Next, Alan Quasha, whose career was outlined by the Real News Project's Russ Baker in a recent article subtitled "Bush's money man becomes Hillary's." He's the notorious financer who, traveling with the BCCI crowd, bailed out Bush's Harken in the eighties.
Baker quotes John Moscow on Hillary. He led the investigation of the corrupt BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International) global financial empire. "Too many of the same names from earlier troubling circumstances suggests a lack of control over who she is dealing with. . . or a policy of dealing with anyone who can pay."
Next, Farhad Azima. As venerable reporter Stephen Pizzo writes at News for Real, Azima inhabits a "world swirling with allegations of gun and drug running, illegal Iranian arms shipments and CIA involvement." But he always "seemed to enjoy a kind of prosecutorial forbearance back then that companies like Halliburton and Blackwater Security enjoy today."
Azima has given money to both Clintons, had it handed back to him, and yet, as recently as a couple of months ago, could still be found hanging around a Hillary fund raiser.
Finally, London's The Independent reported last week that an "analysis of campaign contributions shows senior defence industry employees are pouring money into [Hillary's] war chest in the belief that their generosity will be repaid many times over with future defence contracts."
To quote Moscow again from Baker's article, "That Hillary Clinton's campaign is involved with this particular cast of characters should give people pause." File that under "understatement."
Nothing else springs as straight from the conscience as the issue of nuclear disarmament. Talk about faith-based, it's the ultimate in such initiatives. Yet, especially since the demise of the Nuclear Freeze movement, it flies under the public's radar.
Is someone who has few qualms about accepting money from an international fugitive, a corrupt financier, a gun runner, and the defense industry capable of summoning up the integrity to implement such a policy -- especially when her hands aren't being held to the fire by the public?
Russ Wellen is the nuclear deproliferation editor for OpEdNews. He's also on the staffs of Freezerbox and Scholars & Rogues.
"It's hard to tell people not to smoke when you have a cigarette dangling from your mouth." -- Mohamed El Baradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency