Debate Exposes Bush's Racist War

[NV1962]

Fresh from the rant-o-mat:

Oh surprise, more lies forged with double standards!

A few days ago I railed against a bunch of Christian Taliban cretins going by the name 'Concerned Women for America,' mostly due to their position on the so-called hate crime laws. This part in particular got my goat:

Proponents of the Hatch-Smith bill insist that their version seeks to empower state officials to better handle "hate crimes" and that it mitigates the more radical aspects of the Kennedy-Smith bill. But it still endorses the concept of "hate crimes," greatly expands federal power and will lead inevitably to "thought crimes."

...

A "hate crimes" law can lead to "thought crime" as is found in totalitarian countries and increasingly in Western nations that have fallen into the trap.

The appallingly blunt and overt refusal to recognize the racist intent of hate crimes was, I thought, reserved to rabid Reich-wingers. Boy - was I wrong by placing even some trust in the judgment of conservative members of Congress:

House Republican negotiators yesterday scuttled a Senate-approved proposal to strengthen the nation's long-standing hate-crimes law and extend its coverage to include crimes against gay men and lesbians.

According to sources close to the talks, the proposal was rejected by House members of a conference with the Senate as the negotiators for the two chambers neared completion of work on the 2005 defense authorization bill. The defense bill had been amended by the Senate in June to include the bipartisan proposal to strengthen and update the civil rights-era hate-crimes statute.

The Senate proposal, which was also rejected by House defense negotiators in 2000, would have added crimes based on sexual orientation, gender and disabilities to the existing law that allows federal prosecution of offenses based on race, color, religion or national origin. Financial support would have been provided for state and local investigations and prosecutions of hate crimes.

The proposal would also have eliminated restrictions limiting hate-crime prosecutions to cases where the victims were engaged in federally protected activities, such as voting.

Proponents, led by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), contended the expansion was needed to ensure protection of all hate-crimes victims. Opponents, including prominent House Republican leaders, argued that labeling something a hate crime punished thought rather than action.

Waitaminute - it's pretty well-established that the Christian Taliban has found, rather than co-operative allies, ethically challenged serfs in the Republican-controlled Congress, but what has this to do with Bush, the war in Iraq and tonight's debate?

Simple: my contention is that George W. Bush has directed the toxic triumvirate (Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay and Rick Santorum - key word: the K Street Project) to obliterate an initiative -- the hate crime law -- that might give credence to his own claim of being a "compassionate" conservative. And the "official" reason given here is that they oppose criminalizing "thoughts."

Now that sounds familiar, looking at tonight’s debate:

The question is for President Bush, and the questioner is Robin Dahle.

DAHLE: Mr. President, yesterday in a statement you admitted that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, but justified the invasion by stating, I quote, "He retained the knowledge, the materials, the means and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction and could have passed this knowledge to our terrorist enemies."

Do you sincerely believe this to be a reasonable justification for invasion when this statement applies to so many other countries, including North Korea?

BUSH: Each situation is different, Robin.

And obviously we hope that diplomacy works before you ever use force. The hardest decision a president makes is ever to use force. After 9/11, we had to look at the world differently. After 9/11, we had to recognize that when we saw a threat, we must take it seriously before it comes to hurt us.

In the old days we'd see a threat, and we could deal with it if we felt like it or not. But 9/11 changed it all.

I vowed to our countrymen that I would do everything I could to protect the American people. That's why we're bringing Al Qaida to justice. Seventy five percent of them have been brought to justice.

That's why I said to Afghanistan: If you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist. And the Taliban is no longer in power, and Al Qaida no longer has a place to plan.

And I saw a unique threat in Saddam Hussein, as did my opponent, because we thought he had weapons of mass destruction.

And the unique threat was that he could give weapons of mass destruction to an organization like Al Qaida, and the harm they inflicted on us with airplanes would be multiplied greatly by weapons of mass destruction. And that was the serious, serious threat.

So I tried diplomacy, went to the United Nations. But as we learned in the same report I quoted, Saddam Hussein was gaming the oil-for-food program to get rid of sanctions. He was trying to get rid of sanctions for a reason: He wanted to restart his weapons programs.

(My occasional emphasis in bold.) So, in slow motion for the stubborn right wing readers here:

• 'Thought crime' in the U.S. = bad idea that must not be canonized in Law, because the moral fiber of this administration dictates that racist violence is the exclusive hallmark of totalitarian regimes.
  
• 'Thought crime' by Saddam = excellent reason to rush to war and occupy a foreign country, because the moral fiber of this administration demands proactive Christian compassion with the poor Iraqis.

C'mon, let's cut all the pretense here: this is a racist administration that just barely manages to mask its radical White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant fundamentalism with which it attempts to 'morally sugarcoat' its neo-con agenda.

Interesting but unsuspected attack of candor there by W.

[lanparty]

1. 75% of the Taliban brought to justice ?????

Really ???? How do they know????

What about Al-Queda????

[NV1962]

2. that's not what the simian-in-chief said

Instead, he said:

Of course, we're going to find Osama bin Laden. We've already 75 percent of his people. And we're on the hunt for him.

Amazingly he managed to correctly apply a bogus number to the appropriate bogey club.

Still, the "75%" is a gross misrepresentation, because it's a (rough) proportion of the known aQ chiefs. And I very much doubt that, to this day, the U.S. intel community has a somewhere near reliable estimate of the current total number of aQ operatives.

Given the huge recruitment job he did for them in Iraq, it's hardly imaginable that aQ even stuck to simply replacing their nabbed / knocked capos.

In fact, I suspect he's parading with a phony number that reflects the pre-911 situation, which after the war in Iraq very likely has deteriorated substantially - i.e.: I believe that in reality they have only a fraction of the current, active shadowy and loosely connected patchwork terrorism syndication that for simplicity's sake is referred to as aQ.

[Demeter]

3. CWA is an Old Enemy of the People, Esp. Of the Female Ones

These people are brain-damaged. They have no other excuse. Thought crimes are things like thinking Iraq has WMD, that Iraqis will welcome us with open arms while throwing flowers, that one can pacify a freedom-fighting revolution (by killing everyone) and impose democracy with a bayonet.