Who Are The Fools Fighting Healthcare Reform?

You think health care is expensive now, wait until it's 'free.'

Guaranteeing affordable health care choices for all will require some tax revenues—$50 to 100 billion per year depending on the plan—plus modest contributions from companies and individuals. But it will save us $1 trillion in health care spending.We'll be able to slash administrative costs, emphasize preventative care, reduce emergency room visits and cut down on unnecessary procedures with electronic medical records.

What they are talking about is nothing but socialized medicine.

Conservatives opposed great reforms like Social Security and Medicare by screaming socialism. They were wrong then, and they're wrong now.Guaranteed affordable health insurance would not make doctors and other health care professionals work for the government. The progressive plan is about making sure you have good health insurance you can afford and the ability to go to the doctors you want.
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Water Boarding Our Constitution

We watched Christopher Hitchens and Erich "Mancow" Muller spend a few seconds on a waterboard and emerge convinced that waterboarding is torture. While I welcome their conversions, their stunts really did not teach us anything new. Though the initial panic of having water come at them was suffering enough, they both quit before the real effects of waterboarding kicked in: they have no idea what would come if the torture did not stop when they cried "uncle.

Torture is the systematic use of trauma to provoke a change in consciousness: the only goal of torture is to drive a person to unbearable madness. The purpose of the torture -- interrogation, extortion -- immaterial. Mancow and Hitchens spent a short time on the waterboard and saw that rabbithole in the distance. They bailed before any of the real terror kicked in... But what if ending the torture at will was not an option? What if they would have undergone waterboarding as Bybee prescribed?

The Bush administration deliberately deceived the American people about its enhanced interrogation program. In doing so, they depended on the fact that Americans have a Rambo understanding about torture. In particular, they counted on people and policy makers to miss the fact that it is systematic trauma -- not necessarily acute pain -- that creates torture and drives people to break. We have television and movie images of electric shocks and red-hot pokers that lead us to miss the fact that damaging visible human flesh only makes up small class in the larger set of ways torturers use suffering to drive a person to madness. Torture works by attacking the emotional centers of the brain -- it breaks down the limbic system and triggers the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Trauma damages an essential part of the limbic system called the hippocampus; the head breaks down when the limbic system is compromised.

There is much noise from apologists that water never gets through the cloth to actually drown the prisoner. What they do not tell you is that this does not matter. When normal breathing gets interrupted, so does normal swallowing. During waterboarding, the prisoner's head is tilted back so that any liquid -- including saliva or nasal fluid -- will build up at the back of the throat. This creates a constant aspiration threat. It is the fight to control this liquid at the back of the throat that sometimes results in the prisoner swallowing his own tongue and suffocating to death -- hence the need for a trachiotomy kit in the interrogation room.As carbon dioxide builds in the blood, the body becomes locked in the fight to keep from aspirating at the same time that it fights to take in air. As the waterboarding continues, the prisoner is slowly dying. After forty seconds or so, he gets a few breaths. But he still has to fight to keep from aspirating the liquid at the back of his throat when he gets that short break -- and then they start over with a new cycle of water.This is not a "little dunk." It is a controlled execution that is systematically interrupted each time it starts to become lethal -- a grisly hypoxic/anoxic torture.

NOT IN MY NAME. NO TORTURE. PROSECUTE NOW.

ILLEGAL ALIENS IN AMERICA

There are now said to be 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the US. Of the Mexicans who live here, an estimated 85 percent are here illegally.
Border Patrol vets offer tips on curbing illegal immigration
One day in 1954, Border Patrol agent Walt Edwards picked up a newspaper in Big Spring, Texas, and saw some startling news. The government was launching an all-out drive to oust illegal aliens from the United States.
The orders came straight from the top, where the new president, Dwight Eisenhower, had put a former West Point classmate, Gen. Joseph Swing, in charge of immigration enforcement.
General Swing's fast-moving campaign soon secured America's borders - an accomplishment no other president has since equaled. Illegal migration had dropped 95 percent by the late 1950s.
Several retired Border Patrol agents who took part in the 1950s effort, including Mr. Edwards, say much of what Swing did could be repeated today.
"Some say we cannot send 12 million illegals now in the United States back where they came from. Of course we can!" Edwards says.
Donald Coppock, who headed the Patrol from 1960 to 1973, says that if Swing and Ike were still running immigration enforcement, "they'd be on top of this in a minute."
William Chambers, another '50s veteran, agrees. "They could do a pretty good job" sealing the border.
Edwards says: "When we start enforcing the law, these various businesses are, on their own, going to replace their [illegal] workforce with a legal workforce."
While Congress debates building a fence on the border, these veterans say other actions should have higher priority.
1. End the current practice of taking captured Mexican aliens to the border and releasing them. Instead, deport them deep into Mexico, where return to the US would be more costly.
2. Crack down hard on employers who hire illegals. Without jobs, the aliens won't come.
3. End "catch and release" for non-Mexican aliens. It is common for illegal migrants not from Mexico to be set free after their arrest if they promise to appear later before a judge. Few show up.
The Patrol veterans say enforcement could also be aided by a legalized guest- worker program that permits Mexicans to register in their country for temporary jobs in the US. Eisenhower's team ran such a program. It permitted up to 400,000 Mexicans a year to enter the US for various agriculture jobs that lasted for 12 to 52 weeks.

DEATH OF AMERICA. "The Good The Bad And The Ugly"

Apocalypse has always held a special fascination for me. Even as a small child I can remember being simultaneously compelled and repulsed by the idea of annihilation; formerly bustling cities gone empty and silent, bands of survivors moving through scorched barren landscapes towards a perilous future; nature in the absence of man’s relentless industry reclaiming what is hers.
As we witness the downward spiral and visceral gurgling of the greatest country/state the world has yet produced I am reminded that all things must and will end.
While death is sometimes quick and almost painless it is more often slow and agonizingly painful. My fear is the latter for the United States. The rest of the world have in the last few years become increasingly hostile to this country as more and more people have begun to realize that our "American Dream" was only made possible by others "Enduring Nightmare." Other age old factors are the many political ideologies and religious intolerance's of all the world. America is now crippled and weakened and the lions and hyenas are circling and moving in for the kill.
Perhaps now although to late to save our country a sufficient number of enlightened people will be able to unite in a common cause to fight back against the beast that approaches and to begin to roll back the darkness. This is always the prelude to any rebirth. Will noble ideas such as "ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" OR "WE ARE ALL ENDOWED BY OUR MAKER WITH CERTAIN INALIENABLE RIGHTS SUCH AS LIFE LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS" ever be presented on the world stage again? Will these lofty beliefs ever produce a population sufficiently strong, honest, and resolute enough to fight and die for each others rights to these things? If we look to history for that answer it would be not likely if ever.The reason being is that these ideas have been as rare as fine jewels or gold in the lineage of mankind and once pondered or dreamed of they always would meet opposition from the powers that be at that time. So take a moment to reflect or whisper a silent prayer for that band of survivors because they are after all our children and grand children. GLENN NUNLEY. Sept. 20, 2008. Re-posted May 18, 2009.
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HOW TO CURTAIL THE FEDERAL BEAST

1.) The Scope of the Problem.

The Constitution gives the Congress only 17 discrete powers. One of them is the power to regulate interstate commerce and another is the power to tax incomes. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, almost from the time the first Congress sat, it used its Commerce Clause power to tax goods, to control private behavior, and even to prohibit items in interstate commerce. Subsequent Congresses used that power to control the conditions for production and sale of goods that eventually made their way into interstate commerce. And modern Congresses have used that power to regulate any human behavior they wish, so long as the behavior, when combined with other similar behavior, might conceivably affect the movement of goods or persons in interstate commerce. Thus, today, the water you drink, the air you breathe, the size of the toilet bowl in your bathroom, the number of legs on your desk chair, the strength of the water pressure in your shower in your home, the amount of wheat you can grow in your yard, the amount of sugar manufacturers can put into ketchup, the words you can utter in public or private, are all regulated by the Congress, claiming power under the Commerce Clause. And the feds, as well, use their enormous horde of cash from our income taxes to bribe the states by paying them to regulate in areas that the Constitution prohibits Congress from regulating.

2.) How to address this?

We need an amendment to the Constitution that expressly limits Congress to exercising only the 17 specific powers that are delegated to it in the Constitution and defines and limits the regulation of interstate commerce to its original meaning of keeping commerce regular by preventing all governments, state and federal, from interfering with it. We also need to rescind the 16th Amendment and affirmatively prohibit any federal tax on persons, as individuals or as groups. These two measures will starve the federal government back down to the footprint established for it by the Constitution. The Constitution can only be amended by enactment of an amendment by three-quarters of the legislatures of the states. In order to get to the state legislatures, an amendment can only come from an affirmative vote of two-thirds of both houses of Congress, or from a constitutional convention which Congress must call if asked to do so by two-thirds of the state legislatures.

3.) What should freedom lovers do?

Here are a few simple steps. First, agree on the wording of two amendments addressing commerce and income taxes. Next persuade the state legislatures of 34 states to enact a resolution by a simple majority vote of each house of the states’ legislatures instructing Congress to convene a constitutional convention for the express and sole purpose of considering these two amendments. I don’t know if 34 states will agree to this; but I firmly believe that as the number of agreeing states approaches 34, Congress will become terrified, and will begin to curtail its regulation of our behavior and lower our taxes. If the convention does come to pass and sends the two proposed amendments to the states, the goal is then to get 38 states to adopt the amendments. Note, the state legislative process of demanding a convention and the state legislative process of approving an amendment only requires a simple majority in each house of a state legislature, and neither is subject to a governor’s veto.

4.) What else can freedom lovers do?

They can elect state legislators who are intelligent and courageous enough to challenge and defy the federal government. Montana, Texas, and Oklahoma have many legislators who are prepared to direct their law enforcement to refrain from enforcing any federal laws; to authorize that products that originate and remain within their borders not be subject to any federal regulation; and even to begin the process of seceding from the Union. Even states with more liberal attitudes can be recruited into this effort by persuading them to save money and enhance freedom by prohibiting state and local law enforcement from prosecuting persons for possessing small amounts of controlled substances. The federal government simply cannot enforce all its criminal laws (there are over 4,000 of them) without the active assistance of state and local law enforcement. Secession, even under the biggest of Big Government theories, is perfectly lawful and can lawfully be accomplished by the consent of three-quarters of the remaining state legislatures.

5.) Congress is not a general legislature.

The federal government did not come into existence in order to right every wrong. The feds are obliged to recognize our natural rights. When the government behaves with no self-recognized limitations, when its only restraint is whatever it can get away with, when it actively attacks rather than forcefully protects our natural rights, then, as Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, and as federal law still states, “it is the duty of the people to alter or abolish it.”

CLICK ON COMMENTS BELOW TO EXPRESS YOUR OPINION. THANKS; GLENN.

A QUICK FIRST 100 DAYS REVIEW

BARAK OBAMA'S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

I find this article indicative of our condition in a reverse course of political events and our National direction as is always determined by whatever power cabal is at the controls in Washington. It serves to reinforce my convictions toward the complete necessity of "Secession,by a coalition of a majority, or at least , a determined minorty of the fifty states." as the means to correct the emperial nature of the Federal Government and it's over-reaching influence in all our lives.
The Central Government cannot by it's very nature effect fair and equitable laws or guidance to such a large and diversified population as now exist in our country.
The only corrective political device that is available to the states and thus to the people is an "Ultimatum Of Secession" from this most corrupt and "Nation Shattering" power yoke, "The United States Federal Government" A Government; "OF THE ELITE, BY THE ELITE, FOR THE ELITE. Glenn Nunley. North Florida.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one Messiah to dissolve the historic bonds that have connected his subjects with the fundamental beliefs of a bunch of dead white guys, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Marx entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that I should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men, women, transgendered and questioning individuals deserve equal division of goods, that they are endowed by Me with certain unalienable rights, that among these are the right to abort life, servitude to the state, and the pursuit of taxpayer-supported benefits.

That to secure these rights, government is instituted in Me, deriving my just powers from the consent of a Democrat Congress, ACORN, and Universal Voluntary Public Service. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of Me to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Big Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing (with the help of the groups previously named) My powers in such form, as to Me shall seem most likely to effect My subjects' safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that My government short established should be changed for causes I deem appropriate; and accordingly all my inexperience hath shown that personkind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the oppressive regime instituted by dead white men to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce my subjects under absolute Evil Capitalism, it is My right, it is My duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future Social Security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these downtrodden victims of Evil Capitalists; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. This history of the present Representative Republic is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute freedom for these victims. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a slavering mainstream media.

This Representative Republic was founded on the principles of limited government, and does not allow Me to make all decisions without impunity.

This Representative Republic allows for too many States' rights.

This Representative Republic allows Me to serve only two terms in the highest office in the land.

This Representative Republic allows for too much personal freedom, assuming that individuals know best how to spend the money that they earn and how best to live their lives.

This Representative Republic allows for the free market, not all-knowing bureaucrats, to right any wrongs in the economy.

This Representative Republic expects judges to uphold, not enact, law.

This Representative Republic allows private citizens to own firearms, thus allowing them to protect themselves and their family from all intrusions (including those from government).

This Representative Republic does not guarantee electoral outcomes for any one particular party - namely, My party.

This Representative Republic guarantees citizens equality before the law - not social justice as defined by activist judges and legislators.

In every stage of these oppressions, I have petitioned for redress in the least humble terms: My repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Representative Republic, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define oppressive Evil Capitalism, is unfit to be the government of a people yearning for Hope and Change.
Nor have I been wanting in attention to my Global Citizen brethren. I have warned them from time to time of their attempts by their elected leaders to follow in the footsteps of the United States. I have reminded them of the circumstances of America's many mistakes. I have appealed to their systems of justice and social programs, which I hope to emulate. I have also appealed to our enemies, as I have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow the usurpations of America, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. I must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces America's sovereignty, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, superiors in war, in peace superiors.

I, therefore, the Messiah of the United States of America, acting of my own volition, appealing to Myself for the rectitude of my intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of Myself, solemnly publish and declare:

That the United States ought to be dependent states; that they are absolved from the Tenth Amendment, and that all political connection between them and the Federal Government, is and ought to be of a dependent nature; and that as subservient and dependent states and citizens thereof, they have no power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, or do any other acts and things without express permission from Federal Government thus represented by Me. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of the Nanny State, I pledge to oversee your lives, your fortunes, and what is left of your sacred honor.
Signed,
Barak Obama.
No other signatories needed.

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GET THESE CHAINS OFF OF ME... BIG BRO!

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds... [we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our mis-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers... And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another ]... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery... And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." Thomas Jefferson.

Many Americans make light of the fact that we now work half of each year to meet our tax burdens. But it is no laughing matter. Our local, state and federal governments now tax us so heavily that it takes two adults in each household working full-time to pay for necessities and taxes. Despite this heavy taxation, our federal government acquires ever-increasing debt, mortgaging our independence and our future. "We the People" now pay huge interest payments every year to Communist China. Most households are so burdened with debts and taxes that we have no energy or time to hold our representatives responsible - or as Jefferson phrased it - "calling our mis-managers to account." The solution is surprisingly simple - require our federal government to confine itself to taxing and spending only on those subjects that We the People delegated to it in our written Constitution. That is the form of government we established - a constitutional republic limited by our Constitution. Since our federal government has proven that it cannot confine itself, we also need to repeal the 16th Amendment. We should NOT replace it with another form of taxation. Our federal government, if it were acting within its legal bounds, could operate quite nicely on all the tariffs, excise taxes, import and export taxes that it presently collects.In addition to eliminating our currently oppressive tax burdens, many of our social ills would disappear as well. Since our federal government has no authority to "redistribute the wealth," our current problems with illegal immigration would end. If the federal government did not illegally offer food, housing, education and health care, only those who wanted to work in freedom would come to or stay in America. We should want those yearning to be free, not those wanting to be slaves of a State.
Let's roll, Patriots!

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HYPING TERROR FOR PROFIT AND POWER

For those who want to understand the truth about the state of political corruption in America. You will want to read this.

What if there really was no need for much - or even most - of the Cold War? What if, in fact, the Cold War had been kept alive for two decades based on phony WMD threats? What if, similarly, the War On Terror was largely a scam, and the administration was hyping it to seem larger-than-life? What if our "enemy" represented a real but relatively small threat posed by rogue and criminal groups well outside the mainstream of Islam? What if that hype was done largely to enhance the power, electability, and stature of George W. Bush and Tony Blair? And what if the world was to discover the most shocking dimensions of these twin deceits - that the same men promulgated them in the 1970s and today?

It happened.

The myth-shattering event took place in England the first three weeks of October, when the BBC aired a three-hour documentary written and produced by Adam Curtis, titled "The Power of Nightmares." If the emails and phone calls many of us in the US received from friends in the UK - and debate in the pages of publications like The Guardian are any indicator, this was a seismic event, one that may have even provoked a hasty meeting between Blair and Bush a few weeks later. According to this carefully researched and well-vetted BBC documentary, Richard Nixon, following in the steps of his mentor and former boss Dwight D. Eisenhower, believed it was possible to end the Cold War and eliminate fear from the national psyche. The nation need no longer be afraid of communism or the Soviet Union. Nixon worked out a truce with the Soviets, meeting their demands for safety as well as the US needs for security, and then announced to Americans that they need no longer be afraid. In 1972, President Richard Nixon returned from the Soviet Union with a treaty worked out by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the beginning of a process Kissinger called "détente." On June 1, 1972, Nixon gave a speech in which he said, "Last Friday, in Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which began in 1945. With this step, we have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear—for our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world."
But Nixon left amid scandal and Ford came in, and Ford's Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff (Dick Cheney) believed it was intolerable that Americans might no longer be bound by fear. Without fear, how could Americans be manipulated? Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon's treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear and, thus, reinstate the Cold War. And these two men - 1974 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Ford Chief of Staff Dick Cheney - did this by claiming that the Soviets had secret weapons of mass destruction that the president didn't know about, that the CIA didn't know about, that nobody but them knew about. And, they said, because of those weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work. "The Soviet Union has been busy," Defense Secretary Rumsfeld explained to America in 1976. "They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they ’ve been producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they’ve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They’re purposeful about what they’re doing." The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone. But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good. According to Curtis' BBC documentary, Wolfowitz's group, known as "Team B," came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn't depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable with our current technology.
The BBC's documentarians asked Dr. Anne Cahn of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during that time, her thoughts on Rumsfeld's, Cheney's, and Wolfowitz's 1976 story of the secret Soviet WMDs. Here's a clip from a transcript of that BBC documentary:

Dr ANNE CAHN, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1977-80: They couldn't say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn't find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-acoustic system. They’re saying, 'we can’t find evidence that they’re doing it the way that everyone thinks they’re doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don’t know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.'

"INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Even though there was no evidence.
"CAHN: Even though there was no evidence.

"INTERVIEWER: So they’re saying there, that the fact that the weapon doesn’t exist…
"CAHN: Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It just means that we haven’t found it."

The moderator of the BBC documentary then notes: " What Team B accused the CIA of missing was a hidden and sinister reality in the Soviet Union. Not only were there many secret weapons the CIA hadn’t found, but they were wrong about many of those they could observe, such as the Soviet air defenses. The CIA were convinced that these were in a state of collapse, reflecting the growing economic chaos in the Soviet Union. Team B said that this was actually a cunning deception by the Soviet régime. The air-defense system worked perfectly. But the only evidence they produced to prove this was the official Soviet training manual, which proudly asserted that their air-defense system was fully integrated and functioned flawlessly. The CIA accused Team B of moving into a fantasy world." Nonetheless, as Melvin Goodman, head of the CIA's Office of Soviet Affairs, 1976-87, noted in the BBC documentary, " Rumsfeld won that very intense, intense political battle that was waged in Washington in 1975 and 1976. Now, as part of that battle, Rumsfeld and others, people such as Paul Wolfowitz, wanted to get into the CIA. And their mission was to create a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a nuclear war."

Although Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld's assertions of powerful new Soviet WMDs were unproven - they said the lack of proof proved that undetectable weapons existed - they nonetheless used their charges to push for dramatic escalations in military spending to selected defense contractors, a process that continued through the Reagan administration.
But, trillions of dollars and years later, it was proven that they had been wrong all along, and the CIA had been right. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz lied to America in the 1970s about Soviet WMDs.

Not only do we now know that the Soviets didn't have any new and impressive WMDs, but we also now know that they were, in fact, decaying from within, ripe for collapse any time, regardless of what the US did - just as the CIA (and anybody who visited Soviet states - as I had - during that time could easily predict). The Soviet economic and political system wasn't working, and their military was disintegrating. As arms-control expert Cahn noted in the documentary of those 1970s claims by Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rumsfeld: "I would say that all of it was fantasy. I mean, they looked at radars out in Krasnoyarsk and said, 'This is a laser beam weapon,' when in fact it was nothing of the sort. ... And if you go through most of Team B’s specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong."

"INTERVIEWER: All of them? "CAHN: All of them. "INTERVIEWER: Nothing true?
"CAHN: I don’t believe anything in [Wolfowitz's 1977] Team B was really true."

But the neocons said it was true, and organized a group - The Committee on the Present Danger - to promote their worldview. The Committee produced documentaries, publications, and provided guests for national talk shows and news reports. They worked hard to whip up fear and encourage increases in defense spending, particularly for sophisticated weapons systems offered by the defense contractors for whom neocons would later become lobbyists. And they succeeded in recreating an atmosphere of fear in the United States, and making themselves and their defense contractor friends richer than most of the kingdoms of the world.

The Cold War was good for business, and good for the political power of its advocates, from Rumsfeld to Reagan. Similarly, according to this documentary, the War On Terror is the same sort of scam, run for many of the same reasons, by the same people. And by hyping it - and then invading Iraq - we may well be bringing into reality terrors and forces that previously existed only on the margins and with very little power to harm us.

Curtis' documentary suggests that the War On Terror is just as much a fiction as were the super-WMDs this same group of neocons said the Soviets had in the 70s. He suggests we've done more to create terror than to fight it. That the risk was really quite minimal (at least until we invaded Iraq), and the terrorists are - like most terrorist groups - simply people on the fringes, rather easily dispatched by their own people. He even points out that Al Qaeda itself was a brand we invented, later adopted by bin Laden because we'd put so many millions into creating worldwide name recognition for it. Watching "The Terror of Nightmares" is like taking the Red Pill in the movie The Matrix. It's the story of idealism gone wrong, of ideologies promoted in the US by Leo Strauss and his followers (principally Wolfowitz, Feith, and Pearle), and in the Muslim world by bin Laden's mentor, Ayman Zawahiri. Both sought to create a utopian world through world domination; both believe that the ends justify the means; both are convinced that "the people" must be frightened into embracing religion and nationalism for the greater good of morality and a stable state. Each needs the other in order to hold power. Whatever your plans are for tonight or tomorrow, clip three hours out of them and take the Red Pill. Get a pair of headphones (the audio is faint), plug them into your computer, and visit an unofficial archive of the Curtis' BBC documentary at the Information Clearing House website. (The third hour of the program, in a more viewable format, is also available here.) For those who prefer to read things online, an unofficial but complete transcript is on this Belgian site. But be forewarned: You'll never see political reality - and certainly never hear the words of the Bush or Blair administrations - the same again. Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," The Edison Gene, and "What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy."

Your comments are appreciated. Click on comments below. TP.

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