Re: Will Osama help W.?

From: John Larkin (jjlarkin_at_highlandSNIPtechTHISnologyPLEASE.com)
Date: 10/31/04 

Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 11:04:32 -0800

On 31 Oct 2004 10:04:46 -0800, Winfield Hill
<Winfield_member@newsguy.com> wrote:

> My favorite part: "The Bushies’ campaign pitch follows their usual backward
> logic: Because we have failed to make you safe in three years, you should
> reelect us to make you safer in the next four years."
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/31/opinion/31dowd.html?
> http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?section=Opinion&OID=62531
>
> ---
> MAUREEN DOWD - October 28, 2004 - WASHINGTON -
>
> Some people thought the October surprise would be the President producing
> Osama.
>
> Instead, it was Osama producing yet another video taunting the President
> and lecturing America.
>
> After bin Laden’s pre-election commentary from his anchor desk at a secure,
> undisclosed location, many TV chatterers and Republicans postulated that
> the evildoer’s campaign intrusion would help the President.
>
> OBL, they said, might reelect W.
>
> They follow the Bush strategists’ reasoning that since President Bush rates
> higher than John Kerry on fighting terror, anytime Americans get rattled
> about Iraq and al-Qaeda, it’s a plus for the President. And Republicans can
> keep claiming that al-Qaeda wants the “weak” Democrat elected, even as some
> intelligence experts suggest the terrorists prefer that the belligerent
> Mr. Bush stay in power because he has been a boon to jihadist recruiting,
> with his disastrous occupation of Iraq and his true believer, us-versus-them,
> my-Christian-God’s-directing-my-foreign-policy vibe.
>
> The Bushies’ campaign pitch follows their usual backward logic: Because
> we have failed to make you safe, you should reelect us to make you safer.
> Because we haven’t caught Osama in three years, you need us to catch Osama
> in the next four years. Because we didn’t bother to secure explosives in
> Iraq, you can count on us to make sure those explosives aren’t used against
> you.
>
> You’d think that seeing Osama looking fit as a fiddle and ready for hate
> would spark anger at the Bush administration’s cynical diversion of the war
> on al-Qaeda to the war on Saddam. It’s absurd that we’re mired in Iraq —
> an invasion the demented Vice President praised on Friday for its
> “brilliance” — while the 9/11 mastermind nonchalantly pops up anytime he
> wants. For some, it seemed cartoonish, with Osama as Road Runner beeping
> by Wile E. Bush as *** Cheney and Rummy run the Acme/Halliburton explosives
> company—now under FBI investigation for its no-bid contracts on anvils, axle
> grease (guaranteed slippery) and dehydrated boulders (just add water).
>
> Osama slouched onto TV bragging about pulling off the 9/11 attacks just
> after the President strutted onto TV in New Hampshire with 9/11 families,
> bragging that al-Qaeda leaders know “we are on their trail.”
>
> Maybe bin Laden hasn’t gotten the word. Maybe W. should get off the trail
> and get on Osama’s tail.
>
> W. was clinging to his inane mantra that if we fight the terrorists over
> there, we don’t have to fight them here, even as bin Laden was back on TV
> threatening to come here. The President still avoided using Osama’s name
> on Friday, part of the concerted effort to downgrade him and merge him with
> Iraqi insurgents.
>
> The White House reaction to the disclosures about the vanished explosives
> in Iraq was typical. Though it’s clear the treasures and terrors of Iraq —
> from viruses to ammunition to artifacts—were being looted and loaded into
> donkey carts and pickups because we had insufficient troops to secure the
> country, Bush officials devoted the vast resources of the government to
> trying to undermine the facts to protect the President.
>
> The Pentagon mobilized to debunk the bunker story with a tortured press
> conference and a satellite photo of trucks that proved about as much as
> Colin Powell’s prewar drawings of two trailers that were supposed to be
> mobile biological weapons labs.
>
> Republicans insinuated that it was a plot by foreign internationalists to
> help the foreigner-loving, internationalist Kerry, a UN leak from the camp
> of Mohamed ElBaradei to hurt the administration that had scorned the UN as
> a weak sister.
>
> In their ruthless determination to put Mr. Bush’s political future ahead of
> our future safety, the White House and House Republicans last week thwarted
> the enactment of recommendations of the 9/11 commission they never wanted
> in the first place.
>
> While pretending to be serious about getting a bill on reorganizing
> intelligence agencies before the election, the White House never forced
> congressional Republicans to come to an agreement. So the advice from the
> panel that spent 19 months studying how the government could shore up
> intelligence so there wouldn’t be another 9/11 may be squandered, even
> though *** Cheney’s favorite warning to scare voters away from Mr. Kerry
> is that we might someday face terrorists “in the middle of one of our cities
> with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us,” including
> a nuclear bomb.
>
> Wow. I feel safer. Don’t you?

Hey, Win, would you mind if I snipped chapters from AoE and published
them here?

John