WTF Is It Now?!?

The Two-bit "Texan" and 'Two-bit Terrists':

Growing instability and violence in northern Latin America will challenge the bush administration's plans to launch a large crusade against Iraq, and smaller ones against the diverse Muslim groups opposed to American influence, or those fighting for independence from oppressive rule - all simplistically lumped together by the Connecticut Cowpoker as "terrorists."

Just two weeks ago in Afghanistan, the U.S. lost eight soldiers and dropped 3,300 expensive precision bombs against will-o-the-wisp opponents in a failed battle in the Shah-i-Kot Valley (shades of Vietnam's IaDrang Valley battles). America's arsenals are depleted; its military forces stretched thin - and the crusade against the nefarious "axis of evil" hasn't even been launched yet.

The 19th century American cynic, Ambrose Bierce, observed that Americans learn their geography from wars. Six months before becoming president, the Smirking Simpleton couldn't name the leader of Pakistan - whom he today hails as a champion of democracy and America's new best friend. This weekend, the non-geographic president will begin to discover the complexities of long-neglected Latin America. He will no doubt discover the continent is rich in new "terrorists," as the Lima bombing amply demonstrated.

Bush says he will defend America by fighting them all. But, as Frederick the Great rightly noted, "He who defends everything, defends nothing."

- - from Eric Margolis' Toronto Sun article, courtesy of SmirkingChimp




'I'll have a Brock...Make it a double'

- - by W. David Jenkins III, America Held Hostile:

'Well, well, well. I guess it's official now. After years of right wing pundits and other forms of silliness making fun of Hillary's claim of a "right wing conspiracy" we all finally find out what most of us already knew. Hillary and the rest of us were right. Oh, I know that the conservatives are practically wetting themselves over Bernard Goldberg's book (which shall remain nameless here). They're also wetting themselves over David Brock's book,"Blinded By the Right" as well. And they're tripping over themselves between the two books. Once again, their hypocrisy is getting in the way. See, in order for them to hail one book, they also have to hail the other. And that is causing them quite a bit of anguish. And their squirming dilemma is delicious!'

- - - this comes via SmirkingChimp.com also - you have to get over there!!




Crusader Bunnypants - all talk, no action but stupidity:

"The mix of self-pity and self-congratulation that marked the six-month anniversary of the World Trade Center catastrophe was both surrealistic and sick. In the midst of vows to move on to the "second phase" of the "war on terrorism" and the noisy celebrations of American patriotism (with talk of using nuclear weapons on the "axis of evil" sounding in the background), no one said what is self-evidently true: There has been only a marginal decline in the danger of more terrorism.

"No one should be fooled by the elaborate system of harassment of air travelers at the airports around the country. Most of the pawing and groping, the peering at shoes and the breaking of fingernail files is farcical. The farce descends into madness when cretins want to strip-search a 79-year-old nun with a hip replacement and confiscate a Medal of Honor from an 80-year-old war hero (and former governor). None of this stuff is going to stop a determined hijacker who has checked baggage with a bomb in it and boarded the plane.

"About all the CIA seems able to do is to provide raw material for Tom Ridge's cute new color-coded alert system. Unless there is deep reform of these agencies (to say nothing of Immigration, which gave permission to the terrorists to change their visas six months after Sept. 11), nothing else really matters. The question remains whether such reform is possible.

"Thus for all the flags, all the manic singing of "God Bless America," all the bellicose rhetoric of the president, all the hyper-patriotism, all the elaborate security precautions, all Attorney General John Ashcroft's destruction of civil liberties, the American people are not much safer than they were Sept. 10."

- - - read it all at The Chicago Sun-Times




(Help, please - click on the darker green box of the ratings thing in the lefthand border. I need to know if it works. Thanks!!)

*Opening pic:"Praslin Island, Seychelles", SuperStock; yesterday's was "Hallstatt, Austria", also SuperStock.