The year was 1990, and of the thousands of newcomers arriving in Arizona, at least two were not lured by the blue skies and the dry desert heat. Kenneth Williams, fresh from the F.B.I. Academy, came as a rookie agent and would soon become the terrorism expert at the bureau's office here. Hani Hanjour, only 18, came to study English, and later flying. He would become a terrorist. Continues.
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The New Tin-Foilers
They're crawling all over C-Span's morning call-in shows. They scribble away feverishly at big city dailies, the New York Times and L.A. Times, among them. You'll find them ensconced under the Capitol Dome. They burrow through cyberspace -- Smirkingchimp.com and other fringe gullies, their niches.
Meet the new conspiracy tin-foilers.
Of the left, that is.
Mention the name John Ashcroft, and, instantly, eyes pop, veins swell, fists clench as they thrust into loony rants of mindless paranoia.
Or just whisper, 'George W. Bush.' The same burst of spasmodic hysterics follow. Again, as if on cue.
In this world of tin-foil conspiracy, nothing is too daffy, too silly, too crazy or too absurd. Or too paranoid. Irrationality, angst, panic, delusion, mistrust -- these are coins of the realm.
Got screwball ideas? The liberal tin-foil cabal would be thrilled to hear them. The more far-fetched, the more bizarre, the more half-baked, the more welcomed.
To liberal tin-foilers, the Bush administration is evil personified.
Thought 9/11 was hatched by al-Qaeda alone? Ha! Think again, say lefty tin-foilers. In reality, September 11 was a masterful plot, orchestrated from Washington, contrived by White House political strategist, Karl Rove. Osama was just a dupe, a patsy; al-Qaeda -- a tool, a pawn, a puppet to further Bush's nefarious political goals, and those of his henchmen.
Either that, or Bush knew 9/11 was coming, with specificity, and deliberately did nothing to stop it. Take your pick.
Why would Bush do a heinous thing like that, you ask?
Oh, C'mon, the lefties bristle. Why, he did it to jack up his poll numbers, don'tcha know? (Never mind that, in most polls at the time, Bush was at 55% job approval. Tin-foilers are immune to logic.)
But 9/11 was just phase 1 -- the opening gambit in the Bush plot. The "conspiracy" continues to unfurl, say the conspiracists.
The same paranoid, illogical fixation with conspiracy is used continually to "explain" the 'motive' for Terror Alerts: It's only distraction, carefully timed 'wagging-the-dog' -- designed solely to keep Bush's poll numbers up.
Dittos Bush's prime-time Homeland Security address to the nation earlier this month. (Never mind that the plan to merge 22 agencies into a single Cabinet Department took months of painstaking planning and preparation.)
"The timing of President Bush's address is no coincidence", huffed and puffed Dan Rather, tin-foiler extraordinaire, on the night of the announcement (as quoted by The Media Research Center.)
"It was imperative", said NBC's Tim Russert (again according to MRC) that "in the view of the White House...the President preempt...the discussion that's going on in Congress and around the country, about who knew what and when."
CNN's Paula Zahn smelled a conspiracy, too: "Some have questioned the timing of the President's announcement", she told White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card in an interview shortly after Bush's speech.
Howard Fineman of Newsweek, not to be out-done, brandishes his tin-foil cap, too: "Well, the timing, to say the least, is politically convenient for the White House."
But all hell broke loose with Ashcroft's Padilla announcement from Moscow a week ago.
"Who needs terrorists when we have John Ashcroft to scare us out of our pants?", frothed Dick Meyer, of CBSNews.com. He smeared the Attorney General as a fear-mongerer.
Oh, and (of course) the 'timing' was all part of a conspiracy, too.
Meyer: "That Ashcroft overstated the threat of the Padilla Plot...shows with egregious clarity how willing Ashcroft is to use scare-tactics to grab headlines, control the news agenda and make himself look good".
What explains the hatred, the venom, the rancor, the vitriol -- the uncontrollable animus -- on the left for Bush? This isn't partisanship as usual. Their poisoned attitude long ago crossed that line into pathological hatred.
The paranoia -- their tin-foil theories -- flow from that hatred. Everything is a plot, a trick, a hoax, a gimmick, an artifice, a trap, a prank -- if it comes from this administration. They curse the ground Bush walks on.
Los Angeles Times Columnist Robert Scheer illustrates this animus -- this irrationality -- perfectly. He is a hate-peddling wing-nut. His angry columns seethe with rage, drip with contempt, boil with hostility, brim with bile. If something -- anything -- goes wrong, Scheer knows exactly who to blame: Blame Bush. To Scheer, Bush is the enemy, Bush is a bad man, Bush is a jinx, Bush is a villain, Bush is a crook, Bush is the bete noire out to *get us*.
For sheer animosity, antipathy, ugliness, it's probably impossible to out-do Mr. Scheer (no pun intended).
But his obsessive belligerence -- rancid, fusty, grim, hateful, bellicose -- embodied in his writings, is typical of liberal militants today.
For the left, hate is the only game in town.
Small wonder they're losing the PR war.
Anyway, that's...
My two cents.....
"JohnHuang2"
