1.  Evidence is now conclusive:

“After the Carter Administration failed to secure the release of American hostages held by Iran, Carter lost the 1980 election to Reagan. Following this, evidence emerged, particularly during the Iran-Contra investigations, that Republicans and CIA operatives, including William Casey and George H.W. Bush, had sabotaged Carter’s negotiations with the Iranians and made their own deal for hostage release.”

http://www.911blogger.com/node/21798

2.  Standard issue incident of fragging (mutiny against superiors) at Fort Hood – Muslim psychiatrist had nothing to do with it:

“Authorities say the gunmen were dressed in fatigues, though it’s not confirmed whether they are military personnel.”
…
I saw a comment over on BradBlog that said this was a traditional case of mutiny on the base. After they got things settled, they didn’t want that fact to come out because it might encourage others who are feeling the same way to act out the same way, so they framed this psychiatrist who may have just been injured in the incident.”

http://www.911blogger.com/node/21792

3.  So, British intelligence uses the same threats as the CIA:

“Foreign Office warns Mann to ‘keep quiet’

Plenty of powerful people have an interest in the mercenary behind the ‘Wonga Coup’ keeping his own counsel

 

Simon Mann has been urged by Foreign Office officials to remain silent about the coup attempt that left him languishing in an African prison, and settle for a “quiet life” with his wife and family in the UK, The Independent on Sunday has learnt.

 

The veteran mercenary returned to Britain last week after he was pardoned by oil-rich Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema – the man he had planned to overthrow five years ago. Mann, with the gratitude of a man sprung 34 years before his sentence was due to run out, apologised for the plot that ended with his incarceration in the notorious Black Beach jail. He swiftly made it clear he wanted revenge on those he believes made him the “fall guy” – notably the Lebanese millionaire, Ely Calil, and Sir Mark Thatcher, son of the former British prime minister.

 

Mann’s friends confirmed yesterday that he wanted “justice” for both men – not only for allegedly leaving him to carry the can for the disastrous coup attempt, but also for failing to look after his wife and children while he was in captivity thousands of miles away.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/foreign-office-warns-mann-to-keep-quiet-1816864.html

4.  Sounds good to me:

“Is using aid to Israel as leverage becoming a mainstream idea?

That’s because we single-handedly enable Israeli behavior with our massive amounts of military aid, diplomatic protection, and weapons supplying, which means Israeli behavior is rationally perceived by much of the Muslim world as being one and the same as American behavior.  Muslim anger towards Israel will inevitably translate into Muslim anger towards the U.S. for as long as we continue to flood Israel with aid and cover.

Friedman doesn’t explicitly advocate this, of course, but isn’t the logical outcome of his prescription — that we “just get out of the picture” and tell them to “stay out of our lives” and no longer “subsidize it” – the cessation of all of that massive aid and assistance to Israel?  How are we remotely “getting out of the picture” and telling these governments “to stay out of our lives” and no longer “subsidizing” the conflict if we remain the single largest financial and military enabler of Israeli actions as long as they continue on their current path?  While Friedman isn’t willing to follow his surprisingly blunt premises to their logical conclusions, Time’s Joe Klein is willing do so, as this is what he wrote earlier this week about what the Obama administration should do in the face of Israeli recalcitrance
…

In countless ways, our foreign policy has long and directly violated George Washington’s 1796 warning that “nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded”; that “the nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave”; and that “a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils.”  The typical justification for violating those warnings is that our interests are served by maintaining and steadfastly supporting permanent alliances of this sort.

 

Yet here is one such nation that receives more American support than any other, stubbornly refusing to cease conduct which our government officially proclaims to be deeply harmful to our interests, and the notion of using our vast leverage to make them change behavior is decreed to be one of the most impenetrable taboos (even the Executive Director of the ostensibly orthodoxy-fighting J Street recently demanded that such a step not even be entertained).  For so long, it’s been an unchallengeable given that we are required to continue to lavish Israel with aid and diplomatic protection even if they do things that our own government believes (or at least claims to believe) is directly harming the United States.  Perhaps Friedman’s implicit (if unintended) call for that to change — and Klein’s explicit call that it change — signals a long-overdue erosion of that taboo.”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/