Putting the jackboot on the other foot

What would we be reading and hearing from the corporate media if Al Gore had gotten a full recount in Florida, been inaugurated, and proceeded to do exactly what Dubya has done? Ted Rall has an idea....

Gore's polls, already falling due to the lagging economy, hit rock bottom in the weeks after the September 11th attacks. "People rightly blamed the Commander-in-Chief for not doing anything to intercept planes that had clearly been hijacked and for ignoring warnings of an imminent threat," says a GOP pollster. "But concern about incompetence quickly segued into the 'wimp thing.' Disgust at Gore's cowardice became widespread when he abandoned Washington to the terrorists and flew off to hide in that silo under Nebraska. Diligent journalists then reminded Americans how he'd wussed out of Vietnam by joining the Tennessee Air National Guard and then going AWOL, and for many voters that was that."

Whistling Dixie

Joy-Ann Lomena Reid has two words for those who get worked up over public criticism of the Bush League: grow up!

Republicans defend their ideological lynching of the opposition by saying that the (Dixie) Chicks and others erred by airing their grievances against Bush during wartime -- and overseas, at that. But since when is it unpatriotic to criticize the Commander in Chief -- where ever you happen to be standing -- while the nation is at war? Republicans certainly didn't hold back on Franklin Delano Roosevelt while he prosecuted what is still the conflict of the 20th century, and haters of John F. Kennedy kept right on sneering at him even as the Cuban missile crisis loomed. It certainly wasn't considered unpatriotic for the likes of Tom Delay and other Republicans (who excused themselves from military service during the Vietnam conflict) to fulminate against President Bill Clinton while our fighter pilots were in the air over Kosovo, or on the ground in Mogadishu. Perhaps it's only unpatriotic to criticize the president when he is a Republican.

I have to wonder along with Reid "just what (Chicks lead singer Natalie) Maines is guilty of: Feeling ashamed? Being from Texas? Or speaking her mind?"

More impeachment links

Here's a whole page full of impeachment links, courtesy of The Crisis Papers.

Halliburton: All In the Family

First ABC broke the Administration's concession that the WMD justification was a ruse; now CBS is getting into the act. 60 Minutes did a story tonight on the awarding of Iraq cleanup work to companies like Halliburton and Bechtel.

"This is not about the revolving door, people going in and out,"� says (Center for Public Integrity executive director Charles) Lewis. "There is no door. There's no wall. I can't tell where one stops and the other starts. I'm dead serious."�

"They have classified clearances, they go to classified meetings and they're with companies getting billions of dollars in classified contracts. And their disclosures about their activities are classified. Well, isn't that what they did when they were inside the government? What's the difference, except they're in the private sector."�

Richard Perle resigned as chairman of the defense policy board last month after it was disclosed that he had financial ties to several companies doing business with the Pentagon.

But Perle still sits on the board, along with former CIA director James Woolsey, who works for the consulting firm of Booz, Allen, Hamilton. The firm did nearly $700 million dollars in business with the Pentagon last year.

Another board member, retired four-star general Jack Sheehan, is now a senior vice president at the Bechtel corporation, which just won a $680 million contract to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq.

That contract was awarded by the State Department, which used to be run by George Schultz, who sits on Bechtel's board of directors.

Could it be that the sleeping giant is awakening? Are they going to start asking the hard questions that up to now have been brushed aside?

Time will tell. Meanwhile, write CBS and the sponsors of 60 Minutes and thank them. You know what the other side will be doing.

The Great Debate: Franken v. Wolfowitz

According to Salon Magazine, this exchange of clever repartee took place between "comedian/smart-ass" Al Franken and DoD #2 man Paul Wolfowitz at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner:

FRANKEN: Clinton's military did pretty well in Iraq, huh?

WOLFOWITZ: Fuck you.

He's a real intellectual, that Wolfie....

Impeach the Bush League!

Last Monday, I posted a few quotes from US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, Chief Counsel for the US at the Nuremberg Trials, that explained why the Nazis were being tried as war criminals. Basically, a war of aggression is universally recognized as a crime against humanity.

Every generally accepted definition of a just war includes a requirement that the target of such a war has overtly attacked or poses an immediate threat to the country waging the war. The Bush league claimed that Iraq posed such a threat, but the claim was based on information the administration knew to be unreliable, exaggerated, or simply invented. As the truth is gradually revealed, the warmongers ignore the ramifications of this fact and emphasize what an evil, oppressive monster was the regime they overthrew. That is very true, but the oppression by a government of its own people, no matter how severe--and the atrocities committed by that government within its own borders, no matter how heinous--do not justify invasion by a foreign power.

Thus no matter how morally repugnant the Saddam Hussein regime was, the US-led invasion was a war of aggression, and those who brought it about will be judged by history as war criminals.

But the war against Iraq is just one tile in a mosaic of abuses that have been committed right here in America by the Bush League. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark has drawn up draft Articles of Impeachment that cite 17 counts of impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors, including violations of the Bill of Rights, abrogation of treaties without consent of the legislature, seizure of property without due process, and violations of international law.

There is no issue before us today--the economy, abortion, the environment, corporate excess, global terrorism, or anything else--more important than reversing the damage that the Bush League has wreaked on American freedom. The neoconservatives in Washington have placed themselves above the law. Their abuses grow bolder every day. If they are not stopped, the two-centuries-old experiment in democracy that is the United States of America will soon come to an end.

George W. Bush, Richard B. Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and John David Ashcroft must be removed from office by the will of the people of the United States. Their trampling of the Constitution cannot and must not stand.

The Independent: Road to war was paved with lies

A story published today in The Independent, citing a "high-level UK source," says both American and British intelligence services were "furious" that their reports "were distorted in the rush to war with Iraq."

"The case for invading...was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication," the story says.

The Independent becomes one more voice in a rising chorus. The Bush and Blair administrations must be held accountable for their deceitful, cynical manipulation of public opinion.

America in particular needs to wake up. We are well down the path to fascism. Complacent belief that "it can't happen here" is the biggest danger to our freedom. As Edmund Burke said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Peeling the onion

So now they admit it: it was all about flexing our muscle.

Layer by layer, like the skins of an onion, the surface lies are peeled away only to reveal the deeper lies.

Let's review.

The purpose of the war was to preempt Iraq's impending attack on the US. Also to take weapons of mass destruction away from a country that sponsors terrorism. Besides, Saddam was a bad guy and had to be removed.

Well, maybe the attack wasn't impending, but it was possible. Theoretically.

So the purpose of the war was removal of the WMDs, and regime change, and prevention of an attack on the US at some indefinite future time. We knew he had those weapons, after all.

Well, at least he was trying to get them. We had proof of that much. They had tried to buy uranium from Niger, and they had special, hardened aluminum tubes that could only have been useful in making nuclear arms.

Actually, the papers purporting to document the attempt to buy uranium were fairly obvious fakes, and the aluminum tubes were for conventional weapons, useless for nuclear applications. But we found other stuff too. Remember? Drums of suspicious chemicals. A warehouse full of bodies. Reports of multiple-warhead chemical-payload rockets. And the fact that the chemicals were agricultural pesticides, the bodies were Iraqi casualties from the Iran-Iraq war, and the rockets didn't exist, meant only that Iraq was hiding their WMDs more efficiently than we thought. We'd find them eventually. Besides, our real aim was to liberate the Iraqi people. Regime change first--then seek and destroy the WMDs. Because they had them, for sure.

Or else they were sneaking them into Syria. Yeah, that's it, they took them to Syria!

Or, the President said, maybe the reason we can't find any WMDs is because the Iraqis destroyed them all! Yeah, that's it! They destroyed the evidence, those sneaky bastards! They destroyed their WMDs after we attacked them, just to make us look bad. While they were running around like headless chickens, dodging bombs and abandoning tanks, they somehow found the wherewithal to thoroughly eliminate not only their nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, but also every bit of concrete evidence that they had been rearming. Or maybe they destroyed them before we attacked.

But wasn't destroying their WMDs exactly what we said we wanted them to do? Wouldn't that mean we didn't need to sacrifice 125 American lives and kill hundreds or thousands of Iraqi civilians?

OK, they admit now, we thought they had WMDs, and we knew Saddam was a nasty guy, but the real reason for going in there was to show the world we meant business. See, 9/11 changed everything. Because of 9/11, we needed to flex our muscle and show the terrorists that we could hunt them down anywhere they went. Or if not them, we could hunt somebody down. Maybe not Saddam, who might have gotten away, but somebody. Anybody.

Because of 9/11. Yeah, that's it.

Except that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Jeb Bush, and others in and close to the Bush administration happen to be members of a neo-conservative Fight Club that said we needed to do just that in September of 2000--a year before the 9/11 attack. A month and a half before Jeb's machinations resulted in his draft-dodger of a brother usurping the Presidency, their neoconservative manifesto said we needed to invade and occupy Iraq for the sake of showing the world we could do it. Regardless of whether or not they had any weapons of mass destruction. Regardless of whether or not Saddam consorted with terrorists. Regardless, in fact, of whether Saddam should still be in power when they got their chance.

Of course the Fight Club (which calls itself the PNAC) is motivated, like all good conservatives, only by a desire to do the right thing--the right thing in this case being to rule the world. They see a "new manifest destiny" for the US.

By establishing and demonstrating our dominance, they say, we will usher in a Pax Americana and make the whole world a safer, happier place. Of course you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Thus, in the name of peace, we will militarize space. We will resume nuclear tests and revive our own biological and chemical weapons programs. We will develop the capability to mount "cyberattacks" on our enemies. We will fight and decisively win multiple simultaneous major theater wars. And we will "deter" the rise of any other world power that could possibly threaten our dominance.

"We," in the above paragraph, means a partnership of the US government, particularly the US military, and US business.

And it's just a coincidence that the people planning all of this happen to be very well connected in both government and business, and will make themselves as rich as Croesus in the process.

Yeah, that's it. Coincidence.

It's just like peeling an onion: when you strip a layer of deception off the neoconservative movement, all you find is more of the same.

Ex-CIA Pros: manufacturing the evidence

Knowing that much of the Bush administration's key evidence for the existence of WMDs in Iraq was forged, distorted, or grossly misinterpreted, the world is understandably suspicious about the US insistence that UN inspectors stay out of Iraq while American inspectors conduct their own search for the elusive "smoking gun."

In a report published April 25 by CommonDreams.org, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)--a group of former members of the US intelligence community, mostly ex-CIA analysts--says that it's unlikely. However, they say, if the US were to plant evidence after the fact, it wouldn't be the first time.

From the CIA's planting of Soviet weapons in Nicaragua in 1954 to the staged participation in drug trafficking by a US operative disguised as a Sandanista in 1986, the report counts off deceptions practiced by the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Reagan administrations. But the most striking similarity to George W's war comes from Daddy's dealings in 1990 and 1991.

First there was "Nariyah," the 15-year-old Kuwaiti refugee whose testimony before a Congressional committee included a harrowing tale of Iraqi soldiers tossing babies out of incubators and leaving them to die. It turned out the story was a hoax, and the "refugee" was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador who had been coached by a PR firm with close ties to Bushdaddy's administration. Then...

On September 11, 1990, President George H. W. Bush, addressing a joint session of Congress, claimed "120,000 Iraqi troops with 850 tanks have poured into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia." But an enterprising journalist, Jean Heller, reported in the St. Petersburg Times on January 6, 1991 (a bare ten days before the Gulf War began) that commercial satellite photos taken on September 11, the day the president spoke, showed no sign of a massive buildup of Iraqi forces in Kuwait. When the Pentagon was asked to provide evidence to support the president's claim, it refused to do so--and continues to refuse to this day.

Interestingly, the national media in the US chose to ignore Heller's story. Heller's explanation:

"I think part of the reason the story was ignored was that it was published too close to the start of the war. Second, and more importantly, I do not think that people wanted to hear that we might have been deceived. A lot of the reporters who have seen the story think it is dynamite, but the editors seem to have the attitude, 'At this point, who cares?'"

Does some of this have a familiar ring?

Familiar, indeed.

Democratic Underground "Hate Mailbag"

This is a little out of date, but that's OK--it's timeless! Like FDR, these folks are rightfully proud of the enemies they've made.

Your lies,deceit, and hatefulness of life(abortion) is only a fulfillment of prophecies by Jesus Himself.Your support of anti-semitism is only sparking His impending anger and wrath upon this world.REPENT!!!Before its too late.You can't stop what is going to happen in this world.None of your protests,none of your handwringing,nothing.Democrats are nothing more than an incarnation of the anti-christ,atheistic,communist beliefs of every totalitarian government out there.Its good people don't trust G.W.At least its breaking the proverbial umbilical cord that the Democrats want so much for every American to feed on.If you think prosperity comes from fat,bloated,racist,beligerent politicians getting B.J.'sfrom interns,your sadly mistaken.REPENT!!!!!

DU RESPONDS: Dear Mr. Ashcroft, shouldn't you be out catching terrorists or something? I would think that the attorney general of the United States would have better things to do than send threatening letters to liberal websites. Tsk tsk. Shame on you.

Onion: New Fox Reality Show To Determine Ruler Of Iraq

LOS ANGELES - Fox executives Monday unveiled their latest reality-TV venture, Appointed By America, a new series in which contestants vie for the top spot in Iraq's post-war government.

Me, I'd have called it "Who wants to be a dictator?"

Bush is not a Nazi! Stop calling him one!

Rumsfeld doublespeak

The Iraqis are free to form their own government, Donald Rumsfeld tells the Associated Press. And he doesn't want Iran influencing the process. "If you're suggesting, how would we feel about an Iranian-type government with a few clerics running everything in the country, the answer is: That isn't going to happen."

In other words, the Iraqis can choose their own government--as long as they make the choice we want them to make. Meanwhile, Iran is not to interfere with our meddling.

Not that doublespeak shouldn't be expected. This, after all, is the man Ronald Reagan sent to prop up Saddam a scant two months after American intelligence had informed the Alzheimer's President that the Iraqi dictator was using chemical weapons on his own people. Chemical weapons that the US had supplied him in the first place, and encouraged him to use. Chemical weapons that the current administration cited as justification for taking him out.

Rumsfeld also said of the devastation and looting in Iraq, "We didn't allow it. It happened." That's like saying "I don't allow my children to stay up late. They just don't go to bed." If you're in charge and you do not prevent it, then by definition, you are allowing it.

But back to Rumsfeld's words on the subject of Iraqi self-government: "There will be the beginning of an interim authority soon. I don't know quite what `soon' means. It's a little early to be impatient about it, so I can't be impatient, although the natural thing is to be impatient about it. You want the Iraqis to govern themselves."

Right. As long as they do it your way.

GOP fundraiser screws children, cops plea

There's got to be a cartoon in here...I wish I were a talented enough artist to draw it.

A prominent Republican fund-raiser who once said former President Bill Clinton was "a lawbreaker and a terrible example to our nation's young people" pleaded guilty yesterday in Baltimore Circuit Court to production of child pornography.
(SunSpot.net)

Mothers who take innocent pictures of nude toddlers get jail time and fines; Richard Delgaudio takes pictures of himself having sex with 15- and 16-year-old girls, cops a plea, and gets two years' probation.

What do you want to bet the son of a bitch never shows up on any of those sex-offenders lists, or moves into a new neighborhood and has his neighbors warned about his predatory history?

The press and freedom: some disturbing trends

NPR's Bob Edwards tells it like it is--or at least calls 'em like he sees 'em--in the annual Joe Creason Lecture at the University of Kentucky, delivered on the occasion of Bob's April 8 induction into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame.

You can't hold a press conference without the press, yet President Bush nearly did. Where were they that night? Some of those whose names were called might have bothered to ask a decent question. With the nation about to enter a war that's decidedly unpopular everywhere but here, no one asked the hard questions. Instead, the President was asked if America should pray. He was asked if he worried in the wee small hours of the night. The first black reporter to get a chance to question the President since his decision to support a rollback of affirmative action asked him, "How is your faith guiding you?" One critic said this was the journalistic equivalent of, "Mr. President, you look great today. What's your secret?"

Bob goes on to list some of the hard questions that are not being asked. In this day of neo-McCarthyism, he's taking a big risk by speaking his mind. Makes me proud to be a Louisvillian. You tell 'em, Colonel!

Weapons, Lies, and the United States

It is inevitable that the US will eventually come up with these hidden WMD's the war in Iraq was supposedly fought over. But can we trust that the Bush administration is above planting, or fabricating WMD's in Iraq?

This article chronicles some of the false alarms and fabrications that the Bush administration used to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Blix: US Undermined UN Inspectors

Hans Blix, chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, has told the BBC that American officials tried to discredit the work of inspectors in Iraq to further their own case for war.

US at Nuremberg: "no grievances justify aggressive war"

US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, Chief Counsel for the United States at the Nuremberg Trials, said in a statement to the American people:

We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.

I therefore want to make clear to the American people that we have taken an important step forward...in fixing individual responsibility of war-mongering, among whatever peoples, as an international crime.

In a report to the President, he added:

By the time the Nazis came to power it was thoroughly established that launching an aggressive war or the institution of war by treachery was illegal and that the defense of legitimate warfare was no longer available to those who engaged in such an enterprise. It is high time that we act on the juridical principle that aggressive war-making is illegal and criminal.

The reestablishment of the principle of unjustifiable war is traceable in many steps. One of the most significant is the Briand-Kellogg Pact of 1928, by which Germany, Italy and Japan, in common with ourselves and practically all the nations of the world, renounced war as an instrument of national policy, bound themselves to seek the settlement of disputes only by pacific means, and condemned recourse to war for the solution of international controversies. Unless this Pact altered the legal status of wars of aggression, it has no meaning at all and comes close to being an act of deception. In 1932, Mr. Stimson, as Secretary of State, gave voice to the American concept of its effect. He said, "War between nations was renounced by the signatories of the Briand-Kellogg Treaty. This means that it has become illegal throughout practically the entire world. It is no longer to be the source and subject of rights. It is no longer to be the principle around which the duties, the conduct, and the rights of nations revolve. It is an illegal thing. . . . By that very act, we have made obsolete many legal precedents and have given the legal profession the task of re-examining many of its codes and treaties."

This Pact constitutes only one in a series of acts which have reversed the viewpoint that all war is legal and have brought International Law into harmony with the common sense of mankind, that unjustifiable war is a crime. Without attempting an exhaustive catalogue, we may mention the Geneva Protocol of 1924 for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, signed by the representatives of fortyeight governments, which declared that "a war of aggression constitutes ... an international crime". The Eighth Assembly of the League of Nations in 1927, on unanimous resolution of the representatives of forty-eight member nations, including Germany, declared that a war of aggression constitutes an international crime. At the Sixth Pan-American Conference of 1928, the twenty-one American Republics unanimously adopted a resolution stating that "war of aggression constitutes an international crime against the human species."

So, under several treaties to which the US is party, and under generally recognized international law, if the war against Iraq was a war of aggression (and granted, that's a big "if"), then it is an illegal war, and those who perpetrated it are war criminals.

Serbs All

Public Radio's Christopher Lydon describes how we all have biased perceptions in wartime...especially the media.

Pacifism Kills Secure Unix Funding

DARPA has cut off funding for a project to build a secure, free computer operating system after one of the programmers expressed anti-war sentiments. Moral: exercise your freedom of speech at your own peril. It could cost you your job!

Fear and Loathing vs. Hope and Liberty

In a CommonDreams.org commentary, Vermont governor Howard Dean writes:

Our nation should be viewed as a moral and just power, a power that seeks to do good, one that has led by example and with a spirit of generosity, and one that works with the world community in advancing the ideals of human dignity and rule of law across the globe.

The people of this country must understand that this Administration has a far different concept of the role of America in the world. This concept involves imposing our will on sovereign nations. This concept involves dismantling the multilateral institutions that we have spent decades building. And this concept involves distorting the rule of law to suit their narrow purposes. When did we become a nation of fear and anxiety when we were once known the world around as a land of hope and liberty?

Dean may or may not be the right man to lead us out of this quagmire, but he is dead-on when he talks about the neoconservatives' concept of the new world order and America's place in it. A year before 9/11 - months before George W. Bush was "elected" (wink wink, nudge nudge) President - a group called Project for the New American Century, founded in 1997 by a group that included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and Jeb Bush, published a doctrine of world dominion, in which they described "a new manifest destiny" for the US: to be the ruling power in a new version of the Roman Empire (they even call it a Pax Americana). The group advocated invasion and occupation of Iraq by the next GOP administration, regardless of whether Saddam Hussein should still be in power by that time, for the purpose of controlling the world's oil supply. They want a permanent US military presence in the Middle East. Also in Southeastern Europe and Southeast Asia. They want to do whatever it takes to ensure that no other world power develops to challenge Americas status as king of the hill. They say a core mission for the US military should be "to fight and decisively win simultaneous major theater wars." (Not just to have the capacity to do so, mind you, but to go and do it.) They want to militarize space, creating a new "Space Force" branch of the armed services and putting weapons in orbit (and they see NASA and the shuttle program as the biggest threat to their success in that area). They want to develop "offensive" capacity to conduct "cyberattacks" (read: computer hacking to further the interests of the US). They want to resume nuclear weapons testing and revive chemical and biological weapons programs. Pure and simple, and without the slightest exaggeration, what they want is to rule the world.

The reasons they now give for the Iraq war--to remove a regime that supported terrorism, to bring a Western-style democracy to Iraq, to eliminate the ousted regime's purported weapons of mass destruction--are mere rationalizations; the group's real aims were published in their September 2000 manifesto, "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century."

This goes far beyond questions of right and left to fundamental questions of right and wrong, freedom and bondage, democracy and totalitarianism. All patriotic Americans, whatever their political stripe, should read this document and decide for themselves whether or not they want to buy into this vision; whether it describes an America conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, or one in which might makes right; and whether the dreams of world dominion promulgated by the radical right are worth the millions of dollars and thousands of lives already spent, let alone the billions of dollars and millions of lives at stake.

A peacenik sees the light

From the April 18 San Francisco Gate:
The Warmongers were right! A gutted Iraq, a low slaughter rate, an Exxon can for every peasant. See? Peacenik losers!

Surprise, surprise...

NY Times editorial, April 19: And the Winner is Bechtel

Awarding the first major contract for reconstruction in Iraq to a politically connected American company under restricted bidding procedures sends a deplorable message to a skeptical world.

US as Israel's agent

Conservative columnist Robert Novak in the April 17 Chicago Sun-Times:

Israel wants strike on Syria while iron's hot
Coinciding with the Bush administration's tough talk about Syria, a senior Israeli official Monday exposed a smoking gun. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Tel Aviv newspaper Maariv: ''We have a long list of issues we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians, and it would be best done through the Americans.''

Pfaff: The World According To Bush

Columnist William Pfaff in yesterday's Boston Globe
"Put simply, the Bush administration envisages a world run by the United States, backed by as many states as will sign on to support it.... Washington says that victory in Iraq was the first step in making a new Middle East and a new world order. There probably will be more resistance to both ambitions than it currently expects."

"A chill wind is blowing"

On April 15, Tim Robbins addressed the National Press Club. He had a lot to say about freedom of speech, and leadership, and the place of the press in a free society. A few excerpts...

On the "leadership" shown by the current administration in the wake of 9/11:

"I imagined leadership that would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy of 9/11, a new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: If you attack us, we will become stronger, cleaner, better educated, and more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. Like a Phoenix out of the fire, we will be reborn.

"And then came the speech: You are either with us or against us. And the bombing began. And the old paradigm was restored as our leader encouraged us to show our patriotism by shopping and by volunteering to join groups that would turn in their neighbor for any suspicious behavior. "

On the difference between criticizing Clinton and criticizing Bush:

"I remember when the Columbine High School shootings happened. President Clinton criticized Hollywood for contributing to this terrible tragedy -- this, as we were dropping bombs over Kosovo. Could the violent actions of our leaders contribute somewhat to the violent fantasies of our teenagers? Or is it all just Hollywood and rock and roll?

"I remember reading at the time that one of the shooters had tried to enlist to fight the real war a week before he acted out his war in real life at Columbine. I talked about this in the press at the time. And curiously, no one accused me of being unpatriotic for criticizing Clinton. In fact, the same radio patriots that call us traitors today engaged in daily personal attacks on their president during the war in Kosovo. "

On the role of the press:

"You have, whether you like it or not, an awesome responsibility and an awesome power: the fate of discourse, the health of this republic is in your hands, whether you write on the left or the right. This is your time, and the destiny you have chosen. "

Robbins' speech included a moving account of his own family's personal experiences, and these brief quotes don't come close to doing it justice. Read the full transcript here.

Among this week's edition of Top 10 Conservative Idiots: Don Neddo, Michael Medved, George Pataki...and Ahnold makes good on his most famous quote: "I'll be back." Hasta la vista, baby.

Match the Quote

Here are five famous quotes. Which of the seven speakers, if any, is being quoted?

Statement #1: "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

Statement #2: "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. "

Statement #3: "There ought to be limits to freedom."

Statement #4: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

Statement #5: "Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has 'closed', the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done."

Speakers:

A. George W. Bush
B. Julius Caesar
C. Hermann Goering
D. Adolf Hitler
E. Thomas Jefferson
F. John F. Kennedy
G. Abraham Lincoln
H. None of the above

While you're thinking about it, here's a true story. Dubya is not the first to declare war on terrorism. Rather, he's following in some famous footsteps. Once a country saw one of its famous landmarks destroyed by a madman. The country's commander-in-chief, who hadcome into power partially through voting fraud but was quite popular by this time, called it a sign from God that it was time to declare war on terrorism and the Middle Eastern countries that sponsored it, finding justification for their evil deeds in their Islamic faith. He declared a state of emergency to make it easier for the police to intercept mail, tap phones, and detain suspected terrorists without formal charges. Within a year, he because the various law enforcement agencies were too disjointed and couldn't cooperate as easily as they needed to, he merged into a single department all the national security, espionage, investigative and law enforcement departments--the better to protect the country against terror. He also had his government partner with big business, the better to utilize their services in the defense of the national interest. The visionary who did all these things before our current President was Adolf Hitler. His Department of Central Security was soon known, and is best remembered today, by the initials of one of its branches: the SS.

See this op-ed piece by Thom Hartmann for more detail, and more striking parallels.

The answers to the questions are...1:C. 2:E. 3:A, in a press conference during the 2000 campaign. Bush was referring to the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech, which had made him unable to shut down a parody web site, gwbush.com. 4:G. And 5 widely attributed to B, but that has been effectively debunked; thus the correct answer would be H.