destruction
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Posts posted by destruction
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But the food is good.
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you are so freakin ridiculous It's amazing If bush lied then so did Every european and egyptian intelligence agency not to mention the russians and the chinese. they lied too? you're just ridiculous you take the word of a document which happened to have the original destroyed discovered by michael smith of rathergate fame. cmon man I know you disagree with the war, but if you are gonna say that he lied you better have some proof less flimsy than a document that's a type written copy of a destroyed document of dubious origin. cmon man a type written copy that's what you make your case on.?
It's really easy for you to throw this he lied crap around with out any proof, you don't like the war I get it. but you're not contributing to the discourse by spewing unsubstantiated claims and then when you're proven wrong you just try to find some other wild charge to bring up.( and when I say you I mean you and your ilk)
All you care about it bringing shame on the current administration, you don't try to educate or change with any sort of relevancy or ingenuity.
shit's been discredited now shut up.
1. Read the key findings in this actual CIA document by Bush's own weapons inspector Charles Duefer.
Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991—after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/chap1.html#sect1
He destroyed his WMDs in 1991.
2. Your article is pure propaganda and has zero substance to support the claims. Propaganda aren't facts.
3. Deal with the facts and shut up.
4. Owned!
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What did you say? Spit out the grass before you speak, sheep.
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Iraqi Lawmakers Call for Foreign Troops to Withdraw
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, BAGHDAD
Iraqi lawmakers from across the political spectrum called for the withdrawal of foreign forces from their country in a letter released to the media June 19.
The move comes as U.S. President George W. Bush is under increasing domestic pressure to set a timetable for the pullout of American forces in the face of an increasing death toll at the hands of insurgents.
Eighty-two Shiite, Kurdish, Sunni Arab, Christian and communist deputies made the call in a letter sent by Falah Hassan Shanshal of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the largest group in parliament, to speaker Hajem al-Hassani.
Some of those who signed urged that a detailed timetable be established for the withdrawal.
There are currently about 160,000 foreign troops in Iraq, including a 138,000-strong U.S. force, which has borne the brunt of attacks against coalition forces.
In the letter, Shanshal said the 275-member parliament was the Iraqi people’s legitimate representative and guardian of their interests.
â€We have asked in several sessions for occupation troops to withdraw,†the letter said. “Our request was ignored.â€
â€It is dangerous that the Iraqi government has asked the U.N. Security Council to prolong the stay of occupation forces without consulting representatives of the people who have the mandate for such a decision.
â€Therefore we must reject the occupation’s legitimacy and renew our demand for these forces to withdraw,†the letter added.
The U.N. Security Council agreed on May 31 to extend the mandate of multinational forces in Iraq “until the completion of the political process†following a request from the Iraqi government.
â€Iraqi security forces have managed to break the back of terrorist groups and maintain security in the streets of Iraq, and have gained the trust of Iraqi citizens to arrive at their final goal, total sovereignty for Iraq.â€
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=925971&C=america
As they say, "a man's home is a man's castle". Right Iggypoo???
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Translation...
I have been
Fucking jackbooted nazi.
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Listening to your moronic babble is torture..........they should hire you for Gitmo, your idiosy laced vomit would make any hardened terrorist talk.........
Torture is unamerican and any american who advocates torture like you do is sick and needs help. Scratch that. You're beyond help. Kill yourself.
Here are some tips.
Fucking trolling maggot. I know you're bitter because Bush and his goons are taking a pounding in the polls.
Has it ever occured to you that it is up to congress to either keep the gitmo gulag open or decide to close it? After all, in the constitution, congress opens or closes military bases. The president and the pentagon has no say in that matter.
Article 1
Section 8
Of the Constitution
Article 1Section 8
Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;
To establish post offices and post roads;
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;--And
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html
Has it also occured to you that it is a violation of the 8th amendment of the bill of rights (torture)...
Amendment VIIIExcessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/funddocs/billeng.htm
...and is also against military law? I know. I come from a military family.
Don't force me to cite the law.
you are a stoogeI know you are but what am I.
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A lobbyist, on his way home from work in Washington, D.C., came to a dead halt in traffic and thought to himself that the traffic seemed worse than usual.
He noticed a police officer walking between the lines of stopped
cars, so he rolled down his window and asked, "Officer, what's the hold-up?"
The officer replied, "The President is depressed, so he stopped his
motorcade and is threatening to douse himself with gasoline and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about why we went to war in Iraq, or the worsening deficit and economy, or that his tax cuts won't help anyone except his wealthy friends. So we're taking up a collection for him."
The lobbyist asks, "How much have you got so far?"
The officer replied, "About four gallons, but a lot of folks are
still siphoning."
(AP) President Bush was invited to address a major gathering of the American Indian Nation last weekend in Arizona. He spoke for almost an hour on his future plans for increasing every Native American's present standard of living. He referred to his career as Governor of Texas,how he had signed "YES" 1,237 times - for every Indian issue that came to his desk for approval.Although the President was vague on the details of his plan, he seemed most enthusiastic about his future ideas for helping his "red brothers."
At the conclusion of his speech, the Tribes presented the President with a plaque inscribed with his new Indian name - Walking Eagle. The proud President then departed in his motorcade, waving to the crowds.
A news reporter later inquired to the group of chiefs of how they come to select the new name given to the President.
They explained that Walking Eagle is the name given to a bird so full of shit it can no longer fly.
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Iglost... You're the one who needs to do the shutting up since you advocate torture.
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Right wing bullshit
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I agree ^^
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this might be as bad as all those Pro war-Pro-bush TOby Keith etc.horrid country songs that flooded the airwaves and forced us into fake patriotoism
Let us all pray this crap never makes the radio
God didn't answer your prayers this time.
Radio list:
http://members.aol.com/drovics/radiost.htm
communism doesnt work.Neither does Bush's brain.
George Bush and Henry KissingerWere sent off to the World Court
Their plans for global domination
Were pre-emptively cut short
Their weapons of mass destruction
Were inspected and destroyed
The battleships were dismantled
Never again to be deployed
And the world breathed a sigh of relief
After the revolution
My favorite verse.
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Analysts missed Chinese buildup
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A highly classified intelligence report produced for the new director of national intelligence concludes that U.S. spy agencies failed to recognize several key military developments in China in the past decade, The Washington Times has learned.
The report was created by several current and former intelligence officials and concludes that U.S. agencies missed more than a dozen Chinese military developments, according to officials familiar with the report.
The report blames excessive secrecy on China's part for the failures, but critics say intelligence specialists are to blame for playing down or dismissing evidence of growing Chinese military capabilities.
The report comes as the Bush administration appears to have become more critical of China's military buildup.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in Singapore over the weekend that China has hidden its defense spending and is expanding its missile forces despite facing no threats. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also expressed worries this week about China's expanding military capabilities.
Among the failures highlighted in the study are:
•China's development of a new long-range cruise missile.
•The deployment of a new warship equipped with a stolen Chinese version of the U.S. Aegis battle management technology.
•Deployment of a new attack submarine known as the Yuan class that was missed by U.S. intelligence until photos of the submarine appeared on the Internet.
•Development of precision-guided munitions, including new air-to-ground missiles and new, more accurate warheads.
•China's development of surface-to-surface missiles for targeting U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups.
•The importation of advanced weaponry, including Russian submarines, warships and fighter-bombers.
According to officials familiar with the intelligence report, the word "surprise" is used more than a dozen times to describe U.S. failures to anticipate or discover Chinese arms development.
Many of the missed military developments will be contained in the Pentagon's annual report to Congress on the Chinese military, which was due out March 1 but delayed by interagency disputes over its contents.
Critics of the study say the report unfairly blames intelligence collectors for not gathering solid information on the Chinese military and for failing to plant agents in the communist government.
Instead, these officials said, the report looks like a bid to exonerate analysts within the close-knit fraternity of government China specialists, who for the past 10 years dismissed or played down intelligence showing that Beijing was engaged in a major military buildup.
"This report conceals the efforts of dissenting analysts [in the intelligence community] who argued that China was a threat," one official said, adding that covering up the failure of intelligence analysts on China would prevent a major reorganization of the system.
A former U.S. official said the report should help expose a "self-selected group" of specialists who fooled the U.S. government on China for 10 years.
"This group's desire to have good relations with China has prevented them from highlighting how little they know and suppressing occasional evidence that China views the United States as its main enemy."
The report has been sent to Thomas Fingar, a longtime intelligence analyst on China who was recently appointed by John D. Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence, as his office's top intelligence analyst.
Mr. Negroponte has ordered a series of top-to-bottom reviews of U.S. intelligence capabilities in the aftermath of the critical report by the presidential commission headed by Judge Laurence Silberman and former Sen. Charles Robb, Virginia Democrat.
According to the officials, the study was produced by a team of analysts for the intelligence contractor Centra Technologies.
Spokesmen for the CIA and Mr. Negroponte declined to comment.
Its main author is Robert Suettinger, a National Security Council staff member for China during the Clinton administration and the U.S. intelligence community's top China analyst until 1998. Mr. Suettinger is traveling outside the country and could not be reached for comment, a spokesman said.
John Culver, a longtime CIA analyst on Asia, was the co-author.
Among those who took part in the study were former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Lonnie Henley, who critics say was among those who in the past had dismissed concerns about China's military in the past 10 years.
Also participating in the study was John F. Corbett, a former Army intelligence analyst and attache who was a China policy-maker at the Pentagon during the Clinton administration.
Just like a conservative. Using a source that is owned by Reverend Moon and yields two racist journalists.
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Imagine a society where working class people talking of solidarity and refusing to build weapons? Prisoners sentenced for victimless crimes being released from incarceration? Cops with no guns? Debts owed by third world countries forgiven? Soldiers leaving their bases and coming home? The signing of an anti aggression treaty and the terrorists disband because there were no more countries they can hate? Bush and Kissinger being tried in world court for war crimes? The US' WMDs being destroyed and battleships being deployed after being disarmed? Solar panels on every rooftop? Only chemical free organic foods in the supermarkets after the government bans GMOs and Bill Gates mansion gets turned into a collective farm whilst his constant whining?
This is what folk guitarist, singer and songwriter David Rovics envisions in his song "After the Revolution". This song originally appeared on one of his earlier CDs titled "Return", however this version posted appears on his latest CD titled "For the Moment".
"The way things could be, and hopefully will be soon, as soon as we get it together. We have a world to lose or a world to gain. Originally recorded on Return." - David RovicsSong: after the revolution (F.T.M.)
By David Rovics
Download song: http://www.soundclick.com/util/DownloadSong.cfm?ID=2281602
Lyrics:
It was a time I'll always remember
Because I could never forget
How reality fell down around us
Like some Western movie set
And once the dust all settled
The sun shone so bright
And a great calm took over us
Like it was all gonna be alright
That's how it felt to be alive
After the revolution
From Groton to Tacoma
On many a factory floor
The workers talked of solidarity
And refused to build weapons of war
No more will we make missiles
We're gonna do something different
And for the first time
Their children were proud of their parents
And somewhere in Gaza a little boy smiled and cried
After the revolution
Prison doors swung open
And mothers hugged their sons
The Liberty Bell was ringing
When the cops put down their guns
A million innocent people
Lit up in the springtime air
And Mumia and Leonard and Sarah Jane Olson
Took a walk in Tompkins Square
And they talked about what they'd do now
After the revolution
The debts were all forgiven
In all the neo-colonies
And the soldiers left their bases
Went back to their families
And a non-aggression treaty
Was signed with every sovereign state
And all the terrorist groups disbanded
With no empire left to hate
And they all started planting olive trees
After the revolution
George Bush and Henry Kissinger
Were sent off to the World Court
Their plans for global domination
Were pre-emptively cut short
Their weapons of mass destruction
Were inspected and destroyed
The battleships were dismantled
Never again to be deployed
And the world breathed a sigh of relief
After the revolution
Solar panels were on the rooftops
Trains upon the tracks
Organic food was in the markets
No GMO's upon the racks
And all the billionaires
Had to learn how to share
And Bill Gates was told to quit his whining
When he said it wasn't fair
And his mansion became a collective farm
After the revolution
And all the political poets
Couldn't think of what to say
So they all decided
To live life for today
I spent a few years catching up
With all my friends and lovers
Sleeping til eleven
Home beneath the covers
And I learned how to play the accordian
After the revolution
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They're afraid of freedom of speech.
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Weekend Edition
June 10 / 12, 2005
We Regret Any Inconvenience Caused by Your Humiliation
"Support Our Torturers!"
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
Airline announcement: "To passengers waiting to board Flight ABC 123: your plane has been delayed by fifteen minutes. We thank you for your patience and regret any inconvenience."
US Military in Iraq announcement: "To the 68 year-old man whose house we burst into in the middle of the night, firing stun grenades, and who we then handcuffed, hooded and dragged off to interrogate and then discovered was entirely innocent because we are a bunch of incompetent boobies, we regret any inconvenience."
That's the way it goes, folks. Explode into someone's house at 4 in the morning, trash the place, steal valuables, rough up the elderly owner and terrify his wife, haul him and his sons away, and after the whole thing is realized to have been a total military balls-up announce that "It was determined that [the victim] was detained by mistake and should be released. Coalition forces regret any inconvenience and acknowledge Mr Hamid's co-operation in resolving this matter." Then forget all about it.
If anyone is wondering why US occupation troops (ignore the misleading garbage about "coalition forces") are increasingly detested and regarded with fear and contempt by more and more Iraqis as the days go by, there is no need to look further than their act of swaggering incompetence on May 30, because it is typical of what they have been doing in Iraq since the invasion. The only reason we know about this particular case of arrogance and stupidity on the part of a bunch of clumsy thugs is because the man concerned, Dr Mohsen Abdul Hamid, is a major political figure. The citizens of the United States didn't hear much about the shambles, and they know nothing whatever about all the other outrages because they do not involve high profile people. All the other smash crash and bash operations of cloddish violence against the civil population are reported only in non-US media.
The illegal abduction and gross humiliation of Dr Abdul Hamid are much more important than the bungling ineptitude of the US military commander in Iraq. (For it is he who is to blame. It was his cretinous subordinates who ordered the raid, and his delinquent barbarians who assaulted the house of an innocent family in dead of night. The buck stops -- or should stop -- right on the shoulders of the senior star-wearer.)
The case is specially important because the President and Prime Minister of Iraq protested to the United States of America about the US military's bizarre treatment of one of their country's most prominent politicians. The violation of his privacy and dignity and the statement by Iraq's President that " . . . no one gave prior notice to the Presidential Council about the arrest of Dr. Mohsen Abdul-Hamid. This way of dealing with such a distinguished political figure is unacceptable" are not to be brushed aside. Their expressions of deep concern were made on behalf of their citizens and have a direct bearing on bilateral relations and policy. But Bush Washington ignored the protests.
Failure to respond promptly, publicly and courteously to a head of state in such circumstances is one more example of calculated international vulgarity on the part of the Bush administration. It shows the weak countries of the world that Bush regards them with contempt. Bush would respond quickly enough to China's head man (who personally despises him, with good reason), and if he didn't reply to Russia's Putin, his intellectual superior by some scores of IQ points, he would be put in his place very quickly. But little countries don't matter. And little countries, to the Bush zealots, are those whose heads of state they can insult, bully and denigrate without fear of retaliation.
Last month, President Karzai of Afghanistan dared to raise the matter of the torture and murder of some of his citizens in the most bestial fashion by American soldiers.
There was then immediate release in Washington (let's forget the word 'leak' ; this handout was a matter of Bush administration policy) of a cable from the US embassy in Kabul declaring that President Karzai is entirely responsible for the failure to counter the crisis of massive opium/heroin production in his country. This grotesque announcement was intended to deflect attention in America (the rest of the world doesn't matter) from President Karzai's expression of concern about the savagery of US soldiers in the prison camps they run. The ploy succeeded, of course. As intended by the Bush propaganda apparatchiks, most news outlets swamped the first story by the second -- if indeed they had even mentioned Karzai's protest, which many of them had not.
Deliberate release of the let's-trash-Karzai cable was not only contemptible but ludicrous. The person in the Kabul embassy who composed it (if it is genuine) is either insane, or a sniveling understrapper of the Washington system, or absurdly and unbelievably ignorant of conditions in Afghanistan. Of course President Karzai can't do anything to counter drug production or smuggling, because the 18,000 US troops in his country are forbidden to act against the drug barons and their private armies. The speedy publication of the State Department's classified cable immediately after President Karzai commented on criminal actions against his citizens was intended to humiliate him and make it clear that if he ever dares criticize US soldiers who torture and murder his people, and thus their commander-in-chief, he does so at his peril.
The smear and jeer operation against President Karzai succeeded in spades. It wasn't a shot across his bows: it was a broadside into his vitals. The poor fellow was shown publicly to be a nonentity whose words mean nothing, and his credibility in his own country was shattered. This malevolent and spiteful action by Bush Washington destroyed such authority as he had, and has set back the Afghan stability program by another decade or so. Well done, the deranged ninnies who at all costs defend The Great Leader against the slightest word of disapproval. What a bunch of squalid little jerks.
The warlords who control most of Afghanistan, almost all of whom are up to their necks in the drug trade, now know for certain that the President of Afghanistan is a mere figurehead. His request to Washington for some face-saving measure of control over US forces was rejected out of hand. The literate inhabitants of his country, all 30 per cent of them, now realize that the man they voted to be president is only a dancer to the tune of the occupying power. The illiterate majority, influenced by dangerous rabble-rousers, already firmly believed that Karzai is a mere tool of the invader, which is exactly how Afghan puppet politicians were regarded during the Soviet military occupation in the 1980s.
In similar vein, the President and Prime Minister of Iraq are supposed to be the leaders of a free country, because Bush keeps telling us that he has liberated Iraq and that it is now a democracy. But what "liberator" with any sensitivity would call the main military base in an occupied country "Camp Victory"?
Iraqis are a proud people, a fact which is regarded as quaint (where have we heard that word before?) by the Bush zealots and their smash-the-door-down occupation troops whose ferociously arrogant behavior began to alienate Iraqis immediately after the occupation began. If they had behaved as liberators rather than conquerors there wouldn't have been an uncontrollable uprising. It's too late now to reverse the hatred they have generated, but it would help to at least try to appear civilized by dropping such arrogant and triumphal (and, now, ironic) nomenclature as "Camp Victory". And while we are covering naive, pathetic and immature behavior, the US commander of Iraq should give an order forbidding his troops to use the word "hajis" to describe its citizens. Perhaps he doesn't know it is used. If so, he is failing in his duty. But if he does know that it is usual for his soldiers to scream "get the fuck out of the way you fucking hajis" at bewildered civilians, and does not forbid such atrociously insulting behavior, then he is a moron.
So it is not surprising, given the policy and atmosphere of Bush-induced exultant supremacy, that the leaders of the supposedly free nation of Iraq were not consulted about the pre-dawn arrest of the head of one of the most important political parties in their country, and that when they complained about it they were ignored. This is the Bush version of the spread of freedom, and the world has become accustomed to the use of uncouth boorishness in the US confrontation policy that has replaced diplomacy.
The few US reporters in Iraq know perfectly well that the humiliation of Dr Mohsen Abdul-Hamid was the most sensitive and important story in recent weeks, if only because it has had enormous influence on the Sunni community whose support is so critical in this terrible period of mayhem and murder. But no US paper or network gave it the cover it should have, simply because that would mean criticizing the US military and its goofy "we are the conquerors" policy for the occupation, which has been so utterly disastrous.
Media outlets that do not "Support Our Troops" to the hilt, by doing their utmost to conceal torture, murder, pre-dawn raids on innocent people, and destruction of towns on a scale reminiscent of the Nazis' obliteration of Guernica, are doomed to suffer the Bush/Nixon revenge for "disloyalty", which is malicious, poisonous and vindictive. Some of them try to tell some of the truth, but most just copy the US military mantra about its ruthless excesses that have alienated so many Iraqis and Afghans and horrified so much of the world. It's a phrase we all know well. A comfortable and contemptuous non-apology for planes being late and innocent citizens being brutally persecuted: "We regret any inconvenience." . . . .
Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs. He can be reached through his website www.briancloughley.com
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Bill Kristol and Israel Want to Draft Your Kids
Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire
June 11, 2005
Are you ready to suit up or suit up your kids (and the kids of your kids) in body armor and die for Israel? Before you dismiss me as an anti-Semitic crank, consider the following:
“Ephraim Halevy, the former chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service and the current national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, says plans have been made for a substantial U.S. military presence in the Middle East lasting decades,†al-Jazeera reports. “High-ranking U.S. policymakers have ‘raised the idea of establishing an American trusteeship regime in the areas of the Palestinian Authority, if it should turn out that the Palestinians are not ripe for self-rule. That arrangement would require an American operational military presence along Israel’s border with the Palestinian territories.’â€
Of course, if Israel has its way, the Palestinians will never be “ripe for self-rule†(many Israelis even refuse to consider the word “Palestinian†and believe most Arabs are recent immigrants to Palestine, or instead of Palestine Judea and Samaria, the Hebrew biblical names for the land stolen from the non-Palestinians) and since the Arab demographic is against the Israelis (Arabs have more kids than Israelis) and there is no way the Israelis will ever have enough soldiers to muster an “operational military presence†on the so-called border, it will be up to your kids and your kids kids (since Halevy says this will last decades) to keep the Arabs in check (and suffering from malnutrition [ http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/risinghunger.html ] and disease:
http://www.jerusalemites.org/editorial/85.htm ).
But wait. It’s worse.
“U.S. entanglement in the Middle East in the name of ‘democracy’ has further destabilized the region and made more likely violent revolutions to occur, especially in countries such as Saudi Arabia,†notes al-Jazeera. “In [an early April] visit to the United States,†remarked Halevy, “I was told by several well-informed observers that should one of the more severe scenarios come to pass, the United States will have no choice but to deepen its presence in the Middle East. To that end, it will have to renew the draft, to ensure that there are enough forces to deal with developing situations in countries like Saudi Arabia†(emphasis added).
“Speaking in a semi-closed forum during a visit to Israel a few months ago,†continued Halevy, “Bill Kristol, one of the most influential ‘neocons’ in the United States, noted in this connection that the American presence in Europe after World War II lasted for nearly 60 years. Israelis who are trying to promote a role for NATO in the region, in one form or another, are actually promoting a generation-long American presence†(emphasis added).
“The war-strained all-volunteer U.S. military has a growing manpower problem and a cross-section of Washington policymakers has proposed a solution—increase the size of the regular military by 30,000, 40,000 or even 100, 000 or more,†the San Francisco Chronicle ( http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/
04/MNG47C2S0B1.DTL ) opined in April. “The military draft, which coughed up its last conscript in 1973, could make a comeback if recruiting doesn’t pick up and if America’s commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan turn into long-term occupations or if the Bush administration’s tough-minded foreign policy means military action in places like Iran or North Korea,†or Saudi Arabia and “Israel’s border with the Palestinian territories,†as indicated by the straight talking Ephraim Halevy.
In January, Bill Kristol signed a Project for the New American Century letter addressed to Congress ( http://www.nodraftnoway.org/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1
109712966&archive=&start_from=&ucat=& ) demanding the government take “steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps,†in other words a return to the draft since dangling paltry bonuses and go-to-college-free tickets in the faces of high school students does not do the trick. PNAC, of course, are the folks who brought us the invasion and occupation of Iraq, predicated on lies and dissembling.
Like I said, suit up the kids in body armor—or move to New Zealand.
“Stratfor ( http://www.freemuslims.org/news/article.php?article=49 ) accurately predicted in October 2002 that a war in Saudi Arabia would erupt between al Qaeda and the ruling House of Saud. That war is under way. Al Qaeda’s tactics have become all too clear, with killings and kidnappings of Westerners having become a common event…. Al Qaeda’s endgame is simple: complete control of the oil-rich kingdom. It hopes to establish a transnational empire. At the heart of this pan-Islamic Ummah (nation) would be Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, and the world’s top oil exporter. This pan-Islamic state—with the Arabian Peninsula as the seat of sovereign authority—would serve as both the political and the religious leader of the Islamic world.â€
It would also make it a prime target since no way will the United States allow the world’s largest pool of oil to be controlled by al-Qaeda—even an intel op al-Qaeda.
“On December 15, 2004, in an audio recording, bin Laden said ‘oil prices should be at least $100 a barrel,’ and called upon Persian Gulf militants to exert themselves to prevent the West from getting Arab oil by attacking oil facilities all over the region. This was the first time that al-Qaeda’s leadership had openly divulged its strategy of hitting the Western economy by disrupting oil supplies and causing prices to skyrocket. The following day, NYMEX crude spiked by 5 percent to $46.28 a barrel,†writes Mordechai Abir ( http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief004-13.htm 9 for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, an Israeli think tank headed by Israel's former UN ambassador Dore Gold. “Bin Laden’s call for an ‘oil jihad’ was followed by a web site message from the Arabian Peninsula al-Qaeda to all the mujahidin in Arabia, wherever they are, to focus on oil targets in their struggle against the infidels and their Saudi allies.â€
Bill Kristol and the neocons have Saudi Arabia in their gun sights—and have for some time now. According to veteran investigative reporter Bob Dreyfuss ( http://www.tompaine.com/articles/bigger_than_iraq.php ), the neocons are using al-Qaeda (or what passes for al-Qaeda) as a blunderbuss to buckshot through their anti-Islam, pro-Israel agenda. “Before the war in Iraq, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Akins, told me that by invading Iraq the Bush administration would accelerate the spread of Al Qaeda-style movements in Saudi Arabia, and it's happening. The country is said to be in a state of incipient civil war, and the royal family is apparently unable to stem the spread of the bin Ladenite poison. Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States has called on the kingdom to conduct an all-out war against the terrorists, but it could be too little, too late. Make no mistake, however: if Saudi Arabia falls to radicals, U.S. forces will occupy that country's oil fields faster than you can say ‘imperialism.’ And if that happens, it will be Phase 2 of the neocons' expanded plans for the Middle East: first topple Saddam and ‘flatten Iraq,’ as another former ambassador to Saudi Arabia described the essence of the neocon Iraq strategy, and then move on to Saudi Arabia.â€
“In sum, we should not be attempting to preserve our past relationship with Saudi Arabia but rather forging a new approach to the greater Middle East,†Kristol ( http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2003/535/535p20.htm ) told the House Committee on International Relations.
In 2003, Kristol wrote The Neoconservative Persuasion ( http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?
idArticle=3000&R=785F27881 ), where he declared “it [is] necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary.†Of course, Israel’s survival is not threatened—but the survival of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the lives of your kids (or your life if you are 20-something) are at risk.
It may be time to start looking for real estate in Auckland.
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TWENTY YEARS AGO I was an extreme right-wing Republican, a young and lone "Neanderthal" (as the liberals used to call us) who believed, as one friend pungently put it, that "Senator Taft had sold out to the socialists." Today, I am most likely to be called an extreme leftist, since I favor immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, denounce U.S. imperialism, advocate Black Power and have just joined the new Peace and Freedom Party. And yet my basic political views have not changed by a single iota in these two decades!
It is obvious that something is very wrong with the old labels, with the categories of "left" and "right," and with the ways in which we customarily apply these categories to American political life. My personal odyssey is unimportant; the important point is that if I can move from "extreme right" to "extreme left" merely by standing in one place, drastic though unrecognized changes must have taken place throughout the American political spectrum over the last generation.
I joined the right-wing movement—to give a formal name to a very loose and informal set of associations—as a young graduate student shortly after the end of World War II. There was no question as to where the intellectual right of that day stood on militarism and conscription: it opposed them as instruments of mass slavery and mass murder. Conscription, indeed, was thought far worse than other forms of statist controls and incursions, for while these only appropriated part of the individual's property, the draft, like slavery, took his most precious possession: his own person. Day after day the veteran publicist John T. Flynn—once praised as a liberal and then condemned as a reactionary, with little or no change in his views—inveighed implacably in print and over the radio against militarism and the draft. Even the Wall Street newspaper, the Commercial and Financial Chronicle, published a lengthy attack on the idea of conscription.
All of our political positions, from the free market in economics to opposing war and militarism, stemmed from our root belief in individual liberty and our opposition to the state. Simplistically, we adopted the standard view of the political spectrum: "left" meant socialism, or total power of the state; the further "right" one went the less government one favored. Hence, we called ourselves "extreme rightists."
Originally, our historical heroes were such men as Jefferson, Paine, Cobden, Bright and Spencer; but as our views became purer and more consistent, we eagerly embraced such near-anarchists as the voluntarist, Auberon Herbert, and the American individualist-anarchists, Lysander Spooner and Benjamin R. Tucker. One of our great intellectual heroes was Henry David Thoreau, and his essay, "Civil Disobedience," was one of our guiding stars. Right-wing theorist Frank Chodorov devoted an entire issue of his monthly, Analysis, to an appreciation of Thoreau.
In our relation to the remainder of the American political scene, we of course recognized that the extreme right of the Republican Party was not made up of individualist anti-statists, but they were close enough to our position to make us feel part of a quasi-libertarian united front. Enough of our views were present among the extreme members of the Taft wing of the Republican Party (much more so than in Taft himself, who was among the most liberal of that wing), and in such organs as the Chicago Tribune, to make us feel quite comfortable with this kind of alliance.
What is more, the right-wing Republicans were major opponents of the Cold War. Valiantly, the extreme rightist Republicans, who were particularly strong in the House, battled conscription, NATO and the Truman Doctrine. Consider, for example, Omaha's Representative Howard Buffett, Senator Taft's midwestern campaign manager in 1952. He was one of the most extreme of the extremists, once described by The Nation as "an able young man whose ideas have tragically fossilized."
I came to know Buffett as a genuine and thoughtful libertarian. Attacking the Truman Doctrine on the floor of Congress, he declared: "Even if it were desirable, America is not strong enough to police the world by military force. If that attempt is made, the blessings of liberty will be replaced by coercion and tyranny at home. Our Christian ideals cannot be exported to other lands by dollars and guns."
When the Korean War came, almost the entire old left, with the exception of the Communist Party, surrendered to the global mystique of the United Nations and "collective security against aggression," and backed Truman's imperialist aggression in that war. Even Corliss Lamont backed the American stand in Korea. Only the extreme rightist Republicans continued to battle U.S. imperialism. It was the last great political outburst of the old right of my youth.
Howard Buffett was convinced that the United States was largely responsible for the eruption of conflict in Korea; for the rest of his life he tried unsuccessfully to get the Senate Armed Services Committee to declassify the testimony of CIA head Admiral Hillenkoeter, which Buffett told me established American responsibility for the Korean outbreak. The last famous isolationist move came late in December 1950, after the Chinese forces had beaten the Americans out of North Korea. Joseph P. Kennedy and Herbert Hoover delivered two ringing speeches back-to-back calling for American evacuation of Korea. As Hoover put it, "To commit the sparse ground forces of the non-communist nations into a land war against this communist land mass [in Asia] would be a war without victory, a war without a successful political terminal . . . that would be the graveyard of millions of American boys" and the exhaustion of the United States. Joe Kennedy declared that "if portions of Europe or Asia wish to go communistic or even have communism thrust upon them, we cannot stop it."
To this The Nation replied with typical liberal Red-baiting: "The line they are laying down for their country should set the bells ringing in the Kremlin as nothing has since the triumph of Stalingrad"; and the New Republic actually saw Stalin sweeping onwards "until the Stalinist caucus in the Tribune Tower would bring out in triumph the first communist edition of the Chicago Tribune."
The main catalyst for transforming the mass base of the right wing from an isolationist and quasi-libertarian movement to an anti-communist one was probably "McCarthyism." Before Senator Joe McCarthy launched his anti-communist crusade in February 1950, he had not been particularly associated with the right wing of the Republican Party; on the contrary, his record was liberal and centrist, statist rather than libertarian.
Furthermore, Red-baiting and anti-communist witch hunting were originally launched by liberals, and even after McCarthy the liberals were the most effective at this game. It was, after all, the liberal Roosevelt Administration which passed the Smith Act, first used against Trotskyites and isolationists during World War II and then against communists after the war; it was the liberal Truman Administration that instituted loyalty checks; it was the eminently liberal Hubert Humphrey who was a sponsor of the clause in the McCarran Act of 1950 threatening concentration camps for "subversives."
McCarthy not only shifted the focus of the right to communist hunting, however. His crusade also brought into the right wing a new mass base. Before McCarthy, the rank-and-file of the right wing was the small-town, isolationist middle west. McCarthyism brought into the movement a mass of urban Catholics from the eastern seaboard, people whose outlook on individual liberty was, if anything, negative.
If McCarthy was the main catalyst for mobilizing the mass base of the new right, the major ideological instrument of the transformation was the blight of anti-communism, and the major carriers were Bill Buckley and National Review.
In the early days, young Bill Buckley often liked to refer to himself as an "individualist," sometimes even as an "anarchist." But all these libertarian ideals, he maintained, had to remain in total abeyance, fit only for parlor discussion, until the great crusade against the "international communist conspiracy" had been driven to a successful conclusion. Thus, as early as January 1952, I noted with disquiet an article that Buckley wrote for Commonweal, "A Young Republican's View."
He began the article in a splendid libertarian manner: our enemy, he affirmed, was the state, which, he quoted Spencer, was "begotten of aggression and by aggression." But then came the worm in the apple: the anti-communist crusade had to be waged. Buckley went on to endorse "the extensive and productive tax laws that are needed to support a vigorous anti-communist foreign policy"; he declared that the "thus far invincible aggressiveness of the Soviet Union" imminently threatened American security, and that therefore "we have to accept Big Government for the duration—for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged . . . except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores." Therefore, he concluded—in the midst of the Korean War—we must all support "large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington."
The right wing, never articulate, has not had many organs of opinion. Therefore, when Buckley founded National Review in late 1955, its erudite, witty and glib editorials and articles swiftly made it the only politically relevant journal for the American right. Immediately, the ideological line of the right began to change sharply.
One element that gave special fervor and expertise to the Red-baiting crusade was the prevalence of ex-communists, ex-fellow travelers and ex-Trotskyites among the writers whom National Review brought into prominence on the right-wing scene. These ex-leftists were consumed with an undying hatred for their former love, along with a passion for bestowing enormous importance upon their apparently wasted years. Almost the entire older generation of writers and editors for National Review had been prominent in the old left. Some names that come to mind are: Jim Burnham, John Chamberlain, Whittaker Chambers, Ralph DeToledano, Will Herberg, Eugene Lyons, J. B. Matthews, Frank S. Meyer, William S. Schlamm and Karl Wittfogel.
An insight into the state of mind of many of these people came in a recent letter to me from one of the most libertarian of this group; he admitted that my stand in opposition to the draft was the only one consistent with libertarian principles, but, he said, he can't forget how nasty the communist cell in Time magazine was in the 1930's. The world is falling apart and yet these people are still mired in the petty grievances of faction fights of long ago!
Anti-communism was the central root of the decay of the old libertarian right, but it was not the only one. In 1953, a big splash was made by the publication of Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind. Before that, no one on the right regarded himself as a "conservative"; "conservative" was considered a left smear word. Now, suddenly, the right began to glory in the term "conservative," and Kirk began to make speaking appearances, often in a kind of friendly "vital center" tandem with Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
This was to be the beginning of the burgeoning phenomenon of the friendly-though-critical dialogue between the liberal and conservative wings of the Great Patriotic American Consensus. A new, younger generation of rightists, of "conservatives," began to emerge, who thought that the real problem of the modern world was nothing so ideological as the state vs. individual liberty or government intervention vs. the free market; the real problem, they declared, was the preservation of tradition, order, Christianity and good manners against the modern sins of reason, license, atheism and boorishness.One of the first dominant thinkers of this new right was Buckley's brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell, who wrote fiery articles in National Review attacking liberty even as an abstract principle (and not just as something to be temporarily sacrificed for the benefit of the anti-communist emergency). The function of the state was to impose and enforce moral and religious principles.
Another repellent political theorist who made his mark in National Review was the late Willmoore Kendall, NR editor for many years. His great thrust was the right and the duty of the majority of the community—as embodied, say, in Congress—to suppress any individual who disturbs that community with radical doctrines. Socrates, opined Kendall, not only should have been killed by the Greek community, whom he offended by his subversive criticisms, but it was their moral duty to kill him.
The historical heroes of the new right were changing rapidly. Mencken, Nock, Thoreau, Jefferson, Paine—all these either dropped from sight or were soundly condemned as rationalists, atheists or anarchists. From Europe, the "in" people were now such despotic reactionaries as Burke, Metternich, DeMaistre; in the United States, Hamilton and Madison were "in," with their stress on the imposition of order and a strong, elitist central government—which included the southern "slavocracy."
For the first few years of its existence, I moved in National Review circles, attended its editorial luncheons, wrote articles and book reviews for the magazine; indeed, there was talk at one time of my joining the staff as an economics columnist.
I became increasingly alarmed, however, as NR and its friends grew in strength because I knew, from innumerable conversations with rightist intellectuals, what their foreign policy goal was. They never quite dared to state it publicly, although they would slyly imply it and would try to whip the public up to the fever pitch of demanding it. What they wanted—and still want—was nuclear annihilation of the Soviet Union. They want to drop that Bomb on Moscow. (Of course, on Peking and Hanoi too, but for your veteran anti-communist— especially back then—it is Russia which supplies the main focus of his venom.) A prominent editor of National Review once told me: "I have a vision, a great vision of the future: a totally devastated Soviet Union." I knew that it was this vision that really animated the new conservatism.
In response to all this, and seeing peace as the crucial political issue, a few friends and I became Stevensonian Democrats in 1960. I watched with increasing horror as the right wing, led by National Review, continually grew in strength and moved ever closer to real political power.
Having broken emotionally with the right wing, our tiny group of libertarians began to rethink many of our old, unexamined premises. First, we restudied the origins of the Cold War, we read our D.F. Fleming and we concluded, to our considerable surprise, that the United States was solely at fault in the Cold War, and that Russia was the aggrieved party. And this meant that the great danger to the peace and freedom of the world came not from Moscow or "international communism," but from the U.S. and its Empire stretching across and dominating the world.
And then we studied the foul European conservatism that had taken over the right wing; here we had statism in a virulent form, and yet no one could possibly think these conservatives to be "leftist." But this meant that our simple "left/total government—right/no government" continuum was altogether wrong and that our whole identification of ourselves as "extreme rightists" must contain a basic flaw. Plunging back into history, we again concentrated on the reality that in the 19th century, laissez-faire liberals and radicals were on the extreme left and our ancient foes, the conservatives, on the right. My old friend and libertarian colleague Leonard Liggio then came up with the following analysis of the historical process.
First there was the old order, the ancien régime, the regime of caste and frozen status, of exploitation by a despotic ruling class, using the church to dupe the masses into accepting its rule. This was pure statism; this was the right wing. Then, in 17th and 18th century western Europe, a liberal and radical opposition movement arose, our heroes, who championed a popular revolutionary movement on behalf of rationalism, individual liberty, minimal government, free markets, international peace and separation of church and state, in opposition to throne and altar, to monarchy, the ruling class, theocracy and war. These—"our people"—were the left, and the purer their vision the more "extreme" they were.
So far so good; but what of socialism, which we had always considered the extreme left? Where did that fit in? Liggio analyzed socialism as a confused middle-of-the-road movement, influenced historically by both the libertarian left and the conservative right. From the individualist left the socialists took the goals of freedom: the withering away of the state, the replacement of the governing of men by the administration of things, opposition to the ruling class and a search for its overthrow, the desire to establish international peace, an advanced industrial economy and a high standard of living for the mass of the people. From the right the socialists adopted the means to achieve these goals—collectivism, state planning, community control of the individual. This put socialism in the middle of the ideological spectrum. It also meant that socialism was an unstable, self-contradictory doctrine bound to fly apart in the inner contradiction between its means and ends.
Our analysis was greatly bolstered by our becoming familiar with the new and exciting group of historians who studied under University of Wisconsin historian William Appleman Williams. From them we discovered that all of us free marketeers had erred in believing that somehow, down deep, Big Businessmen were really in favor of laissez-faire, and that their deviations from it, obviously clear and notorious in recent years, were either "sellouts" of principle to expediency or the result of astute maneuverings by liberal intellectuals.
This is the general view on the right; in the remarkable phrase of Ayn Rand, Big Business is "America's most persecuted minority." Persecuted minority, indeed! Sure, there were thrusts against Big Business in the old McCormick Chicago Tribune and in the writings of Albert Jay Nock; but it took the Williams-Kolko analysis to portray the true anatomy and physiology of the American scene.
As Kolko pointed out, all the various measures of federal regulation and welfare statism that left and right alike have always believed to be mass movements against Big Business are not only now backed to the hilt by Big Business, but were originated by it for the very purpose of shifting from a free market to a cartelized economy that would benefit it. Imperialistic foreign policy and the permanent garrison state originated in the Big Business drive for foreign investments and for war contracts at home.
The role of the liberal intellectuals is to serve as "corporate liberals," weavers of sophisticated apologias to inform the masses that the heads of the American corporate state are ruling on behalf of the "common good" and the "general welfare"—like the priest in the Oriental despotism who convinced the masses that their emperor was all-wise and divine.
Since the early '60s, as the National Review right has moved nearer to political power, it has jettisoned its old libertarian remnants and has drawn ever closer to the liberals of the Great American Consensus. Evidence of this abounds. There is Bill Buckley's ever-widening popularity in the mass media and among liberal intellectuals, as well as widespread admiration on the intellectual right for people and groups it once despised: for the New Leader, for Irving Kristol, for the late Felix Frankfurter (who always opposed judicial restraint on government invasions of individual liberty), for Hannah Arendt and Sidney Hook. Despite occasional bows to the free market, conservatives have come to agree that economic issues are unimportant; they therefore accept—or at least do not worry about—the major outlines of the Keynesian welfare-warfare state of liberal corporatism.
On the domestic front, virtually the only conservative interests are to suppress Negroes ("shoot looters," "crush those riots"), to call for more power for the police so as not to "shield the criminal" (i.e., not to protect his libertarian rights), to enforce prayer in the public schools, to put Reds and other subversives and "seditionists" in jail and to carry on the crusade for war abroad. There is little in the thrust of this program with which liberals can now disagree; any disagreements are tactical or matters of degree only. Even the Cold War—including the war in Vietnam—was begun and maintained and escalated by the liberals themselves.
No wonder that liberal Daniel Moynihan—a national board member of ADA incensed at the radicalism of the current anti-war and Black Power movements—should recently call for a formal alliance between liberals and conservatives, since after all they basically agree on these, the two crucial issues of our time! Even Barry Goldwater has gotten the message; in January 1968 in National Review, Goldwater concluded an article by affirming that he is not against liberals, that liberals are needed as a counterweight to conservatism, and that he had in mind a fine liberal like Max Lerner—Max Lerner, the epitome of the old left, the hated symbol of my youth!
In response to our isolation from the right, and noting the promising signs of libertarian attitudes in the emerging new left, a tiny band of us ex-rightist libertarians founded the "little journal," Left and Right, in the spring of 1965. We had two major purposes: to make contact with libertarians already on the new left and to persuade the bulk of libertarians or quasi-libertarians who remained on the right to follow our example. We have been gratified in both directions: by the remarkable shift toward libertarian and anti-statist positions of the new left, and by the significant number of young people who have left the right-wing movement.
This left/right tendency has begun to be noticeable on the new left, praised and damned by those aware of the situation.(Our old colleague Ronald Hamoway, an historian at Stanford, set forth the left/right position in the New Republic collection, Thoughts of the Young Radicals (1966). We have received gratifying encouragement from Carl Oglesby who, in his Containment and Change (1967), advocated a coalition of new left and old right, and from the young scholars grouped around the unfortunately now defunct Studies on the Left. We've also been criticized, if indirectly, by Staughton Lynd, who worries because our ultimate goals—free market as against socialism—differ.
Finally, liberal historian Martin Duberman, in a recent issue of Partisan Review, sharply criticizes SNCC and CORE for being "anarchists," for rejecting the authority of the state, for insisting that community be voluntary, and for stressing, along with SDS, participatory instead of representative democracy. Perceptively, if on the wrong side of the fence, Duberman then links SNCC and the new left with us old rightists: "SNCC and CORE, like the Anarchists, talk increasingly of the supreme importance of the individual. They do so, paradoxically, in a rhetoric strongly reminiscent of that long associated with the right. It could be Herbert Hoover . . . but it is in fact Rap Brown who now reiterates the Negro's need to stand on his own two feet, to make his own decisions, to develop self-reliance and a sense of self-worth. SNCC may be scornful of present-day liberals and 'statism,' but it seems hardly to realize that the laissez-faire rhetoric it prefers derives almost verbatim from the classic liberalism of John Stuart Mill." Tough. It could, I submit, do a lot worse.
I hope to have demonstrated why a few compatriots and I have shifted, or rather been shifted, from "extreme right" to "extreme left" in the past 20 years merely by staying in the same basic ideological place. The right wing, once in determined opposition to Big Government, has now become the conservative wing of the American corporate state and its foreign policy of expansionist imperialism. If we would salvage liberty from this deadening left/right fusion on the center, this needs be done through a counter-fusion of old right and new left.
James Burnham, an editor of National Review and its main strategic thinker in waging the "Third World War" (as he entitles his column), the prophet of the managerial state (in The Managerial Revolution), whose only hint of positive interest in liberty in a lifetime of political writing was a call for legalized firecrackers, recently attacked the dangerous trend among some young conservatives to make common cause with the left in opposing the draft. Burnham warned that he learned in his Trotskyite days that this would be an "unprincipled" coalition, and he warned that if one begins by being anti-draft one might wind up opposed to the war in Vietnam: "And I rather think that some of them are at heart, or are getting to be, against the war. Murray Rothbard has shown how right-wing libertarianism can lead to almost as anti-U.S. a position as left-wing libertarianism does. And a strain of isolationism has always been endemic in the American right."
This passage symbolizes how deeply the whole thrust of the right wing has changed in the last two decades. Vestigial interest in liberty or in opposition to war and imperialism are now considered deviations to be stamped out without delay. There are millions of Americans, I am convinced, who are still devoted to individual liberty and opposition to the leviathan state at home and abroad, Americans who call themselves "conservatives" but feel that something has gone very wrong with the old anti-New Deal and anti-Fair Deal cause.
Something has gone wrong: the right wing has been captured and transformed by elitists and devotees of the European conservative ideals of order and militarism, by witch hunters and global crusaders, by statists who wish to coerce "morality" and suppress "sedition."
America was born in a revolution against Western imperialism, born as a haven of freedom against the tyrannies and despotism, the wars and intrigues of the old world. Yet we have allowed ourselves to sacrifice the American ideals of peace and freedom and anti-colonialism on the altar of a crusade to kill communists throughout the world; we have surrendered our libertarian birthright into the hands of those who yearn to restore the Golden Age of the Holy Inquisition. It is about time that we wake up and rise up to restore our heritage.
--Murray N. Rothbard
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Why is FOX News so angry?
by John in DC - 6/9/2005 07:55:00 PM
AMERICAblog hears someone went batshit-crazy today at the Harry Reid/Howard Dean meeting, but it wasn't who the MSM would like to think.
Our sources tell us that a photo-op took place today with Howard Dean and Senator Harry Reid in Reid’s private office (these are usually secreted away in the Capitol Building itself, near the Senate floor). FOX News's Brian Wilson reportedly spent the photo op angrily interrupting reporters and shouting questions out of turn. After an initial swarm, reporters squeezed out the door. FOX's Brian Wilson was apparently wearing no credential of any kind (that wasn’t a red flag to anyone) and behaving "bizarrely angry" so the Washington Post's Mark Leibovich asked who he was.
We hear that Wilson "went nuts," responding to the Post reporter (whose credentials were clearly on display):
"Who the fuck are you?"
Gee, Brian, do you kiss Rupert with that mouth?
The Post reporter then responded that he was from the Washington Post and didn’t see credentials on Wilson and because of his incredibly pointed questions wondered whether or not he was a rogue Republican staffer!
As they raced down the hall outside the austere Senate chamber, we're told that Wilson displayed an impressive knowledge of four-letter words, and was incredulous that he would either not be recognized without proper ID or would be called out on being completely one-sided and working from GOP talking points.
See, and folks thought things wouldn't be nearly as interesting now that Jeff Gannon is history.
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Totally insane. Sickening.
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Nice read, but i'm tired of everyone thinking this is what the mainstream left thinks. Its just not true and getting old
Exactly the way I feel.
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Useless propagandago away dicksuction
Fucking retards.
Like all of the great Communist leaders past? I guess that means I'm in charge! Up against the wall with Johnnyrevs and Igloo! What a paranoid world you live in where everyone you don't agree with is a "communist" and is an eager fellow traveler with Islamist fanatics. I guess it's not your fault... after all, your "Moderate" President tells you these things. It's weird... I remember the days where fiscally conservative, socially moderate Republicans still existed. Nowadays to call yourself a Republican, you have to spend the government's money like it's going out of style, you have to go to church six times a week, think that Abortion is the worst thing on Earth, think that Americans have too many freedoms except for gun control in which you believe we don't have enough freedom, you must believe we can win a War On Terror without addressing the poverty and repression which creates it, you must believe we invaded Iraq to stop Saddam's nonexistent nuclear program, no wait, you must believe that we went there because of 9/11, no wait, you must believe we went there to free people, right, THAT is why we invaded Iraq, you must ignore the fact that 2/3 of the country are not in America's control, you must ignore the fact that GW Bush has destroyed our long-term economic health by passing all of his bills onto our children, you must believe that appointing Saddam's former right-hand-man -- a known torturer and murderer -- is a GOOD idea and represents freedom and democracy. You people are through the looking glass, chum.
You probably deep down, already know that you are a brainwashed nationalist who doesn't understand what Patriotism is. Patriotism is not doing whatever the goverment says anytime that it says to do it. Patriotism is love for, and devotion and loyalty to, one's nation. I love America (unlike you). I am devoted to America... and not to an iron-bar surrounded America, but a FREE America. I am loyal, despite your sneering insinuations otherwise.
pa·tri·ot·ism
Pronunciation Key (ptr--tzm)
n.
Love of and devotion to one's country.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Patriotism
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does NOT mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country.... To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Theodore Roosevelt. 1912
As I see it, you have but one choice: continue to be a Fox-News brainwashed lemming, or suck it up and defend our Constitution against the poaching of our Civil Rights by Bush & his goons. With your constant assaults on freedom of speech, you and your fellow inbred "Conservatives" show yourselves to be what you really are: Facists.
fascism
Syllables: fas-cism
Part of Speech: noun
Pronunciation fae shih zEm
Definition
1. a system of government characterized by strong, often dictatorial control of political and economic affairs, and often by warlike nationalism and brutal suppression of political dissidents and ethnic minorities.
2. any of the distinctive principles or practices of this system.
3. (usu. cap.) a party or government espousing this system..
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whatever. i dont see why you have to break out the homophobia to do so
Maybe half a fag was the wrong choice of words. Perhaps mongoloid would suffice?
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Son, thanks for posting this article too.......further proof that the shit you have been posting for days is bullshit, overblown, exaggerated, etc............thanks for proving my point on this issue, and thanks for clearly demonstrating how fucking stupid you really are.....
Son, this was a classic........I have never seen someone prove their own stupidity as forcefully as you.........did you even read this article.....obviously not....
Shitstain, you better get a grip.......aspiring to be a top-notch imbecile is not very becoming..........but if that is the case, congrats--you are almost there....
:lol3::lol3:Translation:
You're correct. There is absolutely no way I can defend my arguement any longer.From the FOX NEWS article mongoloid child....
"Of the 13 alleged incidents, five were substantiated, he said. Four were by guards and one was by an interrogator. Hood said the five cases "could be broadly defined as mishandling" of the holy book, but he refused to discuss details.
In three of the five cases, the mishandling appears to have been deliberate. In the other two, it apparently was accidental."
PETA employees charged with animal crulety
in Useless Blabber
Posted
It's disturbing to know that an organization that forbades cruelty to animals to go out and raid animal shelters and kill them before they stuff them in a van. This is total hyprocrasy as well as complete moronic idiocy.
Fuck PETA