Posted on 02/09/2003 6:17:12 AM PST by Richard Poe
My blog entry, "Justin Raimondo -- Enemy Agent?" set off some fireworks last night on FreeRepublic.com. Raimondo defended his honor -- or at least attempted to -- in a nose-to-nose cyber-exchange with your faithful correspondent and various other FReepers.
At issue was Raimondo's patriotism and, more specifically, his motivation for opposing war with Iraq. As usual, Raimondo refused to entertain any suggestion that Iraq might have been involved in various terror attacks on the United States, such as the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the 1995 attack on the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. In the manner of a Soviet psychiatrist, Raimondo dismissed all such discussion as symptomatic of mental illness and kookery -- despite the fact that Iraq expert Laurie Mylroie has made a strong case for an Iraqi terror connection in her book The War Against America, and former CIA director R. James Woolsey has endorsed Mylroie's theory.
"[I]f this is the kind of `logic' involved in Richard Poe's contention that Iraq really bombed the World Trade Center (and, I guess, the Oklahoma City federal building), then I don't think `tinfoil hat' quite covers it: Poe's wacky screed is a Reynolds Wrap Special, for sure," Raimondo quipped.
Raimondo also denied that he ever had any formal connection with the "Red-Brown" Fascisto-Bolshevik Russian webzine Pravda.ru which used to run his columns. "Oh, right, I must be a Russian agent since Pravda took it upon themselves to reprint my work without my permission," he said.
This reply struck me as a bit disingenuous, so I wrote:
There seems to be some discrepancy between your account and Bill White's.
Pravda's former U.S. correspondent Bill White claims here and here that you were instrumental in forcing his resignation -- that you bombarded Pravda.ru's editors with angry letters and threatened to pull your columns in protest against their hiring of White.
All of this implies that you did indeed have some sort of editorial relationship with Pravda.ru.
Granted, White is not the most reliable source. But I'd like to know, for the record, whether you are calling him a liar.
Raimondo responded as follows:
I never gave my permission to Pravda to reprint my work. But if I spent my time tracking down and contacting every internet site that followed suit I wouldn't have time to write anything. When I discovered my articles on Pravda, next to articles by this Bill White nutball, I did contact Pravda and asked them what is up. They claimed to have received permission -- but not MY permission. They then ceased reprinting my stuff. Case closed.
There is something about that phrase "case closed" that always raises my hackles. I had to ask the obvious question. If Raimondo himself had not granted Pravda.ru permission to run his articles, then who had?
A like-minded FReeper named Bonaparte beat me to it. "So who did Pravda say gave them permission to print your stuff? Was that party entitled to give them permission? If so, why were you not consulted first?" asked Bonaparte.
"Who gave them permission?" I echoed.
Raimondo remained on the thread for some time after that. But he never answered the question.
"I guess Justin's not going to tell us who gave Pravda permission," Bonaparte concluded in the next-to-last post of the evening.
Evidently not. But we can always speculate. If I were Pravda.ru's editor, I would have contacted The Center for Libertarian Studies (CLS) which sponsors Raimondo's Antiwar.com Web site.
In any case, all of this is beside the point. The real point is that Raimondo needs to stop blowing smoke about "kooks" and "tinfoil hats" and address the serious issues I have raised, regarding the Laurie Mylroie and Jayna Davis investigations.
Raimondo insists that the only military action we ought to take in response to 9-11 should be to attack the entity known as "Al Qaeda" -- that nebulous, loosely-knit terrorist network whose leader Osama bin Laden appears to be a double, triple or perhaps quadruple agent who, at one time or another, appears to have rented out his services to just about every existing power bloc on the planet. Raimondo asks us to believe that this motley collection of religious fanatics and cutthroats-for-hire somehow managed to carry out the 9-11 attack all by itself, without anyone's help.
I don't buy that, and I don't think Raimondo does either.
Here's what I wrote last night on FreeRepublic.com regarding Mylroie's work:
Laurie Mylroie charges that global "terror networks" such as bin Laden's al Qaeda are nothing more than decoys, "false flag" operations which provide cover for our real enemies.
Mylroie is a leading expert on Iraq. She has taught at Harvard University and the U.S. Naval War College, and is currently an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. During the 1992 presidential campaign, she advised Bill Clinton on Iraqi affairs.
Former CIA director R. James Woolsey is one of several high-level intelligence officials who have endorsed Mylroie's theory that Iraq masterminded both World Trade Center attacks.
In her book The War Against America, Mylroie notes that James Fox, the FBI official in charge of investigating the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, fingered Iraq as the chief suspect. However, Fox noted that the bombing appeared to be a "false flag" operation -- an attack that is deliberately designed to appear as if someone else did it.
The rank-and-file terrorists involved in the plot were Muslim fanatics from Egypt and Palestine. They were true believers, men who followed orders and asked no questions. In short, they were the perfect patsies.
Former CIA director R. James Woolsey agrees that the 1993 World Trade Center attack bore all the earmarks of "a classic false flag operation," in which the mastermind escaped, while leaving "a handful of Muslim extremists behind to be arrested and take the full blame."
Also in keeping with the "classic" false flag pattern, the mastermind of this attack had little in common with the co-conspirators. His name was Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and he was no Muslim fanatic. Yousef was a professional intelligence operative, indifferent to religion, a dapper dresser, womanizer and dedicated nightclubber, who often cursed like a longshoreman in fluent English when annoyed.
He was also an Iraqi agent, according to Mylroie.
I think Raimondo should read Mylroie's book before dismissing it. Either that, or he should just drop the facade and admit that he really doesn't care whether Iraq attacked us or not.
Naturally, Raimondo did not respond to this post. However, a nervous little homunculus calling himself Byron_the_Aussie flitted around the thread like a mosquito, accusing me of being a "Joe McCarthy clone" and urging me to "address the issues."
I'm not sure what qualifies as an "issue" in Byron_the_Aussie's mind, but where I come from, Iraq's possible role in the slaughter of thousands of my countrymen looms mighty large.
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Richard Poe is a New York Times bestselling author and cyberjournalist. His latest book The New Underground: How Conservatives Conquered the Internet is scheduled for April 2003 release. Poe's previous book is The Seven Myths of Gun Control.
The one thing that struck me (a disinterested observer) was that your argument didn't address his arguments, at least in the initial post, but was an ad hominem attack on his motives. No matter how well justified the attack, it is still a logical error to use that to undermine his arguments.
I, frankly, am astounded that the moderators didn't pull the thread. Why? Because a similar ad hominem attack by HIM, with a viewpoint contrary to that on this board, would have been jerked immediately.
That said, the anti-war shibboleth about "just war" is just a smokescreen. The United States has never hesitated to take the battle to the enemy, even if the threat was far removed from our own shores. We warred with the Barbary pirates, the Puerto Ricans, the Cubans, the Filipinos, and the Mexicans -- all of which could be considered "wars of conquest" if you broaden the definition enough. So American economic expansionism, backed by American military might, is nothing new.
Even if we concede that our interest in Iraq is petroleum-based, so what? We didn't compel Saddam Hussein to gas his Kurdish countrymen or pillage Kuwait. We allowed him to retain his throne in Gulf War I by establishing monitoring guidelines under a UN resolution whose provisions he promptly defied. Although there is no evidence he has them, there is little doubt he is bent on developing nuclear and biological weapons. Justin seems to think the sole target will be Israel, but it's just as likely that Kuwait, Iran, and the US will fall in his crosshairs.
A war against Iraq, aimed at overthrowing Saddam Hussein, is perfectly legitimate morally and politcally.
Shouldn't the thread be locked, whacked or moved to chat? That's the normal fate of duplicate posts.
In fact, when the guy who posts a duplicate thread notices it's a dupe, the guy personally alerts the thread moderator and begs that the thread be removed.
Actually it wasn't. This is a new blog entry which I wrote and posted on my blog site this morning.
It does seek to continue a discussion that began on a different thread, but it is not the same thread as yesterday's. It is a commentary on yesterday's thread, and a continuation of yesterday's discussion.
If I erred or in some way violated some FR code of conduct or etiquette, I apologize.
The large number of FReeper responses to my ongoing exchange with Raimondo suggested to me that there was some level of interest here in the discussion. Perhaps I erred in my interpretation.
My posts have always been welcome on FR in the past. If that has changed, for some reason, I will be happy to cease posting.
It is the latter.
I have no conflict with Raimondo personally, only with his views on the war.
I question Raimondo's motivation because I believe that his motivation -- or, to use an analogous term, his ideology -- provides the key to understanding Raimondo's highly selective treatment of the evidence surrounding the Iraq Question.
I'm afraid I don't know what you mean.
I thought my entire exchange with Raimondo dealt with substantive arguments, and that a man's beliefs, motivation or ideology are fair game in a political discussion.
I have been posting and lurking on FR, under various handles, for nearly four years, but perhaps there are still some unspoken rules around here that I have failed to grasp. I will try to be more attentive in future to these subtleties.
Why is that? Have you been banned or your account deleted before? Why do you need various handles? Won't one do?
Why? He's got a right to an opinion too, doesn't he? And to the degree his opinion is well-reasoned and thoughtful, it may have more validity than many that are less cerebrally founded.
And the opinion is not the man. Defending the right to an opinion isn't the same as defending that opinion. This forum is not much good as an echo chamber.
Justin Raimondo brings a cogent, respectable argument in favor of his stance. A WRONG argument, to be sure, but one that bears scrutiny, if for no other reason than to overturn it with the same deliberation that went into its construction.
At issue is Richard Poe's smearing of anyone who disagrees with his wacked-out theories of who is "really" behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
He claims he wants to discuss my "ideology" -- but that is hardly a secret. I'm a libertarian: I believe that we cannot have an empire AND a constitutional republic. And my view is being confirmed even as Ashcroft prepares what Drudge calls "Part II" of the "Patriot" Act: secret arrest, stripping Americans of their citizenship, government spies everywhere. To call my patriotism into question, in this context, is to virtually call for my arrest by our war-maddened leaders.
To that, I can only reply, as I did in my original column on this subject: Go ahead -- make my day.
Well, because originally I had a handle and my wife had one. Sometimes I would use my wife's handle, when I was on her computer.
Recently, I decided that I would start posting under my own name, and so I no longer use my former anonymous handle.
My wife still has her handle, though.
Is that okay? And is there any particular reason for the uncalled-for sharpness of this interrogation?
Well, I am a libertarian too. But that hardly settles the issue, does it? Obviously that word doesn't mean much anymore.
I used to think that libertarians opposed "imperial adventures" abroad but regarded an attack on the U.S. homeland as a clear casus belli. Since 9-11, I have learned that many self-styled "libertarians" have developed a nearly infinite capacity to oppose action -- even in the face of 9-11.
This I cannot understand. It makes me wonder if I was a fool all those years to wear the name "libertarian." It makes me wonder how many people who bear that name really love this country, and how many just use the word "libertarian" as an excuse to justify their fence-sitting on a host of vexing issues.
Jayna Davis and Laurie Mylroie have "cogent, respectable" arguments too. But as many times as I have raised their arguments, Raimondo refuses to discuss them or accord them any respect.
I fail to understand why Raimondo alone should be accorded a fair hearing, and why he should have license to dismiss others' opinions in the most arrogant and high-handed manner, using such dismissive phrases as "tin-foil hat" material and so forth.
So, why not drop the crap about my alleged lack of "patriotism" and start discussing the more substantive issues?
Go for it. Or is this just more of your "legend in his own mind" stuff? Like you calling people chicken hawks
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