I Heart the Daily News
Aug 11th, 2006 at 12:25 pm by Susie
The editorial today in my beloved Philadelphia Daily News (or, as my wingnut brother calls it, “Pravda”):
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.
Conn. Senate Race Still Likely to Have a Democratic Winner
(CQPolitics.com)
CQPolitics.com - CQPolitics.com has analyzed Tuesday’s stunning primary upset of Connecticut Democ
Has Cheney completely lost it?
Implicit in this question is the mistaken notion that Shotgun Dick ever “had it” in the first place.
Maybe we can finally get the groundswell of ridicule going we need against this gang. The Daily News editorial is a good sign they may have finally overreached this time.
Everybody know by now the risk was out there for a dozen years, if it still really was a risk. So why now?
Maybe they improvised too fast when too many narratives started heading south: Lieberman defeat, more plummeting in the polls, the bloody chaos in Iraq where we’re staying the coures (for how long?), cluster bombs for Israel and the blown ceasefire, you name it. So they pulled the plug on some group that was probably started by a provocateur and riddled with informants anyhow (not a bad strategy, in and of itself, actually — suck the nutballs into a compromised organization where you can keep track of them).
A possibly useful operation blown for no reason, except partisan political advantage. And hundreds of thousands of women had millions of dollars worth of makeup confiscated. For Republican political advantage. Lotsa questions are gonna be asked. Keep up the pressure. Every bit helps.
Spinning the White House’s over-the-top terror exploitation … Compare and contrast these two different versions of AFP story for yourself.
i’m not at all scared of flying, but the no liquids policy will definitely keep me grounded. ever land in a foreign country with no luggage? that’s why you keep your essentials in the carry on. what a hassle - who needs it?