Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.
At the recent tea-bag convention Sarah Palin, whose main foreign policy experience seems to be the fact that she could see Russia from her home in Alaska, got a lot of things wrong in her speech. As the new darling of the greediest and least patriotic among us she was fast and loose with the facts. While the possible candidate for the GOP nomination passed out red-meat for the rabid masses, she seems to have left the facts somewhere frozen in the Alaskan tundra.
Yes, not only does "Caribou Barbie" nicely represent the hatred and idiocy that has spewed from the "tea-party" movement, like many of her followers she has twisted the truth around into some hate-filled, insane version that more represents their own failed logic.
Take for instance this quote:
PALIN: What followed was equally disturbing after he was captured. He was questioned for only 50 minutes. We have a choice in how to do this. The choice was only question him for 50 minutes and then read his Miranda rights. The administration says then there are no downsides or upsides to treating terrorists like civilian criminal defendants. But a lot of us would beg to differ. For example, there are questions we would have liked this foreign terrorist to answer before he lawyered up and invoked our U.S. constitutional right to remain silent. [CNN Transcripts, 2/6/10]
http://mediamatters.org/...
However, as always with these folks the truth is always much different that the twisted little fantasy world they live in. Of course, it is no different for this quote:
REALITY: Administration source reportedly says Abdulmutallab currently "cooperating," officials say he provided intelligence after being Mirandized. Responding to Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Sen. Diane Feinstein in a February 2 hearing (accessed via the Nexis database), FBI Director Robert Mueller agreed that "Abdulmutallab has provided valuable information" and that "the interrogation continues despite the fact that he has been Mirandized." Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair testified in the same hearing: "There are decisions that have to be made in which you balance the requirement for intelligence with the requirement for a prosecution and the sorts of pressure that you bring onto the people that you arrest in either form. It's got to be a decision made at the time. And I think the balance struck in the Mutallab was a very -- was an understandable balance. We got good intelligence, we're getting more."
Just getting good and warmed up, Palin continued the lunacy:
PALIN: There are questions that we would have liked answered before he lawyered up, like where exactly were you trained and by whom. You are bragging about all these other terrorists just like you, who are they? When and where will they try to strike next? [CNN Transcripts, 2/6/10]
Once again in the twisted world of the ultra-Conservative wingnut looney tune reality is much different that the maniacal ramblings you convince yourself of:
REALITY: Interrogators reportedly sought and received such information from Abdulmutallab. Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 20, FBI Director Robert Mueller testified that interrogators interviewed Abdulmutallab "to gain intelligence, intelligence about whether there's another bomb, whether other coconspirators, where'd he get the bomb" (accessed via Nexis).
The Associated Press similarly reported: "Shortly after 3:30 p.m., FBI agents began interviewing the suspect in his hospital room, joined by a CBP officer and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. The suspect spoke openly, said one official, talking in detail about what he'd done and the planning that went into the attack. Other counterterrorism officials speaking on condition of anonymity said it was during this questioning that he admitted he had been trained and instructed in the plot by al-Qaida operatives in Yemen."
Her false and misleading statements did not end there and indeed she actually took the words out of Obama's mouth and put back in exactly what she, and her looney tune followers so desperately want to hear:
PALIN: Let me say, too, it's not politicizing our security to discuss our concerns because Americans deserve to know the truth about the threats that we face and what the administration is or isn't doing about them. So let's talk about them. New terms used like "overseas contingency operation" instead of the word "war." That reflects a world view that is out of touch with the enemy that we face. We can't spin our way out of this threat. It is one thing to call a pay raise a job created or saved. It is quite another to call the devastation that a homicide bomber can inflict a "manmade disaster." I just say, come on, Washington, if no where else, national security, that is one place where you've got to call it like it is. [CNN Transcripts, 2/6/10]
The truth is that Obama has fallen into the trap lain by the looney tunes and indeed does use the word "war" instead of "police action", "nation-building" or "illegal occupation", words that much more accurately describe our prescense in the middle-east:
REALITY: Obama has repeatedly used the word "war." President Obama used the word "war" at least seven times during his January 27 State of the Union speech. Moreover, following Obama's January 7 remarks on the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight -- remarks during which Obama stated, "We are at war. We are at war with al Qaeda" -- numerous conservative media figures falsely suggested that prior to that speech, Obama had not characterized the fight against terrorists as a war. In fact, in his inaugural address, Obama stated that "[o]ur nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred," and he has repeatedly discussed terrorism as the rationale for U.S. military action abroad.
Finally we have Palin's critisizms of Obama for reaching out to "rogue" regimes. Yes, in the tea-bagger mindset the worst thing you can do is try to talk to someone instead of just blowing them up and rebuilding them with taxpayer dollars. Here, Palin rips Obama for reaching out to "dangerous dictators":
PALIN: It's that same kind of misguided thinking that is seen throughout the administration's foreign policy decisions. Our president spent a year reaching out to hostile regimes, writing personal letters to dangerous dictators and apologizing for America, and what do we have to show for that? Here's what we have to show. North Korea tested nuclear weapons and longer-range ballistic missiles. [CNN Transcripts, 2/6/10]
However, Palin completely ignores the fact that other American Presidents have reached out to the very same folks. That list even includes the tea-bag "God-King" George W. Bush, whose administration at last count had almost completely destroyed this country:
REALITY: Bush, Clinton also wrote personal appeals to North Korean leader. A December 6, 2007, Associated Press article reported, "President Bush's personal letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, raising the possibility of normalized relations if he fully discloses his nuclear programs by year's end, is a turnabout for a president who has labeled the communist regime part of an 'axis of evil.' " AP further reported that the letter "reflected how U.S. policy toward the nation has shifted from the days when Bush shunned the dictator." Also, a May 27, 1999, Associated Press article reported, "North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, received a letter on Wednesday from President Clinton brought by a special envoy to the isolated Communist country, the official North Korean news agency reported. The envoy, William Perry, delivered the letter through Kim Yong Nam, head of North Korea's legislative Supreme People's Assembly, according to the Korean Central News Agency, which was monitored in Seoul."
The tea-bag movement and folks like Sarah Palin need to realize that while you are entitled to your own opinion you are not entitled to your own facts. Folks with the intelligence, competence and compassion of Sarah Palin and the tea-baggers have already had a chance to run all three branches of our government. What did their sterling vision of the world bring us??
Two failed wars wasting over a trillion dollars and thousands of lives. An economy crashed into the ditch by greed and de-regulation almost to the point of another Great Depression. Debt, Debt and more debt. A huge mess that someone else has to clean up all while those who made the mess cry about it. I will admit that the Democrats are not perfect but allowing our country to be run by the clueless tea-bag movement would be a complete disaster.
And if Sarah Palin were to win the White House in 2012 the Maya may have just gotten things right with their little calender...