It's hard to keep that thought, though, when the lies keep piling up higher and deeper, and when so much of the energy of Bush supporters goes into evading reality. Is it really possible for there to be an honest difference of opinion about the calamitous Bush decision to invade Iraq? No weapons of mass destruction there, as we were told there were. No link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein, as we were told there was, and as we continue to be urged to believe by deceptive administration rhetoric. Almost no likelihood that a stable democracy will be possible in an Iraq rent by ethnic feuds and anti-democratic traditions. Billions upon billions of dollars squandered in Iraq, and billions more stolen by corrupt U.S. contractors. Meanwhile, the Homeland Security entity Bush created has shown itself to be yet another huge government boondoggle, and utterly witless in responding to a national emergency.

Beyond that, we have the shameful spectacle of Americans who call themselves patriots urging a forfeiture of our rights and liberties as U.S. citizens the rights to due process and the protections devised by the founding fathers to guard against abuses of power.

And beyond that, we have breaches of national security in the outing of a CIA agent for no better reason than spite. We have the staffing of all kinds of highly paid and important government jobs with incompetent administration cronies and partners in crime. We have repeated and massive failures of imagination. No one could have imagined a) people flying planes into U.S. skyscrapers, b) a storm of the magnitude of Katrina, or c) a Palestinian militant group like Hamas winning elections in Palestine these being just a few of the things Condoleezza Rice has said the administration couldn't imagine.

Beyond all of that, we have the growing gap between rich and poor, the exportation of American jobs by the hundreds of thousands, the wasteful and exploitive health care system that continues to bankrupt American industries, the packing of the Supreme Court with judges confirmed despite their stonewalling before the congressional oversight committees charged with vetting them before they assumed lifetime appointments. We have been unable or unwilling to secure our borders. We have seen corruption on an unprecedented scale and massive neglect of dozens of urgent national needs. Science has been disregarded whenever it runs afoul of the profit motive, and we have a foreign policy no one, least of all the people in charge of it, seems to understand.

Our actions in Iraq have fueled the most extreme anti-Western views throughout the Islamic world, and the entire Middle East is less stable than it was when the Bush bunch took office.

Meanwhile, we build for our children and grandchildren a legacy of international hatred, plus a huge debt burden as the Bush administration spends and spends as though there is no tomorrow.

We've squandered our good name and our moral authority in the world as we've watched Rumsfeld and Cheney and other spokesmen for our nation argue to justify torture in the interest of our safety.

At a time when it was absolutely essential that the world know unequivocally just who the good guys were, Bush and Co. have sullied the image of America all over the globe, drawing a portrait of a nation that behaves with arrogance, defies world opinion, ignores planetary environmental concerns, and treats other nations with disdain.

All of this harm has come to our nation and to its image, and still a cluster of supporters insist on tarring anyone who might question this ruinous administration. One of the ignorant nimrods who regularly write to this paper to call me a Marxist argues that those who disagree with the president are delighted to see America fail, that people like me take pleasure in anything that gives comfort to our enemies. He argues that people who question the reckless use of the military are "pacifist military haters." There is no truth to such baseless and childish nonsense, but he seems to think it sounds persuasive, or perhaps he thinks it's a kind of logical argument.

That's one of the reasons it's difficult not to think some of these Bush supporters are just willfully stupid.

These people grow more tiresome as they have less and less with which to argue. Their recourse, it seems, is to tag people they disagree with by calling them "leftists" and "liberals," as if those words cancel out all arguments. These people exploit the nation's soldiers to bolster their arguments.

They claim to support the troops, but you never hear a peep from them about cuts to the Veterans Affairs budget or the shameful number of avoidable deaths and injuries suffered by our soldiers because the Bush administration still has not provided frontline troops with the kind of armored vehicles that could have saved them from many of those deaths and injuries.

But to people who are either stupid or malevolent, hatred of those they would label as "liberals" trumps love of country every time and blinds them to the harm being done to our security, our heritage and our well-being.

***

Jaime O'Neill is a widely published freelance writer.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon returned from the Soviet Union with a treaty worked out by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the beginning of a process Kissinger called "détente." On June 1, 1972, Nixon gave a speech in which he said:

"Last Friday, in Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which began in 1945. With this step, we have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear—for our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world."

But Nixon left amid scandal and Ford came in, and Ford's Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff (Dick Cheney) believed it was intolerable that Americans might no longer be bound by fear. Without fear, how could Americans be manipulated? And how could billions of dollars taken as taxes from average working people be transferred to the companies that Rumsfeld and Cheney - and their cronies - would soon work for and/or run?

Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon's treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear.

They did it by claiming that the Soviets had a new secret weapon of mass destruction that the president didn't know about, that the CIA didn't know about, that nobody knew about but them. It was a nuclear submarine technology that was undetectable by current American technology. And, they said, because of this and related-undetectable-technology weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work or have businesses relationships with.

The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone.

As Dr. Anne Cahn, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1977 to 1980, told the BBC's Adam Curtis for his documentary "The Power of Nightmares":

"They couldn't say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn't find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-acoustic system. They’re saying, 'we can’t find evidence that they’re doing it the way that everyone thinks they’re doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don’t know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.'

"INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Even though there was no evidence.

"CAHN: Even though there was no evidence.

"INTERVIEWER: So they’re saying there, that the fact that the weapon doesn’t exist…

"CAHN: Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It just means that we haven’t found it."

But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good.

Wolfowitz's group, known as "Team B," came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn't depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable with our current technology. It could - within a matter of months - be off the coast of New York City with a nuclear warhead.

Although Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld's assertions of this powerful new Soviet WMD was unproven - they said the lack of proof proved the "undetectable" sub existed - they nonetheless used their charges to push for dramatic escalations in military spending to selected defense contractors, a process that continued through the Reagan administration.

Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz helped re-organized a group - The Committee on the Present Danger - to promote their worldview. The Committee produced documentaries, publications, and provided guests for national talk shows and news reports. They worked hard to whip up fear and encourage increases in defense spending, particularly for sophisticated weapons systems offered by the defense contractors for whom many of these same men would later become lobbyists.

And they succeeded in recreating an atmosphere of fear in the United States, and making themselves and their defense contractor friends richer than most of the kingdoms of the world.

Trillions of dollars and years later, it was proven that they had been wrong all along, and the CIA had been right. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz lied to America in the 1970s about Soviet WMDs and the Soviet super-sub technology.

Not only do we now know that the Soviets didn't have any new and impressive WMDs, but we also now know that the Soviets were, in fact, decaying from within, ripe for collapse any time, regardless of what the US did - just as the CIA (and anybody who visited Soviet states - as I had - during that time could easily predict). The Soviet economic and political system wasn't working, and their military was disintegrating.

But the Cold War was good for business, and good for the political power of its advocates, from Rumsfeld to Wolfowitz to Cheney who have all become rich in part because of the arms industry.

Today, making Americans terrified with their so-called "War On Terror" is the same strategy, run for many of the same reasons, by the same people. And by hyping it - and then invading Iraq to bring it into fruition - we may well be bringing into reality forces that previously existed only on the margins and with very little power to harm us.

Most recently we've learned from former CIA National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia Paul Pillar that, just like in the 1970s, the CIA disagreed in 2002 with Rumsfeld and Cheney about an WMD threat - this time posed by Iraq - even as Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz were telling America how afraid we should be of an eminent "mushroom cloud."

We've seen this movie before. The last time, it cost our nation hundreds of billions of dollars, vastly enriched the cronies of these men, and ultimately helped bring Ronald Reagan to power. This time they've added on top of their crony enrichment program the burden of over 2200 dead American servicemen and women, tens of thousands wounded, as many as a hundred thousand dead Iraqis, and a level of worldwide instability not seen since the run-up to World War Two.

When Hilary Clinton recently noted that the only political card Republicans are any longer capable of playing is the card of fear, she was spot-on right. They're now even running radio and TV commercials designed to terrorize our children ("Do you have a plan for a terrorist attack?"), the modern reincarnation of "Duck and Cover."

Now that former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has confessed that many of the terror alerts that continually popped up during the 2004 election campaign were, as USA Today noted on 10 May 2005, based on "flimsy evidence" or were >done over his objection at the insistence of "administration officials," it's increasingly clear that the Bush administration itself is the source of much of the "be afraid!" terror inflicted on US citizens over the past 5 years.

It's time for patriotic Americans of all political affiliations, and for our media, to join with Senator Clinton, former CIA official Paul Pillar, and the many others who are pointing this out, and refuse to allow the Bush administration to inflict terror on Americans - and the world - for political gain.

As Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address in 1932, when Americans were terrorized by the Republican Great Depression, the echoes of World War One, and the rise of Communism in Russia:

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Indeed, the best hope for the growth of democracy around the world and the survival of individual liberty in the United States is for us to turn away from Rumsfeld's and Cheney's politics of terror and fear, and once again embrace the great vision of this nation, held by her great statesmen and women from 1776 to today. Indeed, they are still among us, as we saw most recently when a brave few senators stood up to filibuster the nomination of Samuel Alito.

In this election year, we must redouble our efforts to swell their ranks, to involve ourselves in local and national political groups, and to return America to her destiny as the world's beacon of courage, liberty, and light.

Thom Hartmann [thom (at) thomhartmann.com] is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated noon-3pm Eastern Time daily progressive talk show syndicated by Air America Radio. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent book is "What Would Jefferson Do?"

Not to be outdone, his even more irrational fellow right-wing septuagenarian renewed his call for the United States to assassinate Chavez. This time using Fox News as his pulpit, Robertson added a half-hearted caveat to the death wish: "not now, but one day". The evangelist closed his comments with a racist boast, "until that [earlier] comment everybody thought Chavez was a fellow having to do with table grapes in California". To close the segment, co-host Sean Hannity concluded with this statement, agreeing with the thrust of Robertson's inciteful remarks:

"I think one thing we could say is, the world would be better off without him where he is, because he is a danger to the United States." (See the full interview transcript to believe it at MediaMatters.org).

It would be gratuitous to dwell on the absurdity of Rumsfeld's flailing and Robertson's fatwa. The more important point is to highlight the real political developments underlying the hysteria. There are a number of key aspects to Venezuela's political and social revolution that are currently haunting not only that South American country's economic elites, but their superiors in Washington, D.C. as well.

First, the Bolivarian Revolution is more entrenched politically and more strident ideologically than ever; Chavez has had his mandate confirmed on a number of occasions since his initial 1998 election, and is all but guaranteed a huge victory in the December 2006 presidential elections. A great number of social programs and investments, fuelled by high oil prices, are bringing tangible improvements to the poor majority in the country. In addition to this redistribution of wealth, increased political participation and grassroots organizing is pushing forward for a more radical transformation of society. And Chavez, especially in the past year, has been every more urgently calling for this process to lead to the development of 'socialism for the 21st century'.

Another extremely threatening consequence of the Bolivarian Revolution, from the point of view of imperial interests, is the way that its message is resonating across Latin America. The December 2005 landslide election of Evo Morales in Bolivia was just the most spectacular example of the recent trend in the region. Morales--also, by implication, ludicrously tarred with the Hitler brush in Rumsfeld's remarks--came to power after years of revolt by Bolivia's indigenous peoples and working class.

The Venezuelan experience stands as both an inspiration to social movements across Latin America and as a standard to which populist and Left leaders can be held accountable, as they inevitably face pressure from national elites and the transnational interests of capital.

Finally, Hugo Chavez has been hitting the United States government hard of late on the home front. This might even be the hardest pill to swallow for Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney et al. In September, for instance, the Venezuelan government's offer of aid was held up--and Cuba's offer of hundreds of doctors was ignored outright -- while the U.S. government failed to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. In subsequent months, Venezuela announced that CITGO--a wholly owned subsidiary of the country's PDVSA national oil company--would begin providing discounted heating oil to disadvantaged households in the United States. Last month, for instance, Venezuela agreed to give upwards of $5 million worth of heating oil to low-income, homeless and Native people in--of all places--the state of Maine (2). In this and other initiatives, Chavez is turning international solidarity on its head, and intervening on the side of the 'other America' within the United States. The new internationalism of the Bolivarian Revolution is not the kind of 'globalization' that the progenitors of that euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism had in mind.

As if providing all that essential energy and disaster relief to so many citizens of the United States wasn't enough of a poke in the eye to the government in Washington, last week Hugo Chavez played host to the woman who has led the resurgence of the U.S. anti-war movement. Cindy Sheehan was among the honoured guests at the World Social Forum, held in Caracas January 24-29.

Along with over 60 000 participants, Sheehan resolved, among other things, to build huge rallies on March 18 of this year, the third anniversary of Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq. The Venezuelan president urged people in the United States and around the world to bring down the U.S. Empire, even offering a little career advice to Sheehan, the world's most famous activist against the Iraq war: "He said, 'why don't [you] run for president?'" (3)

And that, as much as anything, explains the murderous fury and ridiculous slander of Pat Robertson and Donald Rumsfeld alike.

Derrick O'Keefe is co-editor of Seven Oaks.

Notes

(1) February 3, 2005, 'Tit for tat: U.S. and Venezuela trade expulsions and slurs', CBC.ca.

(2) January 11, 2006, 'Maine, Venezuela reach oil deal', Portland Press Herald.

(3) January 30, 2006, 'Chavez backs Sheehan in new Bush protest', CNN.com.

So, what the cable news hosts talk about becomes what the country talks about. All of these newsrooms throughout America are inadvertently led to believe the cable news talk show hosts have a beat on what the average American thinks about.

They drive the conversation. They decide what the topics are, they decide how the issues get framed, what questions get asked, what the controversies are, and ultimately, they decide what is important.

The former head of NBC News, Neil Shapiro, just six months ago, said this on a Dateline story:

"I think we do stories that people care about. And there's no doubt that when a story gets, has, and reaches such talkability that everybody's talking about, that it's on Talk Radio, that it's on cable -- that if we as a network news division feel like we can weigh in, we can advance the story -- we should. "

That's another way of saying the major news networks follow the lead of the talk show hosts on the radio and cable news. And over 90% of those are conservatives. They set the bait and the other news operations fall in line because that's what "everyone is talking about."

No matter how important any issue is or how right the opposition might be, if the cable news guys don't cover it, it gets buried. A couple of papers might run a story about it, a magazine might do a piece, and then it's done. Because there is no "national conversation" about it.

The Republicans just put Tom DeLay on the Appropriations Committee that is charged with doling out money in the House and a subcommittee that overlooks the Justice Department investigation of Jack Abramoff. That should be giant news and completely scandalous. But as long as Fox News Channel doesn't want to cover it, and the other two play along, almost no one will talk about it. And more importantly, the American people for the most part won't even hear about it.

Every issue the Democrats have dies an unceremonious death on cable news. So, all these scandals don't matter worth a lick if you can't get Americans to realize they're happening.

How many Americans know that there was a gay prostitute in the White House posing as a reporter to ask the administration friendly questions? How many Americans realize the Pentagon hired a PR group to sell America and the world on the Iraq War years before they launched an invasion? And the list goes on and on.

So, how can Jack Cafferty change all this? He is a rare truth teller on cable news. He gets a couple of minutes a day on CNN to do "The Cafferty File." And every time it is a breath of fresh air - a man speaking truth to power. If CNN would just give Cafferty his own show in primetime, where he can frame the conversation, he can choose the topics and he can ask the right questions, we can turn this whole thing around.

If Cafferty gets good ratings, there will be ten more like him within the year. And if we could get balance on cable news in America, viewers can finally hear the whole story and make up their minds for themselves.

For the last ten years, Americans have been jury members in a trial where only one side had an advocate. It is no wonder they have made the decisions they have. When the British paper asked how so many Americans could be so dumb after the 2004 election, I think they had it wrong. Most Americans aren't dumb or malicious, they simply have no idea what's happening to them.

Are average Republicans really in favor of Senator Grassley sneaking an extra $22 billion out of their pockets and putting it straight into the pockets of the HMOs? Are average Republicans really in favor of a House Majority Leader who hands out tobacco checks on the House floor? Are average Republicans really in favor of an administration that knew there were no links between Iraq and al-Qaeda and said there were anyway?

I know it might be hard for some of you who are knee-deep in these issues to realize that most Americans are not at all aware of any of these things, but they really aren't. Very few people are willing to hand over their hard earned paychecks to corrupt lobbyists. They just don't know any better.

I think we are making the simplest request of all time - give us one strong voice who is an advocate for 50% of the country that votes Democratic on a regular basis. I don't know Jack Cafferty's politics. I don't know if he's a Democrat, and I suspect he would be uncomfortable being classified as a partisan on either side. But it is clear from his reporting that he at least understands the depths of America's problems and is willing to speak up about the real issues in this country.

Is just one show, from a person who is already employed by CNN, too much to ask for? Why is it okay to have dozens of conservative talk show hosts on cable news and not okay to have just one on the opposite side?

Are Republicans and conservatives afraid that Jack Cafferty could take on and beat Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlson, Neil Cavuto, John Gibson and all of the rest just by himself? Are they that cowardly? Are they so insecure that they cannot countenance just one dissenting voice? Are their arguments and positions so weak that they could not withstand a challenge from just one strong voice on the opposite side?

I have never met Jack Cafferty in my life and I suspect my call to arms on his behalf will take him by surprise. I have no vested interest in him. In fact, I am a talk show host who might have to compete with him one day. I don't even know where he stands politically. All I know is he speaks the truth, loudly and clearly. And the country desperately needs that at this time.

I ask all other bloggers, others involved in the media, public interest groups, and most importantly, all of you readers to join this fight. It is imperative that we get balance back on cable news, so that we can get balance back in the national conversation.

Please watch these clips of Cafferty on CNN and see if that doesn't sound like a strong voice for justice to you:

Cafferty on the new House Majority Leader, John Boehner.

Cafferty on Hurricane Katrina response.

Cafferty on scandals plaguing the administration.

Please write the head of programming at CNN and ask for balance on their network. They just hired three new conservative talkers in the last month, Glenn Beck, Bill Bennett and J.C. Watts. Ask him to promote just one person on the other side. I nominate Jack Cafferty.

Here's the e-mail to CNN's President, Jonathan Klein: jon.klein@turner.com.

Cenk Uygur is co-host of The Young Turks, the first liberal radio show to air nationwide.

No one knows better than the editors of the New York Times that Iran does not have nuclear weapons or a nuclear weapons program. The Times editors comb through mountains of information every day and have not yet produced even a shred of evidence to support their fraudulent claims.

Nothing.

So what’s the game here? Is the Times willing to sacrifice what’s left of its tattered credibility just to pave the way to another unprovoked war?

It seems so.

Apart their from their daily updates, which are invariably skewed against Iran, their February 8 editorial reiterated at least 5 times that Iran was developing nuclear weapons.

Huh?

According to the Time’s, Iran has continued to pursue “its two-decade long drive to build nuclear weapons”. The editorial suggests that it would be preferable if the Iranian government was “more willing to put the economic future of its people ahead of building nuclear bombs.”

“Nuclear bombs”?

But, where’s the proof? Or is the Times simply circulating the same speculation, hearsay, and gibberish it did prior to the war with Iraq?

If the Times has knowledge of proscribed weapons-programs they should come forward and dispute the findings of the foremost nuclear weapons inspection team in the world (the IAEA), which has consistently found “no evidence” of nuclear weapons programs.

The Times charges are also refuted by the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) which projects that Iran will not be capable of building nuclear weapons for at least 10 years.

The Times, of course, needs neither evidence nor intelligence to achieve it objective of fabricating a crisis. They simply rely on a steady stream of baseless accusations that contribute to the rising public anxiety.

Judith Miller may have left, but her legacy of deceit still courses through the paper of record like a raging torrent. The strategy for manipulating public opinion never changes. The media settles on a narrative grounded in pure fantasy and simply repeats the same fiction over and over again from its many outlets.

The Times has proved once again that the elite-media is a steadfast partner in mobilizing the masses for unpopular wars. Despite the countless thousands of innocent people who have already been killed by the Time’s fear-mongering coverage of "imaginary" Iraqi WMD, the editors continue to use the corporate-bullhorn to call the nation to arms.

It is truly outrageous.

When America’s war of terror finally concludes, the international community will have to determine the culpability of the media in abetting the vast devastation, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. No one should be surprised if the first group frog-marched to the gallows is the editorial staff of the New York Times. Their guilt was already established long before Iran.