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The Oregon Herald is a non-commercial, non-profit, ad free news publication.
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One Radical Opinion by "Radical" Russ Belville |
"Radical" Russ Belville was born on the first day of the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War in the town of Nampa in the "red" state of Idaho, where any opinion to the left of Reagan gets you labeled as "radical". He currently resides in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon (a.k.a. "Little Beirut") where he works in Information Technology. In his spare time, he enjoys writing about current events, playing the six-string bass guitar, and volunteering for liberal political causes. You can contact him via e-mail at letters 'at' radicalruss.net. |
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| Home | The "Blame Osama First" Crowd | <Back | Next> |
| One of the complaints I hear from supporters of George W.
Bush goes something like this:
"You're all trying to point fingers at who is to blame for 9/11. Was it the FBI, the CIA, the bureaucracy, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice? Why do you liberals always blame America first? The person to really blame is Osama bin Laden!" Those who do not fully understand the point of the investigation use this reasoning. We all know that Osama ordered 9/11. We are trying to investigate the intelligence failures that gave Osama the opportunity to perpetrate 9/11, in the hopes that he will not be able to perpetrate another terrorist horror against America. So let me put it in a way the "have mores" can understand: You own a mansion. It's August, and you are watching a news story about the police looking for a bearded man wearing a robe and a turban who is setting fire to local mansions. You are justifiably frightened; therefore, you hire Brinks Security to install alarms on your doors and windows and to patrol the grounds of your mansion. One September morning, you find that your mansion is on fire. You see a bearded man in a robe and turban running away from your mansion with a crowbar in one hand and a can of gasoline in the other. So what do you do? You probably get on the phone to Brinks to find out what went wrong! Why did the door and window alarms not work? Where was that Brinks patrol car? Why did you spend all that money on Brinks Security? How could Brinks not pay attention to a bearded man in a robe and turban carrying a can of gasoline, especially when he was just on the news! Now of course you want the police to catch the arsonist. However, you would also want to figure out what went wrong with Brinks so you can be more confident in the security of your next mansion. You would not let Brinks off the hook for such a huge lapse in security. You would not complain about the investigation into Brinks Security and say, "the person really to blame for my burned-down mansion is that bearded man in the turban!" Speaking of the bearded man in the turban, you decide to follow-up on the police's investigation and tracking of the turban-wearing arsonist. Imagine how shocked you are to find that the police are spending very little in labor and money on finding the arsonist. Instead, they have most of the cops concentrated in a bad neighborhood across town, tracking down a criminal gang. The gang, while ruthless and despicable, came nowhere near your mansion and do not even know the turban-wearing arsonist. Moreover, the police have already caught the gang leader sleeping under a bridge. "That doesn't matter," the police tell you. "We're engaged in a broad-based war on crime!" Don't you think it is time to hire a security company this November? |