| Author | Message | | Guest | | Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2002 11:28 am Post subject: Zionism Unbound (in US Government) |
| Zionism Unbound
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Pettifer_Zionism.htm
Dissident Voice | December 11, 2002
Zionism Unbound By Ann Pettifer
In the spring of 1986, Gore Vidal, novelist and chronicler of US history, published an essay in The Nation which became instantly notorious. Called "The Empire Lovers Strike Back," its subject was the relationship of American Jewish neo-conservatives to the state of Israel. He chose as exemplars of the phenomenon, Commentary magazine editor, Norman Podhoretz, and spouse, Midge Decter (mother-in-law of Elliot Abrams of Iran Contra infamy; Abrams, a racial purist who disdains intermarriage, now serves as White House Director of Middle Eastern Affairs). Podhoretz and Decter had once been liberals, but an aggressive Zionism led them to pitch their tent in the Republican Party. Their aim was to use US economic and political heft to advance Israel's interests in the Middle East. The essay was vintage Vidal and it greatly provoked his critics. To ensure that no one took seriously what he had to say - to silence the debate before it started - he was rubbished as the worst kind of anti-Semite.
So, exactly what had Vidal said to earn this most feared of labels? In recent weeks we have heard a good deal about the cynical alliance between fundamentalist Christian Zionists in the US and Jewish settlers (supported by the right-wing Likud party) in the Occupied Territories. Sixteen years ago in a display of considerable prescience, Vidal wrote: "since spades may not be called spades in freedom's land, let me spell it out.
In order to get military and economic support for Israel, a small number of American Jews, who should know better, have made common cause with every sort of reactionary and anti-Semitic group in the United States, from the corridors of the Pentagon to the TV studios of the evangelical Jesus Christers all in the interest of supporting the likes of Sharon as opposed to the Peace Now Israelis whom they disdain."
Central to Vidal's case was the indifference to US history which he discerned among these Jewish neo-conservatives. When he was writing a play set during the American Civil War, he recalls Norman Podhoretz asking him, "Why are you writing a play about, of all things, the Civil War?"
When Vidal explained that this was/is "the great, single tragic event that gives resonance to our Republic" Podhoretz replied, "To me, the Civil War is as remote and irrelevant as the War of the Roses." Vidal calls Podhoretz and his ilk Fifth Columnists (Israeli division) to indicate their extra-territorial priorities. They pursue political power not in order to make the US a better place, to right wrongs or to fight inequality here, but to promote Israel's pre-eminence in the Middle East, to confine Palestinians to a couple of Bantustans or, better still, engineer their expulsion to Jordan. Judith Shulavitz, writing last month in The New York Times about Podhoretz's new book, The Prophets: Who They Were And What They Are, observes that for Podhoretz the biblical prophet's message is: "the Jews are the people chosen to redeem the world's They will perform their divinely appointed duty only if they cling to the Covenant between God and themselves and support Zionism." Any appropriation of the prophets in support of social justice he dismisses as false - a Christian overlay or redaction.
The influence of old-guard Jewish neo-cons, such as Podhoretz and Decter, was exercised mainly through journals of opinion they edited or owned (in addition to Commentary, Martin Peretz's New Republic comes to mind). Now, however, a new generation has its hand on the tiller of power. In September, Bill Keller profiled Deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz, for The New York Times' Sunday Magazine. Wolfowitz and fellow Jewish neo-cons Richard Perle and Douglas Feith have emerged as the Pentagon's Paladins, their aim being to subdue the Islamic world through decisive, pre-emptive use of American military superiority. While Wolfowitz is pressing for war against Saddam Hussein, Keller notes his "scholarly detachment" from the disastrous Vietnam War (as remote as the War of the Roses?), in which, while eligible, he had chosen not to serve.
Wolfowitz first formed ties to Israel when he accompanied his father there for a sabbatical year. He is known to have close links to Israeli generals and Likud politicians. Keller, somewhat hesitatingly, discloses that there are people in Washington who hint at Wolfowitz's "dual loyalties." The (London) Guardian columnist, Hugo Young, is less reticent: "Only in Washington does one get a true sense of the obsession of these Pentagon civilians. Conversationally, it is common talk that some of them, not including Rumsfeld, are as much Israeli as American nationalists. Behind nervous, confiding hands come sardonic whispers of an American outpost of Likud. Most striking of all, however, is how unmentionable this is in the liberal press."
If dragons' teeth are being sown by American foreign policy in the Middle East, the urgent question is why a craven liberal press is not addressing the Israeli nationalism of the policy's architects. Thinking I might find clues, I trawled through a piece by Cliff Rothman in The Nation, entitled "Jewish Media Stranglehold?" At the outset, Rothman de-legitimizes the question by reminding us that it was Richard Nixon who first posed it; he then proceeds to associate it with White Power rhetoric, trailer parks and compounds in Montana. Nothing of substance emerges. There was, however, an interesting exchange with Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harpers, whose essays are surely some of the best political writing in the US. When the question was put to him, Rothman writes that Lapham "ventured onto the treacherous terrain of hypothosizing a unique Jewish sensibility impacting the media because of the sheer number of Jewish editors and writers. But, Lapham then recoiled: 'If I am going to take shit, I may as well write my own column.'"
About three years ago, Nightline's Ted Koppel came to the University of Notre Dame to give the Red Smith journalism lecture. I remember summoning every ounce of courage during question time in order to express my concern about the importance of even-handedness in the US media when reporting on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Then I asked Koppel how he felt, as a Jewish-American, about a foreign policy team which at that time was overwhelmingly Jewish. Madelaine Albright and her spokesman, James Rubin, were at the State Department, Sandy Berger was Security Advisor and William Cohen Secretary of Defense; Richard Holbrooke was Ambassador to the UN. I was sure that had the shoe been on the other foot - had the team's composition been almost entirely Arab-American - the issue of fairness would most certainly have been raised. Koppel was nonplussed by the question and responded that in the US gifted individuals, regardless of background, could rise to the top - an answer that did not address my concern.
Each week, I have a marathon phone conversation with a Jewish friend, an octogenarian whose mental vigor remains undiminished. A retired college teacher, her take on virtually every political issue of importance is exemplary. Our friendship is very close and has easily survived occasional squalls over the one topic on which we have some disagreement, namely Israel and the Occupation. After reading something I had written on the neocon Zionists at the Pentagon, she gave me a no-holds-barred dressing down. In identifying Paul Wolfovitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, the Pentagon troika planning the war against Saddam Hussein, as Jewish-Americans, I had crossed the line into anti-Semitism. Go after them as bad guys, not as Jews, she said. After all, there were lots of Jews, herself included, who find the troika a frightening bunch. For days I brooded about her comments, but in the end I demurred. Sure these are bad guys, but it is as Zionists that they are pursuing their war aims. The connections Gore Vidal was making in 1986 still need to be made in 2002.
Robert Dreyfus, a senior correspondent at The American Prospect, came close in a first class expose on how the Pentagon's "well-placed hawks" are muzzling the CIA so that intelligence data that contradicts the case for war is not presented to the White House. Dreyfus is blunt: "For Perle, Wolfovitz and FeithSan attack on Iraq is a strategic necessity, not because Saddam Hussein is a threat, but because America needs to display an overwhelming show of force to keep unruly Arabs and Muslims all over the world in line."
However, Dreyfus still cannot mention the elephant in the room, namely that these well-placed hawks are Jewish-Americans and it is their hard-core Zionism that is shaping American foreign policy. Zionism is fast becoming a poisoned chalice, yet the US is poised for a war largely propelled by its agenda. Most of the country is ignorant or in denial, and the mainstream media either too conflicted or in cahoots to sound the alarm. In the meantime, Richard Perle, addressing British members of parliament even as UN arms inspectors were returning to Iraq, asserted that the US will go to war no matter what. And on the BBC World Service, The Washington Times' Barry Fein proclaimed war as absolutely necessary, saying that from now on the US would decide what constituted international law. There is real madness here, but who will stop it?
Do I think the case against Zionism could be made more effectively by Jews themselves? Certainly, but the evidence suggests it is not any easier. In the early 1960s, there was a bitter correspondence between two German Jews, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, the great scholar of Kabbalah. Much of the disagreement turned on Arendt's rejection of Zionism which led the Zionist Scholem to accuse her of having no love for the Jewish people. Arendt acknowledged that she had no love for any nation or collective - believing, as she did, that love of humankind trumped tribal or parochial affections. Insofar as Zionism had led Jews from belief in God to belief in themselves, she continued, "in this sense I do not love the Jews."
Ann Pettifer is a freelance writer and the publisher of Common Sense, the alternative newspaper at the University of Notre Dame. She can be reached at awalshe@nd.edu
+++++++++++++++++ The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians by Michael Hoffman and Prof.Moshe Lieberman 6 x 9 paperback. 110 pages. A MUST READ!!
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The QUESTION: To subscribe and grow with knowledge or to unsubscribe and Die Stupid? Send an E-mail to: RePorterNoteBook@aol.com | |  | | Guest | | Posted: Tue Dec 24, 2002 4:20 am Post subject: |
| CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. Latest: Sept. 2-4, 2002. MoE ± 3.
"In the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?" *
Israelis 47%
Palestinians 14%
Both 6%
Neither 19%
No Opinion 14% | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2003 10:12 am Post subject: The Return of Zionist Extremist Elliott Abrams |
| The Return Of Elliott Abrams
Israel's Likud Scores Big With White House Appointment
Jim Lobe writes for Inter Press Service, an international newswire, and for Foreign Policy in Focus, a joint project of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and the New Mexico-based Interhemispheric Resource Center.
Neo-conservative hawks in the administration of President George W. Bush have won a major battle against the State Department in the fight for control of United States Mideast policy with the surprise appointment of Iran-Contra figure Elliott Abrams to the region's top policy spot in the National Security Council (NSC).
The appointment, leaked to reporters by the White House, would for the first time place someone in a top Mideast policy spot who has publicly assailed the "land-for-peace" formula that has guided U.S. policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict since the 1967 war.
Abrams, who first came to national prominence as a controversial political appointee in the Reagan administration who later pleaded guilty to lying to Congress regarding the Iran-Contra scandal, has also opposed the Oslo peace process and called for Washington to "stand by Israel," rather than act as a neutral mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.
"Yet another American Likudnik is moving to a position where they control Washington's agenda in the Mideast," said Rashid Khalidi, a Mideast historian at the University of Chicago. "This is a tragedy for the Israeli and American people." Likud is the rightwing Israeli party headed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Currently the NSC staff chief for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations, Abrams will become Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the NSC for Southwest Asia, Near East and North African Affairs.
As such, he will be in charge of presenting policy papers and options for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, whose own opinions have proven decisive in cases where the president receives conflicting views from hawks, represented by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, and the more-dovish Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who is often backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the uniformed military. Rice, a Russia specialist, had no experience with Mideast issues until her current job. Abrams will replace Zalmay Khalilzad, a prominent foreign-policy strategist whose views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are considered much more neutral than Abrams'. Khalilzad succeeded Clinton holdover Bruce Reidel early last year but was quickly consumed with his native-borne Afghanistan after being named special envoy to the interim president, Hamid Karzai. Khalilzad will now become "ambassador-at-large for free Iraqis" and is expected to play a key role in sorting out internal conflicts among the Iraqi opposition.
Beloved by right-wingers who hail him as both a hero for his championship of the Nicaraguan contras during the 1980s, Abrams first gained prominence as a leading neo-conservative when he served as Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights in the early 1980s and then as Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs.
In both positions, he clashed frequently and angrily with mainstream church groups and human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who often accused him of covering up horrendous abuses committed by U.S.-backed governments, such as El Salvador and Guatemala, and rebel forces, such as the Contras and Angola's Unita, while, at the same time, exaggerating abuses by U.S. foes.
He was indicted by the Iran-Contra special prosecutor for giving false testimony about his role in illicitly raising money for the Contras but pleaded guilty to two lesser offenses of withholding information to Congress in order to avoid a trial and a possible jail term. He was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush along with a number of other Iran-Contra defendants in 1992.
His credibility for truth-telling was so low that at one point he was required to take an oath before testifying before Congressional committees. Most analysts here believe that he was given an NSC post by the new Bush administration because any other position would have required Senate confirmation.
After Reagan left office in 1989, Abrams, like a number of other prominent neo-conservatives, was not invited to serve in the Bush Sr. administration. Instead, he worked for a number of think tanks and eventually became head of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) where he wrote widely on foreign-policy issues, including the Middle East, and the threats posed by U.S. secular society to Jewish identity. He also remained an integral part of the tight-knit neo-conservative foreign-policy community in Washington that revolved around one of his early mentors, Richard Perle and former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
Then-House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich furthered his public rehabilitation by appointing him to the new U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in 1999 for which he also served as chairman in 2000-01. Muslim groups here have complained about his refusal to criticise Israeli practices in the occupied territories and Jerusalem, such as sealing off Muslim holy sites, as violations of religious freedom.
He is not known as an Arab-Israeli specialist but has long favoured Likud positions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and even assailed former Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for caving into U.S. pressure to respect the Oslo peace process. Shortly after the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifida at the end of September 2000, he criticised mainstream Jewish groups for calling for a resumption of peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, as well as a halt to the violence.
Like Perle, as well as Rumsfeld's civilian advisers like Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and Cheney's top deputy, I. Lewis Libby, he has favoured a Mideast strategy based on the overwhelming military power of both the United States and Israel and on a military alliance between Israel and Turkey against hostile Arab states, particularly Syria and Iraq, in order to create a "broader strategic context" that would ensure whatever state might emerge on Palestinian territory would be friendly to United States and Israeli interests and that could force Syria to withdraw from Lebanon. He has long favoured forceful action to oust Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
He has accused Palestinian Authority leader Yassir Arafat of being an untrustworthy partner under the Oslo process and is believed to have used his previous NSC Democracy position to push for his ouster from power as part of a thorough reform process. That view, which was strongly backed by Rumsfeld and Cheney's offices, was eventually accepted by Bush last June, over strenuous objections by the State Department and senior aides for Bush's father, notably his former national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft.
In his new position, according to John Prados, a historian who has written about the National Security Council, Abrams should be in an excellent position to influence U.S. policy on the Mideast, particularly in "delaying and/or halting policy on the 'roadmap'" that is being developed by the "Quartet" -- the United States, European Union, Russia, and the United Nations -- on resuming political negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Indeed, it already appears that British hopes for a major meeting of the Quartet on the roadmap before the end of the year are fading quickly.
Abrams is expected to support Israel's recent requests both to put off discussion of the 'roadmap' until after Israel's elections at the end of next month and for some 14 billion dollars in military aid and loan guarantees to help the country cope with economic hard times.
Abrams' influence on policy is already clear. For the first time ever the Bush administration voted against a U.N. General Assembly resolution last week that called on Israel to repeal the Jerusalem law that declares that "Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel."
In the past, Washington has abstained on the issue, insisting that the the status of Jerusalem must be determined by negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. Abrams has in the past assailed that vote, as well as Washington's refusal to recogize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, on the grounds that that such a position "tantalizes the Palestinians with the prospect of forcing the Jews to abandon Jerusalem."
As you might expect, Arab-Americans responded to the appointment with a mix of resignation and foreboding.
James Zogby, the director of the Arab-American Institute (AAI) here said Abrams' appointment sends "a very dangerous message to the Arab world" and adds to the "lock that the neo-con set now has on all the major instruments of decision-making except for the State Department."
Khalidi also pointed to Abrams' history as being less than forthcoming with information that may contradict his own views. "He will be yet another filter blocking reality from reaching the president," he said. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Jan 09, 2003 1:10 am Post subject: Iraq: 'Devastating' War Planned by Warmongering Bush & B |
| Subj: Iraq: 'Devastating' War Planned by Warmongering Bush & Blair
Date: 1/8/03 3:35:17 PM Pacific Standard Time
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Jan. 8) - Coalition warplanes struck air defense targets in southern Iraq on Wednesday for the second time this week, and a key Iraqi official said the United States and Britain were bent on war with Baghdad to subjugate the Middle East.
In Moscow, meanwhile, Iraq's ambassador to Russia dismissed rumors Saddam Hussein might go into exile to avoid war and said the Iraqi leader would ''fight to the last drop of blood'' to defend his country.
Concerns war is imminent have mounted, with the United States and Britain announcing the dispatch of thousands more troops and weapons to the Persian Gulf region because of misgivings about Iraq's commitment to abandon weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq insists it has no such weapons and maintains that claims to the contrary by Washington and London are simply a pretext for war.
''The aggressors in Washington and London are preparing for a devastating aggression against ... the people of Iraq, and they would like once again to destroy the City of Peace (Baghdad) as they did in 1991,'' Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told a visiting South African delegation Wednesday.
Aziz said U.N. arms inspectors, who returned to Iraq in November after a four-year hiatus, had strayed beyond the search for weapons of mass destruction.
''They are searching for other information about Iraq's conventional military capabilities, the Iraqi scientific and industrial capability in the civilian area, and also espionage questions,'' Aziz said.
U.N. spokesman Hiro Ueki denied those allegations and said U.N. officials had received no formal complaint from Iraqi authorities about alleged espionage.
The United States has accused Saddam of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and says it will use force if necessary to disarm him. Iraq insists it has destroyed its biological and chemical weapons and halted its nuclear program and the making of banned missiles. There have been no known instances of serious problems encountered by the inspectors since they began work Nov. 27.
Nevertheless, the pace of the U.S.-British buildup has accelerated. The American battle staff that would run a military campaign against Iraq is beginning to assemble at a command post in the small gulf state of Qatar, U.S. officials said.
Tens of thousands more combat forces are scheduled to flow into the region over the next few weeks. Some U.S. soldiers landed Wednesday in neighboring Kuwait, but U.S. officials refused to say how many or identify their units.
Among the other forces expected to deploy from U.S. bases in the next several days are F-15E and F-15C fighters and B-1B bombers. Still, U.S. and British officials insist war is neither imminent nor inevitable.
As the buildup continues, U.S. warplanes struck Wednesday against air defense communication sites between the cities of Al Kut and An Nasiriyah. The U.S. Central Command said the attacks occurred after Iraqi air defense forces fired anti-aircraft artillery at U.S. planes patrolling the southern ''no fly'' zone and Iraqi military aircraft entered the zone.
On Monday, U.S. planes targeted two Iraqi military radars near the city of Al Amarah. Iraqi officials said two people were killed and 13 were injured in Monday's attacks.
Meanwhile, the official Iraqi News Agency said Saddam held a third day of meetings Wednesday with military and militia commanders, encouraging them not to fear a technologically superior foe.
''In aerial combat, there is a disparity in weapons, but on the ground, men fight with their guns and it's enough for the men to have bombs, bullets, a loaf of bread, water and a gun,'' Saddam was quoted as saying. As long as Iraqi forces receive the support of the people, ''the enemy will be defeated,'' Saddam added.
With tensions rising, Philippine Foreign Minister Blas Ople said Arab governments were trying to convince Saddam to step down and go into exile. Ople, speaking to reporters in Manila, said he learned of those efforts by Arab ambassadors whom he refused to identify.
The German newspaper Tageszeitung said Russian officials had been in Baghdad since November evaluating chances of Saddam stepping down. In a report for publication Thursday, the newspaper said Russian President Vladimir Putin would send a special envoy to Baghdad to finalize details if Saddam appeared willing to accept the Russian offer of exile.
Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency quoted an unidentified ''high-ranking Russian official'' as denying that Moscow was working toward Saddam's departure, saying there were ''no grounds for the Iraqi leader to request political asylum anywhere, including in Russia.''
Iraq's ambassador to Russia, Abbas Khalaf, told the Interfax news agency that Saddam will not leave his country and will ''fight to the last drop of blood.''
Khalaf called reports that Saddam might leave the country ''absolute nonsense'' and ''part of Washington and London's psychological war against Iraq,'' Interfax said.
AP-NY-01-08-03 1508EST | | | | Alpha | | | | Guest | | Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2003 2:35 pm Post subject: Scott Ritter on Zionist Extremists Perle and Wolfowitz |
| As WorldNetDaily reported yesterday, Ritter is calling for the ouster of President Bush for what he feels are unnecessary and murderous actions in the conflict with Iraq.
"I would be in favor of the impeachment of President Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors," the 41-year old former Marine told WND. "Murder is a high crime and misdemeanor, and I can't think of any better definition than murder when he talks about American service members and putting them in a war which is not only illegal but is based on a foundation of lies."
"When you go to war you open up a Pandora's box, the results of which cannot be predicted," he said. "Therefore, there better be a darned good reason to go to war. It's got to be worth the sacrifice that you're asking others to make."
WorldNetDaily recently interviewed Ritter via telephone as he drove from his New York home to appear on Fox News. Throughout the interview, he contended that media have consistently missed his primary concern regarding the proposed military strike against Iraq.
Ritter said the issue is the abrogation of the rule of law, which he views as setting the U.S. up for a particularly nasty potential scenario – U.S. troops cornered in Iraq, subject to chemical attack, which then prompts the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S.
"The Bush administration has put forward a nuclear policy planning document which clearly states a scenario in which nuclear weapons can be used pre-emptively and that scenario is tens of thousands of troops in a hostile land, threatened by the potential of chemical and biological weapons," he said. "And clearly, Iraq could evolve into such a situation.
"What's wrong with diplomacy, what's wrong with inspectors, what's wrong with the rule of law?" he asked.
WorldNetDaily asked Ritter whether he agreed with the contention that Bush's foreign policy constituted a violation of the United Nations and Nuremberg charters.
Ritter reiterated that the U.S. is a signatory to the U.N. Charter, which "stipulates that war is rejected as a means to resolve disputes and conflicts," although he allowed that there are exceptions, as "when the collective, the U.N. Security Council, finds a situation exists that threatens international peace. Then under chapter seven of the charter, it can be resolved by use of force."
Still, Ritter does not find the current situation in Iraq to meet this criteria, and therefore views the idea of a pre-emptive strike as unconstitutional and a violation of American law.
"It has no grounds in legality," he said.
"This is a constitutional issue," he continued. "I think there can be no doubt his policy is a violation of the Constitution, except that constitutional lawyers will say that judicial system will not get involved in matters of national security … There are interpretation issues – what are the limits of executive authority? … I think that it's not so much the legality of his actions. I view it as being unconstitutional … I'm sure many will say the president has these authorities regarding national security."
Ritter also said that impeachment and indictment were legitimate issues.
"What I would find to be grounds of impeachment is the president lying to the American people," he said. "I believe the president has lied to the American people. I believe the vice president has lied to the American people.
"And if we go to war where American service members are killed, I think the president should be held accountable for this judicially," Ritter stated.
"I would be in favor of the impeachment of President Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors," said Ritter. "Murder is a high crime and misdemeanor, and I can't think of any better definition than murder when he talks about American service members and putting them in a war which is not only illegal but is based on a foundation of lies."
WND also asked Ritter about comments he made in an interview with William Pitt, appearing in the book "War on Iraq: What Team Bush doesn't want you to know."
In that interview, Ritter said that "Donald Rumsfeld was politically dead. No one thought of Donald Rumsfeld as having any potential. Paul Wolfowitz was seen as a raving lunatic of the far right. Richard Perle is not called 'The Prince of Darkness' without cause."
Ritter characterized the leaders as "sniping from the fringes," and said "suddenly they're running the show," adding that for this reason, these are "extremely dangerous times."
WND asked Ritter whether he viewed these people as having taken this turn since taking office, or always having been that way.
"Well, they were always this way," he said. "Wolfowitz was always a very dangerous man. He is a walking affront to the Constitution of the U.S. He is a walking affront to international law. The same with Richard Perle . He was openly boastful how President Bush has no other choice but go to war because he's committed too much political capital."
Ritter concluded, "If Richard Perle thinks [that's] a reason to go to war then he might as well remove the American flag from outside his building and put on a swastika and call himself what he is, which is a Nazi. This is the rule of law, not about going to war for political convenience of any single individual."
WorldNetDaily then asked Ritter why, if these political figures were always this way, he voted them into power by voting for President Bush. The former U.N. inspector argued that he didn't vote for them, just for Bush, adding that Gore was a "known commodity – a liar," and that he had actually initially supported Sen. John McCain. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
