E-Mail This Article to a Friend Stop the madness Just say no to the Red Sox. Plus, more lies from the Bushies, and Sheik Ahmed Yassin’s Osama-like qualities.

THE RED SOX, understandably, want to maximize their revenues. Doing so by opening up historic Fenway Park for an occasional concert is a fine idea — but not if team owners want to close off public streets to make it happen. The continued encroachment on public land for private purposes by the Sox is offensive. The latest move — a proposed "Parrothead Village" on Yawkey Way open only to ticket holders for two Jimmy Buffet concerts in September — goes too far. If the Sox want to make money, let them do it within their own footprint.

It’s bad enough that the Sox are allowed to close Yawkey Way for every home game. The street — a public walkway — is open only to game-day-ticket holders in order to sell alcohol, souvenirs, and food. The scheme has already hurt neighborhood businesses — bars, restaurants, pool halls — located off Yawkey Way.

It shouldn’t be made worse with two Jimmy Buffet concerts that would involve closing off Yawkey Way to the people who live here. Unless the Sox can come up with a way to hold the concerts sans tailgating — an integral part of the Parrothead experience — and a privatized Yawkey Way, then the concerts should not be approved. It’s not fair to the people who live in the neighborhood.

The bottom line is that the Red Sox — and Mayor Tom Menino, who seems to accede to nearly every request the team makes — must start showing the people who live here and the businesses rooted in the community some respect. The Fenway neighborhood is not the personal province of the Red Sox or Menino and should not be treated as if it were.

LIES, LIES, and more lies. That’s what we can expect from the Bush administration. This week, the White House launched a smear campaign replete with falsehoods and inaccuracies against Richard Clarke, author of Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, and a counterterrorism expert who has worked for the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and, until 13 months ago, Bush II administrations.

In his book, Clarke, who was a top aide to Bush’s National Security Council, portrays George W. Bush and his foreign-policy advisers as inattentive to the threat posed by Al Qaeda, despite having received ample warning about Osama bin Laden and his terrorist organization from outgoing Clinton-administration officials. He also charges that Bush’s signature response to the terror threat post-9/11 — invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein — has only made the US more vulnerable to attack even as it’s strengthened Al Qaeda.

One of Clarke’s most damning charges against Bush is that on the day following the attacks, the president pulled Clarke aside after a meeting and directed him to investigate any possible connection between the terrorist attacks and Iraq. When Clarke told the president that such connections had been investigated in the past and none could be found, Bush reiterated his demand. The White House says that no record exists of any such conversation. The president says he cannot recall if it ever took place. Yet CBS News was able to find a witness to the conversation in time for last Sunday’s 60 Minutes interview with Clarke.

During an interview this past Monday on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, Vice-President Dick Cheney tried to cast Clarke as a disgruntled former employee angry because he hadn’t been given a top job in the Homeland Security Department. Cheney further charged that Clarke "wasn’t in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff," referring to high-level meetings on how to deal with the terrorist threat. Yet, a White House press release issued on Sunday said that the Counterterrorism Security Group chaired by Clarke "met regularly, often daily, during the high threat period." If Clarke, the guy the National Security Council had put in charge of its group dealing with terror threats, wasn’t in the loop, well, who was? As Joshua Micah Marshall has noted, "Saying Clarke was out of the loop is less a defense of the administration than an indictment of it."

Other administration officials, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, have claimed that Clarke had ample opportunity to warn the administration prior to the 9/11 attacks that not enough was being done to deal with the terror threat posed by Al Qaeda, but that he never did. So it’s odd that the same White House press release mentioned above acknowledges that Clarke sent an urgent memo to the NSC in January of 2001 asking for a Cabinet-level meeting to be called to discuss Al Qaeda.

With his domestic-policy record a mess — an economic recovery that seems to be less of one with each passing day, a record budget deficit, a bizarre push for an anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment — the only thing on which Bush can base his re-election campaign is his supposedly commanding performance fighting the war on terrorism. But the more we learn about what’s really gone on in the White House and Pentagon since Bush took office, the more we see that he has bungled our response to the terror threat beyond what any of his worst detractors ever thought possible.

NEWS THIS week that Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of the terrorist group Hamas, had been killed by the Israeli army was shocking. Yassin is to Hamas what Osama bin Laden is to Al Qaeda. Yassin, like bin Laden, orchestrated terrorist attacks. He directed, ordered, and approved of suicide-bombing attacks. He ran Hamas’s schools. Yassin also shared bin Laden’s philosophy toward terrorism: kill the enemy, become a martyr, and multiple virgins will await you in the afterlife.

There has been much handwringing over Israel’s controversial policy of targeting high-level terrorist leaders like Yassin for assassination. Yet Israel has been under attack by terrorists for 40 months now — or, to be more accurate, for 56 years. If that’s not war, what is? And if the country can’t defend itself by attacking those in charge of the terrorist attacks, then what can it do?

Immediately after Yassin’s killing, Hamas threatened to bring death to every Israeli door. It threatened to bring suicide bombers to the United States. If anyone needed proof that Israel’s enemies are our enemies, look no further. A rare moment of clarity had emerged from the Middle East. Two days later, Hamas’s newly named leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, recanted the threats against the US and announced that retaliation would be aimed at Ariel Sharon. Should we feel any more secure?

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