[Peace-discuss] So This is Why....

Sun Apr 30 13:25:51 CDT 2006

To me the irony is that here is a conservative saying that the 50% of the people who support Bush are really dumb; and the people to whom he refers are his own.

"Morton K. Brussel" <brussel4 at insightbb.com> wrote:  Comment from another (former?) right winger concerning Bush and the populace.  Seeing the light. Ineptitude there is aplenty from the Bush cabal, but the driving force for imperialism is not a question of stupidity. --mkb

  Begin forwarded message:

Polls Show Many Americans are Simply Dumber Than Bush 

By Paul Craig Roberts 

      ---------------
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the 
Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was 
Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial 
page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is 
coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be 
reached at: paulcraigroberts at yahoo.com 
     ---------------

01/29/06 "ICH" -- -- Two recent polls, a Los Angeles 
Times/Bloomberg poll and a New York Times/CBS News 
poll, indicate why Bush is getting away with 
impeachable offenses. Half of the US population is 
incapable of acquiring, processing and understanding 
information. 

Much of the problem is the media itself, which serves 
as a disinformation agency for the Bush 
administration. Fox "News" and right-wing talk radio 
are the worst, but with propagandistic outlets setting 
the standard for truth and patriotism, all of the 
media is affected to some degree. 

Despite the media's failure, about half the population 
has managed to discern that the US invasion of Iraq 
has not made them safer and that the Bush 
administration's assault on civil liberties is not a 
necessary component of the war on terror. The problem, 
thus, lies with the absence of due diligence on the 
part of the other half of the population. 

Consider the New York Times/CBS poll. Sixty-four 
percent of the respondents have concerns about losing 
civil liberties as a result of anti-terrorism measures 
put in place by President Bush. Yet, 53 
percent approve of spying without obtaining court 
warrants "in order to reduce the threat of terrorism." 

Why does any American think that spying without a 
warrant has any more effect in reducing the threat of 
terrorism than spying with a warrant? The Foreign 
Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Bush is 
disobeying, requires the executive to obtain from a 
secret panel of federal judges a warrant for spying on 
Americans. The purpose of the law is to prevent a 
president from spying for partisan political reasons. 
The law permits the president to spy first (for 72 
hours) and then come to the court for permission. As 
the court meets in secret, spying without a warrant is 
no more effective in reducing the threat of terrorism 
than spying with a warrant. 

Instead of explaining this basic truth, the media has 
played along with the Bush administration and 
formulated the question as a trade-off between civil 
liberties and protection from terrorists. This 
formulation is false and nonsensical. Why does the 
media enable the Bush administration to escape 
accountability for illegal behavior by putting false 
and misleading choices before the people? 

The LA Times/Bloomberg poll has equally striking 
anomalies. Only 43 percent said they approved of 
Bush's performance as president. But a majority 
believe Bush's policies have made the US more secure. 

It is extraordinary that anyone would think Americans 
are safer as a result of Bush invading two Muslim 
countries and constantly threatening two more with 
military attack. The invasions and threats have caused 
a dramatic swing in Muslim sentiment away from the US. 
Prior to Bush's invasion of Iraq, a large majority of 
Muslims had a favorable opinion of America. Now only 
about 5 percent do. 

A number of US commanders in Iraq and many Middle East 
experts have told the American public that the three 
year-old war in Iraq is serving both to recruit and to 
train terrorists for al Qaeda, which has grown many 
times its former size. Moreover, the US military has 
concluded that al Qaeda has succeeded in having its 
members elected to the new Iraqi government. 

We have seen similar developments both in Egypt and in 
Pakistan. In the recent Egyptian elections, the 
radical Muslim Brotherhood, despite being suppressed 
by the Egyptian government, won a large number of 
seats. In Pakistan elements friendly or neutral toward 
al Qaeda control about half of the government. In 
Iraq, Bush's invasion has replaced secular Sunnis with 
Islamist Shia allied with Iran. 

And now with the triumph of Hamas in the Palestinian 
election, we see the total failure of Bush's Middle 
Eastern policy. Bush has succeeded in displacing 
secular moderates from Middle Eastern governments and 
replacing them with Islamic extremists. It boggles the 
mind that this disastrous result makes Americans feel 
safer! 

What does it say for democracy that half of the 
American population is unable to draw a rational 
conclusion from unambiguous facts? 

Americans share this disability with the Bush 
administration. 

According to news reports, the Bush administration is 
stunned by the election victory of the radical 
Islamist Hamas Party, which swept the US-financed 
Fatah Party from office. Why is the Bush 
administration astonished? 

The Bush administration is astonished because it 
stupidly believes that hundreds of millions of Muslims 
should be grateful that the US has interfered in their 
internal affairs for 60 years, setting up colonies and 
puppet rulers to suppress their aspirations and to 
achieve, instead, purposes of the US government. 

Americans need desperately to understand that 95 
percent of all Muslim terrorists in the world were 
created in the past three years by Bush's invasion of 
Iraq. 

Americans need desperately to comprehend that if Bush 
attacks Iran and Syria, as he intends, terrorism will 
explode, and American civil liberties will disappear 
into a thirty year war that will bankrupt the United 
States. 

The total lack of rationality and competence in the 
White House and the inability of half of the US 
population to acquire and understand information are 
far larger threats to Americans than terrorism. 

America has become a rogue nation, flying blind, 
guided only by ignorance and hubris. A terrible 
catastrophe awaits. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

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GEORGE W. BUSH - MAKING TERRORISTS FASTER THAN HE CAN KILL THEM!

IF YOU SUPPORT BUSH'S WAR, WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE??

IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

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