“A more visible spokesman on issues of national security than any Democrat in the Senate.”
The New York Times Magazine
To begin with, I am not Hart’s PR agent, nor is there a Hart campaign as such at this point in time. I do not post on his behalf, nor am I paid. I am part of a group of loyal Hartistas hoping to recruit the former Colorado Senator and Co-chair of the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century to run for President again as our candidate. I believe he is the best possible candidate for the party to put forth. I encourage any group who feels that a better candidate is not running to recruit that candidate as well. We will welcome the debate.
The issue is: Who is the best candidate for the Democratic Party to put forth to challenge the Republicans on the Invasion of Iraq and defending the homeland against terrorists?
I am still waiting for an intelligent debate on this issue.
What candidate is better than Gary Hart on these major issues of the day?
There is no answer to the challenge. I will take on all comers.
Instead of an intelligent debate, I have received a personal attack that I, as a volunteer, am an incompetent PR agent. The draft site volunteers have taken a bit longer than expected to get the draft site up and running, but Gary Hart doesn’t need me to put forth his ideas. He has written very extensively on the issues. His writings are available in print, and on the Internet:
http://www.garyhartnews.com/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/http://www.amazon.com/ (author of 17 books)
The beauty of the Internet is that it is not filtered. The reader can get the views of the candidate without editing or bias. Gary Hart is not, and has never been about money, pollsters, handlers, or focus groups. Hart has always been about ideas. To many, this is a radical concept. Because of those ideas, 20 years since his last national campaign, Hart still has a loyal group of followers that are ready to go forth and do battle for these ideas. I have also seen him on college campuses where is idealism attracts young people to these ideas and ideals.
The record is laid out plainly on the Internet:
Hart served as the co-chair of the Commission on National Security for the 21st Century (Commonly referred to as the Hart/Rudman Commission.) It is comprised of three volumes and is available for download but it is much more than the 2 page “expose” the poster requests:
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/nssg/Reports/reports.htm“In its Jan. 31 report, seven Democrats and seven Republicans unanimously approved 50 recommendations. Many of them addressed the point that, in the words of the commission's executive summary, "the combination of unconventional weapons proliferation with the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack."
"A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century," according to the report.
The commission recommended the formation of a Cabinet-level position to combat terrorism. The proposed National Homeland Security Agency director would have "responsibility for planning, coordinating, and integrating various U.S. government activities involved in homeland security,":
http://www.democrats.us/beta/forum/view_topic.php?id=788&forum_id=3The Hart-Rudman Commission was the most comprehensive review of U.S. defense policy since the end of the Second World War. Both the report itself and the following presentation by the Commission to Congress was all but ignored by the national news media, Hart: “WShen our final report came out in 2001, it did not receive word one in the New York Times. Zero. The Washington Post put it on Page 3 or 4, below the fold.”
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/02/hart/index.html?pn=2Rudman-Hart Commission Warns of Terrorist Attack: Why Did the News Media Ignore It?
http://www.brook.edu/comm/transcripts/20020206.htmHart and Rudman met with senior Bush administration officials to discuss the commission’s 50 proposals. While notes where taken at the meeting, the matter was referred to the Cheney’s office where it died, Congressional Republicans deferred to the Vice-President. "Frankly, the White House shut it down," Hart says. "The president said 'Please wait, we're going to turn this over to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate this effort.' And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts and the issue of the day.":
http://www.democrats.us/beta/forum/view_topic.php?id=788&forum_id=3(And I might add, resurrecting the Star Wars defense plan.)
On September 6th, 2001 the headline in the paper in Montreal read, “"Hart predicts terrorist attacks on America." The story was completely ignored in the U.S. news media.
That same day, September 6, 2001, Hart again contacted Condi Rice and personally requested that the administration do more about domestic terrorism. Condi said she would refer his request to the V.P.:
Condi Rice's other wake-up call
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/02/hart/index.html?pn=2After 9-11, Hart continued to work with his colleague, former Senator Rudman on the issue of Homeland security, specifically what the Bush administration had failed to do:
America - Still Unprepared, Still in Danger
http://cis.state.mi.us/mpsc/reports/AmStillUnprep.pdfWhen Bush indicated that he would use the war on terrorism as an rationale for invading Iraq, Hart was the first to speak out. Shut out by the MSM, his editorial was published in the U.K.:
Iraq and American Unilateralism
http://www.garyhartnews.com/hart/writings/columns/colum... By GARY HART
“If we are at war against terrorism, that war's most visible battlefield for most Americans today is the luggage check at the nearest airport.
Meanwhile, 9/11 offered the first central organising principle for foreign policy and military action since the demise of "containment of communism" and the collapse of the Soviet Union eleven years ago. Now those whose ability to comprehend the world requires a villain are happily planning a new mission for the United States in the 21st century - eradicating evil from the world, starting with Saddam Hussein. Having helped to dispatch fascism in mid-20th century, and then successfully faced-off against expansionist communism in the late 20th century, those requiring a messianic purpose for America's role in the world have found it in the "axis of evil" - Iran, Iraq, and North Korea - and more vividly in the personification of evil, Saddam Hussein.
…
Having stagnated somewhere along Afghanistan's craggy border with Pakistan, the war on terrorism has migrated to Baghdad. If Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction, the ability to deliver them and the will to do so, there will be a broad consensus among the American people to undertake military operations to prevent him from carrying out his will.
But some better showing must be made than has hitherto been done that those conditions have been met. Though US presidents find it inconvenient to remember this, the Army still does belong to the people. And as bereaved and furious as we still are post-9/11 at the attacks on unarmed civilians, political leaders must still make the case for potential loss of thousands of American military personnel, and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian lives.
…
Yet, it is a minor irony that those in America who ridiculed Jimmy Carter's human-rights beliefs as the basis for a "realistic" foreign policy have now trumped him by seeking to make America the world's avenging angel.”
You may excused for not knowing this since it was published in The Times (of London) in the U.K. Hart continued to speak out against the planned Iraq war in October 2002.
President Bush Silent on Potential Costs of War with Iraq:
http://www.international.ucla.edu/bcir/article.asp?parentid=2229Hart’s latest thoughts on protecting the homeland are in his latest book, The Shield and the Cloak: The Security of the Commons (Paperback)
Editorial Reviews of The Shield and the Cloak
From Publishers Weekly
Former Senator Hart argues in this treatise the future of national security that 9/11 was an "opportunity to redefine America's role in the world," but one the U.S. is misusing "by waging preemptive warfare in the Middle East and thus possibly increasing the threat." Hart proposes the military abandon traditional notions of warfare ("Fast fighters, giant carriers, monster tanks, big missiles") in favor of increasing the number of special forces units that can be deployed quickly and quietly against insurgents whose organization is akin to "cancerous cells." Hart would have the National Guard, no longer required as an invasion and occupation force, recast as a "homeland security shield." This is an accessible and stimulating read for those interested in national security, politics and terrorism.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
In The Shield and the Cloak: The Security of the Commons (Oxford Univ., $22) former Democratic presidential candidate and senator Gary Hart defines American security broadly. It's not just protecting the United States from the kind of spectacular terrorist attacks warned about by the commission he co-chaired before 9/11; it's also a matter of ensuring trust between citizens and government. Hart roundly criticizes the Bush administration for misleading the public about the Iraq War. "The only issue for history," he writes, "is whether we waged preventive war unnecessarily based on staggeringly wrong factual mistakes or whether our nation's leaders were guilty of massive mendacity." He also argues that the doctrine of preemptive war is unprincipled. The world has many dangerous dictators, and we cannot invade the countries of them all. By "reserving to itself the right to determine when, where, and under what conditions it will invade other countries," Hart contends, the United States is behaving like "a bully at best and a renegade at worst."
Hart's proposed remedies for our current security gaps range from establishing a new, elite intelligence corps with "Arab-American young people, not Anglo Americans
the primary recruits" to increasing federal expenditures for science education. Security, in his view, is not measured only by our ability to ward off threats from afar. "The national security policy of the United States in the early twenty-first century," he proposes, "must incorporate the transformation of the U.S. economy, a new role for the United States in the world, and a new approach to military and intelligence organizations and training." How will we know when we are safe? Hart suggests "one possible standard: When every child in America is secure, then America will be secure."
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Book Description
Gary Hart has long been one of the nation's foremost experts on national security, combining a deep knowledge of national security policy with first-hand experience of the political realities that influence how America safeguards itself and its interests. In his new book, Hart outlines the fundamental changes with which America must grapple when confronting the current terrorist threat--a threat with no state and no geographic home-base and thus no real target for the world's largest and most sophisticated military force. Hart argues for a security of the commons, emphasizing that the new security will require a shield for the homeland as well as a cloak of non-military security, including security of income, community, environment, and energy.
About the Author
Gary Hart represented Colorado in the U.S. Senate from 1975 to 1987. He is the author of seventeen books, has taught at Yale, and lectured at the University of California and Oxford University, where he earned a doctor of philosophy degree in politics in 2001. As co-chair of the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century, he was credited with forecasting a 9/11-type attack. He resides with his family in Kittredge, Colorado.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0195326962/sr=8-3/qid=1176127790/ref=dp_proddesc_0/002-7059507-9628020?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&qid=1176127790&sr=8-3
Hart is the recognized authority in the Democratic Party on Homeland security and National defense:
"In a word, what I advocated was 'Be proactive,'" he said. "Don't just vote against things put forward by this administration, and don't let just one party or one administration define national security."
Hart Urges Democrats to be Proactive on National Defense
By Jeff Johnson
January 10, 2003
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPentagon.asp?Page=\Pentagon\archive\200301\PEN20030110a.html
This is the same advice that he gave to the Senate Democrats in the previously cited link:
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/04/03/hart/index.html
So do you want to nominate the instructor, or the students who flunked the exam?
I am still waiting for a serious debate.
:kick: HART 2008! :kick: 
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