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This is what I sent them. I'm sorry, but I gotta use the P word to identify the village idiot when writing letters to this newspaper.
President Bush has often used the phrase "the terrorists will have surely won."
The Bush administration is considering postponing, or cancelling, the November elections in the event of a terrorist attack. Recently, DeForest B. Soaries Jr., the head of the new US Election Assistance Commission, wrote a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge asking him to ask Congress for the power to do this. I have also seen indications that they are considering cancelling the election in the event of a "credible threat" of an attack.
Never before in the long history of the American Experiment has a national election been cancelled. Not even during the Civil War, when we were a nation divided, was the election cancelled. Wrote Abraham Lincoln, "if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us."
I can think of two reasons Bush's people may be discussing this. One is that they've used terror alerts to drown out news unfavorable to them on many occasions; the Kerry-Edwards ticket is extremely unfavorable to them. The other is that Bush feels he has no chance to win reelection, and that his only hope of retaining power is to suspend America's participatory democracy.
A man who would even consider handing the terrorists such a stunning victory needs to be run out of town on a rail, and if he grants us the great privilege of casting our vote in November we can do just that.
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