General, Ambassador Wave White Flag After Ron Paul's Grilling

Both the electronic and print media made certain that the world knew that Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain had questioned Gen. David Petraeus before the Armed Services Committee but totally ignored the blistering by Rep. Ron Paul before the House Committee on Foreign Affair

“Reviewing the presentations by our panel, I have noted with some concern that they seem more focused on justifying a future attack on Iran than reporting on progress in Iraq,” Paul said.

Paul expressed concern about claims that “new enemies” were emerging in Iraq with ties to Iran: “First we were told that the enemy was Saddam Hussein and his Baathist Party. Then we were told the enemy was the ‘bitter-enders’ from Saddam’s former government. Then the prime enemy became al Qaeda in Iraq, a prime focus of the presentation by Amb. Crocker and Gen. Petraeus last September.

Now the two were saying that the new enemies are mysterious ‘Special Groups’ that are said to have spun off from Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

“If this phenomenon of constantly emerging enemies bent on destabilizing Iraq is accurate and our presence in Iraq keeps generating new enemies,” he said, “perhaps the problem is the occupation itself. If this is the case, doesn’t it make sense that our departure from Iraq may actually have a stabilizing effect?”

Paul said he suspects that these Iranian-supported “Special Groups” are not the prime enemy. He suggested they are being used to provide an excuse for a U.S. attack on Iran or are meant as justification for a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq.

“It makes little sense to assert that Iran is funding militias to undermine the Iraqi government.

“The leading political parties of Iraq, the Islamic Dawa Party and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, have close ties to Iran. Leaders of these parties were in exile in Iran until the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Iranian President [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is warmly welcomed in Baghdad by Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. Why would Iran set up militias in the south to destabilize a government with such strong Iranian ties? I find the allegation that Iran just cannot tolerate an elected government next door to be unsatisfying.”

Paul then challenged them to produce “any hard proof ” that the Iranian government is arming groups in Iraq.

Paul: “Why should the American people continue to support a war that was justified by false information, since Saddam Hussein never aggressed against the United States, Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11, and Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction?

“It is said that we must continue the war because we have already sacrificed so much. But what is moral about demanding even more needless sacrifice of human lives merely to save face for the mistakes of invading and occupying Iraq? Doesn’t it seem awfully strange that the Iraqi government we support is an ally of the Iranians who are our declared enemies? Are we not now supporting the Iranians by propping up their allies in Iraq? If (Iraqi Prime Minister) Maliki is our ally and he has ‘diplomatic relations’ with (Iranian President) Ahmadinejad, why can’t we? Why must we continue to provoke Iran, just looking for an excuse to bomb that country? Does our policy in Iraq not guarantee chaos for years to come?

“It is estimated that up to 2,000 Iraqi soldiers refused to fight against al-Sadr’s militia. Why should we not expect many of the 80,000 Sunnis wehave recently armed to someday turn their weapons against us, since they as well as the Mahdi Army detest any and all foreign occupation?

“Is it not true that with the recent surge in violence in March, attacks are now back at the same levels as they were in 2005? Does Iran not have a greater justification to be involved in neighboring Iraq than we do, since it is 6,000 miles from our shores? If China and Russia were occupying Mexico, how would we react? Since no one can define ‘winning the war,’ just who do we expect to surrender? Does this not mean that this war will be endless since the political leaders will not end it—until we go broke?

”Paul said, “I do have one question that there is enough time to answer: In your estimation, does the administration have the authority to bomb Iran without further congressional approval?”

Petraeus: “Uh, congressman, I, uh, I’m the commander for Iraq, and I do not know the answer to that question, and it’s not within my purview.

”Crocker: Er, uhh, congressman, nor is it in mine, er, ahh, uh, I, uhh you know, my job is Iraq, and I’m just not competent to pronounce on, uh, an issue like that.

”Paul: (who must have been wondering if either had ever read the Constitution) “It disturbs me to no end that we cannot get a flat-out “no” on this question.”

Why McCain Would be Worse Than Bush

by Patrick J Buchanan
January 25, 2008

In 2004, the voters of Arizona, by 56 percent to 44 percent, enacted Proposition 200, requiring proof of citizenship before an individual may vote or receive state benefits. Forty-six percent of Hispanics voted for Prop. 200, giving the lie to those who say Hispanics support the illegal invasion of their country.

Over 190,000 Arizonans petitioned to put Prop. 200 on the ballot. As it simply required proof of citizenship before receiving the benefits and privileges of citizenship, who could oppose it? Answer: the entire GOP congressional delegation, led by Sen. John McCain.

This is the same John McCain who battled the border fence and colluded with Teddy Kennedy on the amnesty bill rejected by Congress last year after a national uproar.

Bottom line: If the presidential race is between Hillary and Amnesty John, the border security battle is over and lost. As Laura Ingraham asks, “If Congress passes McCain-Kennedy in 2009, would President McCain sign it?”

For conservatives, the stakes could not be higher.

For on the great controversies, McCain has sided as often with the Democrats and the Big Media that pay him court as with conservatives.

Where President Bush has been bravest, on taxes and judges, McCain has been his nemesis. Not only did McCain vote against the Bush tax cuts twice, he colluded to sell out the most conservative of the Bush nominees to the courts.

In 1993, McCain voted to confirm ACLU liberal and pro-abortion Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But when Bush set out to restore constitutionalism, McCain colluded with Democrats who wanted to retain power to kill Bush’s most conservative nominees.

McCain helped form the Gang of 14, including seven Democrats, who agreed to block a GOP Senate from using the “nuclear option” – allowing a simple GOP majority to break a Democrat filibuster of judicial nominees – unless the seven Democrats approved. McCain thus conspired with liberals to put at risk the most courageous conservatives nominees of President Bush.

With his record of voting for liberal justices Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, and of colluding with Democrats in their campaign to kill the most conservative Bush nominees, what guarantee is there a President McCain will nominate and fight for the fifth jurist who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade?

In the battle over campaign finance reform, McCain colluded again. The McCain-Feingold law denies to gun folks and right-to-lifers their basic First Amendment right to name friends and foes in ads run before elections.

As for the policies that have transparently failed Bush and the nation, McCain remains an obdurate advocate.

After America has run five straight record trade deficits that have denuded the nation of thousands of factories and 3 million manufacturing jobs, McCain is still babbling on about Smoot-Hawley.

“When you study history, every time we’ve adopted protectionism, we’ve paid a very heavy price,” McCain told a Detroit paper after informing Michiganders their auto jobs are never coming back.

But what history is John McCain talking about?

Was the Tariff of 1816, which saved infant U.S. industries from the malicious dumping by British merchants after the War of 1812, a failure? Were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Calhoun and Henry Clay fools to support President Madison’s tariff?

From Abraham Lincoln through Calvin Coolidge, the Republican Party – the Party of Protection – put 12 presidents in the White House to two for the Democrats, and the United States became the mightiest industrial power in history, producing 42 percent of the world’s manufactured goods.
This is failure – while Bush free trade is a success? Tell it to Ohio.

Even Hillary Clinton, whose husband enacted NAFTA with McCain’s support, has begun to question the NAFTA paradigm. Not McCain.

Where Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon came to office determined to extricate the nation with honor from a war whose costs had begun to outweigh any benefit, McCain is talking about spending 50 or 100 years in Iraq.

Where Bush, by moving NATO onto Russia’s doorstep, planting bases in Central Asia and intervening in the affairs of Russia’s neighbors, has undone the work of Reagan in making Russia a friend, he sounds like George McGovern alongside the braying McCain, who can’t wait to get into Vladimir Putin’s face.

Where Bush finally cleansed his administration of neocons, if not of their legacy, a McCain candidacy is the last, best hope of a neocon restoration and new military adventures in the Middle East.

If Rudy Giuliani founders in Florida, neocons will be chanting, “Mac is back!”

The three issues that ruined the Bush presidency are this misbegotten war in Iraq, the failure to secure America’s borders from invasion and a mindless trade policy that has destroyed the dollar and left foreigners with $5 trillion to buy up America at fire-sale prices.

McCain remains an unthinking advocate of all three.

But where Bush was at his best, on taxes and judges, McCain was collaborating with Hillary. The question conservatives may face if McCain is nominated is not whom should I vote for, but should I vote.

John McCain- Traitor?? - Interview with Colonel Earl Hopper, USAF (Ret.)

Earl Hopper: I'm a US Army retired colonel. I spent 30 year in the Army. I was Airborne Special Forces, I fought in Europe, Korea, and Vietnam. My oldest son was also on active duty, He was in the Air Force and shot down over North Vietnam. He remains missing in action. Although the government has declared him dead, we have no body; no evidence of his death.

I first became familiar with the present senator from Arizona, John McCain (and I hate to say "from Arizona" because I'm a native of Arizona. I was born and raised there, and still live there) but, from the very beginning, in talking to the returned POWs, in the very beginning we began to hear some very bad things about John McCain and his activities while he was in the POW camps.

As an example (and I'll quote this because it can be checked out), he personally wrote an article in the magazine [US News & World Report] , wherein he stated that during the time he was in prison (in fact I think it was 5 or 7 days after he was captured) he asked the [North] Vietnamese to take him to the hospital, the Vietnamese hospital. And in so doing, he promised them that he would would give the classified military information.

They did. He did.

They took him to the hospital, questioned him, and he gave highly classified information. The most important of which was he gave the "package route", which was the route to bomb North Vietnam. He told in detail the altitude they were flying, the direction, if they made a turn, and how to get (into N. Vietnam ?) He also gave them where the targets were; of their primary entry. Whether it was a railroad; whether is was a bridge; whether it was an ammunition or fuel dump; or whatever it was, he gave them the primary targets the United States was interested in.

After he gave them that information, the Vietnamese naturally moved their anti- aircraft defenses into those areas and built them up and strengthened them. They also moved the rockets, aircraft weapons, into the "package route" of where the airplanes were flying in or egressing. The result of this, according to the information that came out later on, in intelligence, was that the Vietnamese started knocking down our aircraft in greater amounts than they had before. In fact, there was an estimate that we started losing 60% more aircraft and more men than we had previously. This went on for about a month, and it got so bad, that they finally called off the bombing of North Vietnam because of the information that McCain had given to them.

Interviewer: And Earl, some people say that what McCain did was at the very least collaboration and at worst, treasonous. Would you say that you would agree with that?

No. I agree with only one part of it. He was treasonous.

McCain, for what he did while he was in captivity, was a traitor. Because he gave information to the enemy, classified, military information to the enemy, which caused the deaths of many of his fellow aviators that came in behind him.

http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/cin_hopper_video.htm

End of excerpts.

Open URL above for rest of Col. Hopper's interview

Neo-Con Invasion

By: Samuel Francis

August 5, 1996

In the last two weeks of February this year, American conservatives were shocked to see the vicious onslaught the media mounted against Pat Buchanan and his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Even with all the distortion that conservatives have come to expect from the liberal biases of the newspaper and broadcast industries, the attacks on Buchanan seemed to go well beyond what most could remember or imagine. Major newspapers, magazines, and columnists all piled on Buchanan to insinuate or claim outright that he is a "fascist," an "extremist," a "Nazi," a "racist," an "anti-Semite," a "xenophobe," a "sexist," a "homo phobe," and a "nativist," not to mention half a dozen other epithets typical of left-wing demonology.

A Closer Look

But, looking more closely at the media blitzkrieg against Buchanan, it became clear that the left was not the only political force involved in the smears. A good deal of the most hostile criticism of Buchanan came not from the left but from the right -- or at least from figures who claim to be on the right. While some of Buchanan's conservative critics expressed legitimate disagreements with some of his positions on foreign trade and economics, much of the most bitter hostility was nearly indistinguishable from what came from the left.

In fact, those on the "right" who led the charge in denouncing Buchanan and leveling some of the most vicious accusations against him emerged from the ranks of what is generally called "neo-conservatism." This is a label that began to appear in the late 1960s for a grouping that is distinct from both the liberal-left side of the political spectrum as well as from the "Old Right" or what is sometimes called the "paleo-conservative" side. Buchanan, however, was by no means the first conservative victim of neo-conservative attacks, and those on the right who have followed the controversies between "neos" and "paleos" over the last 15 years were not surprised at the leading role the neo-conservatives played in the campaign against him. Conservatives who favor Buchanan and the general platform on which he ran need to be informed about what neo-conservatives really stand for.

Neo-conservatism as a distinct identity began to appear in the late 1960s, when several Establishment liberals and leftists started expressing concern about the radical direction their ideological colleagues were taking over issues such as the Vietnam War, American foreign policy in general, and many domestic matters. The leaders of what soon came to be known as "neo-conservatism" regarded themselves as "liberal anti-communists" who favored a policy of containment in Vietnam and who were repelled by the pro-communist apologetics voiced by the New Left. They were also alarmed by what they regarded as the "isolationism" expressed by the New Left as well as by the favor the New Left harbored for many anti-American, anti-Western Third World movements (which often enjoyed Soviet support) such as the Palestine Liberation Organization, the African National Congress, and the Nicaraguan Sandinistas.

Domestically, many of the evolving neo-conservatives also expressed reservations about the spreading pornography, homosexuality, drugs, crime, and "permissiveness" that began to flourish with LBJ's "Great Society," the legacy of the Warren Court, and the emergence of a drug-and-sex-obsessed "counterculture" in the '60s, and they generally defended the authority and legitimacy of traditional morality, religion, and American and Western forms of government.

Old Right Acceptance

Centered around such journals as Commentary and The Public Interest under the editorship, respectively, of liberal intellectuals Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, the neo-conservatives were welcomed by almost all mainstream conservatives of the Old Right, who for some time had been voicing many of the same thoughts about the direction of the United States and its government and culture in the late 1960s. The neo-conservatives had long histories of publishing their articles in prestigious Establishment journals and magazines; some of them had impressive academic credentials and powerful contacts in academic, political, and media circles; and as dissident liberals they were able to express criticisms of the New Left that other liberals would take more seriously than if the same ideas were pronounced by known conservatives. In the 1970s there was every reason to believe that even if the small but growing number of neo-conservative intellectuals could not embrace all of the old conservative agenda, they would be valuable allies of the right in resisting the extreme left.

By the eve of the Reagan Administration, neo-conservatives were generally welcomed into conservative circles, and their ideas began winning acceptance as "respectable," "credible," "results-oriented" expressions of conservatism. But it was not long before old conservatives began to perceive that they would have to pay a price for their new allies.

Despite their dislike of the New Left, their anti-communism, and their concern about destructive cultural and moral trends, the neo-conservatives for the most part never quite managed to break completely with many of the underlying liberal assumptions. In one of the earliest exchanges between neo-conservatives and paleo-conservatives in National Review in 1972, the late James Burnham, himself a former Trotskyite communist who had evolved toward genuine conservatism, remarked that while the intellectuals who espoused neo-conservatism might have broken formally with "liberal doctrine," they nevertheless retained in their thinking "what might be called the emotional gestalt of liberalism, the liberal sensitivity and temperament." In other words, even though neo-conservatives no longer consciously believed in many liberal ideas, they still showed the habits of thought and the emotional reactions to those ideas.

Thus, while neo-conservatives despised the New Left, they continued to embrace an unexamined liberal faith in the big government created by liberals from Woodrow Wilson through Franklin Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Several of them -- such as Ben Wattenberg, Elliott Abrams, and Penn Kemble -- came out of the ranks of democratic socialism and its commitment to organized labor. Even though they criticized various aspects of the welfare state, they continued to believe a welfare state was both legitimate and inevitable. Irving Kristol himself writes in his Reflections of a Neo-Conservative that "a conservative welfare state ... is perfectly consistent with the neo-conservative perspective."

In foreign policy, though the neo-conservatives were anti-communist, they focused mainly on the Soviet Union rather than on China or internal domestic subversion, and they continued to regard "McCarthyism" -- the legitimate and necessary investigation of domestic subversion -- as an evil. They also favored a foreign policy that, while anti-communist, centered around what came to be called "exporting democracy" - that is, using American power to undermine right-wing anti-communist governments that were less than liberal or democratic, and fostering their replacement by "democratic" governments that were often simply democratic socialist in orientation. As the Cold War wound down, "exporting democracy" and opposing "isolationism" became the major neo-conservative foreign policy goals, reflected in their almost universal support for NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, and United Nations "peacekeeping" missions.

Old conservatives who welcomed the neo-cons into their ranks soon found that their new allies often displayed the habit of telling them what was and what was not "permissible" to say and how to say it. Criticism of the New Left and domestic communism was fine, but what the neo-conservatives regarded as "McCarthyism" -- calling for restoration of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, for example, or the FBI's domestic security functions -- was not respectable. Criticizing affirmative action was also okay, but criticism of unconstitutional civil rights legislation, the civil rights movement, or Martin Luther King Jr. was not respectable. Old conservative heroes like Joseph McCarthy, Douglas MacArthur, Charles Lindbergh, Robert Taft, and even Barry Goldwater tended to disappear or earn scorn in neo-conservative journals, while Harry Truman, George Marshall, Hubert Humphrey, and Henry Jackson developed into idols before which conservatives were supposed to bend the knee. Almost none of the neo-conservatives showed any interest in American constitutional principles or federalist and states' rights issues and arguments based on constitutionalism were muted in favor of the "empirical" arguments drawn from disciplines like sociology and political science in which neo-conservative academics tended to concentrate.

Positions of Power

The tendencies of neo-conservatives to dictate to older conservatives what they could and could not say, write, and argue might not have been taken very seriously had the neo-conservatives not succeeded in insinuating themselves into powerful positions within conservative organizations and publications. Midge Decter, wife of the neo-conservative editor of Commentary magazine Norman Podhoretz and a leading neo-conservative writer herself, was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Heritage Foundation, and neo-conservative writers and editors began popping up in the pages and on the mastheads of mainstream conservative publications. By the end of the Reagan Administration, neo-conservatives had become dominant or extremely influential in a number of such conservative groups. Not only at Commentary and The Public Interest, but also at National Review, The American Spectator, and the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, as well as at the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and other leading conservative think-tanks, neo-conservative influence became routine.

Neo-conservatives also began taking over the tax-exempt foundations that had provided funding for most of the conservative organizations. These foundations, smaller than the Establishment liberal giants like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, had been established by wealthy conservative families to serve philanthropic goals. But in the 1980s neo-conservatives succeeded in taking over many of their administrative functions, using their positions to re-direct the funds which the foundations dispensed -- turning off the spigot to conservative groups they deemed not "credible" and turning it on for those they favored.

One mechanism for neo-conservative control of conservative funding was an organization called the Philanthropic Roundtable, established in 1987 by neo-conservative Leslie Lenkowsky. Lenkowsky explained that the Roundtable sought to "encourage foundations to think more about how they can achieve their objectives and to look more closely at what the groups they support really are accomplishing." He warned that that meant not automatically funding "any organization with the word 'liberty' or 'conservative' in its name."

The real purpose of the Philanthropic Roundtable seems to be to "police" the funding of conservative groups by foundations under neo-conservative influence, to make certain that conservative groups of which the neo-conservatives disapprove do not receive donations, and to direct funds to those groups they favor, usually those controlled by their own allies. Old conservative activists have privately complained of being denied funding or having their funds cut if they did not meet with neo-conservative approbation, and donations awarded by foundations under neo-conservative influence seem to reflect this pattern.

In his book The Conservative Movement, paleo-conservative historian Paul Gottfried notes, "Neoconservative activists have largely succeeded in centralizing both the collection and distribution of funding from right-of-center philanthropies." Neo-conservatives like Lenkowsky and Michael Joyce, executive director of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and chairman of the Philanthropic Roundtable, "have been gaining control over the form and content of movement conservatism." Gott fried quotes another Old Rightist, James Taylor, president of the World Youth Crusade for Freedom, as one who "believes the Philanthropic Roundtable was never intended as a mere 'clearinghouse.' It was, from the outset, an 'attempt by neocons to search out all conservative funds and direct them toward their own friends.'" Gottfried cites several Old Right organizations that "have all either been deemed unfit for funding at Roundtable discussions or repeatedly discouraged from applying for grants."

The National Journal has called the Bradley Foundation, with $420 million in assets, "the nation's largest underwriter of conservative intellectual activity," and Michael Joyce as its head exercises immense influence in directing the activities of the conservative movement. In 1987 Joyce remarked, "The terms 'conservative' and 'liberal' are not very precise, and if they have any contemporary meaning, it seems to me that they refer only to general and very relative political dispositions." In 1993, he remarked, "I'm ... not ready to repeal the welfare state. I want to ameliorate the problems of the welfare state," thus reflecting Irving Kristol's endorsement of a "conservative welfare state" as "perfectly consistent with the neo-conservative perspective."
Perhaps the most notorious instance of a neo-conservative effort to bend an Old Right organization to alter its positions was the virtual cut-off of funds to the Rockford Institute which has remained one of the flagships of Old Right conservatism. In 1989, Richard John Neuhaus, a Rockford employee who had been a speech writer for Martin Luther King and had later developed into a neo-conservative, was fired by Rockford after an internal struggle. Though Rockford had been the recipient of large donations from neo-conservative foundations, the institute soon found its money being cut off. Neuhaus and other neo-conservatives falsely accused Rockford and its monthly journal, Chronicles, of "anti-Semitism" and "bigotry," charges that neo-conservatives are well-known for lodging and which resemble similar accusations hurled against conservatism by the left in the 1950s and '60s. Rockford has survived and has continued to support an undiluted old conservatism, but it has had to develop new funding sources. It is interesting that similar smears of the John Birch Society as "anti-Semitic" were launched by the left in the 1960s and then repeated by conservative enemies of the Society.

An Earlier Attack

The smear campaign against Rockford resembled earlier campaigns directed against Old Right figures who had challenged or threatened neo-conservative interests. One of those early campaigns was against the late M.E. Bradford, professor of English at the University of Dallas and a leading exponent of Old Right thought. In 1981, Bradford and his supporters sought his appointment as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in the Reagan Administration. As a widely published scholar and thinker, Bradford had eminent credentials for the post, which controls the flow of federal money to scholarship in the humanities, and as a lifelong conservative he had materially assisted the Reagan campaign in Texas.

One of his rivals for the NEH chairmanship was a virtually unknown academic named William J. Bennett, then the director of the National Humanities Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Bennett held a PhD in philosophy from the University of Texas, but was not a distinguished scholar, had published virtually nothing in his field, and had a liberal background in politics. Nevertheless, Bennett won the support of the neo-conservatives for the position at the NEH.

Since Bennett lacked adequate academic and political credentials to win the post, his neo-conservative supporters resorted to a smear campaign against Bradford, falsely claiming that he advocated slavery, had praised Adolf Hitler, and was a virulent racist. An anonymous document repeating these unfounded charges circulated in the White House for the purpose of frightening the Administration into denying Bradford the appointment. Bradford had written several scholarly critiques of Abraham Lincoln, and these were dredged up, quoted out of context, and used to "discredit" him as an "extremist." Eventually, despite the endorsement of Bradford by some 18 U.S. senators, including Senators Jesse Helms and John East from Bennett's own state of North Carolina, Bennett received the NEH nomination and was later confirmed.

Bennett's appointment was the beginning of a long career as a neo-conservative spokesman that continues to this day. He would later serve as Education Secretary under Reagan and "drug czar" under George Bush. In both positions Bennett pushed anti-conservative policies. At the Education Department, which Reagan had vowed to abolish, Bennett expanded the size and cost of the department and set the stage for further federal intrusion into education policy. As drug czar, Bennett proposed an ambitious and dubiously constitutional plan that would have given him virtually monolithic power over almost every area of federal -- and much state and local -- authority. President Bush wisely rejected much of the Bennett plan, but the incompetent, brutal, and unconstitutional federal intrusion into local law enforcement of recent years originated under Bennett.

The smears conducted against Bradford were perhaps the first occasion in which neo-conservatives had actually attacked a conservative, but a follow-up occurred in 1986 when a similar crusade was launched against National Review editor and syndicated columnist Joseph Sobran. Sobran had written several articles critical of the Israeli government and the leftist proclivities of the American Jewish community. The neo-conservative response came in the form of a letter from Midge Decter to Sobran accusing him of being "little more than a crude and naked anti-Semite." The letter was disseminated to several of the editors of the magazines and newspapers for which Sobran wrote, with the clear intention of intimidating the editors into ceasing to publish Sobran at all. Eventually, William F. Buckley Jr. demoted Sobran as an editor of National Review, and to this day the smears continue against one of the country's most talented and courageous conservative writers.

Much the same kind of attack was also mounted against the late Russell Kirk, one of the country's most respected conservative thinkers, after he remarked in a speech at the Heritage Foundation in 1988 that "not seldom it has seemed as if some eminent neo-conservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States," a wisecrack about the slavishly pro-Israel sympathies among neo-conservatives. Again, Decter responded with a vitriolic denunciation of Kirk as an "anti-Semite." In the 1980s and several times since, Commentary has published articles denouncing Old Right conservatives (including some who are Jewish) for their alleged "anti-Semitism." The lodging of such reckless and serious accusations against conservatives by other purported conservatives always plays into the hands of the left, which is then able to repeat the charges and claim conservative endorsement of them.

The Neo-Con Standard

It was no surprise, therefore, to Old Right conservatives to notice the kind of attacks directed against Pat Buchanan as his campaign gained strength in the Republican primaries this year. Norman Podhoretz published an article in the new neo-conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, claiming once again that Buchanan is an "anti-Semite," and neo-con columnists Charles Krauthammer and George Will regurgitated similar charges.

The Standard itself is the most recent testimony to the neo-conservatives' seemingly invincible talent for attracting funding and support for their peculiar "conservatism." Funded by publisher Rupert Murdoch to the tune $10 million, the Standard is published and edited by William Kristol, son of Irving, who in the first issue endorsed "Rockefeller Republican" Colin Powell for President.
The executive editor of the Standard is Fred Barnes, formerly a senior editor of The New Republic, one of the nation's major liberal journals. In 1990 Barnes coined the term "Big Government Conservative" as an approbative label for such Republicans as Newt Gingrich, Jack Kemp, Dan Quayle, and William Bennett, whose support for federal activism and centralization is "consistent with the neo-conservative perspective."

In 1994, Kristol and Barnes supported an effort to remove language from the Republican Party platform condemning abortion, with Barnes arguing in The New Republic that the removal would "bring the party nearer to the public's view." Although the proposal was strongly opposed by grassroots pro-life activists, it won (at the time, at least) the support of several leaders of the Christian Right, including Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition. Reed has pushed the Christian Coalition much closer to the neo-conservatives than most of the Coalition's membership would probably like. According to a recent article in The New Yorker by liberal neo-con watcher Sidney Blumenthal, Irving Kristol has invited Reed to attend editorial meetings at The Public Interest, a neo-con domestic policy journal. Recently, the Christian Coalition officially opposed language in congressional immigration legislation that would have restricted "family reunification," a policy which allows recent immigrants to import relatives and which is one of the main sources of mass legal immigration into the United States. Despite the makeup of the Christian Coalition's membership, neo-conservatives have largely succeeded in co-opting that organization too, via its national leadership, moving the Coalition's orientation to the left.

Moving conservatism to the left and bringing it closer to prevalent (mainly liberal) public views is a vital element of the neo-conservative agenda, replacing the Old Right's objective of changing the prevalent view to one consistent with traditional American, constitutionalist views. John Podhoretz, deputy editor of The Weekly Standard and son of Norman and Midge, wrote in the Washington Times in 1987, "To be conservative in the 1970s [as a neo-conservative] meant to conserve not only basic moral and political views, but also programs like the New Deal that had become part of the American political fabric. The conservative decision to stop warring against the New Deal was one of the most important developments in the mass acceptance of Ronald Reagan." In other words, the fundamental aim of the neo-conservatives is to work for "conservative" goals within the framework of the New Deal arrangement, to push for a conservatism that brings us "nearer to the public view" and which can gain "mass acceptance," without challenging the basic framework or assumptions of the liberal regime.

These aims reflect what James Burnham meant when he referred to the neo-conservatives' retaining "the emotional gestalt of liberalism, the liberal sensitivity and temperament." Any form of conservatism that does challenge the boundaries of established liberalism and its power structure is, in the neo-conservative mind, "extremism" and shouldn't be permitted. Obviously, what is wrong with this view of "conservatism" is that it leaves the entire liberal apparatus in place and refuses to challenge it or the ideology that justifies it. A "conservatism" that is content with these goals can never succeed in dismantling the oppressive, socially destructive, unconstitutional, and anti-American liberal power structure.

Survival of the Old Right

The current line of the neo-conservatives is that their creed has actually become American conservatism, replacing what the Old Right has been defending throughout American history -- especially since the New Deal era. But the Old Right still lives -- at the Rockford Institute, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the John Birch Society, and in the pages of such publications as Chronicles, Southern Partisan, and THE NEW AMERICAN.

The conservative cause also survives in the hearts and minds of the millions of Americans who supported Pat Buchanan this year. The real lesson of the 1996 Republican primaries is not that Pat Buchanan failed in his Old Right presidential campaign, but that he consistently came in second and that all of the candidates or prospective candidates whom the neo-conservatives favored or supported -- Jack Kemp, Bill Bennett, Dan Quayle, Phil Gramm, Lamar Alexander, Steve Forbes -- either were unable to mobilize enough support to enter the race or wound up winning fewer votes than Buchanan. So much for "bringing the party nearer to the public's view" and gaining "mass acceptance" for conservatism.

Whatever false or fashionable idols the neo-conservatives may succeed in setting up, it seems unlikely that many Americans worship them now or will be disposed to worship them in the future, any more than most Americans have ever worshipped the false gods of liberalism from which the neo-conservatives claim to have defected.

Mr. Francis was a nationally syndicated columnist.

This article originally appeared in THE NEW AMERICAN - August 5, 1996

Is He One of Us?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Friday, April 25, 2008

As one looks at the polls, the issues and the candidates, the election of 2008 resembles what poker players call a "lay-down hand.

"Two-thirds of the nation believes the Iraq war a blunder. Sixty-nine percent disapproves of President Bush. Eighty-one percent thinks America is on the wrong course.

Inflation is at 4 percent and rising. Unemployment is 5 percent and rising. Gasoline, heating oil and food prices are soaring. The dollar has lost half its values against the euro. Homes are being foreclosed upon at Depression rates. The stock market is in a swoon. And 3.5 million manufacturing jobs have vanished under Bush.

Hillary and Obama have both raised far more than John McCain.

Democratic turnout in the primaries and caucuses is two and three times what it was for the GOP. The youth, energy and enthusiasm are on the Democratic side. Voter registration is rising dramatically, and the new registrants are almost all Democrats or independents.

Thirty Republican House members are retiring. In the Senate, the big question is whether Democrats will achieve a 60-40 margin to enable them to kill Republican filibusters.

By all odds, Republican retention of the White House should be as imperiled as it was in 1932, when the hapless Herbert Hoover faced FDR.

Yet John McCain, who presides over a disconsolate party many of whose leading lights not only do not love him, they do not like him, is even money to be the next president of the United States.

What explains this?

Answer: Barack Obama, the probable nominee of the Democratic Party -- his cool and pleasant demeanor aside, and his oratorical skills notwithstanding -- is being steadily pushed by his own mistakes, and rivals Hillary Clinton and McCain, outside the social, cultural and ideological mainstream of American politics.

Hillary's victory in Pennsylvania confirmed what Texas, Ohio and Florida hinted at. Barack has not closed the sale with Middle America. Moreover, he may never close the sale.

What is Barack's problem?

Though he has stitched together the McGovern wing of the party -- the anti-war crowd, the cause people, the professoriat -- with the Jesse Jackson wing -- 90 percent of the African-American vote -- he is being systematically pushed out of the heartland of the party, the white working and middle class. And reinforcing the impression in Middle America that Barack is "not one of us" is the core of both the Clinton and Republican strategies. And they are working.I

In Ohio and Pennsylvania, resistance to the probable nominee hardened and calcified among Catholics, ethnics, union and blue-collar voters, even as Barack outspent Hillary two and three to one.

Racism is the reason, wail the pundits. But this is not a reason, it is an excuse. Barack, after all, ran up record totals in virtually all-white Iowa and is favored to win in virtually all-white Oregon.

Moreover, all politics are tribal. There was resistance in rural Pennsylvania to voting for an African-American, but there was also wild enthusiasm for voting for an African-American in Philly, where Hillary -- spouse of "our first black president" -- was getting about the same share of the black vote as Barry Goldwater.

On balance, as Joe Biden undiplomatically blurted out, the fact that Obama is a black man is an extraordinary asset in 2008. It is the reason a junior senator, three years out of the Illinois legislature, is running first for the nomination, and has become the favorite of a national media intoxicated with the idea of a black president.

Barack's problem is social, cultural and ideological.

Increasingly, he is seen not as a man of the middle, but as radical chic, a man of the liberal and leftist elite who confides to closed-door meetings in San Francisco that folks in Pennsylvania cling to guns, Bibles and bigotries as crutches, because they cannot cope in the Global Economy and government has failed them.

He is seen as a man comfortable with friends still proud of the radical role they played planting bombs in the 1960s, a man who feels relaxed about sending his daughters on Sunday to hear the racist rants of an anti-American berserker.

And if your wife, beneficiary of a Princeton-Harvard Law education denied to 99.9 percent of the people, says she cannot recall ever being proud of America before now, folks are naturally going to be suspicious about why you dumped the American flag pin.

On the big issues of 2008 -- amnesty, the hemorrhaging of American jobs, Iraq -- McCain is on the same side as George Bush, whose approval rating is 28 percent. McCain can be defeated on those issues.

But if, with a little help from Hillary, McCain can paint Barack indelibly as a man of the trendy and radical left, he can win. America will have nowhere else to go.

Journalists disagree on whether immigration, Iraq or the economy will be the major issue in 2008. The real issue may be -- and this is what is causing heart palpitations among Democrats -- is Barack Obama one of us, or is he one of them?

Buenos Dias from Northern Mexico.

by Jim Gilchrist

You will not see this heart-stopping photo on the front page of the NY Times or on the lead story of the major news networks. The protestors put up the Mexican flag over the American flag flying upside down at Montebello High School in California .

I predict this stunt will be the nail in the coffin of any guest-worker/amnesty plan on the table in Washington . The image of the American flag subsumed to another and turned upside down on American soil is already spreading on Internet forums and via e-mail.

Pass this along to every American citizen in your address books and to every representative in the state and federal government. If you choose to remain uninvolved, do not be amazed when you no longer have a nation to call your own nor anything you have worked for left since it will be "redistributed" to the activists while you are so peacefully staying out of the "fray". Check history, it is full ofnations/empires that disappeared when its citizens no longer held their core beliefs and values. One person CAN make a difference.

One plus one plus one plus one plus one plus one....... The battle for our secure borders and immigration laws that actually mean something, however, hasn't even begun.

If this ticks YOU off...PASS IT ON!

Jim Gilchrist is the Founder and President of the Minuteman Project

http://www.minutemanproject.com/index.asp

Stopping Illegal Immigration: Focusing on Jobs

Rod Jetton

Last week, I wrote about how states can help stop illegal immigration by eliminating the incentives and rewards for people who jump our borders. I focused on making sure that only legal immigrants are allowed to attend our public colleges and universities. This week, I want to look at how we can stop the flow of illegal aliens into Missouri by making it harder for them to find employment.

Now, this issue can be a little tricky. First, we can't tolerate businesses and employers who go out trolling for illegal workers just to improve their bottom line. At the same time, we don't want to destroy honest employers who don't know they have illegal aliens in their workforce. And, we don't want to run off hard working immigrants who do everything right and come to this country through the proper channels.

Cracking down on employers who intentionally hire illegal aliens is a no-brainer. But what about those employers who accidentally hire illegal immigrants? Think it can't happen? Ask yourself one question, how would you know if one of your workers was here illegally? Remember, illegal aliens come in all shapes, colors and accents. You'd have to rely on the federal government to help you out. But, right now, they're just not very helpful.

I was told about one employer who hired three workers. When they turned in their paper work, the employer noticed their Social Security numbers were sequential. In other words, their Social Security numbers were exactly the same except for the last digit. This should have been impossible.

The employer called the federal government and asked them what to do. He was told not to fire the workers because he could get sued. That employer was in a bind. He was pretty sure he had illegal aliens working for him, but the federal government has specifically told him he couldn't do anything about it.I

f you are an honest employer what are you supposed to do? We can't force our businesses, especially our smaller employers, to serve as the INS. They don't have the resources or time.

To solve this problem, the federal government needs to work with the states to develop a quick and reliable way to check the immigration status of potential workers. This way, honest employers can avoid hiring illegal immigrants and dishonest businesses will have no excuse to hide behind.

The number one reason people come to America illegally is to find a job. By helping employers identify illegal aliens we can make it virtually impossible for illegal immigrants to find work. As the jobs dry up, so should our illegal immigration crisis.

Rod Jetton is Speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives

email rod.jetton@house.mo.gov.

Speaker Rod Jetton,

201 W. Capitol Ave

Jefferson City, MO 65101

Mexamerica, Here We Come

by Patrick J Buchanan


Have Americans, one wonders, fully reflected on what the Bush amnesty portends for the country their children will grow up in?

Consider what Bush is saying with this amnesty for 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens and his “guest workers” program to allow employers to go overseas and hire people anywhere in the world for jobs Americans will not, or cannot take at the wages offered.


He is saying: I cannot defend our border. I will not enforce the laws. I will not send illegal aliens back. And as I cannot stop this invasion of the United States, I intend to legalize it.


Bush is not only rewarding millions of law-breakers and gate-crashers, he is erasing the border with Mexico. Mexamerica is our future. The United States is going to become a giant Brazil. Bush is saying there is no way to stop it ,therefore, we must embrace it.


Ethnically and racially, this means an America that is no longer a First World country. Third World people of color will be the majority in two decades. Americans whose forefathers came from Europe, 90 percent of the population in 1960, will be a shrinking minority by 2040. For not only are the birth rates of white Americans lower than those of immigrants, the new immigrants will be from the Third World.


Economically, Bush is throwing American workers ,white, black, Asian, Hispanic, into a Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest struggle for jobs with foreigners willing to do sweat-shop labor for wages that cannot sustain an American family.


Winners will be the economic elites who will benefit from low prices produced by cheap labor and from having a vast proletariat to do the chores at their homes, country clubs, ski lodges, restaurants, parking garages, vacation spas and yacht basins.


Losers will be American workers who have to compete for jobs with folks for whom $5.15 an hour is pay undreamed of back home in the Caribbean, Nigeria or Mexico.


Politically, our welfare state will explode. The Bush plan will convert America from the middle-class country we grew up in into a nation with a huge proletariat with a rising claim on our tax dollars for more schools, courts, cops, hospitals, parks, roads and prisons.

If you would know America’s future, look at California. In the 1990s, for the first time since the Spanish arrived, California saw an out-migration of native-born Americans, white and black, along with a huge influx of immigrants, legal and illegal.

We are endlessly reminded how wonderful the new America will be as she becomes more diverse. Californians, who already live in that new America, apparently don’t think so. Every chance they get, they vote to chop welfare and deny drivers licenses to illegal aliens. Now, they are deserting the new California beloved of our elites. If assimilation is working, why are Californians voting with their feet and fleeing to Nevada, Colorado, Arizona and Idaho?


“Who cares where people come from?” comes the retort. “The Melting Pot will make them all Americans, as it did the 18 million who came from Eastern and Southern Europe from 1890 to 1920.”


But those were European peoples coming to a country run by descendants of Europeans. They came to a land that enforced assimilation in its schools. They learned and were taught in the same language, read the same books and magazines, went to the same movies, listened to the same radio, went through the Great Depression together and served in the same Army in World War II.
And after the great wave ended in 1920, we had 45 years of low immigration to assimilate and Americanize the children of the immigrants who had come here.

But America’s population has doubled since 1945. Instead of the 16 million people of color we had in 1960 almost all of whom were black Americans immersed for centuries in American culture – there are 80 million people of color here now, from 100 nations.


Instead of assimilation, we live in an age of racial and ethnic resentments and entitlements, where “multiculturalism” is in vogue and it is “racist” to demand immigrants learn the English language.
But if we no longer worship the same God, honor the same heroes, speak the same language, study the same history, love the same literature or even agree about what is right and wrong, how do we remain one nation and one people?


What do we have in common anymore? If Bush’s ally-ally-in-free immigration policy is embraced, the old America we knew will be nothing more than a global hiring hall and what Teddy Roosevelt called a “polyglot boarding house for the world.”


And if it doesn’t work, there is no going back. It is the end of the America we all loved. Why is President Bush taking this risk with our country?

Ron Paul Leads the Fight to Defend and Restore the Second Amendment

by Larry Pratt

- Executive Director

- Gun Owners of America

Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s pro-gun credentials are impeccable and he has been a leading proponent of rolling back the past 40 years of gun control.

Ron Paul has represented areas near Houston, Texas for nearly 20 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. He has the reputation of the paramount defender of the Constitution and seeks to follow it in casting every one of his votes.

Ron Paul has been a leader in the fight to defend and restore the Second Amendment. He has sponsored legislation to repeal the following:

* the Brady law;

* the requirement to lock up your safety (guns);

* the law permitting the US to be part of the UN (which, among other attacks on American freedoms, seeks to ban privately transfered firearms);

* participation in UNESCO — which has been used to dumb down US education standards;

* the federal prohibition on importation of guns on a sporting basis test;

* federal prohibitions on any pilot wishing to carry a handgun to and in his cockpit; and,

* the so-called “assault weapons” ban (prior to its sunsetting in 2004).

Paul also has sponsored legislation requiring states to treat the concealed carry permit of one state the same as they do that state’s driver’s license.

Paul has viewed his opposition to a national ID card as a protection for gun owners. A national ID card would most likely identify the bearer as a gun owner, among other things of interest to government officials.

Paul acknowledges his underdog status in the 2008 presidential race. He argues that he is offering himself as a pro-Second Amendment alternative to the candidates who have initially led the field, none of whom have a pro-gun record. Paul hopes to use his long experience in raising grassroots support to gain sufficient funding to become the pro-gun alternative to the current leaders of the field.

Ron Paul is a Medical Doctor who for years even as a member of Congress continued practicing as an obstetrician. He is married and has five children, 17 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Benz Says! - - Build The Border Fence

Sign This Petition To Congress:

Join the chorus of citizens from coast-to-coast who are demanding Congress ...

Build the Border Fence as Promised! Click Here To Sign

The Alert: In a backroom deal just prior to the Christmas break, Congress passed the omnibus Appropriations bill which included the Hutchison Amendment that gutted the Secure Fence Act. Her amendment essentially guaranteed that the DHS didn't have to build the fence!

For more click here.

After Grassfire broke the "Secure Fence Hoax", key members of Congress took action in an effort to "undo" what the Hutchison amendment did, by restoring deadlines and double fence mandate for the entire 854 miles of border.

Two bills have already been introduced that Grassfire is supporting. Each of these bills demand Congress make good on their original promise to build the border fence:

Click here to see Clinton and Obama reiterate fence opposition

H.R. 4987-Fence By Date Certain Act (Jones R-NC)
H.R. 5124-Reinstatement of the Secure Fence Act of 2008 (Hunter R-CA)

The Action:

Grassfire finds the actions to undo the Secure Fence Act reprehensible. In response, we've launched a national petition demanding Congress build the border fence as originally promised!

Grassfire is working closely with both Congressional offices to touting the merit of these bills on Capitol Hill and with grassroots Americans. Grassfire is aggressively moving to rally 200,000 citizen petitions to be presented to members of Congress who are taking a leadership role in securing our borders.

BREAKING NEWS: Grassfire will be presenting ALL petitions at a Capitol Hill press event for the Jones legislation on Thursday, April 17. Help us reach our goal of 200,000 petitions by alerting your friends and urging them to sign as well!

Total signers: 162,969

Your Sponsor: Mr. Shane Eden

The Petition States:

The "Build The Border Fence As Promised" petition states:As a concerned citizen, I am signing this petition calling on Congress and the President to reinstate and fully fund the original mandate of the Secure Fence Act.

I am appalled that Congress took action to undo the Secure Fence Act. I find the actions of those involved reprehensible, and demand the following:

Repeal the Hutchison Amendment.
Restore the Secure Fence Act.
Restore the deadlines for construction of the 854-mile fence.
Restore the double-layer mandate that was promised.
Existing fencing does not count in satisfying the mileage requirement.

Specifically, I support H.R. 4987 and H.R. 5124 which repeal the Hutchison amendment and restore the specific provisions of the Secure Fence Act

.As the San Diego fence has proved, border fences do work. That's why I am calling on leadership to put the will of the people first and take the necessary steps to protect our borders from invasion--first by undoing the damage of the Hutchison Amendment and then by building the border fence as originally promised.

Benz Speaks! -- Here is a leader!

Yesterday, we posted a piece by Lee Iacocca asking "where are the leaders?"

Sometimes, you find leaders in the most unusual and unsuspecting places. Patrick Murphy is a leader. Patrick Murphy is only 11 years old, but he assumed the mantle of leadership when the occasion arose. And it came on a school bus in Cleveland, Ohio.

The following piece from the Good Morning America website tells the story better than I can.
Patrick, his brother and mother appeared on the show this morning (April 9, 2008)



Boy Safely Steers Out-of-Control School Bus
David Murphy Was Worried He'd Get Into Trouble for Driving the Bus

By IMAEYEN IBANGA and KAREN COMPTON

April 9, 2008 —

An 11-year-old Cleveland boy is being heralded for his heroic actions after he steered a school bus full of children to safety Monday when it began rolling down a hill.

"The bus had started rolling. Then there was a truck in front of it, and I looked up and it was rolling. Then I decided to get in front of the wheel to turn it from the truck," fifth-grader David Murphy said today on "Good Morning America."

David, who was scared he would get into trouble for driving the vehicle, maneuvered the unattended bus with 26 schoolmates aboard away from the two-lane street where traffic was headed toward the bus and into the Inner Belt Bridge support. He eventually crashed the bus into a pillar.

The riders panicked with some girls beginning to cry when the bus began heading down the hill.

"They was freaking out. Everybody started screaming and hollering," David said.

About four children began to jump off the bus to escape, said David's 12-year-old brother, Patrick Murphy.

"They got off from the front of the bus," he said. "I was about to jump off. I didn't. I decided not to because I didn't want to leave my brother."

When the commotion ended, the bus looked almost as if it had been parallel parked on the side of the road.

"I took the wheel and I had turned the wheel on the sidewalk and aimed for [the pillars]," David said.
The boys' mother, Patricia Murphy, said David was still in shock over the incident. Initially, she said, he was very quiet over what happened.

"He was terrified. I thought the reason why he wasn't talking [was] because I think that him driving behind the wheel just scared him enough," she said. "He was so quiet."

Patricia Murphy said she was surprised to learn of her son's heroics.

"I was amazed. I was in shock. The way the bus looked and when I seen the position of the bus, it seemed like it was parked," she said. "I couldn't believe that he had that strength and that direction."

She questioned her son afterward, and David told her he aimed for the pillars because he really didn't want to go down the hill. He also had enough foresight to jump into the nearest seat after he saw the bus going toward the pillar because he didn't want to get thrown out of the window.

"David is absolutely the most modest hero I've ever met, but [if not] for his actions, that bus would have went right down into the river. He saved all of those children's lives," said the Murphys' lawyer and family friend Brian Seitz. "I think it has yet to really sink in. He's very, very modest. I want to commend him. I've known the family for quite some time. But [if not] for his action, 26 of his classmates and possibly his own life would have possibly  could have been a horrible tragedy."

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

Saddam’s Exile Deal Could Have Saved $6 Trillion

By Ralph Forbes

How did we get from a “profitable” war against Iraq to a $6 trillion swirling black hole that threatens to flush the United States and the world down the drain? Follow the dollars. Follow the lies:

One month before the invasion of Iraq, Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar met with President Bush in Crawford, Tex., Feb. 22, 2003, to beg him, on behalf of European leaders, not to start a war.

The Egyptians made a deal with Saddam Hussein to go into exile to avoid a devastating war against Iraq. Saddam wanted a payment of $1 billion and, for insurance, to keep all the information about how the neocons had supplied him with his weapons of mass destruction. Bush quipped that sending Saddam into exile would save the American people $50 billion for the costs of the war.

That “$50 billion” was a lie. White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was fired in 2002 for daring to predict the war might cost $200 billion.

Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, testified to Congress on March 27, 2003 that oil revenue from Iraq would pay for the Iraq war. “The oil revenues of [Iraq] could bring between $50 billion and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years,” he said. “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.

”When Wolfowitz and the neocons were peddling the tale that Iraqi oil would lower the price of gas, oil was selling for around $20-25 per barrel.

Five years after “mission accomplished,” it is over $100 per barrel and gasoline is $3.50 and more per gallon and rising—as the value of the dollar plummets.

This is great for oil companies reaping record billion dollar profits. The House of Saud and the House of Bush, along with the contractors (and of course Israel), are the only beneficiaries of this war.

The Congressional Budget Office estimate for the cost of the war so far is $500 billion. That figure appeared unbelievably low to Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Memorial Prize winner for economics and the chief economist at the World Bank, who is critical of globalism. Linda Bilmes, lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard Univ., agreed. In 2005 they researched the facts and published a report in January 2006 showing the true cost for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was between $1 trillion and $2 trillion.

An outraged Bush blasted Stiglitz and Bilmes, sneering, “We don’t go to war on the calculations of green-eye-shaded accountants or economists.”

Another CBO report put war costs at $604 billion. Adjusted for inflation, that $604 billion is higher than the costs of the Korea and Vietnam conflicts, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (AFP, March 24, 2008).

Stiglitz and Bilmes discovered, after months of chasing often deliberately obscured accounts, Bush’s Iraqi-Afghan adventure will cost America—just America—a conservatively estimated $3 trillion. But don’t forget, it will cost the rest of the world at least another $3 trillion.These findings are published in a 192-page exposé, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, available at libraries and bookstores.

Freelance writer Ralph Forbes can be contacted via email at justrite@ipa.net

Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University is the author of Making Globalization Work and Globalization and Its Discontents.

Linda J. Bilmes, a professor of public finance at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is a former assistant secretary for management and budget in the U.S. Department of Commerce.

BATFE Spends $3 Million to Ruin gunshop

By Mark Anderson

TWIN FALLS, Idaho—Ryan Horsley seems confident that he will triumph over a government shakedown that has cost his family business about $200,000 in legal fees, as he fights to keep Red’s Trading Post, a fourth-generation firearms store, in operation.

Red’s is Idaho’s oldest surviving firearms dealership. Sometime this summer, federal judge Ed Lodge, who’s best known for presiding over the dramatic Randy Weaver case, will decide if the federal government is right in claiming that Red’s “willfully” violated the law by making a relatively small number of clerical mistakes in its firearms sales records.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (BATFE), a relic of the prohibition days whose modern-day legitimacy is an open question, has been poring through the store’s sales records since at least 2005, looking for such “willful” clerical violations.

Although Horsley at first thought that the BATFE would not push the matter into court, in order to avoid any bad publicity that may accompany a ruling contrary to the government’s position, the matter did go to court on March 3-4, 2008 in Boise—about a year to the day since the battle heated up.

In early March of 2007, the federal agency revoked Red’s Federal Firearms License, but a judge granted an injunction against the BATFE to halt that process, thereby allowing Red’s to continue operating in Twin Falls, where another firearms dealer, Blue Lake Sporting Goods, was shut down by the BATFE. In that case, the store turned in its FFL and buckled under the weight of legal expenses.

Horsley, a particularly irrepressible man who so far has resisted what could easily have plowed his store under, told AFP on March 26 that he feels good about the court proceedings, believing that the government did not convince Judge Lodge that the store is a menace to public safety and deserves having its FFL revoked.

The FFL allows dealers to buy and sell firearms; revoking it would doom the store. Horsley also recalled that when the BATFE first tried to revoke the FFL, it claimed that Red’s was a “threat to public safety” but turned around and said that Red’s still could sell the 1,000 or so firearms already in stock—as long as it did not order additional guns to sell.

“You see what I’m up against?” Horsley said. Horsley’s attorney, Richard Gardiner, told AFP that Red’s largest number of clerical errors on BATFE Form 4473 involved something simple, such as not listing the county of residence of the gun-buyers. But he added that all these forms included zip codes. Many of the purchasers are from Twin Falls County, which has a city of the same name.

Gardiner thinks that Red’s practices do not break federal regulations in listing only the city (plus the zip code), even if the county of residence is sometimes not listed.

“We take the position that the regulations do not require both [city and county]” Gardiner said.

So, why did the BATFE bring what appears to be a weak case to court? Horsley’s view is that the agency cannot very well spend $3 million just on its case against Red’s—to try to revoke an FFL that cost the store just $300 every three years to maintain—and then drop the matter.

“If they just back off, they would have nothing to show for it,” Horsley said, as he struggled to comprehend why $3 million in taxpayer dollars have been spent on a case where no evidence has been found to suggest that Red’s has knowingly put guns into the hands of criminals or committed some other serious act.

Horsley feels the BATFE simply is trying to portray Red’s as a bad place, which, however, is a little tough, considering that local police officers have worked there.

“Many times we’ve had part-time law enforcement officers working for us,” Horsley said.

The local sheriff, Wayne Tousley, told AFP in a 2007 interview that, as the chief law enforcement officer of Twin Falls County, the BATFE is supposed to come to him first to conduct its investigations. But he said then that the agency typically bypasses him.

Reach Mark Anderson at truthhound2@yahoo.com

Benz Speaks! - - Your federal tax dollars at work

Since March, 2007 ATF has spent over $3 million trying to close down a small gun store in south central Idaho. Good thing it isn't a church or they would have to bring in the tanks and burn it down.

Ah, yes! Another shining example of your federal government at work!

The whole story is detailed in the following posting.

Iacocca on outrage and leadership

"Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car.

But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course" Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America , not the damned "Titanic". I'll give you a sound bite: "Throw all the bums out!"

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq , the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving 'pom-poms' instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of the" America " my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for.

I've had enough. How about you? I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have. The Biggest "C" is Crisis ! Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis.It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. A Hell of a Mess So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the b iggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia , while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask:"Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, omnipotence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again.Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "The Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen, and more important, wha t are we going to do about it?

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debit, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem.The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity.What is everybody so afraid of? That some bonehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

Had Enough? Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I' m speaking out because I have hope I believe in America . In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises: the "Great Depression", "World War II", the "Korean War", the "Kennedy Assassination", the "Vietnam War", the 1970s oil crisis,and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this: "You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action.

Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to "Action" for people who, like me, believe in America . It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the crap and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had "enough