Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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Outrage!

Rich Galen

Monday May 23, 2005

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The National Restaurant Association
Chicago, Illinois

Let's see if we can get a consensus here. All those who agree with me, raise hands:

I am getting just the teensiest, tiniest, merest, hint of the scent of a whiff of being really, completely, and thoroughly SICK AND TIRED of the Western press pouncing on the Outrage! in the Arab world about something the United States has done; hasn't done, is accused of doing, or is accused of not doing.

The latest - protesting photos of Saddam Hussein in his tighty whities on the front page of two Rupert Murdock newspapers - is just about enough, shukrun very much.

Saddam Hussein is a butcher. He is in the same - thankfully very small - club with Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot.

Saddam in his underwear is no different than Saddam in a bathing suit. Given how fit he looks, he doesn't seem to be suffering very much from his incarceration.

If anything, the "Arab street" should be incensed because Saddam's treatment has not been harsh enough. How tender should the prison stay of a man be who ordered the deaths of some 300,000 of his countrymen? Maybe we should throw him back into his spider hole.

Saddam Hussein in his drawers? Who cares?

This has little to do with Saddam but much to do with the world-wide effort to discredit anything and everything American, not a little of which comes from within the United States.

We don't need to recount the good things we have done over the past 90-or-so years to protect our pals in Europe and Asia from domination by Germany and later Japan and later, still, the Soviet Union.

We've torn up the IOUs because (a) we didn't do those things to keep score in the first place, and (b) we know we'd never be re-paid even if we did.

Saddam in his U-trou? Give me a break.

What about the continued hostage-taking of unarmed reporters and aid workers? Some of them have been ransomed. Some of them have been killed. None of them has been the object of Outrage!

You want to be Outraged! about something? How about the billions - BILLIONS - of dollars that Saddam and his band of thugs stole from the people of Iraq. The Oil-for-Palaces program was the most successful swindle since Carlo Ponzi invented the genre.

The people of Iraq went without food, clean water, housing and power so Saddam and his boys could build dozens of monuments to � Saddam. His partner in that deal was none other than Kofi Annan of the Ewe-Nighted Nations.

Hello? Can I interest you in even a modest amount of fury, rage or wrath? No? I'll settle for just a smidgen of polite indignation.

Saddam in his smalls? Pul-eeze.

What about the footage of people having their heads chopped off - beginning with Daniel Pearl a reporter for the Wall Street Journal who had done nothing at all to deserve being held captive, much less butchered. Where was even the most diffident suggestion that it was unpleasant let alone barbaric? Outrage! Yeah, right.

The list goes on and on. Fallujah. Remember the four contractors who, escorting a food convoy, were ambushed, burned, dismembered and then hung from a bridge? No Outrage! then, either.

Saddam in his BVDs. Yuck. You couldn't turn on a television over the weekend without seeing the photo with a studio host staring into the camera sadly reporting the damage it was doing to American credibility overseas. Every 17 seconds.

So, let's just call this what it is: A sham. A fake. A lie. A victory for the "America is Always Wrong" crowd.

My best laugh line at the North Carolina Republican Convention in Asheville on Saturday was: You want photos of a former head of state in his underwear? Two words: Bill Clinton.

At least we'd finally know the answer to the biggest question of the Clinton era: Boxers or briefs?

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A brief discussion of a Ponzi scheme, a very amusing Mullfoto and a Catchy Caption of the Day which will make you Outraged!

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