Ladies and gentlemen, the Libertarian Party candidate for the President of the United States of America
Here are some samples excerpted from David Weigel’s interview with Bob Barr in the most recent issue of reason.
reason: Some of what you’re talking about, though, you supported in Congress. You voted for the Iraq war.
Bob Barr: The Iraq war was presented as something that was based on sound intelligence: a clear and present danger, an immediate threat targeting the United States by the Saddam Hussein regime. We now know [sic] that the intelligence was not there to support those arguments. Many of us, including myself, gave the administration the benefit of the doubt, presumed that this would be an operation that was well founded, well thought-out, well strategized, when in fact it wasn’t. There was no clear strategy, and we’ve paid a very, very heavy price for that.
. . .
reason: What about the PATRIOT Act?
Bob Barr: This was presented to us immediately after 9/11. I took what might be called sort of a leadership role in Congress in marshaling a lot of different groups in opposition both to the PATRIOT Act generally and to specific onerous provisions in it. Several factors caused me to sort of go against my gut reaction and vote for the PATRIOT Act.
The administration did in fact work with us and agree to several pre-vote changes to the PATRIOT Act that did mitigate some of the more problematic provisions in it. The administration also, from the attorney general on down, gave us personal assurances that the provisions in the PATRIOT Act, if they were passed and signed into law, would be used judiciously, hat they would not be used to push the envelope of executive power, that they would not be used in non-terrorism-related cases. They gave us assurances that they would work with us on those provisions that we were able to get sunsetted, work with us to modify those and to look at those very carefully when those provisions came up for reauthorization. The administration also gave us absolute assurances that it would work openly and thoroughly report to the Congress, and by extrapolation to the American people [sic!], on how it was using the provisions in the PATRIOT Act. In everyone of those areas, the administration has gone back on what it told us.
— Bob Barr Talks, interview with David Weigel in reason (November 2008), p. 29.
In other words, Bob Barr is either an incredible sucker or a willfully ignorant fool, who supported two of the most infamous acts of a miserable and disastrous Presidency, because he spent years blindly trusting in absurd claims and ridiculous promises made by salivating Republicans in the executing branch of the government, which most people outside of the government, including almost all libertarians, already knew to be lies. He trusted in administration flunkies’ assurances
over the warnings of civil libertarians, even though the assurances
were empty gestures that would not hold back power grabs even for a second as soon as anyone in the DOJ or DOD or DHS decided that a power-grab is what they wanted. And he trusted in the government spooks’ and government flunkies’ claims of intelligence
even though these claims were obviously absurd, and widely exposed as such at the time by anti-war writers, because in spite of all that Bob Barr would rather give his colleagues, the government spooks and administration flunkies, the benefit of the doubt.
In other news, Movement of the Libertarian Left veteran and Southern California ALLy Wally Conger has recently posted an online edition of the MLL’s Issue Pamphlet #5, Our Enemy, the Party, originally published in 1980 and reissued by Sam Konkin in 1987.
