The brown shirts are coming

(05-29) 17:10 PDT SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --

After displaying a painting of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners, a

San Francisco gallery owner bears a painful reminder of the nation's

unresolved anguish over the incidents at Abu Ghraib -- a black eye and

bloodied brow delivered by an unknown assailant who apparently objected to

the art work.

The assault outside the Capobianco gallery in the city's North Beach

district Thursday night was the worst, but only the latest in a string of

verbal and physical attacks that have been directed at owner Lori Haigh

since the painting, titled "Abuse," was installed there on May 16.

Last Wednesday, concerned for the safety of her two children, ages 14 and

4, who often accompanied her to work, Haigh decided to close the gallery

indefinitely.

Painted by Berkeley artist Guy Colwell, "Abuse," the painting at the

center of the controversy, depicts three U.S. soldiers leering at a group

of naked men in hoods with wires connected to their bodies. The one in the

foreground has a blood-spattered American flag patch on his uniform. In

the background, a soldier in sunglasses guards a blindfolded woman.

The painting was part of a larger show of Colwell's work that mostly

featured pastel-colored abstracts.

Two days after the painting went up in a front window, someone threw eggs

and dumped trash on the doorstep. Haigh said she didn't think to connect

it to the black-and-white interpretation of the events at Baghdad's

notorious prison until people started leaving nasty messages and threats

on her business answering machine.

"I think you need to get your gallery out of this neighborhood before you

get hurt," one caller said.

Even after she removed the painting from the window, the criticism

continued thanks to news coverage about the gallery's troubles. The

answering machine recorded new calls from people accusing her of being a

coward for taking the picture down. Last weekend, a man walked into the

gallery, pretended to scrutinize the art work for a moment, then marched

up to Haigh's desk and spat directly in her face.

On Thursday, someone knocked on the door of the gallery, then punched

Haigh in the face when she stepped outside.

"This isn't art-politics central here at all," Haigh said. "I'm not here

to make a stand. I never set out to be a crusader or a political

activist."

In closing the gallery, Haigh was forced to cancel an upcoming show

featuring counterculture artist Winston Smith. She covered the windows of

the gallery with old newspapers from Sept. 11, 2003 that included stories

about the war, a statement she insists was coincidental.

For Haigh, who opened Capobianco a year-and-a-half ago, having the chance

to work with prominent artists fulfilled a lifelong dream.

"I kept thinking someday I'll have enough of a reputation where I could

bring in my heroes of the art world, people like Guy Colwell especially,"

she said.

The irony of the attacks hasn't been lost on Haigh. Among the expressions

of support she's received since shuttering the gallery, her favorite is an

e-mail whose writer said, "I'm sure that a few and dangerous minds don't

understand that they have only mimicked the same perversity this painting

had expressed."

The abuse also has soured her on North Beach, the Italian-American

neighborhood that spawned the Beat Generation. Long considered a bastion

of free speech, it is also home to many old-time San Franciscans. Haigh

believes "it is the locals" who first took aim at her gallery since it's

on a mostly residential street and she hadn't advertised Cowell's show

when the threats started.

But others in the neighborhood have gone out of their way to offer

encouragement and sympathy, among them poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner

of the famed City Lights bookstore. Outside the gallery on Friday, someone

had left a bouquet of flowers along with a note reading, "The woman who

ran this gallery is a brave and honorable woman. ... She is a true

American and a real patriot."

San Francisco police are investigating the incidents and have stepped up

patrols around the gallery while Haigh finishes closing up shop.

Colwell stopped by on Friday and refused to discuss his work or the

reaction to it, saying only, "I'm sorry if this is putting pressure on

Lori."

It was Huey Long who said,

"When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the American flag"

I really can't believe this happened here, in San Francisco!

>It was Huey Long who said,

> "When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped

>in the American flag"

Glutes, I really think it's time that you just face the inevitable - the United States is now Nazi Germany; George Bush is Adolph Hitler; and your permanent incarceration and murder in a concentration camp is around the corner.

All of your most extreme fantasie - - - uh, I mean fears -- are about to come true!

The fact that some guy beat up a gallery owner proves this.

>I really can't believe this happened here, in San Francisco!

Of course that's where it's going to happen. This is all about you. They are after you. They hate you because you're gay and liberal and they will kill you. They are Nazis. They're in San Fransisco because they're looking for you. They will find you. The Nazis are coming, Glutes.

LOL I originally thought this post was about that chain email, I received a little while back, about UPS delivery guys being Al Quaida (Or however you spell it) terrorists. :+

Yes Dougie, they are after 'us', if we should consider you one of us.

Concentrate Campaign On Gay Marriage Amendment Bush Advised

by Paul Johnson, 365Gay.com Newscenter, Washington Bureau Chief

Washington - The conservative base of the Republican Party is

urging

President Bush to stop campaigning on Iraq and concentrate on stopping gay

marriage if he wants to win in November.

Bush met today with James Dobson, head of the conservative

Christian

group Focus on the Family in Colorado. Dobson is a leading supporter of

the

a proposed constitutional amendment to bar legal recognition of same-sex

marriages.

Dobson reportedly told Bush that conservatives are divided about

the

US role in Iraq, but united in fighting same-sex marriage.

His position echoes that of another leading conservative, Paul M.

Weyrich.

Weyrich is the head of the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative

think tank, and the national chairman of an umbrella group of conservative

organizations known as the Coalition for America.

"There is a great disconnect" between Washington and the rest of

the

country on the gay marriage issue and Bush should not be deterred by

advisers who think a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is

unwinnable," Weyrich said.

"If he wishes to be re-elected, then he better be upfront on this

issue, because if the election is solely on Iraq, we'll be talking about

President Kerry," Weyrich told a Capitol Hill news conference.

As his side were Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research

Council, and Gary Bauer, head of the organization American Values. The

press briefing was called to announce the Coalition of African American

Pastors had joined their national alliance against same-sex marriage.

"If he wants to change the subject (from Iraq) - which if I were

president I would certainly want to do - then I think he would be

well-advised, in fact, to take the leadership on this particular point,"

said Weyrich.

The opinions of Weyrich and Dobson represent a sizable force within

the Republican Party.

The pressure from the far right of the GOP Wednesday prompted the

Human Rights Campaign to release a letter to Ken Mehlman, Campaign Manager

of the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign.

The letter, signed by HRC President Cheryl Jacques, calls on the

President to reject the advice from Dobson and Weyrich.

"This kind of cynical advice betrays the American people's desire

for a campaign that brings people together and encourages a debate about

the

domestic and foreign policy challenges facing our nation. Even worse, it

further illustrates that the movement behind the FMA is not about

"protecting marriage" but about partisan electoral politics."

The most recent poll on same-sex marriage shows that while the

public remains divided on the issue, there was an overwhelming belief it

should not be part of the election campaign.

Meanwhile, in a letter sent to members of Congress today, more than

two dozen denominations and other religious groups called for the defeat of

the proposed amendment.

"It is not the task of our government and elected representatives

to

enshrine in our laws the religious point of view of any one faith," the

letter reads. "Rather, our government should dedicate itself to protecting

the rights of all citizens and all faiths."

The letter concludes, "We strongly believe that Congress must

continue to protect the nation's fundamental religious freedoms and

continue

to protect our nation's bedrock principle of respecting religious

pluralism.

Congress should soundly reject any attempt to enshrine into the

Constitution

a particular religious viewpoint on a matter of such fundamental religious

importance."

>Yes Dougie, they are after 'us', . . .

Yes, opposition to gay marriage is definitely the same as building concentration camps and gassing people to death. Anyone who opposes gay marriage is, by definition, a "Nazi." I pretty much assume - like you do - that anyone who says they're opposed to gay marriage (the vast majority of the population) secretely spends their evenings building shrines to Hitler and tattooing swastikas onto the limbs of their children.

>. . . if we should consider you

>one of us.

Definitely not - only people who embrace liberal political views are gay. It's a requirement for group membership. If you are a male and are sexually attracted to other men, rather than to women, it means that you must believe in liberal political views on economics, foreign policy, tax policy, gun control, the death penalty, and a whole slew of other issues having nothing to do with sexual orientation. I mean, that's just logical.

THE NAZIS ARE COMING!!!!!!!!!!!!

>

>>. . . if we should consider you

>>one of us.

Dougie, I don't even think the Log Cabiners would have you!

>

>THE NAZIS ARE COMING!!!!!!!!!!!!

We may see the pink triangles yet agian I'm afraid. And not as cute bumper stickers.

RE: The brown shirts are here!

RECRUITMENT-OFFICE PROTEST

If only he’d put women’s underwear on his head instead ...

BY CAMILLE DODERO

It was a skinny pair of stereo wires that got 21-year-old Joe Previtera

charged with two felonies. A week ago on Wednesday, the Boston College

student poked his head through a gauzy shawl, donned a black pointy hood,

and ascended a milk crate positioned to the right of the Armed Forces

Recruitment Center’s Tremont Street entrance. He extended his arms like a

tired scarecrow; stereo wires dangled from his fingers onto the ground

below. Without those wires, the Westwood native could have been mistaken

for an eyeless Klansman dipped in black, or maybe even the Wicked Witch of

the West swallowed by her hat shorn of its brim. But those snaky cords

made the costume’s import clear: Previtera was a dead ringer for one of

Abu Ghraib’s Iraqi prisoners — specifically, the faceless man who’d

allegedly been forced to balance on a cardboard box lest he be

electrocuted.

"We found that street theater can be more effective in conveying a message

than a flier," Previtera says nearly a week later, explaining why he’d

dressed up like the Abu Ghraib prisoner. "We picked the location because

we wanted to make people think about what they might be called or forced

to do if they enlist in the military."

But the demonstration didn’t go as planned. Previtera — along with four

friends who’d come out to shoot photos and protect the blinded activist in

case, as fellow BC student Nick Fuller-Googins put it, "some

hyper-nationalist character came up and punched him in the stomach" —

figured the cops would warn him before they tossed him in the clink. But

they didn’t. First, Previtera’s friends say, someone came out of the

recruitment office and told him to get down; when Previtera didn’t, the

person went inside. (No one from the Armed Forces Recruitment Center could

be reached for comment.) Soon after, the cops appeared and watched the

spectacle from their cruisers; shortly thereafter, the Boston Police bomb

squad rolled up. Less than 90 minutes after the protest began, the police

began taping off the area around him, and when Previtera stepped down,

they took him into custody for "disturbing the peace." But Previtera had

remained silent the entire time. "I was really trying to play the role as

accurately as possible," he says. "So I was not speaking with anyone, just

trying to stay there as still as possible." Any disturbance came from the

crowd of gawking spectators that, witnesses say, assembled once the

policeman showed.

At the precinct, Previtera discovered that in addition to the initial

misdemeanor, he’d been charged with two felonies: "false report of

location of explosives" and a "hoax device."

"This was supposed to be more symbolic than anything," says Previtera, who

never imagined they’d nab him for a false bomb threat. "I never wanted to

scare anyone into thinking I had a bomb. I just wanted to make people

think about international affairs." He adds, "I never uttered the word

bomb or explosive."

Previtera’s friend Soula was surprised too. But she realizes this kind of

escalated police response has sadly become the norm for activists. "In the

world and time that we are living right now — most people will say the

post-9/11 world — when you go out to some demonstration or in any way

display your dissent for anything related to the government or the status

quo, you’re putting yourself at risk," she says. And the same day of

Previtera’s protest, a report in the Boston Globe warning of possible

terrorist threats read: "Officials were urged to take note of people

dressed in bulky jackets in warm weather ... or trailing electrical wires."

So if Previtera didn’t mention a bomb, what exactly constitutes a bomb

threat? "It can be implied, with fingers and wires — especially in a

heightened state of alert, as we are," says Officer Michael McCarthy,

Boston Police Department spokesman. And McCarthy thinks this is common

knowledge, even if the wires are accessories to a costume. "Mr. Previtera

should know better. He’s a young adult educated at Boston College from a

wealthy suburb. I’m sure he knows wires attached to his fingers, running

to a milk crate, would arouse suspicion outside a military recruiters’

office [when he’s] dressed in prisoner’s garb. If he has any questions as

to why people think he may’ve had a bomb, then he needs to maybe go back

to Boston College to brush up on his public policy. Or at least common

sense, but they can’t really teach that there."

The Money Shot

>Less than 90 minutes after the protest began,

>the police

>began taping off the area around him, and when Previtera

>stepped down,

>they took him into custody for "disturbing the peace." But

>Previtera had

>remained silent the entire time. . . .

>Any disturbance

>came from the

>crowd of gawking spectators that, witnesses say, assembled

>once the

>policeman showed.

Disturbing the peace, just to clarify, does not require noise. It can include incitement, silent or otherwise, which publically affects others.

>At the precinct, Previtera discovered that in addition to the

>initial

>misdemeanor, he’d been charged with two felonies: "false

>report of

>location of explosives" and a "hoax device."

In San Francisco, during the first Iraq war, I and several hundred thousand other individuals protested, frequently in Civic Center. Smaller numbers would march through the financial district and other protest also took places in the days and weeks leading up to Desert Storm. The police arrested a number of individuals I knew personally and many others I did not and cited them for a number of reasons. Many, although not all, of the charges were eventually dismissed. In certain instances, such as when the police in New York arrested the ACT UP protestors involved in any number of actions, police departments have faced civil and other disciplinary action for actions taken against protestors. This included strip search of females and males (something which happened in 2002), keeping medication away from the protestors (something which frequently happened in AIDS related protests), excessive use of force and other acts by the police which not only violated written guidelines of the police department but also violated either federal, state or local laws.

This is not to say that, at times, a small number of protestors have been either violent or uncooperative. However, even the Supreme Court and many Republican appointed federal judges have said that, at many frequent times, the right of assembly, free speech and so forth, far outweigh some of the alleged harm used to stop, prevent, or otherwise interfere with lawful protest.

>>It was Huey Long who said,

>> "When fascism comes to the United States it will be

>wrapped

>>in the American flag"

>>>The Nazis are coming, Glutes.

Maybe they are already here Dougie:

washingtonpost.com

Frederick Company Fires Employee Who Taunted Bush

By Jessica Valdez

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page C06

Glenn Hiller wasn't surprised by the scattered screams and cuss words he

heard after he heckled President Bush at a rally in West Virginia on

Tuesday.

But the Berkeley Springs, W.Va., resident never expected what happened the

next morning, when he was fired from his $35,000-a-year job as a graphic

designer.

He said his boss at Octavo Designs, a Frederick-based advertising and

design company, told him he had embarrassed and offended a client who

provided tickets to the rally.

"She told me my actions reflected badly on the company," Hiller said. He

said he had worked at Octavo for five months.

Hiller, 35, said he waited for lulls in the president's speech to shout

questions and comments challenging what he called "half-truths" in Bush's

statements. He said he asked Bush about the benefits of outsourcing jobs,

justifications for the war in Iraq and inspectors' inability to find

weapons of mass destruction there. He said that at one point, he shouted,

"Would you sacrifice your daughters to liberate Iraq?"

Hiller said he then was escorted from the event at Hedgesville High School

in Berkeley County, W.Va., and was threatened with arrest by campaign

workers.

Hiller's boss at Octavo, Sue Hough, could not be reached for comment

yesterday.

But Sandy Sponaugle, who gave Hiller the ticket for the restricted event,

said his behavior was out of line and made the crowd uncomfortable.

"All I thought was it's not the time or place to be disrespectful of the

president of the United States," said Sponaugle, whose public relations

company has worked closely with Hiller and Octavo Designs. She said

Hiller's behavior has put her own work in jeopardy.

The morning after the rally, Hiller said, he came to work and "there was

just tension in the air." Hough told him his behavior was "unacceptable"

and asked him to leave, he said.

Hiller said he doesn't regret what he did Tuesday and said he would do it

again.

"I didn't do anything wrong," he said. "I wasn't a mindless heckler."

He said he was motivated by how Bush is "pulverizing" society and making

people believe "that if somebody disagrees with you, they are bad." He

also criticized rallies where tickets are required to attend.

"It's a completely scripted speech in a controlled environment where

nobody but those who support him [is] allowed in," he said.

Hiller has two children, ages 15 months and 3 years, and he said he has

interviews lined up in his search for a new job.

As for Sponaugle, she isn't surprised Octavo fired Hiller.

"In any business, you can't jeopardize client relationships," she said.

"You can't be a small business and have your clients wondering what you're

going to do next."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

RE: The Money Shot

>This is not to say that, at times, a small number of

>protestors have been either violent or uncooperative. However,

>even the Supreme Court and many Republican appointed federal

>judges have said that, at many frequent times, the right of

>assembly, free speech and so forth, far outweigh some of the

>alleged harm used to stop, prevent, or otherwise interfere

>with lawful protest.

Give up YOUR rights for the War in Iraq War on Terror. Vote Bush/Cheney 2004.

The Nazis Fascists are coming.

Brown Shirts here.

Amsterdam home of Ken Bigley's brother raided

By Colin Brown and Cahal Milmo

02 October 2004

Armed intelligence officers yesterday raided the Amsterdam home of Paul Bigley, the brother of British hostage Ken Bigley, in the hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the Arab terrorist group which is believed to be holding him.

An intelligence officer from the Foreign Office is alleged to have accompanied the Dutch intelligence officers during the raid. They seized Mr Bigley's computer and interrogated him about his alleged contacts with the Tawhid and Jihad group, which yesterday claimed responsibility for the Baghdad car bombings that claimed the lives of at least 35 children.

Material from Mr Bigley's computer hard-disk was downloaded and sent back for analysis in Britain and he was also forced to make a five-page statement.

Mr Bigley angrily denied he had any direct contacts with the terrorist group, headed by the Jordanian, who is believed to have personally carried out the beheadings of Kenneth Bigley's two American fellow captives.

He told friends that he was frightened by the raid. "He felt intimidated by their behaviour which was aggressive. He feels as though he is being treated like a criminal," said one ally of the family.

"He has no problem with them taking copies of all his e-mails. He is just angry that they have disrupted his campaign to get his brother freed."

Labour MPs were furious. Alan Simpson, the Labour MP leading the Labour against the War group, said: "It is bizarre that the British and Dutch authorities are treating members of the Bigley family like the enemy instead of al-Zarqawi or al-Qa'ida."

Mr Bigley insisted his only contacts with the captors were through al-Jazeera, the Arab television station, who were passing on his messages to al-Zarqawi's group. He denied having any direct contact with the group.

Paul Bigley last week warned Labour supporters at a fringe meeting at Labour's party conference in Brighton that Mr Blair was risking signing his brother's "death warrant" by not intervening personally with the captors.

There were fears among Labour MPs last night that the raid on Mr Bigley was intended to shut him up.

Having seen the two Americans butchered, the family rejected Foreign Office advice to keep a low profile to allow patient diplomacy to yield results. Instead, Paul Bigley and other members of the Bigley family have mobilised public opinion worldwide, including winning the support of Yasser Arafat.

The campaign has angered Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi prime minister, who protested at the media playing into the hands of the terrorists by giving prominence to photographs of Kenneth Bigley chained in a cage. Tony Blair and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, also have been disconcerted by the family's claims that they have done too little and that Kenneth Bigley's blood will be on their hands, if he is executed.

Yesterday, thousands of leaflets carrying a plea from senior British Muslims to the kidnappers holding Mr Bigley that their actions are incompatible with the Islamic faith, were distributed in Baghdad.

2 October 2004 10:32

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D69,

Glad to see you still respond. Pointless really. But ya know, why do you think they're called lemmings. Gotta go. Das Fuhrer ruft mich an.

Spater.

Brownshirting of America

James Bovard, the great libertarian champion of our freedom and civil liberties, recently shared with readers his mail from Bush supporters. For starters, here are some of the salutations: "communist bastard," "a**hole," "a piece of trash, scum of the earth." It goes downhill from there.

Bush's supporters demand lockstep consensus that Bush is right. They regard truthful reports that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was not involved in the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. – truths now firmly established by the Bush administration's own reports – as treasonous America-bashing.

Bovard is interpreted as throwing cold water on the feel-good, macho, Muslim butt-kicking that Bush's invasion of Iraq has come to symbolize for his supporters. "People like you and Michael Moore," one irate reader wrote, "is [sic] what brings down our country."

I have received similar responses from conservatives, as, no doubt, have a number of other writers who object to a domestic police state at war with the world.

In language reeking with hatred, the Heritage Foundation's TownHall.com readers impolitely informed me that opposing the invasion of Iraq is identical to opposing America, that Bush is the greatest American leader in history and everyone who disagrees with him should be shot before they cause America to lose another war. TownHall's readers were sufficiently frightening to convince the Heritage Foundation to stop posting my columns.

Bush's conservative supporters want no debate. They want no facts, no analysis. They want to denounce and demonize the enemies that the Hannitys, Limbaughs, and Savages of talk radio assure them are everywhere at work destroying their great and noble country.

I remember when conservatives favored restraint in foreign policy and wished to limit government power in order to protect civil liberties. Today's young conservatives are Jacobins determined to use government power to impose their will at home and abroad.

Where did such "conservatives" come from?

Claes Ryn in his important book, America the Virtuous, explains the intellectual evolution of the neoconservatives who lead the Bush administration. For all their defects, however, neocons are thoughtful compared to the world of talk radio, whose inhabitants are trained to shout down everyone else. Whence came the brownshirt movement that slavishly adheres to the neocons' agenda?

Three recent books address this question. Thomas Frank, in What's the Matter With Kansas?, locates the movement in legitimate conservative resentments of people who feel that family, religious, and patriotic values are given short shrift by elitist liberals.

These resentments festered and multiplied as offshore production, jobs outsourcing, and immigration took a toll on careers and the American dream.

An audience was waiting for right-wing talk radio, which found its stride during the Clinton years. Clinton's evasions made it easy to fall in with show hosts, who spun conspiracies and fabricated a false consciousness for listeners who became increasingly angry.

Show hosts, who advertise themselves as truth-tellers in a no-spin zone, quickly figured out that success depends upon constantly confronting listeners with bogeymen to be exposed and denounced: war protesters and America-bashers, the French, marrying homosexuals, the liberal media, turncoats, Democrats, and the ACLU.

Talk radio's "news stories" do not need to be true. Their importance lies in inflaming resentments and confirming that America's implacable enemies are working resolutely to destroy us.

David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine lacks the insights of Thomas Frank's book, but it provides a gossipy history of the right-wing takeover of the U.S. media. Brock is unfair to some people, myself included, and mischaracterizes as right wing some media personalities who are under right-wing attack.

Brock is as blindly committed to his causes as the right-wing zealots he exposes are to theirs. Unlike Frank, he cannot acknowledge that the right wing has legitimate issues.

Nevertheless, Brock makes a credible case that today's conservatives are driven by ideology, not by fact. He argues that their stock in trade is denunciation, not debate. Conservatives don't assess opponents' arguments, they demonize opponents. Truth and falsity are out of the picture; the criteria are: who's good, who's evil, who's patriotic, who's unpatriotic.

These are the traits of brownshirts. Brownshirts know they are right. They know their opponents are wrong and regard them as enemies who must be silenced if not exterminated.

Some of Brock's quotes from prominent conservative commentators will curl your toes. His description of the right wing's destruction of an independent media and the "Fairness Doctrine" explain why a recent CNN/Gallup poll found that 42% of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. and 32% believe that Saddam Hussein personally planned the attack.

A country in which 42% of the population is totally misinformed is not a country where democracy is safe.

Today there is no one to correct a lie once it is told. The media, thanks to Republicans, has been concentrated in few hands, and they are not the hands of newsmen. Corporate values rule. If lies sell, sell them. If listeners, viewers, and readers want confirmation of their resentments and beliefs, give it to them. Objectivity turns listeners off and is a money loser.

In his book, Cruel and Unusual, Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies at New York University, explains how right-wing influence has moved the media away from reporting news to designing our consciousness. "The Age of Information," Miller writes, "has turned out to be an Age of Ignorance."

Miller makes a strong case. His description of how CNN and Fox News destroyed the credibility of Scott Ritter, the leading expert on Iraq's weapons, reveals a media completely given over to propaganda. Ritter stood in the way of the neocons' invasion of Iraq.

CNN's Miles O'Brien, Eason Jordan, Catherine Callaway, Paula Zahn, Kyra Phillips, Arthel Neville, and Fox News' David Asman and John Gibson portrayed Ritter as a disloyal American, a Ba'athist stooge on the take from Saddam Hussein, and compared him to Jane Fonda in North Vietnam.

With this, the right-wing talk radio crazies were off and running. Anyone with the slightest bit of real information about the state of weapons development in Iraq was dismissed as a foreign agent who should be shot for treason.

By substituting fiction for reality, the U.S. media took the country to war. The CNN and Fox News "journalists" are as responsible for America's ill-fated invasion of Iraq as Cheney and Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle.

With a sizable percentage of the U.S. population now addicted to daily confirmations of their resentments and hatreds, U.S. policy will be increasingly driven by tightly made-up minds in pursuit of unrealistic agendas.

American troops are in Iraq on false pretenses. No one knows all the fateful consequences of this mistaken adventure. Bush's reelection would be seen as a vindication of aggression, and more aggression would likely follow. A continuing expenditure of blood, money, alliances, good will, and civil liberties is not a future to which to look forward.

Dr. Roberts served as assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. During the Cold War era, he was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger. He is a former associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal editorial page and a former contributing editor for National Review. In 1986-87 he assisted the French government's privatization of socialized firms and was awarded the Legion of Honor.

by Paul Craig Roberts http://www.antiwar.com

From Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, a conservative:

Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it. Thus, the PATRIOT Act, which permits government to suspend a person's civil liberties by calling him a terrorist with or without proof. Thus, preemptive war, which permits the president to invade other countries based on unverified assertions.

There is nothing conservative about these positions. To label them conservative is to make the same error as labeling the 1930s German Brownshirts conservative.

American liberals called the Brownshirts "conservative," because the Brownshirts were obviously not liberal. They were ignorant, violent, delusional, and they worshipped a man of no known distinction. Brownshirts' delusions were protected by an emotional force field. Adulation of power and force prevented Brownshirts from recognizing the implications for their country of their reckless doctrines.

Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy. I went overnight from being an object of conservative adulation to one of derision when I wrote that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a "strategic blunder."