Text 21800, 86 rader
Skriven 2006-08-11 13:56:00 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
Ärende: No shame... None.
=========================
BUSH AND CHENEY'S REIGN OF ERROR
VEEP SAYS CONN. VOTERS AIDING AL QAEDA. NOW, THAT'S SCARY.


THESE PEOPLE have no shame. Their contempt for democracy is so great
they will stop at nothing to undermine it. Their adherence to
fundamentalist beliefs that blinds them to reality is frightening. They
must be stopped.

And that's just the Republicans.

Let's start with Vice President Dick Cheney.

Yesterday, Cheney bashed those who voted for Democrat Ned Lamont in the
Connecticut Senate primary, claiming that these votes would encourage
"al Qaeda types" to think that "they can break the will of the American
people."

The idea is that since 18-year incumbent Joe Lieberman lost based on his
support for Iraq, Americans opposing the war are waving a white flag of
surrender to terrorists.

This is stunningly ignorant logic, as well as annoyingly consistent with
the Bush administration's fundamentalist myth that Iraq had ties to al
Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden - a claim by now well-discounted, most
notably by a presidential commission.

And yet the presidential fog machine has continued to belch out its
Iraq-al Qaeda-link fumes to the extent that a recent poll suggests that
64 percent of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein had strong
links to al Qaeda. More people than ever now believe, according to a
new poll, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Ironically, the number who believe in the al Qaeda link is almost
precisely the same number of Americans - 62 percent - who believe we
are bogged down in Iraq.

For Cheney - and other Republicans like GOP National Chairman Ken
Mehlman - to suggest that those Americans are encouraging terrorism is
reprehensible.

Cheney's comments came out a day before British intelligence officials
announced they had thwarted a major terrorist attack. Surely Cheney was
aware of the plot and the work to thwart it, and was no doubt aware of
the timing of yesterday's announcement.

To exploit a very real terror threat that could have led to major
casualties, and to even indirectly implicate Americans who were
exercising their democratic right by going to the polls and making a
choice borders on the criminal, to say nothing of the insane.

Has Cheney completely lost it?

The latest terror scare is upsetting enough: It is bound to lead to
havoc and chaos both domestically and internationally. It could damage
the economy if fears on flying are sustained. It reopens the profound
wounds of 9/11, a scab we should figure by now will never completely
heal.

But the real terror is this: While our Vacationer- in-Chief and his vice
president shut down dissent, and discourage questions about the way our
government has directed our intelligence and military resources toward
a single target in Iraq, we are no closer to understanding or
dismantling the threat of al Qaeda.

Cheney's remarks underscore just how unsophisticated our understanding
of terrorism is. We have no more understanding of the global forces at
work that lead so many to want to bomb and destroy innocent lives than
we did five years ago.

America's latest crisis is not what happened in Connecticut; it's what
was going to happen in airplanes over the Atlantic.

The immoral and ridiculous claims coming out of the Bush
administration's reign of error could ultimately be responsible for the
kind of casualties that al Qaeda can only dream of.



c 2006 Philadelphia Daily News and wire service sources. All Rights
Reserved.
http://www.philly.com

... Avarice, Corruption, Dishonesty...  GOP family values.
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.47
 * Origin: Try Our Web Based QWK: DOCSPLACE.ORG (1:123/140)