Post #86

Subject: Are ya scared yet?

"Here in America, we are living in the eye of a storm," George W. Bush said. "All around us, dangerous winds are swirling and these winds could reach our shores at any moment."

In a commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy this past Wednesday, Bush asserted that Osama bin Laden was working in 2005 to set up a unit inside Iraq to hit U.S. targets. He stressed that Americans face an ongoing threat from terrorists.

Who is this bin Laden fellow, and why haven’t we gotten him? :p

Wait – is Bush talking about the 9/11 bin Laden? The man who has been marginalized, the man who is dying of kidney disease, the man who has been smoked out and gotten on the run – that bin Laden? The bin Laden of Al-Qaeda?

“Al-Qaeda has expanded in organization and capabilities,” said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates before Senate Appropriations Committee on May 8, adding that it “reestablished itself in western Pakistan [and is] training new recruits.”

"Bin Laden is using Iraq to kill and demonize the United States while remaining secure and planning further operations in Pakistan," said Rand Beers, national security adviser to John Kerry's 2004 Democratic presidential campaign.

Then, why are we in Iraq?

Beers contended that the Bush administration was releasing intelligence to buttress the argument that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism while a number of intelligence sources say the most recent attacks or planned attacks against the U.S. and its allies have originated in Pakistan instead.

Bush said that while the Sept. 11 attacks occurred in 2001, Americans still face a major threat from terrorists. "In the minds of al-Qaeda leaders, 9/11 was just a down payment on violence yet to come…. Victory in Iraq is important for Osama bin Laden, and victory in Iraq is vital for the United States of America, … Hear the words of Osama bin Laden: He calls the struggle in Iraq a `war of destiny,'"

A war of destiny, U.S. troops are in the middle of fights among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds? Gawd help us all.

"As global terror threats remain very real, President Bush is sinking more money and sending more troops to referee Iraq's civil war, when those precious resources would be better spent in finishing the mission left unaccomplished in Afghanistan," said Brian Katulis, a national security expert at the Center for American Progress think tank.

Frank Rich, columnist for The New York Times and author of The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina, said, “I think that they [Bushies] thought this would be a quick, you know, easy joy ride through Iraq, get rid of this thug, Saddam Hussein, and be home by Christmas in 2003. And then like kids playing with matches, it blew up in their faces, and ever since, they‘ve been retrofitting rationales for it.”

So, it boils down – are ya safer now than in 2002? Do ya support Bush’s Iraq folly with its ever-changing rationale, or do ya think the next President needs to do a better job identifying our enemy and determining our national interests?

Yes, I’m scared!