George and Tony Get their al-Qaeda FixBy Greg Palast
The tooth fairy, Santa Clause, WorldCom profits, the Easter Bunny, al-Qaeda.
The cruel, evil jerks who blew up the London subway last week, despite appropriating al-Qaeda's name for their website and T-shirts, have about as much to do with al-Qaeda as a Beatles tribute band has to do with the Fab Four.
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Al-Qaeda this ain't. All the evidence is that this half-assed attack was the work of some poor young Muslim schmucks, possibly whipped into a frenzy by the mewling mullah of Finsbury Park, Omar Bakri Mohammed, a cleric who enjoyed the comfortable middle-class dullness of England during the week while on weekends preaching, "a 9/11, day after day after day" to punish his Western hosts.
It's not al-Qaeda, but for George and Tony, it's good enough. Blair's Foreign Secretary dramatically dashed out to tell us that the explosions had the "hallmarks of al-Qaeda." Our Commander in Chief, looking as commanding as possible (no reading of kiddie stories this time), could not have been more satisfied. The "hallmarks of al-Qaeda"? That's not true and Blair knows it. And Bush knows it. And that's no little matter, my friends. Because Blair and Bush are al-Qaeda junkies. They've sold us on everything from fingerprinting five-year olds to invading Baghdad to tolerating plummeting paychecks all on the slick line that we are under attack by a well-trained, well-armed, well-funded hidden army called al-Qaeda.
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Now, with world media all jumped up on its latest fear high, Bush and Blair can resume their sales pitch: more weaponry, less liberty.
FDR calmed a nation when he said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." But the Bush and Blair slogan is, "We have nothing to sell but fear itself."
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