Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

We do not negotiate with terrorists. We put them out of business.

Yeah, when are you going to start doing that? John Kerry reminds us that they had their chance:

You'd think the only focus tonight would be on destroying Osama Bin Laden, not comparing him to an American who opposes the war whether you like him or not. You want a real debate that America needs? Here goes: If the administration had done the job right in Tora Bora we might not be having discussions on Hardball about a new Bin Laden tape. How dare Scott McClellan tell America that this Administration puts terrorists out of business when had they put Osama Bin Laden out of business in Afghanistan when our troops wanted to, we wouldn't have to hear this barbarian's voice on tape. That's what we should be talking about in America.

It's pretty obvious that the G.O.P. worked fast to make sure everyone knew the talking point in response to bin Laden's tape: Tie him to Democrats, liberals, and anti-war supporters. How about so called democrat, Chris Matthews comparing bin Laden to Michael Moore to Joe Biden. Yeah... that's responsible journalism. I predict that Chris Matthews goes to work for FoxNews in the near future... he's polishing up his resume with O'Reillyesque zingers.

Republicans rolled out all of their favorite fear mongers as soon as the tape hit the news. Here we have direct threat from the man responsible for 9/11 (hint: It's not Sadaam), yet the US doesn't believe that the threat is credible enough to raise our multi-colored threat level. Apparently it is only proper for this administration to act on bad intelligence as opposed to intelligence from the horse's mouth.

My theory is that the US could go after bin Laden, right now... and succeed in his capture. However, it would take forces out of Iraq. We all know that Iraq is the priority here. Who would guard the oil wells if we went off to Tora Bora, or perhaps Saudi Arabia to find bin Laden's spider hole.

In what appears to be a very coordinated campaign- "the boogie man is going to get us so you must surrender your civil liberties!" Some news outlets across the world are predicting that this latest message from bin Laden is actually a boon for the Bush Administration, underlining the War on Terror. (Bush's favorite subject. Believe me, he would much rather be on his throne spewing his dribble about evil-doers as opposed to the scandals.) And yet, another bin Laden tape comes out and no one questions why he is still alive and free. The Bushies use the release of this tape as an, "I told you so" argument to why they should be allowed to continue their degradation of our civil liberties with their illegal wiretaps. More ammo in the fear dept. Phew, we've been getting low lately. Keep us scared, and we'll just hand you the Civil Liberties.

Our Freedoms and Civil Liberties, and of course our arrogance are what al Qaida hate the most. By letting the Bush Administration scare those freedoms and liberties from us, it is allowing the Terrorists to win. Sadly, this is the trend which I am seeing in America today. We will never stop terrorism on the planet. When our own government does the work for the terrorists, by taking away our rights, what work does that leave the terrorists to do. It gives them more free-tim to plot and plan physical attacks against us.