From
It Affects You
To distill this diary into one sentence: The Conservative government has given terrorists access to more fresh recruits and greater training grounds abroad while weakening our ability to fight them at home.
America has been betrayed.
(Okay, that's two)
Kofi Annan
said the obvious yesterday:
"One used to be worried about Afghanistan being the center of terrorist activities. My sense is that Iraq has become a major problem and in fact is worse than Afghanistan."
This quote isn't so impressive to those of us who get our news from sources not connected or beholden to the White House. But in the wake of Katrina, now that it's undeniable just how thoroughly our ability to deal with an attack at home has been dismantled, our Conservative government's double betrayal is made clear.
I've ripped Bush for his ridiculous and dangerous oft repeated line of rhetoric "We're fighting them abroad so we don't have to fight them at home" many times. But that has never, never proved more hollow or dangerous than it does right now.
We are not fighting to prevent Iraq from becoming a terrorist recruiting and training ground as Bush publicly argues; that has already happened on a massive scale. We are fighting against what Conservative policies already encouraged.
And here at home, Katrina sadly demonstrated that this Conservative government has dismantled our ability to deal with an attack at on American soil. That failure is almost incomprehensible in its scope, and DHS, it seems, has been little more than an expensive ruse.
Put them together and you get one of the most devastating betrayals of the American public by its own government. Government's basic duty is to protect its people, and the politicians who won election a large part because they claimed to be the only ones who could do that turned out to be the those least qualified. It's not even clear that was every truly a priority.
We have been betrayed.
From It Affects You