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Banned
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Originally Posted by reconmike
My post was exactly as I intended it to be, you are correct I have no respect for the DEMOCRAT party, their motives, or the people who vote these
"we need to be kinder and gentler and talk this out pussies into office".
Truthfully I am not really concerned about my credibility here on the way left leaning, Host and crew rah rah board, OK?
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Reconmike....here is some support for my opinion that you are out of your league here....and that you would not be able to recognize a "real" Marine, even if he consistently spoke the truth and was punished by USMC brass and the Bush admin. for doing so.....
The following supports my contention that you have "bought"...swallowed a political propaganda message, hook, line, and sinker, and that the "op" that brought that message to you and the others who still subscribe to it, is the rationale for continued support of a hyped, failed, needless mission that is still getting "our kids"....Marines just like the ones you post that you used to lead....KILLED IN IRAQ, for no reason other than "the mission" carried out by Bushie political zealot, Jim Wilkinson.....
....the shame of it is....you, Reconmike, will refuse to allow any of what I'm displaying here, to "sink in".....but "the crew", on this "rah rah" board, will take note of all of it......
....and Reconmike, can you recommend a more "balanced" forum where we can see your version of "truthful" views posted, and supported?
Here's Jim Wilkinson.....the republican, "everywhere" man....the man credited with inventing the accusation that Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet... The Bush "crew" is spread mighty thin.....if this guy had to be pressed into so many roles as a trusted "operative"....from the "coup" in Florida, all the way to his present day duties as a "minder" of outsider, Hank Paulsen at Treasury....and <b>they are full of shit....or they would not have to resort to pressing so hard to push their falsehoods on unsuspecting Americans....like.....Reconmike....</b>
That is what has happened to this country.....there are folks who don't know or who refuse to accept the "con" of the last 6-1/2 years....and there are the folks who recognize that it cannot be anything but a criminal conspiracy that has sucked in the media.....in exchange for "access".
Jim Wilkinson is a "poster child" of a political party where those "elected" (by any means necessary....) never stop campaigning.....they "govern" using the same dirty tricks and misinformation that they used in Florida in November, 2000.... It doesn't matter if the lives of our troops or those of the populace of Iraq are put in the balance by "the campaign"...to these thugs of the Bush/RNC juggernaut....it is business as usual. The consequence is that they've fucked over the US and a significant portion of the rest of the world, and Reconmike not only doesn't see it.....he doesn't care.....he impresses me that....in his mind...."it's all political, anyway...." Some things aren't....they can't be....and still function. We're witnessing the dysfunction that results in placing the same people who are the "on the ground" politcal operatives during the election campaign, in all of the hiring, policy, and information distribution roles during the actual period of government "service" that the dirty tricks laden political campaign achieves for the thugs who operate the campaing, and later, the government, itself.....
The "tell" is that folks who believe that the "media is liberal" have only one other place to go.....to the space where the "information" is catapulted by Bush and his "operative", James R. Wilkinson....and that is a pathetic place where you'll end up with a POV similar to the one regularly exhibited in the posts of Reconmike.....
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/ask/20040319.html
Ask the White House
Privacy Policy
Welcome to "Ask the White House" -- an online interactive forum where you can submit questions to Administration officials and friends of the White House. Visit the "Ask the White House" archives to read other discussions with White House officials.
Jim Wilkinson
Biography
March 19, 2004
Jim Wilkinson
Good to be here and looking forward to your questions.....
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http://www.treas.gov/organization/bios/wilkinson-e.html
<b>Jim Wilkinson</b>
Chief of Staff
Since, July 2006, Jim Wilkinson has served as Chief of Staff for Secretary Hank Paulson at the Department of Treasury.
Prior to joining Treasury, Wilkinson served as Senior Advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from January 2005 to July 2006. In this role Wilkinson served as Secretary Rice’s senior communications strategist and a key policy advisor; he managed the Secretary’s foreign travel, scheduling and engagement with foreign leaders; and he oversaw special projects on behalf of the Secretary. Subsequent to Secretary Rice’s appointment, in December of 2004 and January of 2005, Wilkinson also co-managed Secretary Rice’s State Department transition team with Rice’s legal counsel John Bellinger....
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Quote:
http://www.democracynow.org/article....7/06/20/152255
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: Four years ago, our first guest today helped sell the Iraq war to the American public. Armed with talking points from the Bush administration, <b>Josh Rushing served as a Marine spokesperson at CENTCOM in Doha as the US invaded Iraq. Josh Rushing has since retired from the Marines and has started working at an unlikely outlet: the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera International.</b>
Rushing became famous in the Arab world after he appeared almost by chance in the documentary Control Room about Al Jazeera. After the film was released, the Marines ordered Rushing to stop speaking to the press, because he had begun publicly defending Al Jazeera. When the network launched an English-language channel, Rushing was offered a job.
Josh Rushing writes about his transition from the Marines to Al Jazeera in his new book, Mission Al Jazeera: Build a Bridge, Seek the Truth, Change the World. Josh Rushing joins us now in the firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!
JOSH RUSHING: Thank you for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: Why did you join the Marines?
JOSH RUSHING: I joined the Marines out of a sense of civic responsibility my parents believe in, that you have to give something back, so essentially my sister and I were raised either a teacher, military, firemen, police -- something along those lines, you’ve got to do at least for a few years. So when I graduated high school, I was looking for ways I could put myself through college, I was looking for ways I could give back to my community, and it led me to the Marine Corps.
AMY GOODMAN: So you went into the Marines. Where did you go? Where did you begin? Where was your basic training? And then, where did you end up?
JOSH RUSHING: Sure. Well, it was fourteen years of active duty, but long story short is, I went to basic training in California in San Diego. Everyone west of the Mississippi goes to boot camp in San Diego; east goes to Parris Island, South Carolina. From there, I went through infantry school, Camp Pendleton, California. They pulled me out to be a journalist, oddly enough, for the Marine Corps, a print journalist, and sent me to journalism school in Indianapolis at a military base. From there, I traveled the world for the next several years writing for military newspapers and magazines. Selected for a college program, I went to the University of Texas, still active duty, got a degree in the classics in ancient history while there; became an officer; went through infantry school again as an officer; went to flight school; ended up back in my old field, eventually, of public affairs, being a media liaison; eventually ended up working in Hollywood, representing the Marine Corps to the entertainment industry. And then for six months I was pulled out.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain that part, the representing the Marine Corps to the entertainment industry. Explain how Hollywood works with the military.
JOSH RUSHING: Sure. It depends on how you look at it. The military looks at it as an educational opportunity. They realize how influential Hollywood is in shaping people’s views of the military, and everything else, for that matter. So what they do is that they make government bases, planes, tanks, personnel all available to Hollywood if the script is in some way deemed educational and pretty close to accurate -- more important to be educational than actually accurate. And my job was to go through the script, make sure there was some value for the American citizen and the government participating in that, and then making sure the government was reimbursed to the penny, so that it didn’t cost taxpayers anything.
AMY GOODMAN: And if they didn’t like a script, they wouldn’t allow them to use the --
JOSH RUSHING: I spent more time saying no than yes to projects. For example, Jarhead was a book -- I actually loved the book, Anthony Swofford’s account of his time in the Gulf War, the first one, but I had to say no to the script, even though the military tech advisor was a friend of mine, even though the writer of the script, Bill Broyles, is a former Marine, and then Sam Mendes directed American Beauty, my favorite movie. But we said no because it just had inaccuracies, and it didn’t show the events as they were, and it lacked what I guess was an educational element.
AMY GOODMAN: I remember interviewing the author of Black Hawk Down, saying, yeah, he changed the script to make the military happy, because they wanted to use -- I mean, it’s, to say the least, very dramatic when you can have millions of dollars of US military money invested in a film.
JOSH RUSHING: There was a scene in Black Hawk Down where it had a senior officer slapping a junior enlisted member across the face, and the scene was pulled from the script. And then, the director -- who I’m forgetting right now.
AMY GOODMAN: The author was Mark Bowden. Wasn’t him.
JOSH RUSHING: Mark Bowden, exactly, yeah -- wanted to insert it back into the script, and the military pulled all the gear from the movie, and the movie used a ton of military stuff. They filmed it in Morocco, had all these military helicopters, millions of dollars worth of military stuff that they just couldn’t have otherwise. In the civilian world, you can’t get some of the things the military has, so --
AMY GOODMAN: Ridley Scott was the director, right?
JOSH RUSHING: Ridley Scott, that’s right. That’s right. Scott wanted to put it in. It became a big showdown between Scott and the Army major. And the Army major pulled all the aircraft, and they said on the set for several days -- millions of dollars a day passing by into the studio -- said, “OK, Scott. Drop the scene.” And then they moved forward with the project. But the job in Hollywood, at its worst, is when it’s used for nothing but spin, when it’s used for shaping movies to sell, you know, a message that may or may not be true.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, that’s certainly the power, I mean, if they can withdraw millions of dollars worth of military gear.
JOSH RUSHING: Absolutely is. Absolutely is. And it really depends on the personality and the job. The same civilian has been in charge of it at the Pentagon for years now, a guy named Phil Strub, who’s not a bad guy, and he was my boss when I worked in Hollywood.
But an example is A Few Good Men. Do you remember the movie with Tom Cruise? And it’s about a Marine squad. They kill a Marine down in Gitmo, actually, and then it’s a cover-up to the highest levels down there. And Tom Cruise is a Navy lawyer that kind of unravels the whole plot. That script, which I think is actually a great movie -- Aaron Sorkin wrote it -- was rejected by my office years ago. They denied support for it. I looked at the script and the project, what they were looking for, just out of curiosity when I was in the office, and I would have supported it, because in the end it showed that the colonel played by Jack Nicholson as being arrested and taken away. So it showed there are some bad apples, even at those very high levels, but that institutionally the institution wasn’t corrupt. So I would have supported that movie in a heartbeat. So it really depends on the personality of the person in that office, as to how they use it.
AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, Tom Cruise, in that film A Few Good Men, was playing David Iglesias, who was the US attorney who was fired in this whole US attorney scandal under Alberto Gonzales.
JOSH RUSHING: Really? I didn’t know that.
AMY GOODMAN: As a young attorney.
JOSH RUSHING: I didn’t know that was based on a real person at all.
AMY GOODMAN: I believe it was.
JOSH RUSHING: Oh, that’s fascinating. The law comes back full circle.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go forward from Hollywood to the war in Iraq, because you do have CENTCOM, where you served, that ended up being this multi-hundred-thousand-dollar set to present the war on Iraq. Explain.
JOSH RUSHING: Yeah, I was pulled out for six months to go from my Hollywood job to CENTCOM. There was actually no relationship between the two. And, ironically, I’m known for a movie out of CENTCOM, rather than out of my Hollywood job. But I went to CENTCOM to be a spokesperson for General Tommy Franks and Central Command, where, yeah, there was a lot of production value there for a military, you know, spokesperson’s office. We had a $200,000 set meant for generals to give the daily briefing from. It was intended to look very high-tech and send the message to, I guess, the world that down to the last detail we were the most high-tech, you know, tech-savvy army ever, that kind of thing. But I think a lot of people find it shocking to bring in a Hollywood set designer to set up a stage for a general to give war briefings from. It tells you you’re in a new stage of the information age, doesn’t it?
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the kind of information that was presented at CENTCOM and how you were feeling as someone in the Marines who was part of shaping that message, and how you changed along the way.
JOSH RUSHING: Yeah, no. This part was really rough for me, because as a military spokesperson, you don’t talk about policy. You talk about the way you’re going to conduct an action, not why you’re going to conduct an action. So if someone were to ask me before the war, “Why are you going to invade Iraq?” -- and reporters did -- <b>the only honest answer I could give is, “We’ll invade Iraq if the President orders us to. And we won’t if he doesn’t. We don’t get to pick and choose our battles.” That way, it’s left to a politician in a suit behind a podium at the White House to explain why they made that decision.</b>
<h3>But instead, what we did, we had a Republican operative who was put in charge of our office, displacing a colonel</h3> that had started doing media liaison when this Republican operative was about probably five years old. And what this guy knew how to do was run a campaign, and so we were run like a political campaign. And the first step in that political campaign was to sell the product, and that was sell the invasion. So they gave the reasons down to the young troops, guys like me, to go out to reporters and give the reasons we’re going to invade a sovereign nation.
Here’s the problem: the reporters in no way had the latitude to ask someone in uniform a critical question. I mean, on MSNBC their coverage was actually packaged with a banner that said, “Our hearts are with you.” So when I’m the young troop in uniform on screen, and the viewer sees “Our hearts are with you,” do you think the reporter’s going to ask me a critical question? Of course not. But I’m out there giving political answers. I’m out there saying, “We’re going to invade Iraq” -- and this was the real catch: they would ask me before I would go on air live, “Are there any messages you want to get across today?” Well, yeah. My boss comes straight from the White House, and they have the messages of the day, and so they would give it to us. So I’d say, “Sure. WMD, regime change, ties with terrorism.” And they go, “OK. Well, I’ll ask you these questions, so we can get those answers out.” And they set it all up.
AMY GOODMAN: Who, in particular, would say this?
<h3>JOSH RUSHING: You know, I pick on FOX a lot. FOX reporters would do it. But NBC did it, as well. Those two were probably the worst about it, because those two were the most competitive about wanting access.</h3> I think they saw this as kind of part of the game. So we would go on live. They would ask me, you know, the staged questions. They would pat me on the back and thank me for my service. And then, “Back to you, John, in New York.” And the answers I gave weren’t the way we were going to conduct an action. They were the political reasons for invading another nation. And I was just a junior officer. So it was really kind of startling the way that all went down.
<h2>AMY GOODMAN: Jim Wilkinson, who is he?
JOSH RUSHING: Jim Wilkinson is the Republican operative I was talking about.</h2> He’s a guy that -- he’s about my age. He’s from a small town in Texas. Again, I don’t believe he’s a bad guy. I just -- I disagree with what he was ordered to do, what he volunteered to do. He worked in Dick Armey’s office. He is credited with coming up with a line about Gore having invented the internet. That was Jim’s work.
Then, in the 2000 elections, he was in charge of the media down in the Florida recount, where there was one point where the Dade County voting board was going to recount the ballots down there. The Republicans didn’t want them to recount it until a decision had been made by the courts, and so they stormed the office. The office had to shut down, couldn’t do the recount. It was Jim in the press -- you can go back and look at the articles -- who says it was just a moment where a bunch of Americans felt the voting process was being taken away from them, and so, you know, they got a little over-emotional, and that’s what happened. But if you actually look at the pictures, it’s called the “Brooks Brothers Riot” these days, because everyone in the picture, the rioters, are all in bowties and nice suits [inaudible]. They’re young, twenty-something, blond hair. And if you start to kind of circle the faces and identify them, they’re all congressional staffers, Republican congressional staffers. But if that was an organized event, it would be illegal. It would be voter intimidation. So -- moving them across state lines to perform that kind of thing, because they were all out of Washington, D.C. So that’s why Jim was in the press saying, “Oh, you know, this wasn’t organized. These were just emotional people who felt the system was being taken from their grasp.”
AMY GOODMAN: So it was this party operative, Republican Party operative --
JOSH RUSHING: That was Jim Wilkinson.....
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
IRAQ'S NUCLEAR FILE : Inside the Prewar Debate
Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence
By Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 10, 2003; Page A01
...... <b>'Educating the Public'</b>
Systematic coordination began in August, when Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. formed the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad. A senior official who participated in its work called it "an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities."
In an interview with the New York Times published Sept. 6, Card did not mention the WHIG but hinted at its mission. "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," he said.
The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Among the regular participants were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin <h3>and James R. Wilkinson</h3>; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy advisers led by Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, along with I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.
The first days of September would bring some of the most important decisions of the prewar period: what to demand of the United Nations in the president's Sept. 12 address to the General Assembly, when to take the issue to Congress, and how to frame the conflict with Iraq in the midterm election campaign that began in earnest after Labor Day.
A "strategic communications" task force under the WHIG began to plan speeches and white papers. There were many themes in the coming weeks, but Iraq's nuclear menace was among the most prominent.
'A Mushroom Cloud'
The day after publication of Card's marketing remark, Bush and nearly all his top advisers began to talk about the dangers of an Iraqi nuclear bomb.
Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair conferred at Camp David that Saturday, Sept. 7, and they each described alarming new evidence. Blair said proof that the threat is real came in "the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency this morning, showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapon sites." Bush said "a report came out of the . . . IAEA, that they [Iraqis] were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."
There was no new IAEA report. Blair appeared to be referring to news reports describing curiosity at the nuclear agency about repairs at sites of Iraq's former nuclear program. Bush cast as present evidence the contents of a report from 1996, updated in 1998 and 1999. In those accounts, the IAEA described the history of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program that arms inspectors had systematically destroyed.
A White House spokesman later acknowledged that Bush "was imprecise" on his source but stood by the crux of his charge. The spokesman said U.S. intelligence, not the IAEA, had given Bush his information.
That, too, was garbled at best. U.S. intelligence reports had only one scenario for an Iraqi bomb in six months to a year, premised on Iraq's immediate acquisition of enough plutonium or enriched uranium from a foreign source.
"That is just about the same thing as saying that if Iraq gets a bomb, it will have a bomb," said a U.S. intelligence analyst who covers the subject. "We had no evidence for it." ......
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Quote:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...=Jim_Wilkinson
<b>Jim Wilkinson (James R. Wilkinson)</b>, who served as General Tommy R. Franks' director of strategic communications, is deputy national security advisor for communications as of December 2003. Wilkinson "will craft long-term messaging strategy for the National Security Council" and report to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and White House communications director Dan Bartlett.[1]
<b>Prior to his return to the White House, Wilkinson briefly served as director of communications for the Republican National Convention</b>, which will take place in New York City Aug. 30 to Sept. 2, 2004. "His office, on the 18th floor over Madison Square Garden, is furnished with the essentials: leather-bound Bible, Yankee cap, Fox News on the flat-screen TV. ... His task: establish a communications center in the core of the media capital of the Western world."
"Mr. Wilkinson is bringing the lessons about access and message that the Bush administration learned in Gulf War II--where he helped to manage the program of embedding reporters in combat units--to the home front. ... As for talent, he had General Tommy Franks; now he's got [New York] Governor George Pataki."
<b>"Formerly a political operative, Mr. Wilkinson was put in the position of feeding, informing and calming the most motivated media army in the world in Qatar. There, inside the massive telecommunications studio assembled by the U.S. Army and the Bush administration, he earned both the enmity and admiration of various parts of the worldwide press during war in a technologically superb and informationally sparse desert press center</b>. ... 'It was an unprofessional operation,' said Peter Boyer of The New Yorker, who said he landed an interview with General Franks only by going around Mr. Wilkinson to the Pentagon."
"Jim Wilkinson has gone from politics to war and back since he worked for George W. Bush in Florida during the 2000 election, and his journey is a mark of the administration's utilitarian approach to marketing war, politics and the Presidency. 'He's a man who prefers to work behind the scenes,' said the spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Jim Dyke. He's also got as pure a Republican pedigree as you can wish, and an edge honed in the bitter partisan wars between Bill Clinton and the Republican House leadership.
"Mr. Wilkinson grew up in East Texas and attended high school in Tenaha, population 1,046, then gave up plans to become an undertaker to go to work for Republican Congressman Dick Armey in 1992. Mr. Armey soon became House majority leader; his communications director, Mr. Wilkinson's mentor, was Ed Gillespie, now chairman of the R.N.C."
"Wilkinson first left his mark on the 2000 Presidential race in March 1999, when <h3>he helped package and promote the notion that Al Gore claimed to have 'invented the Internet.'</h3> Then the Texan popped up in Miami to defend Republican protesters shutting down a recount: 'We find it interesting that when Jesse Jackson has thousands of protesters in the streets, it's O.K., but when a small number of Republicans exercise their First Amendment rights, the Democrats don't seem to like it,' he told the Associated Press.
"For his troubles, Mr. Wilkinson was made deputy director of communications for planning in the Bush White House, and was among the aides who set up the Sept. 14, 2001, visit to Ground Zero that redefined George W. Bush's Presidency. During the Afghan war, he managed 'Coalition Information Centers' in Washington, D.C., and London, as well as in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Qatar, he became the point man on the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch and delivered the most memorable and sellable quote of Gulf War II: 'America doesn't leave its heroes behind,' he told reporters at a late-night briefing."
Source: New York Observer, October 23, 2003.
22 October 2003, Salon.com: Karl Rove's "choice as director of communications for the convention is none other than Jim Wilkinson, the flack who left so many reporters furious last spring when he handled Pentagon press relations at the Iraq War headquarters, U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar."
19 August 2003, Republican National Committee Press Release: "2004 Republican National Convention Manager and CEO Bill Harris announced today the appointment of James R. Wilkinson as Director of Communications for the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City.
"Wilkinson currently serves as Director of Strategic Communications at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, and during 2001-02 worked for President George W. Bush in the White House as Deputy Director of Communications for Planning. In 2000 Wilkinson served as Director of Communications at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). Prior to joining the NRCC, Wilkinson spent several years working in Congress for former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), serving in several roles, including Press Secretary and Political Director."
17 March 2003, Buzzflash: "Former Bush campaign aide Jim Wilkinson, (forever seared into the American psyche as the spokesman for GOP Miami-based protesters clamoring to stop the Florida ballot re-count during the 2000 election) has been hired as Tommy Frank's top spokesperson at the media center, and will be responsible for overseeing 42 military public affairs officers charged with managing hundreds of international correspondents covering the war.
"In other words, the media center that's been built by the military, has been designed, in part, by the Hollywood art director who adds the Orwellian ambiance to George Bush's speeches. And to make matters worse, this entire public affairs operation is headed Jim Wilkinson, one of the thugs who protested the Florida recount.
"Ever the good soldier, (though a civilian, Wilkinson reportedly wears a military desert camouflage uniform to work), Wilkinson is poised to 'manage' journalists working at the center, many of whom are currently enjoying Ritz-Carlton accommodations, open bars and free buffets and belly dancing. 'It's a first-class war,' said Peter Lloyd, correspondent for Australian Broadcasting Corp."
Note: The Hollywood art director is "George Allison, the Hollywood honcho who designed the $200,000 stage, most recently worked on the upcoming Kirk and Michael Douglas film, as well as on George Bush's 'Corporate Responsibility' and other propaganda backdrops."
18 September 2002: White House "Deputy Communications Director Jim Wilkinson, 32, a fast-talking Texan who has become an unlikely but keen student of Islam .... recently got back from a trip to Morocco where he continued his study of Arabic (which he can now read and write pretty well).
"It was Wilkinson who spearheaded the successful Afghan women's campaign last year. A Naval Reserve officer, Wilkinson got his start working with Bush ally Texas Rep. Dick Armey. He's the go-to guy when the White House needs information against its enemies.
"In the last few weeks, he and his underlings have weeded through hundreds of pages of news clippings, U.N. resolutions and State Department reports to compile an arsenal of documents against Saddam Hussein. They released the first round last week: 'Decade of Defiance and Deception' (a broken-U.N.-resolutions hit parade)."
Recap of Notable Quotes/Activities
* "Wilkinson first left his mark on the 2000 Presidential race in March 1999, when he helped package and promote the notion that Al Gore claimed to have 'invented the Internet.'"[2]
* "Then [Wilkinson] popped up in Miami to defend Republican protesters shutting down a recount: 'We find it interesting that when Jesse Jackson has thousands of protesters in the streets, it's O.K., but when a small number of Republicans exercise their First Amendment rights, the Democrats don't seem to like it,' he told the Associated Press."[3]
* Wilkinson "spearheaded the successful Afghan women's campaign last year."[4]
* During "Gulf War II [Wilkinson] helped to manage the program of embedding reporters in combat units--to the home front."[5]
* Wilkinson "left so many reporters furious last spring when he handled Pentagon press relations at the Iraq War headquarters, U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar."[6]
* "President Saddam Hussein is seeking uniforms that are 'identical down to the last detail' to those worn by American and British troops, so that atrocities carried out by Iraqi forces could be blamed on the allies, a senior Defense Department official said Thursday. ... James R. Wilkinson, chief spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said Hussein had ordered the uniforms for use by members of his paramilitary force, Fedayeen Saddam. ... These forces, Wilkinson said, 'would wear them when conducting reprisals against the Iraqi people so that they could pass the atrocities off as the work of the United States and the United Kingdom.'"[7]
* "'Key regime figures had spheres of influence, and many in Uday and Qusay's spheres of influence are without a doubt sleeping better tonight,' said James R. Wilkinson, spokesman for the United States Central Command in Tampa, Fla."[8] ....
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Links to supporting info in preceding quote box:
Selling the war to the American Public...The CON JOB of the century...:
http://www.patsfans.com/new-england-...ad.php?t=50562
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...1074-2005Jan23
<b>In The Loop
Miami 'Riot' Squad: Where Are They Now?</b>
By Al Kamen
Monday, January 24, 2005; Page A13
As we begin the second Bush administration, let's take a moment to reflect upon one of the most historic episodes of the 2000 battle for the White House -- the now-legendary "Brooks Brothers Riot" at the Miami-Dade County polling headquarters.
<b>This was when dozens of "local protesters," actually mostly Republican House aides from Washington</b>, chanted "Stop the fraud!" and "Let us in!" when the local election board tried to move the re-counting from an open conference room to a smaller space
With help from their GOP colleagues and others, we identified some of these Republican heroes of yore in a photo of the event.
Some of those pictured have gone on to other things, including stints at the White House. For example, <b>Matt Schlapp, No. 6</b>, a former House aide and then a Bush campaign aide, has risen to be White House political director. <b>Garry Malphrus, No. 2 in the photo</b>, a former staff director of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on criminal justice, is now deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. And <b>Rory Cooper, No. 3</b>, who was at the National Republican Congressional Committee, later worked at the White House Homeland Security Council and was seen last week working for the Presidential Inaugural Committee.
<CENTER><CENTER><img src="http://www.washintonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/graphics/intheloop_012405.jpg">
Here's what some of the others went on to do:
<b>No. 1. Tom Pyle</b>, who had worked for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), went private sector a few months later, getting a job as director of federal affairs for Koch Industries.
<b>No. 7. Roger Morse</b>, another House aide, moved on to the law and lobbying firm Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds. "I was also privileged to lead a team of Republicans to Florida to help in the recount fight," he told a legal trade magazine in a 2003 interview.
<b>No. 8. Duane Gibson</b>, an aide on the House Resources Committee, was a solo lobbyist and formerly with the Greenberg Traurig lobby operation. He is now with the Livingston Group as a consultant.
<b>No. 9. Chuck Royal</b> was and still is a legislative assistant to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a former House member.
<b>No. 10. Layna McConkey Peltier</b>, who had been a Senate and House aide and was at Steelman Health Strategies during the effort, is now at Capital Health Group.
(<b>We couldn't find No. 4, Kevin Smith</b>, a former GOP House aide who later worked with Voter.com, or No. 5, Steven Brophy, a former GOP Senate aide and then at consulting firm KPMG. If you know what they are doing these days, please e-mail shackelford@washpost.comso we can update our records.)
<b>Sources say the "rioters" proudly note their participation on résumés and in interviews.</b> But while the original hardy band of demonstrators numbered barely a couple of dozen, the numbers apparently have grown with the legend.
Quote:
http://archive.salon.com/politics/fe...sch/index.html
Democrats call for federal investigation
Rep. Peter Deutsch asks feds to look into alleged GOP intimidation tactics in Miami-Dade County; Nassau County tosses out its recount and 51 crucial votes for Gore.
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By Jake Tapper
Nov. 24, 2000 | WASHINGTON -- Salon has learned that Democratic Rep. Peter Deutsch, D-Fla., will call for a federal investigation into whether Republicans organized an effort to intimidate the Miami-Dade County canvassing board into stopping their recount. ....
....A 1996 study in the Yale Law Journal concluded that "in considering the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the 90th Congress found that there was 'no question of the constitutional power of Congress to punish private interference with voting in Federal elections, interstate travel or interstate commerce.'"
<h3>But Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for the Bush recount team who was present at the protest outside the Miami-Dade canvassing room</h3>, says that there was nothing orchestrated about the protest. "There were between 80 and 100 of us" outside the room, Wilkinson said, "and it was a very emotional group of young people. But they thought the election was being held behind closed doors." Hence they all walked outside the canvassing room and protested -- emotionally, but spontaneously, Wilkinson said.
Wilkinson observed that the Democrats have their share of protesters in Miami, too. "Al Gore has union volunteers that they've bused in from out of town to down here in Miami," he said. "Jesse Jackson brings a thousand or 10,000 volunteers to Florida and they have no problem with it. All of a sudden, we have 100 people and we're intimidating. Republicans are using Democrat protest tactics and they don't like it." ......
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