The Calgary Sun: Am-Bushed

Turns out peaceniks were the real patriots all along

The Calgary Sun: Am-Bushed:

"It should anger all of us, this Fahrenheit 9/11 film. In fact, Michael Moore's award-winning, irritatingly incisive expose of Bush Junior and his strike-first-and-ask-questions-never bully boys, should leave Calgarians particularly peeved, since it is a celluloid confirmation of betrayal by a president much loved in these parts. How hard it will be for some of us to finally confront the truth. Those who have been made fools.
After all, think back.

When Dubya decided to embark on his misadventure in Iraq, sentiment in this country from coast to coast to coast swung solidly against signing up with the coalition for the killing, cautious about a common cause that was righteous in rhetoric but murky in motives. At the time, precious little skepticism surfaced in Calgary, however.

A solid majority of this city's citizens, including the overwhelmingly-adored favourite sons Ralph Klein and Stephen Harper, were gung-ho Geronimo ready to send our forces into the firefight, semper fi, do-or-die. The good ol' U.S. of A. Their country, right or wrong. Let's twist those Iraqi wrists until they say Uncle ... Sam.

If no link, and there isn't, then what was the real purpose of the war? Why were the swimming-in-oil Saudis not pursued, Saudi Arabia being home base to most of the hijackers and the big bucks of the bin Laden clan? Why did 9/11 itself somehow get lost in the shuffle, with no card ever assigned out of the famous deck?

Ask those questions last year around these hawkish environs and you'd bear the bull's-eye, targeted as a traitor, an appeaser, an anti-American, a peacenik, a wimp, a Saddam sympathizer, some sort of snot who would have rolled over for Hitler if you'd been born back before the Big One."

By RICK BELL
CALGARY SUN