This is the Information Clearing House article cited:

'Swear Him In'

By Ray McGovern

09/11/07 "ICH" -- -- -That's all I said in the unusual silence on Monday afternoon as first aid was being administered to Gen. David Petraeus' microphone before he spoke before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.

It had dawned on me that when House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) invited Gen. Petraeus to make his presentation, Skelton forgot to ask him to take the customary oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I had no idea that my suggestion would be enough to get me thrown out of the hearing.

I had experienced a flashback to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in early 2006, when Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) reminded chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) that Specter had forgotten to swear in the witness, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and how Specter insisted that that would not be necessary.

Now that may or may not be an invidious comparison. But Petraeus and Gonzales work for the same boss, who has a rather unusual relationship with the truth. How many of his senior staff could readily be convicted, as was the hapless-and-now-commuted Scooter Libby, of perjury?

So I didn't think twice about it. I really thought that Skelton perhaps forgot, and that the 10-minute interlude of silence while they fixed the microphone was a good chance to raise this seemingly innocent question.

The more so since the ranking Republican representatives had been protesting too much. Practicing the obverse of "killing the messenger," they had been canonizing the messenger with protective fire. Ranking Armed Services Committee member Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) began what amounted to a SWAT-team attack on the credibility of those who dared question the truthfulness of the sainted Petraeus, and issued a special press release decrying a full-page ad in today's New York Times equating Petraeus with "Betray-us."

Hunter served notice on any potential doubters, insisting that Petraeus' "capability, integrity, intelligence … are without question." And Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, rang changes on the same theme, unwittingly choosing another infelicitous almost-homonym for the charges against Petraeus – "outrageous."

Indeed, Hunter's prepared statement, which he circulated before the hearing, amounted to little more than a full-scale "duty-honor-country" panegyric for the general. On the chance we did not hear him the first time, Hunter kept repeating how "independent" Petraeus is, how candid and full of integrity, and compared him to famous generals who testified to Congress in the past – Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Schwarzkopf. Hunter was smart enough to avoid any mention of Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, who fell tragically short on those traits.

If memory serves, the aforementioned generals and Westmoreland were required to testify under oath. And this was one of the more embarrassing sticking points when CBS aired a program showing that Westmoreland had deliberately dissembled on the strength of Communist forces and U.S. "progress" in the war. When Westmoreland sued CBS for libel, several of his subordinates came clean, and Westmoreland quickly dropped the suit. The analogy with Westmoreland – justifying a White House death wish to persist in an unwinnable war – is the apt one here.

If Petraeus is so honest and full of integrity, what possible objection could he have to being sworn in? I had not the slightest hesitation being sworn in when testifying before the committee assembled by John Conyers (D-Mich.) on June 16, 2005. Should generals be immune? Or did Petraeus' masters wish to give him a little more assurance that he could play fast and loose with the truth without the consequences encountered by Scooter Libby?

With the microphone finally fixed, much became quickly clear. Petraeus tried to square a circle in his very first two paragraphs. In the first, he thanks the committees for the opportunity to "discuss the recommendations I recently provided to my chain of command for the way forward." Then he stretches credulity well beyond the breaking point – at least for me:

"At the outset, I would like to note that this is my testimony. Although I have briefed my assessment and recommendations to my chain of command, I wrote this testimony myself. It has not been cleared by, nor shared with, anyone in the Pentagon, the White House, or Congress."

Is not the commander in chief in Petraeus' chain of command?

As Harry Truman (D-Mo.) would have said, "Does he think we were born yesterday?"

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing ministry of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years and now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

I cannot believe you Yanks follow this Guy.

We are coming for your kind George.

Evil folks are DOOMED! George.

First you take D.C. Then you take New York (:

Text of fax broadcast:
9/11 SIX YEARS ON: WOULD YOU PLEASE PASS THE HOMELAND GRAVY?
NEW YORK, NEW YORK * 9 SEPTEMBER 2007 Citizen of the USAStephen M. St. John addresses the international community in Washington and here in New York City, all members of the US Congress as well as other organizations and individuals, public and private, and forewarns of the consequences of believing that replacement of the Republican Party of God's Wrath We Deliver from Dimona with the Democratic Party of Sodom and Gomorrah and Tel Aviv will usher in new directions in the foreign policy of the USA. Both parties are equally and monopolistically unhinged from constitutional and international law. But both parties would also be equally shocked were a TV news reporter to sign off his or her report with "This is so-and-so at the Nevada-USA border"; yet this is exactly what happened when, in late 1990, the world beheld TV reports from the "Slovenia-Yugoslavia border." In the end, the USA followed the lead of the Vatican and the newly reunited Germany in putting this subtitle on the Charter of the United Nations: "A Joke on Yugoslavia in 111 Parts"! This happened on the watch of President George "Poppy" Bush; but the predictably bloody consequences were fully realized under President William J. Clinton, who contrived a new use for an obsolete NATO. Hitler's DreamWorks -- his posthumous achievement of hegemony of the Deutsche Mark from the Baltic to the Adriatic -- quickly disappeared from notice as the Euro came to the fore. The European Union is a seventh and (praise the Almighty!) final manifestation of the Holy Roman Empire; its core values reflect around the world with US occupied Germany and South Korea as interesting examples insisting they are not occupied! Herein one finds the dubious benchmark by which the psychopathic Zionist Neoconservatives predict the future of Iraq fifty or a hundred years hence: occupied by the USA -- but not really occupied. Or, as Senator "Tootsie" Clinton defines this arrangement, Yankees will stay in Iraq but with a "smaller footprint." Such arrogance of power corrupts the otherwise noble leadership role of the USA as a sovereign equal among sovereign equals. Change will come when Americans confront the evidence of a false flag intelligence operation on 9/11 that gave pretext for war. Cheney should be impeached forthwith for aggravated dereliction of duty for standing down Washington's anti-aircraft missile defenses and putting the blame on a compromised NORAD.

he rules " by conquest" !!
I cannot believe you Yanks follow this Guy.--Masher1

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To Jesus Through Mary

Of Pussy's too scared to upset the Wal-Mart Exec.'s

This is going to get messy.

And Until 100 + million heads start WORKING together YOU ARE FOLLOWING BUSH.

Try to avoid it and you are in denial.,Serious life threatening denial.

Do the WORK or it will be bad.

You Americans permitting the 5000 or so heads KILL millions upon millions while you look away and buy the new 600$ iPhone and call all yer budz HAS to have REAL and lasting consequences.

Yeah lots of heads want Bush. And the world is getting some TIRED of this majority view.

First you take D.C. Then you take New York (:

Until I see millions of American rising up in a mass general strike they are just sheeple following their judas goat leaders and we deserve the judgment that is coming.

Speaking of sheeple, check this Toyota ad campaign out where the "little deviants" earn a new scion car by killing and dismembering the boring "sheeple".

Art mimics life?

you live in Canada, Masher?

Canada. Yeah.

So what of it then?

First you take D.C. Then you take New York (:

I guess the real message this one has is that "We don't Care how much you know NOW".

And what Fracking Market did that commercial run in? I bet it was on SPEED!

First you take D.C. Then you take New York (: