DON'T FALL FOR IRAN PROPAGANDA

That was the headline they came up with for my letter to the editor that was printed today in the Hattiesburg American. I'll post it as published with the parts they edited out in italics...

Don't fall for Iran propaganda

The Bush administration is gearing up for an attack on Iran on the grounds that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon and that Iran is "meddling" with our meddling in Iraq.

However, our own intelligence agencies have stated that Iran will not be able to produce nuclear weapons before 2015 if at all. Iran says its uranium enrichment is for peaceful purposes, and they are entitled to pursue this course under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which they are a signatory.


In the past two weeks, the U.S. has produced supposed evidence that Iran is providing insurgents in Iraq with weapons that only Iranians can produce. However, this supposed "evidence" falls apart under the slightest scrutiny [as the weapons use devices readily available at Radio Shack or similar electronics stores and copper discs that can be produced by anyone with the proper machine tools].

Various administration officials have stated that the United States has no plans for war with Iran and no plans to attack Iran. However, so far we have moved at least two aircraft carrier groups into the Persian Gulf which would provide us easy access to Iran.

There is no reason for us to have a military confrontation with Iran - they pose no threat to us. Iran even tried to enter into negotiations with the Bush administration in 2003 but their overtures were ignored. A war with Iran would be a disaster for our country and the Middle East, indeed, for the whole world.

We must act to stop the war with Iran before it starts. Then it will be used as an excuse to keep it going so as to save face and not "embolden terrorists." [This was originally one sentence which read: We must act to stop the war with Iran before it starts, because if and when it starts, the fact that it has started will be used as an excuse to keep it going so as to save face and not “embolden terrorists” and so forth.] I hope that everyone will urge their friends and family not to fall for administration propaganda designed to take us into another war to divert attention away from the current illegal and immoral war in Iraq.

Clinton Kirby

Hattiesburg

Nice editing job--can't complain too much. I wish the copper disc and Radio Shack parts had been left in, but that's okay...

UPDATE TO "THAT GUY GOT NAILED"

On Friday, I posted the saga of the purloined letter by Przybelski. The paper went so far as to remove his letter from their online edition due to one intrepid blogger's efforts to expose the letter as being copied.

Well, the Saturday edition brought a notice printed in the hard copy versions of the paper which said this (there doesn't seem to be a link):

Letter lifted from Web site blog

A letter in Thursday's edition about World War II radio personality "Tokyo Rose" bore a strong resemblance to an article at a blogger's Web site, www.onebigdog.net.
Much of the letter, published under the headline "Words of WWII still ring true," was verbatim to the blog.
Dick Przybelski of Petal, who submitted the letter, said Friday the information in the letter was sent to him by a friend. He said parts of the information that attacked Democrats were deleted before he submitted the letter.
He said he also changed the syntax in a number of instances in what was sent to him.
The letter should have stated that much of the information was created by the blogger and was not the original work of Przybelski.

Hey, at least they gave credit where credit was due, right?

No seriously, I don't expect personal credit or anything, but why not mention that the forum discovered this and brought it to their attention? I know for a fact that they have been concerned about driving traffic to their forum, and here was a perfect opportunity to show that the forum can be an interesting, educational, and lively place (not really, but you know...)

HOUSECLEANING AND WHAT NOT

I was on Mike Malloy's site just now, seeing what his status is and noticed that he had "Support Judge Anna Diggs Taylor" on the top right-hand side of his page. That got me to thinking, as I have off and on over the past several weeks--has the illegal Bush wiretapping been stopped, as per Taylor's decision? I doubt it, but I haven't really seen any stories about it.

But what's to stop the NSA from just saying "Yeah, we stopped the program," and then just going right ahead with it. I mean, what's to stop them from just, you know, lying about stopping the program.

I took a cursory look over the information about the case posted at the ACLU site, but I don't see anything that leaps out and says that the program was stopped. Anybody know anything about that?

February 2001

And then there was the news that Bush may have started the NSA wiretapping program way before 9/11. From what I had read, the program may have begun as early as February 2001. I haven't heard anything about that in a while. This link is what I wrote about that news back in July.

So after writing the above, I looked around for a little more info on the case, which is: McMurray v. Verizon Communications Inc., 06cv3650. Didn't really find anything about the progress of the case, but I did find this stupid comment from one of my stupid senators, Trent Lott (referring to the supposed harmlessness of the NSA program):

"What are people worried about? What is the problem?" asked Lott, a former majority leader. "Are you doing something you're not supposed to?"

Apparently, Pat Robertson said the NSA program was a "tool of oppression." Well, I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day...oh, and I can't find anything new about the case.

Two Letters To The Editor I'm Not Sending

Because they probably won't print them anyway. They didn't print my last one that I sent them (with a week between each sending), so I figure these won't make the cut either, even though they've published my letters as recently as July of this year.

Oh well, whatever...the first one is finished and was tossed off as fast as I could do it. The second one was more carefully considered and left unfinished because I wanted to be able to say that Democrats would get us out of Iraq if they take the majority in the mid-terms. But then I looked up the official position, which is some mumbo jumbo about "success" in Iraq. So then I just got disgusted with the whole thing...

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Well, hooray for our great "Christian president!"

Thanks to his illegal, immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq, he's not only succeeded in creating more terror (as per the recently declassifed National Intelligence Estimate), he's made us all complicit in the deaths of over half a million Iraqis. Are we even yet for 9/11 (which Iraq wasn't involved in)?

The British medical journal "The Lancet" recently updated its study on Iraqi deaths since the invasion and what they found does not paint a picture that Bush's favorite philosopher would be proud of--655,000 more deaths than there would have been under normal circumstances (i.e, Saddam's reign of terror) since the beginning of our illegal, immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq.

There are fewer and fewer people who continue to support this president or his horrible, unprovoked, and outrageous invasion of a sovereign country. But if you still do support Bush, please realize that you bear responsibility for the evil, unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Don't like to hear that? Too bad--until the passage of last month's Military Commissions Act (which eradicates the writ of habeas corpus and legalizes torture), this country was a constitutional republic, which means that we choose our leaders to create the policies we want them to. It then follows that if you voted for Bush, you voted for the Iraq war and its accompanying wanton slaughter of our fellow human beings.

But we have a way out--it won't absolve us of our sins, it won't make everything all hunky-dory, but it'll be a start. And that way out is to vote the Republicans out of power this November 7. If you're truly concerned about children and freedom and democracy and "choosing life," you will help turn the Republicans out of office.

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If the recent news that 655,000 Iraqis have died due to conditions created by our illegal, immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq doesn't convince you to vote for someone besides a Republican on November 7th, then nothing will.

Granted, not all of these deaths are from our bombs and guns, although many of them are. However, they are all directly attributable to Bush's decision to invade and occupy Iraq, a country which didn't attack us and didn't even threaten us to begin with. In other words, if we hadn't gone into Iraq, those 655,000 Iraqis would likely still be alive, as would our thousands of troops who have died.

Bush's Iraq policy has been aided and abetted by the Republican congressional majority at every turn. To be sure, far too many Democrats have also agreed to go along with Bush's Iraq disaster. But it is the Republicans who have been in control of both houses of Congress for the entire duration of this debacle and therefore, the blame for it rests squarely on their shoulders.