Town of Braintree

FahrenHype 9/11

You have to get a copy of Fahrenhype 9/11. Just bought the DVD at Besy Buy for $10. It tells you how Big Fat Moore lies in his stupid movie.

Are we focused on terrorism

HERE'S a two-part test to determine who will win on Tuesday:

a) Ask yourself: What is the issue we are talking about these days? Are we focused on terrorism and Iraq, or on health care and jobs? The answer is obvious: terrorism and Iraq.
b) Now look at the polls. Not the page that shows who they're voting for. That changes every hour. Look at the page that asks, ''Which candidate do you think would do the best job of handling the war in Iraq?'' The answer is always President Bush, usually by 10 points. And right below that, on ''Which candidate do you think would do the best job of handling the War on Terror?'' Bush leads again, usually by 20 points.
If the issue is terrorism and Iraq, and Bush wins those issues by double digits, then the winner will be . . . voila, Bush! John Kerry was on the verge of moving out to a victory after the third debate. Taking advantage of its pre-ordained focus on domestic issues, he had finally, finally swung the debate back to the issues on which he has ?— and has always had ?— a lead: domestic policy. Next he got a short-term bounce from Bill Clinton's presence on the campaign trail and seemed on his way to closing the Bush lead. Then came the ''disappearing explosives'' story. Kerry's handlers, tacticians to the last, disregarded the needs of basic strategy and hopped on the issue with all four feet, running a TV ad lambasting Bush for losing the weapons after the invasion.
Strategically, this flawed decision assured that the final week of the campaign would focus on the areas of Bush's strength and Kerry's weakness: Iraq and terrorism. Tactically, it tied the electorate's confidence in John Kerry to the mystery of what actually happened in an ammo dump in the desert 18 months ago. Then it began to explode in Kerry's face. Soon we heard that there were only three tons of explosives . . . and they weren't there when we occupied the dump . . . and they were removed by the Russians before we got there . . . and, perhaps, there are satellite photos to prove it. All of a sudden, Kerry seems just not ready for prime time.

The backfire is amplified by the involvement of CBS and The New York Times. The plans of ''60 Minutes'' and Dan Rather to break the story on the Sunday before the election reflect overt partisan bias ?— an overt conspiracy of these leading outlets to stack the deck in favor of Kerry.
This controversy unraveling in front of us all, replete with conspiracy theories and denouement of media bias, is enough to occupy our attention and rivet our focus as Election Day approaches. It will drive all other stories off the front pages and will make the war in Iraq the key element in the election.
At this writing, the possibility that the alleged al Qaeda tape virtually endorsing Kerry will hit the airwaves makes one even more confident of a Bush victory. A threat to let blood run in the streets of America if Bush wins won't intimidate voters, but rather remind them of the importance of sending a warrior to fight the terrorists ?— and seal Bush's victory.



By Which candidate do you think wo

Kerry is a liberal Democrat


Kerry is a liberal Democrat, but in this campaign he is running as a reactionary: one who wants to reverse course -- to go back to the attitudes and practices that guided US policy when Clinton and the elder George Bush were in office. The younger Bush may be a Republican, but he is running this year as a radical. Profoundly transformed by 9/11, he sees the old playbook as feckless and is set on a revolutionary new course.

Kerry's words confirm his Sept. 10 mindset. Asked by The New York Times this month how 9/11 changed him, he replied: ''It didn't change me much at all.'' On CNN in July he said, ''What American would not trade [for] the economy we had in the 1990s, the fact that we were not at war and young Americans were not deployed?''

But of course we were at war during the Clinton and Bush I years, and we repeatedly came under attack -- at the World Trade Center, at the Kenya and Tanzania embassies, at the Khobar Towers barracks, at the port where the USS Cole docked. We were at war, but only the enemy was fighting.

Bush II looks back on the 1990s as a period of tragic complacency: ''Most Americans still felt that terrorism was something distant, something that would not strike on a large scale in America,'' he said in New Jersey last week. ''That . . . attitude is what blinded America to the war being waged against us. And by not seeing the war, our government had no comprehensive strategy to fight it.''

A key Kerry adviser, former ambassador Richard Holbrooke, impatiently dismisses the notion that America is in a real war with a real enemy bent on global domination. ''The war on terror is like saying `the war on poverty,' '' he snorts. ''It's just a metaphor.'' Kerry himself, embracing the pre-9/11 view of fanatic Muslim violence, has repeatedly insisted that the conflict with the jihadis ''is primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation,'' not a military struggle. ''We have to get back to the place we were in the '90s,'' he told the Times -- back to viewing terrorism the way we view prostitution and gambling: ''a nuisance'' that ''we're never going to end . . . but we're going to reduce.''

To Bush the radical, 9/11 shattered the illusion that the Islamo-fascist terror can be controlled with indictments and criminal lawyers. And it shattered the belief that terrorism could be beaten

By but he is running this year as

The Election of a Lifetime

The Election of a Lifetime

In that this will be my last column before the presidential election, there will be no sarcasm, no attempts at witty repartee. The topic is too serious, and the stakes are too high.

This November we will vote in the only election during our lifetime that will truly matter. Because America is at a once-in-a-generation crossroads, more than an election hangs in the balance. Down one path lies retreat, abdication and a reign of ambivalence.

Down the other lies a nation that is aware of its past and accepts the daunting obligation its future demands. If we choose poorly, the consequences will echo through the next 50 years of history. If we, in a spasm of frustration, turn out the current occupant of the White House, the message to the world and ourselves will be two-fold. First, we will reject the notion that America can do big things. Once a nation that tamed a frontier, stood down the Nazis and stood upon the moon, we will announce to the world that bringing democracy to the Middle East is too big of a task for us. But more significantly, we will signal to future presidents that as voters, we are unwilling to tackle difficult challenges, preferring caution to boldness, embracing the mediocrity that has characterized other civilizations.

The defeat of President Bush will send a chilling message to future presidents who may need to make difficult, yet unpopular decisions. America has always been a nation that rises to the demands of history regardless of the costs or appeal. If we turn away from that legacy, we turn away from whom we are.

Second, we inform every terrorist organization on the globe that the lesson of Somalia was well-learned. In Somalia we showed terrorists that you don't need to defeat America on the battlefield when you can defeat them in the newsroom. They learned that a wounded America can become a defeated America. Twenty-four-hour news stations and daily tracing polls will do the heavy lifting, turning a cut into a fatal blow. Except that Iraq is Somalia times 10. The election of John Kerry will serve notice to every terrorist in every cave that the soft underbelly of American power is the timidity of American voters. Terrorists will know that a steady stream of grisly photos for CNN is all you need to break the will of the American people. Our own self-doubt will take it from there. Bin Laden will recognize that he can topple any American administration without setting foot on the homeland.

It is said that America's W.W.II generation is its 'greatest generation'. But my greatest fear is that it will become known as America's 'last generation.' Born in the bleakness of the Great depression and hardened in the fire of W.W. II, they may be the last American generation that understands the meaning of duty, honor and sacrifice. It is difficult to admit, but I know these terms are spoken with only hollow detachment by many (but not all) in my generation. Too many citizens today mistake 'living in America' as 'being an American.' But America has always been more of an idea than a place. When you sign on, you do more than buy real estate. You accept a set of values and responsibilities.

This November, my generation, which has been absent too long, must grasp the obligation that comes with being an American, or fade into the oblivion they may deserve. I believe that 100 years from now historians will look back at the election of 2004 and see it as the decisive election of our century. Depending on the outcome, they will describe it as the moment America joined the ranks of ordinary nations; or they will describe it as the moment the prodigal sons and daughters of the greatest generation accepted their burden as caretakers of the City on the Hill.''


By One Path Lies Retreat Abdication