Just as a new Gallup survey shows that a majority of Americans for the first time consider the Iraq invasion a mistake, and on the heels of another survey that showed Bush's approval rating at the worst ever for a reelected president, a new Bin Laden tape surfaces announcing a partnership between Bin Laden and Iraq's Prince of Darkness, Al Zarqawi. So, once again, we're back to fighting Osama Bin Laden in Iraq. If the January elections are a disaster, it's because the man who killed 3000 Americans on 9/11/2001 will have sabotaged them. In his press briefing this morning, when asked about the Sunni objection to the upcoming election, Bush preemptively and implictly blamed Osama, comparing his own vision of the future with that of Bin Laden's, even though Bush said last year that Osama is irrelevant and used that irrelevance as a justification for diverting resources away from the hunt for Bin Laden in Afghanistan. Yes, the boogeyman has returned.
You really do have an obsession with polls, don't you? BTW, I saw on the news this morning where the Ohio recount is official once again. I think I heard they took about 300 votes away from Bush. Maybe if they do a few hundred more recounts Kerry will win.
The Ohio recounts were a sham. The precincts to be recounted were hand-picked by Ohio Sec. of State Blackwell, the same Republican who rigged the election in the first place, in violation of Ohio law that calls for a random selection of precincts. Also, Mr. Blackwell allowed Triad Systems to tamper with the voting machines in those precincts he selected to be recounted. Now, you can naively believe all of that is innocent, but I will always prefer voting transparency and honesty, and TRUE random sampling.
If we can't catch Al Zarqawi in a flat alluvial plain with 120,000 troops on the ground fighting his guerillas every day, how the hell are we going to catch Bin Laden hiding in the mountains of Pakistan? The bogeyman never went anywhere and he is exploiting Al Zarqawi's fight to make it appear that he carries on a jihad. But increasingly, he directs more videotapes than terrorists attacks and the tenor of his recent ones seem to indicate that he is moving in the direction of political goals. He is trying to drive a wedge between the US and our allies and he is also trying to inflame the moderate Islamic peoples into anti-American politics. The invasion and occupation of Iraq played right into his hands on both counts. The focus of Arab frustration and fear of Western economic/military domination and international political influence is being transformed from hatred of Israel . . . to us.
