48 Hours (A Liberal's Take on Hunter: Barf + LOL Alert)

On May 18, 2007, I read the following headline on the Al-Jazeera News website: "U.S. Plans Israel Missile Shield." I was quite surprised because I had not yet heard of such a project.

The measure, part of a $504 billion defense spending bill passed on Thursday, would redirect $205 million in defense department funds toward projects already underway in Israel.

The key words are "already underway." In other words, this was a done deal with no debate or public announcement of the program to build a missile shield for Israel. Before I went any further, I thought, "This smells of Duncan Hunter."

The move was spearheaded by Duncan Hunter of California, the senior Republican member of the House of Representatives on the House Armed Services Committee and a candidate for his party’s 2008 presidential nomination.

It was a last-minute addition to the Democratic-controlled House’s version of the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill …

This underhanded approval of an item of which most congresspeople are unaware is not without precedence. It is a ploy for a congressperson to slide his/her pet project into a bill without debate. Because these spending bills are so large and cumbersome, the last-minute amendments are rarely scrutinized.

Hunter is a master at such chicanery. Last year, in San Diego, a judge ordered the city to take down an illegal Christian cross that was built and sponsored by the city of San Diego in 1954. The case had been in various courts since 1989 and each time, the city lost its appeal to keep the cross in place. Finally, the original judge on the case lambasted the city for disobeying the law and gave the city 85 days in which to remove it. If it was still in place after the 85-day period, the city was to pay a $5,000-a-day fine.

Enter Duncan Hunter. Without notifying anyone, he attached a last-minute addition to a spending bill of several billions dollars to have the cross transferred from city to federal property under the guise of it becoming a national park. The bill easily went though because every congressperson had "pork" entries that benefit his/her local constituency. That’s the way the system works in the U.S. Congress.

When I heard of Hunter’s unethical move, I called his office to get an explanation. I asked one of his assistants why Hunter made the addition without consulting his constituency. The stooge said that Hunter had discussed the matter in public forums. This was untrue. I had followed the cross case closely and Hunter never uttered one word. When I told this to the assistant, he said, "Well, he didn’t have enough time to make a public announcement." Within a few seconds, Hunter had changed from a congressman who divulged the plan to one who did not have enough time to alert the public. I then told his assistant that I am a taxpayer in Hunter’s district and I was upset because he supported an illegal cross under the guise of a "war memorial." I was told, "That’s your opinion. Congressman Hunter does not think it is illegal." I ended the conversation by enlightening the yes-man to the fact that opinions had nothing to do with it. It had been declared illegal in 1991 and in every subsequent court appeal. At the time of my conversation, the cross was still illegal in fact, not in opinion.

Let’s look at Duncan Hunter’s career in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was elected in 1980 for his first term. During the 1980s, he was considered a Reagan Republican, a conservative ideologue who, at times, conveyed some unorthodox views, even by conservative Republican standards.

In 1990, Hunter began to make national headlines. From August 1990, he was a proponent of going to war with Iraq. He was adamant and came up with reason-after-reason to attack Iraq. In November 1990, in front of a national audience, Hunter said that Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait were throwing Kuwaiti babies onto the floors of hospitals do die and the occupying Iraqi forces sent the incubators to Baghdad. Everybody was shocked, including Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, who was debating Hunter on the Today Show. Clark was caught off-guard. In his book, The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf, Clark explained:

Hate propaganda was systematically used by members of Congress who favored war. In an appearance on the Today Show in November, I was suddenly confronted by Congressman Duncan Hunter from San Diego with the charge that Saddam Hussein had caused the death of incubator babies in Kuwait City. While I questioned the reasonableness of the report and observed it would be the acts of individual soldiers and officers if it occurred, having never heard the charge before, it was impossible to reject out of hand even so improbable a claim. The congressman’s fury must have created hatred toward Iraq among many of the several million viewers. This must have been his motive, as it most likely was President Bush’s when he repeatedly used the same false story thereafter.

While talking to Ramsey Clark in February 1992, I brought up this incident. He was very upset in the manner in which Hunter made the accusations. Clark told me, "I had never heard of the allegations and had no way to defend myself at the time. I knew it was probably false, but I had no way of proving this when Hunter had documents in front of him." By the way, the documents came from Amnesty International. The group made the allegations without even going to Kuwait to check the authenticity of the incidents. After Desert Storm, the head of Amnesty International admitted the group had been "misinformed." However, instead of an apology, the chairman dismissed his group’s error by saying that Bush would have gone to war even if these allegations had not been made. He, like many of the supporters of the March 2003 invasion who perpetrated lies, tried to squirm his way out of any obligation for the cause of Desert Storm. In reality, many U.S. citizens were opposed to attacking Iraq until they heard the baby incubator lies and they became supporters of the imminent war.

The U.S. Senate voted to approve going to war. The vote was close, but a margin of five votes (52-47) sealed the fate of Iraq. In 1992, once the truth emerged about the false accusation of shipping incubators to Baghdad, seven U.S. senators who voted for war stated that they would not have if they knew the truth. One does not need to be a master mathematician to see that the vote would have been 54-45 against the war. But, similar to the aftermath of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, it was too late to reverse the conditions created by the war (the destruction of Iraq) that held their bases on lies.

Something happened in April 1991 that led to my own dealings with Duncan Hunter. I was hired as a reporter by a weekly newspaper, The East County Weekly, in Alpine, California. Three months later, I was named the paper’s editor.

Hunter was a household name in the rural areas of his constituency, so I had much contact with his office. For a year-and-a-half, I experienced some bizarre incidents with the congressman.

I received almost daily press releases from Hunter’s office, mostly about mundane local issues. One time, I received a report and had a few questions. I called Hunter’s office and spoke to his assistant at the time, Cal. No one ever knew his last name. He was always Cal.

I asked Cal a question about the wording in the report. He quickly said, "I’ll have that answer within 48 hours for you." The conversation ended.

Forty-eight hours came and went, but Cal never returned my call. I then called him and he said, "I’ll have that answer within 48 hours for you." I let it slide and put down his non-communication to a possible busy schedule on his part.

Again, I heard nothing from Cal. I called and received the same "48-hour" response. This time, however, I would not let him slide. I asked, "What telephone number do you have for the paper?" He was silent except for a couple of "uhm … uhm" utterances. When I asked him what paper I represented, there was total silence. Not even one "uhm." I then realized that he did not even write my name, the paper’s name or the telephone number on a piece of paper. I just hung up.

A few days later, a ranch owner came into the newspaper office. He spoke to me about the paperwork for some zoning variance that was being held up. Then, he said that he had talked to Hunter’s office several times about it and never received a reply. He added, "I’m going to get an answer soon, though. I spoke to Cal at Hunter’s office yesterday and he said he would get back to me in 48 hours." I wished him luck.

In the matter of a week, I saw the deceit of Hunter’s office in dealing with the press and the public. For a few weeks after my discovery, I had more people tell me that they had spoken to Hunter’s office and were told they would have a reply in 48 hours. Some had called weeks ago and still had not been contacted, despite followup calls. I then knew that the "48 hours" statement was a coded message that, in reality, meant "fuck off."

In mid-1991, I interviewed an environmentalist activist from an adjoining town. He was upset about Hunter’s pushing through a development plan for his rural area without telling the public. He told me that he had an appointment with the congressman and asked if I would accompany him as a press observer. I consented.

On the day of the meeting, Hunter greeted us in the lobby of his office and invited us in. I saw one of his assistants and sat next to him. He looked a little nervous that I chose to sit so close. The meeting started and Hunter kept telling his secretary, "Take that down." I noticed that his hand was moving much faster than it should if he was taking notes. I leaned back and saw he had no pen or pencil in his hand. He merely moved his hand behind the paper, giving the illusion that he was taking notes. Hunter kept saying, "Take that down."

When the meeting ended, I approached the note-taker and asked, "I missed a few words the congressman said. May I check your notes?" He pressed the paper against his chest. Then, I added, "Plus, I seem to have lost my pen. May I borrow yours?" I smiled and walked away.

On the way out, Hunter gave the environmentalist and I a suggestion. He said, "If you have any questions, call my office. Cal will get back to you within 48 hours."

Other than the occasional TV appearance in which Hunter said the U.S. was wrong in its approach to Iraq during Desert Storm (he stated the U.S. should have nuked Iraq and wiped it off the map), Hunter was fairly quiet. Then, in early 1992, he began to outdo himself in blunders.

The golf course fiasco was so outrageous that one could think it was fiction. The Campo Band of Mission Indians, with a membership of about 300, occupy a reservation about 60 miles from San Diego. It is almost literally "in the middle of nowhere," located on hills of desert sand and huge rocks.

The Campo Indians were in the middle of attempting to open a landfill to bring in revenues for their tribe. If it became reality, the tribe could have quickly been able to offer a much better standard of living for its members.

Hunter opposed the landfill. Over the years, he denigrated the plan as well as the Indians. He is no fan of dark-skinned people.

I received a long press release stating that Hunter proposed the building of a golf course on the reservation. He went into great detail about how a golf course could be a great source of revenue. However, he did not mention that no one would travel 60 miles to play golf in a desert outpost when they had dozens of courses much closer to home. Also, at the time, the golf trade was in decline. The sport was booming in the 1970s and early-to-mid 1980s. Then, golf courses began to close. There was too much saturation in the market.

Hunter quoted a few sentences from a report published by the National Golf Federation as his justification for advocating the building a golf course. The remarks had nothing to do with the economic feasibility for constructing a new golf course. In addition, he told millions of people about the plan, with the exception of 300: the Campo Indians.

I called the National Golf Federation and asked it to send me a copy of the report. While waiting for the document, I called my contact at the Campo reservation and jokingly asked who would be the designing architect for the tribe’s new golf course. He asked, "What golf course?" Then, I told him about Hunter’s press release. He was very perturbed and said, "I’m going to call that jerk right now." I advised him not to hold his breath if he was told he would have an answer within 48 hours.

As if not approaching the Indians before proposing a golf course for them was not enough, the report I received from the National Golf Federation made things much worse for Hunter. I read the report and it gave a gloomy outlook for the construction of new golf courses for years to come. I called the author of the report and, without giving specifics, told her that someone in San Diego was advocating building a golf course, citing her report as evidence that it would be a good idea. She told me, "If anyone uses this report to advocate building a new golf course, that person is an idiot."

Many publications ran Hunter’s press release about building a golf course in Campo. I took another route. I wrote an article that included the rage of the Campo Indians over Hunter’s press release as well as the statistics from the National Golf Federation and the quote calling Hunter "an idiot."

Hunter was irate when the article appeared. He was also embarrassed. In the week following the publication of the article, two journalists called me to say that Hunter approached them and offered to pay a handsome fee it they would write an article refuting mine. Both told me that they told Hunter that my article was well-researched and correct and they could not contradict my piece.

In 1992, Hunter was confronted with the only serious electoral opposition he has experienced in his career. Janet Gastil, a left-leaning anti-war, pro environment candidate came close to ousting him. But, in 1994, Hunter beat her easily. He again escaped the constraints of his stupidity.

In 1994, I began to publish a political magazine called The Alternative. I occasionally knocked Hunter, but the scope of the magazine was more worldly than a weekly newspaper, so he did not make front-page coverage.

But, Hunter still kept on upping the ante on bigotry and stupidity. On a trip to Germany in the late 1980s, his idol, Ronald Reagan, told the Soviet leader Gorbachev, "Tear down this wall," in reference to the Berlin Wall. The U.S. public was inundated with politicians saying that no country should have a wall separating it from another.

Hunter did not listen to his mentor’s message. In 1994, he pushed through legislation to build a 14-mile border fence between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico. Many citizens call it a wall of shame and decry the hypocrisy of admonishing the East Germans for a wall, yet praising a physical boundary on the U.S. border.

The fence then was reinforced with a second barrier. It has not stopped illegal immigration. It only moved it eastward. This move has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Mexican nationals because they now have to cross the border in a mountainous area and many die during the winter because they are trapped in the mountains.

Despite the despicable presence of this fence, Hunter has persuaded the xenophobic public that there should be a two-tier fence for the entire length of the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Illegal aliens continue to funnel directly into many of our local communities and adversely impact our way of life," said Mr Hunter, a California congressman.

He said that the lessons of 11 September 2001 taught Americans that immigration was a national issue that required national solutions.

Hunter and his allies in congress maintain that the cost of such a barrier would be about two billion dollars. Nobody questioned this figure. On January 8, 2007, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article that contradicted Hunter’s economic assessment. It stated:

The cost of building and maintaining a double set of steel fences along 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border could be five to 25 times greater than congressional leaders forecast last year, or as much as $49 billion over the expected 25-year life span of the fence, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

A little-noticed study the research service released in December notes that even the $49 billion does not include the expense of acquiring private land along hundreds of miles of border or the cost of labor if the job is done by private contractors -- both of which could drive the price billions of dollars higher.

Another of the absurdities Hunter has discussed is the treatment of foreign nationals being held at Guantanamo Bay. There have been many documented instances of abuse and torture used against the prisoners, most of whom have not been charged with a crime, but have been incarcerated for years. Hunter disagrees they are experiencing hard times. On June 13, 2005, he told CNN News:

So the point is that the inmates in Guantanamo have never eaten better, they've never been treated better, and they've never been more comfortable in their lives than in this situation. And the idea that sometime -- that somehow we are torturing people in Guantanamo is absolutely not true, unless you consider having to eat chicken three times a week real torture.

Hunter has denigrated gays and atheists. In 1995, he proudly accepted an award from the Boy Scouts of America for his active support for the group’s discrimination against non-believers and homosexuals. More recently, he stated that the first qualification for anyone appointed as a judge in the U.S. should be his/her belief in God.

We can go on and on talking about this illogical, bigoted congressman. His actions have hurt many over the years. The surprising aspect of his career is that he has been allowed to make preposterous statements, or use slick methods of having legislation passed, without being chastised. Many people around him have been burned, but he always comes out of any situation with the appearance that he is the aggrieved party.

Hunter is running for president, yet his name is way down on the list when it comes to polls. In a recent speech to the American Conservative Union, broadcast on C-SPAN in its series "Road to the White House, Hunter stated:

To America’s critics, I would say this: When you were hungry, we brought you food. The Americans came. When you were sick, the Americans brought medicine. When you were attacked, we left the safety of our own homes to defend you. America is a great nation because America is a good nation. And our goodness comes from a belief in God and a corresponding belief in the value of human life.

I think the relatives of the millions of dead Iraqis, Vietnamese, North Koreans, Panamanians, and those of other nationalities, who have suffered because of U.S. war-mongering would differ with Hunter on the effect of U.S. benevolence.

Hunter has about the same chance of a urine-induced concavity in a snow-bank of being elected president. His candidacy has spawned good news and bad news. Hunter has announced that this is his last term in the U.S. Congress, regardless of his performance in the presidential primaries. The bad news? Hunter’s son is running for his father’s congressional seat.

LOL.

I'm sorry, but this guy made Hunter out to be the antichrist. OMG, he received a reward from the Boy Scouts!

Lots of references to non-sourced interviews and personal conversations (and we know liberals NEVER lie about those). And of course, trying to equate the Soviet's Berlin Wall to Hunter's San Diego border fence...how pitiful.

Barf alert...or Laugh Alert?

You decide.

Despite the despicable presence of this fence, Hunter has persuaded the xenophobic public that there should be a two-tier fence for the entire length of the U.S.-Mexico border.

You just have to wonder how people can reach this kind of vapid conclusion.

Duncan Hunter "Scaring the Liberal Loon" ping!

(And you KNOW it has to be loony if it appears on uruknet...the Iraqi version of Daily Kos.)

If anyone posted this sack of crap distortions on Kennedy or Pelousey, they would be branded as criminal libels and forced to run the gauntlet of media attacks and investigations as to why they were so cruel.

I say barf.

If these lefties hate him, that’s good reason to love him!

There are plenty of reasons to respect Duncan Hunter.

He makes a strong case for Duncan Hunter for president!

He sounds like every other nut job that posts at DU!

And giving any credence at all to Ramsey Clark, Sadaams own lawyer! Sheesh!

My vote is Laugh alert! It is too funny to even worry about!lol!

Oh no! The Building of the wall caused Mexican Nationals (read, those determined to enter illegally) to have to cross tougher terrain to break our laws. Notice how the Marxist author makes reference to an “ Illegal cross”, but illegal invaders are “mexican nationals” Can’t make this stuff up. Well, actually, you can. This author just did.

I looked in over there this afternoon. What a bunch of boring posts! A real rudy love fest! No one even argues at all and they are so smug! I can’t wait for the elections to wipe that smugness off their faces!lol!! Cause it’s going to happen!

Fascinating article, thanks for the ping.

That’s great! The wall didn’t stop illegal immigration, it just caused it to move elsewhere. Sure sounds like it did the job where it stood. And it didn’t do the job where it did not stand, kinda like a “virtual wall”.

I just love how DH puts the hot coals in the eyes of liberals.

I have no problem at all beating liberals at their own game in opportune. None what so nevermind. Don’t mind DH employing same - Jesse Helms would’ve done the same thing.

It’s called “smart”.

HUNTER FOR PRESIDENT!!!

Well now, that settles it. I could NEVER support Duncan Hunter, knowing he did something as despicable as receiving an award from the Boy Scouts!

/I hope you all know I’m kidding

A lady from California called Rush yesterday. She gave him hell about his past lack of coverage of the illegal immigration issue and strongly suggested he throw his support behind Rep. Hunter. Called him the next Reagan. Rush, of course, said he was the next Reagan and the woman said, “Why don’t you run?”

Seems he’s geting plenty of airtime. Hope people are listening.

“To America’s critics, I would say this: When you were hungry, we brought you food. The Americans came. When you were sick, the Americans brought medicine. When you were attacked, we left the safety of our own homes to defend you. America is a great nation because America is a good nation. And our goodness comes from a belief in God and a corresponding belief in the value of human life.” - Duncan Hunter

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