NP? Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT)

[Doug Millison]

Some of you may be interested in this -- some will want to support this
initiative, others will likely have a different response.
-Doug


http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12612

[...] At a Tuesday gathering of the National Press Club, members of the new
Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT) declared their intention to
"take to task those groups and individuals who fundamentally misunderstand
the nature of the war we are facing." [...] To expose the internal
"threats," AVOT has compiled a sample list of statements by professors,
legislators, authors and columnists that it finds objectionable. The
strategy appears similar to an earlier, much-criticized effort to monitor
war dissidents by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), a
group founded by Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, and
neo-conservative Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman.


AVOT's list of speakers it considers threatening include:


- Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who said, "Some of us, maybe foolishly, gave
this president the authority to go after terrorists. We didn't know that
he, too, was going to go crazy with it."


- President Jimmy Carter, who assailed Bush's use of the phrase "axis of
evil," arguing that it was "overly simplistic and counter-productive."


- Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who accused the president of "canceling, in
effect, the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments" and called
the war "the patriot games, the lying games, the war games of an unelected
president."


- American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner criticizing "Bush's dismal
domestic policies" and his "dubious notion of a permanent war."


- Lewis Lapham, the editor of "Harper's Magazine," who in a recent
editorial said that Washington itself has used terrorist tactics during the
1990s, including the bombing of civilian targets in Baghdad and the
Balkans.


Who exactly is behind AVOT's efforts? The newly-formed organization is
headed by a formidable array of right-wing luminaries. At the top of the
list is former Secretary of Education and drug czar William Bennett, AVOT's
chairman. The group's Senior Advisors include former CIA director R. James
Woolsey; former Reagan Pentagon official Frank Gaffney; William P. Barr,
attorney general under George Bush, Sr; and mega-political donor Lawrence
Kadish. AVOT is a project of Empower America -- also co-chaired by Bennett
-- whose principal members include conservative political operatives Jeane
Kirkpatrick, Jack Kemp, Vin Weber and William Cohen. [...]