John Bolton Grants Interview to Anti-Islam Hate Site

Blog info :
http://brocknet.net/WordPress/?p=909


Monday, August 14th, 2006 at 4:21 pm

John Bolton Grants Interview to Anti-Islam Hate Site

By Thomas Brock

I’ll not add much, just say…
Why haven’t you written your Senators?


Just a day after his failing negotiations over Lebanon were rescued by Condi Rice at the U.N., John Bolton granted an interview. It wasn’t an interview with the New York Times - as Steve has pointed out here before, Bolton doesn’t speak to Warren Hoge at NYT because of ideological differences and perceived media bias.
Apparently, he will grant an exclusive 41-minute interview to someone who calls who believes Islam is a “religious rationale for Arab imperialism.”
Bolton granted the interview on Sunday with Pamela of Atlas Shrugs, a nearly-all-issue right-wing blog. During the interview, Pamela called Kofi Annan a “jihadi tool” and said that someone needed to slap Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Seniora. Bolton, for his part, allowed this rhetoric to stand, even sheepishly reaffirming some of it along the way.
Here is the link to the transcript; the WAV version of the interview is here.
Pamela’s remarks during the interview were inflammatory and outrageous - on par with, say, a Bill O’Reilly. But a quick look around Atlas Shrugs makes the O’Reilly Factor look like Sesame Street.
AS has some pretty crazy policy prescriptions, like an immediate U.S. attack on Iran, but that alone doesn’t make Bolton’s interview condemnable. The problem is, AS is an anti-Islam hate blog.
For starters, a few screens down from its “I’m a fan of disproportionate response” poster, AS features the following quotes in its far right column:
“All forms of leftism and liberalism are based on an atavistic belief in Black Magic. All are based on the primitive fear of the envious Evil Eye.”
“Islam, including the biography of Mohammed and the text of the Koran, was invented in the centuries after the Arab Conquest as a religious rationale for Arab imperialism.”
“Mohammed” is not a name, it is a title meaning The Praised One. His real name was Ubu’l Kassim and he did not come from Mecca. He was a bandit chieftain from what is now southern Jordan.”
Just a quick look through this month’s blogs gives even greater insight to AS’s personal agenda. Pamela frequently refers to Dearborn, MI, the city with the largest Arab population outside the Middle East, as Dearbornistan. She chides modernization theorist Bernard Lewis for misunderstanding Islam, saying he “underestimated its malevolence.”
Finally, she calls out the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) for objecting to Bush’s use of the term “Islamic Fascists.” Rather than attempt to characterize the despicable hate rhetoric on AS myself, I’ll let Pamela speak for herself on the matter:
CAIR is calling out President Bush for speaking the truth, finally calling the enemy what it is — Islamic fascism.It took five years, five years to say the enemy’s name.If CAIR loved freedom, justice and the American way, they would be denouncing Hezb’Allah, Ahmadinejad and aiding law enforcement in cracking sleeper cells in our great country.
U.S. MUSLIMS CONCERNED ABOUT BUSH’S USE OF ‘ISLAMIC FASCISTS’ -CAIR: ‘Today you equated the religion of peace with the ugliness of fascism’
Yeah, you read that right. Religion of peace? Only under a pax islamica. No peace until we all submit to Islam. That’s right folks. That’s what RoP means……….RoPMA
I found these tidbits of hate by perusing the most recent posts on AS for just a few minutes. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
I’m against guilt by association, but this Bolton interview crosses the line for two reasons. First and most clearly, to grant an interview to a hate blogger legitimizes her position. Second, Bolton himself has used access to reward loyalty and like-mindedness. If this interview causes people to wonder about Bolton’s deep-seated beliefs about humankind, he brought that speculation on himself.
Related…
[TPMCafe - Bolton Watch feed]