IVINS: Following the Spoor of Depravity --or-- How Fascism Starts

"It's important to know how fascism starts."

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=16982
or
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/columnists/molly_ivins/8732748.htm?1c

(same column, different sites)

Pass this one on, friends. Everyone needs to know about this.

Send it to your Republican friends. To your Fundy friends. To your over-the-top, wrapped-in-the-flag, Pharisee-Patriot friends.

Normally, something like Abu Ghraib can be blamed in part on the Downward Communication Exaggeration Spiral, which afflicts most organizations. Someone at the top makes a mild suggestion, and by the time it reaches the troops, it's iron-clad law. This appears to be a rare case of a reverse spiral, with the orders coming from the very top and questions being raised about them all the way down, until finally Army Spc. Joseph Darby spoke out and set off the Taguba investigation.

In this case, there is more than sufficient evidence pointing to the culpability of those at the top. But at the same time, the Pentagon is putting out the word that it was "only a few bad apples," six low-level soldiers who have already been charged, with no one else involved. This just stinks of cover-up. Damned if I think these six low-level soldiers should be hung out there to take the blame for a set of explicitly written and signed policies made by people wearing expensive suits, getting paid big bucks and bearing some of the highest titles in the land.

You can read all the memos and documents for yourself. It's important to know how fascism starts.

:kick:

a supporter of the Bush Administration. If she has any comments, I'll post them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's interested in what such a person might have to say.

while I am away on vaction in Alaska. I have been communing with nature in Denali National Park the last few days and so have not been plugged into the net recently.

I've be following Molly for a long time now. Few people know "W" as well as she does.
This is too true, compassionate conservative is just friendly fascist.
The obvious disdain these people have for the truth and the ruthless use of disinformation is scary. I'd bet someone with the spare time could put quotes from Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle leading into the war up against the Nazi propaganda that pushed the Germans into a military disaster.
If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes true.
Elsewhere on the forum was the statement that a survey showed that the people who got their news from Fox where wrong on a majority of current events questions.
fair and balanced...?

You'll fit in well! :toast: