"No Greater Enemy" by Paul Craig Roberts

[rodeodance]

"No Greater Enemy"
By Rick Freedman
Feb 28 2007 - 7:18pm



Paul Craig Roberts has had an extraordinary career as an academic, journalist, and public servant, as his official biography documents. Named by Forbes Media Guide as one of the top seven journalists in the United States, he's also the recipient of the prestigious Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. Mr. Roberts served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan.

He’s also, as I noted in my recent commentary “Conservatives with Conscience”, an articulate and impassioned critic of the policies of the Bush Administration. After a short email conversation, in which I pointed Mr. Roberts to my post commending his position, Mr. Roberts gracefully agreed to a short interview. Our exchange, published unedited below, speaks for itself.

Needlenose: Your recent columns have included some vehement denunciations of the Bush Administration's policies. Can you give us some insight into how your opinions on this evolved: Were you a Bush supporter whose opinion incrementally changed as events unfolded, were you suspicious of this Administration from the beginning, or did some sequence of events trigger your assessment?

Paul Craig Roberts: I object to the word "vehement." I am an honest and forthright critic of the Bush-Cheney regime. Like many Americans, I welcomed the election of Bush as an antidote to Clinton's gratuitous bombing of Serbia and lying to the American people. Bush criticized the idea of America as world policeman and vowed to abandon that role. My attitude toward the Bush administration changed when I saw that the administration intended to use 9/11 as an excuse for unwarranted aggression against Middle Eastern states. I was disturbed already by the presence of so many of the militaristic, anti-democratic neoconservatives that Cheney had placed in powerful policy positions, and when I saw that President Bush and Colin Powell were not checks on the neocon nazis, I concluded that propaganda would extinguish truth and lead us into pointless wars.

Needlenose: You've remarked that Bush and Cheney were potentially subject to impeachment, and even to prosecution for war crimes for their "unprovoked aggression" against Iraq. This is further than even many vehement Bush detractors in the Democratic party are willing to go – what does this say to you about the opposition?

Paul Craig Roberts: There is no political opposition. The Democrats are owned by the same interest groups that own the Republicans and Bush-Cheney.
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http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3841