The interview (and the extended interview) with Tony Blair last night is just stellar stuff.  I am so drawn in to the kind of questioning Jon does,  in stark contrast to the wimpy, insubstantial, trite questions asked by a unwieldy sized proportion of the “mainstream” press).  That is why I truly believe that JOn is a much better journalist than those in the mainstream news.   And not by a little.  By  a lot.  And if that’s the fault mainly of the corporate sponsors of the News or the News directors,  then tough shit,  they have to live with the fact that they give us shitty journalism.  And maybe they live just fine.  I’m sure they do. 

Back to Blair,  where he mentions how the Iraq regime change was followed with elections in which “they voted for it”  (referring to the “rebuilding”)

Me: But isn’t what happened as a result a matter of the “Bremer” Task force selling off the Iraqi industries to foreign investors,  which then sets off the reaction from Iraqi people wondering what happened to the “restabilization”/”rebuilding” effort,  as their jobs vanished?  (See Naomi Klein and “The Shock Doctrine”)

Blair completely sidesteps Jon’s question about conflating Iraq with the more narrowly focused, ideological fundamentalism of Al_quieda…and moves right on to Iran,  and ends up posing the question : “Aren’t we to worry about Iran with a nuclear weapon?”

Jon says :  “OH, I worry about it,  I worry about Pakistan with a nuclear weapon,  I worry about US with a nuclear weapon……Let’s order lunch,  push a button, Oh wait,  that’s launch”   Amen , Jon.

IS the Pakistani government ACTUALLY doing what it can to suppress terrorism?  Didn’t Bin Laden somehow slip away from Afghanistan and INTO Pakistan?  Didn’t the U.S. issue an ultimatum to Afghanistan : “Give us Bin Laden or suffer the consequences”?   Where is the similar ultimatum for Pakistan now?  And where is the call to account for the “accounting” investigation of the money pipeline coming out  of Saudi Arabia to the 9/11 bombers (the country from which 9 of the 12 came)? 

Jon asks:  “Are we not pushing them away (the Muslim world)  by coming at this in too raw a manner”   and Blair says “this is in fact,  so fundamental,  that it has to be taken on”….so ,  Blair is saying that it indeed can and must be fought as an all out military , army strike force strategy. 

NO.  It is not.  We seem to be stubbornly obstinate.  We seem to be Bush/Cheney.  This is what worries me, too , Jon.  And all this shit with the Mosques.  That is not helping.  SHUT UP Islamophobes (and all those who insist that “we’re not Islamaphobes.  We’re just anti-Islamic terror”.  And that’s just it!!!!!!   The terrorist are NOT ISLAM.   NOT ISLAM.  NOT Islamic.  They are terrorists!!! calling it “Islamic terror” is the first sign of Islamophobia!!!!!!!