A Vote for Bush is a Vote for bin Ladin
The New York Review of Books writer Max Rodenbeck quotes the al-Qaeda spokesman on the Arabic news web site, www.elaph.com. al-Qaeda says, it hopes Bush will win reelection "because he acts with force rather than wisdom or shrewdness, and it is his religious fanaticism that will rouse our (Islamic) nation, as has been shown. Being targeted by an enemy is what will wake us from our slumber."
Bush dances to the bin Ladin tune flawlessly. Bin Ladin is Bush's intellectual superior and moral equal. Both send other peoples' children to kill and be killed to advance their personal agendas.
Why aren't the Bush kids in Iraq?
Iraq was not invaded to make America safe. It was to show Saddam he can't thumb his nose at American oil magnates and their buddies - Cheney and Rumsfeld.
This is neither rocket science nor deep analysis. It is obvious to anyone watching closely over time. A year from now people will be wondering why it took the current and increasing calamity
The first and best thing anyone can do is vote at every opportunity to replace with honest thinkers of any persuasion any politician obtuse enough to believe or pretend to that Bush has an honest or patriotic bone in his body.
Ref:
http://whistleass.typepad.com/boot_george_in_2004/2004/02/al_qaeda_wants_.html
Dear Mr. Zakaria,
I read you avidly, look for you on T. V., and fondly hope your influence completely replaces that of the hyphenated Americans of split allegiance whose ideologies now drive American foreign policy.
Today I want to address two points you make. On page 51 of the 12/29 Newsweek issue you say, "Many of those against that [Viet Nam] war were against all war," and, "Arguing against it [the current undeclared Iraq war] is re-fighting history rather than presenting a vision for the future."
Working the quotes in reverse, the principles misguiding the current invasion of Iraq must be dragged, spitting and kicking with all their pseudo-Republican venom, from beneath the layers of pretext and prejudice into a bright new daylight. Only by vigorous discussion and debate can they be exposed and rendered now and forever powerless to bamboozle well-meaning peoples everywhere aspiring to a civil existence - America in particular!
First, of course, we must dispatch the issue of Saddam's violent propensities. Abhorrence of torture and Ashcroft-style secret prosecutions is the primary bait that has hooked American public opinion into supporting Saddam's overthrow. But, mild mannered leaders have never succeeded ruling the Babylonian cradle of civilization. The violence of the dislike directed at the American occupation and the usurping puppets illustrates why. Had a Saddam-like figure not been in place for the decades when America supported or tolerated Hussein, the Sunnis and Shiites, whom Winston Churchill glommed artificially together into one country with the unrelated Kurds after World War I, may well have extended their fierce old feuds into a religious blood-bath. It would unavoidably draw into the maelstrom Iran, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and the nuclear bomb-bristling instigator Israel. Libya, Turkey, Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Russia, and the United States would not be far behind, in one order or another. Nuke bearing Pakistan and India would be hard-pressed to stay out. Even if the chain of escalation were interrupted before every country with an army or a bomb had them committed to one side of the jihad or the other, a population many times in size the quarter million of his detractors that Saddam tortured and killed would have been gone from the earth. Who will keep the lid on the pot now?
As every un-neo-conned literate human knows, neither terror nor WMD were factors in the Cheney-Rumsfeld determination to exploit to the maximum the undertaking begun, perhaps with the gambit of April Glaspie, US ambassador in Baghdad, who told Saddam Hussein, on July 25 of 1990, "the President [Bush] personally wants to expand and deepen the relationship with Iraq ... We don't have much to say about your Arab-Arab differences, like your border differences with Kuwait... Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, ... that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America." Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, with its American green light, created justification for the first American invasion of Iraq.
"Brother's-Keeperism" also played an insidious part in promoting the present military blunder. Aging right-wing religious do-gooders fell over one-another to cheer from safe sidelines while the children of others would kill and be killed as proxy for the old fundamentalist passion of Crusadacost. Nothing about the current war relates to American values of truth, justice, or rule of law, or religious and spiritual freedom. Nothing about it advances any moral, strategic, or even casual American interest. It merely gratifies the tragic vanity and rancor of highly placed American officials.
Moving on, most Americans who opposed this and other undeclared wars are not pacifists. Whether by resignation or by moral indignation, these real patriots exemplify the common sense and opposition to tyranny that until so very lately made America history's greatest beacon of hope and freedom.
Yes, we need to move on. The United Nations and NATO should have major roles in the clean-up. Is it not duty of every sensible intellect and every defender of the American Constitution, to the extent personal safety allows, to be heard with voice and vote, in this increasingly dangerous time?
Sincerely,
Tobey
Judith-
Though it’s off topic, I was very glad up brought up the matter of Howard Dean. It gives me an opportunity to try to correct the record. I am bypassing the humor group because, as you note, this is not funny.
We are all victims when corporate media slurs the tellers of truth.
As a former Peace Corps Volunteer whose service to his country did not involve a uniform, I think Dean’s response was well within the province of supplying potentially useful information to the poll taker - going beyond what was asked for. Howard Dean makes it very clear in his auto-biography that neither he nor his family know why his brother was listed by the American military forces as MIA-POW. His brother and a friend were taken prisoner and, according to witnesses, executed a few months later. Howard says they have speculated that his brother could have been doing work for the CIA, but that they have no specific knowledge about it. The military has kept a close eye on the effort to find the brother and also kept the Dean family informed of developments, which I presume has been the case of MIA-POW persons in whom our government has had more than casual interest. It is the Pentagon who implied Howard’s brother was serving by its assignment of the military-like status to a person, certainly not in uniform and certainly not "a living relative".
As a political candidate, Howard Dean stands head and shoulders above any we have been used to. He is truthful and he does what he says he will do. He would make an excellent President. Our country desperately needs leaders who use thought rather than ideology and put the interests of the citizens above those of their crony’s portfolios. It is a little hard to criticize Bush, since he seems to believe the lies he parrots. Bush is a "born-again" former drunk and, some say, coke-head. One can appreciate his achievement of staying off the booze and away from the dope, but his sense of reality is clearly far from intact.
Saddam Hussein, a former American CIA beneficiary, was unappreciative when he rejected the Cheney-Rumsfeld proposal of a pipeline deal about 15 years ago, during the time he was gassing the Kurds with American supplied chemicals. Neither Cheney or Rumsfeld have forgotten the snub. Later he invaded Kuwait AFTER getting a tacit go-ahead from the American State Department. The invasion gave the USA an anticipated excuse to start the long planned invasion. Saddam was left in place, since he kept the lid on the animosity between the Sunnis and the Shiites. Saddam’s unrealistic dreams of leading the Moslem world into modern importance led him to continued defiance of what he foolishly expected to be an honorable American administration. His first mistake was turning down the pipeline deal. His second was supposing the CIA wouldn’t figure out he had no WMD. Perhaps they did.
Howard Dean, whose record for good government as a Governor, has been well supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, was one of many reasonably informed Americans who have not been fooled. He is one of the few in public life who has presented the facts, available to anyone who cares to check them out.
I truly hope you will devote some of your own time to discovering the truth and, only on having done so, become politically active in a helpful way.
Sincerely,
Tobey
