Saturday, February 19, 2005
Maoists For Bush
It's a good thing I went to the Conservative Political Action Conference this year. Otherwise I never would have known that, despite the findings of the authoritative David Kay report and every reputable media outlet on earth, the United States actually discovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, vindicating all of George W. Bush's pre-war predictions. The revelation came not from some crank at Free Republic or hustler from Talon News, but from a congressman surrounded by men from the highest echelons of American government. No wonder the attendees all seemed to believe him. The crowd at CPAC's Thursday night banquet, held at D.C.'s Ronald Reagan Building, was full of right-wing stars. Among those seated at the long presidential table at the head of the room were Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, Dore Gold, foreign policy advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and NRA president Kayne Robinson. Vice President Dick Cheney, a regular CPAC speaker, gave the keynote address. California Rep. Chris Cox had the honor of introducing him, and he took the opportunity to mock the Democrats whose hatred of America led them to get Iraq so horribly wrong. "America's Operation Iraqi Freedom is still producing shock and awe, this time among the blame-America-first crowd," he crowed. Then he said, "We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq." Apparently, most of the hundreds of people in attendance already knew about these remarkable, hitherto-unreported discoveries, because no one gasped at this startling revelation. And why would they? Like comrades celebrating the success of Mao's Great Leap Forward, attendees at CPAC, the oldest and largest right-wing conference in the country, invest their leaders with the power to defy mere reality through force of insistent rhetoric.Maoists For Bush, indeed. These people insulate themselves from the harsh winds of reality with irrationality and gobs of cash. By the way: Chris Cox is also the moron behind the Cox Report, which the GOP wanted to use to push Chinagate (aka "Klintoon and Hitlery have sold us out to the damn squint-eyes!"), but which itself had so many lovingly-done full-color exploded-view illustrations of classified ordnance that it was itself a far bigger security breach than anything Clinton was falsely alleged to have done. (Remember, just like every other crime, security breaches are A-OK, so long as Republicans are the ones that are committing them.) If anyone in the 1980s and 1990s was guilty of giving America's secrets to the Chinese, it was in fact prominent California Republican activist -- and longtime Chinese spy -- Katrina Leung. But the GOP/Media Axis of Evil didn't and still won't dare mention her strong position within California's Republican elite, at least not in connection with the spying.
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