The John Birch Society almost over took the conservative movement during the rise of Barry Goldwater, but was beaten back by William F. Buckley and the NRO. The JBS's Robert Welch was obsessed with Communists and started multiple conspiracy theories around his delusions, including the one about Eisenhower being a Commie infiltrator.

Welch wrote in a widely circulated statement, The Politician, "Could Eisenhower really be simply a smart politician, entirely without principles and hungry for glory, who is only the tool of the Communists? The answer is yes." He went on. "With regard to ... Eisenhower, it is difficult to avoid raising the question of deliberate treason."[33]

The controversial paragraph was removed before final publication of The Politician.[34]

The sensationalism of Welch's charges against Eisenhower prompted several conservatives and Republicans, most prominently Goldwater and the intellectuals of William F. Buckley's circle, to renounce outright or quietly shun the group. Buckley, an early friend and admirer of Welch, regarded his accusations against Eisenhower as "paranoid and idiotic libels" and attempted unsuccessfully to purge Welch from the Birch Society.[35] From then on Buckley, who was editor of National Review, became the leading intellectual spokesman and organizer of the anti-Bircher conservatives.[36] In fact, Buckley's biographer John B. Judis wrote that "Buckley was beginning to worry that with the John Birch Society growing so rapidly, the right-wing upsurge in the country would take an ugly, even Fascist turn rather than leading toward the kind of conservatism National Review had promoted."[36]

Using the cover of the Tea Party, the Birchers are making a huge comeback and they will find a conspiracy hidden in anything at all. Frank Gaffney gets a gold star for this one. Kudos to Think Progress:

Amidst the political upheaval in Egypt, conservatives are scare-mongering about the possible Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt. But leading neoconservative Frank Gaffney is taking Muslim Brotherhood fearmongering to new heights. This past weekend, Gaffney was a featured speaker at the Educational Policy Conference in St. Louis, an annual gathering of social conservatives. Gaffney used the opportunity to discuss how the Muslim Brotherhood is not only poised to implement a new theocracy in Egypt, but is also operating in the United States under “front groups” like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil liberties group dedicated to “protecting the rights of all Americans, regardless of faith.”
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TP: Do you think [Sharia law] has already infiltrated the federal government?

GAFFNEY: There are questionable people who are sympathetic to the program of the stealth jihadists who have influence with the United States government. Some I think are actually working for it, but for sure people who are persuaded that the folks that they need to work with to reach out to the Muslim-American community, for example, who incessantly turn to Muslim Brotherhood organizations for that purpose, are a very real problem.

TP: Can you name a few names, for instance in the federal government?

GAFFNEY: John Brennan. John Brennan is the Homeland Security Advisor for the President of the United States

TP: He’s complicit in this creep of Sharia law?

GAFFNEY: He’s absolutely daft on what the nature of the threat and is insistent upon using Brotherhood-front organizations as sources of information and as vehicles for reaching out to the Muslim-American community. Jim Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, has said that these sorts of groups are “sources of wisdom,” as he puts it, to the United States government. Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, is incessantly meeting with Muslim Brotherhood front organizations and I think has in the past, if not today, employed people who are associated with them.

This is sick and twisted, but as Digby noted this morning, according to the Tea Party, the Muslim Brotherhood and Obama are in cahoots.

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Of course something this ludicrous had to appear on Breitbart's site written by Frank Gaffney: Can This Possibly Be True? New Obama Missile Defense Logo Includes A Crescent

The Obama administration’s determined effort to reduce America’s missile defense capabilities initially seemed to be just standard Leftist fare — of a piece with the Democratic base’s visceral hostility to the idea of protecting us against ballistic missile threats. A just-unveiled symbolic action suggests, however, that something even more nefarious is afoot.

Gaffney later had to issue an apology of sorts.

And as Digby observes: Teabaggers Aren't The Only Kooks.

They are part of the same pie. The war against symbols has been going on ever since Bush took office. Remember how insane the right wing went over the red crescent design that won the memorial of the Flight 93 back in 2005?

And FOX News had to get in on it too.

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Maybe we need to offer a course for the 24 hour News Channel talking heads in remedial journalism. Certainly, some refresher classes in very basic skills like oh....listening...are needed. My first candidate is Mr. "Hardball" himself, Chris Matthews. Matthews admits that he is so busy doing whatever it is he does to actually listen to his guests. It took a friend watching the show to tell Matthews after the fact that Frank Gaffney derailed his segment right into Neocon Crazytown without Matthews even noticing.

MATTHEWS: I—some time—as you know, sitting in this desk, this side of the desk, Joe and Pat—you have tried to do this—we have all tried to do this—we try to catch everything that goes past us, so we can act in real time.

Sometimes, people say things on this show so fast, that they come out of left field or right field, and I don‘t even hear them. But a friend of mine called me up and said, pay attention to what Frank Gaffney said on your show on Thursday, and we went back and looked at the tape.

You know, if this was an isolated incident with Matthews, that would be one thing, but the irony was that Gaffney was asked on to discuss another Neocon lie by Ari Fleischer that Matthews missed the day before. Excusing his own culpability in not being bothered to listen to what's being said on his program and how that misinforms the public, Matthews is just shocked...shocked, I tell you...that Gaffney would offer up such an egregious lie:

MATTHEWS: These people, they use anthrax. They will use—“The Weekly Standard” has reams of arguments why we should go to war. They won‘t quit, Pat. It is funny, but it‘s horrible. [..]

They would use any case to get us into a war with Iraq, and they did. And they won. They got us in. [..] What about the charge [..] that Saddam Hussein should have been fought, we had to go to war in Iraq because he bombed Oklahoma City? That is so close to fringe argument, Laurie Mylroie stuff, nutcase stuff, I should say.[..]

Gaffney was—was reaching... Because he is a good guy, but he was reaching for the crazy stuff.

TRIPPI: They have been reaching since the beginning. That‘s the whole...(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Oh, OK. I don‘t know where they—where they drink this stuff.

If you don't know, Chris, it's because you really haven't been listening these last eight years. Wake up, dude. The whole meme of "Saddam is a threat to us" originated from fringe cases like Laurie Mylroie, Ahmad Chalabi, and "Curveball" from the beginning. Here's the problem, Chris: YOU LET THEM. You--and all these other derelict talking heads (because I will not call any of you a journalist)--let them come on your program and lie. And because you weren't listening, they knew they could do it with impunity, because there would be no follow up questions, no context, no verification and no obstacles. You want to know why so many people still believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11? Look in the mirror.

Oh, and one more thing: Your comment that Gaffney is a good guy? No, he's not. He may be perfectly pleasant at your Beltway cocktail parties, but Chris, he is a LIAR. No, even more, he is an lying, treasonous, unapologetic warmonger with the blood on his hands of an unbelievable number of people--who posed no threat to us. That is not a good guy. For once in your life, play hardball and call someone out for their lies instead of laughing about them with others. Maybe Gaffney will refuse to come on Hardball again for such treatment, but you know what? That would be a benefit to America.

Full transcripts here

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Chris Matthews was so busy patting himself on the back for his surprisingly sharp interview with Ari Fleischer on Wednesday that he let another really BIG whopper of a neo-con lie go past uncommented on Thursday's Hardball.

Frank Gaffney, proud Neo-con and President of the Center for Security Policy is asked if he thought Fleischer was out of line for his statement that we should all be thankful to George W. Bush because Saddam Hussein can't attack us...again. Someone remind me when Saddam attacked us the first time. Gaffney tries to argue that grammatically that wasn't what Fleischer was saying, but the transcript is hard to argue with.

FLEISCHER: ... and I believe this still today. And of course, you and I disagree with it. But after September 11, having been hit once, how could we take a chance that Saddam might not strike again? And that‘s the threat that has been removed, and I think we‘re all safer with that threat being removed.

I'm sure that it comes to no surprise that the latest member of the Bush Legacy PR Team thinks that not only was Fleischer right, but Saddam was far more evil than we ever knew...right down to conspiring with those who committed the Oklahoma City bombing?

MATTHEWS: The polling that took place before we attacked, conducted by “Time” and CNN, showed that 72 percent of the American people, nearly three quarters, believed it was likely that Saddam Hussein was involved in the attack on us 9/11. How do you think they got that idea, that somehow going to war with Iraq was getting even for 9/11?

GAFFNEY: Well, as I said, he kept saying that he was going to try to get even against us for Desert Storm, so it wouldn‘t be unreasonable for people to conclude maybe that that‘s what he was doing. There‘s also circumstantial evidence, not proven by any means, but nonetheless some pretty compelling circumstantial evidence of Saddam Hussein‘s Iraq being involved with the people who perpetrated both the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and even the Oklahoma City bombing.

Um, Neocon-lying-jackass-pulling-facts-from-his-posterior says what? "Compelling" evidence that Saddam's Iraq had something to do with Oklahoma City? Were Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols secret Iraqi agents? And the thoroughly debunked link to the 1993 WTC bombing too? Where the hell does Gaffney get his "compelling evidence"? Why, none other than Laurie Mylroie:

Mylroie has an impressive array of credentials that certify her as an expert on the Middle East, national security, and, above all, Iraq. She has held faculty positions at Harvard and the U.S. Naval War College and worked at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as well as serving as an advisor on Iraq to the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign. During the 1980s, Mylroie was an apologist for Saddam's regime, but reversed her position upon his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and, with the zeal of the academic spurned, became rabidly anti-Saddam. In the run up to the first Gulf War, Mylroie with New York Times reporter Judith Miller wrote Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, a well-reviewed bestseller translated into more than a dozen languages.

Until this point, there was nothing controversial about Mylroie's career. This would change with the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the first act of international terrorism within the United States, which would launch Mylroie on a quixotic quest to prove that Saddam's regime was the most important source of terrorism directed against this country. She laid out her case in Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America, a book published by AEI in 2000 which makes it clear that Mylroie and the neocon hawks worked hand in glove to push her theory that Iraq was behind the '93 Trade Center bombing. Its acknowledgements fulsomely thanked John Bolton and the staff of AEI for their assistance, while Richard Perle glowingly blurbed the book as "splendid and wholly convincing." Lewis "Scooter" Libby, now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, is thanked for his "generous and timely assistance." And it appears that Paul Wolfowitz himself was instrumental in the genesis of Study of Revenge: His then-wife is credited with having "fundamentally shaped the book," while of Wolfowitz, she says: "At critical times, he provided crucial support for a project that is inherently difficult."

None of which was out of the ordinary, except for this: Mylroie became enamored of her theory that Saddam was the mastermind of a vast anti-U.S. terrorist conspiracy in the face of virtually all evidence and expert opinion to the contrary. In what amounts to the discovery of a unified field theory of terrorism, Mylroie believes that Saddam was not only behind the '93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City to September 11 itself. She is, in short, a crackpot, which would not be significant if she were merely advising say, Lyndon LaRouche. But her neocon friends who went on to run the war in Iraq believed her theories, bringing her on as a consultant at the Pentagon, and they seem to continue to entertain her eccentric belief that Saddam is the fount of the entire shadow war against America.

Gaffney, in fact, cited Mylroie in 2003 when he first tried peddling this theory in the pages of the Moonie Times.

Later in the interview (available here) Gaffney actually has the gall to cite Douglas "the stupidest f&#(ing man in America" Feith as credible source to the dangers that Saddam posed.

But did Tweety once--just once--call Frank Gaffney on such egregious and bald-faced lies? 'Course not. Apparently, NBC News division employees don't think that's their job.

Transcript below the fold:

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In the wake of Dick Cheney's steadfast refusal to admit any wrongdoing, Chris Matthews and David Corn absolutely demolish wingnut/neocon extraordinaire and Cheney-apologist Frank Gaffney over the necessity of the Iraq War and Saddam Hussein's phantom weapons of mass destruction.

Matthews: "You guys sold the war as a nuclear threat to the United States. You sold every trick you could to get us into this war. And now you're backpedaling. And I do find it astounding....four thousand people are dead because of the way you feel and, Frank Gaffney, you're wrong about this."

Gaffney: "It is regrettable that they had to die, but I believe they did have to die. The danger was inaction could have resulted in the death of a great many more Americans than 4,000. And that's the reason I'm still delighted that we did what we did."

It astounds me that people like Gaffney can continue to cling to the idea that Saddam really did pose an imminent threat/that he really had WMD/that the intelligence wasn't cooked etc. and still be regarded as some sort of foreign policy expert who should be taken seriously. It's 100% clear now that the administration "fixed the facts around the policy" by cherry-picking dubious intelligence reports that supported their case while ignoring others (that were far more credible) that disproved it. Not only should Gaffney and his ilk be laughed out of town, they should be committed and/or indicted.

You can catch the entire glorious smackdown here.

It started with Edwards' haircut, then Hillary's neck line and now Obama's lapel pin. The media is insane, ladies and gentleman. I expect and understand that Drudge will pass the slime down the food line to Limbaugh and then to FOX NEWS. It's infuriating to see it instantly end up on the MSM. Christy explains...

Right wing Conservative, John Cole is shrill:

Seriously- what does the current Republican party stand for? Permanent war, fear, the nanny state, big spending, torture, execution on demand, complete paranoia regarding the media, control over your body, denial of evolution and outright rejection of science...Hillarycare doesn’t scare me as much as Frank Gaffney having a line to the person with the nuclear football or Dobson and company crafting domestic policy.

That is why the Republican party is in shambles. The majority of us have decided that the movers and shakers in the GOP and the blogospheric right are certified lunatics who, in a decent and sane society, we would have in controlled environments in rocking chairs under shade trees for most of the day, wheeled in at night for tapioca pudding and some karaoke.

Nieman Watchdog: Lieutenant General William E. Odom, who was director of the National Security Agency under President Reagan, spanked Hugh Hewitt in a wideranging and lusty interview.  All democrats should study the way Odom handled this neocon groupie

The Orstrahyun: Dick Cheney to flaunt his boyish charm Down Under...Part 2

Editor & Publisher: Frank Gaffney is back, claiming that while his bogus "Lincoln" quote was not real, it was a “paraphrase” of Lincoln’s actual views on dissent in wartime.  Just another jackal in a pack of craven demagogues.

netZoo: This 19-year veteran isn't getting full benefits, despite losing her leg when a tank crashed into her tent in Baghdad

Horses Mouth: GOP pollster says 'poll' showing war support is bogus

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Let's Try Democracy...Make Them Accountable...Breaking News USA...Hardliner Blog

As we've noted on two occasions this week, there has been a fabricated and widely-discredited quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln floating around among the pro-war (anti-liberty) conservatives. Well, now it's part of the official Congressional record. In his opposition speech on the House floor Wednesday, Alaska's lone Congressman, Rep. Don Young, opened his remarks with a fake quote that could not be more historically inaccurate.

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As Greenwald reminded Frank Gaffney on Colmes' radio show last night (.mp3), Abraham Lincoln spoke out fiercely against President Polk during the Mexican-America War, saying "show me the spot [where American blood was spilled]" because he believed the war was based on false pretenses. In other words, Abraham Lincoln acted in the exact opposite way as the right-wing historical revisionists are saying he did. Furthermore, although he was elected as a Republican, Lincoln was a staunch Whig who believed in the supremacy of Congress over the Executive. Polar opposite of the situation we see today.

(Nicole: Ironically, the quote in question came not from Lincoln, but from the Moonie Times, who has since issued a retraction. Atrios figures as long as Young refuses to retract his fabricated quote, he'll cite some other fabricated quotes attributed to Young.)

I've written many times about the PNAC group. To think a single Democrat would sign on to one of their letters is reprehensible. I'm not including Joe Lieberman of course--even when he was a Democrat.

When PNAC Democrats like Peter Beinart, Ivo Daalder, Michele Flournoy, Will Marshall, Michael O'Hanlon, and James Steinberg do something like sign PNAC's letter on the need for more American ground forces they serve to further cement the notion that people like Frank Gaffney, Bill Kristol, Cliff May, Daniel McKivegan, Danielle Pletka, and Gary Schmitt should be taken seriously as authorities on national security policy. Well, they shouldn't be taken seriously. And nobody serious about improving America's national security should be publicly collaborating with them....read on

Where I differ slightly with Matt is that when you sign on with PNAC, you SIGN ON. I've read much of the PNAC delusional theory on foreign policy and it's a frightening screed of US world domination. "Hey, we have the power so let's kick some ass." As Team America says: "F--k Yea!"

Duncan:

I won't presume to speak for his list of PNAC Democrats individually, but I think we must acknowledge that many of such people have in fact for years considered the neoconservatives to be credible people "who should be taken seriously as authorities on national security policy." Certainly more seriously than, say, dirty hippies like myself who had the temerity to oppose the stupidest f--king foreign policy decision in the history of the universe....read on

Thank you Michael Lind.

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That Richard Perle and Frank Gaffney, two of the neocon cheerleaders for the disaster in Iraq, would blame President Obama for the election fraud in Iran is unsurprising. That once and future Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney of all people would parrot the charge is hilarious. After all, from his repeated conflation of Shiite and Sunni to his aborted crusade for disinvestment from Tehran and other jaw-droppers, Mitt Romney's pronouncements on Iran have been a comedy of errors.

Just days after he slammed President Obama's unprecedented and widely praised address in Cairo, Romney appeared on ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopolous to lay Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's apparent sham reelection at Obama's feet:

"The comments by the president last week, that there was a robust debate going on in iran, was obviously entirely wrong-headed. What has occurred is the election is a fraud, the results are inaccurate, and you're seeing a brutal repression of the people as they protest. ... It's very clear that the president's policies of going around the world and apologizing for America aren't working. ... Look, just sweet talk and criticizing America is not going to enhance freedom in the world."

Of course, comic pandering to the Republican Party's conservative base won't enhance freedom in the world, either. And to be sure, it certainly hasn't helped candidate Mitt Romney in the United States.

Consider, for example, Romney's 24 hour disinvestment campaign in early 2007, an effort cut short by revelations his own former employer had recent business dealings with Tehran.

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