Reply #24: they aren't likely to sit still, waiting for people to formulate questions

[kenny blankenship]

the President will commandeer airtime from all networks to address the nation. Measures will be announced to tighten security which will be sketched out vaguely, promising both greater effectiveness while being fair. But more importantly the President will promise retaliation against the country responsible, either Iran or Syria depending on how Karl Rove's bowel movement went that morning. The doomed country won't be named during the address, but the President will say emphatically that he's putting our forces on full alert to strike at a moment's notice. "The Evil-Doers know who they are and they should know that their last hours are at hand." The American people are to expect war, not possibly but absolutely certainly. Everyone will then hold their breath-because when you're holding your breath you can't ask questions. Who's going to get it? Will we use our nukes? We'll wake up the next morning to read that downtown __________ is a smoking hole in the ground and our armored divisions are executing an "elegant" end-run attack on the forward defenses of the enemy while our plucky 82nd Airborne harrasses and pins down his reserves and rear echelons. It'll be a good old fashioned war, the kind we always feel good about for 10 minutes afterwards, until the next time. The strike on ___________ will precede any forensic placement of blame for the terrorist attack on any particular country--that and other reasons for choosing which country to decapitate first will come only later when they've been sufficiently fabricated. Meanwhile it's war on ____________ and anyone who says nay is a traitor!

Bush will do, in other words, what he ALWAYS does which is to act out of all proportion and polarize a situation so that in order to criticize him, you have to be on the other side of patriotic icons and institutions like "our troops" and thus expose yourself to a charge of disloyalty and treason. Speaking of treason, expect many people who've objected to his creation of a police state here in America to be charged with it. Formally. He will act not "preemptively" but preemptorily--shortcircuiting any national level debate among the elected representatives and the executive about what our national response should be. As always, before it's possible to call him to account on his last atrocity, he's rushing off to the next one, which you can neither prevent nor prosecute.