I was listening to the radio on the way home from work this afternoon...

NPR was playing classical but I felt like listening to news/talk. I changed the station to WOC. Oh crap, Hannity was on the radio. A little later in Hannity's broadcast, I heard something mentioned about a "battle for the soul of America" or some other tripe along those lines. I don't want my soul to be anything like Hannity's!

Why? I'll just bring up one example. One of Hannity's books (called Deliver Us From Evil) is credited with (at http://www.townhall.com/bookclub/hannity1.html) "Recounting in particular the strong leadership of Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill, and more recently George W. Bush, Hannity calls on all of America to recognize the importance of having (a) the moral clarity and discernment to identify evil and call it by its true name, and (b) the strength and conviction to address that evil head-on, regardless of the venue in which it exists."

Moral clarity? Reagan and company KNEW some of the questionable methods that Hussein was using during the Iran-Iraq war and they also knew that Hussein was brutal. So, what did the Reagan government do? Hey, let's give Saddam weapons, bio-weapons related material, and intel with which to kill Iranians. Yeah, that's the ticket... Well, that wasn't good enough. Since we knew that Hussein was a pretty evil character, we couldn't have him winning the war either. Hmmm, what to do? Hey, maybe we'll arm the other side as well. Yeah, that whole "Islamic Revolution" thing and the hostages...no biggie. The whole Iran-Iraq policy just shouts "moral clarity" to me. Well, at least if I was a citizen of Bizarro World.

I think the debate about the means we used to carry on the Cold War (especially in the Reagan era) will be going on for a very long time. Would the "Evil Empire" have collapsed on its own or was the only possible way to win to arm and train individuals who would later become some of the most deadly enemies of the United States?

One final thing... This whole thing about Teresa Heinz Kerry telling a reporter to "shove it" is laughable. It's OK for Dick Cheney to tell a Senator "fuck yourself" on the Senate floor but John Kerry's wife can't tell someone to shove it?