Teh Fire Next Time

This story is making the rounds today:

Santorum Suggest New Terror Attacks Will Change View Of War

[…]

Santorum went on to clearly imply that terror attacks will occur inside America which will alter the body politic and lead to a reversal of the anti-war sentiment now dominating the country.

“Between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public’s going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK. But I think the American public’s going to have a very different view,” said the former senator from Pennsylvania.

That would really rescue the Republican Party’s fortunes, wouldn’t it? A little boomity-boom between here and November, and America will be terrified back into voting for conservative bunco artists like Rick Santorum.

One finds it hard not to wonder what Rick might know that a grand jury might later find interesting. Because here are ‘unnamed officials’ and Michael Chertoff plowing the same turf:

White House calls meeting on al Qaeda threat

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House has called an urgent multi-agency meeting for Thursday to discuss a potential new al Qaeda threat on U.S. soil, ABC News reported on Tuesday.

Top intelligence and law enforcement officials have been told to meet in the White House Situation Room to report on steps to minimize or counter the threat and what steps are being taken to tighten security at government buildings, ABC said.

The meeting would be one of a number that have been convened in light of new intelligence and information learned from the recent failed car bomb attempts in London, ABC reported, citing a senior U.S. administration official.

Is it that home-grown terrorists are usually total chumps? Incapable of building a car bomb and liable to resort to a desperate Plan B, such as crashing their car into a wall and setting themselves on fire? Because we knew that already. Eek-terror-plot. Eek-terror-plot. Eek-terror-plot. Eek-terror-plot. With enemies like these, who needs Mr. Bean?

The unnamed official told ABC the level of concern of a new attack in the United States was now higher than it had been in some time.

The White House had no immediate comment on the report.

[…]

ABC News cited senior U.S. intelligence officials as saying that new information suggests a small al Qaeda cell was on its way to the United States or may already be in the country.

Separately, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board his “gut feeling” is that the United States faces an increased risk of attack this summer.

Chertoff said his assessment was based on past patterns of terrorists in Europe, intelligence he did not disclose and recent al Qaeda statements, the Tribune reported.

If something happens between now and November ’08, we can naturally expect a sustained shriek of ‘we told you so’ from the right-wing high-chair-thumpers, with immediate shrieky-hooting demands to shred the Constitution and surrender America into despotism, George W. Bush variety (i.e., ‘tin-pot’). It’s a mistake to note that these folks are always saying contradictory, illogical things, and to assume from it that they have no principles. They do. It’s just too simple for us to see, much of the time.

Their constant claim, since roughly the end of Truman’s last term, that America is engaged in an historic battle-of-wills against a powerful enemy, that the present emergency demands drastic measures, and so forth, is only a rationalization, a trick picked up from the exigencies of World War II, that sets them free to support ‘drastic measures’ — which are what they’re really attracted to. The organizing principle behind right-wing rhetoric is simple human spite: The political ideology of its rhetoricians is that somewhere in America, at all times, someone is stealing their parking spot or taking the last jelly donut, and someday there’ll be hell to pay. Someday, as it were, a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.

The Spite Caucus isn’t particular about its methods. The more that ‘liberals’ revere, for instance, the Bill of Rights, the more they attack it under one pretense or another, but ultimately for that reason alone. It gives them the joy that a jerky twelve-year-old gets from jumping up and down on another kid’s sand castle — a Sandschloßspringenfreude. They support torture in part because it is torture, but also (and ultimately more importantly) because they imagine ‘liberals’ helplessly enraged by the manly drastic-methods that our enemies have regrettably forced us to use against them, through no fault of our own. If disaster follows, then disaster, after all, is what they were seeking. They thrive — with intermingled outrage and glee — on any chaos or tragedy that doesn’t touch them personally. Their horror at 9-11 is identical with their exuberance at the leveling of Fallujah or the attack on Beirut.

But the point is that such people attract leaders who are either like them in spirit, or who know how to manipulate this most easily-manipulated of American constituencies. Because truly, the right-wing yellers may be the least of our troubles. If there’s an emergency claim of executive power brewing (and here we have to ask: given what we know about this administration, where does the line of paranoia properly fall?), nobody will believe what’s happening until the dust settles. And 9-11 has taught us that dust can take a passing long time to settle, as it were.

 

Comments: 78

 
 
 

Separately, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board his “gut feeling” is that the United States faces an increased risk of attack this summer.

If Chertoff is going on his gut we’re totally fucked. Isn’t that partly how we got into the Iraq mess?

 
 

This is all true, and yet you’ll notice that no matter how big the threat, it never justifies raising taxes, or confiscating property, or invading any kind of corporate privilege … because that, of course, would be WRONG.

 
 

My favorite part of this is how every time a terrorist attack either takes place or is attempted under Republican leadership, it is assumed that this benefits Republicans politically.

After all, nothing shows which party is the Daddy Party of Keeping Amurka Safe than successful and nearly-successful terrorist attacks.

Always remember: 9/11/2001 showed how strong, manly, and security-minded Republicans were.

Had 9/11/2001 somehow taken place under President Gore (just grant the hypothetical), then it would be time for the Republican masses to assemble outside the White House with pitchforks and torches to drive the Democratic President who let 9/11 happen into impeachment or immediate lynching.

 
 

A wise-ass once said: “Show me a man who profits from a mistake, and I’ll show you a man who will repeart that mistake.”

The first terror attack rescued Bush from “4os and dropping” ratings, (we latter learned that the 6 July PDB made clear OBL was determined to attack in the US, but “who coulda known?”. YOU SHOULDA KNOWN, Condi.) Are we looking at anothe “Mistake”? And will it work?

 
 

And this group depends more on entrails than a pagan priest.

 
 

About that “November” thing. Is there any real significance to the date of November 2007? Or has Santorum pulled a Billy Pilgrim and come unglued from the space/time continuum?

 
 

“With enemies like these, who needs Mr. Bean?”

Hardy-Har!!! Nice one. So apt.

“Someday, as it were, a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.”

Do the worm on metropolis!

 
 

It is so perfectly cyclical, they are CERTAIN to be right eventually. You think the extremist muslim fundamentalists were pissed at the US in ’01? Since then, we’ve done nothing but encourage their anger and hatred. The people we’ve killed, tortured, the cities and lives we’ve destroyed, the people we’ve kidnapped and held because somebody that didn’t like them told us they were “terrorists”, that magic word that allows complete freedom of action with no accountability.

So, are we more likely to get hit again in the next twelve months, or less likely?

People are funny. In the middle of an extended drought, the crazy old indian dude can come out and promise that it will rain. And he will be wrong hundereds of days in a row. But one day he will be right, and a surprisingly large contingent of the population will hail him as a prophet.

We will get hit again. The interesting thing to watch is how the vast majority of the people react this time. Will they once again be cowed like sheep, following the most extreme, reckless and counterproductive policies because at least then we’d be in their base, killing their d00dz? Or will they truly not be fooled again, and demand a more thoughtful, targeted response while maintaining our democratic values?

I am hopeful, without being optimistic…

mikey

 
 

Don’t you realize 7-Eleven changed everything?

 
 

This sounds like a complete set up to me. I’m not a 9/11 conspiracy nut, but with all this “chatter” from the wing nuts about an attack this year, if something does happen, my first suspicion would be that it’s an inside job.

 
 

Sandschlossspringenfreude is the new truthiness.

 
Canadian Observer
 

DJShay

Yes, that would be a logical assumption.

 
 

“I believe the danger is if the American people make the wrong choice in November, that we will be attacked again.”

-Dick Cheney, 2004

“Looks like you made the wrong choice, American people. Suckers.”

-Dick Cheney now

 
 

When you get down to brass tacks, all your gut ever really tells you is that it’s hungry or it wants to poop. Chertoff seems hungry for some terror attacks.

 
 

Between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen… after saying terrorism inside the country would change minds about the war?

Anyone else saying that would be picked up by the FBI.

 
 

Youtube for the collection: “Never Tell A Lie” (80’s Mormon Commercial)

 
 

Wait- I’m confused.

Lil’ Ricky sez:
“..terror attacks will occur inside America which will alter the body politic…”

Are we going to be hit with a giant bomb of the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex, or did I just read that wrong?

 
 

Well, if we eventually find out about how the Bush Administration prevented the summer’s 9/11 event, will you be thanking them or scoffing about it?

Are you hoping for a terrorist attack so Bush looks bad, or are you hoping it doesn’t so you can call this propaganda (like Olbermann did) and make Bush look bad?

I think I see a pattern. So much BDS, so little time.

 
 

Don’t you realize 7-Eleven changed everything?

Mmmm…. Slurpees.

 
Trilateral Chairman
 

This seems odd. For the last few years, Republicans have been crediting Bush for preventing further attacks. At this point, it’s one of the *only* things they give him credit for–that, two Supreme Court justices, and the veto of the stem-cell bill.

If we get hit again, then that argument goes out the window.

Not, of course, that that’ll bother the wingnuts in the slightest.

That said, I do think it’s quite possible that we’ll be attacked again. I think we’ve been very, VERY lucky so far.

 
 

Americans are against the war because they falsely believe we are not persoanlly under the threat of terror. If radical Muslims cause some act of terror in the U.S., Americans will see that the war in Iraq is about terrorism, that we are winning over there and that we need to send more troops and stay indifinitely in Iraq, to protect America, which is the connection they just can’t make now, without being more terrorized, like the terrorists who hate the war in Iraq want.

 
 

I’d like to see as little understating of the significance of the Glasgow plots as possible, thanks in advance.

But it is quite clear that the right hasn’t had any serious claims to keeping anything safe since Churchill (Now there was a conservative who deserved all the praise received).

 
 

At this point, it’s one of the *only* things they give him credit for–that, two Supreme Court justices, and the veto of the stem-cell bill.

Hard to give him credit for the Supreme Court justices: he was the warm body in the chair when the spots needed filling. Anyone think Bush has the knowledge to approve/disappove of anybody with legal opinions of any kind?

 
 

I predict huge terror attack (false flag?) on a liberal city, then semi- to full blown martial law. Possibly even the suspension of the elections.

They have been taking cues from the Nazi play book so far, why not the old Reichstag Fire on seven?

Hut…hut…hut…hut…hut..hut…HIKE!

And I have my tinfoil hat on.

 
 

For the first time, a poll has found that more people consider the Iraq War a mistake than ever thought the same of the Vietnam War during our engagement there.

Teh Linkie.

In other news, loyal bushie spends all day in Congress lying or forgetting, water still wet, and wingnuts still spend all day wetting their beds or hiding under them.

 
 

So, I imagine that Rick is now being questioned by the FBI right?

 
 

Shorter Chertoff: “Big light in sky slated to appear in East.”

 
 

“Are you hoping for a terrorist attack so Bush looks bad, or are you hoping it doesn’t so you can call this propaganda (like Olbermann did) and make Bush look bad?”

Wow. But what if the turrists turn out to be Martians? Plutonians? Hmmmm? What then?

 
 

I don’t think Santorum will be lucky enough to have al Qaeda hit us again. Thanks to 9/11, Bush got his excuse to go into Iraq. Now the US military is bogged down indefinitely, and America is considered to be the number one rogue nation in the world. Bin Laden already has everything he wants, sans the total destruction of Israel.
Any further attacks on America will probably be domestic. Just an assumption.

 
 

Are you hoping for a terrorist attack so Bush looks bad, or are you hoping it doesn’t so you can call this propaganda (like Olbermann did) and make Bush look bad?

This, I’ve slowly come to realize, is The Wingnut Way (soon to be a novel by Tony Hillerman): if you let yay-hoos like Psycheout frame the discussion, then you’re screwed one way or the other. If you do want an attack (although, frankly, it’s only the wingnuts who seem to get a collective boner at the idea), then you’re partisan and bad; if you don’t want an attack, then you’re partisan and bad.

The same thing has been happening with the Fred! “cowboy death scene” story. If AP keeps that part of the story up on the web site, then they’re using false or badly-sourced info in a partisan anti-Fred! hit piece. If they take that part of the article down, then they hiding something, and the entire piece is “open to question.”

Remember, though: if there is an attack this summer, it’s Clinton’s fault.

 
 

Another terrorist attack in the U.S., and Bush & Cheney will be lynched!

 
 

So, let me get this straight, Red Shark.

The reason everyone thinks we’re losing over there is because we’re winning over here. So if we start losing over here, we’ll begin to believe we’re winning over there?

Are you really that confused or did the talking points just get crossed?

 
 

is the Bush/Cheney cabal morally capable of staging a terrorist attack in order to shore up support for imperialist agression and martial law? Yes, I believe they are perfetly capable of it.

Are they capable of pulling it off? I doubt it.

Would the American people fall for such a stunt? I don’t know. It could go either way.

 
 

I think Psycheout is a Satire Troll, but Red Shark loves pie.

Just keeping tabs.

 
 

the Republicans are already calling for more attacks on the US in order to shore up Bush’s figures. Remember the chairman of the Arkansas GOP a few weeks ago, Dennis Milligan?

 
 

Is “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” banned in Republican home schools? Because I don’t understand how they don’t get the skepticism at this point.

And after billions of dollars, hundreds of national security PowerPoint org chart revisions, and a vibrant Crayola terror alert system, all we get is “gut reactions”? That must be the new Brown color for excessively high bullshit levels.

 
 

“I am hopeful, without being optimistic…” – Mikey

“Don’t be happy….worry.” – The Kinsey Sicks http://www.kinseysicks.com

We’re f**ked…Unamerica is ruled by teh stupid.

 
 

Is it that home-grown terrorists are usually total chumps? Incapable of building a car bomb and liable to resort to a desperate Plan B, such as crashing their car into a wall and setting themselves on fire?

As a British citizen, who lives not one mile from the site of an IRA bombing, I can say I don’t see the above events as terrorism so much as alternative comedy.

But then, I’ve always been vaguely sociopathic…

 
 

I thought Red Shark was a parody troll. So hard to keep track, these days!

 
Smiling Mortician
 

I’m with you, Thunder. Red Shark’s twisted reasoning is close to perfection. It makes me woozy — but in a damn-that’s-funny kind of way. Psycheout, on the other hand . . . well, I’m not sure I buy it.

 
Smiling Mortician
 

Oops. To finish: Psycheout passes as a parody for a while but then statements like or are you hoping it doesn’t so you can call this propaganda (like Olbermann did) sound just a little too full of wingnutty goodness.

 
 

Speaking of Olbermann, I like how he made a fart joke out of Chertoff’s “gut feeling.”

 
 

OTOH Blogs4Brownback is way over the top…

 
 

The comments about home grown terrorists bring up an interesting point. As anybody with enough sense to pour the piss out of their boots (if the instructions are written on the heel) knows, almost all acts of terrorism on American soil in the last 20 years have been perpetrated by Wingnuts. This isn’t librul propaganda. This is what anyone in the bidness of law enforcement and/or emergency response will tell you. So whenever I hear a wingnut argue that we need…say… warrantless wiretaps to prevent terror attakcs I always point that the subjects of this surveilance should be extreme fundamentalist/right-wing groups and their supporters. Which reminds me, is the Anthrax Mailer the Maryland area advance man for Rudy or Fred?

 
 

A parody troll, am I? Well, it is a parody site. This place is such a house of mirrors, why can’t anyone see their own reflection.

Look, the logic couldn’t be any clearer. The reason Americans are against the war is because nothing is being accomplished over there. If America were sufficiently terrorized, like they were right after 9/11 then they would be looking at things differently. You know, they way they saw Iraq as part of the war on terror back then, and they don’t see it that way now? We could turn back the clock with one good the-Muslims-almost-got-away-with-a-big-huge-bomb scare. The public won’t unlearn what they understand about Iraq now, they just be riled up and want some radical Muslim blood. Where can we easily fight some radical Muslims? Where we’re already doing it, aren’t we?

 
 

I think Psycheout is a Satire Troll, but Red Shark loves pie.

T4toby, for whatever it’s worth I’ve reached the same conclusion. But Psycheout is annoying enough that if he was to increase the frequency of his little, er, visits here I’d have to drop a load of pie on his ass, too…

mikey

 
 

Let’s see. Logic. So exactly when did we catch Osama Bin Laden? Was that before or after Mission Accomplished?

 
 

Well, why the subterfuge about invoking terrorists to frighten Americans?

I mean, if they’re so confident that any level of fear will prompt Americans to Support Our Commander In Chief, why doesn’t he just threaten to attack us directly?

Bush Jr. and Rove could go on TV and threaten to start attacking American cities in order to make us fearful and supportive, and the sooner we start getting supporting, the sooner the attacks will cease.

There. It’s direct, it’s simple, and it tests whether their hypothesis is right or not. Who knows? Maybe the Bush Jr. supporters will adhere even more strongly to Dear Leader precisely because he has (for those not killed) spared their life until his next strike.

 
 

I HAVE TRAVELED INTO THE FUTURE but return now to inform you that Debbie Schlussel will be outraged. She will have been right all along, after all.

 
 

Red Shark, you assume there was support for invading Iraq. (looks around) I never did, did you over there? What about you? Why did we invade Iraq? come on Red Shark, you can do it… hint, it’s not about terrorism… or democracy…

 
 

The problem is that there are people who are trying to bomb sites in the U.S.. There have been many reports of missing nuclear materials from the former USSR states as well as Canada. We have terrible border and port security. Put it all together and it is not hard to see how some more organized and intelligent terrorists could pull off a dirty bomb explosion in a major city. The problem here is that this has all become more likely through the misrule of Bush. From not securing nuclear material to not securing ports. The flip side of that problem is that it is becoming quite clear that the right is desperate for another major terrorist attack in the U.S. in order to, they think, vindicate their position and shut up the opposition. As far as shutting up the opposition it would probably work. The beltway media and power structure has learned nothing from their mistakes after 9/11 and leading up to the war in Iraq and are posed to repeat them.

The only hope is either a massive uprising of the people fed up with the power elite or a massive change in our government which may come too late or not at all if the hoped for attack comes and the right steals the election as they are now planning.

 
Random Observer
 

Follow the logic:

1. If no terrorists attack the US, it means that the War in Iraq is working and we should continue it.

2. If terrorists attack the US, it proves that we need to fight more against terrorism and thus stay in Iraq.

Funny how that works. Violence in Iraq of course follows the exact same logic:

1. If violence rises it is because the insurgents are desparate and we have them cornered and need to press on.

2. If violence drops it is because we are winning and need to keep doing what we are doing.

There must be a name for this sort of logic. (Other than “massive stupidity.”) Regardless of what happens, all events point to the same pre-ordained conclusion!

It’s also pretty fucking sad that Republicans are now basically hoping for a terrorist attack to occur. Now who hates America again?

 
a different brad
 

Fantastic post, but there’s one thing that bugs me about the whole thing. An attack is by no means guaranteed to help Bush. They’re still trying to convince people 9/11 was Clinton’s fault. There’d be no one to blame but Bush, and The Dept of Homeland Security. Bin Laden ain’t dead, but Saddam is?
The “chatter” does make me worry, and the question of what’s paranoid today is way too relevant. But assuming we’re not talking about the course of a fascist takeover of the country, which is not necessarily a safe assumption, I don’t know that another attack or series of attacks would benefit the Bush Admin the way they presume.

 
 

See, Red Shark, the problem with your ‘plan’, as it is, is we’re not the side interested in terrorizing the U.S. population for petty gain.

We’re not interested in pushing a population who’ve understood what a wretched, horrible and entirely avoidable mistake the war in Iraq is, back to vicious, xenophobic ultra-nationalists to support a lame-duck president, his fascist throng of administrative assistants, and the bigoted, racist, sexist, corporatist/fascist thugs who make up the Republican base.

In sum, we’re not interested in your foul policy ideas, your ways to defile what little good standing is left of the nation, just because you’re terrified of standing revealed for the hollow, vicious monster you and yours are.

 
 

Put it all together and it is not hard to see how some more organized and intelligent terrorists could pull off a dirty bomb explosion in a major city.

Let’s be clearer here: it IS hard to see. Nuclear weapons are hard to make or a rogue explosion would have happened before now.

Someone, somewhere, someday may make such a thing happen, but the probability is low because making such a device, let alone concealing it, delivering it and finding reliable people to do all the above is a massive effort. Smashing planes into buildings was pretty efficient.

 
 

Bubba is right. Most of the “nuclear materials” that cannot be accounted for are random small quantities of uranium, cesium, strontium and many other radioactive substances that cannot be used to make a bomb. The “dirty bomb” concept is a scare tactic dreamed up by the bushies when bioterrorism turned out not to scare anybody.

To any nation or non-state player, a nuclear weapon would be WAY to valuable to risk losing it trying to smuggle it over the american border. Plus, it’s a great way for the source country to cease to exist.

Tell ya what. Worry about stuff that actually might happen, rather than the things your government wants to scare you with…

mikey

 
 

a Sandschloßspringenfreude

Ah, for a second there, I thought Seb was back writing regularly for S, N!

 
 

I’m still laughing about the idea that Bush administration had to put out a press release to tell us all that they were…uh…”having a meeting about terrorist threats. Yeah! An emergency meetin’! ‘Cause it’s urgent we plan for threats! We’re havin’ a meetin’!”

Like, uh, what have you been doing for the last 7 years?

He probably got another Preznitial briefing and instead of telling someone “Well, you covered your ass” they decided to be pro-active and do the thing most important to them, which was to announce publicly that they were gonna have a meeting!

I mean, this is seriously fucked. They ought to be having urgent emergency terrorist threat meetings all the fucking time! and it shouldn’t be NEWS that they’re meeting!

Asshats.

 
 

All I have to say is to point out to Psycheout that it’s not necessary for us Libs to be deranged to explain how bad Shrub looks. Thanks, but our motivation is not hating on him, but the welfare of the nation.

Seems like SOMEONE’s fixated on Bush’s standing though…

 
 

Y’know, Snowwy, that’s a damn good point. Tellya what, Psyche. Check it out. Bush starts doing things that are good for the nation, making decisions that benefit the American people and solving real problems in good faith, I’ll be delighted to be his number one supporter. That whole BDS is a smokescreen. It’s not the man we like, or don’t, or give two shits about one way or another. It’s the policies, the criminal behavior, the warmongering and the support of the oigarchy that we hate. Change the behaviors, we’ll embrace the man…

mikey

 
 

I don’t know about terrorist attacks, but my gut feeling tells me that between now and November some millions of Americans will die from cancer which will change the body politics in a way that would force the Administration to spend on cancer research more than the current 1/100th of what it spends on Iraq… or maybe not…

 
 

Candy said: “are they capable of pulling it off? I doubt it.” Why not? They have a mercenary army (Blackwater), they have access to both the knowledge of how to build a dirty bomb and the materials to make it. Nothing could be easier than for them to blow it up in San Francisco Harbor and blame it on Al Quaida. Means, motive and opportunity.

The only question for me is whether or not thay are sufficiently sociopathic to implement such a plan to advance their fascist takeover. Ah! What am I saying! half a trillion dollars, nearly four thousand Americans dead, 23,000 wounded, nearly a million Iraqis dead or wounded, two million Iraqis displaced, four million refugees in neighboring countries…but the oil is priceless.

 
 

I forgot to say that it probably is no coincidence that we are hearing a lot about how free A. Q. Khan has been just now. Why not blame the provenance of the bomb on him and then we can invade Pakistan as well?

 
 

The “chatter” does make me worry, and the question of what’s paranoid today is way too relevant. But assuming we’re not talking about the course of a fascist takeover of the country, which is not necessarily a safe assumption, I don’t know that another attack or series of attacks would benefit the Bush Admin the way they presume.

I’m not sure it would either, but if there were a crisis and wartime-emergency powers started to be invoked, it would be very hard to stop things from going very wrong very quickly. What scares me is the presumption, even now, that the Bush Administration wouldn’t make such a bold move, even to save conservatism and the Republican experiment from ruin — when everything we know about them says they’re impulsive and heedless to consequences, artists of the brazen bold stroke.

These people need to be watched very closely, especially when they’re under duress.

 
Qetesh the Abyssinian
 

We have terrible border and port security. Put it all together and it is not hard to see how some more organized and intelligent terrorists could pull off a dirty bomb explosion in a major city. The problem here is that this has all become more likely through the misrule of Bush. From not securing nuclear material to not securing ports.

Exactly (with a nod to Righteous Bubba and mikey for corrections on the nukular point). If the Bush junta had any real concern about America’s security, they would have, well, done something about it by now.

Something like improving port security, for example. I remember a couple of years ago, some port officials were complaining politely about the fact that a smallish fraction of the absurd cost of the Iraq Debacle would have bought shiny new scanning machinery, to Make The Ports Safe For Democracy. Alas, it was thought more important to kill foreigners than to stop any potential threats coming in through the ports. Just for example.

Since all they’ve done is wage war on a bunch of innocent people to fulfill a plan they came up with years ago, thereby making large numbers of fresh new enemies, it’s hard to believe that they really give a toss, or even half a toss, about the safety of Murrka.

 
 

As a British citizen, who lives not one mile from the site of an IRA bombing, I can say I don’t see the above events as terrorism so much as alternative comedy.

But then, I’ve always been vaguely sociopathic…

Don’t aplogise, they were alternative comedy. For Sanitorum and Hewitt to project anything from those attacks is real clutching at straws, however, in these sad days for the wingnuts, they will take anything!

 
Qetesh the Abyssinian
 

And after billions of dollars, hundreds of national security PowerPoint org chart revisions, and a vibrant Crayola terror alert system, all we get is “gut reactions”? That must be the new Brown color for excessively high bullshit levels.

Because Brown is the new brown. And PowerPoint is what makes us better than the terrorists.

 
Qetesh the Abyssinian
 

Golly! Red Shark is good. Not with punctuation or spelling, or indeed grammar, but very creative. Let’s take this a bit at a time.

Americans are against the war because they falsely believe we are not persoanlly under the threat of terror.

I can’t speak for all Americans, but I suspect that a lot of people are waking up to the fact that committing genocide doesn’t make less people want to kill you.

If radical Muslims cause some act of terror in the U.S., Americans will see that the war in Iraq is about terrorism,

It certainly is: it’s fostering its growth the way horse shit fosters plant growth.

that we are winning over there

Define winning…?

and that we need to send more troops and stay indifinitely in Iraq, to protect America,

(Slow doubtful look, deep breath) Send more troops to Iraq…to protect…America. You mean, instead of leaving them in America, where they’d be, what, protecting Iraq?

Or are you implying that Iraq is US territory? (Note to readers: I originally mis-typed the last word, spelling it ‘terrortiry’, which seemed oddly fitting)

which is the connection they just can’t make now, without being more terrorized,

So in order for the Bush junta…sorry, sorry, the Bush caring-and-sharing-protective-father-state; in order for the Bush CASPFS to be able to protect America by sending all American soldiers to Iraq, the American people need to be more terrorised?

Nice logic, Red Shark. Almost flawless.

like the terrorists who hate the war in Iraq want.

Hang on: I thought the terrorists-who-hate-the-war-in-Iraq wanted the war in Iraq to stop? But if more Americans are more terrorised, then the war in Iraq, according to you, will continue forever, yes?

[/pretending to take this person seriously]

Matey, the real terrorists, as in the (very few) people who want to kill innocent strangers (but only foreign people who want to kill innocent American strangers, not American people who want to kill innocent foreign strangers, because we know it’s only terrorism if Americans get killed, right?)

Damn, where was I? Oh, yes. Look, matey, the real terrorists are really happy about the war in Iraq, and they’d love for it to go on forever, with bells on. Why? Simple: because the war in Iraq is killing hundreds of thousands of innocents and thereby breeding new recruits for the terrorists.

So shall we say that anyone who wants the war in Iraq to continue is a terrorist? I find that just as unacceptable as the reverse, although far more accurate.

 
 

Gavin, I’m kinda with you, except I have a couple of caveats – 1) they’re not doing it for “conservatism” or “republicanism” – they’re doing it plain and simply for their own damn selves, and 2) they’re so fucking incompetent that whatever they intend, what they do will probably be more disastrous – both to us AND to them – than they intend.

It’s clear to me, with the crisis in the Justice Department, that Bush and Cheney don’t give a good goddam about this country, it’s principles, it’s Constitution. It’s really, for them, All About Them.

The saving grace is – people like that tend to fail rather spectacularly, so they will not achieve their goals. The scarey part is that they’re dragging us along with them into disaster.

 
 

Hm. What can we do to spread rumors among the right wingers, such that if any terrorist does happen, most of them will assume it’s not Al Qaeda, but rather La Raza?

That way, they’ll just get pissed if Bush and Cheney point at Al Qaeda and insist on bombing Iran.

 
 

“The scarey part is that they’re dragging us along with them into disaster.”

Yes, that’s part of the pattern as well.

Europe in ruins. Hundreds of dead men women and children in a jungle in Guyana. A flaming compound surrounded by armed Feds.

 
 

Y’know, it occurs to me that a dirty bomb attack would be easy for the Bushies to fake.

How many people in the average city block have geiger counters, after all?

 
 

What scares me is the presumption, even now, that the Bush Administration wouldn’t make such a bold move, even to save conservatism and the Republican experiment from ruin — when everything we know about them says they’re impulsive and heedless to consequences, artists of the brazen bold stroke.

I know I’ve said it before, but I gotta say it again……..Hitler outlines the whole thrust of his Eastern Front strategy in Mein Kampf. And yet Stalin still had a nervous breakdown after Barbarossa.

That’s not a rhetorical turn of phrase, either – after the Russian air force was destroyed in the first strike, Stalin disappeared from public view for almost three days. Historians’ best guess is that he was literally chewing the furniture and foaming at the mouth, and his handlers sedated him and stuck him in an out of the way dacha for a bit.

The worst thing about these guys is that what they’ve already told us they’re going to do is horrible enough (unless you are crazy enough to think invading China is a good idea). When I think about what they might not have told us…..I get a little queasy.

Incidentally, if anyone I know tries to act surprised if the emergency powers declaration trick is tried, I will not sedate them and take them to a nice dacha. I will kick them in their respective genitals for being naive. And, while I don’t think it a likely scenario, I’ve already thought about what I would do to keep my loved ones safe if it happens. I hope you have, too.

 
 

This is a magnificent post. I only wish I didn’t agree with it.

But the point is that such people attract leaders who are either like them in spirit, or who know how to manipulate this most easily-manipulated of American constituencies.

Given the amount of hypocrisy, e.g., in sexual matters (see Hyde, Foley, Vitter, whatever other names are going to tumble out of Palfrey’s phone book, etc.), that one finds on the other side, I fear that “know how to manipulate” is the option to go with here. Lee Atwater and Karl Rove learned well how to take poorly directed fear, anger, resentment, and religious mania and channel it in directions that, what a coincidence, manage to make Republicans more powerful, rich people ever richer, and Enlightenment civilization more and more an afterthought.

At least, nobody who truly believed in a Christian God could say and do the sorts of things that these people say and do on a daily basis, so with most of ’em it’s gotta be a big-ol’ self-serving act.

 
meaningful wanker, painfully versed
 

I think Red Shark’s got a point. If the US is attacked by terrorists, you will see a surge in support for the war because all of a sudden Merkins will once again be happy to hear about sand coons getting killed, just as they were after 9/11 when the whole damn thing started. A terror attack would be a great dumber-downer, patrioticalistically-speaking.

 
 

You know, they way they saw Iraq as part of the war on terror back then, and they don’t see it that way now

Nope, never did.

and nipper, cut that out. The best way to defeat terrorism is not be scared. and you scared me.

Big meany.

 
 

T4toby, for whatever it’s worth I’ve reached the same conclusion. But Psycheout is annoying enough that if he was to increase the frequency of his little, er, visits here I’d have to drop a load of pie on his ass, too…

Yeah totaly Mikey. At a certain point there is no practical difference between a ‘fake’ troll and a troll. Which is why I just scroll past Psycheout the same as I do past Gary Ruppert or Kevin.

 
 

Scenario for 2008: Sometime in middle to late summer, perhaps early fall, a “terrorist attack” occurs, allowing Bush to suspend the elections in the name of “national security”, and take control of the government via the “National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51” and “Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20”, released by the WH May 9th of this year. Now, wouldn’t THAT be an interesting nightmare?

 
 

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