Joe Biden and Michael Savage Agree on Iraq Plan
Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith’s “The End of Iraq “ appears to be a fair book. Although a Clintonista, Galbraith knows the main players in the Bush administration and has worked with them. He also knows the Kurdish leaders and their situation.
The book details the incompetence of the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration. According to the book the neocons relied on ideology instead of qualified staff to implement and plan post war Iraq. They thought that nation-building would be easy.
The book goes over, what eveyone knows that, the main problem in the country is in a power struggle between the Sunni and Shiite, which the Bush administration never took into consideration until recently, but finally have started to recognize by asking the ruling government to bring more Sunni into the governing of the country.
Galbraith’s solution to the civil war is Democrat Joe Biden’s plan, which conservative talk show host Michael Savage and Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback also support.
The plan "would maintain a unified Iraq by decentralizing it and giving Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis breathing room in their own regions - as provided for in the Iraqi constitution."
Reidar Visser,on the other hand, a Middle Eastern scholar at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs doesn't think the plan will work:
“Galbraith recognizes – at least implicitly –that the Shiites are not such a united bloc, and that several statelets might well materialize through a process of federalization, with the United States quite powerless to affect the turn of events. (He seems to voice some preference for a single Shiite state; presumably this would form a stronger counterweight to Iran than several statelets, p. 219.) The consequence, of course, is that, in terms of formulating a comprehensive policy alternative, Galbraith’s “plan” is not really all that sophisticated. It differs little from the more standard demand for immediate US withdrawal, except for the barely disguised call for putting more arms into Kurdish hands (p. 215) and the prospect of erecting a permanent US military base in Kurdish territory – this would apparently do service as a deterrent against what Galbraith candidly describes as the danger of carbon copies of Taliban-era Afghanistan and revolutionary Iran evolving in Sunni and Shiite areas as side effects of his plan. In other words, this is basically a “let’s get out and hope for the best” initiative.”
Visser appears to think that best solution to the problem is the Iraq Study Group plan.
The Iraq Study Group: Regionalisation Not Balkanisation
1. By Reidar Visser (http://historiae.org)
6 December 2006
In a remarkable rejection of partitionist winds that have blown through America over the past year, the Iraq Study Group (ISG) in its report of 6 December 2006 recommended a final big push for the Iraqi national reconciliation process, with the collective effort of regional powers as a potential catalyst.
As far as state structure issues are concerned, partition (or any kind of unconstitutional federalisation, whether “from above” by Iraqi elite politicians or on the basis of foreign advice) was apparently never taken seriously by the ISG. Already prior to the release of the report, a few members of the ISG working groups had complained to the press that they had felt marginalised during the process and that their proposals never truly came on the agenda. The report itself rather brusquely dismisses the prospect of “devolution to three regions” (p. 43), citing arguments that for once are almost identical to those of the Bush administration: practical infeasibility and the dangers of greater regional chaos. Elsewhere, the report mostly shuns the federalisation question, with the implicit message that the ISG envisages this process to stay on track according to the constitution: outside Kurdistan, federal decentralisation is optional not mandatory, and if it is to be done, it will start by initiatives “from below” in the Iraqi governorates, not by Baghdad politicians or by outsiders with “plans” for Iraq.
Instead, the report advocates a serious attempt to get the national reconciliation process back on track, especially as regards re-inclusion of the Sunnis. To facilitate this, it proposes new initiatives at several levels. Perhaps most significantly, there are proposals to work for greater regional momentum that could be conducive to a more peaceful Iraq. The ISG advocates the creation of an “international support group” for Iraq that would include neighbouring states, which in a collective forum might be able to transcend some of their narrow interests linked to their particular protégées inside Iraq. Importantly, active steps to progress in the wider Arab–Israeli conflict and the Palestine issue are recognised as a central pillar for improving the regional atmosphere.
The ISG also suggests that the Iraqi government itself is not doing enough to drive the national reconciliation effort forward. It focuses on the need for rapprochement with the marginalised Sunnis, and introduces several new ideas about how to achieve that. These include a suggestion for United Nations support in the constitutional revision process, a rather outspoken criticism of the current Iraqi constitution’s allotment of undiscovered “future” oil fields to the regions instead of to the central government (apparently the criticism is also directed against regional control of the oil sector as such), international arbitration over Kirkuk, and a delay of the Kirkuk referendum (pp. 65–66.) There is also a more general “talk-to-everyone-but-al-Qaida” attitude throughout the report.
Many of these proposals are quite radical in that they explicitly challenge the current version of the Iraqi constitution. But at the same time they also serve as alternatives that could receive consideration in the constitutional review process. Some of these suggestions have earlier been floated in international NGOs and by figures working in the United Nations system. It is likely that the driving forces behind the 2005 constitution (chiefly the two big Kurdish parties and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, SCIRI) will feel threatened by some of the recommendations in the report. On the other hand, these suggestions should appeal to a large silent majority of Iraqi nationalists of both Shiite and Sunni backgrounds, as well as to regional powers worried about Iraqi decentralisation spinning out of control.
In the current situation, regionalisation and multilateralism generally come across as good ideas, although the United States should not underestimate the desire of regional powers to keep them engaged, mired down in Iraq. The proposed overtures to regional powers in turn reflect a failure of United States policy in the Middle East in two areas. Firstly, inside Iraq, it relates to a communications problem. The ISG report explicitly acknowledges this (p. 14), asserting that the United States is “unable” to talk to the most important Shiite figure (the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani), and “does not talk” to another important political leader, Muqtada al-Sadr. This has led to sole reliance on the Shiite party that best understands how to deal with Washington – SCIRI – which happens to be the party with the most long-standing and systematic ties to Iran, and which is also the author of the Shiite federalism proposal that most infuriates the Sunnis. But SCIRI account only for some 23% of the deputies within the big pro-Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), and their elevation to a pre-eminent contact point reflects a failure on the part of Washington to engage other partners among the Shiites. This has created some remarkable contradictions in US policy. There was something distinctly Trojan about the way in which pro-Iranian SCIRI leader Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim was invited to Washington for high-level talks only days after a leaked memo by Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld had advocated a robust strengthening of US forces along the border with Iran to physically protect Iraq against Iranian influences.
The second issue that has precipitated a turn to regional powers relates to overall US policy in the region. Importantly, the ISG recognises the inter-relationships between Iraq and broader regional issues. Until there is a minimum of consistency in the US approach to democracy and human rights issues across different countries in the Middle East, it will remain unable to conduct an ideological foreign policy and will rely on compromises with regional states. This also affects the situation in Iraq, where many parties are reluctant to talk to the United States precisely because they are unconvinced about Washington’s overall vision for the region. Until the US becomes more energetic in solving the Arab–Israeli conflict – chiefly by speeding up the process towards an independent Palestinian state within borders approximating the pre-1967 situation and with an honourable settlement for the 1948 refugees – this problem of scarcity of local pro-democracy partners will remain.
The Code is Broken
The Unified Moonbat Theory Revealed
By streiff Posted in War — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I’m a confirmed critic of the idea of partitioning Iraq. I am not alone. I find company in pundits as varied as Anthony Cordesman and Christopher Hitchens. But the best analysis of the reasons why partitioning Iraq is wrongheaded comes in a review of Peter Galbraith’s End of Iraq.
The reviewer, it turns out, actually identifies a Unified Moonbat Theory that takes in all the Iraq plans offered by the Democrats and demolishes them.
Read on.
Galbraith and his book have become very influential. For those who wonder where Joe Biden got his ideas look no further. It’s all there. And Galbraith was even Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Croatia when the Dayton Accords, again so favorably reviewed by Biden, were hammered out.
In his review, Reidar Visser, a Middle Eastern scholar at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, explains that partitioning Iraq is based on a lot of fallacious assumptions.
Galbraith is at pains to render Iraq as an “artificial” and highly fissile construct. Indeed, he accuses his political opponents of “a misreading of Iraq’s modern history” (p. 206). But as soon as he moves beyond his particular area of expertise – the Kurdish north – the narrative becomes less convincing and the arguments more strained. For instance, Galbraith on two occasions reiterates the now widespread but highly erroneous notion that current ethno-religious divisions in Iraq strongly correlate to the old administrative organization of the Ottoman Empire: Mosul was supposedly “Kurdish”, Baghdad “Sunni”, and Basra “Shiite”…
In reality, however, Mosul was essentially a mixed-race province, whereas Baghdad, though home to a large Sunni community, was probably the largest Shiite province of the Ottoman Empire – with its borders extending as far south as today’s Muthanna governorate and with all the rural territory surrounding the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala solidly Shiite, Baghdad was actually far more of a Shiite point of gravity than was Basra (which politically was Sunni-dominated). This in turn means that there was never any such close fit between ethno-religious and administrative maps as that suggested by Galbraith, and that Iraq has in fact a far longer record of ethno-religious coexistence than he seems prepared to admit…
Galbraith’s “Iraq was just cobbled together” thesis is similarly trite and equally misleading: it is true that for some thirty years between the 1880s and 1914 there was administrative separation between Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, but before that there had been frequent intervals of administrative unity between some or all of these areas (especially Basra and Baghdad) – as was the case under the Ottomans and Georgian mamluk rule in the early nineteenth and eighteenth century as well as during long periods of the classical Islamic age (and even under a succession of Mongol rulers after 1258, if more flimsily so)…
The idea of coexistence in Iraq is “absurd” charges Galbraith on pp. 100–101. The decisive proof? Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union all fell apart. But what about other possible comparisons, such as Lebanon – which descended into ethno-religious mayhem and saw extensive internal displacement of its population from 1975 to 1990, only to rise again as a unitary “mosaic”-like state? Today’s sectarian violence in Baghdad is certainly reminiscent of Beirut during the Lebanese civil war, where talk of partition and confederations materialized in some circles at particularly gloomy junctures, only to dissipate later on….
At last, Galbraith recognizes – at least implicitly –that the Shiites are not such a united bloc, and that several statelets might well materialize through a process of federalization, with the United States quite powerless to affect the turn of events. (He seems to voice some preference for a single Shiite state; presumably this would form a stronger counterweight to Iran than several statelets, p. 219.) The consequence, of course, is that, in terms of formulating a comprehensive policy alternative, Galbraith’s “plan” is not really all that sophisticated. It differs little from the more standard demand for immediate US withdrawal, except for the barely disguised call for putting more arms into Kurdish hands (p. 215) and the prospect of erecting a permanent US military base in Kurdish territory – this would apparently do service as a deterrent against what Galbraith candidly describes as the danger of carbon copies of Taliban-era Afghanistan and revolutionary Iran evolving in Sunni and Shiite areas as side effects of his plan. In other words, this is basically a “let’s get out and hope for the best” initiative.
There it is. Let’s get out and hope for the best. That is what all the Democrat plans have in common from John Murtha’s pathetically addled concept of establishing an “over the horizon” presence in Okinawa to Joe Biden’s mindboggling unity-through-division scheme.
Murtha’s plan is merely a pell-mell dash for Kuwait and thence to parts West. After getting out he will hope things go well. Biden will repudiate the constitution, divide the country into ethnic cantons, run for Kuwait and points West and then hope for the best.
None are focused on success. All are focused on bugging out and hoping against hope something less than a disaster will result.
One does not have to believe things are going well in Iraq to see that their plans are nothing short of a sure formula of a geopolitical and human tragedy that will equal that of the Vietnam scenario they have tried so hard to recreate.
2. IRAQ WARSIraq Partition Becomes Fashionable Policy In Washington
by Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Washington (UPI) May 02, 2006
Partitioning Iraq has become a new, fashionable policy in Washington, but it would easier said than done. The idea has been gathering steam in various think tanks over the past year and it took center stage this weekend when Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, advocated it.
Biden spelled out his ideas in article with Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, in the New York Times Monday.
Anthony Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh Burke chair in strategy at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, Monday published a CSIS paper criticizing the practicality of the idea. "Iraq does not have a neat set of ethnic dividing lines," he wrote.
"There has never been a meaningful census of Iraq that shows exactly how its Arab Sunnis, Arab Shiites, Kurds and other factions are divided or where they are located. Recent elections have made it clear, however, that its cities and 18 governorates all have significant minorities, and any effort to divide the country would require massive relocations."
Also, partitioning Iraq may well make the United States far more enemies than friends in the Middle East. Partition would mean giving effective independence to the roughly five million Kurds in northern Iraq. But this idea is anathema to neighboring Iran and Turkey, nations that both have large Kurdish minorities.
Relations between Turkey and the Kurds are particularly fraught. At least 30,000 people were killed through the 1990s in n uprising across the Kurdish-populated regions of eastern Turkey. Although Turkey is a member of NATO and traditionally one of America's most loyal and powerful allies in the region, relations have deteriorated in recent years. The Turks are especially incensed at U.S. support of the Kurds in Iraq. And there is widespread popular anger in Turkey over threats to the Turkoman minority in northern Iraq from local Kurdish militias.
Major, moderate, pro-American Arab nations like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and the Gulf emirates are likely also to be furious at the Untied States if it partitions Iraq. Baghdad was the seat of the Sunni Muslim Caliphate during the most glorious era of its history and Iraq in modern times too has always been seen as Arabs their most powerful military nation and the one that guards the eastern flank of the Arab world. Partitioning Iraq could therefore give an enormous boost to anti-American passions from Morocco on the Atlantic coast to the Gulf States and Oman by the Indian Ocean.
Also, partitioning Iraq, Cordesman argued, could be tantamount to giving the most fierce anti-American and anti-Western Islamists permanent control of the Sunni Muslim minority in central Iraq. The Sunni Muslim-majority regions of Iraq have no oil of their own and are landlocked. They would be isolated impoverished and bitter if a three-way partition is imposed. "Neo-Salafi Sunni Islamist extremist groups with ties to Al Qaida already have come to dominate the Sunni insurgents. If Iraq divides, either they will dominate the Iraqi Arab Sunnis, or Arab Sunni states like Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia will be forced to do so," Cordesman wrote.
Nor is there any guarantee that the 15-million-strong Shiite majority in Iraq would stay unified or largely pro-American if partition was enforced. "The Shiite south is also divided, with the Shiites in Basra talking about their own area separate from many other Shiites who would control the oil in the south," Cordesman wrote.
Partitioning Iraq would certainly boost Iran's influence in the Shiite community by removing Kurds and Sunni Muslims as political counterweights within the same society. Iran, furthermore, has been concentrating on building up its influence and support for armed militias in the south, where the oil is.
Partitioning Iraq, far from fostering an atmosphere of peace and stability that would allow the country to develop its enormous oil resources, may lead to so much instability and conflict that Iraqi oil cannot be effectively exploited for years or decades to come, Cordesman argued.
"Once the nation effectively divides, so does its major resource, and in ways that make the territorial losers in non-oil areas effectively dysfunctional," Cordesman wrote. "The central government cannot preside over a divided nation and hope to control oil and the nation's infrastructure and export facilities at the same time. This leaves the 'losers' with little choice other than further conflict."
Cordesman concluded that partitioning Iraq would create "a violent power vacuum in an already dangerous region." This result, he argued, "is not a strategy, it is simply an abdication of both moral responsibility and the national interest."
The White House Monday clearly indicated its position on partition. Spokesman Scott McClellan first noted it was a question for the Iraqis to decide, but added "a partitioned government with regional security forces and a weak central government is something that no Iraqi leader has proposed, and that the Iraqi people have not supported."
"The United States remains firmly committed to the vision for the future of Iraq that was outlined in the United Nations Security Council resolution 1546, which called for a federal, democratic, pluralist and unified Iraq in which there is full respect for political and human rights."
Source: United Press International
Republicans are Furious with "Incompetence" and Arrogance of Bush Administration
Evans-Novak Political Report for 3/21
Outlook
Just as the Democrats seemed off balance in dealing with the Iraq war, Republicans are furious that the Bush Administration is losing the initiative thanks to three big fumbles: firing the U.S. attorneys, the FBI excesses and the Walter Reed Army Hospital. "Incompetence" is the word used by Republicans in describing the administration.
It is impossible to find a Republican on Capitol Hill who believes either that Alberto Gonzales will survive as attorney general or that he should survive. That typifies the poor congressional relations of the Bush Administration that are rooted in arrogance.
Sam Brownback Is on a Roll
Sam Brownback Is on a Roll
By Bluey
Sen. Sam Brownback (R.-Kan.) stood firmly behind Gen. Peter Pace today, circulating a letter among his Senate colleagues in support of the embattled chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was a bold move by Brownback, but part of a shrewd strategy to differentiate himself from other candidates.
Brownback began to separate from the pack of second-tier candidates at CPAC, where his volunteers stood toe-to-toe with legions of Romney supporters. In today's Evans-Novak Political Report, David Freddoso noted the significance of Brownback's third-place finish in the straw poll.
Although he remains at the top of the second-tier candidates, Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback's third-place finish in the CPAC straw poll was impressive considering he spent less than $2,000 organizing for the event. All but four of his 40 student volunteers paid their own way. Romney finished first in the poll with 21 percent, followed by Giuliani at 17 percent, and then Brownback at 15 percent.
Romney reportedly spent more than $300,000 in organizing for the event and transporting, registering and housing volunteers. Brownback's backers assert that if the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., hadn't been on spring break, Brownback could have beaten Giuliani.
Today, Brownback's campaign circulated a memo making the case that he's a viable candidate for president. It cites the glowing report Brownback received from the Club for Growth and includes this quote from Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform: "What Brownback has is complete credibility on the social conservative issues and complete credibility on the economic issues." The memo also references a Rasmussen poll showing Brownback within striking distance of Hillary Clinton.
How far can Brownback go? He has a long road ahead, but he's on a roll.
[http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:a-Jeq4MlWa8J:vadum.redstate.com/node%3Fpage%3D2+Evans-Novak+Political+Report+,+David+Freddoso+noted+the+significance+of+Brownback%27s+third-place+finish+in+the+straw+poll+.&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&ie=UTF-8]
Brownback Just Five Points Behind Clinton
Brownback Just Five Points Behind Clinton (abridged) Rasmussen Reports March 9, 2007
The first Rasmussen Reports telephone survey gauging general-election support for Republican Senator Sam Brownback shows him trailing Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton among likely voters by the narrow margin of just five percentage points. It’s Clinton 46% Brownback 41%.
[http://www.brownback.com/s/]
Presidential Candidate Who isn't Afraid of Gay Mafia
Finally a presidential candidate who isn't afraid of the Gay Mafia.
Your other choices are Hillary McCain and Rudy Obama. Hillary, Obama (and I'm pretty sure Rudy) think: "Homosexuality Not 'Immoral.'" McCain isn't sure what to say to the media yet. For some reason no one seems to need to ask Edwards where he stands on homosexuality.
Did you notice it took Hillary and Obama awhile to come out of the closet on their support for the Gay Mafia. Did you notice how soon the media dropped the attacks on General Pace. The Republican candidate they most fear is now Brownback.
Pray that Sen. Brownback becomes Republican presidential candidate. Pray that Senator Brownback becomes our new president.
Fred
Sen. Brownback 'Applauds' Pace Remark on Gays
Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback is backing the Pentagon's top general over his remarks that homosexuality is immoral.
The Kansas senator planned to send a letter on Thursday to President Bush supporting Marine Gen. Peter Pace, who earlier this week likened homosexuality to adultery and said the military should not condone it by allowing gay personnel to serve openly.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs also said: "I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts."
Lawmakers of both parties criticized the remarks, but Brownback's letter called the criticism "both unfair and unfortunate."
"We should not expect someone as qualified, accomplished and articulate as General Pace to lack personal views on important moral issues," Brownback said. "In fact, we should expect that anyone entrusted with such great responsibility will have strong moral views."
While there is no indication that Pace's job is in jeopardy, Brownback said "personal moral beliefs" should not disqualify anyone from a position of leadership in the U.S. military.
"General Pace's recent remarks do not deserve the criticism they have received," Brownback said. "In fact, we applaud General Pace for maintaining a personal commitment to moral principles."
Pace said he supports the military's "don't ask, don't tell policy" in which gay service members are required to keep their sexual orientation private.
A Brownback spokesman said the senator was working Thursday to get other lawmakers to sign his letter.
Brownback, a favorite of the religious right, has been a prominent opponent of gay marriage.
Presidential contender Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has said Pace should be given a chance to explain his comments.
© 2007 Associated Press.
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama: Homosexuality Not 'Immoral'
Senators Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., responded on Thursday to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace's comments that homosexual behavior is "immoral," but only after they were criticized for failing to do so by a homosexual advocacy group.
"Well, I've heard from a number of my friends, and I've certainly clarified with them any misunderstanding that anyone had, because I disagree with General Pace completely," Clinton told Bloomberg News. "I do not think homosexuality is immoral."
Also on Thursday, Obama released a statement on the issue. "I do not agree with General Pace that homosexuality is immoral," the Illinois Democrat noted. "Attempts to divide people like this have consumed too much of our politics over the past six years."
The remarks by the 2008 presidential candidates differed dramatically from their comments on the issue made earlier in the week.
On Tuesday, an ABC reporter asked Clinton whether homosexuality is immoral, and she replied: "Well, I am going to leave that to others to conclude."
A spokesman for the junior senator from New York later said that she disagrees with Pace.
On Wednesday, reporters also pressed Obama for reaction to Pace's comments. "Traditionally, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman has restricted his public comments to military matters," the Illinois Democrat said. "That's probably a good tradition to follow."
The lack of open criticism from Clinton and Obama brought a sharp response from Jo Wyrick, executive director of the National Stonewall Democrats, on Thursday.
Without mentioning either of the 2008 presidential candidates by name, Wyrick said that "most Democrats understand, and should understand, that morality isn't derived from sexual orientation or gender identity."
"Morality is how you treat your neighbor, support your community and sacrifice for your family and country," Wyrick said in the news release. "When I tuck my daughter into bed at night, those are the values I teach her.
"We expect Democratic candidates and elected officials to reaffirm those same values, to speak up when families or individuals are scapegoated or maligned for political gain, and to proactively argue the benefits of treating all Americans equally under the law without regard to their sexual orientation or gender identity," she added.
"Morality is also embodied in action," Wyrick stated. "Our Democratic presidential candidates support employment non-discrimination legislation, the extension of health-care benefits to our families and oppose constitutional amendments that attack lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people for political gain.
"Those are moral actions and positions that each candidate should be proud to campaign on," she said.
"National Stonewall Democrats looks forward to further working with our Democratic candidates so that, in the future, they can speak with moral clarity and continue to positively partner with our community," Wyrick noted.
As Cybercast News Service previously reported, Pace said during an interview with the Chicago Tribune that "I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts." He also stated that adultery is immoral.
"I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way," the general told the newspaper.
Along with her criticism of Clinton and Obama, Wyrick had harsh words regarding Pace's comments.
"We expect President Bush to condemn these remarks out of respect for our men and women who are currently serving and dying in Afghanistan and Iraq," she noted.
"It is immoral to send our service members into battle without the proper equipment or plan," Wyrick stated. "It is immoral to deny them proper medical care upon their return, and it is immoral to revoke support for our troops based on this misguided policy reaffirmed by General Pace and the White House."
However, several conservative politicians and religious leaders are rallying to support Pace, who was the subject of a letter sent to President Bush by Senator Sam Brownback, R-Kan., on Thursday.
The letter from the GOP 2008 presidential candidate called the criticism of the general "both unfair and unfortunate."
"We should not expect someone as qualified, accomplished and articulate as General Pace to lack personal views on important moral issues," Brownback said. "In fact, we should expect that anyone entrusted with such great responsibility will have strong moral views."
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also received support Thursday in a news release from Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality.
"Gen. Pace gave voice to historic Judeo-Christian beliefs when he said that both homosexual acts and adultery are immoral, yet instantly he was accused of blind prejudice and called a homophobe," he noted.
LaBarbera also called on the media not to take sides in the culture war over homosexuality and to cover what he called the homosexual movement's "CSI" strategy of "Censoring, Smearing and Intimidating" critics.
© CNS News.com. All rights reserved.
Without Roots: Europe, Relativism, Christianity, Islam [and the USA]
I just started reading "Without Roots: Europe, Relativism, Christianity, Islam." Marcello Pera's opening chapter is the best and most concise birds-eye view of why Europe (and the USA) are dying. Pera also shows how to save the West. I haven't read anything this clear since I first read GK Chesterton. Fred
Re-Christianising Europe against Islam and relativism
Domenico Pacitti reviews a new Italian alliance for possession of the soul of Europe
Senza radici: Europa, relativismo, cristianesimo, islam [Without Roots: Europe, Relativism, Christianity, Islam] by Marcello Pera & Joseph Ratzinger. Published 2004 (2nd edition 2005) by Arnaldo Mondadori, Milan, 134 pages, €7.70, ISBN 88 04 54474 0.
The authors are worried about a spiritual and cultural malady in the West which has led to the omission of specific references to Christian roots in the EU Constitution Preamble. A discourse by each and an exchange of letters together provide diagnoses and suggested remedies.
Marcello Pera (lower left) is president of the Italian Senate, a member of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia Party and a recently retired professor of philosophy of science at the University of Pisa who rejects the incursion of relativist theories within his subject. His political and academic interests turn out to be linked by the defence of absolute power and an intolerance of submissiveness due to relativism.
Pera warns that there is a war in course against the West which should not be misinterpreted as acts of terrorism by a few fanatics and that Europeans do not understand this because paralysis due to endemic relativism has adversely affected their mentality.
According to Pera, contextualists, deconstructionists and theological relativists have paralysed Europeans by destroying their belief in absolute values: Ludwig Wittgenstein has reconstrued meaning as use, Jacques Derrida has eliminated extratextual reality, while John Hick is among theologians who have tried to revise traditional Christology fundamentals.
Suitable references to Christian roots would have been a first step towards recovering absolute values, says Pera, a self-described culturally Christian non-believer who complains of anti-Christian prejudices in Europe. He suggests that Europe should now adopt a civil religion based on Christianity since all good-living people share roughly the same moral principles.
Unaffected by relativism, Pera sees no problem either in expressing his evaluative judgement that Western culture is flatly superior to Islamic or even in arranging these and other cultures in a hierarchical scale of preferences “from best to worst”. Backing up his position with an ingenuously hamfisted application of the is/ought distinction in moral philosophy (the West, he says, has made "the colossal error" of deriving ought from is), Pera wonders why this should occasion “self-censorship, prohibition and linguistic handcuffs”.
Pera is especially enthusiastic about exporting Western institutions and values to other countries and cannot understand those who label this “premature, unilateral and violent” or “an act of intellectual arrogance or cultural hegemony through the use of force, arms, politics, economics or propaganda”.
Pera's reasoning requires little comment beyond the observation that believers and non-believers alike could well find themselves thanking God that the EU is there to restrain him.
Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Vatican’s powerful Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and a leading theologian before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, forms the other half of this interesting new alliance for the restoration of absolute values to Europe.
Ratzinger shares Pera’s concerns over relativism, which he condemns as “a new enlightenment” and a “dictatorship” which has cancelled certainty and replaced it with egoism and desire. But he proceeds more subtly, inducing the reader to perceive Europe’s “deep identity” and spiritual development within a historical summary.
Identifying Europe as a cultural concept, Ratzinger traces its origins through Herodotus to Mediterranean countries linked culturally, politically and economically until Islam produced the first important split in the “continent” in the seventh century.
He maps further splits and developments through the Carolingian era and the fall of Byzantium to the French revolution which marked the final collapse of a spiritual framework “without which Europe could not have been formed”. For the first time ever the state is understood in purely secular terms and founded upon the rationality of its citizens, while the sense of divine mission is lost.
Nowhere does Ratzinger mention the immense harm caused by the Roman Catholic Church through history, for example by the cruel stranglehold which it exerted on people’s lives in eighteenth-century France at dechristianisation or by the perverse and enduring corruption of the mentality of an entire nation and its institutions, as in the case of Italy.
Nor does he ever betray the slightest emotion. Ratzinger advances steadily and inscrutably through history like a Panzer crossing enemy terrain, unflinchingly recording his Church’s losses and gradual collapse.
Ratzinger sketches three models which arose following the French revolution: mainly Latin countries where religion and state are held distinct; Germanic countries with a liberal Protestant state; and the special case of the United States. There, he says, a rigid dogma of separation built on a Christian-Protestant consensus is linked to the deep sense of a worldwide religious mission and there it may be more clearly perceived than in Europe that the nation’s religious and moral bases come from Christianity.
Our present problem in Europe, says Ratzinger, is a decline of moral conscience based on inviolable values which could lead to the self-destruction of the European conscience. He cites the rising success of Islam, which is able to offer a valid spiritual basis lacking in Europe. And now, to make matters worse, Europe is denying its religious and moral foundations.
Christianity, Ratzinger admits, is crumbling and failing to reach people: it demands a way of life which places excessive limits on freedom and is seen as having been superseded by science and out of step with the modern age. This, he says, is partly the Church’s own fault for having wasted too much time debating details. Indicatively, this partial fault is as much as Ratzinger is prepared to blame on the Church.
Regarding future prospects, Ratzinger reflects on Oswald Spengler’s theory of the rise and fall of cultures and civilisations as they move cyclically and inexorably from birth to maturity and death, comparing Arnold Toynbee’s idea that real progress is in terms of “spiritualisation”. But he avoids expressing final judgements, just as he expressly precludes any discussion of US politics and the concept of a just war from his account on the grounds that he is a theologian.
In reply to Pera’s civil religion proposal, Ratzinger draws on Toynbee’s “creative minorities” principle in order to encourage Christians with the necessary conviction, vitality and persuasive force to move in that direction. But he dismisses the idea that this could be accomplished by means of an elected commission and raises the problem of the Roman Catholic universality principle being incompatible with a state Church system.
The Church, Ratzinger concludes, must now address key questions on the nature of Revelation and its role in human history. It must discuss with philosophers and scientists whether matter can create reason, whether pure chance can produce meaning and whether reason, freedom and goodness may not already be part of the principles that compose reality.
One still pictures Ratzinger as Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff’s Inquisitor, overconcerned with absolute power and about as far from the people as from Christ, surveying the world’s poor and underprivileged through the lead squares of the Vatican’s lattice windows. It is not revelation but revolution that is needed.
Domenico Pacitti is Editor of JUST Book Reviews. He has written several hundred articles against corruption in Italy. He has taught philosophy, linguistics and Chinese at universities in the UK and Italy and currently teaches English language and American literature at the University of Pisa.
Two Best Posts on Rove Firings
The two best posts on the Rove firings. Fred
I enjoy these threads where I get to see the most naive people on the internet commenting. The irony in this USA issue is that after all the complaining about Bush’s illegal acts, the one time he does something perfectly legal and not requiring Senate confirmation (albeit the provision making what he did without requiring Senate approval was a last minute addition… and the Senators voted for it w/o reading the altered bill…. too funny) their are subpoenas issued and hearings held.
Politics are local all right. Hearings about a legal act and nothing about all the other stuff from NSA to Iraq.
Comment by TJM
this article did not prove that Rove changed these attornies due to political retribution, it was because of policy. Clinton changed most of the attornies, not for poor performance, but for POLICY (who would prosecute what). John Podesta’s comment, “But the Clinton administration never fired federal prosecutors as pure political retribution” is framing the argument in terms that are not fair to Republicans. Many other comments, cursing and swearing like children, are obviously not looking for anything other than the old Bush=Bad formula. They see nothing else.
Comment by jon
ThinkProgress:
Clinton’s former chief of staff John Podesta told ThinkProgress that Rove’s claim is “pure fiction.” The Clinton administration never fired federal prosecutors as political retribution:
Mr. Rove’s claims today that the Bush administration’s purge of qualified and capable U.S. attorneys is “normal and ordinary” is pure fiction. Replacing most U.S. attorneys when a new administration comes in — as we did in 1993 and the Bush administration did in 2001 — is not unusual. But the Clinton administration never fired federal prosecutors as pure political retribution. These U.S. attorneys received positive performance reviews from the Justice Department and were then given no reason for their firings.
We’re used to this White House distorting the facts to blame the Clinton administration for its failures. Apparently, it’s also willing to distort the facts and invoke the Clinton administration to try to justify its bad behavior.
E-mail indicates Rove role in firings
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 2 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - White House political adviser Karl Rove raised questions in early 2005 about replacing some federal prosecutors but allowing others to stay, an e-mail released Thursday shows. The one-page document, which incorporates an e-mail exchange in January 2005, also indicates Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was considering dismissing up to 20 percent of U.S. attorneys in the weeks before he took over the Justice Department.
The e-mail exchange concludes with Gonzales' top aide warning that an across-the-board housecleaning "would certainly send ripples through the U.S. attorney community if we told folks they got one term only."
E-mails released by the Justice Department indicate that Gonzales and his then-chief aide, Kyle Sampson, suggested replacing 15 percent to 20 percent of federal prosecutors they identified as underperformers.
Sampson resigned this week over the department's handling of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys and the agency's misleading of Congress about the process.
The White House maintains that Rove remembers first hearing about the idea to replace all 93 prosecutors from Harriet Miers, a top White House aide designated at the time to follow Gonzales as the president's counsel. "He has not said who the idea originated with," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Thursday evening.
But earlier Thursday, Rove told journalism students in Alabama that the decision to fire each prosecutor "was made at the
Department of Justice on the basis of policy and personnel."
"We're at a point where people want to play politics with it," Rove told students at a journalism seminar at Troy University.
Democrats have sought to pin down Rove's role in the dismissals to prove they were politically motivated.
A midday e-mail between two White House staffers, dated Jan. 6, 2005, was titled, "Question from Karl Rove."
"Karl Rove stopped by to ask you (roughly quoting), `How we planned to proceed regarding US Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc.,'" Colin Newman, a legal aide in the White House counsel's office, wrote deputy counsel David Leitch.
Leitch immediately forwarded that message to Sampson. Three days later, on Jan. 9, Sampson sent back a lengthy reply.
"Judge and I discussed briefly a couple of weeks ago," Sampson wrote, referring to Gonzales, a former Texas state Supreme Court justice. He said the Justice Department was looking at replacing "underperforming" prosecutors. "The vast majority of U.S. Attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc., etc.," he said.
Sampson noted that, at the time, all 93 prosecutors were in the middle of their terms. "Although they serve at the pleasure of the President, it would be weird to ask them to leave before completing at least a 4-year term," he wrote.
Politically, Sampson said the firings would upset home-state senators who recommended the prosecutors who lost their jobs. "That said, if Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, than so do I," Sampson wrote.
Democrats have asked that Rove, Miers and other White House officials appear before Congress for questioning and are considering subpoenas if they refuse to.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said the e-mails "show conclusively that Karl Rove was in the middle of this mess from the beginning."
The new document also indicates that Gonzales was considering firing prosecutors before he became attorney general on Feb. 3, 2005.
Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said "discussions of changes in presidential appointees would have been appropriate and normal" after the midterm elections.
She said Gonzales "has no recollection of any plan or discussion to replace U.S. attorneys while he was still White House counsel."
___
Associated Press writer Phillip Rawls in Troy, Ala., contributed to this report.
The Leftwing Machine vs. the 'Stand-Pat Republicans'
The Leftwing Machine vs. the 'Stand-Pat Republicans'
By Newt Gingrich
Reading the news this week and talking to friends and leading conservative analysts has convinced me that we are seeing something new and powerful emerging: We are seeing the beginning of a three-way split in American politics among "Stand-pat Republicans" who do not understand change is needed, a leftwing machine that wants to impose the wrong changes, and those Democrats, Republicans and Independents who understand that America is truly being challenged by historic forces and that we must find real solutions large enough to meet those challenges.
Let me begin with the patterns of power in Washington, Detroit, and Sacramento that convinced me there is a new power structure on the left. There is an emerging alliance of leftwing activists and union leaders that will change the pattern of politics and government. These groups have worked together before, of course, but never before have they been this well funded, this well organized, and this determined to impose their will on America.
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Their strategy isn't to work collaboratively with all Americans to develop solutions to the challenges that threaten our future. Their strategy is to work together as a machine to mutually benefit themselves -- at the expense of the American people. They want to impose their leftwing agenda from the top down. And their tactic isn't to encourage debate, it's to stifle it.
The Leftwing Machine vs. the 'Stand-Pat Republicans'
If the 2006 mid-term elections taught us anything, it's that "Stand-pat Republicans" are no match for this leftwing machine.
Who are the "Stand-pat Republicans"? They are those in the Republican Party who don't recognize the need for large-scale solutions to deal with challenges of the aging baby boomers or the unending effort to drive God out of the public square. If the leftwing intimidation machine believes in the wrong changes, Stand-pat Republicans don't believe in much change at all. But business as usual isn't what our party or our country needs.
The country wants real change when it sees bureaucracies failing as they have in New Orleans, failing to control the border, failing by graduating only one out of every five entering freshmen in the Detroit public schools on time, failing in the California prison system that potentially may have to release up to 75,000 convicted criminals before serving their full sentences, and failing to win in Baghdad.
The country wants its values defended on issues such as English as the official language of government, teaching American history, and protecting the right to say "one nation under God" as part of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Stand-pat Republicans fail to offer real leadership on both implementation effectiveness and on successfully defending classic American values.
The leftwing machine actually wants the wrong changes.
For real change in both our politics and our policy, a third coalition will have to emerge: Americans who know we need change and who understand that standing pat and doing nothing will fail and that the left actually wants the wrong changes. I believe there are millions of these Americans, in fact a vast majority, who want the values of classic American civilization and the solutions necessary for our country to successfully win the future.
Enter the American Solutions Supporters
American Solutions supporters are Republicans, Democrats and Independents who have had enough of negative, trivial politics and pork-barrel-payoff governing. Their real allegiance isn't to any political party but to the belief that we can and should be doing much more to ensure a better future for our children and grandchildren.
American Solutions supporters believe in entrepreneurs, productivity, the power of technology and innovation to transform our healthcare and our retirement, and the traditional American values of hard work, optimism and acknowledgement of the self-evident truth that our rights come from God.
The goal of the organization I have founded, called American Solutions, is to be the political home of those Americans who know success for our country and for our children and grandchildren will require real solutions to our challenges. American Solutions will spend the next seven months developing real solutions to challenges such as health care, energy independence, securing our borders and protecting our national security. And then, on September 27 -- what Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard dubbed "G-day" last weekend -- we will host a nationwide series of workshops aimed at communicating these solutions to the 511,000+ elected officials in America.
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Exhibit A: The Big Labor Payback Act
Now to the evidence for the emerging leftwing machine.
Exhibit A was the March 1 vote in the House of Representatives on the so-called "Employee Free Choice Act." This bill should have been called "the American Worker Coercion Act." It literally strips American workers of the right to a secret ballot in deciding whether or not to unionize their company. It exposes every worker to intimidation and coercion tactics from the union seeking to get their dues money.
The hypocrisy of this bill was revealed in a 2001 letter signed by the bill's main sponsor, Rep. George Miller (D.-Calif.) and 11 other members who voted for the bill. The letter was addressed to Mexican government officials and it urged them to protect secret ballots for Mexican workers because -- and these are the exact words -- "we feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose."
Is Your Representative a Member of the Leftwing Machine?
So what has changed for George Miller & Co.? Two things: This is the United States and the Democrats just won the mid-term elections, and American private-sector workers are turning away from the unions in droves. And as the Wall Street Journal put it: "Reversing this trend is a top union priority. Labor leaders made it clear to Democrats that, in return for political support in last year's election, they wanted a vote on legislation that would make organizing much easier. House Democrats have now delivered, but don't let them fool you into thinking this has anything to do with 'free choice.'"
So go online and check. Is your representative a member of the leftwing machine that is determined to strip American workers of the right to a secret ballot in deciding whether to form a union at their workplaces?
Exhibits B, C and D: Protecting Illegal Employees, Putting Prisoners Back on the Streets, and Shutting Down a Debate
Last week brought even more evidence of an emerging leftwing machine of powerful unions and leftwing activists -- aided and abetted, at times, by activist judges.
In California, a local union front group convinced a judge to prevent a hotel chain from terminating employees with invalid Social Security numbers, as required by federal immigration law. These workers were using false Social Security documents. In effect, the unions are working with the help of a judge to force the hotel to violate federal immigration law, keeping illegal immigrants on the payroll. Think of that. A judge is making it illegal to obey the law.
Also in California, an attempt to ease dangerous overcrowding in state prisons by transferring inmates to other states was blocked by the powerful prison guard union. Even though a judge has threatened to begin releasing criminals back onto the street if the overcrowding isn't eased, the union found a state judge to rule against the transfer plan. So the leftwing machine -- in this case the unions, allied legislators in Sacramento and activist judges -- would prefer to see criminals released back into communities, threatening innocent citizens rather than have prison guards lose some overtime pay.
And finally, leftwing activists, whose distain for the Fox News Network knows no bounds, succeeded in intimidating the Nevada Democratic Party into canceling a Democratic presidential debate in Reno to be broadcast on Fox in August. The desire of the leftwing machine to oppose Fox evidently outweighs their desire to have open and honest debate.
These are just a few examples of this leftwing machine, but they illustrate how large a threat this machine represents.
The leftwing machine isn't merely an example of governmental failure or incompetence. Like any greased machine, the leftwing machine actually functions quite well, and therein lies its danger. The culture of political payoff and mutual benefit that defines the leftwing machine serve many powerful political interests. And they will not be defeated by business-as-usual, Stand-pat Republicans.
If Republicans "stand pat," the leftwing machine will roll right over them. If you are not the stand-pat-and-get-rolled type, keep your "Winning the Future" e-newsletter subscription current and visit my website, Newt.org, to find out how you can be a part of our nationwide effort to enact real change. You can also go to AmericanSolutions.com to learn more about the new solutions and the solutions workshops. We have about seven months to begin to create a future for our children and grandchildren that is not ruled by either a machine on the left or complacency on the right.
So join our "Real Change Requires Real Change" coalition today. The countdown to September 27 starts now.
Your friend,
Newt Gingrich
P.S. -- On Wednesday, March 14, at 8 p.m. (ET), I will speak at the Goucher College President's Forum in Baltimore, Md. The event will be in the Kraushaar Auditorium. After the event, I will be signing books. The forum is free and open to the public, but tickets must be reserved by calling (410) 337-6333 or by e-mailing boxoffice@goucher.edu.
On Friday, March 16, at 5:00 p.m. (ET), I will speak to the Excalibur Charitable Foundation at the Meadville High School in Meadville, Pa. I am going to talk about the future of small business and the economy. For more information, visit www.excaliburcharities.com or call 1.800.611.4931.
If you are nearby either of these events, I hope to see you.
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Leading the Majority - Winning the Future's Talk Radio Show
Friday at 2:00 PM ET on RighTalk.com after Paul Weyrich's "The Right Hour."
Last Friday, Rick and Vince interviewed Sigifredo Gonzalez, Jr., Sheriff of Zapata County, Texas, and chairman of the Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition, about increasing violence from drug gangs along the U.S.-Mexican border. We also interviewed Mario Villarreal, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, about President Bush's recent trip to South America. In the "GOPAC Leadership in the Spotlight Segment," Rick and Vince talked to Ron Nehring, the new chairman of the California Republican Party, about his vision for the future of the GOP in California as well as current California politics. [Click Here to Listen]
Rick Tyler is Newt's spokesman and Vince Haley directs Newt's policy research.
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Is Cheney the Republican Bill Clinton?
Is Cheney the Republican Bill Clinton?
I just finished reading “Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero.” I now know how Democrats must have felt about Bill Clinton.
I’ve been a San Francisco Giants fan most of my life. I wanted Bonds to be innocent because I loved the Giants. All I want now is for Bonds to retire before he “breaks” Hank Aaron because he is destroying a game I love.
Democrats must have felt the same way. They must have wanted Clinton to be innocent of perjury as well as of sexually abusing and raping women. At a certain point they must have wanted him to retire because he was destroying a party they loved.
I’m beginning to think Cheney is the Republican Bill Clinton. The parallels between Cheney, Bonds and Clinton are scary:
-Greg Anderson, Barry Bonds' friend, was held in contempt of court and sent to prison for refusing to answer questions from a federal grand jury that is investigating Barry Bonds for possible perjury that Bonds denied that he ever knowingly took steroids.
-Susan McDougal, Bill Clinton’s friend, was held in contempt of court and sent to prison for refusing to answer questions from a federal grand jury that is investigating Bill Clinton for possible perjury that Clinton denied any knowledge of an illegal $300,000 loan.
-I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney’s friend, is going to be sent to prison for lying to a federal grand jury that investigated Dick Cheney’s actions to undermine a critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
It appears fairly clear now that Cheney railroaded President Bush and the US into the Iraq war with “cherry-picked intelligence.”
In the articles below Ann Coulter is right that there is a double standard in this country:
“Bill Clinton was not even prosecuted for obstruction of justice offenses so egregious that the entire Supreme Court staged a historic boycott of his State of the Union address in 2000.”
But Pat Buchanan hit the nail on the head about Cheney and company when he says:
“That larger issue is this: Were we misled, were we deceived by our government, as the White House made the case for invading and occupying Iraq? Did neoconservatives at the Pentagon cherry-pick the intelligence, stovepipe it to the vice president's office and Libby, and then feed it to sympathizers and collaborators in the media, to stampede our country into a war against a nation that, no matter how odious its regime, did not threaten us, did not attack us and did not want war with us?”
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Martyr of the War Party
by Patrick J. Buchanan (More by this author)
Posted: 03/06/2007
The conviction of Scooter Libby on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice is first of all a human tragedy.
A man who served his country at the highest level, who sat in every morning at the senior staff meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, has been dishonored and disgraced, and will be disbarred. Unless his conviction is overturned, or he is pardoned, Libby will go to prison. His life will end with an obituary that declares in its headline and lead paragraph that he was a convicted Dick Cheney aide.
Yet, this was a narrow case. Libby's convictions call to mind Martha Stewart's, who went to prison for lying to investigators about a crime she did not commit. Libby has been convicted of lying about the outing of a CIA classified officer, a crime for which no one has been indicted.
Valerie Plame, the wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was outed as a CIA "operative," was no longer covert and had not been so for half a decade when her name was pushed out of the White House to the press. Joe Wilson, her husband, target of the White House vendetta, yet contends that not only was her career destroyed, a crime was committed -- and that is why the CIA demanded an investigation.
Yet it was an arrogant and stupid thing Libby did. He lied to the FBI, to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, to the grand jury. He fabricated a story about where he learned about Wilson's wife, when, as sworn testimony proved, he learned it from Vice President Cheney and was himself moving it to the press.
However, this was about a larger issue than the narrow question of whether Libby lied about leaking the role of Valerie Plame in having her husband sent to Niger to investigate a report that Iraq had been seeking "yellowcake," a critical component in a uranium enrichment program.
That larger issue is this: Were we misled, were we deceived by our government, as the White House made the case for invading and occupying Iraq? Did neoconservatives at the Pentagon cherry-pick the intelligence, stovepipe it to the vice president's office and Libby, and then feed it to sympathizers and collaborators in the media, to stampede our country into a war against a nation that, no matter how odious its regime, did not threaten us, did not attack us and did not want war with us?
In short, were we lied into a war in Mesopotamia that is breaking our Army, has crippled an administration, and has bled and divided our country as it has not been since the days of Vietnam?
And why has the Democratic Congress, on taking power in January, not begun a broad investigation into how we got into this war?
This is the dog that didn't bark. And the reason the dog is silent suggests itself. The Congress, in voting President Bush the authority to take us to war against Iraq at a time and place of his own choosing, failed to do its duty by the Constitution. In October 2002, to get the issue off the table for the election and give themselves political cover against the Rovian charge they were tying the hands of the commander in chief in the War on Terror, a Democratic Senate -- Clinton, Kerry, Edwards, Daschle, Biden, Reid all assenting -- voted Bush the blank check for war that he cashed in five months later.
The dilemma a Democratic Congress faces in any investigation into whether we were lied into war is that Congress would be investigating why a Democratic Senate failed its constitutional duty to determine the necessity for war.
And, lest we forget, the media, too, played a supporting role in pushing this nation into an unnecessary war. Columnists and commentators assured us there was a nexus between Saddam, al-Qaida and 9-11, a "Prague connection" between Muhammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence. We were told Saddam had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and was working on nuclear weapons, that enrichment of uranium was being done secretly around the country, that if we did not act now, we faced a nuclear-armed Iraq that would surely transfer atomic weapons to al-Qaida terrorists. Said Condi Rice, our proof of WMD might well come in the form of a mushroom cloud above an American city.
Scooter Libby will not lack for legal defense funds as he pursues his appeal, and there will be demands for his pardon before Bush goes home. For Scooter is a martyr of the War Party. Scooter did what he had to do to get us into this war. Then he did what he felt he had to do to discredit Joe Wilson, because Wilson was out to discredit the White House case for war. And in the end, we are unlikely to know the truth of why it was we went to war. For that record is sealed in minds and souls.
This makes it official: It's illegal to be Republican.
Shooting Elephants in a Barrel
by Ann Coulter
Posted: 03/07/2007
Lewis Libby has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence.
It was not a crime to reveal Valerie Plame's name because she was not a covert agent. If it had been a crime, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could have wrapped up his investigation with an indictment of the State Department's Richard Armitage on the first day of his investigation since it was Armitage who revealed her name and Fitzgerald knew it.
With no crime to investigate, Fitzgerald pursued a pointless investigation into nothing, getting a lot of White House officials to make statements under oath and hoping some of their recollections would end up conflicting with other witness recollections, so he could charge some Republican with "perjury" and enjoy the fawning media attention.
As a result, Libby is now a convicted felon for having a faulty memory of the person who first told him that Joe Wilson was a delusional boob who lied about his wife sending him to Niger.
This makes it official: It's illegal to be Republican.
Since Teddy Kennedy walked away from a dead girl with only a wrist slap (which was knocked down to a mild talking-to, plus time served: zero), Democrats have apparently become a protected class in America, immune from criminal prosecution no matter what they do.
As a result, Democrats have run wild, accepting bribes, destroying classified information, lying under oath, molesting interns, driving under the influence, obstructing justice and engaging in sex with underage girls, among other things.
Meanwhile, conservatives of any importance constantly have to spend millions of dollars defending themselves from utterly frivolous criminal prosecutions. Everything is illegal, but only Republicans get prosecuted.
Conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh was subjected to a three-year criminal investigation for allegedly buying prescription drugs illegally to treat chronic back pain. Despite the witch-hunt, Democrat prosecutor Barry E. Krischer never turned up a crime.
Even if he had, to quote liberal Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz: "Generally, people who illegally buy prescription drugs are not prosecuted." Unless they're Republicans.
The vindictive prosecution of Limbaugh finally ended last year with a plea bargain in which Limbaugh did not admit guilt. Gosh, don't you feel safer now? I know I do.
In another prescription drug case with a different result, last year, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (Democrat), apparently high as a kite on prescription drugs, crashed a car on Capitol Hill at 3 a.m. That's abuse of prescription drugs plus a DUI offense. Result: no charges whatsoever and one day of press on Fox News Channel.
I suppose one could argue those were different jurisdictions. How about the same jurisdiction?
In 2006, Democrat and major Clinton contributor Jeffrey Epstein was nabbed in Palm Beach in a massive police investigation into his hiring of local underage schoolgirls for sex, which I'm told used to be a violation of some kind of statute in the Palm Beach area.
The police presented Limbaugh prosecutor Krischer with boatloads of evidence, including the videotaped statements of five of Epstein's alleged victims, the procurer of the girls for Epstein and 16 other witnesses.
But the same prosecutor who spent three years maniacally investigating Limbaugh's alleged misuse of back-pain pills refused to bring statutory rape charges against a Clinton contributor. Enraging the police, who had spent months on the investigation, Krischer let Epstein off after a few hours on a single count of solicitation of prostitution. The Clinton supporter walked, and his victims were branded as whores.
The Republican former House Whip Tom DeLay is currently under indictment for a minor campaign finance violation. Democratic prosecutor Ronnie Earle had to empanel six grand juries before he could find one to indict DeLay on these pathetic charges -- and this is in Austin, Texas (the Upper West Side with better-looking people).
That final grand jury was so eager to indict DeLay that it indicted him on one charge that was not even a crime -- and which has since been tossed out by the courts.
After winning his primary despite the indictment, DeLay decided to withdraw from the race rather than campaign under a cloud of suspicion, and Republicans lost one of their strongest champions in Congress.
Compare DeLay's case with that of Rep. William "The Refrigerator" Jefferson, Democrat. Two years ago, an FBI investigation caught Jefferson on videotape taking $100,000 in bribe money. When the FBI searched Jefferson's house, they found $90,000 in cash stuffed in his freezer. Two people have already pleaded guilty to paying Jefferson the bribe money.
Two years later, Bush's Justice Department still has taken no action against Jefferson. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently put Rep. William Jefferson on the Homeland Security Committee.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat, engaged in a complicated land swindle, buying a parcel of land for $400,000 and selling it for over $1 million a few years later. (At least it wasn't cattle futures!)
Reid also received more than four times as much money from Jack Abramoff (nearly $70,000) as Tom DeLay ($15,000). DeLay returned the money; Reid refuses to do so. Why should he? He's a Democrat.
Former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger literally received a sentence of community service for stuffing classified national security documents in his pants and then destroying them -- big, fat federal felonies.
But Scooter Libby is facing real prison time for forgetting who told him about some bozo's wife.
Bill Clinton was not even prosecuted for obstruction of justice offenses so egregious that the entire Supreme Court staged a historic boycott of his State of the Union address in 2000.
By contrast, Linda Tripp, whose only mistake was befriending the office hosebag and then declining to perjure herself, spent millions on lawyers to defend a harassment prosecution based on far-fetched interpretations of state wiretapping laws.
Liberal law professors currently warning about the "high price" of pursuing terrorists under the Patriot Act had nothing but blood lust for Tripp one year after Clinton was impeached (Steven Lubet, "Linda Tripp Deserves to be Prosecuted," New York Times, 8/25/99).
Criminal prosecution is a surrogate for political warfare, but in this war, Republicans are gutless appeasers.
Bush has got to pardon Libby.
Prosecutor says lies shielded Cheney By R. Jeffrey Smith WASHINGTON POST 03/07/2007
WASHINGTON — In late March 2004, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald asked I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby three separate times whether his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, had discussed telling reporters that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA in an undercover role.
Fitzgerald was unconvinced by Libby's response that even though he "may have" had such a conversation with Cheney, it probably occurred after Plame's identity as a CIA employee had been published in a newspaper column.
Almost three years later, Fitzgerald told the jury at Libby's trial that Libby's lies had effectively prevented him from learning about all of Cheney's actions in the administration's campaign to undermine Plame's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Jurors on Tuesday convicted Libby of obstruction of justice, lying to the FBI and perjury for lying under oath to a grand jury. They acquitted him on another charge of lying.
More than he had previously, Fitzgerald made clear in his summation that his search for truth about Cheney was a goal of his investigation, and that his inability to get it was a key provocation for Libby's indictment. Although Cheney was the target, Fitzgerald's inquiry could not reach him because of Libby's duplicity.
Fitzgerald's summation explained, in part, why he brought charges based on imperfect evidence against Libby, even though Libby was not a source for Robert Novak, the author of the July 14, 2003, newspaper column that outed Plame as a CIA employee.
The jury's verdict addresses Fitzgerald's first conclusion — that Libby lied deliberately and did not misspeak from faulty memory. But the trial showed that the prosecutor finished his investigation with his mind made up that Libby's account was meant to hide his own involvement as well as to conceal the potential involvement of the vice president.
At the trial's close, Fitzgerald expressed his concern in unusually blunt terms. After Libby's lawyers complained that he was trying to put a "cloud" over Cheney without evidence to back it up, Fitzgerald told the jury on Feb. 20, "We'll talk straight."
There was, he said, "a cloud over what the vice president did" during the period before the publication of Novak's column, and it was created by testimony showing that Cheney directed Libby and others at the White House to give out information about Wilson and Wilson's criticisms.
"We didn't put that cloud there. That cloud remains because the defendant obstructed justice and lied about what happened," Fitzgerald added.
The notion that Libby was merely a courtroom stand-in for Cheney infuriated Libby's lawyers, who sought in their courtroom statement to defend both men. "Nobody in the office of the vice president is concerned about" Plame, Libby attorney William Jeffress Jr. said. "She never was part of the story they were trying to put out."
Fitzgerald disagreed. Suppose, Fitzgerald said, you were probing whether a pitcher had purposely beaned a batter, and if so, why?
"As you sit back, you want to learn why was this information going out. Why were people taking this information about Valerie Wilson and giving it to reporters?" Fitzgerald asked at a news conference in October. "What we have when someone charges obstruction of justice is the umpire gets sand thrown in his eyes. He's trying to figure out what happened, and somebody blocked their view."
Randall Eliason, a former chief prosecutor of public corruption and fraud in the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, said Fitzgerald "would not have been doing his job" if he had not brought the charges. If "witnesses believe they can lie to the FBI and lie in the grand jury and there will be no consequences, then it becomes impossible to investigate any criminal activity, from terrorism to shoplifting."
Is Cheney the Worst Vice President of All Time?
Is Cheney the Worst Vice President of All Time?
I’m beginning to think Cheney may be the worst vice president of all time. The more I read about the present administration the more it appears that Bush is not the new Lincoln.
I had hope Bush might free the unborn babies from death by abortion. Instead he most resembles Grant who was misused by his handlers. Cheney seems to be Bush’s chief mis-handler. We need to pray that Bush can shake off the warmonger's mishandling of his presidency.
Below is more information of Cheney’s “shamelessness.”
Fred
The conservative Catholic weekly The Wanderer on February 15 wrote:
“[The Libby trail] via the testimony of Vice President Richard [Dick] Cheney’s press spokesman , Cathie Martin (who has a law degree from Harvard), former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Cheney’s new chief of staff David Addington ( who replaced Libby after his indictment), and others, that Cheney, Libby, and their top aides in the Office of the Vice President, as well as top White House advisers, including Condoleezza Rice, spent at least two full days- maybe three- trying to formulate a sentence that would blame the CIA for the 16 words about Iraq trying to obtain ‘yellow cake uranium from Niger’ that President Bush used in his 2003 State of the Union address, when they all knew the CIA had refuted the false charge, based on the forged documents, more than six months earlier.
“To boil down two weeks of testimony to the bottom line, it is this: Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s report on the false Niger claim was not ‘ lost in the bowels of the bureaucracy,’ as Condoleezza Rice testified, but was circulated at the State Department, the CIA, and the Office of the President. In other words, everyone involved with vetting the 2003 State of the Union address knew that Wilson had debunked the false claims in the summer of 2002.
“There’s another point of fascination, too, which came out during the examination of Cathie Martin, who testified that the Office of the Vice President played key members of the Washington press corp like monkeys on a short leash, leaking to one at the disadvantage of another, playing reporter against each other, using their favorites to ‘spin’ their messages. It’s all so shameless.
“It is also illegal. But that hasn’t come up yet.”
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