(Here’s a bit about Karl Rove speaking in Iowa… Poor Iowa)
To say Karl Rove’s Sunday talk was emotionally charged would be an understatement.
Boos exuberantly punctuated the UI Lecture Committee’s introduction and dozens in the audience stood, turning their backs when President Bush’s former deputy chief of staff and top aide took the stage. A woman charged up an aisle, her hands shaking, as she called for Rove to be arrested. And in a row near the front, a veteran told a different 84-year-old veteran to “F— off” when he asked him to stop shouting.
“I’ve lived in Iowa City more than 60 years, and I have never been more ashamed than I am tonight of the disrespect shown by these people,” 84-year-old Bill Olin said.
Meanwhile, the “architect” on stage remained seemingly unshaken. Armed with a sarcastic humor and several quotations from prominent Democrats to support his contentions, Rove took on the audience of roughly 1,100 - telling a woman who yelled that that UI wanted the $40,000 speaking fee they paid back, simply, “You can’t have it.”
He told another man his comment showed, “a simple, stupid mind, with all due respect.”
“Look, you’ve had a chance to make your chants and protests and statements, and I want to have mine,” Rove told the audience.
But his critics gave him very little chance, repeatedly interrupting him to call him a liar and war criminal.
Sharon Benzoni, the UI Lecture Committee chairwoman, said she had hoped bringing the controversial figure would generate conversation, and she was pleased with the result.
“We feel like we really accomplished our goal of stirring up dialogue both inside the lecture hall and outside as people were leaving,” she said. “That’s what we wanted to do.”
As the president’s most trusted political strategist, Rove was ensconced in the White House before his August 2007 resignation with a indisputable influence over Oval Office policy - an influence that generated allegations of misdeed in his final year.
Rove resigned while under fire for his alleged involvement in what some see as political terminations of several U.S. attorneys, which was a controversy that also fueled calls for then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign. The UI College of Law had invited Gonzales to give last year’s commencement address, but officials said scheduling conflicts prevented his appearance.
Rove left the Bush administration after federal prosecutors decided they would not charge Rove with any crimes for his link to the outing for former CIA agent Valerie Plame.
Additionally, critics have lambasted Rove for his role in crafting communications leading up the invasion of Iraq - which was the first item on the agenda for moderator Frank Durham, a UI associate professor of journalism tasked with conducted the on-stage interview.
Durham asked how the former aide would have helped him answer a phone call he received from a woman grieving the death of a soldier, a woman who also blamed Durham for sponsoring Rove’s appearance.
Rove told him he’s handled plenty of situations like that - getting flags for mothers and stepmothers of those killed in combat.
“Have you ever shed a tear?” a member of the audience yelled.
“I’ve shed lots of tears, but I’ve also been inspired because most moms and dads believe their son or daughter did not die in vain,” Rove responded. He later added that he has seen great passion and commitment for the mission from loved ones of fallen soldiers - to which the audience booed.
They applauded, however, when Rove said Iraq “had nothing to do with 9/11.”
“What it had to do was change the circumstances in the 20th century of transatlantic terrorism,” Rove said.
The tense atmosphere was something Rove said he, as a controversial figure who worked for a controversial administration, expected before the talk .
He is so controversial that when officials at Choate Rosemary Hall, a Connecticut prep school, announced Rove would deliver the school’s 2008 commencement address, angry student and parent reaction led the school’s headmaster to change the forum to the question-and-answer address that occurred last month.
The UI campus protests were long orchestrated, with six community coalitions allying to form “The Karl Rove Welcoming Committee” which called on Iowa City police and UI police to detain Rove for treason, war crimes, and crimes against humanity until U.S. marshals could be dispatched to arrest him.
Other antiwar protesters prepared for Rove’s talk by gathering at a local restaurant to share original musical remonstrations, mostly inspired by 1960s protest songs by the likes of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger.
But Rove, defending his own actions and those of the Bush administration to the end, said, “If we ignore the enemy and his plan, we do so at our own peril.”
He said he would be satisfied that the war in Iraq is won when it is a “stable, democratic ally on the global war on terror.”
E-mail DI reporter Kelsey Beltramea at:
kelsey-beltramea@uiowa.edu
March 10th, 2008
This is a delicious piece by Wayne Madsen.
The McCain/Rove defence contractor shake down game
By Wayne Madsen
EADS Air Force tanker deal enriched campaign coffers of McCain and pockets of Karl Rove.
The recent major Air Force award of the KC-45A tanker contract to European Aeronautic defence and Space Co., the parent firm of Europe’s Airbus Industries, and Northrop Grumman involves political payoffs and dubious lobbying by top Republican officials, including GOP presumptive presidential nominee John McCain, according to knowledgeable sources who spoke to WMR on the condition of strict anonymity.
Boeing, which proposed its Boeing 777 for the Air Force contract to replace the aging KC-135 Boeing 707 fleet, criticized the award to EADS-Northrop because the 179 A330 aircraft are to be built in France and shipped to a proposed factory in Mobile, Alabama for retrofitting for tanker use.
The background to the awarding of the contract to EADS lies at the very heart of the GOP corruption in Alabama that saw the political prosecution of former Alabama Democratic Governor Don Siegelman. The award of the Air Force contract to EADS-Northrop was the result of high-level collusion between Governor Bob Riley of Alabama, the White House, and John McCain. It also helped that two senior Bush administration officials, Deputy Secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz and former Vice President Dick Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby once served as highly-paid advisers for Northrop Grumman.
When EADS decided it wanted to compete for the lucrative Air Force contract it first required a top lobbyist in Washington to see to its interests. EADS tapped Stewart Hall of the lobbying group Hall, Green and Rupli to lobby for the tanker contract. Hall, Green and Rupli eventually became the Federalist Group with Hall serving as its CEO.
WMR’s sources report that soon after Karl Rove moved to Washington in 2001 he decided he wanted a piece of the contracting pie. Rove convinced the Federalist Group to accept a merger with Wayne Berman, the chairman of Berman Enterprises and a member of the Bush-Cheney 2000 Transition Team. The merger was consummated in 2004, a year before the Air Force tanker contract was to become swamped in controversy stemming from criminal charges being brought against a senior Air Force procurement official and Boeing over fraud involving the KC-45A contract.
Berman is a good friend of Rove and influential as the vice chairman of the London-based private banking firm Jardine Lloyd Thompson and chief lobbyist for Lazard Freres and the Carlyle Group. Berman’s wife Lea was Vice President Dick Cheney’s social director before taking on the same duties for First Lady Laura Bush. Berman was also a close adviser to then- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and helped steer Reliant Energy funds into DeLay’s Texas Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC). Berman was one of 19 members of DeLay’s so-called “Kitchen Cabinet” that also included now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff, former DeLay Chief of Staff Ed Buckham of the Alexander Strategy Group, former G.W. Bush Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget and current General Electric Government Affairs director Nancy Dorn (the EADS-Northrop contract specifies the use of GE engines for the KC-45A), American for Tax Reform director Grover Norquist, and former New York Representative Bill Paxon.
Most of the Federalist Group’s lobbying contributions ended up in the coffers of Alabama Republican Senators Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican Representative Terry Everett, and Mississippi Senator Trent Lott.
In 2005, as the controversy with Boeing over the Air Force tanker deal hit the news, the Federalist Group sold to the huge advertising firm Ogilvy and Mather, which is now part of the larger ad giant, the WPP Group. The sale price was $60 million and WMR’s sources revealed that Rove received a cut in the deal.
WMR has also been told that the EADS-Northrop contract, said to be potentially worth as much as $100 billion and, eventually, possibly double that amount, also came with percentages of the deal going to Rove as well as McCain’s presidential campaign coffers.
The greasing for the EADS contract also involved Riley, who began cementing the EADS deal while he served until 2002 and his election as governor as a member of the House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee, the committee with oversight for the Air Force tanker contract. After Riley left the House to take up the governorship of Alabama, the nurturing of the EADS deal fell to Everett, who was also a member of the House Armed Services Committee. From the Senate side, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman McCain, knowing how much money from EADS-Northrop could end up in his 2008 campaign coffers, turned the screws on Boeing.
McCain held hearings beginning in 2003 on favoritism between Air Force officials like Darleen Druyun, the deputy assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition and Management, and senior official of Boeing. Druyun and then-Air Force Secretary James Roche were accused by McCain of favoring a deal whereby Boeing would lease Boeing 767s to the Air Force as refueling tankers rather than striking a more cost-effective deal with Airbus. McCain said Druyun had provided proprietary Airbus pricing data to Boeing.
Druyun has left the Air Force as a career employee and joined Boeing’s missile defence division. However, she soon faced a criminal investigation over criminal conflict-of-interest conspiracy. Moreover, she was accused of seeking personal favors from Boeing in return for favorable contract consideration. The favors included a job for her Druyun’s daughter, her son-in-law, and herself.
Druyun pleaded guilty to the charges brought against her and was sentenced to 16 months in prison. Boeing’s Chief Financial Officer Michael Sears also pleaded guilty and Boeing’s CEO, Phil Condit, resigned. Roche and Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisitions, Marvin Sambur, Druyun’s immediate superior, resigned. McCain held up confirmation of their replacements until he was assured that pro-EADS/Northrop people were put in charge. WMR has been told that MCain’s dislike for Boeing was based solely on the fact that Boeing did not offer McCain a cut in the contract while EADS made it clear early on that McCain would receive a piece of the contract pie. McCain obviously did not like the fact that Druyun was playing the same game with Boeing that he was playing with EADS.
An examination of the Druyun case file at the US District Court for Eastern Virginia revealed that pleas for a light sentence were received by the presiding judge from a number of retired Air Force officers, many of them generals.
In 2007, Riley and Representative Jo Bonner from Mobile led an Alabama delegation to the Paris Air Show where they wined and dined guests along with officials of EADS/Northrop Grumman. One guest at the Alabama pavilion was Air Force Secretary Michael Wynn. Although Alabama stands to gain 7000 jobs at the new EADS/Northrop plant in Mobile, Boeing may shut down operations in Alabama that may result in a job loss of 10,000, which means a net job loss of 3000 for Alabama.
The charges that McCain accepted bribes from EADS/Northrop in return for his support on the Air Force tanker contract are serious and enough to derail his presidential ambitions. His former House colleague, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, is serving a long prison sentence for accepting bribes worth much less than what McCain is accused of accepting from EADS/Northrop Grumman and their lobbyists. As for Rove, he has been cashing in for years on his close relationship with George W. Bush. That malfeasance appears to be continuing unabated…
March 10th, 2008
So Karl is a pundit for FauxNews
Think that was tough job for him to choose?
He’s out of the closet
With a BS deposit
Providing the Brownshirts their own muse.
March 7th, 2008
Karl ate Democracy
And chewed up DC
He riled up the masses
To vote for a Dweeb
He cheated and weaseled
And broke lots of rules
And never got caught
He must see us as fools
But his vision is shattered
And his dreams rot away
His Republican Reich
Has abandoned his play
Will we miss you Dear Karl?
Well, the answer is clear
Like a bad case of acne
Or a china shop steer.
September 5th, 2007
We’re opening up the postings here at karlrove.com. Post your thoughts on Karl and what he’s done to this country and the world. We want to hear what you think!
August 20th, 2007
It’s a good day for America. Karl is leaving. He’s leaving behind a genuine mess, but he’s leaving!
August 20th, 2007
There was a moment during his first US presidential campaign with George W. Bush that Karl Rove made a startling admission. “I run all of my campaigns as if people were watching television with the sound turned down,” he told me. And everything is a campaign for the president’s senior political and policy advisor. The race never ends for Rove. The Oval Office became another campaign headquarters and while the president strutted the deck of an aircraft carrier and told us the Iraq situation was under control, we watched the television from across the dinner table, warmed by the comforting images and the pleasing, muffled sound. Karl Rove never thought the American public was paying attention. And mostly, we were not.
Continue Reading August 13th, 2006
“Right is still right even if nobody’s doing it.
And wrong is still wrong even if everybody’s doing it.”
Texas Ranger Credo
American democracy has acquired some odd conventions. Candidates and office holders appear to no longer formulate independent thought. Advisors keep them on message and guide their policies. President George W. Bush famously brags that he does not need a poll to tell him how to think. And he does not. He has Karl Rove, a political savant who runs nightly surveys and deconstructs the results to find helpful issues and opinions. And then the president knows how to think.
Continue Reading August 13th, 2006
When night raiders forced their way into the Iraqi home of Ahmad Chalabi, no one was able to readily determine the underlying causes. Was the Bush administration finally admitting it had been had by the former head of the Iraqi National Congress? Maybe the CIA had proved Chalabi was working with the Shi’a government in Iran, trafficking in American intelligence that would facilitate Chalabi’s rise to power through the Shi’a majority in Iraq after the U.S. had been neo-conned into deposing Saddam. Those considerations, however, are clouding over a more critical issue: how did American journalism, in particular the New York Times, get so easily manipulated by Chalabi and the Bush White House?
Continue Reading August 13th, 2006
As international political powers seek Iran’s capitulation on nuclear weapons development, little notice is given to what the Americans and the British have done to create this crisis nor what steps the Israelis might eventually take to turn it profoundly more complicated. Iran’s antipathy toward the west did not spontaneously generate out of the crazed rhetoric of radical mullahs. Instead, it has been spurred by what Iranians perceive as a hypocrisy on the part of members of the world’s nuclear community, and the bumbled meddling of the US and UK in Iranian affairs for more than a half century. There is little doubt that Iran is dangerous. And it is even more certain America and Great Britain have helped to make it that way.
Continue Reading August 13th, 2006
Previous Posts
