the left vrs right "debate" goes on at dar kush blog
and so it goes on at writer steve barnes' dar kush blog http://darkush.blogspot.com . left vrs right "a plague on both their houses" etc..etc.. in my opinion , slightly missing the most important point as usual...
to which one astute reader responded :
"Steve,
The comments you are speaking to:
"America being the worst country ever, it derves to be destroyed, 9-11 was justified"
are much more likely to be heard from the religious Right. That would be the Muslim Right, but the Right never the less.
My contention is that what we are seeing is by and large a war of the Right against the Right. It often seems that the Left on both sides is at best being duped into playing the Rights's game (often as comic relief).
Personally, I see little difference in process between groups like "Focus on the Family" and groups like the Taliban other than in degree. If Dobson ever got real political power I am pretty sure we would be seeing executions in the public square of "undesirables" following quickly.
The Right Wing propaganda machine would have us believe differently, but they would also have us believe that we are winning the war in Iraq and that being posted there is a lot like taking a trip to Six Flags.
It seems to me that the Left here in the States has allowed itself to become marginalized, so unless you listen carefully you don't what they are really saying, it just gets drowned out by all the yelling from the Right.
In my dealings with the Left, I have not personally hear even one person express an idea like "America deserved 9/11" I do however hear people on the Right trying to Tar the Left with that brush on a fairly regular basis.
Mushtaq Ali | Homepage | 06.12.05 - 1:37 pm | #"
and another reader observed :
"I agree, but not just the Moslem right. The only people I heard say that the US deserved 9-11 were Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.
David Bellamy | 06.12.05 - 2:30 pm | # "
to which this blogger responds :
thank you gentlemen ...my sentiments exactly . the right is very adept at creating "straw men" to publicly attack.
they labeled the democrats back during the 80's as the "tax and spend democrats" and then ran up the biggest budget deficits in global history .
they screamed and yelled about "personal responsibility" , "welfare queens" and the social "safety net" being too expensive , and then gave away hundreds of billions of taxpayers dollars to bailout the savings and loan industry due to bad loans made --in part as a direct result of the right's push for deregulating the banking industry in the first place.
who has proven to be the bigger "welfare queen" , some poor woman with kids lying about money she made on the side in order to keep her $200 worth of food stamps every month or the nitwits at the pentagon pouring out billions of taxpayer dollars in corporate welfare to companies like halliburton--notorious for deliberately overcharging the government ?
rumsfeld and wolfowitz and the knuckleheads in the Us congress were giving ahmed chalabi and his crew about $300,000 taxpayer dollars per month for grossly faulty intel on iraq . this was AFTER chalabi and about $300,000,000 in depositors money in Petra bank vanished from jordan --chalabi was running the bank and was sentenced to 20 years in prison for bank fraud--but had already escaped jordan by hiding in the trunk of a car.
after the fall of saddam's regime the bushites gave chalabi a job working with the interim government's finances--distributing the new iraqi dinar notes to the banks and getting rid of the old saddam currency--about $20 million of that new money chalabi handled suddenly "disappeared"
the point is that the right loves to point fingers and scream that this group and that group are "traitors" , or don't "support our troops" , or those folks "have no morals and family values"
or this party is "a tax and spend party"
but every charge they make can be turned around on them , usually exposing them as doing much worse--didn't "war president" bush last year cut benefits to veterans-- during a time of war ?
is that his way of "supporting the troops"?
"dumocrat" kerry , in the recent election , was slandered by the swiftboat campaign --causing doubt to be smeared on his service record ---and this smear campaign was done by the party of the guy who not only, did not go off to war , but used his daddy's influence to get him into a safe cushy position in national guard--AHEAD of other more qualified people--and then the guy was awol for about a year and refused to submit to mandatory drug testing that the other pilots faced --and NO ONE he "served" with willingly came forward to say that he remembers the guy being there !
other soldiers kerry served with came forward and publicly vouched for his courage under fire , one guy even said kerry saved him by pulling him from the water when he was knocked overboard---who vouched for bush ? nobody remembers him in the national guard !
yet it's bush's party that gets away with attacking the service record of a guy who actually WAS there in harm's way --instead of avoiding service by being a drunken , coked up party boy rumored to have had not only a womanizing past , but also very , very close "intimate friendships" with other young men---and people actually voted for the guy in 2004 ?
the stock market dropped 900 points and the economy tanked under bush's first watch--and THEN the 9-11 attacks took place --despite bush having been warned in advance by the intelligence agencies of jordan , israel , germany , russia, italy and france--vladimir putin ordered his intelligence service to warn bush in the "strongest possible terms" that terrorist attacks in america were imminent--bush did nothing !
"January 2001 - The Bush Administration orders the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back off" investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who were living in Falls Church, Va. -- right next to CIA headquarters. This followed previous orders dating back to 1996 that frustrated efforts to investigate the bin Laden family. [Source: BBC Newsnight, Correspondent Gregg Palast, Nov. 7, 2001]"
bush is told around 9am on sept 11th that a second plane hit the WTC--"america is under attack" and he sat at that elementary school for at least another 30 to 45 minutes and DID NOTHING except look like he had just soiled his pants !
---and people voted for this guy in 2004 ?!!!
and where was cheney around 9 am that tragic morning ?
he was literally picked up by the armpits and elbows and instantly whisked away by his secret service detail to the bomb-proof command center/shelter designed for just such emergencies .
no one asks why did bush's secret service detail --with the nation clearly under attack--reporters with the president say members of the secret service detail were watching it on tv when the second plane hit--why did they dicker around and waste another 30 to 45 minutes --on the ground --near an airport--at a site the papers and tv had reported to the whole world that the president would be at--no fighter escort scrambled to protect bush while he's there , on the ground and vulnerable to the same type of attack by the other two of the hijacked airliners --attacks just shown on tv to have happened at the WTC---no "leaders " of either party --none of them --"dumocrat" or "repugnantcan" bothers to even question HOW THE HELL COULD THIS GROSS VIOLATION OF SET STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES FOR PROTECTING THE LIFE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES EVER HAVE TAKEN PLACE ?
is anyone punished ?
do any "heads roll" for this obvious breakdown in presidential security ?
is there an investigation ?
well sort of ---the 9-11 commission co-chaired by former republican governor thomas kean investigates the tragedy (wasn't a company that kean did business with connected to the bin laden family ? memory fails me at the moment --so i'll have to check) and who is the co-chair of the 9-11 commission ? --lo and behold --is it florida democratic senator bob graham ?
is it the same senator bob graham who had breakfast on 9-11 with house of representatives member porter goss--former cia agent -now head of cia --both at the time of the WTC attacks , members of their respective congressional intelligence committees?
and weren't these two "distinguished gentlemen" , a republican and democrat-- goss and graham both on the morning of 9-11 in the company of general mahmud ahmad
former head of pakistani intelligence--and the same general mahmud ahmad who resigned his position when it came out that he had ordered aides to wire $100,000 to a guy named mohammed atta ?
"summer 2001 (est.) - Pakistani ISI Chief Gen. Mahmud Ahmad orders an aide to wire transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta who was, according to the FBI, the lead terrorist in the suicide hijackings. Ahmad recently resigned after the transfer was disclosed in India and confirmed by the FBI. The individual who makes the wire transfer at Ahmad's direction is Ahmad Umar Sheik, the lead suspect in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. [Source: The Times of India, Oct.11, 2001.]"
"Sept. 11, 2001 - Gen. Mahmud of the ISI , friend of Mohammed Atta, is visiting Washington on behalf of the Taliban. He is meeting with the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., and Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., [Source: MSNBC, Oct. 7, 2001; The New York Times, Feb. 17, 2002]"
how come this doesn't come out in the investigation ?
how come the cozy relationship between cia and it's "hand maiden" pakistani intelligence and both groups' close connections with the taliban and the afghan mujahideen jihadis / osama bin laden --the same people we are now supposed to be fighting a "war on terror" against-- isn't made clear to the american people ?
why isn't the long relationship between british intelligence, Us intelligence and israeli intelligence and the islamic fundamentalist jihadis like bin laden made clear to the american people ?
why aren't we told about how israel originally helped fund the founding of hamas in order to create a religious fundamentalist counterweight against the secular palestinian authority --hoping to create an internal struggle between the two and divide palestinian christians and palestinian muslims against each other in the process ?
and why would anyone "awake" even vote for bush when he was asleep at the wheel before and during 9-11 and the easily preventable "blowback" from disgruntled former cia assets was allowed to happen by his administration and destroyed the world trade center ? --an attack that conveniently gave the administration the excuse it needed to launch "pipeline-war and petro-war" in central asia and the middle east--carrying out insane rightwing US neo-con and crazy rightwing--"greater israel"-- likud agendas.
why would anyone have voted for bush in 2004 when he and his administration , before the "pipeline-war" in afghanistan was complete, THEN led us into "petro-war" in iraq on faulty intel about weapons of mass destruction --faulty intel about iraq being a regional and world threat-- faulty intel about the war being a cakewalk --faulty intel about the iraqis greeting us with kisses and flowers--faulty intel about a saddam / bin laden alliance-- faulty intel about only 150,000 troops needed to secure the whole country and then quickly returning home--faulty intel about the reconstruction of iraq being quickly accomplished and paid for by iraq's own oil money instead of Us taxpayer dollars--faulty intel about there being only small numbers of iraqi civilian casualties when instead the numbers came out as more than 100,000---faulty intel about depleted uranium munitions not being hazardous to civilians and our own troops when they are a long term ecological NIGHTMARE to any living thing around them --faulty intel about the war being fought over weapons of mass destruction while the Us admitted to using napalm and cluster bombs which are items rejected by much of the international community because of the viciousness of these weapons and in fallujah possibly use of chemical weapons by the Us that residents claim caused unusual discolorations among many of the dead there--faulty intel about how the Us levelled fallujah to "pacify" it but forgot to mention that at the same time insurgents grabbed much of mosul a city 5 times larger than fallujah and iraqi "police" there abandoned without a fight 30 police stations leaving for the insurgents' arsenal another $40 million worth US taxpayer bought military equipment all the while Us troops were tied up fighting the junior varsity--rookies led by some veterans and of course a few candidates for martyrdom back in fallujah ---this war definitely looks lost to me simply because the Us rewards incompetance and lies rather than admitting mistakes and correcting them .
it seems that all of what the bush administration told us was a bunch of miserable lies --after all that , unless they too were "asleep" or fed too many "media-lies" , to understand the reality , how could anybody in those "red states" , or ANY states have voted for such an obviously miserable bunch of liars as george bush and his administration ?
was it thomas jefferson who said "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" ?
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Insults on Left and Right
One of my readers commented that the charge that "Lefties are traitors", often said by right-wing pundits, is roughly equivilent to the "Bush voters were idiots" comment from the Left. Hmmm. You know, I think the odious stereotype is "Traitors on the Left, Bigots on the Right." There is, I think, a whiff of truth in it--in the sense that if you hear someone complaining about America being the worst country ever, it derves to be destroyed, 9-11 was justified, etc, etc, your money would probably be safe betting that the speaker has Leftist politics. Conversely, if you overheard someone complaining about Race Mixing, saying Segregation was "a good idea", that blacks were natural slaves of substandard intelligence, etc....your money would probably be safe betting this person's politics were on the Right. Why this might be is another conversation--I'm just talking observable reality, and public perceptions. But to tar an entire group with the sins of a few (on either side) is just as closed minded and bigoted. We're all Americans. Some of us just look at the flag from different directions.
to which one astute reader responded :
"Steve,
The comments you are speaking to:
"America being the worst country ever, it derves to be destroyed, 9-11 was justified"
are much more likely to be heard from the religious Right. That would be the Muslim Right, but the Right never the less.
My contention is that what we are seeing is by and large a war of the Right against the Right. It often seems that the Left on both sides is at best being duped into playing the Rights's game (often as comic relief).
Personally, I see little difference in process between groups like "Focus on the Family" and groups like the Taliban other than in degree. If Dobson ever got real political power I am pretty sure we would be seeing executions in the public square of "undesirables" following quickly.
The Right Wing propaganda machine would have us believe differently, but they would also have us believe that we are winning the war in Iraq and that being posted there is a lot like taking a trip to Six Flags.
It seems to me that the Left here in the States has allowed itself to become marginalized, so unless you listen carefully you don't what they are really saying, it just gets drowned out by all the yelling from the Right.
In my dealings with the Left, I have not personally hear even one person express an idea like "America deserved 9/11" I do however hear people on the Right trying to Tar the Left with that brush on a fairly regular basis.
Mushtaq Ali | Homepage | 06.12.05 - 1:37 pm | #"
and another reader observed :
"I agree, but not just the Moslem right. The only people I heard say that the US deserved 9-11 were Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.
David Bellamy | 06.12.05 - 2:30 pm | # "
to which this blogger responds :
thank you gentlemen ...my sentiments exactly . the right is very adept at creating "straw men" to publicly attack.
they labeled the democrats back during the 80's as the "tax and spend democrats" and then ran up the biggest budget deficits in global history .
they screamed and yelled about "personal responsibility" , "welfare queens" and the social "safety net" being too expensive , and then gave away hundreds of billions of taxpayers dollars to bailout the savings and loan industry due to bad loans made --in part as a direct result of the right's push for deregulating the banking industry in the first place.
who has proven to be the bigger "welfare queen" , some poor woman with kids lying about money she made on the side in order to keep her $200 worth of food stamps every month or the nitwits at the pentagon pouring out billions of taxpayer dollars in corporate welfare to companies like halliburton--notorious for deliberately overcharging the government ?
rumsfeld and wolfowitz and the knuckleheads in the Us congress were giving ahmed chalabi and his crew about $300,000 taxpayer dollars per month for grossly faulty intel on iraq . this was AFTER chalabi and about $300,000,000 in depositors money in Petra bank vanished from jordan --chalabi was running the bank and was sentenced to 20 years in prison for bank fraud--but had already escaped jordan by hiding in the trunk of a car.
after the fall of saddam's regime the bushites gave chalabi a job working with the interim government's finances--distributing the new iraqi dinar notes to the banks and getting rid of the old saddam currency--about $20 million of that new money chalabi handled suddenly "disappeared"
the point is that the right loves to point fingers and scream that this group and that group are "traitors" , or don't "support our troops" , or those folks "have no morals and family values"
or this party is "a tax and spend party"
but every charge they make can be turned around on them , usually exposing them as doing much worse--didn't "war president" bush last year cut benefits to veterans-- during a time of war ?
is that his way of "supporting the troops"?
"dumocrat" kerry , in the recent election , was slandered by the swiftboat campaign --causing doubt to be smeared on his service record ---and this smear campaign was done by the party of the guy who not only, did not go off to war , but used his daddy's influence to get him into a safe cushy position in national guard--AHEAD of other more qualified people--and then the guy was awol for about a year and refused to submit to mandatory drug testing that the other pilots faced --and NO ONE he "served" with willingly came forward to say that he remembers the guy being there !
other soldiers kerry served with came forward and publicly vouched for his courage under fire , one guy even said kerry saved him by pulling him from the water when he was knocked overboard---who vouched for bush ? nobody remembers him in the national guard !
yet it's bush's party that gets away with attacking the service record of a guy who actually WAS there in harm's way --instead of avoiding service by being a drunken , coked up party boy rumored to have had not only a womanizing past , but also very , very close "intimate friendships" with other young men---and people actually voted for the guy in 2004 ?
the stock market dropped 900 points and the economy tanked under bush's first watch--and THEN the 9-11 attacks took place --despite bush having been warned in advance by the intelligence agencies of jordan , israel , germany , russia, italy and france--vladimir putin ordered his intelligence service to warn bush in the "strongest possible terms" that terrorist attacks in america were imminent--bush did nothing !
"January 2001 - The Bush Administration orders the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back off" investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who were living in Falls Church, Va. -- right next to CIA headquarters. This followed previous orders dating back to 1996 that frustrated efforts to investigate the bin Laden family. [Source: BBC Newsnight, Correspondent Gregg Palast, Nov. 7, 2001]"
bush is told around 9am on sept 11th that a second plane hit the WTC--"america is under attack" and he sat at that elementary school for at least another 30 to 45 minutes and DID NOTHING except look like he had just soiled his pants !
---and people voted for this guy in 2004 ?!!!
and where was cheney around 9 am that tragic morning ?
he was literally picked up by the armpits and elbows and instantly whisked away by his secret service detail to the bomb-proof command center/shelter designed for just such emergencies .
no one asks why did bush's secret service detail --with the nation clearly under attack--reporters with the president say members of the secret service detail were watching it on tv when the second plane hit--why did they dicker around and waste another 30 to 45 minutes --on the ground --near an airport--at a site the papers and tv had reported to the whole world that the president would be at--no fighter escort scrambled to protect bush while he's there , on the ground and vulnerable to the same type of attack by the other two of the hijacked airliners --attacks just shown on tv to have happened at the WTC---no "leaders " of either party --none of them --"dumocrat" or "repugnantcan" bothers to even question HOW THE HELL COULD THIS GROSS VIOLATION OF SET STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES FOR PROTECTING THE LIFE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES EVER HAVE TAKEN PLACE ?
is anyone punished ?
do any "heads roll" for this obvious breakdown in presidential security ?
is there an investigation ?
well sort of ---the 9-11 commission co-chaired by former republican governor thomas kean investigates the tragedy (wasn't a company that kean did business with connected to the bin laden family ? memory fails me at the moment --so i'll have to check) and who is the co-chair of the 9-11 commission ? --lo and behold --is it florida democratic senator bob graham ?
is it the same senator bob graham who had breakfast on 9-11 with house of representatives member porter goss--former cia agent -now head of cia --both at the time of the WTC attacks , members of their respective congressional intelligence committees?
and weren't these two "distinguished gentlemen" , a republican and democrat-- goss and graham both on the morning of 9-11 in the company of general mahmud ahmad
former head of pakistani intelligence--and the same general mahmud ahmad who resigned his position when it came out that he had ordered aides to wire $100,000 to a guy named mohammed atta ?
"summer 2001 (est.) - Pakistani ISI Chief Gen. Mahmud Ahmad orders an aide to wire transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta who was, according to the FBI, the lead terrorist in the suicide hijackings. Ahmad recently resigned after the transfer was disclosed in India and confirmed by the FBI. The individual who makes the wire transfer at Ahmad's direction is Ahmad Umar Sheik, the lead suspect in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. [Source: The Times of India, Oct.11, 2001.]"
"Sept. 11, 2001 - Gen. Mahmud of the ISI , friend of Mohammed Atta, is visiting Washington on behalf of the Taliban. He is meeting with the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., and Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., [Source: MSNBC, Oct. 7, 2001; The New York Times, Feb. 17, 2002]"
how come this doesn't come out in the investigation ?
how come the cozy relationship between cia and it's "hand maiden" pakistani intelligence and both groups' close connections with the taliban and the afghan mujahideen jihadis / osama bin laden --the same people we are now supposed to be fighting a "war on terror" against-- isn't made clear to the american people ?
why isn't the long relationship between british intelligence, Us intelligence and israeli intelligence and the islamic fundamentalist jihadis like bin laden made clear to the american people ?
why aren't we told about how israel originally helped fund the founding of hamas in order to create a religious fundamentalist counterweight against the secular palestinian authority --hoping to create an internal struggle between the two and divide palestinian christians and palestinian muslims against each other in the process ?
and why would anyone "awake" even vote for bush when he was asleep at the wheel before and during 9-11 and the easily preventable "blowback" from disgruntled former cia assets was allowed to happen by his administration and destroyed the world trade center ? --an attack that conveniently gave the administration the excuse it needed to launch "pipeline-war and petro-war" in central asia and the middle east--carrying out insane rightwing US neo-con and crazy rightwing--"greater israel"-- likud agendas.
why would anyone have voted for bush in 2004 when he and his administration , before the "pipeline-war" in afghanistan was complete, THEN led us into "petro-war" in iraq on faulty intel about weapons of mass destruction --faulty intel about iraq being a regional and world threat-- faulty intel about the war being a cakewalk --faulty intel about the iraqis greeting us with kisses and flowers--faulty intel about a saddam / bin laden alliance-- faulty intel about only 150,000 troops needed to secure the whole country and then quickly returning home--faulty intel about the reconstruction of iraq being quickly accomplished and paid for by iraq's own oil money instead of Us taxpayer dollars--faulty intel about there being only small numbers of iraqi civilian casualties when instead the numbers came out as more than 100,000---faulty intel about depleted uranium munitions not being hazardous to civilians and our own troops when they are a long term ecological NIGHTMARE to any living thing around them --faulty intel about the war being fought over weapons of mass destruction while the Us admitted to using napalm and cluster bombs which are items rejected by much of the international community because of the viciousness of these weapons and in fallujah possibly use of chemical weapons by the Us that residents claim caused unusual discolorations among many of the dead there--faulty intel about how the Us levelled fallujah to "pacify" it but forgot to mention that at the same time insurgents grabbed much of mosul a city 5 times larger than fallujah and iraqi "police" there abandoned without a fight 30 police stations leaving for the insurgents' arsenal another $40 million worth US taxpayer bought military equipment all the while Us troops were tied up fighting the junior varsity--rookies led by some veterans and of course a few candidates for martyrdom back in fallujah ---this war definitely looks lost to me simply because the Us rewards incompetance and lies rather than admitting mistakes and correcting them .
it seems that all of what the bush administration told us was a bunch of miserable lies --after all that , unless they too were "asleep" or fed too many "media-lies" , to understand the reality , how could anybody in those "red states" , or ANY states have voted for such an obviously miserable bunch of liars as george bush and his administration ?
was it thomas jefferson who said "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" ?
posted by dsekou at 12:48 PM
2 Comments:
well damn. Concise and to the point.
lol ...but sadly some of the people who responded over there seem really blind...or just can't face the reality that their "president" sold em a bill of rotten goods...you know the old saying --you can lead a horse to water...and he ends up in "de-nile" ;)
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