What the Democratic Party leadership fails to remember is, that
#1. unrestrained HATE RADIO in America leads to Tim McVeigh's DOMESTIC TERRORISM.
The Alpha and Omega of right-wing hate radio, of course, is smearing all those who do not conform to the "whitebread" view of the world - for example, hating "socialized big government spending" while entire swaths of the American economy depend on federal road and highway spending - and SMEARING people to the edge of calling them TREASONOUS, which of course in war is a capital crime. Thereby, ergo, Right-Wing hate-radio shock-jocks are implicitly arguing for the ability to cull from society "treasonous" dissidents, by execution preferably, much as the Communist and Nazi regimes and lesser dictators before and since have for centuries.
#2. The Republicans were able to build their movement to IMPEACH president Bill Clinton, through a campaign of 1,000 slashes: FAKE SCANDALS, from "Travel-office-gate" to "file-gate" to "Whitewater" to "LINCOLN BEDROOM" to "WHITE HOUSE TRASHING" eabled Republicans to investigate and subpoena the entire Clinton White House and supporters, not only empowering Republican prosecutorial thugs like KEN STARR, but allowing Republican senators, representatives, and party leaders to call Clinton "A LIAR" for almost an entire decade.
Note: The "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL!" and "WHITE HOUSE TRASHING SCANDAL!" were ENTIRELY FABRICATED "scandals" there was never so much as ONE PHOTOGRAPH produced to document the "trashing" of the White House, and to think that the Republicans and their media allies were able to create a false 'scandal' out of the Clinton's overnight guest list - when the George W. Bush White House won't even confess to having convicted bribery felon JACK ABRAMOFF, convicted fraud felon KEN LAY, and professional gay male prostitute Jeff Ganon all visit the White House repeatedly! And what of Ken Starr's great "WHITEWATER" investigation? Besides poor Jim McDougal DYING IN PRISON, on a cold concrete floor, in isolation, in a max-security prison despite his age and heart condition, KEN STARR's other grand conviction was of Clinton friend and counsel Webster Hubblell's conviction for - OVERBILLING CLIENTS and partners!
OVERBILLING CLIENTS is a felony?? If clients or partners don't like or agree with counsel's legal bill, they DON'T PAY IT! Charging, much less, convicting Web Hubbell of "overbilling clients" is like the scene in the Vietnam movie "Apocalypse Now" where the CIA assassin (played by Martin Sheen) tells the general "charging a man with murder in this place is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500".
It is BEYOND LUDICROUS to recall Ken Starr's conviction of Webster Hubbell for "overbilling clients," when the Republican Party (and Demcoratic 'leadership') do NOTHING about President Bush stacking the nation's emergency disaster administration with an ENTIRELY UNQUALIFIED, INCOMPETENT HACK ("Heckuva job, Brownie" Administrator MICHAEL BROWN put in charge of FEMA, despite Brown having NO disaster relief or emergency experience.)
Not to mention Vice President Cheney's ongoing financial ties to Halliburton and the huge no-bid, no-oversight, no-performance government contracts for that company; his inextricable connection to the "outing" of CIA agent Valerie Plame and the OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE conviction by his own Chief of Staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby that pushed that scandal past the 2004 election; or his role in convincing America that Iraq was an immdiate threat to America when it was his administration's failure to heed warnings about SAUDI-based Al Qaida which allowed terrorists to attack America, UNIMPEDED BY EVEN MINIMUM SECURITY PRECAUTIONS, on 9-11-2001.
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Tell us another one, Mr. Vice President
Dick Cheney is still trying to link Iraq with Al Qaeda and 9/11.
By Senate Carl Levin
CARL LEVIN, a Democratic senator from Michigan, is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
April 12, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-levin12apr12,0,7221964.story?track=mostviewed-homepage
TO PARAPHRASE President Reagan, there he goes again.
On Rush Limbaugh's radio program last week, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke about Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi and stated: "He went to Baghdad. He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the Al Qaeda operations inside Iraq…. This is Al Qaeda operating in Iraq and, as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq."
It is incredible that more than four years after the invasion, the vice president is still trying to convince the public that Saddam Hussein's regime was connected to Al Qaeda and that Zarqawi's presence in Iraq was evidence of a connection.
While the vice president doesn't say directly that there was a tie between the two, his clear purpose is to blur the line between Al Qaeda — the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks — and the Iraqi dictator in order to justify the war in Iraq.
The problem is, that's simply not supported by the facts or by our intelligence community — and everyone except the vice president acknowledges it. In September, for example, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report that Hussein was "distrustful of Al Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from Al Qaeda to provide material or operational support." And the CIA reported a year earlier, in October 2005, that the Iraqi regime "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates." As the Intelligence Committee report noted, the Iraqi intelligence service was actually trying to capture Zarqawi, who was in Baghdad under an alias. Is the vice president willfully ignoring what the rest of the government has concluded? Or does he have access to information he hasn't shared with us? If so, he should produce it.
The vice president has a clear, documented pattern of overstating and misstating information with regard to Iraq. He also, for instance, continued to claim that 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta may have met with an Iraqi agent in Prague — long after the intelligence community believed otherwise. Again, his obvious purpose is to link Hussein's regime with Sept. 11, even though the rest of the world has concluded that no such link exists.
The vice president has made so many outlandish statements that the country barely raised an eyebrow at his false statement last week. The public has stopped believing the words of a man who promised, before we invaded Iraq, that we would be "greeted as liberators" and reassured us nearly two years ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes."
But his comments continue to erode our credibility with the international community, which has already been severely damaged by our rush to war with Iraq with little international support. If, in the months ahead, we face a crisis over Iran's weapons programs and need to rally the international community, we may find that the world has little interest in trusting an administration that misstates facts.
By all accounts, Dick Cheney is one of the most powerful vice presidents in our history, if you define power as influence over policy. We need to ask ourselves: What does it mean for our country when the vice president's words lack credibility, but he still wields great power?
