Posts by Nico Pitney

Nico Pitney is National Editor at the Huffington Post.

Banana-gate: McCain Backer's Firm Pleaded Guilty To Funding Terrorist Group In Colombia
Posted by Nico Pitney, Huffington Post on July 2, 2008 at 8:00 AM.

The co-host of a recent top-dollar fundraiser for Sen. John McCain oversaw the payment of roughly $1.7 million to a Colombian paramilitary group that is today designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Carl H. Lindner Jr., the billionaire Cincinnati businessman, was CEO of Chiquita Brands International from 1984 to 2001, and remained on the company's board of directors until May 2002. Beginning under his tenure, Chiquita executives paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish acronym AUC), which is described by George Washington University's National Security Archive as an "illegal right-wing anti-guerrilla group tied to many of the country's most notorious civilian massacres."

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DNC Ad Hammers McCain on Iraq: Watch Video
Posted by Nico Pitney, Huffington Post on April 27, 2008 at 12:51 PM.

Here's a first look at the Democratic Party's new ad hitting Sen. John McCain -- the first DNC spot to take on McCain over his support for the Iraq war.

The 30-second ad manages to squeeze in not one but two clips of McCain's infamous exchange at a town hall meeting declaring that he'd be "fine" staying in Iraq for 100 years. In between, we see edgy shots of chaos in Iraq, including a bomb going off behind a startled U.S. soldier, and Iraqis scrambling around an exploded car.

The McCain campaign is sure to go apoplectic over the spot. In the past few months, they've sent out no less than 13 emails decrying the use of the "100 years" line by his political opponents. But the DNC plays it smart by not characterizing McCain's words, and it's hard to argue with the tape.

The ad is part of a $500,000 buy on national cable networks. Take a look:

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Bill Clinton Flashback: "All These Economically Insecure White People ... Are Scared to Death"
Posted by Nico Pitney, Huffington Post on April 13, 2008 at 4:00 PM.

As the rumination continues over Barack Obama's comments about economically-depressed small town voters, statements made by Bill Clinton on the same topic -- uttered while he was running for president in 1991 -- have now surfaced.

"The reason (George H. W. Bush's tactic) works so well now is that you have all these economically insecure white people who are scared to death," Clinton was quoted saying by the Los Angeles Times in September 1991.

A couple months later, Joe Klein, writing for the Sunday Times, reported that Clinton made the following remarks:

"You know, he [Bush] wants to divide us over race. I'm from the South. I understand this. This quota deal they're gonna pull in the next election is the same old scam they've been pulling on us for decade after decade after decade. When their economic policies fail, when the country's coming apart rather than coming together, what do they do? They find the most economically insecure white men and scare the living daylights out of them. They know if they can keep us looking at each other across a racial divide, if I can look at Bobby Rush and think, Bobby wants my job, my promotion, then neither of us can look at George Bush and say, 'What happened to everybody's job? What happened to everybody's income? What ... have ... you ... done ... to ... our ... country?'"

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NY Times: McCain's Alleged Romance with Lobbyist Exposed
Posted by Nico Pitney, Sam Stein, Huffington Post on February 20, 2008 at 8:15 PM.

On Thursday night, an otherwise obscure telecommunications lobbyist by the name of Vicki Iseman was thrust into the media and campaign spotlight, after a New York Times story suggested that she and Sen. John McCain had a close relationship that may have been romantic.

[Iseman] had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client's corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself -- instructing staff members to block the woman's access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist's client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Who is Iseman? A quick search on the Internet turns up some background information, including a picture of her with President Bush.

A website of her alma matter, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated with a degree in elementary education in 1990, documents her fast rise in the world of lobbying.

Iseman, the site notes, secured a job at the firm Alcalde and Fay only a few months after graduation, mostly for secretarial work. Soon thereafter, however, she began moving up the employment ranks. And eight years after she started, she became the youngest partner at Alcalde. Her clients included PAXtv, Religious Voices in Broadcasting, Telemundo, the Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.

From her page on the firm's website -- which was pulled from the web shortly after the New York Times story broke -- there is this: "[Iseman] has consulted for clients who are interested in government contracting opportunities. She has assisted corporations through the authorization and appropriation process. An active fundraiser, she has organized and participated in many political fundraising events."

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Hillary May Have Magic, But Obama Has Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Posted by Nico Pitney, Huffington Post on January 22, 2008 at 4:32 PM.

Unbeknownst to him, basketball legend-turned-author Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was pulled into the 2008 campaign fray this week.

In a radio ad airing in South Carolina, Abdul-Jabbar's former teammate Magic Johnson endorses Hillary Clinton and suggests that her chief rival, Barack Obama, is an overreaching rookie.

"We won our first game on a last-second shot," the former L.A. Lakers point guard says in the ad. "I was so hyped. But the captain of my team said, 'Take it easy rookie, it's a long season, it's a long road to the championship.' He was right."

The team captain that Magic is referencing: Mr. Abdul-Jabbar, who told the Huffington Post that Magic has it wrong about Obama. "I don't think he's a rookie. He's served as a senator very capably, and he is very skilled in terms of his ability to organize and lead people. And that's what we need right now."

Abdul-Jabbar, who recently authored a book charting the lasting impact of the Harlem Renaissance, said he doesn't fault Magic Johnson for his endorsement. "Mrs. Clinton is not a bad choice, I just think Mr. Obama is the best choice."

But he noted, "Unfortunately, Mrs. Clinton has been at many times a divisive figure, and I don't think that's intentional on her part, but I do think that's the case."

Abdul-Jabbar's book "On the Shoulders Of Giants" addresses the legacy of key African American leaders (in a glowing book review, the Washington Post said the author had transitioned from "iconic professional athlete to astute cultural historian.") But he chose not to weigh in on the recent racially-loaded spats between Obama and Clinton.

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New Documents Revealed in Case of Huckabee's Support for Freeing Rapist
Posted by Nico Pitney, Sam Stein, Huffington Post on December 11, 2007 at 5:35 AM.

This post, written by Sam Stein and Nico Pitney, originally appeared on The Huffington Post

In the wake of revelations that Mike Huckabee pushed for the parole of a convicted rapist who went on to rape and murder two other women, the former Arkansas governor has sought to distance himself from the story and questioned the legitimacy of the relevant documents.

Murray Waas reported last week for the Huffington Post that Huckabee received (and subsequently tried to keep secret) letters from victims of rapist Wayne Dumond and their family members, imploring the state not to grant his parole.

When first informed of our story last Tuesday, Huckabee spokesperson Alice Stewart said, "There were no letters sent to the governor's office from any rape victims." Later on Tuesday, Huckabee's campaign acknowledged that his office had received at least one letter from another Dumond victim.

On Wednesday, Huckabee campaign research director Joe Carter claimed in a statement that "the authenticity of the letters [posted by the Huffington Post] is questionable." Yet, in an interview with ABC News aired on Wednesday evening, Huckabee personally acknowledged receiving one of these letters from a previous victim of Dumond, and said he had also "encountered" the rape victim.

Since the Huckabee campaign has questioned the validity of the original report, the Huffington Post has decided to release additional documents from Huckabee's file on Dumond.

[Read the new documents in full here.]

The file, which was provided by a staffer to then-governor Huckabee who was concerned about his handling of the case, includes 12 separate letters written by eight different women. (This includes the three documents posted for the original story). Three of the women reported being raped or sexually assaulted by Dumond. One, whose writings have not been made public up to this point, wrote about her harrowing assault at Dumond's hands.

Standing there yielding a butcher knife above his head, was the shadow of a man. I asked "Who is it?" and he immediately burst on to my side of the bed, put his hands over my mouth and stuck the knife in my throat, whispering, "Don't say a word or I'll cut your goddamned throat." I froze and adhered to his request...

Also included in the file is an officially marked and dated Arkansas State Police affidavit, given to Huckabee prior to his decision to support parole, in which Dumond confessed to having raped another woman. Dumond was never charged for the crime.

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Obama To Bush: "You Don't Have Our Authorization" For Iran War
Posted by Nico Pitney on September 12, 2007 at 11:00 AM.

This post, written by Nico Pitney, originally appeared on The Huffington Post

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is set to deliver a "major policy speech" on Iraq today in Clinton, Iowa. Below, an excerpt of the speech obtained by the Huffington Post:

We hear eerie echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq in the way that the President and Vice President talk about Iran. They conflate Iran and al Qaeda. They issue veiled threats. They suggest that the time for diplomacy and pressure is running out when we haven't even tried direct diplomacy. Well George Bush and Dick Cheney must hear - loud and clear - from the American people and the Congress: you don't have our support, and you don't have our authorization for another war.

More from the speech, titled "Turning the Page in Iraq":

"Conventional thinking in Washington lined up for war. The pundits judged the political winds to be blowing in the direction of the President. Despite - or perhaps because of how much experience they had in Washington, too many politicians feared looking weak and failed to ask hard questions. Too many took the President at his word instead of reading the intelligence for themselves. Congress gave the President the authority to go to war. Our only opportunity to stop the war was lost."

"There is something unreal about the debate that's taking place in Washington... The bar for success is so low that it is almost buried in the sand. The American people have had enough of the shifting spin. We've had enough of extended deadlines for benchmarks that go unmet. We've had enough of mounting costs in Iraq and missed opportunities around the world. We've had enough of a war that should never have been authorized and should never have been waged."

"I opposed this war from the beginning. I opposed the war in 2002. I opposed it in 2003. I opposed it in 2004. I opposed it in 2005. I opposed it in 2006. I introduced a plan in January to remove all of our combat brigades by next March. And I am here to say that we have to begin to end this war now."

"Let me be clear: there is no military solution in Iraq, and there never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year - now. We should enter into talks with the Iraqi government to discuss the process of our drawdown. We must get out strategically and carefully, removing troops from secure areas first, and keeping troops in more volatile areas until later. But our drawdown should proceed at a steady pace of one or two brigades each month. If we start now, all of our combat brigades should be out of Iraq by the end of next year."

"Some argue that we should just replace Prime Minister Maliki. But that wouldn't solve the problem...The problems in Iraq are bigger than one man. Iraq needs a new Constitutional convention that would include representatives from all levels of Iraqi society - in and out of government. The United Nations should play a central role in convening and participating in this convention, which should not adjourn until a new accord on national reconciliation is reached."

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Cheney Lies To High School Kids
Posted by Nico Pitney on June 5, 2007 at 4:01 AM.

This post, written by Nico Pitney, originally appeared on Think Progress

"Addressing about 100 wide-eyed Wyoming high school students learning about government and the political process," Vice President Cheney yesterday repeated one of the key fabrications that helped send the United States into war.

During the question and answer session, one student asked, "I was wondering -- I'm not trying to start a debate, or anything, but do you still think that the Iraq war can be won?" Cheney immediately answered "yes," adding, "I think we're making significant progress now."

He then launched into a justification of the war, citing the September 11 attacks. "The fact of the matter is Iraq is part of the global war on terror," he told the students. "And you've got to go back and look at what happened on 9/11." Cheney recounted the tale of the late al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the administration's great pre-war myths:

The worst terrorist we had in Iraq was a guy named Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian by birth; served time in a Jordanian prison as a terrorist, was let out on amnesty. ... Then when we launched into Afghanistan after 9/11, he was wounded, and fled to Baghdad for medical treatment, and then set up shop in Iraq. So he operated in Jordan, he operated in Afghanistan, then he moved to Iraq.

The implication that Zarqawi helped justify the war was thoroughly debunked last year by the Senate Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Bush loyalist Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS.) It found:

Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and...the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi. [p. 109]

Adding insult to injury, earlier in the event, Cheney was asked about the "values or philosophy" he has developed during his 40 years of government service. He answered, "I basically developed a great respect for American history."