Prefers Terrorism to "Left-Leaning Crazies"
Wikipedia says this about this writer: Mike Gallagher (born in Dayton, Ohio on April 7, 1960) is a popular conservative American radio talk show host. He is, according to Talkers Magazine estimates, the 6th most listened-to radio talk show host in the United States [[NewsMax. Magazine's "Top 25 Talk Radio Host" list selected Gallagher as the eleventh most influential host in the nation.
So this isn't just some guy flapping his jaw. A lot of people listen to this nut.
Here's what he's written in TownHall today (h/t Atrios), about the anti-war march this weekend, which Jane Fonda spoke at:
Man, I'll tell you ... I'll just leave that to speak for itself.
So this isn't just some guy flapping his jaw. A lot of people listen to this nut.
Here's what he's written in TownHall today (h/t Atrios), about the anti-war march this weekend, which Jane Fonda spoke at:
Seeing Jane Fonda Saturday was enough to make me wish the unthinkable: it will take another terror attack on American soil in order to render these left-leaning crazies irrelevant again. Remember how quiet they were after 9/11? No one dared take them seriously. It was the United States against the terrorist world, just like it should be.
It's time to stand tall, speak loudly and defend America against these enemies like Hanoi Jane. Hanoi Jane makes me sick..literally
Man, I'll tell you ... I'll just leave that to speak for itself.
posted by JimK at 2:14 PM
18 Comments:
"So this isn't just some guy flapping his jaw. A lot of people listen to this nut."
Fortunately, not too many listen to the nut that writes these posts.
Personally, I always liked Jane Fonda. Like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi too. Still, he's not hard to see where this guy's coming from. Winning this war has now become vital to our national security. Unfortunately, he's also right about what it will take to wake up America's left. 9/11 did briefly.
Reports out today give Iran a space-based ICBM that can reach the U.S. by 2015. They and the North Koreans are working feverishly on it.
Which one would you prefer we be blackmailed by?
Winning this war has now become vital to our national security.
Why is that? And why don't we have enough troops and supplies to fight against countries that pose real danger to us and our allies?
We knew about Iran's and North Korea's nuclear proliferation programs back when Dumbya launched his blunder into Iraq. The moron and his band of neotheocons lied to the American people and got us to believe that Iraq had a nuclear profileration program going. They even outed an undercover CIA spy in an attempt to silence her husband who had followed the Iraq-African yellow cake story to its dead end and publicized that fact, which of course the criminally stupid administration didn't like.
Now we don't have enough troops and troop supplies to send where they are really needed. Why? Because we're fighting the wrong people in the wrong place thanks to the arrogant ineptitude of our President and his cronies.
I can't really say that I even know who this person is since about all the radio I listen to is NPR.
With that said though, I have regretably come to the conclusion that the US will need to be hit harder than we were on 9/11. This is unfortunate, but there is still alot of denial on the political left, some of which is bleeding over to the rest of the population. The part that makes me shudder though is what additional freedoms will we be forced to give up?
I think there are nuts right here. Yes, we were hit on 9/11 but we attacked Iraq. HELLO, do you people still think IRAQ had something to do with 9/11- even your hero Bush admits Iraq was not behind 9/11.
And to Orin and the other nut- You are the terrorists to suggest America needs to be "hit harder" than on 9/11. Talk about people who hate our country.
Al Qaeda Zaquorwi - you know, the one legged guy that was running the insurgency in Iraq ...
Before the war, Saddam Hussein's personal doctor was the one who dealt with Zaquorwi's injuries.
And we have satellite footage of terrorist camps in Iraq training on 737's.
I do agree, now, that it was a bad idea to go in there.
Too bad our intelligence was so badly hurt by the Clinton adminstration that we weren't able to figure this out ahead of time.
Did you know that when the little prop plane crashed in the white house front lawn the CIA staff joked that it was James Woolsey trying to get a meeting with Bill Clinton ?
He didn't meet with his CIA director for months on end... most presidents meet with them daily.
He cut all the funding for Arabic translators.. not that you would think it was okay to listen to conversations anyway, but whatever...
So, Andrear, do you APPROVE of the NY Times leaking the NSA programs ?
Or will it take another attack to convince you that perhaps this is a bad idea ?
So Theresa, do you APPROVE of the White House leaking classified information to the press to expose an active undercover CIA agent in an attempt to discredit her husband's report that Iraq did NOT seek yellow cake in Africa for its supposedly reactivated nuclear weapons program as the President LIED to us in his 2003 State of the Union speeech (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html) and his October 2002 speech in Cincinnati? (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/07/bush.transcript/)
Or will it take Bush lying about his sex life to convince you he should be impeached for his lies?
"Winning this war has now become vital to our national security.
Why is that?"
Iraq is the current battlefield where the war is being fought. Losing it to the Islamic fundamentalists will be a decisive victory in their quest to regain control of all the lands between Persia and Spain that they feel were stolen from them by the "crusaders".
The people of Iraq were happy to be liberated from a sadistic dictator. The outside forces that have come in to exacerbate a civil war don't attack us for that act. They have simply taken the opportunity to attack us for having any involvement at all in their "holy land". Our assistance to Kuwait involved the presence of our troops in the Arabian peninsula, a place where infidels such as ourselves are forbidden.
Surrendering would mean no ally would ever again feel they can trust our assurances to protect and assist them. When al-quaeda comes in and executes the democratic advocates in Iraq, no one will dare advocate tolerance and democracy in the Mid East for a long time.
Theresa writes:
"I do agree, now, that it was a bad idea to go in there.
Too bad our intelligence was so badly hurt by the Clinton adminstration that we weren't able to figure this out ahead of time."
I don't think even Bush and Cheney would argue that they would not have gone into Iraq had the information from the CIA been better. Their theory all along was the neo-con dream that if we smashed the Saddam dictatorship, all Iraqis would be not only grateful but would set aside their centuries-old differences and create a liberal democracy in the heart of the Middle East.
But as Senator Webb correctly noted last week, what in fact occurred was not only predicted, but predicable.
As for the various analyses as to why backing off our military commitment in Iraq would be have bad consequences, I generally agree (although the evidence is pretty clear that the main problem is not "outside agitators," but a home-grown civil war). That is why so many of us opposed the War before it started, because we suspected that this is precisely the mess we would get ourselves into.
So we, as a nation, must now figure out the most acceptable of various bad options. In my view, the escalation will not work and will simply throw more gas onto the fire. The Saudi-backed Sunnis and the Iranian-backed Shiites may just have to duke it out until they come to their senses. Sadly, we do not have the capacity to referee this civil war, and our attempts to do so just make all factions more angry at us. So we need to find the best way to back off.
"So we, as a nation, must now figure out the most acceptable of various bad options. In my view, the escalation will not work and will simply throw more gas onto the fire."
Not necessarily. If twenty thousand troops can restore relative stability in Baghdad, there might be a base from which to rebuild the security forces free from harassment.
I suspect, though, that the U.S. force should be doubled. It can be done and should be, if it becomes apparent that it is necessary.
While losing would be a disaster, winning would probably change the course of history. It's worth the investment. A free and prosperous democracy at the top of the Persian Gulf, next door to Iran, would probably be a fatal blow to the Islamic fundamentalists.
The Iraqis did indeed embrace democracy when given a chance to vote. It is indeed the outside forces that have provided the resources to conduct the civil war.
We should pay any price, bear any burden. The dividends will be ours- and the world's.
Anon,
If there was any possibility that a "surge" could have the impact you posit, it might well be worth it -- even though the downsides of failure of the surge would be signficant (and not just in lost American lives and treasure). That is why people like Howard Dean, in 2003-04, argued against the Kucinich proposal to immediately withdraw.
But we seem to be well past any such possibility of success now (even if it ever existed).
"discredit her husband's report that Iraq did NOT seek yellow cake in Africa for its supposedly reactivated nuclear weapons program"
Her husband's report ?
Tell me Anon, what government agency commissioned that report...
None apparently.
He was not qualified and was not sent. He was apparently out of job when he decided to go on his own....
Where do you come up with this stuff, Theresa? Did you find this gem of a rightwing lie at the same website as you found the bogus claims of Fred Singer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer) and his anti-global warming group Science & Environmental Policy Project?
"Side Issue in the Plame Case: Who Sent Her Spouse to Africa?
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 11, 2005; Page A08
The origin of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's trip to Niger in 2002 to check out intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium has become a contentious side issue to the inquiry by special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who is looking into whether a crime was committed with the exposure of Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, as a covert CIA employee.
After he went public in 2003 about the trip, senior Bush administration officials, trying to discredit Wilson's findings, told reporters that Wilson's wife, who worked at the CIA, was the one who suggested the Niger mission for her husband. Days later, Plame was named as an "agency operative" by syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, who has said he did not realize he was, in effect, exposing a covert officer. A Senate committee report would later say evidence indicated Plame suggested Wilson for the trip.
Over the past months, however,the CIA has maintained that Wilson was chosen for the trip by senior officials in the Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division (CPD) -- not by his wife -- largely because he had handled a similar agency inquiry in Niger in 1999. On that trip, Plame, who worked in that division, had suggested him because he was planning to go there, according to Wilson and the Senate committee report.
The 2002 mission grew out of a request by Vice President Cheney on Feb. 12 for more information about a Defense Intelligence Agency report he had received that day, according to a 2004 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. An aide to Cheney would later say he did not realize at the time that this request would generate such a trip.
Wilson maintains that his wife was asked that day by one of her bosses to write a memo about his credentials for the mission--after they had selected him. That memo apparently was included in a cable to officials in Africa seeking concurrence with the choice of Wilson, the Senate report said.
Valerie Wilson's other role, according to intelligence officials, was to tell Wilson he had been selected, and then to introduce him at a meeting at the CIA on Feb. 19, 2002, in which analysts from different agencies discussed the Niger trip. She told the Senate committee she left the session after her introduction.
Senior Bush administration officials told a different story about the trip's origin in the days between July 8 and July 12, 2003. They said that Wilson's wife was working at the CIA dealing with weapons of mass destruction and that she suggested him for the Niger trip, according to three reporters.
The Bush officials passing on this version were apparently attempting to undercut the credibility of Wilson, who on Sunday, July 6, 2003, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" and in The Washington Post and the New York Times that he had checked out the allegation in Niger and found it to be wrong. He criticized President Bush for misrepresenting the facts in his January 2003 State of the Union address when he said Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Africa..."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/10/AR2005081001918.html
"...outside forces that have come in to exacerbate a civil war don't attack us for that act [liberating Iraq from a sadistic dictator]. They have simply taken the opportunity to attack us for having any involvement at all in their "holy land"."
Really? Well then if so, please tell us why no outside forces attacked us when we defended Kuwait's sovereignty by fighting against Iraqi troops in the first Gulf war even though "Our assistance to Kuwait involved the presence of our troops in the Arabian peninsula, a place where infidels such as ourselves are forbidden." What's different this time around?
"The people of Iraq were happy to be liberated from a sadistic dictator."
Which "people of Iraq" were happy -- Sunni, Shi'a, Assyrians, Turkomans, or Kurds? Are they as happy as the Kuwaiti's were after the first gulf war? If they are happy to be liberated from Saddam by our troops, why are they attacking our troops? Why has Iraq descended into a civil war if "the people of Iraq" are so happy?
"Surrendering would mean no ally would ever again feel they can trust our assurances to protect and assist them."
It won't take "surrender" in Iraq to cause our allies to not "trust our assurances to protect and assist them." Go ask our long-term Cold War allies in "Old Europe" about their trust in US assurances these days.
...no one will dare advocate tolerance and democracy in the Mid East for a long time.
Do you honestly think we're "advocat[ing] tolerance and democracy" with all those troops, bullets, and bombs? Maybe we should try to "advocate tolerance and democracy" WITHOUT attacking, occupying, killing, maiming, and other acts of aggression. It's called "diplomacy" but it's apparently too complicated and time consuming for this neocon Administration.
"we have satellite footage of terrorist camps in Iraq training on 737's"
Is that footage as reliable as the intel that backed these lies Bush told the world (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/07/bush.transcript/) in October of 2002?
1. "surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it has used to produce chemical and biological weapons."
2. "We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical and biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using UAVs for missions targeting the United States"
3. "We have learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb making, poisons, and deadly gases"
4. "...information from a high-ranking Iraqi nuclear engineer who had defected, revealed that despite his public promises, Saddam Hussein had ordered his nuclear program to continue....Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past."
5. "Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. "
6. "Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons, and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon. "
Bush got the "facts on the ground" wrong, and his crystal ball - or whatever he uses to predict the future - has proven to be a little cloudy too. He sure got this part wrong:
"We refuse to live in fear. This nation -- in world war and in Cold War -- has never permitted the brutal and lawless to set history's course.
Now, as before, we will secure our nation, protect our freedom, and help others to find freedom of their own. Some worry that a change of leadership in Iraq could create instability and make the situation worse. The situation could hardly get worse, for world security, and for the people of Iraq.
The lives of Iraqi citizens would improve dramatically if Saddam Hussein were no longer in power, "
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/07/bush.transcript/
So, is the situation today in Iraq "hardly worse...for the people of Iraq" than it was before we invaded? No, it isn't "hardly worse." The situation is so much worse that Iraqis who had no qualms about living in Iraq during Saddam's reign have made a different choice now that American troops are on the ground there. "..Tens of thousands of middle class Iraqis have given up and fled the country. Those who remain are becoming increasingly radicalized as the violence draws them into cycles of revenge."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/16/news/iraq.php
Have the lives of Iraqi citizens improved "dramatically" now that Saddam is not longer in power? No. "Riding through the streets of the northern city of Mosul three years later, taxi driver Sattar Khalid Othman has barely noticed.
"What reconstruction?" Othman said in an interview last week. "Today we are drinking untreated water from a plant built decades ago that was never maintained. The electricity only visits us two hours a day. And now we are going backwards. We cook on the firewood we gather from the forests because of the gas shortage."
Othman's view is shared by many across the country...
"When the occupation came and we heard the promises, we said, 'Now the conditions in the city will improve.' But things got worse," said Ahmed Mohammed, 45, a teacher in the central province of Salah al-Din. "We know that large amounts of money have been dedicated to the city, but they were all stolen."
The United States has committed more than $38 billion to reconstructing Iraq, far more than any other nation, according to the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. Most of that money is now gone. Three-quarters of the primary fund for rebuilding has been spent and the rest has been set aside for finishing key projects."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/11/AR2006111101076.html
And what about the Iraqi death toll? Has that gotten smaller since the invasion? No. According to the White House (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/04/20030404-1.html), just less than 390,000 Iraqis and Iranians were killed by Saddam's regime in the 24 years since 1983.
The Human Rights Watch puts the figure at 250,000-290,000 over 20 years. By comparision, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimates that over 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the US invasion in 2003. That's over twice as many dead Iraqis in three years of Bush's war as Saddam managed to kill in 24 years of despotic rule. http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116052896787288831-zIkhR7ZgGRS2_Bz9LXSKJsg43vQ_20071010.html?mod=rss_free
PTA
Theresa said "Her husband's report ?
Tell me Anon, what government agency commissioned that report...
None apparently.
He was not qualified and was not sent. He was apparently out of job when he decided to go on his own.... "
You have got to be kidding! Which "news" outlet is spreading these lies that nobody sent him and that a former Ambassador to an African nation wasn't qualified to ask about business deals that might have been discussed? The CIA sent Ambassador Wilson because the Vice President's office requested more information about an intelligence report.
"On Feb. 12, 2002, Cheney received an expanded version of an unconfirmed Italian intelligence report which was shared with British intelligence, and then passed on to Washington. It said Iraq's then-ambassador to the Vatican had led a mission to Niger in 1999 and sealed a deal for the purchase of 500 tons of yellowcake uranium in July 2000. Cheney's office asked for more information.
The CIA chose a former ambassador to Africa to undertake the mission.
Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was sent by the CIA to the West African nation of Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium for a weapons program.
Immediately upon his return, in early March 2002, Wilson briefed the CIA and State Department and reported that the documents in the Italian report were bogus. It is unclear if that information was passed on to the White House or if the administration chose to ignore the report discrediting sales of yellowcake uranium to Iraq and undercutting an element of the administration's belief that Iraq was readying weapons of mass destruction which could threaten the U.S.
But at the time, the Vice President's office did not know the name of the envoy sent on the mission.
The "16" Words
By summer 2002, the White House Iraq Group began to describe the "grave and gathering danger" of Iraq's allegedly "reconstituted" nuclear weapons program. That claim, along with repeated use of the "mushroom cloud" image by top officials beginning in September, became the emotional heart of the case against Iraq.
President Bush invoked the mushroom cloud in an Oct. 7, 2002, speech in Cincinnati. References to African uranium remained in his speech until its fifth draft, but a last-minute intervention by Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet excised them.
On January 28, 2003 President Bush delivered his State of the Union address, which included the infamous "sixteen words" asserting that, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
In May 2003, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof first wrote that an unnamed ambassador traveled to Niger to investigate uranium sales. The envoy, Kristof writes, reported to the CIA and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.
Who is Wilson?
Libby then asked an under secretary of state for information concerning the trip. The under secretary told Libby that the ambassador was Joseph Wilson.
Libby and Cheney made separate inquiries to the CIA about Wilson's wife, and each confirmed independently that she worked there."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16599094/
Then please explain this:
("Childhood Family Correlates of Heterosexual and Homosexual Marriages: A National Cohort Study of Two Million Danes," by Morten Frisch and Anders Hviid, Archives of Sexual Behavior Oct 13, 2006; [E-publication ahead of print])
A major study is about to be published in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal, Archives of Sexual Behavior, which provides striking new evidence for the influence of childhood family factors on sexual-orientation development.
The study used a population-based sample of 2,000,355 native-born Danes between the ages of 18 and 49. Denmark -- a country noted for its tolerance of a wide variety of alternative lifestyles, including homosexual partnerships, and the first country to legalize gay marriage.
With access to the "virtually complete registry coverage of the entire Danish population," the study sample therefore lacked the problematic selection bias that has plagued many previous studies on sexual orientation.
Knock knock knockin' on Cheney's door:
One of the FBI agents who interviewed I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby during the CIA leak investigation testified yesterday that the vice president's then-chief of staff did not acknowledge disclosing the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame to reporters, asserting that he was surprised when another journalist later told him about her.
FBI agent Deborah S. Bond also testified that Libby said that, while he was preparing to be interviewed by investigators in the fall of 2003, he came across a handwritten note he had made during a phone conversation with Vice President Cheney. The note made it clear that, shortly before June 12, 2003, Cheney had told Libby that Plame worked at the CIA's counterproliferation division and was married to an outspoken critic of the Iraq war.
Libby's conversation with Cheney took place nearly a month before Libby telephoned Tim Russert, NBC's Washington bureau chief. According to Bond, Libby said that, during that call, Russert mentioned that "all the reporters" knew that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's wife worked at the CIA. Libby told the investigators that "it was as if it was the first time he heard it," Bond said.
Coming on the seventh day of testimony in Libby's perjury trial, Bond's description of the FBI's two interviews with Libby in his White House office gave jurors their first account of what the prosecution alleges were lies that Cheney's former top aide told investigators to obscure his role in spreading classified information.
The version of events Libby related to the FBI conflicts with the accounts of several government officials and journalists who have already testified at the trial. Russert is scheduled to be the prosecution's final witness early next week.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020100913.html
Vice President's Shadow Hangs Over Trial
Testimony Points Out Cheney's Role in Trying to Dampen Joseph Wilson's Criticism
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 4, 2007; Page A05
Vice President Cheney's press officer, Cathie Martin, approached his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on Air Force Two on July 12, 2003, to ask how she should respond to journalists' questions about Joseph C. Wilson IV. Libby looked over one of the reporters' questions and told Martin: "Well, let me go talk to the boss and I'll be back."
On Libby's return, Martin testified in federal court last week, he brought a card with detailed replies dictated by Cheney, including a highly partisan, incomplete summary of Wilson's investigation into Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction program.
Libby subsequently called a reporter, read him the statement, and said -- according to the reporter -- he had "heard" that Wilson's investigation was instigated by his wife, an employee at the CIA, later identified as Valerie Plame. The reporter, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, was one of five people with whom Libby discussed Plame's CIA status during those critical weeks that summer.
After seven days of such courtroom testimony, the unanswered question hanging over Libby's trial is, did the vice president's former chief of staff decide to leak that disparaging information on his own?
No evidence has emerged that Cheney told him to do it. But Cheney's dictated reply is one of many signs to emerge at the trial of the vice president's unusual attentiveness to the controversy and his desire to blunt it. His efforts included the extraordinary disclosure of classified information, including one-sided synopses of Wilson's report and a 2002 intelligence estimate on Iraq.
Under questioning from FBI agent Deborah S. Bond, Libby acknowledged that he and Cheney "may have talked" aboard the plane from Norfolk that day about whether to make public Plame's CIA employment, Bond testified Thursday.
Her testimony brought Cheney closer than ever to the heart of the controversy surrounding the Bush administration's efforts to discredit Wilson, who had accused the White House of twisting intelligence he had gathered as it sought to justify the invasion of Iraq.
White House officials testified that Cheney was irritated because he thought Wilson had alleged the vice president sent him on the fact-finding trip to Niger but rejected the investigation's conclusions. Time after time at the height of the controversy, they said, Cheney directed the administration's response to Wilson's criticism and Libby carried it out.
Cheney personally dictated other talking points for use by the White House press office; helped negotiate the wording of a key statement by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet; instructed Libby to deal directly with selected reporters; told Libby to disclose selected passages from the national intelligence estimate and other classified reports; and held a luncheon for conservative columnists to discuss the controversy.
Throughout this period, Cheney kept a news clipping of Wilson's criticisms on his desk, annotated with the question, "did his wife send him on a junket?" according to court statements. Libby told a grand jury that he and Cheney discussed it on multiple occasions each day...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/03/AR2007020301344.html
Nice design of blog.
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