Wednesday, May 7, 2014

GOP Establishment takes hit in North Carolina, 'iconoclast' Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) beats well funded Bush crony Griffin

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5/6/14, "Rep. Jones survives well-funded challenge," The Hill, Cameron Joseph

"Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) has bested his primary challenger, beating back an onslaught of attacks from establishment Republicans.

The Associated Press has called the race for the iconoclastic Jones, who was leading Bush administration official Taylor Griffin (R) by 53 percent to 44 percent with 71 percent of precincts reporting. The win all but guarantees him an 11th term in the House in the heavily Republican district.

The race was Jones’s hardest fought since he first won the seat, and his win comes in spite of heavy spending from two national GOP groups. The fiscally conservative Ending Spending super-PAC and the neoconservative Emergency Committee for Israel dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into the district.

Griffin benefited from a number of endorsements (and behind-the-scenes help) from former Bush administration officials including former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, as well as a late endorsement from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), who he worked for while on the McCain-Palin presidential campaign.

Jones has long been a thorn in the side of GOP leadership.

After initially supporting the war in Iraq, Jones became a leading Republican critic of President Bush of the war, allying with then-fellow Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) to eviscerate Bush on a number of occasions.

He’s also increasingly split with party leaders on fiscal issues, voting for Democrats’ Wall Street reform bill and against Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budgets because he doesn’t think they cut enough foreign aid. He also refused to endorse both McCain and Mitt Romney for president, backing Paul both times.

Republican leaders stripped Jones and four other uncompromising House Republicans of their committee assignments in late 2012. A month later, he was one of nine to vote against keeping House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) as head of the conference.

His primary win all but guarantees he'll remain a headache for GOP leaders in the House."

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5/6/14, "Walter Jones Prevails Over Former Bush Official Taylor Griffin," Tony Lee, Breitbart

"The Associated Press called the race for Jones. With 87% of precincts reporting, he was up 51-45% over Griffin. Neither the primary race nor the candidates fit nicely into the conventional boxes, especially the GOP Establishment versus Tea Party story-line that has dominated other GOP primary fights. 

Griffin was backed Republican establishment figures like former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. 

But former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin also endorsed him, perhaps a gesture of loyalty after he fended off attacks against her during the 2008 presidential campaign as a campaign spokesman. The local Crystal Coast Tea Party Patriots group also backed Griffin who, like Jones, is pro-life, received the top rating from the NRA, and staunchly opposes Obamacare.

An Eastern Shore native who worked for Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), in George W. Bush's Treasury Department, and co-founded Hamilton Place Strategies before selling his ownership share to move back to North Carolina and run for Congress, Griffin often mentioned his work for Helms, especially his opposition to the United Nations. But Helms' widow, Dorothy, endorsed Jones, who ran radio ads touting her support.

Jones supported the Iraq War before becoming one of the most anti-war candidates from either party.

He is the most liberal Republican in Congress, according to National Journal, and has voted with President Barack Obama more than any other Republican. But he is also reviled by the Republican establishment and leadership that often favors compromise and voted against Speaker John Boehner's reelection as speaker in 2013. 

Jones is the only Republican still in Congress who voted for Dodd-Frank, favors the Democrat-authored DISCLOSE Act, was removed from the Financial Services Committee, and has not had a good relationship with the Republican establishment and leadership. He supported impeaching then-Vice President Dick Cheney and implied that President George W. Bush should have been impeached as well.

After Jones led the effort to change "french fries" to "freedom fries" in the House cafeteria after France refused to support the U.S.'s mission in Iraq after 9/11, he had an about face on the war, even supporting efforts to impeach Cheney in 2007.

Congress will not hold anyone to blame,” Jones recently said at an event for former Rep. Ron Paul's (R-TX) Young Americans for Liberty group in North Carolina. “Lyndon Johnson’s probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War, and he probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney.”

Jones said that Cheney and the Bush administration bought "into a lie to send men and women to die.”...

Griffin, who went to Alaska in 2008 to fend off the liberal press then trying to attack Palin on ethics complaints for which she was later absolved, also touted Palin's endorsement on his website and campaign signs in the last week of the campaign. 

Palin said that Washington needed someone like Griffin to "stay true to your beliefs of smaller government, protecting life and furthering conservative principles."

Griffin does not offer the kind of red meat rhetoric of candidates that Palin typically endorses, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Griffin, as CNN noted, said he would be "willing to cut deals, horse-trade and generally play nice with other elected officials and appointees if his district needs it," especially along the coast where residents have asked for help from the federal government to save their endangered tourism industry. In an interview with MamaGrizzlyRadio, Griffin also emphasized the importance of legislating by saying Helms taught him that it was not mutually exclusive to be principled and an effective legislator.

Ending Spending Action Fund, which was founded by Joe Ricketts, though, did not see Griffin as someone who would waste taxpayer funds and also spent six-figures on his behalf. Brian Baker, the president of Ending Spending Action Fund, which has been against earmarks and is dedicated to electing "fiscally responsible leaders," told Breitbart News that though "Jones has served with distinction," he seems to have "forgotten his conservative values."

He said Jones' refusal to support the Paul Ryan "Path to Prosperity" budget -- in addition to his liberal voting record -- convinced the group to oppose his re-election.

Jones faced a primary challenger in 2008 who could not raise money to compete with an entrenched incumbent who relatively popular with constituents. That was not the case this year. In the first quarter of 2014, Griffin raised more money than Jones, hauling in $118,000 to Jones' $102,000, giving him the war chest to effectively have a fighting change against the 20-year incumbent whose father was a longtime Democratic Congressman."

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In 2013 Rep. Walter Jones read the 28 pages George Bush redacted from 9/11 report after the House Intelligence panel finally gave two congressmen permission to read redacted pages. They say it's urgent for Americans to know the contents:

12/9/13, "9/11 Link To Saudi Arabia Is Topic Of 28 Redacted Pages In Government Report; Congressmen Push For Release," IB Times, Jamie Reno
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"Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) can’t reveal the nation identified by it without violating federal law. So they’ve proposed Congress pass a resolution asking President Obama to declassify the entire 2002 report."...

12/15/13, "Inside the Saudi 9/11 coverup," NY Post, Paul Sperry

"After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors.

But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on 9/11 dealing with “specific sources of foreign support” for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.


It was kept secret and remains so today.

President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely blank, except for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood (this story by comparison is about 1,000 words).

A pair of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion say they are “absolutely shocked” at the level of foreign state involvement in the attacks.

Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) can’t reveal the nation identified by it without violating federal law. So they’ve proposed Congress pass a resolution asking President Obama to declassify the entire 2002 report, “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”

Some information already has leaked from the classified section, which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally.

The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found “incontrovertible evidence” that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom — helped the hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war.
 
The findings, if confirmed, would back up open-source reporting showing the hijackers had, at a minimum, ties to several Saudi officials and agents while they were preparing for their attacks inside the United States. In fact, they got help from Saudi VIPs from coast to coast:

LOS ANGELES: Saudi consulate official Fahad al-Thumairy allegedly arranged for an advance team to receive two of the Saudi hijackers — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — as they arrived at LAX in 2000. One of the advance men, Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi intelligence agent, left the LA consulate and met the hijackers at a local restaurant. (Bayoumi left the United States two months before the attacks, while Thumairy was deported back to Saudi Arabia after 9/11.)

SAN DIEGO: Bayoumi and another suspected Saudi agent, Osama Bassnan, set up essentially a forward operating base in San Diego for the hijackers after leaving LA. They were provided rooms, rent and phones, as well as private meetings with an American al Qaeda cleric who would later become notorious, Anwar al-Awlaki, at a Saudi-funded mosque he ran in a nearby suburb. They were also feted at a welcoming party. (Bassnan also fled the United States just before the attacks.)

WASHINGTON: Then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar and his wife sent checks totaling some $130,000 to Bassnan while he was handling the hijackers. Though the Bandars claim the checks were “welfare” for Bassnan’s supposedly ill wife, the money nonetheless made its way into the hijackers’ hands.

Other al Qaeda funding was traced back to Bandar and his embassyso much so that by 2004 Riggs Bank of Washington had dropped the Saudis as a client. The next year, as a number of embassy employees popped up in terror probes, Riyadh recalled Bandar.

Our investigations contributed to the ambassador’s departure,” an investigator who worked with the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington told me, though Bandar says he left for “personal reasons.”

FALLS CHURCH, VA.: In 2001, Awlaki and the San Diego hijackers turned up together again — this time at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, a Pentagon-area mosque built with funds from the Saudi Embassy. Awlaki was recruited 3,000 miles away to head the mosque. As its imam, Awlaki helped the hijackers, who showed up at his doorstep as if on cue. He tasked a handler to help them acquire apartments and IDs before they attacked the Pentagon.

Awlaki worked closely with the Saudi Embassy. He lectured at a Saudi Islamic think tank in Merrifield, Va., chaired by Bandar. Saudi travel itinerary documents I’ve obtained show he also served as the ­official imam on Saudi Embassy-sponsored trips to Mecca and tours of Saudi holy sites.

Most suspiciously, though, Awlaki fled the United States on a Saudi jet about a year after 9/11.

As I first reported in my book, “Infiltration,” quoting from classified US documents, the Saudi-sponsored cleric was briefly detained at JFK before being released into the custody of a “Saudi representative.” A federal warrant for Awlaki’s arrest had mysteriously been withdrawn the previous day. A US drone killed Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.

HERNDON, VA.: On the eve of the attacks, top Saudi government official Saleh Hussayen checked into the same Marriott Residence Inn near Dulles Airport as three of the Saudi hijackers who targeted the Pentagon. Hussayen had left a nearby hotel to move into the hijackers’ hotel. Did he meet with them? The FBI never found out. They let him go after he “feigned a seizure,” one agent recalled. (Hussayen’s name doesn’t appear in the separate 9/11 Commission Report, which clears the Saudis.)

SARASOTA, FLA.: 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and other hijackers visited a home owned by Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi adviser to the nephew of King Fahd. FBI agents investigating the connection in 2002 found that visitor logs for the gated community and photos of license tags matched vehicles driven by the hijackers. Just two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, the Saudi luxury home was abandoned. Three cars, including a new Chrysler PT Cruiser, were left in the driveway. Inside, opulent furniture was untouched.

Democrat Bob Graham, the former Florida senator who chaired the Joint Inquiry, has asked the FBI for the Sarasota case files, but can’t get a single, even heavily redacted, page released. He says it’s a “coverup.”

Is the federal government protecting the Saudis? Case agents tell me they were repeatedly called off pursuing 9/11 leads back to the Saudi Embassy, which had curious sway over White House and FBI responses to the attacks.

Just days after Bush met with the Saudi ambassador in the White House, the FBI evacuated from the United States dozens of Saudi officials, as well as Osama bin Laden family members. Bandar made the request for escorts directly to FBI headquarters on Sept. 13, 2001 — just hours after he met with the president. The two old family friends shared cigars on the Truman Balcony while discussing the attacks.

Bill Doyle, who lost his son in the World Trade Center attacks and heads the Coalition of 9/11 Families, calls the suppression of Saudi evidence a “coverup beyond belief.” Last week, he sent out an e-mail to relatives urging them to phone their representatives in Congress to support the resolution and read for themselves the censored 28 pages.

Astonishing as that sounds, few lawmakers in fact have bothered to read the classified section of arguably the most important investigation in US history.

Granted, it’s not easy to do. It took a monthlong letter-writing campaign by Jones and Lynch to convince the House intelligence panel to give them access to the material.

But it’s critical they take the time to read it and pressure the White House to let all Americans read it. This isn’t water under the bridge. The information is still relevant ­today. Pursuing leads further, getting to the bottom of the foreign support, could help head off another 9/11.

As the frustrated Joint Inquiry authors warned, in an overlooked addendum to their heavily redacted 2002 report, “State-sponsored terrorism substantially increases the likelihood of successful and more ­lethal attacks within the United States.”

Their findings must be released, even if they forever change US-Saudi relations. If an oil-rich foreign power was capable of orchestrating simultaneous bulls-eye hits on our centers of commerce and defense a dozen years ago, it may be able to pull off similarly devastating attacks today.

Members of Congress reluctant to read the full report ought to remember that the 9/11 assault missed its fourth target: them."

"Paul Sperry is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of “Infiltration” and “Muslim Mafia.”"


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10/20/11, "The lost decade," [2001-2011] Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Institute

"Our ruling class justified its ever-larger role in America’s domestic life by redefining war as a never-ending struggle against unspecified enemies for abstract objectives, and by asserting expertise far above that of ordinary Americans. (parag. 9)...It failed to ask the classic headwaters question: what is the problem?...(subhead, 'Whatever it takes')


"Whatever it Takes"...

That would have pointed to the Middle East’s regimes, and to our ruling class’ relationship with them, as the problem’s ultimate source. The rulers of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Authority had run (and continue to run) educational and media systems that demonize America. Under all of them, the Muslim Brotherhood or the Wahhabi sect spread that message in religious terms to Muslims in the West as well as at home.

 

That message indicts America, among other things, for being weak.

And indeed, ever since the 1970s U.S. policy had responded to acts of war and terrorism from the Muslim world by absolving the regimes for their subjects’ actions....Many influential Americans were making money in the Arab world."...

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