the education of Rory Holderness (I hope)

"RMHisCOOL" <43084107@recpoker.com> wrote in message news:1157373142$864345@recpoker.com...

RMH -- How am I anonymous? My name is Rory Holderness, and as I have previously stated. I'm with 2nd Battalion 8th Marines, located at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

Ramashiva --I went through infantry training at Camp Lejeune in 1967 after completing boot camp at Parris Island Marine Corps Recruit Depot. I was later stationed at Camp Lejeune temporarily while waiting for assignment to OCS. I subsequently decided not to attend OCS and withdrew my name from the waiting list before a slot became available.

RMH -- I have said all of this before, so how am I an anonymous troll??

Ramashiva -- Thank you very much for identifying yourself. At least you have a nutsack. As far as I knew you were anonymous, as I had not previously seen your identification. You were not even on my radar screen until yesterday, when I read some of your ignorant spew for the first time.

RMH -- Also, exactly what threat have I levelled at you?

Ramashiva -- Also, exactly where did I say you had threatened me? Please learn to read English and stop claiming people have said things which they haven't. Here is precisely what I said regarding your threatening me --

"I suggest you seriously consider the above before telling any lies about me or making threats against me which you cannot possibly back up in the real world."

Please notice I did not say you had threatened me. I was telling you that threatening me would not be a good idea, since I react very negatively to threats.

RMH -- None. I don't threaten people anonymously via the internet, I'm a man.

Good for you. My respect for you has increased tremendously simply because you have the balls to identify yourself and refrain from making anonymous threats. If you have been reading RGP for the past four years, you know that many people who agree with you politically show what brave men they are by threatening me and insulting me anonymously while hiding behind anonymous handles. Two of your heros who have insulted me while hiding behind anonymous screen names are Irish Mike and Francis Lee Turbo (FL Turbo). Nothing frosts my balls more than scumbags who are too scared to tell the world who they are, while issuing threats and/or insults behind an anonymous screen name. Of course, neither Irish Mike nor Francis Lee Turbo would dare repeat any of their insults to my face. In particular, Irish Mike has repeatedly questioned my patriotism, including a post made within the last 24 hours.

I just assumed you were another one of these anonymous internet tough guys. I apologize for confusing you with these subhuman scum who have such tiny dicks that they try to prove they are men by making anonymous internet threats and insults.

RMH -- I have interspersed my responses among your ravings.

On Sep 4 2006 3:32 AM, William Coleman wrote:

Ramashiva -- Well we have a new contender for the title of "King of Idiots" among the right-wing nutcases who post to RGP. Previously, Irish Mike and Francis Lee Turbo were the only serious contenders.

The new kid on the block, whose initials are obviously "RMH", is a strong contender. This guy is such an idiot that he doesn't realize telling us his initials is a huge clue to finding out exactly who he is and exactly where he lives. He also tells us his first name is Rory. DP75089 also realized he was making a huge mistake by using his initials and his zip code for a screen name.

Attention RMH. The internet is not as anonymous as you think it is. You have given me enough clues to find out exactly who you are and exactly where you live, if I care to devote a few hours to it. It took eleaticus and myself less than an hour to find out that your fellow Nazi, DFSPON, is really named Richard Sportsman.

You are an anonymous cowardly troll hiding behind the anonymity of the internet. Why are you such a coward? Why don't you post with your real name like I do, and like many other RGP posters do? Because you are a coward, that's why. Punk.

I suggest you seriously consider the above before telling any lies about me or making threats against me which you cannot possibly back up in the real world. I eat anonymous internet tough guys like you for lunch.

Here is a classic example of RMH's idiocy from a post he made in the thread "Convert to Islam", started by my least favorite RGP poster, Irish Mike.

Here is a Google Groups link to RMH's post --

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.gambling.poker/msg/9dbe554e3fa93382

My responses are interleaved.
____________________________________________

"RMHisCOOL" <43084107@recpoker.com> wrote in message news:1157283342$863796@recpoker.com...

On Sep 3 2006 4:58 AM, Bryan Kimmes wrote:

On Sep 3 2006 2:31 AM, Irish Mike wrote:

Irish Mike -- Following is a cut & paste from a CNN story today. Al Queada is graciously inviting all Americans to convert to islam - or else. "We invite all Americans and believers to Islam, whatever their role and status in Bush and Blair's world order," Gadahn says. "Decide today, because today could be your last day."

Kimmes --"We invite all Arabs to Democracy, whatever their roles in their current governments may be." W Says. "Decide today, because tomorrow you might be building Nukes."

RMH -- Way to attribute quotes for something that doesn't exist in order to slant it whichever way suits you. Spoken like a true liberal. I can't even respond to this because its so idiotic.

Ramashiva -- Do you understand written English??? Obviously not. Do you understand the significance of this sentence --

"Decide today, because tomorrow you might be building Nukes."

The significance is that the Bush Crime Family will likely attack Iran, and possibly other Muslim countries, on the pretext that they are developing nuclear weapons. There is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. If they do, they are at least ten years away from having a functioning nuclear weapon. There is no possible justification for an attack on Iran at this time, yet it is obvious Bush plans to do so before he leaves office. It will be Iraq Redux, except Iran has a formidable military, unlike Saddam's broken down military.

Look, shit for brains, Iran's sock puppet, Hizbollah, withstood the full onslaught of the mighty Israeli military machine for a month and fought the Israelis to a standstill. If you think Iran itself will be a pushover, you are beyond clueless.

I suggest you do some research to find out exactly who the Persians are. They are not Arabs. Persians are Aryans. You know, Aryans -- Hitler's Master Race. Please do not confuse Hitler's Master Race with Sand Niggers.

I also suggest you study some military history. When you do, you will find that the Persians are the baddest motherfuckers of them all. Man for man, and armed with comparable weapons technology, the Persians would slaughter both the Jews and the Americans.

You idiots who want to attack Iran have no clue how disasterous the consequences will be. The consequences will make the Iraq War look like a minor bit of unpleasantness.

RMH -- Yes, I understand English. So you'd be more comfortable allowing the nuclear program of Iran to come to fruition before we do anything?

Ramashiva -- No, I would not be comfortable with that at all. This is another example of a strawman argument. Please do not put words in my mouth. If you want to state my position for purposes of argumentation, please either quote my words directly or offer an accurate paraphrase. Please do not try to portray me as holding a position which I do not hold.

The problem of Iran developing nuclear weapons is very serious, but I am not sure we have an option available to stop it. If I thought there was any chance of stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons by use of military force, I would fully support such military action.

What I don't support is Bush going off half-cocked and attacking Iran, with no evidence whatsoever that Iran even has a nuclear weapons program. Bush has already created the greatest military and foreign policy disaster in the history of our country by invading and occupying Iraq, when he had absolutely no evidence there were WMD in Iraq. Please do not claim that Bush had any evidence of WMD in Iraq. There were no WMD in Iraq in 2003. The Duelfer Report concluded that not only were there no WMD in Iraq, there were no WMD programs in Iraq in 2003. Nor were there any plans for WMD programs in the future.

As I said, Bush had no evidence there were WMD in Iraq. Since there were no WMD in Iraq, there was no evidence there were WMD in Iraq. There is no such thing as evidence for that which does not exist. What the Bush Crime Family had were lies and repetitions of lies. Bush, Cheney, and Rice knew that much of their WMD "evidence" was false, yet they repeated this "evidence" when they knew they were lying.

I will give you a few examples. You can find many more by using Google Groups to search my posts in the Google Archives, and by using Google to search the internet. If you really want to know the truth, and not just support the Bush Crime Family's lies about WMD, then you will inevitably conclude that Bush, Cheney, and Rice are pathological liars and traitors because they led the USA into an unnecessary war by scaring the shit out of the American people in order to get their war on.

Regarding the infamous aluminum tubes -- Condi Rice stated publicly that these aluminum tubes could really only be used for building nuclear centrifuges. At the time she made that statement, she was well aware that nuclear scientists in the Department of Energy had already stated that these aluminum tubes were totally unsuitable for building nuclear centrifuges and were probably intended for building rockets.

Regarding Iraq's supposed purchase or attempt to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger -- Bush, Cheney, and Rice continued to pimp this nonsense long after they knew for sure that there was nothing to the story, and that the story was based on forged documents, most likely forged by the Italian equivalent of the CIA. Specifically, CIA Director Tenet advised the White House in 2002 to remove a reference to the Iraq/Niger/Uranium story from a Presidential speech, because the CIA regarded the story as a complete fabrication. Despite this, the famous sixteen words that British intelligence had learned that Iraq recently tried to buy Uranium in Africa found its way into the 2003 State of the Union address. At that time, the Bush Crime Family already knew, or should have known, that British intelligence was basing its findings on the forged Italian documents.

Joseph Wilson, who travelled to Niger at the behest of the CIA to determine if there was any basis to the Iraq/Niger/Uranium story, finally got tired of hearing the lies of the Bush Crime Family on this matter, and published his famous NYT Op-Ed "What I didn't find in Africa" --

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm

Published on Sunday, July 6, 2003 by the New York Times

What I Didn't Find in Africa

by Joseph C. Wilson 4th

Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?

Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council.

It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me.

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.

In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F. Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible.

The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq — and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.

I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.

Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.

(As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors — they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government — and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)

Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.

Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.
I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.

Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.

The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.
Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.

The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses. (It's worth remembering that in his March "Meet the Press" appearance, Mr. Cheney said that Saddam Hussein was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons.") At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted.
I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program — all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions. Having encountered Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed.

But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history," as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.
Joseph C. Wilson 4th, United States ambassador to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, is an international business consultant.
_________________________________________________________________

What was the response of the Bush Crime Family to Ambassador Wilson's Op-Ed? Did they admit that Wilson was correct? Fuck no. Instead, they launched a vicious personal attack on Wilson, which included outing his wife, Valerie Plame, as a covert CIA operative. They had to do this in order to promulgate the complete fabrication that Plame had authorized Wilson's trip, which was a boondoggle and nepotism according to Rove, Libby, and company. Of course, Plame never authorized Wilson's trip. That authority was way above her pay grade. Please do not claim that the Bush Crime Family never said that Plame authorized Wilson's trip. Those are the EXACT words Karl Rove used in leaking Plame's identity to Time reporter Matt Cooper. Nor did Plame suggest or recommend Wilson, as the liars Ken Mehlman and Karl Rove maintain to this day. This lie is based solely on a State Department memo which so states. The State Department has since repudiated this part of the memo as without foundation. Yet the right-wing noise machine still spews this proven lie. If you are like most right-wing nutcases, you get most of your information from the right-wing noise machine. You need to find a more reliable source of information, since the right-wing noise machine continues to spew many lies which have been proven to be lies.

Remember when, shortly after the invasion of Iraq, Bush said, "We found the WMD"? He was referring to the supposed mobile biological weapons laboratories, of which Colin Powell had shown diagrams at his U.N. speech presenting the "evidence" for WMD in Iraq. At the time Bush claimed we had found the WMD in Iraq, a joint CIA/DOD taskforce had already travelled to Iraq and examined these trailers in detail. Their conclusion was that these trailers could not possibly be used to produce biological weapons, and were most likely used to produce hydrogen for weather balloons. The report of the joint taskforce was officially filed the day before Bush made his idiotic claim that we had found the WMD in Iraq. Bush most probably was not aware of this report at the time he made his remark. But did Bush make the report public and repudiate his prior remarks? Fuck no. George Bush is a pathological liar and a traitor. The response of the Bush Crime Family was to classify the report top secret and continue to repeat the lie that the trailers were mobile biological weapons laboratories.

In the run up to the Iraq War, both Bush and Cheney repeatedly stated that there was NO DOUBT that Iraq had WMD programs, including a nuclear weapons program. There was plenty of doubt, and they knew it. The 2002 NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) on Iraq had many qualifications and caveats that the Iraq WMD intelligence was shaky and questionable. When the Bush Crime Family published a sanitized version of the NIE, they omitted all qualifications and caveats, creating the impression that the Iraq WMD intelligence was solid.

Do you really think Tenet ever told Bush the Iraq WMD case was a "slam dunk"??? I don't believe Tenet ever said any such thing. I think this is just another example of Tenet falling on his sword to cover Bush's ass, as Tenet did when he accepted responsibility for the Iraq/Niger/Uranium fuckup in the 2003 State of the Union Address, when Tenet had warned the White House months earlier that the story was a hoax.

I could go on and on my friend. I have written the above paragraphs without notes or use of Google. I have not provided links. I have provided such links in previous RGP posts, and you can easily find these links yourself if you know how to use Google. Every statement I have made is exactly correct and verifiable with authoritative links and sources.

So, sir, as one Marine combat veteran to another, I ask you -- Are you willing to follow the truth no matter where it leads? Are you willing to stop listening to the lies of the right-wing noise machine and start using Google and other research tools to find out the truth for yourself? Are you willing to come to terms with the truth, even though the truth means that Bush, Cheney, and Rice are pathological liars and traitors to our great country for leading this nation into an unnecessary war based on lies which they knew were lies at the time they told them? Or are you going to react like your fellow right-wing nutcases and dismiss everything I have said on this matter as left-wing propaganda and lies? The truth is the truth, and no amount of lies from the right-wing noise machine will change the truth.

Given the Bush Crime Family's history of lying about Iraqi WMD, are you really going to believe anything Bush, Cheney, and Rice say as justification for military action against Iran? Please tell me that you are not that gullible.

RMH -- No wonder you love Clinton so much.

Ramashiva --I do not love Clinton, but I think he was a great President and will be so judged by history. I disagreed with many of Clinton's policies. Please do not try to paint me as a mindless Clinton supporter. Specifically, I disagreed with the following Clinton policies --

The attempt to integrate faggots into the military with his "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. Do you agree with me that there is simply no place for faggots, in the closet or out, in the U.S. military?

Various attempts to further violate the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms. I am a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, and I have been so stating on RGP for four years. Please do not assume that all liberals are gun control nutcases.

The military incursions into Bosnia and Kosovo. This was none of our business. The national security of the United States was not involved. The dispute between the Serbs and the Muslims of former Yugoslavia goes back for centuries, including the fact that the Yugoslavian Muslims collaborated with the Nazis and against the Serbs during World War II.

The United States cannot be the world's policemen. We cannot right all wrongs nor solve all problems. The use of military force to solve problems has limitations. A man needs to know his limitations, and so does a country. The United States should only use military force and send our soldiers and Marines into harm's way when the national security of the United States is involved, or when treaty obligations to our military allies compel us to take military action.

The limitations on the use of military force are nowhere more apparent than in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, President Karzai is the mayor of Kabul, nothing more. The central government has no control over the rest of the country, which is controlled by the Taliban and various warlords, some of whom are allied with the Taliban. The Taliban are resurgent and stronger than ever. George Bush said in a speech, in 2002 or 2003, I believe, that we had destroyed the Taliban and put them out of business forever. George Bush is an idiot, a liar, or both. The level of violence and conflict between the Taliban and coalition forces has been steadily increasing and now amounts to a full blown guerrilla war. As I have previously explained, military force alone can never defeat an insurgency which has popular support. We supposedly learned that lesson in Viet Nam. The only solution which can neutralize an insurgency with popular support is a political settlement reached through negotiations.

In Iraq, we see exactly the same lesson. Despite the best efforts of our brave soldiers and Marines, Iraq is rapidly descending into chaos and civil war. The Iraqi central government controls Baghdad and not much else. U.S. and Iraqi military forces do not even effectively control Baghdad. Despite the presence of 60,000 coalition forces in Baghdad, we can't even keep a lid on the violence or physically control the city. Most of Baghdad is under effective control of sectarian militias and Al Qaeda.

There are actually three wars going on at once in Iraq, and our soldiers and Marines are caught in the middle, powerless to do anything to stop the violence --

The war of the insurgency and Al Qaeda against U.S. military forces.

The war of the insurgency and Al Qaeda against the elected government in Iraq.

The war of Sunni militias against Shia militias.

Basically, everyone is armed to the teeth in Iraq, and they seem hellbent on killing each other. We should get the fuck out of there ASAP, and let them kill each other if that is what they are determined to do. We are powerless to stop the violence, and the continued presence of U.S. forces in Iraq is only exacerbating the situation. I am sure you are aware that Congressman John Murtha, a retired Marine Corps Bird Colonel and decorated veteran of both the Korean and Viet Nam Wars, has been saying exactly what I am saying for quite some time. The response of the right-wing noise machine is to label Murtha a coward and his policy of withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq as "cutting and running". It makes my blood boil to hear the deserter George Bush and the five-time draft deferment accepter Dick Cheney call Murtha's policy "cutting and running". Bush and Cheney are very far from being decent men.

It is treason of the highest order to waste the lives of thousands of U.S. soldiers and Marines and throw away hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money on a bogus war on terror. The War in Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror, which is itself simply a slogan to justify the imperialist aggression of the Bush Crime Family. There was no terrorism and there were no terrorists in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion. Al Qaeda is in Iraq precisely because the U.S. military is in Iraq. As one Iraqi famously said, "Why can't George Bush find somewhere else to fight his war on terror?"

The notion that we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here is also nonsense. Let's get real. The Iraqi insurgency is 95% or more homegrown. This is the official DOD estimate, and one ground General whose name escapes me at the moment estimated that less than 1% of the insurgency is composed of foreign fighters. Yet Bush, Cheney, and company continue to lie to us when they say that the insurgency is just a few foreign terrorists and Saddam deadenders. Cheney is lying when he says over and over that the insurgency is in its last throes. The insurgency in Iraq is stronger than ever.

The Iraqis who compose the insurgency were not terrorists before the American invasion and occupation. They have had exactly the same reaction that you and I would have if our country were invaded and occupied by a foreign military power. They have taken up arms and are willing to fight to the death to expel the foreign invaders. The idea that these Iraqi insurgents would be over here attacking the USA if the U.S. military withdrew from Iraq is pure propaganda from the Bush Crime Family. Those Iraqi insurgents were in no sense terrorists before we invaded and occupied their country.
Irish Mike -- "Mansfield, who is a writer and corporate adviser on the Middle East, Islam and terrorism, said the time reference could indicate an attack is near. Muslims believe that non-believers should be given a chance to convert before they are attacked."

Kimmes -- "Irish Mike, who is an avid Rush Limbaugh listener, can be lied to repeatedly by the self-serving leaders, yet still follow them blindly, and attempt to defend the indefensible."

RMH -- Elaborate please. What is indefensible?

Ramashiva -- The entire foreign policy of the Bush Crime Family, which constitutes the greatest foreign policy disaster in the history of the USA.
RMH -- If somebody doesn't agree with you, it must be absolutely indefensible.

Ramashiva --No sir, not at all. Again you are constructing strawman arguments. Many positions of my political opponents are defensible. I may disagree with these positions, but I can see how reasonable men would come to different conclusions based on the same facts.

There is absolutely no question that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is a huge strategic and military disaster. We can debate that all you want, but you will lose the debate, because I have all the facts and all the logic are on my side. Many senior people in the defense and foreign policy community have reached exactly the same conclusion. If you got your information from sources other than the right-wing noise machine, you would already know this.

RMH -- The world is black and white, eh Bill?

Ramashiva -- It most certainly is. We are experiencing the climax of the ageless war of good against evil as we speak. I have to tell you that there is no question in my mind that the greatest evil in the world today is the Bush Crime Family. They are far and away the biggest threat to world peace and to my life personally.

Yes, the Islamofascists in general and Al Qaeda in particular are also extremely evil, and we should exterminate them like rats whenever we have the opportunity. But I have to tell you that the threat of Islamofascism is greatly overblown by Islamophobics like Irish Mike and Francis Lee Turbo. Yes, Islamofascism is a threat to our country, but not a threat that now or ever will threaten our national survival.

Look, Osama bin Laden and his Islamofascist followers have dreams of taking over the world. So what? So does every steet gang in Los Angeles.
The fact that you dream of taking over the world does not mean you are a serious threat to do so.

Here is truth -- Cheeseburgers are a greater threat to the lives of Americans than Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. The Bush Crime Family is simply using the terrorist boogeyman to win elections by scaring the shit out of the American people, to justify using the U.S. Constitution as toilet paper, and to justify their grand imperialistic design to take over all the oil fields in the Middle East.

That is truth, my friend. Open your eyes and ears. See the truth and hear the truth. I would not lie to a fellow Marine.
RMH -- And how has Mike defended it? Are you denying Mansfield said this? Who cares? That has nothing to do with the point of the post. How have we been lied to?

Ramashiva -- OMFG!!! You really are brain dead. I could list hundreds of definitively documented lies of the Bush Crime Family, but you would just dismiss it as liberal propaganda. Do some research. Turn off Rush Limbaugh. Get in contact with the real world. Stop living in your Nazi fantasy world.
RMH -- Wow, you're a clever one. You could list hundreds and hundreds of things, but ah...um...you don't.

Ramashiva -- Do you seriously want me to start listing the lies of the Bush Crime Family??? I already gave you a few of the WMD lies, and I can back up every statement I have made about the WMD lies with authoritative references. But I shouldn't have to give you those references. You should be a seeker of truth yourself and use Google to verify that everything I am telling you is true. If you use Google Groups to search my posts the RGP Archives, you will find that I have already provided you with authoritative sources documenting many lies of the Bush Crime Family.

Are you so naive and/or so brainwashed that you actually believe that Bush, Cheney, and Rice have not lied to us many, many times???

RMH -- If these were solid proof, then it couldn't be dismissed as propaganda, but amazingly, you don't offer anything solid. Surprise. Yawn.

Ramashiva -- You are a fucking idiot, man. Seriously, you are an idiot. When I say "I could list hundreds of definitively documented lies of the Bush Crime Family", do you really think I cannot back up my words with facts and authoritative references??? You need to study my history of debate on RGP. When I make an assertion, I am ALWAYS ready to back my assertion up with facts and authoritative references. You are obviously new here and don't know who I am.

I can always back up what I say in debates. I never bluff in debates, and I never bluff in poker. As was recently discussed in the thread on Barry Greenstein, expert poker players almost never bluff, especially in low limit games. If you really think stone cold bluffs are an important part of correct poker strategy, then you are a novice poker player who knows nothing about correct poker strategy.

But I shouldn't have to provide you with any links or sources. If you are really a seeker after truth, I have given you enough information and specific facts that you should be able to use Google to verify that what I am saying about the WMD lies is exactly correct.

If you want to be an asshole about it and challenge me to prove my assertions about the Bush Crime Family's WMD lies, I will do so. But you need to be prepared to eat humble pie and apologize to me for questioning my truthfulness every step of the way.

So do you want to call my bluff about WMD lies? If so, please do not ask me to prove everything at once. I am not going to spend hours and hours with Google doing your homework for you. Select a specific statement of mine regarding WMD lies which you want to challenge. I will then provide you with authoritative sources and links. And I will insist that you admit that you are an asshole and idiot for challenging my credibility in the first place. I do not lie. I am a truthteller. Got that?
RMH -- Please come up with an actual point not just a wisecrack next time.

Ramashiva -- Apparently you think a bullshit remark like this can refute a cogent comment.

RMH -- If I had seen a cogent comment, maybe I'd understand what you mean.

Ramashiva -- You did see one, but you are such a dumb motherfucker that you wouldn't know a cogent comment if one bit you on the ass. Let's look at your reply to Bryan Kimmes -- "Please come up with an actual point not just a wisecrack next time."

Do you understand that is a juvenile, sophomoric remark which indicates you have no reply to Bryan, but you think you can just dismiss his cogent comment with rhetorical handwaving? At the present time, you are way out of your depth in terms of the political debates which rage on RGP all the time. I suggest you review some RGP off-topic debating history before jumping into debates where you will be cut up into little pieces by veteran debaters on both sides of the political spectrum.
Irish Mike -- Apparently they made an exception to the "give them a chance to convert before we kill them" rule regarding the Americans in the World Trade Center.

Kimmes -- Apparently, the United States government made an exception in defending the country after Osamas declaration of WAR, and his previous attack on the WTC.

RMH -- I'm pretty sure Mike, as well as myself, or anybody else who doesn't hate this country blames Clinton for his inaction in all things terrorist.
Ramashiva -- I am pretty sure you are a complete idiot or a mindless Clinton basher who willfully lies about the greatest President of the last sixty years. The lie that Clinton took no effective action against Islamofascists has been definitively debunked by Urban Legends, commonly called Snopes.
RMH -- So how many felonies does a President have to commit to get on your bad side?

Ramashiva -- Go fuck yourself, asshole. Clinton lied about an extramarital blowjob. 99% of married American men would do exactly the same thing. He lied in a deposition in the Paula Jones sexual harassment trial. The judge in that trial later ruled that the question about Monica Lewinsky should never have been asked in the first place. Please explain what possible relevance a blowjob by Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office has to allegations that Clinton dropped his pants in a motel room years before Clinton became President.

Clinton's lie was about his private life and had nothing to do with his duties or functioning as President. The Republican-controlled Supreme Court was way out of line in ruling that a sitting President could be sued for actions he took before becoming President. Think about it. Paula Jones was trailer trash whom the Republican dirty tricksters dug up in a desperate attempt to get something, anything on Clinton. For reasons I will never understand, the Republican right-wing hated Clinton with a passion. They spent eight years in an unsuccessful attempt to bring him down. This makes no sense. Clinton actually did what Republican Presidents and Presidential candidates had been promising for years --

He balanced the budget and actually started paying down the National Debt.

He managed to push through a long overdue welfare reform. To do so, he had to shove welfare reform down the thoats of members of Congress in his own party.

He finally got the NAFTA free trade agreement passed. Again, over the strenuous objections of many members of his own party.

He actually reduced the size of the Federal Government.

What is there not to like about the man? Do you seriously maintain that lying about a blowjob negates all these accomplishments???

Here, educate yourself and stop lying --

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/clinton.htm

Claim: The Clinton administration failed to track down the perpetrators of several terrorist attacks against Americans.

Status: False.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2001]
After the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, which killed six and injured1,000, President Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunteddown and punished.After the 1995 bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed five US militarypersonnel, President Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunteddown and punished.After the 1996 al-Khobar towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 andinjured 200 US military personnel, President Clinton promised that thoseresponsible would be hunted down and punished.After the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Africa, which killed 257 andinjured 5,000, President Clinton promised that those responsible would behunted down and punished.After the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 and injured three USsailors, President Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunteddown and punished.Maybe if Mr Clinton had kept his promise, an estimated 7,000 more peoplewould be alive today.Origins: In chronological order:On 26 February 1993, a car loaded with 1,200 pounds of explosives blew up ina parking garage under the World Trade Center, killing six people andinjuring about a thousand others. The blast did not, as its plannersintended, bring down the towers - that was finally accomplished by flyingtwo hijacked airliners into the twin towers on the morning of 11 September2001.Four followers of the Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman were captured,convicted of the World Trade Center bombing in March 1994, and sentenced to240 years in prison each. The purported mastermind of the plot, Ramzi AhmedYousef, was captured in 1995, convicted of the bombing in November 1997, andalso sentenced to 240 years in prison. One additional suspect fled the U.S.and is believed to be living in Baghdad.On 13 November 1995, a bomb was set off in a van parked in front of anAmerican-run military training center in the Saudi Arabian capital ofRiyadh, killing five Americans and two Indians. Saudi Arabian authoritiesarrested four Saudi nationals whom they claim confessed to the bombings, butU.S. officials were denied permission to see or question the suspects beforethey were convicted and beheaded in May 1996.

RMH -- What does Clinton have to do with this?

Ramashiva -- Who said it did, you fucking moron??? You are the most pathetic debater I have ever seen. Snopes is simply providing the historical background for the various bogus attempts to paint Clinton as soft on terrorism. Since you are so clueless, I doubt you know anything at all about Snopes. You should. Practically everything you believe is a lie. You can find the debunking of most of the lies you believe in on Snopes. Snopes is strictly non-partisan. Snopes is acknowledged by both the left and the right as a definitive source for settling arguments. If Snopes says it is so, you had better believe it is so.

One exception to this will totally blow your little right-wing mind. At one time, Snopes debunked what Michael Moore said in Fahrenheit 9/11 about the plane full of Bin Ladens and other Saudis leaving the country in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. When Moore rammed the facts down Snopes' throat, Snopes was forced to issue an apology to Moore and correct the record.

Of course you, like all right-wing assholes, claim Michael Moore is a liar. If you think Moore is a liar, then you are full of shit and do not know what you are talking about. Michael Moore is a truthteller. Got that? A truthteller. Yes, Moore is willing to use selective editing and quoting out of context to create false and misleading impressions. That doesn't make him a liar. It makes him a brilliant propagandist. Propaganda is not lies. Effective propaganda must be based on the truth to be credible. Propaganda is simply the selective use of facts and arguments to present a convincing case for a particular position. That is exactly what every columnist and editorial writer in the country does. It's what I do on RGP. That's why I say I am from the Department of Agitation, Propaganda, and Demagoguery. I am upfront about what I do. I do not claim to present a complete and balanced picture on the issues which I discuss. Why should I? I am a partisan liberal Democrat. I present my strongest facts and arguments to bolster my case and justify my conclusions. If someone wants to argue with me, they need to come up with their own facts and arguments to refute my conclusions. I am not going to hand my debating opponents ammunition with which to shoot me.

Back to Michael Moore. Yes, he does sometimes present information which is actually false. No one is perfect. Everyone, including me, sometimes gets their facts wrong. I make every effort to make sure I have got my facts straight, but I sometimes fuck up. When someone points out one of my factual fuckups, I immediately thank them for the correction. I do not try to obfuscate the issue with bullshit debating techniques to try to claim that what I said was actually correct. Nor do I just ignore people who correct my factual errors. Most of the people on your side of the political spectrum simply refuse to admit when they are wrong. Pickle and Mo Ron Charles are classic examples of this intellectual dishonesty.

Seriously, man, Michael Moore made every effort to tell the truth in Fahrenheit 9/11. He had what he thought was a reliable source for every statement he made in the movie. If you doubt that, here is a link to Moore's sources for every statement made in the movie --

http://www.michaelmoore.com/books-films/f911reader/index.php?id=16

Notice there are six pages of links and sources. Six pages. Michael Moore didn't make anything up in Fahrenheit 9/11. He had what he thought were reliable sources for everything he said. In a few cases, he didn't get his facts straight. Big fucking deal. That happens to everyone.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is the most exhaustively researched and documented documentary movie in history. The Nazis among us are simply lying when they claim that Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a documentary. It is the quintessence of a documentary film.
On 25 June 1996, a booby-trapped truck loaded with 5,000 pounds ofexplosives was exploded outside the Khobar Towers apartment complex whichhoused United States military personnel in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killingnineteen Americans and wounding about three hundred others. Once again, theU.S. investigation was hampered by the refusal of Saudi officials to allowthe FBI to question suspects.
On 21 June 2001, just before the American statute of limitations would haveexpired, a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicted thirteenSaudis and an unidentified Lebanese chemist for the Khobar Towers bombing.The suspects remain in Saudi custody, beyond the reach of the Americanjustice system. (Saudi Arabia has no extradition treaty with the U.S.)

RMH -- bHe put a lot of pressure on them, no doubt.

Ramashiva --Look, asshole. Your comments are extremely weak. Snopes is simply documenting the factual background, not making a partisan argument in defense of Clinton. So far, your comments are weak and foolish.
On 7 August 1998, powerful car bombs exploded minutes apart outside theUnited States embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,killing 224 people and wounding about 5,000 others. Four participants withties to Osama bin Laden were captured, convicted in U.S. federal court, andsentenced to life in prison without parole in October 2001. Fourteen othersuspects indicted in the case remain at large, and three more are fightingextradition in London.
On 12 October 2000, two suicide bombers detonated an explosives-laden skiffnext to the USS Cole while it was refueling in Aden, Yemen, blasting a holein the ship that killed 17 sailors and injured 37 others. No suspects haveyet been arrested or indicted. The investigation has been hampered by therefusal of Yemini officials to allow FBI agents access to Yemeni nationalsand other suspects in custody in Yemen.
(The USS Cole bombing occurred one month before the 2000 presidentialelection, so even under the best of circumstances it was unlikely that theinvestigation could have been completed before the end of PresidentClinton's term of office three months later.)
In August 1998, President Clinton ordered missile strikes against targets inAfghanistan in an effort to hit Osama bin Laden, who had been linked to theembassy bombings in Africa (and was later connected to the attack on the USSCole). The missiles reportedly missed bin Laden by a few hours, and Clintonwas widely criticized by many who claimed he had ordered the strikesprimarily to draw attention away from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. As JohnF. Harris wrote in The Washington Post:
In August 1998, when [Clinton] ordered missile strikes in an effort to killOsama bin Laden, there was widespread speculation - from such people as Sen.Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) - that he was acting precipitously to draw attentionaway from the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, then at full boil. Some said hewas mistaken for personalizing the terrorism struggle so much around binLaden. And when he ordered the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front ofthe White House after domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City, some Republicansaccused him of hysteria.
. . . the federal budget on anti-terror activities tripled during Clinton'swatch, to about $6.7 billion. After the effort to kill bin Laden withmissiles in August 1998 failed - he had apparently left a training camp inAfghanistan a few hours earlier - recent news reports have detailed numerousother instances, as late as December 2000, when Clinton was on the verge ofunleashing the military again. In each case, the White House chose not toact because of uncertainty that intelligence was good enough to find binLaden, and concern that a failed attack would only enhance his stature inthe Arab world.
. . . people maintain Clinton should have adapted Bush's policy promising that regimes that harbor terrorism will be treated as severely as terroriststhemselves, and threatening to evict the Taliban from power in Afghanistanunless leaders meet his demands to produce bin Laden and associates. ButClinton aides said such a policy - potentially involving a full-scale war incentral Asia - was not plausible before politics the world over becametransformed by one of history's most lethal acts of terrorism.

RMH -- Why not? People have to die before we'll say you can't harbor terrorists? Bullshit.

Ramashiva -- No, what you are saying is bullshit. What you are saying shows that you are completely ignorant of history and the way the world actually works. The invasion of Afghanistan was only feasible because Pakistan was willing to cooperate with us in removing the Taliban in the aftermath of 9/11. Prior to 9/11, Pakistan was a strong supporter of the Taliban. In fact, the Taliban was basically a production of the Pakistan military and intelligence services. You seriously think we could have bullied Pakistan into supporting the overthrow of the Taliban prior to 9/11???

If you seriously think the Pakistanis would not have told us to go fuck ourselves prior to 9/11, then you are a total idiot. I shouldn't be wasting my time on you, since in that case, you would be nothing but a completely brainwashed Nazi. I still have hope for you, since you are a Marine and a combat veteran. Please do not disappoint a fellow Marine.Clinton's former national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger . . . saidthere [was] little prospect . . . that Pakistan would have helped the UnitedStates wage war against bin Laden or the Taliban in 1998, even after suchoutrages as the bombing of U.S. embassies overseas.Update: In January 2004 a version of the 2001 e-mail with "BUSH COVERED IT!" inserted after each entry began to be circulated on the Internet. Must be an election year.Last updated: 27 January 2004
_________________________________________
RMH -- What's your point?

You're trying to counter the point that Islam is not a religion of peace by mentioning the previous terrorist attacks conducted by Muslims. Genius. You must have voted for Hillary.

Ramashiva -- If she does run for President, she will be far and away the best qualified candidate to run for President since Adlai Stevenson.

RMH -- Wow, I can't say anything to that, except that I'm glad most Dems are too lazy to vote.

Ramashiva -- You are just a braindead Nazi who hates Hillary the same way you hate Bill Clinton. The woman is extremely intelligent. She is extremely well-educated. She is extremely competent and determined to achieve her goals. These are all qualitities you want in a President. Notice George Bush is the exact opposite of Hillary --

George Bush is easily the dumbest motherfucker ever to be President. If he didn't have rich connected parents, he would have wound up a degenerate alcoholic bum snorting coke when he could afford it.

Despite holding two prestigeous degrees, George Bush is profoundly uneducated. He basically knows nothing except what his handlers tell him. Again, there are hundreds of examples of Bush showing his complete ignorance of common knowledge facts. Yet you probably think the Smirking Chimp is a great President. If you think that, you are beyond clueless.

You think George Bush is competent??? Don't make me laugh. He is so fucked up that he couldn't even complete his military obligation, and met the criteria for a deserter, but his father's influence with the Texas Air National Guard resulted in a coverup and the sanitizing of Bush's service record. If you seriously think George Bush was not a deserter, here is irrefutable proof from the parts of his service record which did not get sanitized --

http://www.glcq.com/bush_at_arpc1.htm

http://www.glcq.com/

No doubt your response will be that this is just more liberal propaganda. This is not liberal propaganda, asshole. Everything in these links is directly from the service records of George W. Bush, Deserter.

Besides being a deserter, Bush also fucked up every business opportunity his father's rich friends handed him on a golden platter, with the exception of his being given a share of the Texas Rangers worth $10 million simply for the use of the Bush family name. His Presidency is an unmitigated failure, and the evidence of his incompetency is overwhelming. If you stopped listening to the lies of the right-wing noise machine, you would already know this.
Irish Mike -- It's amazing to me that many Americans still delude themselves with the myth that islam is a religion of peace.

Kimmes -- It's amazing to me that anyone still deludes themselves with the myth of religion.

RMH -- What do your religious views have to do with Mike's post about Islam NOT being a religion of peace? Its of little consequence whether or not you believe in anything. Although you do strike me as one of those atheists who are atheists merely to be cool or the elitist attitude. Thats why you say condescending one liners like the one above. Either way, IT DOESN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH MIKE'S POINT!

Irish Mike -- They refuse to believe that islam makes no distinction between women & children and military targets.

Kimmes -- No women or children have died in Iraq. Also, no women or children were killed in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

RMH -- There probably have been some in Iraq, of course.

Ramashiva -- PROBABLY??? You are a submoron. Something on the order of 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the Iraq War. Obviously, many of these were women and children.

RMH -- Collateral damage is definitely the same thing as targeting them, right?

Ramashiva -- Collateral damage, my ass. That is the favorite excuse of war criminals and their sycophants. Listen genius, the U.S. military routinely dropped 500-pound bombs on residential neighborhoods in Fallujah. Since such actions will forseeably kill innocent civilians, such actions constitute the war crime of Collective Punishment. I look forward to the war crimes trials of Bush, Cheney, and Rice.

RMH -- From what I've seen of Fallujah, there's not a lot of innocent civilians there.

Ramashiva -- Again, go fuck yourself. You are an unmitigated Nazi asshole. Before the U.S. military levelled Fallujah, there were about 400,000 people living there. Do you seriously think all or even most of them were terrorists or members of the insurgency??? Sure, most of them were supporters and sympathizers of the insurgency. So fucking what? Their country had been invaded and occupied by an infidel military force. They were perfectly within their rights and on solid moral ground in opposing the U.S. military, even if they were opposing the U.S. military by shooting back.

You just don't get that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was profoundly immoral. Resistance to this illegal invasion and occupation of their country is perfectly moral and perfectly acceptable. The U.S. military in Iraq is fighting on the side of evil. Got that? If you fought in Iraq, then you were part of the forces of evil. Either you were duped into thinking that the U.S. cause in Iraq was moral and right, or you are just an evil person who thinks it is perfectly acceptable to invade and occupy another country, indiscriminately kill its citizens, torture its citizens in its prisons, and generally behave just as badly as Saddam. Most of the justifications of U.S. atrocities and crimes amount to --

"We are not as bad as Saddam!" Is that the moral standard to which you think the United States of America should be held? Seriously. Is that what you think?

RMH -- Dumbass.

Ramashiva -- Talking to yourself now?

RMH -- I also think its a fantastic argument to bring up something that the United States did before most of us were even born.

Ramashiva -- It is a perfectly legitimate point. All you flag waving, patriotic song singing Nazis who think the USA is pure and innocent need to look at the U.S. war crimes during WW II. The firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, as well as the nuclear blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are clear, unambiguous war crimes, now defined by the Geneva Conventions as Collective Punishment.

RMH -- Absolutely, there were atrocities. Internment camps was one you failed to mention as well. So what?

Ramashiva -- Do I always have to explain the obvious to the obtuse? Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick. Let's go back to Bryan Kimmes post to which you replied.

You completely missed the point of his post. Not surprising, since you are one of the dumbest motherfuckers I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. His post was a satire, numbnuts. You kept making the totally irrelevant point that what Bryan said didn't refute what your fellow Nazi, Irish Mike said. He wasn't trying to refute anything Irish Mike said. He was making fun of Irish Mike and making the point that people in glass houses shouldn't walk around naked. I hope you are not so dense that you cannot realize the previous sentence is my feeble attempt at humor. Obviously I meant people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Now, let's look at Bryan's post --

Irish Mike -- They refuse to believe that islam makes no distinction between women & children and military targets.

Kimmes -- No women or children have died in Iraq. Also, no women or children were killed in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Get the fucking point now, genius??? Irish Mike is criticizing the Islamofascists because they indiscriminately kill women and children in their terrorist attacks. Agreed. Indiscriminately killing innocent civilians, especially women and children, is always deplorable and always a war crime. Bryan's point was that the USA was equally guilty of such indiscriminate killing, both in World War II, and also in the Iraq War.

Have I succeeded in explaining the obvious to the obtuse??? Your reply to Bryan immediately below shows that Bryan's point went completely over your head. Did you hear a whooshing sound when you read Bryan's post? Again, I have to tell you, you are way out of your depth in trying to get involved in the RGP political debates. How can you debate someone when you don't even understand what your opponent is saying?

The best course right now for you would be to lurk and just read what others are saying in the political debates. You should also start getting both sides of the story by reading what liberals are saying in their weblogs. I am not saying that we liberals have the whole truth, but we can certainly prove to you that most everything you believe is a lie. Are you man enough to accept that possibility? That you have been lied to by the right-wing noise machine? I gave you a list of the most prominent liberal blogs in your request for blog recommendations from some of your fellow Nazis. If you are actually a seeker of truth and not a brainwashed Nazi, you will listen to both sides of every issue before forming an opinion. I read conservative blogs and news sources all the time. I want to make sure I am getting both sides of the story. You should also.

The blogs --

http://www.dailykos.com

http://atrios.blogspot.com

http://www.firedoglake.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

http://www.juancole.com

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com

http://www.warandpiece.com

RMH -- What's your point? That Islam is a religion of peace because the US dropped an A-bomb on civilians sixty years ago?

Ramashiva -- Is this your concept of argumentation? To completely misrepresent your opponent's argument? Apparently all you have got is strawman argumentation.

RMH -- You can't stay on topic. Are you a Kennedy or something?

Ramashiva -- And what would be wrong with that??? The Kennedys are political royalty. Deal with it.

RMH -- Yeah, they're great. I wish I could get away with DUIs and murder.

Ramashiva -- Again, fuck you asshole. You really are an asshole. Who got away with a DUI? George Bush, that's who. He managed to conceal his DUI arrest and conviction until just days before the 2000 Presidential Election. Look up how many DUI convictions Dick Cheney has. The answer will blow your mind. As far as Teddy and Chappaquidick (spelling?) is concerned, it was a tragic accident and Teddy handled the incident in a very irresponsible way. No question about that. To call it murder is nonsense. That suggests that Teddy deliberately drove off the bridge to kill Mary Jo Kopecne. Is that what you believe??? That Teddy committed a deliberate act of murder? Just how much bullshit from the right-wing noise machine have you swallowed???

RMH -- Royalty indeed.

Yes, Royalty indeed, you Nazi pig. I notice you didn't mention Teddy's assassinated brothers, John and Robert. Would you also like to trash the memory of these two great Americans with some of your Nazi sleaze? I suppose you will trash them for fucking Marilyn Monroe. Tell me you wouldn't fuck Marilyn's brains out if you ever got the chance. Not that you would ever even get the chance to smell the pussy of a woman as beautiful as Marilyn Monroe.

Listen, shit for brains. The Kennedys were all horny studs, as is Bill Clinton. Do you understand that these powerful masculine men were continuously beseiged by beautiful women who wanted to fuck them? You want to criticize the Kennedys and Clinton because they got all the pussy they could get, whenever they could get it? What kind of man are you, anyway? Contrast the Kennedys and Clinton with both President Bushs, Reagan, Ford, Nixon, etc. Do you seriously think any of these sexually repressed Republican Presidents ever got any strange stuff? Do you? Let's face it. Democratic Presidents are almost always masculine studs. Republican Presidents are almost always sexually inadequate wimps. Enough said.
Irish Mike -- They do not want to believe that islam gives infidels (which is any non-muslim) only two choices: convert to islam or be killed.

Kimmes -- They do not want to believe that Christians killed hundreds of thousands, only two choices: convert to Christianity or be killed.

RMH -- Wow, now you're going even further back.

Ramashiva -- What is wrong with going back in history??? To paraphrase Santayana -- Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

RMH -- How does this have anything to do with what we're talking about? Are you talking about the Crusades or what? Do you actually believe that's why we attack people today? Clarify.

Ramashiva -- You fucking moron, the Roman Catholic Church has killed 100,000,000 people for the crime of disagreeing with Catholic Dogma. Did I mention that the Roman Catholic Priesthood has, for centuries, operated an international ring of pedophiles and child molesters?

RMH -- They operated a ring eh? Do you have evidence or do you just enjoy saying sensationalist things?

Ramashiva --The fucking evidence has been plastered all over the news for twenty years. Do you live in a cave??? Yes. The Roman Catholic Priesthood is an organized international conspiracy of pedophiles and child molesters. For centuries, the official policy of the Catholic Church regarding pedophile priests has been to cover up for their child molesting priests. This has been the official policy of the Catholic Church, passed down the chain of command from the Pope to the Cardinals to the Archbishops to the Bishops. No police are ever called. Listen, when a Priest molests a child, that is a serious felony and the Priest should be immediately defrocked and turned over the cops.

Instead, what has been the official policy of the Catholic Church? The pedophile Priest is sent for rehabilitation. There is a retreat in New Mexico devoted to the rehabilitation of pedophile Priests. The name of the retreat is Spirit of the Paraclete. Following the rehabilitation, the pedophile Priest is sent to a new parish, and the Bishop of that Parish is not even informed that he has been sent a pedophile Priest.

Do you still think I am exaggerating when I say the Roman Catholic Priesthood is an organized conspiracy of pedophiles and child molesters? I am not saying every Catholic Priest is a pedophile. What I am saying is that the Roman Catholic Hierarchy has provided for centuries a safe protective environment for Priests who are pedophiles and child molesters. That is a conspiracy in my book.
Ramashiva -- Anyone who condemns Islamofascism, without also condemning the excesses of the Catholic Church, has a huge blind spot.

RMH -- You're right. I would condemn the Church for much of what it did hundreds of years ago,

Ramashiva -- The fact that the murder of 100,000,000 true Christians occurred centuries ago is irrelevant. You can never wash the blood of 100,000,000 innocents off your hands. For the last 2000 years, the Catholic Church has been the most evil institution on the face of the earth. They are an apostate Church, teaching pagan doctrines as Christian doctrines. I have written extensively about the evils and apostasy of the Catholic Church. Just use Google Groups with search keys ramashiva Catholic Church. All will be revealed.

The Roman Catholic Church is not murdering people now, only because they do not have the political power to do so. Many of their policies, such as opposition to abortion, amount to murder, since this policy is a primary reason for overpopulation and poverty in many third world Catholic countries.

RMH -- as I condemn Islamofascism for what it does today.

Ramashiva -- Listen. In his wildest dreams, Osama bin Laden never has and never will commit even a fraction of 1% of the evil committed by the Roman Catholic Church over the centuries. The Catholic Church is literally the Church of Satan. Read some church history. I am not exaggerating at all.
Irish Mike -- The blame America first crowd is so busy bashing America that they deny that this is a fundamental tenet of islam - not just of radical islamofascists.

Ramashiva -- We do not blame America first. We accurately point out that events do not happen in a vacuum. Actions have consequences. The proximate causes for the 9/11 attacks were the presence of American troops in Muslim countries, especially Saudi Arabia, and U.S. support for Israel.

The root cause of the 9/11 attacks are people who drive around in 10-mpg SUVs, sporting bumper stickers like "These colors don't run" and "United We Stand".

RMH -- Sure it is. It has nothing to do with terrorists going unpunished.

Ramashiva -- You are so fucking dense. Exactly what lack of punishment of which terrorists resulted in 9/11? Are we back to the nonsense of Clinton being soft on terrorism? That is a pure lie from the right-wing noise machine. I already gave you the Snopes link debunking the myth that Clinton was soft on terrorism. Are you going to admit it when you are shown to be wrong about something, or are you just going to keep repeating your Nazi lies?

The people who drive 10-mpg SUVs are the ultimate cause of 9/11. If everyone drove a car which gets 40 mpg like I do, and like I have done for the last 40 years, there would be a great reduction in our total demand for oil. Sufficient reduction that we would not have become so dependent on Middle East Oil like we have increasingly become over the last 40 years.

Listen. If we didn't need Middle Eastern Oil, do you seriously think we would need to station troops in Saudi Arabia to protect our oil supply??? If you knew anything at all about what caused 9/11, which you obviously don't, you would know that Osama's primary beef with us, which he upbraided us about for many years before 9/11, was the presence of infidel troops in the Land of the Two Mosques, i.e., Saudi Arabia.

If we did not need Middle Eastern Oil, we would not give a fuck what the Sand Niggers were doing, or what was happening in their Godforsaken countries. Get real.

Kimmes -- The blame America first crowd is growing rather large. Apparently 50+ years of self-serving dominance over the Middle East has had an effect.

RMH -- Nice non-sequitor to save yourself from having to actually say something meaningful.

Ramashiva -- He said something meaningful. You have not. Nor have any of your comments shown even a glimmer of intelligence.

RMH -- Nonetheless, I wouldn't expect any less of you at this point.

Irish Mike -- So, fuck you very much but I decline your offer to convert to islam.

Kimmes -- I also decline.

RMH -- First intelligent thing you've said this post. Your answer surprises me though.

Ramashiva -- It surprises you that he doesn't want to convert to Islam??? Believe it or not, it is a complete myth that liberals are supporters or sycophants of Islamofascism.

RMH -- I believe you're providing a good amount of evidence to the contrary.

Ramashiva -- I believe you are an unrepentant Nazi asshole. Just because I disagree with the warmongering policies of the Bush Crime Family does not mean that I support Islamofascism in any way. I have made it perfectly clear repeatedly that I condemn Islamofascism.

One of the most disgusting lies you Nazis tell is that liberals support terrorism, are soft on terrorism, or are traitors. Are you aware that this disgusting technique has been used by American Nazis for 60 years? Please see my post "OT: Stabbed in the back!" for details --

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.gambling.poker/msg/30f68491328ac891

Here. I will copy the entire post for you, since you are probably too dumb to click on a URL --

Here is a fantastic essay by Kevin Baker in Harpers, which puts in perspective the current attempts by Bush, Cheney, Rove, and other right-wing warmongers to blame liberals and war critics for the failures of the Bush Crime Family in Iraq. If the Iraq War winds up being a total disaster (as if it weren't already a total disaster), we will hear a huge hue and cry from the right that the liberals and war critics are to blame.
Of course, we have seen this all before. We lost the Viet Nam War because Jane Fonda and John Kerry went to Hanoi. If the American military had been allowed to do its job, we would have kicked Vietnamese ass.
Baker does a great job of tracing the origin of the modern stabbed in the back myth to Wagner's Gotterdammerung. He shows how the Nazis embraced this myth to explain the German defeat in World War I, and how the Republican Party has taken a page right out of the Nazi playbook since World War II by blaming all American foreign policy failures on treasonous betrayals by Democrats and liberals.
This essay should be required reading for all right-wing nutcases. You guys are all complete historical illiterates, and what history you do know is a completely distorted narrative. Witness Paul G's recent assertion that Augusto Pinochet was a "good man" because Chile was under attack from communism, and Pinochet saved Chile from being transformed into a totalitarian communist dictatorship. Never mind that Allende was democratically elected in one of the few stable democracies in Latin America. Never mind that, upon assuming power, Pinochet dissolved parliament and destroyed a viable democracy. Never mind that he ruthlessly persecuted members of all opposition parties, killing thousands of them. Never mind that he kidnapped and tortured thousands of people. Never mind that he disappeared thousands of others. Never mind that, like all corrupt dictators, left or right, he embezzled millions of dollars from the Chilean people. He was fighting communism, you see. That justifies any and all atrocities by Pinochet, no matter how horrific. He was a good man.
Anyway, read and learn, you right-wing nutcases. Find out how every time you call a liberal a traitor, a terrorist sycophant, or a communist, you are taking your strategy right out of the Nazi playbook.
http://harpers.org/StabbedInTheBack.html
Stabbed in the Back!
The past and future of a right-wing myth
Posted on Friday, July 14, 2006. Originally from June 2006. By Kevin Baker.
First drink, hero, from my horn: I spiced the draught well for you To waken your memory clearly So that the past shall not slip your mind!
-- Hagen to Siegfried, Die Götterdämmerung
Every state must have its enemies. Great powers must have especially monstrous foes. Above all, these foes must arise from within, for national pride does not admit that a great nation can be defeated by any outside force. That is why, though its origins are elsewhere, the stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders. Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat, always making sure to increase the number of internal enemies.
As the United States staggers past the third anniversary of its misadventure in Iraq, the dagger is already poised, the myth is already being perpetuated. To understand just how this strategy is likely to unfold-and why this time it may well fail-we must return to the birth of a legend.
* * *
The stab in the back first gained currency in Germany, as a means of explaining the nation's stunning defeat in World War I. It was Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg himself, the leading German hero of the war, who told the National Assembly, "As an English general has very truly said, the German army was 'stabbed in the back.'"
Like everything else associated with the stab-in-the-back myth, this claim was disingenuous. The "English general" in question was one Maj. Gen. Neill Malcolm, head of the British Military Mission in Berlin after the war, who put forward this suggestion merely to politely summarize how Field Marshal Erich von Ludendorff-the force behind Hindenburg-was characterizing the German army's alleged lack of support from its civilian government.
"Ludendorff's eyes lit up, and he leapt upon the phrase like a dog on a bone," wrote Hindenburg biographer John Wheeler-Bennett. "'Stabbed in the back?' he repeated. 'Yes, that's it exactly. We were stabbed in the back.'"
Ludendorff's enthusiasm was understandable, for, as he must have known, the phrase already had great resonance in Germany. The word dolchstoss-"dagger thrust"-had been popularized almost fifty years before in Wagner's Götterdämmerung. After swallowing a potion that causes him to reveal a shocking truth, the invincible Teutonic hero, Siegfried, is fatally stabbed in the back by Hagen, son of the archvillain, Alberich.
Wagner had himself lifted his plot device from a medieval German poem, which was inspired in turn by Old Norse folklore, and of course the same story can be found in a slew of ancient mythologies, whether it's the fate of the Greek heroes Achilles and Hercules or the story of Jesus and Judas. The hero cannot be defeated by fair means or outside forces but only by someone close to him, resorting to treachery.
The Siegfried legend in particular, though, has nuances that would mesh perfectly with right-wing mythology in the twentieth century, both in Germany and in the United States. At the end of Wagner's Ring Cycle, the downfall of the gods is followed by the rise of the Germanic people. The mythological hero has been transformed into the volk, just as heroic stature is granted to the modern state. Siegfried is killed just after revealing an unwelcome truth-much as the right, when pressed for evidence about its conspiracy theories, will often claim that these are hidden truths their enemies have a vested interest in concealing. Hagen, as a half-breed, an outsider posing as a friend, stands in for something worse yet-the assimilated Jew, able to betray the great warrior of the volk by posing as his boon companion.
It was an iconography easily transferable to Germany's new, postwar republic. Hitler himself would claim that while recuperating behind the lines from a leg wound, he found Jewish "slackers" dominating the war-production bureaucracy and that "the Jew robbed the whole nation and pressed it beneath his domination." The rape imagery is revolting but vivid; Hitler was already attuned to the zeitgeist of his adopted country. Even before the war had been decided, a soldier in his company recalled how Corporal Hitler would "leap up and, running about excitedly, say that in spite of our big guns, victory would be denied us, for the invisible foes of the German people were a greater danger than the biggest cannon of the enemy."
It didn't matter that Field Marshal Ludendorff had in fact been the virtual dictator of Germany from August of 1916 on, or that the empire's civilian leaders had been stunned by his announcement, in September of 1918, that his last, murderous offensives on the western front had failed, and that they must immediately sue for peace. The suddenness of Germany's defeat only supported the idea that some sort of treason must have been involved. From this point on, all blame would redound upon "the November criminals," the scheming politicians, reds, and above all, Jews.
Yet it was necessary, for the purging that the Nazis had in mind, to believe that the national degeneration went even further. Jerry Lembcke, in his brilliant work, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam, writes of how the Nazis fostered the dolchstosslegende in ways that eerily foreshadowed returning veteran mythologies in the United States. Hermann Göring, the most charismatic of the Nazi leaders after Hitler, liked to speak of how "very young boys, degenerate deserters, and prostitutes tore the insignia off our best front line soldiers and spat on their field gray uniforms." As Lembcke points out, any insignia ripping had actually been done by the mutinous soldiers and sailors who would launch a socialist uprising shortly after the war, tearing them off their own shoulders or those of their officers. Göring's instant revisionism both covered up this embarrassing reality and created a whole new class of villains who were-in his barely coded language-homosexuals, sexually threatening women, and other "deviants." All such individuals would be dealt with in the new, Nazi order.
* * *
The dolchstosslegende first came to the United States following not a war that had been lost but our own greatest triumph. Here, the motivating defeat was suffered not by the nation but by a faction. In the years immediately following World War II, the American right was facing oblivion. Domestically, the reforms of the New Deal had been largely embraced by the American people. The Roosevelt and Truman administrations-supported by many liberal Republicans-had led the nation successfully through the worst war in human history, and we had emerged as the most powerful nation on earth.
Franklin Roosevelt and his fellow liberal internationalists had sounded the first alarms about Hitler, but conservatives had stubbornly-even suicidally-maintained their isolationism right into the postwar era. Senator Robert Taft, "Mr. Republican," and the right's enduring presidential hope, had not only been a prominent member of the leading isolationist organization, America First, and opposed the nation's first peacetime draft in 1940, but also appeared to be as naive about the Soviet Union as he had been about the Axis powers. Like many on the right, he was much more concerned about Chiang Kai-shek's worm-eaten Nationalist regime in China than U.S. allies in Europe. "The whole Atlantic Pact, certainly the arming of Germany, is an incentive for Russia to enter the war before the army is built up," Taft warned. He was against any U.S. military presence in Europe even in 1951.
This sort of determined naiveté had Taft and his movement teetering on the brink of political irrelevance. They saved themselves by grabbing at an unlikely rope-America's very own dolchstosslegende, the myth of Yalta. No reasonable observer would have predicted in the immediate wake of the Yalta conference that it would become an enduring symbol of Democratic perfidy. Yalta was, in fact, originally considered the apogee of the Roosevelt Administration's accomplishments, ensuring that the hard-won peace at the end of World War II would not soon dissolve
into an even worse conflict, just as the botched peace of Versailles had led only to renewed hostilities in the years after World War I. The conference, which took place in the Soviet Crimea in February 1945, was the last time "the Big Three" of the war-Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin-would meet face-to-face. The U.S. negotiating team went with specific goals and was widely perceived at the time as having achieved them. Agreements were reached on the occupation of the soon-to-be-defeated German Reich, the liberation of those Eastern European countries occupied by or allied with Germany, the Soviet entrance into the war against Japan, and, most significantly in Roosevelt's eyes, on the structure of a workable, international body designed to keep world peace, the United Nations.
FDR's presentation of these agreements before a joint session of Congress that March met with almost universal acclaim. This was not surprising. Roosevelt, who had been at Versailles as a junior member of the Wilson Administration, was preoccupied with making sure that his vision for the postwar world did not founder on any partisan bickering with Congress. Before leaving for Yalta, he had briefed a group of leading senators from across the political spectrum on what he hoped to accomplish, and solicited their opinions and questions. The delegation he took with him to the Soviet Union was a bipartisan team of senior diplomats, advisers, and military men, and he continued to cultivate support from all quarters on his return to the United States. Such prominent Republican figures as Arthur Vandenberg, the once-isolationist senator from Michigan turned internationalist, and Thomas Dewey, Roosevelt's fierce opponent in the 1944 presidential race, expressed general support for the results of the Yalta conference. Taft and the right wing of the Republican Party were more skeptical, but offered no substantial criticisms.
Save for a few congressmen, newspaper publishers, and columnists on the extreme fringe of the right, this early Cold War consensus would survive until 1948. Then, Dewey's and the Republicans' stunning losses in the elections that fall, combined with a confluence of American setbacks abroad, served to revivify the right.
Not only did the Republicans lose a presidential election against a badly divided, national Democratic Party; they also lost the congressional majorities they had just managed to eke out in 1946, following fourteen years in the political wilderness. It now seemed clear that the Republicans would never return to power merely by supporting Democratic policies, or by promising to implement them more effectively, and the right wing gained traction within the party.
Meanwhile, the exposure of Alger Hiss as a Soviet agent followed, in relatively rapid succession, by the fall of Czechoslovakia's coalition government to a Soviet-backed coup, the Soviet attainment of an atomic bomb, and the victory of Mao's Communists over Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang regime in China, cast the entire policy of containment into doubt. Never mind that the right's own feckless or muddled proposals for fighting the Cold War would not have ameliorated any of these situations. The right swept them into the memory hole and offered a new answer to Americans bewildered by how suddenly their nation's global preeminence had been diminished: Yalta.
A growing chorus of right-wing voices now began to excoriate our wartime diplomacy. Their most powerful charge, one that would firmly establish the Yalta myth in the American political psyche, was the accusation that our delegation had given over Eastern Europe to the Soviets. According to "How We Won the War and Lost the Peace," an essay written for Life magazine shortly before the 1948 election by William Bullitt-a former diplomat who had been dismissed by Roosevelt for outing a gay rival in the State Department-FDR and his chief adviser, Harry Hopkins, were guilty of "wishful appeasement" of Stalin at Yalta, handing the peoples of Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Baltic states over to the Soviet dictator.
The right wing's dolchstosslegende was a small but fateful conspiracy, engineered through "secret diplomacy" at Yalta. Its linchpin was Hiss, a junior State Department aide at Yalta who was now described as a major architect of the pact. Hiss was a perfect villain for the right's purposes. He was not only a communist and a spy; he was also an effete Eastern intellectual right down to his name-and, by implication, possibly a homosexual. He had been publicly exposed by that relentlessly regular guy, Dick Nixon, as an unnatural, un-American element who had used his wiles to sway all of his superiors in the Crimea.
Just how he had accomplished this was never detailed, but it didn't matter; specificity is anathema to any myth. Bullitt and an equally flamboyant opportunist of the period, Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce, offered a more general explanation. The Democrats, Mrs. Luce had already charged, "will not, or dare not, tell us the commitments that were overtly or secretly made in moments of war's extermination by a mortally ill President, and perhaps mortally scared State Department advisers."
The idea of the "dying President" at Yalta was plausible to much of the public, who had seen photographs of Roosevelt looking suddenly, shockingly gaunt and exhausted throughout much of the last year of his life. To the right wing-which had conducted a whispering campaign against Roosevelt throughout his term in office, claiming that his real affliction was not polio but syphilis, and that he, his wife, and various advisers, including Hopkins, were "secret Jews" and Soviet agents-it all made perfect sense. To the many Americans who still loved Roosevelt and whose votes the Republicans needed, FDR himself could now become the Siegfried figure, a dying hero betrayed by the shady, unnatural Hiss.
All of this, of course, falls apart under the most cursory examination. Hiss was a "technician" at Yalta, relied upon mostly for his expertise regarding the planned United Nations, and-already suspected of espionage-he had played no policymaking role in a large, bipartisan delegation that included most of the nation's military and diplomatic leadership. Roosevelt was in severe physical decline and would die from a massive stroke some two months later, but his mind was still active and engaged. Chip Bohlen-who actually was at Yalta and who went on to become a leading Cold War statesman under both Republican and Democratic administrations-would echo many other observers in reporting that while Roosevelt's "physical state was certainly not up to normal, his mental and psychological state was certainly not affected. He was lethargic but when important moments arose, he was mentally sharp."
Far from handing over anything to anyone, Roosevelt had actually persuaded Stalin to sign onto a "Declaration on Liberated Europe" that affirmed "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live" and committed the Big Three "to the earliest possible establishment through free elections of governments responsive to the will of the people." More was not possible. The salient fact about Eastern Europe at the end of World War II was that the Red Army enjoyed an immense numerical advantage there. To dislodge it, the United States would have had to embark immediately upon another epic struggle, a vast new war for which the American people, already clamoring for demobilization, showed absolutely no enthusiasm. It is likely that the United States would have eventually prevailed in such a struggle, but only at a cost of American lives that would have dwarfed the total lost in World War II itself, and the further devastation of the very European countries we had sought to liberate.
As Bohlen told a Senate committee in 1953, "I believe that the map of Europe would look much the same if there had never been a Yalta conference at all." Why this should have been surprising, and how it possibly reflected a failure of American foreign policy, is a mystery in any rational analysis of the situation. But any such analysis could never be made by the heroic state. Instead, Roosevelt and the nation he represented had to have been betrayed. The previous, disastrous policies advocated by the Republican right-ignoring the growing Axis threat, then leaving Western Europe defenseless while plunging into war in China-could be safely forgotten.
* * *
Republicans now began an almost continuous campaign against alleged Democratic conspiracies. Following Chiang's defeat, conservatives in Congress demanded to know "Who lost China?" and Robert Taft, discarding his much vaunted integrity, egged on Joe McCarthy's witch-hunt against the Truman Administration, urging him to "keep talking and if one case doesn't work out, he should proceed with another." Yet it would take another hot war-and another expansion of the dolchstosslegende-to permanently enthrone the idea of a vast, treasonous left-wing conspiracy in the American psyche.
The outbreak of hostilities in Korea in 1950 was disturbing enough, but the defeat of General Douglas MacArthur that winter by invading Chinese forces sent shock waves throughout the United States. More than anyone else, MacArthur had brought about his own defeat, launching his troops up the Korean peninsula in separate columns, divided by mountain ranges, ignoring both orders from the White House to halt and plentiful signs that a massive Chinese force had already infiltrated the Korean peninsula. But while his subordinates scrambled to rally their reeling men, MacArthur moved swiftly to salvage his military reputation and his hopes for the presidency.
What the general proposed was a massive escalation of the war. U.N. troops would not only "blockade the coast of China" and "destroy through naval gunfire and air bombardment China's industrial capacity to wage war" but would also "release existing restrictions upon the Formosan garrison" of Chiang Kai-shek, which might lead to counter-invasion against "vulnerable areas of the Chinese mainland." Above all, MacArthur urged that no fewer than thirty-four atomic bombs be dropped on what he characterized as "retardation targets" in Manchuria, including critical concentrations of troops and planes. Even this soon seemed insufficient. MacArthur later added that had he been permitted, he not only would have launched as many as fifty atomic bombs but also would have used "wagons, carts, trucks, and planes" to create "a belt of radioactive cobalt" that would neatly slice the Korean thumb from China. "For at least sixty years," he said, "there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the north."
MacArthur insisted the "only way to prevent World War III is to end the Korean conflict rapidly and decisively"-as if a massive, atomic attack upon the world's most populous nation would not, in itself, constitute World War III. When the Truman Administration rejected his proposals, the general announced that he was not being allowed to win-"An enormous handicap without precedent in military history." The U.N. had to "depart from its tolerant effort to contain the war to the area of Korea" and accept his strategy to "doom Red China," an opponent "of such exaggerated and vaunted military power."
MacArthur conveyed similar sentiments to his conservative allies in Congress, writing House Minority Leader Joseph Martin that he was only trying to "follow the conventional pattern of meeting force with maximum counter-force, as we have never failed to do in the past," and concluding: "There is no substitute for victory." Martin gleefully aired the great man's views in a speech in Brooklyn, thundering, "If we are not in Korea to win, then this Administration should be indicted for the murder of thousands of American boys." He added that "the same State Department crowd that cut off aid" to Chiang in 1946 now opposed invading China because this would show up their earlier mistakes. The only way to "save Europe and save Asia at the same time" was "to clear out the State Department from top to bottom." After Martin repeated MacArthur's views on the House floor, Truman finally removed the general from his command. But the move seemed only to confirm that something was very wrong.
The right seized the opportunity to renew-and expand-its charges of dolchstoss. Republican Senator William Jenner of Indiana bellowed from the floor of the Senate that "this country today is in the hands of a secret inner coterie which is directed by agents of the Soviet Union. We must cut this whole cancerous conspiracy out of our Government at once. Our own choice is to impeach President Truman and find out who is the secret invisible government which has so cleverly led our country down the road to destruction." Nixon, his new colleague, agreed in barely coded language, attacking "the whining, whimpering, groveling attitude of our diplomatic representatives who talk of America's fear rather than of America's strength and of America's courage." He claimed that "top administration officials have refused time and time again to recognize the existence of this fifth column" or "to take effective action to clear subversives out" of the government.
Douglas MacArthur now became the martyred Siegfried, stabbed in the back by weaklings at home who were for some reason afraid of victory. It was the fault of these "whimpering," "soft," "cowardly," "lavender" "appeasers," so unnatural they were willing to "murder" American boys to cover up their own misjudgments. Communist treachery and appeasement were blended seamlessly with an emerging, postwar sex panic.
An entire, seemingly plausible narrative of treason was now firmly established. The conspiracy of spies, or sexual deviants, or both, had now expanded beyond Alger Hiss to include pretty much the entire State Department and maybe the rest of the executive branch. Taft, launching his third run for the Republican nomination, offered to name MacArthur as his vice president, and the general, while still harboring hopes of winning the nomination himself, agreed on the condition that he would have a voice in foreign policy and be put in charge of national security.
In their desire for power, Republican centrists soon joined this right-wing chorus. John Foster Dulles, now Eisenhower's secretary-of-state designate, denounced the very strategy of containment that he had helped to formulate and promised to "roll back" Communism everywhere, including in Eastern Europe. Eisenhower himself refused to disown McCarthy, even after the senator had impugned the patriotism of his longtime friend and mentor, George Marshall.
The Republican platform that Ike ran on in the fall of 1952 was a freefall into fantasy, a fatal compact by party moderates with a right wing that would eventually push them into extinction. For the first time since the Civil War era, one major American political party charged another one with treason. Democrats were accused of having "shielded traitors to the Nation in high places" and creating "enemies abroad where we should have friends." Democrats were responsible for all "110,000 American casualties" in Korea, where they had "produced stalemates and ignominious bartering with our enemies" that "offer no hope of victory." Republicans promised to "repudiate all commitments contained in secret understandings such as those of Yalta which aid Communist enslavements."
United once more, Republicans brought this compilation of hysterical charges and bald-faced lies before the American people-who swallowed them willingly. Once in power, Eisenhower and Dulles immediately returned to managing the Democratic system of containment. Dulles met with MacArthur, listened respectfully to his plan to nuke Manchuria, allowed that it "could well succeed," then shelved it without another word. No "secret understandings" to "aid Communist enslavements" were repudiated because, of course, they did not exist. The idea of "rolling back" Communism from Eastern Europe was taken seriously solely by the Hungarian people, who launched a brave rebellion against their Soviet occupiers in 1956, only to find that Dulles and Eisenhower were willing to offer them nothing more than sympathy.
* * *
The right's initial blindness toward first the Axis and then the Soviet threat in Europe; the disastrous military campaign waged by one of its icons; its feckless and even apocalyptic ideas for recouping its previous mistakes-all had been erased in much of the public consciousness by the stab in the back, a vote-winning tale of deviancy, subversion, and intentional defeat radiating from Yalta all the way to Korea. The Vietnam War, however, would call for yet another expansion of the dolchstosslegende.
Vietnam was the sort of war Republicans had been clamoring to fight for two decades. A liberal administration had started it, with misplaced bravado, but it had been egged on-even dared-to take the plunge into full-scale war by prevailing right-wing dogma. When the war soured, Republicans first tried to blame not the failed premise of the domino theory or the flawed diplomacy of the Kennedy Administration or the near-universal American failure to recognize Vietnam's boundless desire for self-determination-no, it was the old fallbacks of appeasement, defeatism, and treachery in high places.
Once again, we were told that American troops were not being "allowed" to win, if they could not mine Haiphong harbor, or flatten Hanoi, or reduce all of North Vietnam to a parking lot. Yet Vietnam was a war with no real defeats on the ground. U.S. troops won every battle of any significance and inflicted exponentially greater casualties on the enemy than they suffered themselves. Even the great debacle of the war, the 1968 Tet offensive, ended with an overwhelming American military victory and the Viet Cong permanently expunged as an effective fighting force. It is difficult to claim betrayal when you do not lose a battle.
Worse yet, Republicans could not provide any meaningful alternative strategy. Nixon was able to take office in 1969 only by offering a "secret plan" to get the boys home from Vietnam, not by promising to hugely escalate the fighting or risk a wider conflict. Richard Nixon became the first Republican president since the turn of the century to take office while a major war still hung in the balance, and now all the fantasies began to fall away. More than 21,000 Americans were killed in Vietnam during Nixon's time in office, and there were no Democrats to blame it on.
The only political hope for the administration was to turn its gaze outward-to blame the people themselves, or at least a portion of them. Nixon, as historian Rick Perlstein has observed, "had a gift for looking beneath social surfaces to see and exploit subterranean anxieties," and he had been on hand at the creation of this game. Initially, the divisions he sought to exploit were much the same as those he had manipulated back in the 1940s, though they were now aimed at broad swaths of the general public-the children of the New Deal, as it were. The leading tactics included employment of the same sorts of code words so bluntly wielded twenty years before, along with a good deal more street muscle.
Over and over, antiwar protesters were called Communists, perverts, or simply "bums"-the last epithet from Nixon's own lips. The large percentage of college students in their ranks were depicted as spoiled, obnoxious, ungrateful children. Older, more established dissidents were ridiculed by Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew, in a series of William Safire?authored speeches, as "nattering nabobs of negativity," and, unforgettably, as "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals." These invectives were, of course, doubly disingenuous; it was Agnew and Safire who very much wanted such persons to be known by the damning label of "intellectual," and what the vice president was really calling them was fags.
All these bums and effetes might be un-American, but their disapproval still was sufficient to demoralize our fighting men in Vietnam and thereby put them in imminent peril. And on hand to take the torch from an increasingly beleaguered Nixon was a new Republican master at exploiting subterranean anxieties, Ronald Reagan. As early as 1969, Reagan was insisting that leaders of the massive Moratorium Days protests "lent comfort and aid" to the North Vietnamese, and that "some American will die tonight because of the activity in our streets."
The Nixon Administration now had its new Hagens. People who voiced their opposition to the war were traitors and even killers, responsible for the death of American servicemen, and as such almost any action taken against them could be justified. The Nixon White House even had its own blue-collar shock troops. Repeatedly, on suspiciously media-heavy occasions, construction workers appeared to break up antiwar demonstrations and beat up peaceful demonstrators. The effete protesters had been shown up by real working-class Americans-and their class allies in the police force eagerly closed ranks.
* * *
Neither Nixon, nor Agnew, nor the war would survive a second term. With the shameful, panicked helicopter evacuation of Saigon, U.S. prestige in the world dropped precipitously-but none of the other dominoes followed. Once again, by 1975, the American right should have found itself utterly discredited. A war that conservatives had fervently supported had ended in defeat, but with none of the consequences they had prophesied. Instead, the entire operating right-wing belief in "monolithic communism" was debunked in the wake of our evacuation from Saigon, as Vietnam attacked Cambodia, China invaded Vietnam, and the Soviet Union and China clashed along their border.
Yet the cultural division that Richard Nixon had fomented to try to salvage the war in Vietnam would take on a life of its own long after the war was over and Nixon had been driven from office in disgrace. It cleverly focused on the men who had fought the war, rather than the war itself. If Vietnam had been an unnecessary sacrifice, if world Communism could no longer be passed off as a credible threat to the United States, then the betrayal of our fighting men must become the issue.
Vietnam, for the right, would come to be defined mainly through a series of closely related, culturally explosive totems. The protesters and the counterculture would be reduced to the single person of Jane Fonda, embalmed forever on a clip of film, traipsing around a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun. The soldiers, meanwhile, were transformed into victims and martyrs. It became general knowledge that they had been savagely scorned and mocked upon their return to the United States; those returning through the San Francisco airport were especially liable to be spat upon by men and women protesting the war.
Of course, those who were able to return at all were the lucky ones. Soon after we had bugged out of Saigon, millions of Americans became convinced that American prisoners of war had been left behind in Vietnamese work camps, by a government that was too cowed or callous to insist upon their return. Numerous groups sprang up to demand their release, disseminating flags with a stark, black-and-white tableau of a prisoner's bowed head against the backdrop of a guard tower, a barbed-wire fence, and the legend: YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN POW*MIA.
It would do no good to point out that there is no objective evidence that veterans were ever spat upon by demonstrators or that POWs were ever left behind or that Jane Fonda's addle-headed mission to Hanoi did anything to undermine American forces. The stab-in-the-back myth is much more powerful than any of these facts, and it continues to grow more so as time passes. Just this past Christmas, one Faye Fiore wrote a feature for the Los Angeles Times about how returning Iraqi veterans are being showered with acts of good will by an adoring American public, "In contrast to the hostile stares that greeted many Vietnam veterans 40 years ago." The POW/MIA flags, with their black-and-white iconography of shame, now fly everywhere in the United States, just under the Stars and Stripes; federal law even mandates that on at least six days a year-Memorial Day, Flag Day, Armed Forces Day, Veterans Day, Independence Day, and one day during POW/MIA Week (the third week of September)-they must be flown over nearly every single U.S. government building. There has been nothing else like them in the history of this country, and they have no parallel anywhere else in the world-these peculiar little banners, attached like a disclaimer to our national flag, with their message of surrender and humiliation, perennially accusing our government of betrayal.
* * *
If the power of the stab-in-the-back narrative from Vietnam is beyond question, it still raises the question of why. Why should we wish to maintain a narrative of horrendous national betrayal, one in which our own democratically elected government, and a large portion of our fellow citizens, are guilty of horribly betraying our fighting men?
The answer, I think, lies in Richard Nixon's ability to expand the Siegfried myth from the halls of power out into the streets. Government conspiracies are still culpable, of course; ironically, it was Nixon's own administration that first "left behind" American POWs in North Vietnam. Yet this makes little difference to the American right, which never considered Nixon ideologically pure enough to be a member in good standing, and which has always made hay by railing against government, even now that they are it. What Nixon and a few of his contemporaries did for the right was to make culture war the permanent condition of American politics.
On domestic issues as well as ones of foreign policy, from Ronald Reagan's mythical "welfare queens" through George Wallace's "pointy-headed intellectuals"; from Lee Atwater's characterization of Democrats as anti-family, anti-life, anti-God, down through the open, deliberate attempts of Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove to constantly describe opponents in words that made them seem bizarre, deviant, and "out of the mainstream," the entire vernacular of American politics has been altered since Vietnam. Culture war has become the organizing principle of the right, unalterably convinced as it is that conservatives are an embattled majority, one that must stand ever vigilant against its unnatural enemies-from the "gay agenda," to the advocates of Darwinism, to the "war against Christmas" last year.
This has become such an ingrained part of the right wing's belief system that the Bush Administration has now become the first government in our nation's history to fight a major war without seeking any sort of national solidarity. Far from it. The whole purpose of the war in Iraq-and the "war on terrorism"-seems to have been to foment division and to win elections by forcing Americans to choose between starkly different visions of what their country should be. Again and again, Bush and his confederates have used the cover of national security to push through an uncompromising right-wing agenda. Ignoring the broad leeway already provided the federal government to fight terrorists and conduct domestic surveillance, the administration has gone out of its way to claim vast new powers to detain, spy on, and imprison its own citizens, and to abduct and even torture foreigners-a subject we shall return to. It has used the cover of the war to push through enormous tax cuts, attempt to dismantle the Social Security system, and alter the very social covenant of the nation. Incidents from the Terri Schiavo case to the teaching of "intelligent design" are periodically exploited to start new cultural battles.
Given this state of permanent culture war, it is not surprising that the Bush White House trotted out the stab-in-the-back myth when its Iraq project began to run out of steam early last summer. It was first given a spin, as usual, by the right's media shock troops, and directed at both Democratic and renegade Republican lawmakers who had dared to criticize either the strategic conduct of the war or our treatment of detainees. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page opined, "Where the terrorists are gaining ground is in Washington, D.C." and noted that General John Abizaid, of the U.S. Central Command, had said, "When my soldiers say to me and ask me the question whether or not they've got support from the American people or not, that worries me. And they're starting to do that."
Again, the link was made. Soldiers of the most powerful army in the history of the world would be actively endangered if they even wondered whether the folks at home were questioning their deployment. The right was looking for a target, and it got one when Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), appalled by an FBI report on the prisons for suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, compared them to those run by "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime-Pol Pot or others-that had no concern for human beings . . . "
The right's response was predictably swift and savage. The Power Line blogger Paul Mirengoff commented that the senator "slanders his own country. Normally that kind of slander is uttered only by revolutionaries seeking the violent overthrow of the government." Rush Limbaugh harrumphed that "Dick Durbin has just identified who the Democrats are in the year 2005, particularly when it comes to American national security and when it comes to the U.S. military. These are the same people that say they support the troops. This is how they do it, huh? They give aid and comfort to the enemy."
Yet for once, Rush was outdone. John Carlson, host of a Seattle talk show and Washington State's unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor in 2000, said of Durbin, "This man is simply a piece of excrement, a piece of waste that needs to be scraped off the sidewalk and eliminated." Bill O'Reilly of Fox News launched a preemptive attack on his few liberal counterparts, urging that the staff of Air America be jailed: "Dissent, fine; undermining, you're a traitor. Got it? So, all you clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send them over to the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they're undermining everything."
Once the Republican media had secured the ground and set the terms of debate, the party's representatives in Washington jumped into the fray. When Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi called the war "a grotesque mistake" that was "not making America safer," the as-yet-unindicted Tom DeLay retorted that Pelosi "owes our military and their families an apology for her reckless comments," and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt claimed that Pelosi's words had "emboldened" the enemy.
All of the crucial elements of the stab-in-the-back charge were now in place. Critics of the war were not simply questioning its strategy or its necessity, or upholding the best of American traditions by raising concerns over how enemy prisoners were being treated. Instead, they were aiding the enemy, and actively endangering our fighting men and women. They were traitors and "revolutionaries," individuals who were "conducting guerrilla warfare on American troops," and "excrement" who could now be safely incarcerated "immediately" or even "eliminated."
It remained only for the chief Republican strategist, Karl Rove, to appear before a conservative party fundraiser in Manhattan on June 22 and tie up a campaign that bore all of his usual earmarks.
"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Rove began, riffing on a proven theme from the 2004 presidential election, which sought to link Democrats not only with the terrorist attack on 9/11 but also with a generation of Republican assertions that liberals are "soft" on domestic crime. Rove then honed in on poor Dick Durbin's remarks: "Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year? Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."; (My italics.)
The conspiracy had expanded yet again. Not just Nancy Pelosi or Dick Durbin but all Democrats and all liberals were now firmly established as traitors, and it was not possible that they had made some honest gaffes; instead, their very motives were sinister.
When Rove's thunderous media offensive had finally subsided, however, a strange silence ensued. The popularity of his master, George W. Bush, continued to plunge in the opinion polls. Support for the war continued to plummet as well, and by July, Rove himself was thoroughly enmeshed in the Valerie Plame scandal, with all of the attendant implications about its manipulation of prewar intelligence. By November, Rove was forced to send out Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney themselves on a new "Strategy for Victory" campaign. Speaking on Veterans Day to an all-military audience at an army depot in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, Bush attacked Democrats who were saying they had been duped by the fraudulent intelligence the administration had used to secure their votes for war.
"These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will," Bush told the soldiers assembled for his photo op. "As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them."
Once again, criticism of the war in Iraq had been adroitly linked to criticism of the administration, and then to treason-something that would, somehow, magically empower the enemy and demoralize our own troops. Once again, unnatural enemies were striking at the heroic, Siegfried figures at the top of the administration, who struggled to get out their great truth that no intelligence had been manipulated and the Democrats were engaging in "revisionism."
Yet still, somehow, Bush's numbers continued to plunge. What went wrong? How could such an infallible Republican strategy, conducted with all of the right wing's vast media resources at his command, have failed so utterly? How was it that the story of the stab in the back had lost its power to hold us spellbound?
* * *
What has really robbed the conspiracy theories of their effectiveness is how the war in Iraq has been conducted. Bush and his advisers have sought to use the war not only to punish their enemies but also to reward their supporters, a bit of political juggling that led them to demand nothing from the American public as a whole. Those of us who are not actively fighting in Iraq, or who do not have close friends and family members who are doing so, have not been asked to sacrifice in any way. The richest among us have even been showered with tax cuts.
Yet in demanding so little, Bush has finally uncoupled the state from its heroic status. It is not a coincidence that modern nationalism dates from the advent of mass democracy-and mass citizen armies-that the American and French revolutions ushered in at the end of the eighteenth century. Bush's refusal to mobilize the nation for the war in Iraq has severed that immediate identification with our army's fortunes. Nor did it begin with the Bush Administration. The wartime tax cuts and the all-volunteer, wartime army are simply the latest manifestations of a trend that is now decades old and that has been promulgated through peace as well as war, by Democrats as well as Republicans. It cannot truly be a surprise that a society that has steadily dismantled or diminished the most basic access to health care, relief for the poor and the aged, and decent education; a society that has allowed the gap between its richest and poorest citizens to grow to unprecedented size; a society that has paid obeisance to the ideology of globalization to the point of giving away both its jobs and its debt to foreign nations, and which has just allowed one of its poorer cities to quietly drown, should choose to largely opt out of its own defense.
Anyone who doubts that this is exactly what we have done need only look at how little the war really engages most of us. It rarely draws more than a few seconds of coverage on the local television news, if that, and then only well into the broadcast, after a story on a murder, or a fire, or the latest weather predictions. Even the largest and angriest demonstrations against our occupation of Iraq have not approached the mobilizations against the war in Vietnam, but a close observer will notice that we also have yet to see any of the massive counterdemonstrations that were held in support of that war-or "in support of the troops." Such engagement on either side seems almost quaint now.
Who could possibly believe in a plot to lose this war? No one cares that much about it. We have, instead, reached a crossroads where the overwhelming right-wing desire to dissolve much of the old social compact that held together the modern nation-state is irreconcilably at odds with any attempt to conduct such a grand, heroic experiment as implanting democracy in the Middle East. Without mass participation, Iraq cannot be passed off as an heroic endeavor, no matter how much Mr. Bush's rhetoric tries to make it one, and without a hero there can be no great betrayer, no skulking villain.
And yet, a convincing national narrative, though it may be the sheerest, most vicious fiction, can have incredible staying power-can perhaps outlast even the nation that it was meant to serve. It is ironic that, even as support for his war was starting to unravel in May of 2005, George W. Bush was in the Latvian capital of Riga, describing the Yalta agreement as "one of the greatest wrongs of history." The President placed it in the "unjust tradition" of the 1938 Munich Pact and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which together paved the way for the start of World War II in 1939. Bush's words echoed his statements of three previous trips to Eastern Europe, dating back to 2001, during which he had pledged, "no more Munichs, no more Yaltas," and called Yalta an "attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability," a "bitter legacy," and a "constant source of injustice and fear" that had "divided a living civilization."
The ultimate irony of Bush's perpetuating this ageless right-wing shibboleth is that for once it wasn't intended for home consumption. The Yalta myth has finally lost its old magic, here in historically illiterate, contemporary America. Nor did Bush make any special attempt to let his countrymen know he was apportioning them equal blame with Stalin and Hitler for the greatest calamities of the twentieth century.
Bush's pandering was directed instead to the nations he was visiting, in a region that still battens on any number of conspiracy theories. Why he should have so denigrated his own country to a few small Eastern European nations might seem a mystery, until one considers that this is the "new Europe" that Bush has solicited for troops for his Iraqi adventure . . . and where he appears to have found either destinations or conduits for victims of "extraordinary rendition," en route to where they could be safely tortured in secrecy.
An American president, wandering the halls of Eastern European palaces, denounces his own nation in order to appease his hosts into torturing secret prisoners. Our heroic age surely has come to an end.
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Ramashiva -- Finally, you disgusting excuse for a human being, here is positive proof that you and your fellow Nazis, like Irish Mike and Francis Lee Turbo, are taking your plays right out of the Nazi playbook when you claim liberals are hurting the war effort and helping the terrorists when we criticize the foreign policy of the Bush Crime Family --
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

Got that? You are a fucking Nazi pig. Are you going to admit it, or are you going to continue to spread your Nazi filth and lies on this newsgroup? If so, you will face the Wrath of Ramashiva. I am the ubertroll of this newsgroup, and I will not tolerate Nazi pigs like you contaminating what is undoubtedly the greatest usenet newsgroup of them all.