President Bush continues to rationalize sending more troops into Iraq, in part anyway, by evoking the war on terror.
He did it again in last week’s State of the Union address.
The president again claimed credit for the government for having stopped several terror plots, everything from an attack on the Library Tower in Los Angeles to the scheme to use liquid explosives to blow up British Airplanes flying to the U.S.
Except, as in his other State of the Union speeches, the president was factually challenged.
Terror experts openly questioned what—if anything—was really disrupted.
Tonight, Keith Olbermann’s special comment. You can read an excerpt below:
West Yorkshire in England, has a new chief police constable.
Upon his appointment, Sir Norman Bettison made one of the strangest comments of the year thus far:
“The threat of terrorism,” he says, “is lurking out there like Jaws 2.”
Sir Norman did not exactly mine the richest ore for his analogy of warning. A critic once said of the flopping sequel to the classic film: “You’re gonna need a better screenplay.”
But this obscure British police official has reminded us that terrorism is still being sold to the public in that country -- and this -- as if it were a thrilling horror movie, and we were the naughty teenagers about to be its victims.
And it underscores the fact that President Bush took this tack, exactly a week ago tonight, in his terror-related passage in the State of the Union.
A passage that was almost lost amid all the talk about Iraq and health care and bipartisanship and the fellow who saved the stranger from an oncoming subway train in New York City.
But a passage, ludicrous and deceitful — frightening in its hollow conviction —frightening, in that the president who spoke it tried for “Jaws” and got “Jaws 2.”