Letters to the Editor
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Orwell pales by comparison
When I first read 1984 more than 30 years ago, I was assured by my teachers that it was a fabulous exaggeration, blowing far out of proportion the dangers of authoritarianism in order to make a point.
Because of Orwell's 1984, they said, we have the example of a scenario worse than worst case, against which we can always measure our democracy to check whether we are leaning too far toward a totalitarian state.
Who could imagine that in the course of six short years, we would have not only reached that unimaginable point of 1984's nightmare, but actually surpassed it.
The RWA freakazoids aren't even trying to hide their agenda, not even attempting to pretend their goal is anything but establishing a horrific empire of death beside which Orwell's Oceania will seem like a kindergarten picnic.
How do you stop criminals who have nothing to hide, nothing to fear, nothing to lose?
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Dangerously delusional
Borrowing from the Nazis
If you wonder about the source of the incredibly insane and absurd neoconservative mantra:"Islamic terror represents an existential threat to the US", look no further than the Nazi mantra:"The Jew represents an existential threat to Germany". They borrowed every single word from Nazi propaganda and changed only the source of the "existential threat". And the neocon ranks are crawling with bonafide psychopaths, just like the Nazi leadership.
-- pantanal
This is a simple-minded historical comarison that fails to take account of several facts:
The Jews in fact were not an existential threat, didn't have the means to be so, and never in fact made such threats.
Islamic terrorists are an existential threat to the West, have attacked us multiple times already (beginning arguably in 1979 with the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran--an act of war, according to international law) but most especially beginning with the attacks on the WTC in 1993. They have attacked us (the West) multiple times since, have bragged about these attacks, and promise to continue them until the West is either destroyed or becomes part of their worldwide caliphate living under medieveal sharia law.
Pantanal (and his/her ilk) are delusional, worse than ostriches with their heads in the sand. They are so blinded by their Bush hatred that they are willing to overlook the enemy that is threatening to destroy them (and sometimes actually wishing that enemy's victory if it will make Bush look bad).
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From ElBaradei's Nobel Acceptance Speech
Link:http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2005/ebsp2005n020.html
At the International Atomic Energy Agency, my colleagues and I work to keep nuclear materials out of the reach of extremist groups. We inspect nuclear facilities all over the world, to be sure that peaceful nuclear activities are not being used as a cloak for weapons programmes.
/snip/
I am very proud of the 2300 hard working men and women that make up the IAEA staff - the colleagues with whom I share this honour. Some of them are here with me today. We come from over 90 countries. We bring many different perspectives to our work. Our diversity is our strength.
We are limited in our authority. We have a very modest budget. And we have no armies.
But armed with the strength of our convictions, we will continue to speak truth to power. And we will continue to carry out our mandate with independence and objectivity.
Emphasis added.
Ah, that's the problem. An independent, objective body that has been right in the past when speaking truth to power, and now dares to do so again when said power is preparing to embark on another illegal, immoral and contrived attack simply cannot be taken as serious.
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Such a busy reptile he is
Not to mention "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some little crappy country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business" -- and his possible circulation of the forged Niger documents. Thanks for taking him on, Glenn.
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Anonymous coward smearing Scott Ritter:
What, it's a "complete lie," but then you say he produced the documentary with, what ... $400,000 he just happened to have lying around?
It's a complete lie that he received this funding from Saddam, as you alleged.
He covered up for Saddam on a children's prison because such information, he said, would help what he called the "pro-war" faction. He freely admits that his filmmaking was facilitated by people who were close to Saddam. He was given special (and limited) access to Iraqi sources. C'mon, Glenn, wake up and smell the coffee!
Who are more right about the state of the Iraqi weapons program? Scott Ritter in that video or the poltical figures you admire?
Check out the Financial Times and Time magazine reporting on Ritter, Glenn
Why don't you provide a link and a quote substantiating yuor accusation?
Your hero is not just a Saddam patsy, he's also a sex offender.
Ritter denied those charges, which were dismissed. Who are you?
Ritter's perfidy is well-documented, Glenn. Too bad you feel the need to defend him.
Right. He said there was no convicing evidence that Saddam has WMD. What "perfidy" - terrible.
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Roots Of Treason--Part 1
Damning as this might sound:
Yet Ledeen played a central role in brokering the sale by Israel to Iran of highly advanced weapons as part of the Reagan administration's Iran-contra shenanigans in the 1980s. A military confrontation with Iran would likely subject U.S. troops to attack from the very same nasty weapons which Ledeen and his friends provided to Iran during a time when, Ledeen and neoconservatives now insist, Iran was waging war on the U.S. As Scott Lemieux, among many others, has noted, providing arms to a country "waging war against the U.S." -- as Ledeen did with Iran in the 1980s if his central premise is to be believed -- is called treason.
It gets worse. US-approved arms shipments from Israel to Iran began almost as soon as Reagan took office, as Robert Party has long reported:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/110500b.html
History on the Ballot
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Covering Up Iran-Contra
While allegations of Republican shenanigans in 1980 were left in this haze of evidence and denials, the lingering hostage crisis clearly damaged Carter’s political standing in November 1980.
Reagan won a solid electoral victory. Then, immediately after Reagan’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981, the Iranians released the American hostages.
It’s also clear that the Reagan-Bush administration followed up release of the hostages with a secret policy of permitting Israel to ship U.S. military hardware to Iran.
Senior State Department officials learned of the secret policy in summer 1981 when an Argentine plane carrying U.S. military supplies from Israel to Iran strayed off course and was shot down over the Soviet Union.
Nicholas Veliotes, assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, investigated the strange case and said he learned from “people on high that indeed we had agreed that the Israelis could transship to Iran some American-origin military equipment. … I believe it was the initiative of a few people [who] gave the Israelis the go-ahead. The net result was a violation of American law.” [For details, see Parry’s Trick or Treason,]
The clandestine U.S. relationship with Iran took other turns in the months ahead. Israel invaded Lebanon, followed by a Reagan-Bush decision to introduce American troops and then to begin shelling Moslem villages. Islamic extremists retaliated by seizing more American hostages.
None of this was really hidden, due to the shoot-down of the Argentinian plan (Reagan had us in bed with the architects of Argentina's "Dirty War" that "disappeared" 30,000 "leftist students" up until the Falklands War). It was simply ignored.
But why? Why had Reagan green-lighted such an arrangement? The reason--only suspected at the time--was a secret deal with Iran to elect Reagan in 1980 by holding the hostages until after the election. Evidence of this plot accumulated gradually, but inexorably over the course of the Reagan/Bush years, finally culminating in a Congressional investigation overseen--and undermined--by the ultra-serious Lee Hamilton.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/102506.html
The Original October Surprise
October 25, 2006
History turned in December 1992 when the truth about what happened in the pivotal 1980 presidential election might finally have been revealed to the American people. Just a month after Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush, the dam that had held back the 12-year-old secrets finally gave way.
An investigative House Task Force was putting the finishing touches on a report intended to debunk the longstanding October Surprise allegations of Republican interference with the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980. The bipartisan Task Force planned to treat the story as a conspiracy theory run wild.
But suddenly the Task Force found itself inundated by a flood of new evidence going the other way, indicating that the long-whispered suspicions of a grotesque Republican dirty trick a dozen years earlier were true.
Task Force chief counsel Lawrence Barcella, who had been onboard for the debunking, was stunned by the late surge of new evidence. He concluded that it couldn’t be ignored and that it justified extending the investigation at least a few more months.
Years later, Barcella told me that he recommended a three-month extension to the Task Force chairman, Rep. Lee Hamilton, but the Indiana Democrat rejected the idea of taking the extra time to check out the new evidence. An extension would have required getting approval from the new Congress being seated in 1993.
Plus, Hamilton, who was about to ascend to the chairmanship of the House International Affairs Committee, had other priorities. He treasured perhaps more than anything his reputation as a respected centrist figure in a capital city torn by partisanship.
Hamilton, with his no-nonsense butch haircut and home-spun eloquence, was a candidate for one of Washington’s highest unofficial honors, the title of Wise Man. Indeed, Hamilton’s passion for bipartisanship had made him the Democrat that the Republicans most wanted to run an investigation into Republican wrongdoing.
When Hamilton was chosen in late 1991 to chair the October Surprise Task Force, Republicans hailed his selection. Hamilton then selected investigators who weren’t inclined to press too hard, even as Hamilton’s GOP counterpart, Rep. Henry Hyde, staffed his side with tough-minded partisans.
At one point, in a gesture of bipartisanship, Hamilton even granted Republicans veto power over the choice of a Democratic staff investigator. Hyde exercised this extraordinary offer by blocking the appointment of House International Affairs Committee chief counsel Spencer Oliver because Oliver suspected the October Surprise allegations might just be true.
The key evidence came from Soviet intelligence. Because of length, I will post it separately as follows....