The Omega Letter Looks Back at 2003
Vol: 27 Issue: 31 Wednesday, December 31, 2003
Every news organization from the AP to Fox News has at least one feature recapping the past year’s top stories from their perspective. I thought I’d do the same thing from the perspective of the Omega Letter Intelligence Digest archives.
I’d have to say that our number one topic in 2003 was deception.
We began the year by examining two conflicting schools of thought regarding the upcoming war against Saddam Hussein.
In a briefing entitled, ‘Academics’ Launch ‘Fact-Finding’ Mission — Did Some Get Lost?’ we examined the lead from a story in the Agence France-Presse that opened with the line, “A group of American academics who oppose a war with Iraq began a fact-finding and humanitarian mission in Baghdad on Monday, saying a conflict was illegal and unnecessary.”
This was one of the most perfectly constructed sentences I have ever seen — sort of. By ‘perfectly constructed’ I am speaking in the sense of its semantic construction. Here we find a sentence that manages to impart some facts, invent some facts, twist a couple more, all the while subliminally implanting a whole host of thoughts in the reader’s mind.
The impression offered is that of refined, caring intellectuals who seek a greater understanding of the problems at hand. However, note they BEGAN a mission that is allegedly one of ‘fact-finding’ by declaring the conflict ‘illegal and unnecessary’.
Having acknowledged in advance of the facts that they had already arrived at a conclusion, they moved on to the ‘humanitarian’ phase of their ‘mission’ – keeping Saddam’s regime in power.
This worldview continues to reverberate wherever liberals congregate, even after we got a peek behind the curtain after toppling Saddam’s regime.
This is the liberal view that whatever the problem, it’s America’s fault. Then, having established that America is to blame, they then stonewall every legitimate American effort to fix it.
In January, 2003, most of America were still adherents to the School of the Recently Mugged.
The Recently Mugged don’t need fact-finding missions to explain WHY they were recently mugged. They want the mugger stopped before he mugs them again. They recognize that exploring the social contraints that created their mugger won’t stop him from mugging them again. First you stop the mugger.
The spindoctors for the left began speaking wistfully of an illusory world in which there exists the Universal Brotherhood of Man, where we can all live together in harmony if we would just all learn to get along.
By February, they had banded together under the banner of the Useful Idiot Brigade. The unofficial leader emerged in the person of Michael Moore, who was in France accepting an award for an alleged (and discredited) ‘documentary’ about Columbine that was just another liberal anti-gun propaganda piece.
While Moore praised the French for trying to prop up Saddam Hussein, the rest of Hollyweird lined up in support of Saddam Hussein, encouraged by the lunatic left as embodied by the Right Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
The useful idiots at home and at the UN managed to delay the war until March, forcing our troops to begin the fight during the dreaded Iraqi sandstorms and to continue it through Iraq’s 120 degree plus summer months.
Assessing the war through the eyes of the mainstream media, you could only conclude that we were losing the war (until it was won).
By April, the liberals were crying that, having substantially won the war, the US immediately began ‘losing the peace’.
As 2003 progressed with no new attacks from al-Qaeda, the deceivers launched a two-pronged attack, saying the government didn’t do enough to prevent 9/11 while simultaneously complaining about too much security.
By July, then-presidential candidate Bob Graham began calling for George Bush’s impeachment.
In August, attention shifted away from Iraq briefly to focus on the evils of Christianity. Judge Roy Moore became the target of the mainstream media, who castigated him for refusing to remove the 10 Commandments monument from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court.
Although an August Gallup poll found that 77% of Americans supported Moore’s position, Judge Moore lost his job, and 10 Commandment monuments across the nation became targets of the liberal left.
While no public school teacher in America would dare to read the Bible in class, the NEA endorsed a MANDATORY curriculum called “A Simulation of Islamic History and Culture” – paid for with public money. The American Center for Law and Justice filed a lawsuit, using the same arguments that were used to remove the 10 Commandments in Alabama.
The ACLJ lost when a federal judge ruled that forcing students to study from the Koran, memorize parts of it, pray to Allah and act out Islam’s Five Pillars of Faith’ was NOT a government endorsement of religion.
In September, the uber-liberal Canadian government passed a landmark piece of legislation called Bill C-250, repealing free speech unless it met certain government guidelines.
The Bible became hate literature because it contains prohibitions against homosexual conduct, and homosexuals became a legally protected minority. It was hailed by the liberal left of both countries as a ‘landmark decision for human rights.’
Under the new law, if a heterosexual criticizes the homosexual lifestyle, that is ‘hate speech’. If a homosexual criticizes the traditional heterosexual family, that is ‘free speech’.
In October, a US Army General was ripped to shreds by the LA Times and CNN for saying — in church — that America’s real enemy was Satan.
CNN covered the story without explaining that the General was standing in the pulpit of a church during a church service. It was a classic example of how to create a lie by telling the truth out of context.
CNN made it sound like Boykin was under some kind of media ‘investigation’ for his ‘extremist’ views, saying, “Audio and video tapes of Boykin’s public appearances before religious groups over the past two years were obtained exclusively by NBC News, which reported on them Wednesday night on the “Nightly News” with Tom Brokaw.”
Los Angles Times op-ed columnist William Arkin wrote that, General Boykin “spews this intolerant message while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army . . .strongly suggests that this is an official and sanctioned view and that the U.S. Army is indeed a Christian army whose mission is to carry out a Christian jihad .
Lt. General Boykin had been nominated for Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. With the ‘shocking’revelation that he went to church and believed the Bible went public, his nomination went in the trashcan.
In November, the Congress passed a bi-partisan bill that forbade partial birth abortion, which is the practice of killing a full term healthy baby before it’s feet have completely exited the womb.
Legal challenges were immediately launched and federal courts across the country agreed. “Allowing Congress to practice medicine without a license endangers the lives and health of women,” Vicki Saporta, chief executive officer of the NAF, told the Associated Press. “Thankfully, the court understood the gravity of the situation and stopped this law from taking effect.”
Douglas Johnson, a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee, explained what the court’s ‘understanding of the gravity of the situation’ really meant.
“Partly born, premature infants will continue to die at the point of seven-inch scissors because of these judicial orders,” Johnson commented. NARAL’s comments were widely quoted. Johnson’s were spiked.
The liberal media universally praised the courts for overturning a majority vote of Congress for ‘courageously protecting a woman’s right to choose’.
Universally ignored by the press was a Gallup Poll released in November that said only a slight majority of Americans (51%) describe themselves as ‘philosophically pro-choice’ but, even then, being ‘pro-choice’ isn’t the same as being pro-abortion.
When the poll question wording changes from ‘are you pro-choice?’ to ‘are you pro-abortion?’ the pro-abortion response is closer to 25%.
In addition, 86% of Americans support restrictions on abortion in the third trimester, and 69% in the second trimester. 62% support restrictions when a woman says she “can’t afford” the baby; and 51% would support restrictions on abortion of fetuses diagnosed as mentally handicapped.
Most Americans are NOT in favor of abortion on demand. A significant majority (if 86% of Americans can be called ‘significant’) oppose abortions in the third trimester.
Also spiked was the finding that third trimester abortions are on the rise, while abortions overall are at their lowest levels in thirty years.
The Congress and the Senate debated the issue for more than a decade and have passed two similar laws, both of which were vetoed by Bill Clinton.
After ten years of trying, the Congress and Senate passed a law that nine Americans in ten support. It was signed by the President of the United States. It was squashed before the ink was dry.
But you didn’t learn any of that from ABC News. Instead, you learned of a ‘victory for a woman’s right to choose’.
And December’s hot story was the debate over whether or not Christmas should be renamed to keep from offending liberals, atheists, Muslims and Jews.
The story was so hot, in fact, that it pushed Howard Dean’s statement that the capture of Saddam Hussein did NOT make America any safer right out of most newscasts.
Assessment:
2003 was the year deception became a legitimate art form. Scripture says that Satan is the father of deception. When asked what would be the sign of His soon return the first words out of His Mouth were, ‘Take heed that no man deceive you.’
He concluded His discourse by telling His disciples, “And when these things BEGIN to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.”
Omegaletter 