[Gimpy]

Weapons Of Mass Stupidity

It's the inviolable first rule of democracy that all politicians will praise the wisdom of the people -- an effusive flattery that intensifies when they ask "the people" to swallow something exceptionally inedible. What the people never hear from anyone, or from anyone with further ambitions, is the truth.

It is and has always been true, in Samuel Johnson's famous words, that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" -- by which, of course, Dr. Johnson meant patriotism as a political and rhetorical weapon, not as a private emotion. Belittling other people's patriotism to achieve political leverage is the lowest road a public scoundrel can travel, the road where neo-conservative meets neo-fascist.

In flag-frenzied attacks, an unscrupulous administration found a blunt object ready-made to hammer its critics. IT'S UNPATRIOTIC TO OPPOSE THE ADMINISTRATIONS ACTIONS AT THIS TIME!....................Horse$hit!

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public," said President Theodore Roosevelt.


The invasion of Iraq was in no way what it seemed to be, either. Saddam Hussein was never a threat to the United States. His "weapons of mass destruction" remain invisible, his terrorist connections remain unproven, and he had absolutely nothing to do with the destruction of the World Trade Center. Most cynical of all was the "liberation" lie, the administration's sudden concern for the helpless citizens of Iraq. Saddam, as grotesque as he was, wasn't getting any meaner, and "liberators" like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were doing brisk business with him when he was in his murderous, citizen-eating prime (and in Cheney's case, as recently as 1999 when he was at Halliburton). It would take half a page to list all the US-sanctioned dictators, killers of their people, who will be sharing hell's hottest corner with Saddam Hussein.


They don't make Republicans like they used to. The troop-support doctrine, so universally and smugly conceded (as is the arguement about WMD), is logic for the intellectually disabled, for people who've been hit in the head repeatedly with a heavy shovel. The stupidity of those who buy it is no more astonishing than the hypocrisy of those who sell it -- Republicans (not all, but especially the radical neo-cons) who preach our sacred duty to the army's morale and simultaneously cancel $15 billion in veteran's benefits and 60 percent of federal education subsidies for servicemen's children, along with all the unmentioned inadequacies being instituted against veterans and their families, are just that........HYPOCRITES! If you can't believe that, look it up, it IS in the public record!

PS............Scamp................No that does NOT make me "squirt". We all have things in our past we "regret" we may have had to do in order to make a living! Your post was.......as Larry said.......straightforward and too the point! Your statement, and I quote."I further assert that Iraqi forces were about to be routed with absolutely nothing standing between the Islamic Shiite fanatical hordes and the Port of Aden but distance, period. I don?t know that is a reason to introduce WMD, but it was the apparent reason at the time. Oh what a wonderful world. " End quote!

This was NO reason ...........as the Geneva convention has proclaimed BTW....for US (the United States of America under the leadership of of Ronnie Reagen, George the First, then VP , Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld) to offer up these weapons or the means and methods to procure them, manufacture them and ESPECIALLY use them! Just as the original post states.....this administration and members of the current "leadership" within the party of Lincoln are guilty of at best ...Hypocrisy.........and at WORST.......untold, lies and deception to advance their 'agenda"!