Talkingpointsmemo's Josh Marshall: Do Your Job. Stop Ignoring Randy Scheunemann's Past

[flpoljunkie]

Thank you, Josh Marshall. You join an elite group of journalists 'doing their job'--writing about Randy Scheunemann--WaPo's Peter Slevin and MSNBC'S Keith Olbermann.

Do Your Job: Stop Ignoring Scheunemann's Past

07.14.08 -- 1:03PM

By Josh Marshall

As you can see, the McCain campaign is moving ahead with a new stab-in-the-back style attack on Obama over Iraq. But as Team McCain is raising the volume on these slash-and-burn style attacks, it's time for some coverage of the guy who's McCain's brain on Iraq. Remember, McCain's pitch on Iraq is that he was a critic of Bush, not a supporter, on the poor decisions and lies that got us into the current mess. In the McCain paradigm, he starts fresh with the 'surge'. That's where he takes ownership, as it were, of Iraq.

But look who's advising him on Iraq, who's crafting Iraq policy. That would be Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign policy advisor. And he's the guy who today accused Barack Obama of wanting to lead America to defeat in Iraq for political gain.

Scheunemann was a core participant in the lobbying, plotting and organized campaigns of deception that led America to war in Iraq. He was a close collaborator with Ahmad Chalabi through the 1990s. He helped draft the Iraq Liberation Act, which created the new funding stream for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. At the start of the Bush administration he signed on as Don Rumsfeld's 'consultant' on Iraq at the Pentagon. And then when the administration started cranking up the machinery for the propaganda campaign in favor of war he went back on the outside to form and lead the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, to lead the press and lobbying campaign to make sure the war got started on schedule.

Remember, US intelligence later found evidence that Chalabi, in addition to foisting a bunch of bogus intelligence and lying informers on the US and pocketing a lot of US taxpayer dollars, had provided highly classified US intelligence to Iran. Scheunemann worked closely with Chalabi for years in his efforts to get the US into war with Iraq. He was also a go-between between Chalabi and McCain. Now that he's taking such a high-profile role on the Iraq issue in the 2008, Scheunemann's history with Chalabi and the use of bogus intelligence to get the nation into war is unquestionably highly newsworthy.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/203960.php

[Hope And Change]

1. K & R!

[flpoljunkie]

2. Thanks, Hope and Change! We need to hammer this!

[blogslut]

3. I'm trying, Josh!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6370317&mesg_id=6370317

[flpoljunkie]

5. Yes, you are! I chimed in to your terrific post about Scheunemann and the CLI.

[blogslut]

10. Yes you did!

I'm still working on a follow up post to that. Goes a lil' further back ;)

[scarletwoman]

4. k&r -- This merits much more attention! (nt)

[flpoljunkie]

6. Yes, it does! Thank you, scarletwoman.

[scarletwoman]

7. You're welcome! (see? I get to kick it again)

:D

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. Recommended. It shouldn't be too much to expect the news media to report the news.

[flpoljunkie]

11. Sadly, in this country, it is.

[depakid]

15. Which is why if the campaign and its surrogates don't do it

and do it loudly and repeatedly, it won't get done.

Hopefully, tha lesson's been learned from the Kerry and Gore campaign. We shall see.

[mod mom]

9. Thanks to Josh. We need to expose the PNACers including the Dems who sided w them.

I was happily surprised to see TPM and HuffPo call out Evan Bayh on his connection to the neocons:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/204355.php

[flpoljunkie]

12. Yes, Bayh and Lieberman were honorary Co-Chairs. McCain was a Co-Chair of the CLI.

Thank you for your post.

[MarjorieG]

13. And let's not forget Gramm. Gone, maybe, but trust in Gramm says a lot about economy ideas.

[flpoljunkie]

14. Ah, Phil 'Enron Loophole' Gramm whose also helped bring us the current subprime meltdown.

In 1999, former Senator Phil Gramm (who is, incidentally, Senator John McCain's economic adviser and cochairs his presidential campaign) set out to completely gut the Glass-Steagall Act, and did so successfully, replacing most of its components with the new Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act: allowing commercial banks, investment banks, and insurers to merge (which would have violated antitrust laws under Glass-Steagall). Sen. Gramm was the driving force behind the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, as he had received over $4.6 million from the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate donations) over the previous decade, and once the Act passed, an influx of "megamergers" took place among banks and insurance and securities companies, as if they had been eagerly awaiting the passage of Gramm's Act. Everything in between Glass-Steagall and Gramm-Leach-Bliley (i.e. Savings and Loan crisis/bust) was, in large part, the incubation period for what would take place over the nine years that would follow the passage of Gramm's Act: an experiment in deregulation.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3613212&mesg_id=3613931