Truest statement of the week

Well I appreciate what you said about -- by way of people that truly oppose the war as opposed to Kool-Aid drinkers who drank the Obama Kool-Aid and are still on their various stages of hangover at this point, realizing that he really didn't mean to change anything. But there are still those of us out here who truly believe in non-interventionism, who truly believe in respecting the people of the rest of the world and that our foreign policy should only represent the truly benevolent will of the American people and not the interest of the American empire or the military-industrial-complex. The thing about this trip though that Obama just made to Iraq is what's so interesting is how much it stands in stark contrast to his trip of last July when he was still at least broadly seen as an anti-war candidate. Now, I mean, I read the fine print from the beginning. And really didn't believe him when he said "I would like to end the war" because I read the fine print. And the fine print said twelve months, forty to sixty-thousand troops and, you know, an increased reliance on private contractors. So I knew he wasn't about ending the war from the beginning but at least when he was able to fool enough people into believing that that's what he wanted to do, when he went to Iraq as a senator, and as an anti-war candidate, he didn't need anymore security than the troops on the ground or the generals at least, generals on the ground, as they're called, who really run our foreign policy. But now, as president, when people know what he really stands for and what he's actually planning on doing there, he's got to go in in secret and with super intense security. Now I understand there's some increased security necessary when you're the president as opposed to a candidate but by stark contrast, Ahmadinejad walks around the streets of Iraq like it's cool because they respect him there. They're not going to respect the next imperialist American president no matter what his skin color is.



-- Adam Kokesh on KPFA's Flashpoints April 7, 2009.