He tells crowd at Stabler Arena that’s what will happen here if U.S. loses Iraq war.
July 20, 2007
By Daryl Nerl
Former House speaker and possible presidential contender Newt Gingrich, speaking Thursday night at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, conjured up images of an Islamic dictatorship in the United States as the consequence of failure in Iraq.
”It isn’t about Israel. It isn’t about us being in Iraq,” Gingrich told about 500 people gathered at the Impact ’07 leadership conference at Stabler Arena. ”They want to impose their dictatorship on us.”
In grim terms, Gingrich described the most severe consequences for women, who he said would not have been allowed to attend the Lehigh conference.
”If you want to be able to drive, to have a job, to have a checkbook; if you don’t want to have to wear a veil; if you want to be able to appear in public without a man, you’d better hope our team wins,” Gingrich said as he concluded his appearance on the Stabler stage, the first visit to the Lehigh Valley by a potential 2008 White House contender.
During a question-and-answer session, event host and radio personality Bobby Gunther Walsh put Gingrich on the spot about his presidential aspirations, but the Pennsylvania-born former congressman from Georgia remained coy.
”Beats me,” Gingrich said when Walsh asked him if he would run. Asked about a possible running mate, Gingrich said: ”I don’t know.”
Walsh then asked the crowd if they wanted Gingrich to run, and most responded with enthusiastic applause.
Among those cheering was John Hinkle, a Lehigh County Republican committeeman from Upper Milford Township, who said Gingrich is his favorite candidate.
”I think Newt is a very smart man,” Hinkle said. ”He understands the war on terror.”
Gingrich has been touring the country in much the same way a hopeful would, making frequent stops in New Hampshire and Iowa where the presidential primary will kick off in January 2008.
Before introducing Gingrich, Walsh noted that a recent poll of Republican-leaning voters had ”undecided” leading the presidential race. ”We couldn’t get him here tonight,” Walsh said.
That poll, sponsored by The Associated Press, had Gingrich in fifth place behind former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former ”Law & Order” star and ex-Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Thompson and Gingrich have not declared their candidacies. Gingrich has said he will not decide until October.
Nonetheless, Gingrich took an unsolicited swipe at another politician flirting with a run, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who recently announced he has abandoned the Republican Party to become an Independent. Some have speculated that the billionaire did this in preparation for a third-party run at the White House.
”I predict that if Bloomberg runs next year and he tries to spend $90 a vote, he’ll do surprisingly poorly,” Gingrich said. Voters will not respond well to a presidential candidate who is running ”as a hobby,” he said.
But the former House speaker saved his deadliest venom for Senate Democrats, accusing them of ”trying to defeat the U.S. in case Gen. [David] Petraeus wins” during a marathon debate on the war Wednesday night. Petraeus commands the U.S. military forces in Iraq.
”If Gen. Petraeus tomorrow morning announced the death of al-Qaida and peace in Iraq, a third of the U.S. Senate would be deeply disappointed,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich said he has not always been happy with the decisions made in Iraq. ”It has been a mess,” he said. ”But it is getting better.”
He was the headline speaker at the conference, for which about 1,800 tickets had been sold or handed out to sponsors, said Pat Breslin, the event’s organizer. The goal was to raise about $35,000 to support the Life Academy of Allentown and the Boys and Girls Club of Easton, though Breslin was uncertain whether the target would be reached.
07/19/2007
by Muriel Kane
Thom Hartmann began his program on Thursday by reading from a new Executive Order which allows the government to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies.
He then introduced old-line conservative Paul Craig Roberts — a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan who has recently become known for his strong opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq War — by quoting the “strong words” which open Roberts’ latest column: “Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.”
“I don’t actually think they’re very strong,” said Roberts of his words. “I get a lot of flak that they’re understated and the situation is worse than I say. … When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order] … there’s no check to it. It doesn’t have to be ratified by Congress. The people who bear the brunt of these dictatorial police state actions have no recourse to the judiciary. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. … The American people don’t really understand the danger that they face.”
Roberts said that because of Bush’s unpopularity, the Republicans face a total wipeout in 2008, and this may be why “the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush’s follies or the war, because they expect his unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory in next year’s election.”
However, Roberts emphasized, “the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling.” Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party. “Something’s in the works,” he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place.
“The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists … are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events,” Roberts continued. “Chertoff has predicted them. … The National Intelligence Estimate is saying that al Qaeda has regrouped. … You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda’s not going to do it, it’s going to be orchestrated. … The Republicans are praying for another 9/11.”
Hartmann asked what we as the people can do if impeachment isn’t about to happen. “If enough people were suspicious and alert, it would be harder for the administration to get away with it,” Roberts replied. However, he added, “I don’t think these wake-up calls are likely to be effective,” pointing out the dominance of the mainstream media.
“Americans think their danger is terrorists,” said Roberts. “They don’t understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. … The terrorists are not anything like the threat that we face to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism. Americans just aren’t able to perceive that.”
Roberts pointed out that it’s old-line Republicans like himself, former Reagan associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein, and Pat Buchanan who are the diehards in warning of the danger. “It’s so obvious to people like us who have long been associated in the corridors of power,” he said. “There’s no belief in the people or anything like that. They have agendas. The people are in the way. The Constitution is in the way. … Americans need to comprehend and look at how ruthless Cheney is. … A person like that would do anything.”
Roberts final suggestion was that, in the absence of a massive popular outcry, “the only constraints on what’s going to happen will come from the federal bureaucracy and perhaps the military. They may have had enough. They may not go along with it.”
Jul 19, 2007
by Brian Trent
…Terrorism will never destroy America. It will come from within. From fear-addicts who have raped the U.S. so much that they should be drawn up on charges of treason. The cowards who want a nanny state to coddle them, hug them, and ultimately contain them in a little crib with bars and monitors and cameras…
Sooner or later (as all great civilizations through time have dealt with) America will be attacked by terrorists again. There are too many people out there hopelessly addicted to extremism, to acting as pawns in a game of supernatural Risk, to blind fanaticism for it not to happen.
But that won’t destroy America.
In history, there have been the Hyksos, the Hittites, the Visigoths, the Huns, the Golden Horde, the Crusaders, and countless other unnamed peoples who have arrived with sword and torch to bring devastation to society. Today they use bombs and AK-47s. And in the future, even if education raises up humanity from the gutters of ignorance there will still be those of the fanatic pathology. It is likely there will always be barbarians.
But that won’t destroy America either.
You will.
I’m referring to the screeching fear-addicts who have raped the United States so thoroughly that they should be drawn up on charges of treason. The cowards who, unlike their grandfathers and earlier ancestors, want a nanny state to coddle them, hug them, and ultimately contain them in a little crib with bars and monitors and cameras.
These are the whining tantrum-throwers who live in such a fear-choked world that they will trade in America’s Constitution and Bill of Rights for far less than thirty pieces of silver.
They want the President to have the power to arrest Americans without review or charges. To have the power to imprison them indefinitely. To be able to strip away a citizen’s status with the magic words “enemy combatant” and cart them off to secret military trials per the PATRIOT ACT’s overbroad definitions.
These are the traitorous weasels who think that standing up for America’s rights is an act of weakness! The fools who have forgotten that every President swears an oath to “protect, defend, and preserve the Constitution of the United States.” At the end of the day, it is the Constitution which must survive us and continue as the guiding principle for America’s future as it has been for our past.
These are the cultists who have surrendered their most precious ability – freethinking – to be told by pundits what to echo and chant with brainless repetition.
I am not afraid of terrorists.
My country defeated the British Empire when we were but scattered colonies in the wilderness.
We defeated Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.
We can defeat today’s Visigoths without devolving into a police state, without becoming the very antithesis to freedom and civil liberty that we were founded upon. For it is these notions that form the spine of our founding document – the Constitution.
And while we’re at it:
You spineless people who endorse the government listening to your phone calls, invading your homes, monitoring you beneath banners of “Freedom is Slavery” and ever-watchful eyes.
You people who are so terrified of open and honest debate that you simply parrot your equally cowardly pundit priests. You who refuse to hold the government accountable, refuse to remind them that they work for us, that we have the power in this nation, that the principles of liberty you mouth are things which must be fought for on domestic soil.
You who allows George W. Bush’s illegal wire-tapping and surveillance and propaganda machines to operate unfettered, without realizing that someday a Hillary or PETA or Moore will have access to the same system put in place today. Didn’t think of that, did you?
America can only be destroyed from within, not without. It isn’t gay marriage or pluralism that destroys us. It is the fear-addicts who are also astounding hypocrites: who support the right to bear arms despite 11,000 deaths a year (and for the record, I also support the Second Amendment wholeheartedly) but freak out when confronted with the proportion of deaths-from-terrorism over the last several years and will fork over their souls to a nanny-state self-perpetuating White House regime without hesitation.
Hypocrites. Cowards. Traitors.
Make no mistake that those in power are keenly aware of how easy you are to manipulate. They flash the lightning and you cower. They feed you a steady diet of feel-good platitudes because they know the real meal – reading the Constitution – is something you won’t bother to stomach.
Shame.
When we’re attacked again, we need to stand strong and firm and fight, against those barbarians who hurt us and against those opportunistic politicians who will try to exploit the tragedy.
Don’t let others tell you what the Founding Fathers wrote. Read it for yourself, brush up on your history, and rediscover the bravery of your progenitors.
Before it’s too late, and the “land of the free/home of the brave” becomes a footnote filed under irony.
July 22, 2007
By JEFF KOSSEFF
Constituents called Rep. Peter DeFazio’s office, worried there was a conspiracy buried in the classified portion of a White House plan for operating the government after a terrorist attack.
As a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, DeFazio, D-Ore., is permitted to enter a secure “bubbleroom” in the Capitol and examine classified material. So he asked the White House to see the secret documents.
On Wednesday, DeFazio got his answer: DENIED.
“I just can’t believe they’re going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack,” DeFazio said.
Homeland Security Committee staffers told his office that the White House initially approved his request, but it was later quashed. DeFazio doesn’t know who did it or why.
“We’re talking about the continuity of the government of the United States of America,” DeFazio said. “I would think that would be relevant to any member of Congress, let alone a member of the Homeland Security Committee.”
Bush administration spokesman Trey Bohn declined to say why DeFazio was denied access: “We do not comment through the press on the process that this access entails. It is important to keep in mind that much of the information related to the continuity of government is highly sensitive.”
Norm Ornstein, a legal scholar who studies government continuity at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he “cannot think of one good reason” to deny access to a member of Congress who serves on the Homeland Security Committee.
“I find it inexplicable and probably reflective of the usual knee-jerk overextension of executive power that we see from this White House,” Ornstein said.
This is the first time DeFazio has been denied access to documents. DeFazio has asked Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., to help him access the documents.
“Maybe the people who think there’s a conspiracy out there are right,” DeFazio said.