"Progressive Hero" Glenn Greenwald Promotes Racist, Anti-Government Hate Group

[kfreed]

192. Cato fellows wrote the legal justification for the War, Torture, Warrantless Wiretapping...

The Nation: "Independent and Principled: Behind the Cato Myth"

"Cato Claim #1: The Cato Institute was one of the earliest and most principled critics of the Bush Administration’s wars abroad and attacks on civil liberties at home (here and here).

Fact: The Cato Institute’s actual record during the Bush administration years was anything but principled and far from heroic.

John Yoo, author of the notorious “torture memo,” served on the Cato editorial board for Cato Supreme Court Review during the Bush presidency. At the same time, Yoo was writing the Bush administration’s legal justifications for waterboarding, Guantánamo, warrantless wiretapping and more. Yoo also contributed articles to Cato Supreme Court Review and a chapter to a Cato book titled The Rule of Law in the Wake of Clinton criticizing President Clinton’s “imperial presidency.”

The “Cato Policy Report” attacked progressive critics of Bush’s “War on Terror” as “Terrorism’s Fellow Travelers“ in its November/December 2001 issue. Former Vice President of Research Brink Lindsey wrote, “Most of the America haters flushed out by September 11 are huddled on the left wing of the conventional political spectrum.”

Another Cato executive, Ted Galen Carpenter, former VP for defense and foreign policy studies, enthusiastically supported Bush’s “war on terror” and called on Bush to invade Pakistan.

"http://www.thenation.com/article/independent-and-principled-behind-cato-myth/

The Cato Institute advised the 2002–04 Republican-dominated Congress to commence military strikes in Pakistan in its Cato Handbook for Congress arguing, “Ultimately, Afghanistan becomes less important as a place to conduct military operations in the war on terrorism and more important as a place from which to launch military operations. And those operations should be directed across the border into neighboring Pakistan.”

Another Cato Institute executive, Roger Pilon, vigorously supported Bush’s attacks on civil liberties. Pilon, Cato’s VP for legal affairs and founding director of the Cato Institute’s “Center for Constitutional Studies,” supported expanded FBI wiretapping in 2002 and called on Congress to reauthorize the Patriot Act as late as 2008.

While it’s true that compared to other pro-Republican think-tanks, Cato did have periods when it was critical of Bush’s wars and attacks on civil liberties, those attacks weren’t consistent and showed every sign of being subordinated to the Cato Institute’s political demands. The most obvious example of this came in 2005, when Cato suddenly called a halt to its growing criticisms of Bush’s “war on terror” and fired one of its most ardent anti-interventionists (another resigned), sparking a backlash from some prominent non-Cato libertarians like antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo, who wrote: “Now that the majority of Americans have turned against this war, the Cato bigwigs are lining up with the neoconservatives who want to ‘stay the course.’” In 2006, with Bush’s presidency in tatters, Cato restarted its criticism in earnest."
http://www.thenation.com/article/independent-and-principled-behind-cato-myth/