WilliamPitt's open letter to * (from Truthout)

[No Mandate Here.]

is an amazing piece.

<http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/081704A.shtml>

<snip>

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure...if, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I can see it, if you don't.'"

The wiser man who wrote these words was Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to his law partner Billy Hendron. Lincoln wrote this letter in 1848 while serving in the House of Representatives, years before he himself would assume the office of the Presidency. Lincoln became, in the fullness of time, a war President who unwillingly inherited his war, and then pursued it with grim determination.

<snip>

You fancy yourself a war President, right? "I'm a war President," you said on television not long ago. "I make decisions in the Oval Office with war on my mind." Your war in Iraq is a war of choice, not of necessity. It had nothing to do with September 11, weapons of mass destruction, or bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. It had nothing to do with defending the American people.

Your boys wanted to get paid. Cash money on the barrelhead for Halliburton, right? Almost twelve billion dollars they've made to this point. Hey, it's good work if you can get it. All you had to do was use September 11th against your own people for months, scare them to death, denigrate the work of the weapons inspectors you agreed to send in there, flap around some claims about weapons of mass destruction (26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX gas, per your own words from your 2003 State of the Union Address), and then fly onto an aircraft carrier and declare victory while your people were still dying.

<more>

Your insights are right on, WilliamPitt.

[acmavm]

1. I read this last night. I was so impressed by not only it's well placed

and valid moral outrage, but by the honesty in the letter when describing the current administration and their brain dead ignorance and corruption. The Lincoln quotes are devastating to their rationale for the war in Iraq.

I thought that this was the best article I'd ever read in Truthout about Iraq. Or pretty much anywhere else.

[tavalon]

2. I would say that too,

except that I have read other artlcles by Will that are, in my mind, equally stunning. He is, in my opinion, the best political writer of this generation. The man is our Patrick Henry.

[Raster]

3. Once again, preach on Brother Will!!!

If I was christian, I would swear * is the antichrist...

just look at his actions. just an honest look is all it takes to scare the living shit out of you.

[JohnyCanuck]

4. Wide gap between Bush and Abe Lincoln.....

and also between Bush and James Madison

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war . . . and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

James Madison, April 20, 1795 (as quoted in Brainwashing America by Dr. Norman Livergood)