Guest blogged by Winter Patriot
Robert Parry‘s Consortium News has recently posted a beautifully-written piece by William Frey, M.D., called “Confessions of a Repentant Republican”.
Dr. Frey is a former Bush supporter who has torn himself away from the propaganda and re-engaged with reality. And now he’s writing about it. He can really write, too. Look at this:
Many Americans whom I know and love, including many current supporters of President Bush, remain conflicted over both his ultimate intentions in Iraq as well as domestic curtailment of civil liberties.
Many have given the benefit of the doubt to President Bush, and, in a misdirected spirit of unity, have supported, as did I, Administration policies that conflict with our essential values.
This essay explores many of the issues that led me personally to the recognition that the policies I was supporting in Iraq were not consistent with the justifications made for the invasion in the spring of 2003, that implicit in our post-invasion actions was the goal of permanent occupation, which would ensure endless war and the resultant degradation of our liberty, our security, and our moral authority.
For me, recognizing that I could no longer support the President for whom I voted, and the occupation of a land we had invaded, remains personally painful.
I have learned that while it is difficult to admit being wrong, such recognition is a prerequisite for redemptive action, necessary both for individual growth and for the healing of our nation.
It is in this spirit that I submit these reflections.
A great introduction, is it not? Who could argue with such a reasonable presentation?
The same is true of the entire piece. It’s completely reasonable, all the way through. And it explains, in a very clear and dispassionate way, what is wrong with the foreign and domestic policies being followed by this administration. I love it for that.
I love it for including this quote from Eisenhower, too:
and these from James Madison:
But above all, I love this essay because it gives us a potential bridge to the 30 or 35 percent who still say they support the president. What are they thinking? What are they reading? Maybe it would help if they were reading “Confessions of a Repentant Republican”.
The BRAD BLOG sometimes gives an award when it finds an intellectually honest conservative, and I’d love to give one for this essay. But I’m not the proprietor, I’m only the concierge. My job here is simply to help ruin the blog; I can’t give away any awards. But I can make a nomination.
So here it is: I hereby nominate Dr. William Frey for one of the coveted BRAD BLOG Awards for intellectually honest conservatives.
If you haven’t already set a bookmark at Consortium News, consider this a friendly reminder.
The Whispering Campaign has a high opinion of this essay as well, and is in the process of making short excerpts available for easy printing and distribution. The following one-page excerpts are now posted:
Confessions of a Repentant Republican
Eisenhower Warned Us About This
Concrete Speaks Louder Than Words
How Has It Come To This?
The Price Of Believing The Prevailing Myths
We Must Confront Them With The Truth
With Us Or Against Us
Others may be coming soon. Please help spread the word.
And please share “Confessions of a Repentant Republican” with all your right wrong-leaning friends.
I’ll probably never forget this guy because he not only elected this duped loser Bush, he elected the absolute Darth Sidious of the world Dick Cheney!!!
And Dick Cheney ENJOYS torture…..He is one sick freak!
:O
If this guy wants any redemption at all, join the fight to dump Diebold today and take them all to court!!
DUMP DIEBOLD!!!
Doug E.
Well exactly, Doug, but it’s nice to see people waking up, and trying to wake up others too. Granted that Dr. Frey isn’t talking about election fraud or foreign spies — he doesn’t even mention controlled demolitions pawned off as fire damage — but everybody has to start somewhere.
The more Americans wake up, the better off we will all be, and the harder it will be to disguise fixed elections, in my view. These are my opinions only, of course, but I don’t mind sharing them. 😉
Are you interested in learning more about what Dr. Frey has been up to? I am; I’ve been reading A Time for Moral Outrage and The Tragedy of a Complicit Media and looking around at the website of the group he has founded, Republicans for Humility. And I like what I see.
Last weekend a very smart friend of mine said "This is never gonna end until the Republicans put a stop to it."
I’m still thinking about that one.
Did you mean to say this Winter Patriot?
My job here is simply to help "ruin" the blog; I can’t give away any awards.
re #4, yeah. That’s my job! 😉
GWN – now that’s funny! WP does have a wry sense of humor tho’ …
Here’s an interesting web site and article:
CIA Secrecy Claims to Iraq Intelligence Given Little Scrutiny
[snip] Washington, D.C., October 21, 2005 – U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer has accepted the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) contention that every single word of a 50-page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq must be kept secret, according to a September 30 Memorandum Opinion in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by the National Security Archive against the CIA.
The Archive filed suit after the CIA refused to expedite processing and release of the 2004 Iraq National Intelligence Estimate ("NIE). As the New York Times reported on September 16, 2004, the NIE spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq. The Estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war.
Although the CIA had not expedited processing of any FOIA request since the 1996 amendments added expedited processing provisions to the law, the CIA suddenly managed to process the Archive’s request within a few days after the law suit was filed. Nonetheless, the CIA claimed that every single word of the NIE must be kept secret pursuant to FOIA exemptions 1 (national security), 3 (sources and methods), and 5 (deliberative process). [snip]
Haven’t had a chance to read it all or follow the numerous links. It looks very interesting …..
Oops – add this to my comment #6
[snip-con’t] Judge Collyer accepted the CIA claims without ever looking at the NIE. Instead Judge Collyer deferred to the affidavit of Martha M. Lutz, the Information Review Officer for the Director of Central Intelligence, who claimed that no portion of the NIE could be released without damage to U.S. national security.
To rebut Lutz’s claims, the Archive filed with the Court the CIA’s own unclassified congressional testimony, speeches, and reports that contain the CIA’s assessment of the situation in Iraq during the period in which the NIE was written. Refusing to compare this evidence to the actual NIE, Judge Collyer concluded it was only speculative to contend that the NIE contained some of the same information that was in these disclosed CIA statements. [end-snip] **MORE**
WP – forgot to say I printed out Mr. Frey’s article and will take it with me to my Thanksgiving gathering this year.
Maybe it should be wrapped & given as a gift to my Repub relatives.
~~ Sorry, Dr. Frey.
I supported Bush at first, fooled by the notion that one must unite behind the President when the nation is attacked, even though the evidence justifying war seemed thin at best.
I’m tempted to say that I am ashamed, but it is Bush that should be ashamed, not those who believed that no one would dare to bring such dishonor to the Presidency.
Not that he’s the first.
I mean, not that Bush is the first who has dishonored the Presidency.
Give me a break. Really.
Inspectors were on the ground, the PNAC had their manifesto up for all to read and most of our allies told us we should not invade. It’s not that these people didn’t realize that this war was a lie, they just chose to look the other way.
Now the pedulum has swung and they want redemption. Cry me a freakin’ river!
So go ahead people, lay down your guard so they can keep stealing elections and keep mudering innocent people. As for me, I believe once a Con always a Con and I won’t trust or forgive any one of them. EVER!
Although I agree that my support of Bush is fading fast, it’s not because I am or was "in the wrong." Indeed, my issue with Bush is his intentional inconsistent conservatism for the sake of triangulating liberal issues (thanks Mr. Rove!). He becomes liberal to buy votes from the elderly, caters to hispanics by sacrificing our border security, and has ballooned federal spending to sway fence-sitters in battleground states. I want a conservative on all issues, not just family values and abortion. I see Bush now as a slightly better version of his father, which won’t carry the conservative cause past the 2006 mid-term elections.
Here’s what everyone must realize: the Bush administration doesn’t care. They do not need to win the most voters over…they have the electronic machines. So, do you think they care? They certainly don’t act like they care about the polls. You know, the polls? What the people want? Most people don’t like anything they are doing right now. Do they care? Absolutely not!!! When you are not beholden to the voters because you can steal elections, you do what YOU want, not what the PEOPLE want. It’s a government within a government. Out of touch with Americans, according to the polls. But, does it matter? They don’t have to get the people to vote for them, the machines do it!
Think about it. Isn’t this the way an administration would act, if they didn’t need the most votes? Wouldn’t they act exactly they way they are acting? Because they know they don’t have to answer to the voters?
If you played devil’s advocate, one would have to admit that this is exactly what an administration would do, that can steal elections. They wouldn’t do what the people want, they wouldn’t care what the people thought, or what the polls said.
This is what we are (with a few other added undertones such as theocracy) —
From Wikipedia:
Oligarchy is a Political regime where most political power effectively rests with a small segment of society (typically the most powerful, whether by wealth, military strength, ruthlessness, or political influence). The word oligarchy is from the Greek for "few" and "rule". Some political theorists have argued that all societies are inevitably oligarchies no matter the supposed political system.
Oligarchies are often controlled by a few powerful families whose children are raised and mentored to become inheritors of the power of the oligarchy, often at some sort of expense to those governed. In contrast to aristocracy ("government by the ‘best’"), this power may not always be exercised openly, the oligarchs preferring to remain "the power behind the throne", exerting control through economic means.
Although Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as a synonym for rule by the rich, for which the exact term is plutocracy, oligarchy is not always a rule by wealth, as oligarchs can simply be a privileged cadre. It has also been suggested that America fits the definition of oligarchy in that the elected officials do not seem to represent the people that elected them, thus converting the Republic into an Oligarchy.
Good for him, he spoke the truth. God is watching!
Now let’s see how quickly the wingnuts savage the good Doctor for his soul-searching. At least that will show him he is right for abandoning W. Most of the people in this country are pretty slow on the uptake politically, but now that the chimperor truly has no clothes even Joe Average can see that a chimp in a suit was still a chimp, no matter how elaborately Karl Rove tried to train him. I don’t mean to disparage chimps by this remark.
I’m waiting for the repentant confessions of the cabal (but not holding my breath) – however a conviction would be pleasing to see.
Update: Government Lies About Not Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
By David Lindorff
[snip] … American troops even have a term for the barbaric technique — "Shake and Bake"–clear evidence that this was no one-off affair.
No wonder journalists have been barred from Fallujah, except when safely embedded and under the control of U.S. military units. No wonder there were reports of whole blocks being bulldozed clear of soil and hosed down after the fighting ended. No wonder the U.S. took control of hospitals in the area and barred the media. No wonder the U.S. military avoided doing body counts.
The U.S. now stands unequivocally condemned as an outlaw terror nation.
The only bright spot in this horror show is that President Bush, our strutting, god-communing commander-in-chief, will now end his career (hopefully sooner than anticipated) confined to the U.S., lest he be arrested and tried in a cage like Saddam for the crime of using chemical weapons against civilians in Iraq.
What a grand irony that would be.
I’m sorry, but in the programming language by which MY personal configurations and mental itinerary are legislated ("J++?-"…it’s proprietary), any attempt to promote or even instigate coexistence involving the values "right-leaning" & "friend" returns "Bad Command or File Name" no matter how I twist ’em around and try to type ’em in. Indeed, it seems that my psyche presents quite an unforgiving atmosphere for such comprimising parametric attempts. It’s just the way I came, OEM. I suspect this to have a great deal to do (in a wholly equicentric, give-and-take sort of way) with the fact that I’m so much cooler than everyone else, in addition to being infinitely better at Frogger. %-]
Another interesting story is that neoCon Democrats, which I have called "George Bush Democrats", have likewise gone thru a metamorphosis as has Mr. Frey.
Hillary Clinton, Zel Miller, and many others have moved to the right and stand out from the moderates.
People develop and hold values based upon certain factors. When those factors change so do their values.
Some significant degree of what we think and the values we hold are really agreement or disagreement with what others think.
Peer pressure, what mom and dad think, what the neighbors think, what friends think, and the social values around us all form our opinions.
Sometimes we do independent research, listen to other peoples reasoning, etc., and our values or beliefs may change or may hold fast.
That can be good or it can be bad … it goes both ways. Change is a neutral essence, in that it can lead to improvement or degeneration.
That is why I think things should be taken issue by issue rather than by political party. Party loyalty can be blind, wrong, and counter productive.
Political parties go thru metamorphosis too, and that can be good or bad.
Party affiliation tends to be group think by its very nature, so I shy away from absolute party loyalty, and instead stay loyal to values which I find to merit my loyalty to them.
(in re: Terri in S Fl #12) Just because wheels are turning, or somebody’s home, doesn’t mean that the lights are on…ie:"deciding" to look the other way doesn’t lend anything at all to the concept of making actual conscious (much less intelligent, logical, or in any other way discerning) realization or recognition. People have a tendency to lie to THEMSELVES with increasing frequency and magnitude when not consciously, on an intrapersonal level, owning up to mistakes and lies of this nature. Most will perform all manner of inexplicable principle, reason, or logic-defying mental and rhetorical acrobatics simply to avoid facing and dealing with the fact that A) they were wrong, [and subsequently], B) they have somehow ended up with two versions of things in their own memory (conscious or otherwise) that are utterly diametrically opposed.
——For the record, I, for one, absolutely relish such intrapsychologistical competition and confrontation. I’ve even appointed a committee of some of the various voices on which I blame my mental–well, "processes" (for lack of a better term) to formulate official rules and regulations for the first annual "Intrajeffish [Sub/]Mental Olympics?" to be held sometime next week/century–whichever appears to have arrived first (interestingly, it’s not necessarily such a cut and dry matter of minor temporal arithmetic, depending on a given voice’s relative orientation within the aenima itself). Also, anyone interested in running squares or even loansharking toward certain peripheral interests to these sure-to-be-fantrasticulous games, let me know—the Census Voices, PhD, LLC have noted a worrisome lack of ‘unhealthy’ interest and subsequent activity surrounding this event and fear such a deficit of self-serving(ness) may lead to some kind of personal honesty(ish)ness, which, needless to say, threatens the very existence of the voices themselves (and subsequently, most/all elements currently ensuring my life remains varied and/or [at least] interesting)…
RE: to "COMMENT #10 [link]
…epppie said on 11/20/2005 @ 3:51pm PT…
I supported Bush at first, fooled by the notion that one must unite behind the President when the nation is attacked, even though the evidence justifying war seemed thin at best.
I’m tempted to say that I am ashamed, but it is Bush that should be ashamed, not those who believed that no one would dare to bring such dishonor to the Presidency.
Not that he’s the first. "
I ask WHY IS THIS NOTION IN THE MINDS OF SO MANY CITIZENS? It’s our job to question the governement…Thomas Jefferson said so!
This was part of the brainwashing talking points that this nasty immoral administration has played on and continues to do…look at the new attack on those that dare point out their lies.
I don’t blame people that voted for bush in 99 though the signs were on the wall,but the ones that voted for him in 04….do have blood on their souls. I will forgive those that speak out and often against this regime of evil, but if they lay silently in guilt, shame on them more!
Even with the media being so hushed in its reporting of the events surrounding the months leading up to bu$h’s inauguration in 2001 and the years following, some of us were able to get enough information to understand that the bu$h administration was twisting the truth, cheating and lying in order to sell its personal agenda.
However, if people consumed a diet made up solely of rightwing radio (i.e. rush, hannity, et al) and Faux News, they were hearing that anything "unfavorable" to the bu$h admin. and its agenda was lies made up by evil Liberals.
Therefore, it’s all about the desire to learn beyond what somebody tells you in predigested, opinionated sound-bytes and to seek further information when the evidence doesn’t fit the spin.
I have to assume those people who bought into the "notion that one must unite behind the President" or be unAmerican, either don’t have the ability to research, read actual documents and think for themselves – or they see themselves as members of a club and don’t care what means the club uses to win – as long as it wins (or in this case tells you its winning.) I suppose they could also be easily-led types or lazy.
Let’s hope those who are waking up won’t get fooled again.
Hi again. Re #23 from Kira:
We all tend to oversimplify things and I’m as guilty as anyone. But I beg to point out that things are not as simple as they appear in the closing line of comment #23.
Those who are waking up will get fooled again, and so will those of us who like to think we’re awake. This administration is not about to start telling the truth, they’ve got the big media in their back pocket, and we’re going to be seeing even more deception as time goes on. Guys like John Rendon will see to that.
In my view, the struggle is going to be continuous: waking people up is only one part of the challenge. We need to help them stay awake; and we need to help ourselves stay awake, too. There’ll be new challenges every day, and even the most astute among is will get fooled some of the time. But hopefully not for long.
I think need to get smarter, and then we need to keep getting smarter. I also think that we who read blogs such as this one need to make an effort to share what we learn here.
There are a number of ways to do this, and it’s happening, and it’s growing; it’s good to see it happening but it needs to keep happening and it needs to keep growing too.
And that’s why I keep saying Knowledge Is Power! Pass It On!!"
Then again, WP, do we continually make things far more difficult than they need to actually be?
Remember Ocham’s Razor and "the devil is in the details?"
One of the essential tools of propaganda is to create confusion by padding the central, core issues with extraneous information and thereby creating a multitude of false paths.
Yes, we need to get smarter – let’s work on finding the path of least resistance through the maze.
I don’t think we’re the ones who are making this difficult, Kira. 😉