Kevin Barrett for Congress

On Tuesday, July 29th, the head of the "Star Wars" space weapons program under two U.S. presidents, Dr. Robert Bowman, will ask State Legislators to request the re-instatement of Dr. Kevin Barrett as a University of Wisconsin instructor.

Col. Bowman, a rocket scientist with a doctorate from Cal Tech who flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam as a fighter pilot, will present his request to the legislature at a press conference in the State Capitol building, Room 330 Southwest, at 11 a.m. Tuesday 7/29/08.

Kevin Barrett, the target of a 2006 witch-hunt by State Rep. Steve Nass, has not been rehired at UW-Madison, despite his repeated applications for open positions, since he finished teaching his controversial Islam course in fall 2006. His most recent application, for the spring 2008 semester, was rejected in favor of a less-qualified and less-experienced applicant.

Barrett was also turned down for a tenure-track position at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2006. Then-Dean of Humanities Howard Ross told Barrett "You were discriminated against." Ross, who was part of the hiring process, says that Barrett was the most qualified of the three finalists, but that the position was offered to the other two finalists because of Barrett's political views. When both of the less-qualified finalists turned down the job, the University closed the position, denying students Arabic and Humanities instruction, rather than hire Barrett, whose teaching has repeatedly received excellent reviews from colleagues and students alike. Barrett is currently the self-styled "peace candidate" for Congress in Wisconsin's District 3: http://www.barrettforcongress.us

Bowman argues that Barrett should be rehired on free-speech and academic freedom grounds, regardless of the merits of his views on 9/11 and other political controversies. Additionally, Bowman -- a former fighter pilot who "knows the drill" regarding interceptions of errant airliners -- agrees with Barrett that the official story of 9/11 is "impossible" and that a genuine investigation, focusing on the possibility of official complicity, is urgently needed.

Dr. Bob Bowman will be speaking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Monday (see below for details). For more information about Bob Bowman see http://www.thepatriots.us

“Take Back America - Impeachment is imperative now!" with Dr. Bob Bowman, John Nichols, and Joe Elder

Town Meeting, Monday, July 28, 2008, 7 PM, University of Wisconsin-Madison, B-130 Van Vleck (next to Bascom Hall - use parking garage beneath Grainger Hall, 975 University Avenue, and walk up Charter Street; or Park in Lake Street parking ramp, corner of Lake and State Streets, and walk up Bascom Hill)

John Nichols’ draft title: "Congress Fails to Hold President Accountable: Where we are at and where we should go on accountability."

Organized by Veterans for Peace-Impeachment Committee Clarence Kalin Chapter 25, WI Impeachment/Bring Our Troops Home Coalition (ImpeachWI.org); Co-sponsors include WI Network for Peace and Justice, Madison Area Peace Coalition, Democrats for Peace.

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008, 7:30 pm, Milwaukee Friends Meeting House, 3224 N. Gordon Pl., Milwaukee

On Tuesday, July 29th, 6:30-8:30 p.m. the film 9/11 Mysteries will be shown at Western Technical College, 220 S. Main, Viroqua, WI; click here for map and directions. Dr. Kevin Barrett will introduce the film and lead a discussion afterwards.

On Wednesday, July 30th, 7 p.m., meet Dr. Bob Bowman at Kevin Barrett's open house! RSVP kbarrett@merr.com, 608-583-2132. Fine Mediterranean food from former Casablanca Deli chef Fatna Bellouchi will be available, and a $10 donation to cover costs is requested.

I just listened to Vincent Bugliosi talking to Bobby Kennedy about his plan to prosecute Bush for murder. (Listen here.)

It sounds like Bugliosi has an airtight case. If Bush leaves 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue next January, there should be a squad car waiting to pick him up.

Even if he somehow dodges the murder rap, sooner or later Bush will face dozens of charges of war crimes, kidnapping, torture, electoral fraud, maybe even high treason against the Constitution of the United States of America. Bush is a good bet to be our first ex-president to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

I say IF Bush leaves office next January because...well, he'd have to be crazy to step down.

Set off a nuclear or biological weapon on American soil. Blame the usual suspects, "Muslim terrorists," and link them to Pakistan or Iran. Attack Pakistan or Iran, invoke Presidential Directive 51, suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, intern dissidents and Muslims in FEMA camps, seize control of the other branches of government, and suspend the elections "until order has been restored."

There are several reasons why Bush and his consigliere/puppetmaster Cheney might think they could get away with it. First, the economy is tanking, raising the specter of civil disorder. Elites, threatened by the prospect of disorder, reflexively search for an authoritarian, iron-fisted strong-man. And guess what? Obama ain't it. Bush could count on the support of much of America's corporate and military elite if he declared himself dictator during a national emergency.

Even a self-inflicted national emergency? Well, who's going to know the difference? 9/11 had all the telltale signs of being a false-flag inside job, which serious students of the issue now know it was -- yet America's military, corporate and media institutions continue to pretend to believe in the official story.

An untraceable nuclear or biological attack would make evidence-based debate even more superfluous than it already is. Since there would be no evidence to debate, people would have to go with their gut feeling: Was this done by an outside enemy, or by our own leaders? If enough people accepted the "outside enemy" scenario -- which is natural primate behavior when threatened -- we could witness a resumption of the orgy of flag-sucking that followed 9/11, and Our Fearless Leader would once again be the man of the hour. Since the corporate media would be tirelessly parroting the official story, it stands to reason that the roughly two-thirds of Americans who don't seriously dispute the official 9/11 legend would go along with Bush's next mythical enemy attack.

Could this happen despite Bush's abysmal popularity ratings? Yes, because, as Naomi Klein points out in The Shock Doctrine, a massive shock can wipe the slate clean. The shock of a nuclear or biological attack on an American city would make Americans forget how much they hated Bush the day before. They would feel themselves in a whole new world, and everything they valued yesterday -- Constitutional government, peace, Obama, what-have-you -- would instantly seem like shards of an ancient, long-vanished past viewed dimly through the mist. As 9/11 cover-up commissar Philip Zelikow wrote in a 1998 Foreign Affairs article: "Like Pearl Harbor, such an event would divide our past and future into a 'before' and 'after.'"

We are already living in Zelikow's "after" with respect to the 9/11 false-flag attack. The "after" of another, larger, untraceable attack would be even less pleasant.

That is why we need to make every American understand that Bush is likely to play his get-out-of-jail-free card sometime during the next four months. If enough people expect it, and are ready to blame Bush for it, he may decide that exile in Paraguay is a safer bet.

The League of Women Voters just sent me their Fall 2008 Voter Guide Questionnaire. They may have gotten more than they bargained for. Below are their questions and my answers. For more about my positions on the issues, see http://www.barrettforcongress.us/issues.htm Constructive feedback appreciated: kbarrett @ merr.com

I am a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist and have taught American Civilization, American and English Literature, Religious Studies, Humanities, and many other topics at colleges and universities in Wisconsin, France, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 2006, I have been blacklisted and forced out of academia by a McCarthy-style witch-hunt, purely on account of political views I expressed on a radio program. Since the politicians have made it impossible for me to practice my chosen profession, I have decided to run for office on a "fire all incumbents" platform.

2. As a member of the the US House of Representatives from Wisconsin, what priorities will you have in the next two/six years, and how will you address them?

I am running as a peace candidate. I want to end the war NOW, bring ALL our troops home, and close all 700 US military bases in all 130 foreign countries. We can afford to defend our borders, but we can't afford the neocon plan to conquer the world. Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz predicts that the Iraq war will cost us a total of five trillion dollars. The Fed is printing tons of money to pay for the war, which is destroying the value of the dollar and pushing gas prices to all-time highs. If we do not quickly cut back on out-of-control military spending, our economy will collapse completely. My top priority will be to save this country by returning to fiscal sanity. End the empire, restore the Republic!

While our national economy is being destroyed by military spending, Wisconsin's state economy is getting hit extra-hard. Here in Wisconsin we have almost no military industry. That giant sucking sound you hear is your military tax money being siphoned out of Wisconsin toward high military-spending states, and from there into the black hole in Iraq. Send me to Congress and I will campaign tirelessly for ending the military-industrial complex's pillaging of the Wisconsin taxpayer.

I also strongly support a new investigation of the crimes of September 11th, 2001. We owe it to the victims' family members, who are clamoring for a real investigation, as well as to the thousands of Americans and the more than one million Iraqis and Afghanis who have died in the 9/11 wars.

3. What should be done, if anything, at the federal level to reduce our use of and dependence on fossil fuels?

While current high gas prices are almost entirely the result of the war in Iraq, and the threatened war on Iran, the near future is likely to bring ever-higher fossil fuel prices as global demand eclipses supply. We need to retool our military-industrial complex into an infrastructure-industrial complex, and put all that brain power and labor power to work developing alternative energy sources, rebuilding our railroads, fixing our decrepit dams and bridges and highways, developing sustainable agriculture, building super-efficient cars and buildings, and otherwise preparing for the post-fossil-fuel world. I will introduce legislation to shut down all but the genuinely defensive parts of our military, and put the trillions of dollars we're spending on empire into retraining soldiers and scientists to prepare us for a sustainable future.

4. What should the federal government do, if anything, to ensure that every American has health coverage?

I favor single-payer health care, following the Canadian model, because it costs half as much and yields better results. The reason we are spending twice as much per capita on health care as every other developed nation, and getting a far worse product, is that the multi-billion dollar insurance companies are bribing Congress to keep the current system, which is lining their pockets and emptying ours.

5. Please explain why you do or do not support setting spending limits for political campaigns and providing a set amount of public funding for all candidates who agree to take no private contributions.

My plan for campaign finance reform is simple: Just as possession of more than a given amount of drugs is considered evidence of drug dealing, any office holder who accepts more than $200 from anyone should be automatically prosecuted for taking a bribe. This would not apply to non-incumbents who are not office holders. The result would be to free our system from the grip of incumbents, and from the system of legalized bribery that keeps them in Washington forever. I support the Kick Them All Out Project (firecongress.org) and urge voters to fire every single incumbent in the 2008 election. I also support strict term limits -- one term for Senators, two terms for Representatives. If elected, I promise to serve no more than two terms.

I support legislation strictly penalizing employers who knowingly or negligently employ illegal aliens. Such legislation would end the illegal immigration problem overnight. The reason Congress has not yet passed such legislation is that virtually all of our Senators and Representatives are taking huge bribes from the employers of illegal aliens. I repeat: We need to fire Congress and end the system of legalized bribery that keeps them permanently in Washington. As long as we have a government of bribe-takers, we will not be able to solve any of our pressing problems.

Today, while campaigning in Lone Rock, Wisconsin, 3rd District Congressional Candidate Dr. Kevin Barrett predicted that quarterback Brett Favre would return to the NFL, throw at least 20 touchdown passes, and lead the Green Bay Packers back to the Super Bowl.

Barrett believes that the marketing opportunities Favre brings to the table will be too much to resist for both Favre and Packers management. Since the Packers had the youngest team in the NFL last season, with Favre, they could be favored to win the Superbowl.

Barrett also believes that time has healed the wound felt by Favre, who was angry that greedy Packers management refused to sign wide receiver Randy Moss last season. The Packers could have gotten Moss for a 4th round draft pick, but instead, tried to hold out for a 5th round pick. Moss caught an NFL record 23 touchdown passes last season for the New England Patriots.

Kevin Barrett says; "A Brett Favre comeback will be good for the war-ravaged Wisconsin economy."

1) The Milwaukee Brewers will make it to the World Series and possibly win it, further boosting Wisconsin's economy.

2) Barrett refuses to predict a championship for the Milwaukee Bucks next season, noting that the NBA East has several stronger teams and that the San Antonio Spurs always win the title in odd-numbered years.

3) Barack Obama's flip-flop on the FISA bill and telecom immunity will be proven to be just the tip of the iceberg, for those who think Obama may be an anti-Empire candidate.

4) Despite the flip-flop, Obama will win the presidential election by more than 10%. Hence, since John McCain won't win, Barrett urges you to invest your vote with either Libertarian Bob Barr or Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney.

5) Man will someday colonize the Moon, and life will be found somewhere else in the universe.

7) In 2020, Wisconsin farmers will lead the nation in producing hemp for fiber, food and fuel, and more than half the milk sold in Wisconsin will be raw milk, which scientists will have determined to be healthier.

9) Supercomputers will determine that the Ramsey number R(6,6) = 117. Current scholarship places the value of R(6,6) to be between 102 and 165, inclusive.

11) The final NIST report on WTC 7 will not appear until George Bush is out of office.

12) Based on comparisons with the Soviet and Roman Empires, the United States central government will collapse in the year 2125 (approximately), because of economic problems brought on by high taxes, budget deficits, and militarism.

"If an alien spaceship were to come to Earth and demand that we tell them the answer to R(5,5) or they will kill us all, it would take all the computing power in the world to find the answer for the aliens. If they ask for R(6,6), we should try to kill them."

(anonymous)

The one-hour BBC program The Third Tower should have a positive effect on spreading the truth about what happened to WTC 7. Despite its attempt to debunk by twisting and omitting facts, there is much to cheer about.

7) Barry Jennings was told while in WTC 7 "Get out of there, get out of there now", which sounds very suspicious.

8) Barry Jennings' time-line is not contradicted by anything Barry Jennings says.

9) After seven years, no final report on the collapse of WTC 7 has appeared. The 9/11 Commission never mentioned the collapse of WTC 7.

11) The program will help raise the profile of Dylan Avery, Richard Gage, and Steven Jones.

12) The profile and web hits for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth will be raised.

13) New experts not well known are introduced, including Scott Grainger and Kamal Obeid of www.ae911Truth.org.

14) WTC 7 housed offices of the CIA, Secret Service, Department of Defense, and the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management.

15) WTC 7 was the only steel-framed building ever alleged to fall from fire damage.

17) One large piece of partially evaporated steel from WTC 7 was saved and is shown.

18) Thermal maps showing temperatures greater than 700 degrees Celsius five days after 9/11 are shown. Water poured over the area is shown.

19) Despite protests that fire took down WTC 7, little fire is shown in the program.

20) In the early morning of 9/11, the alarms in WTC 7 were placed on test status, meaning all fire alarms to WTC 7 would be ignored. One alarm went off, but since the alarms were on test, the location of the fire could not be pinpointed.

22) Dylan Avery has a great put-down of Richard Clark -- a classic, blunt, and to the point call-out.

24) The BBC claims that they put one of their most valuable media tapes, the day of 9/11, on the wrong shelf, with no evidence to back it up.

25) Larry Silverstein is quoted as saying "pull it." While the most important part of the quote ("and we watched the building collapse") is edited out, the full quote is widely available and well-known.

27) Scientific tests on steel beams with fires hotter than in WTC 7, didn't cause collapse.

28) The issue of skyscraper safety and building codes, assuming WTC 7 really fell from a fire, is breached.

30) A video (with audio) of a loud explosion that occurred in between the collapses of the North tower and WTC 7 is played.

Many of these facts were included in the BBC trailer, and most were included near the beginning of the program. Since more people watch the trailer than the actual program, and many people start watching a program, but never finish, these facts are, in effect, emphasized.

Because the BBC has confirmed on national TV many facts long advocated by the 9/11 Truth movement, The Third Tower may accelerate the slow, controlled demolition of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory.

Kevin Barrett is a Ph.D Arabist-Islamologist, academic freedom-fighter, talk radio host, and well-known 9/11 truth advocate. He is currently running for Congress as a Libertarian against pro-war Democratic incumbent Rep. Ron Kind:

Rolf Lindgren is Barrett's Campaign Adviser and has a degree in Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a defender of Galileo and James Madison and an expert on WTC 7.

Controversial Barrett 'supports the truth,' backers say

Samara Kalk Derby — 6/24/2008 10:00 am: http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/292988

Michael Anthony, a self-employed handyman who lives in the Madison area, can't vote for Kevin Barrett, who is challenging U.S. Rep. Ron Kind in western Wisconsin's 3rd District, but did donate $10 to his campaign Monday night during a campaign event at the Dardenelles restaurant on Monroe Street.

"He's got guts. He's not afraid of controversy. A lot of people will run from controversy, especially if it means doing so on national television," Anthony said. "He has faced those Fox people with bat in hand."

Anthony was referring to Barrett's 2006 appearance on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes" program, in which Sean Hannity called Barrett a "conspiracy nut" and an "extremist" and Barrett shot back, "Fox News is the biggest bunch of extremists on the planet."

Barrett, the controversial former UW lecturer who believes the U.S. government was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, is running as a Libertarian and promises to call for an investigation into the terrorist attacks.

Anthony, the handyman, doesn't necessarily believe the government perpetrated or was complicit in 9/11, but said the government knows "a whole lot more than they have said. They certainly had a hand in it."

Andy Albrecht, a UW-Madison student of political science, made a $20 donation to the campaign Monday night. Albrecht's parents live in the 3rd District, and that is where he is registered to vote, although has never voted before.

Albrecht said he appreciates Barrett's tenacity and his anti-war stance.

"I like that he supports the truth. He really pushes the truth. He's not afraid to stand up for what he believes in," said Albrecht, who added that he doesn't necessarily believe 9/11 was "an inside job," but does think the government is withholding information.

Taking a page from Russ Feingold's 1992 "endorsement" from Elvis Presley, Barrett got Tim Biancalana, a dead ringer for John Lennon, to perform at the Dardanelles. About 30 people attended the event and watched the 2006 documentary, "The U.S. vs. John Lennon."

Biancalana, who is based in the Los Angeles area, performed Lennon's "Working Class Hero" and his original song, "Samsara."

"Behind every war there is a great big lie," Biancalana said. He is supporting Barrett, he said, because of "his truth."

"He's actually doing something for truth. When we have truth, we can get the peace we want," he said. "Everything today is about divide and conquer," but Barrett stands for the unity of people, said Biancalana, who has appeared on one of Barrett's radio programs.

Barrett, of Lone Rock, has three talk radio shows and spends eight hours a week on the air. The programs are broadcast, respectively, on Republic Broadcasting Network (RBN), Genesis Communications Network (GCN) and We the People Radio Network (WTPRN). None of them are broadcast locally, but all can be found on the Internet. He also does a daily five-minute news headline show strictly online at www.noliesradio.org.

Barrett's motto is, "Truth in politics. What a concept!"

"If we don't know what is going on we can't get peace and prosperity," Barrett told his supporters Monday night.

Kind has repeatedly voted for the war and against his own party's attempts to limit the duration of the war, Barrett said.

"He's also voted against the Constitution," Barrett said, noting that Kind has voted for Patriot Act I, Patriot Act II and HR 1955, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007.

Kind, D-La Crosse, has represented the 3rd District in Congress since 1996.

That's "too long," said Barrett. "His blow-dry has petrified on his head. He is way too comfortable. I promise when elected not to blow dry my hair."

Barrett needs 1,500 signatures to get on the ballot and has collected about 940, with a few volunteers helping him.

He considers himself a "new Libertarian candidate," calling himself much more moderate on economic issues than most libertarians.

"With the current imploding economy, the government will have to help people survive," he said. "We can't just shut down the social programs. We might even have to expand some of them."

Barrett's opponent in September's Libertarian primary is Ben Olson III of Wisconsin Dells, a longtime Libertarian party activist. If Olson weren't a Libertarian, he'd be a Republican, whereas Barrett would be a Democrat, Barrett said.

"Both parties are terminally corrupt at this point," he said.

Barbara Wright, who owns the Dardanelles, said she and Barrett have some things in common. Both are married to Moroccans and have a foot in the Muslim world. Barrett converted to Islam, while she has not, Wright said.

When Barrett told her he was going to run for Congress, she offered to host a fund-raising event at her restaurant.

"There needs to be some truth spoken about what is going on with our government, about the repression in society and the move toward fascism, the gutting of the middle class and the truth behind 9/11," Wright said. "I think that one of the ways you fight the fear that people feel is to get together as a community and talk about things."

Samara Kalk Derby — 6/24/2008 10:00 am

Barrett misses Nass in would-be confrontation  By Patrick Marley  

9/11 conspiracy theorist Kevin Barrett today tried to confront a lawmaker who he said ended his academic career. And just to make the encounter that much more strange, Barrett was joined by a John Lennon impersonator. ... - http://blogs.jsonline.com/

"While I don't agree with the guy - he is effective at getting his message out

Kevin Barrett, the controversial former UW lecturer who is big on the 911 conspiracy truth stuff, is running for congress. Check out this story in the Cap Times. I have not really examined the arguements much, and it appears pretty half baked, I have to give this guy a hand at his effective PR campaign for his cause. He has radio shows, gets in the news, gets supporters from all over to help him and then as he runs for congress he will get some good media coverage to promote his idea. Maybe after this campaign, he should start his own PR firm.

Election-fraud expert Richard Hayes Phillips, author of Witness to a Crime, will be my guest Wednesday, June 18^th on 9/11 and Empire, 8-10 pm, http://www.wtprn.com. Dr. Phillips documents that the Republican party has become a criminal syndicate, and that the 2004 election was blatantly stolen.

One explanation for the outrageous criminality we have witnessed in recent years is that psychopaths often rise to the top of power hierarchies, corrupting the people and institutions around them. This happened in Hitler's Germany, Stalin's USSR, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and many other places. It may also be happening in today's USA. For more details, check out my widely-read article Twilight of the Psychopaths (Barrett Twilight Psychopaths now generates 111,000 google hits).

Bush and Cheney, of course, are classic, clinical psychopaths. But John McCain? Isn't he a campaign finance reformer? Doesn't he have a reputation as a straight shooter?

In the article below, Douglas Valentine discusses evidence that McCain bombed Vietnamese civilians without remorse, collaborated in a borderline-treasonous way with his Vietnamese captors, regularly experiences outbursts of extreme rage, and has never cared about anything but his own ego, his own advancement in the power hierarchy - whether that hierarchy is run by his Vietnamese captors or his current neocon captors. In short, according to this analysis, McCain is, at minimum, a borderline psychopath.

McCain - a neocon-controlled psychopath calling for a 100-years-war - is hardly a credible choice for President of the United States. Honest conservatives should vote for Libertarian candidate Bob Barr.

If you have no idea what war is about, thank your gods. It is not what you see in Mel Gibson movies, nor is it hidden within the Big Lie Big Brother tells you about Pat Tillman’s heroic “Army of One” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When my father was in New Guinea with the 32nd Division in 1942, his fellow American soldiers would point their long Springfield rifles skywards and shoot at American pilots flying overhead.

The pilots had comfortable quarters beside the airstrip in Port Moresby. When orders for a mission came down, they’d climb in their planes, rattle down the runway, and soar over the Owen Stanley Mountains with the clouds in spotless uniforms, breathing fresh clean air. The Glory Boys weren’t trapped in the broiling jungle, in the mud and pouring rain, their skin rotting away, chewed by ghastly insects, bitten by poisonous snakes, stricken with cerebral malaria, yellow fever, dysentery, and a host of unknown diseases delivered by unknown parasites.

If the Fly Boys perished, it was in a blaze of glory, not from a landmine, or a misdirected American mortar, or a Japanese bayonet in the brain.

One day my father and his last remaining friend, Charlie Ferguson, were walking through the jungle up to the front line. One the way they passed a group of bare-chested Aussies in khaki shorts sitting round a grindstone sharpening their knives. Every once in a while one of the Aussies would hoist his rife and casually put a bullet into a Japanese sniper who had tied himself into the top of a nearby tree. Not in any place that would outright kill him, but some place painful enough to make the point.

A little further toward the front line, my father and Charlie came upon Master Sergeant Harry Blackman, an adult man in his forties, regular army, a grizzled combat veteran. A few days earlier in a fight with the Japanese, a young lieutenant, a “90-Day Wonder,” had curled up in a fetal position when he should have been directing mortar fire. As a result, US mortar rounds landed on several US soldiers. Blackman, in front of everyone, took the lieutenant behind a tree and blew his brains out.

As my father and Charlie waked through the jungle they saw Harry Blackman perched on the lower limb of a huge tropical tree, babbling incoherently among the butterflies and flowering vines, driven stark raving mad by sorrow and jungle war with the Japanese.

Several days later my father was sent on a patrol into Japanese held territory. He was the last man in a formation moving single file through the jungle. Plagued by malaria and exhaustion, he kept falling behind. Around noon, a group of Japanese soldiers sitting high up in trees dropped concussion grenades on the patrol. As he lay on the ground, unable to move, my father watched the Japanese slide down the trees. Starting with the point man on patrol, they pulled down the pants and castrated each man, before clubbing him to death with their rifle butts or running a bayonet into his gut.

War. If you’re a Glory Boy like John Sidney McCain III, you really have no idea what it is. You drop bombs on cities, on civilians, maybe on enemy forces, maybe on your own troops. Glory Boys like John McCain rarely get a taste of the horror they inflict on others. Their suffering rarely extends beyond the high anxiety that they might get shot down and that some bombarded mob on the ground might take its revenge.

Magically, my father was spared that day when his patrol was slaughtered. Against regulations, he had stolen a cross-swords patch and sewn it on his shirt sleeve. At the age of 16, he thought it looked cool. On the morning of the patrol, when the new “90-Day Wonder” told him to take it off, my father said “Sure.” He and the lieutenant stared at each other for a while and then the lieutenant moved away. Insubordination was the least of anyone’s worries. No one expected to survive the patrol, anyway.

When the Japanese who had ambushed the patrol got to my father, they stood poised to mutilate and kill him. Then they saw the cross-swords patch. They apparently felt that dear old dad was an important person with inside information about American forces. Instead of killing him, they took him prisoner. When they realized he was just a stupid kid, the Japanese sent him to a POW camp in the Philippines.

Being a POW is what my father and John McCain have in common; although their experience as POWs was as different as their class and their character.

Class indeed has privileges, and while the government refused to provide my combat-veteran father with medical benefits for his malaria, McCain, who spent ten hours of his life in mortal danger, was decorated with the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart.

In the fall of 1967, Navy pilot John McCain was routinely bombing Hanoi from an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. On October 26, he was trying to level a power plant in a heavily populated area when a surface-to-air missile knocked a wing off his jet. Banged-up John McCain and what was left of plane splashed into Truc Bach Lake.

A compassionate Vietnamese civilian left his air raid shelter and swam out to McCain. McCain’s arm and leg were fractured and he was tangled up in his parachute underwater. He was drowning. The Vietnamese man saved McCain’s sorry ass, and yet McCain has nothing but hatred for “the gooks” who allegedly tortured him. As he told reporters on his campaign bus (The Straight Talk Express) in 2000, “I will hate them as long as I live.” (1)

Americans have to hate people, and dehumanize them as “gooks” or “rag-heads” in order to drop bombs on them. Stirring up such hatred is the forte of the US government, as witnessed by its Israeli-driven PR campaign against Arabs and Moslems. That’s why Bush and his media minions tied “brutal dictator” Saddam Hussein to 9/11 – so Americans would hate Iraqis enough to kill and abuse them in a thousand ways, everyday, for five years. Or, according to McCain, for 100 years if necessary.

The flip side to the equation is that people generally hate those who drop bombs on them. When the Germans dropped bombs on London, the Allies called it Terror Bombing. The French resistance especially hated the Germans, especially after the Gestapo set up shop in occupied France in 1940.

Likewise, Iraqi and Afghani resistance fighters hate the Americans (who more and more resemble the Germans of 1940) for occupying their countries. They especially hate our Gestapo – the CIA – and its torturers. But that’s War for you, and John McCain is lucky the locals didn’t eat him alive – like Uzbek nationalists trapped in a horrid prison camp in Afghanistan nibbled on CIA officer John “Mike” Spann shortly after Spann summarily executed a prisoner. Spann was killed in the ensuing riot, shortly before the CIA and its Afghan collaborators massacred the remaining Uzbek prisoners on 28 November 2001.

The Vietnamese had good reason to hate McCain. On his previous 22 missions, he had dropped God knows how many bombs killing God knows how many innocent civilians. “I am a war criminal,” he confessed on “60 Minutes” in 1997. “I bombed innocent women and children.” (2)

If he is sincere when he says that, why isn’t he being tried for war crimes by the U.S .Government?

In any event, the man who rescued McCain tried to ward off an angry mob, which stomped on McCain for a while until the local cops turned him over to the military. McCain was in pain, but suffering no mortal wounds. He was, however, in enough pain to break down and start collaborating with the Vietnamese after three days in a hospital receiving treatment from qualified doctors – something no other POW ever enjoyed.

War is one thing, collaborating with the enemy is another; it is a legitimate campaign issue that strikes at the heart of McCain’s character…or lack thereof.

There are certainly degrees of collaboration. As a famous novelist once asked, “If you’re a barber and you cut a German’s hair, does that make you a collaborator?”

Being an informant for the Gestapo, or its stepson the CIA in Iraq, and informing on the resistance and sending them to their death, is different than being a barber. In occupied countries like Iraq, or France in World War Two, collaboration to that extent is an automatic death sentence.

The question is: “What kind of collaborator was John McCain, the admitted war criminal who will hate his alleged torturers for the rest of his life?”

Put another way, how psychologically twisted is McCain? And what actually happened to him in his POW camp that twisted him? Was it abuse, as he claims, or was it the fact that he collaborated and has to cover up?

Covering-up can take a lot of energy. The truth is lurking in his subconscious, waiting to explode. A number of US officials, including Andrew Card, have commented on McCain’s inexplicable angry outbursts.

In a July 5 2006 NewsMax.com article, former Senator Bob Smith (R-NH), was quoted as having said about McCain: “I have witnessed incidents where he has used profanity at colleagues.... He would disagree about something and then explode.” Smith called it “irrational behavior. We've all had incidents where we have gotten angry, but I've never seen anyone act like that.'

So, you say, McCain has a short fuse behind the plastered TV smile. So he calls his colleagues assholes and shit-heads. In high school they called him “McNasty.” That’s just how he is. Always was, always will be.

Well, maybe. And maybe it’s not a quality we want in a president. And maybe that repressed anger actually has its roots in a Vietnamese POW camp, where John McCain betrayed his forefathers and his country.

In the forced-labor camp where my father was tortured by the Japanese, the POWs killed anyone who collaborated. Indeed, the ranking POW in my father’s camp, an English Major, made a deal with the Japanese guaranteeing that no one would attempt to escape. When four prisoners escaped, the Major reported it. The Japanese sent out a search party, which found the POWs and brought them back to camp, where they were beheaded on Christmas morning 1943.

The POWs held a war council that night. They drew straws, and the three who got short were given a mission. A few hours later, under cover of darkness, they crept to the major’s hut. My father had gotten one of the short straws and kept watch while the other two POWs strangled the Major in his sleep.

McCain, in his carefully prepared statements, claims he was tortured while in solitary confinement, and that is why he signed a confession saying, “I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors.” (3)

However, on March 25, 1999, two of his fellow POWs, Ted Guy and Gordon 'Swede' Larson told the Phoenix New Times that, while they could not guarantee that McCain was not physically harmed, they doubted it.

As Larson said, 'My only contention with the McCain deal is that while he was at The Plantation, to the best of my knowledge and Ted's knowledge, he was not physically abused in any way. No one was in that camp. It was the camp that people were released from.'

Guy and Larson’s claims are given credence by McCain’s vehement opposition to releasing the government’s debriefings of Vietnam War POWs. McCain gave Michael Isikoff a peek at his debriefs, and Isikoff declared there was “nothing incriminating” in them, apart from the redactions. (4)

McCain had a unique POW experience. Initially, he was taken to the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison camp, where he was interrogated. By McCain’s own account, after three or four days, he cracked. He promised his Vietnamese captors, 'I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital.'

His Vietnamese capturers soon realized their POW, John Sidney McCain III, came from a well-bred line of American military elites. McCain’s father, John Jr., and grandfather, John Sr., were both full Admirals. A destroyer, the USS John S. McCain, is named after both of them.

While his son was held captive in Hanoi, John McCain Jr., from 1968 to 1972, was the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Pacific Command; Admiral McCain was in charge of all US forces in the Pacific including those fighting in Vietnam.

One can only wonder when the concierge at the Hanoi Hilton started taking calls from Admiral McCain. Rather quickly, one surmises, for the Vietnamese soon took John Boy McCain to a hospital reserved for Vietnamese officers. Unlike his fellow POWs, he received care from a Soviet doctor.

“This poor stooge has propaganda value,” the Vietnamese realized. The Admiral’s bad boy was used to special treatment and his captors knew that. They were working him.

For his part, McCain acknowledges that the Vietnamese rushed him to a hospital, but denies he was given any 'special medical treatment.'

However….two weeks into his stay at the Vietnamese hospital, the Hanoi press began quoting him. It was not “name rank and serial number, or kill me,” as specified by the military code of conduct. McCain divulged specific military information: he gave the name of the aircraft carrier on which he was based, the number of US pilots that had been lost, the number of aircraft in his flight formation, as well as information about the location of rescue ships. (5)

So McCain leveraged some details to get some medical attention. That’s not anything too contemptible. And who among us civilians is to judge someone in the position?

On the other hand, according to one source, McCain’s collaboration may have had very real consequences. Retired Army Colonel Earl Hopper, a veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam, contends that the information that McCain divulged classified information North Vietnam used to hone their air defense system.

Hopper’s son, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Earl Pearson Hopper was, like McCain, shot down over North Vietnam. Hopper the younger, however, was declared “Missing in Action.” Stemming from the loss of his son, the elder Hopper co-founded the National League of Families, an organization devoted to the return of Vietnam War POWs.

According to the elder Hopper, McCain told his North Vietnamese captors, “highly classified information, the most important of which was the package routes, which were routes used to bomb North Vietnam. He gave in detail the altitude they were flying, the direction, if they made a turn… he gave them what primary targets the United States was interested in.” Hopper contends that the information McCain provided allowed the North Vietnamese to adjust their air-defenses. As result, Hopper claims, the US lost sixty percent more aircraft and in 1968, “called off the bombing of North Vietnam, because of the information McCain had given to them.” 6

McCain was held for five and half years. Collaborating during the first two weeks might have been pragmatic, but he soon became North Vietnam’s go-to collaborator for the next three years. Given the quality of the military information he allegedly shared, his situation isn’t as innocuous as the pragmatic French barber who cuts the hair of the German occupier. McCain was repaying his captors for their kindness and mercy.

This is the lesson of McCain’s experience as a POW: a true politician, a hollow man, his only allegiance is to power. The Vietnamese, like McCain’s campaign contributors today, protected and promoted him and in return, he danced to their tune.

Not content with divulging military information, McCain provided his voice in radio broadcasts used by the North Vietnamese to demoralize American soldiers.

Vietnamese radio propagandists made good use out of McCain. On June 4, 1969, a U.S. wire service headlined a story entitled 'PW Songbird Is Pilot Son of Admiral.” (7)

The story reported that McCain collaborated in psywar offensives aimed at American servicemen. 'The broadcast was beamed to American servicemen in South Vietnam as a part of a propaganda series attempting to counter charges by U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird that American prisoners are being mistreated in North Vietnam.'

On one occasion, General Vo Nguyen Giap, the top Vietnamese commander and a nationalist celebrity of the time, personally interviewed McCain. His compliance during this command performance was a moment of affirmation for the Vietnamese. His Vietnamese handlers thereafter used him regularly as prop at meetings with foreign delegations.

In the custody of enemy psywar specialists, McCain became what he is today: a professional psywar stooge.

It is impossible to prove exactly what happened to McCain short of traveling to Vietnam and tracking down his captors, and picking up thee trail where it begins. According to The Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain, McCain says he only collaborated when he brutally tortured by his Vietnamese captors and a wicked Cuban he referred to as Fidel. (8)

“In the anguished days right after my confession,” McCain said in his autobiography Faith of My Fathers, “I had dreaded just such a discovery by my father.”

“I only recently learned that the tape I dreamed I heard playing over the loudspeaker in my cell had been real; it had been broadcast outside the prison and had come to the attention of my father,” McCain said. “If I had known at the time my father had heard about my confession, I would have been distressed beyond imagination, and might not have recovered from the experience as quickly as I did.”

But wait! McCain did not commit suicide. In fact, he’s alive, running for President on the “war hero” ticket, and promoting more war everywhere. The new McCain feels no distress at having been a collaborator or a war criminal – if he ever did.

According to Fernando Barral, a Cuban psychologist who questioned McCain in January 1970, “McCain was 'boastful' during their interview and 'without remorse' for any civilian deaths that occurred 'when he bombed Hanoi.' McCain has a similar recollection, writing in his [autobiography] that he responded, 'No, I do not' when Barral asked if he felt remorse.” (9)

McCain told [Barral] that he had not been subjected to “physical or moral violence,” and “lamented in the interview that ‘if I hadn't been shot down, I would have become an admiral at a younger age than my father.’”

“Barral said McCain boasted that he was the best pilot in the Navy and that he wanted to be an astronaut.” The Cuban psychologist concluded that McCain was [a] ‘psychopath.’” (10)

'He felt superior to the Vietnamese up there in his plane, with all his training,' Barral recalled.

Psychopath McCain emerges, now, as a contemptible elitist, stewing in the crucible of his class conscience, the ultimate right wing psywar stooge.

There are no public records from other POWs to confirm McCain's self-aggrandizing claims, but his detractors, like fellow POWs Ted Guy and Gordon 'Swede' Larson, and Colonel Hopper, have yet to be discredited or silenced by McCain’s PR team.

Hopper, Guy and Larson are part of a larger movement concerned with the fate of the 2,000 American veterans still missing in Vietnam. They’ve been pressing McCain to own up to his POW experience, drop the “war hero” posturing, and do more to provide a full accounting of the POWs and MIAs who were not as fortunate, privileged, or willing to collaborate as the would-be president.

McCain’s supporters are trying to quiet detractors by ignoring them. 'Nobody believes these idiots. They're a bunch of jerks. Forget them,' said Mark Salter, McCain's chief mythologist. Salter is credited by casting McCain as a modern Teddy Roosevelt, “the war hero turned domestic reformer.” (11)

By in large the Salter strategy has worked. The American media accepts McCain’s “war hero” myth as gospel and, in so doing, bolsters the “straight talk” image so essential to his success in politics. In a recent TV interview with John Kerry, victim of the Swift Boat Heroes for Truth Movement in the last election, another “fortunate son,” Chris Wallace, actually took umbrage when Kerry criticized McCain. Son of media admiral Mike Wallace, Chris made Kerry admit that McCain was a hero.

McCain learned his lesson well from the Vietnamese propagandists who used him for their psywar projects. But it’s not the collaboration that makes John McCain unfit for office; it’s the fact that he has managed to rewrite his collaboration into political capital. “He’s a war hero, respect him, or die.”

As a pedigree, the McCain family’s stature rests on the status and prestige of its achievements in the military: rank, medals, and most importantly to John McCain’s presidential campaign, the image of warrior masculinity: the straight talking maverick of the Republican Party, the 21st century rendering of Teddy Roosevelt.

Not exactly. In his current presidential campaign, he’s cozying up to the hate-mongering Christian right he once criticized. He’s reversed positions on so many issues that his Democratic rivals have assembled his contrasting statements into “The Great McCain Versus McCain Debates. (12)

Underlying the Jekyll-Hyde reversals is McCain’s hidden past of collaboration. Somewhere in the unplumbed human part of John Sidney McCain III, he knows his POW experience contradicts the war hero image he projects. This essential dishonesty, this lie of the soul, is a sign of a larger lack of character - like the major in my father’s POW camp, but without the come-uppance.

McCain is not some principled leader, not a maverick cowboy fighting the powerful. He’s a sycophant. He believes in nothing but power and will do anything to attain it. He explodes in anger when challenged because, when a criticism hits to close to home, it goes to straight his deep-seeded shame.

McCain’s handlers have turned his unspeakable reality into a myth worthy of Teddy Roosevelt. No wonder the Glory Boy has stuck around Washington so long.

Doug Valentine is the author of The Hotel Tacloban, the story of his father’s experiences in a Japanese POW camp in World War Two. The Hotel Tacloban is available at Mr Valentine’s websites http://www.DouglasValentine.com and http://valentine.sb2.authorsguild.net

Brendan McQuade assisted Mr Valentine by providing timely research for this article.

1. C W Nevius, Marc Sandalow, John Wildemuth, “McCain Criticized for Slur,” San Francisco Chronicle, 18 February 2000

4. Sydney Schanberg, APBNews.com, 25 April 2000, citing Isikoff, Newsweek, 1 January 2000.

5. Ted Sampley, “Luck Of The Admiral's Son Not For 'Grunts' U.S. Veteran Dispatch, October 1999.

9. Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, March 11, 2008; C01

(Rodrigue Tremblay will be my second-hour guest on the Dynamic Duo radio show Monday, June 9^th. Scientist Frank Greening, the only qualified and honest critic I have found who is willing to critique the WTC controlled demolition hypothesis, will be the first hour guest. 4-6 pm Central, http://www.gcnlive.com Network 4)

"I believe that the Iraqi people will greet us as liberators." Sen. John McCain, (March 20, 2003)

"As you know, there are al Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they're moving back into Iraq." Sen. John McCain, 2008 presumptive Republican presidential nominee, (In Amman, Jordan, March 18, 2008)

“Iran obviously is on the path toward acquiring nuclear weapons." ...“At the end of the day we cannot allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."Sen. John McCain

“Anyone who worries about how long we [the United States]’re in Iraq does not understand the military.” Sen. John McCain

"McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues." Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.)

Many people write to me asking what I think of the current batch of presidential candidates in the U.S. —First, let me make a general observation. The American political process, especially at the presidential level, is inhuman and inefficient. It is a gruesome meat grinder where candidates have to campaign for months in primaries or caucuses in all 50 states, raise tens of millions dollars and see their private lives exposed and criticized. With such a system, it is no wonder that few Americans with high intellect and character are willing to submit themselves to such an ordeal. The current batch of presidential candidates is the result of such a system. You will find no great personalities of the caliber of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower or John F. Kennedy, even though the more nutty ones have been eliminated. The three remaining candidates are not the best of what America can offer and afford.

Let me begin with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain (R-AZ). My appreciation is, on the whole, relatively negative.

On the positive side, Senator McCain has built a long history of independence in the U.S. Senate, so much so that he is often referred to as a maverick. For example, Sen. McCain has displeased many Republicans by supporting political finance reform, by denouncing state torture and even by criticizing initially the way the Bush-Cheney administration launched the Iraq war. On the last issue, however, it can be said that Sen. McCain has since backed off and he has aligned himself more closely with the current Republican White House.

On the question of torture, Sen. McCain has promised to close the detention center in Guantanamo Bay. He has declared that he would engage more actively in climate talks (as long as China and India agreed to emissions cuts). It can also be said that Sen. McCain does not consider himself a “religious” candidate, and I doubt very much that he will be holding weekly Bible sessions, as George W. Bush is reported having done within the walls of the White House. These may be inconsequential differences with the current administration, but I think they are real.

On the negative side, however, the issues on which Sen. McCain agrees with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are much more numerous and much more important. On most of the important issues, it would be “more of the same” with John McCain. That is why President George W. Bush has said that he is ready to do anything to have Senator John McCain elected president and that he is going to raise funds for him. Bush knows perfectly well that a McCain presidency would be like a third term for his own failed presidency. Indeed, people who like what Bush has done or undone during the last eight years should vote for McCain with little fear of being disappointed. In particular, they would love his militarism and his bellicose character. On the other hand, those who have felt betrayed or have been the victims of the Bush-Cheney administration, and that includes the 81 percent of Americans who believe their country is on the wrong track, should think twice before de facto extending the disastrous Bush presidency one day further than necessary.

For one, Sen. McCain is expected, as one commentator put it, to behave as a George W. Bush on steroids. Some go as far as depicting him as a candidate who aspires to become President McBush, because so many of his policies would duplicate Bush's policies. For example, Sen. McCain is partisan of the imperial presidency theory, advanced and practiced in recent years by the Bush-Cheney administration. As recently as last May 6, he confirmed that if he were elected President, he would enthusiastically throw out the restraint on power established by the constitutional checks and balances and would embrace the Bush-Cheney's claim of near absolute executive power. McCain is especially worried that the courts could stick to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution and reject attempts by the President to establish a quasi dictatorship while dismissing Congress' prerogatives. In McCain's words, presidential executive power in the U.S. is too constrained by a judiciary that "show[s] little regard for the authority of the president." On this very question, however, Sen. McCain seems to want it both ways. Is this sincere or is it solely a way to create confusion? For instance, on May 15, he tried to distance himself from the Bush-Cheney administration and professed that he now embraces the constitutional concept of checks and balances. Which McCain is the real McCain? Obviously, further clarifications are urgently needed.

Secondly, on foreign policy more than anywhere else, McCain can be expected to be a McBush plus. He can be expected to be a mixture of a simplistic George W. Bush and of a rabidly nationalistic and interventionist Dick Cheney, the last two always ready to immorally bomb people and ask questions later. McCain stands ready to continue the Bush-Cheney's insane foreign policy. Therefore, no one should expect that he would be much different than what this duo has stood for over the last eight years, which is aggressive global interventionism, disastrous unilateralism and excessive militarism. Under McCain, the United States would still be the global bully of the planet. This will lead to more geopolitical instability worldwide, more debt for the United States, and more economic disruptions in trade, especially for oil and commodities. There will be a high economic price to pay with a McCain presidency, make no mistake about it. The current slowdown or recession may be only a harbinger of things to come.

Indeed, listening to him, one has the feeling that Sen. McCain has never met a war he didn't like. For instance, if it were only up to him, American soldiers would still be in Vietnam, where he was a pilot, flying fighter-bombers that dropped bombs over North Vietnam. He has also said that he would like to intervene even more directly in South America. And in the Middle East, he has said that he would not mind having an American military occupation of that region for another one hundred years. In McCain's view, Iraq is an American colony forever, thus making sure there will be permanent war and permanent military occupation in that part of the world. In 1999, McCain even lobbied the Clinton administration to have the U.S. invade Yugoslavia with ground troops. America's Founders would be turning in their graves if they could see their cherished republic becoming a militaristic empire!

Thirdly, Sen. McCain does not seem to know or care about international law. Indeed, not only is Sen. McCain constantly confusing the Sunnis and the Shi'ites in Iraq, after all these years, but he seems to be completely lost as to the true meaning of "preemptive" war versus "preventive" war. A preemptive war or a preemptive strike is a self-defensive measure which is taken against a foreign country that poses an imminent and inevitable threat because it is about to invade, or is threatening to attack shortly. A preventive war is rather a war of choice or a war of aggression that is launched in anticipation of a loss of security or strategic advantage in a more or less far away future, or to gain foreign territories and resources. While a preemptive war is essentially defensive in nature, a preventive war is fundamentally imperialistic. In McCain's vocabulary, the two notions are confused since he says that he would not rule out launching preemptive wars, when in fact he means launching preventive wars of aggression “against future enemies” who pose no immediate threat to the United States.

A preemptive war can sometimes be legal and justifiable, and be in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. But a preventive war, because it is a planned and overt act of aggression, is never legal according to international law.

Fourthly, it seems that Mr. McCain is a man who has a chip on his shoulder, which is also reminiscent of George W. Bush, and that makes him a dangerous man to be trusted as leader of a heavily armed country like the United States. For example, remembering his days as a Navy pilot and a prisoner during the Vietnam War, nearly fifty years ago, he now says that he would like to go to Cuba to “punish” those Cuban soldiers who hurt his buddies in Vietnam. The Cuban government has answered him that there were no Cuban soldiers in Vietnam, but he keeps the grudge.

Another parallel with Mr. Bush is the fact that Mr. McCain, who will be 72 years old in August, attended a naval academy at Annapolis where he ranked near the end of this class, 894th out of 899 students. Thus, he cannot be expected to be a "philosopher president," and would be expected to lead with his guts rather than his head.

Fifth, Sen. McCain is a neocon candidate. The Israel Lobby, indeed, and the Neocons, that is to say the small clique of misguided ideologues who have whispered advice into George W. Bush's ears for years, and who have begun whispering into McCain's ears, would be delighted to have a militarily hawkish and neoconservative McCain in the White House. For them, this would be a dream come true. Their pet project—a war against Iran—would become a reality.

Sen. McCain was born on a U.S. military base in a foreign country (Panama), and he is the son and grandson of military career individuals. That may explain why he is enamored with anything military. This is a man who believes there is a military solution to any political problem. He would be expected to follow the necon-inspired so-called "Bush Doctrine." He would also be expected to embrace the Neocons' imperialistic and extreme Right Wing Project for the New American Century (PNAC) that calls for American global dominance. Armed with these two “doctrines”, Sen. McCain, if elected President, would stand ready to launch future gratuitous and illegal wars of aggression around the world to ensure American supremacy. Those who liked George W. Bush will love John McCain. They will get all the fireworks and more. Whether this approach is good for the United States, for its economy and for its reputation, and for stability in the world, is another matter.

Sixth, a John McCain as president would be a gift from heaven to the American military industrial complex. It's easy to see why. —Sen. McCain is on record for advocating to increase the size of the U.S. armed forces from the current 750,000 to 900,000 members. Under his governance, the Pentagon and a host of defense contractors would see the U.S. defense budget, already bloated to a point of being larger than the defense spending of all 191 other countries taken together, would increase even further. Another red flag is the fact that McCain has surrounded himself with a host of far right lobbyists to run his campaign and raise money. This means that if ever he is elected, he will be a prisoner of these far right elements. Not a promising perspective.

Seventh, Senator John McCain has supported George W. Bush's huge tax cuts for the rich, which have resulted in large budget deficits and which have contributed so much to placing the United States in its current precarious economic situation, that is to say, being saddled with a falling currency and a spreading financial crisis. It is no wonder that George W. Bush has enthusiastically endorsed John McCain, although such an endorsement could prove to be a double-edged sword, since Bush's approval rating in the U.S. is the lowest of any American president, while a large majority of Americans believe their country is heading in the wrong direction.

Eighth, McCain's personal character is open to question. He is known, and this from his early childhood, to be prone to sudden and uncontrollable fits of temper tantrums. It is reported by biographer Robert Timberg (“John McCain: An American Odyssey”) that right up into his twenties, he remained a strikingly violent man, "ready to fight at the drop of a hat". This rage seems to be at the core of his personality: describing his own childhood, McCain has admitted to having a quick temper and a short fuse (see his book “Worth the Fighting for: A Memoir”) and he has confessed that as a youngster “at the smallest provocation I would go off into a mad frenzy, and then suddenly crash to the floor unconscious. When I got angry I held my breath until I blacked out!” Then, his parents would be forced to soak him in cold water, clothes and all, to wake him up.

A man with such a character is a dangerous man to be entrusted with the responsibility of custody of nuclear weapons. Even some of his Republican Senate colleagues say that he is too reckless to be commander-in-chief. And this is on top of his aggressive militarist stance in foreign policy and his obvious and avowed lack of knowledge in economic matters.

Ninth, there is the legitimate question of his age and personal health. The New York Times has recently been complaining about the lack of medical information regarding the presumptive Republican candidate and how little people know about his health. After all, this is not a trivial matter, since Sen. McCain will be 72 years old in August and he is recovering from an August 2000 surgery for a melanoma cancer, the deadliest of all cancers. A recently released medical report does not alleviate a bit concerns about this very issue.

And ten: Since the media have criticized Senator Barak Obama for his close association with an outspoken black minister, it is worth noting that Senator John McCain has also been endorsed by probably one of the worst right-wing religious bigots in the U.S. today, Texan anti-Catholic televangelist John Hagee.

Let us remember that televangelist (San Antonio megachurch) leader John Hagee, has said that the 2005 hurricane Katrina was God's punishment to New Orleans; he has also referred to the Roman Catholic Church as "the great whore" and called it a "false cult system" and "the apostate church." (There are 60 million Catholics in the U. S. and they could resent such insinuations.) And to top that, he has also declared that God sent [Adolf] Hitler to perpetrate the Holocaust in order to force Jews to move to Israel!

Therefore, it is certainly legitimate to ask why there is all the media attention on Senator Barack Obama's association with a controversial pastor, and hardly any directed at Senator McCain's association with another controversial pastor. Does this not smack of double standards?

In conclusion, when all the dots are connected, it would seem to be clear: Senator "100 Years" John McCain must be considered a man too dangerous and too unpredictable to be entrusted with the presidency of a heavily armed country. Do Americans really want a man whom some call "Senator Hothead", to become "President Hothead" and place him in a position of high responsibility? Let's hope that enough Americans will reflect about all that before the events unfold, not after. If Americans really believe that their country is headed in the wrong direction, does it really make sense to line up behind a candidate who wants to go even further in the same direction?

 Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com

Ron Kind Brought You $4-a-gallon Gas!

Gas Prices Would be Under $2 Per Gallon If We Hadn't Invaded Iraq

Ron Kind is directly responsible for the price you're paying at the pump. He voted for it.

Ron Kind repeatedly voted for the Iraq war. He has voted against setting a deadline to bring the troops home. He is personally responsible for destroying the US economy by burning FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS in Iraq.

As a Democrat, Ron Kind is supposed to be a member of the opposition party. But he has given the Bush league war criminals a blank check - and YOU are paying for it.

Please read the article below, from the respected British newspaper the Independent. Check out my plan to cut gas prices in half. Then contribute to my campaign, spread the word, and help me give Ron Kind his pink slip!

The invasion of Iraq by Britain and the US has trebled the price of oil, according to a leading expert, costing the world a staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone.

The oil economist Dr Mamdouh Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), told The Independent on Sunday that the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the Iraq war.

He spoke after oil prices set a new record on 13 consecutive days over the past two weeks. They have now multiplied sixfold since 2002, compared with the fourfold increase of the 1973 and 1974 “oil shock” that ended the world’s long postwar boom.

Goldman Sachs predicted last week that the price could rise to an unprecedented $200 a barrel over the next year, and the world is coming to terms with the idea that the age of cheap oil has ended, with far-reaching repercussions on their activities.

Dr Salameh, director of the UK-based Oil Market Consultancy Service, and an authority on Iraq’s oil, said it is the only one of the world’s biggest producing countries with enough reserves substantially to increase its flow....

[Full article here - it argues that we have passed "peak oil" and are heading into global economic chaos. But not all experts agree. In the articles below, F. William Engdahl argues that peak oil is a hoax, and that the prices we are paying at the pump have been engineered to maximize the profits of financiers and oil barons.]

"The price of crude oil today is not made according to any traditional relation of supply to demand. It’s controlled by an elaborate financial market system as well as by the four major Anglo-American oil companies. As much as 60 percent of today’s crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks and hedge funds. It has nothing to do with the convenient myths of Peak Oil. It has to do with control of oil and its price. How?"

"The hoax of Peak Oil—namely the argument that the oil production has hit the point where more than half all reserves have been used and the world is on the downslope of oil at cheap price and abundant quantity—has enabled this costly fraud to continue since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 with the help of key banks, oil traders and big oil majors."

Moderate Libertarians Poised to Become New Center-Right Opposition Party After Republicans Follow Whigs Into Oblivion

Richard Viguerie, the founding father of modern conservative strategy, has called on all Republican leaders, from Bush and Cheney on down, to resign immediately.

Viguerie's stunning statement, reproduced in full below, heralds the complete destruction of the Republican party. Top Republicans' involvement in the 9/11 cover-up, and their responsibility for the criminal 9/11 wars that have trashed our economy, our reputation, and our Constitution, is gradually being understood by the American people. The result: The Republicans are heading for an unprecedented electoral disaster followed by the complete and permanent demise of the party founded by anti-slavery activists in 1854.

The Democrats, who went along with the 9/11 coverup and the 9/11 wars, are equally guilty of high treason and crimes against humanity. Unfortunately, most voters, bombarded by corporate media lies, do not understand that the Democrats are nearly as morally and intellectually bankrupt as the Republicans.

The implosion of the Republican Party opens up a void on the right side of the American political spectrum. The party in the best position to fill that void - if its members are smart enough to rein in their ideologues and move to the sensible center - is the Libertarian Party.

The Libertarians are the natural heirs to the moribund Republicans for several reasons. First, unlike the other conservative third party, the Constitution Party, the Libertarian party has a left as well as a right wing, which makes it a potential party of moderation. Libertarians oppose empire, wars, and the excesses of the prison-industrial complex. They want to end the racist "war on drugs" and stop imprisoning half of America's young black males. They favor decriminalizing marijuana and legalizing hemp farming for paper, oil, fabrics, and biofuels. They generally oppose the racist, genocidal war on Islam. They are "progressive" in the sense of welcoming the transformative possibilities of new communications technologies. All of these attributes will help the Libertarian party move from the right fringe toward the center, and become a major party rather than a third party, by attracting support from the left as well as the right.

Along with their potentially centrist platform, the Libertarians, unlike today's Republicans, are bona fide fiscal conservatives. The single biggest thing the Republicans used to have going for them was their fiscal conservatism. While the Democrats were perceived as the big spenders, the Republicans were the party that could be trusted to spend the taxpayers' money sensibly. Today, the Democrats are still big spenders, but the Republicans are even bigger spenders! Reagan set the tone by outspending Carter with his foolish and costly military build-up - and now Bush and Cheney have completely bankrupted the country with their idiotic "war on terror." The new major party that replaces the Republicans will have to be grounded in fiscal conservatism, and Libertarians are strong fiscal conservatives.

The Republican-to-Libertarian shift will be driven by the Ron Paul phenomenon. Ron Paul is the only 2008 presidential candidate with significant grass-roots support. While it is true that Obama, like Dr. Paul, is getting lots of small contributions and exciting popular fervor, Obama's campaign is astroturf, not grass-roots. Obama, as Webster Tarpley explains in Obama: The Postmodern Coup, is the candidate of a "color revolution" orchestrated by the left wing of the City of London/Wall Street financiers and their intelligence assets. Obama's phony grassroots support will quickly fade, while Ron Paul's genuine grassroots base will continue to grow - and as the Republican Party collapses, it will move to its natural home, the Libertarian Party.

To succeed in replacing the Republicans as a major party, the Libertarians will need to move forcefully toward the center. Currently the Libertarian Party is too easily labeled as the home of extremists and ideologues. Many voters think Libertarians are people who want to take away Social Security and let poor old folks starve to death. They think Libertarians want to abolish public education and unions, and let the super-rich and the big corporations run rampant while ordinary people suffer.

To counter this image at a moment when ordinary people are hurting, and will be voting their pocketbooks, Libertarians need to reassure voters that, if elected, they will not quickly abolish all of the public enterprises and social safety nets that are providing a living for many tens of millions of people. (The safety nets will be even more important as the economy tanks due to Bush's wars.) Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine makes it clear that sudden impositions of libertarian economic principles are not only politically impossible except under conditions of brutal authoritarian rule, but also impose tremendous, unacceptable costs in human suffering. Libertarians should insist on gradual rather than sudden economic transformations, beginning with the most useless or harmful enterprises. The mass murder industry euphemistically known as "the military," the pork-laden mind-control program known as "Homeland Security," and the kidnapping and torture industry known as the prison-industrial complex, would be good places to start. As people from these unproductive sectors lose their jobs, there will still be a need for safety nets to tide them over until they can retrain and find productive employment.

As they move to the center, Libertarians will need to deliver the coup de grace to the Republican Party. They will have to bash it mercilessly from the center-right even harder than the Democrats are bashing it from the left. They will have to endlessly hammer the Republicans for abandoning true conservatism in favor of radical Straussian/Trotskyite neoconservatism, even as they slam the Democrats for fecklessness and irresponsibility. Finally, Libertarians will have to have the guts to nail the Republicans for 9/11 high treason. (A Libertarian party perceived as patriotic and center-right is in a better position to pursue treason charges against the Republicans than a Democratic party that is not only widely viewed lefty and less patriotic, but that is itself at least passively complicit in the same act of high treason.) Without such a concerted attack from the center-right, the Republicans might straggle on for a few years or decades, perhaps even regrouping before the Libertarians take their place. That would be a tragic missed opportunity not only for the Libertarian Party, but also for the USA.

The United States of America is a nation founded on an idea, not an ethnicity. That idea, in a word, is freedom. In the Libertarian Party, liberty isn't just our middle name - it's our first, last, and only name. At a time when the USA seems to have lost its identity, the Libertarian party's name, and the principle for which it stands, reminds us of what our nation is really all about. If the Libertarian party has the courage and vision to seize the day and become the new mainstream center-right party, it could go down in history as the salvation of a mortally-threatened nation.

Republican leaders in the White House, the Congress, and the Republican National Committee and its affiliates, along with most Republican leaders at the state level, have failed – or outright betrayed – the conservative voters who put them in their positions.

The result is that the party’s “brand” has become a negative, to an extent greater than in the Watergate era, perhaps worse than in the days of Herbert Hoover.

The number of new Republican voters is flat while Democratic voter registration is skyrocketing.

Contributions to GOP candidates and Republican parties are way off, while donations to Democrats are setting records.

In primaries, votes for Republican candidates at all levels are running far behind the Democrats.

And in recent special elections, the party lost long held congressional seats in Illinois, in Louisiana, and, yesterday, in Mississippi – all in districts carried overwhelmingly by President Bush. A single election can be a fluke, but when Republicans lose three seemingly safe seats in a row, disaster is looming.

The hard work of the last 50 years by millions of conservative campaign workers, donors, candidates, writers, intellectuals, and activists has been trashed. The conservative movement has been set back 10-20 years – possibly even permanently – by politicians consumed by power, including but certainly not limited to Denny Hastert, Tom DeLay, John Boehner, Roy Blunt, Mitch McConnell, Trent Lott, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, party chairman Mike Duncan, and their friends.

Some deserve more of the blame than others, but they are all part of a party Establishment that has brought the party down.

For things to change, for conservatives to be justified in giving our contributions, our volunteer efforts, our energy, and votes to the GOP, the party must clean house. The party leadership should resign immediately.

We must replace the Big Government/Big Business/Establishment Republicans with principled conservatives, most of them young. By “principled conservatives,” I mean leaders who will stand up to the liberals and fight for freedom and traditional values.

Republicans are doomed to wander in the political wilderness until this generation of weak-kneed, no-vision, inarticulate, afraid-of-the-liberal-media politicians are replaced mostly with principled conservatives in the mold of Bill Buckley, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

The Democrats have firm principled beliefs. What motivates most Republican leaders? Nothing except a craving for power. What do Republicans offer voters? Nothing except “Elect us because we’re not Democrats.”

To Republican leaders, I say: You turned against the principles you once espoused – conservative principles – and, in turn, conservatives and the American people have turned against you. Things will not get better until you accept responsibility, and resign.

You have stayed too long. For the future of the Republican Party, for America and the cause of freedom: Go!

Richard A. Viguerie, president of ConservativeHQ.com: The Conservative Headquarters, is author of the new book, Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause. His email is rav@conservativesbetrayed.com.

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