By Andrew W. Griffin

Red Dirt Report, editor

Posted: July 8, 2008

OKLAHOMA CITY -- As reported here at Red Dirt Report, via a story linked the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website, Sen. Barack Obama's airplane had to make an emergency landing at Lambert Field in St. Louis, Mo. and as of now, the FAA is "conducting an investigation' according to reports. Seems strange, though. Of course Sen. Obama took the incident in stride, according to reports.

And as I've written previously, in my article "Stay safe, Obama," many have expressed concern about Sen. Obama's safety as he tours the country campaigning for president, particularly as he flies from town to town. Planes do fall out of the sky sometimes and sadly more than one have contained outspoken political figures.

Yes, it goes without saying that there have been a number of politicians, many outspoken, who have died in air crashes of varying sorts, including Rep. Larry McDonald, D-Ga., who died in 1983 aboard KAL 007 near Sakhalin Island, USSR when the Soviets shot it down when it entered their airspace, or so the story goes. McDonald, a member of the John Birch Society, had been outspoken about a growing communist presence in the world and an impending New World Order.

And then there was Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., who died in October 2002 aboard a plane which crashed mysteriously in northern Minnesota. Wellstone had voted against the Iraq war resolution weeks earlier. He was extremely disliked by the Republicans, particularly Vice-President Dick Cheney and the neoconservative faction. My February 2005 Alexandria, La. Town Talk review of Four Arrows and Jim Fetzer's "American Assassination: The Strange Death of Sen. Paul Wellstone" book about the murder of Wellstone, really opened my eyes to the issues surrounding that crash. I have no doubt that plane was taken down on purpose and the feds knew it was going to happen in advance, not unlike the 9/11 attacks.

Others include Reps. Nick Begich, D-Alaska and Hale Boggs, D-La. in October 1972 in Alaska. They were never found. Boggs had been on the Warren Commission and doubted the 'single-bullet theory' and some say wanted to re-open an investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Begich, meanwhile won his re-election posthumously, a few weeks later. However, since then, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, Mr. "Bridge-to-Nowhere" has held Begich's former seat.

And within a day of one another, Sen. John Heinz, R-Penn. and former Senator and Iran-Contra figure John Tower, R-Texas, were killed in bizarre air crashes - Heinz in a helicopter and Tower in a plane - during the first week of April 1991. Also killed aboard Tower's plane was a NASA astronaut from Georgia, Manley Lanier "Sonny" Carter, Jr. What did Tower know?

There was Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan who ran against Republican incumbent Sen. John Ashcroft in 2000. On Oct. 17, Carnahan' s plane crashed. Jean Carnahan, his widow, replaced him after he posthumously won. Of course Ashcroft would soon be named US Attorney General under the Bush Administration.

Do you remember the Clinton Administration's Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown? He also died during the first week of April, this time in 1996, during a mission to Croatia, Brown and 34 other Americans perished in a bizarre air crash, not dissimilar to the one that killed Wellstone and his entourage.

Speculation has swirled since then about why Brown may have been targeted. First, he was facing a Justice Department investigation and possible jail time as well as the wrath of Bill and Hillary Clinton in the wake of Whitewater and other money-related scandals. One online report says Brown told Clinton he wouldn't take the rap and that he'd spill the beans on Clinton's involvement. From then, the report says, Brown was a 'dead man walking.'

So, now we have Obama, a rising star in American politics on the verge of becoming president. Are there powerful forces that would want to thwart his attempts to become president? Various secret societies, racist elites and elements of the military-industrial complex would most definitely prefer a John McCain presidency because he would go with the "business-as-usual" program and continue the war on Mesopotamia for 100 years.

Think back to JFK and his optimistic proclamations. Sure, he made some mistakes but sought to bring peace to the world and spoke out against secrecy in government and the powerful influence of secret societies.

In '"Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA," the incredible new book by Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara, he notes that the USSR's Nikita Khrushchev was open to JFK's offer to have a peaceful, joint US-Soviet mission to the Moon.

Hoagland and Bara write that Khrushchev's son has said recently that his father had agreed to this joint mission to explore the mysterious Moon but that powerful congressmen like Albert Thomas, the Texas congressman who was aboard Air Force One after JFK was assassinated were against a joint mission. Tellingly, it's Thomas who winks at a smiling, just-sworn-in President Lyndon B. Johnson as everyone else looks sad and bewildered by JFK's murder.

Who really knows what an Obama presidency would bring to America. While I'm not necessarily an Obama supporter, there is an optimism in his speeches and presence that many people find very attractive, particularly when matched against McCain's crotchety, shaking-his-fist-at-the sky old man routine.

Scarily, though, history shows us that idealistic leaders usually are stopped before they can truly shine and lead humanity to a better day. I pray that Sen. Barack Obama continues to have a safe journey as he travels our great country in hopes of being the next president.

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