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:

Labels: 9/11, George W. Bush, incompetence, LIHOP

PROLOGUE

It is the mid-1980's, perhaps 1985. I'm stuck in a kind of employment limbo, working in a department where I'm a member of the Newspaper Guild. This wasn't my choice, but it's a Guild department. I'm basically pro-union, but in this case the union is blocking my advancement. You see, I'm an administrative assistant, and my supervisor wants to promote me into an entry-level marketing management position. He plans to replace me with another Guild position, but the shop steward will have none of it. I have to remain in the union, which means I can't be promoted. This is the first real chance I've had at emerging out of Sociology major secretarial hell and it's being taken away from me because the Newspaper Guild wants the few dollars in dues it gets from me and the headcount.

So on this particular day, I'm sitting in the lobby of a large brokerage firm, waiting for an interview for yet another administrative assistant job. I'm figuring that if I'm going to be stuck doing this, I'm going to do it in a company where I can at least make some decent money. If I'm going to be a chump, I at least want to be a well-paid one.

The interviewer is late. I'm just as glad, because the company is located in the World Trade Center, and I've just come up two sets of elevators to get to its offices...and I'm a little freaked out, because those shaky elevators are the scariest experience I think I've ever had.

So I wait. And I wait. And I wait. And about an hour goes by. Finally I remind the receptionist that I have an interview scheduled. She checks with the manager with whom I'm supposed to meet and then extends his apologies, that he has to cancel for today but that I should make another appointment with the receptionist to come back for the interview later in the week. I'm peeved that I've wasted all this time, and I've also realized that there is absolutely no way I can handle dealing with those elevators every day. I tell the receptionist that I will have to call back to set up the appointment, knowing full well that I have no intention of doing so.

The company's name is Cantor Fitzgerald.



I woke up on the morning of September 11, 2001 with a sense of dread. Today was the day I was traveling with two colleagues to Bethesda for a training course on FDA compliance in clinical trials. And I absolutely did not want to go. My reason was silly -- the other two colleagues I was with were very friendly with each other, and I just knew I'd be the odd man out. I felt as if I were back in high school and for some reason I had to go somewhere with the pretty, popular girls and I just knew that they were going to make my life miserable. It was ridiculous, as they'd never treated me badly and I was moderately friendly with both. But still -- I dreaded this trip in a way that I hadn't dreaded anything in years.

The phone rang at around 8:15 AM. It was Mr. Brilliant calling from LaGuardia. He'd just landed after the flight he'd been booked on the previous night had been cancelled due to a thunderstorm in Durham, North Carolina. He just wanted to let me know he was on the ground safely and would be headed right to work. We do this when we fly and land safely. So I went ahead and got dressed and headed into work.

We were supposed to leave for DC at around noon. Just after 8:45, one of my colleagues came into my office and said, "A small plane just hit the World Trade Center." It was the kind of gruesome news that one hears every morning on the local news, where If It Bleeds, It Leads. I don't recall exactly how I found out about the second plane, but I turned on the AM radio in my office and it became clear very quickly that we were dealing with some Very Big Stuff. It didn't hit me until the towers fell just HOW big it was, because I remember thinking until about noon that we could probably still get to Bethesda by car even though air travel was grounded by then.

When I heard that one tower and then another had fallen, it was unfathomable. Internet news sites were inaccessible, first because of the traffic and later because Verizon's infrastructure was buried under tons of rubble. TVs were set up in the big meeting room for those who wanted to watch what was happening as it unfolded. I don't even remember feeling afraid, though I did think "This must have been what it was like to hear about Pearl Harbor on the radio."

CONTEXT

The eight-month-old presidency of George W. Bush hadn't exactly had an auspicious beginning. Installed in office by a questionable Supreme Court decision, he didn't exactly have a lot of political capital in reserve. There were people like me who viscerally loathed everthing about the man, but except for the most rabid knee-jerk right-wingers, there was a sense that this would be a troubled presidency.

A month after his inauguration, a Navy submarine collided with a Japanese fishing vessel. It later came out (though it was little reported) that two civilians were at the controls of the submarine when it surfaced and hit the fishing boat. It was not unusual for civilians to be granted these kinds of "goodwill trips" on Navy subs, but a third of these civilians were Texas oil men, which at least created an appearance of a "Lincoln Bedroom on the seas."

Then ten weeks after Bush's inauguration, a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet, made an emergency landing, and its crew was taken into Chinese custody. Relations with China had been under strain for that entire time because of the Bush Administration's stand on Taiwan. The incident ended with a carefully worded apology to the Chinese government by the Bush Administration, one which outraged the right wing of Bush's own party but which in contrast to the recklessness we would see later, served to defuse what could have been a major diplomatic crisis.

The controversy surrounding Bush's election only escalated during the summer of 2001 -- one dominated by reports of shark attacks and prurient interest in the disappearance of a young Washington intern linked to California Congressman Gary Condit. By August 10, 2001, Bush had already spent 54 days -- one-quarter of his time in office -- on vacation, fueling speculation that Vice President Dick Cheney was doing most of the work. It was, of course, during this vacation that the infamous August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing was angrily brushed off.

On September 10, 2001, this issue of Newsweek hit newsstands and mailboxes all over the country:



The cover article was an excerpt from author David Kaplan's book The Accidental President, which took a look inside the Supreme Court decision that gave Bush the White House, and revealed for the first time just how close Al Gore had come to prevailing. Bush's approval rating stood at 51% in a Gallup poll taken September 7-10, 2001. These days a 51% rating is regarded as a good polling number, but in the aftermath of Bill Clinton never going below 56%, even during the Lewinsky scandal, these were not perceived as good numbers for a new president.

And then the day turned over to the eleventh of September.


TINFOIL

Like everyone in the country, Mr. Brilliant and I were glued to the television set that night. We flipped from channel to channel to channel, our brains sponges for as much information as we could find. And that is when we saw Larry Kudlow on CNBC, grinning ear to ear and crowing about how the attacks meant an end to any talk of a Social Security lockbox. I turned to Mr. Brilliant and said, "Oh my God, they did it."

I'm not to now embark on an exhaustive examination of what happened and who benefitted that day. It's not appropriate today, I've talked about it before, and Will Bunch has already asked ten non-crazy questions that still warrant answers. But there is no question that the events that occurred ten years ago today saved an already-foundering presidency. Do with that what you will.


AFTERMATH: THE LOST

The day after the attacks, my neighbor ran up to me and told me that the husband of one of our neighbors was still missing. My heart hurt for her, as barely a year earlier she had lost her son in a car accident and now her husband, a Port Authority police officer, was missing. He was later confirmed among the dead.

Excerpt from E-mail from a friend, received on Wednesday, September 12, 2001 (initials changed from real names):

P's brother is still missing. It doesn't look good. He was on the 105th floor of the first building. My brothers are ok. D. works in a building behind the WTC. He was able to get a Ferry from the South Street Seaport. My father decided not to go to NYC yesterday. Say a prayer for P's brother. His name is R.

R. was never found. He was thirty years old.


WAR, PRESIDENTS, AND TRUST

The following Sunday, the Bergen Record included a full-page image of an American flag. I don't own a flag, but for a couple of days I put it in our front window. As the invasion of Afghanistan ramped up, I said to Mr. Brilliant, "I don't like him, I never will like him, and I sure hope he knows what he's doing, because he's all we've got." Even I, who starting in 2004 started blasting his already-tainted presidency regularly, was willing to put my trust in that president, because, well, he may be a schmuck, but in those first few days, he was our schmuck.


TEN YEARS ON

And now ten years have passed. It seems simultaneously like the blink of an eye and an entire lifetime. Aside from airport security and some economic setbacks and revivals, my own sphere has been little affected by the attacks. And for most Americans, if they really want to tell the truth, neither have theirs. This entire week has been an orgy of a weird self-congratulatory combination of picking open the wound again and enjoying the spectacle one more time. I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to have lost someone ten years ago and once again be unable to open a newspaper without seeing a photograph of the Twin Towers burning with your brother, or son, or spouse, or sister, or father or mother inside.

My neighbor sold her house to her daughter, who now lives there with her husband and their baby -- a symbol of renewal in a household that knew nothing but fear and worry and sadness ten years ago. My friend's brother soldiers on but is still haunted by memories of having taken the train in to the city with R. that day and of calling him and telling him to get the hell out of there, let's go home...and then calling him for the last time and getting no answer. He and his wife, R.'s sister, have three children.

All over the New York metro area, the spouses of the dead remember. Some have remarried, some have not. Some have healed better than others. All over the area, those who were children that day have grown up. Life goes on.

Five years ago a friend of mine lost her daughter who had just turned 24. One of our colleagues said about the aftermath of a lost child, "You never get over it. But you find a place for it, and you go to visit it every now and then when you need to...or when you are able to." Some of the survivors of the dead, and the survivors among the first responders, have been able to find that place and close the door. Others are still wandering, lost, looking for a place to put it. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, those left behind tried to find heroism in the last moments of their loved ones. Some were heroes, trying to get others out and staying behind themselves. Some were just ordinary people who did nothing but go to work just as they always do. They are not heroes but victims. And there is no disgrace in that. The loss of the victims is just as tragic as that of the heroic. Only those left behind know that loss.

For years, the Ground Zero site was like a gaping wound in the heart of lower Manhattan. Today the memorial site will be opened to the families. The footage I've seen and the still photographs look so, well, RIGHT. The reflecting pools with their waterfall sides appear to demonstrate both the calm of healing and the continual tears of memory. We do so many things wrong, and yet Michael Arad, who designed and built this memorial appears, at least to me, to have gotten it right.




Today is not for politicians fighting the culture wars. It is not for religious leaders to try to score converts or demonize those who believe differently. It is not for posturing for the 2012 election. Today is for those who were there, for those who made it home, and for the families of those who didn't. It's for heroes and victims alike, and the people they left behind. Today is THEIR day.

Labels: 9/11

There was one election year in which Mr. Brilliant and I were so fed up with electroal politics that we planned a Jamaican vacation for that week. Oh, we finally succumbed and watched a little bit of the election returns on our tiny TV while ensconced in a beachfront room at the old and alas now defunct T-Water Beach Hotel in Negril, but we managed to escape most of it.

I kind of feel that way about the approaching anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, but unfortunately I'm stuck here in New Jersey. It almost seems as if politicians and the nation's security apparatus are happy about this opportunity to once again fan the flames of fear and war once again. Yesterday we heard rumblings of, and today lots of mediaflogging about an "unconfirmed credible threat" against New York City bridges and tunnels this weekend, accompanied by the same footage we see over and over again of guys wrapped in what look like rags, "training" on children's monkeybars. It's astounding that after a decade and over a trillion dollars spent on wars that we were told were an integral part of the so-called "war on terror", we're still in a situation where a bunch of bewildered-looking cops with rifles are going to be posted all around the city looking for...what, exactly? Unless we're prepared to stop and search every vehicle using every bridge and tunnel in the city, how do you stop something?

And again -- a bunch of guys in rags training on monkeybars are going to be whipping people into a panic.

It probably won't be the denizens of the city itself. After all, they don't have the luxury of being afraid. What we ARE going to see, I suspect, is another rush of rhetoric in the flyover states and the south against sharia law, and probably a few anti-Muslim hate crimes as well. But in some ways, these dead-enders who still insist that Barack Obama is a Muslim terrorist and that the few hundred Muslims in their state are somehow going to turn their entire state into a caliphate, aren't all that different from the terrorists they fear. The world to which they want to return, the world symbolized by the conspicuous and radical Christianity of Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, is gone and can never return. It won't be long before every suburban neighborhood has a gay couple raising their children and a house co-owned by five young people who aren't coupled off and a multigenerational immigarnt family living in it. They can promise to return us to their never-existed TV vision of the 1950's, but unless a Rick Perry is prepared to run the entire country by executive order of forced conversion and incarceration/massacre of those who do not conform (and I'm not saying he wouldn't), the forces of a freedom that isn't represented only to corporate greed are already in play.

Andrew Sullivan has a long essay in Newsweek this week that's part of his ongoing mea culpa about having been such an ardent Bushflogger in the early days after the 9/11 attacks. We can grant him his absolution or not as we please, but one tiny excerpt struck me:

From the streets of Tehran to Cairo, it appears that the young Muslim generation does not want to withdraw from the modern world into a cultural and intellectual blind alley forever. They are too busy on Twitter.

There have always been mass movements. Tiananmen Square took place in 1989, long before anyone even thought of something like Twitter. But social networking has certainly made it easy, and the things we viddy on a computer or iPad screen are a window to a different kind of world. In 2001, the web was still largely a "push" medium; today it's participatory and immediate. When young people can see a different world in front of them, it becomes more difficult to talk them into sacrificing themselves for a vague promise of 72 virgins after death. The terrorist dead-enders are still out there, but if we as a nation can just keep from fucking it up, it's just possible that we might be able to help the protesters and fighters in Egypt and Libya and Yemen and every other country that's trying to shake off the despots we've tolerated in the name of oil to pull their nations, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the present. And then our task will be to keep our own from slding back to the past.

I'm not going to be opining much about the 9/11 anniversary, other than just a comparatively dispassionate piece I'll put up on Sunday about my own experiences on that day, because frankly, after a decade of living in a nation governed by one party that is willing to use fear and terror to further its own agenda and another so terrified of that party that it refues to call the sky blue if the other one says it's yellow, I just don't want to relive the last decade. And while New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has taken a lot of crap for limiting the invited guests to Sunday's memorial to the families of those lost, Sunday really should be for them, not for those of us who only had to watch it on TV and then get on with our lives.

And in the midst of all this, President Please-Like-Me was on the teevee again last night, doing another one of his quasi-populist bellowings in front of a Congress that predictably either sat on its hands of applauded furiously depending on which party they represent. The aforementioned Andrew Sullivan is so far into penitence mode that he actually used the name "Harry Truman" in his critique of the speech, so desperate is he to find something strong and resolute in this president. This was Obama's time to say, "You guys fucked this up, I've spent three years trying to fix it, and you've blocked me every step of the way. I'm sick of dealing with you, now here's what we're going to do." But instead he patronized the crowded under-bus crowd with a few crumb-words like "union" and "polluters" while talking about starving Social Security with "payroll tax cuts" (the better to gut it later in his quest to be Nixon in China) and making sure that already highly-skilled unemployed Americans have NO time to go on interviews for jobs that might pay a living wage by making them work for private companies for the pittance that unemployment pays. But hey, at least American companies will have access to cheap labor....and we'll see how many of them actually hire these people at even one penny more than unemployment pays.

Sullivan isn't the only one sold on the speech, but we know this guy gives good speechifying. But as Digby notes, after a bit of lip service paid to liberal ideals, the rest of it was all about cutting spending, making Medicare unavailable to people between the ages of 65 and 67, and tax cuts that are unlikely to get enough fuel into the demand side of the economy to get this stalled-out engine going again.

Happy Friday, everyone.

Labels: 9/11, Barack Obama, Democratic sellouts, economic death watch, terrorism, the so-called war on terror

So what do you think the wingnut response will be to the killing of Osama Bin Laden on Barack Obama's watch?

I'll start:

"How DARE he keep children awake on a school night delaying his remarks!"

"He kept Americans, some of whom lost loved ones on 9/11, waiting while his speechwriters told him what to say."

"This is George Bush's victory. After all, it was he who started the war in Afghanistan."

"This proves Obama is a Muslim. Obviously other Muslims turned Bin Laden in."

Post your own projections and overhearings in the comments.

POST-SPEECH UPDATE: It's doubly sweet that this has happened on Codpiece Day. And kudos to Obama for NOT giving credit to George W. Bush, who let Osama Bin Laden go at Tora Bora and barely six months after the 9/11 attacks, was saying this:


ANOTHER UPDATE: Oy. Ida Siegel, reporting from lower Manhattan for MSNBC, just referred to "Obama" being dead. Barack Obama has been president for over two years already. You'd think people would know how to pronounce his name by now.

Labels: 9/11, Osama bin Laden, wingnuttia

...when Republicans and corporations think of themselves and each other. People more often than not get laid off at Christmas while their former company's executives receive huge bonus checks. People tend to get evicted around Christmas, as if the most uncharitable and unconscionable elements of society save their worst for the worst time of the year.

The Republican Party is just such a case. Out of 42 Republicans in the Senate, only one, Sam Brownback of Kansas, voted for the Zadroga bill that would free up to $7.4 billion for 911 first responders. Every one of the other 41 Republicans in the Senate voted against it while prioritizing two major tax cuts for the wealthy plus the undermining of Social Security. As with DADT, START, the DREAM Act and an unemployment extension, the Republicans nakedly held up all other legislation until they got their tax cuts for the most undeserving scumbags on the planet earth.

But now that they got what they wanted yesterday, they're saying they don't have time to vote on the Zadroga bill. Jon Kyl of Arizona said it would be disrespectful on the holiest holiday in all the Christian world to work between Christmas and New Year's. Harry Reid wanted to work during that week to enact this legislation, which has already passed in the House with some bipartisan support.

But Senate Republicans like Kyl think it's more Christian to take a week or so off to drink egg nog and give and receive expensive presents instead of completing the legislative process to make this seven billion in 911 first responders' aid available.

As Jon Stewart pointed out on this year's last broadcast of The Daily Show, the three dinosaur networks dropped the ball on this and hadn't covered the Zadroga bill in 2 1/2 months. Fox "News", to its credit, excoriated the Senate for holding up the bill but failed to mention it was completely the fault of the Republican Party (Majority Leader Harry Reid was the only Democrat to vote against the bill but that was for purely procedural reasons. He simply didn't want to let the bill die).

Furthermore, Stewart reminds us the only other network to devote any serious time to the Zadroga bill of late is Al Jazeera. Yes, an Arabic television news network that's sympathetic to al Qaeda is also more sympathetic to the plight of ill and dying 911 responders than the Republican Party and Fox "News."

Welcome to the rabbit hole.

It's not very often that you see a party that so thoroughly implodes its value system so soon after a major series of victories. The Republicans haven't even taken control of the House yet and they're already proving to America, even Tea Baggers, what a horrible, horrible idea it was to give them the majority in the lower chamber and near parity in the higher. People who voted Republican last month, if they're not already, will be experiencing not just buyer's remorse but sticker shock. They bought a car that will take itself where ever it wants but its owner nowhere.

They've brazenly held 911 first responders' aid to languish, filibustering the bill virtually into a legislative coma. They've blocked the repeal of DADT. They've blocked START. They've blocked The DREAM Act. They'd blocked unemployment extensions for people who've been out of work for more than 6 months.

But they sure moved fast and furious on those tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%, even though the Democratic Congress and President Obama were still willing to give those tax cuts to the "bottom" 98%. That wasn't good enough. Our government and our neediest citizens were essentially in a barricade hostage situation so a handful of billionaires and multimillionaires could resume getting money they can't possibly need.

And you have the Republican Party to thank for that, a party that never learns, a party that can't even define shame since it's not in their lexicon, a party that will always have ass-backwards priorities, a party that never tires of using 911 for partisan political gain until it comes time to cash that $7.4 billion check they write with their big mouths.

Merry Xmas, America, and thanks for the gift of the Republican Party, the gift that keeps on taking and taking and taking.

UPDATE by Jill: Usually I don't step on JP's posts here, but I'm so livid about the meanness, the hypocrisy, the utterly foul stench that is the Republican Party, I just had to post this -- it's the 9/11 "tribute" video that was made for and played at the 2008 Republican Convention -- the one that nominated John McCain for the Presidency:

No matter how much of a blowhard you think Olbermann is, he was right to apologize for broadcasting the Republicans' snuff porn to a national audience. This was not a "tribute", this was propaganda of the worst kind. There are still people in this area who grieve loved ones. There are still people in this nation who were and in many cases still are, living and working in lower Manhattan. That video wasn't put together by the Republicans to pay "tribute" to anyone, not even in their passing mention of the very same people they're screwing over now. Fear is the Republicans' stock in trade. It's all they've got, other than greed.

And oh, by the way...in case you want to know where John McCain stands on the Zadroga bill, here you go:

Arizona Sen. John McCain did it again, insulting 9/11's heroes and belittling the push to pass a health bill as "fooling around."

The Arizona Republican, dubbed McWeasel for blowing off an ailing Ground Zero construction worker two weeks ago, whipped up new fury last night by suggesting Senate Democrats have wasted time trying to pass the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, among other bills.

That ailing Ground Zero worker is T.J. Gilmartin. Here is his encounter with John McCain:

"I couldn't get to see McCain at all. I went to his office four times, and it was all like 'you need an appointment.'

"They gave me an email address of some guy.

"I thought I could talk to him. I mean, he's a real hero, not like us. We're just little half heroes.

"Our country took care of him when he came back. He was a POW. I respect that.

"I wasn't stalking him or anything, but then I saw him in a hallway going to an elevator near the rotunda.

"It was a floor up from where they have the badges.

"I stepped in front of him, and I was very respectful. I told him who I was and I asked for his help on the Zadroga bill.

"It lasted maybe 10 or 15 seconds.

"He said 'Thank you for your service.'

"And 'I can't help you.'

"Then, bang, he stepped around me and onto the elevator.

"If his eyes were daggers, I'd be dead. They'd all be in my heart."

Labels: 9/11, Greedy Republican Bastards, hypocrisy

This is what Republicans think of people who gave their heath -- and their lives -- trying to rescue people and clean up Ground Zero:

Republican senators were so worried about meeting with 9/11 responders who came to Washington today that at least one called the cops on them, the Daily News has learned.

Even before the nine responders had a chance to start visiting senators’ offices - where they intended to stay until meeting with legislators - they were greeted by Capitol Police, who had been called by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.).

Collins apparently reacted to a story in today’s News which quoted a letter to senators from 9/11 advocate John Feal warning that he and others planned to sit in offices until they got meetings - or the police made them leave.

Collins is among the senators the 9/11 community hopes will come over to their side, but her call to authorities left them wondering if they could succeed.

“I’m deeply disappointed in Sen. Collins for calling the Capitol Police, but they welcomed us with open arms,” said Feal, although he wound up with a police escort for the first stops on his visit.

“I’m more disappointed that Susan Collins is hiding behind ideology, and now the police, to stop from helping us,” Feal said. “And the people she called to stop us, are just like us. It’s a little ironic.”

Officers eventually determined he and his team were not threatening and left them alone.

Only one Republican has agreed to back the $7.4 billion James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, and even he - Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois - voted against bringing it up until the Bush-era tax cuts are extended.

Collins’ office did not immediately comment on why she was worried enough about the 9/11 responders to call police.

The advocates - who all served at Ground Zero - are growing desperate with time running out in the Senate. The Zadroga Act either needs to be attached to other legislation or passed on its own before the year ends, and the calendar is crowded with other measures.

Procedural hurdles can also be thrown in the way of any bill if senators don’t want to deal with a measure.

If the bill does not pass this year it is all but dead, and the responders are so concerned they also targeted Democrats who voted for the bill, hoping to inspire leaders to take every step possible.

Their luck wasn’t much better. A group of retired cops, construction workers and firefighters heading to visit the office of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) bumped into the Rev. Jesse Jackson leaving a meeting there.

Jackson stopped and held an impromptu prayer circle with them in the hallway. But Schumer strolled on by, waited for an elevator and hopped on without saying a word.

“It was disrespectful,” said former NYPD emergency services cop Glen Klein. “It seems like he’s not concerned about our welfare. He could have at least stopped as said hello.”


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/2010/12/gop-senator-calls-cops-on-911.html#ixzz18KKIFQ8G

Yes, Schumer was rude too. But Schumer is a reliable vote for the bill.

Republicans have been using the corpses of the 9/11 dead and the 9/11 heroes as props for nearly a decade. But now that it's time to put their money where their mouths are, all of a sudden we can't afford it -- but we can afford to tax cuts for billionaires.

These people are despicable. And that enough Americans gave them back the keys to the car makes them despicable.

Peter Griffin is right.

Labels: 9/11, Greedy Republican Bastards, heartlessness

Republicans have been flogging the 9/11 attacks for nearly a decade now, setting themselves up as our only hope against marauding terrorists. It's hard to forget this video of snippets from the 2004 RNC convention, in which 9/11 was invoked with the kind of almost sexual zeal that today Republicans reserve for Sarah Palin:

And they were still doing it four years later:

I remember watching TV on that day, watching a large group of tough-looking, brawny ironworkers marching on foot down to Ground Zero, tears streaming down their faces, while one of them told a reporter that he didn't know how they were going to be able to help, but they just had to help. There were many people like this, along with the police and firefighters who were sent into harm's way by Rudy Giuliani -- the man who fancies himself the Patron Saint of 9/11 -- without adequate equipment. The recognized and unrecognized alike went down there and gave their all to try to save people. These people represent the best of what Americans can be when the chips are down.

Today many of them are sick or dying from respiratory ailments contracted while working at the site, because they trusted the reprehensible Christine Todd Whitman, George Bush's head of the EPA, who assured them at the air quality was safe. Some have died already, like James Zadroga, after whom legislation being blocked by Republicans to help these first responders pay their medical bills is named.

Yes, the Republican Party, which never hesitates to flog the corpses of the 9/11 dead to further their political aims, refuses to help the people they once used as props and called heroes, have some financial peace of mind before they leave this mortal coil. And Mitch McConnell is perhaps the most loathsome of the bunch:

Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader from Kentucky, refuses to take a public position on the $7.4 billion James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, but sources say that in private discussions he has not supported it.

When he was running for reelection two years ago, McConnell touted his support for a law that compensated "patriots" who worked to build America's nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.

McConnell said as much in an ad that sounds remarkably like the case for helping Americans who came from all over the country to toil in the toxins of Ground Zero - and got sick after officials said it was safe.

"During the Cold War, America's security depended on nuclear strength. Workers at Paducah's gaseous diffusion plant are patriots who did some of the most dangerous work," the ad says.

"We always knew the job was dangerous," says nuke worker David Fuller in the ad. "What we found out along the way was that it was more dangerous than what we were made aware of."

McConnell's spot crows that he won both a cancer screening program and compensation for people who were ignored and dying because of their service - much like 9/11's neglected responders.

"Really all we're asking for is the same thing that was done for nuclear workers," said Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.). "I would hope that Mitch McConnell realizes that 9/11 workers were just as victimized as the nuclear workers were, and they all should be protected by the federal government."

Advocates for 9/11 responders argued that McConnell's constituents would be all for him backing the Zadroga bill.

"If he's only going to help the people of Kentucky, he's a homer; he doesn't deserve to be a national leader," said John Feal, founder of the Fealgood Foundation.

"Kentucky people are some of the most patriotic people in the country," Feal said. "They would be embarrassed if they knew Mitch McConnell was not supporting 9/11's patriots."

The Zadroga bill needs two Republican senators to sign on in order to pass. Insiders believe one is ready to join, but if McConnell said yes, many more likely would follow.

And yet McConnell, who refuses to do the right thing on the Zadroga bill (presumably because of the $7.4 billion price tag) insists that those who already have more money than they can spend in a thousand lifetimes, simply cannot survive without extending George W. Bush's irresponsible tax cuts (tax cuts which created not one job, I might add). Here he is on Face the Nation on Sunday:

SCHIEFFER: You have argued that one of the main purposes -- and other Republicans say the same thing -- is to reduce the deficit.

SCHIEFFER: But I have to ask you, Senator McConnell, when you're talking about extending those tax cuts for upper-income Americans, the estimates are that will cost $700 billion over the next 10 years. I mean, if you take all the tax cuts together, you're talking about $4 trillion. How do you intend to pay for those tax cuts?

MCCONNELL: Bob, it only costs $700 billion if you consider it the government's money. This is our money. This has been the tax rate for almost a decade -- almost a decade.

The federal government doesn't have this problem because it taxes too little. It's got it because it spends too much. We don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. So the whole nomenclature surrounding this that somehow we're doing people a favor by giving them their own money back, I just don't accept. The government is too big. It needs to be shrunk.

We can do that by targeting the annual discretionary spending, which we, by the way, have already begun to do in this Congress. We're going to be able to do more of it in the next Congress. And then I'm hoping that the president's deficit reduction commission, which is supposed to report on December 1st, is going to have some recommendations with regard to our long-term debt problems, which are quite severe, that people like me and my Republican colleagues can support.

Forget about McConnell's grammar for a minute. Let's hold his feet to the fire about his notion that we "spend too much" and that keeping in place tax cuts that have resulted in an unemployment rate of over 10 percent will somehow magically create jobs now when they haven't in ten years. Howard Gleckman in the Christian Science Monitor takes a look at the folly of Mitch McConnell's economic "plan" and calls bullshit on it.

If Republicans want to stick to their guns about spending, they're more than welcome to do so. But if that's the case, then the almost-certain failure of the Zadroga bill ought to be hung around their necks like an albatross. Because these so-called "pro-life" Republicans who profess to represent "hard-working Americans" are turning their backs on some of the hardest-working, while they continue to shovel cash into the pockets of the wealthy.

Labels: 9/11, Greedy Republican Bastards, hypocrisy, scumbaggery

It occurred to me while listening to the car radio this morning as the names of the 9/11 dead were read that perhaps after next year, the 10th anniversary of the attacks, it's time to leave the ritualized mourning to the families.

I'm not saying we should forget what happened nine years ago today. You don't forget something like that any more than those who were at Pearl Harbor and survived ever forgot that. But the names of the Pearl Harbor dead aren't read annually in perpetuity either.

There's something that I variously call "The Book of Old Grudges" or "The Garden of Old Grudges", depending on what metaphor I use on any given day. It's the syndrome, and I know you either have varying degrees of it or know people who do, characterized by an unwillingness to let go of bad things that happened in the past and a seeming sense of gratification one gets from reliving those bad things over and over and over again. You see it in people still bitter over divorces that happened decades ago, even if they are happily remarried. You see it in women who persist, twenty, thirty, forty years later in describing themselves as "survivors of rape". You see it in people who are unable to find a way to live with the scars of childhood trauma. They are unable to in any way get past something awful that happened to them and instead nurture the trauma, sculpting it into something lasting, something that pervades everything about their lives. They get "stuck" -- unable to live, unable to move along, unable to find a place for the terrible things that happen in life.

A friend of mine lost her 24-year-old daughter very unexpectedly a few years ago. One day her daughter was here, and the next she was gone. One of our colleagues said something at the time that I thought was very wise. She said "You never really get over it, but you find a place for it -- like a room in your mind that you visit every now and then." When we both started work at the same place after being laid off, my friend wondered how to answer the question about how many children she has. After all, she didn't want to pretend that her daughter had never existed, but didn't want to have to be "The Woman Whose Daughter Died." My friend is not "The Woman Whose Daughter Died." She's a colleague, a professional, a mother to her remaining daughter, a friend, someone with interests and plans for the future -- someone with a life.

I keep thinking of that scene from the otherwise hokey movie Tuck Everlasting, in which William Hurt explains to Alexis Bledel why being immortal and staying the same forever isn't all it's cracked up to be:

Look around you.

It's teeming life.

It's flowers and trees and frogs.

It's... it's all part of the wheel.

It's always changing; it's always growing...like you, Winnie.

Your life is never the same.

You were once a child. Now, you are about to become a woman.

One day, you'll grow up and you'll do something important.

You'll have children, maybe, and then one day you'll go out...

just like the flame of a candle.

You'll make way for new life.

That's a certainty.

That's the natural way of things.

And then, there's us.

What we Tucks have, you can't call it living.

We just... are.

We're like rocks, stuck at the side of a stream.

[snip]

There's one thing I've learned about people.

Many will do anything, anything not to die

and they'll do anything to keep from living their life.

Do you want to stay stuck as you are right now, forever?

I've just got to make you understand.

(Winnie) I don't want to die. Is that wrong?

No. No human does...but i-it's part of the wheel...

the same as being born.

You can't have living without dying.

Don't be afraid of death, Winnie.

Be afraid of the unlived life.

I don't pretend to be able to tell anyone who lost a friend, a spouse, a brother or sister, a father, mother, uncle, or neighbor how to grieve, or how long to grieve, or how they should remember this day. I do think that some reflection is warranted, not just about the horror of that one day, but about all the horrors that day has wrought since then, some of it wrought by the very people we looked to on that day to provide reassurance. Since that day we have endured needless, endless war, limits to our freedoms that produce no added safety, divisiveness that rivals that of the Jim Crow era. The circus that has filled the 24/7 news cycle for the last few weeks about the Park51 project and about a lunatic in Florida and those who would copy him, do nothing to commemorate or pay respects to the dead.

The endless flogging of 9/11 for political purposes has forever sullied any kind of public observance of this day. Next year on this day we will have read the names of the dead in each year of the decade since the attacks. We should never forget what happened. But after a decade, it will be time for those of us lucky to have been personally untouched by the tragedy to put it away and get on with the business of living, instead of being stuck, like rocks at the side of a stream.

Labels: 9/11, personal musings

No, not the U.S. mission in Iraq, or even the one in Afghanistan. The only mission that's been accomplished is the one by Osama Bin Laden and others like him to bring a once-great nation to its knees. And I'm glad someone with the stature of Ted Koppel had the guts to say it:

America's war on terrorism is widely perceived throughout Pakistan as a war on Islam. A muscular Islamic fundamentalism is gaining ground there and threatening the stability of the government, upon which we depend to guarantee the security of those nuclear weapons. Since a robust U.S. military presence in Pakistan is untenable for the government in Islamabad, however, tens of thousands of U.S. troops are likely to remain parked next door in Afghanistan for some time.

Perhaps bin Laden foresaw some of these outcomes when he launched his 9/11 operation from Taliban-secured bases in Afghanistan. Since nations targeted by terrorist groups routinely abandon some of their cherished principles, he may also have foreseen something along the lines of Abu Ghraib, "black sites," extraordinary rendition and even the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But in these and many other developments, bin Laden needed our unwitting collaboration, and we have provided it -- more than $1 trillion spent on two wars, more than 5,000 of our troops killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans dead. Our military is so overstretched that defense contracting -- for everything from interrogation to security to the gathering of intelligence -- is one of our few growth industries.

We have raced to Afghanistan and Iraq, and more recently to Yemen and Somalia; we have created a swollen national security apparatus; and we are so absorbed in our own fury and so oblivious to our enemy's intentions that we inflate the building of an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan into a national debate and watch, helpless, while a minister in Florida outrages even our friends in the Islamic world by threatening to burn copies of the Koran.

If bin Laden did not foresee all this, then he quickly came to understand it. In a 2004 video message, he boasted about leading America on the path to self-destruction. "All we have to do is send two mujaheddin . . . to raise a small piece of cloth on which is written 'al-Qaeda' in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses."

Through the initial spending of a few hundred thousand dollars, training and then sacrificing 19 of his foot soldiers, bin Laden has watched his relatively tiny and all but anonymous organization of a few hundred zealots turn into the most recognized international franchise since McDonald's. Could any enemy of the United States have achieved more with less?

Labels: 9/11, FUBAR, warmongering, wingnuttia

I wonder: If the news about Park51 had broken in, say, February of LAST year, would it have become as big a story? I doubt it. With Jan Brewer showing the entire country just what "catch the immigrants" looks like in real life, Republicans needed a new scapegoat to keep Americans afraid enough to give them back the keys to the car -- and Park51 gives them the perfect scapegoat: Muslims. Even when the underwear bomber was apprehended we didn't see anything like this. There's been no new attack, no new threats, just the right whipping up a frenzy of anti-Muslim sentiment -- because it tends to work for them. Rachel went over the fearmongering in detail on last night's show (video to come shortly), but our status as a Nation of Fear didn't start with a community center planned in lower Manhattan. It's been going on for nine years, and as we head into the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I think we ought to take a look at ourselves and see just how much nineteen guys with box cutters succeeded in bringing a once-great nation to its knees, willing to sacrifice everything it stands for in order to achieve an illusion -- a delusion, if you will -- of safety.

The latest tactic in the whack-a-mole of anti-terrorism arose after the Attempted Underwear Bombing of 2009 in the form of full-body screening machines replacing the hodgepodge of metal detectors and pat-downs at airport security checkpoints. If you are going to fly out of many airports now, you must submit to a dose of radiation as a prerequisite -- or suffer the consequences:

f you somehow missed the hoopla, there are two types of machines being installed, which have raised concerns about privacy, health risks and even their effectiveness at catching terrorists. The more controversial “backscatter” devices project an X-ray beam onto the body, creating an image displayed on a monitor viewed by a T.S.A. employee in another room. The “millimeter wave” machines, which are considered less risky because they do not use X-rays, bounce electromagnetic waves off the body to produce a similar image.

Unlike metal detectors, these machines can detect objects made with other materials, like plastic and ceramic. But they can’t see anything hidden inside your body, or detect certain explosives.

[snip]

The T.S.A. claims that the machines have been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, the Commerce Department’s National Institute for Standards and Technology and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. But when I called these organizations to ask about their evaluations, I learned that they basically tested only one thing — whether the amount of radiation emitted meets guidelines established by the American National Standards Institute, a membership organization of companies and government agencies.

But guess who was on the committee that developed the guidelines for the X-ray scanners? Representatives from the companies that make the machines and the Department of Homeland Security, among others. In other words, the machines passed a test developed, in part, by the companies that manufacture them and the government agency that wants to use them.

[snip]

Mr. Kimball said passengers can choose not to go through the scanner and opt for the metal detector and a pat down instead, information that is also on the T.S.A.’s Web site. But the message travelers are getting at the airport isn’t that clear.

“It definitely didn’t feel optional at all,” said Drew Hjelm, an Army veteran who recently encountered the X-ray machine at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. After asking to go through the metal detector, being turned down and even speaking with a supervisor, he was given other choices.

“The officer said, either you go through the body scanner or you leave the airport or we’re going to call the police and they’re going to come and arrest you,” Mr. Hjelm said. “After I went through the body scanner, they still patted my pants down.”

Since other passengers have said they weren’t given a choice, or were subjected to an aggressive pat down if they declined to be X-rayed, the Electronic Privacy Information Center has created an online form for travelers to report problems.

The advocacy group has also filed a motion in court to suspend the body scanner program, saying that it violates the Fourth Amendment (and other statutes) by imposing search procedures that are more intrusive than the courts have allowed for routine screening.

So this is what flying is now -- exposure to radiation by machines that have only been tested by people with a vested interest, automatic suspicion if you refuse to expose yourself to such radiation, and abuse by TSA personnel.

All in the same of quote-safety-end-quote -- safety that is, like the principles we used to stand for, only an illusion.

Nine years ago, Osama Bin Laden succeeded to a degree he could not even imagine. So when you observe the anniversary of the attacks tomorrow, by all means mourn the dead. But also mourn something else that died that day -- our very nation.

(Oh, and just as an aside -- these machines would NOT have detected the explosives carried by the so-called "underwear bomber".)

Labels: 9/11, air safety, Fourth Amendment, FUBAR

Alissa Torres is a woman who lost her husband Eddie, who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, in the 9/11 attacks. Notice I don't call her "a 9/11 widow." I do that because Torres is so much more than just a label that's all too often used as a political prop. She's also, in addition to many other things we don't even know about, an eloquent advocate for what this country is supposed to mean:

Whether it was an evenhanded article (like Newsweek's piece in which two mothers of firefighters shared their conflicting opinions) or any of the frustrating one-sided reports I've cringed over, it was hard to deny a whiff of Jerry Springer about this: All of us, in so much pain, duking it out in the public sphere. I felt saddened, confused. It used to be so meaningful to hear a victim's voice. To listen to someone speak out. Nine years later, as I watched this spectacle unfold, 9/11 victim pitted against 9/11 victim, I had to wonder: Was it still?

Right after my husband died, grief constricted my throat; I couldn't speak. Everyone, everywhere, talked about what happened: The news told me who killed my husband, what recovery efforts were occurring, where I could get resources. Meanwhile, I was mute. I remember in those early days how much it meant to hear Rita Lasar, who lost her brother Abe Zelmanowitz in the attack (and who eventually helped found 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows), a lone voice on TV explaining why it was wrong to invade Afghanistan.

Eventually, I found my voice in a series of articles I wrote for Salon and, later, in a book. I was lucky; I had a platform that allowed me to be more than a color quote in someone's reported story. As a Peaceful Tomorrows member, I lobbied in Washington on the U.S. Patriot Act, immigration and Guantánamo Bay, and though I always felt embarrassed saying it, my status as a 9/11 family member opened doors: I spoke to high-level legislative aides, I met with actual representatives.

There is therapy in speaking up, in feeling that you are not simply small and helpless in these giant matters. Each issue presents a chance for small triumph inside an abyss of loss. Maybe we can get this even if we can never get what we really want. Because what we really want is still to have our loved ones back.

But here is what's been lost in this Park51 controversy: We are not experts, we are victims. We deserve to speak up, we need to speak up to acknowledge the pain and suffering, but we were never meant to be leaders in a national debate. Because the only thing we really know intimately is grief. The only thing we really know is what it feels like to lose a loved one in 9/11.

As we approach the ninth anniversary of the event that ripped open our lives, those 5,000+ people on Arnie Korotkin's listserv are more divided than ever. And I can't shake the feeling that the media has duped us. In trying to create a controversy where there is none, in raking over wounds that -- nine years later -- still hurt. As we continue to grieve on Sept. 11, many 9/11 organizers have called for a "cease-fire" in the controversy to respect all our dead. But even that isn't something we can agree on; some families will use the day to continue to protest.

But for or against Park51, who among us wants to see images of the towers about to be hit by a plane splayed on New York City buses, as right-wing blogger Pamela Geller's anti-"ground zero mosque" ad features? None of us needs craven gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio, standing in front of a picture of the smoldering towers, saying that he speaks on behalf of the victims of 9/11.

Labels: 9/11, Gutter politics, Religious Intolerance

I can't believe what I was just watching on Countdown. Richard Wolffe is reporting that the Obama Administration plans to investigate whether intelligence information relative to the December 25 attempted airplane bombing was deliberately withheld. The question being asked is whether this is some kind of turf war among intelligence agencies -- the kind of turf war that was supposed to have stopped after the 9/11 attacks; or if the withholding of information was somehow deliberate -- "designed to make someone look bad."

I'm astounded that ANYONE in the press, let alone the Obama administration, is willing to go there. Because when you look at this information Wolffe is receiving in the context of Dick Cheney coming out of his hidey-hole to call Barack Obama weak on national security, it's not hard to imagine whom it was designed to make look bad. And if that's where the Administration is going, then we have something that some of us have been open to ever since that night in September 2001 when Larry Kudlow was on CNBC grinning from ear to ear because the attacks meant an end to any talk of a Social Security "lockbox"; one that should scare the bejeezus out of all of us -- that there are elements in this country's intelligence apparatus who are willing, even eager, to allow terrorist attacks to take place for Republican political gain.

We'll know more about this investigation tomorrow, when the President makes a statement around 4:00 PM Eastern time.

I'll post the clip as soon as I can get it.

UPDATE: Here it is:


...and Rachel's take:

Labels: 9/11, LIHOP, terrorism, tinfoil

I just heard a report on one of the news radio stations that some people are complaining that schoolchildren aren't being taught enough about 9/11. And that got me thinking: What SHOULD we teach children about 9/11? Should we teach them about this:


or this:



This:



This:



Or this:


I'm not naïve enough to believe, given the whitewashed versions of much of U.S. history that most children receive in school, that we'll ever see children taught about how the President refused to take a briefing seriously because he was on vacation, or how he used the attacks as a pretext to go to war against a country that wasn't even involved in them. The Dick Cheney meme of "We kept the country safe for eight years", ignoring the one day when they didn't; the day it really counted, the day about which plenty of people like Richard Clarke and the two poor CIA saps who dared disturb George W. Bush on August 6, 2001 while he was on vacation warned them about.

So what's the best we can hope for? Studs Terkel isn't around anymore to do an oral history, but since we're going to get a rah-rah version of that day anyway, the comments at today's New York Times story, "Remembering a Future that Many Feared" is a good place to start.

A few choice excerpts:

"I remember in the days following 9/11, when ordinary people were showing up to help at Ground Zero, CBC News showed 4 guys in the back of a pickup truck on their way to GZ. One of them said, "Man, I'm getting tired of this . We should've gone after those s the last time."
When I heard this, I got the funny feeling that NYC (and the US) would be ok."

"When I think of Sept. 11th I think of all those lives lost, I especially think of two sisters that worked at Cantor Fitzgerald and died that day (I don't know them or their family, but something about them has always stayed with me), and I resolve to live my life to the fullest to reach out to family and friends, to enjoy life, to vote, to stay involved, to try and make the world a better place. When I gripe that I have too much work and not enough time in the day, sometimes those sisters come back to me and I tell myself no complaints, enjoy it, enjoy life."


"I remember watching the peace marches that happened only days after the 9/11 attacks. New Yorkers of all colors and ages, marching, chanting "Peace, Salaam, Shalom." I also saw the spontaneous debates and discussions that happened wherever people gather--parks, plazas, etc. They often got heated, but ended in a handshake and a deep appreciation for our Bill of Rights. Many saw a world in smoke and embers, a world burning. I saw a world healing, on the verge of breaking through to a new day, a new society, a new world community.

Then George W. Bush and the neo-cons got hold of things, and all we knew from then on was fear, fear, and more fear. The terror they sowed was rivaled only by the terror sown by the 9-11 hijackers themselves. Their culture of fear has persisted ever since, leading us to invade two foreign nations, embroil ourselves in legal/moral/ethical quandaries, and sow discord throughout the world (NOT just the Muslim world).

I still admire New Yorkers for their bravery, dignity, and courage in the face of the horrors inflicted upon them after 9-11. And I will never forgive the Bush administration from taking that away from them, and turning it into a political tool for achieving their foreign policy agenda. They turned the grief of American families into gold in their pockets, and into the grief of families in Iraq and Afghanistan. For that, they will be judged."


"It is true that New York has come back, but the post 9/11 New York is decidedly different from the pre-9/11 city it replaced. Gone is the swagger and confidence that the 1990’s economic boom instilled in us. Gone is the certainty that the city would continue as the world’s economic capitol, and in fact its primacy is now seriously challenged by London and Beijing. Gone is the belief that New York represented the best America had to offer the world. Chicago has quickly become the country’s new “Emerald City,” which might grab the Olympic prize for 2016 that New York failed to get for 2012. No, something intangible is gone. That elusive “Top of the World” belief we had in ourselves is gone. Just as the rhythm and pulse of the traffic in Times Square has been replaced by lawn chairs and benches (What next? Hammocks!), it seems that the drive and pulse of its citizens has also diminished."


"I woke up on the morning of the 12th in my sister's Upper East Side apt, since I wasn't able to get home to my apartment in Queens the day before. I took an early subway to work in midtown, and the last stop on the train was Bleecker St...none of us on the train knew what lay south of Bleecker at that moment, and were all imagining the worst. My company decided to close that day, and I went in search of a bloodbank to donate blood. I didn't know what else to do. The bloodbank said they were already overloaded with donations, and didn't need more. The city was silent, the only sound was sirens. No car traffic, no one on the sidewalk talking, no one making eye contact with each other, everyone in shock. It's the only time I've known NYC to be quiet. Later, that night, when I made it home to Astoria, there were flags flying from every house on my block, and it felt so emotional to know we were all united together."

I too remember that feeling of "What now?" on September 12, 2001. I was already appalled at the Bush Administration, but I remember having this feeling that we had to trust that president because what choice did we have? I remember taking the paper flag so nicely provided by our local newspaper and hanging it in the front window. I remember Mr. Brilliant saying, "God, I hope he knows what the hell he's doing."

And of course we know how THAT turned out.

There are hundreds of thousands of preschoolers and elementary schoolers in this country who weren't even here yet on that day, or who are too young to remember. What should they be taught, and what will be taught?

Labels: 9/11

When will the media stop taking the lunacy of the right seriously?

Matthew Vadum at American Spectator:

The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry.

This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but it's not likely many lawmakers thought this meant that day was going to be turned into a celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing.

OMG!! Grab the duct tape and sheeting! COMMUNITY ORGANIZING!!!! AAAAUUUUGGGGHHH!!!!

I wonder what Mr. Vadum (and wouldn't I love to know what HIS daddy issues are) thinks SHOULD be the meaning of the 9/11 attacks? Perhaps he thinks it should be "beat up a Muslim" day. Or maybe "Kill a liberal" day. Or maybe "Bomb a Federal building in Oklahoma" day. Something good and violent to keep our hate on.

Perhaps Mr. Vadum doesn't remember how people came together in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to work at the rubble site, or provide bottled water and food to those working there. There were so many people -- an impromptu COMMUNITY which ORGANIZED itself to help out at a time of need.

What a horrible way to remember that day -- to revive the spirit of "We are all together" that for a few brief days before George Bush discovered the power to be had by advocating endless war and constant fear -- existed in New York City.

(h/t)

Labels: 9/11, right-wing hatemongers

Richard Clarke has had quite enough of Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, and the rest of the Bush Administration's war criminals' claim that "they kept us safe after 9/11", thank you very much. He reminds us that when the warnings were there, these murderous criminals ignored them. I believe it was that they wanted an excuse to go into Iraq, but Clarke seems to learn more towards simple incompetence:

Top officials from the Bush administration have hit upon a revealing new theme as they retrospectively justify their national security policies. Call it the White House 9/11 trauma defense.

"Unless you were there, in a position of responsibility after September 11, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans," Condoleezza Rice said last month as she admonished a Stanford University student who questioned the Bush-era interrogation program. And in his May 21 speech on national security, Dick Cheney called the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a "defining" experience that "caused everyone to take a serious second look" at the threats to America. Critics of the administration have become more intense as memories of the attacks have faded, he argued. "Part of our responsibility, as we saw it," Cheney said, "was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America."

I remember that morning, too. Shortly after the second World Trade Center tower was hit, I burst in on Rice (then the president's national security adviser) and Cheney in the vice president's office and remember glimpsing horror on his face. Once in the bomb shelter, Cheney assembled his team while the crisis managers on the National Security Council staff coordinated the government response by video conference from the Situation Room. Many of us thought that we might not leave the White House alive. I remember the next day, too, when smoke still rose from the Pentagon as I sat in my office in the White House compound, a gas mask on my desk. The streets of Washington were empty, except for the armored vehicles, and the skies were clear, except for the F-15s on patrol. Every scene from those days is seared into my memory. I understand how it was a defining moment for Cheney, as it was for so many Americans.

Yet listening to Cheney and Rice, it seems that they want to be excused for the measures they authorized after the attacks on the grounds that 9/11 was traumatic. "If you were there in a position of authority and watched Americans drop out of eighty-story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people," Rice said in her recent comments, "then you were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again."

I have little sympathy for this argument. Yes, we went for days with little sleep, and we all assumed that more attacks were coming. But the decisions that Bush officials made in the following months and years -- on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping -- were not appropriate. Careful analysis could have replaced the impulse to break all the rules, even more so because the Sept. 11 attacks, though horrifying, should not have surprised senior officials. Cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.

Go read the whole thing. Clarke has tried mightily to be diplomatic in the years since the 9/11 Whitewash the Bush Administration Commission, but after Dick Cheney's reprehensible behavior of the last two weeks, he's finally decided to point out what many of us have known ever since that day in 2001: That when it counted, these people were AT BEST asleep at the switch. If you want to paint yourselves as competent, you don't claim credit for closing the barn door after the horse has escaped.

To the extent that we live in a more dangerous world today, it's BECAUSE of the mistakes of the Bush Administration. Frank Rich enumerates them today:

On Sept. 6, 2002, Landay and Strobel reported that there was no known new intelligence indicating that “the Iraqis have made significant advances in their nuclear, biological or chemical weapons programs.” It was two days later that The Times ran its now notorious front-page account of Saddam Hussein’s “quest for thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes.” In the months that followed, as the Bush White House kept beating the drum for Saddam’s imminent mushroom clouds to little challenge from most news organizations, Landay and Strobel reported on the “lack of hard evidence” of Iraqi weapons and the infighting among intelligence agencies. Their scoops were largely ignored by the big papers and networks as America hurtled toward fiasco.

Another reporter who was ahead of the pack in unmasking Bush-Cheney propaganda is the author Ron Suskind. In his 2006 book on the American intelligence matrix, “The One Percent Doctrine,” Suskind wrote about a fully operational and potentially catastrophic post-9/11 Qaeda assault on America that actually was aborted in the Bush years: a hydrogen cyanide attack planned for the New York City subways. It was halted 45 days before zero hour — but not because we stopped it. Al-Zawahri had called it off.

When Bush and Cheney learned of the cancellation later on from conventional intelligence, they were baffled as to why. The answer: Al-Zawahri had decided that a rush-hour New York subway attack was not enough of an encore to top 9/11. Al Qaeda’s “special event” strategy, Suskind wrote, requires the creation of “an upward arc of rising and terrible expectation” that is “multiplied by time passing.” The event that fits that bill after 9/11 must involve some kind of nuclear weapon.

“What are the lessons of this period?” Suskind asked when we spoke last week. “If you draw the wrong lessons, you end up embracing the wrong answers.” They are certainly not the lessons cited by Cheney. Waterboarding hasn’t and isn’t going to save us from anything. The ticking time-bomb debate rekindled by Cheney’s speech may be entertaining on “24” or cable-news food fights, but is a detour from the actual perils before the country. “What we’re dealing with is a patient foe who thinks in decades while we tend to think more in news cycles,” Suskind said. “We have to try to wrestle this fear-based debate into something resembling a reality-based discussion.”

The reality is that while the Bush administration was bogged down in Iraq and being played by Pervez Musharraf, the likelihood of Qaeda gaining access to nuclear weapons in a Taliban-saturated Pakistan was increasing by the day. We know that in the month before 9/11, bin Laden and al-Zawahri met with the Pakistani nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood. That was the real link between 9/11 and nuclear terror that the Bush administration let metastasize while it squandered American resources on a fictional link between 9/11 and a “nuclear” Saddam.

And where are we now? On the eve of Obama’s inauguration, David Sanger reported in The Times that military and nuclear experts agree that if “a real-life crisis” breaks out in Pakistan “it is unlikely that anyone would be able to assure an American president, with confidence, that he knew where all of Pakistan’s weapons were — or that none were in the hands of Islamic extremists.”

Pakistan is the time bomb. But with a push from Cheney, abetted by too many Democrats and too many compliant journalists, we have been distracted into drawing the wrong lessons, embracing the wrong answers. We are even wasting time worrying that detainees might escape from tomb-sized concrete cells in Colorado.

What we need to be doing instead, as Suskind put it, is to “build the thing we don’t have — human intelligence. We need people who are cooperating with us, who step up and help, and who won’t turn away when they see things happening. Hearts and minds — which we’ve botched — must be corrected and corrected quickly. That’s what wins the battle, not going medieval.

After all the lies, after all the botching of this nation's anticipation of terrorism, handling of terrorism, and policy in the Middle East, why on earth, other than craven attempts at getting ratings, is ANYONE even listening to anything Dick Cheney says? And why is anyone giving him any credit at all for knowing what he's talking about? The news media were in thrall to these people for eight years, and they're in thrall to them still. Perhaps they feel fear gets ratings. Perhaps they long for the kind of punitive Big Daddy that Cheney represents instead of the one who'll get on the swingset with you like Obama. Perhaps they think that global thermonuclear war will be a cool thing to cover. But you can get that if a Democrat had botched eight years in office the way the Cheneybush Administration did, David Gregory and the rest of the media whores wouldn't be fellating him on national television.

Labels: 9/11, Dick Cheney, incompetence, LIHOP, war crimes

No, I don't think we should let up on Dick Cheney's claim that he "kept us safe after 9/11." Closing the barn door after the horse leaves, when you knew that door wasn't secure doesn't qualify you for a medal. An administration that came into power claiming that "the adults are now in charge" and then ignored (perhaps deliberately) warning after warning that something very big and very bad was about to happen has absolutely ZERO claim on "keeping us safe."

Now, former 9/11 Commission member Richard Ben Veniste, best known for asking Condoleeza Rice for reciting the title of the now infamous August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing, has heard quite enough about how Dick Cheney's lunatic view of the universe "kept us safe" AFTER the Bush Adminitration's spectactular level of negligence:

In the interview with Bush, Ben-Veniste asked the president why he hadn't met with the FBI director after getting the PDB.

Bush replied that there were concerns predating his administration about politicizing the FBI and interfering in pending cases.

But "this was no pending case subject to claims of political interference," Ben-Veniste writes in his book.

The president said he couldn't recall whether he asked National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to get in touch with the FBI regarding the PDB, according to the book.

There was no immediate response from a spokesman for the former president to requests for comment.

Finally declassified by the Bush administration amid public and political pressure in April 2004, the PDB from Aug. 6, 2001 said, "The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden related." The PDB also said that the CIA and the FBI at the time were investigating a call to the U.S. embassy in the United Arab Emirates three months earlier saying that "a group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives."

It's clear that Dick Cheney is now operating in accordance with his "One Percent Doctrine" -- that if there is a one percent chance that something is true, you proceed as if it were a foregone conclusion. In this case, given his daughter Liz' inadvertent revelation that her dad is crapping his pants at the thought that he might be prosecuted for his crimes, he probably feels that there is MORE than a one percent chance, even though so far the Obama Administration has been loath to even entertain the possibility. But as Cheney makes his Legacy Tour, and keeps repeating his safety claim, at what point do we actually start to look not at the post-9/11 record, when ANY administration would have stepped up to the plate, but at the time period between January 20 and September 10 2001, when warning after warning of an impending attack came in -- and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did nothing.

Nothing.

They. Did. Nothing.

The choice we have in our view of these criminals is simple: Were they simply stupid, utterly incompetent, or did they decide to let things play out so they could invade Iraq? Take your pick. Whichever you choose, it is completely inconsistent with Dick Cheney's public posture as Savior of America™.

Labels: 9/11, Bush Administration crimes, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, LIHOP