GOP Fear Mongering

Advertising terrorism
The key to terrorism is not the act — but the fear of the act

Keith Olberman

From the transcript:

“To fill or overpower with terror; terrify. To coerce by intimidation or fear.”

By this definition, the people who put these videos together — first the terrorists and then the administration — whose shared goal is to scare you into panicking instead of thinking — they are the ones terrorizing you.

By this definition, the leading terrorist group in this world right now is al Qaida.

But the leading terrorist group in this country right now is the Republican Party.

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And now we have this cheesy commercial — complete with images of a faked mushroom cloud, and implications of “mass death in America.”

This administration has derived benefit and power from terrorizing the very people it claims to be protecting from terror.

It may be the oldest trick in the political book: scare people into believing they are in danger and that only you can save them.

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If, Mr. President, this is the kind of crack work that your new ad implies that only you and not the Democrats can do, you, sir, need to pull over and ask for directions.

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The families and friends of each of the 2,749 dead — who had been grimly told in May of 2002 that there were no more remains to be found — were struck anew as if the terrorism of that day had just happened again.

And over the weekend they’ve found still more remains.

And now this week will be spent looking in places that should have already been looked at a thousand times five years ago.

For all the victims in New York, Mr. Bush — the living and the dead — it’s a touch of 9/11 all over again.

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And yet you can actually claim that you and you alone can protect us from terrorism?

You can’t even recover our dead from the battlefield — the battlefield in an American city — when we’ve given you five years and unlimited funds to do so!

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Setting aside the fact that your government has done nothing else for those five years but pat yourselves on the back about terror, while waging pointless war on the wrong enemy in Iraq, and waging war on the cherished freedoms in America;

Just on this subject of counter-terrorism, sir, yours is the least competent government, in time of crisis, in this country’s history!

“These are the stakes,” indeed, Mr. President.

You do not know what you are doing.

And the commercial — the one about which Zawahiri might say “hey, pretty good — we love your choice of font style”?

All that need further be said is to add three words to Shakespeare.

Mr. President, you, and that advertisement of terror, are full of sound and fury — signifying (and competent at) nothing.

Video at Crooks and Liars.