The Red Pill Society
How Deep is the Rabbit Hole?

This is an article taken from the Al Jazeera website. I know this is a heavily debated issue with lots of passionate verbiage from all sides of the argument. Well, that’s the very point of The Red Pill Society. Open conversation and debates over issues that affect our world. Don’t be so sure that your opinions are the only right answer. Different points of view can give a completely different description of events. At least be open to the fact that there may be another “truth” beyond what you think. I for one have always believed that the US presence in Iraq was driven by the desire to control oil. Are there other reasons? Of course. I’m not sitting at the table with George W. Bush to hear the real story. Do you seriously think they would tell us the REAL truth?

By Michael Schwartz

• Putting a country in your tank

Lately, even Democratic candidates for president have been weighing in on why the U.S. must maintain a long-term, powerful military presence in Iraq.

Hillary Clinton, for example, used phrases like protecting our “vital national security interests” and preventing Iraq from becoming a “petri dish for insurgents,” in a major policy statement. Barack Obama, in his most important speech on the subject, talked of “maintaining our influence” and allowing “our troops to strike directly at al Qaeda.” These arguments, like the constantly migrating justifications for invading Iraq, serially articulated by the Bush administration, manage to be vaguely plausible (with an emphasis on the “vaguely”) and also strangely inconsistent (with an emphasis on the “inconsistent”).

That these justifications for invading, or remaining, are unsatisfying is hardly surprising, given the reluctance of American politicians to mention the approximately $10-$30 trillion of oil lurking just beneath the surface of the Iraq “debate” — and not much further beneath the surface of Iraqi soil. Obama, for example, did not mention oil at all in his speech, while Clinton mentioned it twice in passing. President Bush and his top officials and spokespeople have been just as reticent on the subject.

Why then did the U.S. invade Iraq? Why is occupying Iraq so “vital” to those “national security interests” of ours? None of this makes sense if you don’t have the patience to drill a little beneath the surface – and into the past; if you don’t take into account that, as former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz once put it, Iraq “floats on a sea of oil”; and if you don’t consider the decades-long U.S. campaign to control, in some fashion, Middle East energy reservoirs. If not, then you can’t understand the incredible tenaciousness with which George W. Bush and his top officials have pursued their Iraqi dreams or why — now that those dreams are clearly so many nightmares — even the Democrats can’t give up the ghost. (more…)

Hundreds of thousands of people may not be able to vote in next year’s US presidential election because of a huge citizenship application backlog.

Hispanic leaders voiced concern over the delays at the US immigration department, which said it had not expected the paperwork mountain.

Officials said applications had surged before a July administration fee rise.

The backlog could take 18 months to resolve, leaving many applicants unable to vote in the November 2008 election.

The delays will affect those who filed citizenship applications after 1 June with the Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, said officials.

‘No political motivation’

The agency says becoming a US citizen usually takes about seven months, but the current paperwork backlog could take between 15 and 18 months to work through. (more…)

By John Gibson – FOX News

Apropos of the letters: A bunch of ‘lefties’ are writing in asking: “Why aren’t you going to talk about Scott McClellan ‘s new book?” – in which he says Bush lied when he assured McClellan that Libby and Rove weren’t involved in the outing of Valerie Plame.

First, Scott McClellan has come out today and clarified earlier reports: Bush did not lie to him.

Second, I’m the guy who said a long, long time agon that whoever outed Valerie Plame should get a medal, and if it was Karl Rove I’s pin it on him myself.

“John, have you taken leave of your senses? Whoever did that should be put on trial for exposing a U.S. secret agent.”

Well, most times, but not all, especially when the secret agent – if she actually was one – is actively working against an elected president’s publicly stated policies from behind her veil of secrecy. This is about an anti-Bush cabal inside the CIA, something that should be rooted out. Ours is not a government of spies who pull political strings while in hiding and are never exposed because of their special status.

So did she pull strings? Her bosses say she did, that she set up the meetings which eventually led to her anit-war husband setting off to ostensibly establish a reason the president might use to underpin his war plans. Instead, her husband went on a mission so lackadaisical that it certainly was no surprise to his wife when he came home and said Saddam was not trying to buy nuke bomb material from Africa. If her husband had stumbled on Saddam’s actual nuke bomb he would have denied ever seeing it.

And the fact that later subsequent reports from the CIA itself said her husband was wrong should also be noted.

In total, it was “Miss Spy” – Plame – and her former ambassador husband deciding they would tank the president’s war plans by responding to the vice president’s query with an answer the president and the vice president wouldn’t like and would put them in the box, no matter what the actual facts in Africa were.

So I still want someone to get a medal. I just can’t figure out which person deserves it most: Rove, Cheney, Armitage, Libby or Bush himself.

That’s My Word.

____________________________________________________________

To be fair we’ll try to post opposing view points for discussion purposes. This article from FOX news takes a very different view point of the Valerie Plame outing. I’m not at all surprised this is one of the views coming out of FOX news. But we all know most news agencies are NOT subjective when reporting the news. Some people like FOX news because they are in sync with their own beliefs. Just like some people like the way CNN report the news, or BBC, or even Al Jezeera for that matter. You all know where I stand in relation to FOX news and the other hardcore “righties.”

A former White House press secretary has said the US president was involved in misinforming the public over the leaking of a CIA agent’s identity. In an excerpt from his book, Scott McClellan says George W Bush helped mislead the public over the role in the affair of two White House aides.The CIA agent, Valerie Plame, says her identity was leaked because her diplomat husband opposed the Iraq war.The White House said Mr Bush would not ask anyone to pass false information.

Lawsuit - Mr McClellan’s book is not scheduled for publication until April and the excerpt released was brief.It refers to a White House press conference he attended in 2003. 

(more…)

The following is from Fox News and I have to ask, Aren’t we going overboard with political correctness? Either that or some people in Australia are really bored and this is the best fight they can come up with. What a joke I tell you. Get a life people!

By Janet Fyfe-Yeomans and Amanda Grant

SYDNEY, Australia — He is an unlikely revolutionary, but this Christmas, Santa is a rebel with a claus.

He is having the last laugh on political correctness — and it’s a great big fat belly laugh.

Santas across Sydney, Australia, are rebelling against attempts to ban their traditional greeting of “ho, ho, ho” in favor of “ha, ha, ha.”

Recruitment firm Westaff — which supplies hundreds of Santas across the country — has told its trainees that the “ho ho ho” phrase could frighten children and could even be derogatory to women.

Two Santa hopefuls reportedly quit the course because of the hullabaloo of the ho, ho, ho.

One would-be Santa has told The Daily Telegraph he was taught not to use “ho, ho, ho” because it was too close to the American slang for prostitute. He also quit.

“Gimme a break,” said Julie Gale, who runs a campaign against sexualizing children called Kids Free 2B Kids. “We are talking about little kids who do not understand that ‘ho, ho, ho’ has any other connotation, and nor should they.”

“Leave Santa alone,” she added.

Australian Childhood Foundation chief executive officer Dr. Joe Tucci said it was the latest example of political correctness gone mad.

“There is no stronger tradition for children than Santa’s ho, ho, ho,” Tucci said.

(more…)