Posted March 14, 2002

The Best

Just wanted to say thank you for your excellent website and information. I've especially appreciated your willingness to cover the Israeli spy operation in the U.S. I particularly enjoyed Justin Raimondo's recent article "9/11: The Truth Comes Out" of March 8, 2002. Your site and coverage are gaining much popularity, and it's easy to see why. You guys are the best! I will visit often, and will promote your site.

~ Thomas S.

Delusion

Thanks to Justin for the "Doomsday Doctrine" article. It's high time to stop treating the Wolfowitz Pack (Bush included) as rational beings. One of the stereotypes of insanity, we all know, is the delusion that one is Napoleon. Most of official Washington belongs in straitjackets, accessorized with field marshals' hats.

~ Tikhon G.

Oil

After reading Scott McConnell's ... ["March Madness"] I find myself nodding up and down, as I so often do at your site. The argument, in a very general nutshell, is quite clear: Intervention = terrorism, death, hate, anger, resentment, etc. Nonintervention = not quite a global kumbaya, but certainly no reason left to toss planes into our buildings.

The one objection that is constantly thrown at me when I state this seemingly (yet not experimentally) obvious fact, is that one word: oil (it's kinda replaced "stopping Communism" as the fallback answer to anything questionable we do, you see). All bets are off, all arguments mute, to many people, when the specter of oil is hung over the noninterventionist's head. "Do you want to pay $100 for a gallon of gas?" Etc. The Mideast, they argue, will create a monopoly that Bill Gates would envy if we just up and left, they say.

Many on your site have certainly alluded to the important role oil plays in all of this, but, what is it, specifically? Would gas really cost $100 a gallon if we brought every American home, let them all duke it out and offer to be a loyal buyer to whoever wins? Will they cripple our economy with it? How important is oil to America, really? Tell us, so we can enlighten our bloodthirsty friends in our nightly debates.

~ Winston Smith

Future 'Freedom Fighters'?

Past: KLA was on US State Department's terrorist list in 1998. Present: IMU is on US State Department's terrorist list. No Chechen Liberation Army (CLA) or Xinjiang Liberation Army (XLA) -- yet. Future: Will IMU, like KLA, mysteriously disappear from the State Department's Terrorist list? Will the US government be "fighting against terrorists" or "supporting freedom fighters" in Caucasus and Central Asia? Will "non-al Qaeda" Chechens, Uzbekis and others be used to poke and prod Russian bears that have nuclear-tipped claws and Chinese dragons that breathe radioactive mushroom clouds?

I can foresee the US government starting to make a distinction between "native" Chechen or Uzbek fighters and the "foreign" or "Arab" al-Qaeda fighters within the next 5 years. The US government would cite the very real distinction between "native" Afghanis and the "foreign" or "Arab" al-Qaeda in Afghanistan as a precedent to back up their claims. I can also foresee the US doing Clintonian hairsplitting by making a distinction between 2 geographic areas that just so happen to border each other -- Pankisi Gorge in Georgia and Chechnya in Russia. The US could also compare "bad" Chechens in Pankisi Gorge to the bad Taliban Afghanis. Then compare "good" Chechens in Chechnya to good Northern Alliance Afghanis.

I don't think the US has made any public statements whether the Uzbek deployment is to fight against IMU terrorists or not. Just sharing my thoughts on the potential future of Clintonian hairsplitting, hypocrisy, and war propaganda.

~ Rob J.

No Fear

[Regarding Justin Raimondo's column of March 11, "The Doomsday Doctrine":]

It is not just blind chance that the majority of the second Bush Administration comes from the first. These are the men who intended, under Reagan and Bush I, to implement the agenda of the religious right wing. They see no conflict between the amassing of huge financial fortunes on earth and the hope of eternal rapture. They believe their fortunes are the mark of God's favor, and that whatever they do or have done to acquire those fortunes is approved of by God, or he wouldn't have let them acquire it. Thus there is no contradiction, for they know that if the end of the world doesn't come, they will continue to be obscenely wealthy, meaning favored by God, and if the end of the world does come, they are so favored that they will immediately be taken up to heaven.

Furthermore, they have no fear of nuclear weapons. If God wants to destroy the world and use them and their nukes as the instrument, well, it's God's will. And if it isn't time for God to destroy the world, all the nukes in all the stockpiles won't make a difference. On the other hand, for those of us who don't believe in this theology, things could be rather dicey. But understanding why the current administration has (or at least why it may have) such a cavalier attitude toward nuclear weapons may in turn help the rest of us take them very, very seriously.

~ Linda Ann Wheeler Hilton

Depravity Reigns

I've said it before, but thank you again for the work you are doing. Quite extraordinary. My favorite essays recently are Justin Raimondo's "Go, Slobo, Go" and "The Doomsday Doctrine" -- and those by the brave Charley Reese. It seems to me, historically speaking, it isn't that "power corrupts" so much as it is that integrity and ethics don't grow in keeping with a growth in power. In our case, as Mr. Raimondo points out, integrity and ethics have shrunk in fact and "moral depravity" reigns.

~ M. McCormick