Ted Rall: Assassination by Joystick

January 18th, 2006 9:05 PM

Ted Rall, the cartoonist that hates President Bush and the military, decries the January 13 “massacre” in Pakistan while claiming that the United States is committing “murder by mistake”.  In his Jan 17 op-ed, “Death From Above: US Drone Planes Have a Nearly Perfect Record of Failure”, Rall states that the Hellfire Missiles “slammed into three local jewelers’ houses” and killed “at least 22 innocent civilians, including five women and five children.” He neglects to mention that the #2 Al Qaeda terrorist was supposed to be dining with the “jewelers”.  He also neglects to mention that stories are now coming out that 3, possibly more, Al Qaeda terrorists are believed to have been killed in the air strike, including the bomb making mastermind, Abu Khabab al-Masri.

Rall goes on to cite the number of “desperately poor civilians” that have been killed by United States “precision air strikes”. He chastises the US for not apologizing for the deaths while calling the air strikes “assassination by joystick”.  Not content to just rain down judgment on the Bush administration, Rall cited the air strike in Libya that killed Khadafi’s “baby daughter and 37 others” and President Clinton’s bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that killed “dozens”.

According to Rall, the Jan 13 air strike has led to “devastating political fallout”. He states that “tens of thousands of people chanted ‘death to America’ at protest marches across Pakistan.”  Rall explains that some of the anti-American sentiment was fueled by “the West’s failure to provide earthquake aid in Kashmir”, completely ignoring the massive amounts of financial and physical assistance the US provided to the devastated region. Rall states the political protests weakened the “regime of US puppet dictator General Pervez Musharraf”.

As if that was not enough America bashing, Rall goes on to state that “incompetence and poor intelligence are not exclusive to us”.  He then downplays the September 11, 2001 tragedies:

“Though brutal, the 9/11 attacks fell far short of their planners immediate goals.  Tens of thousands would have died at the World Trade Center had the hijackers known that New Yorkers start work at nine.  And even if one of the two Washington-bound planes had struck the White House, Bush was in Florida at the time.”

Ted Rall has called our soldiers “poorly paid contract killers”.  He has portrayed our military as rapists, torturers and pedophiles. Rall depicts the President of the United States as a monkey-faced dictator in his little drawings.  He exposes his hatred of America in every one of his cartoons and op-eds. I am not questioning his patriotism – I am pointing out his complete lack of it.