[Rhodes22-list] 'Political' Left wing back channel communication! 'Political' Big Al delete...

[stan]

now I get it Ed,   You are really a double agent.  Thanks for coming out of 
the closet to post that great piece.

ss

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tootle" <ekroposki at charter.net>
To: <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 1:23 PM
Subject: [Rhodes22-list] 'Political' Left wing back channel communication! 
'Political' Big Al delete...


>
> Folks,
>
> A member of this forum sent me the following post back channel so the rest
> of you would not read the email.  This did not come from Cindy Spitzer a
> writer on the offending left wing newspaper alleged to have printed this
> snivel:
>
> Why I Believe Bush Must Go
> Nixon Was Bad. These Guys Are Worse.
>
> By George McGovern
> Sunday, January 6, 2008; B01
>
> As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have
> belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is
> to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.
>
> After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach
> President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I 
> thought
> that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of
> personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me.
>
> Today I have made a different choice.
>
> Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. 
> The
> political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial 
> partisanship,
> especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and statesmanship on 
> the
> part of too many Democratic politicians. So the chances of a bipartisan
> impeachment and conviction are not promising.
>
> But what are the facts?
>
> Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They
> have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national
> and international law. They have lied to the American people time after
> time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved
> country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These 
> are
> truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard.
>
> From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the
> product of questionable elections that probably should have been 
> officially
> challenged -- perhaps even by a congressional investigation.
>
> In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed 
> throughout
> the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has
> been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That 
> irresponsible
> venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number
> mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000
> Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins
> Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The
> financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is
> expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed
> from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9
> trillion -- by far the highest in our national history.
>
> All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress 
> that
> the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in
> violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and
> property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse
> of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the
> Geneva Conventions of 1949.
>
> I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon
> administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far 
> stronger
> than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after 
> the
> 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a
> Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our
> national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?
>
> How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of 
> killing,
> immorality and lawlessness?
>
> It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived
> Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had
> nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an "imminent
> threat" to the United States. The administration also led the public to
> believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks -- another blatant
> falsehood. Many times in recent years, I have recalled Jefferson's
> observation: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is
> just."
>
> The basic strategy of the administration has been to encourage a climate 
> of
> fear, letting it exploit the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks not only to justify the
> invasion of Iraq but also to excuse such dangerous misbehavior as the
> illegal tapping of our telephones by government agents. The same
> fear-mongering has led government spokesmen and cooperative members of the
> press to imply that we are at war with the entire Arab and Muslim world --
> more than a billion people.
>
> Another shocking perversion has been the shipping of prisoners scooped off
> the streets of Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other countries
> without benefit of our time-tested laws of habeas corpus.
>
> Although the president was advised by the intelligence agencies last 
> August
> that Iran had no program to develop nuclear weapons, he continued to lie 
> to
> the country and the world. This is the same strategy of deception that
> brought us into war in the Arabian Desert and could lead us into an
> unjustified invasion of Iran. I can say with some professional knowledge 
> and
> experience that if Bush invades yet another Muslim oil state, it would 
> mark
> the end of U.S. influence in the crucial Middle East for decades.
>
> Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of
> their administration, their policies -- especially the war in Iraq -- have
> increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United
> States. Consider the difference between the policies of the first 
> President
> Bush and those of his son. When the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait in 
> August
> 1990, President George H.W. Bush gathered the support of the entire world,
> including the United Nations, the European Union and most of the Arab
> League, to quickly expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Saudis and Japanese
> paid most of the cost. Instead of getting bogged down in a costly
> occupation, the administration established a policy of containing the
> Baathist regime with international arms inspectors, no-fly zones and
> economic sanctions. Iraq was left as a stable country with little or no
> capacity to threaten others.
>
> Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military
> occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody 
> civil
> strife. It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of 
> state,
> James A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent 
> Scowcroft,
> all opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.
>
> In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral
> responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the
> Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty
> condenses it to a sentence: "I have never ever seen anything as badly
> bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans." Any
> impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the
> collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst 
> natural
> disaster in U.S. history.
>
> Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to 
> act.
> Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution 
> to
> deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the 
> land.
> It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some 
> of
> us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support
> the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I
> believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.
>
> As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the
> Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, "it wasn't until the
> most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of
> hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign
> Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- and argued that, as Commander in
> Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override
> our country's laws -- that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach 
> as
> I did during Watergate. . . . A President, any President, who maintains 
> that
> he is above the law -- and repeatedly violates the law -- thereby commits
> high crimes and misdemeanors."
>
> I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in 
> the
> opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation 
> and
> will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and
> Congresses. At age 85, I won't be around to witness the completion of the
> difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I'd like to hold 
> on
> long enough to see the healing begin.
>
> There has never been a day in my adult life when I would not have 
> sacrificed
> that life to save the United States from genuine danger, such as the ones 
> we
> faced when I served as a bomber pilot in World War II. We must be a great
> nation because from time to time, we make gigantic blunders, but so far, 
> we
> have survived and recovered.
>
>
> © 2008 The Washington Post Company
>
>
> Fowarded to demonstrate the anti Americanism of the left continues...
>
> Ed K
> Greenville, SC, USA
> "Political liberty is incompatible with economic subjection." Max Eastman
>
> -- 
> View this message in context: 
> http://www.nabble.com/%27Political%27--Left-wing-back-channel-communication%21-%27Political%27-Big-Al-delete...-tp14672415p14672415.html
> Sent from the Rhodes 22 mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
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