"My Cabinet is diverse. The people who walk into the Oval Office and say, Mr. President, you're not looking so good today, they're diverse. (Laughter.) And I'm better off for it. I'm better off for listening from people from different walks of life. And our bench will be, too, if we can get people to have a fair hearing on the floor of the United States Senate. They need to stop playing politics with my nominees for the sake of good justice, for the sake of diversity and for the sake of unclogging some of these federal courts that have got loaded dockets, because the Senate won't approve some of my nominees."
Yes, because John Bolton and John Roberts are both fine examples of diversity. There aren't nearly enough white people in the Supreme Court, or in the U.N. for that matter. I mean the security council is made up of all... well...it gets stupider.
"That's the whole crux of the faith and community initiative -- faith-based and community initiative that I have worked with Congress on and worked with my administration on to spread compassion in America. Oh, I know there's a big debate here in Washington about separation of church and state, and I accept that debate. And I think it's important. The church should never be the state and the state should never be the church. No question about it.
...
Excuse me. Excuse me. I think it's very important for the faith-based initiative to continue on, because I know we can save America one heart, one soul, one conscience at a time. (Applause.)"
The state doesn't have to be the church to be run by it.
"I've got a duty as your President to work as hard as I can to secure our country. It's a duty that goes on. September the 11th changed the world. It changed how we must look at our internal security. There is some thinking here in America that says, if you go on the offense against the terrorists, you're creating more terrorists. That is a woeful misunderstanding of the nature of the terrorist threat. (Applause.)
These were the people who were training for years to bring harm to freedom-loving people. These were the people who took -- who gained confidence because there was no response when they wantonly killed around the world. These are people who you cannot negotiate with, you cannot bargain with. And these are people that you must not hope for the best. See, they're cold-blooded killers, they will kill you just like that, in order to create fear and intimidation. My most solemn duty is to protect our country. I will continue to do so by hunting these killers down around the world and bringing them to justice before they hurt us here at home. (Applause.) And as we do so, we will continue to spread freedom and peace."
Because killing ain't killing when we're doin' it.
"I want to tell you a story about an event that took place in the Oval Office. Seven men came to see me, from Iraq. They had had their right hands cut off by Saddam Hussein. You know why? Because his currency had devalued and he needed a scapegoat. In this case, he needed seven scapegoats. I asked one of the fellows who came in to see me, he said -- I said, why you? And he said, well, because he happened to have sold dinars to buy euros, I think he said, to buy gold so he could manufacture the jewelry that he was making. He made this transaction on -- evidently on the wrong date, because the dictator picked him out and said you're one of seven, and I'm cutting off your hand and burning an "X" in your forehead. And these were the fellows that came to see me.
They came to see me because their story was documented and Marvin Zindler -- I don't know if there are any Houstonians here, but you know Marvin Zindler, he's a -- yes, you know Big Marv. (Applause.) Yes, sir, born and raised in Houston, he knows -- he was brought up by Marvin Zindler. Big 2 News. He flew them over to Houston, and they got new hands. And they were coming to see me in the Oval Office. And it was a very emotional moment for all of us. A guy took a Sharpie, folded it in his new hand, and wrote, "God bless America," in Arabic. You see, he said, "God bless America" because he had been liberated from the clutches of a brutal tyrant who whimsically could cut off a hand.
The contrast was sharp to me, about the nature of freedom, a free society and a tyrannical society. Free societies are peaceful societies. Free societies help people realize their dream. Free societies are compassionate societies.
In the Oval, I told them, I said, you know, I'm glad you're here; it's very important for you to know that a successful President is one who realizes he's not bigger than the office, that the office of President is always bigger than the person, and that as we help you build a free Iraq, the institutions must be bigger than the people, so that never happens to you again."
Uh huh. But wait there's more!
"We actually misnamed the war on terror, it ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world. (Laughter.)
No, that's what they do. They use terror to -- and they use it effectively, because we've got good hearts. We're people of conscience, they aren't."
Parse that sentence and tell me there aren't two meanings. One where you follow what he's trying to say and the other where grammatically he refers to "free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon..."
2 comments:
Parse these:
“The UN Charter is fundamentally a political, not a legal document. On finances it amounts to little more than an ‘agreement to agree.’”
– Op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, April 13, 1997
You should've pointed out that Bolton wrote that Op-Ed in the LA Times.
http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.foreign,pubID.7611/pub_detail.asp
After reading the article completely, I totally disagree with his position. That statement is meant to assert that if the U.S. were to hold back on funding certain efforts of the UN, that we wouldn't be acting "illegally", because it's our money and the UN is not any form of legal authority. This is wrong for several reasons. First off, it IS unfair that the U.S. is able to throw money around to intimidate the actions of the UN or it's members. We have a responsibility to keep our international commitments. If the UN wants to do something we don't agree with, then it's our duty to inform the body of our intent and reasoning and come up with a better plan. Considering just the legality argument, in all respects, the charter is more of a political article than actual international law, however the UN has been a major player in enforcing international law and to say that we don't play by the same rules as everyone else because we're the main monetary contributor is just bullshit. That would be like saying that big corporations don't have to follow federal laws because they are main contributors to the federal budget and campaign funding. I mean if you want to dumb it down, any law in the U.S. is just an agreement between the government and the people to agree on these laws. Looked at in that way, you don't have any obligation to authority unless it has deep pockets, and for an international body to coordinate treaties, that's starting on the wrong foot. American arrogance is not what the UN needs more of, and hedging on debts political or otherwise is just bad business.
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