2 posts tagged “republicans”
"Many potential jurors in the Jose Padilla terrorism-support case say they aren't sure who directed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks because they don't trust reporters or the federal government...many seem unwilling to blame al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden--the conclusion reached by the national Sept. 11 Commission and the Bush administration and widely reported by news media."
Wow, I wonder how that ties in to the percentage of people who think that Saddam and Bin Laden were BFFs. Perhaps there are less of them floating around than I thought.
"Some people say they don't necessarily believe the U.S. government's statements about Sept. 11, with many of those people citing the faulty intelligence and misinformation about weapons of mass destruction that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the toppling of President Saddam Hussein.
"It could have been Saddam Hussein. It could have been bin Laden. I really don't know who," one woman said."
There wasn't some over-arching Illuminati style '9/11 Conspiracy.' Why the administration ignored the warnings they received, and the nature of the business ties between the Bush family and the Saudis, are both fair questions, but its more an issue of incompetence/corruption on than proof of any kind of malicious and premeditated conspiracy. However, the amount of bullshit that was piled on the American public in the wake of 9/11 has helped create a 'boy who cried wolf' phenomenon in reverse. The administration lied about the Al Qaeda-Iraq connection and about the WMD threat. Those were two absolutely massive and brazen lies, and together they made possible a war that would never have gotten off the ground otherwise (cf. Operation Desert Fox ).
The fact that 9/11 itself was milked for all it was worth, invoked like a Constitutional Amendment to justify everything from invading Iraq to wiretapping to re-electing Republicans, cheapened the event and its memory to the point that it became meaningless. The RNC convention in New York City--an overwhelmingly Democratic area which the GOP would never have chosen otherwise--was the pinnacle of this infuriating exploitation. The fact that many of the actual victims' family members have spoken out against the administration since also accentuates the divide between the 'official' 9/11 narrative and the popular narrative, in the same way that the constant spin on the Iraq war created a credibility gap which became a gaping chasm. The administration has absolutely zero credibility at this point, because its officials developed some kind of bizarre allergy to the truth in the fall of 2001. At this point many people wouldn't believe Bush if he said that the sky was blue.
Potential Terror Jurors Cite 9/11 Doubts [WaPo]
Bad News for Rudy: No one Even Believes 9/11 Anymore [Wonkette]
It seems like every time another scandal breaks with this administration, there is this hope that this one will be the one, the one so blatantly obscene that it cannot be denied or parsed, the one that will finally make this disgusting regime we find ourselves under fall. So let's recap. We've had:
1. The Downing Street Memo: no one gave a shit, no one paid attention.
2. Abu Ghraib: no one high up on the chain of command is punished. Rush Limbaugh says the soldiers were just having a good time
3. Katrina: Halliburton gets the rebuilding contract.Newt Gingrich blames the residents of the 9th Ward, for being too stupid to get out of the way of the hurricane.
4. The Plame Affair: Libby convicted, may or may not be pardoned by Bush. Oh, also Plame outed herself, the dumb bitch.
5. Walter Reed: It was all those slovenly veterans' fault.
6. The US Attorney Scandal: Clinton did it.
It is enough to make me want to bash my head against a brick wall. The Democrats have finally got the balls to subpoena the relevant parties but Bush will fight it allll the way to the Supreme Court. And you know what? He may win. And his supporters in the pundit world and in the blogosphere keep on tapdancing. I guess when you've gotten to the point where you're parsing the definition of torture you can justify anything. But the cognitive dissonance is maddening. This point has been made over and over and over and over and over again, but since Tony Snow is now attempting to eat his own words, I think it bears repeating. These were the same people who tried to impeach Clinton for getting a blowjob. Even thinking about it makes me want to scream. Can they just publicly clarify that Democrats and Republicans will have completely different legal standards applied to them from here on out.
I try to be optimistic, and tell myself that it is almost over. But I know it can still get worse, in so many ways. Bush has been the president since I was 15 years old. Half of highschool and all of college, I just tried not to think about it. Pondering it, for me, only leads to rage, and then sullenness and depression.
