Much to the regret of George Bush, the Iraqi people refuse to fulfill
their obligations to his prewar predictions of welcoming the US forces
for relieving them of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.
With his pollsters telling Bush that he has succeeded in gaining the
trust of the American voters on the issues of war, terrorism and foreign
policy, he has launched a more aggressive military campaign against the
heart of Iraqi resistance, Falluja, aimed at compromising his opponent,
John Kerry.
US forces launched a wave of attacks in and around insurgent Falluja.
At this point, 44 are known to be dead, as residents of the victims
pound their chests in mourning while denouncing the United States and
George Bush.
Separately, we learn that Bush was specifically warned of the risk of
the US triggering a civil war in Iraq by a National Intelligence
Estimate commissioned by the former Director of Central Intelligence,
George Tenet, only two months ago.
Kofi Annan's pronouncement that the US led war against Iraq was illegal
has put Bush on the defensive, but emboldened by his internal polling in
the US, he feels that he can drown out Annan's carping with a succession
of bombs and body bags in Falluja.
Jonathan Steele's analysis of the situation in Iraq is masterful. Steele
cites surveys of Iraq that reveal that many Iraqis regard the US as a
brutal dictatorship, and the people Bush claimed to be liberating wish
all American forces would leave their benighted nation ASAP.
Steele points out that the Iraqis's hopes for early elections to
legitimize a government empowered to rid them of the hated American
occupation may be postponed by those with stakes in the status quo: the
US and its minions surrounding the puppet dictator, Eyad Allawi.
Junkie:
The .pdf file for you to print this as a bumper sticker can be found
here: Bumper Sticker
Sen. Edwards
The story below is depressing, but predictable.
In North Carolina, Senator Edwards' home state, there is a training
institute for political candidates called the NC Institute of Political
Leadership, which was founded by the distinguished political scientist,
Dr. Walter De Vries, who co-authored The Ticket-Splitter, with Lance
Tarrance in 1972.
Dr. De Vries is a Republican political consultant with a long history in
North Carolina.
Political candidates who attend the Leadership Program of the IOPL are
trained to eschew what is termed, "negative campaigning."
Instructors have been known to instruct their students that negative
campaigning and negative advertising are always and in every situation
counterproductive based on their opinion surveys and the results of
elections that they have analyzed over an extended period of time.
In North Carolina the IOPL is very influential, and many candidates
simply refuse to countenance the possibility of running a negative
campaign regardless of the circumstances. For example, when Harvey Gant
was running against Senator Jesse Helms in 1990 and 1996, he refused to
criticize his opponent even though Helms had one of the most disgraceful
records in American history.
The impact of the IOPL in North Carolina is pervasive, and it would not
be surprising to learn that at some point, John Edwards has been trained
that the use of negative advertising is either unethical or ineffective
or both.
At the same time, it is obvious that neither George Walker Bush nor Dick
Cheney are graduates of the IOPL - and that negative campaigning and
negative advertising like the SBVT do have a palpable impact on American
voters in 2004.
If I were in position to advise John Edwards, I would urge him in the
strongest terms imaginable to attack the Bush-Cheney record as the
greatest disaster to have befallen America since 1776.
I would then place in his hand a copy of Gore Vidal's latest book,
Imperial America, and commend it to him as a vibrant source of
excellent material for his forthcoming series of attacks.
