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Thursday, September 28. 2006

It Keeps Getting Worse

Senator Hillary Clinton
and former
President Bill Clinton

While I sit here pondering the news of the day, antibiotics and Tylenol with codeine coursing through my body; this corporeal shell fevered for much of the day, I ponder Keith Olbermann’s astute observation about former President Clinton’s outburst to Chris Wallace on Fox Weekend. When asked “why” he (President Clinton) didn’t capture or kill Usama bin Laden, the former president responded angrily, saying at least he tried, while this current administration did not in the eight months leading up to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

We know the president (Bush 43) ignored a security brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside U.S.” We know the president (Bush 43) didn’t meet with his counter-terrorism chief Richard Clark until September 4 of 2001, We know Condoleeza Rice — then the National Security Advisor for Bush (43)! — was of the notion “… no one could have anticipated the use of planes as weapons;” we know all this but not until now has someone with any gravitas said publicly what is really the truth about 9/11: the current president (Bush 43) and his administration were asleep at the wheel when Al Qaa’ida hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that beautiful September morning.

In the transcript of Secretary Rice’s testimony before the 9/11Commission, it is quite clear the president and his staff ignored the Al Qaa’ida threat, instead focusing their national security efforts on the Star Wars defense system and taking down Saddam Hussein.

Despite the ABC network’s propaganda piece, The Path to 9/11, the record from the 9/11 Commission (on which ABC initially claimed the mini-series was based) shows the Clinton Administration engaged in the fight against Al Qaa’ida and the Bush (43) Administration ignoring Al Qaa’ida.

President Clinton finally said what many of us outside of Washington have been saying for five years: The Bush 43 Administration failed in its duty to protect America from outside attacks.

And what of Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY)? Just when you thought she was moving away from her base, she tells an audience of reporters, “…I’m certain that if my husband and his security team had been shown a classified report entitled ‘Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,’ he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team.”

Now, those of us engaged in the effort to change the power in Washington from the current rubber-stamp congress to a congress that provides the American people with constitutionally-mandated oversight can publicly say it, our friends running for public office can say it: For over seven months this current administration ignored the threat of Al Qaa’ida until it was too late, despite the best efforts of the “Terrorism Czar” Richard Clark, despite the actual plan the Clinton Administration (with Richard Clark) handed to the Bush (43) Administration once it was determined Al Qaa’ida was behind the U.S.S. Cole attack — which was confirmed in February, 2001.

Since then, we’ve created a war in Iraq that every security agency within our government has now stated has made us less safe from terrorist attack; a war that has created a new generation of jihadists, a new generation of Muslims who hate the United States.

Originally this was to be about our own, home grown extremists — the Christian Right dominated by the extremist James Dobson, without whom many Republican politicians would have a difficult, if not impossible chance, of winning elections.

Former Republican congressman Dick Armey of Texas had some harsh words for the Republican Party of today — and Armey was one of the Republicans leading the charge to impeach President Clinton!

But all that will have to wait another day. This current president has once again got his way with Congress, in this case, the approval for the president to determine what is or isn’t torture, as set forth in “Common Article 3” of the Geneva Convention.

— And just an aside here: the president all but admitted “we” were sending terrorism suspects to other countries through “Extraordinary Rendition” — a clear violation of the Geneva Convention if it is known suspects would be tortured and/or treated inhumanely. This soul-sickness has to be remedied and re-electing this rubber-stamp Republican Congress will only worsen this scourge.

Posted by Tim Forkes in NEWS and POLITICS at 01:40 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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