Thirty years ago today Reagan

An admission that mistakes were made and have been remedied.

Is that why our leadership is looked to by every free country in the world?

And Po Pot was an American?

Following the revelation that a key "witness" featured in this week's CBS 60 Minutes report on Benghazi previously claimed that he never got near the besieged diplomatic compound on the night of the attacks, Media Matters chairman David Brock is calling on CBS to retract its story.

On October 27, CBS aired a report on the Benghazi attacks that featured the claims of a supposed eyewitness using the pseudonym "Morgan Jones." Today, the Washington Post revealed that Jones, whose real name is Dylan Davies, previously filed a report with his security contractor employer saying that he "could not get anywhere near" the compound the night of the attack.

The flawed CBS report has since been trumpeted by conservative media and Republican politicians.

In his letter to CBS executives, Brock writes that the story should be "immediately retracted and an independent investigative committee needs to probe all aspects of how the story was reported."

The full letter to CBS is below.

Quote:

Mr. Jeff Fager

Chairman, CBS News

Mr. David Rhodes

President, CBS News

Greetings,

I am writing to express my concern about a 60 Minutes segment on the attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi that CBS aired on October 27. As Media Matters for America noted earlier in the week, the segment revived long-answered questions about the attack and, even more troubling, a Fox News correspondent said that he had spoken to one of the witnesses interviewed "a number of times" about the attacks but stopped after the man "asked for money."

Today, The Washington Post revealed that the very same witness previously said he never got near the diplomatic compound the night of the attack. This completely contradicts what was reported on air by correspondent Lara Logan, who said that during the attack, the witness "scaled the twelve-foot high wall of the compound that was still overrun with al Qaeda fighters." In the interview, the witness told Logan he had personally struck one of those terrorists in the face with his rifle butt and, following the attack, he went to the Benghazi hospital and saw Ambassador Chris Stevens' body.

According to Post, the witness revealed none of those details in the incident report he wrote following the attack. Instead, he said that he spent most of that night at his Benghazi beach-side villa and learned of Stevens' death from a colleague. This paints a damning picture of the credibility of the supposed eyewitness -- and thus of the CBS report itself.

A network spokesman told the Post, 'We stand firmly by the story we broadcast last Sunday." This is not sufficient. When questions were raised about documents involving President George W. Bush's service in the Air National Guard, CBS appointed an independent panel "to help determine what errors occurred in the preparation of the report and what actions need to be taken." Similar standards must be applied in this case.

The 60 Minutes story should be immediately retracted and an independent investigative committee needs to probe all aspects of how the story was reported and get answers to the following questions:
◾Were witnesses paid to talk?
◾Did anyone bother to compare the witness' story to the written report he filed at the time?
◾If the network was aware of the incident report, why did no one acknowledge the discrepancy in the witness' story?
◾Who worked on the story at all levels?
◾How was the story vetted and by whom?

The committee's findings should be public to and, if necessary, appropriate disciplinary action should take place.

In my most recent book, The Benghazi Hoax, I chronicled how the media has, for over a year, twisted the facts about what happened the night of the attacks. CBS' report was a new low. I hope you take this opportunity to reassure your viewers of your standards and accountability.

Sincerely,

David Brock

Chairman, Media Matters for America

And it never will. Do you want to deal with the facts or lament human nature?

The Republicans want to isolate Obama and Clinton from the flow of recent history, make them out to be something evil. In fact, reading over the last several presidents, they all are much closer, in both parties, than people want to admit. We are screwed, no matter which party wins, but the Democrats at least make a few concessions to the needs of the nation.

Ronald Reagan Guilty of Treason & War Crimes

As the mass media engaged in an orgy of adulation for Ronald Reagan in June of 2004, many thinking persons were remembering and mourning the deaths of the hundreds of thousands of victims of Ronald Reagan's policies and pondering the lasting damage that the man did not only to the United States but to the world.

During Reagan's reign the United States experienced the beginning of the end of what could have been a great nation. Under Reagan, elements within the government engaged in massive criminal activity that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the entrenchment of a vicious and evil criminal organization that is now firmly in power of not only the United States but much of the world.


Reagan's crimes are many and started well before he was President when he and Bush committed treason and paid the Iranian's to not release the hostages in order to prevent the re-election of Jimmy Carter in 1980, not mention his reign of stupidity as Governor of California. The hostages were released as promised as Reagan was sworn into office. Reagan then secretly sold chemical & biological weapons to Iraq and told CIA buddy Saddam Hussein to step up bombing of Iran while still selling weapons to Iran in a war that claimed an estimated one million victims. The criminal activities in the Mid East stretched around the world to Central America in the spectacle that came to be known as Iran-Contra.

In Afghanistan, Reagan was busy funding Ossama bin Laden and a terrorist army to displace the Russians. Once the mighty 'Muhjadeen' had completed their task they were partially abandoned and became the Taliban and Al Queda. With no real replacement intended for the Russian backed government, the radical muslims quickly took power. Only later did the army without a war become the enemy so desperately needed by the US defense industry.

In Central America, Reagan-Bush ran a massive criminal operation that imported hundreds of tons of cocaine into the US and shipped arms illegally to the terrorist Contras that Reagan affectionately called "Freedom Fighters". Coca paste was brought in from South America by plane to an airstrip near Puntarenas, Costa Rica owned by Reagan/Bush supporter Julio Calleja and processed on the ranch of CIA operative John Hull. From there the high-grade coke was shipped by plane to the Mina, Arkansas Airport under the protection of Bill Clinton and to various Air Force bases..

Under direct US control, Reagan's 'Freedom Fighters' raped, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Nicaragua in an effort to bring down Nicaragua's first democratically elected government. The US had previously ruled Nicaragua through the brutal Somoza family dicatorship, once the dictatorship was overthrown by a popular revolution the US was quick to start an criminal campaign of terror against the government and civilians. The campaign of terror claimed 50,000 lives and crippled the entire nation.

Nicaragua took its case to the World Court. The court found that the U.S. actions constituted "an unlawful use of force .... [that] cannot be justified either by collective self-defence ... nor by any right of the United States to take counter-measures involving the use of force." The court ordered the United States to pay reparations, estimated at between $12 billion and $17 billion, to Nicaragua. Two weeks after the verdict was issued, the U.S. Congress voted to give the Contras $100 million to continue their war of terror against the people of Nicaragua. The US has never recognized the World Court's ruling nor paid any of the compensation owed to Nicaragua.

"The ripple effects of that criminal murderous intervention in my country will go on for 50 years or more." Fr. D'Escoto, Priest and former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister

Reagan's blood-fest wasn't limited to Nicaragua, his puppet military dictators abducted, tortured, murdered and mutilated over 200,000 civilians in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in the name of 'democracy' and fighting communism. Nor was the slaughter done only through the US controlled dictators. In operations that are still highly classified, US AC-130 gunships, crewed by US personnel, flew at night over mountainous areas with potential rebels and killed anything that gave off body-heat. The AC-130 is a highly sophisticated computerized killing machine that "incorporate side-firing weapons integrated with sophisticated sensor, navigation and fire control systems to provide surgical firepower or area saturation during extended loiter periods, at night and in adverse weather. The sensor suite consists of a television sensor, infrared sensor and radar." - US Air Force

In 1999 the United Nations determined that the wholesale slaughter of Guatemalans, constituted "genocide." It was a genocide ordered and managed by the White House under Reagan.

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http://consortiumnews.com/2013/05/11/ronaldreagan-accessory-to-genocide/

Ronald Reagan: Accessory to Genocide
May 11, 2013

Exclusive: More than any recent U.S. president, Ronald Reagan has been lavished with honors, including his name attached to Washington’s National Airport. But the conviction of Reagan’s old ally, ex-Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt, for genocide means “Ronnie” must face history’s judgment as an accessory to the crime, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

The conviction of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt on charges of genocide against Mayan villagers in the 1980s has a special meaning for Americans who idolize Ronald Reagan. It means that their hero was an accessory to one of the most grievous crimes that can be committed against humanity.

The courage of the Guatemalan people and the integrity of their legal system to exact some accountability on a still-influential political figure also put U.S. democracy to shame. For decades now, Americans have tolerated human rights crimes by U.S. presidents who face little or no accountability. Usually, the history isn’t even compiled honestly.

President Ronald Reagan.

By contrast, a Guatemalan court on Friday found Rios Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced the 86-year-old ex-dictator to 80 years in prison. After the ruling, when Rios Montt rose and tried to walk out of the courtroom, Judge Yasmin Barrios shouted at him to stay put and then had security officers take him into custody.

Yet, while Guatemalans demonstrate the strength to face a dark chapter of their history, the American people remain mostly oblivious to Reagan’s central role in tens of thousands of political murders across Central America in the 1980s, including some 100,000 dead in Guatemala slaughtered by Rios Montt and other military dictators.

Indeed, Ronald Reagan – by aiding, abetting, encouraging and covering up widespread human rights crimes in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua as well as Guatemala – bears greater responsibility for Central America’s horrors than does Rios Montt in his bloody 17-month rule. Reagan supported Guatemala’s brutal repression both before and after Rios Montt held power, as well as during.

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