Skip to content
The World Can't Wait
Menu
  • Home
  • Events
  • About
    • About World Can’t Wait
      • History of World Can’t Wait
  • Projects
    • War Criminals Watch
    • We Are Not Your Soldiers!
    • Fire John Yoo
    • Sudan’s Struggle
  • Media
    • Audio
      • Video
    • Public Svc. Announcements
    • Press & Press Releases
      • Press Releases
      • Press Coverage
    • Photos
  • Take Action
    • Materials in English
    • Materials in Spanish
    • What You Can Do Now
    • Donate
    • More Resources
      • News & Analysis
        • Alternet
        • Antiwar.com
        • Black Agenda Report
        • Common Dreams
        • CounterPunch
        • Dissident Voice
        • Media Matters
        • Next Left Notes
        • OpEd News
        • Project Censored
        • Raw Story
        • Revolution Newspaper
        • Truthdig
        • Truthout
      • Anti-War
        • Afghans for Peace
        • Courage to Resist
        • Drone Warfare Awareness
        • Iraq Vets Against the War
        • Peace of the Action
        • Veterans for Peace
        • Voices for Creative Non-Violence
        • War is a Crime
      • Anti-Torture/Detention
        • Andy Worthington
        • Close Guantanamo
        • Free Detainees
        • Int’l Justice Network
        • No More Guantánamos
        • Religious Campaign Against Torture
        • Witness Against Torture
      • Political Repression
        • Bill of Rights Defense Committee
        • Center for Constitutional Rights
        • Committee to Stop FBI Repression
        • Drop the Charges on Gregory!
        • National Lawyers Guild
        • No Separate Justice
        • Project Salam
        • Stop Mass Incarceration
      • Women’s Rights/Theocracy
        • Defend Science
        • Feministing
        • RH Reality Check
        • Stop Patriarchy
        • Talk 2 Action
        • Theocracy Watch
        • Walk for Choice
      • Environment
        • Bill McKibben
        • Climate Connections
        • Enviros Against War
        • Grist
        • Tar Sands Action
  • En Español
Menu

Hillary’s Hypocrisy

Posted on February 17, 2011
Share:
 

By David Swanson

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday about the failures of foreign leaders to respect people’s freedoms, a 71-year-old U.S. veteran Army officer, a man who spent 27 years in the CIA and delivered presidential daily briefs, a peace activist and proponent of nonviolence, the man who famously confronted Donald Rumsfeld for his war lies, the man who drafted our letter to Spain and delivered it to the Spanish Embassy on Monday, our friend Ray McGovern turned his back in silence.  As Clinton continued to speak about respecting the rights of protesters, her guards — including a uniformed policeman and an unidentified plain-clothed official — grabbed Ray, dragged him off violently, brutalized him, double-cuffed him with metal handcuffs, and left him bleeding in jail.  As he was hauled away (see video), Ray shouted "So this is America?" Clinton went right on mouthing her hypocrisies without a pause.

Ray told Rob Kall at OpEdNews what he had been protesting by standing silently with his back turned:

"Hillary is the driving force, together with a few others, behind the wars in Afghanistan. She’s one of the big hawks in Iran. When I look at her and her husband that they don’t know the first thing about war. I do and so do my fellow Veterans for Peace. I have to make clear that we Veterans for Peace think that her policies are an abomination to the nation, that they are at cross purposes to the country and not everybody should applaud and give her the idea that she’s doing the right thing."

"I knew that Hillary knew, at the beginning of the war, that Hillary knew how things would go. There was a young lady who was working as Hillary Clinton’s personal staff chief, when she was a senator in 2002 and 2003, was in a class I taught in DC and I’d ask her to give her boss articles I wrote. And she did give them to her. So I know that. She made a political calculation that she needed to be strong because she was a woman even though she knew from us that the unintended consequences would be catastrophic. She knew all that and made that calculation."

"The height of irony, of course, is that was her tragic flaw that let Obama beat her. She supported the war and Obama didn’t. She is the height of hypocrisy. When people die because we have hypocrites at the top of our government, that compels me to make a statement in whatever way I can. It was not the theme of her speech that I was protesting. It was her war policies and support of Mubarak."

McGovern told Kall what happened:

"They grabbed me and the shock wore off. There was a real struggle. I shouted, ‘This is America.’ Then I said, ‘Who are you?’ This is a mystery to me. Who were they? The guy in the suit was the one who did the damage. He was brutal."

"They took me outside, put two sets of iron handcuffs that pierced my wrists. The bleeding went all over my pants. One guy said, "I pricked my finger" like it was his blood."

"I was bleeding in the car so I said ‘I think you need to put some gauze on me.’ They handed me to the DC police and they told I was being charged with disorderly conduct. I was booked, fingerprinted, mug shot taken. They put me in a little cell — must be the same size as Bradley Manning’s– about six by four feet."

"It was about three hours that they held me until they let me out. I had to take a cab to the hospital where they x-ray’d me, treated me and dressed my wounds. Then the doctors told me that since this was an assault on me, I had to inform the police about who had assaulted me. A little humor helped then."

Ray compared this incident to his earlier questioning of Donald Rumsfeld, an incident in which Ray did not stand in silent protest but rather waited for his turn at the microphone and did something U.S. journalists tend not to: asked uncomfortable questions:

"When Clinton started talking about how people beat up and arrested people in Iran, it gave some poetic justice, a great irony, to my standing there and what happened to me then, when she’s talking about what happened in other countries and there I am being handled in a vicious way…God knows what would happen next. Maybe some senior would ask her questions [she doesn’t take questions]. As bad as Donald Rumsfeld was, he let me speak. He let me speak and engaged me in dialog."

"At the same [Rumsfeld] speech, there was a courageous guy who stood with his back to Rumsfeld the entire speech. They left him completely alone and he walked out at the end, unbothered. Four years later, things have changed.


3 thoughts on “Hillary’s Hypocrisy”

  1. Norman Koerner says:
    February 19, 2011 at 11:59 am

    Thanks Ray for your continued principled opposition to the US wars of empire which, of course, require constant maintenance lying by hypocrites Obama (didn’t he call out the Iranian regime for beating protesters but stated falsely that the Egyptian regime did not beat protesters! in a speech last week), Gibbs, and the apologist and enabler of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, Clinton. Let us not forget how Sen. Biden (Mubarak is a “good guy”), as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, refused to call any witnesses in the hearings on preparations for the US criminal invasion of Iraq, who could have exposed and opposed it at the critical moment of the formation of public opinion. The Obama Regime has greatly expanded the Rumsfeld-Cheney’s doctrine’s use of extra-judicial targeted assassination drone attacks across international borders into Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen (a la Israel in Gaza-although Israel has not used drones for “extra-judicial” assassinations-their murder weopon of choice has usually been US made F-16 fighters or Apache helicopters). Of course, the Obama regime has also greatly increased the number of drone assassination strikes (compared to Bush Regime) in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which, it has been documented, greatly increased civilian casualties. Not to mention, of course, Obama’ s big increase in unleashing Army special force raids (another Rumsfeld-Cheney strategy) within Afghanistan itself and good old-fashioned US warplane bombing raids and artillery shelling of Afghan villages( in order to save them from the Taliban, of course). Change you can believe in? As they say in Philly-forgetaboutit!

    Log in to Reply
  2. Apophis st says:
    February 18, 2011 at 2:34 am

    Everyone need to standup before is too late,Obama-hillary-biden stabbed us all in the name of corporations and israhell.
    We need to Demand a just unbiased balanced media as well..

    Log in to Reply
  3. Nancy Van Ness says:
    February 17, 2011 at 11:47 pm

    Yes, four years later and things have changed. It is interesting that Obama won because he said he opposed the wars, in fact he does not. And the repression is much worse.

    We need to stand up in large numbers and resist.

    Log in to Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Because humanity & the planet come first...
store
Don’t stop… Don’t conciliate... Don’t accommodate... Don’t collaborate... and support World Can't Wait.

Sign up for email

Stop FBI Repression
Know your rights
If An Agent Knocks

About

World Can't Wait mobilizes people living in the United States to stand up and stop war on the world, repression and torture carried out by the US government. We take action, regardless of which political party holds power, to expose the crimes of our government, from war crimes to systematic mass incarceration, and to put humanity and the planet first.

Read More

Subscribe to E-Newsletter

Contact World Can't Wait

TOPICS

  • Afghanistan & Pakistan
  • Covert Drone War
  • Crimes are Crimes
  • Culture of Bigotry
  • Environment
  • G.I. Resistance
  • Haiti
  • Immigrants
  • Iran
  • Iraq
  • Libya
  • Mass Incarceration
  • Obama
  • Occupy
  • Palestine
  • Police State Repression
  • Real History Lessons
  • Reproductive Rights
  • Reports on Protest & Resistance
  • Theocracy
  • Torture
  • Wikileaks
  • Calls to Action
  • The Expanding War on the World

Projects

  • War Criminals Watch
  • We Are Not Your Soldiers
  • Get Involved

  • Donate
  • Download filters, stickers and posters
  • More ways to get involved
  • ©2025 The World Can't Wait | Design: Newspaperly WordPress Theme
    Menu
    • Home
    • Events
    • About
      • About World Can’t Wait
        • History of World Can’t Wait
    • Projects
      • War Criminals Watch
      • We Are Not Your Soldiers!
      • Fire John Yoo
      • Sudan’s Struggle
    • Media
      • Audio
        • Video
      • Public Svc. Announcements
      • Press & Press Releases
        • Press Releases
        • Press Coverage
      • Photos
    • Take Action
      • Materials in English
      • Materials in Spanish
      • What You Can Do Now
      • Donate
      • More Resources
        • News & Analysis
          • Alternet
          • Antiwar.com
          • Black Agenda Report
          • Common Dreams
          • CounterPunch
          • Dissident Voice
          • Media Matters
          • Next Left Notes
          • OpEd News
          • Project Censored
          • Raw Story
          • Revolution Newspaper
          • Truthdig
          • Truthout
        • Anti-War
          • Afghans for Peace
          • Courage to Resist
          • Drone Warfare Awareness
          • Iraq Vets Against the War
          • Peace of the Action
          • Veterans for Peace
          • Voices for Creative Non-Violence
          • War is a Crime
        • Anti-Torture/Detention
          • Andy Worthington
          • Close Guantanamo
          • Free Detainees
          • Int’l Justice Network
          • No More Guantánamos
          • Religious Campaign Against Torture
          • Witness Against Torture
        • Political Repression
          • Bill of Rights Defense Committee
          • Center for Constitutional Rights
          • Committee to Stop FBI Repression
          • Drop the Charges on Gregory!
          • National Lawyers Guild
          • No Separate Justice
          • Project Salam
          • Stop Mass Incarceration
        • Women’s Rights/Theocracy
          • Defend Science
          • Feministing
          • RH Reality Check
          • Stop Patriarchy
          • Talk 2 Action
          • Theocracy Watch
          • Walk for Choice
        • Environment
          • Bill McKibben
          • Climate Connections
          • Enviros Against War
          • Grist
          • Tar Sands Action
    • En Español