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Rustang
Newbie Poster
Username: Rustang
Post Number: 21
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - 09:32 am: | 
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I was listening to the confirmation hearings of John Negroponte as the first national intelligence director yesterday and I couldn't help but notice a couple of things.His being the 'make it happen' guy in the Iran/Contra thing never really came up.It seems to me that if a person has been involved in training contra death squads and that apparently has no ethical constraints concerning making opposition leaders 'disappear',that this would be relevent in the decision making process concerning putting him in charge of the intelligence gathering agencies here.
A person with no prior knowledge of the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq would get the impression that Bush was acting in good faith on bad information,based on the wording of the questions.There were essentially two things that Bush did before the second plane hit on 9/11.Start making arrangements to get the Bin Laden family out of the country and tell his people to make this be about Iraq.Powell goes in front of the U.N. and the whole world knows that he is passing on a pack of bald-faced lies so, of course,he does not secure U.N. backing for invading Iraq.People here,like Scott Ritter for example,are saying quite publicly that Iraq has no WMD,they don't have the capability of producing any WMD,and if they started today going wide open and unencumbered they won't have that capability for at least 10 years.The administration knew this,and yet now,it seems,the official version is that there was a breakdown in the interface between the executive branch and the intelligence gathering community.
I understand that there are blacks that vote republican.I don't understand why,but I do acknowledge that it happens.It looks to be the same sort of reasoning that led some jewish people to vote for Hitler.It happened,but I'm pretty confident that at some point they would have conceeded to themselves that this was probably not the best decision they could have made at the time.
So now we have an ambassador to the U.N. that believes that the United States should be the only permanent member of the security council,and that U.N. itself is an organization that has long outlived any utility that it might have had in the past,and a director of national intelligence that trains and supervises death squads.Is it possible that we (americans) are actually that ignorant and apathetic?Or,as the subject asks,have I just missed something? |
Rustang
Newbie Poster
Username: Rustang
Post Number: 22
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - 09:41 am: |
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And let's not overlook our attorney general that condones torturing prisoners and that the geneva conventions don't apply to captured enemy combatants,even though captured enemy combatants are exactly the people that they were talking about in the geneva conventions. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 2319
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - 09:49 am: |
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Rusty,
I think the situation is more dire even than you suggest.
The appointments you mention, the US Patriot Act, torture at Abu Grab (as you say, rationalized by the current US Attorney General), unexplained deaths at Guantanamo BAy, incarcerations sans due process, voting rights violations and MANY other infringements on life/liberty over the last 5 years prove that Americans can be every bit as tyrannical as any of our despotic predecessors.
We maybe ONE major terror event away from becoming a modern day Nazi Germany. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 2135
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - 10:54 pm: |
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And don't forget what's his name, that abrasive loose cannon who Bush just appointed as Ambassador to the UN. With their majority in the senate and house, Republicans are gettin ready to inflict some serious damage on our civil liberties. They especially have it in for the judiciary and once they dismantle the court systems, this country is in big trouble. I just hope the American people realize what is going on. |
Rustang
Newbie Poster
Username: Rustang
Post Number: 23
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 14, 2005 - 08:44 am: |
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It grieves me to have to say this,but my opinion of the intelligence of your average american has taken a pretty serious beating over the last few years.They seem to have entirely forgotten the lies that they were handed as reasons to invade Iraq.Recently I saw Tom Delay on TV talking about how barbaric the treatment of Terry Schiavo was.From listening to his diatribe on this matter one would never get the idea that Delay pulled the plug on his father about 15 years ago.The judiciary is all that stands in the way of our becoming an outright military dictatorship and the Cheney/Bush crowd seems to be doing a pretty good job of stirring up the herd about how it's a bad thing that the judiciary is holding them to a minimal standard of restraint.People don't seem to realize that, if one must give up everything good about being an american,then national security is no longer a worthwhile objective.But,that's just me.And a few other people,I guess.Ben Franklin said that a person willing to exchange essential liberty for temporary safety deserves neither.Truman refered to that person as being so cowardly and servile that they didn't deserve the liberties secured for them by better men.Oh,well. |
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