Paul Craig Roberts

[urbsdad6]

I am posting this particular item not to insult nor point fingers at anyone on this forum politically. I believe Paul Craig Watson and many other commentators on the web call them as they see them. Whether or not it is perceived by others in the same way is a whole other issue. The article is at the least food for thought.
Article found on the following website:

http://www.infowars.com/articles/Bus..._than_bush.htm


Doc Urb



Polls Show Many Americans are Simply Dumber Than Bush

"ICH" | January 29, 2006
By Paul Craig Roberts
Two recent polls, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll and a New York Times/CBS News poll, indicate why Bush is getting away with impeachable offenses. Half of the US population is incapable of acquiring, processing and understanding information.

Much of the problem is the media itself, which serves as a disinformation agency for the Bush administration. Fox "News" and right-wing talk radio are the worst, but with propagandistic outlets setting the standard for truth and patriotism, all of the media is affected to some degree.

Despite the media's failure, about half the population has managed to discern that the US invasion of Iraq has not made them safer and that the Bush administration's assault on civil liberties is not a necessary component of the war on terror. The problem, thus, lies with the absence of due diligence on the part of the other half of the population.

Consider the New York Times/CBS poll. Sixty-four percent of the respondents have concerns about losing civil liberties as a result of anti-terrorism measures put in place by President Bush. Yet, 53
percent approve of spying without obtaining court warrants "in order to reduce the threat of terrorism."

Why does any American think that spying without a warrant has any more effect in reducing the threat of terrorism than spying with a warrant? The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Bush is disobeying, requires the executive to obtain from a secret panel of federal judges a warrant for spying on Americans. The purpose of the law is to prevent a president from spying for partisan political reasons. The law permits the president to spy first (for 72 hours) and then come to the court for permission. As the court meets in secret, spying without a warrant is no more effective in reducing the threat of terrorism than spying with a warrant.

Instead of explaining this basic truth, the media has played along with the Bush administration and formulated the question as a trade-off between civil liberties and protection from terrorists. This formulation is false and nonsensical. Why does the media enable the Bush administration to escape accountability for illegal behavior by putting false and misleading choices before the people?

The LA Times/Bloomberg poll has equally striking anomalies. Only 43 percent said they approved of Bush's performance as president. But a majority believe Bush's policies have made the US more secure.

It is extraordinary that anyone would think Americans are safer as a result of Bush invading two Muslim countries and constantly threatening two more with military attack. The invasions and threats have caused a dramatic swing in Muslim sentiment away from the US.
Prior to Bush's invasion of Iraq, a large majority of Muslims had a favorable opinion of America. Now only about 5 percent do.

A number of US commanders in Iraq and many Middle East experts have told the American public that the three year-old war in Iraq is serving both to recruit and to train terrorists for al Qaeda, which has grown many times its former size. Moreover, the US military has concluded that al Qaeda has succeeded in having its members elected to the new Iraqi government.

We have seen similar developments both in Egypt and in Pakistan. In the recent Egyptian elections, the radical Muslim Brotherhood, despite being suppressed by the Egyptian government, won a large number of seats. In Pakistan elements friendly or neutral toward al Qaeda control about half of the government. In Iraq, Bush's invasion has replaced secular Sunnis with Islamist Shia allied with Iran.

And now with the triumph of Hamas in the Palestinian election, we see the total failure of Bush's Middle Eastern policy. Bush has succeeded in displacing secular moderates from Middle Eastern governments and replacing them with Islamic extremists. It boggles the mind that this disastrous result makes Americans feel safer!

What does it say for democracy that half of the American population is unable to draw a rational conclusion from unambiguous facts?

Americans share this disability with the Bush administration.
According to news reports, the Bush administration is stunned by the election victory of the radical Islamist Hamas Party, which swept the US-financed Fatah Party from office. Why is the Bush administration astonished?

The Bush administration is astonished because it stupidly believes that hundreds of millions of Muslims should be grateful that the US has interfered in their internal affairs for 60 years, setting up colonies and puppet rulers to suppress their aspirations and to achieve, instead, purposes of the US government.

Americans need desperately to understand that 95 percent of all Muslim terrorists in the world were created in the past three years by Bush's invasion of Iraq.

Americans need desperately to comprehend that if Bush attacks Iran and Syria, as he intends, terrorism will explode, and American civil liberties will disappear into a thirty year war that will bankrupt the United States.

The total lack of rationality and competence in the White House and the inability of half of the US population to acquire and understand information are far larger threats to Americans than terrorism.

America has become a rogue nation, flying blind, guided only by ignorance and hubris. A terrible catastrophe awaits.

[billyguns]

man, I agree 100% with what you have posted. I don't consider myself politically inclined one way or the other but in time surely the American public will realize the current administration makes tricky Dick and Watergate look like child's play.

[Advisor]

"Americans need desperately to understand that 95 percent of all Muslim terrorists in the world were created in the past three years by Bush's invasion of Iraq"
Darn bold statement...but, proof please. I am sick of fricken' opinions being stated as facts without backup. Opinions are like assholes..everybody has one. Kinda processed that piece of info, didn't I????

[PHO127]

So the proof that 95 % of the terrorists were created in the last three years is where.

We were not in Iraq when the trade towers were first bombed, we were not there when the aircraft hit them.

Originally posted by Advisor "Americans need desperately to understand that 95 percent of all Muslim terrorists in the world were created in the past three years by Bush's invasion of Iraq"
Darn bold statement...but, proof please. I am sick of fricken' opinions being stated as facts without backup. Opinions are like assholes..everybody has one. Kinda processed that piece of info, didn't I????

Darn bold statement but where is the proof

[Jerry D]

Heck we weren't even in Iraq when my buddies got wounded at Kobar Towers at Daharan AB, KSA (1996)and all the while Saddam was busy gassing Kurds and knocking off his son in laws! Further more he was paying PLO homicide bombers families for killing Israelis! Then look what a political cartoon in Denmark resulted in... lots of MAD Muslims burning other peoples embassy's like in 1979 and I heard tell today more innocent people were killed in Muslim country's just for being foreigners that weren't Muslim. :cd:

Cartoon Protest Spreads to US Base
Associated Press | February 06, 2006
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan security forces opened fire on demonstrators Monday, leaving at least four dead, as increasingly violent protests erupted around the world over published caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. European and Muslim politicians pleaded for calm.

The worst of the violence was outside Bagram, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan, with Afghan police firing on some 2,000 protesters as they tried to break into the heavily guarded facility, said Kabir Ahmed, the local government chief.

Two demonstrators were killed and five were injured, while eight police also were hurt, he said. No U.S. troops were involved in the clashes, the military said.

Afghan police also fired on protesters in the central city of Mihtarlam after a man in the crowd shot at them and others threw stones and knives, Interior Ministry spokesman Dad Mohammed Rasa said.

Two protesters were killed, and three other people were wounded, including two police, officials said. The demonstrators burned tires and threw stones at government offices.

The unrest also spread to East Africa as police in Somalia fired in the air to disperse stone-throwing protesters, triggering a stampede in which a teenager was killed and raising to six the number of deaths in protests related to the publication of the series of cartoons satirizing Islam's holiest figure.

Lebanon, meanwhile, apologized to Denmark a day after thousands of rampaging Muslim demonstrators set fire to the building housing the Danish mission in Beirut to protest the series of cartoons satirizing Islam's most revered figure.

At least one person died, 30 were injured - half of them security officials - and about 200 people were detained in Sunday's violence, officials said. Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said the arrested included 76 Syrians, 35 Palestinians and 38 Lebanese.

The European Union issued stern reminders to 18 Muslim countries that they are obliged under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to protect foreign embassies, and Austria - which holds the EU presidency, said it called in a top representative of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to express concerns for the safety of diplomatic missions.

The prime ministers of Spain and Turkey issued a Christian-Muslim appeal for calm, saying "we shall all be the losers if we fail to immediately defuse this situation."

But Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said media freedoms cannot be limitless and that hostility against Muslims was replacing anti-Semitism in the West.

Anger has spread over the 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten in September and recently reprinted in European media and elsewhere in what the newspapers say is a statement of free speech.

One depicted the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. The Danish paper said it had asked cartoonists to draw the pictures because the media were practicing self-censorship when it came to Muslim issues.

The drawings have touched a raw nerve in part because Islamic law is interpreted to forbid any depictions of the Prophet Muhammad for fear they could lead to idolatry.

The protesters in Afghanistan threw stones at the U.S. base and smashed a guard post. Some of those in the crowd then shot at the base with assault rifles, prompting the police to return fire, Ahmed said.

U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Mike Cody, said American troops did not fire on the crowd and security was left to the Afghan police.

About 200 protesters also tried to break down the gate of a the Danish government's diplomatic mission office in the capital, Kabul, but failed, said police who were guarding the building.

The protesters then threw stones at the mission and beat some officers guarding it, as well as some guards at a nearby house used by Belgian diplomats.

Police later used batons and rifle butts to disburse the demonstrators who had walked toward the presidential palace. An Associated Press reporter saw at least three protesters bleeding from injuries, and at least seven more who were arrested and driven away in a police vehicle.

"Long live Islam! We are Muslims! We don't let anyone insult our prophet!" chanted the demonstrators, many of whom appeared to be teenagers. They also chanted, "Down with America!" and slogans against the Afghan and U.S. presidents.

Some protesters moved toward the main American base in city and threw stones that smashed windows of a guard house. Police watched but did not intervene.

U.S. soldiers later arrested two photographers outside the base and checked the memory discs of an AP photographer, but did not arrest him. Cody, the U.S. military spokesman, said he had no details about the matter.

Thousands of other people demonstrated peacefully in at least five other cities. The spreading unrest came day after some 4,000 Afghans took to the streets across the country.

About 200 demonstrators in Iran threw stones at the Austrian Embassy in Tehran, breaking windows and throwing firecrackers that started small fires. The demonstration lasted two hours, but police quickly extinguished the blazes and stopped some protesters from throwing stones.

Several thousand Iraqis rallied in southern Iraq, burning Danish, German and Israeli flags, as well as an effigy of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to demand diplomatic and economic ties be severed with countries in which the caricatures were published.

Protesters called for the death of anyone who insults Muhammad and demanded withdrawal of 530-member Danish military contingent operating under British control.

Danish Capt. Philip Ulrichsen said Danish troops were shot at and targeted by stone-throwing youths on Sunday and a roadside bomb was defused, but no soldiers were wounded.

In Somalia, hundreds of protesters threw stones at police and aid workers after attending a peaceful rally in the northern port city of Bossaso, sparking the stampede in which a teenage boy was killed, said businessman Mohamed Ahmed, a witness. Officials could not be reached for comment.

Melees also broke out during protests in New Delhi and Gaza City, while several thousand students massed peacefully in Cairo on the campus of al-Azhar University, the oldest and most important seat of Sunni Muslim learning in the world, to protest the drawings.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for an end to violence and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the country would try to use its contacts with Arab countries to cool the violence.

"We cannot allow this argument to become a battle between cultures," Steinmeier said.

Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said the government had unanimously "rejected and condemned the ... riots," saying they had "harmed Lebanon's reputation and its civilized image and the noble aim of the demonstration."

"The Cabinet apologizes to Denmark," Aridi said.

Police investigating Sunday's fire and riot at the building housing the Danish mission said that, contrary to previous reports, the mission offices were intact. The fire and wrecking of offices had been confined to Lebanese businesses on lower floors.

The Beirut violence came a day after violent protests in neighboring Syria, including the burning of the Danish and Norwegian missions. The United States accused the Syrian government of backing the protests in Lebanon and Syria, an accusation also made by anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero published a column in the Paris-based International Herald Tribune in which they appealed for "respect and calm," saying the dispute "can only leave a trail of mistrust and misunderstanding between both sides."