we will not drink again

Ok, this was pretty good. Olbermann is right on lately. You can watch it here. Trust me when I say, I didn't just like it because he used the word scurrilous. But it helped. Here's the transcript (emphases mine):

It is to our deep national shame—and ultimately it will be to the President’s deep personal regret—that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies—or even question their effectiveness or execution—to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present. Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 — without ever actually saying so—the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, “a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.” Make no mistake here—the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the “media.” The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press. Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle: The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word—“media”—the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda. That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American. Mr. Bush and his colleagues have led us before to such waters. We will not drink again. And the President’s re-writing and sanitizing of history, so it fits the expediencies of domestic politics, is just as false, and just as scurrilous. “In the 1920’s a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews,” President Bush said today, “the world ignored Hitler’s words, and paid a terrible price.” Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them. More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek—a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety. It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration’s recent Nazi “kick” is an awful and cynical thing. And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

Indeed.

Murtha also responds to Bush's latest war speeches by saying (and I love these quotes):

"This is a failed policy wrapped in illusion." *snip "I've been all through the country… There is a sentiment out there, an intensity that I haven't seen since Watergate."

Video here.

I'm saddened, but not at all surprised that Bush/Rove/Cheney/Rummy are continuing to use fear to try to win elections. I'm even more mournful that it continues to be affective with some...

I work with a friend that considers herself "more republican than democrat". I will never understand how an educator can be a republican...but that's another story. One of the things that she has said to me over and over is: "I just feel safer with a Republican in office." I gave her the book, What's the Matter With Kansas? (which I know is not really about fear as much as ecomonics and those "morals" that people keep talking about) and I am hopeful that between her mother and I, we will help her to "see the light". :-) Pay attention! I know they are scary, but don't let them scare you!!!

Ok, one more video. See Max Cleland's response to Gonzolas insisting that Iraq was a major front in the war on terror AND downplaying the importance of Osama here.

BLITZER: Do you agree with the attorney general as far as his assessment of the importance or lack thereof, if you will, of Osama bin Laden overall in terms of the war on terror? MAX CLELAND (D), FORMER GEORGIA SENATOR: I don’t agree with a damn thing the attorney general said. It is al Qaeda, stupid. It is Osama bin Laden and his terrorist cadre that must be killed or captured, period. If we don’t have high government officials in Washington who understand that, we need new high government officials.

Now, maybe it shouldn't be, but that's just funny.