THE PIMPS OF K STREET

"But the kingpin of Turkish advocacy is Bob Livingston, whose lobbying firm, the Livingston Group, has hauled in roughly $13 million in Turkish lucre since 2000."
~ Michael Crowley.

In comments the other day, someone dropped off a link to a great video produced by the Armenian National Committee of America. I wished that the video were available through YouTube so that I could embed it here. Today, I received an email which contained a link to the video on YouTube, so I am carrying the video here.

Along with the video was a link to an article from The New Republic by Micheal Crowley which discusses Washington's illustrious red-light district, known in "polite" society as "K Street." That's K Street, as in the center of power for the American lobby industry,and Crowley's article looks at the lobby industry through the lens of the Armenian Genocide. As an intro to the video, let's look at a part of that article, a part which deals with the rat you will see in the video:

With Rogan's [Jim, R-CA] seat on the line in 2000, a first-ever vote on a genocide resolution seemed a sure thing--that is, until the Turkish government mobilized its lobbying team, led by former Republican House Speaker Bob Livingston, its $700,000 man in the field. In a state of affairs one furious Republican described to Roll Call as "ridiculous," Livingston found himself battling a measure meant to protect the very House majority he had briefly presided over just two years earlier. A Turkish threat to cancel military contracts, including a $4.5 billion helicopter deal with a Fort Worth-based company, ensured the opposition of powerful Texas Republicans like Tom DeLay. Hastert was cornered. But he found cover in Bill Clinton, who warned that Turkey might shut down its American-run Incirlik air base, from which the United States patrolled the no-fly zone over northern Iraq. Citing Clinton's objections, Hastert pulled the bill. Rogan tried to accuse Clinton of playing politics, and someone sent out a last-minute mailer featuring Schiff next to a Turkish flag. But it wasn't enough, and Schiff beat Rogan by nine percentage points.

The "Fort Worth-based" helicopter company would be Bell Helicopter Textron, whose employees helped to murder Kurdish civilians throughout the 1990s. And let's not forget that Bill Clinton (whose wife is now campaigning to become the Democratic nominee for the US presidency courtesy of Turkish Deep State campaign funds) provided more weapons, including illegal weapons transfers, to Turkey than any other administration in US history.

Turkey, in turn, used those American weapons to commit gross human rights abuses and violations of the laws of warfare against its Kurdish population. Along with that is the fact that US and UK sorties leaving Incirlik to protect the Kurdish people of South Kurdistan, ostensibly, were always called off by the Turkish general staff when they wanted to conduct their own sorties against the very same Kurdish people the US and UK were supposed to be protecting. Aircraft supplied courtesy of Bill Clinton and Lockheed Martin and paid for, in most part, by the US taxpayer.

In other words, the Clintons and their administration lackeys are guilty of the crime of genocide.

And speaking of Clinton lackeys, the article at TNR brings up the subject of Dick Gephardt, former "Young Turk"--his own label--and supporter of the Armenian Genocide Resolution back in the year 2000, who's become a pimp for Turkey in the same mold as Livingston:

A RISING St. Louis politician in the mid-1970s, Richard Gephardt was among a dynamic group of aldermen dubbed "The Young Turks." So perhaps it's not surprising that, 30 years later, the former Democratic minority leader of the House of Representatives has aged into an Old Turk. This spring, Gephardt has been busy promoting his new favorite cause--not universal health care or Iraq, but the Republic of Turkey, which now pays his lobbying firm, DLA Piper, $100,000 per month for his services. Thus far, Gephardt's achievements have included arranging high-level meetings for Turkish dignitaries, among them one between members of the Turkish parliament and House Democratic leaders James Clyburn and Rahm Emanuel; helping Turkey's U.S. ambassador win an audience with a skeptical Nancy Pelosi; and, finally, circulating a slim paperback volume, titled "An Appeal to Reason," that denies the existence of the Armenian genocide of 1915.

[ . . . ]

Even more striking than the historic Turkish-Armenian hatred festering in the halls of Congress, however, is the way Washington's political elites are cashing in on it. Take Gephardt. While the Turks and Armenians have a long historical memory, Gephardt has an exceedingly short one. A few years ago, he was a working-class populist who cast himself as a tribune of the underdog--including the Armenians. Back in 1998, Gephardt attended a memorial event hosted by the Armenian National Committee of America at which, according to a spokeswoman for the group, "he spoke about the importance of recognizing the genocide." Two years later, Gephardt was one of three House Democrats who co-signed a letter to then House Speaker Dennis Hastert urging Hastert to schedule an immediate vote on a genocide resolution. "We implore you," the letter read, arguing that Armenian-Americans "have waited long enough for Congress to recognize the horrible genocide." Today, few people are doing more than Gephardt to ensure that the genocide bill goes nowhere.

It's Gephardt's DLA Piper connection that links him to some of the worst monsters of the Clinton bureaucracy because DLA Piper is the legal partner of The Cohen Group. The Cohen Group was founded by Clinton's defense secretary, William Cohen, while two other former Clinton bureaucratic lapdogs help run the show--former NATO chief and current Lockheed Martin PKK Coordinator Joseph Ralston and former ambassador to Turkey, the slimy Marc Grossman.

You can read the entire The New Republic article here.

Now, on to the show. By the way, did you know that Livingston had to resign his place in the House of Representatives for adultery? Well, now you do know.