Obama: Armenian genocide

McClatchy:

Obama marks Armenian tragedy but doesn't say 'genocide'

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Friday broke a campaign pledge but mollified Turkey by formally remembering the mass killings of Armenians without using the diplomatically loaded term "genocide."
[...]
Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush broke similar pledges. President Bill Clinton, too, leaned on congressional leaders not to pass genocide commemoration measures.

In 2000, only minutes before debate was set to start in the House of Representatives, then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert yielded to Clinton's request not to bring the genocide resolution, authored by Radanovich, up for a vote.

Hastert is now a lobbyist with the firm Dickstein Shapiro, one of a number that Turkey hired to press its cause on Capitol Hill. Turkey pays $35,000 a month for help from Hastert and his team, Justice Department foreign-agent filings show. Turkey is paying former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt's firm, DLA Piper, $100,000 a month, filings have shown.

For the record, Gephardt is another first-I-was-against-it genocide denier too.

Poltico is running this youtube of Samantha Powers today



Kudos to Jonathon Schwarz who ran this six weeks ago.

BTW: I knew that Marc Grossman, William Cohen and Joe Ralston had a "strategic alliance" with DLA Piper via the Cohen Group, but I (think I) only recently learned that all three are actually "Senior Advisers" to DLA Piper directly.

BTW2: Note in the following youtube how Hastert's 'official spokesman' says "The Speaker does not have any connections to American-Turkish interests." That statement is no longer operative.



Also interesting is the spokesperson's statement/rebuttal that 'the reporter does not have a transcript of any wiretap conversations that we know of' - which is reminiscent of the current outbreak of the Harman/AIPAC outrage.

* Update: In a post worth reading (as usual) , Mizgin says:

"If any of these Deep Staters had even the slightest nano-particle of honor, they'd blow their own brains out.

I'm just saying."

For what it is worth, I'd consider any reports of suicide as suspicious. I think we are both on the same page.