Sunday, November 14, 2010
[The following, by Matt, is crossposted from Huffington Post Monitor.]
HP blogger Robert Steele, whom I have never heard of before, posted on a recent peace-process related article the following post:
So what are the conspiracies Steele espouses? 9/11 (of course), U.S.S. Liberty (oldie but goodie) and the USS Cole (hey, there's a new one!). Of course, there's no evidence for any of those three, but that doesn't stop Steele for posting it up.
And, of course, like most smart anti-Zionists, he just quotes someone else rather than taking personal responsibility for his own word. He quotes Phi Beta Iota, which is apparently a "public intelligence blog", whatever that means. Go to that link, and see what they use as a reference. That's right, an Israel hater on the Huffington Post! That's a really reputable source you got there, PBI.
So, as usual for the HP, we got anti-Israel conspiracy theories made up out of whole cloth in order to drive a wedge between the US and Israel. The only thing different is that it's an official HP blogger doing it, rather than just one of the normal users.
A very quick look at Huffington Post doesn't tell me much about this person, and his official status there. Furthermore, it's not 100% clear to me that that lunatic Phi Beta Iota stuff is Steele himself speaking (just 99%). But the next thing the Google brings up after a not too informative Wikipedia profile of Robert David Steele is a link to CounterPunch, the website of Alex Cockburn, which welcomes Israel haters, if not unabashed antisemites. There Steele wrote, "Seventeen percent of the eligible voters elected Obama, triumphing over the fifteen percent that voted for McCain. Upon entering office, instead of reaching out to Cynthia McKinny, Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, and others representing the two thirds of America that did not vote, the Voices Not Heard, Obama immediately abandoned his transpartisan campaign rhetoric and adopted the prevailing Washington paradigm of bi-partisanship." So, if you think Obama should have reached out to the likes of Cynthia McKinny, then Steele is your guy."
Steele seems to have a CIA stint in his professional past, and to currently be running a solo consulting operation of some sort in the DC area. I've seen a great many of his Reader Review posts on Amazon -- he always comes across as just sufficiently "out there" (not in a good way) to suggest that he left the CIA under a cloud and feels underappreciated in general. What you show with this Huffington Post rant of his is that Steele is like a clone of ex-CIA guy Michael Scheuer (sp?), another anti-Semite.
I have nothing positive to say on behalf of Scheuer, but if this guy Steele really did write, as it appears he did, "We are certain Israel knew in advance of 9/11 and co-conspired [sic] with the neo-conservative element led by Dick Cheney (who scheduled the counterterrorism exercise three months in advance for 'the day') to let it happen," then he is not simply an antisemite, anti-Israel, or what have you, he is all of the above plus truly lunatic. Now, my question is exactly what status does he enjoy at Huffington Post.
Tied to the "Puppet Meister"?