“To put this little piece of braggadocio in context it should be noted that no other American president has ever admitted to such a serious violation of law. Although assassination is specifically forbidden as a course of action open to U.S. officials including Presidents, no one seems to have noticed — perhaps because they were so caught up with the theater of what was happening on the screen — what was said.”

Oliver then proceeds to list US laws that state the prohibiting of assassination.  Now granted both Oliver and I are cut from the same mold, men of outstanding principle and concerned almost purely with accountability.  But in this instance Oliver North has proven that he doesn’t have the nuts to be a hardcore right wing neoconservative.  That pussy-ish “we are a country of laws, we must abide by laws” attitude is something I would expect coming from nancy boy “we are the world” democrats or an unwashed hippy, not a battle and controversy hardened men of principle like Oliver North.

Is he really saying it is morally wrong to engage in assassination, even if it is Bin Laden simply because assassination directly violates a statute of US law?  So you want to allow him to keep on terrorizing the US and all you want to do is drag him in front of an international court instead of snuffing him by a US government sanctioned assassination squad?  When the fuck did Oliver North become a liberal wuss?  Even democratic pretty boy Kennedy offered suggestions of wiping out Castro, Kennedy has more right-wing cred than Oliver North.

The same man who fears the legality issues concerning assassination is the same Oliver North, who oversaw the slightly illegal selling of weapons to Iran, a known haven for militant islamic terrorism.  Why does Oliver North hate America and why was he giving aid and comfort to the enemy?  Well, the reason was to make money in order to provide support for clandestine operations (clandestine = only illegal if people know about it) of Contra rebel groups so that they in turn could assassinate known sandinistas.

So assassination is fine as long as we build the gun, provide the bullet, place the gun in someone else’s hands and draw them a map to the target, but we don’t actually pull the trigger, than somehow we are left morally uninvolved and morally untainted by whatever will result.  That’s crappy Christian logic, but it is a Christian nation.

Is this the same Oliver North who met with drug lord and dictator Manuel Noriega and agreed on the idea of using money raised by drug trafficking to fund the contras, at the same time when Reagan’s America was fervently fighting the war on drugs on the home front.  Thank god Noriega was taken to the US and jailed in federal lockup (I’m sure his extradition was done peacefully and lawfully) on various counts of racketeering, money laundering, drug trafficking and basically doing everything the Regan administration supported in their actions against the Sandinistas.

This is the same Oliver North who was getting Noriega to help sabotage and as … depose the sandanistan government.  This is the same guy that lied to the joint congressional committee overseeing the investigation of Iran-Contra, lied while under oath which goes against some funny rule of some weird US law.  That was the man who is beloved by Regan conservatives.  That man was willing to use any illegal means to justify what he felt was a righteous cause.  The legality of the means was irrelevant, the focus was the goal and that’s what made Oliver North a patriot.  And now it looks like he’s become some cut-and-run liberal, angrily riding his moral high horse simply because he doesn’t have the guts it takes to get the job done.  Now some of you might thinking, wait Oliver North isn’t a liberal, he’s just so full of Clinton hatred, so blinded by his hate of Clinton, that he’ll take the contrary position to whatever position Clinton has even if taking that position ironically places him on the opposite side of the political spectrum.  No!  That’s something I’d expect from CNN, but not my beloved fox news.

again he states:

“Not one of the “experts” has, as yet, observed that in all of this, the biggest loser wasn’t on the screen; it was the American people. The tape of a former president arrogantly proclaiming on international television that he personally authorized the assassination of a foreign foe may be great stuff for the screenplay of “Rambo V,” but U.S. and international law specifically forbid it. Over the course of fighting the jihad being waged against us, Mr. Clinton’s intemperate words will come back to haunt us many times over. And of course, he won’t be the one to pay the price.”

Notice how Oliver chooses his words.  He purposely quipped about the hypothetical Rambo V, purposely skipping over the hypothetical Rambo IV.  That’s because Rambo IV is Rambo: the Iran War Years.  You know, Iran, the avowed enemy of the United States and the same fuckers Oliver North sold American made weapons to for money.  Funny how that comes back around to haunt you?  So let’s not rush to making Rambo V until we get Rambo IV out to the theaters.  See, and you probably thought he was saying that to be facetious.

So what does this all boil down to?  That Oliver North is a bat-shit liberal pussy in disguise, or that surprisingly I’ve found myself more right-wing than a fox news pundit?  Perhaps it comes down more importantly to phrasing.  “Unlawful use of force” is just and warranted in the toppling of another countries government, however to openly admit that one has attempted, merely attempted to set into action a plan of assassination has done more grievous harm against the American people, rather than having just done it.  One must first declare an ambiguous moral cause like “war on terror” to justify skirting around US laws in order engage in the assassination of foreign individuals unlike that pansy Clinton who wants to assassinate a person instead of starting the whole war first.

I don’t know where to go from here.  Now that fox news is no longer a haven for my opinions to be voiced, I guess I’ll be tuning into Jerry Falwell’s radio broadcasts.  How utterly disappointing.

If I could compel myself to make just one small criticism (*blush*) of Oliver it’s his use of the word braggadocio.  If you’re going to use SAT words to criticize someone, at least use it correctly.  A braggadocio is empty boasting, bragging about things one cannot really provide.  One doesn’t usually brag about things that they openly admit of failing to accomplish.  Secondly, if you’re criticizing Clinton’s admission of planned (note, not actually attempted) assassination by saying braggadocio, you’re technically criticizing him for not being able to fulfill his boast of assassination.  How can you both chastise Clinton on the moral grounds against assassination and at the same time criticize his boast because he couldn’t pull the assassination off?