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US Republicans launch terror ad

:roll: See also the Boston Globe and Kurt Nimmo

BBC | Last Updated: Saturday, 21 October 2006

Osama Bin Laden (file image)

The US Republican Party has launched a controversial terror-linked TV advertisement to bolster support ahead of mid-term elections next month. The footage shows al-Qaeda leaders with captions of threatening statements, while the soundtrack of a ticking bomb plays in the background.

The advertisement, which ends with the sound of a bomb exploding, is due to air from Sunday.

Democrats have hit out at the commercial, calling it scaremongering.

US voters go to the polls on 7 November to elect members of Congress.

Republicans have made a tough stance on terrorism a major part of their campaign strategy.

‘Desperate ploy’

Both Osama Bin Laden and his second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are shown in the commercial, which is entitled “The Stakes”.

Attributed quotes such as “Kill the Americans” and “What is yet to come will be even greater” are flashed across the screen.

Gun-bearing militants in training camps are also shown, followed by the stark message: “These are the stakes. Vote November 7th.”

A statement on the Democratic National Committee website called the advertisement “a desperate ploy to once again try to scare voters and distract from their failures”.

“Republicans are so afraid of their abysmal record they can’t offer one example of what they’ve done to keep America safe,” the response said.

But the Republican National Committee said the advertisement “underscores the high stakes America faces in the global War on Terror”.

The BBC’s Justin Webb in Washington says the advertisement comes as the Republican Party face up to the real possibility that it could lose control of one or both houses in the polls.

This is an outcome that would in effect torpedo the Bush presidency, our correspondent adds.

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This entry was posted on 22 October, 2006 by in Elections, Empire, War and Terror, International Relations, Iraq, Race, US Foreign Policy, USA.

Timely Reminders

"Those who crusade, not for God in themselves, but against the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better, but leave it either as it was, or sometimes perceptibly worse than what it was, before the crusade began. By thinking primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions, to create occasions for evil to manifest itself."
-- Aldous Huxley

"The only war that matters is the war against the imagination. All others are subsumed by it."
-- Diane DiPrima, "Rant", from Pieces of a Song.

"It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there"
-- William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"


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