Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06SAOPAULO981
2006-09-11 16:20:00
UNCLASSIFIED
Consulate Sao Paulo
Cable title:  

MEDIA REACTION: GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR: FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF

Tags:  KMDR OPRC OIIP ETRD BR 
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TAGS: KMDR OPRC OIIP ETRD BR

SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION: GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR: FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF
9/11; SAO PAULO


The Worst Five Years of America
Lead editorial in center-right O Estado de S. Paulo (9/10) states:
"Not even in his most glorified fantasies (...) could Osama Bin
Laden have imagined the series of disasters in politics, diplomacy
and the military arena and to the image of the United States
overall, that would be perpetrated by the most near-sighted,
authoritarian and unprepared head of government to come to
Washington in memory, with much worse consequences for international
relations and the safety of the nations than those left by the
failure of the U.S. in Vietnam.... President George Bush,
Vice-President Dick Cheney, political operator Karl Rove, Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and [then] National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice, backed by an assortment of ideologues, high-level
officials, congressmen, republican leaders and opinion makers,
pulverized the enormous solidarity movement that embraced the U.S.
after the barbaric attacks...[The] president...took advantage of the
outrage to attack a former ally, dictator Saddam Hussein. Whatever
his many crimes, he never had anything to do with Islamic extremists
in general or with the 9/11 perpetrators in particular and neither
did he have nor was he about to have the weapons of mass destruction
invoked to justify the "war of choice...." The worst is that the
shot backfired enormously. At the cost of dozens of thousands Iraqi
lives and over 2,600 Americans, the country once oppressed by Saddam
became an arena for a stupid war of everyone against everyone....
But nothing seems to shake the White House's cynicism, where history
keeps being rewritten...the unbreakable Bush, with the strength of
the righteous, leads-on the Iraq front and wherever else Good faces
Evil-the great 'ideological war of the 21st Century.' It is
surreal.


Another 9/11
Liberal Folha de S.Paulo (9/11) editorializes: "In light of the
catastrophe that the U.S. unilateral military intervention in Iraq
has turned into, and the need to tirelessly fight this dangerous
form of irrational politics that Islamic terror engenders, we must
seek inspiration in the teachings of recent history. Instead of
recreating regimes-without any previous offense to justify military
reaction-it is desirable that the only superpower that is left
exercise restraint and pragmatism when dealing with other nations,
and go back to valuing the UN. If it insists on its current policy,
Washington will isolate itself even further, instead of isolating
terror.
McMullen