4.12.02 @ 2:37PM
There are protection rackets, and then there are protection rackets. How did Colin Powell's toy boy qualify for both?
Only in America, where a bought Ohio jury yesterday made Rep.
Jim "Junior" Traficant a made man, as in a made Democrat.
Immediately Rep. Ricardo "Mama's Boy" Gephardtini began plotting
Junior's ouster from the Congressori family, going so far as to
declare him a non-Democrat though he remains an active trial lawyer
and his own consigliere. Junior will not be easily snuffed out, not
so long as naysaying Republican Rep. Roberto Ney of Ohio retains
clout. Ney says he respects Junior's right to an appeal, but even
he admits that if Junior is sent up-river it could be curtains.
"Obviously," he said in an untraceable call to a Washington Post
reporter, "no one convicted and sentenced can remain in the U.S.
House." Oh, yeah? How come it's called the Big House?
Another Democrat from Palermo, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, whom Osama
bin Laden recently unveiled as his emissary to Washington, charges
that President Bush has parlayed advance warning of the September
11 attacks to reward war-profiteer backers and enforcers of his
Florida coup. How did she know about the advance warning?
Apparently by breaking the code provided by Pat Buchanan in a
recent book describing British attempts to withhold intelligence
intercepts from an American president a few wars ago.
But Signora McKinney's inspiration may have been the obscure
Italian journalist Tiziano Terzani, who has been on America's case
since Vietnam and in a hot new book denounces the U.S. war in
Afghanistan as an act of barbarism. On promotional tour in Italy,
where his book is outselling David Brock's, Comrade Terzani is
raising many important questions. Thanks to a gentleman from
Vicenza, who provided Enemy Central with a strategic intercept of
its own, we know Terzani is entertaining serious doubts about
whether 9/11 ever occurred. "I am not in a position to know what
happened," he told Italy Daily. "I'm just sustaining that what we
have been told is not the whole truth." So what about the
smoking-gun video in which Osama admitted his involvement? "How do
I know?" Terzani asks. "I'm not an expert on videos. All I know is
that the video comes from the same society that produced 'Jurassic
Park.'" This guy's good, certainly better than Brock.
Terzani is a model in the making of an anti-American. Back in
the sixties someone asked him why he was so hostile to the land of
the free. Because he didn't know the country, he replied. So he
enrolled in a few of its top schools of patriotism, specifically
Stanford and Columbia, on a two-year Harkness fellowship. Last
summer he returned for a refresher course, as if he could have ever
forgotten a single thing he'd been taught. Here's what earned him
his "A": "My impression of America was disastrous. It was an
appalling feeling of an arrogant country, a country with no
curiosity whatsoever about the rest of the world. A country so
self-centered, so deeply convinced of being the expression of the
ultimate civilization ... as if they had reached the peak of
something mankind had always been looking for." Evidently he's
still recovering from the disappointment he felt when informed that
San Francisco wasn't the shining city on a hill Ronald Reagan was
referring to.
Fortunately for America we have Colin Powell defending our case
abroad. Nothing will stop him, no matter how many stops it takes.
First, Morocco and a dressing down from one of our closest allies
in the region. Then Egypt, another close ally that sure could use a
few more billion a month in U.S. aid, the better to break ties with
Israel. Then Spain, where Kofi Annan was waiting in ambush, along
with lots of neat European statesmen, all united in anti-Israelism,
the weak man's version of anti-Americanism. Finally, grudgingly,
with nose-in-the-air as if he were still visiting the Pyramids,
arrival in Israel and a meeting with Ariel Sharon. All this
humiliation just so General Powell could win the grand prize and
meet on the Jewish Sabbath with Yassir Arafat, the closest thing
this side of Asia to what remains of Osama bin Laden on the
other.
Months ago the General's boss said we'd do away with such
vermin. So why is the Secretary of State now extending privileges
to Arafat due an Endangered Species. If this doesn't bedeck him and
his entire Foggy Bottom crew with EOW hardware, nothing will.
topics:
Law, Israel
