They’ve beheaded an American! Outrageous! How totally uncivilized these animals are! Don’t they realize that the Good Housekeeping approved method of dealing with POWs is to smear them with shit and make them fuck each other? Well, maybe not worthy of the Good Housekeeping seal, bit certainly legal in Texas, if not Geneva, especially if they’re not white guys.
But I digress, the topic here is outrage, of the sort that Germans felt when they learned their citizens were being mistreated in Poland. In that case, nerdy history buffs might recall, it turned out that the abusers were not really Poles or even pole dancers, they were just other Germans dressed up in Polish uniforms. What got into them to shed their lederhosen and masquerade as Poles? It didn’t matter, Hitler saw an opportunity and invaded Poland and the rest is history.
Speaking of which, it is an opportune time to review our history – in this case a blog entry of mine from November 12, 2002 (inspiration stolen from Slate) about the Pentagon PowerPoint presentation of one Laurent Murawiec, a former assistant to Lyndon LaRouche, who apparently was as trusted in the 5-sided polygon as Ahmed Chalabi once was. Here are the key points:
I hope it's not a red herring. Remember Egypt from the infamous Laurent Murawiec Powerpoint presentation? The key points, after the lights went out, were:
Iraq is the tactical pivot
Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot
Egypt the prize
Iraq and Saudi Arabia were easy to understand in realpolitik terms, but why Egypt? The Saudi financial backing and all-Egypt 9/11 flight crews have been touched on in a couple of Salon blogs, and I can see the primitive logic of overkill revenge. The Biblical imagery versus Islamic imagery, Fandy's compelling point, is more frightening once you begin suspecting a bogus tape. Anyone could have created it. The point of the tape is to "prove" bin Laden is still alive, so the question remains: Who needs him?
So now, on the eve of Farhrenheit 9/11, the case for the “strategic pivot” is being built emotionally, if not logically (sound familiar?). If there is any Rosetta Stone to decipher the foreign policy of these Oil Guys it is that American Lives and tax dollars are being expended in a manner consistent with Murawiec. They don’t really about that care because only people without means get killed in wars. Quick – how many Americans died brutal deaths in Iraq this week (we know for sure one civilian Apache helicopter mechanic died in Saudi Arabia)? So what’s news? What resource is that made-in-the-USA Apache protecting? Saudi corn fields? Mecca?
So, as we enter a slow news weekend, the images of a beheaded American in Saudi Arabia and that of "trustworthy" Vladimir Putin endorsing the Administration's fantasies of an Iraqi terrorist connection infect our minds' eyes. Say, aren't the Russians Oil Guys too? And why has no one traced the Kevin Bacon/bin Laden connection? It oughta be a slam-dunk.
8:37:40 PM 
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