would appoint an independent counsel to investigate the events surrounding the Watergate break-in of June 17, 1972. Cox subsequently issued a subpoena to President Nixon, asking for copies of taped conversations recorded in the Oval Office and authorized by Nixon as evidence. The president initially refused to comply with the subpoena, but on October 19, 1973, he offered what was later known as the Stennis Compromise—asking U.S. Senator John C. Stennis to review and summarize the tapes for the special prosecutor’s office.
Mindful that Stennis was famously hard-of-hearing, Cox refused the compromise that same evening, and it was believed that there would be a short rest in the legal maneuvering while government offices were closed for the weekend. However, President Nixon acted to dismiss Cox from his office the next night—a Saturday. He contacted Attorney General Richardson and ordered him to fire the special prosecutor. Richardson refused, and instead resigned in protest. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General Ruckelshaus to fire Cox; he also refused and resigned in protest.
Nixon then contacted the Solicitor General, Robert Bork, and ordered him as acting head of the Justice Department to fire Cox. Richardson and Ruckelshaus had both personally assured the congressional committee overseeing the special prosecutor investigation that they would not interfere—Bork had made no such assurance to the committee. Bork also felt that the order was legal and appropriate. Thus, Bork complied with Nixon’s order and fired Cox. Initially, the White House claimed to have fired Ruckelshaus, but as The Washington Post article written the next day pointed out, “The letter from the President to Bork also said Ruckelshaus resigned.”
Congress was infuriated by the act, which was seen as a gross abuse of presidential power. In the days that followed, numerous resolutions of impeachment against the president were introduced in Congress. Nixon defended his actions in a famous press conference on November 17, 1973, in which he stated,
“…[I]n all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I can say that in my years of public life that I’ve welcomed this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their President’s a crook. Well, I’m not a crook! I’ve earned everything I’ve got.”[3]
Nixon’s presidency would later succumb to mounting pressure resulting from the Watergate scandal and its coverup. In the face of the, by then, certain threat of removal from office through impeachment and conviction, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.
The now expired Independent Counsel Act of 1978 was a direct result of the Saturday Night Massacre.
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)
Blouise:
Touche!
Can still remember that headline.
As Prof. Turley might say, res ipsa loquitur.
Didn’t Nixon do the same thing? I think it was called the Saturday Night Massacre.
And we complain about Venezuela….oh and there’s oil there too…damn coincidence….