WARMING-OVER THE COLD WAR

Bush's trip to the former Soviet Block as well as his caustic comments toward Russia would at first seem puzzling -after all haven't we become allies with Russia, with Bush playfully referring to the Russian President as "pooty-poot"? Haven't many of the former Soviet satellites become democratic nations? Haven't we both joined forces to combat the "greater threat" of the Big T?

Perhaps, but let's review:

The worst thing to ever happen to the (to borrow an old phrase) Military Industrial Complex was the end of the cold war. They'd staked their financial futures on being able to keep stockpiling weapons to subdue the 'threat' of the 'evil empire', and when the Iron Curtain came down and revealed not a giant grizzly but an old and shaky Russian circus bear - they went into freefall.

They tried to use the (to them) great stroke of luck that 9/11 provided to change the evil 'ism' from commun-ism to terror-ism, but that has failed in majority public opinion because of the administration's bumbling tactics and neck breaking switch of focus from Afghanistan to Iraq. It also hasn't provided the same economic opportunities that developing new and bigger weapons did because the warfare style doesn't require them.

With the 20th anniversary of the end of the cold war mere years away, and with the increasing memory-loss of the American electorate in their back pockets -why not try to resurrect hostilities with our old nemesis now? After all the Secretary of State is a former cold war specialist, and the VP a former defense contractor -the time is ripe! We know for a fact they have nuclear weapons -so we wouldn't have to sell the threat so hard this time. We also know they've been in league with Iran, Cuba and other numbers of our enemies. It's ready-made resuscitation for the sagging weapons industry!

Now if we can only somehow tie them to 9/11...