Blair’s bungling, flailing approach to fighting terrorism in England just shows how incapable he and Bush are of taking productive action to protect their respective nations from terrorist attacks.

Blair still is claiming that there are no links between the London attacks and the war in Iraq. One obvious link is that the occupation and killings in Iraq are infuriating the Muslim world, helping Al Queda recruit terrorists worldwide.

Instead of reevaluating the Iraq war, and its role in aiding and abetting Al Queda, Blair is pushing a shoot-to-kill policy against people who randomly seem suspicious. This isn’t helping protect Britain, but it is alienating Brazilians. Hundreds of Brazilian friends and relatives of the victim have marched and demanded the arrests of the British officers who fired the fatal shots.

Protest Articles:

Scotsman

Los Angeles Times

Terrorists certainly have made it more dangerous to travel to England. But, now there is another danger: police given orders to shoot to kill anyone who they think might be a terrorist. The killing of an innocent Brazilian man is extremely disturbing. All he did was to do something completely normal on a subway system: running to catch a train.

Tony Blair, a rather wimpy man, is rushing to outdo the macho talk of another wimpy man, George W. Bush. In the process, civil liberties and basic safety have been severely compromised. I am unwilling to let terrorists dictate where I travel, but I also am unwilling to be killed because of insane orders of the government of the travel destination. I’m not willing to take a stray bullet because Tony Blair has lost it.

Even if the policy was limited to those who really are terrorists fleeing from the police, it needs to be reconsidered. Dead terrorists provide no information about other terrorists.

Meanwhile, I’m not traveling to England until this policy is revoked.

Will Bush’s Supreme Court nomination of rightist zealot judge John G. Roberts Jr. distract liberals from Rove’s ethical problems? Do liberals have to choose whether to fight Roberts or publicize Rovegate?

I’ve heard and read various versions of these questions the past day or two. This completely underestimates liberals. We can fight the illegitimate regime in more than one area. We can focus on more than one thing at a time.

This gives us an advantage against the dittoheads of the world who can only obsess on one issue during a given time. Here are some links on Roberts:

http://media.pfaw.org/roberts.pdf
http://www.independentjudiciary.com/resources/docs/John_Roberts_Report.pdf
http://www.prochoice.org/policy/courts/nominations/roberts_facts.html

Both of them were involved in revealing the identity of a CIA agent in order to obtain revenge against her conservative Republican husband whose only “offense” was telling the truth about the hokey story that the Bush regime invented about Saddam Hussein trying to obtain uranium from Niger.

Even worse, these actions of Novak and Rove have undermined the CIA’s efforts to gather intelligence on nuclear proliferation, something of critical importance in the post-911 world. The betrayal of an undercover agent also will make it more difficult for the CIA to hire and retain undercover agents.

Rove’s actions make him unfit to serve in the White House, regardless of the outcome of the criminal investigation against him. Novak’s actions have eliminated any credibility that Novak might have had at one time, and CNN discredits itself by continuing to employ Novak.

Contact Bush and demand that Rove be fired.
president@whitehouse.gov

Contact the Republican National Committee and demand that they publicly insist on Rove’s firing.
info@gop.com

Contact CNN and demand that Novak be fired.
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form4a.html?1