"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" -Oscar Wilde |
"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself." -- Proverbs 11:25 |
President Bush and his surrogates are taking their re-election campaign into dangerous territory. Mr. Bush is running as the man best equipped to keep America safe from terrorists - that was to be expected. We did not, however, anticipate that those on the Bush team would dare to argue that a vote for John Kerry would be a vote for Al Qaeda. Yet that is the message they are delivering - with a repetition that makes it clear this is an organized effort to paint the Democratic candidate as a friend to terrorists.
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This is despicable politics. It's not just polarizing - it also undermines the efforts of the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency to combat terrorists in America. Every time a member of the Bush administration suggests that Islamic extremists want to stage an attack before the election to sway the results in November, it causes patriotic Americans who do not intend to vote for the president to wonder whether the entire antiterrorism effort has been kidnapped and turned into part of the Bush re-election campaign.
[Note from me: We don't have to wonder. We know. And we've known since 9/11/2001. And frankly, this is a taste of what people like me have to look foward too once Diebold and Glenda Hood and the now-cowed CBS and Fox News and everyone else still carrying water for this bunch of thugs succeeds in propping him up for at least another four years (because why should anyone care about the Constitution at this point?).]
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The general instinct of Americans is to play fair. That is why, even though terrorists struck the United States during President Bush's watch, the Democrats have not run a campaign that blames him for allowing the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to be attacked.
The Islamic militant group that claimed responsibility for the Madrid train bombings has warned that its next targets could be Japan, Italy, Britain or Australia, an Arabic newspaper reported on Thursday.
The newspaper, Al Quds al Arabi, which is based in London, said on its Web site that it had received a statement from the group, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, in which the group reiterated its responsibility for bombings, which killed 201 people and wounded more than 1,600...The statement tells Americans that Abu Hafs al-Masri supports the re-election of President George W. Bush.
"We are very keen that Bush does not lose the upcoming elections," it said.
Addressing Bush, it said: "We know that a heavyweight operation would destroy your government, and this is what we don't want. We are not going to find a bigger idiot than you." The statement said Abu Hafs al-Masri needs what it called Bush's "idiocy and religious fanaticism" because they would "wake up" the Islamic world. Comparing Bush with his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry, the statement tells the president, "Actually, there is no difference between you and Kerry, but Kerry will kill our community, while it is unaware, because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish infidelity and present it to the Arab and Islamic community as civilization."