Letter: Bush exploits fear to push agenda

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2004 | 8:46 a.m.

Vice President Dick Cheney says that a vote for Kerry is a vote for a terrorist attack on America. Fear and the sale of a fictional George Bush are used to deflect discussion of the issues. Behind their antics with semantics, with names like "Clean Air" and "Healthy Forests" and "Ownership Retirement" is a domestic policy designed to permanently shift the wealth of the nation to the very rich.

Further, the Patriot Act has ravaged the U.S. Constitution and Bush seems determined to establish a theocracy. The Bush foreign policy is to establish the American corporate empire through wars and the overthrow of governments, even if those governments were elected. Bush calls this "spreading democracy."

What is being sold to America in this election is a fantasy version of Bush, as a strong war leader with God on his side. We are supposed to forget that 9/11 happened on his watch. We are to forget that Bush sat reading "My Pet Goat" while New York burned. When he did act, the real Bush shortchanged the Afghanistan war on al-Qaida to work his bait and switch from terrorism to the oil fields of Iraq.

Now more than 1,000 dead troops and $200 billion later, our country is isolated and divided, al-Qaida is back in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden is never mentioned, and we are losing the war in Iraq and the "War on Terror." It is another bait and switch to ask Americans to vote for this fantasy Bush out of our fear.

JERRY BITTS