Friday, September 10, 2010

Palin Advisor is 'Foreign Agent'

From an article by Geoffrey Dunn, an award-winning journalist, filmmaker and historian:

... According to sources close to the Palin camp, [Randy] Scheunemann plays a major role in advising Palin on foreign policy issues as she positions herself for a run at the White House in 2012. As Ben Smith of Politico pointed out, it was Scheunemann who drafted Palin's first major foreign policy speech in Hong Kong a year ago. Scheunemann accompanied Palin overseas to that engagement.

FEC records indicate that Palin's political action committee, SarahPAC, is paying Scheunemann's Virginia-based Orion Strategies $10,000 per month and has expended $90,000 to date for his services. ...

... Scheunemann's lobbying efforts on behalf of several foreign governments during the Bush II years--most notably Georgia, Macedonia and Taiwan -- have drawn criticism from across the political spectrum. Moreover, Scheunemann played a critical role in engineering the war in Iraq as director of the New American Century and as executive director of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He also served as a special advisor on Iraq to Bush II's discredited Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Former UN Weapons inspector Scott Ritter described Scheunemann as a "very dangerous figure" and a "classic behind-the-scenes player in the Neo-Conservative cabal."

Conservative political commentator and communications director for Ronald Reagan, Pat Buchanan, was even more direct in his condemnation of Scheunemann:
He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man.
She [Palin] is certainly the horse on whom the Neo-Cons are placing their bets in the 2012 GOP presidential sweepstakes. Palin has crafted a hard-line position in Afghanistan and the Middle East and has supported NATO going to war against Russia to protect international oil interests in the region. Scheunemann is clearly the architect of these policies.

Leave it to Pat Buchanan to make the compelling summation of Scheunemanns:
"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence...a free people ought to be constantly awake," Washington warned in his Farewell Address. Our Founding Father was warning against the Randy Scheunemanns among us, agents hired by foreign powers to deceive Americans into fighting their wars. And none dare call it treason.
The complete article, which can be read here, provides more information and also tells of Schuenemann's work as a lobbyist for BP.

2 comments:

Joie Vouet said...

Also from the article:

As the media focus on Palin disintegrates into discussions about Spanx girdles, alleged remarks about her daughter Bristol's marriage plans and the mistaken identity of her infant son at a campaign event two years ago, Palin is readying herself for a major 9/11 rally this weekend with Glenn Beck in Anchorage (with a second one in her hometown of Wasilla) at which she will be shoring up her foreign policy credentials as the most vital mouthpiece of the conservative, evangelical wing of the Republican Party. ...


I believe that Dunn's description of the mistaken identity as occurring in 2008 is a mistake. At the event, in Independence Missouri, William Joseph Gross states:

Palin and the crowd might as well be one. She’s glad to be here with the people of Independence, Missouri, “where so many of you proudly cling to your guns and your religion”—the first laughline in a 40-minute stump speech that alludes to many of the perceived insults she and her audience have suffered together, and that transforms their resentments into badges of honor. Palin waves her scribbled-on palm to the crowd, proclaiming that she’s using “the poor man’s teleprompter.”

The "poor man's teleprompter" hadn't yet been "invented" in 2008. She was forced to use old-school, obsolete technology at that time.

Virginia Voter said...

This is the "scary" part of Sarah Palin, that we must not turn away from, and that bothers me more than anything. Sarah has been bought and paid for by the same neo-cons and corporatists who brought us 8 years of George W. Bush...the Texas oil folks, swift boaters, Koch brothers, Karl Rove...they and all their money are behind Sarah Palin, the Tea Party is merely a front. While Sarah is out spouting off "Do you love your country" bull shit to the great white masses, the puppeteers are just pulling her strings.

Yeah, we laugh and Sarah's manic tweets, her mangling of the English language, and tabloid family, but there are some very dangerous people behind the scenes.