16 September 2004

Hall of Shame and Notoriety

Flip Flopper Number 1



Via DFA 2.0, which identifies the most outrageous flip-flopper in American politics.

It was Dick Cheney, but not as you know him. Thirteen years ago, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney gave the keynote address at the Washington Insitute's Soref Symposium. The speech was titled "The Gulf War: A First Assessment" and you're not going to believe some of what he said.

"Should we have gone in to Baghdad? Did we leave the job in some respects unfinished? I think the answer is a resounding "no."

"I think the proposition of going to Baghdad is fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, and once we'd done that we'd have to put another government in its place."

"It is vitally important for a President to know when not to commit U.S. military force. How many casualties should the United States accept in (the) effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?"

"It's my view that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq."

This is the man who makes hopes to win an election by portraying Senator Kerry as a "flip-flopper." Read the entire transcript from the Washington Institute.

Flip Flopper Number 2



During the Legislative Assembly Debate on 15 September 1955 the Great Leader, then an ordinary assemblyman, said:

"If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him, when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law - if that is not what we always cried out against in Fascist states - then what is it?"

The same Great Leader, upon assumption of power in 1959, went on shortly to jail without trial, launch defamation suits, and bankrupt all his political opponents for almost 50 years.

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