Nobody Daily – 6/25/08

G. W. BUSH AND E. HOWARD HUNT

Nobody Asked Me But:

“Two years ago, President Bush declared that America was ‘addicted to oil,’ and, by gosh, he was going to do something about it. Well, now he has. Now we have the new Bush energy plan: (drill up the coastline and) ‘Get more addicted to oil.’” Thomas Friedman

THE SHRINK: A cartoon strip without pictures.

The S. - Your life seems filled with danger.
CIA Guy – I laugh at danger!

The S. – You could be killed at any minute.
CIA Guy – I laugh at death!

The S. So what do you want from me?
CIA Guy – Help me to stop laughing!

The past few days I have been doing a (very) late spring cleaning of my computer and I discovered a 2004 interview in Slate Magazine with “Mr. Watergate,” E. Howard Hunt – THAT I SAVED AND NEVER READ. I am sure that none of you have had that experience.

Anyway, I read it and once again I wondered: Are honesty and morality in foreign policy simply foolish dreams – even in America? In the interview, Hunt talked about his CIA role in sparking a mid-1950s coup in Guatemala that deposed democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz. Then, in the 60s, he claims to have played a significant part in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and later set Che up to be killed in Bolivia. And we all know what happened in the 1972 after Hunt had left the CIA – but that’s another story.

Perhaps the best summary of the attitude of Hunt and his CIA superiors can be seen in his answer below:

Slate: Some 200,000 civilians were killed in the civil war (Guatemala) following the coup, which lasted for the next 40 years. Were all those deaths unforeseen?

Hunt: Deaths? What deaths?