BushCo's Bacon Shoplifter

It just gets better.

One of the high "mucky-mucks" brought into the CIA by BushCo had previously been arrested for shoplifting bacon.

Are you laughing your a** off?

How is it that virtually everything this administration does is based in corruption, greed, incompetence or all three? They just seem to find criminals and idiots to elevate within their ranks.

Today we have another clue of just how systemic these operating principles are as the New York Times reports:

"Kyle Foggo, who is the man known by friends and associates as Dusty — and who on Monday resigned his post as the third-ranking official at the Central Intelligence Agency — has become entangled in a widening investigation that has already brought down former Representative Randy Cunningham, a k a Duke, [who pleaded guilty last year to taking bribes from military contractors.] Investigators say they are examining what could be a larger pattern of bribery and government corruption."

Foggo was "plucked out of obscurity" by J. Porter Goss. [Goss was appointed C.I.A. director in September 2004 and recently resigned after nothing but clashes with agency professionals who "derisively" called him and the people he brought in 'The Gosslings']

But that's not all the muck that Goss tracked in. More from the New York Times:

"The man Mr. Goss first selected to become the C.I.A.'s executive director, Michael V. Kostiw, had to turn down the job when it surfaced in the news media that he had resigned from the agency in the 1980's after being caught shoplifting bacon.

It was finger-pointing over who leaked word of Mr. Kostiw's shoplifting arrest that led to the resignation of several top officials in the agency's clandestine service. Among those who left were Stephen R. Kappes, the deputy director of operations, and his deputy, Michael Sulick. Mr. Kappes is expected to return as the agency's No. 2 if Gen. Michael V. Hayden is confirmed as the new director.

Days before Mr. Goss submitted his resignation, the C.I.A. director asked Mr. Foggo to step down as executive director, according to one intelligence official who was granted anonymity to speak freely about the circumstances of Mr. Foggo's departure. The official said that Mr. Goss had concluded that the inquires into Mr. Foggo's activities had become a distraction and had the potential to damage the agency's reputation.

Mr. Foggo, 51, has admitted attending poker parties throughout the 1990's that Mr. Wilkes held in a suite at the Watergate Hotel in Washington. The parties were primarily attended by C.I.A. officials and congressmen, and Mr. Cunningham, a California Republican, occasionally attended. Several news media accounts have reported that prostitutes frequented the parties."

This fits in with the image we now have of Bush as President who creates no policy or standards as reported by Paul Krugman in his article State of Delusion published on February 3, 2006:

'John DiIulio, the former White House head of faith-based policy explained it more than three years ago. He told the reporter Ron Suskind how this administration operates: ''There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. I heard many, many staff discussions but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues.''

In other words, this administration is all politics and no policy. It knows how to attain power, but has no idea how to govern. That is why the administration was caught unaware when Katrina hit, and why it was totally unprepared for the predictable problems with its drug plan. It is why Mr. Bush announced an energy plan with no substance behind it. And it is why the state of the union -- the thing itself and not the speech -- is so grim.'


[Note that historians have commented on the fact that Hitler had no policy discussions, no papers, no apparatus. He had ideas (mostly bad, like Bush's) and just told his staff to figure out how to get it done. After the war staffers testified that they had no idea what they were doing or how to do it. The shared incompetence, to me, is clear, along with the fact that Hitler identified others as enemies and brought about war to take attention away from his - dare we call them - domestic programs?]

Meanwhile, the CIA continues to 'disappear' people and use extraordinary rendition to take dark skinned people to other countries for torture. (And there is my segway.)

This is 'Torture Awareness Month.' (Isn't it mind-boggling we need one?)

To find out what is going on - and that torture HAS NOT BEEN MADE ILLEGAL IN THE U.S. despite the McCain/Feingold ammendment [thanks to Bush's tricks and the complexity of our laws] visit Torture Awareness to find out what you can do to create zero tolerance for torture in the U.S.

You can view a brief video interview of Maher Arar, the Canadian kidnapped by the CIA as he was returning to Canada from a vacation, as well as read fact sheets with some pretty disturbing statistics. For instance, out of nearly 750 men thrown into Guantanamo, many wound up there because they were SOLD to the U.S. for $5000 per head by Northern Alliance warlords and Pakistani authorities.

Tell me that no innocent men were rounded up for the money. Five thousand dollars is a virtual fortune to those who collected it.

Who is this monster that we have become as a nation?

Fear and ignorance will do it every time.