Posted on 09/29/2004 8:26:53 AM PDT by Happy2BMe
Liberal Billionaire Begins Lecture Tour In Drive To Oust Bush
By Jeff Gannon
Talon News
September 29, 2004
WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- What his millions of dollars in donations to leftist political groups have not yet been able to do, billionaire George Soros hopes to accomplish by pamphleteering in the month leading up to the presidential election. The Hungarian-born immigrant will take his campaign to oust President George W. Bush from the White House to a dozen U.S. cities on a speaking tour promoting the paperback edition of his recent book, "The Bubble of American Supremacy: The Costs of Bush's War in Iraq."
Soros announced his plans during a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. He pledged to spend up to $3 million advertising his appearances in cities situated in battleground states. The billionaire also launched a new web site to publicize his campaign and distribute information about his speeches.
Retired General Wesley Clark and Ambassador Arthur Hartman introduced Soros at the press event. Clark was a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination and Hartman represented a group called Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change (DMCC).
Clark said, "George Soros is sounding the alarm for the American people. Few people in the United States understand better than George Soros the risks to America's world leadership of this administration's foreign policy. I am very pleased to stand with him today to support his work to highlight the costs of this misguided war in Iraq and the need for a change in this country's leadership."
Hartman, speaking on behalf of former career diplomats and retired military officials of the DMCC, said, "Never before have so many retired diplomats and military commanders come together to warn the country we served and love that we need a change in leadership and direction. We are thrilled to join George Soros in this effort and to support his work to bring these fundamental issues to the American people."
Soros began his lecture stating, "President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests and undermining American values."
He claimed that Bush's doctrine of preemption, manifested in the invasion of Iraq, caused a vicious cycle of escalating violence. Soros said that a defeat for the Republican in November would be a repudiation of that policy and help to break the circle and regain the respect and support of the world.
Soros, who operates an international foundation that he says promotes the values and principles of a free and open society, warned against Bush's threats to American civil liberties. He claimed that after September 11, 2001, the president silenced all criticism by calling if unpatriotic.
He believes that Bush committed a fundamental error in thinking that whatever action the United States would take against terrorists is "automatically good."
"What we do to combat terrorism may also be wrong," he said.
Soros repeated a talking point recently adopted by the Kerry campaign. He said that Bush inadvertently played into the hands of bin Laden with the invasion of Iraq.
He said, "It was President Bush's unintended gift to bin Laden."
Soros made his political pitch when he said, "If we reelect President Bush, we are telling the world that we approve his policies - and we shall be at war for a long time to come."
He disagreed with Bush's assertion that terrorists hate Americans for being freedom-loving people. He also claimed that the prisoner abuse of Abu Ghraib was not the work of a few misguided soldiers, but part of a system of dealing with detainees put in place by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The billionaire also accused an influential group within the Bush administration led by Vice President Dick Cheney of "itching to invade Iraq long before 9/11."
Soros went on to recite a laundry list of leftist criticisms of the President and his foreign policy. He feigned concern for the safety and morale of American troops and callously implied that combats deaths were in vain and pronounced the liberation of Iraq a "quagmire."
Tuesday was not the first time Soros has made outrageous statements. He raised some eyebrows at a meeting of a liberal activist group in Washington in June when he compared the mistreatment of Iraqi POWs to the deaths of 3,000 Americans on September 11.
He told members of the Campaign for America's Future, "I think that those pictures hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself ... not quite with the same force, because in the terrorist attack, we were the victims. In the pictures, we were the perpetrators and others were the victims."
Soros continued, "But there is, I'm afraid, a direct connection between those two events, because the way President Bush conducted the war on terror converted us from victims into perpetrators."
He was introduced at the "Take Back America" event by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) who said, "we need people like George Soros, who is fearless and willing to step up when it counts."
Jim Dyke, communications director for the Republican National Committee, issued a statement about Soros' plans, saying, "The only explanation for the Daddy Warbucks of the Democratic Party, George Soros, to step out from behind the curtain 35 days before the election is his obvious concern for his investment in John Kerry."
He continued, "And the only explanation for the Kerry campaign's public embrace of a man who says the President's words conjure up memories of Nazi Germany, spends his millions supporting marijuana legalization, softer penalties for drug dealers doing business around schools and euthanasia liberalization is desperation."
Copyright © 2004 Talon News -- All rights reserved.
BTT
May George drive a SUV like the clown in Damascus.
Yup. And we could all blow bubbles at him ;0)
1. George, you had better hope that Putin doesn't find out that you might have financed the mass murdering terrorists who killed innocents in Russia.!
2. George, if you are planning to kick a tiger in the ass, you'd better have a plan to deal with it's teeth.
If Putin finds out that $oreA$$ might have financed the recent Islamofascist terrorist acts in Russia, this problem will be handled.
Sorry, but I don't get the $oro$ - Islam connection.
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