"They were like putty in our hands"

Shellfish McToast? It's what's for breakfast. Start with a handful of clams and mussels left over from Sunday's Down East Clambake. Toast a slice of bread, cut in two (other half not shown) and slather on a little mayo. Pile bivalves onto toast, cover with other half and garnish plate with leftover cuke slices. Shellfish are worth about 10 calories apiece. That's 100, plus 100 for the bread and 40 for a tbsp of mayo. Cucumbers are 8 calories for a half cup of slices. That's a total of just under 250 for a delicious treat, the latest recipe in our Cold Turkey Cookbook. Tuck -- who wouldn't dream of having anything but cereal or eggs and bacon for breakfast -- asks: How long can you keep leftover clams? This is two days later. We used some in a Clammyssoise made from puréed leftover red potatoes and onions and chicken broth last night and will freeze the rest for future use. Update: Reader responses to above photo: "I was totally horrified,"  "Icky,"  "GROSS to look at,"  "You are what you eat?"

"[Soviet-bloc communists] asserted that a fish starts smelling from the head, and they did everything in their power to make the head of the Free World stink," writes Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa in Opinion Journal. The highest-ranking KBG intelligence official ever to have defected from the Soviet bloc -- in his case, Romania -- Pacepa gives an insider's account of the unwitting assist our fellow citizens of the Useful Idiot community gave and continue to give the enemies of freedom. To this day they still don't seem to understand they're being used.

Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community during the years I worked at its top levels. This same strategy is at work today, but it is regarded as bad manners to point out the Soviet parallels . . .

The communist effort to generate hatred for the American president began soon after President Truman set up NATO and propelled the three Western occupation forces to unite their zones to form a new West German nation. We were tasked to take advantage of the reawakened patriotic feelings stirring in the European countries that had been subjugated by the Nazis, in order to shift their hatred for Hitler over into hatred for Truman -- the leader of the new "occupation power." Western Europe was still grateful to the U.S. for having restored its freedom, but it had strong leftist movements that we secretly financed. They were like putty in our hands.

The European leftists, like any totalitarians, needed a tangible enemy, and we gave them one. In no time they began beating their drums decrying President Truman as the "butcher of Hiroshima." We went on to spend many years and many billions of dollars disparaging subsequent presidents . . .

During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America's presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren't facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy.

As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.

Our nuanced junior Senator John "The mystical war against communism" Kerry's anti-American 1971 Senate testimony regarding villages "razed" by our soldiers  "in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan" comes to mind.

Update: Sub Rosa blogbuddy Tom of Libertarian Leanings thinks our friends on the left side of the aisle know they're being used but have smaller fish to fry:

I think you are too kind to the Useful Idiot community. With the Democratic leadership in particular, I think they know what's going on but they view it in terms of shared goals with our potential allies. So what if they happen to be our enemies at the moment. Our Useful Idiot Democratic leaders see themselves as the ones in the driver's seat.

The mainstream press has done a spectacular job of turning treason into just another point of view.

The Democrats' awareness of what's going on is debatable, but there's no question they see themselves as the ones in the driver's seat, aided and abetted by their fellow travelers in the mainstream press.

Update II: Pajamas Media links.

Update III: Gateway Pundit headlines [via Maggie's Farm] "Finally, Proof of John F. Kerry's Useful Idiocy":

Back in 2004, Ion Mihai Pacepa was asking this very question, "Where did Kerry get his material?" . . . what Kerry said in his 1971 Senate testimony was almost exactly like the disinformation line that the Soviets were sowing worldwide.

Only more nuanced.

Comments

[goomp]

Those of the left are anything but liberal. Calling themselves liberals is just another lie in the style that Pacepa describes. The left wants only to control others and will gladly support a dictatorship that says it will control in the fashion that the left believes in. Unfortunately for the left, once in power dictators rule in their own fashion and not some false leftist dream. Wake up America! Do not be led to slavery by leftist dreams.

[hnav]

Shellfish McToast !

such amazing photos in the last several posts.

i cannot seem to open the comments on a few, but that caterpillar is incredible.

best wishes.

[Teresa]

The General is saying our junior Senator is the most famous Communist mouthpiece we've ever had. Thus he should hold a place in our hearts right along side Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw-Haw. Good going Mr. Kerry - such esteemed company you keep!

[Scott]

I find it impossible to believe that Americans' disapproval of the war in Vietnam and its White House proponents was a direct result of Soviet propaganda, simply because Lt. Gen. Pacepa says so. But that's, at least, plausible - his insinuation that Americans are somehow locked in the grip of Al Qaeda/Islamist propaganda is simply laughable.

To ask us to believe, though, that America's image abroad "is directly proportional to America's own respect for its president" is simply absurd. It's contradicted by his later supposition that foreign propaganda is effective. That's a feedback loop, where Americans affect world opinion, which in turn affects American opinion, which in turn affects world opinion...

Gen. Pacepa's credibility is tempered by three rather telling admissions in his feature.

First is the surprising stance he takes, as an expat Hungarian during the Communist era, that public dissent is poisonous in a free society. You'd think someone like him would have cultivated a healthy skepticism of power during those years.

Second, in a piece about the danger of foreign-made propaganda, is the baffling decision to incorporate the words of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi into his argument.

Last, and perhaps most telling of all, is the assertion "that the leader of the Free World granted me my freedom". Your freedom, according to the Constitution of the United States of America, is endowed by your creator, Lt. Gen. Pacepa, and inalienable. No leader may grant such a thing.

[Sissy Willis]

Scott, honey, it isn't just the word of Gen. Pacepa. Check out my own post of over a year a go, "Chomsky, Moore, Fisk: Pathetic memebots running the program of a dead tyrant" for starters.

Then take a gander at Eric S. Raymond's checklist of "some">http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=260">some of the most important of the Soviet Union’s memetic weapons."

As Raymond points out, "Indeed, the index of Soviet success is that most of us no longer think of these memes as Communist propaganda." Thanks for dropping by.

[Gayle Miller]

I have been eating tuna salad on sourdough or whole wheat bread for breakfast for years! Couple slices of tomato, some pickles (I'm a pickle addict). We're talking good grub! I'm not one for sweet stuff early in the day. And I'm not one for having anything other than a bowl of cereal or a piece of toast with some really good jam for dinner. My eating schedule is upside down BUT since I've been doing this, I have gradually begun to lose some of the pudge!

And I'd nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton as the most famous Communist mouthpiece ever!

[Gayle Miller]

Let's be very clear on this - I was in high school in the mid-50s and remember the Hungarian refugees and the stories they told us at lunchtime. I also remember the various kinds of "dissent" that went on during the Vietnam years and it was vicious, unreasoning and utterly lacking in any due regard to the welfare of our own country. In both cases, there was overwhelming indication of outside influences and there was nothing benign about the Russian treatment of the Hungarian patriots (and I took that very seriously since I AM Hungarian), nor was there anything benign about the behavior of 99% of the anti-war goons in the 60s and early 70s. Just as one example - there was a significant contingent of anti-war dissidents planning to crash the Republican Convention in Miami and set up significant barriers to access the convention center. The theory was that rich Republicans would have to walk too far in blazing heaat to the convention, have heart attacks and die. That is not dissent, that is criminal thuggishness! They were most solicitous of their own civil rights (the right to assemble and make an ass of themselves) without a concommittant dedication to the rights to life and assembly of those convention delegates!

Goons is all they were and they were goons being driven by outside agitation as could easily be evidenced by the emptiness in the eyes that heralded a similar emptiness in the brain cells!

[jameshigham]

It's in the Focus tonight, Sissie.