| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
11 Sep 2006 09:33:45 AM |
| Object: |
Just in time for elections, Republicans campaign on fear |
From The Chicago Sun-Times, 9/10/06:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/anderson/cst-edt-monroe10.html
Just in time for elections, Bush campaigns on fear
BY MONROE ANDERSON
Five years after the 9/11 tragedy, the kingpin of Abraham Lincoln's
party is still dead set on fooling most of the people most of the
time.
President Bush and his chorus of Republican pols, Cabinet members and
neo-con sycophants would have us believe we're safer or, depending on
political expediencies, not that safe.
According to the president's pre-9/11 anniversary speeches on the
progress of the war on terror, we're safer than we were before the
attacks but not yet safe enough to steer clear of his failed
stay-the-course strategy.
As Bush explains it, al-Qaida's leadership is decimated but remains
dangerous enough to destroy the entire civilized world.
There he goes again.
With midterm congressional elections less than two months away, the
Bush subterfuge machine is in full spiel and spin.
Too incompetent to manage problems that are all too real to mainstream
America, such as high gas prices, 45 million citizens without health
insurance and a sliding income for middle-class workers -- or
capturing Osama bin Laden for that matter -- the president and his
forces are back to wheeling and dealing terror.
They're playing the same fear-mongering three-card monte game that
worked so well in the 2002 and 2004 elections:
See if you can find the terrorist threat under here or here or there.
Find Saddam Hussein's ethereal weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Watch the politically timed color alert rise and fall on cue.
There's a book just out with a title that sums it all up: Hubris: The
Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War.
Authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn report that Bush hated Saddam
so much that he privately let loose expletive-laden tirades against
the dictator.
In March 2002, months before Bush asked Congress for authority to
attack Saddam, he bluntly exposed his true intentions in an unguarded
moment with two aides.
When told that White House correspondent Helen Thomas was questioning
the need to oust Saddam, Bush snapped:
''Did you tell her I intend to kick his sorry m - - - - - - - - - - -
- ***** all over the Mideast?''
The president's anger was understandable.
''After all,'' Bush said six months later while speaking at a
fund-raiser in Houston, ''this is the guy who tried to kill my dad.''
I think that's admirable that Bush 43 loves his dad, Bush 41, enough
to try to revenge Saddam's botched assassination attempt in 1993.
I loved my late dad as much as Bush loves his, and while I too would
have been livid if the Iraqi dictator tried to whack my father, I
wouldn't have set into motion a wave of international shock and awe
that would result in the deaths of more than 2,600 U.S. military men
and women and more than 41,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.
I also love my two sons as much as I'm sure he loves his twin
daughters.
If we're really in danger of Apocalypse Soon, as Bush keeps insisting,
then we ought to act like it.
The president should re-institute a mandatory military draft.
I'll tearfully send my sons off to war, right after Bush tearfully
sends his daughters to sign up in our co-educational military.
If the war against Islamic terrorists compares to the fight against
Nazis, as Bush insists, and if a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq
would lead to its conquest by our nation's worst enemies, then we
ought to have a military reflecting that clear and present danger.
There were 16 million Americans fighting to keep the world safe for
democracy in World War II.
There are 130,000 in Iraq.
I'm afraid Bush's plan to save the world from Islamic fascism is way
too modest.
He wants Congress to pass his terrorist surveillance act and
authorization to try the al-Qaida detainees held in his secret CIA
torture prisons.
For reasons too simple for many Americans to understand, he's not
interested in following the 9/11 Commission's recommendations to shore
up security at U.S. harbors or keep a close watch on checked airplane
luggage.
Those measures, which would obviously make America safer from the
inevitable al-Qaida strikes in the future, would cost big business big
money.
But what fool would want to take those measures when it's so much more
politically practical to scare most of the people one more time?
____________________________________________________________
Republicans seem to be prepared to drag our nation down into hell if
it serves their political needs.
Harry
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