Posted on 05/13/2003 2:31:48 AM PDT by kattracks
(CNSNews.com) - The drafters of the U.S. Constitution would be "nauseated" by the "shock and awe" strategy used by the American military in the opening stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to former U.S. Attorney General and current anti-war activist Ramsey Clark.
Clark, who directs International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), spoke to journalists and others at the National Press Club in Washington Monday.
"Do we really believe a phrase like that?" Clark asked the press club audience. "Do we really want people to submit to shock and awe?"
International A.N.S.W.E.R. has been criticized by some in the media for serving as a front for the World Workers Party, an admitted socialist organization that has allegedly advocated the regime of North Korea's Kim Jong Il. In a recent article for his Frontpagemag.com Internet site, former leftist radical turned conservative David Horowitz said the anti-war group uses a tactic developed by communists in the 1930s.
"In place of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' and an 'international civil war,' the Communists organized coalitions for 'democracy, justice and peace,'" Horowitz wrote, adding that the organizers of today's peace demonstrations are "veteran Communists, and the movement itself is an exemplary expression of the strategy of the 'popular front.'"
Writing in Frontpagemag.com, author Stephen Schwartz described Clark as a "pliable puppet" for International A.N.S.W.E.R. "in an effort to gain respectability."
"I wouldn't be surprised if they (A.N.S.W.E.R.) were getting money from Saddam Hussein's regime and from North Korea," Kristinn Taylor, co-leader of the D.C. chapter of Free Republic told CNSNews.com.
Taylor and a handful of other D.C. Free Republic members protested Clark's appearance Monday outside the National Press Club building.
Inside the press club, Clark said, "U.S. militarism threatens the destiny of humanity."
"This country of ours has committed the most serious act of aggression in its history by engaging in a war of aggression without a declaration of war by Congress," Clark said, referring to the recent war with Iraq.
He said he did not see how "any reasonable person" could believe Iraq posed any kind of threat to the U.S., adding that weapons of mass destruction never made a difference in the decision to go to war with Iraq.
"The greatest danger we face is ourselves," Clark said. "We harbor the vast majority of all weapons of mass destruction ... yet we demand absolute obedience to our will."
Clark also called for Congress to impeach President George W. Bush.
"I urge everyone who cares about the integrity of our Constitution to take back the Constitution by insisting that the House of Representatives, which has the sole power of impeachment, process impeachment proceedings now against President Bush for launching this war of aggression," Clark said.
However, Clark admitted that getting Congress to act would be difficult since "the media shows no interest," and "the people are uninformed." He also acknowledged the difficulty in toppling a popular president.
"President Bush is the hottest thing since Sylvester Stallone," Clark said. "You can't get any better than Rambo, but he did, and he glories in it. You can feel his passion for militarism."
But Clark said the president's popularity was "paper-thin," noting the surge in popularity Bush's father enjoyed as president after the first Persian Gulf War until a soured economy took its toll and led to the elder Bush's defeat at the hands of Democrat Bill Clinton in the 1992 election.
"I guess if the economy is good, you can get away with any sin at all in the White House," Clark said.
When asked if he believed Saddam Hussein had tortured his own people as alleged, Clark said the charges amounted to a "demonization" of Hussein. He said in America today, people who don't say anything bad about Louis Farrakhan or Fidel Castro are themselves labeled "bad."
"I don't believe demonization is very helpful," Clark said. "I don't even believe in demons."
Clark defended his role as legal advisor to former Yugoslavian dictator Slobodan Milosevic before a U.N. war crimes tribunal, insisting that "everyone needs his own lawyer.
"I'd take on any capital case against anyone because I've always opposed the death penalty passionately," Clark said.
Such explanations fail to sway Taylor, who said he would like the media to do a better job of exposing the connection between communist groups supporting totalitarian regimes, the peace movement and the role anti-war leaders like Clark play.
"He is working to undermine America, pure and simple," Taylor said. "We used to call that treason, and some of us still do."
E-mail a news tip to Steve Brown.
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About the only thing Clark got right, clinton being the prime example.
Useful idiot?
Evil at the core?
What this article fails to mention is that Ramsey Clark received applause from the National Press Club audience for every one of his anti-American, anti-Bush, pro-Communist statements. The media showed plenty of interest in his pathetic point of view, and anyone who watched C-SPAN last night could see for themself.
But Ramsey, aren't you doing precisely this to President Bush???????
Leftists are illogical conflicted idiots who don't even see the irony in their own spiel.
"The media shows no interest", kind of like Osama's call for Jihad after Afghanistan huh?
"The people are unimformed"' wow, these people always reveal their lofty opinion of their intelligence by putting down everyone else.
THE MYSTERIOUS RAMSEY CLARK: STALINIST DUPE OR RULING-CLASS SPOOK?
...He became the lawyer for anti-war protestor Philip Berrigan, headed a private probe into the FBI killings of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and travelled to Vietnam to condemn the bombing....the Iran hostage crisis, he joined a forum on "Crimes of America" in Tehran...
After the US bombing of Libya in 1986, he met with Col. Moammar Qadaffi in Tripoli. He went to Grenada to advise Bernard and Phyllis Coard, leaders of the clique accused of murdering Maurice Bishop, who were facing treason charges.
...Clark represented ultra-right cult-master Lyndon LaRouche and six cohorts on conspiracy and mail fraud charges. The LaRouchies had been bilking their naive followers of their savings...
Clark also represented PLO leaders in a suit brought by the family of Leon Klinghoffer...
Another Clark client was Karl Linnas, an ex-Nazi concentration camp guard in Estonia (where he had overseen the murder of some 12,000 resistence fighters and Jews)... [Clark] went to bat for his client in the public arena, questioning the need to prosecute Nazis "forty years after some god-awful crime they're alleged to have committed."
[Clark becomes a WWP shill in 1990]
With glasnost, WWP supported the Kremlin hard-liners who resisted Gorbachev's reforms and disarmament moves. Insisting that China remained a "workers state," WWP supported Deng Xiaoping in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, again attacking the protesting students and workers as "counter-revolutionaries." In 1991, WWP supported the KGB coup against Gorbachev.
...refusal to condemn Saddam Hussein or Iraq's invasion of Kuwait...
In November 1990, Clark flew to Baghdad to meet with Saddam, who allowed him to return with a few hostages. In February, with the bombs falling, Clark was in Basra, Iraq's southern port, witnessing the destruction. But his consistent failure to complain about Saddam's regime made it clear he was there at its invitation.
...In 1992, Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, was served with federal subpoenas ... [rights groups] acting on behalf of Bosnian refugee women, were charging him with ordering mass rape and war crimes. Clark, of course, immediately came forward to represent Karadzic. Clark also made junkets to Serb-occupied Bosnia to schmooze with Karadzic (as did various Russian neo-fascists like Vladimir Zhirinovsky).
International Action Center leaflets engaged in blatant historical revisionism over Serb war crimes, portraying them as lies perpetrated by an imperialist conspiracy.
In October 1999, Clark met with Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade... [Milosevic] called his guest "brave, objective, and moral."
...Clark, meanwhile, represented a Rwandan Hutu militiaman fighting his extradition from the US back to Rwanda to face genocide charges. The WWP line simultaneously (and predictably) tilted to the genocidal Hutu militias as the UN wrote up war crime charges against their leaders for ordering the slaughter of half a million Tutsi civilians in 1994.
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