There's a Central American version, too:
Nicaragua's Ortega says crisis is God punishing U.S.
"It's incredible that in the most powerful country in the world, which spends billions of dollars on brutal wars ... people do not have enough money to stay in their homes," former Marxist guerrilla Ortega said in a speech late on Thursday.
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As the stock market tumbled to new lows this week, a commenter on one of the blogs--wish I could remember where/who--observed that destroying the American economy was Al Qaeda’s purpose behind both World Trade Center attacks. So as the American economy slides further into the danger zone, and the ripples reach far around the globe, I have to wonder if this isn’t Al Qaeda’s “Mission Accomplished” moment.
Remember this tidbit from the 2004 presdiential election?
Bin Laden, whose al Qaeda network carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, proved he's kept a close eye on U.S. politics as he detailed al Qaeda's strategy of bleeding America bankrupt, even as Americans weighed their presidential votes largely on the issues of terror and the economy.
He provided a financial analysis of al Qaeda's destruction in his latest 18-minute video, a full transcript of which was posted Monday on the Internet.
According to bin Laden's math, each $1 al Qaeda has spent on strikes has cost the United States $1 million in economic fallout and military spending, including emergency funding for Iraq and Afghanistan.
"As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers," bin Laden said, estimating the deficit at more than $1 trillion.
In reality, spending in the war against terror and other factors have resulted in an expected $377 billion shortfall for 2003 — the highest deficit since World War II when inflation is factored out. The total U.S. national debt is near the $7.4 trillion statutory limit.
That was November 2004, of course. As I posted in yesterday’s “Memory Hole,” the National Debt Clock had to be reconfigured to accommodate the latest $10 trillion figure.
My fellow prisoners, this is something to think about, long and hard.
