Raising questions about 9/11 gets an Army sergeant demoted for “disloyalty.”

Friendly Fire

By STEPHEN C. WEBSTER

Sgt. Buswell wants to know: What really happened on 9/11? And he said so in his e-mail. In the few paragraphs of that August 2006 message — a reply not to someone outside the service, but to other soldiers — Buswell wrote that he thought the official report of what happened that day at the Pentagon, and in the Pennsylvania crash of United Airlines Flight 93, was full of errors and unanswered questions.

“Who really benefited from what happened that day?” he asked rhetorically. Not “Arabs,” but “the Military Industrial Complex,” Buswell concluded. “We must demand a new, independent investigation.”

For voicing those opinions in an e-mail to 38 people on the San Antonio Army base, Buswell was stripped of his security clearance, fired from his job, demoted, and ordered to undergo a mental health exam.

(He was also ordered not to speak with the press. Information for this story came from documents, conversations with Buswell’s family members and friends, and sources within Fifth Army who asked not to be named.)

As if all that weren’t enough, Fort Sam Houston’s chief of staff penned a letter accusing Buswell of “making statements disloyal to the United States.”

[click on "Friendly Fire" for entire article]

Consider news reel evidence vs. the official story of Flight 93:

Click It or Ticket: Buckle Up for Tyranny?

That is the conclusion of Walter William's article written some time ago on the wasteful, irrational, insurance-company sponsored, tyrannical Click-it or Ticket program, where the Gestapo detains you to see if you are harnessed properly in your private vehicle while motorcycles with unharnessed drivers (and sometimes helmetless) on two wheels without enclosure have more freedom that you on four wheels in a secure metal capsule with airbags! Just one more reason in this creeping coup toward Totalitarianism that the police can stop and detain you with checkpoints in the new Amerika. (The principles here also apply to mandatory arbitrary drug testing by corporations even now creeping now into government under the guise of "safety" and "necessity"--contrary to the 4th Amendment--lacking probable cause and prohibiting warrantless searches).

The public needs to reject this fascism and start a take off your seat belt at all checkpoints campaign, starting now. Here is why, for it is supported by nothing less than West Virginia law, which reads thus:

§17C-15-49. Operation of vehicles with safety belts; exception; penalty; civil actions; educational program by division of public safety.

c) Any person who violates the provisions of this section shall be fined not more than twenty-five dollars. No court costs or other fees shall be assessed for a violation of this section. Enforcement of this section shall be accomplished only as a secondary action when a driver of a passenger vehicle has been detained for probable cause of violating another section of this code.

Therefore, the law says you have committed no legal offense in not wearing a seatbelt unless it is SECONDARY. Therefore, West Virginians can protest this tyrannical abuse of power, and waste of taxpayers money (and diversion from more appropriate traffic violation enforcement and other more criminal activity), by TAKING OFF THEIR SEAT BELTS AT SUCH CHECKPOINTS IN PROTEST, and the police are powerless to arrest or issue citations unless another PRIMARY cause warrants it. Bottom line is this, according to the Daily Mail, that Charleston police received $200,000 to enforce this federal campaign, to make the states puppets of Washington.

Walter Williams below wrote to show just how big the PRINCIPLE behind this is, and the very real tyranny that comes if people permit the government to enforce such tyrannical laws.


Click It or Ticket

by Walter Williams (September 15, 2003)

Imagine you're having a backyard barbeque. A cop walks in and announces, "This is a random health and safety check to see whether you've removed the skin from the chicken before you served it." Though delicious in taste, we all know that chicken skin contains considerable unhealthy fat. If you're caught serving chicken skin, the cop gets your ID and issues you a $50 ticket.

If something like this were to occur, most Americans -- I hope -- would see such an action as ludicrous, offensive and a gross violation of our liberties. But not so fast. Let's think about it. Each year, obesity claims the lives of 300,000 Americans and adds over $100 billion to health-care costs. Doesn't that give government the right to dictate what we eat? If you're the least offended by the notion of government dictating our diets, pray tell me how it differs in principle from seatbelt laws and especially the new federal enforcement program called "Click It or Ticket."

Under the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, the federal government is spending $500 million to aggressively enforce seatbelt laws. According to a July Consumers Research article written by Eric Peters titled "The Federal Government Wants You to Buckle Up," about 11,000 law enforcement agencies across the country have set up random checkpoints and have issued hundreds of thousands of tickets to unbelted drivers and passengers.

Just as in my barbeque scenario, their justification is our health and safety. After all, the 2002 highway death toll was 42,815 and, according to a U.S. Department of Transportation National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study, "The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes on America's Roadways," seatbelt usage could have prevented an estimated 9,200 fatalities.

"Click It or Ticket" represents another bold step along the road to serfdom. History knows of no totalitarianism agenda where noble goals weren't used as justification. Nazis used "for the good of the German Volk" and the Soviets used "for the good of the proletariat" as their justification. Health and safety have become the American justification for attacks on liberty.

In a free society, each person owns himself. As such, he has the broad discretion to make his own choices regardless of what others think of the wisdom of his choices. He has the right to take chances with his own health and safety. However, if an American doesn't own himself, and it's Congress that owns him, he doesn't have those rights. Thus, the "Click It or Ticket" program is simply Congress' way of caring for its property, the American people.

Whether seatbelt usage is a good idea is beside the point, for daily exercise, nutritious meals, eight hours sleep, and cultural and intellectual enrichment might also be good ideas. The point is whether government has a right to coerce us into taking care of ourselves.

If eating what we wish is our business and not that of government, then why should we accept government's coercing us to wear seatbelts? America's tyrants might answer, "We just haven't gotten around to dictating diets yet."

Some might argue, but falsely so, that the problem with people exercising their liberty to drive without seatbelts, ride motorcycles without helmets or eat in unhealthy ways is that if they become injured or sick, society will be burdened with higher health-care costs. That's not a problem of liberty but one of socialism.

There's no liberty-based argument for forcing one person to care for the needs of another. Under socialism, one is obliged to care for another. A parent-child relationship emerges between the citizen and the government. That was not the vision of our Founders.

PATRIOTISM -- Memorial Day Special

Rep. Ron Paul Before the U.S. House of Representatives, May 22, 2007

Madam Speaker, for some, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. For others, it means dissent against a government's abuse of the people's rights. I have never met a politician in Washington or any American, for that matter, who chose to be called unpatriotic. Nor have I met anyone who did not believe he wholeheartedly supported our troops, wherever they may be. What I have heard all too frequently from various individuals are sharp accusations that, because their political opponents disagree with them on the need for foreign military entanglements, they were unpatriotic, un-American evildoers deserving contempt. The original American patriots were those individuals brave enough to resist with force the oppressive power of King George. I accept the definition of patriotism as that effort to resist oppressive state power. The true patriot is motivated by a sense of responsibility and out of self-interest for himself, his family, and the future of his country to resist government abuse of power. He rejects the notion that patriotism means obedience to the state. ... ...True patriotism today has gotten a bad name, at least from the government and the press. Those who now challenge the unconstitutional methods of imposing an income tax on us, or force us to use a monetary system designed to serve the rich at the expense of the poor are routinely condemned. These American patriots are sadly looked down upon by many. ... Liberals, who withhold their taxes as a protest against war, are vilified as well, especially by conservatives. Unquestioned loyalty to the state is especially demanded in times of war. Lack of support for a war policy is said to be unpatriotic. Arguments against a particular policy that endorses a war, once it is started, are always said to be endangering the troops in the field. This, they blatantly claim, is unpatriotic, and all dissent must stop. Yet, it is dissent from government policies that defines the true patriot and champion of liberty. It is conveniently ignored that the only authentic way to best support the troops is to keep them out of dangerous undeclared no-win wars that are politically inspired. Sending troops off to war for reasons that are not truly related to national security and, for that matter, may even damage our security, is hardly a way to patriotically support the troops. Who are the true patriots, those who conform or those who protest against wars without purpose? How can it be said that blind support for a war, no matter how misdirected the policy, is the duty of a patriot?

Blasting Cap--again! Capito uses War Funding Bill for Personal Gain

Rep. Shelly Moore Capito had the audacity to appear on WCHS talk radio (waving her Memorial Day flag with neocon sycophant Michael Agnello) to continue the propaganda campaign to support funding a clearly unjust war that was conceived in secret and thrust onto a manipulated public (by "there is no doubt" and "mushroom cloud" speeches) with ferocious, mindless flag-waving. Ms. Capito's audacity was her statement that "most Americans want to" pass funding to (watch the spin again) "support our troops"! "It would have been irresponsible for Congress to leave for Memorial Day holiday without passing the funding bill (ed. quoting from memory after listening). (Meanwhile West Virginia Patriots for Peace and others were protesting all day, and Agnello pretended he "did not notice", even after the news break covered it, whose actually popular position was being impugned as if those who oppose the war are evil and do not have the welfare of American soldiers in mind.) This deliberate distortion and lie, while wrapping the flag around herself, against the facts cannot be given a pass:

"Most Americans", Shelly, want the troops to come home immediately, for a long time now (Zogby poll, per below, 72% wanted the war to end in 2006!). Most Americans do not want the funding continued to support an unjust war. Most Americans fully believe they were LIED TO, by the President, Vice President, and neocons imbedded in the rogue Office of Special plans (at odds with other military brass)--to justify THEIR war. Most West Virginians, Shelly, want the troops home and war over, but you did not represent the majority in your district. "Support our troops" is a ruse slogan to support unjust war--period. Anyone who cares about US troops does not want them sent for unjust purposes upon false pretenses to be cannon fodder toward building a World Democratic Federation, by overthrowing the Middle East. "MOST AMERICANS", SHELLY, ARE WAKING UP.

It does not take additional funding (consider the small percentage actually spent on personal needs for troops in video below) to ramp down, close America's occupation of Iraq, and bring the troops home! It "would not be responsible" for Congress to continue to fund an unjust war through a Pentagon budget that lacks any accountability whatsoever.

Here are the facts, dear Shelly, of what "most Americans" believe, while "taxation without representation" continues and the voices of "most Americans" are impugned as un-American by representatives like you and talk show propagandists. Trying to wrap yourself in a flag does not change the truth, nor does your deliberate misrepresentation of what "most Americans" believe.

MOST AMERICANS, Shelly, are right, contrary to your deliberate lie and distortion of their position. But why should we be surprised from someone who is a loyal pawn of deceitful administration?

Zogby: U.S. Troops in Iraq: 72% Say End War in 2006

http://www.zogby.com/NEWS/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075

CNN Poll: Most back Congress over Bush in war funding fight

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/08/schneider.iraq.poll/index.html

Now as far as the "necessary funding to support our troops" (deceitful propaganda), this is just how the Pentagon has spent, and lost, misplaced, and obfuscates TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS ALREADY MISSING. This is how the Pentagon spends war funding to "support our troops". Consider what is spent and where it really goes, while you ponder how Congress can overlook this gross irresponsibility or criminal deceit that would get the CFO of any corporation thrown into jail for embezzlement or fraud :

"Click-It or Ticket" -- Irrational, Wasteful, Abusive Campaign that Overlooks Real Traffic Violations

The present law enforcement campaign of "click-it or ticket" --i.e. "or we'll kick your tail pipe (implies the tough-guy image through commercials)"--shows the stupidity of present government. What is the taxpayers cost of this wasteful, irrational, and intrusive (stop, detain, search without probable cause) State Police campaign? The only ones that truly benefit from this campaign are THE INSURANCE COMPANIES WHO WANT TO LIMIT THEIR MEDICAL AND DEATH CLAIMS! Indeed, it was insurance companies that coerced this law, and that by false promises of lower premiums that West Virginians never collected on. Is this really for the public good?

That lack of seat belts never are the cause of accidents is common sense, and therefore no one is endangered but the foolish vehicle operator who choses not to use them. So what? How does that hurt anyone else on the road? Is this therefore the most needful campaign to spend millions of dollars of taxpayers money on in advertising campaigns? The ads are so tyrannical in nature, threatening officers "will be all over....maybe in your rear view mirror" (translation: be very afraid of us, the Seat Belt Police), that it makes even those who wear them want to break out in open rebellion against such an arrogance of government presuming to tell people what they do in their car. This writer was stopped at a "check-point" for the sole purpose of checking for seat belts--without probable cause of any violations, without warrant! HAVE THE COPS NOTHING BETTER TO DO?

Instead, the true cause of accidents is documented by legal experts: As one can see, it is not only the driver who may be at fault, but also the government, through lack of reasonable road maintenance or safety procedures during construction, etc.. But there is a wide variety of causes, including weather and deer!.

Causes of Car Accidents

There are a wide variety of possible causes for automobile accidents, including:

Driver Error - The most common cause of car accidents is driver error. Common errors which contribute to accidents include failure to yield the right of way, following too closely, driving at excessive speeds, unsafe passing, and disregard of traffic control devices.

Distractions - When the driver's attention becomes diverted from the road, the chances of an accident increase. Distractions may occur from outside of the car, such as when something at the side of the road draws a driver's attention. Distractions also occur inside cars, such as where the driver attempts to read or put on makeup while driving, change CD's in the CD player, dials a cellular phone, or attempts to parent an upset or unruly child.

Intoxication - Motorists whose ability to drive is impaired as a result of the consumption of alcohol or drugs are more likely to cause car accidents.

Bad Weather - Sometimes, bad weather conditions will contribute to an accident by interfering with visibility, diminishing traction on the road surface, or otherwise making it more difficult to drive a car. A driver should take the effects of the weather, such as strong cross-winds or slippery roads, into consideration when driving. Sometimes the weather will cause an unexpected hazard, such as black ice or flash flooding, which may not be detected by a driver until it is too late to avoid the hazard.

Road Design - A poorly designed roadway, intersection, or means of controlling traffic can at times cause or contribute to an accident. Poorly placed and poorly designed road signs or barriers can cause unnecessary injury when vehicles collide with them. At times, such defects will result in liability by the governmental agency responsible for the design and maintenance of the roadway, although governmental immunity may apply.

Road Conditions - The conditions of a roadway can be bad for a number of reasons, including weather, poor design or maintenance, or the presence of objects or debris on the roadway. Such factors can cause or contribute to accidents.

Vehicle Defects - At times an accident will result from a defect with a driver's vehicle, such as a tire blowout, brake failure, or other mechanical failure. Sometimes the injuries suffered in an accident will be made worse by a design or manufacturing defect with a vehicle, such as a design defect which makes an SUV more susceptible to rolling over in an accident or a gas tank more likely to ignite in a collision, or a manufacturing defect which causes a seatbelt to fail or an airbag to deploy improperly.

Most law enforcement, however, should be focussed on DRIVING VIOLATIONS, not wearing of seat belts. But most officers ticket for ONLY SPEEDING. WHY?

Lack of seat belts never led to an accident, but failure to signal, reckless driving, following too close, and failure to yield are the direct cause of injuries and fatalities to others. These are the violations that should be ticketed instead of playing Big Brother while overlooking these illegal and dangerous acts that jeapordize public safety. Enforcing these REAL VIOLATIONS would lead to safer roads!

Watch this expose' of how people really drive, and how the auto industry encourages people to drive, in total fantasy. THIS IS THE CAUSE OF TRAFFIC DEATHS--NOT LACK OF SEAT BELTS! Increasing safety apparatus actually only encourages WORSE driving, giving a false impression of safety despite reckless and irrational driving.

Will Republicans Destroy Themselves Before They Destroy America?

Again we reprint from Paul Craig Roberts, and ask the reader to consider his Reagan administration credentials before stopping their ears. Neither republicans nor democrats get a pass from him, nor does the easily manipulated general public. Those who listen to "conservative" talk radio must be confronted with the deceit of the neoconservative (Trotskyite) agenda again, and see that America is being led from freedom to fascism, unless the public wakes up. Fortunately there are signs it is, but partisanship plays to much of a distracting role. The Constitution is the center of Robert's sound arguments, as they are of republican candidate Ron Paul, who both show that the PRESENT REPUBLICAN party is clearly in a constitution-trampling mode. (But this writer knows it began with Lincoln, and that this is nothing new).

Will Republicans Destroy Themselves Before They Destroy America?

by Paul Craig Roberts
by Paul Craig Roberts

As everyone except for a dwindling band of Bush supporters now knows, the US is in a terrible situation in Iraq from which it cannot extract itself. For Bush and Cheney, their own pride and delusion are more compelling than US casualties, the destruction of Iraq and its people, and the inflaming of sectarian strife and anti-American violence throughout the Middle East.

Congress is complicit in the great strategic blunder. Republican flag-wavers led Americans like lemmings into the abyss. The Democrats have already abandoned the electorate that gave them Control of Congress six months ago in the false hope that the Democrats would corral the White House Moron and lead America out of the abyss.

Like the Republicans, the Democrats serve the few special-interest groups that benefit, or believe that they benefit, from the war. By now we all know who these groups are: the oil industry, the military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby, AIPAC. This contrived war, based on lies and deception, serves no other interest.

There is no longer any question whatsoever, not a single sliver of doubt, that Americans were deceived into this disastrous war. The President of the United States lied to the American people, as did the Vice President, the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Undersecretary of Defense, as did every neoconservative in the Bush administration, think tanks, and media.

The fact that the American people were lied to and deceived does not absolve them from blame. The lie was transparent, the logic nonexistent, the true facts available and easy to discover.

America failed, because the American people failed. The American people failed, because their self-righteousness and their hubris made them easy saps for deception.

Even now after five years of a disastrous policy, Republicans cannot accept the facts about the US invasion and failed occupation of Iraq. At the recent "debate" between Republican presidential candidates in South Carolina, US Representative Ron Paul dared to tell the truth. Rep. Paul said that our difficulties in the Middle East are "blowback" from our government's determined attempts to exercise hegemony over the Middle East.

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, a person who sunk so low as to frame innocents while serving as US Attorney in order to boost his name recognition, played the self-righteous card to extreme. How dare Ron Paul suggest that US policy toward Muslims has anything whatsoever to do with attacks on the US! With all the outrage he could muster, Giuliani asked Rep. Paul "to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that."

The thunderous applause from the Republican audience to Giuliani's put-down of the only honest person present underlines that the Republican Party is incapable of leadership to end a futile and lost war that under international standards is a war crime, an unprovoked naked aggression based entirely on lies, deception and a secret agenda.

At other times, the Republican audience applauded in support of torture and greeted John McCain's protest against the practice with cold silence.

In the opening years of the 21st century the Republicans have made it clear that they are willing to sacrifice the US Constitution and Bill of Rights in order to wage "war against terrorism." This willingness makes the Republican Party a more dangerous threat to Americans than Muslim terrorists. Muslim terrorists cannot destroy our country's reputation, trash our civil liberties and wreck our system of accountable government, but the Republican Party has done a thorough job of it.

The Democratic Party is complicit in the Republican Party's crimes, but unlike the Republican electorate, the Democratic electorate does not support the occupation, the domestic police state measures, and the Bush administration's decision to send more combat troops to Iraq. Although none of the current frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination are independent of the special interests that benefit from the war, it might still be possible for a Democrat to emerge who will represent the Democratic electorate instead of the special interests.

Republican support for Bush's contrived war against Iraq has diminished the Republican Party. Intelligent and decent people have abandoned the party, which has morphed into a Brownshirt Party with which fewer people are willing to be associated. The diminished Republican ranks will make it difficult for the party to steal any more elections.

If we are fortunate, Republicans will complete their self-destruction before they extinguish the Constitution and destroy America.

May 23, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts [send him mail] wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is author or coauthor of eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolution (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous scholarly journals and testified before Congress on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He is also coauthor with Karen Araujo of Chile: Dos Visiones – La Era Allende-Pinochet (Santiago: Universidad Andres Bello, 2000).

Copyright © 2007 Creators Syndicate

Paul Craig Roberts Archives

[Fair Use Notice: Republished for educational purposes only].

America's Anti-Christian Government Exposed

Yes--the truth is coming out! Note he describes the CIVIC (government-sponsored) RELIGION (secret, but discernible), as contrasted to true biblical Christian faith. ANTI-CHRIST HAS BEEN SLOWLY RISING IN AMERICA FROM ITS CONSTITUTIONAL FOUNDATIONS (FEDERALIST), AND DEISM HAS PLAYED NO SMALL ROLE, FROM GEORGE WASHINGTON TO GEORGE W. BUSH. CHRISTMAS TOO (unmentioned) BEING OPENLY ESTABLISHED NOW IS A KEY COMPONENT IN THAT DECEITFUL CRAFT, BEING A MARK OF THE PERSECUTING ANTI-CHRIST ALWAYS IN HISTORY, AND WHY THE PILGRIMS AND PURITAN DISSENTERS, BAPTISTS, AND PRESBYTERIANS FLED TO AMERICA AND OPPOSED THE CHURCH AND KING OF ENGLAND. Where establishment of religion is erected Persecution and Inquisition are sure to follow. The bowing and reverencing of National Symbols as Religious Icons is also idolatry and a mark of anti-Christ government, and the reason that the "Founders were Christians" false doctrine must be exploded. As the author below writes:

But I do know this: the American civil religion is a form of idolatry, a false religion that worships a false god and promises things – salvation, grace, community, purpose, love – it simply cannot deliver. We have no business believing in any of it.

Pastor, Prophet and Priest

by Charles H. Featherstone
by Charles H. Featherstone

"[T]he English regard and practice their religion only insofar as it relates to their duty as subjects of the king. They live as he lives and believe as he believes; indeed, they do everything he commands. ... [The English] would accept Mohammedanism or Judaism if the king believed it, and told them to believe it."

~ Giovanni Micheli, Venetian ambassador to England during the reign of Henry VIII,
as quoted in Reformation Europe: Age of Reform and Revolution, p. 174

"Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is."

~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower as quoted in Civil Religion and the Presidency, p. 200

The veneration and near-worship of the president, and the presidency, has been with us for a long time, as long as the United States of America has existed as a nation under the Philadelphia Constitution and quite possibly as long as Americans have misled themselves into thinking they are God’s chosen people. In fact, while Americans fancy themselves a Christian people, and their nation a Christian nation, the national faith of the United States of America – and most Americans – is Americanism, and the god of most Americans is their country, its "principles" and its symbols worshiped in deeply held civic faith willed into being over the last two centuries (more or less) from bits and pieces of English Calvinism, deism and 19^th century evangelicalism.

And a whole lot of wishful thinking and very hot air.

So is the conclusion of academics Richard V. Pierard and Robert D. Linder, authors of the nearly 20-year-old tome Civil Religion and the Presidency. I came across the book while I was doing research during the spring semester on the views of Martin Luther and Philip Melachthon – the two architects of the German Reformation – toward the state, and knew immediately this website needed a review. Pierard and Linder evaluate the role of nine presidents – George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan – in using, leading and shaping the American civic faith and the faith Americans have in the meaning and purpose of their government and their country.

Pierard and Linder begin the book with an exploration of civil religion, noting that human beings in most, if not all, societies throughout human history create some kind of civic faith that stipulates a "‘sacred cosmos’ which locates their lives in an ultimately meaningful order." Civic faiths unify societies, help create a common shared frame of reference for members of that society, allow for the settlement of disputes and help create "common goals and values validated through some cosmic frame of reference which their members recognize as defining their collective existence."

While religion had filled this role in "ancient" societies, and the institutional church in pre-Enlightenment Europe, since the Enlightenment, the state-centered societies of the West have had to (consciously or otherwise) create civic faiths to take the place or fill the role that a state church would play. While both Rome and Greece possessed strong civil faiths – an offense against the gods was also an offense against the state and against society, and the reverse was also true, which is why Christian martyrs like Polycarp were charged with atheism for refusing to perform public religious rituals like sacrificing to the emperor – true civil religion in the context of Christendom only begins with the Crusades. Early Christians, even after the effective merger of Church and state during the rein of Emperor Constantine, distinguished between the polity where they lived and their patria, their homeland in heaven. This distinction comes directly from passages in Pauline epistles which state the Christians are sojourners and resident aliens of wherever they live while their "citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20, "ημων γαρ το πολιτευμα εν ουρανοις υπαρχει,” literally “for our commonwealth/state exists in the heavens”). In fact, in the anonymous early apologetic writing (sometime in the early to middle second century A.D.) the Letter to Diognetus, the author expands on this by writing:

[Christians] live in their own countries, but only as aliens. They have a share in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign land is their fatherland, and yet for them, every fatherland is a foreign land. (Diog. 5:5 as printed in The Library of Christian Classics: Vol. 1, Early Christian Fathers, p. 217)

This notion of Christians having their real home in heaven began to change, Pierard and Linder write, in the early Middle Ages, when the king’s realm and the patria began to merge. Taxes and war, of course (for you cannot have one without the other), were the main instrument of this: taxes to pay for the Crusades, which created a concept of "holy land" that would eventually be transferred to the European nations sending crusaders to the Levant, allowing Europeans to eventually consider themselves covenant people chosen by God to do God’s will on Earth. "Before long," Pierard and Linder write, "the French saw war for France as war for the ‘Holy Land of France.’ In this context, Joan of Arc cried, ‘Those who wage war against the holy realm of France, wage war against King Jesus.’"

(The English would take time to catch up with the French, and would not go around claiming they were God’s chosen people until 1559, when English Bishop John Aylmer would claim "God is English." John Foxe would soon thereafter popularize the idea of England as God’s chosen land and the English as his chosen people in his Book of Martyrs, according to Pierard and Linder.)

The same period of time also saw the creation of an organic notion of nation and society similar to the evolving medieval notion of the church. If the church was a "body" with Christ as its head (and the pope as his earthly vicar), than the combined patria-realm would be one "body" with the prince or king as its earthly head. "Reason and nature demand that all members of the body serve the head as well as be controlled by it," they write.

But modern civil religion, the civic faith of nations and the bulk of people inhabiting those nations, is really the product of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. For Pierard and Linder, John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau were the great authors of a "minimum civil creed that would instill civic spirit and discipline the citizenry" that might not share a single religious confession. Rousseau envisioned a simple and "exactly worded" civic faith with few dogmas:

The existence of a mighty, intelligent, and beneficent Divinity, possessed of foresight and providence; the life to come, the happiness of the just, the punishment of the wicked; the sanctity of the social contract and the laws: these are its positive dogmas.

The problem with Rousseau’s civil faith is that it essentially made the state and the "popular will" as expressed in the state transcendent in and of itself. "Reason enabled each individual member of Rousseau’s civil society to read the revelation of Nature’s God in creation," Pierard and Linder write. "For many practitioners of civil religion before and since, the state encompassed everything that mattered: there was no law or loyalty higher than the state. ... The likelihood of idolatrous subservience to the state lurked in Rousseau’s earthbound public religion because it had no fixed transcendental referent by which it could be judged."

American civil religion begins almost the minute the English colonists set foot on the continent. From the Mayflower Compact and John Winthrop’s A Model of Christian Charity (from which the phrase "city on a hill" as applied to the enterprise of being American comes from), the earliest settlers in British North America had a sense that they were being watched by both God and the entire world and were engaged in a mission of "cosmic significance," that they were God’s people Israel crossing the wilderness and settling in the promised land after leaving Egypt (Europe).

According to Pierard and Linden, this sense of chosenness would be one of five main characteristics of American civil faith, the others being: civil millenarianism, the evangelical consensus, deism, and a self-authenticating history.

Civil millenarianism would manifest itself in the faith of American political institutions to save the world. Quoting church historian John Smylie, Pierard and Linder write: "Gradually, in America, the nation emerged as the primary agent of God’s meaningful activity in history. Hence, Americans bestowed on it [the nation] a catholicity of destiny similar to that which theology attributes to the universal church." God will save the world through God’s chosen instrument, the United States of America, and its political institutions.

(If there is a weakness in this book, Pierard and Linder spend too much telling me things, rather than using quotes to show me.)

By the evangelical consensus, Pierard and Linder appear to mean the emotive and experiential Christianity that emerged from the Second Great Awakening of the early 19^th century – a faith that emphasized the conversion experience, action as opposed to doctrine, and was generally positive in its anthropology (humans may be sinners but they could, of their own accord, choose God) and its outlook. History was getting better, and humans could make their world and the societies better through Christian action and state action (often one in the same). Because God’s chosen instrument for world betterment was the United States of America, evangelical Christians could easily pledge loyalty to both God and nation. (This evangelical consensus would become watered down, somewhat, as the civic faith was later expanded to include Roman Catholics and Jews.)

The deist contribution is important because if deists and evangelicals shared little, they did share common social outlooks. "For example, two Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson (convinced deist) and John Witherspoon (staunch Calvinist) agreed that humans possessed a natural, innate ability to grasp the truth about the world and morality without the need for divine grace or revelation. Thus political thought in Revolutionary America was based on the assumption that the light of natural reason could reveal the eternal principles of God’s law to any unprejudiced, right-thinking individual," Pierard and Linder write. While both deist and evangelical might differ on the sinfulness of human beings, both agreed and believed in individual freedom "under God" and of "freedom and democracy in the context of a New Israel with a sense of divine mission."

Finally, there is the matter of a self-authenticating history, a history which proves (since we don’t actually have any scripture telling us that God gave the Constitution to George Washington after he fasted on Mt. Vernon for forty days and forty nights) American specialness and chosenness. This is a history mostly of bloodshed, of victory in war and the expansion of territory and "freedom." Meaning, a history of "positive" state and government action and of the state as the central organizing principle of American society.

But what of the president? What role does he play in this? Pierard and Linder write:

Few students of politics would dispute that there is a religious component to the presidency, though determining whether the man influences the office in this way of vice versa is beyond the purposes of this book. The truth is that most Americans regard the office with a measure of religious awe [italics mine] and that certain presidents down through history have used the position with great success in playing the role of prophet and/or priest in America’s public religion.

In any event, scholars generally agree that whether he is religiously active or passive, the foremost representative of civil religion in America is the president. He not only serves as head of state and chief executive, but he also functions as the symbolic representative of the whole of the American people. He affirms that God exists and that America’s destiny and the nation’s politics must be interpreted in the light of the Almighty’s will. The rituals that the president celebrates and the speeches he makes reflect the basic themes of American civil religion.

Most of the nine presidents Pierard and Linder have chosen to examine are considered by most historians as "great" or "near great" presidents (with the exceptions, I’m guessing, of Nixon and Carter) who also held the office during times of war and/or great national crisis. Most of the nine did not have strong denominational bonds: George Washington was more of a deist than an Episcopalian and had little time for kneeling in prayer or partaking of the Eucharist; Lincoln may have been a deeply religious man but he was not much of a churchgoer (and no one is certain where Lincoln’s personal faith came from); Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s greatest "religious" influence was lifelong friend and Groton headmaster (and one of the major figures in early American Muscular Christianity) Endicott Peabody, whose religion was "a mixture of messianic idealism and simple pragmatism"; Dwight Eisenhower was only baptized (in a Presbyterian service) after his first inaugural in 1953; Nixon would adhere to neither the Quaker faith he was raised in or the Pentecostalism he spent some time as a young man flirting with, but would rather make America’s "innate goodness," the country’s "spirit" and its national mission his object of worship.

(However, Nixon would spend far too much time palling around with the closest thing to a "state church" the United States has ever had – Billy Graham, who wanders through this book like a false prophet.)

Each of these presidents contributed hugely to the country’s civil faith. Washington defined much of the job, creating the language of the civil faith by constantly invoking "providence" and "the deity" to oversee the country’s affairs. Lincoln, with the Gettysburg Address, added permanently to the canon of American "holy scripture" and outlined "the American Democratic Faith," the belief that American political institutions are central and necessary for the salvation of humanity. (Lincoln, along with Martin Luther King, would become one of the two martyred saints of the American civil faith.) McKinley, in presiding over the war with Spain and the campaign to subdue to Philippines, would attach imperial expansion to the country’s civil faith, giving America and Americans a potentially globe-spanning role as the savior of the world, emphasizing in particular America as God’s chosen instrument for world and human salvation. Woodrow Wilson further expanded that sense of global mission and further moralized that American sense of mission. Franklin Delano Roosevelt expanded the civil religion beyond the country’s Evangelical Protestants to include both Roman Catholics and Jews. (The civil faith had always invoked God the Father far more than God the Son anyway.) Dwight Eisenhower intensified the civic faith during the Cold War, portraying it as a struggle with "godlessness" and harnessing religion in general to "democratic" political institutions. Richard Nixon, consciously seeing himself as the central figure of the civil faith, "hoped to lead in the revival of moral values by making a dramatic public emphasis on worship [in the White House], and in doing so he created an extraordinary syncretism of church religion and civil religion."

Pierard and Linder identify three main ways the president manifests himself in the civil faith – as pastor, as prophet, and as high-priest. The pastoral job is most obvious at time of "national crisis" (wars, natural disasters, space shuttles blowing up, school shootings), when the president seeks to reassure the country that its election is intact and that God still has great things in mind for America and Americans. Neither Pierard nor Linder spend much time on this function (save to say it was Eisenhower’s primary job), but FDR was probably the first real pastor president, the first president able to speak words of immediate "comfort" to Americans, since being the pastor to all of America requires a mass media that allows the president to "talk to" millions of people at the same time. Only radio and television can accomplish that.

The prophet calls Americans and America to be better, to aspire to their better natures and the values inherent in the covenant, to live up to their founding ideals and to expand those ideals to those not originally included. The prophetic has largely been the preserve of Democrats – FDR comes to mind – but Lincoln’s presidency was very much a "prophetic" one. In fact, both Pierard and Linder say that if a religiously tinged presidency is unavoidable (a conclusion they appear to come to), prophetic is best, since it actually aims the nation at transcendent values that lie outside the nation itself. It holds the nation and its leaders accountable to something other than themselves.

(For another example of the "prophetic" in action in American politics, one need only look at Jim Wallis and folks at Sojourners, who like all Progressives past, continue to mistake God’s command to God’s people – that would be the church – to be just, merciful and charitable toward the poor with a command to the nation, and all that entails – taxes, force, coercion, state power and death.)

This leaves the high priest, a model both authors seem to believe Republicans have adopted in the last few decades beginning with Richard Nixon. (George W. Bush is clearly a high priest president.) This is a dangerous model, they write, because "[t]he president as high priest possesses what amounts to a sacred character, and thus his actions may not be resisted in any meaningful fashion." The authors quote at length 1968 Republican campaign strategist Ray Price on the matter of who Republicans then believed the president was in the eyes of the people:

People identify with a President in the way they do with no other public figure. Potential presidents are measured against an ideal that’s a combination of leading man, God, father, hero, pope, king, with maybe just a touch of avenging furies thrown in. They want him to be larger than life, a living legend, and yet quintessentially human; someone to be held up to their children as a role model; someone to be cherished by themselves as a revered member of the family, in somewhat the same way in which peasant families pray to the icon in the corner [emphasis mine]. Reverence goes where power is; it’s no coincidence that there’s such persistent confusion between love and fear in the whole history of man’s relationship to the gods. Awe enters into it. ...

Selection of a President has to be an act of faith. ... This faith isn’t achieved by reason; it’s achieved by charisma, by a feeling of trust that can’t be argued or reasoned, but that comes across in those silences that surround the words. The words are important – but less for what they actually say than for the sense they convey, for the impression they give of the man himself, his hopes, his standards, his competence, his intelligence, his essential humanness, and the directions of history he represents.

Whether Americans, or even Republicans, see the president this way (I think many do, actually, and many Republicans seem to have developed an idea of the presidency as a kind-of Davidic kingship), it’s pretty stunning that a major political party in an allegedly democratic nation state can speak of leadership in such, well, undemocratic terms. (To be fair, the above paragraphs can just as easily describe the devotion to and the cults surrounding FDR and John F. Kennedy, and what I’ve seen of the cult of Barak Obama.)

The problems with a high-priest presidency are two-fold. First, opposition to the president and the nation he (or, I suppose, she) isn’t just treason – it’s heresy. Religions, even ones cobbled together from junk, can be brutally intolerant of heresy. Second, the high priest isn’t really accountable to the people, he’s accountable only to God. (And, to be fair, the prophet isn’t accountable to anyone but God either.) He stands in front of the people but faces the altar, rather than at the altar facing the people. We are his to dispose of, and our wills, our desires – our persons and our very humanity – do not matter.

Better, however, would be no civil religion at all, no faith in the nation, its institutions or its purpose. I do not need nor want the president to stand in my stead before God, to mediate my encounter with the divine. I already have Jesus, so what need have I of George W. Bush or Hillary Clinton? My purpose comes from elsewhere, and so should yours. But that is about as likely as the government disappearing tomorrow. So I encourage non-belief in the civil faith and non-observance of its rituals. A committed Christian, a faithful Jew, a devout Muslim, has no business believing that the United States of America, its values, its spirit, its ideals and its institutions, can save the world. That is to worship a created thing, a transitory thing, an artifact of history, one that does not and cannot transcend anything.

I’m not sure any of this can be reformed or changed, because it may not be possible to have "America" without this nonsensical civil religion, without the sense that Americans are God’s chosen people, that America and American institutions can save the world. I could accept an Americanness that did away with the sense of mission and the evangelical faith in "democracy," an Americanness that assumes we are and allows us to be just another people living in just another country. But this sense of ourselves as God’s chosen people, as cosmically special, may be too central to our overall sense of ourselves, and our faith in our political institutions – including the wretched presidency – may be too strong and too essential to rid ourselves of. It may not be possible to have Americanness without it. I don’t know.

But I do know this: the American civil religion is a form of idolatry, a false religion that worships a false god and promises things – salvation, grace, community, purpose, love – it simply cannot deliver. We have no business believing in any of it.

May 22, 2007

Charles H. Featherstone [send him mail] is a seminarian and freelance editor living in Chicago. Visit his blog.

Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com

Charles H. Featherstone Archives

[FAIR USE NOTICE: Reposted for Educational Purposes only]

The History of Gas and Crude Prices tied to Middle East Wars

Click on this chart see see hard factual analysis. As long as the U.S. entangles itself in the Middle East in wars contrary to the principles of the Christian doctrines of "Just War" (i.e. in self-defense alone) Americans will bear this virtual WAR TAX at the pumps. Unjust government policy has its consequences, and this is just one of them, that you must pay for heeding lies. You are paying for "supporting our troops" in an unjust war daily. It is not even Memorial Day, or summer yet! Watch prices soar even higher.

And yes, we are proven right, that oil crude prices were LOWERED DURING THE 2006 election period, and rose after that! But how short everyone's memory truly is.

The assertions made to the column on the right, particularly that the INDUSTRY HAS DELIBERATELY REDUCED REFINERY CAPACITY TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS WHICH HAS INFLATED PRICING DUE TO SQUEEZE ON SUPPLY, should be noted as the testimony before Congress (of poor quality) plays:

The Desperation to Force Unconstitutional Gambling to Increase State Tax Revenues

In gambling, the "House always wins", and the public should see just how the State is greedy to make everyone "pay through the nose" to accomplish their goal and expand their dirty habit from Lottery to Table Games of defrauding the gullible and naive public. When the government plays the House the society it governs loses and its judicial grounds are corrupted.

The propaganda lately and sheer desperate madness of people like republicans Mayor Danny Jones and Kanawha County Commissioner Kent Carper to use all means available, even breaking constitutional and lesser laws, and spending taxpayers money to advertise and propagandize it all (how is that legal?), which benefits the local media through advertising revenues, under the guise of "tourism" and "economic pragmatism" demonstrates the gross corruption and deliberate COLLUSION being used to force table games for the gambling industry. Indeed, Carper could be called the County "Ommissioner", in that he wanted to Omit the legal requirement of 30 day legal advertising notification that was as plain as the nose on his face. Does that not demonstrate just how desperate they all are? (Yet they demand "click it or ticket" and pretend to make driving a "privilege" not right, and setup cameras everywhere to watch the public and want to tell ATV owners how and where to ride). How can West Virginians respect a government that breaks and tramples its own Constitution and laws?

It is no time to mince words, or be too respectful, with those entrusted with public office who trample the laws of the state themselves, a form of anarchy by government. And how dare anyone call them immoral for doing so, by using even forceful political tactics and craft, to expand the corruption of the State, as if there are no social, moral or government consequences that are negative! After all, the hypocritical state would still have gambling illegal--except when they share "a piece of the action" to share its revenues "for the good of all"! That West Virginia government is already itself addicted to gambling is observable by their own desperation to increase it.

Does everyone see just how desperate and determined "the powers that be" are to expand state-sponsored gambling in West Virginia? Eager to wager their souls on the deceitful idol of Economic Pragmatism, the majority in state and local governments, the subtle Governor, and the cunning Lottery Commission, are waging open warfare to force gambling-based taxation down the public's throat, choking us with tax-payer funded media advertising and pure propaganda to influence a vote on something the ammended Constitution clearly forbids, while the Supreme Court obstructs hearing the complaint that should render the elections void!

Injunctions should be filed whenever the government violates the State Constitution or laws, and a relentless pursuit of justice to prohibit what the constitution plainly forbids (in any matter whatsoever) should be done without wavering, while also keeping an eye on the shifty Supreme Court themselves, whose actions (or lack) are thus far suspicious.

See our first article on this subject: State-sponsored Gambling, Immoral, Corrupt, Unconstitutional

Again, here is the plain verdict on that the ammendment of the Constitution permitting "lotteries" does not permit table or parlor games, irregardless of who owns or operates them, by WVU Law Professor and expert on the West Virginia Constitution, Bob Bastress.

The Ft. Dix "Conspiracy" -- The Role of the FBI, Informant or Provocateur?

The following blog from another source is absolutely excellent and well-researched. People need to see how these threats (always at critical political times, elections, etc.) have no evidence to support the allegations, and how they have the mark of false-flag operations, involving either government or agency-allied connections. Note especially the update at the bottom regarding the FBI informant's role. Also, Tony Snow has stated for the press that they have "no direct evidence" linking the men to a foreign terrorist organization, just like Rex Tomb of the FBI has stated they have "no hard evidence" linking Bin Laden to the 9/11 attacks, which is why his MOST WANTED TERRORIST poster does not include that claim!

The Ft. Dix "Conspiracy," or Why Dana Rohrabacher Should Be Pimp-Slapped (UPDATE, May 10)

Friends of yours, Dana? Commandos with the "Kosovo Liberation Army," taking a break from terrorizing moderate Albanians and putting Christian churches to the torch, strike a pose.

It is dangerous and potentially lethal to take at face value anything we're told by the Regime regarding its supposed success in interdicting terrorist threats. The abortive plot by a half-dozen imported radicals to attack Ft. Dix is a splendid illustration of that principle.

FBI Special Agent J.P. Weis claims that the little knot of accused terrorists was "forming a platoon to take on an army." It's worth pointing out that, horrible as the prospect of an attack on a secure and fortified Army base may be, the alleged conspirators apparently weren't planning an assault on a "soft target" -- such as a shopping mall or other large civilian gathering place.

This isn't intended to minimize the alleged crime, but rather to set up what I consider to be an important question: Would the Homeland Security Apparatus display such alacrity in dealing with a threat of this sort (assuming, once again, it was legitimate) had it been directed at somebody other than agents and assets of the State?

It's also worth noting that in the Ft. Dix plot we find, once again, the conspicuous involvement of an FBI "informant," described as a veteran of the Egyptian military; in fact, the FBI plant actually seems to have suggested the attack. (Thanks to Justin Ptak by way of Lew Rockwell's blog.)

I wonder if the Bureau got in touch with Emad Salem and offered him another gig. The first one didn't turn out so well: Salem penetrated the terror cell responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and was furious with the FBI after it allowed that attack – which would have been immeasurably bloodier had it not been for the unfathomable stupidity of Mohammed Salameh – to proceed.

Neither a Mensa candidate nor a male model: Terrorist Mohammed Salameh, an imbecile who aspires to be a moron someday.

Salameh, like the dimwits from the purported "Seas of David" terrorist cell, is typical of the kind of people drawn into Washington's "rent-a-cabal" False Flag operations. It's too early to tell if the people from the alleged Ft. Dix plot fit that description, but the fact that they were planning to attack an Army base suggests that we're dealing with people dwelling on the left side of the Bell Curve.

The most important elements of this story can be found in the identity of the Albanian Muslim brothers – Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka – involved in the alleged conspiracy, and in the fact they lived in New Jersey. Since the late 1990s, New Jersey has played host to a large and growing population of Albanian Muslims, among whom can be found elements of the Albanian mafia and partisans of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) – or do I repeat myself.

The KLA, as I have pointed out, may be the only terrorist group genuinely deserving of the description "Islamo-Fascist": Its lineage can be traced to the Albanian Skanderbeg militia organized by the Waffen SS during World War II. That's the "Fatherland" half of its pedigree, as it were; the "Motherland" half is traced through the Stalinist regime of Albania's Enver Hoxha. Indeed, the KLA could be considered the mutant offspring of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact – a bastard child raised and nurtured by Osama bin Laden, with the help of the Albanian narcotics underground and (of course) the CIA.

Passionate attachments: KLA enlistees muster for a recruiting rally in Yonkers, New York during the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Serbia.

This colorful pedigree may explain why the KLA troops in parade review combined the Nazi goose-step with the Soviet clenched-fist salute – although in this case the salute involved smacking the fist against the forehead.

Like I said, we're dealing with people who would test a couple of standard deviations below the mean.

During the 1999 NATO terror-bombing of Serbia, the KLA canvassed Albanian immigrant populations in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan for recruits into a propaganda army – an "Ibrahim Lincoln Brigade," as it were. After the Clinton administration – working through the UN and NATO – delivered Kosovo (a province of Serbia) into the KLA's hands, a reign of terror commenced against both Serbs and moderate ethnic Albanians.

The KLA, and its domestic front group, the Albanian-American Civic League (AACL), have made no secret of their demented irredentist objectives: They seek the creation of a "Greater Albania" that would include parts of Serbia, Macedonia, and other Balkan countries. They won't succeed, of course, but their militancy was operationally useful to the Power Elite when it turned its malignant ambitions against the Serbs. And the same principle obtains regarding KLA-connected radicals here and abroad, who can be mobilized for the purpose of staging little terrorist melodramas whenever it suits the interests of our rulers to do so.

During the 78-day "Kosovo War," the media was ablaze with accounts of Nazi-magnitude atrocities supposedly committed by the Serbs (who, whatever their failings, were pro-US and anti-Nazi during World War II, unlike the pro-Axis Kosovo Albanian militiamen). We were repeatedly assured that the admittedly loathsome regime of the late, unlamented Slobodan Milosevic had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent Albanians.

Oddly enough, once forensic investigators had access to Kosovo, they failed to find the promised hecatomb. Yes, there was evidence of horrible crimes committed in the course of a very nasty inter-communal war, but Kosovo had not become a huge Killing Field, ala Cambodia or Rwanda.

Rather than admitting that the war had been waged under false pretenses, we were told that the evidence of genocidal killings had been removed by the devious Serbs: Huge refrigerated trucks had been sent into the province to transport thousands of Kosovar cadavers to Serbia, where they were burned, eliminated by acid baths, or otherwise quietly disposed of.

The same trope was used to explain the mysterious disappearance of Saddam's WMD arsenal, of course: It was supposedly transported to Syria in an operation carried out with such subtlety and competence that no evidence of it has ever materialized.

In both cases, this Munchausen-magnitude tale was retailed to the media by the squalid little clique working as a sub-contractor to Washington: The "Iraqi National Congress" with regard to the missing Iraqi WMDs, and the KLA regarding the fleet of mortuary vehicles that supposedly transferred Albanian corpses to Serbia.

Wretched and repellent as the KLA is, it should be considered a tool, albeit one that might be somewhat difficult to control.

And this means that California Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a stalwart ally of the KLA, is a tool of a tool.

"There is no Dana, only Zu'ul": Perhaps demonic possession explains why Rep. Rohrabacher is such a passionate defender of Osama's allies, the KLA.

On July 23, 2001, Rohrabacher was the featured guest at an AACL fundraising dinner at Le Jardin in Edgewater, New Jersey. Also on hand was John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page supported the terror-bombing of Yugoslavia. Rohrabacher used his speech to extol the Islamo-Fascist KLA as the heirs to the Patriots of our War for Independence, and denounce congressional colleagues who didn't support arming that terrorist clique in 1999.

The 9-11 attacks came little more than a month later.

That atrocity, according to the standard account, was carried out by elements of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network – a network that included Rohrabacher's friends in the KLA.

More recently, Rep. Rohrabacher, his chickenhawk plumage fully displayed, assailed critics of the Bush Regime's illegal "extraordinary rendition" program, in which people are kidnapped by the CIA for summary imprisonment somewhere in Washington's global torture archipelago.

During the April 17 hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, Rohrabacher browbeat witnesses from the European Parliament (not a body for which I'm burdened with much respect, but still) who had criticized the rendition policy.

Addressing those critics, as well as audience members who were audibly disgusted with his antics, Rohrabacher exclaimed: "I hope it's your family members that die when terrorists strike."

(Click here for a video excerpt from the hearing that contains Rohrabacher's outburst.)

Somebody needs to grab Rohrabacher by the wattles of his neck, give him a good hard shake and maybe a stout slap or two (I'd love to do it myself, but I'm over-booked), and say approximately the following:

"Hey, Dana, why don't I round up a few dozen soldiers from Ft. Dix, and you can say the same thing to them? You can do this right after you explain to them why you thought it was a good idea to give hardware and money to Osama's Albanian allies – including, most likely, the guys who were planning to shoot up the base."

---
As I noted earlier, we don't know for sure that the plot against Ft. Dix was genuine. But we have ample reason to believe that the terrorist talent pool created by the Regime is deep enough to contain some genuinely lethal threats to our well-being, and we'll be hearing from those folks soon enough.

UPDATE

The chief FBI informant in the Ft. Dix case came "to be seen by the suspects as the person who might actually show them how an act of terror could be carried off," reports the New York Times today (May 10).

Over the course of the investigation, "as the targets of the investigation spoke with a sometimes unfocused zeal about waging holy war, the informer, one of two used in the investigation, would tell them that he could get them the sophisticated weapons they wanted. He would accompany them on surveillance missions to military installations, debating the risks, and when the men looked to purchase the weapons, it was the informer who seemed to be pushing the idea of buying the deadliest items, startling at least one of the suspects."

-----------

The FedGov's plant, in other words, was the ringleader of the supposed terrorist plot. He cultivated this little group of disgruntled Muslims and catalyzed their inchoate radicalism into something potentially deadly. And he was deeply implicated in every act for which the six "plotters" now face criminal prosecution.

Why do I fail to be surprised by any of this?

Oh, yeah, that's right -- maybe it's because the Regime does this kind of thing all the time.

The Right Source has some very interesting items -- both current news stories and material from the archives -- about the KLA and its patrons, from Washington to Kabul. Please stop by and take a look!