Letters to the Editor
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two ways to interpret terrorism
way 1:
a genuine threat from outsider extermists designed to exploit the soft underbelly of democracies and force the political elites (via pressure by their electorates) to change thier policies vis a vis a particular issue
way 2:
a manufactured threat by the political/military/financial elites to terrify the electorate into giving up their freedoms and for bypassing constitutionality and therefore checks and balances. Very useful for competing interests in goverment to get their agendas through - military, more spending, corporates, less oversight, after all what could be more urgent than fighting amorphous pervasive and ubiquitous 'terror'
it could very easily be argued that Bush's reaction to 9/11 pointed irrationaly to way 2 rather than way 1. After all, if your genuine concern is citizen safety, you wouldn't try to create a police state mentality and use it as a stick to beat your opponents.
I'm inclined to Webster Tarpley's view that wherever there is terrorism look for covert activity and assistance by governmental secret services. This is well know and well documented. The fact that the MSM doesn't like to point it out, is really besides the point.
I'd like to finally point out, that even on the surface of things the government narrative of the War on Terror (which has been a colossal flop politically but not for the military industrial complex) makes no sense at all.
let's get the Taliban, let's get Saddam...ah but where were the hijakers from =>Saudi, an ally.
where is alleged evil mastermind Bin Laden? => Pakistan, an ally.
so GOP where is the groundswell from your base for an invasion of Pakistan to rout out Bin Laden, the fact that they're not even suggesting it, shows that GOP policy has nothing whatever to do with US security given even the highly flawed internal logic of the government story and everything to do with using terror for domestic political advantage, hence these adverts.
I do get a sense however that the public (even the GOP supporters) are tired and bored of all this, it's been very grim, it's 7 years old and Guiliani the King of 9/11 show-one-upmanship [famouse words of Ralph Nader] is doing abysmally, Obama and huckabee have sensed this mood and they're doing rather better because of it.