Say Anything Blog

Yes, the way to victory is through retreat and defeat.  Black is white, war is peace, love is hate…
How “1984” of you, P.

Leftie political philosophy, from a DU commenter:

It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. RUMOR IS TRUTH. The modern laws of media hype and political warfare have a useful tenet: Repeat ANYTHING or raise false concern over ANYTHING and it is likely to be planted in the conscious/subconscious of many voters.

I wonder why it is that virtually every published reference to Lt. General William Odom mentions his stint as DIRNSA. Director, National Security Agency, under President Reagan?

The question is rhetorical since the answer is obviously to give Odom’s leftist, rabidly anti-war views more general credibility, although the truth of the matter is that where intelligence and national security matters were concerned, Reagan relied far more on Bill Casey’s judgment than he ever did Bill Odom’s.

All this is understandable.  Odom actually cut his national security teeth during the infamous Carter administration working as military assistant for the National Security Appeaser… uh,… Advisor, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, where his area of expertise was Soviet Affairs and nuclear weapons policy.

Odom, who apparently has a contract to provide quarterly anti-war articles for the Neiman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, has authored monographs such as the September 2005 piece brazenly titled “What’s Wrong With Cutting and Running?” in which he speciously argued for an immediate and uncontrolled withdrawal from Iraq, while in November of 2005, argued that if we “want stability in the middle east” we ought to “get out of Iraq,” a thoroughly gratuitous and ill-informed suggestion since instability and conflict long preceded any active US engagement in the middle east and thus have nothing to do with any US presence in the region.  Just ask the Israelis… something Odom is curiously reluctant to discuss as he goes on, and on, about US withdrawal from Iraq and the middle east.

Odom has even suggested in his October, 2006 monograph that we “unmask the so-called ‘Global War on Terrorism’ as a slogan” and that we should publicly “ignore” al Qaeda and other such groups.

I have suggested on a number of occasions that the Left’s real anti-war foreign policy agenda extends well beyond the war in Iraq, and that in their parlance “anti-war” means anti- any sort of military action by the US for any reason whatsoever.  The writings of retired Lt. Gen William Odom, as dutifully endorsed by Puzzlefeet, only prove that point.

The very first requirement for achieving any goal in life is the belief that the goal can be achieved.  No Matter what. And nothing has ever been accomplished by denying that it could be done… a point which the Left, including Odom, would do well to go back and re-learn.

“Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.”

Good post, Bat One.  Was he around when Ramsey Clarke was in his heyday?

Communism is evil

This sounds like more realpolitik b.s.  Stability through the tolerance of tyranny and terrorism.

It won’t work in the long run, and liberals like puzzle are just seizing on it opportunistically because of it’s overtly negative tone.

Remember that this is the same Puzzlefeet who was calling for more troops in Iraq before the President was.  Now that the President supports that, she’s against it.

Very, very telling.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

The thing the lefties must avoid like the plague is a US victory of any sort over Islamic terrorism, either in Iraq or anywhere else.  To prevent this, they will tell any lie and support any terrorist leader(like Chavez, for instance).  Dan Rather’s fawning interview with Saddam Hussein comes to mind.

Leftie political philosophy, from a DU commenter:

It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. RUMOR IS TRUTH. The modern laws of media hype and political warfare have a useful tenet: Repeat ANYTHING or raise false concern over ANYTHING and it is likely to be planted in the conscious/subconscious of many voters.

We certainly don’t want anyone who fawns over Saddam, do we bob?

It was a different era, Don.  At that time America was in the habit of tolerating tyranny in Iraq at the expense of liberty and democracy.  We did this for the sake of stability in the region.

Now that has changed, but my question for you is this: Why do you want to go back to the day when we sent envoys to people like Saddam to shake his hand?  Because that’s what you and your fellow liberals are calling for in a withdrawal from Iraq and a return to ineffective UN diplomacy.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Rob I think you should acknowledge that back during the cold war if we didn’t do business with these third world dictators that the Soviets would have.

What’s going to happen to US industry when the global warming extremists like John McCain double the price of electricity?  I would think all these factories will close and set up in countries where they aren’t scared of technology.

It was a different era, Don.  At that time America was in the habit of tolerating tyranny in Iraq at the expense of liberty and democracy

The Reagan/Bush I regimes didn’t just “tolerate” tyranny---they openly sold arms to tyranny. Back then, Saddam was a CIA employee.

...my question for you is this: Why do you want to go back to the day when we sent envoys to people like Saddam to shake his hand?

My question for you is this: why do you put words in my mouth.

Special bonus question: why can’t you think of any alternatives between total war and Rumsfeld-giving-Saddam-a-blowjob?

One of those alternatives is containment, a policy of sanctions and diplomacy that was working under the Clinton regime. Why do you think Saddam has no WMDs? Because the Clinton era of containment worked.

Because that’s what you and your fellow liberals are calling for in a withdrawal from Iraq and a return to ineffective UN diplomacy.

Actually, most of us call for a withdrawl from Iraq so we can use those resources to fight al Qaeda. Bush let them go in Afghanistan to pursue a for-profit war in Iraq.

Every time you start a sentence with “Liberals say...” I know that the rest of the sentence is complete bullshit. You don’t listen to liberals. You listen to what Rush and the right-wing media tells you about liberals. Do you see the diff?