Blogger & lawyer Glenn Greenwald
tries to ascertain why his new book
How Would A
Patriot Act? is doing so well. Apparently, the American
People are
so hungry for people who can explain
what's been going on for the past five years. The mealy-mouthed,
overly-cautious, consultant-driven Democrats appear to be simply too
frightened, too risk-averse to adopt an uncompromising stance against
the President.
We've seen many debates over the years
as to whether the Bush Administration tried to suggest an Iraq-al Qaeda
link. Looking again at Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech (He
never actually spoke those words, but had a big banner behind him
saying exactly that.)
there's
not much question as to exactly what he was trying to say:
The liberation of Iraq is a crucial
advance in the campaign against
terror. We have removed an ally of Al Qaeda, and cut off a source of
terrorist funding.
And this much is certain: No terrorist
network will gain weapons of
mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because that regime is no more.
In these 19 months that changed the
world, our actions have been
focused, and deliberate, and proportionate to the offense. We have not
forgotten the victims of September 11th -- the last phone calls, the
cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those
attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United
States. And war is what they got.
Note: May 2003 minus September 2001 equals 19 months.
"...focused,
and deliberate"? Sure, I'll go with that. "...proportionate
to the offense"? Only if you believe that "That's our oil under
their sand!"
Oh, and how is the Bush Administration
doing on the
War
on Terror?
Overall, the report tallied about
11,000 terror attacks around the
world last year, resulting in more than 14,600 deaths. That is almost a
fourfold increase in attacks from 2004, though the agency blames the
change largely on new ways of tallying the incidents.
But let's not forget:
Leaders of al-Qaida lost some control
of the terror network last year due to the arrests and deaths of top
operational planners
Um, okay...so let's get this straight...al Qaeda "lost some control",
but
still managed to increase
the attack and casualty counts
four-fold?!?!?!