That's more like it

Oh the right-wing is going to have vapors of the NY Times editorial page (you know New York, the "home" of 9/11 [not 9/11 "teh musical"] -- the people who lived it, fought it, and now overwhelmingly vote against Bush & Cheney?).

It comes like a punch to the gut, at times like these, when our leaders blatantly use the nation’s trauma for political gain. We never get used to this. It never feels like business as usual.

On Wednesday, when the administration already knew that British agents were rounding up suspects in what they believed was a plot to blow up planes en route to the United States, Vice President Dick Cheney had a telephone interview with reporters to discuss the defeat of Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut in a Democratic primary. Mr. Cheney went off on a rather rambling disquisition, but its main point was clear: In rejecting Mr. Lieberman, who supported the war in Iraq, the Democrats were encouraging “the Al Qaeda types.” Within the Democratic ranks, the vice president added, “there’s a significant body of opinion that wants to go back — I guess the way I would describe it is sort of the pre-9/11 mind-set, in terms of how we deal with the world we live in.”

The man who beat Mr. Lieberman, Ned Lamont, lives in Greenwich, a suburb full of commuters who work in New York high-rise buildings. They are completely aware of the way international terrorism can come crashing down on an ordinary family, leaving the survivors stunned and bereft. A dozen of their neighbors died at the World Trade Center. They will never be able to go back to a “pre-9/11 mind-set.”

But that did not seem to deter Mr. Lieberman from scoring a cheap sound bite yesterday. Leaving Iraq, as Mr. Lamont advocates, “will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England,” he said. “It will strengthen them and they will strike again.”

It's getting pretty bad out there. And the worse it gets for Republicans, and it is looking very bad for them, the more over the top they will become:

"Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big," said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won't "look as appealing" under the circumstances.

Yes, thanks to another country's action, the Bush Administration has finally vanquished "Poland Springs Bottled Water". That's really what invading Iraq was all about.