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  Tuesday  August 20  2002    09: 53 PM

War Against Some Terrorists

Coup De Crawford

We used to worry about a military coup against civilian authority. Now we worry about a civilian coup against military authority.

It's the reverse of the classic movie "Seven Days in May," about gung-ho generals trying to wrest power from an "appeasing" president. In "Thirty-One Days in August," gung-ho presidential advisers try to wrest power away from "appeasing" generals. [read more]

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The war on Iraq is already under way

There is growing evidence to suggest the physical war against Saddam Hussein has been under way for nearly six months.

No shots have been fired or bombs dropped in anger beyond the attacks on Iraqi anti-aircraft batteries that U.S. and British air forces have been conducting regularly for a decade.

Yet almost out of sight, U.S. and allied forces have been tightening the noose around Saddam, even deploying troops inside Iraq, according to some reports. [read more]

thanks to SmirkingChimp.com

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Barbara Lee and Limbaugh … eye to eye at last

Lee, the Democratic congresswoman from Oakland, was the only member of Congress to vote against that resolution, and for that she was called a traitor and received death threats from all over the country. The thoughtful UC Berkeley political scientist Nelson Polsby chided Lee, telling Newsweek that it was just "a feel-good vote, not an appropriation."

Now Lee appears to have been a seer, and the vote of Congress was the worst kind of appropriation -- a blank check.

"It was a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the Sept. 11 events -- anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation's long-term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit," wrote Lee in The Chronicle on Sept. 23. "In granting these overly broad powers, the Congress has failed its responsibility to understand the dimensions of its declaration." [read more]

thanks to SmirkingChimp.com

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How Islam-Bashing Got Cool
President Bush no longer seems able to restrain anti-Islamic rhetoric

In the last six weeks, a major Protestant leader has described the Prophet Muhammad as "demon-possessed pedophile;" a well-known conservative columnist suggested that Muslims get "some sort of hobby other than slaughtering infidels;" the head of a conservative activist group suggested American Muslims should leave the country; and evangelist Franklin Graham described Islam as inherently violent.

Meanwhile, the University of North Carolina is being sued by the Family Policy Network, a conservative group, for asking incoming freshmen to read a book called "Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations, " an assignment Fox News Network's Bill O'Reilly compared to teaching Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in 1941. On Wednesday, a North Carolina state legislator told a local radio station his view: "I don't want the students in the university system required to study this evil." [read more]

thanks to wood zilla lot