EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Wisconsin Bill Would Treat Organic Milk, Sharp Cheddar, Brown Eggs as "Junk Food"
- Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’
- Climate Change's 'Evil Twin': Ocean Acidification
- Disaster Capitalism Strikes as Hedge Funds Circle Near-Bankrupt Municipalities Like Vultures
- Ignoring Bee Crisis, EPA Greenlights New 'Highly Toxic' Pesticide
- Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’
- Wisconsin Bill Would Treat Organic Milk, Sharp Cheddar, Brown Eggs as "Junk Food"
- Climate Change's 'Evil Twin': Ocean Acidification
- In 'March Toward Disaster,' World Hits 400 PPM Milestone
- Ignoring Bee Crisis, EPA Greenlights New 'Highly Toxic' Pesticide
Popular content
Today's Top News
Who Is to Blame for the Next Attack?
After watching the farce surrounding Dick Cheney's coming-out party this month, you have to wonder: Which will reach Washington first, change or the terrorists? If change doesn't arrive soon, terrorists may well rush in where the capital's fools now tread.
The Beltway antics that greeted the great Cheney-Obama torture debate were an unsettling return to the post-9/11 dynamic that landed America in Iraq. Once again Cheney and his cohort were using lies and fear to try to gain political advantage - this time to rewrite history and escape accountability for the failed Bush presidency rather than to drum up a new war. Once again Democrats in Congress were cowed. And once again too much of the so-called liberal news media parroted the right's scare tactics, putting America's real security interests at risk by failing to challenge any Washington politician carrying a big stick.
Cheney's "no middle ground" speech on torture at the American Enterprise Institute arrived with the kind of orchestrated media campaign that he, his boss and Karl Rove patented in the good old days. It was bookended by a pair of Republican attack ads on the Web that crosscut President Obama's planned closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention center with apocalyptic imagery - graphic video of the burning twin towers in one ad, a roar of nuclear holocaust (borrowed from the L.B.J. "daisy" ad of 1964) in the other.
The speech itself, with 20 mentions of 9/11, struck the same cynical note as the ads, as if the G.O.P. was almost rooting for a terrorist attack on Obama's watch. "No one wishes the current administration more success in defending the country than we do," Cheney said as a disingenuous disclaimer before going on to charge that Obama's "half measures" were leaving Americans "half exposed." The new president, he said, is unraveling "the very policies that kept our people safe since 9/11." In other words, when the next attack comes, it will be all Obama's fault. A new ad shouting "We told you so!" awaits only the updated video.
The Republicans at least have an excuse for pushing this poison. They are desperate. The trio of Pillsbury doughboys now leading the party - Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Cheney - have variously cemented the G.O.P.'s brand as a whites-only men's club by revoking Colin Powell's membership and smearing the first Latina Supreme Court nominee as a "reverse racist." Republicans in Congress have no plausible economic, health care or energy policies to counter Obama's. The only card left to play is 9/11.
Yet even before Cheney spoke, Congressional Democrats were quaking in fear, purporting with straight faces that the transfer of detainees to "supermax" American prisons constituted a serious security threat. Many of the same senators who signed on to the Iraq war resolution in the fall of 2002 joined the 90-to-6 majority that put a hold on Obama's Gitmo closure plans.
The déjà vu in the news media was more chilling. Rather than vet the substance of Cheney's fulmination, talking heads instead hyped the split-screen "dueling speeches" gimmick of the back-to-back Obama-Cheney scheduling. Time magazine's political Web site Photoshopped Cheney and Obama's faces atop prize fighters' bodies.
Most of the punditocracy scored the fight on a curve, setting up a false equivalence between the men's ideas. Cheney's pugnacious certitude edged out Obama's law-professor nuance. "On policy grounds, you've got a real legitimate fight here," David Gregory insisted on "Meet the Press" as he regurgitated the former vice president's argument ("You can't compromise on these matters") and questioned whether the president could "really bring" his brand of pragmatism "to the issue of the war on terror."
One New York Daily News columnist summed up Cheney's supposed TKO this way: "The key to Cheney's powerful performance: facts, facts, facts." But the facts, as usual, were wrong.
At the McClatchy newspapers' Washington bureau, the reporters Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel detailed 10 whoppers. With selective quotations, Cheney falsified the views of the director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, on the supposed intelligence value of waterboarding. Equally bogus was Cheney's boast that his administration had "moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks." In truth, the Bush administration had lost Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, not least because it started diverting huge assets to Iraq before accomplishing the mission of vanquishing Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. That decision makes us less safe to this very minute.
You can find a link to the complete Landay-Strobel accounting of Cheney's errors in the online version of this column. The failure of much of the press to match their effort has a troubling historical antecedent. These are the same two journalists who, reporting for what was then Knight Ridder, uncovered much of the deceit in the Bush-Cheney case for the Iraq war in the crucial weeks before Congress gave the invasion the green light.
On Sept. 6, 2002, Landay and Strobel reported that there was no known new intelligence indicating that "the Iraqis have made significant advances in their nuclear, biological or chemical weapons programs." It was two days later that The Times ran its now notorious front-page account of Saddam Hussein's "quest for thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes." In the months that followed, as the Bush White House kept beating the drum for Saddam's imminent mushroom clouds to little challenge from most news organizations, Landay and Strobel reported on the "lack of hard evidence" of Iraqi weapons and the infighting among intelligence agencies. Their scoops were largely ignored by the big papers and networks as America hurtled toward fiasco.
Another reporter who was ahead of the pack in unmasking Bush-Cheney propaganda is the author Ron Suskind. In his 2006 book on the American intelligence matrix, "The One Percent Doctrine," Suskind wrote about a fully operational and potentially catastrophic post-9/11 Qaeda assault on America that actually was aborted in the Bush years: a hydrogen cyanide attack planned for the New York City subways. It was halted 45 days before zero hour - but not because we stopped it. Al-Zawahri had called it off.
When Bush and Cheney learned of the cancellation later on from conventional intelligence, they were baffled as to why. The answer: Al-Zawahri had decided that a rush-hour New York subway attack was not enough of an encore to top 9/11. Al Qaeda's "special event" strategy, Suskind wrote, requires the creation of "an upward arc of rising and terrible expectation" that is "multiplied by time passing." The event that fits that bill after 9/11 must involve some kind of nuclear weapon.
"What are the lessons of this period?" Suskind asked when we spoke last week. "If you draw the wrong lessons, you end up embracing the wrong answers." They are certainly not the lessons cited by Cheney. Waterboarding hasn't and isn't going to save us from anything. The ticking time-bomb debate rekindled by Cheney's speech may be entertaining on "24" or cable-news food fights, but is a detour from the actual perils before the country. "What we're dealing with is a patient foe who thinks in decades while we tend to think more in news cycles," Suskind said. "We have to try to wrestle this fear-based debate into something resembling a reality-based discussion."
The reality is that while the Bush administration was bogged down in Iraq and being played by Pervez Musharraf, the likelihood of Qaeda gaining access to nuclear weapons in a Taliban-saturated Pakistan was increasing by the day. We know that in the month before 9/11, bin Laden and al-Zawahri met with the Pakistani nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood. That was the real link between 9/11 and nuclear terror that the Bush administration let metastasize while it squandered American resources on a fictional link between 9/11 and a "nuclear" Saddam.
And where are we now? On the eve of Obama's inauguration, David Sanger reported in The Times that military and nuclear experts agree that if "a real-life crisis" breaks out in Pakistan "it is unlikely that anyone would be able to assure an American president, with confidence, that he knew where all of Pakistan's weapons were - or that none were in the hands of Islamic extremists."
Pakistan is the time bomb. But with a push from Cheney, abetted by too many Democrats and too many compliant journalists, we have been distracted into drawing the wrong lessons, embracing the wrong answers. We are even wasting time worrying that detainees might escape from tomb-sized concrete cells in Colorado.
What we need to be doing instead, as Suskind put it, is to "build the thing we don't have - human intelligence. We need people who are cooperating with us, who step up and help, and who won't turn away when they see things happening. Hearts and minds - which we've botched - must be corrected and corrected quickly. That's what wins the battle, not going medieval." It's not for nothing, after all, that Powell, Gen. David Petraeus and Robert Gates, the secretary of defense - among other military minds - agree with Obama, not Cheney, about torture and Gitmo.
The harrowing truth remains unchanged from what it was before Cheney emerged from his bunker to set Washington atwitter. The Bush administration did not make us safer either before or after 9/11. Obama is not making us less safe. If there's another terrorist attack, it will be because the mess the Bush administration ignored in Pakistan and Afghanistan spun beyond anyone's control well before Americans could throw the bums out.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
77 Comments so far
Show AllExcellent article by Frank Rich, but regardless for what is said and done, the Dick Cheney type "pugnacious certitude" of U.S. Foreign Policy over the past 30 years is to be blamed for the next terrorist attack, both Republicans and Democrats are complicit.
As a nation, we are just incapable of seeing the ruthless and oppressive capitalistic timber in our own eyes. If you do, you are a "liberal" and unpatriotic. The U.S. as a whole still remains in the coma of American exceptionalism even after near total collapse of Wall Street.
". . . the Dick Cheney type "pugnacious certitude" of U.S. Foreign Policy over the past 30 years is to be blamed for the next terrorist attack, . . ."
You are absolutely correct. However, when the next attack comes (and there will be one, even if McCain had been elected) Obama and the Dems WILL be blamed by the corporate media.
And when this scenario occurs, Obama and the Dems will do what they're doing now: grab their ankles.
q
quickstepper, you are unfortunately precisely correct that the Dems will openly cave to the ruling-elite 'corporate financial Empire' that controls our country behind the facade of its two-party 'Vichy' sham of democracy.
The Dems, including Obama, have already covertly caved to this exact Empire, in exchange for their very existence and political charade of power --- while the real power remains fully in control of the ruling Empire.
However, the Dems will more openly and overtly expose their 'dirty deal with the devil of Empire' once the second attack occurs and they implement the domestic control plans of the Empire they serve.
But, in fact, that second attack (as I point out in a separate post) has already occurred after the 9/11 'kinetic' attack, with the 'second shoe dropping' of the 9/15 (08) 'economic' attack on the homeland.
And true to form, the Dems have already responded as the Empire directed them to with increasing domestic economic oppression, looting, and police-state tyranny and spying.
In fact, it is this second wave of 'economic' attack being ignited that is by far the more deadly (in lives and treasure) to the American people, and more profitable to the ruling-elite 'corporate financial Empire' (in wealth transfer by looting) than was the 9/11 initial phase of this dual 'Shock Doctrine'.
[The non-humorous irony is that even Hitler did not need two Reichstag fires to “ignite” and transmogrify the German Republic into the Nazi Empire.]
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
amacd,
May I point out that if another attack comes, it may be to the advantage of two political groups:
1. The non Democratic and Republican parties. It has been both the demo's and repubs who have gotten us into this mess. I don't care if one party destroys the other and they both go down. That leaves third parties a chance to fill the vacuum.
2. The other group would be Osama Bin Laden /Al Quida. Mr. Bin Laden has repeatedly said his goal is to bankrupt the USA. Looks like his plan is succeeding. The 2001-02 recession was caused by the 911 attacks. Indeed, around now would be an advantageous time to have a coordinated terrorist attack on NYC and Washington DC, again. That would stop the "consumer confidence" which is so very important to the success of American capitalism.
Much good may come from a little bad.
Excellent points, Stephen.
For the life of me, I don't see how we will avert another attack. Since we are incapable of looking at ourselves in the mirror we will keep doing as we have always done, with the same disastrous results.
Avert another attack? Try behaving ourselves. No more sadistic torturing. No more assassination from the sky. No more bombing mosques in Iran. Or paying middle East gangsters like Israel to do it. No more pillage and plunder. No more poisoning the land, air and water. Avert another attack? It's easy, just grow up and rejoin the human race.
I don't remember the rest of the human race being particularly peaceful. They just don't have our resources and money when it comes to killing.
True enough, but one must ask the question: WHY do the media consistently get the facts wrong, let the likes of Cheney play them, and mislead the public? WHY does Congress always vote for aggression and against intelligent choices? So often, articles like this imply that these people are all stupid suckers, easily manipulated by a few brilliant sociopaths like Cheney and Bush and Rove. Wrong. There's a reason this filthy stuff has been going on, not since W took office in 2001, but for at least a century. That reason is collusion between sociopaths running the government and corporations, most importantly the giant corporations which count media outlets among their portfolios...along with weapons companies, drug companies, etc. A small group makes the decisions for its own benefit and uses "our" representatives to implement their policies, and lets the resisters among the general public wear themselves out with importuning of "their" representatives, letters to editors, hearings, rallies, etc. Meanwhile the corporate media ensures that the bulk of the public remains uninformed, misinformed, and passive. Thus there are never enough activists to actually change things.
Well said, mwildfire. My sentiments exactly. Until we see how the road to perpetual war, for war's and profit's sake, is paved by these sociopathic fiends who absolutely control the political and economic engines of this country, we will be banging our heads up against futility forever. Appealing to bought and paid for Congressmen to stop the very policies they were paid to advance will get us precisely nowhere. It's like asking the Mafia to vote on no longer acting like the Mafia.
I agree. The left will make little or no progress until its members recognize that the idiot liars in Washington are no more than ciphers, employed to carry out the policies of their corporate overlords. The left needs to focus more on opposing and directing its efforts towards the overlords, and ignore the noise in Washington.
True words.
But who, exactly, is "the left?" Are they some disorganized amorphous blob out there waiting to organize when the time is right? Who are we talking about when we say "the left?"
Haven't the organizations, past and present, that once housed "the left" shown themselves to be either ineffective or complete sell-outs? Yes, let's ignore the noise in Washington, but what do we DO?
I'm not asking for specific answers, 'cause I don't believe there are any. I believe that the answer is in each of us to start acting on what our gut tells us. We know what we know, we know what we'd like to see, we know what we'd like to do. Who, and what, are we waiting for?
WE are the left!
Ted, you ask poignantly, but with obvious frustration, "But who, exactly, is "the left?" Are they some disorganized amorphous blob out there waiting to organize when the time is right?"
To which I would only add my frustration and suggestion that, "The principled left/progressive movement has been scattered to the winds by the covert plan of the Empire that is the central cause of all their issues, and which has been delighted by their division --- which has allowed them to be conquered."
No, Ted, the left is not some "disorganized amorphous blob out there waiting to organize when the time is right" --- they are waiting for the ISSUE to be right.
And the right issue must be a singular and uniting issue which resonates with each of the hundreds of separate 'issue advocacy groups' that the EMPIRE is trying like hell to keep separate, weak, and divided ---- as all EMPIRES do to conquer opponents and to keep their own power centralized in the EMPIRE.
Now, Ted, if each separate and competing 'interest group' on the left, which has separate membership, and separate funding, and separate agendas, and separate protests, and separate energy could somehow seriously look to the common evil which is actually causing their particular, 'hot-button issue' to be the problem, injustice, offense, oppression, and 'sorrow' that it is to them personally, then they might just see that 'all roads lead to Rome', or more importantly 'all road lead to EMPIRE' (which was what the common problem of Rome, and Britain, and France, and Germany, and Russia, and ...)
It almost defies logic that this single "8 ton elephant of EMPIRE" could be the ultimate and seminal cause of all the problems of our own country, and the world, and yet be camping out right in plain sight in our living room of supposed democracy and not be detected or even suspected at all of the cancer it is spreading to all the different left 'issues'.
But wait.
I suppose that if everyone is foolish enough to think that we are sitting in the living room of a democracy (even if that facade of democracy has been created by the EMPIRE and staffed with 'Vichy' political parties and 'Vichy' media) then nobody is going to shout about EMPIRE in the midst of what they think is a democracy --- even if it's a weak-kneed democracy.
So if everyone just holds hands, including the political parties, the media, and the people (even the left) --- continues to talk and think as if there is a thing called 'democracy', and if nobody, not even our new 'hopeful', 'change-oriented' president ever, ever, even says the word 'EMPIRE' --- so that that awful word never, ever, even comes into our minds, nor in any way effects our thinking (which, as George Lakoff notes in his fabulous new book "The Political Mind", is essential to effecting any 'metaphorical thinking' and resolution of "contested concepts" in our minds) then viola --- we can never think of EMPIRE, and thus we can never rebel against EMPIRE.
And thus, kiddies, the EMPIRE "lives happily ever after".
"That's the end of our story, and now 'good night' to all you good groups".
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
The "Left" united to oppose Vietnam, but there was less control and draconian laws then.
I think the Left and Right need each other to protect the people from government abuse.
Interesting, Alan, and I agree about the empire (though, it could go by other names, such as a corporate fascist state).
But wait for a single issue? Like what, Hostess to change its main ingredient in Twinkies? Hell, the people of this country have been screwed 6 ways from Tuesday and we need the issue to be right in order to act? Like the issue of sending our kids to die in a bogus war isn't right? Or our people torturing innocent people isn't right? Or our bank accounts to be raided and our futures to be sold isn't right? Holy Yoholy, what issue will be the right one if these are not?
My point is that if we wait for any more issues, for any more "organizations", for any more leaders, then we're dead...or, we'll wish we were. WE are the issue! WE are the organizations! WE are the leaders. All it takes, ALL-it-takes, is for us, "the Left", to separate our asses from our chairs and do the myriad of things we must do to wrest control from the sociopathic killers who have created this empire. There is no single issue, nor is there a single way to fix this. If we are each, personally, not doing at least one thing to change our situation, we are screwed. And, we are part of the problem. If we do not do what we can - each of us - then we have become the empire.
mwildfire, you're certainly correct, in talking about the corporate/political nexis that, "A 'small group' makes the decisions for its own benefit and uses "our" representatives to implement their policies, and lets the resisters among the general public wear themselves out with importuning of "their" representatives, letters to editors, hearings, rallies, etc. Meanwhile the corporate media ensures that the bulk of the public remains uninformed, misinformed, and passive."
However, your concluding point, that, "Thus there are never enough activists to actually change things." misses a seminal point.
The key point is that this "small group", as you call them, is indeed small in numbers (smaller in fact than the percentage of sociopaths in the general population), but this particular "small group" CAN NOT be simply characterized as a vague or neutral sounding "small group", but MUST be precisely recognized for what it is, an EMPIRE, and it MUST be openly and consistently pointed to by all "resisters" as the EMPIRE which is the cause of all our problems, symptoms, and sorrows of EMPIRE.
mwildfire, I agree with your frustration and plea, but you (and all other principled left/progressive "resisters", and "activists") must consciously stop allowing this EMPIRE from distracting, dissipating, and literally destroying your effectiveness by falling for the EMPIRE's age-old 'divide and conquer' technique by being suckered into woefully scattered 'issues' about the symptoms fo what EMPIRE is doing to our country ---- and instead focus,like a laser, on the single, signal, seminal CAUSE of absofrigginlutely ALL of your issues rolled up into one cancerous central tumor: EMPIRE.
If the principled left/progressive movement of "resisters" wants to continue to be duped, divided, and dissipated by this guileful political-economic ruling-elite EMPIRE, and continue to fight a hundred little battles over which is more important; anti-war, health care, spying, torture, economic oppression, women's rights, abortion rights, Democrats vs. Republicans, neo-liberals vs, neo-conservatives, credit card reform, mortgage reform, forclosure reform, global warming, and protecting whales, then I can't help you --- and, YES, as you say, "there are never enough activists to actually change things" (and there never will be --- because the EMPIRE will be laughing all the way to your graves).
But if you want to have any chance of actually doing anything about the EMPIRE, which is the precipitating cause of all your complaints, then get your protest signs out of your arses and meet the focused power of EMPIRE with a sigualr focused power of people.
Best luck herding the cats into an army of focused activists.
My only advice is that the only times this has been done effectively against the massive and violent centralized power of EMPIRE (whatever name it disguises itself under in that era) is by all working-class people banding together in solidarity under the conviction of class-conflict, and taking it to the wall with the tiny minority of sociopathic bastards.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
PS. if, after my somewhat impolite advice, you really want to understand why I personally came to this conclusion, both intuitively and through the rationale of cognitive science and linguistics, then feel free to look up in CD my posts on George Lakoff's amazing "The Political Mind".
A re-investigation of 9/11 is getting closer..............................................................................
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=oO2yT0uBQbM
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/
publish/printer_4741.shtml
That IS inspiring. Thank you for that link!!
Interesting.
ANGRY, have you noticed the rest of our back-and-forth thread has disappeared?
People keep saying their posts disappear, and now it's finally happened to me.
Interesting point on the Youtube video, Angry. I Googled Securacom (changed to Stratesec), the company in charge of security at the World Trade Centers. I found this interesting tidbit of info from Wikipedia:
"The head of the company was Wirt Walker.[9] Marvin P. Bush, a younger brother of George W. Bush, was on the board of directors of the company from 1993 to June 2000.[10]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratesec
Not a new revelation to 9/11 followers, but it is to me.
Curiouser and curiouser.
...also, after watching the video, I started watching this one, and wound up watching all 5 in the series. We thought the Matrix was just a movie!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0IM7Hobd_k
Check out the Dun & Bradstreet web site and search for the American counterparts for the entities that John Harris shows. This is corporate fascism, not by accident, but by design. Design. It's all working perfectly. That's what we haven't understood. Perfectly...for them.
And if you also didn't realize . . . Wirt Walker is a cousin to Marvin and George Bush.
PBS's "Torturing Democracy" revealed to me something I should have known Congress passed a law protecting torturers and those who ordered it.
Thus I would think they could only be prosecuted Internationally and possibly Congress is also liable.
I wonder if immunity can be given retroactively can it also be removed retroactively.
This all shows that the conservative Supreme Court is the last bastion defending against Bush/Obama atrocities.
The Hydrogen Cyanide attack is news to me, very little MSM airplay.
I guess at least one of those heightened alerts were valid.
The next attack will come when a high enough ranking Bush official is indicted.
My only difference with Rich is I do not believe we needed to attack Afghanistan to neutralize Al Qaeda.
Remember it is all about pipelines and the misconception of a "need" for fossil fuels.
as far as cheney goes - me thinks the lady doth protest too much, as they say
his embarrassing public appearances - which are quite a departure from his public air time while in office - are nothing more than an admission that he is guilty of not only torturing but a whole mess of other crimes relating to his whole bullshit "war on terror"
let's talk about 9/11 - as cheney now seems so intent on doing. in his case he is perpetuating the lies, as frank rich points out in this article, and pressing the terror card in the not so unlikely hope that he can rattle the scardey cat nation one more time.
i think it is time for the group of so called progressives to get off the media deluded high horse and - i'm suspecting for the first time - actually take the time to have a look at the events that transpired in manhattan, pennsylvania and at the pentagon
the irrational rejection of the analysis of the 9/11 truth movement by the sheeple has been discouraging - but to be expected given the scardey cat mentality embraced by them
the sheeple have been doing their best impression of a quivering bowl of guava jelly for eight long years and its time for them to stop quivering
stand up like the free men and women you are supposed to be
the 9/11 movement is a messy loosely joined hodge podge of groups who have tried to do what the government has tried to avoid - and that is an investigation into 9/11
we have accumulated a lot of evidence - over which not everyone agrees - but it would provide a huge database of leads for any serious investigator to follow up on, to say the least
i'm quite sure a serious investigator would, in short order, dismiss all of the government's "evidence" (hint: there is none)completely as lies, incompetent and unreliable
the case for the government's posture on 9/11 is not unlike their cases against the gitmo detainees in that there is none
no evidence, no case, and no facts
that's the government's side
and the truthers get blown off as crazies
thank you corporate media - they couldn't have done it without you
as of May 2009 we now know
1. 9/11 remains suspiciously uninvestigated - despite the fact that the entire thrust of the government's hyper military psychotic response was built on lies and misinformation
2. cheney was the liar in chief
3. yes virginia - america does torture - we have hit the bottom of the barrel mainly because we are a nation of scardey cats being played by the nwo controllers and their corporate media
4. colin powell by his own admission disgraced himself by presenting evidence at the un he knew to be false
5. bushco are liars
6. the military industrial complex/banks who run the united states have cashed in big time with the phony war
7. the country is on the verge of disaster as a result of this phony war
8. we have killed millions of people for this lie
9. obama plans to kill millions more
lastly, and sadly, the american people are a combo of too dumb and to weak to stand up for the truth and get to the bottom of this mess
like the bank scam - no one will be prsecuted and the nwo/cntrollers are like garth and wayne
party on garth
party on wayne
M A _ G,
Nice inspired job of delineating the salient points.
Disrepresentative C_O_R_P_O_ W _ R _ A _ I _ T _ H ___ P O W E R _ is :
____ unconscionable,
____ unbridled, and
____ unrelenting
Way beyond the unnatural and bizarre, our corpowraith edificial pseudo-personal entities are as twistedly perverse as a
____ tornado sucking life out of
____ an occupied elementary school.
D A R T H _ C H E N E Y __ is the perfect representative of corpowraith CEOs, depraved and shameless in boundless avariciousness, disproportionate rendering of civil society to the wicked alter of the abattoir of humanity for mere profit.
There is no mystery of motivation, nor means -- as expedient a$$et$ are hung upon the hooks of greed and provocative magnified wickedness.
_ 9 _ ! _ ! _
is also no mystery to those who have researched the USA lead in manufacturing of
_ n a n o _ t h er m i t e _ e x p l o s i v e s _
which are abundantly still active in WTC dusts 8 years later, still more explosive than dynamite -- still unacknowledged by corpowraith $ewer Main $tream Media ( $M$M ) and of course deniers of truth.
__ " I ' m _ a s _ m a d _ a s _ h e l l _
__ a n d _ I ' m _ n o t _ g o i n g _ t o _
__ t a k e __ i t __ a n y m o r e ______________ "
Namaste
Luciplicity May 31st, 2009 12:06 pm....Good video here...Richard Cage...9/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO2yT0uBQbM
A N G R Y _ O L D _ M A N,
A stupendously very persuasive video,
with an actual ballsy & honest Architect -- almost as important to our society, as that long ago dude who invented the first wheel !
Namaste
"let's talk about 9/11 - as cheney now seems so intent on doing. in his case he is perpetuating the lies, as frank rich points out in this article, and pressing the terror card in the not so unlikely hope that he can rattle the scardey cat nation one more time."
The fear card being perpetuated by Cheney is already working. A recent local news poll showed that in our local area at least, 72% of those polled said they feel less safe from a terror attack than they did one year ago.
It would seem that the effectiveness of using the fear of terrorisism is working as well now as it did eight years ago. Land of the free and home of the brave? Certainly not the late, great U.S.A. (Actually, to be more accurate, as someone pointed out several days ago, we more resemble the "Land of the Fee and Home of the Slave,)
finally and i mean it this time, let me leave you with some analysis from paul craig roberts on obama's false dichotomy on iran and north korea
"We are witnessing the Washington gangsters construct yet another threat like Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, John Walker Lindh, Hamdi, Padilla, Sami Al-Arian, Hamas, Mahkmoud Ahmadinejad, and the hapless detainees demonized by the US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld as "the 700 most dangerous terrorists on the face of the earth," who were tortured for six years at Gitmo only to be quietly released. Just another mistake, sorry.
The military/security complex that rules America, together with the Israel Lobby and the financial banksters, needs a long list of dangerous enemies to keep the taxpayers’ money flowing into its coffers.
The Homeland Security lobby is dependent on endless threats to convince Americans that they must forego civil liberty in order to be safe and secure.
The real question is who is going to stand up to the American and Israeli governments?
Who is going to protect Americans’ and Israelis’ civil liberties, especially those of Israeli dissenters and Israel’s Arab citizens?
Who is going to protect Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Lebanese, Iranians, and Syrians from Americans and Israelis?
Not Obama, and not the right-wing brownshirts that today rule Israel.
Obama’s notion that it takes the entire world to stand up to N. Korea is mind-boggling, but this mind-boggling idea pales in comparison to Obama’s guarantee that America will protect "the peace and security of the world."
Is this the same America that bombed Serbia, including Chinese diplomatic offices and civilian passenger trains, and pried Kosovo loose from Serbia and gave it to a gang of Muslin drug lords, lending them NATO troops to protect their operation?
Is this the same America that is responsible for approximately one million dead Iraqis, leaving orphans and widows everywhere and making refugees out of one-firth of the Iraqi population?
Is this the same America that blocked the rest of the world from condemning Israel for its murderous attack on Lebanese civilians in 2006 and on Gazans most recently, the same America that has covered up for Israel’s theft of Palestine over the past 60 years, a theft that has produced four million Palestinian refugees driven by Israeli violence and terror from their homes and villages?
Is this the same America that is conducting military exercises in former constituent parts of Russia and ringing Russia with missile bases?
Is this the same America that has bombed Afghanistan into rubble with massive civilian casualties?
Is this the same America that has started a horrific new war in Pakistan, a war that in its first few days has produced one million refugees?
"The peace and security of the world"? Whose world?
On his return from his consultation with Obama in Washington, the brownshirted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that it was Israel’s responsibility to "eliminate" the "nuclear threat" from Iran.
What nuclear threat? The US intelligence agencies are unanimous in their conclusion that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program since 2003. The inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency report that there is no sign of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.
Who is Iran bombing? How many refugees is Iran sending fleeing for their lives?
Who is North Korea bombing?
The two great murderous, refugee-producing countries are the US and Israel. Between them, they have murdered and dislocated millions of people who were a threat to no one."
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13779
back to quivering everyone
Well said, Ma G...
You string together all of the major issues that are ignored by the media and considered taboo to mention in polite company...
Astute analysis of geopolitical strategy of Amerisrael...
It is funny how people roll their eyes when you connect the dots for them...
Although I always enjoy FR, this article is (sigh) just one more examination into "terrorism" and the AfPak war that amputates its cause: pipelines. Specifically pipelines from Caspian sea oil and gas which is what drives our policies in south asia (and the Balkans). It implicitly separates Obama and his goon squad of banksters from Bush's. They are the same crew. Clinton's Sec. of Treasury was Rubin (Goldman-Sachs), Bush's was Hank Paulson (Goldman-Sachs) and Obama's Sec., Geithner, appointed as his 2 main undersec.s Neel Kaskari (G-S) and [sorry, name escapes me...Paul M.] also G-S. Wow! Change I can believe in! And are we "withdrawing troops from Iraq immediately", as Obama promised? No, plus we're expanding the AfPak war (and destabilizing Paskistan) to clear the way for the carbon industry's TAPI pipeline. The media tries to present politics as "mindsets" or personalities. They don't want you to understand that a small group of lizard brained financiers has run this country for decades through their control of the 2 corporate parties. THINK! When did you ever get what candidates promised? LBJ would "never send US boys [to VN] to do what asian boys should be doing". But he did. Nixon had a "secret plan" to end the war. But he didn't. Reagan had a scheme to end the national debt. But he tripled it. Clinton promised Health care and to protect US jobs. We lost welfare and got only NAFTA and a bubble economy. Here in Cal., Schwarzenagger would never cut services or raise taxes, but did both. Every year you get poorer, your country deteriorates toward 3rd world status and we project more violence overseas, while mythic sums of $ are lavished on the rich. Turn off your TV, pull your head out of the rectum of your Junk-culture and stop believing in fairy tales or your kids (the LUCKY ones) will be working in the sex trade. I don't know the solution but it starts with a mature, non-fairy tale based evaluation of the reality you are up against. It's worse than you think.
Good comment. Thanks for that!
How could the US not continue to sink when the nation rests upon a public discourse about political issues that consists of a sea of lies?
Cheney and the right wing may be assholes, but they (a) have a vision of the kind of society they want to create, and (b) fight like hell to win it.
Outside of Participatory Economics (parecon), there is no vision on the left -- and discussion of pareon is mostly blacklisted on the left, because it's too threatening to the coordinator class.
It's verboten to even mention the coordinator class on the left. Until the left gets serious about dealing with this third class, Dick Cheney will still have a lot to teach us about winning ... even if he is a total, complete, and utter asshole.
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
For the far left vision, you can have a look at the Green party platform, and various other far left third party platforms. You can look at Wasserman's recent article. Various others offer the vision from time to time. Basically, it's the golden rule, applied.
"It's verboten to even mention the coordinator class on the left."
You're mistaking the real left with the elite's McLeft. McLeft is quite a spectacle. But it's not the real thing! I think you can find good explanations - ask around.
The problem with blaming people for the next terrorist attack is it subtly lets the terrorists off the hook. They are responsible. The timing is theirs, the location, everything. So, thinking about it holds us hostage to fear, which is what they want.
All we OWN is who we are, and Cheney's defense of torture should be attacked on those grounds. Not on the grounds that they were ineffective. We don't do terror ourselves, we don't torture. It's who we are (or were). Because we don't do those things, we choose to look forward rather than backward.
Its sad that Cheney's argument for extreme and degrading engagement of Al-Qaida is actually being cast aside because, in the end, it was too expensive, and we're broke. Bush/Cheney's extreme over-response to the Al-Qaida problem has distracted America from her true business. Which is business, not war. Creating new products, creating new wealth, using that wealth responsibly to, among other things, find and lock up WMD and help our natural environment.
The proper response to Al-Qaida was to note that they don't matter and have never mattered. Criminals should be found out and punished, but beyond that, saying you're at 'war' with them just legitimizes them to the stature of a country, which is absurd. Of course nuclear material should be corralled, but would that requirement be somehow gone if Al-Qaida didn't exist? We need to take action against mass-death because action is needed in and of itself. Its, duh, the prudent thing to do, like not leaving a gasoline can next to a fire.
Cheney legitimized Al-Qaida, gave it a face and a name, gave it publicity, gave it stature. He EVEN legitimized its methods: terror and torture. All of this essentially sent the message, 'you are right. you are important.' What a gift to a madman.
All these comments are good, however, I really appreciate and totally agree with MA G. I say the two great TERRORIST countries: the US and Israel. I am a Canadian and our federal government is a clone of the Bush/Cheney criminal cabal. We are in the same foul boat as the US, just not nearly as much power....thank God!!!!
Frank Rich’s column, “Who Is to Blame for the Next Attack?”, could be very revealing if we are willing to look beyond the heartfelt details that he provides, and look at the big picture of ‘non-state actors’.
Rich focuses on revealing the truth of the non-state actors, Al Qaeda etc., who struck on the first attack of 9/11, with the presumption that these or other non-state actors will launch the “Next Attack”.
In addition to the traditionally held image of the non-state actors of Al Qaeda terrorists, who were the proximate cause of 9/11, Rich’s column suggests that there are less traditional non-state actors whose mistakes, motivations, deceptions, and intentional propagandizing of the American people could actually be the underlying cause of any “Next Attack”.
In fact, it appears to me that Rich is implying, if not plainly saying, that Cheney (and his gang) not only did not try to protect the ‘public interest’ of average Americans from the first attack, but that his elitist ‘faction’ in our country represent a sort of ‘non-state actors’ radical-right within our own country that are not honestly committed to our common interests, but rather to their own special interests.
Interestingly, Al Gore said, in his fabulously revolutionary, but overlooked and under-appreciated 2007 book, "The Assault on Reason", much the same thing as I perceive in Rich’s column, that, "a radical right 'faction' (I would have said EMPIRE) has taken over our government and holds in utter contempt the very concept that such a thing as 'a public interest' even exists."
While it may seem, to many, that a tiny and disguised cabal of non-state actors within our own country, which seeks interests so different than average American citizens that it could welcome the “Next Attack”, look forward to it, and even deceptively work toward that end for its own benefit, might dismiss such thinking as ‘conspiracy theory’, today’s NYT editorial on the very same page, “A Rogue Industry”, which describes the long term lies and criminal conspiracy of the cigarette industry, dispels the myth that such non-state actors (and anti-social actors) actually exist in the real world --- and right within our own country.
So, one is left with the shocking reality (or “Shock Doctrine”), even if it is only a “One Percent Doctrine” for less than one percent of the ruling-elite ‘corporate financial Empire’ that controls our country behind the façade of its ‘Vichy’ government for its own private benefit regardless of the externality costs that it dumps on the public, that such non-state actors do IN FACT exist in the form of cigarette corporations --- and that the United States [Federal] Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has reviewed voluminous evidence of this criminal reality, and judged that such non-state (and anti-social) actors are acting antithetically to the real ‘public interests’ of America’s citizens --- and that such non-state (corporate) actors should be regulated and constrained by our Federal Government, even if that constraint on their corporate and financial abuse of freedom destroys the private profit of their anti-social scheme.
The bottom-line of Rich’s question, “Who Is to Blame for the Next Attack?”, is already answerable, because that ‘Next Attack’ after 9/11 has already occurred --- and we already know the non-state actors who launched that attack on ‘our country’ and ‘our people’.
The ‘Next Attack’, the ‘Second Attack’ on America, and the ‘Second Shoe Dropping” after the 9/11 ‘kinetic’ attack, has already occurred ironically on 9/15 (08) with the non-state (anti-state) actors of the ruling-elite ‘corporate financial Empire’ within our own country having intentionally launched an ‘economic’ attack from within, by allowing the failure of Lehman to ignite a firestorm and collapse every bit as destructive as the collapse of the World Trade Towers --- and for the same reason: because, like the cigarette corporations that profit from cancer, they privately profit from it, regardless of the destruction wrought on average Americans.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
amacd May 31st, 2009 12:33 pm..May I refer you to these important articles as to the real perpetrators behind 9/11 and one of the many motives......
http://www.israelshamir.net/Contributors/
Collateral_Damage_911.pdf
www.israelshamir.net/Contributors/
Collateral_Damage_Part_II_26122008.pdf
angryoldman, thanks again for your first link (which I previously read from your previously shared link), and thanks particularly for the second and newer link (of 12/26/08) which I scanned and will digest in more detail.
Two points in my mind are:
1. The clear fact that the center, headquarters, focus of the global ruling-elite 'corporate financial Empire', of which I am primarily concerned, was/is in the post-WWII U.S., although subsidiary elements of such Empire affect (and infrect) other entities still posing as traditional nation-states (as is the U.S. itself, with great assistance from both the two-party 'Vichy' government, and the 'Vichy' media --- both controlled by the now global Empire).
While the balance of interests and concerns between the ruling-elite global Empire and the parochial concerns of various charade nation-states, many of which it now controls, are clearly not on any basis of nationalism, race, religion, or other superficial factors, but only one of class differentiation between the ruling/elite tiny minority and many larger and varied interest grouping of average and majoritarian polities within old fashioned countries, regions, races, and religions.
However, the epicenter of economic conflict (running through the oil rich Middle East and South Central Asia, seems to have caused the global Empire to focus inordinate attention to the propagandizing of this Huntington-style 'clash of civilizations' as a central and popular theme for justifying its complementary and dual warfare and economic 'shock doctrines'.
2. I would like to better understand, with more specificity, the choice of Lehman as the precipitant catalyst for acting as the 'nuclear trigger' of the 9/15 (08) 'economic' attack --- the 'second shoe dropping' in the Empire's coup de grâce 'shock doctrine'.
Why Lehman, rather than any of the other very convenient Wall Street IB's as the triggering mechanism for the attack?
Why not Bear?
Was it simply the right time and scale, or was there something unique about Lehman that made it the right domino to start the 'economic attack' with?
Was Lehman's earlier report exposing the 'gaming' of markets with the known 'market failure' of 'negative externality cost dumping' applied to global warming and financial manipulation some kind of sick retribution that the Empire's elite found delight in visiting on Lehman for daring to appear as a 'traitor to its class'?
[see Lehman's exposure report of 2007
http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/2237.html ]
Why was Lehman selected as the 'detonator' to this second attack of 9/15?
Anyway, oldman, I am old also and make no pretense to knowing all the answers, but like you, I am angry, about what this Empire is doing to our former democratic Republic, this supposed "city on the hill" of human history.
Best,
Alan MacDonald
amacd May 31st, 2009 2:03 pm..I suspect the combination of Lehman's size and even more so, it's age,was seen to create the greatest shock effect. AND they may not have been going along with the program.
Obviously, I am angry over much of what is occuring. But, more than anything, I am totally frustrated with the average American's inability to see through this charade.....especially of 9/11....and that is where I concentrate my efforts to at least bring forth a new investigation of 9/11. NYC is headed that way in November through their NYC CAN project. If they cannot get something going, who will?
http://files.meetup.com/300645/NYC%20CAN%20-%20support%20letter.pdf
angryoldman, I agree with you completely in your "efforts to at least bring forth a new investigation of 9/11".
But I sincerely believe that the more recent, and less investigated, second attack of 9/15 (08) would quite probably shed additional light on the cast of characters and motivations that went into both events --- and thus might greatly help in further investigating areas (beyond the 'kinetic' and structural aspects of 9/11) which are murkier about the people and rationale involved in 9/11, and thus might have additional light shed by comparing the people-dots of both attacks.
However, I can well appreciate the sense of urgency and value for those who have faithfully had the bone of 9/11 in their mouths for low these nearly 8 years.
Best,
Alan
LEHMAN was GOLLUM SACHS major competitor …
¿ What better _ m o t i v e _
___ than unbridled and
___ unencumbered profiteerism ?
Namaste
Just remember:
-------------------------------------------------------
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Joseph Goebbels
29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945
"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. 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 peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same for any country."
Herman Goering to Gustave Gilbert at Nuremberg, 18 April, 1946
------------------------------------------------------------
And it will all become clear to you.
The trio of Pillsbury doughboys now leading the party - Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Cheney - have variously cemented the G.O.P.'s brand as a whites-only men's club . . .
As of this moment, the true leader of the Republican party is still George Wanker Bush. The cluelessness, the lazy, sneering stupidity, the casual cruelty and evil are all The Wanker - still. The far right thinks Reagan was their great and most successful hero. It was George Wanker Bush.
This is an easy question.
Both the political right and the Obama people will blame Bill Clinton.
i really don't get f. rich sometimes. he's saying bush/cheney faction lied this country into the most horrible, immoral, disastrous decision it could ever make (the war in iraq), and yet he will NEVER come out and say they should be tried for their betrayals.
in fact, it's worse: he accepts and reinforces the very paradigm that makes cheney-ism inevitable:
that there is such a thing as a War on Terror.
once we accepted that monstrous lie, cheney's nightmare vision was/is ultimately unavoidable.
Who is to blame for the next attack? Why is this question even being asked? Did we not just spend $1 trillion fighting our enemy after the last attack? Does that just not buy what it used to? Under what scenario would we ever imagine spending THAT kind of money and then asking about the dreaded 'next' attack?
As BushCo marched toward war with Iraq, I called on the gov't (not very loudly) to starting investing in poverty-stricken areas in the Middle East, where radical Islam finds its greatest appeal (misery loves company and the poor are ever easily radicalized). Offering companies incentives to locate factories in Cairo or Karachi, for example. Building bridges, hospitals, parks, roads, schools. Sending over computers. All copiously covered with the American flag so the locals know where these things came from. Economic development even in Saudi Arabia (which does a horrible job spreading its commonwealth - hence the attraction of Al-Qaida there). Economic development as government policy would be much cheaper than war and pays dividends that keep on paying with each passing year (unlike destruction, construction creates value every year it is used). And if you believe in globalization, as I do, the result is a win-win: American consumers find cheaper goods coming from the Middle East. Shoes... not shoe bombs. Its not as sexy to the American public as 'unleashing hell' on millions of people who had nothing to do with 9-11, but for eliminating the causes of radicalism (poverty), its MUCH more effective. I called, I think, for $80 billion to go into such programs. LOL. I could have called for $500 billion, which would have eliminated poverty in the Middle East permanently.
Vote for me, my fellow Americans, and I promise to spend a trillion dollars fighting MidEast terrorism in such a way that you never, ever have to ask again: 'Who is to blame for the NEXT attack?'
Just asking that question is an admission of a failed strategy. If Cheney asked that question, he should have followed it with an apology.
Re the torture debate, for those of you who haven't heard, Olberman recently pointed out a couple of interrogation tactics that worked fabulously: sugar free cookies (for a diabetic terrorist suspect) and an apology for US actions in Iraq (suspect wanted to kill interrogator for allowing Shites to hurt family members in Iraq, followed by interrogator apology, followed by suspect crying, followed by telling us everything we wanted to know.)
Funny. Since 9-11 more Americans have died from lightning that any terrorist attack in America, yet the corporate media continues to play up the dangers of a potential attack. Personally I don't think another attack is necessary. Bin Laden is quite aware that America is a country owned and operated by a few, ruthless corporations that would use the attacks on the World Trade Center to fleece the public treasury in the name of defence. Now we have a military that dwarfs our Cold War machine with no clear enemy in sight. We also have a brand new bureaucracy (Homeland Insecurity) that is government funded (but privately operated!) and represents our most bloated, insulting and useless excuse for “security” in America.
While the Dems and Repubs continue to funnel middle class taxes into the coffers of the defence contractors, Big Oil, and our brutal prison/justice system (while strangulating any discussion or move towards universal, single-payer healthcare), Osama only has to sit by and laugh to himself as Americans wilfully surrender what's left of their marginal sovereignty to the filthy rich, culturally ignorant class that dominates American society.
To an outsider, a non-American, the country looks like it's gone completely mad. 7.1 million Americans locked up or on parole while the amount of crimes in America has decreased significantly over the last twenty years; no healthcare; daily corporate bailouts; a population that's scared of it's own shadow; people making time for reality shows, Jerry Springer and American Idol but shying away from becoming politically savvy. A supposedly peaceful country that sports the highest murder rate on the planet and possesses more guns that the rest of the world combined. Less Americans (percentage wise) can read and write today than during the American revolution, yet our so-called institutions of higher learning require $100,000 for just the most basic of diplomas and some ephemeral social status we are led to believe is crucial to advance in our dog-eat-dog society.
Frank Rich gets it, but I can almost feel his sense of despair in our ability to set things straight. The general population has been spoon-fed corporate crap for so long, that they have no idea who is responsible for our current state of affairs.
At least we have CD's to vent our frustrations.
SUCH an obvious set-up.
1st-Cheney shrieks on Fox that Obama has invited AQ into every baby's bedroom in America. As he is.
2nd-The Mossad delivers. But this time is not apprehended FILMING their own crimes. As they were.
3rd-The Republiscum are swept back into power on an avalanche of fear where they make bush2 look like FDR. Then the Slaughter of millions more Arabs commences, Israel's annexation of it's neighbors land continues, and further radical upward drafting of wealth in the US accelerates.
SUCH an obvious set-up.
Rich asks this question: "Which will reach Washington first, change or the terrorists?"
The answer is already in: The terrorists. They never left. Indeed, they've been in DC for decades. And Obama is currently the Head Terrorist.
In the universe of the US "media," Luke Skywalker is a terrorist. He's fighting the Evil Empire, after all. And the USA is the most evil of the empires on this planet. So he would certainly be fighting the US Empire. But Rich is quite incapable of understanding this very basic aspect. I mean, how many terrorist recruiting ads are aimed at the gullible and uninformed daily and paid for by taxpayers? Next on the insideous list are the many ultraviolent video "games," which would have an X rating if they were a movie and are advertised by the dozens daily. Stormtrooper recruiters allowed to enter and disrupt highschools by their very presence.
So, the terrorists are already here and attack daily, often killing themsleves, family members and other innocents. The person who shot and killed the doctor at the Kansas church today qualifies as a terrorist, and many terrorist wannabes will applaud the act.