Friday, December 22, 2006

The Op-ed Censored by the White House


The New York Times has published the redacted version of an Op-ed censored by the Bush Administration. Take a look at the graphic here, and tell me you are not living in a state similar to the USSR.

If you've been following the story, you know that this is the Op-ed that is critical of the Bush Administration's refusal to talk to Iran.

Authors, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann provide a long list of citations to back up their assertion that everything censored here by the Bush Administration has long been in the public domain. As you can see from the excerpt below, making sense of the Op-ed will require that you also read the cited material.

The authors state that they "will to continue to press for the release of the article without the material deleted," and they remind the Bush Administration that classifying information as secret is what you do for "the safety and security of the United States," not what you do for your self-serving political reasons.

If we ever rid ourselves of the Egomaniac in the Oval Office, we really need to fix our system so that we can easily evict a president who wrecks such havoc upon the world that virtually the entire country is in a constant state of crisis.

Impeachment takes too long. We are living in the instant information age. Why does it still take years to get rid of an obviously incompetent president? The security of the country cannot wait years. Congress should be able to call a special election whenever there is a crisis of confidence, or whenever it is obvious that we have a president who is wrecking the nation, a president better suited for the USSR.

In the meantime, what will the madman do next?

Excerpt of Redacted Version of the Op-Ed on Iran:

But Tehran was profoundly disappointed with the United States response. After the 9/11 attacks, xxx xxx xx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xx set the stage for a November 2001 meeting between Secretary of State Colin Powell and the foreign ministers of Afghanistan’s six neighbors and Russia. xxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxx xx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx Iran went along, working with the United States to eliminate the Taliban and establish a post-Taliban political order in Afghanistan.

In December 2001, xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx x Tehran to keep Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the brutal pro-Al Qaeda warlord, from returning to Afghanistan to lead jihadist resistance there. xxxxx xxxxxxx so long as the Bush administration did not criticize it for harboring terrorists. But, in his January 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush did just that in labeling Iran part of the “axis of evil.” Unsurprisingly, Mr. Hekmatyar managed to leave Iran in short order after the speech. xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx the Islamic Republic could not be seen to be harboring terrorists.

Read the rest of what your President will let you read . .