A new case of foot in mouth.
Archive for the '9/11' Category
About time somebody told them.
(By the way, when will the mainstream media ask Ron Paul about his support of the 9/11 truthers, going so far as to have his press guy make regular appearance on “9/11 Truth” leader Alex Jones’ radio show? Just askin’.)
Still wanted. Still on the loose. Deaths of our fellow citizens remain unavenged.
That is the totally bizarre way President Bush described the 9/11 hijackers yesterday.
It matters to the security of people here at home if we don’t work to change the conditions that cause 19 kids to be lured onto airplanes to come and murder our citizens.
Kids?
He just doesn’t come across well. He seems combative, argumentative, etc. In other words, another incompetent Bush administration official (and yes, I know he was there before Bush came in). As I noted - this guy was CIA director at the time of the worst intelligence failure in U.S. history. He didn’t say a damn thing when we invaded Iraq, when he received the medal of honor and on and on until he’s got a book to push in order to financially benefit himself.
Just not credible.
George Tenet is making headlines saying the administration misplayed the WMD evidence. But Tenet has held his tongue on this information for years now until he stands to gain fiscally. George Tenet is the CIA director who served at the time of the worst intelligence failure in U.S. history. He was part of the leadership team that led this country into a war that killed over 3,000 Americans. For this he was awarded the medal of freedom and he held his tongue.
Take what he says with a giant salt lick.
After Don Imus was fired we got (and continue to receive) the worst kind of hate mail at Media Matters you could think of, but to my knowledge nobody has alleged anything like this fanciful plot where Don Imus gets fired because he was about to reveal some sort of 9/11 secret.
Then again, like with most conspiracies, that’s what “they” want you to think.
By the way, while I’ve always been fascinated and amused by conspiracy theories, the bunch behind the “9/11 Truth” movement are just dumb and they make the folks who obsess over the JFK assassination look calm and scholarly (I’ve got more than a passing interest in the story). Put bluntly: LBJ working with the mafia, communists, and the military industrial complex to assassinate Kennedy is a heck of a lot more plausible than saying that the single most recorded event in human history was somehow masterfully executed by George Bush — who cannot even fire a bunch of lawyers properly.
Must see American History.
A writer at the far-right online magazine, American Thinker, in a screed attacking Barack Obama writes this:
Five years ago the White House and Congress were barely spared, but only because the passengers on Flight 94 took matters into their own hands, and died as a result.
Of course, every other American knows that the flight in question was United Flight 93. I mean, it’s not like we all watched the same event or if they made a movie about it. Oh, wait.
The geniuses over at Red State try to prop up ABC’s anti-Clinton propaganda film and in the course of doing so make a salient point:
But at the end, nearly 3,000 people still die. That’s one scene the liberals will never be able to rewrite.
Yes, 3,000 people died on 9/11. Innocent people killed on a September morning five years ago. The architects of their murders remains on the loose, their hateful ideology now propelled to a major force in the world. Yes, 3,000 people died on the watch of an American president who hasn’t avenged their deaths.
His name is George W. Bush.
President Bush demonstrates the Republican strategy on defeating terrorism and securing America.
The DNC comes out on the 9/11 slander movie being used by Disney/ABC to prop up Bush.
The ABC television network — a cog in the Walt Disney empire — unleashed a promotional blitz in the last week for a new “docudrama” called “The Path to 9/11″. ABC has thrown its corporate might behind the two-night production, and bills it as a public service: a TV event, to quote the ABC tagline, “based on the 9/11 Commission Report”.
That’s false. “The Path to 9/11″ is actually a bald-faced attempt to slander Democrats and revise history right before Americans vote in a major election.
>> Open Letter to ABC: Don’t Airbrush 9/11
MORE: ABC is actually going out of their way to tell the right-wing that yes, they will smear President Clinton and that they have nothing to worry about. Welcome to the brave new world.
In the continuing affair between fiction and propaganda, ABC’s 9/11 slander piece just simply makes a scene up. It follows in the conservative path of just throwing crap against the wall and hoping the MSM is dumb enough to just let it stick. I understand ABC makes a healthy profit off of pushing out right-wing noise like Sean Hannity, but they usually don’t blatantly shill like that. Is anyone aware of any broadcast-related legislation swimming around in congress that would provide motive for this latest round of attack.
Berger, portrayed as a pasty-faced time-server by Kevin Dunn (Col. Hicks in “Godzilla”) freezes in dithering apprehension when a manly and virtuous CIA agent played by Donnie Wahlberg radios in from the wilds of Afghanistan to say that he and his noble band of local tribesmen have Osama bin Laden within sight and begs for the green light to terminate him with extreme prejudice. In the film, the line goes dead before Berger offers any reply.
The moment is clearly intended to encapsulate the notion of American inattentiveness to the terror threat in the 1990s — a point driven home when the camera pans back to show Berger surrounded by a supporting cast of fellow Clinton administration nervous Nellies, including Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen.
So when the post-screening question-and-answer session began, Ben-Veniste stood to say that the Berger-bashing scene didn’t square with the research he and the other commissioners conducted. “There was no incident like that in the film that we came across. I am disturbed by that aspect of it,” Ben-Veniste, a loyal Democrat, told the panel, which included both the producer and the commission’s GOP chairman, former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey.
Berger, reached by phone after the screening, seconded Ben-Veniste’s criticism. “It’s a total fabrication,” he said tersely. “It did not happen.”
The Bush administration proclaimed significant progress in the war on terror Tuesday but said the enemy has adjusted to U.S. defenses and that “America is safer but we are not yet safe.”
Releasing an updated counterterrorism strategy in advance of a speech that
President Bush was set to give later in the day, the White House said: “The United States and our partners continue to pursue a significantly degraded but still dangerous al-Qaida network.”
Five years ago this week, the Taliban’s al-Qa’ida allies made final preparations to launch devastating attacks on America that would precipitate the “war on terror,” the US led invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent invasion of Iraq.
Far from ending terrorism, George Bush’s tactics of using overwhelming military might to fight extremism appear to have rebounded, spawning an epidemic of global terrorism that has claimed an estimated 72,265 lives since 2001, most of them Iraqi civilians.
More Americans have died via terrorism during the presidency of George Bush than for any president in American history. Terrorism has increased every year of his presidency.
Otherwise, he’s doing a heck of a job.
Five damn years since 9/11 and Al Qaeda still exists to threaten America.
We destroyed the Nazis in less time, but when it comes to this gang of murderous chuckleheads our spineless leadership quakes in fear.
In the continuing saga of propaganda disguised as entertainment and information, ABC is pushing a movie that blames 9/11 on President Clinton instead of the administration on whose watch the worst terrorist attacks happened (rhymes with George W. Bush).
If you wanted even more proof that the GOP is desperate and that their rhetorical well is as dry as the Sahara, look no further.
President Bush and his surrogates are launching a new campaign
intended to rebuild support for the war in Iraq by accusing the
opposition of aiming to appease terrorists and cut off funding for
troops on the battlefield, charges that many Democrats say distort
their stated positions.With an appearance before the American
Legion in Salt Lake City today, Bush will begin a series of speeches
over 20 days centered on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks. But he and his top lieutenants have foreshadowed in recent
days the thrust of the effort to put Democrats on the defensive with
rhetoric that has further inflamed an already emotional debate.
The only way the line of attack works is for Democrats to use the same idiotic responses they’ve used since 2001 - either not responding at all or just parroting the right. Neither works. Americans are looking for backbone, and while the Republicans stand only for disaster, death and continued mayhem and insecurity - they’re standing for something.
Democrats, at long last must stand firm. They must not allow Republicans to continue the appeasement of terrorists and the unnecessary unwarranted killings of our troops in a flawed, failed, and ill-fated Iraqi engagement. Democrats must at long last fully engage the Republican party on the central issue of national security and educate America that the party that led us through the greatest war man has ever known is the party that is more interested in killing, capturing and punishing America’s true enemies than in conducting a all-hat and no cattle photo op policy that is getting people murdered.
Terror is the central issue of our time. Five years ago Al Qaeda attacked us in New York City, Washington D.C, and Pennsylvania. To this day, that mass murder remains unavenged thanks to Republican dithering and appeasement of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. The Republican party fought John Kerry with more vigor and vitality than they attack Al Qaeda.
They use rhetoric and win elections but do nothing to lead and govern. Democrats wish to defend, secure and unite Americans. The clear choice must be made or we are doomed to continued Republican led "heck of a job", "bring ‘em on" failures.
On the coming anniversary of 9/11, CBS plans to broadcast the film “9/11″, a documentary of that fateful day in American history. But our domestic Taliban is upset. You see, CBS plans to show “9/11″ in an uncut format on the air. But Don Wildmon and the religious right army he commands is trying to censor the broadcast.
Why?
Because there are some dirty words being used.
That’s right, because when confronted with terrorist bastards who sought to kill thousands of us, a firefighter, a cop or a regular citizen might have been compelled to use a four letter word.
Because they are human.
But the “American Family Association” is a soft-minded association of nincompoops whose slavish devioton to censoring the world knows no bounds. And so they’ve launched a campaign to censor CBS’ broadcast of 9/11 because - oh no, someone is going to use a naughty word.
Frank Rich makes a similar argument that I’ve been making in his Sunday NYT column, discussing how especially in a post-Katrina America, the Republican ability to scare up votes by freaking out people just doesn’t work.
Five Years After 9/11, Fear Finally Strikes Out
What makes the foiled London-Pakistan plot seem more of a serious threat — though not so serious it disrupted Tony Blair’s vacation — is that the British vouched for it, not Attorney General Gonzales and his Keystone Kops. This didn’t stop Michael Chertoff from grabbing credit in his promotional sprint through last Sunday’s talk shows. “It was as if we had an opportunity to stop 9/11 before it actually was carried out,” he said, insinuating himself into that royal we. But no matter how persistent his invocation of 9/11, our secretary of homeland security is too discredited to impress a public that has been plenty disillusioned since Karl Rove first exhibited the flag-draped remains of a World Trade Center victim in a 2004 campaign commercial. We look at Mr. Chertoff and still see the man who couldn’t figure out what was happening in New Orleans when the catastrophe was being broadcast in real time on television.
…
Most of the 60 percent of Americans who oppose the war in Iraq also want to win the war against Al Qaeda and its metastasizing allies: that’s one major reason they don’t want America bogged down in Iraq.
Boo-yah. Can I get a witness from the congregation?
Kevin Drum is wondering how hard-nosed Democrats should be on the issue of security and terror in 2006. My answer is what it has always been: very.
(Nobody has listened to me so far and they’ve lost in 2002 and 2004. I don’t pretend to have all the answers but punting when you’re down in the fourth quarter just seems asinine to me.)
Democrats should take every answer to ask “are you safer now than you were six years ago?” Republicans will reliably answer yes and say that we’ve “had no major terrorist attacks since” 9/11. But that’s not the question, and I don’t think its what most people have in mind.
WE STOPPED AN AIRPLANE FOR FACIAL CLEANSER TODAY.
SOON, W’ERE GOING TO “FIGHT TERROR” BY REALLY STARING HARD AT PEOPLE.
Again, “are you safer now than you were six years ago?” But first, throw away your g-d lip gloss and take off your freaking shoes so the guy at the airport can feel you up!
“Are you safer now than you were six years ago?”
No, we’re not.
Every year of the Bush administration has seen terrorism increase (no matter how hard they try to cook the numbers). The perpetrators of 9/11 are still on the loose and their organization is growing. We’re the richest country in the world but we don’t have infinite resources. The force and time we are spending to police Iraq’s civil war could be spent smashing terror networks, infiltrating them in the same law enforcement manner with which the UK has.
This is the issue, this is vital, this is the path to save America.
