With a little help from his enemies
June 29, 2004
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"When I was a teenage communist half a century ago I knew a few comrades who gave the Libs their first preferences. They regarded the ALP as being mealy-mouthed compromisers and insufficiently enthusiastic about the Soviet Union, and believed that a vote for a conservative party would hasten what Marx had promised – the inevitable "crisis in capitalism". They believed that the whole rotten edifice of private enterprise would crumble, having been white-anted by what Marxists called "internal contradictions". "
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"I can't help but wonder whether similarly bizarre reasoning isn't fundamental to latter-day fundamentalism. Thus far, Osama bin Laden and the boys have been behaving as oddly as those quixotic communists – for their plethora of terrorist attacks, particularly those targeting the US, have saved George W. Bush's bacon and, by extension, Howard's."
"Before September 11, there was unrest in the Bush team. Take Donald Rumsfeld. The White House was energetically undermining him. The Washington Post was one of many papers receiving leaks and backgrounders from the White House, including names of the candidates most likely to replace him. Rumsfeld knew he was for the chop and told his confidantes that only a major terrorist attack could save him. "
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9981003%5E12272,00.html