''Sometimes,'' he said, ''I feel like I'd like to wring somebody's neck.''

by OLGS, guest blogger

''Sometimes,'' he said, ''I feel like I'd like to wring somebody's neck.''

--Former Secretary of State George P. Schultz, testifying before the Joint House-Senate Iran-Contra Committee, July 25, 1987

Twenty-one years ago, I remember staying at home during the summer taking care of then pre-schooler Joe College Graduate, and the still-in-diapers Joe College. In between feedings, walks with the stroller, and diaper-changes, I spent my days watching the Congress hold hearings to investigate the secret White House- led covert operations in Iran, Lebanon, and Nicaragua. Perhaps the only witness appearing under oath who emerged with any of his or her reputation undamaged was Secretary of State George Schultz, shown above on the Stanford campus. The secretary testified that the White House and the National Security Council had kept secret from him and his State Department the sale of weapons to Iran and the transfer of funds and weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua, both actions in violation of U.S. law. Schultz’s feeling that he wanted to “wring somebody’s neck” was directed mainly at the President’s staff, who served their president badly, he testified.

It's summer again, and today's headlines reminded me of the summer of 1987 and Iran-Contra. Yesterday, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued two reports. The first one, known as Report “Phase IIa,” recounted what had long been reported in the press: from August 2002 through February 2003, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Powell made statements about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction based on shaded, exaggerated, or sometimes on no intelligence at all. Here’s the link to the summary of the Phase IIa report:

http://intelligence.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=298775

The full report is also available from the Committee as a pdf file and is well-worth reading.

Almost overlooked was the second report, which brought Schultz’s 1987 comment about the White House and National Security Council to mind. The “Phase IIb” report made public that starting in 2001 and continuing through 2003, the National Security Council’s deputy director (Stephen Hadley) and the Office of the Deputy Secretary of Defense (Paul Wolfowitz), and the Office of the Vice President (Dick Cheney) approved a covert operation meant to lead to “regime change” in Iran. Who was the essential middleman to put the U.S. in touch with so-called “Iranian moderates”? None other than one of the arms dealers in the Iran-Contra affair, Manucher Ghobanifar, shown here in1987.

Just as Robert “Bud” McFarlane, Admiral John Poindexter, and Colonel Oliver “Ollie” North, kept the State Department in the dark about their dealings in Iran and Nicaragua, so, too, did the Bush Administration’s wannabe-spooks led by Hadley, Wolfowitz, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and also Elliot Abrams (another Iran-Contra figure) keep Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet uninformed about the 2001-2003 Ghobanifar-inspired attempt at regime change in Iran. As much as $25 million dollars was funneled through Ghobanifar between 2001 and 2003 to promote “regime change” in Iran. The Phase IIb report also suggests that the Ghobanifar initiative was manipulated by Iranian intelligence to send false information directly to the White House. This reads like a reprise of the Iran-Contra affair.

One of the regrettable outcomes of the Iran-Contra investigations is how few Reagan Administration people were indicted and sent to jail. One of the regrettable results of that failure is how many have surfaced with responsible jobs in the Bush 43 Administration. Is it too much to ask the Senate Intelligence Committee to refer to the Justice Department for prosecution everyone involved with this second Iran-Contra scandal? Is it too much to ask to send Scooter Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley, Elliot Abrams and others to jail before they can start work on a third covert operation to effect “regime change” in Iran through Ghobanifar’s “Iranian moderates”?

The Twin Cities last night: Joe High School at the "U", Sen. Obama at the "X"

by OLGS, guest blogger

Last night, Joe High School and I went to an orientation session at the University of Minnesota (the "U") for metro area students admitted into the PSEO program. PSEO stands for Post-Secondary Education Options. The Minnesota state legislature provides funds for hundreds of high school seniors to take college-level classes on college campuses. Joe applied and got admitted for next year and last night showed up for orientation.

The "U" staff tried hard to keep the attention of the 400 or so students and family members in attendance. The staff provided handouts, pocket planners, a PowerPoint show, cookies & lemonade, but still, no high school kid wants to sit still through a two-hour orientation session. Even I got a little bored with trying to follow the specifics of how to read the online class schedule and how to pick a Chemistry lecture and lab section. Mercifully, the PSEO orientation session ended a little after 8:00 p.m.

When Joe and I got to the car, we turned on the radio to listen to coverage of Senator Clinton's expected end-of-campaign speech from New York, and Senator Obama's expected victory speech from the Excel Energy Center (the "X") in St. Paul. The radio reporter live on the scene at the "X" said that the senator was in the building and that only about one-half the seats were filled. I asked Joe: "Should we drive over to the X and see the next president for ourselves?" Joe answered: "Let's go home and ask Mom if she wants to go." Mom--Louise--had baked a rhubarb cake. Joe dived into the cake and forgot the next president getting ready to speak in an arena with apparently plenty of empty seats and only about a ten-minute drive from our house. Under questioning from Louise, Joe admitted that he had homework that he had not completed. Therefore, Joe, Louise, and I passed on the chance to go see Sen. Obama deliver what some commentators said was the first of two nomination acceptance speeched (the other one to come in Denver in August).

Meanwhile, at the X, about 40,000 people had lined up for the 18,000 seats inside. The reason the arena was only half-full when the radio reporter gave his account was that so many people were still outside waiting to pass through security and the metal detectors. By 9:00 p.m., the place was packed and 20,000 people outside followed along on outdoor giant screens.

Louise and I listened at home on the radio. The senator mentioned four places in American history where Americans made their own history: Philadelphia in 1787, Antietam and Gettysburg in the Civil War, Omaha Beach in 1944, and the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in 1965. The people in the X last night certainly felt that they were making history watching their candidate accept his party's nomination.