COLIN POWELL'S "PIAZZA MOMENT"

Please, pay no attention to that Syrian war plan behind the curtain...

WASHINGTON - Trying to calm a charged atmosphere, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday the United States has no plans to go to war with Syria or anyone else to bring democracy to a totalitarian state.


"Iraq was a unique case, where it wasn't just a matter of a dictator being there," Powell said at a news conference with foreign reporters. "There is no war plan to go and attack someone else, either for the purpose of overthrowing their leadership or for the purpose of imposing democratic values."

"Democratic values have to ultimately come from within a society and within a nation," he said, tempering heated rhetoric from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and some other senior U.S. officials.

snip

...he rejected any suggestion the administration had a list of countries against whom it might send troops again.

"There is no list," he said, even as he registered unhappiness with some policies of Iran as well as Syria.

(...quietly adding "like we'd write that shit down???")

I'm very suspicious. They've got all the news networks talking about Syria. Then again, this could be a ploy. To what end? To crowd out news about the mess that they've made of Iraq, where chaos reigns, and we stood idly by as thousands of years worth of artifacts are looted and libraries are burnt to the ground. Instead of allowing the average American to ask him/herself "why are we guarding the Oil ministry while the national library and musem burn?", or "why are we installing former ba'ath party members to high-level transitional posts?", or even "hey, come to think of it, where's Saddam?", our government wants us to seethe at Syria and their own (young, western-educated) dictator.

So if there ends up being war in Syria, judging by the 8-month buildup to war in Iraq, the Bush administration will need at least one more war after that to provide political cover from our shithole economy to survive the 2004 election. You betta watch yo' ass, (country to be named later)!!! Dubya and the neocons are coming for ya!

In a related story, Dr Strangelove will be shown on June 3rd, in Chem1179 here at ucsb...