Fool Me Twice

If you tell a lie enough times, does it become the truth? George Bush and Dick Cheney and their various apologists would have us believe that the greatest victory of this administration is that they have kept us safe from terrorism. Everything they have done, every transgression of the law, every attack on the Constitution was done in the name of keeping us safe from terrorism. The story they wish to tell us is that the ends have justified the means. I live in New York City and I lived here on that fateful September day in 2001. I would like to remind the President, the Vice President and all those who would seek to perpetuate the myth that the Bush administrations responsibility somehow magically began on 9/12/2001, that 3,000 people lost their lives on that day. I would ask them to talk to the families and friends of those who were killed that day and try and convince them that they have been kept "safe" during the Bush administration.

On September 11, 2001 George Bush had been in office for almost 9 months. He had been on vacation for 3 of those months. He was given ample warning of a potential terrorist attack by the use of hijacked planes. He and his advisors chose to do nothing about those warnings. When told about the attack he sat stunned and unresponsive for several minutes as he listened to school children read books aloud. At that very moment he realized that his incompetence had cost the lives of thousands of Americans. He realized that history would blame him for being asleep at the wheel and for ignoring the multiple warnings that he had received. To some extent, his administration did begin on 9/12/01. The campaign to systematically destroy the rights of the citizens of this country and to bring about the neocom dream of military action and nation building, began in earnest on that day.

President Bush came to NY and said all the right things to a shocked and dazed nation. He promised retribution and America stood up and cheered. There was no talk of the fact that this could have been prevented. There was no talk of the fact that the President had ignored warnings of just such an attack. There was no talk of the President being on vacation almost as much as he was on the job. There was no talk of blaming the current administration for the needless loss of American lives. The press focused on the tragedy and the talk of retribution. The American people wanted blood and the Bush administration was going to make sure that they got it.

There was a commission put in place to investigate 9/11. The commissioners were appointed by the President and Congress. Eventually they came to the conclusion that it was the intelligence community and not the President who was to blame for the attack. Of course that was just one part of the strategy to distract and deflect the gaze of the American public. The coup de grace was the war with Iraq. The administration decided to go to war with a country that had neither attacked us or played any part in the 9/11 attacks. Iraq posed no credible threat to the United States and yet George Bush and his pals were able to convince the American people that it was a moral imperative for us to commit our troops to this endeavor. The administration sent out its Boy Scout (Colin Powell) to convince the rest of the world that Iraq posed the greatest threat to world peace since Hitler's Germany. Even today, when it has been proven that there was no like between the 9/11 hijackers and Iraq, the Vice President still insists on trying to muddy the waters by claiming that Saddam Hussein had links to Al-Qaeda.

The truth played no part in any decision that the Bush administration made regarding 9/11. Illegal wiretapping, torture, no bid contracts in Iraq, etc. are all just part of the plan that began on 9/12/01. A lie repeated can sometimes become the truth. We here at Random Thoughts can only hope that there are enough people who will remain vigilant about reporting what actually happened during this administration, that the lie does not become the truth. We were not kept safe by George W. Bush. We died (in war and in terrorist attacks), we were tortured, we were bugged, we were ignored after natural disasters, we had our rights taken away and we were lied to on a daily basis. That is the truth of Bush administration. Let's make sure that we never forget it.