Letters to the Editor
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Friedman
is clearly a man who impresses none more than himself. It's all over his body language. He looks like a teenager hunched over one of his dad's Hustlers, only there's nothing there except his own prattling.
It's breathtaking to think how many of our greatest problems today have uncontrolled ego at their root.
The only thing worse than an idiot is an idiot disguised as a genius.
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the "sick" truth from Rudy's advisor
“..because there is so much incredible truth to be exposed about this sick clown.”~RMP
One of the sickest statements (which hasn’t received a lot of attention) is from Rudy’s advisor Mr. Podhoretz:
“My view has been, and I very much doubt that Giuliani would disagree with what I am about to say, what we are doing is to try and clear the ground that has been covered over at least since WWI,” he said. “Draining the swamps is the beginning of the process of clearing the ground, and planting the seeds from which institutions can grow the foundations of a free society.”
In the context of a broader, longer war that he expects will take at least three decades to win, the casualties that the United States has so far endured are “miniscule.” He says that fretting about whether to attack Iran sends only a message of weakness to the combined Shiite and Sunni enemies in the Middle East. And, like Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Podhoretz thinks that the creation of an independent Palestinian state would now only create another terrorist state.
Instead, America should be working to overthrow governments in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt and “every one of the despotic regimes in that region, by force if necessary and by nonmilitary means if possible,” he said. “They are fronts of the war. You can’t do everything at once. And to have toppled two of those regimes in five years or six years is I think a major achievement. And maybe George Bush won’t be able to carry it further, but I think he will. It may have just been given to him to start act one of the five-act play.”
I really find myself unable to say anything after that quote. It’s that sick. Comparing genocide to a "five act" play?
http://tinyurl.com/2su5jh
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@zack
My feelings on Rudolf being the candidate are so mixed. I want the Dems to win big and at the same time I have to look at his face and fake smile probably even more than I have to look at junior and I think I will end up with ulcers or high blood pressure or both. But we all have to make sacrifices to get rid of these thugs for as long as possible. Now that Glenn and others have educated me on Podman, I have to see his face behind Rudy’s. It’s as if I’m learning to be a masochist. Please assure me that it will all be worth it.
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I must agree with Red Snapper
Come on, Glenn.
Where the heck is the rest of the post?
It is a huge can of worms and you have really left us hanging here.
9/11 was not about dwarfs challenged into toppling towers due to envy or haterd of our (once) marvelous freedoms-(the Dan Rather on Letterman weeping lie).It was not overly pious Islamicists cutting up for their 77 virgins in paradise. It wasn't culture war- those substitute pilots were actually yuppies with tech. degrees and future plans!
IT WAS PALESTINE! Palestiune was also the reason behind the '93 attack on the same building and Palestine will be the excuse for a prolonged worldwide , anti-US insurgency way into the future. 60 years of the US choosing the side of injustice!
It was those Illegal, immoral Israeli settlements that the neocons and Rudy and Tom and Charlie Rose and his idol, Kissinger are so in love with.
And the problem won't stop after the next towers fall, either. It won't begin to stop until this nation faces its obligation toward peace and justice in Palestine (for starters).Our most visible, yet politically silent terror bait.
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3 decades?
Yeah, that's about right.
Glad to see the Pod still has his feet on the ground. He's a realist, like Bismarck and Kissinger. We need more of him---cloned, perhaps, and armed with fusion blasters.
Because the future's not fun enough!
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@ _zack_, Jim White
Slips like this are very interesting, since it is arguably our policy not to let Iran have nuclear power. We certainly seem to be banging the drum hard enough about their nuclear (power) program. Although I suspect that it's by no means our primary policy goal to deny Iran their right to have peaceful nuclear power, there are definite reasons why allowing this is contraindicated, based on the Bush administration's ideological orientation and their economic interests. In no particular order of importance, these are the ones I can come up with:
1) It increases Iran's energy independence, allowing them to increase the amount of oil they're able to export onto the world market. Since the amount of oil that Iran produces is not subject to control by the supermajors, this is a definite problem for the Bush administration, who represent the supermajors and interests associated therewith (e.g., Bechtel, Halliburton). This could cause problems among those actors within the petrochemical industry that are less "ideological" (i.e., profit is a larger motivator than other considerations) because of the potential for lost profit. Dealing with an Iran that's getting serious about increasing its oil production and the investment in infrastructure this requires represents a potential source of profit. Although it's difficult to say just how much discontentment would result, and there's almost certainly competition for this market, there's the potential for a certain amount of re-negotiation of the relationships involved and concessions being given to quiet discontent. This translates to lower profits for the more ideological actors.
2) Iran can leverage any expertise they develop in the nuclear power field (remember that building a nuclear power plant requires expertise in several non-trivial areas of engineering and science) into economic power and diplomatic cachet in the rest of the region. Iran has a vested interest in undermining the "West's" stranglehold on this technology, even the Russians'. Assuming a relatively "realistic" foreign-policy regime on the part of major powers, the balance of power in the region would be altered in a non-trivial way in Iran's favor. No one is especially interested in seeing Iran independently develop nuclear power, which is the main thing that mullahs are driving for. This undermines the position of several major transnational corporations, including GE and Westinghouse, both of whom have built nuclear reactors.
3) Let's assume for a moment that the fatwa was issued as a means of buying time, and that Iran does ultimately desire nuclear weapons). Nuclear technology is inherently dual-use; the expertise required to successfully design and build nuclear reactors is directly transferable to the design and construction of nuclear weapons. A nuclear-armed Iran would be virtually immune to outside pressure and would definitely be immune to attack; this is unacceptable to the United States, and is obviously the scenario the administration wants to paint as being the "obvious" or most likely one.