[A-List] Fw: THE LATEST THREAT TO HOMELAND SECURITY

["Christopher Black" <bar@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "davidpet" <davidpet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "david peterson" <davidpet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 4:38 PM
Subject: RE: THE LATEST THREAT TO HOMELAND SECURITY


>     ( * You've always got to watch out for "baby buggies and suburbanites
in
> khaki shorts mixed into the crowd," and the like.  The threat they pose to
> the security of the Homeland is of a kind not seen since the Yippies and
the
> pinko commie rats of the 1930s.)
>
>
> Los Angeles Times
> January 12, 2003 Sunday  Home Edition
> SECTION: California Metro; Part 2; Page 1; Metro Desk
> HEADLINE: Steve Lopez POINTS WEST;
> Middle-Class Dissent on Display at War Protest
> BYLINE: Steve Lopez
>
> Antiwar rallies tend to draw the usual suspects, and Saturday's in
downtown
> Los Angeles was no exception. You had your socialists, anarchists and
> various professional protesters among a rag-tag, bang-the-drums throng of
> several thousand.
>
> But there were baby buggies and suburbanites in khaki shorts mixed into
the
> crowd, some of them looking as if they'd taken a wrong turn on their way
to
> the mall.
>
> "They're the very people who are being hurt the most by national
policies,"
> said Craig Frey, 48, a software engineer from San Diego. Frey held a sign
> that neatly expressed his middle-class dissent:
>
> "Saddam Didn't Steal My 401(k)." "They say Iraq is such a threat to the
> U.S.," he said. "But there are people in the Cabinet who've done more harm
> to us by protecting corporate criminals."
>
> Another sign in the crowd borrowed from the same theme: "Iraq Never Closed
> My Health Clinic."
>
> Only a few hundred people had gathered at Olympic and Broadway by 10:30
> a.m., and I feared the rally would be a bust. But within an hour,
thousands
> had fallen into line, with more on the way. My guess is that they bolted
> from their cereal and raced downtown after reading the morning newspaper.
> Current events these days can really get the blood boiling.
>
> We're on the verge of war against a country that hasn't threatened us and
> has no nukes anyone can locate. And do you remember those mysterious
> aluminum tubes that got the White House worked into a lather about an
Iraqi
> nuke program? Looks like it was all a mistake.
>
> Meanwhile, North Korea's leader gets a little more like Yosemite Sam every
> day. He's kicking President Bush around as if George were the schoolyard
> wimp, and Bush has shrunk into a corner with his legs crossed.
>
> Kim Jong Il is rolling out his missiles and writing Bush's name on them,
> practically taunting the world to come get him.
>
> Our response?
>
> We're sending 62,000 more troops to the Persian Gulf to keep an eye on
> Saddam.
>
> If it sounds batty to you, maybe Craig Frey can explain.
>
> "North Korea doesn't have oil," he said.
>
> Well, it's a little more complicated than that. But I still like the
button
> worn by Frey's wife, Heather Smith, a textiles artist.
>
> "Are you Willing to Die for Exxon?"
>
> Alexis Robinson's answer is no.
>
> Robinson and her husband, Roy, along with their 6-month-old daughter,
Emma,
> and Roy's brother David, took the train from Claremont to save gas. About
10
> others had the same idea, said David, all of them boarding at the
Claremont
> Metrolink station.
>
> "We wanted to make a statement," said Alexis, a young mother who had never
> before attended a political rally.
>
> If the Iraqis had nukes, Alexis said, she might feel differently about the
> march to war. If they had threatened the U.S. or been linked to Al Qaeda,
> that could put her in line behind the president, too.
>
> "But without that, are we going to war just because Bush and Cheney want
to?
> What's happening in North Korea makes it all the more hypocritical,"
Alexis
> said.
>
> "The Democrats in Congress have no backbone," said her husband, Roy, a
> studies-abroad counselor at Claremont McKenna College. "The NRA, the
> Republicans, they stand up and say they're proud of who they are. But
isn't
> there one Democrat who will challenge this?"
>
> Ismael Alsharif, a Web engineer who lived in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, fears
> that a strike on Iraq will be a gift to those who recruit terrorists. He
and
> three friends from West Hollywood -- Pat Amirault, a TV producer; Mark
> Zecca, a film producer; and Pat McFadden, an administrative assistant at
> Disney -- came to the rally with a simple objective.
>
> They hoped a sufficiently large crowd would send the message that
reasonable
> people have legitimate questions about where the United States is headed.
> Questions about the cost of war, the motives, the benefits, the risks.
>
> Look, the awful truth is that Saddam is scary. Kim Jong Il is, too. But
Bush
> is no slouch in that department, and if we sit here waving a flag over
> everything he says, the planet could blow.
>
> It's a complicated world and there are no easy answers, said Canoga Park's
> Merilie Robertson, 74. But she came to the rally with friends from her
> Presbyterian church and asked a perfectly sensible question:
>
> Why not continue a policy in Iraq that has worked reasonably well to date?
>
> Good question. The situation isn't perfect, but why war, and why now?
>
> The one event that set in motion all this brinkmanship and saber-rattling
> seems, at times, to have been forgotten. Frey, the software engineer from
> San Diego, brought it back into focus.
>
> "Why not just go after the terrorists?"
>
> Oh yeah, the terrorists.
>
> I leaned in closer to Frey so I could hear him over the drumbeat, and
here's
> what I read on one of his buttons:
>
> "If you're not totally p-----off, you're not paying attention."
>
> *
>
> Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at
> steve.lopez@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
>