According to the polls, the man who won the last election through our republic's Electoral College still enjoys high ratings from the people. Campaigning on the platform of compassionate conservatism with the unique ability to bring opposing sides together, this president now acts like a character from OK Coral and wants portable miniature nukes so troops in the field can kill a number equivalent to one-third of the Hiroshima population at a time.

Watch out, because President Bush needs something dramatic to regain the world sympathy we had after 9/11 and to keep the American collective consciousness diverted elsewhere.

The idea that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked by a group of suicidal maniacs who envied our freedoms is beginning to wear thin. It wasn't the Al Qaeda that stonewalled any investigation into why this happened and then delivered the ultimate insult to victim families by appointing Henry Kissinger, Dr. Strangelove himself, a man who can't leave the country without fear of arrest for crimes against humanity, to head up an investigation. And finally, when another commission of friends to the administration is selected to investigate, their results are not released to the public because it might endanger national security. Does that sound like freedom to you?

Come on folks, deep in our hearts we all know that having thousands of American troops spread across the globe has engendered a great deal of hate and distrust of Americans. These troops are not diplomats, they're soldiers trained to follow orders and fight. They can engender hatred just by the accidents that happen while keeping in shape or the boys-will-be-boys encounters with the native populations.

It certainly doesn't require a great deal of empathy to understand how we would feel with Russian or Chinese military bases in Kansas, Texas, or anywhere else in our own country. And how would we feel if some hotshot jet pilot killed some of our loved ones by knocking down a ski-lift in Aspen? How do you suppose the relatives of a fishing boat sunk by a nuclear sub showing off feel towards Americans? And how about the passengers on school buses or airliners that we've blown up by accident?

Even if we pulled these troops home and tried to find them jobs, how long would it take to heal the wounds developed over the last decade or five?

Ambiguities.

If we can't win the war on drugs, how are we ever going to stop terrorism? If tons of white powder can be smuggled into this country to go directly up people's noses or into their veins, what in the world makes people think that we could stop terrorists from bringing in chemical and biological weapons?

And what would happen to this nation's economy if we won the war on drugs? Estimated seven years ago at $500 billion a year, a half trillion in profit, just the cocaine business in this country could ruin our economy if it were stopped tomorrow. You don't really think the kingpins of this industry sock their profits back into product improvement do you?

What's to develop or improve? Are they trying for better weeds and kitchens, vacuum packaging and container shipping, owning their own banks and airlines? Did you know that the Chinese recently opened the world's largest container shipping operation on Grand Bahama Island, about eighty miles off our Florida coast?

Now there's a real fear story that could be developed. Suppose the war channels and loyal news services started leaking rumors that shipments of cocaine were laced or cut with anthrax. How many bankers, judges, hotel and restaurant operators, other business types and people on the street would suddenly develop nervous breakdowns?

The booga-booga fear stories about one or two groups of organized terrorists wanting to kill as many Americans as possible make just about as much sense.

Do you really believe that terrorists are dumb, that they believe it's the American people who have caused the problems and injustices in their homelands? Do you think these people don't understand leadership and that it's the U.S. government and the military planners that foment the deeds that hurt them? And you can include international banking, once headquartered in the World Trade Center, right in there with Washington and the Pentagon as well as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Banking, also headquartered in Washington. These are the terrorist's primary targets.

Therein lays the dilemma. To bolster his own propaganda, Bush needs an attack on the American heartland to prove real terrorism. He needs an attack that cannot be misinterpreted as anything other than an attack on innocent civilians, people that are guilty of nothing more than electing and permitting the form of leadership now running this country, an attack at a major sporting event like the Olympics we recently had in Salt Lake City or a baseball game, Chicago subway, the hotels of Miami Beach or anything other than Washington, our military, or the media and banking cabals. He can't just run around crying wolf whenever he needs a weapon of mass distraction.

When it happens, will we again believe it originated outside the country?


"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."

Ed Henry is the founder of TUFF, the Taxpayers Union, and a regular columnist for Ether Zone.

Ed Henry can be reached at ctzcrank@mindspring.com

Ed's FREE pamphlet-"To The Moon, Alice" the national debt, your Social Security, and the Pay-It-Again Sam scam.

We also invite you to visit his website at http://www.uncle-scam.com/

Published in the May 30, 2003 issue of  Ether Zone.
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