Non-News: GHB is Incubating Terrorism, not Fighting It
Anyone paying any attention at all, as opposed to fighting desperately with hands over ears to defend their mistaken and pathetically naive votes and positions, has of course known this for a good long time now. The misbegotten Iraq invasion, predestined and inevitable due to the bushtapo's determination that actually monitoring, managing, or attending to terrorism and Bin Laden in particular was too Clintonesque, has turned out to be the best thing terrorism ever saw. Not that the bush dynasty hasn't been a friend to tyrants and terrorism and its supporters for decades. They profiteered with a vengeance in the 1930's, enthusiastically helping to arm Hitler. They have financed Bin Laden, Hussein, Iran's rulers, and any number of other tyrannical leaders and terrorists for as long as they have been in government of course. That would be George 1 and 2 and their ilk. Or yukk is more like it.
Not that it takes deep channeling to understand that if terrorism tapered off or - say - Bin Laden were found dead at the wrong moment (e.g., in a non-election year?), the administration's feeble yet febrile fear-mongering and claims of effective terror-fighting might lose some spin. They need more and more terrorism of course to make their dark fantasy plausible even to the kool-aiders. Hence the idea that Iraq is a "success." Of course it is. We have many more terrorists to have a potential shot at (and be bombed by) now. Sorry, civilians. Mea culpa, American military, thinking you were actually engaged in a "war." This is all about maintaining the bush dynasty, and/or saving their "face."
When reports from our own intelligence agencies, currently outrageously throttled, controlled, threatened with jail, and otherwise censored by cheney et al document what a fantastic terrorism-generator the Iraq nightmare dreamed up by bush/cheney/rumsfeld etc. has been, you know we have reached something a good long way from nirvana.
Glenn Greenwald, he of Unclaimed Territory (I have spoken with admiration of him before), has this, working off a NYT article. This ought to be thought-provoking stuff, but that word "thought" worries me - I fear it may be so only for those who already know. It's troubling that some 30% or so of those responding to polls at least seem to have taken their batteries out. I encourage you to check out full Greenwald and Times article.
If I were shaping the Democrats' election strategy, I would create a television commercial where someone reads the following four paragraphs -- from a new report in the NYT today -- and then I would air it over and over and over every single day as much as possible until November 7:
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.
The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.
Numerous sources told the NYT about the contents of NIE, which "are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence." So this assessment -- that the war in Iraq has increased the terrorist threat to the U.S. -- is from the Bush administration itself and is the consensus of the same intelligence community which the administration purged of all dissidents.
Only in the U.S., with its toxic mix of Bush administration propaganda and media listlessness, could it ever even be a question open to debate whether invading, bombing and occupying a Muslim country in the Middle East for almost four years would fuel Muslim radicalism, inflame anti-American resentment, and create far more terrorists than ever existed before. And only in the current political climate where up is down could the political party directly responsible for severely exacerbating the terrorism problem with a pointless, disastrous and seemingly endless war have their chances for victory depend upon maximizing the country's focus on terrorism -- the very problem they have so severely exacerbated.
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Not that it takes deep channeling to understand that if terrorism tapered off or - say - Bin Laden were found dead at the wrong moment (e.g., in a non-election year?), the administration's feeble yet febrile fear-mongering and claims of effective terror-fighting might lose some spin. They need more and more terrorism of course to make their dark fantasy plausible even to the kool-aiders. Hence the idea that Iraq is a "success." Of course it is. We have many more terrorists to have a potential shot at (and be bombed by) now. Sorry, civilians. Mea culpa, American military, thinking you were actually engaged in a "war." This is all about maintaining the bush dynasty, and/or saving their "face."
When reports from our own intelligence agencies, currently outrageously throttled, controlled, threatened with jail, and otherwise censored by cheney et al document what a fantastic terrorism-generator the Iraq nightmare dreamed up by bush/cheney/rumsfeld etc. has been, you know we have reached something a good long way from nirvana.
Glenn Greenwald, he of Unclaimed Territory (I have spoken with admiration of him before), has this, working off a NYT article. This ought to be thought-provoking stuff, but that word "thought" worries me - I fear it may be so only for those who already know. It's troubling that some 30% or so of those responding to polls at least seem to have taken their batteries out. I encourage you to check out full Greenwald and Times article.
If I were shaping the Democrats' election strategy, I would create a television commercial where someone reads the following four paragraphs -- from a new report in the NYT today -- and then I would air it over and over and over every single day as much as possible until November 7:
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.
The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.
Numerous sources told the NYT about the contents of NIE, which "are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence." So this assessment -- that the war in Iraq has increased the terrorist threat to the U.S. -- is from the Bush administration itself and is the consensus of the same intelligence community which the administration purged of all dissidents.
Only in the U.S., with its toxic mix of Bush administration propaganda and media listlessness, could it ever even be a question open to debate whether invading, bombing and occupying a Muslim country in the Middle East for almost four years would fuel Muslim radicalism, inflame anti-American resentment, and create far more terrorists than ever existed before. And only in the current political climate where up is down could the political party directly responsible for severely exacerbating the terrorism problem with a pointless, disastrous and seemingly endless war have their chances for victory depend upon maximizing the country's focus on terrorism -- the very problem they have so severely exacerbated.
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posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:56 PM
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