For the freeps: Ronald Reagan quotes on torture and wars of agression

[cynatnite]

May 20, 1988

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

September 26, 1988

Human rights is not for some, some of the time. Human rights, as the universal declaration of this Assembly adopted in 1948 proclaims, is ``for all people and all nations,'' and for all time.

December 10,1986
Indeed, we've learned through painful experiences that respect for human rights is essential to peace and, ultimately, to our own freedom. A government which does not respect the rights of its own people and laws is unlikely to respect those of its neighbors.

December 10, 1985
Governments that must answer to their peoples do not launch wars of aggression. That's why the American people cannot close their eyes to abuses of human rights and injustice, whether they occur among friend or adversary or even on our own shores.

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/search/speeches/speech_srch.html

Considering that freeps and repubs alike practically worship the man, this seems appropriate.

[RandiRhodesArchives]

1. "but...but...9/11 changed everything"

:sarcasm::crazy::puke:

[Freedom_from_Chains]

2. The typical freeper response will be

That was before 9-11 you idiot. Don't try to get them to understand the philosophical underpinnings of an argument. It will frustrate you and it makes them mad.

[cynatnite]

5. Basically the only one that mattered pre 9/11 was Clinton...

Oh, that's right. Silly me :silly:

[Erika]

8. 911 was only four planes hijacked by miscreants

If W, the freeper president gave orders for us to be sissified by 4 planes, that's their problem.

As little as I respected Reagan, he, I think, would not have recommended the country to be so sissified.

I abhor the security measures of trying to catch the needle in a vast multitude of haystacks. W and his terra...terra...terra garbage unhinged the freepers.

[cynatnite]

I do think Raygun would have disapproved...

of bush's handling to a degree whether he did it publicly or privately. When I was reading through Raygun's speeches tonight I was struck by how much hope they had. Love him or hate him, they were good.

[Erika]

11. They were good only from his point of being a pampered

public official and a millionaire. He had the same detachment that W does for the working class. He'd been there, hated it, abhorred them.

He tossed many out on the street with Alzheimer's, while he had SS agents to help his every move and whim while he had the disease.

[cynatnite]

13. I don't doubt the shit the man did...

not for one second.

The speeches were incredible...too bad he didn't back up the words.

[Solly Mack]

3. said the President during Iran-Contra and Negroponte's death squads

Reagan was a hypocrite. Right wing mentality respects that.

[EFerrari]

4. Reagan on torture? Why not Colonel Sanders on chicken?

Reagan was the biggest exporter of torture in our history -- until Junior outdoes him.

[cynatnite]

6. Yeah, I know...

That's why I thought this was so appropriate. :hi:

[EFerrari]

9. I think I mislaid my sense of irony!

:hi:

[whistle]

7. Ronald Reagan talked out of both sides of his mouth also

...he was the first great Satan of the U.S.

<snip>
June 2004
Deja Vu All Over Again
Ronald Reagan, Neo-Cons and the "Intelligence Failures"
By ZEYNEP TOUFE

United in a fervent desire to praise Reagan, not bury him, the pundit class seems to have agreed that, no matter what else they might say about him, Reagan won the cold war by outspending the Soviets and forcing them into bankruptcy.

It's a neat story, except that it's not what happened.

In fact, the Soviet Union was already economically crumbling and in severe decline by the 1970s, barely able to keep its economy functioning let alone surpass the United States militarily or economically. The Soviets were doing a pretty good job of bankrupting themselves and did not even try to keep up with the United States' insane levels of military spending in the eighties. Reagan's policies helped bust the United States' budget, provided massive corporate boondoggles to the military-industrial complex, such as the missile defense systems which did not work then and do not work now. If anything, emerging memoirs and interviews suggest that Reagan's aggressive policies impeded and delayed Gorbachev's efforts at reform.

And in contrast to the current political rhetoric that portrays the Iraq war "intelligence failures" as mistakes and shortcomings resulting from unprecedented pressure on intelligence agencies, the CIA of the time was also heavily pressured, and in the end instrumental, in exaggerating the threat posed by the Soviet Union in order to justify belligerent policies.

No amount of falsehood was enough for some just as it wasn't this time around. So, remarkably enough, one can trace the first policy victory of the neo-conservatives to the creation of the infamous "Team B" in the seventies where a panel authorized by the then-CIA chief George Herbert Walker, whose members included Daniel Pipes and Paul Wolfowitz, whose architect was Richard Perle, and whose backers included Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, trashed the CIA for not exaggerating the Soviet threat sufficiently.
<more>
http://www.counterpunch.org/toufe06102004.html

<also see>
The Apotheosis of Ronald Reagan
Divinity Thorugh Marketing
By NOAM CHOMSKY

There was something similar after the JFK assassination, but of course the assassination of a living president is quite different. I don't recall anything else remotely similar, perhaps since FDR, in the midst of a war, and of course he really was a significant figure, whatever one's judgment of him. Reagan is another story: mostly a PR creation in the first place, and massively so in recent years.

During his years in office, Reagan was not particularly popular. Gallup just published poll figures comparing him during office with other presidents. His average ratings during his years in office were below Kennedy, Johnson, Bush I, and Clinton; above Nixon, Ford, Carter. This is averages during their terms in office. By 1992 he was ranked just next to Nixon as the most unpopular living ex-president. Since then there has been an immense PR campaign to convert him into a revered and historic figure, if not semi-divine, and it's doubtless had an effect, radically shifting the rankings. Not on the basis of facts: rather, extremely effective marketing. The current performance is reminiscent of the death of Hirohito and Soviet leaders. One of the more depraved moments of US media. The lying is quite impressive, even by people who surely know better.

Noam Chomsky's latest book is Hegemony or Survival.
http://www.counterpunch.org/chomsky06102004.html

[Erika]

10. Reagan threw out many mental defects onto the streets

He had no pity for anyone who wasn't a war hero (or played the part of one)

Wonder what he would think of our chickenhawk administration. So they didn't serve, couldn't they have been at least patriotic enough to act the part?

[EFerrari]

14. He didn't have pity on war heroes, either. Ask any homeless vet.

And, careful how you talk about the mentally ill, sister. They're not "defects" but citizens who are entitled to care and who do not get it.

[me b zola]

12. They don't care

The megaphones and snake-oil salesmen tell them what to think, what to believe in, and how to vote. It doesn't mean a rat's ass that what they are believing and doing does not follow rational thought. Logic, history, nor facts will affect them, they are on a crusade--they don't know what they are crusading for, they're just following the voice coming out of the box.