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Perils of the profession #563: when big news happens, we get to put up with TVs here tuned to cable news, and their constant bleating. I suppose I should be grateful that it's MSNBC, and they're not foisting Pravda Fox on us.
Meh. This is going to dominate the rest of the election season, I suspect. I just hope Dems seize the opportunity to say, "hey, we've been fucking around in Iraq all this time, and ignoring actual terrorists. Duh."
Bush's charming new "Islamic fascists" thing is going to lodge in some heads, too. It's why he's been able to justify the whole Iraq debacle when the country had absolutely no connection to actual terror networks. Hussein was a petty dictator, not an insane fundie. The government was even secular. But to ignorant Americans, any Muslim is a terrorist, so "fighting them over there" means invading any country with a largely-Muslim population, even if it means ignoring greater threats. I'm sure people are going to seize on the notion that this latest group is supposedly Pakistani, despite the fact that the actual Pakistan government is what helped British officials track the group down.
1. Yes, many terrorists are Muslim, but virtually every Muslim terrorist is a fundamentalist. There's a whole nother branch of the religion that has nothing to do with that. Of course, the fact that Bush didn't even know until a few years back that there are Sunnis and Shiites is facepalm territory.
2. People like to point to the Koran and say it's evidence that all Muslims are violent. Uh, folks? Have you actually read the Bible recently?
3. Not all terrorists are Muslim. I suppose we have short memories if we don't remember groups like the IRA, or homegrown whackjobs like Timothy McVeigh. Who was not an isolated case, btw. Christian terrorist groups are widespread in the US. They just tend to target gay folk and abortion clinics, so no-one cares.
My guess is that Bush thought Iraq--having been softened up by the Gulf War--would be an easy takeover, and we could install a puppet government there. We'd get control of their oil--bonus to Bush's buddies--and have a base of operations from which to merrily march through the rest of the region, clearing the way for Israel to establish its homeland so the Rapture can come.
Five years of this nonsense, and we're in far, far worse shape than we would have been if we just took the time to spank the hell out of the Taliban and Al-Queda and then gone back to focusing on domestic policy.
This gal, I like (from an AP story):
Margaret Gavin, 67, waiting to board a train, said she wasn't scared. "Why should I change my life because some idiots want to blow something up?" she said.
Pree-cisely. Shutting down, giving up civil liberties, etc.--that's how these guys operate. There aren't enough of them to attack us outright and defeat worldwide military forces in a real war. They win when they're able to paralyze a population and destroy an economy because people are worried that their streetcorner might be next.
But of course, people still panic. I suspect this might be a hell of a time to snap up cheap plane tickets.
Meh. This is going to dominate the rest of the election season, I suspect. I just hope Dems seize the opportunity to say, "hey, we've been fucking around in Iraq all this time, and ignoring actual terrorists. Duh."
Bush's charming new "Islamic fascists" thing is going to lodge in some heads, too. It's why he's been able to justify the whole Iraq debacle when the country had absolutely no connection to actual terror networks. Hussein was a petty dictator, not an insane fundie. The government was even secular. But to ignorant Americans, any Muslim is a terrorist, so "fighting them over there" means invading any country with a largely-Muslim population, even if it means ignoring greater threats. I'm sure people are going to seize on the notion that this latest group is supposedly Pakistani, despite the fact that the actual Pakistan government is what helped British officials track the group down.
1. Yes, many terrorists are Muslim, but virtually every Muslim terrorist is a fundamentalist. There's a whole nother branch of the religion that has nothing to do with that. Of course, the fact that Bush didn't even know until a few years back that there are Sunnis and Shiites is facepalm territory.
2. People like to point to the Koran and say it's evidence that all Muslims are violent. Uh, folks? Have you actually read the Bible recently?
3. Not all terrorists are Muslim. I suppose we have short memories if we don't remember groups like the IRA, or homegrown whackjobs like Timothy McVeigh. Who was not an isolated case, btw. Christian terrorist groups are widespread in the US. They just tend to target gay folk and abortion clinics, so no-one cares.
My guess is that Bush thought Iraq--having been softened up by the Gulf War--would be an easy takeover, and we could install a puppet government there. We'd get control of their oil--bonus to Bush's buddies--and have a base of operations from which to merrily march through the rest of the region, clearing the way for Israel to establish its homeland so the Rapture can come.
Five years of this nonsense, and we're in far, far worse shape than we would have been if we just took the time to spank the hell out of the Taliban and Al-Queda and then gone back to focusing on domestic policy.
This gal, I like (from an AP story):
Margaret Gavin, 67, waiting to board a train, said she wasn't scared. "Why should I change my life because some idiots want to blow something up?" she said.
Pree-cisely. Shutting down, giving up civil liberties, etc.--that's how these guys operate. There aren't enough of them to attack us outright and defeat worldwide military forces in a real war. They win when they're able to paralyze a population and destroy an economy because people are worried that their streetcorner might be next.
But of course, people still panic. I suspect this might be a hell of a time to snap up cheap plane tickets.
