For the record, I think that the deception perpetrated by the Bush administration concerning the G8 Summit on Sea Island is despicable. All of the public information being provided pretends that Sea Island is near Savannah, Georgia when it is actually over 70 miles away near St. Simons Island.
If the thinking was that by misleading the public and the international media, potential terrorists would be misdirected, then the security services in this country are even more misguided than they were in the past.
Terrorists who knew enough to take a plane from Portland, Maine to hijack a plane leaving from Boston, are certainly going to be smart enough to get the lay of the land long before any meeting takes place. Putting missiles on roof-tops won't help much either. Indeed, it has been reported that there were missiles on rooftops in Florida on that day in September 2001 when none of our defensive systems seemed capable of responding to four planes that had gone astray.
Of course, the deception isn't limited to the location of the meeting. The initial proposal for Iraqi sovereignty which was supposed to be approved was a smoke screen, intended to hide the intent to leave American military assets in Iraq indefinitely.
Moreover, though the administration has been forced to agree to having our military removed whenever the Iraqis demand it, the failure to guarantee the interim government any source of funding other than from the sale of "natural resources" vitually assures that the central government will remain dependent on "contributions" or rents for the land on which the American military is becoming entrenched. The longer they stay there, the harder it will be to get them out.
While the Germans and French seem to be on the side of Iraqi sovereignty, they are probably ambivalent. On the one hand, they would like to be able to enter into profitable commercial contracts with a free and independent Iraq. On the other hand, the prospect of having the American military moved out of Western Europe and repositioned in the Persian Gulf region must be very tempting. Since our military presence isn't wanted in Saudi Arabia (bin Laden's goal was to get us out) and Qatar is obviously too small and Southeast Asia has rejected our offer to provide protection against "pirates" with out naval fleet, where are our assets going to go?
The logical answer would be to bring them home, but for some reason military bases on our own soil are suddenly too expensive. Or are they just too polluted and it's too expensive to clean them up?
Posted by Hannah at June 4, 2004 05:55 AM