Airport "Security"

Am I the only one who thinks that this latest disruption to a terror plot came up at an awfully opportunisitic time? Let's think about it . . .

Ned Lamont, an anti-war candidate running against senior senator Joe Lieberman, won the Democratic primary in CT and the very next day the world hears about a potential terror plot to blow up airplanes bound for the U.S., thwarted by officials in the UK. Phew! That was close.

But not only did this sequence of events cause airports to become perpetual log-jams with added security and in some cases National Guardsmen/state police officers patrolling airports with guns - Politicians are able to exploit the incident for anticipated political gain!! America the Beautiful!

Dick Cheney came out with an immediate statement that said in part that terrorists plotting against the U.S. were encouraged by Lieberman's loss - it meant that Democrats couldn't even get their party together enough to support one of their own. He also said that Lamont's victory was a signal to terrorists in Iraq that Democrats didn't have the same resolve as Republicans to finish the job in Iraq (because Lamont is an anti-war candidate) and therefore bolstered the strength of the insurgents that if they just waited long enough the U.S. would go home. (And I hope we do)

Now let's pause for a moment - Cheney is a Republican through and through, Lieberman running as a Democrat. He's upset that Lieberman lost the primary because for some strange reason Lieberman has been buddy-buddy with the Bush Administration as of late. Sickening really. I'm glad he lost. And Cheney's never been one to pass up a clever PR move - aka mafia-like scare tactic - probably cooked up by should-be-felon Karl Rove.

Which brings me back to the disrupted terror plot. Coincidence? Call me a conspiracy theorist - I personally like the label. I've been right before. With midterm elections coming up in just a little over two months - is it a coincidence that the Republicans once again have the opportunity to try and use terrorism - the "We will protect you, the Democrats will not" campaign slogan - to win another election? I think not.

In fact, I heard on NPR on my way to work this morning that Newsweek conducted a survey late last week after the terror suspects were detained and after airports went on HIGH alert (I'm not sure what color that is on the Security Threat-o-meter) - that Dubyah's approval rating for keeping the U.S. safe went up by, I believe, 11 points.

Please don't tell me this is all going to happen again! What do Democrats have to do? We've seen over the last six years that Republicans have put the U.S. in a very precarious position - while we try and prevent Iraq from entering into a civil war which has sprouted from the illegal war we started there over three years ago, we have no means of trying to assist the UN in calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah because we don't have the manpower to send peacekeeping troops to Lebanon!

Not to mention that much of the rest of the world is not happy with the U.S. and its attempts to build a bigger empire. George W. Bush and his cronies have been nothing but bad news for this country on both foreign and domestic policy fronts. Should we even get into Bush's horrifying environmental policies, his continued subsidizing of the oil industry while consumers struggle to pay their home heating oil and gasoline bills for their (allbeit) gas-guzzling SUVs and he has single-handedly added to the ruins of the public education system with his No Child Left Behind Act.

All right. That's it for the rant . . . for now. But just think about it before you go and vote in November . . . please?

P.S. If you want a funny, and very short, take on this whole airport security thing - check out Bunkosquad's latest entry.