The DOW slid again yesterday, perilously close to 10,000, as the 9/11 commission prepares for what some consider its “most significant” hearings today on the efforts, or non-efforts, the current Administration has made to defeat al Qaeda.
In a Cape Cod Times online poll, 59% of respondents answered that they feel the war in Iraq has made the world less safe from terrorism.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration’s dogs are engaged in their own sickeningly predictable “take no prisoners” attack mode against Richard Clarke, the former antiterrorism chief who served Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. Clarke’s new book, “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror,” asserts that the Bush administration consistently ignored his and the Clinton administration’s warnings about al Qaeda, focusing instead on Iraq and Saddam, “as if they had been frozen in amber” from Bush I.
In other news, our principal ally in the Middle East, Israel, assassinated the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin. Waves of fury and revulsion have spread across the Arab countries, with universal condemnation from moderate leaders who are furious that this will undermine their efforts to facilitate Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza strip and the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.
The current Bush administration may be successful in convincing the gullible through their manipulation of statistics and their co-opting of Allen Greenspan that the economy is not in fact as bad as it is. But how any cognizant human being can see their foreign policy as anything less than a disaster is beyond understanding or imagination.
Safer today than four years ago? You’ve got to be kidding.