Correct, Rev. Wright on one side and white evangelicals on the other....sm
Posted By: independent on 2008-10-14
In Reply to: As much as that "our God should beat their god(s)" - vote for McCain prayer just yesterday?
They both spew hatred and division, not love and acceptance. Keep religion out of the whole process. This is my only reservation about Obama, being a member of this church for so long with no inkling!, but this can be said about the republicans too. I have been to tent revivals and see the furvor. Oh my! I am a Christian, but respect good people of all religions, not the radicals
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Meet The (White) Man Who Inspired Wright's Controversial Sermon
I was reading on ABC.com and found this article in the comments section. I don't know much about the Huffington Post, so this may be taken with a grain of salt. I thought it was interesting though.
Meet The (White) Man Who Inspired Wright's Controversial Sermon
Sam Stein
The Huffington Post
March 21, 2008
Meet the man who inspired Reverend Jeremiah Wright's now famous tirade about America's foreign policy inciting the terrorist attacks of September 11.
His name is Ambassador Edward Peck. And he is a retired, white, career U.S. diplomat who served 32-years in the U.S. Foreign Service and was chief of the U.S. mission to Iraq under Jimmy Carter -- hardly the black-rage image with which Wright has been stigmatized.
In fact, when Wright took the pulpit to give his post-9/11 address -- which has since become boiled down to a five second sound bite about "America's chickens coming home to roost" -- he prefaced his remarks as a "faith footnote," an indication that he was deviating from his sermon.
"I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday," Wright declared. "He was on Fox News. This is a white man and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. He pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Muhammad was in fact true: America's chickens are coming home to roost."
Wright then went on to list more than a few U.S. foreign policy endeavors that, by the tone of his voice and manner of his expression, he viewed as more or less deplorable. This included, as has been demonstrated in the endless loop of clips from his sermon, bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nuking "far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye."
"Violence begets violence," Wright said, "hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism."
And then he concluded by putting the comments on Peck's shoulders: "A white ambassador said that yall, not a black militant, not a reverend who preaches about racism, an ambassador whose eyes are wide open and is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice... the ambassador said that the people we have wounded don't have the military capability we have, but they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them... let me stop my faith footnote right there."
Watch the video (the relevant material starts around the 3:00 mark):
So it seems that while Wright did believe American held some responsibility for 9/11, his views, which have been described as radically outside the political mainstream, were actually influenced by a career foreign policy official.
Who is Peck? The ambassador, who has offered controversial criticism of Israeli policy in the West Bank but also warned against the Iraq War, was lecturing on a cruise ship and was unavailable for comment. But officials at Peck's former organization, the Council for the National Interest, a non-profit group that advocates reducing Israel's influence on U.S. Middle East policy, offered descriptions of the man.
"Peck is very outspoken," said Eugene Bird, who now heads CNI. "He is also very good at making phrases that have a resonance with the American people. When he came off of that Fox News, a few days later he said they would never invite me back again."
And what, exactly, did Peck say in that Fox News interview that inspired Wright's words?
Here are some quotes from an appearance the Ambassador made on the network on October 11, 2001, which may or may not have been the segment Wright was referring to. On the show, Peck said he thought it was illogical to tie Saddam Hussein to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, and that while the then-Iraqi leader had "some very sound and logical reasons not to like [the United States]," he and Osama bin Laden had no other ties.
From there, Peck went on to ascribe motives for what prompted the 9/11 attacks. "Stopping the economic embargo and bombings of Iraq," he said, "things to which Osama bin Laden has alluded as the kinds of things he doesn't like. He doesn't think it's appropriate for the United States to be doing, from his perspective, all the terrible things that he sees us as having been doing, the same way Saddam Hussein feels. So from that perspective, they have a commonality of interests. But they also have a deeply divergent view of the role of Islam in government, which would be a problem."
Why do you think Freepers are evangelicals? sm
I have to admit, that's the first time I heard that generalization applied to them.
Evangelicals running the party?
Just last week the Dems were snickering that the "leader" of the Republican party is Rush Limbaugh, who is hardly an "evanglical" of any color or stripe.
Really, they should make up their mind. Someday, people are going to wake up and notice that their various attempts to "slime" the Republican party are inconsistent with one another.
southern evangelicals are running the republican party and I am
I believe the term you are really using is not "arrogant", but "uppity."
Stop you evil propaganda, you're just lowering yourself to all those hypocritical evangelicals!
It's obvious your mind is already made up, so please do not force yours on us who do not agree with you one bit. If you're trying to make the rest of us swing in your direction by writing this litany of pettyness and sillyness, you're wrong. John McCain is passé...gone, okay? If I hear him talk about his military service and his tortures one more time, I'm going to puke! This is 2008, the war in Vietnam is long over and the U.S. had to get out. The Russians were in Aghanistan for ten years and had to get out with millions of their soldiers dead. This is an unwinnable war, why smarty pants can't you understand that? And Palin....oh please! She's a controller freak, she'll be running McCain if he's elected! We don't want neither one of them and you will see why come November 4th. We will not put up with four more years of aq Bush.......he's screwed up the country so bad in every way possible! Now everyone hates americans thanks to your current president. He's a Clint Eastwood in disguise. The axis of evil is America, and not the countries Bush loves to denigrade. So stop your propaganda against Barack, he's a breath of fresh air which we all long for. Biden did a lot more than McCain did in Congress. We don't need a novice from Alaska that's for sure. I'm Canadian and up here, it's democrat all the way. I suppose Palin can see the Yukon from her bedroom now? Bush will go down as the worst President the U.S. has ever had. No wonder you're all so scared and nervous about terrorists....he dared them and challendged and now they hate his guts. Let's get Barack in there and start negotiating, communicating and get the world on you side once again, like it used to be. So don't give me your crap about Barack or Joe. Bet you don't even know where Khandahar is! So stop your propaganda and keep your hateful thoughts to yourself!
Monique
I guess you want the old white, wrinkly white guy?
Right wing horsesh*t being shoved out as "truth." Sad.
Rev. Wright
He was in the news yesterday. Oh yeah. It won't be on the "drive-by" stations. Let the libs do their own research.
He won't be forgotten, Sam. Trust me.
Let's hear it for the party of "women." They can't have it both ways with all their so-called working mothers. It's the ole' rope theory. They'll hang themselves.
If she's such a nobody, why do they waste their time?
How about Fred Thompson last PM? Wow!
So you would consider Rev. Wright A LOT OFF
nm
I wouldn't think Rev Wright ......(sm)
is expecting anything after the publicity he's had. Of course, ya never know....he might...LOL
video - ann wright - former US diplomat
Dont know if any of you have already seen this video, if so, I apologize for posting it, however, if you havent, check it out.
Ann Wright - Former US Diplomat
08.23.05
QuickTime
DSL | 56K
Windows Media
DSL | 56K
RealMedia
DSL | 56K
Ann Wright, a Felon for Peace
Ann Wright: A Felon for Peace
Tomdispatch Interview with Ann Wright
Friday 11 November 2005
She's just off the plane from Tulsa, Oklahoma, the cheapest route back from a reunion in the little Arkansas town where she grew up in the 1950s. For thirty years, she and her childhood friends have climbed to the top of Penitentiary Mountain, where the local persimmon trees grow, for a persimmon-spitting contest. (All in the great spirit of just having fun and being crazy.) She holds out her hands and says, I probably still have persimmon goop on me!
We seat ourselves at a table in my dining room, two small tape recorders between us. She's dressed all in black with a bright green over-shirt, a middle-aged blond woman wearing gold earrings and a thin gold necklace. As she settles in, her sleeves pull back, revealing the jewelry she'd rather talk about. On her right wrist is a pink, plastic band. This one was to be a volunteer in the Astrodome for Hurricane Katrina. I did two days work there, then three days in Covington, Louisiana, the first week after. On her left wrist, next to a watch from another age, are two blue plastic bands: And this one, she says with growing animation, fingering the nearest of them, was my very first arrest of my whole life on September 26th in front of the White House with 400 of my closest friends. This is the bus number I was on and this is the arrest number they gave me and then, later on, I had to date it because now I have two. She fingers the second band. Last week 26 of us were arrested after a die-in right in front of the White House in commemoration of the two thousandth American and maybe one hundred thousandth Iraqi who died in this war. So now, she announces, chuckling heartily, I'm a felon for peace.
When she speaks - and in the final g's she drops from words (It's freezin' in Mongolia!) - you can catch just a hint of the drawl of that long-gone child from Bentonville, Arkansas. In her blunt, straightforward manner, you can catch something of her 29 years in the Army; and in her ease perhaps, the 16 years she spent as a State Department diplomat. Animated, amused by her foibles (and those of her interviewer), articulate and thoughtful, she's just the sort of person you would want to defend - and then represent - your country, a task she continues to perform, after her own fashion, as one of the more out-of-the-ordinary antiwar activists of our moment.
Last August, she had a large hand in running Camp Casey for Cindy Sheehan at the President's doorstep in Crawford, Texas; then again, that wasn't such a feat, given that in 1997 she had overseen the evacuation of 2,500 foreigners from the war zone that was then Sierra Leone, a harrowing experience for which she was given the State Department's Award for Heroism. That's why I joined the Foreign Service, she comments, her voice still filled with some residual excitement from those years. I wanted to go to places you wouldn't visit on vacation. In fact, the retired colonel opened and closed embassies from Africa to Uzbekistan and took some of the roughest diplomatic assignments on Earth, including the reopening of the American embassy in Kabul in December 2001.
On March 19, 2003, the day before the first Cruise missiles were launched against Baghdad, she resigned from the Foreign Service in an open letter sent from the U.S. embassy in Mongolia (where she was then Deputy Chief of Mission) to Secretary of State Colin Powell. In it she wrote, in part:
This is the only time in my many years serving America that I have felt I cannot represent the policies of an Administration of the United States. I disagree with the Administration's policies on Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, North Korea and curtailment of civil liberties in the U.S. itself. I believe the Administration's policies are making the world a more dangerous, not a safer, place. I feel obligated morally and professionally to set out my very deep and firm concerns on these policies and to resign from government service as I cannot defend or implement them.
Once used to delivering official U.S. statements to other governments, she now says things like: Everyone should have to be handcuffed with the flexi-cuffs they use now and feel just how unflexible they are, just how they cut, and then imagine Iraqis, Afghans, and other people we pick up in them 24 hours a day. She relaxes, sits back, awaits the first question, and responds with gusto.
Tomdispatch: I thought we'd start by talking about two important but quite different moments in your life. The first was not so long ago. Let me quote from a New York Times article on a recent Condoleezza Rice appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It was a day that echoed the anguish, anger and skepticism that opinion polls show have begun to dominate the thinking of Americans. The hearing was punctuated by a heckler who called for an end to the war, only to be hustled out. Now, I believe this was you.
Ann Wright: [She chuckles.] Yes! Not a heckler, I was a protester.
TD: Tell me about it.
AW: It was as much a protest against the Senators as against Condoleezza Rice, because they were not holding our Secretary of State responsible. I picked up the Washington Post that morning and noticed that Condoleezza was going to testify on Iraq, and I thought, well, I'm free until noon. When I walked in, I was not planning on doing anything.
But I sat there for two hours and Senators were saying: We've heard the administration is discussing a military option in Syria and perhaps Iran. The committee needs to be brought in on this, because we've only given you authorization for military action in Iraq. In an almost rude, dismissive tone, the Secretary of State essentially replied: We'll talk to you when we want to; all options are on the table; and thank you very much. Then the senators just kind of sat there. It was like: Come on, guys talk! Pin that woman down! We, the people, want to know. I want to know. And then they just started off on something else. It was like: No! Come back to this question. We don't want to go to war in Syria or Iran...
TD: And did you stand up?
AW: So I stood up. I was back in the peanut gallery. I've never done anything like it before in my whole life. I took a deep breath and went, Stop the killing! Stop the war! Hold this woman accountable! You, the Senate, were bamboozled by the administration on Iraq and you cannot be bamboozled again! Stop this woman from killing!
At that point, I ran out of things to say because I hadn't really planned it. [She laughs.] I was looking around. There was only one police officer and he was just ambling toward me. It was like he enjoyed what I was saying. I thought, until he gets here I've got to say something more, so I went: You failed us in Iraq, you can't fail us on Syria! The police office finally said, Uh, ma'am, you've got to come with me. This is the first time - somebody told me later - anyone's ever seen a protester put her arm around a police officer. [She laughs.]
TD: So you weren't hustled out?
AW: Noooooo. It was a slow walk and there was silence in the room, so I thought: Well, I can't let this go by and I started another little rant on the way out. That part wasn't mentioned in the news reports.
TD: At least some papers like the Washington Post mentioned you by name. The Times merely called you a heckler.
AW: Well, how rude! I wasn't heckling anyway. I was speaking on behalf of the people of America.
TD: This obviously takes you a long way from your professional life, because you were in the Foreign Service for...
AW: Sixteen years...
TD: ... and in all those years this would have been rather inconceivable.
AW: Having testified at congressional hearings as a Foreign Service officer, particularly on Somalia issues back in '93 and '94, I was always humbled to go into those rooms as a government employee. I always found it interesting when people in the audience stood up to say something. You know, I learned later that most protestors do it in the first ten minutes because that's when the cameras and all the reporters are sure to be there.
As it happened, the chairman of the committee declined to have me arrested. The police officer said, Well, if you're disappointed, I can arrest you. I replied, If you don't mind, I'll just run on over to my lunch appointment. I was actually on my way to a presentation by Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, where he would describe the secrecy of the administration and the way the State Department was isolated by the White House and the National Security Council.
TD: Another moment of protest, one I'm sure you thought about very carefully, took place the day before the shock-and-awe campaign against Iraq began. That day you sent a letter of public resignation to Colin Powell which began - and not many people could have written such a sentence - When I last saw you in Kabul in 2002...
AW: Indeed I had volunteered to go to Kabul, Afghanistan in December 2001 to be part of a small team that reopened the U.S. embassy. It had been closed for twelve years. I have a background in opening and closing embassies. I helped open an embassy in Uzbekistan, closed and reopened an embassy in Sierra Leone. I've been evacuated from Somalia and Sierra Leone. And with my military background, I've worked in a lot in combat environments.
I volunteered because I felt the United States needed to respond to the events of 9/11, and the logical place to go after al-Qaeda was where they trained, knowing full well that you probably weren't going to get a lot of people. The al-Qaeda group is very smart and few of them, in my estimation, would have been hanging out where we were most likely to go after them in Afghanistan. Actually, I was amazed the administration went in physically. I thought, like the Clinton administration, they would send in cruise missiles. Considering the severity of September 11, I guess the military finally said: Well, it looks like we're going into that hell-hole where the Russians got their butts whipped. Everybody knew it was going to be tough.
TD: You've commented elsewhere that a crucial moment for you was watching the President's Axis of Evil State of the Union address from a bunker in Kabul.
AW: A bunker outside the chancellery building meant to protect against the rockets the mujahedeen were sending against each other after they defeated the Soviets. We had taken [then interim leader] Hamid Karzai, who had been invited to the State of the Union, to Bagram Air Base and sent him off three days before. We told him, You've got to start getting together some detailed plans for economic development funds because the attention of the United States doesn't stay on any country for long; so, get your little fledgling cabinet moving fast. Well, the President started talking about other interests that the United States had after 9/11 and these interests were Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Just as he said that, the cameras focused on Karzai and you could almost see him going: Hmmmm [she mugs a wince], now I know what they were telling me at the embassy. And we were sitting there thinking, Oh my God...
TD: You had a functioning TV?
AW: Barely. We had a satellite dish made of pounded-out coke cans - these were being sold down in Kabul - and a computer chip sent in from Islamabad, because we wanted to hear from Washington what was going to happen with Afghanistan. When, instead of talking much about Afghanistan, the President started in on this axis-of-evil stuff we were stunned. We were thinking: Hell's bells, we're here in a very dangerous place without enough military. So for the President to start talking about this axis of evil... everyone in the bunker just went: Oh Christ, here we go! No wonder we're not getting the economic development specialists in here yet. If the American government was going after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and clearing out the Taliban and preparing to help the people of Afghanistan, why the hell was it taking so long? Well, that statement said it all.
TD: Did you at that moment suspect a future invasion of Iraq?
AW: I'm a little naïve sometimes. I really never, ever suspected we would go to war in Iraq. There was no attempt at that moment to tie 9/11 to Iraq, so it didn't even dawn on me.
Anyway, that was the preface to my letter of resignation. I wanted to emphasize that I had seen Colin Powell on his first trip to Kabul. I wanted to show that this was a person who had lots of experience.
TD: In the whole Vietnam era, few, if any, government officials offered public resignations of protest, but before the invasion of Iraq even began, three diplomats - Brady Kiesling, John Brown, and yourself - resigned in a most public fashion. It must have been a wrenching decision.
AW: I had been concerned since September 2002 when I read in the papers that we had something like 100,000 troops already in the Middle East, many left behind after the Bright Star [military] exercise we have every two years in Egypt. I thought: Uh-oh, the administration is doing some sneaky-Pete stuff on us. They were claiming they wanted UN inspectors to go back into Iraq, when a military build-up was already underway. It's one thing to put troops in the region for pressure, but if you're leaving that many behind, you're going to be using them. Then, as the mushroom-cloud rhetoric started getting stronger, it was like: Good God! These guys mean to go to war, no matter what the evidence is.
By November, I was having trouble sleeping. I would wake up at three, four in the morning - this was in Mongolia where it was freezing cold - wrap up in blankets, go to the kitchen table, and just start pouring my soul out. By the time I finally sent that resignation letter in, I had a stack of drafts like this. [She lifts her hand a couple of feet off the table.] I did know two others had resigned, but quite honestly I hadn't read their letters and I didn't know them.
TD: You were ending your life in a way, life as you had known it...
AW: Thirty-five years in the government between my military service and the State Department, under seven administrations. It was hard. I liked representing America.
TD: Was there a moment when you knew you couldn't represent this government anymore?
AW: I kept hoping the administration would go back to the Security Council for its authorization to go to war. That's why I held off until virtually the bombs were being dropped. I was hoping against hope that our government would not go into what really is an illegal war of aggression that meets no criteria of international law. When it was finally evident we were going to do so, I said to myself: It ain't going to be on my watch.
TD: Was it like crossing a border into a different world?
AW: It was a great relief. During the lead-up to war, I had begun showing symptoms of an impending heart attack. The State Department put me on a medivac flight to Singapore for heart tests. The doctors said, Lady, you're as strong as a horse. Are you just under some kind of stress? Yes, I am! The moment I sent in that letter, it was like a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. At least I had made my stand and joined the other two who had resigned.
TD: And what of those you left behind?
AW: In the first couple of days, while I was still in Mongolia, I received over 400 emails from colleagues in the State Department saying: We're so sad you're not going to be with us, but we're so proud of the three of you who resigned because we think this going-to-war is just so horrible; then each one would describe how anti-American feeling was growing in the country where they were serving. It was so poignant, all those emails.
TD: Why don't you think more people in the government - and in the military where there's clearly been opposition to Iraq at a very high level - quit and speak out?
AW: There were a few. [General] Eric Shinseki talked about the shortchanging of the [Iraq] operations plan by a couple of hundred thousand people. He was forced out. But see, in the military, in the Foreign Service, you're not supposed to be speaking your own mind. Your job is to implement the policies of an administration elected by the people of America. If you don't want to, your only option is to resign. I understood that and that's one of the reasons I resigned - to give myself the freedom to talk out.
There are a lot of people still in government service speaking out, but you've got to read between the lines. The senior military leaders in Iraq, what they've been saying is very different from what Donald Rumsfeld and the gang in Washington say. These guys are being honest and truthful about the lack of Iraqi battalions really ready for military work, the dangers the troops are under, the days when the military doesn't go out on the streets. They're signaling to America: We're up a creek on this one, guys, and you, the people of America, are going to have to help us out.
TD: ...Let's talk about [Colin Powell's chief of staff] Larry Wilkerson as an example. He assumedly left after the election when Colin Powell did, so almost a year has passed. He saw what he believed was a secret cabal running the government and it took him that long after he was gone to tell us about it. I'm glad he spoke out. But I wonder why there isn't a more urgent impulse to do so?
AW: If you look at Dick Clarke [the President's former chief adviser on terrorism on the National Security Council], he had all the secrets from the very beginning and he retired in January 2003. Yet he didn't say anything for over a year and a half, until he published that book [Against All Enemies] in 2004. If he had gone public before the war started, that man could have told us those same secrets right then. So could [the National Security Council's senior director for combating terrorism] Randy Beers. I worked with both of them on Somalia, on Sierra Leone. I know these guys personally and it's like: Guys, why didn't you come forward then?
As you probably know, on the key issues of the first four years of the Bush administration, the State Department was essentially iced out. I mean, look at the Iraq War. Colin Powell and the State Department were just shoved aside and all State's functions put into the Department of Defense. Tragically, Colin Powell, who was trying to counsel Donald Rumsfeld behind the scenes that there weren't enough troops in Iraq, never stood up to say, Hold it, guys, I'll resign if we don't get this under control so that logical functions go in logical organizations and you, the Defense Department, don't do post-combat civil reconstruction stuff. That's ours. He just didn't do it. To me, he was more loyal to the Bush family than he was to the country. His resignation was possibly the one thing that could have deterred the war. Then the people of America would really have looked closely at what was going on. But tragically he decided loyalty to the administration was more valuable than loyalty to the country. I mean, it breaks my heart to say that, but it's what really happened.
TD: So what is it that actually holds people back?
AW: I think the higher up you go, the more common it is for people to retire, or maybe even resign, and not say what the reasons are, because they may hope to get back into government in a different administration. Dick Clarke had served every administration since George Washington and maybe he was looking toward being called back as a political appointee again. Sometimes such people don't speak out because they feel loyalty to the person who appointed them. Nobody appointed me to nothin', except the American people. I'm a career foreign service officer and I serve the American people. When an administration wasn't serving the best interests of the American people, I felt I had to stand up.
TD: And are you now pretty much a full-time antiwar activist?
AW: [She laughs.] That's the way it's turned out.
TD: What, if anything, do you think your military career, your State Department career, and this... well, I can't call it a career... have in common?
AW: Service to America. It's all just a continuation of a real concern I have about my country.
TD: And what would you say to your former compatriots still in the military and the State Department?
AW: Many of the emails I received from Foreign Service officers said, I wish I could resign right now, but I've got kids in college, I've got mortgages, and I'm going to try really hard, by staying, to ameliorate the intensity of these policies. All I can say is that they must be in agony about not being able to affect policy. There have been plenty of early retirements by people who finally realized they couldn't moderate the policies of the Bush administration.
TD: What message would you send to the person you once were from the person you are now?
AW: You trained me well.
TD: If in this room you had the thirty-five year-old woman about to go into Grenada, as you did back in 1983, what would you want her to mull over.
AW: I would say: You were a good Army officer and Foreign Service officer. You weren't blind to the faults of America. In many jobs, you tried to rectify things that were going badly and you succeeded a couple of times. My resignation wasn't the first time I spoke out. For instance, I was loaned, or seconded, from the State Department to the staff of the United Nations operation in Somalia and ended up writing a memo concerning the military operations the UN was conducting to kill a warlord named Addid. They started taking helicopters, standing off, and just blowing up buildings where they had intelligence indicating perhaps he was there. Well, tragically he never was, and here we were blowing up all these Somali families. Of course the Somalis were outraged and that outrage ultimately led to Blackhawk Down.
I wrote a legal opinion to the special representative of the Secretary General, saying the UN operations were illegal and had to stop. It was leaked to the Washington Post and I got in a bit of hot water initially, but ultimately my analysis proved correct. I was also a bit of a rabble-rouser on the utilization of women in the military back in the eighties, part of a small group of women who took on the Army when it was trying to reduce the career potentials of women. I ended up getting right in the thick of some major problems which ultimately cost the Army millions of dollars in the reassessment of units that had been given incorrect direct-combat probability codings. I was also part of a team which discovered that some of our troops had been looting private homes in Grenada. The Army court-martialed a lot of our soldiers for this violation of the law of land warfare. We used their example in rewriting how you teach the code of conduct and, actually, the Geneva Convention on the responsibility of occupiers.
TD: You know a good deal about the obligations of an occupying power to protect public and private property, partially because in the 1980s you were doing planning on the Middle East, right?
AW: Yes, from 1982 to 1984, I was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina when the Army was planning for potential operations using the Rapid Deployment Force - what ultimately became the Central Command. One of the first forces used in rapid deployment operations was the 82 Airborne at Fort Bragg. I was in the special operations end of it with civil affairs. Those are the people who write up the annexes to operations plans about how you interact with the civilian population, how you protect the facilities - sewage, water, electrical grids, libraries. We were doing it for the whole Middle East. I mean, we have operations plans on the shelf for every country in the world, or virtually. So we did one on Iraq; we did one on Syria; on Jordan, Egypt. All of them.
We would, for instance, take the UNESCO list of treasures of the world and go through it. Okay, any in Iraq? Yep. Okay, mark 'em, circle 'em on a map, put 'em in the op-plan. Whatever you do, don't bomb this. Make sure we've got enough troops to protect this. It's our obligation under the law of land warfare. We'd be circling all the electrical grids, all the oil grids, all the museums. So for us to go into Iraq and let all that looting happen. Well, Rumsfeld wanted a light, mobile force, and screw the obligations of treaties. Typical of this administration on any treaty thing. Forget 'em.
So everything was Katy-bar-the-door. Anybody could go in and rip up anything. Many of the explosives now being used to kill our troops come from the ammo dumps we did not secure. It was a total violation of every principle we had for planning military operations and their aftermath. People in the civil affairs units, they were just shaking their heads, wondering how in the hell this could have happened. We've been doing these operations plans forever, so I can only imagine the bitchin' and moanin' about - how come we don't have this civilian/military annex? It's in every other op-plan. And where are the troops, where are the MPs?
TD: If back in the early eighties you were planning to save the antiquities of every country in the Middle East, then obviously the Pentagon was also planning for a range of possible invasions in the region. Do you look back now and ask: What kind of a country has contingency plans to invade any country you can imagine?
AW: One of the things you are likely to do at a certain point in your military career is operations plans. It did not then seem abnormal to me at all that we had contingency plans for the Middle East, or for countries in the Caribbean or South America. At that stage, I was not looking at the imperialism of the United States. I just didn't equate those contingency plans with empire-building goals. However, depending on how those plans are used, they certainly can be just that. Remember as well that this was in the days of the Cold War and, by God, that camouflaged a lot of stuff. You could always say: You never can tell what those Soviets are going to do, so you better be prepared anywhere in the world to defeat them.
TD: And we're still prepared anywhere in the world...
AW: Well, we are and now, let's see, where are the Russians? [She laughs heartily.]
TD: Tell me briefly the story of your life.
AW: I grew up in Arkansas, just a normal childhood. I think the Girl Scouts was a formative organization for me. It had a plan to it, opportunity to travel outside Arkansas, good goals - working on those little badges. Early State Department. Early military too. It's kind of interesting, the militarization of our society, how we don't really think of some things, and yet when I look back, there I was a little Girl Scout in my green uniform, and so putting on an Army uniform after college wasn't that big a deal. I'd been in a uniform before and I knew how to salute, three fingers. [She demonstrates.]
If you look, we now have junior ROTC in the high schools. We have child soldiers in America. We're good at getting kids used to those uniforms. And then there's the militarization of industries and corporations, the necessity every ten years to have a war because we need a new generation of weaponry. Corporations in the military-industrial complex are making lots of money off of new types of weaponry and vehicles.
TD: While you were in the military, did you have any sense that these wars were actually living weapons labs?
AW: Particularly seeing the privatization after Gulf War I, going into Somalia. All of a sudden, as fast as military troops were arriving, you had Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown, and Root in Somalia. They started saying, You need mess halls, oh, we'll do the mess halls for you. And it turned out they had staged a lot of their equipment in the Middle East after the Gulf War. So it was in Somalia lickety-split. The privatization of military functions is now so pervasive that the military can no longer function by itself, without the contractors and corporations. These contractors, these mercenaries really, are now fundamentally critical to the operations of the U.S. military.
TD: So a Girl Scout and...
AW: In my junior year at the University of Arkansas, a recruiter came through town with the film, Join the Army, See the World. I had been an education major for three years. Nurse, teacher, those were the careers for women. I didn't want any of it. So, in the middle of the Vietnam War, I signed up to go to a three-week Army training program, just to see if I liked it. And I found it challenging. Even though there were protests going on all over America, I divorced myself from what the military actually did versus what opportunities it offered me. I hated all these people getting killed in Vietnam, but I said to myself: I'm not going to kill anyone and I'm taking the place of somebody who will be able to go do something else. All these arguments that... now you look at it and go: Oh my God, what did you do?
TD: Don't you think this happens now?
AW: Absolutely! I sympathize with the people in the military right now. The majority didn't sign up to kill anybody. You always prayed that, whatever administration it was, it didn't go off on some wild goose chase that got you into a war you personally thought was really stupid.
TD: Would you counsel a young woman now to go into the military?
AW: I think we will always have a military and I think the military is honorable service as long as the civilian leadership uses it in appropriate ways and is very cautious about sending us to war. And yes, I would encourage people to look at a military career, but I would also tell them that, if they're sent to do something they think is wrong, they don't have to stay in, though they may have to take some consequences for saying, Thank you very much but I'm not going to kill anybody.
In fact, if I were recalled to active duty, which is possible... I put myself purposely at the Retired Ready Reserve so that, if there was ever an emergency and my country needed me, I could be recalled, and in fact there are people my age, 59, who are agreeing to be recalled. The ultimate irony would be resigning from my career in the diplomatic corps and then having the Bush administration recall me, because my specialty, civil affairs, reconstruction, is in really short supply. I'm a colonel. I know how to run battalions and brigades. I can do this stuff. But I would have to tell them, sorry, I refuse to be placed on active duty. And if they push hard enough, then I'd just have to be court-martialed and I'd go to Leavenworth. I will not serve this administration in the Iraq war which I firmly believe is an illegal war of aggression.
TD: You know, if someone had said to me back in the 1960s that a Vice President of the United States might go to Congress to lobby for a torture exemption for the CIA the way Dick Cheney has done, I would have said: This couldn't happen. Never in American history. I'm staggered by this.
AW: Me, too. The other thing that's quite interesting is the number of women who are involved in it. There were something like eighty women I've identified, ranging from high officers to CIA contractors being used as interrogators in Guantanamo. Talking about things that will come back to bite us big time, this is it. And we are complicit, all of us, because, quite honestly, we're not standing out in front of the White House every single day, and every time that Vice President leaves throwing our bodies in front of his car, throwing blood on it. We need to get tough with these guys. They're not listening to us. They think we're a bunch of wimps. We've got to get tougher and tougher with them to show them we're not going to put up with this stuff.
TD: You've quoted Teddy Roosevelt as saying: To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. I was particularly struck by that word servile. Do you want to talk about dissent for a moment?
AW: Well, we shouldn't be hesitant about voicing our opinions, even in the most difficult of times which generally is when your nation is going to war and you're standing up to say, this isn't right. That's tough and, in fact, the first couple of months after I resigned, oh man, all that TV and nothing on but the war, and very few people wanted to hear me. It probably was a good four months before anybody even asked me to come speak about why I had dissented, and that was a little lonely. [She chuckles.]
TD: Any final thoughts?
AW: We now have a two-and-a-half-year track record of being a very brutal country. We are the cause of the violence in Iraq. That violence will continue as long as we're there, and the administration maintains that we will be there until we win. That means to me that this administration is planning for a long-term siege in Iraq. It means that young men and women in America should be prepared for the draft because the military right now cannot support what this administration wants. In fact, yesterday I was talking to about ninety high school seniors in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a very Republican part of the United States. I said: Your parents may support this war, but how strongly do you feel about it? If it drags on for years and there's a draft, how many of you will willingly go? Only three put up their hands.
We are continuing down a very dangerous road. The United States and its citizenry are held in disdain in world opinion for not being able to stop this war machine. So one of the things I'm doing is ratcheting up my own level of response. A dear friend, Joe Palambo, a Vietnam veteran in Veterans for Peace who went to hear the President in Norfolk when he talked about terrorism, was recently cited in the newspapers this way: There was one protestor in the second row of the audience who stood up and railed against the President, saying: You're the terrorist! This war is a war of terrorism! Joe called me right after that happened and said, Hey, Ann, I heard what you did in the Senate and I thought, I'm going to go do the same thing to the President.
I mean, we're going to dog these guys all over the country. Our Secretary of State, our Secretary of Defense, our Vice President, our President, our National Security Adviser, the head of the CIA, any of these people who are the warmongers, who are the murderers in the name of our country, wherever they go, the people of America need to stand up to them to say, No! Stop! Stop this war. Stop this killing. Get us out of this mess. Because that's the only time they hear it, when we stand up in these venues. They don't come out to the street in front of the White House to see the hundreds of thousands of people who are protesting. They ignore that. But for those fifteen seconds, if you can stand up so that everybody in that audience sees that there's one person, or maybe even two or three... Who knows?
-------
Obama and Reverend Wright.
You know what really amazes me is that some news anchormen on MS NBC seem to defend Jeremy Wright's statements. They say that the older generation is sometimes politically incorrect and have relatives in their own families (white people), who have made really awful statements and racist remarks. One I believe was Keith Oberman (sp?) on MS NBC who claimed that his grandfather did not like a black baseball player (Willie Mayes I think) just because of his color. He seemed to justify Wright's racist type sermons. I really don't understand this kind of logic, but that is what they are saying on MS NBC. Even Matthews who really surprised me seemed to make light of Wright's sermon. Are we to just make light of this and say, well they are from the older generation and they don't know any better. I think not!!!!! This to me is very alarming to justify these racist remarks. What if a White Supremacist went on air and said the same thing about their race -- I seriously doubt that anyone would say, "Well, that is OK they they didn't mean it"
Am I way off base in my thinking or does anyone out there agree with me? I am just shocked by some people's opinions and ideas.
Suzanne
Rev. Wright has been Obama's friend!
and close, like an "uncle" as state by Obama. They had been friends and Obama stated he looked to Rev. Wright as his spiritual advisor. I don't remember if those were the EXACT words, but pretty darn close. How could he have remained so close to him for many years and not know all the racist and hateful feelings Rev. Wright had toward America? How could you look to someone like that as your spiritual advisor..... and how could you NOT know that your advisor was basically racist and a divisive character, not a uniter, which makes me wonder how Obama really feels too. If you are going to look to someone for guidance, admire them, wouldn't you tend to AGREE with their vision of things?!
The only "hatred" was coming from Rev. Wright,
nm
No, he was not her pastor at the time like wright...
was obama's for 20 years. Witches, racists...who's on first?
Personally, I never said that, but Wright, Rezko,
nm
Like Ayers and Wright and ACORN?
xx
Then we agree that Obama and Rev Wright are
@
I never heard Rev. Wright say those things (nm)
x
You mean like listening to Rev Wright for 20 years...
and never hearing the sermons. hmmm
You mean like listening to Rev Wright for 20 years...
hmmm
Been reviewing Rev. Wright's sermons?
xx
I'm sure Wright has been preaching similar sentiments
for the 20 years Obama has belonged to the church, implying IMO he agrees.
The political image/persona he's tried to build for himself (all politicians do it) has just been shot full of holes.
Knowing Wright's rhetoric why does he stay a member to this day??
If you've listened and watched the full sermon it is very disturbing, and I don't see any "cherry picking" in the media I so love to hate. That remark on Obama's part could be taken as his defending the diatribe.
I hope this bombshell doesn't go away - people need to know where Obama is really coming from.
britney spears rev wright william
ayers. Rinse and repeat. britney spears rev wright william ayers. Rinse and repeat.
Yeah, Rev Wright does not matter, Rezko does not
nm
The copout was saying because no one responded to your post about Wright...
that there must be nothing to it. THAT is a copout. I didn't say anything about any of the other stuff you posted here. As to being tortured for 7 years, electing to stay when you could have been released and not have to endure years more...simply because you felt other men deserved to be released before you? That is the strength of character and devotion to country the Presidency has not seen in YEARS and is SORELY needed. I would have thought YOU would have appreciated that.
What about judgement? Wright, Rezko, Ayers,
nm
Why do Wright, Rezko, Khalidi, Odinga, etc. not
nm
No you don't understand...O said he did not hear Wright say those things...
yet he went to his church for 20 years...hmmm
Bill Ayers was just a guy in the neighborhood.
Whatever.
Yep, sitting in Rev Wright's church sure proved that
@@
Post if you find the entire Wright sermon1
That was a very interesting article. I've read a number of articles on Huffington Post - I think tends towards liberal but - to me - seems like fair and informative info!
If anyone comes across a transcript of Pastor Wright's entire sermon, I would definitely be interested in reading it and seeing all the Sound Bites in context! Please post if you do. As we know from our work, context means everything.
Obama, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Rev. Wright
Here is where the racial tension at the heart of Mr. Obama's campaign flared into view. He either shared these beliefs or, lacking good judgment, decided it politically expedient for an ambitious young black politician trying to prove his solidarity with all things black, to be associated with these rants. His judgment and leadership on the critical issue of race is in question.
While speaking to black people, King never condescended to offer Rev. Wright-style diatribes or conspiracy theories. He did not paint black people as victims. To the contrary, he spoke about black people as American patriots who believed in the democratic ideals of the country, in nonviolence and the Judeo-Christian ethic, even as they overcame slavery, discrimination and disadvantage. King challenged white America to do the same, to live up to their ideals and create racial unity. He challenged white Christians, asking them how they could treat their fellow black Christians as anything but brothers in Christ.
When King spoke about the racist past, he gloried in black people beating the odds to win equal rights by arming "ourselves with dignity and self-respect." He expressed regret that some black leaders reveled in grievance, malice and self-indulgent anger in place of a focus on strong families, education and love of God. Even in the days before Congress passed civil rights laws, King spoke to black Americans about the pride that comes from "assuming primary responsibility" for achieving "first class citizenship."
Last March in Selma, Ala., Mr. Obama appeared on the verge of breaking away from the merchants of black grievance and victimization. At a commemoration of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights, he spoke in a King-like voice. He focused on traditions of black sacrifice, idealism and the need for taking personal responsibility for building strong black families and communities. He said black people should never "deny that its gotten better," even as the movement goes on to improve schools and provide good health care for all Americans. He then challenged black America, by saying that "government alone can't solve all those problems . . . it is not enough just to ask what the government can do for us -- it's important for us to ask what we can do for ourselves."
Mr. Obama added that better education for black students begins with black parents visiting their children's teachers, as well as turning off the television so children can focus on homework. He expressed alarm over the lack of appreciation for education in the black community: "I don't know who taught them that reading and writing and conjugating your verbs were something white. We've got to get over that mentality." King, he added later, believed that black America has to first "transform ourselves in order to transform the world."
But as his campaign made headway with black voters, Mr. Obama no longer spoke about the responsibility and the power of black America to appeal to the conscience and highest ideals of the nation. He no longer asks black people to let go of the grievance culture to Transcend racial arguments and transform the world.
He has stopped all mention of government's inability to create strong black families, while the black community accepts a 70% out-of-wedlock birth rate. Half of black and Hispanic children drop out of high school, but he no longer touches on the need for parents to convey a love of learning to their children. There is no mention in his speeches of the history of expensive but ineffective government programs that encourage dependency. He fails to point out the failures of too many poverty programs, given the 25% poverty rate in black America.
And he chooses not to confront the poisonous "thug life" culture in rap music that glorifies drug use and crime.
Instead the senator, in a full political pander, is busy excusing Rev. Wright's racial attacks as the right of the Rev.-Wright generation of black Americans to define the nation's future by their past. He stretches compassion to the breaking point by equating his white grandmother's private concerns about black men on the street with Rev. Wright's public stirring of racial division.
And he wasted time in his Philadelphia speech on race by saying he can't "disown" Rev. Wright any more than he could "disown the black community." No one has asked him to disown Rev. Wright. Only in a later appearance on "The View" television show did he say that he would have left the church if Rev. Wright had not retired and not acknowledged his offensive language.
As the nation tries to recall the meaning of Martin Luther King today, Mr. Obama's campaign has become a mirror reflecting where we are on race 40 years after the assassination. Mr. Obama's success has moved forward the story of American race relations; King would have been thrilled with his political triumphs.
But when Barack Obama, arguably the best of this generation of black or white leaders, finds it easy to sit in Rev. Wright's pews and nod along with wacky and bitterly divisive racial rhetoric, it does call his judgment into question. And it reveals a continuing crisis in racial leadership.
What would Jesus do? There is no question he would have left that church.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120726732176388295.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
Who Obama listens to.........Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers,
Bernadine Dohrn publicly approved of the Charles Manson murders. And she thought it was great!
These are the people who helped him start his career, such as it is. Now in 2007, not when Obama was 8 years old, but 2007, Ayers hosted Obama's first fundraiser and his good 'ole pal Bernadine Dohrn was sitting there with him. Now, those are the kind of people who he LOVES to spend time with.
You gotta do better than that. You really just do not want to know the truth.
I agree that Wright's racist rants were ugly. nm
x
Worse is that you ignore Ayers, Wright, Rezko
nm
Respectable? Like his friends Wright, Rezko, Ayres
nm
Go ahead. Let's bring Reverend Wright back into the conversation...
and Jesse Jacksin (hymietown) and Louis Farrakhan...yeah, let's bring that back into the conversation. If Barack can claim he went to that church for 20 years but doesn't share the theology...so can she, right?
If you are going to fry her now, let's go back to Reverend Wright. You betcha!!
Sean Penn...Jeremiah Wright...James Carville...to name
X
I was never on SP's side.... s/m
but I think that it was extremely tasteless of this Canadian comedian to post as
French President Sarkozy and interview her for 5 minutes and making fun of her.
Extremely tasteless.
After all she was the running mate of McCain.
I am a democrat.
I don't think that either side... sm
has much room to talk.
I have seen articles, opinions and links posted, apparently by Republicans, about the issues facing Obama, and the first replies are the childish Dems who come on and say "well, it's Bush's fault that he has this or that to deal with" or some other childish remark.
By the same token, I have seen what I believe to be Democrats posting nasty articles and opinions about Sarah Palin and how she is giving interviews, how she obviously doesn't have the sense to be a major political player or whether she gave the clothes back to the party before going back to Alaska.
I'm with BWT. I think the childishness and catiness that I have seen on this board for the last week or so need to end and let's get to discussing the issues at hand. We won't be able to solve a danged one of them, but we can have a civilized adult discussion and we might even learn a thing or two from each other.
Reach across the aisle, folks. 
We are on the same side
I wanted to post and did not want to respond to an Ann fan, so I posted under your reasonable statement.
no just one side
This problem is not just a dem/repub problem. It is a greedy CEO/Wallstreet problem as well. It is a mass amounts of people went out and bought things they couldnt afford and houses they didnt need and couldnt afford problem. Did the gov make them go out and do that? Who made all these people sign their names on these subprime short arm loans that collapsed? It is their fault too. It is also a welfare problem. You know, those people who would rather pop out kids for a job than work for real.
...and just you on the other side.
...but not LAST night.
Get a job.
No one took Eric's side. sm
 But then, you know that. The rest I won't argue with you about. If you use science against God's Word, what more can I say.
The Other Side of Mel Gibson...sm
Disney Cancels Mel Gibson Holocaust Series
The ABC television network has pulled a miniseries about the Holocaust it was developing with Mel Gibson 's production company, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, quoting an unidentified representative for the network.
Gibson was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving early on Friday and was reported to have launched into a tirade against Jews, asking the arresting officer if he was a Jew and blaming the Jews for starting all wars.
The actor, who holds strong conservative Catholic religious and political views and whose father is a Holocaust denier, apologized on Saturday.
The incident has raised questions about the future of projects Gibson and his Icon Productions company are working on, like the ABC television miniseries based on a memoir about a Dutch Jew during World War II, the newspaper said An ABC representative told the paper, without elaborating, it has been two years and the network still has not seen a script, so the project is being pulled.
A spokesperson for ABC, which is owned by Walt Disney Co. , could not be reached for comment.
Disney's movie studio arm still plans to release Gibson 's self-financed Mayan-language movie Apocalypto on Dec. 8, Hollywood's trade papers reported. The Web site Slate.com quoted Walt Disney Studios president Oren Aviv as saying he accepted Gibson 's apology.
Copyright Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
We're on the same side
I am trying to understand where all this animosity is coming from. Why does it bother you so much that the last democratic president and former first lady/candidate/senator are going to be at the convention? How would it look if they weren’t there? Hillary and Obama are basically on the same page when it comes to policy, so I am guessing this is a personality issue for you? During the primaries, her tactics and strategies left a lot to be desired, to be sure, which may have been a mitigating factor as to why Obama was ultimately able to come out on top but, let’s face it, not by much. It will be extremely important that the party get past its in-fighting and focus on the task at hand of winning the election in November.
Bill and Hillary Clinton are and will remain influential party leaders for a some time to come. It appears that it is her die-hard base supporters that are acting like children. They are the ones who prolonging the division and ill-will which you are expressing here. Both the Clintons have been selected by the Democratic National Convention Committee to speak in Denver for good reason. The DNC recognizes just how pivotal their roles will be in bringing the party back together. This group of HRC’s supporters who are planning to disrupt the convention and demand a roll-call are not very likely to succeed in this effort. This serves no useful purpose whatsoever and is in nobody’s best interests.
Hillary will eventually “crawl back into her hole,” as you so eloquently put it, and return to her position as a junior senator, but not until she has done her job of trying to encourage party unity. I suspect that she still has much to contribute in that capacity and in roles yet undefined in terms of advancing party policies. Try not to take what the newscasters say as gospel. They relish in scandal and controversy. Do not give them the satisfaction. It should come as no surprise that the Clintons are disappointed in the primary results, but that does not mean that they are supposed to fade on off into the sunset. It is not their time to pass...not just yet.
Bill Clinton, a racist? Where is this coming from? Fox News? He does not hide behind mansion walls in the ghetto. His foundation continues to advance the cause of civil and human rights, both here and abroad. It is unfair to write HRC off as a disgrace to women who needs to “just go away,” based on this one less than stellar chapter in her political career. She is much more than that, just as Bill Clinton is much than the "impeached president" you so casually dismiss. I am wondering if you hated him this much while he was in office, or did this arise out of the recent primary process?
In any case, if Obama is defeated, HRC will not be responsible. It will be this divisive in-fighting within the party members that will be the reason. We are between the primaries and the convention. The entire campaign still lies ahead of us. Just give it a little more time. You will see Hillary and Bill come around as party loyalists who will play perhaps the most key roles of all in party unification. This is not just their job. It is up to all democrats to come together this fall and keep their eyes on the prize. Perpetuating this kind of division does nothing to advance that cause. Is this hatred really worth harboring to the extent that, in the end, we will be facing 4 or 8 more years of a republican regime? Try to keep that in mind the next time you find yourself this riled up, and ask yourself what I ask you now….where is this really coming from? I think I know the answer, but I am more interested in hearing yours at the moment.
Disrespect is nothing new on your side...
and it is not just directed at me, and to suggest so is being dishonest at best. You tolerate no opinion other than your own, want to discuss only issues that you are pro and do not tolerate discussion of any other viewpoint, and for people who call themselves Democrats that is a very undemocratic attitude. You hate an entire group of people (all Republicans...well I should say anyone who is not Democrat) for no reason other than that. Two sides? That's rich! There have never been 2 sides.
As to domination of the board....there are about 6 or 8 of you guys to 1 of mine. lol. Talk about blinders.
All voters should consider this regardless of which side
It should be very troubling that the mainstream media has been in the tank for Obama since day one. Ask Hillary Clinton or anyone else who ran (again, R, D, or I).
With that in mind, who gave them the right to choose our next President?
Incidentally, the media (left-wing, of course) actually selected McCain, too. They were absolutely certain that he would be the weakest candidate. Mitt scared the holy hanna out of them. I personally hoped for a Rudy-Fred ticket, in no particular order.
It should be interesting as to how many honest people there are reading this stuff to see how they'll react. Based on what I've read since Palin's speech, she's certainly changed quite a few minds.
The thing that surprises me the most is that the bulk of people on this board is women, yet so many of them put party above the person. I personally don't vote by genitalia. I think it's foolish.
"Woe to the other side who does not
recognize it." What I saw was very scary, an individual who has not clue one about what is going on in this country or out of it. Very scared, indeed. Woe, indeed. You make this election sound like a football game. This is our country, our children's future that is at stake. And no, I didn't find her very knowledgeable in the least, just mouthing words and throwing something someone told her to say. We will see, but I pray to God these two do not get elected.
The other side of the story....
http://www.newsmax.com/smith/barack_obama_tony_rezko/2008/09/02/126890.html
Another side of the coin.....
I respect your beliefs and am very happy you found your niche in life and saved your marriage. Kudos to you! I myself do not question Obama's morals - and I can't say that I question McCain's either. But, Bush got into the white house based on deceptive strategies aimed at leading the populace to believe he was on the moral high ground. (I see the same strategy being used in McCain's campaign). In view of what has transpired over the last 8 years, my faith in the pubs moral high ground has been trampled beyond repair. I believe torture of other human beings to be reprehensible and not advocated by any religion, but it continues and McCain supported it - even though he himself was tortured as a POW. The sex scandals - Larry Craig (airport bathrooms - it was illegal - otherwise, I don't care who he has sex with), Mark Foley (Repub House Representative - Once known as a crusader against child abuse and exploitation, Foley resigned from Congress on September 29, 2006 after allegations surfaced that he had sent suggestive emails and sexually explicit instant messages to teenaged males who had formerly served and were at that time serving as Congressional pages) and now the scandal surrounding the Department of the Interior on charges of getting into bed with big oil (literally and figuratively) drug abuse, etc. I find the whole thing ridiculous to base your campaign on "personality" and moral high ground. I am not saying that Dems did not have their issues with sex scandals - as we all know.
I believe Jesus Christ was once a very highly evolved human being and no longer has to incarnate as a human as he has reached perfection. I believe Buddha was a very highly evolved human being who no longer has to incarnate for the same reason. I believe that Ghandi and Mother Theresa were highly evolved. I believe that energy never disappears, it only changes form. I believe in life after death. I believe that love is the most important thing in life. Humans are not perfect. I do not believe that sex is sin. Dolphins have sex for pleasure and I am not equating humans to aquatic life - but Dolphins are highly intelligent. Do you think God judges them for indulging in pleasure? I believe that exploiting the vulnerable for sex is morally wrong (children, women....that's as far as I'll go on that). Sex between 2 consenting adults is not wrong.
I believe that every religion has it's place on earth and I am in no way authorized or vetted to judge which one is right and which one is wrong. They are all right. Paganism, Wiccan, the Jewish faith, Catholic, Muslim, etc., etc. We, as humans, have the right to decide what is right for us in that regard.
I think all religions know the difference between right and wrong and stealing from others, torturing others, even JUDGING others is morally wrong. You can boil it down to not having ANYTHING to do with religion.
And to believe that whoever is in the white house holds your moral values as a primary reason for decisions that are made is naive. I think the last 8 years proves that and for that reason, I fear more of the same. I am willing to cross party lines just to see if this disaster of a country can be repaired.
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