Nobody to match Bush

[OPTIONAL777]

CoulterKampf
The Problem With Ann

Few would dispute that she's a babe. Lanky, skinny, with long blonde hair tumbling down to her breasts, Ann Coulter has been photographed in a shiny black latex dress. She's whip-sharp in public debates, has done a fair amount of homework, and has made a lot of the right enemies. If much of modern American conservatism has made headway because of its media savvy, compelling personalities, and shameless provocation, then Coulter deserves some pride of place in its vanguard.

But that, of course, is also the problem. In the ever-competitive marketplace of political ideas - in a world of blogs and talk radio and cable news - it's increasingly hard to stand out. Coulter's answer to that dilemma is two-fold: look amazing and ratchet up the rhetoric against the left until it has the subtlety and nuance of a car alarm. The left, in turn, has learned the lesson, which is why the fraud and dissembler, Michael Moore, has done so well. In fact, it's worth thinking of Coulter as a kind of inverse Moore: where's he's ugly and ill-kempt, she's glamorous and impeccably turned out. (Her web-page, AnnCoulter.org, has a gallery of sexy images.) But what they have in common is more significant: an hysterical hatred of their political opponents and an ability to say anything to advance their causes (and extremely lucrative careers).

Coulter's modus operandi is rhetorical extremity. She was fired from the conservative National Review magazine when, in the wake of 9/11, she urged the invasion of all Muslim nations and the forcible conversion of their citizens to Christianity. As media critic, Brendan Nyhan, has documented, her flights of fancy go back a long long way. No punches are pulled. Ted Kennedy is an "adulterous drunk." President Clinton had "crack pipes on the White House Christmas tree." You get the idea. In Coulter's world, there are two types of people: conservatives and liberals. These aren't groups of people with competing ideas. They are the repositories of good and evil. There are no distinctions among conservatives or among liberals. To admit the complexity of political discourse would immediately require Coulter to think, explain, argue. But why bother when you can earn millions insulting?

Here are a few comments about "liberals" that Coulter has deployed over the years: "Liberals are fanatical liars." Liberals are "devoted to class warfare, ethnic hatred and intolerance." Liberals "hate democracy because democracy requires persuasion and compromise rather than brute political force." Some of this is obvious hyperbole, designed for a partisan audience. Some of it could be explained as good, dirty fun. It was this formula that gained her enormous sales for her last book, "Slander," which detailed in sometimes hilarious prose, the liberal bias in much of American media. But her latest tome ups the ante even further. If biased liberal editors are busy slandering conservatives, liberals more generally are dedicated to the subversion of their own country. They are guilty of - yes - treason.

A few nuggets: "As a rule of thumb, Democrats opposed anything opposed by their cherished Soviet Union. The Soviet Union did not like the idea of a militarily strong America. Neither did the Democrats!" Earlier in the same vein: "Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant." And then: "The myth of 'McCarthyism' is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times. Liberals are fanatical liars, then as now. The portrayal of Sen. Joe McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. Liberals weren't hiding under the bed during the McCarthy era. They were systematically undermining the nation's ability to defend itself, while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy's name."

Coulter does not seek to complicate her view of liberals with any serious or lengthy treatment of the many Democrats and liberals who were ferociously anti-Communist. Scoop Jackson? Harry Truman? John F Kennedy? Lyndon Vietnam Johnson? She doesn't substantively deal with those Democrats today - from Senator Joe Lieberman to the New Republic magazine - who were anti-Saddam before many Republicans were. She is absolutely right to insist that many on the Left are in denial about some Americans' complicity in Soviet evil, the guilt of true traitors like Alger Hiss or the Rosenbergs, who helped Stalin and his heirs in their murderous pursuits. And part of the frustration of reading Coulter is that her basic causes are the right ones: the American media truly is biased to the left; some liberals and Democrats were bona fide traitors during the Cold War; many on the far left today are essentially anti-American and hope for the defeat of their country in foreign wars.

But by making huge and sweeping generalizations about all liberals, Coulter undermines her own arguments and comes close to making them meaningless. If you condemn good and bad liberals alike, how can you be trusted to make any moral distinctions of any kind? And by defending the tactics of Joe McCarthy, she actually plays directly into the hands of the left. What she won't concede is that it is possible to be clear-headed about the role that some liberals and Democrats played in supporting the Soviet Union, while reviling the kind of tactics McCarthy used. In fact, when liberals taunt conservatives with being McCarthyites, conservatives now have to concede that some of their allies, namely Coulter, obviously are McCarthyites - and proud of it.

One of the most reputable scholars who has studied the McCarthy era in great detail, Ron Radosh, is appalled at the damage Coulter has done to the work he and many others have painstakingly done over the years. "I am furious and upset about her book," he told me last week. "I am reading it - she uses my stuff, Harvey Klehr and John Haynes, Allen Weinstein etc. to distort what we actually say and to make ludicrous and historically incorrect arguments. You might recall my lengthy and negative review in The New Republic a few years ago of Herman's book on McCarthy; well, she is ten times worse than Herman. At least he tried to use bona fide historical methods of research and argument." Now Radosh has endured ostracism and abuse for insisting that many of McCarthy's victims were indeed Communist spies or agents. But he draws the line at Coulter's crude and inflammatory defense of McCarthy. "I think it is important that those who are considered critics of left/liberalism don't stop using our critical faculties when self-proclaimed conservatives start producing crap."

Amen. American politics has been badly damaged by the scruple-free tactics of those like Michael Moore and Ann Coulter. In some ways, of course, these shameless hucksters of ideological hate deserve each other. But America surely deserves better.

 

[OPTIONAL777]

George F. Will: Proof of WMDs is crucial
By George F. Will
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Sunday, June 22, 2003
WASHINGTON -- An antidote for grand imperial ambitions is a taste of imperial success. Swift victory in Iraq may have whetted the appetite of some Americans for further military exercises in regime change, but more than seven weeks after the president said, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended," combat operations, minor but lethal, continue.
And overshadowing the military achievement is the failure -- so far -- to find, or explain the absence of, weapons of mass destruction that were the necessary and sufficient justification for pre-emptive war. The doctrine of pre-emption -- the core of the president's foreign policy -- is in jeopardy.

To govern is to choose, almost always on the basis of very imperfect information. But pre-emption presupposes the ability to know things -- to know about threats with a degree of certainty not requisite for decisions less momentous than those for waging war.

Some say the war was justified even if WMDs are not found nor their destruction explained, because the world is "better off" without Saddam. Of course it is better off. But unless one is prepared to postulate a U.S. right, perhaps even a duty, to militarily dismantle any tyranny -- on to Burma? -- it is unacceptable to argue that Saddam's mass graves and torture chambers suffice as retrospective justifications for pre-emptive war. Americans seem sanguine about the failure -- so far -- to validate the war's premise about the threat posed by Saddam's WMDs, but a long-term failure would unravel much of this president's policy and rhetoric.

Saddam, forced by the defection of his son-in-law, acknowledged in the mid-1990s his possession of chemical and biological WMDs. President Clinton, British, French and German intelligence agencies and even Hans Blix (who tells the British newspaper The Guardian, "We know for sure that they did exist") have expressed certainty about Iraq having WMDs at some point.

A vast multinational conspiracy of bad faith, using fictitious WMDs as a pretext for war, is a wildly implausible explanation of the failure to find WMDs. What is plausible? James Woolsey, President Clinton's first CIA director, suggests the following:

As war approached, Saddam, a killer but not a fighter, was a parochial figure who had not left Iraq since 1979. He was surrounded by terrified sycophants and several Russian advisers who assured him that if Russia could not subdue Grozny in Chechnya, casualty-averse Americans would not conquer Baghdad.

Based on his experience in the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam assumed there would be a ground offensive only after prolonged bombing. U.S. forces would conquer the desert, then stop. He could manufacture civilian casualties -- perhaps by blowing up some of his own hospitals -- to inflame world opinion, and count on his European friends to force a halt in the war, based on his promise to open Iraq to inspections, having destroyed his WMDs on the eve of war.

Or shortly after the war began. Saddam, suggests Woolsey, was stunned when Gen. Tommy Franks began the air and ground offenses simultaneously and then "pulled a Patton," saying, in effect, never mind my flanks, I'll move so fast they can't find my flanks. Saddam, Woolsey suggests, may have moved fast to destroy the material that was the justification for a war he intended to survive, and may have survived.

Such destruction need not have been a huge task. In Britain, where political discourse is far fiercer than in America, Tony Blair is being roasted about the missing WMDs by, among many others, Robin Cook, formerly his foreign secretary. Cook says: "Such weapons require substantial industrial plant and a large work force. It is inconceivable that both could have been kept concealed for the two months we have been in occupation of Iraq."

Rubbish, says Woolsey: Chemical or biological weapons could have been manufactured with minor modifications of a fertilizer plant, or in a plant as small as a microbrewery attached to a restaurant. The 8,500 liters of anthrax that Saddam once admitted to having would weigh about 8.5 tons and would fill about half of a tractor-trailer truck. The 25,000 liters that Colin Powell cited in his U.N. speech could be concealed in two trucks -- or in much less space if the anthrax were powdered.

For the president, the missing WMDs are not a political problem. Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, says Americans are happily focused on Iraqis liberated rather than WMDs not found, so we "feel good about ourselves."

But unless America's foreign policy is New Age therapy to make the public feel mellow, feeling good about the consequences of an action does not obviate the need to assess the original rationale for the action. Until WMDs are found, or their absence accounted for, there is urgent explaining to be done.

 

[tatertrader]

Quote from Doubter:


No one. But maybe you should answer the same question. You are trying to shove your prejudices down the conservative throat. I am saying we should divide the country and you can do as you damn well please but so can we. Seems fair to me. [/B]

Seems unbelievably ignorant to me. At least coming from an American.


This is a country borne of a multiplicity of ideals.

Have you ever read the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution of the Bill of Rights?

Do you have any idea what country you live in!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

The very bedrock of this Nation is founded not only in the tolerance for a brilliant diversity of political, religious, ethnic, and social concepts - it is founded in the GUARANTEE that all should be embraced, and protected from the tyranny of totalitarianism, and intolerance.

If you can't abide dissent and diversity in your society you are damned to a solitary and desolate existence.

No thanks.

 

[KymarFye]

Quote from OPTIONAL777:

Quote from KymarFye:


The issues were in dispute. It was the immediacy of a need to act now, to suspend weapons inspections that the inspectors were claiming were effective and showed promise. It had to be war right now, not in 6 months, not in a year, etc., because the administration claimed that waiting increased the risk of an attack by Iraq.

That's a drastic oversimplification of the debate. Needless to say, there were different positions about the "effectiveness" of weapons inspections, or even about the meaning of the inspectors' claims, alongside an attempt by war opponents to turn the inspectors into detectives searching for hidden weapons rather than what they were supposed to be: Verifiers of "full and immediate compliance" vs. "serious consequences." No one believed that such cooperation as the Iraqis gave - never much more than progress on "procedural" issues that never would have come up if the Iraqis had truly been cooperative - would have occurred at all if not for the intense US military pressure.

The US position on Resolution 1441 was that it was the last chance, after years of broken promises, for Iraq to comply. Fully expecting what actually did occur - a lack of compliance - the US brought its forces into the region, to a state of high readiness and high vulnerability. The timing was very much of the Administration's choosing. A delay of six months or a year would have been disadvantageous and risky for a number of reasons, especially in light of the near certainty on the Administration's part that war was in fact inevitable. Consenting to such a delay would have entailed multiple uncertainties, including the very real possibility that opposition in Europe and the Arab world would only intensify, and that Iraq and third parties, such as Al Qaeda, would gain six more months to a year to advance their political strategies and to prepare mischief. Continued uncertainty was also already inflicting enormous economic cost, and not only the United States.

This is only an overview of the relevant issues. Partly for these reasons, it was often said - both before the recent war and before Gulf War I - that the worst nightmare for supporters of the war and the military would have been a greater show of compliance on Saddam's part: the fear being that he might manage, through delay, partial cooperation, and the effective use of objective allies especially in the anti-war movement, to escape the forces finally in place to handle him, while retaining his capacity to re-start his WMD program at a time of his choosing, alongside his military and financial potential and his longheld ambitions.

Yet, we saw no attack from Iraq even when they knew we were coming to get them, even when we attacked them, even now when they could easily use the WMD in acts of terrorism against troops in Iraq.

We've argued over these issues before - why it would have been disadvantageous for SH to use whatever WMDs he may have had. They apply to the current post-war situation as well, probably even more strongly - even accepting your dubious assertion that "they could easily use the WMD in acts of terrorism against troops in Iraq."

The longer this goes on without evidence of an immediate threat, the questions increase that maybe in fact containment was working, and the potential for weapons inspections coupled with the "threat" of force could have been successful.

It is conceivable that the entire case for the war will be re-argued in a partisan political context. The Administration would clearly prefer to move on to other issues, and I doubt that the public as a whole would be as interested in it as you and I seem to be. At this moment, the Democrats see an opportunity to attack Bush's character and credibility - weakening him on these scores is critical to they're political strategy - but the sands may shift beneath their feet with tomorrow's or the day after's headlines. It's not hard at all to imagine a set of circumstances under which they'd again revert to not really wanting to talk about the war at all.

The case for war that you made, without the urgency of WMD threat, would in all likelihood not have convinced the American people of the need for war such that we had to break from our allies in Europe and the Soviet Union. All the cost, lost of lives, political upheavals, international conflict, risk of further terrorism by angering those who live in the middle east, lack of success in capturing Hussein, not finding WMD, etc.

I disagree - both about the case that was made, and about the public's perceptions of it. I believe that the Administration argued the case that it had - whose "urgencies" were always more complex than you acknwledge - and that things got somewhat diverted and sidetracked by the whole inspections fiasco and how it was manipulated both by Saddam and by war opponents.

I have also c&p'd articles on the subject. We have discussed the nature of judgment and opinion, and recognized that there is no objective standard, but always an element of judgment in any decision on war. At other times, I have cited specific statements - such as the clear and unequivocal statements in the SOTU address in which Bush explicitly argued that imminence was not the proper criterion.

Wild and others have C&P's articles countering the opinions of those you pasted.

How could a c&p contradict Bush's clear and unequivocal statements?

Had that argument Bush gave in the SOTU address been sufficient to justify war, why the need to focus on WMD, why go to the U.N., why send Powell to the U.N., etc.

For a number of reasons, the political decision was made to seek support and closure through the UN. One effect of this decision was to heighten the focus first on WMDs (which is different and separate from "irrefutable danger of imminent attack" or however you're now defining "urgency"), and then on a very particular set of WMD issues and an inappropriate use of inspections - rather than on Saddam's long history of defiance and aggression, or on the larger and longer term threat and strategic challenge he presented.

Blindly? Of course not. We can only apply our judgment to the evidence as it unfolds.

So you freely admit that your judgment concerning the missing WMD and Bush's intentions may in fact be clouded by your own personal conclusion that war was necessary and justifiable. You are admitting you are not objective, isn't that right?

I have no idea how you draw that inference from my comment.

Is that another of your attempts at humor? You don't know who the Republicans I refer to are? You don't know who voted right along party lines, to pursue Clinton despite the lack of support by the electorate as evidenced in the public opinion polls?

I don't know whether you mean the Republicans who hated Clinton and sought in every way they could to bring him down, or whether you mean the Republicans who disliked and disapproved of Clinton and finally had enough of him when the Lewinsky scandal broke and they believed he lied under oath, or whether you mean the Republicans who thought the whole impeachment process was a horrible mistake, or whether you mean the Republicans who voted for Clinton and changed parties out of disgust.

I also don't know what relevance you think this matter has to the current debate, except perhaps as a bad justification for trying to get payback at the expense of Bush.

 

[Doubter]

The very bedrock of this Nation is founded not only in the tolerance for a brilliant diversity of political, religious, ethnic, and social concepts - it is founded in the GUARANTEE that all should be embraced, and protected from the tyranny of totalitarianism, and intolerance.
_________________________

This all sounds great and should be but until you live in a region or among people who live in this country and are daily not protected from the tyranny of totalitarianism and intolerance forced upon them by the liberals and their tools in the federal agencies, then you are only theorizing. I have read the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Federalist Papers, have taken classes on them and one of my good friends teaches seminars on them. Your head is clearly in the sand on the breaches of the Constitution and the others under Clinton/Gore administration. I am simply saying that the liberals are so adamant to change the rule of law that there may be no way to reconcile the differences. I believe in personal property, personal liberty, states rights, and county government rights and those three documents, as they were written. I do not believe in law making by judicial decree and I see no justification for it in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or Federalist Papers. I was testifying before a state senate committee about 3 years ago when a senator asked a liberal attorney why he ran around the state suing everybody all the time. The liberal attorney said "because you don't pass the laws we want" even though just a minute percent of the citizens support his position. What is not totalitarian and intolerant about that attitude?

 

[Doubter]

Week before last I read an article about debate on the permannent repeal of the death (inheritance) tax and the focus of the article was about a wonderful liberal organization called The Nature Conservancy. The TNC was lobbying against the repeal of the death tax so that the property owners would be forced to sell the property to pay the tax and then the TNC could get its' hands on the property so they could in turn sell at least a portion of the basically confiscated property to the federal government and the rest to some wealthy liberal from somewhere. This is real tolerance, compassion, and not a sign of totalitarianism. Some of the properties they want have been in the family for generations but all TNC cares about is the cash to be made and the roll over. This to me dwarfs anything Haliburton has done, at least to individuals who are being forced out.

 

[OPTIONAL777]

Quote from KymarFye:

That's a drastic oversimplification of the debate. Needless to say, there were different positions about the "effectiveness" of weapons inspections, or even about the meaning of the inspectors' claims, alongside an attempt by war opponents to turn the inspectors into detectives searching for hidden weapons rather than what they were supposed to be: Verifiers of "full and immediate compliance" vs. "serious consequences." No one believed that such cooperation as the Iraqis gave - never much more than progress on "procedural" issues that never would have come up if the Iraqis had truly been cooperative - would have occurred at all if not for the intense US military pressure.

Truth is drastically simple. Men complicate things to mask the truth.

I was not opposed to the intense US military presence as a means to get compliance, but that is a far cry from regime change.

The US position on Resolution 1441 was that it was the last chance, after years of broken promises, for Iraq to comply. Fully expecting what actually did occur - a lack of compliance - the US brought its forces into the region, to a state of high readiness and high vulnerability. The timing was very much of the Administration's choosing. A delay of six months or a year would have been disadvantageous and risky for a number of reasons, especially in light of the near certainty on the Administration's part that war was in fact inevitable. Consenting to such a delay would have entailed multiple uncertainties, including the very real possibility that opposition in Europe and the Arab world would only intensify, and that Iraq and third parties, such as Al Qaeda, would gain six more months to a year to advance their political strategies and to prepare mischief. Continued uncertainty was also already inflicting enormous economic cost, and not only the United States.

That may have been the US position, but was it written into that resolution that the US would have the designation of police to enforce that resolution on a timetable that was not agreed upon by other members of the security council?

Would a delay have been disadvantageous? Matter of opinion, not fact. The administration was certain of war being inevitable because they wanted to wage war. A delay would have brought uncertainties, and possibilities of many outcomes, one of which was enough WMD to be discovered sufficient to bring other allies on board who would not only lend support, but financing. We are financing nearly this entire war and occupation, with little or no financial support from the rest of the world. It would have been much more of a unification of the war on terrorism if it were possible to negotiate, on the basis of proof, cooperation from allies. I don't believe, as others also don't believe, that we did all we could to find a solution that would have brought a more unified force to bear on Saddam. Had he seen a unification of threat of force by the entire world, we may well have had success without a war.

To deny this was possible, or not preferable is unusual in my opinion by those who say they want what is best for all concerned.

Bush painted a picture that we had no choice, but clearly there were options. It was not like we had to fight off an attacking force, or retaliate the way we did in Afghanistan.

It was a choice, quite possibly the wrong choice.

This is only an overview of the relevant issues. Partly for these reasons, it was often said - both before the recent war and before Gulf War I - that the worst nightmare for supporters of the war and the military would have been a greater show of compliance on Saddam's part: the fear being that he might manage, through delay, partial cooperation, and the effective use of objective allies especially in the anti-war movement, to escape the forces finally in place to handle him, while retaining his capacity to re-start his WMD program at a time of his choosing, alongside his military and financial potential and his longheld ambitions.

Worst nightmare? Yes, this was often said by war and chicken hawks.

Again, you paint a picture of only one possible solution to the problem, which is not true, just an opinion....and one not supported without the existence and intent to use WMD against America and the national security of our homeland.

We've argued over these issues before - why it would have been disadvantageous for SH to use whatever WMDs he may have had. They apply to the current post-war situation as well, probably even more strongly - even accepting your dubious assertion that "they could easily use the WMD in acts of terrorism against troops in Iraq."

We have argued, no victor in that argument. All we have before us is the talk of WMD and no proof of their existence at present.

It is conceivable that the entire case for the war will be re-argued in a partisan political context. The Administration would clearly prefer to move on to other issues, and I doubt that the public as a whole would be as interested in it as you and I seem to be. At this moment, the Democrats see an opportunity to attack Bush's character and credibility - weakening him on these scores is critical to they're political strategy - but the sands may shift beneath their feet with tomorrow's or the day after's headlines. It's not hard at all to imagine a set of circumstances under which they'd again revert to not really wanting to talk about the war at all.

Sure the administration would prefer to move to other issues, in the same way that Clinton wanted to get on with the business of the country and not deal with his political opponents.

The war, and the policy put forth by Bush is a current topic, and relevant as long as the war on terrorism continues, and different opinions are offered.

I would hope the debate never ends until such time as we have certainty that we are always doing the right and best thing in this war on terror.

I disagree - both about the case that was made, and about the public's perceptions of it. I believe that the Administration argued the case that it had - whose "urgencies" were always more complex than you acknwledge - and that things got somewhat diverted and sidetracked by the whole inspections fiasco and how it was manipulated both by Saddam and by war opponents.

I disagree, and if you read the column from George Will, he disagrees with certain aspects of the Bush policy, and other columnists and citizens disagree with Bush's policy and actions thus far.

How could a c&p contradict Bush's clear and unequivocal statements?

Others have posted cut and pasted unequivocal quotes from Bush and his administration that show the emphasis on WMD. Most of your cut and pasts are opinions, not Bush's speeches.

For a number of reasons, the political decision was made to seek support and closure through the UN. One effect of this decision was to heighten the focus first on WMDs (which is different and separate from "irrefutable danger of imminent attack" or however you're now defining "urgency"), and then on a very particular set of WMD issues and an inappropriate use of inspections - rather than on Saddam's long history of defiance and aggression, or on the larger and longer term threat and strategic challenge he presented.

Support and closure through the UN? Our closure was to ignore the security council and just do what we wanted. I would argue that the focus on WMD was to generate fear in the citizens as to gain support in public opinion polls and to play on 9/11 fears and angers. I argue that the heightening of focus on WMD was for the express purpose of gaining support here at home. It is clear that we didn't care about the UN, but Bush and company did care about what Joe Average thought. If they could capture the imagination of Joe Average, they could do whatever they wanted, and the best way to sway Joe Average was to generate a fear of WMD and Hussein.

So you freely admit that your judgment concerning the missing WMD and Bush's intentions may in fact be clouded by your own personal conclusion that war was necessary and justifiable. You are admitting you are not objective, isn't that right?

I have no idea how you draw that inference from my comment.

Okay, are you claiming objectivity then?

I don't know whether you mean the Republicans who hated Clinton and sought in every way they could to bring him down, or whether you mean the Republicans who disliked and disapproved of Clinton and finally had enough of him when the Lewinsky scandal broke and they believed he lied under oath, or whether you mean the Republicans who thought the whole impeachment process was a horrible mistake, or whether you mean the Republicans who voted for Clinton and changed parties out of disgust.

Those Republicans who didn't do what was best for the country, and were blinded by their hatred of Clinton. They have their counterparts in the Democratic party.

I also don't know what relevance you think this matter has to the current debate, except perhaps as a bad justification for trying to get payback at the expense of Bush.

You are the master of justification. I am just pointing out that the focus by some Democrats is purely political, just like some Republicans.

Others, like Chuck Hagel Republican from Nebraska seem more concerned with the bigger picture of how poor intelligence, or misuse of intelligence, or lying might impact policy and support from allies going forward...when we might really need it.

 

[OPTIONAL777]

Naked forgery

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: July 11, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern


© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com


On Oct. 27, 1941, FDR, locked in mortal combat with an America First Committee that was resisting his drive to war, played his trump. On Navy Day, at the Mayflower Hotel, FDR declared,

"I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler's Government – by planners of the New World Order. ... It is a map of South America ... as Hitler proposes to reorganize it. ... This map makes clear the Nazi design, not only against South America but against the United States as well."

Roosevelt was not done. I also have, he informed his audience, a Nazi document detailing plans "to abolish all existing religions, liquidate all clergy and create an 'International Nazi Church.'

"In the place of the Bible, the words of 'Mein Kampf' will be imposed and enforced in a Holy Writ. And in the place of the cross of Christ will be put two symbols – the swastika and the naked sword. ... The God of Blood and Iron will take the place of the God of Love and Mercy."

The Nazi plans for eradicating Christianity were never found. And the map? A forgery by British agent Ivar Bryce, who worked under Churchill's man William Stephenson, who had been given his mission: Provoke America to go to war with Germany.

As Nicholas Cull relates in "Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign Against American 'Neutrality' in World War II," the "most striking feature" of Bryce's fake map "was the complicity of the president of the United States in perpetrating this fraud."

In his address to Congress calling for war, after Pearl Harbor, FDR did not even mention Germany. Yet Hitler stunned the world by declaring war on America. Why? Among the reasons cited by Germany was the provocation of FDR's Navy Day speech and fake map.

Stephenson's forgery was a triumph and served a backdrop for Clare Luce's remark that Roosevelt "lied us into war because he did not have the political courage to lead us into it."

Though Stephenson used fraud and blackmail to goad us into a war that killed and wounded a million Americans, he is the hero of the best-seller "A Man Called Intrepid." And not only has FDR been forgiven, he has been celebrated. His lies, it is said, were noble lies, to rouse an isolationist America into doing its duty and ridding the world of Adolf Hitler.

But it all depends on how a war turns out. And that is the problem for the president. In the 2003 State of the Union, he declared: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

For those who opposed war with Iraq as necessary, this was riveting. If Saddam was building nuclear weapons, the case for war was far more compelling than if all he had were Scuds, mustard gas and anthrax he could not deliver. Days after the president spoke, Dick Cheney raised anew the awful specter: "We believe he has ... reconstituted nuclear weapons."

Now, with Americans dying daily in our own Gaza Strip in Iraq, we learn that the critical document on which the president relied was also a naked forgery. Someone fabricated the document that supposedly proved Iraq was secretly trying to buy uranium from Niger.

Moreover, the CIA knew the truth, as ex-ambassador Joe Wilson had been sent to Niger to ferret it out. And Wilson had returned to report that the nuclear link to Iraq did not exist.

So, two questions remain. Who forged the Niger document? Who put the lie in the president's State of the Union address?

Fingers are being pointed in all directions. President Bush gave the British government as his source, leading one to suspect the heirs of Bryce and Stephenson. The Brits point to the CIA. The Washington Post said that a foreign intelligence agency was the source. CNN cited officials who said it was not the Brits or Mossad. Lately, Italy has popped up as a possible source – and the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmed Chalabi.

Whoever did it, the forgery – so crude it suggests the author knew his recipient wanted it so badly he would not bother to verify it – was a war crime, a deliberate provocation of the United States to instigate a war on a country that did not threaten America.

"An enemy has done this to us," the Bible reads. Congress should find out who that enemy is. With American kids dying in a new war in Iraq that has no end in sight, we have a right to know who deceived the president – who lied us into war.

Patrick J. Buchanan

 

[msfe]

Trading on fear

From the start, the invasion of Iraq was seen in the US as a marketing project. Selling 'Brand America' abroad was an abject failure; but at home, it worked. Manufacturers of 4x4s, oil prospectors, the nuclear power industry, politicians keen to roll back civil liberties - all seized the moment to capitalise on the war. PR analysts Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber explain how it worked.

Saturday July 12, 2003
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,995669,00.html

 

[Doubter]

Choking on regulations




This week, the libertarian Cato Institute released a study chronicling the number and cost of Washington-mandated regulations. In Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Shapshot of the Federal Regulatory State, author Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. passes along some stunning information. For example, the 2002 Federal Register is the largest in history, with more than 4,000 rules covering 75,606 pages. The number is growing rapidly by the year. Back in 1990, there were less than 50,000 pages; in 1970, less than 21,000; and 1950 less than 10,000. The Supreme Court may say whatever it wants about privacy in the bedroom, but the mind-boggling number of federal rules make clear that there is very little in our lives that isn't regulated by the government somehow.
As Mr. Crews points out, "Only five agencies are responsible for more than half of this torrent: the Environmental Protection Agency (surprise!) and the Departments of Transportation, Treasury, Agriculture and Interior." Green regs, workplace safety and personal health rules are the most persistent. Of all the federal departments, the EPA spends the most on enforcement, with $4.4 billion set aside for policing this year alone. The expense doesn't all go to worthy causes, such as making sure Lake Erie doesn't catch on fire. One of the silly EPA regs revealed by the study is a mission to crack down on air pollution caused by plywood. While most regulatory trends are bad in their meddlesomeness, there is some improvement in some areas, and some new rules are justifiable. For example, there are many new rules governing the expanded federal role in homeland security, and a tiny number of regulations are on the books to get rid of other regulations. We could use more of these latter rules, to be sure.
Cato's examination of Washington's "Ten Thousand Commandments" reminds us of the unpleasant reality that the era of big government is far from over. The enormous size of the regulatory state is a heavy millstone around the neck of the U.S. economy. At an estimated cost of $860 billion, regulatory spending is larger than the GDP of Canada, about one-third the size of our federal budget and makes the $158 billion budget deficit look like chicken feed.
Changing this bureaucratic nightmare is no simple proposition. Although Rep. J.D. Hayworth has written a sensible bill to require Congress to approve major federal regulations, we're not holding our breath that his colleagues want to grab hold of this hot potato. As it is, congressmen can vote for vague, noble-sounding bills and never look back, leaving implementation to the bureaucracy. The system is such that no one electable is directly accountable. This is government run amok at its worst, but we shouldn't expect bureaucrats to fix the mess because we can't vote out a bureaucrat. If congressmen were required to vote up or down on major regulations, they would have to defend them at the next election. Perhaps then the Federal Register would finally start to shrink

Want more evidence of totalitarian and intolerant?