*** ORBUSMAX GUEST OP/ED ***

Six Degrees of Separation - By Jon Eekhoff

June 21, 2004

Monday Vice-President Dick Cheney said, "He (Saddam Hussein) had long standing ties with Al Qaeda." Wednesday the American people heard from the bipartisan 9-11 commission that there were no ties between Hussein and Al Qaeda.

There must be some reason for this confusion. We couldn't have leaders who recklessly lie, could we?

Maybe there is some guy named Al Qaeda who knew Saddam Hussein. Al could have been a neighbor, or possibly a deli owner where Hussein would get his gyros. Maybe Al owned the local barbershop. All of these possibilities would provide the "long standing ties" needed for Cheney's statement to be true, but I have a feeling Cheney is talking about the terrorist group Al Qaeda that crashed planes into the World Trade Centers and Pentagon. Cheney has made this unproven, illogical assertion before. Most often he makes these statements in front of pro-republican groups who will not question his allegation. These statements are often then replayed for the 6 o'clock news crowd and soon people start to believe what Cheney is saying.

Our recently deceased and soon to be sainted, ex-president Ronald Reagan used to have a saying I think is appropriate for Cheney at this time, "There you go again." Cheney is the subliminal message deliverer in the White House. His Jedi mind control trick does work on the weak-minded, but for those citizens with functioning gray matter he makes no sense. His continued efforts to sway the American public has worked, many people believe that Iraq and Al Qaeda worked closely together even though they DID NOT.

There is a nation with WMD that did have "long standing ties" with Iraq and Al Qaeda. This rogue nation once sent a handwritten note from its leader to Saddam Hussein that was hand-delivered by a special envoy on December 20, 1983. That special envoy was named Donald Rumsfeld and the author of the note was President Ronald Reagan. There are even pictures of this meeting; it isn't one of Cheney's pretend meetings between Al Qaeda leadership and Hussein at the local Blockbuster video store.

The Al Qaeda ties with the United States are a bit more like playing Six Degrees of Separation, which it seems, is how Cheney continues to link Iraq and Al Qaeda. Let's start with 9-11 highjacker Mohamed Atta. Atta met a number of times with Al Qaeda leadership, Atta lived in Florida, Jeb Bush is the Governor of Florida, and Jeb Bush is George Bush's Brother, so therefore George Bush and Mohamed Atta have "long standing ties".

It is this form of ridiculous logic that Cheney is using to make connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq and it doesn't help that most of the American public believes what he is saying. For the average American the Middle East is a mess that is too complicated to try to figure out. There is Israel and then there is everyone else. Everyone else can be lumped into one big group we call "the Arab nations", it doesn't matter that these nations are diverse and vastly different, they are Arabs. So in the mind of most Americans it is easy to see how Iraq and Al Qaeda are confused.

We used to make this same confusion with Asian countries. China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand…everyone there is the same. The difference in cuisine alone should give a good indication of how vastly different these cultures are.

Within the Arab community it is no different. Don't confuse an Iraqi with an Iranian; they spent more than twenty years trying to blow each other up. Syrians are not Jordanians and Saudis are not Palestinians. Inside each of these nations are also different sub-groups who should not be confused. All Arabs are not Muslim. All Muslims are not the same. You wouldn't want to confuse a Presbyterian with a Southern Baptist even though both groups are Christians?

Everyone in the Arab world is not a member of Al Qaeda.

It is time for Jedi Master Obi One Cheney to lend some substance to his claims. Where is the documentation? Where did the meetings take place? Where are the pictures? No credible evidence means that there is no real evidence. There will always be some wacko out there making claims on their website www.Iraq=AlQeada.org, but these claims are as believable as Michael Jackson's that he hasn't had plastic surgery. Being a wacko with a website and being Vice-President should have two different job descriptions and sets of expectations. Being a wacko conspiracy theorist is best left to the experts in the CIA who provided all the evidence of WMD before the war. It is time for Obi One Cheney to admit, "We made a mistake," but like all Jedi Masters the pull of the dark side is strong and once you leave the path of the truth it is hard to find your way back.

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Jon Eekhoff is a teacher in Western Washington, and one of the 5 greatest basketball players to hail from Lemoore, California.