Getting Desperate, Bush Plays The Terror Card (Bill Press Barf Alert)

http://www.billpress.com/ ^ | September 7, 2006 | Bill Press

[lowbridge]

Getting Desperate, Bush Plays The Terror Card

In a way, you can’t blame him. He can’t defend his record on the economy, health care, immigration or Social Security. He certainly can’t defend the war in Iraq. There’s only one way George Bush and Republicans can possibly win in November — and that’s to scare the hell out of the American people.

So it’s no surprise that President Bush gave four speeches in one week, all trying to tie an unpopular war in Iraq to a still-popular (barely) war on terror. If you believe George Bush — and fewer and fewer Americans do — the war in Iraq is directly linked to Sept. 11; Iraq is the frontline in the war on terror; and, by fighting terrorists in Iraq, we are saving ourselves the headache of having to fight them in downtown Des Moines, Dallas or Seattle. And, by the way, we’re not torturing prisoners, either.

Nonsense. Bush’s attempt to equate the war in Iraq with the war on terror worked in 2004, but it’s not going to work in 2006. Why? Because the American people are smarter. As any thinking person now knows — and any thinking person not on the Bush payroll would admit — that Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11. There was no al-Qaida presence in Iraq. The terrorist organization received no weapons, cash or logistical support from Iraq. And Saddam Hussein was no ally of Osama bin Laden. The road from Ground Zero to Afghanistan was a righteous straight line. The road from Afghanistan to Iraq remains a tragic, and unnecessary, detour.

Nor does the continuing violence in Iraq have anything to do with the war on terror. Who’s getting killed there today? Shiites and Sunnis, victims of sectarian violence in Iraq’s open civil warfare. And American troops, caught in the crossfire, where they don’t belong and should not be forced to stay.

There’s only one real connection between Iraq and the war on terror: the fact that Iraq sucks our time, attention and resources away from the real enemy. Yes, there are still evil people planning attacks against the United States. But they’re not in Iraq. They’re in Germany, France, Spain, the U.K., Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other hot spots. Every time they hear President Bush say we’re going to “stay the course” in Iraq, they say “Thank You, George” for giving them more time to plot, plan, raise money and round up new recruits.

The most cynical part of Bush’s new terror offensive is his promise to clean up the legal mess at Guantanamo Bay. This is nothing but pure political grandstanding. Bush is simply trying to take a disastrous Supreme Court decision — which declared his military tribunals unconstitutional — and turn it to his political advantage. So what does he do? After admitting he’s operating a secret network of CIA torture prisons around the world and still holding hundreds of prisoners at Gitmo with no charges filed and no opportunity to see a lawyer, Bush now says he’s willing to start obeying the law. Sort of. As long as Congress swallows the legislation he’s trying to force down their throats. Wow! A president agrees to obey the law . . . maybe. This is progress?

Americans won’t be fooled by Bush’s new terror tactics, any more than they’ll be spooked by his new fondness for comparing Osama bin Laden to Hitler and critics of the Iraq war to Nazi sympathizers. But Bush keeps plugging away, on the theory that if he tells the same lies often enough, people will start believing them. As he explained in March 2005: “In my line of work, you gotta keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in . . . to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

Sound familiar? It should. Bush’s words are strikingly similar to those of another famous propagandist: “Of course, the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along. . . . Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger.” That’s how Hermann Goering put it at the Nuremberg trials in 1945.

So who’s sounding like a Nazi now?

[Lumper20]

http://www.billpress.com/bio.html

Take a look at where this warped mind comes from.

[Semus Dynnen]

"GOOD DAY SIR"

[Froufrou]

Where have you been? Moving still?

[presidio9]

No I haven't moved yet. Suspended for a week. Ostensibly for improperly excerpting an article from the NY Post, but mostly because Jim and his loser hand-picked moderators don't like the fact that I am not afraid to point out that they are a bunch of libertarians running this so-called conservative site. They are also way too tolerant of all the attacks on Catholicism that goes on here.