Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers Imitates Chicken Little

Updated:

Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers is rotating his media blitz between impassioned pleas for CISPA, which Mike Rogers second wife, Kristi Clemens Rogers, stands to benefit from  
    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130417/16253022748/oh-look-rep-mike-rogers-wife-stands-to-benefit-greatly-cispa-passing.shtml%3Cbr%20/%3E  and strong action against Syria.  Rogers’s political aspirations began to fizzle with the trouncing of Mitt Romney - Mike is a long time Romney family water-carrier. Rogers is trying to keep himself relevant and seizing a moment hoping to become a political leader in the struggling GOP.


 Mike Rogers, the House Intelligence Committee Chairman from Brighton. Michigan, is trumpeting his warning from one newscast to another with his views on Syria, stating there’s "mounting evidence that the Syrian government has been using its chemical arsenal” – not unlike Chicken Little who ran around screaming the ‘sky is falling’.

“There’s a high probability that a chemical agent was used in Aleppo,” Rogers said on CBS’s “This Morningprogram.  Rogers adding, “I’m an old FBI guy. I like to see forensic evidence.”  “Probability” is “forensic evidence”, since when Mike?   Although, Mike is touting his FBI background, Rogers worked organized crime and public corruption from 1989–1994, or approximately 5 years then Rogers left his job with the fed’s.  Not exactly an extensive career.  Outside of taking tips from the criminally minded Mike was ‘supposed’ to be investigating it is hard to see how Rogers limited FBI experience makes Mike an expert in forensic evidence.  

Red line has been crossed_ in Syria, Rogers says –

Rogers’s hometown  Livingston County, Michigan is a tightly controlled county run by inbred, “violent, irrational actors”  terms used by Mike to describe Syria are fitting descriptive words for Mike's own hometown.   Mike is hypocritical calling Syria “violent, irrational actors” and needs to look inward at the actions of his own county insides. Considering the public corruption that riddles Brighton and Livingston Michigan, the community the Rogers family controls. Mike learned an extensive amount during his stint in the FBI on how to run a community steeped in public corruption. The Rogers family fled the metro Detroit area to the then remote and rural community of Brighton during the early days when racial integration and busing were introduced and entrenched themselves in Livingston County politics. 


It is incredulous Rogers is attempting to invoke his FBI experience into the Syria issue. Given the toxic nature and betrayals of agents the likes of Aldrich Ames, Richard W. Miller, Robert Hansen, Earl Edwin Pitts all of whom passed secrets to the Russians, hardly gives an angelic pass on personal moral integrity and judgment by claiming ones service in the FBI.  Rogers will not answer whom Samuel J. Skousen was having week-day clandestine secret meetings with at Brighton Methodist Church, the church Mike Rogers attends. Nor, will Rogers say if Russian Alex Itkin helped Mike with his run for Congress.  Samuel Skousen is a dyed in the wool Mormon and rarely if ever, attended other churches outside his own, much less going into another church for secret, clandestine “meetings” during a time the Methodist Church regular church services were not in session.

Despite US officials telling The Associated Press that neither side had used chemical weapons in a battle near Aleppo, Rogers has not stopped beating his retaliatory drums against Syria. Rogers was equally convinced there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  Mike carried his war message against Iraq to his home town of Brighton and everywhere else Rogers spoke. More than 100,000 Iraqis were killed over the false claims of WMD and 4,475 American families lost their love ones in military service.

The President is correct in using caution and  investigating  allegation of chemical weapons use in Syria. During the Chechen War, Russia was accused of using chemical weapons and an international cry went out. On further investigation a fuel air bomb did not fully detonate causing burns similar to chemical weapons. Fuel air bombs are brutal and lethal to civilian population, even penetrating bunkers, but are considered conventional warfare. Humanitarian groups discourage the use of fuel-air bombs near civilian populations.
  


In 2007 Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers' Office was vandalized over the Iraq War “unknown individuals splattered red paint on the Lansing building and put up a sign saying the Republican has "blood" on his hands. They also spray painted the sidewalk with the words "no more deaths," glued shut the front door of the building and destroyed security cameras” said Andy Keiser, Rogers' chief of staff.

Rogers’s first wife divorced Mike on the heels of Rogers’s 2006 re-election run off and win against, former CIA agent and longtime friend of Valerie Plame, James Marcinkowski.  Rogers’s wife stating they had problems since the beginning of their marriage and filed for divorce from Mike Rogers. Mrs. Rogers had agreed to wait to file for divorce until after the election.  The three page divorce settlement gave everything to Mike’s wife. Mrs. Rogers must have had something good on Mike.

It is time Mike Rogers is voted out of office.

For additional information on the Syria conflicts see:

Richard Hass and Joshua Landis give additional insights and complications of the Syrian conflict on Charlie Rose (March 20, 2013)


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