First Lady flying the flag as sour ally closes ranks

[emad]

Times
By Roger Boyes
German city takes action to stem rising tide of hostility



LAURA BUSH put in some of the groundwork yesterday for her husband’s conciliatory visit to Old Europe by praising the hospitality offered by Germany to US troops. She did so in a hangar at the Ramstein airbase, surrounded by 3,000 servicemen and so thoroughly sealed off from the rest of Germany that it might as well have been an offshore island.

“Germany is a close friend and ally of the United States,” she said as the army families nodded and waved their paper flags. But in truth Germany, for their visiting President, is largely an abstraction.

President Bush, who arrives in nearby Mainz today, will be riding and (briefly) walking through an empty city. Yesterday, it was starting to resemble a fortress, not just because of the legitimate fear of terrorist attack, but also because of German nervousness that the President might experience some of the lingering hostility to his policies.

“We intend to make our voice heard,” a defiant Tina Kernter, of the organising committee of No Welcome to Bush, said. The anger at Iraq, at Kyoto and the repression of human rights, she said, has been enough to unite various tribes, from Attack to Pax Christi, into a huge swelling protest in Mainz today.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1495929,00.html

[No Exit]

1. "legitimate fear of terrorist attack" --??? What bullshit!

Whoever the "terrorists" are, they know darn well that Bush is the best friend they ever had. In fact, he's one of them!

No, they didn't empty out the city b/c of "legitimate fear of a terrorist attack". They emptied out the city because the little limpdick Kennebunkport Cowboy quakes in his oversized boots at the thought that someone, or something, might act in an unscripted way.