End the War on Freedom

Mainachi News - War on Iraq: Propaganda Leaflets - what the U.S. is dropping on Iraq. U.S. soldiers should take this to heart, and "leave now and go home". [grabbe]

L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - Attention Libertarian Writers - concerning the blacklist in New York and Hollywood against libertarian writers. [tle]

Keith S. Shugarts at The Libertarian Enterprise - The Tractor You've Probably Not Heard About - commentary on Dwight Watson's tractor. [tle]

In past decades this stunt against the government would have been lauded and saluted, a tribute to the great heritage of those who tossed tea into Boston Harbor. a big old middle finger to the pricks in Washington. As Robert Heinlein once wrote, "anarchy is the birthright of Americans".

Now, in these recent years, questioning the government is not only frowned upon, but those who do so are risking a visit from the FBI. Americans for the most part do not fear their government, they embrace it - they believe it brought them through the depression (rather than bringing the depression to them), World War II, and now the post-9/11 eara. The government now coddles them and promises them protection and security.

William Stone, III at The Libertarian Enteprise - Wartime Principles - on the depravity of organized government warfare in the light of the ZAP. And why this war in unconstitutional. [tle]

The argument, repeated gibbered by screeching, talk radio whores of the Boot-On-Your-Neck Party (BOYN: collectively the Republicans and Democrats) goes like this: "Not supporting Our President during Time of War encourages The Enemy and only prolongs the battle--and in the process ensures more casualties." Dissenters, the BOYNs' whores opine, are causing people to die.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. The only individuals responsible for the deaths of American soldiers are those who order them into harm's way. I can disagree with the President until I'm blue in the face, but it won't alter the location of a single infantryman. Only the President has such power.

...

The passage of a law by Congress that is in violation of the Constitution does not make that law valid. The Constitution doesn't change to accommodate laws in violation of it no more than the sky will change to green.

No wonder the BOYNs would like to equate the trivial effort necessary to "authorize military force" with the grave responsibility of "declaring war." If they don't, the individuals over whom they wield power might discern that they have been governed by a lying pack of traitors for more than fifty years.

Any Congressman who voted for such an authorization is a traitor, in violation of their Oath of Office--in which they swore a sacred oath to protect and defend the Constitution.

Bob Tipton at The Libertarian Enteprrise - Why It's Wrong - to drop bombs on cities. [tle]

That little girl doesn't care that her arm was blown off by a multi-million dollar piece of ordinance that combines the best talents of electrical, aeronautical, and chemical engineers. She doesn't care that the pilot of the plane that delivered the ordinance is flying at altitudes that approach space flight. To her, there's no difference between being on the receiving end of this particular culmination of man's intellectual achievement and having her arm hacked off by a machete. In either case, her world is shattered. Don't tell me about how every effort is going to be made to prevent this from happening. All of these reassurances are invariably followed by assertions that "collateral damage" is inevitable. It's not inevitable. If you don't drop the bomb on people you can't see, it doesn't happen. It can never be moral to kill people en masse, knowing full well that some of the people you kill have done you no harm. Self defense isn't a valid justification.

David Wooding at The Sun - SOS for Saddam surgeon - someone in Iraq asked someone in Russia to provide a surgeon for someone whose injuries sound like a bomb attack. Saddam? The writer believes so. [huntersagainstterrorists]

Thomas L. Knapp at Rational Review - Credit and credulity - about the fact that this war on Iraq is turning out nothing like twelve years ago. I have less faith than Mr. Knapp that the public will learn from it not to trust the war party. [smith2004]

Umm Qasr, which was supposed to fall on the first day of ground operations, is finally secure -- but somebody seems to have neglected to tell the Iraqis about it.

On Thursday, US Marines and British Special Boat Service troops began fighting to secure landing zones near Basra so that that city -- Iraq's second largest, with a population of 1.2 million -- could serve as an Iraqi Paris, with cheering crowds welcoming their "liberators." On Friday, Umm Qasr mysteriously became "the gateway to Basra." On Saturday, it was announced that Basra would be isolated and bypassed, rather than conquered.

The US forces seem to have changed their strategy from one of conquest and "liberation" to one of "get Saddam and hope the resistance falls apart without him." The problem with that is that they may have killed him already, and the resistance seems to be growing, not dissipating. Who knows if Saddam is dead or alive? The Iraqi troops have their orders. They seem, for the most part, to be following them, without regard to the personal status of their leader. Saddam's cult of personality, it turns out, looms larger in the American mind than in the Iraqi mind.

"Operation Iraqi Freedom" is going south on its planners in a big way.

Alan Bisbort at American Politics Journal - God Damn You George W. Bush. [grabbe]

You are still the little impetuous and impulsive frat boy, still that D Student from the Skull and Bones Club, still the family Black Sheep, still the shakedown artist and flim-flam man, still the coke hound and party animal, let loose on the ultimate dance floor: worldwide Armageddon, at least as your feeble brain understands these theological matters.

Just as your concept of a Creator bears no resemblance to mine (or to the Pope's or to Tutu's, Carter's, Mandela's, etc.), your fantasy of heaven -- with "good" Americans like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott but not "bad" Americans like the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X or Henry D. Thoreau sitting around shooting the breeze for eternity -- is not one I would wish on my worst enemy. And your idea of a "just" and "holy" war has cost all humanity some precious part of their soul. It will, if it hasn't done so already, poison forever America's great tradition of democracy, America's role as a beacon of hope in the world. To use an appropriately twisted metaphor, the virginity of American ideals have been brutally gang-raped by a cadre of unelected ideologues. This coupling will result, nine months hence, in a monstrous offspring that will slouch toward Bethlehem to be emitted from betwixt quivering gams, a black oozing thing that will drip its hate-filled goo for the next hundred years.

So, as the Pope implied, God damns you, George W. Bush.

John Kaminski at Rense.com - The Official Version Of 9/11 Is A Hoax - this meme is gaining ground. I see it more and more on my trips around the web. Can't say anything for its truth, however. Remember that grain of salt. [grabbe]

Today, millions of people around the world are protesting the criminal destruction of the nation of Iraq. But these protests won't change the number of minds necessary to stop America's criminal madmen from continuing with their genocidal aim of enslaving the entire world.

What WILL stop them is spreading the realization that President George W. Bush and his billionaire accomplices in the oil industry perpetrated 9/11 as an excuse to begin the militarization of America for the purpose of world conquest.

History has shown all too clearly the deceived American people WILL support the destruction of faraway countries on phony pretexts of defending so-called freedom.

Thus the needless wars continue. Right now we watch high-tech weapons slaughter the defenseless people of Iraq. Soon it will be Iran, Syria, Colombia, Venezuela, North Korea, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and who knows where else. All these misguided atrocities will be possible because of the hoax known as 9/11.

But the American people will not - and cannot - tolerate leaders who kill our own people merely to invent a pretext - the war on terror - to go around killing anyone they like.

Sheldon Rampton at PR Watch - Anti-war Reporting Banned in UK Papers - of course this is "supporting the troops", not censorship. Of course. [grabbe]

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