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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 14, 2019 at 12:09 am
On June 12, during an interview with ABC News correspondent George Stephanopoulos, President Donald Trump said he would accept information on his 2020 opponents from hostile nations like Russia and China:
“It’s not an interference, they have information. I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI. If I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research.
“The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it, but you go and talk honestly to congressmen, they all do it, they always have. And that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.”
The reaction was nationwide outrage.
Donald Trump
Apparently, most Americans don’t like having their elections subverted by enemy nations.
Subverting the governments of other countries is a right that Americans have long reserved for themselves. For example:
- Between 1898 and 1934, the United States repeatedly intervened with military force in Central America and the Caribbean.
- Americans staged invasions of Honduras in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924 and 1925 to defend U.S. interests. These were defined as Standard Oil and the United Fruit Company.
- The United States occupied Nicaragua almost continuously from 1912 to 1933. Its legacy was the imposition of the tyrannical Somoza family, which ruled from 1936 to 1979.
- The United States occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. American banks had lent money to Haiti and requested American government intervention.
- In 1918, 13,000 American soldiers joined armies from Europe and Japan to overthrow the new Soviet government and restore the previous Tsarist regime. By 1920, the invading forces proved unsuccessful and withdrew.
Allied troops parading in Vladivostok, 1918
- From 1946 to 1949, the United States provided military, logistical and other aid to the Right-wing Chinese Nationalist Party of Chiang Kai-shek. Its opponent were Communist forces led by Mao Tse-Tung, who ultimately proved victorious.
- In 1953, the Eisenhower administration ordered the CIA to overthrew the democratically-elected government of of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. His crime: Nationalizing the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913.
- He was succeeded by Mohammad-Reza Shah Phlavi. Whereas Mossadeddgh had ruled as a constitutional monarch, Phlavi was a dictator who depended on United States government support to retain power until he was overthrown in 1979 by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
- In 1954, the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected government of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. His crime: Installing a series of reforms that expanded the right to vote, allowed workers to organize, legitimized political parties and allowed public debate. Most infuriating to American Right-wingers: His agrarian reform law, which expropriated parts of large land-holdings and redistributed them to agricultural laborers.
- The United Fruit Company lobbied the United States government to overthrow him—and the CIA went into action. Arbenz was replaced by the first of a series of brutal Right-wing dictators.
- From 1959 until 1963, the United States government was obsessed with overthrowing the revolutionary Cuban government of Fidel Castro. Although not democratically elected, Castro was wildly popular in Cuba for overthrowing the dictatorial Fulgencio Batista.
- On April 17, 1961, over 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Cuban military forces crushed the invasion in three days.
- Infuriated with the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President John F. Kennedy authorized “Operation Mongoose” to remove Castro through sabotage and assassination. The CIA, wanting to please Kennedy, teamed up with the Mafia, which wanted to resurrect its casinos on the island.
- Among the tactics used: Hiring Cuban gangsters to murder police officials and Soviet technicians; sabotaging mines; using biological and chemical warfare against the Cuban sugar industry. None of these proved successful in assassinating Castro nor overturning his regime.
Ernesto “Che” Guevera and Fidel Castro
- In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon ordered the CIA to prevent Marxist Salvador Allende from being democratically elected as president of Chile. When that failed, he ordered the CIA to overthrow Allende.
- Allende’s crime: A series of liberal reforms, including nationalizing large-scale industries (notably copper mining and banking. In 1973, he was overthrown by Chilean army units and national police. He was followed by Right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet, who slaughtered 3,200 political dissidents, imprisoned 30,000 and forced another 200,000 Chileans into exile.
Americans reacted to all these attempts—successful and unsuccessful—with indifference or outright support.
The popular 1960s TV series, “Mission: Impossible,” regularly depicted a CIA-type agency supporting regimes “we” liked or toppling those “we” didn’t.
Americans generally assume their Presidents and Congress know best who is a “friend” and who is an “enemy.” America’s friends often turn out, for the most part, to be Right-wing dictators like Chiang Kai-Shek, Fulgencio Batista, Augusto Pinochet and Mohammad-Reza Shah Phlavi.
And its enemies often turn out to be liberal reformers like Augusto Sandino, Mohammad Mosaddegh and Salvador Allende.
Americans favor intervention for the flimsiest of reasons. In 2003, President George W. Bush claimed Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had plotted 9/11 with Osama bin Laden. There was absolutely no proof to substantiate this, yet Americans overwhelmingly supported Bush’s unprovoked invasion of Iraq.
But now the shoe is on the other foot.
Americans are now tasting the medicine they have dished out to so many other countries. And they find it as repugnant as those countries have found the American brand.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 29, 2019 at 12:11 am
Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he is a victim of “fake news.”
But future historians will note how often the media ignored the foremost reality of their time: That the United States was led by a psychopathic dictator.
This is true even for CNN, the network that Trump clearly hates the most.
In a May 22, 2018 CNN essay on Trump vs. the press, longtime political consultant David Gergen wrote:
“Instead of raging on about ‘fake news,’ the President would do well to read Peggy Noonan [a Ronald Reagan speechwriter turned author] on Reagan and focus on building his character.”
So what’s wrong with this?
Trump was 72 years old when this was written. George Orwell wrote that, by age 50, every man has the face he deserves. By age 72, every man has the character he has spent his life being. And Trump’s life has been dedicated to inflating his wallet and his ego.
He isn’t going to radically change at this point—especially if he believes himself “a very stable genius.”
Donald Trump
Then there’s a July 30, 2018 story on CNN: “Trump Opens Window Into His Rage With Mueller Attack.”
This focused on a tweetstorm Trump launched against Special Counsel Robert Mueller just two days before Mueller prosecuted Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman.
Among those tweets:
“Is Robert Mueller ever going to release his conflicts of interest with respect to President Trump, including the fact that we had a very nasty & contentious business relationship, I turned him down to head the FBI (one day before appointment as S.C.) & Comey is his close friend.”
And:
“…Also, why is Mueller only appointing Angry Dems, some of whom have worked for Crooked Hillary, others, including himself, have worked for Obama….And why isn’t Mueller looking at all of the criminal activity & real Russian Collusion on the Democrats side-Podesta, Dossier?”
Robert Mueller
CNN characterized this cascade of libels as a “trio of tweets…packed with inaccuracies and misrepresentations.”
An accurate description would have been: “Lies.”
There were no “conflicts of interest” on Mueller’s part. And having been FBI director for 12 years (2001-2013) he had no desire to once again assume such a grueling burden at age 72.
Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times, described a meeting between himself and Trump:
“I told him that although the phrase ‘fake news’ is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists ‘the enemy of the people.’ I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence.
“I repeatedly stressed that this is particularly true abroad, where the president’s rhetoric is being used by some regimes to justify sweeping crackdowns on journalists. I warned that it was putting lives at risk, that it was undermining the democratic ideals of our nation, and that it was eroding one of our country’s greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press.”
Arthur Gregg Sulzberger
Appealing to Trump’s “better angels” was an exercise in futility—and insanity.
A 2016 analysis by USA Today found that for 30 years, Trump and his businesses had been involved in 3,500 legal cases in U.S. federal and state courts. This is not a man who, at heart, is a peacemaker.
Nor does he respect truth. The Washington Post has reported that, by March 17, 2019, Trump said or tweeted 9,179 lies or misleading statements. This makes for an average of 11.6 lies a day.
To expect that Trump has any regard for such Constitutional niceties as freedom of the press is beyond rationality.
He intends to strip every potential challenger to his authority—or his version of reality—of legitimacy with the public. If he succeeds, there will be:
- No independent press to reveal his failures and crimes.
- No independent law enforcement agencies to investigate his abuses of office.
- No independent judiciary to hold him accountable.
- No independent military to dissent as he recklessly hurtles toward a nuclear disaster.
- No candidate—Democrat or Republican—to challenge him for re-election in 2020.
- No candidate—Democrat or Republican—to challenge his remaining in office as “President-for-Life.”
Yet the media—including CNN—refuses to brand Trump as the liar and dictator he clearly is.
Reporters who cover the White House are among the most knowledgeable their newspapers/networks have to offer. They see the President up close not only there but at campaign stops and state occasions. They quickly gain a sense of him as a man.
So it can’t be ignorance that leads so many of them to refrain from telling the truth. The answer has to be cowardice—by them and/or by their editors.
Newspapers fear Trump’s attacks on their integrity—and the loss of subscriptions. They fear the press will fall into even lower esteem than it’s now held. (An Ipsos poll shows almost a third of Americans agree the news media is “the enemy of the people.”)
For the owners of TV networks, there is an added fear of having their licenses challenged by the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the airwaves.
Regardless of the reason for this cowardice, it ill serves the journalism profession—and the country.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 21, 2019 at 10:36 am
In The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political science, raised the question of “whether it is better to be loved than feared, or feared more than loved.”
And he answered it: “The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved.”
But Machiavelli warned against relying primarily on fear: “Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred, for fear and the absence of hatred may well go together, and will always be attained by one who abstains from interfering with the property of his citizens….or with their women.”
If the Republicans governing Georgia and Alabama ever read this warning, they have ignored it with a vengeance.
Niccolo Machiavelli
On May 7, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed an anti-abortion law that—in defiance of the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade—re-criminalizes abortion.
The law bans abortions as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detectable. This usually occurs about six weeks into a pregnancy—even before many women know they’re pregnant.
The law permits abortions
- Only if the mother’s life is at risk; or
- If the fetus cannot survive.
No exceptions are made for cases of rape or incest.
“HB 481 would also have consequences for women who get abortions from doctors or miscarry,” writes Mark Joseph Stern for Slate.
“A woman who seeks out an illegal abortion from a health care provider would be a party to murder, subject to life in prison. And a woman who miscarries because of her own conduct—say, using drugs while pregnant—would be liable for second-degree murder, punishable by 10 to 30 years’ imprisonment.
“Prosecutors may interrogate women who miscarry to determine whether they can be held responsible; if they find evidence of culpability, they may charge, detain, and try these women for the death of their fetuses.” [Emphasis added.]
In addition, a woman could be sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment if she leaves Georgia to obtain an abortion in another state.
And on May 14, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed into law the “Alabama Human Life Protection Act.” The law only allows exceptions “to avoid a serious health risk to the unborn child’s mother,” for ectopic pregnancy and if the “unborn child has a lethal anomaly.”
As in the case of Georgia, no exceptions are made for rape or incest.
Ivey admitted that the new law may be unenforceable owing to Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in all 50 states. But the whole point of the law is to challenge that decision, Ivey said.
Republicans constantly claim to be “the party of small government.” But there can be no more intrusive act than dictating to a woman that she must give birth—even if she’s the victim of rape or incest.
At the same time:
- Republicans have proven uniformly hostile to providing poor mothers with access to food, clothing and medical care.
- Donald Trump has made repealing the Affordable Care Act—which provides medical insurance to more than 20 million Americans—the hallmark of his Presidency.
It’s easy to imagine many of these women fatally cracking under the strain.
On December 6, 2011, Rachelle Grimmer, a 38-year-old resident of San Antonio, pulled a gun in a state welfare office and held off police for seven hours. Then she shot and wounded her two children—ages 10 and 12—before fatally shooting herself.
For months, she had been unable to qualify for food stamps.
Thus, women living in abortion-banning states face Right-wing hypocrisy on one hand and draconian laws punishing the most intimate acts—of sexuality and reproductive freedom—on the other.
It’s easy to imagine some pregnant women—especially the victims of incest and/or rape—desperately seeking redress through violence. And the targets of their wrath could easily be the Republican legislators of their states who have made their lives a living hell.
The President is constantly guarded by the Secret Service. And governors are protected by state police. But state assemblymen and senators aren’t assigned such details—unless there’s a specific threat made against them.
In fact, Right-wing figures have often been the targets of successful—and unsuccessful—assassination attempts.
- On September 8, 1935, Louisiana U.S. Senator Huey Long was shot and fatally wounded by Carl Austin Weiss, an idealistic young doctor. Long had intended to run for President in 1936 and unseat Franklin D. Roosevelt.
- On May 27, 1942, SS Obergruppenführer (General) Reinhard Heydrich—“The Butcher of Prague”—was killed with a hand grenade by two Czech patriots.
- On May 15, 1972, Presidential candidate George C. Wallace was shot and paralyzed by a crazed gunman while mingling with supporters in a Maryland shopping center.
- On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot and almost killed by a psychotic gunman while walking to his bulletproof limousine in Washington, D.C.
All of these men, it should be noted, had bodyguards assigned to them at the time they were attacked.
Given the ferocity of laws aimed specifically at them, some women may decide to abort more than fetuses.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 20, 2019 at 12:49 am
The Right’s war on freedom of choice continues.
On May 14, 2019, Alabama passed the most restrictive abortion legislation in the United States, banning the procedure in nearly all circumstances, including rape and incest. The only exceptions will be cases where a woman’s health is at serious risk.
In the first quarter of 2019, at least 28 state legislatures introduced abortion bans.
Fueling all this anti-abortion legislation: President Donald Trump has appointed two Right-wing, anti-abortion Justices to the Supreme Court.
Across the country, anti-abortionists believe this is their best chance to reverse Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. They hope that one of these cases will be reviewed—and the Court will overturn Roe.
So what’s responsible for all this fetus fanaticism?
First, there is an energized constituency for politicians willing to wave this red flag. Every every major Republican Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan has tapped into this voting bloc. And each has found plenty of votes to be gotten from it.
Second, many fetus fanatics simply dislike women. They fear and resent the women’s movement, which has given women the right to enter the workforce and compete directly with men.
And what they hate most is the legal right of a woman to avoid becoming pregnant via birth control—or to abort the result of a male’s sperm if they do. They see this as a personal rejection.
The Right is made up overwhelmingly of white males. And many of these men would feel entirely at home with a Christianized version of the Taliban. They long for a world where women meekly cater to their every demand and believe only what their male masters approve for them to believe.
Third, many fetus fanatics are “pro-life” when it comes to fetuses, but hypocritically refuse to support the needs of children from low-income families.
Fourth, many fetus fanatics are “family values” hypocrites. For example: Representative Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), an anti-abortion, “family values” doctor, had an affair with a patient and later pressured her to get an abortion. He also agreed that his wife should have two abortions.
Scott DesJarlais
People like this subscribe to a philosophy of: “Do as I say, not as I do. And if I do it, it’s in the service of a Higher Cause and therefore entirely justified.”
Fifth, many fetus fanatics feel guilty about their own past sexual transgressions—especially if these resulted in pregnancy. And they want to prevent others from living the same life they did.
Some of these people are well-intentioned. Even so, they usurp unto themselves a God-like right to intrude on the most intimate decisions for others—regardless of what those people may need or want.
Sixth, many fetus fanatics embrace contradictory goals. On one hand, most of them claim they want to “get government off the backs of the people.” That usually means allowing corporations to pollute, sell dangerous products and treat their employees as slaves.
On the other hand, they want to insert the government into the vagina of every woman. That means empowering State and Federal authorities to prevent women from getting an abortion–even in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.
Seventh, many leaders of the fetus fanatics movement are independently wealthy. This means that even if abortion could be outlawed for the vast majority, they could always bribe a willing doctor—-here or abroad—–to perform such an operation on their wife, daughter and/or mistress. For them, there is always an escape clause.
Eighth, many fetus fanatics are not truly “pro-life.” They totally oppose abortion under most—-if not all—circumstances. But they also fully support:
- making military-style assault weapons available to nutcases;
- capital punishment;
- going to war for almost any reason;
- wholesale massacres of wildlife;
- despoiling of the environment; and
- even nuclear war.
And many of those who fanatically defend the right of a fetus to emerge from the womb just as fanatically oppose welfare for those who can’t support that newborn.
Lucy, the famous cartoon character in Charles Schultz’ “Peanuts” series, once said: “I love humanity. It’s people I can’t stand.” With fetus fanatics, the line runs: “I love fetuses. Everything else is expendable.”
Ninth, many fetus fanatics believe that since their religion teaches that abortion is wrong, they have a moral duty to enforce that belief on others.
This is especially true for evangelical Christians. These are the same people who condemn Muslims—-such as those in Saudi Arabia–for segregating women, forbidding them to drive and forcing them to wear head scarfs or chadors—-loose, usually black robes.
Taliban: Islam’s version of the “Right-to-Life” movement
But while they condemn Islamics for their general intolerance of others’ religious beliefs, they lust to impose their own upon those who belong to other churches. Or who belong to no church at all.
Tenth, many fetus fanatics are just as opposed to birth control as they are to abortion. Thus, when Georgia University law student Sandra Fluke asked Congress to require insurance companies to cover birth control, Rush Limbaugh branded her a “slut” and a “prostitute.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 16, 2019 at 12:02 am
On August 11-12, 2017, white supremacists from across the country gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a “Unite the Right” rally. Among the organizations represented:
- The Ku Klux Klan (KKK);
- The Alt-Knights;
- The “Militia Movement”;
- The American Nazi Party;
- The Confederate League of the South.
They marched through the streets carrying flaming tiki torches, screaming racial epithets and frightening the local citizenry. Echoing Nazis in 1930s Germany, they shouted: “Blood and Soil!” and “Jews will not replace us!”
On August 13, a Nazi sympathizer rammed his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 other demonstrators.
President Donald Trump stated: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”
But he refused to specifically denounce the Fascistic demonstrators.
Donald Trump
White supremacists were elated.
“He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us,” wrote Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer.
“No condemnation at all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.”
Another Trump admirer: Former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke.
“Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa,” Duke tweeted after the news conference.
Fascistic groups make up a pivotal constituency for Trump. Without their support, he might not have become President. He can’t afford to alienate them.
But more than 50 years ago, another President was willing to declare all-out war against white supremacists: Lyndon B. Johnson.
The reason: The murders of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi—Michael “Mickey” Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney—-on June 21, 1964.
Poster for missing civil rights workers
Johnson ordered the FBI to find the missing activists.
Two hundred FBI agents interrogated 480 Klansmen. After the civil rights workers’ bodies were found buried near a dam, Johnson gave FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover a direct order: “I want you to have the same kind of intelligence [on the Klan] that you have on the communists.”
For decades, Hoover had refused to tackle white hate groups. And, in truth, there had not been any President willing to give him the order to do so.
But now a President had given him such an order. And Hoover was approaching the mandatory retirement age of 70—which could be waived by a sympathetic President. If he wanted to stay on as director of the agency he loved, he had no choice.
So the FBI launched a counterintelligence program—in Bureau-speak, a COINTELPRO—against the Ku Klux Klan.
Klansmen had shot, lynched and bombed their way across the Deep South, especially in Alabama and Mississippi. Many Southern sheriffs and police chiefs were Klan sympathizers, if not outright members and accomplices.
Ku Klux Klansmen in a meeting
The FBI’s covert action program aimed to “expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize” KKK groups through a wide range of legal and extra-legal methods. Seventeen KKK groups were targeted, So were nine others, including the American Nazi and National States Rights parties.
After the Klan murdered Lemuel Penn, a black army reserve lieutenant, the FBI targeted every major Klan group in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.
“My father fought the Klan in Massachusetts,” recalled William C. Sullivan, who headed the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division in the 1960s. “I always used to be frightened when I was a kid and I saw the fiery crosses burning in the hillside near our farm.
“When the Klan reached 14,000 in the mid-sixties, I asked to take over the investigation of the Klan. When I left the Bureau in 1971, the Klan was down to a completely disorganized 4,300. It was broken.
William C. Sullivan
“They were dirty, rough fellows. And we went after them with rough, tough methods.”
Among those methods:
- Developing informants within Klans—usually by paying small fortunes for information. (“There would be a meeting of 10 Klansmen, and six of them would be reporting back to us the next day,” recalled an FBI agent.)
- Planting electronic surveillance devices in Klan meeting places.
- Carrying out “black bag jobs”—burglaries—to steal Klan membership lists.
- Contacting the news media to publicize arrests and identify Klan leaders.
- Informing the employers of known Klansmen of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them.
- Illegally obtaining Klansmen’s tax returns.
- Sending anonymous letters/postcards to Klansmen warning: “Someone KNOWS who you are!”
- Falsely accusing other Klansmen of being FBI informants.
- Breaking up the marriages of Klansmen by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
- Beating and harassing Klansmen who threatened and harassed FBI agents.
The FBI’s counterintelligence war against the Klan ended in 1971.
Over the next 40 years, Klan membership steadily rose again. In 2017, its membership rose sharply.
By June, 2017, an estimated 3,000 Klan members belonged to 42 different Klan groups in 22 states. And the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) tracked Klan activity to 11 other states, including liberal ones like California.
Only when America has a President who’s not beholden to the Fascistic Right can there be another COINTELPRO aimed at white hate groups.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 15, 2019 at 12:22 am
At the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., the following sign is prominently displayed: WARNING SIGNS OF FASCISM.
Beneath that are listed the signs to beware of an approaching Fascistic dictatorship:
- Powerful and continuing nationalism
- Disdain for human rights
- Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
- Supremacy of the military
- Rampant sexism
- Controlled mass media
- Obsession with national security
- Religion and government intertwined
- Labor power suppressed
- Disdain for intellectuals and the arts
- Obsession with crime and punishment
- Rampant cronyism and corruption
- Fraudulent elections
During the 1930s and 1940s, Fascism was clearly on the rise, and Western democracies seemed unable to cope with it.
U.S. Holocaust Museum and Memorial
But by April, 1945, Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Benito Mussolini’s Italy were on the ash-heap of history.
After a run of quick victories, they had out-stretched their limited resources—and found themselves overwhelmingly defeated by the combined might of England, the United States and the Soviet Union.
And at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the infamy of Nazi extermination camps was fully revealed.
And that—believed millions of anti-Fascists throughout the world—was the end of Fascism.
But it wasn’t.
By the time Donald J. Trump took office as President of the United States, Fascism was very much alive and dangerously well.
Specifically: In January, 2019, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found that Right-wing extremists were linked to every 2018 extremist murder—at least 50—in the United States.
In 2017, there had been 37 such killings by Right-wing extremists.
That same year, the FBI concluded that white supremacists killed more Americans from 2000 to 2016 than “any other domestic extremist movement.”
In 2018, Right-wing extremists killed more people than in any year since 1995, the year that Timothy McVeigh’s blew up the Oklahoma City federal building.
According to the ADL’s Center on Extremism:
- Every perpetrator had ties to at least one Right-wing extremist movement.
- Firearms were used overwhelmingly in Right-wing attacks.
- Forty-two of the 50 deaths in 2018 were caused by guns. Knives or edged weapons accounted for the rest.
- Five of the 17 incidents involved shooting sprees that caused 38 deaths and injured 33 others.
- Five shooting sprees resulted in 38 deaths and left 33 people injured.
Among the five major Right-wing shooting sprees in 2018:
- Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh, PA: 11 dead;
- Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, FL: 17 dead;
- Waffle House, Nashville, TN: four dead.
For nearly two decades, United States counter-terrorism strategy has focused almost exclusively on American and foreign-born jihadists, overshadowing Right-wing extremism as a legitimate national-security threat.
Between 2002 and 2017, the United States spent $2.8 trillion—15% of discretionary spending—on counter-terrorism. Between 2008 and 2017, domestic extremists killed 387 people in the United States, according to the 2019 ADL report.
“We’re actually seeing all the same phenomena of what was happening with groups like ISIS, same tactics, but no one talks about it because it’s far-Right extremism,” says P. W. Singer, a national security strategist at the New America think tank.
In 2017, Singer met with senior Trump administration officials to discuss creating a counter-terrorism strategy that encompassed a wider range of threats.
“They only wanted to talk about Muslim extremism,” said Singer. But even before the Trump administration, “we willingly turned the other way on white supremacy because there were real political costs to talking about white supremacy.”
P. W. Singer
Catiline17 [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D
Among those costs:
- Arousing the ire of Southern states, where Right-wing terrorism organizations like the Ku Klux Klan have long been tolerated, if not outright supported.
- About 22 million Americans say it’s “acceptable” to hold neo-Nazi or white-supremacist views, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken in the wake of the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017.
- About 10% of Americans said they supported the “alt-right.”
- Many police officers don’t see white supremacist groups as a threat. One domestic-terrorism expert who conducts hate-crimes training for police has often been asked by officers: ‘Why aren’t you calling Black Lives Matter or Antifa a hate group?’ The answer is, because they’re not hate groups! But they didn’t see it that way.”
- According to William Fears, one of the most dedicated foot soldiers of the alt-right: Police were far less forgiving of Antifa, whose members consist of anti-fascists, anarchists, Socialists, animal rights activists, immigration rights activists, members of the local Socialist movement and environmental protesters.
- Another white nationalist activist recalled a rally where police posed for pictures with members of the alt-right: “Very buddy-buddy.”
Since taking office as President, Donald Trump has consistently shown his support for Right-wing terrorist groups.
On August 11-12, 2017, white supremacists from across the country gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a “Unite the Right” rally. Among the organizations represented:
- The Ku Klux Klan (KKK);
- The Alt-Knights;
- The “Militia Movement”;
- The American Nazi Party;
- The Confederate League of the South.
Like the Nazis in 1930s Germany, they marched through the streets carrying flaming torches, screaming racial epithets and frightening the local citizenry.
On August 13, a Nazi sympathizer rammed his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 other demonstrators.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 14, 2019 at 12:05 am
William Kristol—a Right-wing political analyst—has been dubbed “the godfather of neoconservatism.” And with good reason.
During the first two years of the George W. Bush administration, as the editor of the Weekly Standard, he was one of the leading instigators of the 2003 war with Iraq.
Bill Kristol
He—like senior officials on the George W. Bush administration—falsely claimed that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and planned to use them against the United States.
Another Kristol lie: Hussein planned 9/11 with Osama bin Laden.
He has never apologized for either lie—or the resulting war that killed 4,487 American soldiers and wounded another 32,226.
But even after the disaster of the 2003 war against Iraq, Kristol wasn’t through urging the United States into another murderous quagmire.
In a September, 2013 column, Kristol called for a return to war—not only in Syria but Iran as well:
“…Soon after voting to authorize the use of force against the [Bashar al-] Assad regime, Republicans might consider moving an authorization for the use of force against the Iranian nuclear weapons program.
“They can explain that [President Barack] Obama’s dithering in the case of Syria shows the utility of unequivocally giving him the authority to act early with respect to Iran.”
So it’s no small thing that Kristol has found himself agreeing with Democratic Massachusetts United States Senator and 2020 Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren that Democrats should begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
Elizabeth Warren
He did so on a segment of MSNBC’s “Meet the Press” on May 7, 2019.
Earlier in the day, Elizabeth Warren had stated on the Senate floor:
“More than 600 federal prosecutors have now said that what’s laid out in the Mueller Report would constitute obstruction of justice, and would trigger a prosecution for any human being in this country other than the President of the United States.
“Robert Mueller put all of the facts together for us, put all of the information together for us, and abided by the Trump administration declaration under the Office of Legal Counsel that a sitting president cannot be indicted for his crimes.
“We took an oath not to try and protect Donald Trump, we took an oath to protect and serve the Constitution of the United States of America, and the way we do that is we begin impeachment proceedings now against this president.”
On February 15, 2019, Kristol had posted this tweet on Twitter:
“Members of Congress take this oath of office (see Title 5, Section 3331 of the United States Code): “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
On May 7, in a blistering attack on his fellow Republicans, he posted “the new GOP Congressional oath”:
“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend Donald Trump against all oversight; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to him; that I take this obligation despite mental reservation and in the spirit of evasion of duty. So help me God.”
Hours later, Kristol appeared before a “Meet the Press” panel and attacked Democrats for being “so terrified about the word impeachment that we can’t even have hearings….I must say I agree with Elizabeth Warren. I never thought I would say this.
“Robert Mueller’s report… invited Congress to take a look for itself at the obstruction of justice charges. They have an obligation to do it. They don’t have to impeach him. They may take a look and decide there aren’t grounds for impeachment. Maybe they wanna censure him…I think Elizabeth Warren’s right. Begin the hearings.”
Kristol’s “new GOP Congressional oath” is a deadly reminder of another oath that had fatal consequences for Nazi Germany—and the world.
Soldiers swearing the Fuhrer Oath
On August 2, 1934, President Paul von Hindenburg died. Adolf Hitler was then serving as Reich Chancellor—the equivalent of attorney general. Within hours, the Nazi Reichstag [parliament] announced the following law, back-dated to August 1st:
“The office of Reich President will be combined with that of Reich Chancellor. The existing authority of the Reich President will consequently be transferred to the Führer and Reich Chancellor, Adolf Hitler.”
Immediately following the announcement of the new Führer law, the German Officer Corps and every individual soldier in the German Army was made to swear a brand new oath of allegiance:
“I swear by God this holy oath, that I will render to Adolf Hitler, Führer of the German Reich and People, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, unconditional obedience, and that I am ready, as a brave soldier, to risk my life at any time for this oath.”
No doubt Kristol, who considers himself a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, remembers all too well the fate of those old-time conservatives who dared oppose Hitler.
The lucky ones were sent to concentration camps. The unlucky ones wound up on meat hooks.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 9, 2019 at 12:11 am
“You know the great thing about the state of Iowa is, I’m pretty sure you all define gun control the same way we do in Texas—hitting what you aim at.
“My wife, Heidi, who is a petite, 5’2 California blonde, she was standing at the tripod unloading the full machine gun with a pink baseball cap that said ‘Frmed and Fabulous.’”
Yes, it was United States Senator Rafael “Ted” Cruz (R-Texas) on the prowl for laughs–-and votes—at a town hall meeting in Iowa.
Normally, Cruz would do his vote-hunting in Texas. But now Cruz had a bigger prize on his mind than simply being re-elected a United States Senator. Cruz wanted to be President in 2016.
U.S. Senator Rafael Cruz
And Iowa held its precinct causes on February 1-2, 2016.
Cruz’ jokes about gun control came on June 19, 2015, only two days after Dylann Roof, a white high school dropout, gunned down three unarmed black men and six black women at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Dylann Roof
Following his remarks, Cruz headed to a shooting range, where he fired off rounds on a semiautomatic .223-caliber Smith and Wesson M&P 15.
Cruz’ remarks no doubt appeared insensitive to those who now mourned for the latest victims of gun violence. But Charles L. Cotton took insulting the dead to a whole new level.
Cotton is a National Rifle Association (NRA) board member who also runs TexasCHLForum.com, an online discussion forum about guns and gun owners’ rights in Texas and beyond.
In a discussion thread on June 18, 2015—one day after the church slaughter—a board member noted that Clementa C. Pinckney, one of the nine people slain, was a pastor and a state legislator in South Carolina.
Cotton responded: “And he voted against concealed-carry. Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.”
That discussion thread has since been deleted.
During a subsequent phone interview, Cotton emphasized that he had been speaking as a private citizen—and not as an NRA board member:
“It was a discussion we were having about so called gun-free zones. It’s my opinion that there should not be any gun-free zones in schools or churches or anywhere else. If we look at mass shootings that occur, most happen in gun-free zones.”
If private citizens were allowed to carry guns everywhere, Cotton says, there will be fewer mass shootings because “if armed citizens are in there, they have a chance to defend themselves and other citizens.”
Cotton’s position—“there should not be any gun-free zones”—is exactly that of the NRA itself.
Under such circumstances, America will become a nation where anyplace, anytime, can be turned into the O.K. Corral.
Another point that Cotton didn’t mention: Dylann Roof did believe in concealed-carry–and it cost the lives of nine innocent men and women.
Finally, there is this: Even highly-trained shooters—such as those assigned to the United States Secret Service–don’t always respond as expected.
On May 15, 1972, Alabama Governor George Wallace was campaigning for President in Laurel, Maryland. He gave a speech behind a bulletproof podium at the Laurel Shopping Center. Then he moved from it to mingle with the crowd.
Since the 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, all those campaigning for President have been assigned Secret Service bodyguards. And Wallace was surrounded by them as he shook hands with his eager supporters.
Suddenly, Arthur Bremer, a fame-seeking failure in life and romance, pushed his way forward, aimed a .38 revolver at Wallace’s abdomen and opened fire. Before he could be subdued, he hit Wallace four times, leaving him paralyzed for the rest of his life.
Arthur Bremer shoots George Wallace
Nor was he Bremer’s only victim. Three other people present were wounded unintentionally:
- Alabama State Trooper Captain E. C. Dothard, Wallace’s personal bodyguard, who was shot in the stomach;
- Dora Thompson, a campaign volunteer, who was shot in the leg; and
- Nick Zarvos, a Secret Service agent, who was shot in the neck, severely impairing his speech.
None of Wallace’s bodyguards got off a shot at Bremer—before or after he pulled the trigger.
On October 6, 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was reviewing a military parade in Cairo when a truck apparently broke down directly across from where he was seated.
Anwar Sadat, moments before his assassination
Suddenly, soldiers bolted from the rear of the vehicle, throwing hand grenades and firing assault rifles. They rushed straight at Sadat—who died instantly under a hail of bullets.
Meanwhile, Sadat’s bodyguards—who had been trained by the CIA—panicked and fled.
Sadat had been assassinated by army officers who believed he had betrayed Islam by making peace with Israel in 1977.
The ultimate test of the NRA’s mantra that “there should not be any gun-free zones…anywhere” will come only when one or more heavily-armed gunmen target an NRA convention.
It will then be interesting to see if the surviving NRA members are as quick to blame themselves for being victims as they are to blame the victims of other mass gun-slaughters.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 3, 2019 at 12:22 am
Everyone knows how World War II ended for Nazi Germany: With its Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, dead, and its capital city of Berlin in ruins.
Casualty figures range from 4.3 to 5.3 million dead Germans.
And for 44 years—from May 7, 1945, until November 9, 1989—Berlin was a divided city and Germany a divided nation. The Soviet Union ruled the eastern half. Germans—backed up by American military forces—ruled the western half.
Yet before all this unhappiness descended on the Fatherland, the vast majority of Germans enjoyed what they called “The Happy Time.”
This period began on January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor—and lasted until June 22, 1941.
For most Germans, those years—and especially the year between June, 1940, and June, 1941–were a time of prosperity and joy.
According to Robert Gellately’s 2002 landmark study, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, the Nazis operated a highly popular dictatorship. They didn’t try to cow people into submission. Instead, they set out to win converts by building on popular images, cherished ideals and long-held phobias.
And their efforts succeeded. The Gestapo owed its fearsome success to ordinary German citizens who voluntarily reported on “enemies” within their midst. These citizens saw themselves as patriots.
Nor, as has long been believed, were Nazi atrocities carried out in secret. From the media, Germans learned about the Nazis’ brutal campaign against the Jews, the concentration camps, and the Nazis’ radical approaches to “law and order.”
But as far as everyday Germans were concerned:
- The streets were clean and peaceful.
- Employment was high.
- The Communists and Jews were being locked up.
- The trouble-making unions were gone.
- Germany was once again “taking its rightful place” among ruling nations, after its catastrophic defeat in World War 1.
The height of “The Happy Time” came in June, 1940. In just six weeks, the Wehrmacht accomplished what the German army hadn’t in four years during World War 1: The total defeat of its longtime enemy, France.
Frenzied Germans greet Adolf Hitler
Suddenly, French clothes, perfumes, delicacies, paintings and other “fortunes of war” came pouring into the Fatherland. (Reichsmarshall Herman Goring, head of the Luftwaffe—air force—amassed his own private air collection from French museums.)
Most Germans believed der Krieg—“the war”—was over, and only good times lay ahead.
But Adolf Hitler had other plans.
On June 22, 1941, three million Wehrmacht soldiers slashed their way into the Soviet Union. The Third Reich was now locked in a death-struggle with a nation even more powerful than itself.
German soldiers in the Soviet Union
And then, on December 11, 1941—four days after Germany’s ally, Japan, attacked Pearl Harbor—Hitler declared war on the United States.
“The Happy Time” for Germans was over. Only prolonged disaster lay ahead.
Now, fast forward 77 years to the America of President Donald J. Trump. According to an official White House statement entitled “American Greatness,” issued on June 4, 2018:
Donald Trump
“Nearly 3 million jobs have been created since President Trump took office. The unemployment rate has dropped to 3.8, the lowest rate since April 2000, and job openings have reached 6.6 million, the highest level recorded. President Trump has restored confidence in the American economy, with confidence among both consumers and businesses reaching historic highs.”
Much of this jobs growth, however, was already underway during the closing years of the Obama administration. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from taking credit for it.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders doubtless spoke for millions of Trump supporters when she said, on June 4, 2018: “Since taking office, the President has strengthened American leadership, security, prosperity, and accountability. And as we saw from Friday’s jobs report, our economy is stronger, Americans are optimistic, and business is booming.
“The American people do not believe this strong economy is fantasy or unrealistic.”
Many Congressional Republicans have echoed this: The American people care only about the economy—and how well-off they are.
Only five days earlier—on May 31, 2018—the Trump administration had announced it would put steel and aluminum tariffs on longtime American allies Canada, Mexico and the European Union (EU).
Mexico, Canada and the EU immediately vowed to retaliate. For Americans, this will mean higher prices on such items as beer, baseball bats and cars. The EU has threatened to impose tariffs on motorcycles, bourbon whiskey, Levi’s jeans, peanut butter and cranberries.
A disastrous global trade war could be the ultimate result.
On June 4, Trump claimed, in a tweet: “As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself….”
And, making clear how far above the law he thinks Trump is, his attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, told the Huffington Post on June 3: “In no case can he be subpoenaed or indicted. I don’t know how you can indict while he’s in office. No matter what it is.
“If he shot [former FBI director] James Comey, he’d be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.”
The Germans made a similar devil’s-bargain with Hitler—and paid dearly for it. Americans, by supporting Trump—or at least not opposing him—have made a similar devil’s-bargain.
And such bargains always end with the devil winning.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Self-Help, Social commentary on April 29, 2019 at 12:04 am
More than two million Californians got a rude Christmas gift in 2018.
The Department of Homeland Security informed the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) that the driver’s licenses and identity cards it had issued were worthless.
The DMV had been issuing ID cards and driver’s licenses that didn’t comply with the Federal Government’s standards. So if you’ve received such a card, you won’t be allowed to board an airplane or enter a Federal Building after October, 2020.
The Federal Government is requiring all states to upgrade to the so-called Real ID cards, which are supposedly harder to forge. The “enhancements” were ordered into place after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
In 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act as a counter-terrorism measure. Its goal was to set security standards for government-issued IDs.
The Act started to be introduced in late 2013. Now in the last phase of its implementation, its enforcers have decided that licenses issued by some states don’t contain enough identifying information to pass muster with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
One of those states is California.
The others:
- Alaska
- Illinois
- Kentucky
- Maine
- Missouri
- Montana
- New Jersey
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
So where did the California DMV go wrong?
Instead of requiring two documents to prove residency, the DMV was only asking for one document from Real ID applicants. The department would then mail the ID card to the applicant’s address, which they believed constituted a second method of verifying the person’s residency.
And how are residents of states like California supposed to cope?
The Federal Government is advising them to get a passport.
And this, in turn, carries an illogic all its own.
As one soon-to-be affected traveler outlined: “To get a passport I’ll first need to get a certified copy of my birth certificate. And to get a copy of my birth certificate I need only to submit a copy of my driver’s license.
“A copy, no face-to-face, is-that-really you? So a New York driver’s license isn’t good enough for flying but it is good enough to get a birth certificate, which gets me a passport, which allows me to fly.”
Sample state ID card that’s acceptable under the Real ID Act
So much of what passes for security is actually security theater. It doesn’t actually make us safer, but it makes us feel safer.
And it makes us feel the government is keeping us safe, even when it isn’t.
For example: In the months after 9/11, National Guard troops were stationed in American airports. They certainly looked impressive.
But passengers would have felt far less reassured had they known the assault rifles they carried had no bullets.
Or take the checking of photo IDs that has become routine to enter State and Federal office buildings.
What exactly does this tell the security guard?
If you’re John Dillinger or Osama bin Laden, it tells him: “This is a very wanted man.”
But if you’re John Q. Public, who’s not notorious as a bank robber or terrorist, showing him your ID tells him nothing.
But people watching the guard performing this ritual assume: “The security guard must know what he’s looking for. So we have to be safer for his checking those IDs.”
In fact, most security guards have little training and even less experience. Many of them don’t carry firearms and lack self-defense skills.
According to Salary.com: The median annual Security Guard salary is $29,204, as of July 29, 2016, with a range usually between $25,857 and $33,522.
Repeated showings of security theater can be seen every weekday at any Federal Building.
To enter, you must show a driver’s license or State ID card.
Then you must remove
- Your belt;
- Your shoes;
- Your watch;
- Your wallet;
- All other objects from your pants pockets;
- Any jacket you’re wearing;
- Any cell phone you’re carrying.
All of these must be placed in one or more large plastic containers, which are run through an x-ray scanner.
Finally, assuming you avoid setting off any alarm system, you’re allowed to enter.
If you want to report a crime to a field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), here’s the procedure.
You take an elevator to the floor its offices are on. You tell a secretary why you want to speak with an agent. She requires you to pass her your driver’s license or State ID card. Then she makes a xerox of this and hands the card back.
Then you must list, on a single-page form, your:
- Name;
- Address;
- Phone number;
- Social Security umber;
- The reason you want to speak to an agent.
You can refuse to fill out the form. But then the secretary will refuse to let you speak with an agent.
The FBI has always encouraged Americans to report anything they consider a threat to national security or a violation of Federal law.
But this demand for so much private information is almost certain to sharply decrease the number of people willing to report knowledge of a crime.
At a time when Federal law enforcement agencies need all the cooperation they can get, this is not a matter to be taken lightly.
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WHEN AMERICANS FACE REGIME CHANGE
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 14, 2019 at 12:09 amOn June 12, during an interview with ABC News correspondent George Stephanopoulos, President Donald Trump said he would accept information on his 2020 opponents from hostile nations like Russia and China:
“It’s not an interference, they have information. I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI. If I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research.
“The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it, but you go and talk honestly to congressmen, they all do it, they always have. And that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.”
The reaction was nationwide outrage.
Donald Trump
Apparently, most Americans don’t like having their elections subverted by enemy nations.
Subverting the governments of other countries is a right that Americans have long reserved for themselves. For example:
Allied troops parading in Vladivostok, 1918
Ernesto “Che” Guevera and Fidel Castro
Americans reacted to all these attempts—successful and unsuccessful—with indifference or outright support.
The popular 1960s TV series, “Mission: Impossible,” regularly depicted a CIA-type agency supporting regimes “we” liked or toppling those “we” didn’t.
Americans generally assume their Presidents and Congress know best who is a “friend” and who is an “enemy.” America’s friends often turn out, for the most part, to be Right-wing dictators like Chiang Kai-Shek, Fulgencio Batista, Augusto Pinochet and Mohammad-Reza Shah Phlavi.
And its enemies often turn out to be liberal reformers like Augusto Sandino, Mohammad Mosaddegh and Salvador Allende.
Americans favor intervention for the flimsiest of reasons. In 2003, President George W. Bush claimed Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had plotted 9/11 with Osama bin Laden. There was absolutely no proof to substantiate this, yet Americans overwhelmingly supported Bush’s unprovoked invasion of Iraq.
But now the shoe is on the other foot.
Americans are now tasting the medicine they have dished out to so many other countries. And they find it as repugnant as those countries have found the American brand.
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