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As you know our economy is headed towards basketcase status, but there is a simple solution to saving our economy and it doesn’t involve a single tax increase to anyone in the United States. However, those who believe war heals all wounds and is a preventative cure all will not like this solution because quite simply the most effective way to save the economy is to drastically reduce defense spending. The way I see it we could reduce our annual defense spending by about 500 billion. We’d still be spending about 200 billion annually on defense expenditures, but we’d still be spending more than three times as much money per year on defense than our leading competitors, and we’d still outspend them if they all combined against us.
2 France 61,571,330,000
3 United Kingdom 61,280,890,000
4 People’s Republic of China 61,036,400,000
For what its worth out of the second, third, and fourth ranked nations in yearly military spending (we are in first place at over 700 billion) only China could be deemed as a threat to our national security and they have an annual budget of a little more than 61 billion. You wanna toss in the big bad Russkies, they must be bad because I saw Red Dawn the other day, and you get another 50 billion per year. China and Russia together (arguably our biggest rivals) spend 111 billion a year on defense. Somewhere out there at least one hawk is thinking about the doomsday scenario of what would happen if the Peoples’ Republic of China and the Russian Federation linked up with the two remaining members of the fantastical Axis of Evil. As far as spending goes this would not be a problem as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea combined only spend 112 billion combined. Iran, alone, spends six billion a year on military expenditures, and I have to say that I have to agree with John McCain a nation that spends that little on military expenses has got to be “an exististional threat to the United States.” The other member of Axis of Evil, North Korea, spends 5.5 billion dollars.
Of course the member nations of the Axis of Evil may be looking for new members since uber evil and overwhelmingly powerful Iraq (you know the ones who were going to take out Israel, Kuwait and make Europe into a Caliphate before they marched through Downtown Manhattan, but who oddly enough were completely occupied in less than four weeks) was squashed. So lets say, for hypothetical purposes, that the Axis of Evil in its usual comic book style knights Cuba and Venezuela as evil enough for membership. Lets say for a moment that both Cuba and Venezuela (two nations with governments we don’t like so surely thats recipricol and not just empty rhetoric spewed from those in the military industrial lobbyists on K-Street) should combine their spending power with the traditional boogey men countries of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. First lets examine Cuba, this tropical gulag is led by Castro who has to be the worst man alive considering the millions of man hours the CIA has invested, along with a billion or so dollars, over the years to kill him. Cuba spends 694 million per anum on defense. The other Latin candidate for the Axis of Evil is Venezuela. Chavez spends 4 billion per year on defense. Our biggest threats, as far as nation states go, spend a combined 127 billion a year. Which means that we could cut our spending by more than 500 billion and still nearly spend twice the amount of money a year on defense that they spend combined.
Oh sure, this would mean less foreign adventures such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. No cool quagmires or humanitarian disasters, not as many new toys either. We’d have to cancel our antagonistic manhood measuring contest, aka our missile defense shield, in Poland and the Czech Republic. We’d have to leave the Balkans, we’d have to stop training the Georgians on how to commit genocide and blame the Russians for it, but we’d still be able to have a well equipped Army, Air Force, and Navy. Naturally, we would have to quit the cowboy diplomacy of the past eight years with actual diplomacy and we could do this and still have a defense budget that is more than three times larger than that of our nearest competitor. We’d still be able to respond to threats and while we wouldn’t be able to do away with the yearly income tax we could give every single American tax payer a stimulus check for the amount of 2500 dollars.
So to reiterate, all we would have to do would be to cut defense spending from 700 billion to 200 billion (a slash of 500 billion) per year and we could either take that money and save social security, have universal healthcare, build new energy and transportation infrastructure, build and fund more schools and universities, or just simply give every American tax payer (all two hundred million) a 2500 dollar stimulus check.
A lot of GOPers are giddy over the ever weakening prospect that Barack Obama does not meet the citizenship requirements for the American presidency. To support their claim they suggest that Obama’s father is Kenyan, that he has siblings in Kenya, and that he will not release his birth certificate for public scrutiny. When Obama produced evidence to prove, beyond a shadow of doubt, that he is an American citizen by birth, the dullards in the GOP hardliner camp said that this document was clearly a forgery. Fortunately, as they always do, FactCheck.Org came through with the final verdict in this matter. Here is the full findings of FactCheck:
Since we first wrote about Obama’s birth certificate on June 16, speculation on his citizenship has continued apace. Some claim that Obama posted a fake birth certificate to his Web page. That charge leaped from the blogosphere to the mainstream media earlier this week when Jerome Corsi, author of a book attacking Obama, repeated the claim in an Aug. 15 interview with Steve Doocy on Fox News.
Corsi: Well, what would be really helpful is if Senator Obama would release primary documents like his birth certificate. The campaign has a false, fake birth certificate posted on their website. How is anybody supposed to really piece together his life?
Doocy: What do you mean they have a “false birth certificate” on their Web site?
Corsi: The original birth certificate of Obama has never been released, and the campaign refuses to release it.
Doocy: Well, couldn’t it just be a State of Hawaii-produced duplicate?
Corsi: No, it’s a — there’s been good analysis of it on the Internet, and it’s been shown to have watermarks from Photoshop. It’s a fake document that’s on the Web site right now, and the original birth certificate the campaign refuses to produce.
Corsi isn’t the only skeptic claiming that the document is a forgery. Among the most frequent objections we saw on forums, blogs and e-mails are:
The birth certificate doesn’t have a raised seal.
It isn’t signed.
No creases from folding are evident in the scanned version.
In the zoomed-in view, there’s a strange halo around the letters.
The certificate number is blacked out.
The date bleeding through from the back seems to say “2007,” but the document wasn’t released until 2008.
The document is a “certification of birth,” not a “certificate of birth.”
Recently FactCheck representatives got a chance to spend some time with the birth certificate, and we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. We can assure readers that the certificate does bear a raised seal, and that it’s stamped on the back by Hawaii state registrar Alvin T. Onaka (who uses a signature stamp rather than signing individual birth certificates). We even brought home a few photographs.
The Obama birth certificate, held by FactCheck writer Joe Miller
Alvin T. Onaka’s signature stamp
The raised seal
Blowup of text
You can click on the photos to get full-size versions, which haven’t been edited in any way, except that some have been rotated 90 degrees for viewing purposes.
The certificate has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a U.S. passport: “your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.” The names, date and place of birth, and filing date are all evident on the scanned version, and you can see the seal above.
The document is a “certification of birth,” also known as a short-form birth certificate. The long form is drawn up by the hospital and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents’ hometowns. The short form is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health’s birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department. We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response.
The scan released by the campaign shows halos around the black text, making it look (to some) as though the text might have been pasted on top of an image of security paper. But the document itself has no such halos, nor do the close-up photos we took of it. We conclude that the halo seen in the image produced by the campaign is a digital artifact from the scanning process.
We asked the Obama campaign about the date stamp and the blacked-out certificate number. The certificate is stamped June 2007, because that’s when Hawaii officials produced it for the campaign, which requested that document and “all the records we could get our hands on” according to spokesperson Shauna Daly. The campaign didn’t release its copy until 2008, after speculation began to appear on the Internet questioning Obama’s citizenship. The campaign then rushed to release the document, and the rush is responsible for the blacked-out certificate number. Says Shauna: “[We] couldn’t get someone on the phone in Hawaii to tell us whether the number represented some secret information, and we erred on the side of blacking it out. Since then we’ve found out it’s pretty irrelevant for the outside world.” The document we looked at did have a certificate number; it is 151 1961 – 010641.
Blowup of certificate number
Some of the conspiracy theories that have circulated about Obama are quite imaginative. One conservative blogger suggested that the campaign might have obtained a valid Hawaii birth certificate, soaked it in solvent, then reprinted it with Obama’s information. Of course, this anonymous blogger didn’t have access to the actual document and presents this as just one possible “scenario” without any evidence that such a thing actually happened or is even feasible.
We also note that so far none of those questioning the authenticity of the document have produced a shred of evidence that the information on it is incorrect. Instead, some speculate that somehow, maybe, he was born in another country and doesn’t meet the Constitution’s requirement that the president be a “natural-born citizen.”
We think our colleagues at PolitiFact.com, who also dug into some of these loopy theories put it pretty well: “It is possible that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world’s biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything’s possible. But step back and look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what’s reasonable has to take over.”
In fact, the conspiracy would need to be even deeper than our colleagues realized. In late July, a researcher looking to dig up dirt on Obama instead found a birth announcement that had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961:
Obama’s birth announcement
The announcement was posted by a pro-Hillary Clinton blogger who grudgingly concluded that Obama “likely” was born Aug. 4, 1961 in Honolulu.
Of course, it’s distantly possible that Obama’s grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his U.S. citizenship in order to run for president someday. We suggest that those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat. The evidence is clear: Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A.
Update, August 26: We received responses to some of our questions from the Hawaii Department of Health. They couldn’t tell us anything about their security paper, but they did answer another frequently-raised question: why is Obama’s father’s race listed as “African”? Kurt Tsue at the DOH told us that father’s race and mother’s race are supplied by the parents, and that “we accept what the parents self identify themselves to be.” We consider it reasonable to believe that Barack Obama, Sr., would have thought of and reported himself as “African.” It’s certainly not the slam dunk some readers have made it out to be.
When we asked about the security borders, which look different from some other examples of Hawaii certifications of live birth, Kurt said “The borders are generated each time a certified copy is printed. A citation located on the bottom left hand corner of the certificate indicates which date the form was revised.” He also confirmed that the information in the short form birth certificate is sufficient to prove citizenship for “all reasonable purposes.”
Regardless of the insipid hopes of the most banal members of the GOP elite -including Pat Robertson, Carl Rove, and Trailer Park Trash across the land- Barack Obama is an American citizen by birth, but what about John Sydney McCain? The All American grumpy old white guy running for the GOP. Well, his citizenship is at least as questionable as Obama. McCain, you see, was born in the Panama Canal Zone which -although at the time was an American territory- is not a part of the United States. According to the New York Times:
Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.
Almost since those words were written in 1787 with scant explanation, their precise meaning has been the stuff of confusion, law school review articles, whisper campaigns and civics class debates over whether only those delivered on American soil can be truly natural born. To date, no American to take the presidential oath has had an official birthplace outside the 50 states.
“There are powerful arguments that Senator McCain or anyone else in this position is constitutionally qualified, but there is certainly no precedent,” said Sarah H. Duggin, an associate professor of law at Catholic University who has studied the issue extensively. “It is not a slam-dunk situation.”
Mr. McCain was born on a military installation in the Canal Zone, where his mother and father, a Navy officer, were stationed. His campaign advisers say they are comfortable that Mr. McCain meets the requirement and note that the question was researched for his first presidential bid in 1999 and reviewed again this time around.
But given mounting interest, the campaign recently asked Theodore B. Olson, a former solicitor general now advising Mr. McCain, to prepare a detailed legal analysis. “I don’t have much doubt about it,” said Mr. Olson, who added, though, that he still needed to finish his research.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and one of Mr. McCain’s closest allies, said it would be incomprehensible to him if the son of a military member born in a military station could not run for president.
“He was posted there on orders from the United States government,” Mr. Graham said of Mr. McCain’s father. “If that becomes a problem, we need to tell every military family that your kid can’t be president if they take an overseas assignment.”
The phrase “natural born” was in early drafts of the Constitution. Scholars say notes of the Constitutional Convention give away little of the intent of the framers. Its origin may be traced to a letter from John Jay to George Washington, with Jay suggesting that to prevent foreigners from becoming commander in chief, the Constitution needed to “declare expressly” that only a natural-born citizen could be president.
Ms. Duggin and others who have explored the arcane subject in depth say legal argument and basic fairness may indeed be on the side of Mr. McCain, a longtime member of Congress from Arizona. But multiple experts and scholarly reviews say the issue has never been definitively resolved by either Congress or the Supreme Court.
Ms. Duggin favors a constitutional amendment to settle the matter. Others have called on Congress to guarantee that Americans born outside the national boundaries can legitimately see themselves as potential contenders for the Oval Office.
“They ought to have the same rights,” said Don Nickles, a former Republican senator from Oklahoma who in 2004 introduced legislation that would have established that children born abroad to American citizens could harbor presidential ambitions without a legal cloud over their hopes. “There is some ambiguity because there has never been a court case on what ‘natural-born citizen’ means.”
Mr. McCain’s situation is different from those of the current governors of California and Michigan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jennifer M. Granholm, who were born in other countries and were first citizens of those nations, rendering them naturalized Americans ineligible under current interpretations. The conflict that could conceivably ensnare Mr. McCain goes more to the interpretation of “natural born” when weighed against intent and decades of immigration law.
Mr. McCain is not the first person to find himself in these circumstances. The last Arizona Republican to be a presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, faced the issue. He was born in the Arizona territory in 1909, three years before it became a state. But Goldwater did not win, and the view at the time was that since he was born in a continental territory that later became a state, he probably met the standard.
It also surfaced in the 1968 candidacy of George Romney, who was born in Mexico, but again was not tested. The former Connecticut politician Lowell P. Weicker Jr., born in Paris, sought a legal analysis when considering the presidency, an aide said, and was assured he was eligible. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. was once viewed as a potential successor to his father, but was seen by some as ineligible since he had been born on Campobello Island in Canada. The 21st president, Chester A. Arthur, whose birthplace is Vermont, was rumored to have actually been born in Canada, prompting some to question his eligibility.
Quickly recognizing confusion over the evolving nature of citizenship, the First Congress in 1790 passed a measure that did define children of citizens “born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States to be natural born.” But that law is still seen as potentially unconstitutional and was overtaken by subsequent legislation that omitted the “natural-born” phrase.
Mr. McCain’s citizenship was established by statutes covering the offspring of Americans abroad and laws specific to the Canal Zone as Congress realized that Americans would be living and working in the area for extended periods. But whether he qualifies as natural-born has been a topic of Internet buzz for months, with some declaring him ineligible while others assert that he meets all the basic constitutional qualifications — a natural-born citizen at least 35 years of age with 14 years of residence.
“I don’t think he has any problem whatsoever,” said Mr. Nickles, a McCain supporter. “But I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if somebody is going to try to make an issue out of it. If it goes to court, I think he will win.”
Lawyers who have examined the topic say there is not just confusion about the provision itself, but uncertainty about who would have the legal standing to challenge a candidate on such grounds, what form a challenge could take and whether it would have to wait until after the election or could be made at any time.
In a paper written 20 years ago for the Yale Law Journal on the natural-born enigma, Jill Pryor, now a lawyer in Atlanta, said that any legal challenge to a presidential candidate born outside national boundaries would be “unpredictable and unsatisfactory.”
“If I were on the Supreme Court, I would decide for John McCain,” Ms. Pryor said in a recent interview. “But it is certainly not a frivolous issue.”
In my personal opinion Obama, by virtue of his Hawaiin birth certificatem and McCain, by virtue of being born on a United States Military Base to parents who were in the service of the United States government, both meet the citizenship qualifications required of them in the constitution. However, if you want to make an argument out of it then it would appear that McCain would have a much rougher time proving his citizenship by birth than Obama would. After all Obama has a birth certificate issued by the state of Hawaii -and contrary to the bizaare apocalyptic ramblings of Pat Robertson he has been quite open regarding his birth certificate- whereas McCain has a Panamanian registration.
Waaah, Waaaah, Waaaah, in case you are wondering those whining sounds are the words of Mikheil American Neocon Puppet Saakashvili regarding Russia’s latest dealings with South Ossetia. Now, Mr. Saakashvili South Ossetia is a sovereign state -oh sure your handlers in DC have not yet recognized South Ossetia’s independence, but Moscow and many other capitals have- and you need to stay out of their affairs. So Russia has placed 2000 troops in a sovereign state who have requested Russian support.
I understand that from reading Yahoo’s article on this: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081023/wl_nm/us_georgia_ossetia_troops#full that you would believe that Russia has launched more aggression, but when you consider that a Georgian wrote this article it becomes little more than an Op-Ed piece and once again the American media has been shamefully biased. Russia is protecting the sovereignty of a state that has been at least nominally independent since 1991 and it would be aggression on the part of Georgia if Russia was forced to remove their protective forces from South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Make no mistake Saakashvili is a neoconservative thug who has attempted to embroil the United States into his anti Ossetian and Abkhazian ethnic cleansing. Even more shameful is the fact that he has quite literally purchased -via one million dollars in campaign contributions- McCain’s support for his genocidal aggression. Saakashvili has cracked down on the freedoms of the Georgian people, he has arrested political dissidents, and he has waged a war of ethnic cleansing on Ethnic Russians. My prayers are with the Russian, Georgian, South Ossetian, and Abkhazian people but Saakashvili is a thug.
According to Article 51 of the UN charter and the recent peace deal brokered by the French, the Russians have every right to remain in South Ossetia to protect the Ossetians from Georgian aggression. It is a disgraceful day in world affairs when Saakashvili gets to dictate, or even tries to dictate, the relationship between two sovereign states. The people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are predominantly Russian and they should have every right to secede from Georgia or to merge with the Russian Federation.
Now I realize that some people, who unfortunately only watch the American media (which is dominated by the geopolitical interests of its corporate parents who happen to be heavily invested in oil and military manufacture), will blubber and spout that Russia is the aggressor here. However, this could not be further from the truth. It was Georgia, not Russia, who launched the aggression into South Ossetia. Russia stopped an ethnic cleansing and gets blamed for it? There is something seriously wrong with that and for us, with our record of preemption in the Balkans and Irag, to condemn them is down right hypocritical.
Do you remember when we were powerful enough to tell every other state in the Western Hemisphere what they could and could not do? Do you remember when we deposed and drop kicked those who dared to set out on a competing or non aligned foreign policy? Well those days are now gone. Most of this blame actually rests on the Bush administration because, other than Cuba, we pretty much controlled the foreign policy strategy of the respective nations of Central and South America. Because of the current failed regime of the failed Dictator in Washington we are now weak in our foreign policy. If someone wants to hammer out a peace deal they look to France, Great Britain, the European Union, or gasp even Russia.
Now we talk a lot of game, but we no longer have it. During the recent Georgia fiasco -whether you feel Saakashvilli is a slimeball stooge (he is by the way) is immaterial- Russia proved to the rest of the world that we are no longer credible as a world power and that outside Iraq, we are winning that war as much because the Sunni want to have a say in the aftermath when we finally leave town and so they are cracking down on the foreign terrorists as we are because of our troops. We have learned this decade that America is still able to project its power, but has done so more and more ineptly. In Afghanistan we only control the northern territory, Khandahar, and Kabul (actually the various tribes own the northern territory and those tribes still shift their alliegence when they feel they can get a better deal elsewhere. In Pakistan we risk going to war against a nation that is nuclear tipped and increasingly at odds with our government due to our incursions into their territory and their reluctance to hand over Bin Laden reveals that we cannot even bring those who have caused so much devastation to justice. In Iraq we learned that we cannot even defeat an enemy in a nation whose infrastructure we spent ten years obliterating. While it is quite shameful that we can no longer conduct wars of empire, dictate peace terms, or isolate those whom we consider hostile it is even more alarming that we can no longer even enforce the Monroe Doctrine. This failure is evidenced by the fact that Bolivia and Venezuela are currently taking a pro Havana, Beijing, and Moscow line and we are essentially powerless to stop them from pursuing their own course.
Venezuela signals above anything else that DC no longer is capable of projecting its influence even as far as the Caribbean. From Russia today we learn quite a bit about the details of Chavez’s recent alliance and partnership with Putin and Medvedev.
They have also landed TU-160s in Venezuela and in the most ominous step taken by Caracas and Moscow yet Russia is preparing to help Chavez build nuclear reactors:
Putin: Nuclear energy deal possible with Venezuela
Russia is ready to consider making an nuclear energy deal with Venezuela, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said at a meeting with President Hugo Chavez in Moscow. He says there is also space for co-operation in hi-tech, engineering and petro-chemistry fields.
Hugo Chavez has arrived in Moscow with a two-day visit.
The relations between the countries are at their best in years. Moscow has recently sent warships to South America to take part in joint military exercises with Venezuela.
The Venezuelan leader’s invitation to host both Russian bombers and the Russian Navy came a month before the U.S. ordered its warships to enter the Black Sea.
Moscow and Caracas say they had an earlier agreement to conduct military exercises and deny any connection between the presence of the U.S. Navy near Russian borders and the Russian fleet heading to America’s backyard.
The nuclear-powered Peter the Great cruiser, an anti-submarine ship and 2 support vessels are now preparing to cross the Atlantic, but Russian Navy officials say the trip has no political implications.
“We are not going to demonstrate any aggressive intentions. The fleet has always been and will remain a deterrent,” insists Russian Navy spokesperson Igor Dygalo.
The ships started off just days after two Russian TU-160 strategic long-range bombers, carrying no nuclear weapons, returned to their home base in Russia after a week of maneuvers in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez said he was satisfied with the flight.
“Russian planes flew across the Atlantic and Caribbean. I do not know when they will return, but any time they want to return – they can do that. Venezuela is their home. Russia plays a role of a true friend and ally,” said Venezuelan president.
To read more about Russia’s Navy in Venezuela, please follow the link
During his current visit, Hugo Chavez is going to discuss energy, scientific and technological cooperation.
Previous such meetings have already brought tangible results and today leading Russian companies are now building their presence in the Venezuelan market.
In turn, Venezuela has already purchased billions of dollars worth of arms from Russia, including military helicopters and Kalashnikov rifles.
Hello out there, the disinterested cynic here. Today we will talk about how the Republicans love Welfare, Big Government, and giving hand outs to foreigners. Now I know some of you pachyderms (in case you are a true Republican it means elephant) out there will say, “buyh buh Obama da one that raise tax, gib welfare, and grow gubmint, n give aid to people from other nations en stuff.” No, sorry you would only be partially correct. You see while the GOP, this includes McCain and saintess Sarah, boast about cutting government programs meant for the poor -especially welfare and social security- and how they ensured personal responsibility by limiting the ability of folks like you and me to seek shelter in personal bankruptcy they have done their best to provide welfare for their connections in banking and big business, and when the corporatists need cash the GOP is oh so willing to open up your pocket book and give their buddies a loan. Now I don’t know about you, but I know for a fact that if I could not meet my financial obligations and I walked into the Treasury Department and asked them to give me someone else’s money I would be laughed at and committed to an insane asylum.
See the problem I have with these bailouts is not that they are bailing out the corporations who mismanaged so much money, but that the same people who voted for S. 256 -which essentially eliminated chapter seven bankruptcy protection and made chapter thirteen much harder to get- were the same exact critters who supported the bailout. To be fair Barack Obama voted against S. 256 but John McCain voted in favor of it. So while McCain is against using tax payer money and loans from foreign countries he has no problem using your money to bail out his rich friends. Now don’t take my word for it, let the man’s record speak for itself:
See its okay for the GOP to be against giving money to the poor- thats what the GOP does- but giving money to the corporate elite is just plain wrong. The Republicans have proven that as long as you make over five million a year and own a major corporation they have no problem helping you out in time of need, but if you are working class or lower middle class then you are on your own.
Now, I am going to play you a clip of a John McCain attack ad where McCain attacks Obama and his liberal allies for increasing the size of the government.
Now I would not have a problem with this commercial other than to say that McCain’s support of bailing out the felled big boys by creating a new oversight and lending agency that will shell out billions of dollars is well -oh I don’t know- massively augmenting the size of the federal government. So Mr. McCain whats with the flip flops. Oh wait, I forgot when McCain whines about big government he is attacking programs like the Department of Education, Foodstamps, Welfare, Unemployment insurance, OSHA, the Labor Board, Social Security, the SEC, and Medicare which help millions of working and middle class persons every year. What makes me so sick about this is he would have no qualms about cutting the programs that help you, but would fight like hell to increase the size of government to bail out his buddies.
Finally I’d like to spend some time talking about how McCain and his GOP stooge friends would be the first to deny any humanitarian benefits whatsoever to illegal immigrants, but boy when it comes to foreign banks and global corporations the GOP is there with your pocket book to bail them out of trouble. Don’t believe me then check out what was on the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) over the weekend in regards to the Treasury Department’s bailout program:
“But this is a humbling experience to see such fragility in capital markets and to ask how did we ever get here,” Mr Paulson told NBC’s Meet the Press.
Congressional and Treasury officials have been meeting over the weekend to try to get the package signed into law within a matter of days.
International rescue
Under the draft Treasury plans, financial institutions with “significant operations in the US” are eligible to sell or auction their bad debts to Treasury fund.
The fund would aim to sell off these mortgage-related debts in the future.
That would mean a number of British banks could sell their soured assets to the Treasury-owned bank – via an auction – according to the BBC’s business editor, Robert Peston.
On Saturday, US President George Bush defended the plan, saying the cost to taxpayers of shoring up markets was better than the alternative of job losses and diminished pensions.
“I’m convinced that this bold approach will cost American families far less than the alternative,” he said.
“Further stress on our financial markets would cause massive job losses, devastate retirement accounts, further erode housing values, and dry up new loans for homes, cars and college tuitions.”
Oddly enough the GOP has a history of bailing out foreign governments like this and the most (in)famous examples of this would be the Dawes Plan of 1924 and the Young plan of 1929 which were designed to loan the German government money to pay off its reparations debt to the French and the British so they could pay off their debt to us. Yeah that went over like a proverbial lead balloon and when the market crashed in 1929 we could no longer loan the Germans money and the Germans could no longer pay off Britain and France which means we could no longer get the money to loan to Germany and so a decade long depression began here at home and a little Austrian corporal -no not the governor of California- named Adolf Hitler rose to prominence in Germany and started a devastating war of destruction.
So to sum it all up McCain is actually for welfare, benefiting foreigners, and increasing the size of government as long as it benefits the richest five percent. So the question for you is do you want someone who will only address economic problems if the economy is affecting his rich buddies? I don’t think so.
Today’s topic is one that could be taken directly from the pulpit of a plethora of pulpits across America but it needs to be said. Sensual hedonism, overindulgence, and instant self gratification are wreaking havoc in our nation. There is an old song which seems to be our cultural anthem which essentially goes “I want it like that and I want it right now.” Many of our social problems including obesity, adultery, divorce, pornography, pre marital sex, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, alcoholism, violent crimes, theft, fraud, and identity theft is all caused by our society’s problematic addiction to instant self gratification.
Now if you don’t think our sensual hedonism is a problem then I encourage you to watch television (not cable, just basic broadcast television), browse the internet, and/or shop at Wal-Mart. On TV you will see skankish women talking shamelessly about all the sex partners they’ve had while selling medicines for penile enlargement pills. During prime time you will shows such as Desperate Housewives where people throw off the traditional norms of marriage -love and respect for the other person- and replace them with overt sexuality. Listen to the music of today, Rap, Rock and Roll, Country, alternative etc and you will be bombarded with messages of lust, license, rage, and general hedonism. Women and men are being portrayed by the culture masters in Hollywood as sex objects and vehicles for pleasure.
The websites, other than Myspace (which pedophiles and rapists find very useful for their hedonistic acts which have victimized so many) and Facebook (which is trying way too much to be Myspace lite) and other social networking sites, which draw the most views per page are pornography sites. Harlequin romance novels – face it ladies who read them- are nothing but porn without the pictures and quite amazingly many churches sell these in their book stores. Our culture is inundated with vice and self gratification and we are pounded with it from all directions including the internet, radio and music, television, and the movie theatre. Sadly, however, hedonism is not confined to the realm of mass media which can be shut out and ignored, no our hedonism and greed shapes policy, theology, philosophy, and much of our news headlines.
A place where hedonism is becoming more and more pervasive is the church house. Too many churches embrace the prosperity doctrine (essentially give minister X hundreds of dollars and Jeebus makes you a millionaire glory be and hallelujah), now do not get me wrong I believe the Lord does prosper his people and tithing is essential (not so much because you should expect things in return, but because it is commanded). Lest you say, “but I don’t go to a prosperity doctrine church so I don’t hear a hedonistic gospel” I advise you to consider the fact that way too many churches teach a feel good acceptable doctrine. I am not against churches teaching you to have joy in Jesus, and nor am I saying the church should teach rapture and/or Hell, fire, and brimstone every Sunday, but I am saying too many churches are teaching a cost free form of Christianity where you say a formula sinner’s prayer and glory be you have a fire insurance policy keep going on doing exactly what you did before uninterrupted. While salvation is free, there is indeed a cost of discipleship and while I cannot call out someone who claims to be born again, I will say it looks rather suspicious if you aver to accept Christ as savior and there is no change. There are too many churches, and they are growing ever popular, where there are miracles, healing circles, tounges, prophecy, up tempo movement, and yet sound doctrine is not being taught. Do not get me wrong, I believe in a miracle working God and that spiritual gifts (tounges, prophecy, healing by the laying on of hands, and casting out demons) are for today, but too often the pentacostal churches go to overflowing congregations because people are seeking the miracles and the gifts which are free, but are less than interested in the one who does the miracles and dispenses with the gifts. People are flocking churches (especially Pentecostal ones) to see a show, do some calisthenics, and watch pastors preach much ado about nothing. The gospel is obscured by the circus acts such as the amazing woman who stammers like a baby, the man who sounds like he is having . . . . well . . . . a sexual act, the woman who moos like a cow, barks like a dog, or wails like a banshe. Do not get me wrong the Holy Spirit is still alive, but too often I get the impression that people are trying to draw attention to themselves far more than the Holy Spirit. Bottom line is that the church is now where people go for a one hour feel good experience, but where they do not seek change. Far too many churches no longer equip people for spiritual warfare and help them with their physical and spiritual needs. The church has become a place where one goes to act like a holy fool for an hour on sunday before going back to the carnal old man -that Ephesians chapter Four says we are supposed to die to daily- Monday through Saturday.
Sensual hedonism has also latched onto the Federal Government and how it shapes policy. We are in Iraq because Bush wanted to make a boat load of money for his wealthy friends and because of this 1.3 million Iraqis have died and so have 4000 Americans. Sensual hedonism has led to Enron, the bank failures, adjustable rate mortgages, credit card debt, and the many scandals of the Bush administration. The fruits of the spirit, seen in the fifth chapter of Galatians, would have warded off many of the crises that this country has faced in the past decade.
On a more local level one only need go to Wal-Mart to see hedonism face to face. You will hear the Subway commercial that says “indulge yourself,” and if you worked maintenance there for any time frame you would go “oh please do not indulge yourself.” You will see the children not getting their toys (these kids are 4 or 5 at the oldest) and proceeding to tell their mother (s) to F*** off. There is no discipline, no patience, no self control, no peace, no joy or compassion left in the United States and it will be our downfall. Much as it was the downfall of The Soviet Union, Qing China, The French Aristocracy, the Romanovs, the Weimar Republic, Rome, Athens, Persia, Mongolia, Israel, Babylon and the list goes on and on and on. We are not special in the eyes of God. We are not selected by God- historically only Israel is given any such promise- and we are not his chosen people or generation. If we do not repent and turn from our wickedness and our hedonism then we will join the ever growing ash heap of history.
Hello out there, the disinterested cynic here. War between Israel and Iran is looming and it looks like it could be sooner rather than later. According to CBN News, I know I know that fake news show looks a lot like Joe Goebbels’ outfit, Israel is plotting on . . . . well . . . . uh . . . . canceling Iran’s nuclear program in a time frame that stretches from shortly after the November Elections to shortly after the inauguration of the new president. According to the ministry of Christofascist propaganda:
JERUSALEM, Israel – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced last week an attack on Iran’s nuclear program would endanger the entire world. Medvedev’s comment is just the latest barometer of what’s at stake in today’s volatile Middle East.
Collision Course
Russian tanks rumbled through Georgia in its most aggressive military action since the end of the Cold War.
Meanwhile Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues his rants and threats to eliminate the Jewish state of Israel.
Numerous reports indicate Israel is preparing for a military strike on Iran’s nuclear plants.
These forces are all part of today’s Middle East landscape, forces that well might be on a collision course.
“In Israel, people having in the back of their mind past traumas, especially the Holocaust are truly afraid that the minute Ahmadinejad lays hands on a nuclear weapon, he will drop it on Israelis heads,” said Ronen Bergman, an Israeli investigative journalist and author of “The Secret War With Iran.”
He says Iran is Israel’s number one concern.
“Since 2002, since General Meir Dagan was appointed Mossad General Director, the Israeli foreign intelligence service is basically working on one issue and one issue alone and this issue is Iran,” he said.
October Surprise
Many analysts believe Israel won’t tolerate a nuclear Iran, but don’t expect an immediate response.
The last thing Israeli leaders want is to be part of an “October Surprise” before the U.S. elections. But they also know that the window to stop Iran from going nuclear may soon be closed.
“Mossad estimates of what they term as the first nuclear device is at the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010,” Bergman said.
Whatever the estimate of when Iran can produce nuclear weapons, some suspect an Israeli military strike might take place after the U.S. presidential election and before the inauguration of the new President.
Bergman is one analyst who expects a strike at a later date – after the inauguration.
“At present time, if things continue as they are, I think we should expect a very tense, though quiet days in the Middle East,” he said.
Questions that Linger
Regardless of the time frame, a number of unanswered questions hang over the Middle East: Will Israel attack Iran? Will the U.S. attack as well, or assist Israel militarily? And if an attack is launched, what will be the consequences? What would Russia do?
Now here is where this thing gets downright scary. We have sold the Israelis 1000 bunker busters obstinantly to hit Hezbollah and Hamas arsenals in Gaza and the West Bank, but one has to bear in mind that conventional weapons already in the Israeli arsenal could take these out,no these are to attack Iran and lest you think I am making this stuff up here is what the AP had to say about this:
JERUSALEM – The U.S. plans to sell Israel 1,000 buster-bunker bombs which Israeli military experts said Monday could provide a powerful new weapon against underground arsenals in Lebanon or Gaza.
The experts said they doubted, however, that the bombs could be used to deliver a crippling blow against Iran’s nuclear program.
In announcing the proposed $77 million deal, which still needs Congressional approval, the U.S. Defense Department said the sale of the Boeing GBU-39 smart bombs would be consistent with the U.S. interest of assisting Israel “to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability.” The Pentagon issued a release on the planned sale on Sept. 9.
Because it is a precision weapon that generates far less collateral damage than heavier munitions, “this bomb is going to be the general-purpose bomb of the next generation,” said Yiftah Shapir, a military analyst at Tel Aviv’s Institute of National Security Studies. He said possible targets would include “Katyusha launchers in Lebanon or Qassam (rocket) launchers in Gaza.”
Shlomo Brom, the Israeli military’s former chief of strategic planning, noted an increasing tendency to place weapons underground.
In Israel’s 2006 war against Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrilla group, “one of our problems had been that they put many of the rocket launchers in bunkers and fortifications underground ,” Brom said.
One hardened target the military went after in that war was the bunker of Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Israeli security officials have said. Nasrallah survived the fighting, but has been in hiding since the war.
Past U.S. sales of bunker-buster bombs to Israel have been construed as a veiled threat against Iran’s nuclear program.
But Brom and Shapir said they did not think they would be used against Iran, where key nuclear facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant at Nantanz are buried deep and hardened by yards of concrete.
“You would need something a lot heavier,” he said. The GBU-39 can penetrate 6 feet of concrete, and “6 feet is not enough,” he said.
Despite a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, Israel and many in the United States still believe Iran’s nuclear program is geared toward developing weapons. Iran insists the program is only for producing electricity.
Israel hopes Iran can be induced through sanctions and diplomacy to scale back its nuclear ambitions, but has not ruled out a military strike.
The GBU-39 is “a weapon Israel needs for general purposes,” said Shapir, who questioned Israel’s capability to deal a blow to Iran’s nuclear program. “But attaching this thing to an attack on Iran is propaganda, in my view.”
Now if Israel’s plans to take out Iran’s nuclear program and our selling Israel the weapons needed to do the job are not bad enough lets talk about recent developments in Georgia. It seems that NATO is planning to place fighter planes in Georgia officially for the purposes of fending off future Russian aggression. However, according to Russiatoday.com those planes would be used for operations against Iran.
‘U.S. may use Georgian air bases to strike at Iran’ The U.S. military could have plans to use Georgian air bases to launch air strikes against Iran, according to Russia’s envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin. He pointed out that Georgia would be the perfect base for a potential U.S. operation in Iran.
Speaking in Brussels, Dmitry Rogozin said:
“What NATO is doing now in Georgia is restoring its ability to monitor its airspace, in other words restoring the whole locator system and an anti-missile defence system which were destroyed by Russian artillery. Now these systems are being restored as soon as possible. We have unconfirmed information that American ships under cover of himanitarian aid have delivered all the equipment necessary for the restoration of these systems.
He noted that there it is impossible that these preparations are designed for Georgia’s protection against Russia, since the war in the Caucasus is over and all the security measures in South Ossetia and Abkhazia are being pursued.
“It’s done for logistic support of some air operations either of the Alliance as a whole or of the United States in particular in this region. The swift reconstruction of the airfields and all the systems proves that some air operation is being planned against another country which is located not far from Georgia. What country could it be? Which country is in the spotlight now? Of course it’s Iran, there are no other countries,” the envoy said.
Rogozin also added that if a U.S. military operation against Iran goes ahead, he would have “pity for Georgia, because Iran is certain to defend itself.”
Rogozin called for the U.S. to support Russia’s effort to engage Iran in international dialogue. According to him, threatening and pressuring Iran only “gives Teheran more arguments in favour of building some sort of weapons of mass destruction”.
Iran has been in a state of diplomatic conflict with leading world powers over its nuclear programme. The state government argues that it needs enriched uranium for the peaceful generation of electricity. However, Western analysts argue that the program is geared toward weapon production.
The US hasn’t denied that a military option exists to deal with the Iranian issue. This has spawned numerous theories on how and when the US could attack Iran. To read RT’s report on the issue follow the link.
Nevertheless, David Wurmser, a former key national security adviser to UN Vice President Dick Cheney, has said that President Bush is highly unlikely to take any military action against Iran before he leaves office.
“Two things have to be in place for there to be an attack – and that time has run out, and that diplomacy has run out,” Wursner said in Brussels after a day-long meeting on nuclear nonproliferation. “The feeling to a large extent now is that diplomacy is working, that there is a trend in the regime toward moderation, that pressure is building on the regime.”
The Islamic Republic is currently under three sets of relatively minor UN sanctions. However, the government denies a possibility of folding its nuclear programme.
Iran’s nuclear programme
The Iranian government insists that it is functioning fully in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The Treaty’s terms state that a country is allowed to enrich its own fuel to a level suitable for civil nuclear power. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stressed that the country will not break its NTP obligations. He argues that international pressures on the country amount to bullying.
The UN’s Security Council is concerned that the same technology used to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes can be used to produce nuclear warheads. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has pointed out that there are two outstanding issues with Iran’s nuclear porgramme. Primarily, Iran has not explicitly clarified its position in relation to studies into nuclear armament. Moreover, it has not allowed extra inspections into all of the enrichment facilities. Nevertheless, there have been no confirmed reports of Iran enriching weapons-grade uranium. U.S. intelligence reports have stated that the possibility of Iran reaching a sufficient level of technology to make a nuclear weapon even by late 2009 is “highly unlikely”.
Ahmadinejad has called the UN’s demand to inspect all of the country’s enrichment facilities “illegitimate”. Time and time again Iran announced that it would not yield to international pressures and its peaceful programme of uranium enrichment would remain unchanged.
Fact file
On September 15, Iran’s air force and units of its missile defence force began military exercises across half the country. The scenario of the war games will see the use of spy planes to collect intelligence on enemy moves. Next, the army is tasked with repulsing a missile attack on Iranian ‘objects and systems’. In the final phase of the drill, the army of the Islamic Republic practises destroying the ‘most vulnerable areas of enemy territory’.
Two months before the exercises began Tehran tested new domestically-made missiles, among them an upgraded version of the ‘Shekhab-3’ rocket. That missile is capable of reaching Israel and the Persian Gulf, where U.S. military bases are located. The range of the new rocket is more than 2,000km. The distance between Iran and Georgia is about 1,000km.
Now America’s involvement in Georgia makes perfect sense, first we take a desire for war against Iran. Second we want our war without Russian intervention. Third we want to pound Iran from all sides. So with all this in mind we goad our ally Mikheil Saakashvili to commit genocide in South Ossetia and Abkhazia knowing full well that Russia will come to the defense of people who are ethnic Russians, and as soon as Russia comes to the defense of their peace keepers and nationals our government instantaneously get the media to shape popular support against them and the Bush administration denounces Russia and sends an “aid” package (read: weapons) to Georgia. Under the pretext of defending Georgia’s territorial integrity the American government gets to put advanced military technology against Iran and with this Iran is encircles on the north (Georgia and Turkey), the West (Iraq), the East (Afghanistan) and the south (the fleet in the Gulf).
The planes we will be placing in Georgia in the very near future are there for a duel purpose. The first is to bully and intimidate Russia, remember when Bush says bullying and intimidation are unacceptable in the twenty first century he is referring to every other nation besides the United States, and the second is for strategic positioning against Iran. What makes this situation so dire is that I really doubt that Russia -especially with their current government in power- will take all this lying down. Russia, because of our meddling in their affairs during the South Ossetian Conflict, is now looking to play the old Cold War ploy of tit for tat. This is evidenced by their increased support for Cuba, their selling of several billions of dollars worth of weapons to Chavez and sending their navy and some strategic bombers to Caracas, their ever increasing ties to China, North Korea, and Medvedev’s recent statements of support for Iran as well as Russia’s increased military and research investments in Iran. The Russians have proven that it is unwise to toy with them and it is almost as foolish to mess with Iran.
The following is the absolute worst, and therefore very likely course of events should we get Israel to bomb Iran. First, Israel takes out Iran’s nuclear reactors. In response Iran calls on Russia to remember their alliance and Iran fires its missiles at Saudi oil fields and our fleet and kills many people. Russia responds by striking Israel. Israel asks America for help and so our fighters and bombers in Georgia, Ukraine, and the Baltic strike targets in Russia. This results in the Russians retaliating by striking back at our airforce bases. In the absolute worst case scenario America and Russia are wiped out in a nuclear catastrophe. Lets hope not, but I fear that our recent actions against Russia and Iran may have opened Pandora’s box and there is no hope of closing it.
Since the end of the Second World War politicians in both parties have talked about how great we are as a nation. They have talked about how mighty, how powerful, how wealthy, and how influential we are in the world. They have rightly talked about how we have replaced Great Britain as leader of the Free World.
However, with great power and influence comes great responsibility. If we want to be remembered by our descendants as a great nation then we must use our might to rid the world of the great scourge of our day which is not terrorism, but human trafficking and exploitation. In the nineteenth century, as they groped towards World Empire, the British stamped out slavery starting as early as 1807. They started first in their own holdings, and then in Europe, and by 1834 the Royal Navy had crushed the Trans Atlantic slave system. By 1843 they had eradicated it even in the holdings of the East India Company. By 1870 they had completely eradicated it across the globe. If a state traded in slaves the Royal Navy embraced them with Gunboat diplomacy which destroyed the slave stations and hoisted the Union Jack above slave prevention forts. Now the British Empire did much wrong in its bid to take over a fourth of the world’s surface, but they did right in ending the slave trade in the lands that constituted their empire.
Some 140 years later the United States owes it to the world to stamp out a similarly vile system, that of Human Trafficking and Exploitation. Throughout the world women are kidnapped or tricked into sexual slavery. Even worse, is that this process affects little children the same as it does of women in their late teens and twenties. Nations such as Thailand and the Philippines are infamous for their trafficking of women sex workers to American and western clientel. The Ukraine, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and Southwest Asia are other hotspots of forced recruiting for the international slave trade. Now many try to pretend that this problem does not exist, but what is dreadfully true is that this stuff even reaches into the United States. People in China, Mexico, and central America are promised assistance into getting into the United States by rogue elements and after often brutal passages they are sent to the United States where they work in slave labor conditions in sweat shops. Women who make these tragic journeys are often sold into brothels and forced into prostitution.
Two centuries ago the British decided that they would eradicate slavery from the World and for a time they were successful in this endeavor but this problem has reared its ugly head again. The United States is indeed powerful and it should use its economic and diplomatic might to sever trade links with nations that employ underage workers and do not pay a living wage. The government should sever diplomatic ties and trade ties completely with nations that persist in the sex trade of children. Americans and persons from American allied nations caught in the act of exploitation should face the strongest possible punishments found in the law. There are some that say noninterventionalism is a must, but if we are to have war and if we are to have empire then it needs to be just and fair and rid the grave problems of our time. Let us use our military, economic, and diplomatic might to help instead of harm. If we do nothing to curb international human trafficking we will be harshly judged by history.
In today’s history/geography lesson you will learn what Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Grenada, Venezuela, Bolivia, Georgia, and Ukraine have in common. Now I will first have to discombobulate and correct the world view of the Christofascists who voted for Bush and will vote for McCain and Palin because they want to bring about Armageddon (note, I fully believe that Christ is returning but its downright asinine to try to bring about the apocalypse). You see there is an argument shared by Condi Rice, George Bush, and many others that says shame on Russia without realizing what is going on and why. So I will help you understand the world, not so much how you think it should be, but how it really is. Bush, shortly after Russia intervened in Georgia to defend its UN mandated troops in the separatist provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, said that the days of geopolitical political spheres are past. Well that is when it applies to other nations, we still incorporate the Monroe Doctrine, that is to say that no president has yet rescinded the Monroe Doctrine. The United States has a long history of protecting the integrity of its Geopolitical sphere and as such the United States government has shamefully toppled or attempted to topple several governments in Central and South America. The sad thing about America’s actions is that with the exceptions of Cuba and Grenada America toppled or attempted to topple democratically elected governments.
To get directly to the point please tell my why Russia is the big bad boogey man when they move against American backed right wing governments such as Saakashvili in Georgia and Yushchenko of Ukraine when we have done equally dirty or even worse things to the democratically elected governments of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, and Venezuela? Before I go on I am not defending Russia’s actions in Georgia -outside of stopping genocide in South Ossetia and Abkhazia- and I am not defending Putin’s poisoning of Yushchenko,but I will not defend the rank hypocrisy of a United States government that has done things that are equally or even more odious. Now lets talk a little about the American backed Right wing stooges in Georgia and . Mikheil Saakashvili according to Wikipedia :
Saak’ashvili graduated from the School of International Law of the Kiev State University (Ukraine) in 1992. He briefly worked as a human rights officer for the interim State Council of Georgia following the overthrow of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia before receiving a fellowship from the United States State Department (via the Edmund S. Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program).He received an LLM from Columbia Law School in 1994 and took classes at The George Washington University Law School the following year. In 1995, he also received a diploma from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.
After graduation, while on internship in the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler in early 1995, Saak’ashvili was approached by Zurab Zhvania, an old friend from Georgia who was working on behalf of President Eduard Shevardnadze to enter politics. He stood in the December 1995 elections along with Zhvania, and both men won seats in parliament, standing for the Union of Citizens of Georgia, Shevardnadze’s party.
Saak’ashvili was chairman of the parliamentary committee which was in charge of creating a new electoral system, an independent judiciary and a non-political police force. Opinion surveys recognised him to be the second most popular person in Georgia, behind Shevardnadze. He was named “man of the year”[dubious – discuss] by a panel of journalists and human rights advocates in 1997. In January 2000, Saak’ashvili was appointed Vice-President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
On October 12, 2000, Saak’ashvili became Minister of Justice for the government of President Shevardnadze. He initiated major reforms in the Georgian criminal justice and prisons system. This earned praise[dubious – discuss] from international observers and human rights activists[citation needed]. But in mid-2001 he became involved in a major controversy with the Economics Minister Ivane Chkhartishvili, State Security Minister Vakhtang Kutateladze and Tbilisi police chief Ioseb Alavidze, accusing them of profiting from corrupt business deals.
Saak’ashvili resigned on September 5, 2001, saying that “I consider it immoral for me to remain as a member of Shevardnadze’s government.” He declared that corruption had penetrated to the very center of the Georgian government and that Shevardnadze lacked the will to deal with it, warning that “current developments in Georgia will turn the country into a criminal enclave in one or two years.”
Having resigned from the government and quit the Shevardnadze-run Union of Citizens of Georgia party, Saak’ashvili founded the United National Movement (UNM) in October 2001, a right-of-center political party with a touch of nationalism, to provide a focus for part of the Georgian reformists leaders. In June 2002, he was elected as the Chairman of the Tbilisi Assembly (“Sakrebulo”) following an agreement between the United National Movement and the Georgian Labour Party. This gave him a powerful new platform from which to criticize the government.
Georgia held parliamentary elections on November 2, 2003 which were denounced by local and international observers as being grossly rigged. Saak’ashvilli claimed that he had won the elections (a claim supported by independent exit polls), and urged Georgians to demonstrate against Shevardnadze’s government and engage in nonviolent civil disobedience against the authorities. Saak’ashvili’s UNM and Burdjanadze-Democrats united to demand the ouster of Shevardnadze and the rerun of the elections.
Massive political demonstrations were held in Tbilisi in November, with over 100,000 people participating and listening to speeches by Saak’ashvili and other opposition figures. The Kmara (“Enough!”) youth organization (a Georgian counterpart of the Serbian “Otpor”) and several NGOs, like Liberty Institute, were active in all protest activities. After an increasingly tense two weeks of demonstrations, Shevardnadze resigned as President on November 23, to be replaced on an interim basis by parliamentary speaker Nino Burjanadze. While the revolutionary leaders did their best to stay within the constitutional norms, many called the change of government a popular coup dubbed by Georgian media as the Rose Revolution.
Saak’ashvili’s “storming of Georgia’s parliament” in 2003 “put U.S. diplomats off guard. …. [Saak’ashvili] ousted a leader the U.S. had long backed, Eduard Shevardnadze.”[5] Seeking support, Saak’ashvili went outside the U.S. State Department. He hired Randy Scheunemann, now Sen. McCain’s top foreign-policy adviser, as a lobbyist and used Daniel Kunin of USAID and the NDI as a full-time adviser.[5]
. . . .
There have been some concerns about Saak’ashvili monopolizing power since his coming to office in 2004. Saak’ashvili has also occasionally used aggressive language, an example of which was reported by Amnesty International around the time of the President’s inauguration. At a news briefing on 12 January, Saak’ashvili advised the then Justice Minister “to use force when dealing with any attempt to stage prison riots, and to open fire, shoot to kill and destroy any criminal who attempts to cause turmoil. We will not spare bullets against these people.” Saak’ashvili in his inaugural speech stated that “now it is time for the government to be afraid of people.”[22]
In 2004 a new media law sparked controversy, with fourteen Georgian civil society leaders and Georgian experts writing an open letter to the President, published in several national newspapers, claiming “Intolerance towards people with different opinions is being planted in Georgian politics and in other spheres of social life”.
On March 27 2006 the government announced that it had prevented a nation-wide prison riot plotted by criminal kingpins. The police operation ended with the deaths of 7 inmates and at least 17 injuries. While the Parliamentary opposition has cast doubts over the official version and demanded an independent investigation, the ruling party has been able to vote down such initiatives.[23].
The conduct of the Sandro Girgvliani Murder Case has also raised eyebrows at home and abroad. Several senior Interior Ministry officials were alleged to have played active roles in the murder, yet despite a series of resignations and sackings, only four low-ranking individuals directly engaged in the case have been prosecuted. In addition to this, Georgian businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili has claimed that pressure has been exerted on his financial interests after Imedi Television broadcast several accusations against officials. On October 25, 2007, former defence minister Irakli Okruashvili accused the president of planning Patarkatsishvili’s murder.[24].[25][26] Okruashvili was detained two days later on charges of extortion, money laundering, and abuse of office.[27] However, in a video taped confession released by the General Prosecutor’s Office on October 8, 2007, in which Okruashvili pleaded guilty to large-scale bribery through extortion and negligence while serving as minister, he retracted his accusations against the president and said that he did so to gain some political benefit and that Badri Patarkatsishvili told him to do so.[28] Okruashvili’s lawyer and other opposition leaders said his retraction had been made under duress.[29]
The BHHRG has frequently claimed that the new government immediately set out to settle scores with Shevardnadze era officials. Many former ministers, local administrators and businessmen associated with the former regime were arrested for abuse of office. Some Western organisations were concerned by the live broadcasting of these arrests and by President Saak’ashvili’s occasional appearances on television to denounce the suspects, before any charges were laid.
On June 30 2005 riot police and special military forces carrying machine guns violently dispersed hundreds of protesters blocking a major road in Tbilisi. It started as protest against the arrest of two well-known sportsmen accused in blackmail but soon grew into a demonstration against the central authorities. 25 people were arrested including 5 members of opposition parties.[30] In November 2007 another series of demonstrations forced Saak’ashvili to set the pre-scheduled presidential elections for January 5, 2008.[31]
The late Georgian media tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili’s opposition television station Imedi, shut down after its premises were stormed during news coverage by riot police in November of 2007, resumed broadcasts a few weeks following the incident, but “did not cover news or talk shows until after the election.”[32]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikheil_Saakashvili
So what does all this say about Saakashvili
1) He is a neoconservative
2) He is American educated and American Backed
3) He is a tyrant who uses force of arms to silence dissent in the media and among political opposition
4) He vowed, after the American backed Rose Revolution, to crack down on Abkhazian and South Ossetian independence
5) He wanted to Isolate Russia, like all good neoconservatives want to do
Saakashvili is ultimately an American backed thug who used genocide to reel in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and ultimately his decision to suppress rebellion in those two provinces was that he felt confident that Bush would back him up. This did not happen, and therefore any bloodshed on the Georgian people rests squarely on Saakashvili’s shoulders.
Instead of denouncing Georgia and Russia, Bush singled out Russia and as such he exposed himself and American policy. Russia, afterall, did nothing really all that different than what we have done in the past fifty five years. In Guatemala in 1954, the CIA toppled the Moscow leaning democratically elected government for the twin reasons that land reform was threatening the commercial plantations that the United Fruit Company (American owned and operated) needed for its banana business -yes that is where we get the phrase banana republic- and the fact that the Guatemalan government was pro Moscow. In 1960 Fidel Castro won power in Cuba and in 1961 we launched a badly botched invasion to try to oust him from power. In 1962 we barely averted nuclear war during a dangerous time when Castro was allowing the Russians to park Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles in Cuba. For the past forty years we have spent millions trying to topple Cuba’s communist government and we have even employed terrorists to kill Cuban civilians (I don’t know about you, but blowing up an airplane full of civilians is the epitomy of terrorism) to get his regime toppled.
Sadly, Cuba is not even the worst action that our government has done. In 1972, a Chilean Communist named Allende was democratically elected president of a coalition government in Chile. President Nixon immediately sought to undermine the Chilean economy and when that failed he supported a junta’s military coup to topple a democratically elected government. In 1984 Cuba was building an air strip in a tiny tropical island named Grenada, and in response Reagan sent in the US Army to seize the island. Rayguns did a lot of other fun stuff to topple pro Kremlin Regimes in Central America as well. In the 1980s he sold weapons to Iran (keep in mind this was after the hostage crisis in Tehran) to fund a coup against Nicaragua’s government which was pro Moscow.
Today, and this made the front page just last week, our government continues to routinely move against Latin American governments which do not adhere to our world view. Just this past week Venezuela and Bolivia kicked out our diplomatic corps from their countries because our embassies were supporting toppling their governments/and or assassinating their leaders:
CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez ordered the U.S. ambassador to leave Venezuela within 72 hours on Thursday, accusing the diplomat of conspiring against his government and saying he would also withdraw his own envoy from Washington immediately.
Chavez made the move in solidarity with Bolivia after his Andean ally expelled the U.S. diplomat there, accusing him of aiding violent protests. He said a new American ambassador will not be welcome in Caracas “until there’s a U.S. government that respects the people of Latin America,” suggesting that diplomatic relations will be scaled back until President Bush leaves the White House.
“They’re trying to do here what they were doing in Bolivia,” Chavez said, accusing Washington of trying to oust him.
“That’s enough … from you, Yankees,” Chavez said, using an expletive. Waving his fists in the air, he added: “I hold the government of the United States responsible for being behind all the conspiracies against our nations!”
Holding up a watch to check the time, Chavez declared: “From this moment, the Yankee ambassador in Caracas has 72 hours to leave Venezuela!” He told his foreign minister to recall Venezuela’s ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, “before they kick him out of there.”
The U.S. Embassy said it was aware of Chavez’s speech but had not received official notification. Embassy spokeswoman Robin Holzhauer said Ambassador Patrick Duddy is traveling in the United States this week.
The diplomatic spat brings relations between the two countries to a new low and raises questions about whether it could hurt trade. Venezuela is the fourth-largest oil supplier to the United States, and Chavez also threatened to cut off crude shipments “if there’s any aggression against Venezuela.”
Chavez has threatened to stop selling oil to the United States on a number of occasions. But the U.S. is Venezuela’s No. 1 oil client, and taking such an action would debilitate his government financially.
Duddy, who was posted in Venezuela just last year, irritated Chavez last month when he lamented that U.S. and Venezuelan officials have not been cooperating in fighting drug trafficking. Deteriorating relations were giving cocaine smugglers the upper hand, he said.
The socialist president responded by warning that Duddy could soon be “packing his bags.”
Simmering tensions between Venezuela and the U.S. began heating up even more this week after two Russian strategic bombers were deployed to the country at Chavez’s invitation.
“The presence of those Russian planes in Venezuela is a warning,” Chavez said Thursday. “There’s nothing better to keep yourself from being attacked than to dissuade.”
Hours before announcing the ambassador’s expulsion, Chavez said his government had detained a group of alleged conspirators in a plot to overthrow him. He accused the group of active and former military officers of trying to assassinate him with backing from the United States.
Chavez has repeatedly accused Washington of backing plots to have him killed or ousted — and U.S. officials have repeatedly denied the allegations.
Now, Mr. Bush what was that about gone are the days of geopolitical spheres? I know in the idea world for many Americans who have ever spent a rainy saturday watching Red Dawn the Americans are always just and Russia is always bad. Sorry to wake you from your slumber but in real world politics the world is a dirty place full of shades of gray.
I would hope that a qualified candidate could answer this question, but Palin could not. Come on Palin this is for the white house, and it is part of our current policy. Surely you’d know and you wouldn’t embarrass yourself on national television:
Oooopsie, well I guess the answer would be she doesn’t know. As a friend said about this, it sounded like she had the wrong mental flash card in her head. Now, Ms. Palin I know you are governor of Alaska and all, but really you need to know what the Bush doctrine is: To help you out I will now show you what the Bush Doctrine is. You can view the entire document online at : http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/
It is an eleven part document, but the crux of the document is article five which is entitle Prevent our Enemies from Threatening Us, Our Allies, and Our Friends with Weapons of Mass Destruction.
A. Summary of National Security Strategy 2002
The security environment confronting the United States today is radically different from what we have faced before. Yet the first duty of the United States Government remains what it always has been: to protect the American people and American interests. It is an enduring American principle that this duty obligates the government to anticipate and counter threats, using all elements of national power, before the threats can do grave damage. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction – and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. There are few greater threats than a terrorist attack with WMD.
To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively in exercising our inherent right of self-defense. The United States will not resort to force in all cases to preempt emerging threats. Our preference is that nonmilitary actions succeed. And no country should ever use preemption as a pretext for aggression.
Countering proliferation of WMD requires a comprehensive strategy involving strengthened nonproliferation efforts to deny these weapons of terror and related expertise to those seeking them; proactive counterproliferation efforts to defend against and defeat WMD and missile threats before they are unleashed; and improved protection to mitigate the consequences of WMD use. We aim to convince our adversaries that they cannot achieve their goals with WMD, and thus deter and dissuade them from attempting to use or even acquire these weapons in the first place.
B. Current Context: Successes and Challenges
We have worked hard to protect our citizens and our security. The United States has worked extensively with the international community and key partners to achieve common objectives.
* The United States has begun fielding ballistic missile defenses to deter and protect the United States from missile attacks by rogue states armed with WMD. The fielding of such missile defenses was made possible by the United States’ withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was done in accordance with the treaty’s provisions.
* In May 2003, the Administration launched the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a global effort that aims to stop shipments of WMD, their delivery systems, and related material. More than 70 countries have expressed support for this initiative, and it has enjoyed several successes in impeding WMD trafficking.
* United States leadership in extensive law enforcement and intelligence cooperation involving several countries led to the roll-up of the A.Q. Khan nuclear network.
* Libya voluntarily agreed to eliminate its WMD programs shortly after a PSI interdiction of a shipment of nuclear-related material from the A.Q. Khan network to Libya.
* The United States led in securing passage in April 2004 of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1540, requiring nations to criminalize WMD proliferation and institute effective export and financial controls.
* We have led the effort to strengthen the ability of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to detect and respond to nuclear proliferation.
* The Administration has established a new comprehensive framework, Biodefense for the 21st Century, incorporating innovative initiatives to protect the United States against bioterrorism.
Nevertheless, serious challenges remain:
* Iran has violated its Non-Proliferation Treaty safeguards obligations and refuses to provide objective guarantees that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.
* The DPRK continues to destabilize its region and defy the international community, now boasting a small nuclear arsenal and an illicit nuclear program in violation of its international obligations.
* Terrorists, including those associated with the al-Qaida network, continue to pursue WMD.
* Some of the world’s supply of weapons-grade fissile material – the necessary ingredient for making nuclear weapons – is not properly protected.
* Advances in biotechnology provide greater opportunities for state and non-state actors to obtain dangerous pathogens and equipment.
C. The Way Ahead
We are committed to keeping the world’s most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the world’s most dangerous people.
1. Nuclear Proliferation
The proliferation of nuclear weapons poses the greatest threat to our national security. Nuclear weapons are unique in their capacity to inflict instant loss of life on a massive scale. For this reason, nuclear weapons hold special appeal to rogue states and terrorists.
The best way to block aspiring nuclear states or nuclear terrorists is to deny them access to the essential ingredient of fissile material. It is much harder to deny states or terrorists other key components, for nuclear weapons represent a 60-year old technology and the knowledge is widespread. Therefore, our strategy focuses on controlling fissile material with two priority objectives: first, to keep states from acquiring the capability to produce fissile material suitable for making nuclear weapons; and second, to deter, interdict, or prevent any transfer of that material from states that have this capability to rogue states or to terrorists.
The first objective requires closing a loophole in the Non-Proliferation Treaty that permits regimes to produce fissile material that can be used to make nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian nuclear power program. To close this loophole, we have proposed that the world’s leading nuclear exporters create a safe, orderly system that spreads nuclear energy without spreading nuclear weapons. Under this system, all states would have reliable access at reasonable cost to fuel for civilian nuclear power reactors. In return, those states would remain transparent and renounce the enrichment and reprocessing capabilities that can produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. In this way, enrichment and reprocessing will not be necessary for nations seeking to harness nuclear energy for strictly peaceful purposes.
The Administration has worked with the international community in confronting nuclear proliferation.
We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran. For almost 20 years, the Iranian regime hid many of its key nuclear efforts from the international community. Yet the regime continues to claim that it does not seek to develop nuclear weapons. The Iranian regime’s true intentions are clearly revealed by the regime’s refusal to negotiate in good faith; its refusal to come into compliance with its international obligations by providing the IAEA access to nuclear sites and resolving troubling questions; and the aggressive statements of its President calling for Israel to “be wiped off the face of the earth.” The United States has joined with our EU partners and Russia to pressure Iran to meet its international obligations and provide objective guarantees that its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes. This diplomatic effort must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided.
As important as are these nuclear issues, the United States has broader concerns regarding Iran. The Iranian regime sponsors terrorism; threatens Israel; seeks to thwart Middle East peace; disrupts democracy in Iraq; and denies the aspirations of its people for freedom. The nuclear issue and our other concerns can ultimately be resolved only if the Iranian regime makes the strategic decision to change these policies, open up its political system, and afford freedom to its people. This is the ultimate goal of U.S. policy. In the interim, we will continue to take all necessary measures to protect our national and economic security against the adverse effects of their bad conduct. The problems lie with the illicit behavior and dangerous ambition of the Iranian regime, not the legitimate aspirations and interests of the Iranian people. Our strategy is to block the threats posed by the regime while expanding our engagement and outreach to the people the regime is oppressing.
The North Korean regime also poses a serious nuclear proliferation challenge. It presents a long and bleak record of duplicity and bad-faith negotiations. In the past, the regime has attempted to split the United States from its allies. This time, the United States has successfully forged a consensus among key regional partners – China, Japan, Russia, and the Republic of Korea (ROK) – that the DPRK must give up all of its existing nuclear programs. Regional cooperation offers the best hope for a peaceful, diplomatic resolution of this problem. In a joint statement signed on September 19, 2005, in the Six-Party Talks among these participants, the DPRK agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons and all existing nuclear programs. The joint statement also declared that the relevant parties would negotiate a permanent peace for the Korean peninsula and explore ways to promote security cooperation in Asia. Along with our partners in the Six-Party Talks, the United States will continue to press the DPRK to implement these commitments.
The United States has broader concerns regarding the DPRK as well. The DPRK counterfeits our currency; traffics in narcotics and engages in other illicit activities; threatens the ROK with its army and its neighbors with its missiles; and brutalizes and starves its people. The DPRK regime needs to changes these policies, open up its political system, and afford freedom to its people. In the interim, we will continue to take all necessary measures to protect our national and economic security against the adverse effects of their bad conduct.
The second nuclear proliferation objective is to keep fissile material out of the hands of rogue states and terrorists. To do this we must address the danger posed by inadequately safeguarded nuclear and radiological materials worldwide. The Administration is leading a global effort to reduce and secure such materials as quickly as possible through several initiatives including the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI). The GTRI locates, tracks, and reduces existing stockpiles of nuclear material. This new initiative also discourages trafficking in nuclear material by emplacing detection equipment at key transport nodes.
Building on the success of the PSI, the United States is also leading international efforts to shut down WMD trafficking by targeting key maritime and air transportation and transshipment routes, and by cutting off proliferators from financial resources that support their activities.
2. Biological Weapons
Biological weapons also pose a grave WMD threat because of the risks of contagion that would spread disease across large populations and around the globe. Unlike nuclear weapons, biological weapons do not require hard-to-acquire infrastructure or materials. This makes the challenge of controlling their spread even greater.
Countering the spread of biological weapons requires a strategy focused on improving our capacity to detect and respond to biological attacks, securing dangerous pathogens, and limiting the spread of materials useful for biological weapons. The United States is working with partner nations and institutions to strengthen global biosurveillance capabilities for early detection of suspicious outbreaks of disease. We have launched new initiatives at home to modernize our public health infrastructure and to encourage industry to speed the development of new classes of vaccines and medical countermeasures. This will also enhance our Nation’s ability to respond to pandemic public health threats, such as avian influenza.
3. Chemical Weapons
Chemical weapons are a serious proliferation concern and are actively sought by terrorists, including al-Qaida. Much like biological weapons, the threat from chemical weapons increases with advances in technology, improvements in agent development, and ease in acquisition of materials and equipment.
To deter and defend against such threats, we work to identify and disrupt terrorist networks that seek chemical weapons capabilities, and seek to deny them access to materials needed to make these weapons. We are improving our detection and other chemical defense capabilities at home and abroad, including ensuring that U.S. military forces and emergency responders are trained and equipped to manage the consequences of a chemical weapons attack.
4. The Need for Action
The new strategic environment requires new approaches to deterrence and defense. Our deterrence strategy no longer rests primarily on the grim premise of inflicting devastating consequences on potential foes. Both offenses and defenses are necessary to deter state and non-state actors, through denial of the objectives of their attacks and, if necessary, responding with overwhelming force.
Safe, credible, and reliable nuclear forces continue to play a critical role. We are strengthening deterrence by developing a New Triad composed of offensive strike systems (both nuclear and improved conventional capabilities); active and passive defenses, including missile defenses; and a responsive infrastructure, all bound together by enhanced command and control, planning, and intelligence systems. These capabilities will better deter some of the new threats we face, while also bolstering our security commitments to allies. Such security commitments have played a crucial role in convincing some countries to forgo their own nuclear weapons programs, thereby aiding our nonproliferation objectives.
Deterring potential foes and assuring friends and allies, however, is only part of a broader approach. Meeting WMD proliferation challenges also requires effective international action – and the international community is most engaged in such action when the United States leads.
Taking action need not involve military force. Our strong preference and common practice is to address proliferation concerns through international diplomacy, in concert with key allies and regional partners. If necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self defense, we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. When the consequences of an attack with WMD are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize. This is the principle and logic of preemption. The place of preemption in our national security strategy remains the same. We will always proceed deliberately, weighing the consequences of our actions. The reasons for our actions will be clear, the force measured, and the cause just.
Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction
This Administration inherited an Iraq threat that was unresolved. In early 2001, the international support for U.N. sanctions and continued limits on the Iraqi regime’s weapons-related activity was eroding, and key UNSC members were asking that they be lifted.
For America, the September 11 attacks underscored the danger of allowing threats to linger unresolved. Saddam Hussein’s continued defiance of 16 UNSC resolutions over 12 years, combined with his record of invading neighboring countries, supporting terrorists, tyrannizing his own people, and using chemical weapons, presented a threat we could no longer ignore.
The UNSC unanimously passed Resolution 1441 on November 8, 2002, calling for full and immediate compliance by the Iraqi regime with its disarmament obligations. Once again, Saddam defied the international community. According to the Iraq Survey Group, the team of inspectors that went into Iraq after Saddam Hussein was toppled and whose report provides the fullest accounting of the Iraqi regime’s illicit activities:
“Saddam continued to see the utility of WMD. He explained that he purposely gave an ambiguous impression about possession as a deterrent to Iran. He gave explicit direction to maintain the intellectual capabilities. As U.N. sanctions eroded there was a concomitant expansion of activities that could support full WMD reactivation. He directed that ballistic missile work continue that would support long-range missile development. Virtually no senior Iraqi believed that Saddam had forsaken WMD forever. Evidence suggests that, as resources became available and the constraints of sanctions decayed, there was a direct expansion of activity that would have the effect of supporting future WMD reconstitution.”
With the elimination of Saddam’s regime, this threat has been addressed, once and for all.
The Iraq Survey Group also found that pre-war intelligence estimates of Iraqi WMD stockpiles were wrong – a conclusion that has been confirmed by a bipartisan commission and congressional investigations. We must learn from this experience if we are to counter successfully the very real threat of proliferation.
First, our intelligence must improve. The President and the Congress have taken steps to reorganize and strengthen the U.S. intelligence community. A single, accountable leader of the intelligence community with authorities to match his responsibilities, and increased sharing of information and increased resources, are helping realize this objective.
Second, there will always be some uncertainty about the status of hidden programs since proliferators are often brutal regimes that go to great lengths to conceal their activities. Indeed, prior to the 1991 Gulf War, many intelligence analysts underestimated the WMD threat posed by the Iraqi regime. After that conflict, they were surprised to learn how far Iraq had progressed along various pathways to try to produce fissile material.
Third, Saddam’s strategy of bluff, denial, and deception is a dangerous game that dictators play at their peril. The world offered Saddam a clear choice: effect full and immediate compliance with his disarmament obligations or face serious consequences. Saddam chose the latter course and is now facing judgment in an Iraqi court. It was Saddam’s reckless behavior that demanded the world’s attention, and it was his refusal to remove the ambiguity that he created that forced the United States and its allies to act. We have no doubt that the world is a better place for the removal of this dangerous and unpredictable tyrant, and we have no doubt that the world is better off if tyrants know that they pursue WMD at their own peril.
Combined with her failure to understand the nature of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, her woeful inexperience, her abuse of power during trooper gate, her flip flopping and downright lying on taking funds for the Bridge to nowhere, her stance against rape victims, and her theocratic mindset is she really who you want as second in command?
Posted by Innoculation Against Idiocy 
Posted by Innoculation Against Idiocy 
Posted by Innoculation Against Idiocy 