Newt Gingrich’s 2nd Ex-Wife- Newt wanted an open relationship, one where he had a wife and a mistress
Newt Gingrich lacks the moral character to serve as President, his second ex-wife Marianne told ABC News, saying his campaign positions on the sanctity of marriage and the importance of family values do not square with what she saw during their 18 years of marriage.
In her first television interview since the 1999 divorce, to be broadcast tonight on Nightline, Marianne Gingrich, a self-described conservative Republican, said she is coming forward now so voters can know what she knows about Gingrich.
In her most provocative comments, the ex-Mrs. Gingrich said Newt sought an “open marriage” arrangement so he could have a mistress and a wife.
She said when Gingrich admitted to a six-year affair with a Congressional aide, he asked her if she would share him with the other woman, Callista, who is now married to Gingrich.
“And I just stared at him and he said, ‘Callista doesn’t care what I do,’” Marianne Gingrich told ABC News. “He wanted an open marriage and I refused.”
Marianne described her “shock” at Gingrich’s behavior, including how she says she learned he conducted his affair with Callista “in my bedroom in our apartment in Washington.”
“He always called me at night,” she recalled, “and always ended with ‘I love you.’ Well, she was listening.”
All this happened, she said, during the same time Gingrich condemned President Bill Clinton for his lack of moral leadership.
She said Newt moved for the divorce just months after she had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, with her then-husband present.
“He also was advised by the doctor when I was sitting there that I was not to be under stress. He knew,” she said.
Gingrich divorced his first wife, Jackie, as she was being treated for cancer. His relationship with Marianne began while he was still married to Jackie but in divorce proceedings, Marianne said.
There was no immediate comment from Gingrich on his ex-wife’s allegations. Gingrich has said during the campaign he has “no relationship” with Marianne.
While she had been quoted earlier as saying she could end his career, Marianne Gingrich defended Newt’s ethics while he served in Congress and came under several ethics investigations.
“At the time, I believed him to be ethical,” she said in the interview.
The former Mrs. Gingrich says Newt began to plan a run for President at the time of the divorce and told her that Callista “was going to help him become President.”
In a statement to ABC News provided by the campaign, Gingrich’s two daughters from his first marriage said, “The failure of a marriage is a terrible and emotional experience for everyone involved.”
The daughters, Kathy Lubbers and Jackie Cushman said they would not say anything negative about Marianne and said their father “regrets any pain he may have caused in the past to people he loves.”
Marianne Gingrich said Newt has never expressed any such regrets or apologized to her.
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HELP! FEARS OF IMMINENT COUP PROMPT PAKISTAN’S PRIME MINISTER TO CALL ON UK FOR BACKUP
Pakistan’s prime minister telephoned the top British diplomat in the country this week expressing fears that the Pakistani army might be about to stage a coup, a British official and an official in Islamabad said Friday.
The call, which one official said was “panicky”, suggests there was – or perhaps still is – a genuine fear at the highest level of the Pakistani government that army might carry out a coup or support possible moves by the Supreme Court to topple the civilian leadership.
Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gilani asked High Commissioner Adam Thomson for Britain to support his embattled government, according to the officials, who didn’t give their names because of the sensitivity of the issue. It’s unclear if the British government took any action.
Such is the weakness of state institutions, Pakistani leaders have often looked to foreign powers, especially the United States and Gulf countries, to intervene in domestic affairs, mediate disputes between feuding power centers or “guarantee” agreements between them.
The army, which has staged four coups in Pakistan’s history and is believed to consider itself the only true custodian of the country’s interests, has never liked the civilian government headed by Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari.
But a scandal that erupted late last year, which centered on an unsigned memo sent to Washington asking for its help in heading off a supposed coup following the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, has brought the army and civilian government into near-open confrontation.
While most analysts say army chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani has little appetite for a coup, they say the generals may be happy to allow the Supreme Court to dismiss the government by “constitutional means.”
A Supreme Court commission is probing the memo affair, which in theory could lead to Zardari’s ouster.
The court has also ordered the government to open corruption investigations into Zardari dating back years. The government has refused. Earlier this week, the court said it could dismiss Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gilani over the case. Judges are convening Monday for what could be a decisive session.
While its lawmakers are widely seen as both corrupt and ineffectual, they – unlike the army and the judges – have some legitimacy because they were elected to office. Pakistan history of successive military coups and interference in the democratic process by the courts and the army are main cause of the country’s current malaise, proponents of democracy say.
The nuclear-armed country is facing a host of problems, among them near economic collapse and a virulent al-Qaida- and Taliban-led insurgency. The fight against the militant has been complicated by allegations that the country’s main Inter-Services Intelligence is supporting some of the insurgents.
On Friday, a government-appointed commission investigating the unsolved murder of a journalist last year said that the ISI needed to be more “law-abiding.” The report did not find enough evidence to name any perpetrators in the death of Saleem Shahzad, who was killed after he told friends he had been threatened by the ISI.
The commission called on the ISI to be made more accountable to the government through internal reviews and oversight by parliament. It said its interactions with reporters should be closely monitored.
Also Friday, militants assaulted a police station in the northwestern city of Peshawar, shooting dead three officers and wounding nine others, said police officer Saeed Khan.
The Pakistani Taliban have carried out hundreds of attacks on the country’s army and other security forces since 2007. The attack came a day after militants armed with guns and grenades killed four Pakistani soldiers in an ambush in the South Waziristan tribal area.
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Afghanistan – Uncensored Video of US Soldiers Urinating on Dead Taliban Fighters
The US marine corps has said it would investigate a video showing what appears to be American soldiers in Afghanistan urinating on corpses.
“While we have not yet verified the origin or authenticity of this video, the actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the marines in our corps,” the corps said in a statement on Wednesday. “This matter will be fully investigated.”
The video, which was first posted on the Live Leak website, shows four men in military uniforms urinating on three bloodied bodies on the ground, apparently aware that they are being filmed.
One of them jokes: “Have a nice day, buddy.” The other makes a lewd joke about a shower.
“Regardless of the circumstances or who is in the video, this is… egregious, disgusting behavior, unacceptable for anyone in uniform,” said John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman. “It turned my stomach,” he said.
Some 20,000 Marines are deployed in Afghanistan, mostly in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in the south of the war-ravaged country.
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DEFIANCE! WITH HIS FAMILY BY HIS SIDE, ASSAD DARES THE WEST AT A PUBLIC RALLY!
Attending a rally in Damascus, Mr Assad reiterated the central theme of his speech on Tuesday, his first since June, that the outside world would not stop him seeking a military rather than negotiated end to the revolt. He said he wanted to “draw from the strength” of those still backing him. “Without a doubt we will defeat the conspiracy, which is nearing its end,” he said, in deliberately and unusually casual mode, with open-necked shirt.
The appearance alongside him of his British-born wife Asma came as a surprise. A former investment banker who was brought up in London by her Syrian parents, a cardiologist and diplomat, and attended Queen’s College, a London private school, she was once seen as a figurehead of reformist elements in the regime.
She had kept such a low profile since the start of the uprising that she was at one stage rumoured to have fled the country and returned to Britain, a claim her presence at the rally in the historic Umayyad Square may have been designed to quell.
The presence of Mr Assad’s children was an even greater act of defiance, given the family nature of the regime which he inherited from his father and which he now runs with his brother and brother-in-law.
His son, Hafez, 10, is named after his father, whose coup and 30-year dictatorship created modern Syria. His daughter, Zain, is 8, and younger son Karim, 6. The children appeared confused and frightened in pictures beamed across the world from the scene.
Opposition figures were already accusing Mr Assad of being in denial over his speech, in which he poured scorn on the Arab League peace mission to the country and made little mention of allegations of abuse levelled against his forces by the United Nations and others.
“He still speaks of the existence of a global conspiracy against Syria,” Omar al-Khani, of the Syrian Revolution General Commission, told The Daily Telegraph from Damascus. “But who killed more than six thousand people in Syria so far?”
Earlier in the day, one member of the Arab League monitoring mission resigned, saying it was a “farce” that was being orchestrated to buy time and hunt down activists who spoke to them.
The observer, Anwar Malek, a prominent Algerian writer, said what he had seen in Syria was a “humanitarian disaster”. “The regime isn’t committing one war crime but a series of crimes against its people,” he said in a dramatic interview with Al-Jazeera television, while still wearing his orange observer’s jacket.
“The regime has gained a lot of time that has helped it to implement its plan. They wanted to use this mission and they’ve sent spies and intelligence officers with our team to act as drivers and minders to get our information and as soon as we left an area they attacked people.” The League decided at a meeting on Sunday to push ahead with the mission and even expand it despite criticism that it was achieving little. It is now under even more pressure since Mr Assad’s speech.
The League was further humiliated at the United Nations on Tuesday night when the assistant secretary-general, Lynn B. Pascoe, said that 400 people had been killed in the ten days after the observers arrived, a rate higher than the average according to Susan Rice, the United States’ ambassador.
The League justified the continuance of the mission by saying it had reduced the level of violence.
Activists claim the latest atrocity was the killing of a four-month-old girl, Afaf Mahmoud al-Sarakbi, whose body allegedly showed signs of beating when it was returned to her family though the cause of her death could not be verified independently.
She was with her father, an activist, and mother when they were seized trying to escape from Homs two weeks ago, activists said. The parents have not been seen since.
“These are the reforms of the Assad regime – the torture and killing of children,” Mr Khani said.
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