Repugs running on their anti-terror record: LOL...

[marmar]

Published on Friday, July 7, 2006 by the Los Angeles Times
That's Their Big Gun?
Republicans running on their anti-terror exploits are just plain nutty.
by Rosa Brooks

According to the media, Republican strategists hope to make the fight against terrorism a "campaign cornerstone" in the run-up to the November elections.

Great idea! If these same strategists had been around in 1932 during the Depression, they'd probably have urged President Hoover to run for reelection on the strength of his economic policies.

Why would the Republicans want to make their record on fighting terrorism a campaign centerpiece? It's been almost five years since the 9/11 attacks, yet a recent bipartisan study found that 84% of the foreign policy experts surveyed disagreed with the president's often-repeated assertion that we're winning the war on terror. Iraq has become a magnet for the world's aspiring terrorists; in Afghanistan, the Taliban is resurgent and security is worsening; Osama bin Laden remains on the lam.

Unless I'm really missing something, the problem is not only that the GOP anti-terror strategy has been largely counterproductive. Much of the time, it also seems impressively unfettered by logic.

Of course, it could just be me. Maybe the strategy is actually devilishly sophisticated and not incoherent at all.

Here are a few examples. You be the judge.

First, naturally enough, we want to kill terrorists. I get that part. But although we are allowed to kill terrorists, terrorists are not allowed to kill themselves. When they kill themselves — as three terror suspects at Guantanamo did recently and more than 25 have attempted in the past — their suicides are part of an unacceptable campaign of "asymmetrical warfare" against us. Go figure! Gotta hope Bin Laden doesn't catch on — if he realizes that self-destruction is the best way to fight us, next thing you know, he'll kill himself too. And then where would we be?

Then there's this: We want to interrogate terror suspects. Who wouldn't? In fact, we want to use "enhanced" interrogation methods (translation: torture) against terror suspects, and when it's inconvenient for us to torture people ourselves, we regularly trundle them off to foreign states that don't mind getting their hands dirty. Yet we don't want to release any of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo because we're worried that their home governments might … torture them!

The rest of the column is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0707-28.htm

[leesa]

1. So EVERY DAY Democrats should be quoting rising terrism rates

since the Bush Follies started. Will they do it?

[slingsam]

2. And they used to laugh at Baghdad Bob

Remember that fool?

[zbdent]

3. To blow them out of the water

"What were you doing between 10/12/2000 and 9/10/2001? Running after keyboards missing typewriters and investigating the 'trashing' of the White House ... when it was clear that Osama bin Laden was behind the USS Cole bombing, and you didn't feel that it was important. That's the real 'pre-9/11 mentality', you guys ignored the real threat!"