In the Spin Zone

One of my favorite political writers Robert Scheer has a good article called:

Spinning Old Threats Into New Fears

Investigators have known for a decade about terrorist plots to bring down passenger jets with liquid explosives. So why, all of a sudden, did Bush ban most liquids on flights?

Government-induced hysteria thrives on public ignorance, which is why President Bush is so confident of turning the British bomb plot to his partisan purposes. Otherwise, how could he dare claim that his policies have made the nation safer?


...With Saddam Hussein three years gone, yet Iraq still a disaster, Bush is now emphasizing the boogeyman of “Islamo-fascism.” This concept completely ignores the fact that U.S. enemies such as Syria’s Baathist regime and many Sunni insurgents in Iraq are secular, while religious fanatics on both sides of the Sunni-Shiite split are slaughtering each other in Baghdad every day in an insane sectarian conflict for control of what’s left of Iraq.

Nor are these divides anything new. Arab (and Persian) nationalism and Islamic fanaticism have for decades competed for adherents in a post-colonial region still bullied by the West and suffering from an inferiority complex. According to the 9/11 Commission, Sept. 11 lead hijacker Mohamed Atta hated the neo-fascist Iraqi dictator Hussein as “an American stooge set up to give Washington an excuse to intervene in the Middle East.”

Read all at link above.