OK so, a discussion group I belong to had a post from a member that contained a newsletter excerpt from the oh-so-wise *gag* Gary Bauer where, like your typical neocon, he completely distorts, rewords, and lies about Sen. Ted Kennedy's speech recently. In part, it reads:
Hope Or Despair?
Today brought some good news from Iraq – the capture of two more of terrorist thug Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's top aides. No doubt the arrest earlier this week of the man in charge of car bombings produced intelligence information that led to these arrests. Meanwhile, Iraqis all over the world, including here in the United States, started voting today.
The "main event" in Iraq itself is on Sunday. All Americans can feel a sense of pride in the knowledge that our young men and women in uniform have sacrificed greatly in order to secure liberty for the Iraqi people.
But here in the United States, the Senate's biggest "naysayer,"Senator Ted Kennedy, chose yesterday to deliver a major foreign policy speech in which he called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. Kennedy said U.S. troops, who he claimed to support, "are fanning the flames ofconflict." He added, "the war in Iraq has become a war against the American occupation."
Perhaps Senator Kennedy can explain to us why, if he is correct, thugs like Zarqawi are killing other Iraqis as often as they attack U.S. soldiers. The fact is that the violence in Iraq is a struggle over the future of theMiddle East with profound implications for the future of our children too.
Will the region be controlled by bin Laden's Al Qaeda, the Baathists of Syria and the mullahs of Iran? Or can freedom take root and bring this breeding ground of Islamofascism and terrorism into the civilized world?
Once again, Senator Kennedy has embraced defeat and despair at the very moment when hope and strength are needed most. I still remember another Kennedy standing on the steps of the Capitol andspeaking these memorable words: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
Of course, being the person that *I* am, I refuted, point by point, the stupidity of statements like "why are they targeting civilians," etc? Frankly, I get so sick of people perpetuating this type of crap -- they perpetuate it because they're on some "Christian" mailing list and they BELIEVE this type of propaganda. Often I lose patience but there's one member of this discussion group who always seems to stay logical, rational, and right on. With her permission, I'd like to share a response of hers - it's long but SO worth the read! Thanks to michiaj.
Here is some of what your post made me think about. First, about people like Gary Bauer...I don't consider him a "true" conservative. I see him as a pharisee or a saducee...a legalist who believes that his way is the only way...that is not a conservative or American value. Conservative American values have always been that we each have a right to believe, worship, and live in freedom. Not freedom according to Gary Bauer, but in our own true pursuit of liberty, justice, and happiness. If Gary, (and others) were true conservatives, they would still have and express strong religious beliefs, but they would fight to the death for yours and my freedom to believe, worship and live according to our own beliefs. They don't...they fight tooth and nail to enforce their beliefs on us.That violates a true conservative principal.
Second, I don't think we can even say, "Well, we don't agree on everything but I still think he is a good man with good intentions." Lies are lies. Misleading is misleading. Lying to people, blatantly, misquoting, misrepresenting other people is dishonest...so it isn't just a matter of "disagreeing." It is blatant attempts to manipulate huge numbers of people from behind a pulpit. When you do so deliberately (and they cannot say it isn't deliberate---he had a copy of the speech, they twist numbers and studies long after the authors of those studies have come out and TOLD them they are misrepresenting them and not being honest about them) then you lose the right to say "I meant well...."
If we look at even just this most recent example of this report or article that he sent out in which he so blatantly misquoted and misrepresented the facts, we have to ask: "Why???" If he cannot support his beliefs without resorting to lies, then are his beliefs defensible? That's the problem when you start stretching and manipulating the truth--the very fact that you had to resort to such methods indicates there is a weakness in your argument.
As far as 9/11...the vote...all of that...I believe that the propaganda machines have done a very good job of creating this idea that anyone who believes Bush is doing a bad job in Iraq didn't care about 9/11, or has forgotten it, or that they don't want terrorists defeated. It is so way off base I almost don't know where to begin.
I remember 9/11. It happened the day before I was supposed to give my partner her 40th birthday party. She begged me to cancel it and I did. We watched the television for hours and we wept profusely. Every time I heard one of the recorded calls from people in the towers telling loved ones goodbye...my heart was ripped from my chest. I literally was watching when the second plane hit the other tower. I think we all walked around numb with pain and shock...I don't think cutting off one of our own limbs would have produced more numbness...more shock.
After 9/11 the entire world gathered around us...the entire world was ready to stand with us and go after terrorists. The entire world was sick of the violence and sick of terrorists. I believe we did the right thing going into Afghanistan when the Taliban refused to cough up Bin Laden...and then something happened...the focus started to change. Instead of doing all the things Bush said we would in Afghanistan--rebuilding roads, schools, hospitals...we started like little boys playing with firecrackers looking for something new to blow up. We fulfilled less than 10% of the rebuilding we promised (to this day)...and we started pouring money into a war in Iraq...and at first they tried to connect that war in Iraq with 9/11...over and over the connection was made--then later "We never said that..."
Don't you find it just a little bit odd that even though Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld all now say "We never said there was a connection between Iraq and Al Quaida" that you yourself still see a connection there? It is because it was a very carefully and very cunningly crafted idea planted in the hearts and minds of the American people...so they would support a war in Iraq...
But then they said, "Weapons of mass destruction..." Over and over they said it, and over and over they emphasized "We KNOW WITHOUT A DOUBT there are weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam is planning on using them..." They ignored the inspectors, they ignored even American CIA agents and reports who kept sending memos up the line refuting their "intelligence." In fact, the guy who put the line BACK into Bush's speech about Hussein obtaining uranium from Nigeria after a CIA fact checker took it OUT of the speech because he said they already KNEW IT WAS FALSE INFORMATION--the guy who put it BACK IN got promoted!!?
Then it became, well we went in to "liberate" the people. Great, I am all for helping others to have freedom and liberty, especially if they are being killed by the thousands...except the mass graves were NOT being filled currently...the mass executions took place back when the US was sending Rumsfeld to shake hands with Hussein (the Reagan administration) and back when Bush senior was allowing biological samples like smallpox and anthrax to be SOLD TO IRAQ. Hussein murdered tens of thousands of Kurdish people, men, women, children, using biological weapons in the 80's!!! We never heard about it back then...partly because WE SOLD THEM the makings!! By the time we went into Iraq there were no more mass executions. The torture and prisons? Well we replaced their gaurds with ours. Because the Bush administration developed a policy of "sweeps" in which they picked up men, women, and children, literally off the street and put them in jail for interrogation. Our new Attorney General, as White House Council, wrote a memo that was passed down the line of command that said, "Geneva Convention laws are not applicable" and paved the way for methods of torture and humiliation that Americans should be incredibly ashamed of....all used on the same people we were "liberating."
In the meantime, even though we have captured 3/4 of the people said to "lead" Al Quaida, world wide intelligence shows that Al Quaida has quadrupled in numbers...they are four times as strong as they were before 9/11. Why the explosion in numbers? Because the Arab countries that grieved with us, stood with us, after 9/11 now believe that Bush has used this as an excuse to build an American empire...because Arab countries that believed we truly did want to bring freedom to Iraqi's now believe that the elections are a ruse, and that we will still put our "puppets" in place...like we put Hussein in place (something Americans forget--we helped him get into power, and we remained an ally right through his mass murders...)
In Iraq itself, when we first went in, the insurgents were small, isolated...but as the stories of torture have come out, as they have seen more and more of their children lying in hospitals, more and more of them have started to believe what the insurgents have told them--that Americans are there to protect oil interests and to create a puppet government.
So why did they vote in spite of the dangers? Because it is their only hope. Even if they think it is rigged, the only hope is to go and vote so that you can stand up and say, this is how I voted if you believe the Americans rigged it. They still hold onto hope that somehow freedom will come, but if you are listening to them, one of those freedoms they long for is FROM Americans.
The administration wants you and me and everyone to believe that they are the guys in the white hats who stand for freedom and liberty—even while they sit at home attacking my family. Even while they literally lie and bully in our own country.
Again, I have to ask...if their aims and their goals and their execution of their tasks are innocent and pure, why do they have to lie all the time? Why force government employees to put out reports without numbers, or with false numbers? Why promote people who give you BAD information deliberately (when it is removed for inaccuracy and then you put it right back in, it is deliberate) and fire people who say "No that isn't right"...? If you have to do so many bad things to accomplish your goals, can the goals be better than the means of achieving them?
We MUST get away from this entrenched idea that if people don't support Bush's errors, lies, ineptitude, that they didn't care about 9/11 or terrorism. Of course we all care about and remember them. We want to deal with them in ways that do not create MORE Of them.
I'll tell you what would have struck the greatest blow to terrorism and al Qaeda and would have encouraged democracy more than anything Bush has done--if we had done exactly what we had said we would in Afghanistan. If we had focused all our efforts right there...get Bin Laden, and while we were looking for him, poured even 1/10th of the money we have poured into Iraq on building schools and hospitals, kept a peacekeeping force there that would actually protect the girls' schools (the majority of women there still cannot go to school because when they do they are killed...), made Afghanistan a shining example of how we want to help people...then we would have taken away the recruiting tools of Al Quaida.
Want to know how they recruit? They show pictures of children with half their bodies blown away by "Shock and Awe." They show our telecasts where we oohed and ahhhed over our own powerfulness, and then they show the children hit by those bombs...they show videos of Bush saying we would rebuild Afganistan, and make it better, freer, then they show how most of the country still doesn't have usable roads, schools, or hospitals...and that all of our forces are stationed along the oil pipeline...
They do the same things that AFA, FOF, CWA do: they use religious doctrine, and they lie, and they point to one group of people who are out to destroy them (except for Al quaida, they use "Americans" in place of "gays") and they lie and they twist the truth and they scare parents and teens by saying, "if you don't help us stop them, they will destroy your family, your country."
Why does a sixteen year old boy strap explosives to his chest and walk into a crowd and detonate it? Hate? There is some hate there, yes, but it is hate born of something...what is the birthplace of that hate? Bush says it is hate of our freedoms...think about it. Is that deep enough? Really? "I hate the fact that your women can drive to the store without a male so I will blow myself up and die?" No...they are told, shown, that Americans are coming to kill your brothers and sisters and mother and father...they want all of us dead...see how they drop bombs on civilians? See how they arrest hundreds and torture them in Hussein's prisons? If you do not help us, they will come for YOUR family. Help us, sacrifice your life, and protect your family, your religion.
What Bush's policies and actions and even words "Bring it on!!" has done is to make it so they don't even have to work hard to come up with their propaganda...
Whew!! Sorry it is so long...but I wanted to explain all of why the whole "Well, we may not be entirely honest, but we are pure" ideas don't work...they don't work when you are a religious leader using dishonest means to express your faith, and they don't work when you are a world leader who says they are spreading freedom and liberty yet you do and say the opposite...
I hope that, after reading this, you said "WOW" too, like I did.
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