David Horowitz: All Wrong, All the Time

I hear that David Horowtiz spent half a million bucks on developing his conspiracy site, “Discover the network,” which purports to document the “subversive” activities of anyone he disagrees with. If so, his donors should ask for their money back, because if the entry on me is any indication, he manages to get everything — even the smallest easily-checkable details — flat-out wrong. Among my alleged sins:

“Administers the website Antiwar.com.”

Wrong. I’m not the webmaster of Antiwar.com, nor am I an administrator, alas, but only a mere writer. The real administrators keep me as far away from administrative affairs as possible — and that’s just the way I like it.

“Once sought notoriety as a leftist, but now poses as a rightist.”

This is puzzling. I was never a leftist, of any sort: National Review was my bible as a teenager, and I actively campaigned for Barry Goldwater for President in 1964. From there I joined Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), and then founded my own youth group, “Young Radicals for Capitalism.” We had a huge chapter at Wayne State University, and put out a single issue of a magazine, The New Radical, that was filled with denunciations of the New Left. From there I joined the Libertarian Party during the presidential campaign of Roger MacBride (1976) and subsequently ran for office (Congress, state legislature, etc.) several times in California under the LP banner. I left the LP in 1983.

Oddly, none of this is mentioned in Horowitz’s looney “profile” of me: according to his weird “alternate reality” version of my political history, my longtime (and continuing) association with the libertarian movement never happened.

In short, never have I “sought notoriety as a leftist.” I think Horowitz is projecting here, since the description fits him and not me.

“Posing as a war-hater, Raimondo defends murderous dictators like Slobodan Milosevic.”

Another lie, as anyone who reads my numerous attacks on Milosevic can see for themselves.

“Presents the Ba’athist party-states in Iraq and Syria as victims of the malicious West.”

As I have said repeatedly, the real victims of our intervention in the Middle East are the peoples of the countries that we target — and the American people, who have to die for and pay for the neocons’ endless wars.

“Openly wishes that Japan had won World War II.”

This laughable malarkey — after all, isn’t it a little late to be cheering for the Mikado? –comes from a comment I made about the calm beauty of the Japanese tea ceremony as opposed to Eminen’s noisy misogyny. Whatever they’re smoking over there in Horowitz-land, it must be some pretty powerful stuff.

“States that September 11 was ‘an enormous defeat for the U.S.'”

Is Horowitz is saying it was a great victory?

“Believes that the Great Satan is America, and the Little Satan is Israel.”

Horowitz doesn’t cite anything I have written or said to back this up. But, then again, what’s evidence for a proven liar and fraud, who knows the Leninist art of lying all too well?

“Author of The Terror Enigma, a pamphlet that insinuates, with no serious evidence, that the Israeli government had prior knowledge of 9/11 but failed to warn U.S. authorities.”

If Horowitz is saying that Fox News is not a source capable of providing “serious evidence,” then I believe there are many on the left who would agree with him. However, their four-part series on Israel’s “vast” (their word) spy network in the U.S. is just one of many sources that I rely on, including The Forward, Die Zeit, Insight magazine, Salon.com, and a host of others.

As if being wrong about everything wasn’t enough, however, the supposedly “interactive” feature of Horowitz’s “database” is broken. When I clicked on the button that is supposed to conjure up a “map” detailing all my alleged links to the “anti-American left,” what comes up on the screen is — absolutely nothing!

This cost half a million bucks? All I can say is that somebody got ripped off — bigtime.

Postscript: If you want to see what kind of dingbats are attracted to Horowitz and his nutty site, go here. Birds of a feather, and all … Continue reading “David Horowitz: All Wrong, All the Time”

“Buds of Democracy” in Iraq

Any guerrilla war has lulls, slowdowns, little coffee breaks that last a week, a month, sometimes years. It doesn’t mean the war’s over. The VC used to go home when it was time to harvest the rice crop; every time they did, the Saigon PR office would declare that the insurgency was beaten. Sadr and his boys are going to work us the way you work a can lid: back and forth, over and over, sheer metal fatigue. They’ve got a whole new crop of martyrs to worship, and all they have to do is wait for another policy mistake to outrage all their followers. One thing you can be sure of, if you’re an Iraqi Shiite: outrages are like buses, there’ll always be another one coming along. When it arrives, they’ll get on board, fight us again, lose again, win the propaganda battle again, and come back a little stronger, with more of the Shi’ite poor on their side. After a half dozen lost battles, they’ll be so strong we’ll be glad to catch the last chopper out of Najaf and let’em martyr each other, instead of paying hundreds of billions of my tax money to be their Santa-Claus bogeyman….Gary Brecher, War Nerd, 04 September 2004

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The bombings, the shootings and kidnappings go on daily in Iraq. But two years after US troops pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, there are signs of hope that Iraq is finally turning the corner. The number of US casualties, the scale of militant attacks and the amount of civilian blood spilt have been reduced sharply from the peak in January and February. The security situation is still bad, but it is less awful than it has been for the past year.

American and British commanders are careful to caution that this may be a lull, little different from those seen in February and June last year. Yet in the Green Zone, the fortified government enclave in Baghdad, coalition and Iraqi officials dare to hope that they are gaining the upper hand……Telegraph, 13/04/2005

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Iraq4a

Chanting “Death to America” and burning effigies of President Bush and Saddam Hussein, tens of thousands of Iraqis flooded central Baghdad on Saturday in what police called the largest anti-American protest since the fall of Baghdad, the capital, exactly two years ago.

The peaceful demonstration by angry young followers of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr underscored the United States’ accomplishments and its failures since the end of the war.

The Paradise Revolution…..LENIN”S TOMB

Thanks to blogslut for the picture

Rumsfeld lectures Iraqi Parliament

All those recently elected Iraqis who’ve been screwing around like forming a government is no big deal, have had the riot act read to them by Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld’s message was made extremely loudly and clearly in his indomitable style when he told the interim Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari about Washington’s frustration with the fact that 10 weeks after the historic elections here in Iraq, the government has still yet to be formed.

The defense secretary made the Iraqi officials fully aware of his belief that this delay is having damaging effects on Iraq’s future. It not only undermines the faith of the Iraqi people in democracy. But, every day the formation of the government is delayed is yet another day that U.S. troops are going to have to remain in this country. In addition, the power vacuum only feeds the insurgency that is making the daily lives of regular Iraqis so miserable.

That’ll show ’em.

If a power vacuum feeds an insurgency, is that why it has grown so large under the US occupation? Just asking.