Fool me once, twice, three times - but enough is enough already!

[babylonsister]

http://www.cmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070722/REPOSITORY/707220336/1028/OPINION02

Fool me once, twice, three times - but enough is enough already!
Bushies are tryingto scare us to death


By Katy Burns
Monitor columnist
July 22. 2007 12:07AM

snip////

Suddenly, in the course of a week or less, all talk is about terrorism. Our Homeland Security czar doesn't actually know anything, but he sure has a chatty gut, and it sees doom ahead. Ominous reports are filling airwaves and headlines. Al-Qaida - which we'd been assured by none other than Bush himself not long ago was broken and on the run - is back! Bigger than ever! More threatening than ever! Be afraid, be very afraid!

We are assured by the administration that this spate of scary news is purely coincidental and has nothing to do with the prez's sagging poll numbers and the spate of ill tidings that threaten to sink his ratings even lower.

We know better, because for six years we've seen this crew follow the same script. And it's usually worked.

Now? Maybe not so much. The administration did succeed in changing the subject with major news outlets, particularly TV. Iraq's violence and growing instability, tainted imports, rapid climate change and government corruption were at least temporarily off the air. But the coverage of the "threats" this time was dramatically different.

Reporters who were largely supine stenographers of government sound bites for too long after September 11 are now snarky, even downright persistent, when they question administration flacks and skewer their evasive responses. Critical analyses of the administration's follies that several years ago might have been buried deep within newspapers are on page one.

Ordinary citizens are equally skeptical.

If we are supposed to be so threatened, they ask, just what on earth has the administration been spending time and prodigious treasure - including the blood of our fighting men and women - on in the last six years? And, y'know, there's no answer to that question that doesn't indict our president and his people.

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[Demeter]

1. Anybody Told Chertoff About Prilosec Yet?

or maybe the 12 Step Programs?