Reporter backs Klansman's attack on Bush

David Revelman
Melbourne: Australia
BrookesNews.Com
Sunday Feb. 23 2003

Alan Ramsey has a problem with George Bush — he hates him with a blind passion. Ramsey also has a problem with the truth. He hates that too. To vent his hatred of Bush and his loathing for the US, he quoted at length senator Robert Byrd, former Senate Democrat leader and now its longest-serving member and fromer Grand Kleagle (don't you love the name) of the Ku Klux Klan (Little men in a coward's castle, Sydney Morning Herald 22/2).

Byrd launched a tirade in the Senate against Bush, accusing him of being dangerous and of violating international law. According to Byrd the US economy is crumbling (I can just imagine Ramsey salivating at the thought) while Bush fiddles with Saddam. In fact, the US economy is in a better state than the Australian economy. We are suppose to be booming and yet our unemployment level exceeds the US level even though it is in recession. Furthermore, US productivity appears to be outstripping Australian productivity.

The rest of Byrd's bitter tale of woe is just as bad. Osama bin Laden has not been found. Perhaps that is because he is under 50,000 tons of mountain rocks. Afghanistan venture is a failure. Excuse me? The Taliban are swept aside, al Qaeda's bases are destroyed, his lieutenants on the run, the Afghan people are free and the women and girls are flocking to get the education that the misogynist Taliban denied them. But not a word of this from Byrd and Ramsey.

The US is giving Afghanistan millions of dollars to build its health services. Because of this aid about 4.5 million Afghan children have been immunised against measles. More than 2 million rural Afghans have been provided with improved primary health care, scores of clinics have been supplied with drugs and equipment, and so on. Not a peep from the Kleagle or Ramsey on these successes.

Byrd condemned the administration for abusing heads of states. But it is Bush who has been abused. And let us not forget that when Chirac recently abused and threatened the administration's east European allies Byrd and Ramsey supported him through their silence. Byrd also argues that the US cannot fight global terrorism on its own. Who said it can? Has he not heard of Britain and Australia, for example. (Ramsey's attitude is that we should not join with the US but at the same time the US should not fight a 'unilateral' war against terrorism).

The rest of Byrd's feigned outrage was basically in the same defeatist and dishonest vein. Ramsey said of it: "Remember, this is a veteran American politician, not some eloquent Australian peacenik. It is political speech-making of the highest quality and courage." (What does Byrd have to fear considering his position in the Senate, Mr Ramsey?), Rubbish. It lacked courage, it lacked honesty and it lacked substance. Virtues that Ramsey also lacks. Maybe that is why he admired it.

Now for Byrd the hypocrite. That part of this 'courageous' politician (and the only man in the Senate who voted against both black nominees to the Supreme Court: Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas) that bin laden Ramsey neglected to mention.

Byrd says that Iraq poses no threat, and yet last September he stated "that Iraq has biological weapons, we know the type, the strain, and the batch number of the germs that may have been used to fashion those weapons." In the light of this, how can he now say that Iraq poses no threat?

What about helping the Iraqi people free themselves? He is also against that too. For instance, arming the Kurds would "be laying the groundwork for a brutal civil war…" In other words, do not liberate them and do not help them liberate themselves. (Byrd is obviously Alan Ramsey's kind of man. So what does that say about Ramsey?)

Ramsey evidently approves of Byrd's demands that Bush should obtain a declaration of war and consult Congress, meaning the Democrats, on the issue. Are there two senator Byrds? Is this the same senator, Mr Ramsey, who never made the same demands of Clinton when he launched hundreds of cruise missiles at Iraq, prepared for an invasion in 1998, attacked the Sudan, invaded Haiti and Kosovo? Well, what do you know, it is the same Byrd. No wonder Ramsey and the Saddam Times (aka The Sydney Morning Herald) love him.

It is more than clear that Byrd is a cynical political opportunist . The man who attacks the president on his war decision also voted, along with 97 other senators, for 14 September resolution which amounted to declaration of war. Now the dishonest Ramsey is trying to portray the Kleagle as a farsighted statesman

Some readers might feel uncomfortable about me raising Byrd's KKK past. They should not. Byrd has never apologised for it: nor has he ever said sorry for voting against the 1964 Civil Rights Act or voting against Thurgood and Thomas.

If any Republican had possessed Byrd's racist history they would have been driven out of Washington on a rail. And you can bet on one other thing: the journalistic lowlifes at The Saddam Times would never allow his views to be accorded any respect.

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