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Compassion or Pity? Words fail me.

Compassion means you are on-side, that you go out to bat for someone. Pity, on the other hand, is what you may feel for an Iraqi, for a Palestinian in a refugee camp, for a brown skinned Tsunami victim. You can feel pity for a sweatshop worker in China and still buy the clothes. You can feel pity for the Iraqi's as a US grunt and still mow someone down at a check point.

Pity is what we offer a Palestinian child shot by an Israeli sniper. Compassion is what we offer an Israeli child blown up by a Palestinian. It is all about point of view, isn't it. It's about being able to manipulate events to set agendas. Bush used the destruction of the Twin Towers like Hitler used the Burning of the Reichstag. Hitler introduced the enabling act and Bush the Patriot act. It's a ploy as old as history.

Moore tells us, 15 out of the 19 bombers were Saudis, Saudi money financed the attack on the Towers and a Saudi planned it, but Bush used 9/11 as justification for the invasion of...Iraq. He might as well have invaded the Czeck Republic.

But, hey, don't think of that, just bow your head in inarticulate grief, right? And if you saw Bush, head bowed in grief, it is because the more personal and painful a tragedy is and the less people articulate the political historical context, the more people like Bush will use the killing of 3,000 peaople in New York to further their agendas.

Words fail, because what you take is selective compassion and that's all the media has to give. For others, all people like you have to offer, in general, is pity.

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