LETTERS FROM OUR READERS
We receive hundreds of emails daily from our readers. We publish some of the many letters received that we believe add value to the commentary and news already published on Axis of Logic. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we cannot publish many of the worthy letters we receive. - LMB
Well, check this out:
"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed to tell big lies." -- Adolf Hitler
Another four years of a Bush Administration and this country is going to crash and burn. Until now, I have never been more frightened of our our own government, than our foreign enemies.
Judy Thibodeau
California
To Axis of Logic:
I was just reading Sheila Samples’ article Bad to the Bone, Axis of Logic Editorial (Dec. 3, 2003) on your website. In it she says this “Dubya told the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, "We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great nation..." I was curious about this quote because I hadn’t heard that the President had said that before and I thought that if he had said something so inflammatory that I would have heard about it in the news. So I did some research and discovered that George W. Bush was not the person who said that. It was an unidentified American in Afghanistan who was with a group of other Special Forces/CIA units making a makeshift memorial to the fallen of 9-11. Here is the quote in context.
"On February 5, 2002, about 25 men representing three different Special Forces units and three CIA paramilitary teams gathered outside Gardez, Afghanistan, in the east, about 40 miles from the Pakistani border.
"It was very cold, and they were bundled in camping or outdoor clothing. No one was in uniform. Many had beards. The men stood or kneeled on this desolate site in front of a helicopter. An American flag was standing in the background. There was a pile of rocks arranged as a tombstone over a buried piece of the demolished World Trade Centre. Someone snapped a picture of them.
"One of the men read a prayer. Then he said, 'We consecrate this spot as an everlasting memorial to the brave Americans who died on September 11, so that all who would seek to do her harm will know that America will not stand by and watch terror prevail.
"'We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of our great nation.'"
I know it is difficult to get facts right on a time schedule (Sin in haste, repent in leisure), but I think that it harms the credibility of any speaker right or left when they make mistakes such as these. It could cause people to question whether other facts in the editorial are accurate and undermine the message that the author was arguing for. I know that this sort of thing happens on both sides of the political divide. I noted that your tagline is “Finding Clarity in the 21st Century Mediaplex” and it made me feel that you would want to know this information. Thanks for reading my message and please let me know if my research is incomplete (i.e., George W. Bush did say this in another context).
Richard O. Beans, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Greenville 315 E. College Ave Greenville IL rich.beans@greenville.edu
I passed your challenge to the Bush-quote on to Sheila Samples. Below is her reply, which she asked me to pass on to you (with copies to our submitting-editors). It appears that her article was very well-researched and well-sourced - so Axis of Logice will stand by the quote. Thanks for reading and questioning! Les...had my sources been left-wing bloggers, I would be inclined to retract -- however, they are mainstream, credible writers. If they attributed a quote to Bush erroneously, then the fault is theirs, and my retraction, of course, will follow theirs.
ss
Sheila's sources:
This is a review of Woodward's book written by Georgie Ann Geyer for Pat Buchanan's American Conservative Magazine, January 2003:
According to Woodward, the president, contrary to much critical thinking, did not embrace the Iraqi war from the very beginning, nor did he embrace it consistently. According to the book, he went up and down on it, his moods vacillating from the emotional conviction that his “father’s generation was called” (and now, so is he) to watching the polls and depending upon the political response around the country. At the end of the book, when he finally meets with a deeply worried Colin Powell, after months in which, astonishingly, his own secretary of state barely has access to him, Bush of course finally responds with a willingness to go to the UN and to place the problem before the world community, while Powell breathes a sigh of desperate relief.
Indeed, it is less Bush’s immediate obsession with Iraq that is illustrated here, than a kind of religiously-inspired grandiosity of character is revealed. For instance:
“This will be a monumental struggle between good and evil,” he says just after 9/11. He returns to the White House from Camp David one day, makes a brief statement to the press, and takes five questions: “He referred to ‘evil’ or ‘evildoers’ seven times and three times voiced amazement at the nature of the attacks,” Woodward writes. In another place, from Bush: “We haven’t seen this kind of barbarism in a long period of time.” He stops at a hockey game in Philadelphia, and, when the fans demand to watch his speech on the stadium’s overhead video screens and the players huddle to watch,” Bush says with wonder, “They wanted to hear what the commander in chief, the president of the United States, had to say during this moment! I have never felt more comfortable in my life.”
Another time, he says to Woodward, “I’m the commander—see, I don’t need to explain—I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”
At still another point after the Afghan war has started, the president says to his staff, “Look, our strategy is to create chaos, to create a vacuum.” And Woodward ends the book with another quote from the president, in which he again reflects the obsessive chaos theory of the neoconservatives surrounding him like sentinels and for whom Iraq has become the sina quo non of political existence: “We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of our great nation.” Whew.
http://www.amconmag.com/01_13_03/geyer7.html lnternational Herald Tribune -->by William Pfaff
Woodward ends his book with another quotation from the president, uncomfortably apposite: "We will export death and violence to the four corners of the Earth in defense of our great nation."
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0407-08.htm
In Bush at War Bob Woodward writes, "Most presidents have high hopes. Some have grandiose visions of what they will achieve, and he was firmly in that camp."
"To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil," says Bush. And again President Bush said, "We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great nation."
Grandiose visions. Woodward comments, "The president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of Gods Master Plan."
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MahdiUnite/message/2138
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/vance1.html
Christianity and War
"We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of our great nation"– George Bush
See also:
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/2003/01/000215.html
http://www.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/The_Compassionate_Conservatives/
Dear Axis of Logic,
Read your article and can only say anyone who doesn't question press releases passing as news these days should be regarded as Ann Coulter regards those over 16 who are undecided. That said I have one question. Just how stupid is Senator Nelson and how dumb are the rest of the 75? How exactly did they think Saddam was going to communicate and control a UAV over the curve of the earth and open ocean? Possibly through his extensive space program and all his deployed satellites? Not that this discounts the very real possibility that someone in the Bush administration would be dishonest enough to tell Senators that or arrogant enough to believe them too stupid to dispute it but isn't it possible that this was a nudge nudge wink wink excuse given to them for cover and justification? Did Daddy Bush sell him more than just biological, chemical weapons, and PROMIS software? Maybe he was supposed to use Osama bin Laden's satellites. Or maybe Ruppert Murdoch's. The point is there is more to this story and someone should ask some more questions.
Brett Cotham
Dear Brett,
I think your comments are "spot-on". All the while I was writing the article, I was thinking the very same thing. The "Naive 75" had to know, but I'm sure were more than thankful to the Bush Regime for giving them cover for voting to invade Iraq. Soon it will all pass from the pages of corporate media and they will be all back in business. We'll do everything we can to keep these stories alive.
Thanks so much for your astute insight and observations - and for taking time to write to us.
Les Blough
To Axis of Logic,
Les Blough is my uncle. What he is doing, is what he believes in, and whatever he does with this website, I will support him.
Sincerely,
Gene Pritts
Davidsville, PA
[To axisoflogic, MANY THANKS TO
http://www.axisoflogic.com/ FOR PICKING UP THIS IMPORTANT SLACK IN THE NEWS !!! Vheadlines appers to be down. Adam.antville.org also appears to be defunct. At least they are both broken as of this writing. - Rainbow Sally
Dear Les,
I fully agree with the points made by Lawrence Smallman, who has obviously thought deeply about the problems.
Effectively, all these comments by others confirm my view that Saddam Hussein should be tried in Iraq by an Iraqi Court, but only after a free Iraqo government has the full power to appoint such a Court and its Judges.
I also think that the Court should take the fullest advantage of expert advice from outside, but the whole matter should be dealt with internally. If, after such a trial, and (if he is convicted) after he has served his time (unlikely in my view that he could live that long) he should then, and only then, be placed at the disposition of a suitable International Court or Tribunal.
Best wishes
Robert
(Axis note: Robert Thompson is a retired international lawyer from Northern France)
Ladies and Gentlemen,
As a retired Avocat (Court-room Lawyer) in Northern France, I was delighted when a friend in the U.S.A. sent me a copy of this article by Sheila Samples. Please pass on to this lady my congratulations for her brilliant description of the Bush family. It is a relief for us to receive directly from the U.S.A. comments which show that those of you who have free access to genuine information share our (general European) view of the Bush family and also of such shady mafia-like organisations and groups as the neo-conservatives and the Carlyle Group. Europe has its notorious traitors, such as Messrs Blair and Aznar, who are so servile towards Mr George W. Bush and the neo-conservatives who control him, but most fortunately they do not seem in any way to represent the views of their respective electorates.
It was not by chance that a recent poll throughout the European Union showed that the people thought that Mr George W. Bush was the most dangerous man in the world, and that the U.S.A. (under its present administration) were considered to be the state posing the greatest threat to world peace, followed fairly closely by their puppet "State of Israel". As I say these results were not by chance, but were, I believe, a fair reflection of what ordinary people think around us in our very rural area.
We do not believe that we live in a perfect society, or that our politicians are above reproach, but we do at least have the advantage of having a genuinely free press, and our other media are protected from the kind of control which we can see in the U.S.A., and, most unhappily, in the United Kingdom. In the U.K. many of the same corporations from the U.S.A. (e.g. those controlled by Mr Rupert Murdoch) exercise tight control through their strangle-hold on much of the press and also the most powerful satellite television company. Here, in France, we put our comparative freedom down partly (perhaps largely) to the lack of a common language with these tyrants in your country. We hope that they will never manage effectively to bridge that gap.
To conclude, I send my heartiest congratulations to Sheila Samples, and wish her many years of useful writing.
Yours sincerely,
Robert Thompson
Postal address :
Maitre Robert THOMPSON
Avocat Honoraire
22, rue de l'Eglise
62990 RIMBOVAL
FRANCE
Something for Sheila Samples
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 20:55:42 -0500
To: "Les Blough" contact@axisoflogic.com
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