July 4th Ramblings

First of all, Happy Independence Day America! Rock on!

Now to more serious matters. People are quite angry (at least most of them are) that Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence by waiving his jail term. I wasn't surprised at all by Bush's decision. Hell, i was expecting a full pardon and actually Bush suggested that yesterday. Bush after all is expected to look out for his loyal subordinate after he took all the hits and remained silent throughout the whole investigation. What else could you expect from a president who puts loyalty above all things while choosing people to work for him or for the government?

What people should be really angry about is the way Patrick Fitzgerald carried out the investigation - the whole "Who leaked CIA source?" thing. After all, Libby was just found guilty of obstructing justice by not revealing information about who was behind this whole leak. So to put it simply, he let the higher officials in the Bush administration (read Cheney & Co.) go scot-free without any charges being leveled against them. Hope the Dems will find courage to look into the details of this (wishful thinking!?)

Moving on.......the investigation into the failed U.K terror plots is throwing up interesting and scary results. All or most of the suspects who were either arrested or detained in this regard turned out to be highly educated Muslim medics!? And they are also are from diverse backgrounds.....from countries like Iraq ( :wink: - so much for war on terror in Iraq ha), Jordan and India (whaaaaat!?). These people are most probably thought to have met after coming to U.K. and might have plotted these attacks 'cause of shared ideology and seeing what is going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine. Obviously, most of the Islamic world sees things differently when it comes to war on terror in places like Iraq and Lebanon these days. And with things spiraling downhill in places like Afghanistan and Palestine, it is a lot of difficulty for the West to win hearts and minds of the people in the Islamic world. And worst of all, more plots or attacks like these would lead to extensive racial profiling of all immigrants in the West......and the prospect of that is really scary to all the peaceful immigrant majority living in the West.....including myself.

We need to realize that our current strategy of fighting radical Islam is going no where in making us safe. We need to seriously think about starting a dialogue with the moderate majority of the Islamic world which is largely peaceful and open to dialogue with the West. Using military force would only worsen and deepen lot of misunderstandings that exist between the west and the middle-east. But at present i don't see any such steps being taken or considered from both sides.

P.S.: Between, thank you once again Keith Olbermann for speaking for the majority of us here in the U.S.