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Title: Tony Bennett in bizarre rant as he claims 'America caused 9/11' and 'George Bush told me he regretted the war in Iraq'
Source:
Daily Mail Online
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art ... ed-Iraq-rant-Howard-Stern.html
Published: Sep 20, 2011
Author: Daily Mail Reporter
Post Date: 2011-09-20 23:28:17 by Sebastian
Keywords: None
Views: 46929
Comments: 64
Tony Bennett spoke about 9/11 and the Iraq war on Howard Stern's Sirius radio show Legendary singer Tony Bennett said in an interview with Howard Stern on Monday night that 'we caused' the 9/11 attacks. He also went on to say that President George W. Bush confided in him that the war in Iraq was a mistake. Speaking on Stern's Sirius Radio show, Mr Bennett, who describes himself as a pacifist, said: 'They flew the plane in, but we caused it. 'Because we were bombing them and they told us to stop.' Stern had asked the singer, a World War II vet, how the U.S. should deal with the terrorists responsible for the World Trade Centre attacks. 'But who are the terrorists?' Mr Bennett said, according to ABC News. 'Are we the terrorists or are they the terrorists? Two wrongs don't make a right.' The 85-year-old spoke of the night in 2005 when then-President Bush made that astonishing statement. Mr Bennett said: 'He told me personally that night that, he said, 'I think I made a mistake".' The event was in honour of Mr Bennett and he said he believed Mr Bush made the admission because he liked the singer. Mr Bennett said that his experiences as a teenager in combat in the Second World War forever changed his position on war. Haunting: Bennett said his views on war and 9/11 are shaped by his time in the U.S. Army during the Second World War 'I'm anti-war,' he said. 'It's the lowest form of human behaviour.' He was drafted by the U.S. Army in November 1944 and served as an infantryman in Europe, moving across France, and later into Germany. He said: 'The Germans were frightened. We were frightened. Nobody wanted to kill anybody when we were on the line, but the weapons were so strong that it overcame us and everybody else. The day before his controversial remarks Bennett celebrated his 85th birthday gala in New York on Sunday, joined daughters Joanna, far left, Antonia, far right, and Susan Crow Mr Bennett credited the Army with allowing him to study singing. He said: 'The first time I saw a dead German, that's when I became a pacifist.' He told Mr Stern that he was left forever shaken by the sight of death. The big guns were there: Former President Bill Clinton joins Bennett on stage at his 85th Birthday Gala in New York on Sunday Mr Bennett said: 'It was a nightmare that's permanent. 'I just said, "This is not life. This is not life".' That's why, he added, that he agrees with Mr Bush. He said: 'To start a war in Iraq was a tremendous, tremendous mistake internationally.' The night before, Mr Bennett, who is currently promoting his new album, Duets II, enjoyed a star-studded party in his honour at his 85th Birthday Gala Benefit for Exploring the Arts at The Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Guests included Bill Clinton, Elton John and Robert DeNiro.
But he also admitted that his two years of service gave him enough time to witness the horrors of war.
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#7. To: Sebastian (#0)
'Just shut up and sing' comes to mind. Of course he has the right to say anything he wants - that has absolutely nothing to do with military service - but this just makes him look like a kook.
I wouldn't have phrased it that way - "America caused 9/11" - but I've tried to get past the sound bytes and consider what is behind this train of thought. You can easily dismiss it when it's a statist whacko like Michael Moore or a religious whacko like Louis Farrakhan saying it, but it's more difficult when it's someone like this. Bennett has seen the horrors of war up close and personal - I tend to give more weight to what people like that say. Putting right or wrong motives aside for a moment - the truth is the US HAS interfered in other nations' political affairs. That is an indisputable fact. And, when a nation does that, it is not unreasonable to expect blow-back. I AM NOT SAYING THE JIHADISTS WERE JUSTIFIED IN ATTACKING US ON 9/11. What I am saying is this: when nation #1 is perceived as meddling in nation #2's internal affairs, it is not surprising that perceived meddling will create resentment by lunatic factions in nation #2 and they will attempt to retaliate. Ron Paul is accused of being a {{{shudder}}}} isolationist (he's not), but this is the point he tries to make and gets shouted down for it. We are not minding our own business here at home (or have we already solved problems like illegal immigration and a crappy economy?).
Not only that,but he has been mostly apolitical his entire life. Not saying he hasn't voted or supported different candidates,but he has never been out there promoting one party or national candidate over another. BTW,he was just on tv a few minutes ago saying he had been misunderstood,and that nobody loved America more than he does,and that he has a fuller explanation of what he meant on a web site. Presumably his own web site.
He has to clarify his statement for the FOX right wing whacko nationalists. Left leaners are not the ones being offended by Bennett's comments - its the right wing kneejerk tea party types that are jumoing all over this. It's the Dixie Chicks all over again - I guess the right wing whack job contingent (and this article is from a right wing leaning neocon rag in the UK) fears that these messages will filter down to their mind control right wing zombies and change their minds - and they can't let that happen.
FOX News - check Can you write in anything other than stereotypes? Here's a clue - I'm about as "right-wing" as you can get, but I have no use for the endless wars that statists like LBJ, Clinton, the Bushes and now Obama seem to be determined to get us in. So wise up - if you're capable.
You know what a Venn Diagram is? Your views intersect with a large aspect of those on your right wing universe I labeled kooks. I am "right wing" as well but I embrace a right wing that wants no part of unregulated capitalism and is for a safety-net with a dollop of nationalism. In Europe it is called the "social market" but it is found all over the world as the standard form of govt and economy mix. Since you espouse an economic system based on ideology with no real world analog - I must place you in the kook category - despite my agreeing with your non intervention stance.
Aha. So you're a corporatist. You must be an admirer of Mussolini. No wonder why you love oBUMa- he's a modern Mussolini wannabe.
So you're a corporatist. You must be an admirer of Mussolini. I find you trying to figure out categories funny since you post anti-capitaist stuff all the time as proof you defend capitalism. I think you are actually a loon and treat you like the brain damaged person you are. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,890558,00.html Monday, May 25, 1953 Looking out over devastated Europe at war's end in 1945 the journalists of the world—plain reporters and exalted pundits—considered the future and, to a man, came to the same conclusion: Europe would go left and socialist. The right, dishonored by the Petains and Papens, and by its devotion to 19 century capitalism, was doomed. The center, caught between the stridencies of right & left, and forced to choose, would have to go left. Communists and Socialists had made a name in the undergrounds and concentration camps. And in the end, Socialism, the wave of the future, would triumph, as it had in Scandinavia long before, and in Britain only recently. The experts were wrong. Instead, postwar Europe's dominant force turned out to be Christian Democracy. Today, Christian Democrats govern or share heavily in the governing of every war-torn country of Western Europe; most of their Premiers and all of their foreign ministers (except The Netherlands') are Christian Democrats. All are disciples of European unity, all share an overall philosophy, all—perhaps by political accident—are Roman Catholics. When Italy's De Gasperi, West Germany's Adenauer and France's Bidault sit down to negotiate a treaty or discuss the future, they draw from a common religious inspiration that sees Europe reunited as it was before Europe burst asunder in post-Reformation strife. They share, too, the paradox of having come to power frankly religious men, in a Europe heavily influenced since the Age of Enlightenment by secularistic and often anti-religious political doctrine. In such a scene, the Christian Democrats have learned not to accent their sectarian differences, but to stress what they have in common. What is their credo? Fundamentally, it is the common heritage of Western civilization, a Judeo-Christian heritage with which men of all faiths may agree. Their basic philosophical faith may be generally stated as a belief in 1) the fatherhood of God, 2) the brotherhood of man, 3) the essential dignity of man, and 4) the right of the individual to hold and administer private property, subject to his responsibilities to his fellowmen. Christian Democracy began as a Christian Socialism and gradually moved towards center and right. Originally, its intention was to escape the bleak godlessness of both left and right, while avoiding the charge of church domination, particularly domination by the Vatican. Trying to oppose materialism, while meeting it on its own good ground of material welfare for all, involves difficulties. "The Christian is a citizen of two worlds," says Catholic Philosopher Heinrich Rommen, "the City of God and the City of Man. He is destined for the former, but he must live and work for his salvation in the latter." From a deep and common tap root, the Christian Democrats of Europe branch out in a variety of directions. In France, the party's name is Mouvement Republicain Populaire. In theory, it stands only a few steps away from mild Socialism, but in practice it sits mostly in the center. It began in the heroism of the French underground. For more than a year between the fall of France and Hitler's attack on Russia, the French Resistance was organized and dominated by courageous young veterans like Georges Bidault, now French Foreign Minister; Pierre-Henri Teitgen (now M.R.P. president). "The prominence of so many individual devout Catholics in the Resistance," reported one student of France, "saved the church in France." For some time, the M.R.P. was the largest party in France. Now worn and watered down after eight debilitating years in the cockpit of French party politics, it now attracts about 12% of the French electorate. Best known for its support of family allowances, which arrested the decline in France's birth rate, the M.R.P. is parted from its ideological neighbors by an anxious controversy over church schools. In West Germany, Christian Democracy is the party of conservative Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, but is still flavored by the Christian Socialism of the Catholic Labor movement. Mitbestimmungsrecht, for example, the radical program under which many German workers share in the management of industry, was energetically pushed by Catholic labor. Where France's M.R.P. works in a nominally (97%) Catholic community, Catholic Adenauer's party works in the shadow of historic Catholic-Protestant cleavage in Germany. But it numbers thousands of Protestants in its coalition (they total about 30%), and it has elected Protestant Hermann Ehlers as its vice chairman. Many German Protestants complain, nevertheless, that if Adenauer "were more of a German and less of a Rhineland Catholic," he would slow down his drive for a united Europe and pay more attention to uniting West Germany with the Protestant (and now Communist-ruled) East Germany. Adenauer's Christian Democratic Union comes before the voters this year. High personal prestige and West Germany's remarkable prosperity are in his favor. Diverse as are their political environments and their religious faiths, Western Europe's Christian Democrats are loosely organized into a kind of clearinghouse for Christian parties representing 20 million voters: Last fall it set up a committee to try to define Christian Democracy, but it has still to agree on a definition. Yet Christian Democracy, like so many idealistic abstractions, demonstrably exists. Its faith is demonstrated by the high character of its leaders, whose performance shows that what eludes definition need not pass understanding. Christian Democracy may well take its credo from Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
That's because you think you think. You don't.
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#9. To: Badeye (#7)
Of course he has the right to say anything he wants - that has absolutely nothing to do with military service - but this just makes him look like a kook.
#14. To: Get Outta Dodge! (#9)
You can easily dismiss it when it's a statist whacko like Michael Moore or a religious whacko like Louis Farrakhan saying it, but it's more difficult when it's someone like this. Bennett has seen the horrors of war up close and personal - I tend to give more weight to what people like that say.
#17. To: sneakypete, Get Outta Dodge! (#14)
(Edited)
BTW,he was just on tv a few minutes ago saying he had been misunderstood,and that nobody loved America more than he does,and that he has a fuller explanation of what he meant on a web site. Presumably his own web site.
#23. To: Godwinson (#17)
He has to clarify his statement for the FOX right wing whacko nationalists.
"right wing" - check
"whacko" - check
#47. To: Get Outta Dodge! (#23)
Here's a clue - I'm about as "right-wing" as you can get, but I have no use for the endless wars that statists like LBJ, Clinton, the Bushes and now Obama seem to be determined to get us in.
#50. To: Godwinson (#47)
I am "right wing" as well but I embrace a right wing that wants no part of unregulated capitalism and is for a safety-net with a dollop of nationalism. In Europe it is called the "social market" but it is found all over the world as the standard form of govt and economy mix.
#51. To: Capitalist Eric (#50)
Aha.
#54. To: Godwinson (#51)
I find you trying to figure out categories funny since you post anti-capitaist stuff all the time as proof you defend capitalism.
Replies to Comment # 54.
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