WTF Is It Now?!?

Won't get fooled again
Voters like being taken for suckers even less than they like incompetence at the top.

From the UK Guardian: Iraq is providing the Bush administration with some hard and necessary lessons. One home truth is that frightening the voters only works for a while. George Bush & Co put a great deal of effort into persuading Americans that Saddam Hussein posed a direct threat to home, high school, family SUV and, generally, to the American way of life. Lest we forget, Bush claimed at one point that unmanned aerial vehicles could menace US cities with biological or chemical weapons. Dick Cheney went bigger than big on the supposed Iraqi nuclear threat. Bush adopted the notorious Blair-Campbell "45 minutes to Armageddon" one-liner, as well as the exotic Niger yellowcake fairytale.

Maybe it is Bush who should be frightened now. His and Cheney's ever-ready willingness to scare the children and drape themselves in the flag may not be enough for voters in a 2004 election focused on largely economic issues.

Many now suspect that Bush privately decided to attack Iraq in spring-summer 2002, and then spent six months telling Americans (and gullible or complicit allies such as Tony Blair) that war was not inevitable - when it was. If true, that would be the biggest lie of all.