Reply #9: "new wrinkle on Sunday" The fear, Brzezinski argued, was also being exploited by so-called "terror [View All]

[rodeodance]

.......The speech (by Cheney) marked a ratcheting up of a tense standoff between the White House and Democratic-controlled Congress, which is under heavy pressure from constituents to find a way to wrap up the war that most Americans now believe was a mistake.

But the Democrats made clear they have no intention of backing down. In a radio address Saturday, Representative Paul Hodes (news, bio, voting record) said the era of blank checks issued by Congress to the president was over and urged Bush to respond "by listening to the American people."

The angry debate added a new wrinkle Sunday, when a leading US foreign policy expert, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, delivered a stinging rebuke to the whole concept of the war on terror, arguing it was promoting "a culture of fear" that was being exploited for political and financial gain.

"The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being 'at war'," he wrote in The Washington Post.

The fear, Brzezinski argued, was also being exploited by so-called "terror entrepreneurs."