A while back I had a few interesting email exchanges with a retired Marine Colonel by the name of Bob Pappas. You can find my diaries about those exchanges here, here and here.
Colonel Pappas is a right wing, christian Bush believer and internet commentator, to put it mildly. After a while we both agreed to discontinue our email conversations. However, he’s kept me on his mailing list, and I occasionally get copies of his latest rants delivered to my mailbox. This one, on Cindy Sheehan, seemed too priceless not to share.
Col. Pappas speaks (with my humble commentary) after the break . . .
Hurting Mother” or Traitor?
by Col Bob Pappas, USMC, Ret.
The writer doesn’t know Cindy Sheehan, but has to wonder about her. Additionally, is her protest of her own doing or is she being supported by the radical left? Does so called, “free expression” guaranteed by the First Article of Amendment to the US Constitution obviate Article III, Section 3?
That’s a new one! Free speech doesn’t include the right to protest a war, at least if you are part of the “radical left.” Obviosusly that doesn’t apply to members of the GOP and FOX News who protested against President Clinton’s employment of US forces in Bosnia/Serbia and Kosovo, but then the Constitutional guarantees in the Bill of Rights were obviously not intended to protect leftists. I’m sure Madison wrote about that somewhere in the Federalist papers, right?
During the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, there were all manner of voices in and out of government calling for removal of Saddam Hussein and destruction of his arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). He even gave credence to the notion that he possessed WMD, but in retrospect was bluffing. He may have been a murdering-genocidal-totalitarian-dictator, but most, a great poker player.
Yes, who knew Saddam was so good at poker? Maybe if we could have only convinced him to visit Vegas for the World Championship of Poker tournament we could have avoided all sorts of trouble. I can see a grateful Hussein, luxuriating in his new found wealth and fame abdicating his position as Dictator so he could come to America and join the Professional Poker tour. I’m sure he would have been a big hit on ESPN or on Bravo’s Celebrity Poker.
On the nightly news, Monsoor Ijaz, an American Muslim businessman, and Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, the latter who is presently a Shiite Muslim delegate to the Iraqi Constitutional Convention, confirmed Saddam’s possession of WMD. Where they were wrong and the US was suckered, it is well established that Saddam perpetrated genocide against Iran and Kurds.
In the lead-up to invasion, U.S. intelligence, British, French, German, Russian and Israeli all corroborated the WMD line. But as it turns out, the U.N. had destroyed most if not all of Saddam’s WMD arsenal. It also turns out that Chalabi and Ijaz were significant sources of intelligence upon which the US relied. Although not much has been made of it, Chalabi eventually admitted that he had intentionally misled U.S. intelligence in order to effect Saddam’s removal. Ijaz has not been seen nor heard of for months, or is it now years?
What can one say to this but — Duh!
During the period in question, the writer “argued with the television” that they were overdoing the WMD issue and would eventually regret using that approach to build support for war. Those “arguments” were both in vain and fruitless, but dead on. Would American’s have supported the invasion, overthrow of Saddam, and occupation if a different issue was chosen? The answer to that is the classic, “what if,” and reminiscent of Frost’s “Road Not Taken.” We are where we are, not where we might have been.
Gotta love a man who can torture a Robert Frost poem to come up with an appropriate metaphor for why we need to stay the course in Iraq. BTW, I argue with my TV too, or I used to before i stopped watching FOX News. Who knew conservatives did the same thing? Curse you Fox! If you hadn’t played up the WMD angle so much this war would have gone so much better.
Whether or not one likes it, and most “liberals” won’t, it is the country that undertook the invasion of Iraq. The vote in the House and Senate were lopsided in favor of imputing the President with the authority to forcibly remove Saddam given his repeated violations U.N. resolutions, resolutions that were also accompanied by repeated exhortations that he should comply with its orders to disarm, etc., etc..
He’s right about that. I didn’t like it then and I still don’t like it. Congress giving Bush carte blanche. Why — it’s all Congress’ fault! They should have known Bush would fuck it up! Didn’t they know about Arbusto and Harken Oil?
For “liberals” or as a commentator like to say, “for those in Rio Linda,” that was the country making its will known through its elected representatives and executive branches of government, not pollsters and partisan wags. If the country had not believed that forcible removal should be exercised in the absence of a “political” settlement, the authority to use force would not have been issued. But, authority was imputed in a Joint Resolution # 114 of 10 October 2002. The Resolution states with specificity that the President is authorized to use force under specific conditions, including Saddam’s failure to comply with the latest in the series of U.N. resolutions. Does that mean that one hundred percent of Americans agreed? Of course not.
This is what’s called beating a dead horse. Yep, Congress did authorize Bush, under certain specific conditions to use force to make Saddam disarm. And Bush lied to Congress about satisfying those conditions. Does that mean Col. Bob wants to impeach President Bush for lying us into an illegal war? Uh, not exactly . . .
But now, CNN and others are making Ms. Sheehan their anti-war “poster child.” Sheehan is a “down home” talking, “grieving” mother, who has been “outed” as the soft-spoken mouthpiece of the radical left and well characterized by her latest that the President is the “biggest terrorist in the world.” Given Joint Resolution #114, the question arises as to whether or not Ms. Sheehan and other associated actors, including media supporters, are in violation of both the Resolution, which has the effect of law, and the U.S. Constitution.
Want to place bets on where Col Bob comes out on this question? Are Cindy and the “Media” guilty of violating the US Constitution? Oh the suspense is killing me! Let’s peek ahead and find out . . .
The writer opines they are, because, their conduct dear reader is enemy propaganda of the highest order. The enemy within, wittingly or otherwise, Sheehan and her associates actions are in violation of both law and Constitution. If one were Usama bin Laden, and in this writer’s opinion he’s dead, one would be rejoicing at the likes of Sheehan and her cohorts. As Rome fell from within, so is the U.S. being actively undermined from within, and that’s a prospect that carries with it far greater danger than bin Laden.
Yes folks we have met the enemy and she is — Cindy Sheehan. Who knew the mother of a soldier who fought and died for his country could be the source of such devastation? Who knew she was a greater threat to our way of life that Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, or Michael Moore? Who suspected that when Bush joked about looking for WMD under his desk at the Correspondent’s dinner that it wasn’t really a joke? For, dear reader, the truth comes out: Cindy Sheehan (and all those who enable her) are the real weapons of mass destruction. They distribute the truth, and that can be highly dangerous to any right wing nutjob of a President. Just ask Richard Nixon.
Oh and in case you’d like to contact Col. Pappas to show your “support” for his point of view, he cheerfully provides the following contact information:
[ . . . ]
Semper Fidelis
If you wish to write a letter to the editor please use: http://www.bulletinboards.com/view.cfm?comcode=gulf1msw
If you wish to send a comment to Bob Pappas please use: Cheetah@gulf1.com
[ . . . ]
Copyright © August17, 2005 by Robert L. Pappas. With proper attribution, this essay may be quoted and redistributed. It may not be used in any way, in conjunction with any advertisement without the author’s expressed written permission.
