GROUND ZERO, New York City, Feb. 13--While U.N. weapons inspectors are searching for illegal missiles in Iraq's haystack of storage supplies, Americans are hunting down duct tape and plastic sheets to protect against threatened Terrorist attacks.
       The game of Fear, Intimidation and Complacency is charging forward at top speed.  But it's not caused by Saddam Hussein.  It's the work of Osama bin Laden.
       In a new development, the U.N. weapons inspection team confirmed Iraq was in violation of Resolution 1441 by harboring Al Samoud 2 missiles with a range of 114 miles.   Any missile with a range of more than 90 miles was supposed to be destroyed under the agreement with the U.N.

      The United States has insisted that Iraq has violated the tenants of Resolution 1441 by forcing the U.N. inspectors to "find needles in the haystack."   America claims Saddam Hussein is playing a "cat and mouse" game, turning the U.N. into a "weapons hunting team" rather than confirming that Iraq has destroyed weapons.
       Critics of America's "rush to war" such as Russia say that Iraq disclosed the missiles but just didn't destroy them.  The Russian spokesman says it is a sign of cooperation by Iraq, not another reason to go to war.
        The world, it seems, is doing its best to keep America from attacking Iraq on the grounds it is a "Terrorist Nation" that harbors threats to the United States.   Osama bin Laden's recent audio tapes are helping prove the difference between a Terrorist and a Tyrant.
        Tyrants rule real estate.  Terrorists rule people minds.
         It isn't Saddam Hussein who is driving Americans to buy thousands of miles of duct tape to seal windows, and millions and yards of plastic to protect their bodies from exposure in case of a biochemical Terrorist attack.  It's the bearded one, the guy without a country that set America into a state of shock.  .  It's the skinny guy with the scraggly beard who lives in the dark shadows of caves, who  slinks about in the shadows, popping up here and there to spew venom and hatred into the air, then submerging again so the radar can't find him, who has hurled the spears of Fear, Intimidation and Complacency into 300 million Americans..
         In today's news a mother went so far as to write a final letter to her children in case she was killed, telling them:  "Mommy is dead, but mommy loves you."
          Others are less concerned and fall into the Complacent sector of Terrorism's formula.   One man said he wasn't worried, and would get a fine bottle of wine and drink it slowly if something happened.  Another, a carpet layer in New York City, said the scare was just the government's way of covering itself, and didn't think the high alert was anything more than Chicken Little screaming "the sky is falling."
         The reactions over the Osama Tapes and the Iraqi invasion force one to divide the two issues and examine them for what they are--Tyranny versus Terrorism.
          In a single wave of the hand, citizens of the United States, especially those in New York City and Washington D.C., are experiencing all the viruses of Terrorism at once--Fear, Intimidation and Complacency.
        As a Terror Hunter, I see the Duct Tape Syndrome as a failing of our understanding about Terrorism's difference with Tyranny.  It makes me wonder why we attribute the word "Terrorist" to Saddam Hussein.
        Saddam Hussein is a Tyrant not a Terrorist.

        His goal is to rule the Middle East, to become lord over the Arab World, King of the oil fields.
        He ultimately has no quarrel with the citizens of America.  He's not interested in sending suicide squads to New York City or Los Angeles and blowing up innocent people in subways or releasing dirty nuclear bombs.  That's the domain of the Terrorists--small bands of outlaws who, like homeless bullies, want to thump their chests in victory over the weak and vulnerable.
        Saddam is simply a power merchant not a Terror merchant.  He wants to squeeze as much power out of his domain as possible.  He has no reason to reach out thousands of miles away to another culture and grab it by the throat.   He has enough trouble keeping his own borders protected from his neighbors who consider him a bull in a china closet, roaring to take over as much land and power around him as possible.  And, he has enough dissidents in his own country to keep him sleeping in a different bed every night for fear he will be assassinated not by the C.I.A., but from one of his own people or a "Brother Arab Nation" who doesn't like the fact Saddam's stated goal is unify the Arab world.
        Saddam wants a throne, not martyrdom.
        He doesn't rule under religious dogma.  He's a secular humanist when it comes to ruling his land.   He uses tyranny to oppress dissent.
        Tyranny is forcing someone to do something against their will.  A tyrant rules in a police state, and usually fills his prisons and graveyards with those who oppose him.  He or she acts with a sledgehammer against all opposition.   When Saddam gassed to death 5,000 Kurdish dissidents in a village, he exercised his power as a tyrant to oppress his people into subservience.   He is guilty of ordering tortures, intimidations, religious suppression, amputations and death penalties to punish opponents and deter opposition.

      When he released tens of thousands of inmates a number of months ago from Iraqi prisons, it was to prove to the world he wasn't a "real tyrant," and to gain sympathy that he was "subject to change."  He wants to be known as a benevolent "tyrant."   His plans for tyranny don't extend beyond his thirst to rule the Middle East--at least, not yet.
        He hasn't formed squads of suicide bombers to attack America or any other nation.   And, he hates Osama bin Laden because Osama wants to rule the Middle East too, but not with Tyranny.  Osama wants to use Terrorism to achieve his goal, and seeks to rule Islam from a religious vista, cutting off all contact with the West.  Saddam wants the West's money, its cigars, its fine wines, its vehicles, its technology. 
       Osama wants only the blood of the West.
       Saddam is simply a real estate broker--a land tyrant, willing to kill 5,000 Kurds (his own citizens) to show all who oppose him the lengths he'll go to retain control of Iraq.  This isn't Terrorism.  This is tyranny.
       On the other hand, Osama bin Laden owns no land.
       He owns air.
       His feet are his nation, for wherever he moves, his state moves with him.
       His state is all in his head.  It is a world of religious fanaticism where Islamic fundamentalism has all power and retreats from the "civilized world" into ancient principles of purity.
       Osama is a self-appointed martyr.  
       Unlike Hussein who kills to seek control, Osama kills for the pleasure of creating Fear, Intimidation and Complacency.   He kills to awaken the Beast of Terror in his victims, and their children, and their Children's Children's Children.

        Osama kills and maims to exercise power over the weak.  He attacks his victim's  primal fear--survival. He kills to rule the mind, to drive his victims into states of emotional frenzy, huddling in fear over the presence of his shadow.  He revels in the fact his audio tapes has set off so much Fear in America that duct tape sales soar, and people write death statements to their children.
       Tyrants kill and maim to rule terra firma.  They believe in possessing the land, amassing large numbers of people and real estate that they can fortress against attack from the outside world.
       Terrorists kill and maim to rule the psyche, to prove to those who think they are strong that they are weak, vulnerable, unable to protect themselves or their children from the Beast of Terror..
       A Terrorist seeks to capture a person's "soul" by spinning a web of Fear, Intimidation and Complacency around it so that it immobilizes the victim and drives him or her to write a final letter to his or her child, or to the Tru-Value hardware store to buy the last roll of duct tape and hopefully a plastic sheet, or to slump reluctantly into an oversized armchair with a bottle of wine and drink oneself into Complacent death.
      The territory a Terrorist seeks to control is the five-billion brain cells in the mind of each American citizen.
      Saddam Hussein could care less what American's think.
      His target is the Middle East.  It has always been his target. 
      Osama, and Terrorists like him, are far more vicious.   They are like child molesters who rob the innocence of the mind and install in it the ugliness of Fear, Intimidation and a sense of powerlessness over their lives that leads to Complacency.

     If Americans wonder why the polls have drooped in support of President Bush's rush to attack Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein is a Terrorist, it is because Saddam is not a Terrorist.   He's a Tyrant.
     Intuitively, people know that Iraq does not present a "clear and present danger" to the children of America.  At least, not yet.   The inability of the Administration to find direct links between al-Qaeda and Iraq are the result of Saddam's revulsion for Osama bin Laden and the conflict between a Tyrant and a Terrorist.
     Saddam, a businessman, sees no gain in Terrorism.   There is no real estate to garner after a victorious suicide bombing, and no prizes to conquer after an anthrax scare.  All Terror attacks do is sate some perverted sense of power over being able to make people afraid.   There is no net profit in Terrorism.
      Tyranny, on the other hand, offers profit.  If Saddam is successful in capturing the real estate of another by driving his tanks into their land and occupying the territory, he gains control.   He wins real estate and all the rights that go with it.
      Americans understand this.
      Saddam is so far distant from Osama bin Laden that few can logically put them in the same class.   If they were in the same room together, each would try to kill the other because they represent total opposing points of view--one secular, the other apocalyptic.
     There is little doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein went into a rage when the Osama Tapes were released.  The last thing he wants is a link between his Tyrannical leadership and Osama's Terroristic leadership.   No two could be farther apart ideologically or strategically.
      Yet the Administration is trying to make the Osama Tapes a bridge between the brotherhood of Osama and Saddam.   That's a giant mistake, as has been the attack on Iraq as a Terrorist nation.
      Duping the American public into thinking that Saddam Hussein is a Terrorist fractures the credibility of the U.S. stand against Saddam Hussein.   If we're going to attack Iraq, it should be because Iraq is a despotic nation that violates the rights of it citizens, and, that it has the potential of selling weapons of mass destruction to Terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, or anyone who is willing to pay for them.
      Let there be no doubt Saddam Hussein, as would Kim Jong Il, turn his weapons into profit.   But, the priority for both leaders is not to "export Terrorism."    Terrorism disrupts the world's economy, and both are businessmen.  Both realize that unless there is a place to sell and trade their nation's wares, they lose.   Economic power goes hand-in-hand with Tyranny, and the Western World is the great source of cash flow for Tyrants.
       Terrorists don't care about the world economy.  The more disrupted it is, the better they feel.   Since Terrorism seeks to reverse civilization and throw it back into the Stone Age where fundamentalism becomes the rule and freedom the exception, blowing up all the financial centers in the world plays directly to the goal of crippling society's advancement.
       Tyrants oppose such a strategy because they like to drive nice cars, fly in expensive planes, drink fine wines and champagne, eat delicacies from around the word, and fill Swiss banks with cash they skim off the top of their spoils.

       That's why economic sanctions are used as weapons against them.   Depriving tyrants to access the world's fruits starves them into submission.   Their greed for "nice things" often quenches their lust to oppress, or, at leas diminishes it.
        Terrorists can't be bought off.  They can't be sanctioned.  They can't be embargoed.  They can only be killed, for they are cancerous, eating up the good and leaving only waste.  They have no profit goals.  
        Killing Americans is not within the privy of Tyrants such as Saddam Hussein.  He needs duct tape in his own country.  To kill the people who make it and ship it to him is counterproductive.
        But to a Terrorist, nothing is more gleeful than for them to figure out how many rolls of duct tape have been sold and how many people fearfully are taping their windows with it.  
        Terrorists cheer when people run like scared rabbits.  They jump for joy when the stock market dips.   They do cartwheels when they see their cause linked with Iraq because it legitimizes their goal of making the West think Terrorism is everywhere when it is nowhere but in our minds.
        I think it is time we divided the Terrorism table into proper settings.  I think we need to call a spade a spade and refer to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il as Tyrants not Terrorists.
       We need to reshape our thinking about where we as individuals stand on the two issues--how we think and act against a Tyrant and how we think and act against a Terrorist.
       Lumping Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il into the same frying pan as Osama bin Laden is a mistake.  It gives Terrorism far too much power and blinds us of our real duty to fight it.
       Terrorism must be fought in our thoughts, not on the battlefields of Iraq or North Korea.
       Those are battlefields against Tyranny and Oppression of people, not battlefields against Terrorism.
       North Koreans and Iraqis did not attack America.   Terrorists did, non-national shadows from caves flew those planes.  There were men without countries, anonymous merchants of horror who died as martyrs for their cause which was simply an act of Bullyism against America, not an act of Tyranny.
       To fight Terrorism we must arm ourselves not with rifles and bullets and jet fighters and thousands of young men and women on battlefields in Iraq or North Korea, but with Courage, Conviction and Right Actions for the Children's Children's Children sake.

       We must recognize that Terrorism's goal is to engage our Beast of Terror in our minds, to unleash it so that our Fear cripples us to rush to the store and buy duct tape to secure our window, and Intimidation forces us to buy pieces of plastic to shroud ourselves in a thin wall of protection from biochemicals, and Complacency makes us feel powerless over fighting our Fear and Intimidation and makes us sit in a chair drinking wine waiting for the sky to fall when we could be rallying support for people to sign the Pledge of Vigilance and stand up for the Children's Children's Children rights.
        Osama bin Laden has proven once more our inept Internal Security to fight Terrorism.
        Just a few threats from him drives us into a frenzy.
        It validates our lack of Courage, Conviction and ability to take the Right Actions for the Children's Children's Children, for if we were true Parents of Vigilance, we would not write our children death notes.
       Instead, we would write a letter such as the following:

New Sophia's Wisdom Story:
"Emotional Band-Aids" 
Click Heart--Go There Now!

Feb 12.--The Osama bin Laden Tape--The Missing Terrorist Link

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