How dare you say true and sensible things? What kind of American are you?

Since I became an ex-pat, I've wondered how to get across to people living in the US how different the world is from what they (and I used to) think. It's a kind of self-congratulatory self-hypnosis - proof by lack of a counter-example, as we said in University.

The easiest way to get what you want is to pretend it's so - you might get away with it for a while. The downside is you have to stay cut off from reality to maintain it, or admit it was all nonsense.

GW didn't excel in school, didn't finish his military commitment, didn't find oil in Texas, was bailed out of every business venture he has been in, and doesn't want to admit he's talking to himself when he thinks he's talking to God. There is a vanishingly small chance he will admit any reality - it would be a complete loss, and all the people who have hitched their wagon to his to get what they (think they) want also face an enormous cost in admitting the consequence of their choice. It's not likely soon.

But it's thus very likely they will continue to make everyone else pay to avoid their own responsibility. Pretend about one thing, and you have to start pretending about other things too, to try to keep from admitting it.

"God bless us, every one". We're going to need it.

Mr. Schwartz -

As you noted at the beginning of your article, you found it difficult to find the reserves necessary to reply to the 10 questions.

Thanks so much for doing so. It might seem like familiar territory to you, but I found it useful to read a cogent, reasoned response to many of the stock questions I find floating about this issue.

Nice work!

Firstly...bcw, you state something that it seems too many americans can't admit. Secondly.... Mr Schwartz, your reasoned responses, I am afraid, will fall on too many deaf ears. Or, at least, too many deaf administration ears. I am afraid that I am too right. This war and some other wars our gov't has waged is the wrong war, a war we, WE are paying for. Let's get together and protest, let's get together and let THEM know their war is wrong.

but the blindness of the country to the insanity of this administration can not last. Protest? Maybe. But arming oneself with the facts � as opposed to just a visceral reaction to the inhumanity and mendacity of the administration � and slowly, carefully, bringing them out with neighbors, family and friends, I believe will, must, eventually have some effect.

Let's be brutally honest -- Americans hate.

When was the last lynching in the South? Only 50 years ago?

How many blacks, homosexuals and Jews are attacked and beaten every day in this country?

How many aborition doctors are assasinated because "Jesus made me do it"??

How many school teachers have lost their jobs because they wanted to teach evolution instead of fundementalist Christian dogma, er, oops, I meant to say the "science" of creationism?

When Bush ran for re-election didn't he make it perfectly clear that gays are evil and that anythng less than the daily torture of the brown-skinned Muslim demons would result in another 9/11? That the only possible way to prevent every memeber of your family from being executed by brown skinned terrorists was to murder as many as posisble and troture the rest into submission?

America is just as intolerant as and extreme as Iran or any other hard core "freedom hating" Muslim country -- which is why the critque of Bush's war always falls on deaf ears. They don't care if Bush's military strategy is effective, they just enjoy watching brown skinned "sinners" suffer.

How can we claim we're not like them when our own people routinely murder and assualt ethnic groups? Blacks. Homosexuals. Religious minorities. It's not on the scale of other countries, but just because we're not as prolofic and a little better at hiding it doesn't make those lynching and murders any less xenophobic. We ask why the Shiite and Kurds (or whoever) can't co-exist without killing each other -- yet WE can't do that without killing each other.

How can we decry extreme religious fundementalism curtailing individual freedoms in other counries when we do the same here? Abortion doctors assasinated. Women called whores and attacked. Homosexuals taken to religious "re-education camps" to be cured. White Supremicist groups growing in support.

Bottom line: Americans hated blacks, then hated Mexicans and now we hate brown skinned "non-christian" pagan Muslims.

People don't cheer when Bush bombs Iraq because they are "confused" about the effects, logisitcs or effects of that particular military strategy --- they cheer because deep down the love watching those brown-skinned non-white non-Christians die.

Until we start talking about that, the particulars of Bush's military strategy will always fall on deaf ears.

Thank you for the well-reasoned and yet simply stated arguments.

But not in the way Bush and the neocons would like everyone to believe. Back in the 80's during Ronald Reagan's administration BOTH Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were our friends!

Saddam was fighting a war against Iran, where we supplied both sides with weapons and expertise while turning a blind eye to Saddam's use of chemical weapons against the Iranians and Iraqis who supported the Iranians. He didn't become our enemy until he attacked Kuwait over a dispute about oil, and there is some evidence that the US government was okay with it until it actually happened and the world demanded action.

Osama bin Laden was befriended by the US during the 80's when the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The US government provided him with weapons, expertise, and money to help drive the Soviets out. He didn't become our enemy until Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the US put military bases on what Muslims consider sacred soil in support of Desert Storm. The longer we kept that base open, the angrier he got with us.

So, 9/11 is the result of the failed policies of Reagan and the elder Bush and their misadventures in Iraq. THAT's the Iraq connection to 9/11.