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Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out
Posted by Jill | 7:45 PM
As a person who did not lose anyone close to me on September 11, 2001, I have felt for the past few years that the annual festival of Let's Enjoy It Again that occurs every year on this day for over a decade is designed to keep people wrapped up in mourning, remembrance, and most importantly, mythology. This national refusal to not just remember but to also move on has an important purpose -- to keep people from asking questions. Because questions are dangerous.

Remember the orgy o'fear that was the 2004 Republican National Convention?



It was so clear that these guys were getting off on the imagery they invoked during their convention that year. Eight years on, and except for the odious Condi Rice, who spoke of remembering 9/11 like it was yesterday as if it were the finest day of her life, not one Republican wants to be reminded of Bush's Free Pass.

If you can watch this footage again and not want to scream, you're a better person than I am:



Most of the media won't touch it, but the August 6 PDB wasn't even the most explosive (so to speak) document that was prepared to warn George W. Bush of what was coming. In a column that was quietly slipped into the New York Times yesterday, Kurt Eichenwald makes allegations that should forever turn George W. Bush and Dick Cheney into objects of loathing, to be shunned like any corrupt leader anywhere in the world.

A sample from the article:


The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.

“The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government’s transliteration of Bin Laden’s first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.

And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have “dramatic consequences,” including major casualties. On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but “will occur soon.” Some of the briefs again reminded Mr. Bush that the attack timing was flexible, and that, despite any perceived delay, the planned assault was on track.

Yet, the White House failed to take significant action. Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic. On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews. The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else.

That same day in Chechnya, according to intelligence I reviewed, Ibn Al-Khattab, an extremist who was known for his brutality and his links to Al Qaeda, told his followers that there would soon be very big news. Within 48 hours, an intelligence official told me, that information was conveyed to the White House, providing more data supporting the C.I.A.’s warnings. Still, the alarm bells didn’t sound.

On July 24, Mr. Bush was notified that the attack was still being readied, but that it had been postponed, perhaps by a few months. But the president did not feel the briefings on potential attacks were sufficient, one intelligence official told me, and instead asked for a broader analysis on Al Qaeda, its aspirations and its history. In response, the C.I.A. set to work on the Aug. 6 brief.


Hell yeah, there is more.

You don't have to come up with theories about controlled demolitions and Jewish bankers to recognize that something about that day has never quite added up. Whether the Bush Administration was hopelessly inept and so obsessed with Saddam Hussein (like Ahab and his great white whale) that they refused to acknowledge what was startig them in the face, or they decided to take a calculated risk that whatever was about to happen would give them the pretext they wanted to go to war against Iraq. Either way, this was a fuckup of massive proportions. And while to turn today into a day of solemn reflection may be comforting to those who lost loved ones that day, those of us who were lucky enough to be relatively unaffected owe it to future generations to not be lulled into a false complacency by succumbing to mawkishness every year on this day, but to remain vigilant and never, ever allow a government to do what the Bush Administration did in the months leading up to September 2001. Republicans like to say that George W. Bush "kept us safe."

Except for the time when he didn't. And now we know that he could have -- and didn't.

*************


UPDATE: Also, too. And too. And too. And too:

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1 Comments:
Anonymous The WP said...
W didn't keep my cousins safe in the WTC towers, and my college friend safe on a plane.

And he didn't exactly add to a sense safety by attacking Iraq and embroiling us in two expensive, unnecessary wars.

If he was so fucking concerned about safety, there would've been a Mossad type surgical raid into Afghanistan and al Qaeda taken out in the months following 9/11.

The never ending barrage of pictures is like watching an autopsy on family members. It prolongs the grieving, intentionally making us angry which is a wasted emotion. It picks at the scab until it bleeds. How many times to i have to watch the towers fold in on themselves knowing they are folding on my cousins?

Say what you want about Obama; he gave the order to put an end to the Tora Bora Dialysis shit. Better late than never. For that I will be forever grateful.
9/11/12, 11:22 PM  
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