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THE MORON MAJORITYBy Ted Rall An American Warlord Races to Waterloo NEW YORK--Now it's official: most Americans are idiots. Decades of budget cuts in education are finally yielding results, a fact confirmed by CNN's poll of March 16, which shows that an astonishing 51 percent of the public believe that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was responsible for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. There is no reason to think that. None. True, George W. Bush has asserted the existence of indirect links between low-level Al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi intelligence officials--a lame lie repeatedly denied by the CIA but even our professional prevaricator has never gone so far as to accuse Saddam of direct involvement in 9-11. Despite their increasingly tenuous grasp on reality, not even the Bush Administration's most fervent hawks deny that the secular dictator of Iraq is a mortal enemy of the Islamist extremists of Al Qaeda. No mainstream media outlet has ever reported otherwise. So why do these pinheads think such a thing? Simple: the official Bushie pretexts given for launching a unilateral invasion of Iraq don't stick. If Saddam was going to launch nukes or anthrax missiles in our direction, he would have done so during the last dozen years, while American warplanes were pulverizing his military installations with weekly bombing raids. He'd certainly let us have it this week, now that Bush is revving up the war he wanted all along--but he won't, because he can't. Furthermore, no one really believes that the GOP is interested in liberating the oppressed people of Iraq. America's role in the world, after all, typically involves funding dictators--as Bush is currently doing in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan---not democrats. Like a befuddled chemistry lab student who works backwards from the answer in order to ensure the correct results, the Moron Majority have talked themselves into an excuse they can live with for a war they can't otherwise morally justify. Denial, after all, isn't just a river in Egypt. By a two-to-one margin, Americans think that their country should adhere to its tradition of attacking other countries in self-defense only, never preemptively. Thirty-seven percent say that they support an invasion of Iraq only with UN approval. This war against Iraq fulfills neither of these conditions, so Americans have managed to morph Bush's insinuations about a Saddam-Al Qaeda link into full-on blame. Sure, we're about to begin killing innocent men, women and children over in Iraq. It's not self-defense, so let's just call it "vengeance for 9-11." Does that work for you? Great. Osama's gotta be laughing like a hyena now that the heat's off. There is some good news in all this. I know, "good" is a relative term if you're reading this in a bomb shelter under Baghdad or trapped at your work station under the rubble of an office building some Islamist wired and brought down on your head. But the war on Iraq is likely to lead to the political demise of the man whose evil and illegitimate rule currently represents the greatest threat to stability and peace in the world: George W. Bush. Win or lose, Iraq will probably be Bush's Waterloo. Victory over Saddam's armed forces is a given; just as a company's announcement of previously-anticipated profits fails to deliver an uptick in stock price, military success is already assumed by the market of public opinion. That's why, even after it became evident that he'd be fighting this war alone (plus Tony Blair minus the British public), Bush had to go ahead. His right-wing base, the part of the electorate that craves a belligerent president to protect it from future 9-11s, would have otherwise deserted him. Even if Bush delivers a best-case scenario--quick defeat, minimal U.S. military and Iraqi civilian casualties--it won't do him any good. His supporters already expect that. Things are most likely to go wrong when Bush can least afford it, during next year's campaign. Don't believe Kurdish promises to rejoin a federalized Iraq--they've had de facto independence for 12 years and they're not coming back. Turkey is already threatening to invade Iraqi Kurdistan, and they're leaning on their own Kurds. Hoping to neutralize its unruly neighbor, Iran is arming the Shiite majority. Civil war is more than likely, possibly leading to the disintegration of Turkey and an American excuse for an attack on Iran. It's impossible to predict the effects of prolonged American occupation of an Arab country; increased terrorism, regional instability and even greater Muslim hostility to the U.S. and its allies seem likely. But a failure to establish a long-term U.S. military presence throughout the country could prove even more damaging than a quick pull-out. If Iraq follows Afghanistan nto neglect, political disintegration and anarchy, we'll be able to count our resentful new enemies by the tens of millions. American alliances and relations with the UN and NATO have been stretched to the breaking point. By launching an illegal, unsanctioned invasion of a sovereign nation, the U.S. has abandoned its moral standing. We are, by definition, a rogue state. More frightening than that, foreign leaders from Paris to Berlin to Beijing to Moscow are starting to count more on one another than on us. This means trouble for us, sure, but also for Bush as we notice our nation's loss of prestige. As always, however, the fools will save us from themselves. The 51 percent who currently believe what is patently false will ultimately conclude that they were duped by Bush (though it's not really true). Like stupid Americans before them (those who bought into the Domino Theory, Joe McCarthy and the necessity of interning Japanese-Americans in concentration camps), they'll wonder what the hell they were thinking. And they'll have lots of time to think about it, what with not having a job and all. Then they'll vote for an Unnamed Democrat, currently leading Bush 48 to 44 percent in the Quinnipiac poll released March 6. (Ted Rall is the author of "Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan," an analysis of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline and the motivations behind the war on terrorism. Ordering information is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.)
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World Trade Center Attack Memorial - September 11, 2001 Breaking News From GOD: April 17, 2006 11:23 AM
Send mail to Webmaster (at) Twin-Towers.net with questions or comments about
this web site. On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, at 8:45am New York local time, One World Trade Center, the north tower, was hit by a hijacked 767 commercial jet airplane, loaded with fuel for a trans-continental flight. Two World Trade Center, the south tower, was hit by a similar hijacked jet 18 minutes later at 9:03am. (In separate but related attacks, the Pentagon building near Washington D.C. was hit by a hijacked 757 at 9:43am, and at 10:10am, a fourth hijacked jetliner crashed in Pennsylvania.) The south tower, WTC 2, which had been hit second, was the first to suffer a complete structural collapse at 10:05am, 62 minutes after being hit itself, 80 minutes after the first impact. The north tower, WTC 1, then also collapsed at 10:29am, 104 minutes after being hit. WTC 7, a substantial 47 story office building in its own right, built in 1987, was damaged by the collapsing towers, caught fire, and later in the afternoon also totally collapsed. The list of collapsed buildings (as confirmed by the New York Times through Saturday, 2001.0915) included all seven buildings of the World Trade center complex — including WTC 6, the U.S Customs House to the north; WTC 3, the 22 story Marriot World Trade Center hotel just west of Tower Two; and WTC 4 and 5, the Plaza Buildings to the east (although satellite images suggest much of WTC 5, the north Plaza Building, was still standing). Other nearby buildings were significantly damaged, including the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, and One Liberty Plaza, a 54 floor, 743' tall building across Church Street to the east. About 2800 people died in the attack. The recovery and site clearing process officially concluded on May 30, 2002 with 1796 people still remain unrecovered. 1.8 million tons of debris was removed from the disaster site. Yahoo! Buzz Index Overall Leaders 1. Jennifer Lopez 2. Britney Spears 3. Euro 2004 4. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 5. Usher 6. 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Buzz Index Music Movers 1. Johnny Ramone 2. Ryan Cabrera 3. 98 Degrees 4. Alanis Morissette 5. Aretha Franklin 6. The Ramones 7. Justin Guarini 8. SWV 9. William Hung 10. Dave Navarro 11. Tim McGraw 12. Tragically Hip 13. Diana DeGarmo 14. Los Lobos 15. Lionel Richie Yahoo! Buzz Index Sports Leaders 1. Euro 2004 2. Detroit Pistons 3. NBA 4. Los Angeles Lakers 5. NASCAR 6. MLB 7. Kobe Bryant 8. NBA Finals 9. U.S. Open 10. David Beckham 11. Chicago Cubs 12. NFL 13. New York Yankees 14. Olympics 15. PGA Yahoo! Buzz Index Sports Movers 1. Jeanie Buss 2. Marion Jones 3. Olympic Torch 4. New York Marathon 5. Triple Crown 6. Chauncey Billups 7. Detroit Pistons 8. Larry Brown 9. Cristiano Ronaldo 10. Darko Milicic 11. Richard Hamilton 12. Jennie Finch 13. Tayshaun Prince 14. Karl Malone 15. Gary Payton Yahoo! Buzz Index Actors and Actresses Leaders 1. Jennifer Lopez 2. Lindsay Lohan 3. Ryan Reynolds 4. Ashlee Simpson 5. Hilary Duff 6. Pamela Anderson 7. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen 8. 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Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 14. Zelda 15. Mega Man Yahoo! Buzz Index Video Games Movers 1. NBA Live 2004 2. SOCOM 2 3. EverQuest 4. Pokemon Crater 5. Starcraft Cheats 6. Silent Hill 4 7. Battlefield 1942 8. Command and Conquer 9. Fire Emblem 10. Mortal Kombat 11. Final Fantasy X-2 12. Sonic 13. Counter-Strike Hacks 14. FFX 15. MVP Baseball 2004 Yahoo! Buzz Index Networks Leaders 1. ESPN 2. Cartoon Network 3. Nickelodeon 4. BBC 5. CNN 6. Disney Channel 7. MTV 8. Weather Channel 9. Food Network 10. CBS 11. QVC 12. Fox News 13. Univision 14. MSNBC 15. PBS Yahoo! Buzz Index Baseball Leaders 1. Chicago Cubs 2. New York Yankees 3. Houston Astros 4. Boston Red Sox 5. Los Angeles Dodgers 6. San Francisco Giants 7. Texas Rangers 8. San Diego Padres 9. St. Louis Cardinals 10. Cincinnati Reds 11. Philadelphia Phillies 12. Atlanta Braves 13. Chicago White Sox 14. Milwaukee Brewers 15. Anaheim Angels Yahoo! Buzz Index Basketball Leaders 1. Detroit Pistons 2. Los Angeles Lakers 3. Dallas Mavericks 4. Chicago Bulls 5. Indiana Pacers 6. Sacramento Kings 7. Minnesota Timberwolves 8. San Antonio Spurs 9. Boston Celtics 10. Houston Rockets 11. New Jersey Nets 12. Orlando Magic 13. Memphis Grizzlies 14. New York Knicks 15. Phoenix Suns Yahoo! Buzz Index Football Leaders 1. Dallas Cowboys 2. Oakland Raiders 3. Green Bay Packers 4. San Francisco 49ers 5. Chicago Bears 6. Washington Redskins 7. Pittsburgh Steelers 8. Philadelphia Eagles 9. Indianapolis Colts 10. Miami Dolphins 11. Cincinnati Bengals 12. Detroit Lions 13. Seattle Seahawks 14. Cleveland Browns 15. New York Giants Yahoo! Buzz Index Hockey Leaders 1. Tampa Bay Lightning 2. Detroit Red Wings 3. Calgary Flames 4. Philadelphia Flyers kate faber Paris Hilton Sex Video TapeWORLD TRADE CENTER TERRORIST ATTACK IN NEW
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