Baseless Smears

They never, ever fail to stoop to lower and lower levels of decency. Once a party of honorable opposition, the current brood of goons in charge of the GOP are not only destroying political discourse but they will soon destroy their party - again. The Rethuglicans are now making outrageous claims that anyone opposed to the Dubai – US Ports deal is at best an idiot and at worst a racist. The disgusting hypocrisy of that statement is readily apparent. This is the party that always finds a way to use the baser instincts of human nature to divide people in pursuit of cheap political goals. They divide by income level, by faith, by age, and by sexual orientation. They divide by race and they use false patriotism to create hysteria in the public that will allow them to abrogate Constitutional rights and solidify power. To suggest that concerned Americans who object to this secret Bush deal are racists is a vile, baseless, traitorous smear.

Just who are the people making this smear against American patriots? One of those unthinking, uncaring, amoral politicians is Little Georgie himself who has condemned opposition to the deal as anti-Arab bigotry, saying it had been thoroughly vetted and raised no legitimate national security concerns. Chimpie has also threatened to veto any attempt by Congress to scuttle the deal and at the same time, in an act of phony contrition, has expressed regret that he did not keep congressional leaders informed of the deal. Ever the slimy hypocrite, Georgie has never even rooted out the bigots in his own ranks. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, an outspoken Christian conservative who has ridiculed Islam as "Satan" and dismissed Muslims as idol worshipers, is still a high-ranking Pentagon official, in charge of intelligence-gathering because Little George has not wanted to risk the ire of other anti-Islam Christian fundamentalists by dumping the general.

Yesterday, however, Representative Peter King of New York, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, dismissed Bush's contention of bias against Arabs. ''I don't think it serves any purpose saying that this is somehow anti-Arab," King said. ''It's real concerns about a company which comes out of a country which had the strongest pro-Taliban leanings in the world prior to 9/11 and also in many ways refused to cooperate with the US in the war against terrorism until recently. These are real concerns which have to be addressed.''

Another smearer is the increasingly clueless drone, Sen Pete Domenici, who said much of the criticism has an anti-Arab bias: "We are at war against terrorists, not any religion or ethnicity. Some politicians seem to have forgotten that. ... Such alarm, verging almost on hysteria, harms our efforts to have the broadest coalition possible against worldwide terrorism."

So it is racist to question a country that recognized the Taliban government in Afghanistan as being legitimate, that has a very spotty record in resisting terrorism, that operates ports in it's own country that are known havens for hijacking, smuggling, and other illegalities, that owns Dubai Ports World (which may already have infiltrators form al Qaeda as employees), that had citizens as members of the 9/11 terrorist group who destroyed the World Trade Towers, and that has not enacted any policies nor made any strong public pronouncements that condemn terrorism or the extremists Muslims who support terror acts? Seems like common sense to most Americans.

Oh, for residents of Florida, this will be quite comforting: Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has said he trusts his brother the president on such security issues.
Posted on The Human Stain