May 19, 2003 – C

Joining the Ranks of Aggressor Nations
by Jacob G. Hornberger, The Future of Freedom Foundation
May 2, 2003, www.fff.org

“The United States was never at risk of suffering an imminent attack from Iraq, either with weapons of mass destruction or conventional weapons…”

“…where is the justification for an external power to wage war on a foreign country for the purpose of freeing its citizens from the tyranny of their own government, especially when a natural consequence of the war is going to be the deaths of thousands of innocent people, including ordinary soldiers who will be killed in battle? Shouldn’t the issue of freedom and tyranny be decided by the people within that country rather than by a foreign government?”

“…under international law and the war-crime principles established by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, invading a country for the purpose of “freeing the people from tyranny” or “regime change” or for false reasons cannot — and do not — remove the invasion from the ranks of a “war of aggression.””

 

Asymmetric Politics
by Joseph R. Stromberg, Antiwar.com, May 10, 2003

“…Right now, the tough-minded are all around us, chanting the refrain that we must give up liberties “temporarily.” In the next breath, they exhort us that the struggle could go on for decades. It is a fair conclusion, then, that they wish to take away liberties for decades.”

“…A cynic would say that, if the Constitution goes missing and bottomless powers land upon the rulers at the first sign of a war, then rulers who wished to enjoy more power would tend to go around actively finding wars to be in”

 

US Rivals Turn on Each Other as Arms Search Draws a Blank
The Observer, observer.co.uk, May 11, 2003

“…Aside from Downing Street’s plagiarised dossier, there are allegations that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger. The documents that the accusation were based on were shown to be false by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but that had not stopped Britain and America warning of Saddam’s nuclear threat”

 

Frustrated, US Arms Team to Leave Iraq
by Barton Gellman, Washington Post, May 11, 2003

“Task Force Unable To Find Any Weapons”

 

Lies About Iraq’s Weapons Are Past Expiration Date
by Cliff Montgomery, AlterNet.org, May 8, 2003

“As we now know, Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the IAEA, told the UN Security Council that the documents regarding the uranium sales were clear fakes. One senior IAEA official told Hersh, “These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine they came from a serious intelligence agency.””

“…Blair had handed the papers over to American intelligence, and at just the right time; Tenet’s evidence was instrumental in getting Congress to back the war resolution”

“…A week after the IAEA’s bombshell, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), formally asked for an FBI investigation into the matter, stating that, “the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception aimed at manipulating public opinion . . . regarding Iraq””

 

Weapons of Mass Destruction Were a Fantasy From the Start by Gwynne Dyer, The Salt Lake Tribune, May 5, 2003

“Putin openly mocked Blair for the failure of the “coalition” to find any of the fabled WMD even weeks after the end of the war: “Where are those arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, if indeed they ever existed? Perhaps Saddam is still hiding in an underground bunker somewhere, sitting on cases of weapons of mass destruction, and is preparing to blow the whole thing up and destroy the lives of thousands of Iraqis.

“The Russian journalists at the press conference roared with laughter — maybe it loses something in translation — but Blair looked distinctly grim”

“… as former British Defense Secretary Doug Henderson said on 18 April: “If by the turn of the year there is no WMD then the basis on which this [war] was executed was illegal.””

 

Look to Iran for the Real Costs of the War in Iraq
by Ivan Eland, The Independent Institute, independent.org, May 8, 2003

“Yet the administration’s aggressive counter-proliferation policy of launching of “pre-emptive” attacks against states that are attempting to gain or possess weapons of mass destruction is backfiring.”

 

The Unmaking of Conservatism
by Joseph Sobran, www.sobran.com, April 24, 2003

“But by winning power, the conservative movement began to loose its grip on conservative principles. It had hoped to reverse the gains of liberalism — not only Johnson’s Great Society, but Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, both of which had violated America’s constitutional tradition of strictly limited and federal government. Now it quietly dropped its original goals.”

 

Why Libertarianism Is As Much Fun As Medical Marijuana
by Peter McWilliams, July 4, 1998, Speech at Libertarian National Convention
Introduced by R.W. Bradford with an account of McWilliams’ incredible battle with the State, his positive outlook and tragic death. (1)

“…I believe medical marijuana currently stands for the most hideous ongoing example of government interference in the private lives of individuals today.”

“…Medical marijuana prohibition is an outrage within an outrage within an outrage. The first outrage, of course, is the War on Drugs itself. Prohibition does not work, has not worked, cannot work, and anyone who says it can is either deeply delusional or is making money on the Drug War.”

“The next layer of outrage is marijuana prohibition…”

 

Smoking Gun
by Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, May 9, 2003

“Does Senator Bob Graham have the goods on the Bushies and 9/11?…”

“…long before Strauss became known as the philosopher king of the War Party, Murray N. Rothbard – writing over forty years ago – had Strauss’s number:

“As Strauss sees matters, classical and Christian natural law did not impose strict and absolute limits on state power; instead, all is left to the prudential judgment of the wise statesman. From this contention, Rothbard vigorously dissents. ‘In this [Straussian] reading, Hobbes and Locke are the great villains in the alleged perversion of natural law. To my mind, the ‘perversion’ was a healthy sharpening and development of the concept.’ … Strauss’s rejection of individual rights led him to espouse political views that Rothbard found repellent: ‘We find Strauss . . . praising ‘farsighted’, ‘sober’ British imperialism; we find him discoursing on the ‘good’ Caesarism, on Caesarism as often necessary and not really tyranny, etc… he praises political philosophers for yes, lying to their readers for the sake of the ‘social good’…. I must say that this is an odd position for a supposed moralist to take.””

Notes

[1] http://www.yvettehirth.com/e_html/e_petermcwilliamsspeech.htm
Yvettehirth.com