Candice Miller, Are You Awake?

Everyone should read the latest National Intelligence Estimate: "The Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland. It tells us once again how inept and counterproductive the Bush-Cheney policies on terrorism have been. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq is bin Laden's wet dream, allowing him to expand his organization and solidify his base in northwest Pakistan. US troops actually had al Qaeda on the run by spring 2002, but that's just when the Bush-Cheney junta lost interest in Afghanistan and turned its attention to "regime change" in Iraq. Since then, virtually everything the US has done has helped bin Laden to prosper, reconstitute his command structure, and recruit potential extremists.

Hundreds of thousands of people are dead, hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted, and the reputation of the US around the world has been tarnished, if not utterly destroyed. What does Candice Miller have to say about this? Her July 2007, "Newsletter" has plenty to say about passports, mileage standards, and Great Lakes shipping. When she gets around to Iraq (in a radio broadcast), she shamelessly repeats the republican mantra that the only problem in Iraq is the inadequacy of the Iraqi government, but--surprise!--she completely dodges the truly important subject of where al Qaeda actually is and what sort of a threat it poses to the US.

The latest neocon con on Iraq is to blame the Iraqis for the chaos brought on by the US occupation. Imagine: you invade a country, wipe out its entire infrastructure, disband its army, stir up ancient sectarian animosities, slaughter untold thousands of civilians, and then pompously complain when a puppet government you've propped up can't deliver electricity or police the streets. Yeah, it's really the fault of the Iraqis that their country is mired in this mess! When Miller and her comrades in deceit repeat this nonsense, they're insulting us and dishonoring the dead.