For your PC needsS. O. Damocles
13-11-2004, 03:13 PM
Ethic wrote:
> Now We'll Have the Torture Guy as Attorney General.
> What's Next, Charles Manson as Secretary of Defense ?
>
> 11 November 2004 By MAUREEN DOWD OP-ED COLUMNIST Email:
> liberties@nytimes.com
>
> A Moveable Feast of Terrorism
>
>
> WASHINGTON - During the campaign, President Bush and Dick
> Cheney
> gave the ominous impression that there was a dire threat
> that
> terrorists could incinerate Americans at any time if that
> powder
> puff John Kerry got anywhere near the Oval Office.
>
> We felt the hot breath of the wolf pack bearing down on us.
> But only a week later, the alarums have dimmed.
>
> The administration lowered the terror threat in New York and
> Washington yesterday, and the Capitol Hill police were
> dismantling
> the elaborate security checkpoints they had put on streets
> around
> the Capitol to thwart would-be bombers.
>
> In his handwritten resignation letter, John Ashcroft
> reassured
> Mr. Bush that "the objective of securing the safety of
> Americans
> from crime and terror has been achieved.''
>
> Mission accomplished. Tell those wolves to scat, and let
> that
> eagle soar, baby.
>
> It was a tad surprising that Mr. Ashcroft would want to
> leave
> just when he had a mandate to throw blue curtains over every
> naked statue in town and hold Bible study for government
> employees
> in a federal office. (He called his daily devotionals at the
> Justice Department "RAMP'': Read, Argue, Memorize and Pray.)
>
> The president is putting his own counsel, Alberto Gonzales,
> who wrote the famous memo defending torture, in charge of
> our
> civil liberties. Torture Guy, who blithely threw off 75
> years
> of international law and set the stage for the grotesque
> abuses
> at Abu Ghraib and dubious detentions at Guantánamo, seems to
> have a good grasp of what's just. No doubt we'll soon learn
> what other protections, besides the Geneva Conventions and
> the Constitution, Mr. Gonzales finds "quaint'' and
> "obsolete.''
>
> With the FBI investigating Halliburton and the second-term
> scandal curse looming, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney want a
> dependable
> ally - and former Enron attorney - at Justice. But since the
> country is controlled by one party and the press has tended
> toward the pusillanimous, cowed by the special prosecutor
> Patrick Fitzgerald as he tries to throw reporters in jail,
> the White House may be able to suppress any second-term
> problems.
>
> Mr. Bush should quit fiddling around on the domestic side
> and
> revamp his war council and national security team. The
> Bushies
> can stop mentioning Osama's name and tell themselves that
> his
> last, less militant video was a sign of weakness, but it's
> just
> part of their dangerous denial. Osama bin Laden killed 3,000
> innocents on 9/11; let's nail him.
>
> Even as Karl Rove boasts that "moral values'' swept his boss
> back into the White House, it never seems to occur to the
> president that it's immoral to endanger our troops in a war
> shaped by the political clock, a war with no visible enemy,
> no coherent plan and no exit timetable.
>
> Falluja, supposed to be a defining battle, showed only how
> undefined this guerrilla war is. The Marines swept into a
> city deserted by most of the insurgents, who were
> terrorizing
> and kidnapping Iraqis elsewhere.
>
> "Falluja isn't Masada or the Alamo,'' Fred Kaplan wrote in
> Slate, "some last-ditch outpost where the rebels whoop
> their final battle
> cry, rally one more round of resistance, then pass into
> history
> when their last rifleman falls.''
>
> Last night, the military said it dominated 70 percent of
> Falluja.
> But what good does that do if 98 percent of the bad guys
> have
> already moved on, or if 100 percent of the Sunnis boycott
> the
> elections out of anger over the assault ? It's just like
> when
> Mr. Bush says 75 percent of Al Qaeda's leadership has been
> killed
> or captured. What good is that if Al Qaeda has become an
> inspirational force for 100 percent of the jihadists ?
>
> The math is self-defeating. Pictures of forces taking a
> Falluja
> mosque will no doubt spur a surge of Islamic terrorist
> recruits,
> who won't be fooled by the marines' new camouflage : their
> Iraqi
> vanguard.
>
> Just as there is talk here that John Kerry may want to run
> again,
> there is also talk that Donald Rumsfeld wants to stay on to
> continue
> his transformation of the military. Rummy's stubborn need
> to show
> we could do more with less is what kept us from having the
> strength
> to secure Iraq at the start, turning our troops into
> targets for
> a ghostly foe armed with the explosives and missiles looted
> by
> insurgents from unguarded caches.
>
> The president should say ..............................
> More :
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/opinion/11dowd.html?oref=login&oref=login&
> oref=login&hp
> Now We'll Have the Torture Guy as Attorney General.
> What's Next, Charles Manson as Secretary of Defense ?
>
> 11 November 2004 By MAUREEN DOWD OP-ED COLUMNIST Email:
> liberties@nytimes.com
>
> A Moveable Feast of Terrorism
>
>
> WASHINGTON - During the campaign, President Bush and Dick
> Cheney
> gave the ominous impression that there was a dire threat
> that
> terrorists could incinerate Americans at any time if that
> powder
> puff John Kerry got anywhere near the Oval Office.
>
> We felt the hot breath of the wolf pack bearing down on us.
> But only a week later, the alarums have dimmed.
>
> The administration lowered the terror threat in New York and
> Washington yesterday, and the Capitol Hill police were
> dismantling
> the elaborate security checkpoints they had put on streets
> around
> the Capitol to thwart would-be bombers.
>
> In his handwritten resignation letter, John Ashcroft
> reassured
> Mr. Bush that "the objective of securing the safety of
> Americans
> from crime and terror has been achieved.''
>
> Mission accomplished. Tell those wolves to scat, and let
> that
> eagle soar, baby.
>
> It was a tad surprising that Mr. Ashcroft would want to
> leave
> just when he had a mandate to throw blue curtains over every
> naked statue in town and hold Bible study for government
> employees
> in a federal office. (He called his daily devotionals at the
> Justice Department "RAMP'': Read, Argue, Memorize and Pray.)
>
> The president is putting his own counsel, Alberto Gonzales,
> who wrote the famous memo defending torture, in charge of
> our
> civil liberties. Torture Guy, who blithely threw off 75
> years
> of international law and set the stage for the grotesque
> abuses
> at Abu Ghraib and dubious detentions at Guantánamo, seems to
> have a good grasp of what's just. No doubt we'll soon learn
> what other protections, besides the Geneva Conventions and
> the Constitution, Mr. Gonzales finds "quaint'' and
> "obsolete.''
>
> With the FBI investigating Halliburton and the second-term
> scandal curse looming, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney want a
> dependable
> ally - and former Enron attorney - at Justice. But since the
> country is controlled by one party and the press has tended
> toward the pusillanimous, cowed by the special prosecutor
> Patrick Fitzgerald as he tries to throw reporters in jail,
> the White House may be able to suppress any second-term
> problems.
>
> Mr. Bush should quit fiddling around on the domestic side
> and
> revamp his war council and national security team. The
> Bushies
> can stop mentioning Osama's name and tell themselves that
> his
> last, less militant video was a sign of weakness, but it's
> just
> part of their dangerous denial. Osama bin Laden killed 3,000
> innocents on 9/11; let's nail him.
>
> Even as Karl Rove boasts that "moral values'' swept his boss
> back into the White House, it never seems to occur to the
> president that it's immoral to endanger our troops in a war
> shaped by the political clock, a war with no visible enemy,
> no coherent plan and no exit timetable.
>
> Falluja, supposed to be a defining battle, showed only how
> undefined this guerrilla war is. The Marines swept into a
> city deserted by most of the insurgents, who were
> terrorizing
> and kidnapping Iraqis elsewhere.
>
> "Falluja isn't Masada or the Alamo,'' Fred Kaplan wrote in
> Slate, "some last-ditch outpost where the rebels whoop
> their final battle
> cry, rally one more round of resistance, then pass into
> history
> when their last rifleman falls.''
>
> Last night, the military said it dominated 70 percent of
> Falluja.
> But what good does that do if 98 percent of the bad guys
> have
> already moved on, or if 100 percent of the Sunnis boycott
> the
> elections out of anger over the assault ? It's just like
> when
> Mr. Bush says 75 percent of Al Qaeda's leadership has been
> killed
> or captured. What good is that if Al Qaeda has become an
> inspirational force for 100 percent of the jihadists ?
>
> The math is self-defeating. Pictures of forces taking a
> Falluja
> mosque will no doubt spur a surge of Islamic terrorist
> recruits,
> who won't be fooled by the marines' new camouflage : their
> Iraqi
> vanguard.
>
> Just as there is talk here that John Kerry may want to run
> again,
> there is also talk that Donald Rumsfeld wants to stay on to
> continue
> his transformation of the military. Rummy's stubborn need
> to show
> we could do more with less is what kept us from having the
> strength
> to secure Iraq at the start, turning our troops into
> targets for
> a ghostly foe armed with the explosives and missiles looted
> by
> insurgents from unguarded caches.
>
> The president should say ..............................
> More :
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/opinion/11dowd.html?oref=login&oref=login&
> oref=login&hp