Letters to the Editor
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Logic, of course, eludes them
The biggest weapon the GOP has today in American politics is fear. Another major attack would vastly increase that fear, and the GOP would roundly decry that they could have stopped the attack if only the weak-kneed Democrats would have let us torture people, and spy on US citizens and conduct strip searches of every airline passenger, and on and on ad nauseum.
The terrorists may be crazy, but they're not stupid. If, as McCain and his cohorts postulate, al Qaida wants a Democrat in the White House, the last thing they would do is stage another attack before the election.
Now, here's where the GOP logic really goes 'round the bend. There has never been a greater recruitment tool for bin Laden and his rabid gang than GW Bush's debacle in Iraq. The last thing they want is for us to withdraw and make peace with the Arab world.
So McCain is right -- and of course absolutely wrong at the same time: the terrorists might want to influence the election here, but it would not be to defeat him, but to assure his election, so that they could continue to use US troops as bomb targets in a hostile desert, instead of the US using a newly freed-up military to actually pursue al Qaida at its source.