Osama Bin Laden - Bush versus Obama
It didn't take long for the usual suspects on the right to start whining about politicizing a historic moment. But it isn't political exploitation to tell the truth. And none of the voices that now decry the truth-telling cared a whit when Bush blatantly exploited the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with politically timed orange alerts and the lies and fear-mongering that led the nation into a war on a nation that had had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks. Republicans have been dishonestly exploiting fears of foes real and imagined for decades, and the cynical strategy's most recent incarnations have been the questions about President Obama's birth certificate, the lies that he is secretly a Muslim—as if there is anything wrong with being a Muslim in the first place—and of course the Sharia Law freak show, as if anyone anywhere in this nation has ever been threatened with the imposition of any form of religious fundamentalism other than that emanating from the cesspool of right-wing theocrats.Torture violates at least three US laws. making Cheney, Bush and Condi Rice guilty of war crimes. This is not about pitying terrorists it is about the rule of law. It is about Cheney, Bush and Rice engaging in illegal activities that not only endangered our troops but is responsible for the deaths of the US military serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. No wonder these anti-American cretins flocked to the networks since Bin laden's death to try and take credit and drum up the torture cheerleaders again. The conservative movement lied us into one war, blew victory in Afghanistan and failed to get Bin Laden. That smell in the air is the desperation sweat from trying to save their reputation for utter failure.
This historic moment is political. All historic moments are political. History is political, and the only people who now claim otherwise do so purely for political reasons. Even the desperation to deceive the public into believing the lie that the Bush administration's immoral, inhuman, and illegal torture regime helped make this successful raid possible is purely impurely political. Dick Cheney wants credit for this success because Dick Cheney doesn't want anyone to remember that his astonishing failures made this raid necessary. Every time Dick Cheney appears on television, it becomes necessary to revisit the historic facts. Every time any Republican or right-wing apologist or oblivious media hack repeats the lie that Republicans are competent, much less superior to Democrats, at protecting national security, it becomes necessary to revisit the historic facts: If not for the Bush administration's unprecedented failure at national security, the unprecedented terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, would not have succeeded.
This is a recap. I have posted it before, in several different forms. Repeating it should not be necessary. These facts should be so much a part of national consciousness as to permanently destroy the credibility of all whose failures allowed the September 11 attacks to succeed. But that would necessitate a dispassionate and honest and professional traditional media, which we clearly do not have. But Democrats, and all who care about historical accuracy, should have these facts readily at hand, to be oft repeated at every opportunity, until they do dent national consciousness. In the absence of a dispassionate and honest and professional traditional media, and given the frequent failures of message discipline by institutional Democrats, the responsibility falls on us.
Just a month before the 9/11 attacks, while on a month long vacation, Bush was personally handed a presidential daily briefing entitled:
Bin Laden determined to strike in US.
With characteristic intelligence and class, Bush responded with the words:
All right. You've covered your ass, now.
And went fishing.
But Bush wasn't the only member of his administration to blow off warnings, and ignore the threat of terrorism. Indeed, his Attorney General, John Ashcroft, revealed his own lack of concern just a day before the attacks:
In his final budget request for the fiscal year 2003 submitted on Sept. 10 to the budget director, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the attorney general called for spending increases in 68 programs, none of which directly involved counterterrorism. Upgrading the F.B.I.'s computer system, one of the areas in which he sought an increase, is relevant to combating terrorism, though Mr. Ashcroft did not defend it on that ground.
But in his Sept. 10 submission to the budget office, Mr. Ashcroft did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators.
Mr. Ashcroft proposed cuts in 14 programs. One proposed $65 million cut was for a program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants for equipment, including radios and decontamination suits and training to localities for counterterrorism preparedness.
And Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reacted similarly, less than a week before that:
When Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who was then chairman of the Armed Services Committee, sought to transfer money to counterterrorism from the missile defense program, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sent a letter on Sept. 6, 2001, saying he would urge Mr. Bush to veto the measure. Mr. Levin nonetheless pushed the measure through the next day on a party-line vote.
And former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke had this to say about National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice:
...I believe it was, George Tenet called me and said, "I don't think we're getting the message through. These people aren't acting the way the Clinton people did under similar circumstances." And I suggested to Tenet that he come down and personally brief Condi Rice, that he bring his terrorism team with him. And we sat in the national security adviser's office. And I've used the phrase in the book to describe George Tenet's warnings as "He had his hair on fire." He was about as excited as I'd ever seen him. And he said, "Something is going to happen."
Florida's Governor Rick Scott has a nice career going as a criminal. He was so successful at screwing over the American public, Florida conservatives rewarded him with the job as governor. he has the same criminal mind he had before he was elected - Florida Republicans Cut Unemployment Benefits To Pay For Corporate Tax Cut
