Be Afraid – Be Very Afraid

by on June 29th, 2005

“There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home.”

“We either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us.” (Quoting Army Lt General John Vines)

“We fight today because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens.”

President George W. Bush, Speech on Iraq, June 28, 2005

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At least he didn’t raise the color code to orange. Strange how that hasn’t happened since the election ended.

But there shouldn’t be any doubt about the intent of last night’s speech — to scare the American people into supporting the war in Iraq.

The strategy is pretty much standard fare for the Bush administration. When you start to fall behind in the polls – scare em. Meanwhile have your henchmen attack your opponents as liberal wimps and cowards, unwilling and unable to protect the American people, ala Karl Rove’s comments last week in New York. (PS- if there is anybody out there that still thinks Rove’s comments were an off the cuff mistake, call me, I have a bridge I want to sell you.)

Never mind that there was no connection between 9-11 and Iraq, never mind that there were no weapons of mass destruction for Saddam to give to terrorists. That didn’t keep the President from trying to tie his mess in Iraq to the holy grail of 9-11 and using the tragic deaths of 3,000 Americans on that day to try and scare us into supporting a poorly planned and implemented military action that has turned Iraq into a recruiting poster for terrorism and made America less safe.

But I’m not so sure that the American people are going to buy this swill this time. He may have gone to the 9-11 club one time to many. My sense is that the American people were already plenty worried, what they wanted to hear was how Bush is going to get us out of this Neocon nightmare.

John McDonald