Robert Crook: Kerry-Edwards 2004

Sat, 04 Dec 2004 04:43:32 GMT

Associated Press photo

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts places flowers on the casket of Marine Lance Cpl. Dimitrios Gavriel of Haverhill, Mass., during funeral services yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. Gavriel, who was 29 years old, was killed in action last month outside of Fallujah, Iraq.

"President" George W. Bush has yet to attend a single funeral of the more than 1,250 American military personnel who have died in Iraq since the Bush regime illegally, immorally, imperialistically and unprovokedly invaded Iraq in March 2003 against the wishes of the United Nations and most of the world.

Fri, 26 Nov 2004 22:48:41 GMT

AFP photos

Fox News won't tell you this, but John Kerry, not George W. Bush, might be inaugurated in January after the impending Ohio recount.

The ultimate closer?

Although I've been mostly silent on it, I've been following the aftermath of the Nov. 2 presidential election where the struggle to have Americans', especially Ohioans', votes properly counted is concerned.

Where we stand right now is that the current, unofficial electoral vote count is 286 electoral votes for George W. Bush and 252 for John Kerry. (A presidential candidate needs 270 of the 538 electoral votes to win the White House.) The Nov. 2 election all came down to Ohio, which Bush "won" -- unofficially -- by 136,000 votes. The official vote counts from Ohio's counties are not due to the state until Wednesday, and then there most likely will be a statewide recount of Ohio as the result of a federal lawsuit filed by Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik and Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb.

If Ohio, with its 20 electoral votes, were to be determined to have been won by Kerry, not by Bush, that would change the electoral vote count to 266 for Bush and 272 for Kerry, making Kerry president. (See a detailed analysis of what could happen with Ohio here.)

Kerry is oft-noted for being a closer, for coming back from the dead right at the end of a campaign, as he did in January when he pulled a Lazarus and trounced crown prince Howard Dean in Iowa and New Hampshire for the Democratic presidential nomination.

If Ohio were to switch to Kerry's column and he were to be inaugurated in January, it would be his biggest close of his political career and one for the history books.

So far, the Kerry-Edwards campaign has done nothing to contest the election fraud in Ohio. (I say election fraud because interestingly, the voting irregularities that have been reported in Ohio and elsewhere throughout the nation disproportionately benefit Bush, not Kerry. If they were due solely to incompetence or computer malfunction or the like, there wouldn't be so many "mistakes" in Bush's favor.)

The Kerry-Edwards campaign doesn't have to lift a finger right now where Ohio is concerned, however; others are picking up the swords for them, such as Badnarik and Cobb, with their lawsuit to force a statewide recount; the Government Accountability Office, which is going to investigate voting irregularities that happened nationwide on Nov. 2; and the People for the American Way Foundation, which filed a lawsuit today to ensure that Cuyahoga County, Ohio counts the provisional ballots correctly so that no voter who used a provisional ballot is disenfranchised.

Several other organizations, such as blackboxvoting.org, are also all over Ohio election officials like stink on shit, as is Air America Radio's wonderful Randi Rhodes.

While the corporately controlled mainstream U.S. media aren't reporting it -- because they benefit from the Republican Party's and the BushCheneyCorp's pro-corporation, anti-people policies, and because they hate to report on complicated issues -- there is a below-the-radar groundswell regarding the legitimacy of the Nov. 2 vote, especially in Ohio. It's a zit that is gathering pus and could soon pop.

Many who voted for Kerry think that since Nov. 3 he has been like Al Gore, who pretty much rolled over and played dead in late 2000 while Team Bush, with a lot of help from the U.S. Supreme Court, stole Florida and thus the White House. While I have no insight into what Kerry is actually doing right now, I suspect that he is happily watching others go after Ohio elections officials on his behalf. If Kerry were to be front and center in the effort to ensure that Ohio isn't this year's Florida 2000, he would look like a sore loser. (Remember the "Sore Loserman" campaign that the anti-democratic, anti-vote-counting Republicans ran in late 2000?)

Kerry, I surmise, is wisely staying out of the limelight, watching and waiting, allowing everyone to think that George W. Bush's second term is inevitable, and then...

The strongest public statement that Kerry has made regarding the Nov. 2 election is like this one: "I will fight for a national standard for federal elections that has both transparency and accountability in our voting system. It's unacceptable in the United States that people still don't have full confidence in the integrity of the voting process."

That's politically astute; no one can criticize Kerry for calling for fair elections, but if he were to contest Ohio right now, it would be politically damaging. Americans just want their elections over and done with already so that they can get back to their reality television shows; whether or not their elections are actually conducted fairly and legally they aren't so concerned about, because ensuring fair and legal elections is, as Bush would say, hard work. (We Americans have boundless energy and resources, however, to ensure that democracy is practiced scrupulously in other nations, such as Iraq and Ukraine.)

Speaking of Ukraine, interestingly, Republicans, who are up in arms over alleged election fraud in Ukraine, are trying to prevent an Ohio recount.

This is from The Associated Press on Monday:

Keith Cunningham, director of the Allen County Board of Elections and incoming president of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, called the lawsuit [filed by Badnarik and Cobb] "frivolous," adding that he might mobilize counties to resist a recount.

"Commissioners are beginning to understand — and if they don't, will understand soon — what kind of financial impact this is going to have on them, in a year when elections already cost a great deal more than expected," said Cunningham, a Republican [emphasis mine].

The two former third-party candidates have said they raised more than $150,000 to cover the state's fee for a recount. Ohio law requires payment of $10 per precinct, or $113,600 statewide, but election officials say the true expense would be far greater.

LoParo has estimated the actual cost at $1.5 million.

I pose these questions to all Republicans: You're perfectly OK with billions and billions of American taxpayers' dollars going to Iraq to "democratize" that poor, beaten-down nation (beaten down first by Saddam Hussein and now beaten down by George W. Bush), but when it comes to ensuring that the democratic process in our own fucking nation is sound, you don't want to spend a fucking penny? And we liberals are the "traitors"? You oppose democracy for your own God-damned nation, and you're the "patriots"? No, you are fucking lucky that those of us who are true patriots let you live, that we fucking tolerate your blatantly anti-democratic bullshit. If we rise up, you are all dead fucking meat. (And you know that, which is why you are committing election fraud.)

I'm not OK with billions of our tax dollars going to "democratize" Iraq while treasonous, anti-democratic, anti-vote-counting Republicans bitch and moan about the cost of ensuring fair elections here at home. Memo to the Republicans: Where it comes to ensuring democracy and fair elections in the United States of America, money is no fucking object. (Of course, it's not really the cost of recounts that bothers Republicans; it's democracy and fair elections that really bother Republicans, and they're just using the cost of recounts as an excuse, because they can't say that they oppose democracy and fair elections.)

But I digress; back to the possibility that Kerry, not Bush, will be inaugurated in January: As much as we Kerry supporters would like to see Kerry sit in the Oval Office in January, it could be a case of be careful what you wish for.

President Kerry would inherit Bush's many messes, foreign and domestic.

President Kerry would be starting off with the largest federal budget deficit in the history of the United States of America, thanks to the war-profiteering Bush regime, which over the past four years wiped out the federal budget surplus that outgoing President Bill Clinton left behind him. So Kerry couldn't exactly start a slew of social programs. And the Bushwhacked economy could take years to ever reach its Clinton-era level again.

President Kerry also, of course, would have the quagmire in Iraq to sort out, which could take years. As one columnist put it after the Nov. 2 election:

...[N]o one appears to have any good ideas for fixing Iraq. In this sense, the Democrats have dodged a bullet ... by losing this election. If Kerry had won, he would have been blamed, given public perceptions of Democratic national security weakness, for the likely failure to secure Iraq. From the get-go, this was Bush's war of choice. It is only fair that he suffer the consequences of his own overreaching. If the Iraq adventure fails, or drags on interminably, he, and not Kerry, will suffer the ugly political fallout. And that is likely to come sooner rather than later. The Democrats will be around in 2008 to pick up the pieces.

Indeed, mopping up the Bush regime's many messes would take years, and the citizens of the United States of Amnesia would blame the lack of national progress on President Kerry, not on Bush, who deserves full credit.

That Republicans want Power By Any Means And At Any Cost might destroy the Republican Party in the long term. If Bush is inaugurated in January, without any checks and balances -- with a Republican in the White House, a Republican-dominated Senate and a Republican-dominated House of Representatives and more Republicans appointed to the federal courts -- things should get so bad in and for the United States over the next four years that in their unbridled power orgy, the Republicans will alienate a clear majority of American voters.

If Bush is inaugurated in January and the Republicans don't destroy the world along with their party during the next four years, the Democrats should win 2008 in a landslide.

Wed, 03 Nov 2004 21:49:04 GMT

Associated Press and AFP photos

Above: Dick Cheney gloatingly shows us today who's really the president of the United States of America; President Bush looks like a village idiot and Laura Bush looks like a Stepford wife, as usual; John Kerry concedes; and John Edwards and Kerry demonstrate today that they still don't have that body space thing down, but they put up a good fight against BushCheneyCorp. Below: The map of the 2004 electoral vote count thus far (Iowa and New Mexico are still undetermined) demonstrates that the crazy dumbfucks in the red states are progressively pushing those of us Americans who are sane and intelligent into Canada and into the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

America fails national I.Q. test;

evil triumphs over good (again)

When I went to bed around 3 o'clock this morning, the presidential election was left at 249 of the necessary 270 electoral votes for George W. Bush and 242 electoral votes for John Kerry, with Ohio, the state that would decide the election, up in the air. It could take days or even weeks for them to sort Ohio out, I learned on CNN.

It seemed safe to go to bed, and while I'd wanted resolution, it was better to know while going to bed that the election was still up for grabs than to know that Bush had won "re"-election.

About eight hours later, I awoke to the news that Kerry conceded to Bush today, acknowledging that he can't win Ohio. The numbers right now, according to The Associated Press, are 274 electoral votes for Bush, with Ohio under his belt, and 252 for Kerry, with Iowa's seven and New Mexico's five electoral votes still unassigned to either candidate. The AP also reports that so far in the popular vote, Bush is at 51 percent and Kerry at 48 percent.

My thoughts are swirling about, so I'll just write them as I can catch them:

What will another four years of George W. Bush look like, with a Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives and a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate?

Remember the scenes in "The Terminator" movies after the nuclear apocalypse? I can see it coming to that...

The upshot is that President Bush (I guess I don't need to use quotation marks around the word "President" now, since it looks like he finally actually won a presidential election, even if barely) will provide me with a helluva lot more blogging material for the next four years than President Kerry would have.

(But will my radiation burns prevent me from blogging?)

If I hear one former Howard Dean supporter say that Dean would have won, Dean will have himself one fewer former supporter.

Now that the election is over and Kerry no longer needs the Deanies' votes, I can say it: You Deaniacs are/were almost as out of touch with reality as is George W. Bush. You thought that a man with the temperament of a rabid Chihuahua on crack would be appealing to the national electorate? Jesus Fucking Christ.

I might have been able to support Dean had his fairly moderate record as governor of Vermont actually matched his new-found foaming-at-the-mouth liberal rhetoric. And I could never get over the fact that he refused to unseal the records from his governorship of Vermont. We were supposed to just trust him that there was nothing bad in those records.

While Kerry narrowly lost, Dean, had he been nominated, would have lost by a wide, embarrassing margin.

I do credit Dean for bringing millions of people into the political process -- even if they were creepy and clueless and self-centered and resembled cult members -- but I have to wonder how many of them actually voted when their guy didn't win the Democratic presidential nomination. Dean himself, in one of his many foot-in-his-mouth moments, quasi-threatened that if he didn't get the nomination, he couldn't see his supporters supporting another nominee.

Expect more terrorist attacks upon Americans. While many American-haters thus far have given us a break, realizing that the Bush regime stole the 2000 election, they will now see George W. Bush as Americans' choice, even though, according to the count thus far, only 51 percent of Americans chose him.

The Bush regime has a great gig: Make the United States of America hated throughout the world, thus increasing the incidence of terrorist attacks, and then take credit for battling the freedom-hatin', terror-lovin', evildoing terrorists, who, according to the Bush regime's endless propaganda, attack us not because we've done anything wrong -- such as, oh, say, invade and occupy a sovereign Muslim nation that did absolutely nothing to us to warrant said invasion and occupation -- but because they're dyed-in-the-wool freedom-hatin', terror-lovin' evildoers.

As "Fahrenheit 9/11" and many books and articles have pointed out, the Bush dynasty is in bed with the Saudis, the people who spawned 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, yet apparently 51 percent of Americans, who are abject dumbfucks, can't and/or won't see that the Bush regime is creating the very same terrorists from whom it claims to be so valiantly protecting us.

Whatever. Those 51 percent of Americans who are dumbfucks are going to get what they deserve with another four years of the Bush regime's Armageddon-bent policies and practices. (Unfortunately, the rest of us have to endure it, too.)

I don't know if the United States has been more divided since the Civil War. And it's only going to get worse. Bush has acknowledged the division that yesterday's election has demonstrated, today's news reports say, but he is the one who has created it, despite his 2000 campaign promise to be "a uniter, not a divider."

If you think that Bush, with the Senate and the House of Representatives in his AmeriNazi column, is going to work on reaching out to those half of Americans who oppose him, you are one deluded fuck. (Maybe I'll run into you in the concentration camp the AmeriNazis will put us liberals, fags and dykes, sand monkeys, et. al. into and we can discuss this point further.)

Anyway, Bush lost to Al Gore by a half-million votes in 2000 and was installed by the five members of the U.S. Supreme Court who were appointed by Republican candidates, but he and his henchpeople proceeded to treat his 2000 "victory" like a fucking mandate.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that he and the members of his regime will act any differently over the next four years, even though only barely more than half of Americans (apparently) voted for him.

Those touch-screen voting machines: I understand that the conspiracy theories are already circulating about the touch-screen voting machines, which do not produce tangible proof of the voters' votes. Would I be surprised if I were to to learn that the Republicans stole yet another election? Absolutely not.

But as of this writing, I have no proof that that is the case, so, until and unless I have reason to believe otherwise, right now, I consider George W. Bush to have been elected as president of the United States for the first time yesterday, albeit very narrowly.

Am I angry at Kerry for fucking it up?

Not in the least. I'm not angry -- I'm disappointed, of course, but not angry, and I'm not devastated, because although I really thought that Kerry would win, I always knew that Bush might -- and I don't see that Kerry fucked it up.

Kerry gave it his all, and it was an uphill battle from the beginning, trying to unseat an incumbent who for the past three-plus years has fed the American people a steady diet of fear and and lies and disinformation, which at least 51 percent of them lapped up like obedient lapdogs. It's not Kerry's fault that at least 51 percent of Americans are dumbfucks and that for the past four years the Bush regime has played up to the fact that a good chunk of Americans are total fucking idiots who can be misled with minimal effort.

The Bushies can celebrate their victory, but our republic, our democracy, cannot and will not survive when more than half of its citizens are dumbfucks. So the AmeriNazis win a presidential election -- but now face the potential of the fall of the American empire within our lifetime.

Dumbfucks.

I gave the Kerry campaign hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours of my time and energy for the past year and a half. Do I regret it? Not in the least. When Armageddon arrives, at least I'll know that I did what I could do to prevent it.

Let us sane, intelligent, progressive, liberal Americans have our day or week or month of mourning that we are faced with another four years of the Bush regime, but let's not roll over and play dead. We are still 48 percent of the nation, at least!

We fight on!

Finally, those of you who are feeling suicidal should take some wisdom from my long-haired Chihuahua, Kit. She sees no difference between yesterday and today. For Kit there are still dog treats to eat, walks to take (and other dogs' urine to sniff and cats to be wary of during those walks), people food to beg for and baths to have to endure. She will continue to steal my pillow whenever I take my head off of it and will continue to jump into my laundry basket full of clean clothes within minutes of my return from the laundromat.

My point is that in many aspects, for the next four years our lives will go on much the same as they have the past four years.

Wait a minute -- that's the problem...

OK, so you'll have to look for sappy inspiration elsewhere.

But I still say:

We fight on!

P.S. This is funny. It's from Not a Dollar Short via The Forge:

In all seriousness, however, I recommend that those 48 percent (or so) of us Americans who are intelligent and sane continue to fight for our nation, not flee to Canada...

P.P.S. This is the e-mail that I received this morning from the Kerry-Edwards campaign:

Dear Robert,

Earlier today I spoke to President Bush, and offered him and Laura our congratulations on their victory. We had a good conversation, and we talked about the danger of division in our country and the need, the desperate need, for unity for finding the common ground, coming together. Today, I hope that we can begin the healing.

In America, it is vital that every vote counts, and that every vote be counted. But the outcome should be decided by voters, not a protracted legal process. I would not give up this fight if there was a chance that we would prevail. But it is now clear that even when all the provisional ballots are counted, which they will be, there won't be enough outstanding votes for our campaign to be able to win Ohio. And therefore, we cannot win this election.

It was a privilege and a gift to spend two years traveling this country, coming to know so many of you. I wish I could just wrap you in my arms and embrace each and every one of you individually all across this nation. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.

To all of you, my volunteers and online supporters, all across this country who gave so much of themselves, thank you. Thanks to William Field, a six-year-old who collected $680, a quarter and a dollar at a time selling bracelets during the summer to help change America. Thanks to Michael Benson from Florida who I spied in a rope line holding a container of money. It turned out he raided his piggy bank and wanted to contribute. And thanks to Alana Wexler, who at 11 years old and started Kids for Kerry.

I thank all of you, who took time to travel, time off from work, and their own vacation time to work in states far and wide. You braved the hot days of summer and the cold days of the fall and the winter to knock on doors because you were determined to open the doors of opportunity to all Americans. You worked your hearts out, and I say, don't lose faith. What you did made a difference, and building on itself, we will go on to make a difference another day. I promise you, that time will come -- the election will come when your work and your ballots will change the world, and it's worth fighting for.

I'm proud of what we stood for in this campaign, and of what we accomplished. When we began, no one thought it was possible to even make this a close race, but we stood for real change, change that would make a real difference in the life of our nation, the lives of our families, and we defined that choice to America. I'll never forget the wonderful people who came to our rallies, who stood in our rope lines, who put their hopes in our hands, who invested in each and every one of us. I saw in them the truth that America is not only great, but it is good.

So here -- with a grateful heart, I leave this campaign with a prayer that has even greater meaning to me now that I've come to know our vast country so much better and that prayer is very simple: God bless America.

Thank you,

John Kerry


	Paid for by Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc.

John Kerry, entirely unlike George W. Bush, is a class act.

P.P.P.S. Some more:

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 06:06:57 GMT

Reasons not to 're'-elect Bush -- in pictures!*

*Especially helpful for those of you in the red states who have problems with the big words!

After he lost the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore by more than a half-million votes in November 2000, George got into the White House with just a little help from his friends, such as Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (top), who just happened to also be co-chair of his Florida campaign (no conflict of interest there!); his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (who, I am sure, remained completely neutral); and the five members of the U.S. Supreme Court who just happened to have been appointed by Republican presidents. Yes, it was a completely fair election, and anyone who suggests otherwise is an enemy combatant.

To watch the video in which our decisive, resolute "war president" sits paralyzed in a classroom for several minutes after learning that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, click here. Or watch "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Hope that the U.S. military never comes to "liberate" you! (To see more images of Iraqi children maimed or killed during the unprovoked, illegal, immoral, imperialistic March 2003 invasion of Iraq by the unelected Bush regime, click here.)

Who can forget this great day in May 2003?

(For more images of flag-draped U.S. military coffins the Bush regime never wanted you to see, click here.)

(For more images of maimed U.S. military personnel the Bush regime also surely doesn't want you to see, click here.)

Hey, Halliburton got those no-bid federal government contracts fair and square! The BushCheneyCorp did not fabricate a war so that Dick Cheney's Halliburton and other subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp could war profiteer -- because that would be wrong!

You can judge a man by the company he keeps...

Again, hope that the U.S. military never comes to "liberate" you! (For more images of the Nazi-like treatment of Iraqi detainees [most of whom were innocent of any crime, according to the Red Cross] at the hands of the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison, click here.)

The neocon cabal within the Bush regime said that Americans would be greeted as liberators in Iraq. In Fallujah in March, four American contractors were greeted by being turned into charcoal, mutilated, dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge.

Beheadings in post-"mission accomplished" Iraq became the new reality television! (That's American Nick Berg, the first contestant, in June. Don't fucking whine that I posted the photos, because while you only have to look at some unpleasant pictures and probably are, like I am, an overly comfortable American, Nick Berg, like the Iraqi children pictured above, had to experience the results of the fact that the American people just fucking let the Bush regime steal the White House. Because a group of people who would steal a presidential election surely wouldn't do anything bad once installed in the White House!)

This FBI memo makes it clear that it was known in July 2001 that Osama bin Laden was up to no good and that it involved airplanes. But "President" Bush was too busy on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas to pay much, if any, attention to the threat. (For the full "Phoenix memo" -- what parts of it aren't blackened out, that is -- click here.)

We have in custody former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (left), who posed no demonstrated threat to the United States or its allies whatsoever -- at the cost of billions and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars (much, if not most, of which has gone to Halliburton and other subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp), the lives of more than 1,100 U.S. military personnel, and the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis. But the man who was actually responsible for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Saudi-born Osama bin Laden (right), has been on the loose for more than three years after 9/11.

Hey, I don't know about you, but I sure feel safe with BushCheneyCorp behind the wheel, and I say: "Another four years!"

Sun, 31 Oct 2004 00:39:10 GMT

Quote unquote

"There's no question [that Osama] bin Laden would rather have [George W.] Bush in the White House. The Iraq war has been a fantastic recruiting tool for him and the behavior of this administration has played into his hands."

-- James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute

"You cannot stand with Halliburton, big oil companies and the Saudi royal family and still stand up for the American people."

-- Vice presidential candidate John Edwards on BushCheneyCorp

Sat, 30 Oct 2004 20:08:06 GMT

In a new video of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden addressing Americans that was broadcast on Al-Jazeera yesterday, bin Laden actually makes some valid points; we Americans ignore what our opponents have to say at our own peril. The Associated Press notes that bin Laden appears "far healthier in the video released [yesterday] than many would have suspected, considering speculation that he was already ailing in the winter of 2001... U.S. officials have often described him as holed up in a dank and dreary cave, all but cut off from the outside world."

What October surprise?

This is the October "surprise"?

I'm disappointed.

My dictionary defines "surprise" as "a taking unawares."

Who was unaware that Osama bin Laden is still at large, except, perhaps, those well-informed Bush supporters who still believe that George W. Bush was fairly elected as president of the United States; that Iraq had something, anything, to do with the al-Qaeda-conducted terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; and that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which the United States found?

The pundits are crawling all over each other pronouncing what effect Osama's new video will have on Tuesday's presidential election.

My guess: It will have less effect on the election than will Eminem's new video (which you really must see if you haven't).

My guess is that for every person who feels more "inspired" by fear to vote for Bush because bin Laden has shown his salt-and-pepper-bearded face again, there is another person who is only reminded by bin Laden's resurfacing that more than three years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Bush regime has failed to capture bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11.

But even if the Bush regime were to capture bin Laden today, how would our personal situations change whatsoever? Are we better off today than we were four years ago?

Hell no, and that's why the BushCheneyCorp is toast on Nov. 2.

At any rate, here is a translation of bin Laden's latest video, which I have cobbled together from WorldNetDaily's translation and World Press Review's translation:

To begin: Peace be upon he who follows the Guidance.

People of the United States, my speech to you concerns the best way to prevent another Manhattan and deals with the war and its causes and results. Before I begin, I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. [If we hate freedom,] then let him explain why we did not strike Sweden, for example.

We know that those who hate freedom don't have defiant spirits like those 19 [a reference to the 19 Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers, 15 of whom were from Saudi Arabia and not one of whom was an Iraqi -- Ed.] who were blessed. No, we fight because we are free men who do not sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our Muslim nation; and just as you lay waste to our nation, so shall we lay waste to yours.

I am so amazed at you. Although we are in the fourth year after the events of Sept. 11, Bush is still practicing distortion and deception and hiding from you the real causes [of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks], and, therefore, the reasons still exist for a repeat of what happened before.

So I shall tell you the story behind those events and I shall tell you truthfully about the moments in which the decision was taken for you to consider.

I say to you Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we saw the oppression and tyranny of the American-Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind. The events that affected my soul in a difficult way started in 1982, when the United States allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon with the assistance of the American sixth fleet.

And the whole world saw and heard but did not respond.

In those difficult moments, many ideas that I can't describe bubbled in my soul, and they resulted in intense feelings of rejection of tyranny and gave birth to a strong determination to punish the oppressors. As I looked at the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressors in the same way and destroy towers in the United States so that they taste some of what we tasted, and so that they stop killing our women and children.

We have not found it difficult to deal with Bush and his administration due to the similarity of his regime and the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by military and the other half of which are ruled by the sons of kings and presidents. Our experience with them is long. Both types are arrogant and stubborn and the greedy and take money without right.
This resemblance began after the visits of Bush Senior to the region at a time when some of our compatriots were dazzled by the United States and hoping that these visits would have an effect on our countries. All of a sudden [Bush Senior] was affected by these monarchies and military regimes and he became jealous that for decades they were remaining in power, stealing the public's wealth without anybody overseeing them.
So he transferred dictatorship and the suppression of freedoms to his son, and they named it the PATRIOT Act under the pretenses of fighting terrorism.
[Bush Senior] was bright in installing his sons as governors of states, and he didn't forget to transfer his observations of election fraud by the rulers of our region to Florida to be made use of in moments of difficulty.
All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration.

And for the record, we had agreed with the Commander-General Muhammad Atta, God bless him, to execute the whole [Sept. 11] operation within 20 minutes, before Bush and his administration would notice. We never thought that the commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces would abandon 50,000 of his citizens in both towers to face those great horrors alone when they needed him most.

But because it seemed to him that occupying himself by listening to the little girl telling him about about her goat and its butting was more important than occupying himself with the airplanes butting the towers, we were given three times the amount of time we needed to execute the operation. Thank God.

Your security is not in the hands of [John] Kerry or Bush or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your hands. Each nation that doesn't interfere with our security has automatically secured its own security.

I'll get hate e-mail and nasty comments for this, but fuck it: I agree with bin Laden on many points.

The Bush dynasty is just as bad as is the Saudi dynasty. (Actually, the Bush dynsasty is worse because it commits its crimes against humankind in the name of "democracy" and "freedom," while the Saudi dictatorship doesn't pretend to be democratic, to my knowledge.) Both dynasties, and all dynasties, need to go, need to be replaced with democracies -- not the bullshit, pseudo-democracies that the Bush regime pushes, in which it uses the U.S. military to invade sovereign nations and then install in those nations puppet prime ministers who lick the United States' ass, but real democracies.

Bin Laden, unlike many Americans, is sane enough to point out that George W. Bush's presidency has been illegitimate from Day One, that Bush became "president" only because of the blatant election fraud that the Republicans perpetrated in Florida in 2000. And bin Laden seems to have seen "Fahrenheit 9/11," because he refers to how Bush, when he was informed that a second airplane had hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, sat dazed, confused and paralyzed in a classroom for several minutes. (Eminem opens his new video with a scene inspired by this. I guess Eminem is an America-hatin' Commie like me.) Yeah, I have nothing but confidence in our current "commander in chief" to protect me from the big bad terror-lovin' freedom-hatin' sand monkeys when it's clear that when crisis hits, he fucking freezes.

Like bin Laden, I also believe that the United States should just leave Muslim nations the fuck alone; invading and occupying Iraq without provocation and without reason, killing as many as 100,000 Iraqis in the process, certainly doesn't qualify as the United States leaving Muslim nations the fuck alone.

Let the Muslims be Muslims in the Muslim nations and let Americans be Americans in the United States. The two cultures mix like, um, oil and water, and while I hope for good relations between all peoples someday, if two groups of people can't get along for the time being, if their meetings result only in violence and destruction and death, then it's better for the groups to keep to themselves.

Lest readers who live in the red states think that I agree with the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks because I agree with some of the things that Osama bin Laden said in his latest video, I will state for the record, once again, that I'm against anyone killing anyone unless it's in clear self-defense or in the clear defense of others who, without intervention, would face imminent death.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 upon the United States do not meet that test -- and neither does the BushCheneyCorp's illegal, immoral, unprovoked and imperialistic invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Both were terrorist attacks and the perpetrators of both terrorist attacks should be brought to justice.

Sat, 30 Oct 2004 03:18:09 GMT