Sadly, No!

… or then and now.

In September, 2002 during the run-up to the war, Condoleezza Rice said on PBS? The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:

So, yes, there are contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. We know that Saddam Hussein has a long history with terrorism in general. And there are some al Qaeda personnel who found refuge in Baghdad … There clearly are contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented … no one is trying to make an argument at this point that Saddam Hussein somehow had operational control of what happened on September 11th, so we don’t want to push this too far.

Today, in a Washington Post opinion piece obviously aimed at countering Richard Clarke?s rather explosive statements on 60 Minutes last night and in his new book Against All Enemies, Condi Rice says:

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the president, like all Americans, wanted to know who was responsible. It would have been irresponsible not to ask a question about all possible links, including to Iraq — a nation that had supported terrorism and had tried to kill a former president. Once advised that there was no evidence that Iraq was responsible for Sept. 11, the president told his National Security Council on Sept. 17 that Iraq was not on the agenda and that the initial U.S. response to Sept. 11 would be to target al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

So what exactly did Condi learn in that year between September 2001 and 2002? Shouldn?t she be testifying about this before the 9/11 commission?

And speaking of commissions, Condi Rice has been said to dream about a job as NFL commissioner. But she would probably be better as a players? agent ? la Jerry Maguire: her disingenuousness is astounding.

Many thanks to Quiditty at uggabugga and Lunaville for the database of quotes.

If you didn’t see tonight’s (Mar 21/04) 60 minutes segment with BushCo’s former counter-terrorism advisor, Richard Clarke, read the transcript: it’s devastating. Clarke served Reagan, Bush I, and through both Clinton terms as the Terrorism Czar. (Download the plain text file or the HTML formatted version I transcribed off the cached and saved audio. I checked it once for accuracy, but haven’t copy edited for spelling or punctuation.)

It’s too late for as blistering an analytical post as I’d like, but in the meantime here are a few noteworthy chunks to mull over:

CLARKE: Well Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq and we all said, ‘No no, al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan.’ Rumsfeld said, ‘There aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.’ I said, ‘Well there are lots of good targets in lots of places but Iraq had nothing to with it.’

LESLIE STAHL: You wrote you thought he was joking.

CLARKE: Initially I thought when he said there aren’t enough targets in Afghanistan, I thought he was joking.

STAHL: Now what was your reaction to all this Iraq talk? What did you tell everybody?

CLARKE: What I said was, you know, invading Iraq or bombing Iraq after we’re attacked by somebody else, it’s akin to, what if Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor instead of going to war with Japan said, “Let’s invade Mexico.” It’s very analagous.

Rumsfeld was told there simply was no Iraq connection to the 9/11 attacks, and no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, but department heads also knew:

CLARK: I told them that, George Tenet told them that …

STAHL: Who did you tell?

CLARKE: I told that to the group, to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General. They all knew it.

The President was also urged to focus on al Qaeda rather than Iraq, but rejected the advice from Clarke, the CIA and FBI and sent them back to “look again” for an Iraq/911 connection. The public record is littered with examples of Iraq on the Brain. Listening to Clarke’s frustration come through in describing what it took to get the President and the imperious heads of departments to listen was pretty damning. From the time BushCo took office, Clarke pushed for focus on al Qaeda rather than Iraq, but came up against an imperial wall of stubbornness.

CLARKE: I said, ‘Mr. President. We’ve done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There’s no connection.’ He came back at me and said, “Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there’s a connection.’ And in a very intimidating way. I mean, that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report.

STAHL: In other words, you did go back and look.

CLARKE: We went back again and we looked.

STAHL: You did. And was it a serious look? Did you really … ?

CLARKE: It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and down to FBI and said, ‘Will you sign this report?’ They all cleared the report and we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, ‘Wrong answer.’ …

STAHL: Did the President see it?

CLARKE: I have no idea to this day if the President saw it because after we did it again it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, Leslie, I don’t think the people around the President show him memos like that. I don’t think he sees memos that he wouldn’t like the answer [to].

STAHL (exposition): {Clarke was the President’s top advisor on terrorism and yet it wasn’t until after 9-11 that he ever got to brief Mr. Bush on the subject. Clarke says that prior to 9-11 this administration did not take the threat seriously.}

CLARKE: We had a terrorist organization that was going after us, al Qaeda. That should have been the first item on the agenda and it was pushed back, and back, and back for months.

Don’t you feel safer already knowing that the Presidential Gut decides what’s what and then personally, or through his staff, rejects whatever disagrees with it, as though sending back an icky looking cheeseburger? On taking office, BushCo rejected al Qaeda warnings from Clinton administration officials and from intelligence advisors within their own administration. For months, Clarke tried, and couldn’t get, cabinet-level meetings to deal specifically with al Qaeda.

CLARKE: We had a terrorist organization that was going after us, al Qaeda. That should have been the first item on the agenda and it was pushed back, and back, and back for months.

STAHL: You’re about to testify publicly before a committee that wants to know if the Bush administration dropped the ball. What are you going to tell the committee when they ask you that?

CLARKE: Well there’s a lot of blame to go around and I probably deserve some blame too. But on January 24th of 2001, I wrote a memo to Condileezza Rice asking for, urgently — underlined urgently — a cabinet level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack and that urgent memo wasn’t acted on.

STAHL: Do you blame her for not understanding the significance of terrorism?

CLARKE: I blame the entire Bush leadership for continuing to work on the Cold War issues when they came back in power in 2001. It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier. They came back, they wanted to work on the same issues right away — Iraq, Star Wars — not the new issues, the new threats that had developed over the preceding eight years […]

In April of 2001, Clarke met with Paul “We didn’t invade Iraq because of WMDs” Wolfowitz:

CLARKE: I began saying, ‘We have to deal with bin Laden. We have to deal with al Qaeda.’ Paul Wolfowitz the Deputy Sec’y of Defense said, ‘No, no, no. We don’t have to deal with al Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.’ And I said, ‘Paul, there hasn’t been any Iraqi terrorism against the Untied States in eight years,’ and I turned to the Deputy Director of [the] CIA and said, ‘Isn’t that right?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s right. There is no Iraqi terrorism against the United States.’

STAHL: In eight years.

CLARKE: In eight years.

The incident Clarke is referring to is an assassination attempt on Bush the Dad. This following passage speaks volumes about the kind of thinking BushCo considers steady wartime leadership:

CLARKE: The White House carefully manipulated public opinion, never quite lied, but gave the very strong impression that Iraq did it.

STAHL: But you’re suggesting here that they knew better —

CLARKE: They did know better.

STAHL — and it was deliberate.

CLARKE: They did know better. They did know better. We told them. The FBI told them. The CIA told them. They did know better. And the tragedy here is that Americans went to their deaths in Iraq thinking that they were avenging September 11 when Iraq had nothing to do with September 11. I think for a Commander in Chief and a Vice President to allow that to happen is unconscionable.

STAHL (exp): {And he thinks the President to this day misinterprets the nature and the scope of the terrorist threat.}

CLARKE: He asked us after 9/11 to give him cards with pictures of the major al Qaeda leaders and tell us when they were arrested or killed so he could draw X’s through their pictures, and you know, I write in the book, I have this image of George Bush sitting by a warm fireplace in the White House drawing X’s through al Qaeda leaders and thinking that he’s got most of them and therefore he’s taken care of the problem, and while George Bush thinks he’s crossing them out one by one there are all these new al Qaeda people who are being recruited who hate the United States in large measure because of what Bush has done.

Steven Hadley, No. 2 on the National Security Council, issues some dismissals and denials, even going to the “he’s cosy with Democrats I tells ya!” ploy by suggesting that Clarke intends to work for Kerry — Public Enemy Number 1! — and even going to the “Look! Clinton!” gambit. But here’s how well Hadley’s strongest feint holds up.

HADLEY: All the chatter was of an attack, a potential al Qaeda attack overseas, but interestingly enough, the President got concerned about whether there was the possibility of an attack on the homeland. … So the President put us on battle stations.

STAHL: Now he[Clarke]’s the top terrorism official in this administration at that point. He’s saying you didn’t go to battle stations.

HADLEY: Well I think that’s just wrong —

STAHL (exp): {He also says Clarke was wrong when he said the President pressured him to find a link between Iraq and 9/11}

HADLEY: We can not find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the President ever occurred.

STAHL: Now can I interrupt you for one second. We have done our own work on that ourselves and we have two sources who tell us independently of Dick Clarke that there was this encounter. One of them was an actual witness.

HADLEY: Look, the — I — I stand on what I said. But the point I think we’re missing in this is of course the President wanted to know if there was any evidence linking Iraq to 9/11.

STAHL (exp): {So he’s not denying the President asked for another review, nor is he denying that Clarke wrote a memo stating once again that Iraq was not involved in 9/11. In fact the White House showed us the memo dated September 18th. As Clarke said, it was bounced back. The notation reads, ‘Please update and resubmit,’ and it was written by Steven Hadley.}

HADLEY: I asked him to go back — not ‘wrong answer’ — I asked him to go back and check it again a week or two later to make sure there was no new emerging evidence that Iraq was involved.

STAHL (exp): {Hadley says the whole issue about Iraq was moot by the time Clarke submitted his memo, since the President, at a meeting with his War Cabinet at Camp David had already decided to focus the US response to 9/11 on Afghanistan, which is what Clarke had been recommending. But Clarke said it was not moot, because the administration wanted to make Iraq phase two of the response, no matter what happened in Afghanistan.}

VIDEOTAPE OF GW BUSH: You can’t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.

STAHL: (exp): {Clarke contends that with statements like that, the President continually left an impression that Saddam had been involved in 9/11.}

So what does the Preznit consider “battle stations”? Shortly after sending the following notice of a continuation of the “Iraq Emergency” to Congress, the President left for a month-long Crawford vacation in August, 2001.

(To Congress on July 31, 2001) Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)) provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, prior to the anniversary date of its decla-ration, the President publishes in the Federal Register and transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date. In accordance with this provision, I have sent the enclosed notice, stating that the Iraqi emergency is to continue in effect beyond August 2, 2001, to the Federal Register for publication.

The crisis between the United States and Iraq that led to the declaration on August 2, 1990, of a national emergency has not been resolved. The Government of Iraq continues to engage in activities inimical to stability in the Middle East and hostile to United States interests in the region. Such Iraqi actions pose a continuing, unusual, and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. For these reasons, I have determined that it is necessary to maintain in force the broad authorities necessary to apply economic pressure on the Government of Iraq.

This jibes with news stories referring to Karl Rove’s mention that a “new product” doesn’t get introduced before Labor Day. That new product was, of course, an Iraq invasion. The public record is filled with examples illustrating that an Iraq invasion was a set course, from the persistent campaign to discredit UN inspections, to bullying and even spying on UN diplomats, to campaigns to smear local dissenters.

Not only is this all this sleazy on its own, it persistently works to the the detriment of true national security. An administration so petty and vicious it exposes a valuable CIA agent and all her contacts throughout her long career, for nothing more than revenge and partisan gain, simply isn’t responsible enough to be entrusted with national security. Intelligence, small-i and big-I is utimately based on truth. BushCo has spent more time and resources distorting and suppressing it than working to illuminate it by adding the best information available.

I hope everyone writes their respective congresscritters demanding that any administration testimony before the 9/11 committee be public. The media and the RNC treat 9/11 as if it’s GW Bush’s personal campaign toy — you’d think all 9/11 was was the “defining moment of his presidency”. It’s bad enough that Bush has unnecessarily delayed an investigation into the WMD hype so it won’t mess up his politicking, and there’s not even a bleat of protest from the press. (Only in America …)

He shouldn’t be allowed to continue treating 9/11 like Barney biting down on a favorite bone. 9/11 wasn’t a personal attack on GW Bush, or an attack on the Republican party and the rest, collateral damage to be completely ignored.

It’s outrageous that Democrats routinely get compared to or associated with terrorists. Presumably there were no Democrats in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or the planes that crashed, among the responders and the survivors, or among the millions that watched in horror.

9/11 was an attack on the entire nation. Any hearings involving administration officials that don’t explicitly involve classified information but rather meetings and memos should be public, and televised.

Update: I’ve made minor corrections to the transcripts (corrected name spellings) and removed from this post a duplicated paste of a segment.

Remember bank-robber Ahmed Chalabi‘s recent interview in the Daily Telegraph in which he discussed accusations that he and his Iraqi National Congress misled Washington with faulty intelligence in the run-up to the war?

Mr Chalabi, by far the most effective anti-Saddam lobbyist in Washington, shrugged off charges that he had deliberately misled US intelligence. “We are heroes in error,” he told the Telegraph in Baghdad.

“As far as we’re concerned we’ve been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We’re ready to fall on our swords if he wants.”

Now we hear from brethren-in-WMDs Paul Wolfowitz on comments by Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski last week that his country was “misled” on information concerning Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction:

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, speaking on PBS’ News Hour With Jim Lehrer, questioned Kwasniewski’s comments.

“I use the word ‘misled’ when somebody knows a fact and tries to persuade you of a different fact. When somebody tells you their best estimate of a situation and it turns out to be wrong, that’s life. That happens often,” he said.

So there you have it, President Kwasniewski! That’s life! You just have to roll with the punches when you’re playing the neocon’s nation-building game! Freedom is messy!

So is the truth, apparently. Will these guys ever tell it? Sadly, no!

Okay, today’s “Everybody Loves Doug Giles” is a fast and furious ride with Roger Rabbit through the surreal and manic world of a zombie movie as sung by Celine Dion. So strap on those Biblical values and get ready to rock like it’s 1999!

Our current culture is trying to toss off Judeo-Christian ethics, as Rosie O?Donnell would a tub of low-fat yogurt.

Doug is, like one of you pointed out last week, a failed Dennis Miller wannabe (just when you thought that Dennis was about as pathetic as a man could get, you meet the man who wants to be him) who seems to make pop culture references to show that he’s hip and with it, even though they MAKE NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.

Anyway, I guess that Doug is saying that the un-thin Rosie would “toss off”a tub of low-fat yogurt — you know, because she’s lactose intolerant. And that’s like how our culture is throwing away Judeo-Christian ethics once the “use by” date has passed, even though we’re all fat and should eat low-fat yogurt, despite the fact that we don’t like it and would probably be better off just waiting for dinner.

For the last 40 years there has been a belligerent, systematic secularization of the United States by the liberal thought police, removing from all public sectors of society any semblance of biblical values, all influence of religious institutions and all sacred symbolism.

These anti-religious relativists reject the notion of an absolute standard of truth, applicable to all people, in all places and at all times. For this cabal, there is no transcendent norm of right or wrong; there is only pleasure and pain. For them, since God does not exist, or at least cannot be solidly defined ? well then, nothing is prohibited.

It?s crack night in the ferret hut, baby!

And it’s Mardi Gras in the Battle of Little Bighorn, kid. It’s “The Apprentice” in a blender, my sweet! It’s rugby in the Tilt-o-Whirl, ma petite chou!

In the PoMo world where truth is ?dead?, power becomes the operative principle of speech and the results are conformity and bullying. You know, the stuff you see on a 24/7 basis if you click on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Bravo, VH1 and MTV as they pulverize the religious traditionalist with every banal broadcast.

Well, geez, if the religious traditionalist can be pulverized by banality, then maybe he didn’t deserve to survive.

The secular revolutionaries have created a rock-solid environment of political correctness, and God help you if you rustle their feathers by not parroting their opinions. Yes, the person who champions a traditional view of truth and not hype, who stands for the historical record and not the hysterical read, and who believes that biblically based, previously proven transcendent standards should continue to serve as an external pattern to govern our nation?s character: that person will endure more scorn than Alanis Moresette?s last boyfriend.

Like somebody else pointed out last week, Doug is about 5-years behind the times in his references (and unable to spell their names correctly).

But, you know, so what? The grand, the great and the noble have never had it easy. We will get whacked, as the immortal Elmer Fudd might say, by the scared, secular ?wittle wabbits?. The secularized Sopranos will come after you, my traditional, conservative, Christian buddy, and do everything they can to suppress you. So, buy yourself some seriously protective gear ? starting with a cup and a face mask.

Okay, Doug has heard of “The Sopranos,” so maybe he didn’t really take up resident in an underground fallout shelter about the time he found religion. But is the ineffectual, stupid, weak, Elmer Fudd really who the “grand, great, and noble” are supposed to identify with? And while the wabbit was pretty secular, was he ever actually scared? I mean, didn’t he win every round with Elmer, so what did he have to be scared of? And would a cup and face mask protect you from being “suppressed” by a Sopranos-hired hitman with an Uzi?

Look ? truth has never been popular with the solipsistic navel-gazers but it is always effective and liberating, and therefore demands that we side with it, even when it?s detested. The person who holds an objective biblical view of right and wrong needs to stand up, especially in this day where evil has been twisted into appearing good and good, evil. No matter what the cost and no matter how hard he?ll be slammed in the media, in liberal chat rooms and on Salon?s blogs.

“Salon blogs”? Hey, is that a reference to World O’Crap? I bet it was! Woo hoo, Doug thinks I’m slamming him hard! This is indeed a proud day for me, Doc.

My ClashPoint is this: ?If as a nation we neglect the truth, contradict the truth or are careless with the truth then we have stumbled into a carelessness?, as Os Guinness says, ?that we can ill afford?. As individuals and as the only free superpower on the planet, we may not blow off the verities of holy writ and its time-tested values. We must not take the moral law and discard it like the planet did Geri Halliwell?s latest CD. For if we do, we?ll watch our country get torn apart quicker than a skirt marked down to $1.99 at the Gap.

I have some questions about the above paragraph: Just which are planet’s unfree superpowers? Who is Geri Halliwell? (Okay, I just looked it up — she was Ginger Spice; since she apparently hasn’t released a CD for like four years, this is another manifestation of Doug’s time warp.) And what does that line about torn apart Gap skirts mean? Seriously, does he mean that the skirt will get pulled to pieces as the shoppers fight for bargains on outdated, unfashionable clothing? Does he mean that the skirt is cheaply made (which is why it was marked down), and will rip easily when you try to put it on? Was the skirt remaindered because it has the Ten Commandments printed on it, and bought as an ironic statement by the secular revolutionaries, who then shredded it on MTV? Or was it torn to bits by the ferrets on crack? I need to know — the fate of our country is riding on it!

Let?s face it: we need committed, conservative Americans with cojones. Who cares about skin color: red, yellow, black, brown, or white? You and I must stand up for what we believe. We must be seen and heard within the public square. And we must keep at it, relentlessly.

That is, if we don?t want the greatest republic to become ? a banana republic.

Is that a reference to a mall store from five years ago, or is Doug saying that a lack of Ten Commandments monuments in our public squares will cause us to become a third-world nation, like the deeply Catholic ones of central America? And why suddenly bring race into it? Is there any logic to this column, or was it just another macarena-dancing, mood ring-wearing, “I’m the king of the world”-shouting, Pop Rock-eating rant about who knows what? I suspect the latter — but hey, I could be wrong.

Gentlethings, start your engines, or at least your VCRs and TIVOs. This is a bullseye shot headed straight for the vaunted presidential Codpiece of Justice. NSC terrorism advisor Richard Clarke’s experience certainly explains why the Terra Preznit stonewalled the 9/11 commission for so long, then had Hastert try to shut it down before the panel could get to Clarke. (Note the WH wording in the underlined non-denial denial: evidence of a conversation? Gee, why not just let the press ask him, like they do in real democracies?)

Add to this the upcoming testimony on Tuesday and Wednesday on how Dr. Rice and others ignored explicit and urgent warnings immediately after the election and it’s going to take more than wisecracks about Kerry’s Frenchness to reverse Bush’s luge ride down the polls.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, President Bush ordered his then top anti-terrorism adviser to look for a link between Iraq and the attacks, despite being told there didn’t seem to be one. The charge comes from the advisor, Richard Clarke, in an interview airing Sunday at 7 p.m. ET/PT on 60 Minutes.

The administration maintains that it cannot find any evidence that the conversation about an Iraq-9/11 tie-in ever took place. …

[Clarke]: “The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, ‘I want you to find whether Iraq did this.’ Now he never said, ‘Make it up.’ But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this. “I said, ‘Mr. President. We’ve done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There’s no connection.’ “He came back at me and said, “Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there’s a connection.’ And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report.”

Clarke continued, “It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. … It got bounced and sent back saying, ‘Wrong answer. … Do it again.’

Billmon has a great segment loaded with context and more links. And do tip the bartender; he’s the best.

As an afterthought, I’m not sure how long the chimp handlers can keep their boy away from an actual press conference for the rest of the campaign with shit like this finally coming down the pike. If Mumblechump can barely handle being gummed by Russert, even a docile press is going to spook him. His usual Francisco Franco events with tv-frame friendly backdrops and applausebots who don’t understand English are just making him look even more dispensible. I better get more popcorn.

FLIP:

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” And, “[Saddam Hussein is] a threat because he is dealing with al Qaeda.” 3/17/03 George W. Bush

FLOP:

DIANE SAWYER: But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still ?

PRESIDENT BUSH: So what’s the difference?– ABC interview 12/16/03

He should ask Mr. Aznar’s party if there’s any difference between holding office and being trounced out in ignominy. Then get his head of his ass and read the writing on the wall.

Worldwide protests demand Iraq pullout – From Sydney to Tokyo, from Santiago, Chile, to Madrid, London, New York and San Francisco, demonstrators on Saturday condemned U.S. policy in Iraq and said they did not believe Iraqis were better off or the world safer because of the war. Journalists estimated that at least a million people streamed through Rome, in probably the biggest single protest.

Here’s me giving a shout-out to Dr. No! in case his channel surfing coincided with me caught on camera kicking a cop in the nuts. (No, not really. It was perfectly peaceful where I was and the Law was amiable and helpful.)

I can’t say I have the same expectation from the thugs the Bush administration just hired for the campaign. The Emperor is protected by a large and efficient Secret Service detail. His delicate eyes are shielded from dissent by sucking local homeland security coffers dry to keep anti-Bush signs out of camera range. (And no doubt taxpayer Joe Schmuck agrees that protecting the Emperor’s image is more important than having an efficient local response to terror.)

Yet BushCo has retained the Vance Corporation, a private security firm with an unsavory record for being associated with violence during labor disputes, as reported at Kos. Atrios has entries on Vance here and here. Demonstrators at any lefty assembly should digitally archive any incidents of people trying to start fights so the images can immediately be uploaded and matched to Rethug wonks, as happened with the Pasty Guys in Beige Pants Riots of Election 2000. (The Vance guys are pro headbusters, though, and we have a right to know what role Bush/Cheney intends them to play.)

Some demonstration pictures from around the globe (out of the Yahoo slideshow):

Code Pink
You go, Congresswoman Waters!
The Real Axis of Evil
Why aren’t they arresting Total Dick Cheney instead?
This death wasn’t newsworthy to domestic media

(Note: apologies to anyone who had their surfing disrupted as I fixed some links.)

During your travels today, be sure to add your voice to the worldwide anti-war, anti-Bush protest by making an appearance at the demonstration in your area. Check your local activist pages or jump to them from IndyMedia.org.

If you’re house- or work-bound, reach out and touch your local media with a phonecall or email. Make sure they take a break from their infomercial coverage of Preznit Photo-Op to show actual democracy in action.

As part of an effort to provide new and exciting wingnuts for your reading pleasure, allow me to present Paula Devlin (who lives where “the men still put their pants on one leg at a time” and who writes for many of the low-rent wingnut sites), with an essay on Holy Matrimony: Church v. State

The allowing of marriage outside the churches, under the control of the civil authorities, has ruined it and the family along with it.

With an opening sentence like that, you know this is going to be good.

The concept of civil marriage originated with Luther (no doubt because of his personal situation) and became public policy after the French Revolution.

For thousands of years and in every culture, matrimony has had religious connotations: a ceremony with offering sacrifices or prayers (only the married realize how much they are needed) are common everywhere.

And marriage, of course, has never been primarily a religious institution (the transmission of property was a very important aspect of it, I believe), but let’s move on.

Civil marriage is fatally flawed as detrimental to public morality. No-fault divorce, available since the early 1970?s, has made a mess of so many lives that it should be banned immediately. Women and children are the losers in most divorces, especially in the lower classes: so many end up in poverty and even worse situations.

We were warned of the dangers of civil marriage over 100 years ago, when it was noted that it would open the floodgate of unbridled license.

But if civil marriage started with Martin Luther in the 1400’s, why didn’t anybody warn us about it and its license until the Victorian age?

Even then, Socialists were responsible for the advocacy of free love. Their view of the world as completely materialistic is wrong. They do not believe there is a final accounting for one?s actions. Regardless, it prevails, to the detriment of all.

But “free love” holds that if a couple are “soul mates,” then nature has joined them together and they don’t need the blessings of the church or the state. And besides, there are very few socialists in America these days. So, what does “free love” have to do with divorce, civil marriage, or anything else we’ve been talking about so far?

Holy matrimony has been the basis for a stable, productive society. There are those who saw that to destroy the family would provide a chink in a nation?s armor which would help bring it down. Families with multiple sets of parents, siblings and sleeping arrangements cannot be the best character-nurturing environment for children. Add to this instability the cultural influences from government schools, music and television.

So, is Paula claiming that “those” (maybe the Socialists, or possibly the Stalinists) are causing American families to have step-siblings and multiple sleeping arrangements, as part of an effort to bring down America? If so, you have to admire their power over us.

The family as the building block of society has been destroyed and replaced with impersonal institutional propagandizing. Children are ultimately under the control of the state, which is the moral equivalent of being under the control of the devil.

America, the nation, is good and pure, but America, the state, is the devil? I’m really getting confused here.

Giving civil authorities ultimate power over matrimony marked a subtle transition in the philosophy of government. It made matrimony a political issue, subject to mob rule. We can blame the greedy American Bar Association for no-fault divorce. We can blame ourselves for not passing legislation banning this over-funded retirement plan for lawyers.

Oh, if only we had stopped that damned Martin Luther when we had the chance! And now the civil benefits that come from matrimony are in the hands of the state, and the churches are not allowed to give out tax breaks or survivor benefits, which is certainly not the way it was in the good, old days.

And it’s the greedy ABA which reaps the benefits of sin, in the form of Cadillacs and swimming pools, all because we let them talk us into no-fault divorce.

And now we get to the topic you knew this was leading to the whole time — gay marriage.

As for the union of people of the same sex, I am sorry but my mind cannot get around the concept. At best, it is an oxymoron that defies logic. Plumbers know how pipes fit together. I?m not a plumber, but those pipes don?t fit. It is against the natural law.

And as famous greedy lawyer Johnny Cochrane said, “If the pipes don’t fit, you can’t commit.”

Yes, yes, yes, there have always been folks of that inclination, but there have also always been alcoholics, schizophrenics, pedophiles, sadists, politicians, hookers, etc. Evil has always been part of the human condition. But the object of the game has been to overcome it, not jump in with both feet and enjoy it. That?s a Christian concept. And now, in our brave new world order, Christianity is not politically correct, so you can forget about positive things such as charity, fraternal correction, forbearance and run for your lives.

I think what Paula is saying here is that homosexuals, alcoholics, and schizophrenics are evil, and they and others of their ilk (like pedophiles, hookers and politicians), shouldn’t be allowed to marry. You know, because because charitable, forbearing people like Paula don’t like their inclinations.

If ?The Passion? is being attacked as Hate Speech, then these screaming ninnies will attack anything that smacks of conscience as hate speech, including this.

Paula, like Johnny also said, “If the shoe does fit, you must wear it.”

That kind of behavior supports the diagnosis of poor home training. This circle of evil is complete.

I have no idea what that even means, but I’m sure Paula meant it in a charitable way.

But join us next time, when Paula talks about Bolsheviks and Serfdom, American Style and advises:

It wasn?t so long ago property owners could shoot trespassers. Now the trespassers have all the rights, especially illegal immigrants. They should not even have legal standing. Property owners who have illegals on their property should shoot them on sight and ask questions later.

Hey, I told you she was charitable.

“[The coalition of the willing] contains many governments that have done their utmost to suppress and stifle the independent media in their countries. … At a time when the United States and Great Britain are promising to introduce democracy to postwar Iraq, it is troubling to see them aligned with so many authoritarian states.” – J. P. Fritz, International Press Institute

Of course the attack dogs are baying about Kerry stating the obvious: that most foreign leaders don’t want Bush back. After three clueless years, why should this administration suddenly be aware of world opinion? These are the same guys who paid Iraqis wanted abroad for fraud millions for WMD information, then spent $200 billion more to retrieve magic beans (literally, castor beans.)

This goofy GOP ‘group bellows’ tactic to fan offhanded comments into scandal won’t offset the First Liar’s mountain of mendacity, but today it does deflect from why BushCo’s sending business Myanmar’s way after making it illegal to import their goods. (I guess it’s only illegal for anyone outside the Bush/Dick campaign.) If you want an explanation on the flip flop, do call the RNC phonebank in India, set up to promote the fabulously successful “Jobs & Growth” initiative.

Since the theme of this Friday’s news dump is this administration’s ever-shifting foreign policy — dictatorships and democracies being good or evil depending on the Presidential GI Tract — savor a taste of the steady moral clarity that makes him so loved and respected around the world.

This leafleting campaign was part of a GOP initiative to keep the wartime Preznit steadily focused on wartime issues such as wartime fundraising, wartime vacationing, and wartime taking breaks from the other two.

Getting together an international coalition of countries the Preznit could actually articulate wasn’t a priority once mighty Eritrea had the USA’s back in Iraq. And don’t get me going on fabulous Micronesia, a nation founded after the Mini-nesia fad turned out to be both swinging and groovy.

For unimportant lands like Canada and Mexico who merely watch our borders, it was simpler to distill rude messages that couldn’t be delivered by a barking Rummy or a snapping Condi in person. Don’t think our allies didn’t appreciate that!

Seb has emailed me, from his hospital bed, to inform me that Amber wishes it to be known that she does so have a boyfriend. So, I guess her remarks about men who use evolution as an excuse to seek out younger, hotter babes is not derived from personal experience but from Darwin’s writings. (And I guess this means our matchmaking efforts were not needed, and we can get back to finding a man for Condi Rice.)

Per Seb, Amber also wants us to be more timely in our distortion and mocking of her columns. She has a new one up at Men’sNewsDaily [it’s about Iranian Youth], and she suggests that we get to it more quickly this time.

But you know, I just don’t feel like it. Sure, it contains good bits, like “the rioting students might eek out the truth,” and “The PC left can?t admit that radical Islam is oppressing a population that wants a distinctly secular government,” but it just doesn’t inspire me today. But if you want to check it out, first read this other piece at Men’sNewsDaily (by an actualy Iranian, albeit one living in London), so you’ll be able to sorta follow what she’s talking about.

And if you don’t want to go to all the bother, here are a couple of paragraphs to give you the flavor of her latest ouevre:

The Western media, professors, etc., identify with the Palestinians and such, because the Palestinians are driven by hatred ? the only ?freedom? they want is the freedom to blow up their neighbors. But the Iranians genuinely want freedom ? the freedom to think and produce and progress. Leftists cannot intellectually sympathize with people who want this kind of freedom. To leftists, the only kind of ?freedom? they can understand is the right to smoke marijuana or swear on the radio.

Anyone who has an ounce of a love for life and a desire to see good things happen cannot helped but be romanced by the Iranian youth. The Iranian culture is one that is undeniably beautiful ? grounded in secularism, reason, and prosperity. You would have to be completely heartless to talk to an Iranian ? to see how bright and accomplished they are, how much good their culture has brought to the world ? and not be whisked away, desiring freedom for them.

And now, my Amber obligations fulfilled, I’m going to go smoke some marijuana and swear on the radio. Or at it. Same thing.