SINGING FOR THE PAŞAS

"He [Şemdin Sakık] was not a big leader, but a peasants’s gang chief. For ten years he has behaved this way. We did not bring him forward. Since 1993 it has been the Turks’ plan to propel him centre stage. Even the French secret services warned us that important sums of money ended up in his pockets."
~ Abdullah Öcalan.

Hevallo has a post from last Friday on the Council of Europe's call for an end to the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan. He's included a link to the CoE's report.

He's also posted this familiar photo, the one photo that we've seen of Öcalan's cell. Then there's more description of Öcalan's prison conditions, from the translator's introduction to Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilization:

Ocalan inhabits a cell of 13 square metres equipped with a single frosted-glass window, which can only be be opened a finger's breadth. Fresh air is provided by air-conditioning. The cell is located in a two-storey building with special safeguards. There is a toilet and washing facility in the room. The cell is subject to 24-hour surveillance by camera and peephole by a team of carefully selected Turkish military officers, who are regularly rotated.

The cell is illuminated 24 hours a day, causing the prisoner severe sleep problems. In general, Ocalan is permitted to see his lawyers for one hour once a week in a room adjacent to his cell. These visits are often arbitrarily postponed or cancelled, resulting in complete week-long isolation.

Ocalan's closest relatives are permitted to see him once a month for one hour. They may only see him through a glass partition and speak to him by means of a telephone. Twice a day he is allowed to leave his cell for a one-hour walk in the yard. This yard is about 40 square metres in size; it is surfaced with gravel and surrounded by high walls surmounted with barbed wire.

Contact with the outside world, including access to information, has been reduced to an absolute minimum. Ocalan has no television, and the books and papers supplied by his lawyers are often handed over to him only in part and sometimes not at all. His mail is censored, and he is not allowed to answer any letters. He is allowed no more than three books at a time. His single source of up-to-date information is a radio, which only receives the state-run Turkish channel TRT.

This is the official picture of Öcalan's prison conditions, of Turkey's so-called premier "terrorist."

On the other hand, we have the example of Şemdin Sakık's imprisonment. Sakık was the PKK commander who disobeyed Öcalan's orders and killed 33 off-duty Turkish troops in 1993 ending a PKK ceasefire. Sakık ran from PKK in 1998 and sought refuge with the KDP, who turned him over to the Ankara regime, along with his brother.

After his imprisonment, Sakık began to sing the TSK's tune like a canary. Those who attempted to assasinate Akın Birdal claimed to be inspired to do so by Sakık's false accusations against Birdal, which were vigorously promoted by the irresponsible Turkish media. Sakık also claimed that PKK carried out the assassination of Swedish politician Olof Palme. Turkish journalists Cengiz Çandar and Mehmet Ali Birand were fired from Sabah on the basis of Sakık's "confessions"; they were allegedly taking bribes from the PKK in exchange for promoting the freedom movement.

Sakık was considered Turkey's number 2 terrorist.

Sakık began to write books for the Paşas.

Nowadays, Sakık has his own laptop and website, where you can see a flash player photo gallery of his spacious digs. You can register at his site. You can leave comments. You can read his books online at semdinsakikweb(dot)com.

See how nicely the Paşas treat you when you sing their tune?

When you get done at Sakık's place, check Progressive Historians, where Gordon Taylor has a great post on recent events in Turkey.


NEWSFLASH: Clinton drops Mehmet Çelebi like a hot potato, from ABC News:

"We were unaware of Mr. Celebi's involvement in this film and we obviously do not agree with it," said Clinton campaign senior adviser Ann Lewis on Friday to JTA. "He is no longer raising money for this campaign."

Some Clinton critics note that Clinton campaign has known about this issue since at least about a month ago when the New York Post called to ask about the Celebi connection and asked how Lewis could have only learned about it Friday from JTA.

Asked this morning for clarification, the Clinton campaign told me that they were unaware of Celebri's involvement with the film until around the time of the New York Post item, when Celebri's involvement with the campaign ceased.

It will be interesting to see if Sen. Obama's campaign suggests that Clinton return the $100,000 or so that Celebi bundled for her.

So I guess those Kurdish sources were pretty damned accurate.


And let's not forget Çelebi's connections to Sibel Edmonds' story and the Deep State.

CLINTON: RELATIONS WITH TURKEY WILL PROSPER

"As a secular Muslim state, Turkey has always been an attractive political and military ally to the Israelis; respectful of the close relationship between the US and Israel, over a decade ago the Turks began to appreciate the value for Turkish-US relations in being close with Israel, and have also grown to appreciate how useful an ally the American Jewish lobby can be against the Greek- and Armenian-American lobbies."
~ Jason Vest, "Turkey, Israel and the US".

Here's something more on Clinton ties to Turkey, from Hyeoctane:

Some may have thought that Hillary Clinton's backpedaling on the Genocide resolution back in October or appointment of Turkish ultra-nationalist fundraiser Mehmet Celebi as one of her delegates to the Democratic Convention wasn't quite enough to make her suspect in the eyes of Armenians and anti-genocide activists. After all, she is still a co-sponsor of the Armenian Genocide resolution in the U.S. Senate, right?

Well, now it seems that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is seeking to end all doubt on where Mrs. Clinton actually stands. In a recent interview with the Turkish daily Sabah, Bill said the following: "Turkey is a very significant country for us. We need to have good relations with Turkey. The biggest contribution to this will come from Hillary. There will be great progress in relations if Hillary is elected."

He went on to thank the many Turks who "contribute a lot to Hillary's election campaign" and assured readers that relations with Turkey will prosper under a Hillary administration.

Check Hyeoctane's post for several links to sources. If, as Bill says, "There will be great progress in relations [with Turkey] if Hillary is elected," then all that money coming from Mehmet Çelebi must be doing some good, eh?

It also looks like Çelebi is working to compensate for Kurtlar Vadisi Irak by producing a new film, about the Holocaust. From Blogian:

The Turkish Daily News reports that BMH Worldwide Entertainment is filming The Ambassador, about a Turkish diplomat who saved Jewish lives during World War II.

[ . . . ]

Confirming official Turkish support for The Ambassador, Çelebi told TDN:

"BMH Worldwide Entertainment has been working with Member of Turkish Parliament and previous President of the Federation of Turkish-American Associations Egemen Bagis, who has spent many years in the United States and is very aware of and concerned about Turkey’s image around the world. He has been a great supporter of this and other projects that will enhance Turkey’s image across the globe.

"Bagis, the president of the U.S. Caucus in Turkish Parliament, had given the first clue about the project last week in Parliament. Bagis, also a member of advisory council of the Turkish Film Council in the United States, suggested."

"Prominent figures of the diaspora pay Hollywood to make genocide movies. We too have wealthy people; however, we don’t have a culture of investing in Hollywood. We should also be relying on such methods and commission movies explaining Turkey’s side of the story."

The point? It's crystal clear:

Two sides to the story? Sure. Racism and anti-Semitism for domestic consumption, tolerance and harmony abroad.

Not too much different from Erdoğan's hypocrisy in Germany last Sunday.

On the other hand, it may simply be a case of Turkey trying to keep up with the neighbors.

MORE ON THE ÇELEBI-CLINTON CONNECTION

"In her secure testimony, Edmonds disclosed some of what she recalled hearing. In all, says a source who was present, she managed to listen to more than 40 of the Chicago recordings supplied by Robertz. Many involved an F.B.I. target at the city’s large Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associates."
~ David Rose, "An Inconvenient Patriot".

It's apparent from the right-wing fascist blogs that have commented on Çelebi's involvement with Clinton, that those blogs are only concerned with the inherent racism of the film Kurtlar Vadisi İrak, something that was of interest to Kurds years ago when the film first came out. The TV program of the same name, airing in Turkey, was also a controversy after the Council of State attack in Turkey by the Deep State in May 2006.

But Turkish racism, in this case, is merely a distraction.

What no one is talking about are Çelebi's ties to Sibel's story, including his possible close ties to (or employment by) Milli İştihbarat Teşkilatı (MİT).

Oddly enough, last year in June, the BMH Worldwide website was not just a tangle of dead links as it is today; it actually worked. At the time, I captured something from Çelebi's bio for Rastî readers:

Mehmet's experience in management and finance spans the globe. Professionally, Mehmet worked in a management capacity at some of the world's largest financial institutions and has provided financial guidance to many high-net worth individuals and celebrities as well as corporations.

[ . . . ]

Mehmet is also an authority on international relations. He has worked with various political leaders from Turkey as well as other countries on issues dealing with Turkish-American relations and Turkey at large, and is considered one of the national leaders of the Turkish-American community in the US. He has been serving as the President of the Turkish-American Cultural Alliance since 2000, and as Member of the Board/Vice-President of the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations, a Washington, D.C. based umbrella organization representing 57 organizations.

Mehmet has also been a member of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations', "Task Force on Islamic relations in the US," since 2003.

As I asked in June, how could MİT overlook a guy with so much talent and potential? And if MİT is not involved in the Deep State in the US, then why does Sibel post Mehmet Eymür's picture in her Rogue's Gallery? Eymür was the former head of the "counter-terror" department at the MİT, in charge of the kontragerillas, who were trained by the US military, and who conducted a campaign of atrocities and gross human rights violations against the Kurdish people during the last Clinton administration--a fact well-known to that administration.

Oh, yeah, Eymür now has a safe haven in the US.

Luke Ryland says that all the info on Çelebi needs to be made public through FOIA. He's absolutely correct and then let's see the fascist right-wing start blogging about it.

But don't hold your breath.

In the meantime, here's Luke's latest post in its entirety with permission, sourced from Sibel Edmonds, and targeting the future of the Deep State in the US:

Note: All links to BMH Worldwide, Çelebi's company that was involved with the production of Kurtlar Vadisi Irak, have mysteriously been yanked from the web.

Key Clinton Backer Guilty in Sibel Edmonds Case

The UK's Times has already run three bombshell articles on the nuclear black market element in the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds this year, and we are expecting more fallout in the near future as new evidence and witnesses come forward.

In the meantime, another important angle to Edmonds' case has opened up. Earlier this week, the New York Post ran a Page 6 piece, ODD FILM BY HILLARY BACKER, which highlights the close relationship between Hillary Clinton and Chicago-based Turkish businessman Mehmet Celebi.

Celebi, "one of the national leaders of the Turkish-American community in the US," is a key fundraiser for Clinton, and is one of Clinton's Chicago delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Celebi was also heavily involved in the controversial 2006 movie "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq" which has been widely regarded as "anti-Semitic, anti-American, conspiratorial agitprop."

Mehmet Celebi is also a key figure in the Sibel Edmonds case - he is heavily involved in the narcotics trade in the US and the corruption and bribery of high-level US officials.

According to Celebi's bio:

"He has been serving as the President of the Turkish-American Cultural Alliance (TACA) since 2000, and as Member of the Board/Vice-President of the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations (ATAA), a Washington, D.C. based umbrella organization representing 57 organizations."

The Chicago-based Turkish-American Cultural Alliance (TACA) and the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations (ATAA) both figure prominently in Sibel Edmonds' case. Both are reported to be front groups for criminal activity involving illegal weapons sales, narcotics trafficking, and the bribery and corruption of high level US officials.

Mehmet Celebi first came to my attention in my first interview with Sibel in January 2006. My notes from that interview read:

"Sibel mentioned the mafia nature of the Turkish business establishment - in particular she mentioned Celebi as one of the key players - apparently they are involved in an arms trading cartel, and they ship narcotics in the cargo of their planes as they zoom around.

One of the Celebi family members (Mehmet Celebi) is chairman of the Turkish American Cultural Association (TACA) in Illinois. (Sibel has often pointed to both Chicago, and also to 'cultural exchanges')."

TACA and the ATAA were both targets of an FBI counter-intelligence operation investigating the corruption and bribery of high-level US officials from 1997 onward, including the period when Celebi had high level positions at these organizations.

According to the 2005 investigative piece in Vanity Fair into Sibel's case:

Vanity Fair has established that around ... December 2001, Joel Robertz, an F.B.I. special agent in Chicago, contacted Sibel and asked her to review some wiretaps. Some were several years old, others more recent; all had been generated by a counter-intelligence that had its start in 1997. “It began in D.C.,” says an F.B.I. counter-intelligence official who is familiar with the case file. “It became apparent that Chicago was actually the center of what was going on.”

Its subject was explosive; what sounded like attempts to bribe elected members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican. “There was pressure within the bureau for a special prosecutor to be appointed and take the case on,“ the official says. Instead, his colleagues were told to alter the thrust of their investigation – away from elected politicians and toward appointed officials. “This is the reason why Ashcroft reacted to Sibel in such an extreme fashion,” he says “It was to keep this from coming out.”

In her secure testimony, Edmonds disclosed some of what she recalled hearing. In all, says a source who was present, she managed to listen to more than 40 of the Chicago recordings supplied by Robertz. Many involved an F.B.I. target at the city’s large Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associates (ATAA).

Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes. To a person who knew nothing about their context, the details were confusing and it wasn’t always clear what might be significant. One name, however, apparently stood out – a man the Turkish callers often referred to by the nickname “Denny boy.” It was the Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert."

Hastert is from Chicago, of course, but he wasn't the only congressmen who was bribed by these groups - others who were identified in Sibel's Rogues Gallery are Roy Blunt, Tom Lantos, Dan Burton, Robert Livingston and Steven Solarz.

The Vanity Fair article identifies a number of different mechanisms for bribing these Congressmen, and the bribes appear to come from three separate, yet overlapping, groups. In an article in 2006, I attempted to categorize these groups:

The first group is a criminal element of the Military Industrial Complex, represented primarily by Richard Perle, Doug Feith and Marc Grossman among others - generally using AIPAC and the American Turkish Council as front organizations.

The second group suspected of bribing Hastert is the 'mafia-like' Turkish 'Deep State', probably a mix of Turkish military, heroin producers and drug-runners. It is suspected that these funds are laundered through 'lobbyists' - originally Perle & Feith's company International Advisors Inc, and later (and currently) through Bob Livingston's company The Livingston Group.

The third group is a bit more hazy, but it is suspected that it is a group of Turkish heroin 'baba' (mafia) operating in the US, probably headquarted in Chicago. This group appears to use front organisations such as the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (A.T.A.A.) and the Turkish American Cultural Alliance (T.A.C.A.)

Mehmet Celebi is a key player in this third group, the Turkish heroin mafia.

Ex-CIA agent Phil Giraldi has also previously linked TACA and ATAA to Sibel Edmonds case,

"The commercial interest (between has also fostered close political ties, with the American Turkish Council, American Turkish Cultural Alliance (TACA) and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA) all developing warm relationships with AIPAC and other Jewish and Israel advocacy groups throughout the US."

Given the strong connections between the Turkish and Israeli lobbies identified in Sibel's case, it is perhaps not surprising to see members of Israeli lobbying groups stepping forward to defend Celebi in the NRO and elsewhere, although the claims made in his defense are easily debunked.


Why is Hillary Clinton involved with such a character? The claims against him are well documented, and extend back to her husband's presidency, including steps in place to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Celebi and the bribery of Hastert's and others. Sibel described the situation on a radio program in early 2006:

" In 1999, the Clinton Administration actually asked the Department of Justice to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Hastert, and certain other elected officials that were not named in this (VF) article, to be investigated formally. And the Department of Justice actually went about appointing this prosecutor, but after the Administration changed they quashed that investigation and they closed it despite the fact they had all sorts of evidence, again I’m talking about wiretaps, documents - paper documents - that was highly explosive and could have been easily used to indict the Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. That investigation was closed in 2001, and this was around the time I started reporting my cases to the Congress."

Has Hillary forgotten all this? Or is she too for sale to the highest bidder? We are all well aware of George Bush's fund-raising giants, the Rangers and Pioneers, which resulted in many a scandal and prosecution including Ken Lay, Jack Abramoff and Brent Wilkes - yet here is Hillary Clinton engaging in the exact same behaviour, taking large sums of money from corrupt interests, and appointing these people to positions of political power. How can we even hope that a Clinton presidency will be an improvement over the last 8 years?

The right-wing blogs are already beginning to pick up this story of Celebi and Clinton - Debbie Schlussel, National Review Online, Gateway Pundit - focusing solely on Celebi's involvement with the movie "Valley of the Wolves." The Right-Wing-Noise-Machine will no doubt go into overdrive if Hillary wins the nomination to be the next president. This information needs to be made public immediately.

When asked for a comment, Sibel said:

"In 2005, Vanity Fair reported that Dennis Hastert had been bribed by Turkish interests. If people want to investigate this further they should FOIA the FBI's Chicago Field Office for information regarding Mehmet Celebi going back to 1997. If the FBI is honest, there will be boxes and boxes of files responsive to these FOIA requests.

Hillary Clinton knows, or should know, about Mehmet Celebi's activities. If she doesn't, she should ask Bill Clinton or his Attorney General Janet Reno."

The FBI's Chicago Field Office has investigative files relating to Mehmet Celebi's involvement in the trafficking of narcotics as well as the corruption of high-level US officials. We need to recruit some prominent 'good government' groups, of any political persuasion, to file a FOIA request with the FBI's Chicago Field Office (CFO) for all information relating to Mehmet Celebi and this criminal activity. I expect that the CFO will deny and stonewall, but as we saw with the recent UK Times article, false denials can lead to other frustrated whistleblowers coming forward with documents and other evidence which can prove the case. Please contact me if you can prepare, file, and follow-up the FOIA request.

**********

As Sibel recently said, "Buckle up, there's much more coming".

THE VIDEO HILLARY DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE

A video on Hillary, Çelebi, and others. Many thanks to the friend who sent the link:

What would Sibel say?

CLINTONS, KURDS, MORE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

"President Nursultan Nazarbaev retained power in the December 2005 presidential elections, which international observers found did not meet international standards."
~ Human Rights Watch, Report on Kazakhstan.

Do you live in one of the world's top surveillance societies? Check the map:




Here's the color key:




From Wired:

Privacy International, a UK privacy group, and the U.S.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center have put together a world map of surveillance societies, rating various nations for their civil liberties records.

Both the U.S. and the UK are colored black for "endemic surveillance," as are Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Russia, China and Malaysia.

Here's a link to the data. Isn't that interesting?

We know that the Clinton administration did all it could to enrich the military-industrial complex by selling more MIC product to Turkey than during all the combined years of the Cold War. We also know that it was the Clinton administration that appointed criminals like Marc Grossman and Joseph Ralston to important positions whereby they were able to set themselves up very comfortably in private life--working to sell Turkey more MIC product or warning off Turkish interests from CIA front companies like Brewster Jennings. We might say that the term "conflict-of-interest" is the term that best describes everything that happened while the Clinton administration was in charge.

Today, the NYTimes tells us that the former president has been assisting Canadian buddies in swinging uranium deals in that well-known bastion of democracy--Kazakhstan:

Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton.

Upon landing on the first stop of a three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent.

[ . . . ]

Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy. Mr. Clinton’s public declaration undercut both American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, Mr. Clinton’s wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Within two days, corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.

The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Giustra, analysts said.

Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges.

If Hillary Clinton goes to the White House, Bill, with all his conflicts-of-interest and privileges bestowed on "friends", will go with her. Of course, Hillary boasts of her previous experience in the White House during her two terms as first lady:

In seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton lays claim to two traits nearly every day: strength and experience. But as the junior senator from New York, she has few significant legislative accomplishments to her name. She has cast herself, instead, as a first lady like no other: a full partner to her husband in his administration, and, she says, all the stronger and more experienced for her "eight years with a front-row seat on history."

[ . . . ]

Clinton's role in her most high-profile assignment as first lady, the failed health care initiative of the early 1990s, has been well documented. Yet little has been made public about her involvement in foreign policy and national security as first lady. Documents about her work remain classified at the National Archives. Clinton has declined to divulge the private advice she gave her husband.

Don't forget that Hillary is owned by, among others, Mehmet Çelebi and the MIC. In case you've forgotten, Mehmet Çelebi was one of the producers of Kurtlar Vadisi İrak. Note the following:

Celebi, who led Chicago-based the Turkish American Cultural Alliance (TACA) during a time Vanity Fair magazine claimed the local Turkish community was under FBI counterintelligence surveillance, is an up and coming movie producer.

The Vanity Fair article in question is the article by David Rose on Sibel Edmonds from September 2005.

And since I've pointed out Bill Clinton's Kazakh connections, take a look at what's happening to Kurds in Kazakhstan:

Fearing for their physical safety, many ethnic Kurds say they plan to leave southern Kazakstan, as reports of low-level violence against them continue.

Zara, an inhabitant of the southern city of Shymkent, says her family and many other local Kurds plan to sell up and leave following a spate of attacks on the community last November.

“Of course we are afraid to leave - we have lived here all our lives - but we are also afraid to stay,” Zara told IWPR.

“We don’t know what is coming next. The newspapers are writing bad things about us Kurds. If the community elders say so, we will certainly leave.”

The trouble dates from the end of October, when a Kurdish teenager from the village of Mayatas, in the Tolebi district of South Kazakstan region, was accused of sexually assaulting a four-year-old Kazak boy. (See previous IWPR story, Kazakstan: Ethnic Clash a Worrying Sign.) After the latter’s father went to the police, locals took the law into their own hands and started burning and looting houses and beating up Kurds.

The violence then spilled over into other towns and villages where to Kurds live.

[ . . . ]

Official statistics suggest that there about 46,000 Kurds now living in Kazakstan, of whom 7,000 live in the South Kazakstan administrative region.

The Kurds belong to a community deported wholesale from Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1937, and from Georgia in 1944. Like hundreds of thousands of Chechens, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars and other ethnic groups, they were deemed suspect by Stalin, who ordered them to be shifted far into the interior of the Soviet Union.

The entire Kurdish community of Kazakhstan is punished for the alleged wrongdoing of one. There's no mention of a trial, not even of a trial in a kangaroo court, but the entire Kurdish community has already been judged. Hard to believe, isn't it, especially since Kazakhstan is considered part of Greater Turan.

Bill Clinton praised the Kazakh dictator, Nazarbaev, for "opening up the social and political life of [his] country," and hoped Kazakhstan would lead the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). This must be the US position on Kazakhstan anyway since Dick Cheney and other US officials have recently "failed to comment publicly on the government’s human rights record during their visits" to the country.

Unfortunately, Human Rights Watch has a different opinion about that.

But Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, and an entire host of US officials would never lie to us . . . right?