Sarah Palin Palling Around With Terrorists

Sarah PalinSarah Palin is so outraged about the breach of security by WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange that she wants him to be hunted down like a terrorist – just as soon as she’s through reading the U.S. State Department cables that Assange made public through WikiLeaks. This is what she wrote on her Facebook page last month:

“Assange is not a ‘journalist,’ any more than the ‘editor’ of al Qaeda’s new English-language magazine Inspire is a ‘journalist.’ He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?”

It’s so thoughtful for Palin, a Fox News contributor, to define for us what a journalist is. After all, she considers herself a journalist by virtue of having acquired a degree in communications (after attending five colleges) and reading weekend sports scores on a local Alaskan TV station.

However, this week Palin published an op-ed in USA Today that exposes an ironic twist to her hypocrisy. In the article she (or rather her ghostwriter) rails against the Obama administration for not being sufficiently panicked by Iran’s alleged efforts to acquire nuclear weapons capabilities. She’s done her homework and can reveal that…

“…now we know for sure because of leaked diplomatic cables. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia ‘frequently exhorted the U.S. to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program,’ according to these communications.”

The reason Palin knows what she claims to know is only because Assange published the cables she is referencing. However, were she to get her way he would be executed for treason (a legal impossibility because he isn’t a U.S. citizen, but having a grasp of facts never stopped her before). So Palin thinks that Assange has blood on his hands for publishing the materials she is now using to validate her hawkishness toward Iran and her attack on President Obama. By her own assessment she has adopted a terrorist as her source.

Without realizing it, Palin has actually justified Assange’s commitment to the free flow of information that permits people to know what their government is doing in their name. She is herself a beneficiary of that commitment to a free press. By referencing the WikiLeaks cables Palin is, in effect, honoring Assange and his heroic work. Without him she would never have known about King Abdullah’s exhortations. Nevertheless, she refuses to acknowledge him as a journalist, and has no qualms about exploiting data that she believes should be classified and that she obtained from someone she compares to Al Qaeda.

The rest of Palin’s op-ed was a frenetic advocacy of military intervention with Iran. She cavalierly dismisses the economic and diplomatic efforts currently underway and proposes her own solutions such as banning all financial dealings with Iranian banks, limiting Iran’s access to international capital markets and banking services, and closing air space and waters to Iran’s national air and shipping lines. Amongst the many things that Palin doesn’t know is that her proposals are tantamount to a declaration of war. That would be an irresponsible and unconscionable strategy insofar as Iran’s nuclear ambitions are many years from bearing fruit and we are a long ways from having exhausted less hostile remedies.

Palin’s plan would result in the unnecessary deaths of thousands of American soldiers, not to mention Iranian, Israeli, and other civilians in the region. And it would put our country in the position of having to fight three simultaneous wars. It would also destroy any hope for advancing the interests of Iranian dissidents as those who were not neutralized by the Iranian government would turn against their U.S. aggressors. Starving and/or bombing people is not the best way to gain their affection. But what would you expect from a woman who hosts a TV reality show on which she pounds fish and shoots reindeer?

This editorial is just another example of why Palin is utterly unqualified for national leadership. She is ignorant and unstable. And she is so afraid of presenting herself to the media to defend her bizarre and dangerous positions that she hides behind occasional op-eds, Fox News, Twitter, and her Facebook wall, where she will never have to respond to criticism. And from the safety of her cyber-perch she bashes Julian Assange even as she uses his work to prop up her harebrained schemes.

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10 thoughts on “Sarah Palin Palling Around With Terrorists

  1. Why do you state that Palin has a degree. There is no evidence that she actually earned a degree. She has been asked to produce the degree and has not…she has been asked to produce a birth certificate for the downs syndrome child and has not.

    Palin is a liar and I do not believe anything she says unless it is documented.

    Are you just repeating what you heard…look into it . What degree?

  2. “After all, she considers herself a journalist by virtue of having acquired a degree in communications (after attending five colleges)”

    Once again, Sarah Palin’s college degree is something we are supposed to take her “word” that she actually accomplished. However, her “word” has changed from first claiming she had a degree in journalism to now claiming she had a communications degree.

    Here is a fascinating chronology of Sarah Palin’s College/University years:

    http://palingates.blogspot.com/2010/08/sarah-palins-crazy-college-daze.html

    Sarah, quit makin’ things up!

    Have you HEARD Sarah Palin speak?
    To quote Jacob Weisberg: “Palinisms occur when Palin expresses one of these views in her idiosyncratically involuted syntax (“It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia”); when she expresses two or more of them in combination (“God’s will has to be done, in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that”); or when she says anything at all in her imitable my sentence went on the Tilt-a-Whirl and got nauseous way (“And I think more of a concern has been not within the campaign, the mistakes that were made, not being able to react to the circumstances that those mistakes created in a real positive and professional and helpful way for John McCain”).”

    • I’m not getting into a birth-certificate-style debate over Palin’s college degree. It’s bad enough that she stumbled through five colleges 25 years ago and never used anything she allegedly learned.

      • “I’m not getting into a birth-certificate-style debate over Palin’s college degree.”
        And this is how Sarah Palin has been elevated into the national spotlight – no one questions her background. Asking her softball questions like “what do you read” does not count, although that certainly provided insight into her stupidity.

        A commenter at Palingates noted that the Univ. of Idaho tassel color for journalism is crimson. In the picture purported to be Sarah Palin in her cap and gown, she has a yellow tassel, and (coincidentally?) yellow hair like her sister Molly. The fuzzy picture shows white flowers in the background. The tassel color for Communication Studies is white. Molly is a dental hygienist, and her tassel color would be golden yellow.
        But no one will debate Sarah Palin’s “word”.

        BTW, very good article.

        • Thank you, and thanks for the tweets.

          The article you linked above is interesting, but while it raises many questions, it provides no proof of anything.

          I have no problem with investigating Palin’s college years, and I certainly don’t take her word for anything. But I just don’t think this is the most important issue. If someone has proof that she is lying about her degree, bring it on. Otherwise, we don’t need a left-wing version of birthers.

          • You DO know that Republicans are expert at projection, don’t you? Jumping in front of an embarrassing situation by pointing in the opposite direction? RWNJ Philip Berg filed a lawsuit in mid-August 2008 claiming Obama was not born in Hawaii, the birth of the “birther” movement. What better way to ridicule any forthcoming revelation that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy when less than 2 weeks later McCain picked her as his running mate.

            Before you make any further “left-wing version of birthers” remarks, I invite you to spend just a few minutes of your valuable time to watch these:

            http://palingates.blogspot.com/2010/07/two-videos-about-babygate-sarah-palins.html

            And this:
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZSVMzeR5jU

            Palingates.blogspot.com has compiled a vast warehouse of information on Sarah Palin. The list of “Gates” on the sidebar at Palingates is a phenomenal collection of facts. I know that I can say with impunity to Sarah Palin’s face that she faked her “pregnancy” with Tri-G. The only thing I fear about Sarah Palin is her vicious “head-stomping” cult followers and her billionaire corporatist puppetmasters, which is the same reason the press and politicians fear to expose the biggest hoax in the history of American politics.

          • Mark –
            You should hop over to palingates.blog.com and look at the MANY lies that sarah Palin has told. The facts presented there are neither “left” nor “right”. Just the truth.

  3. Re: “Otherwise, we don’t need a left-wing version of birthers.”

    Why is it every time anyone dares to question anything Palin all of it sudden it’s “The Left” it’s “The Hater’s” whatever happened to investigative reporting?

  4. Why?? Because these conspiracy theories about Sarah Palin’s degree and the birth of Trig are idiotic. And I can say with impunity to Pro-choice Grandma that Granny is a liar and a nut.

  5. Huh? Anyway, it is interesting how these wingnuts keep hammering on wikileaks until one of the leaks appears to support their views. A great example of this is the claim that Moore’s ‘Sicko’ was banned in Cuba. See fair.org/blog/2010/12/20/michael-moores-not-at-all-banned-movie/

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