By Isaac
isaac3rd@attbi.com
 

"Behind every goal I've talked about tonight is a great hope for our country. A hundred years from now this must not be remembered as an age rich in possession and poor in ideals. Instead, we must usher in an era of responsibility."

"I don't think it's healthy to take yourself too seriously, but what I do take seriously is my responsibility."

"For too long our culture has sent this message: if it feels good, do it.  And if you've got a problem, just go ahead and blame somebody else. Each of   us must understand that's not right."

"Public officials should call on Americans to be responsible, but lectures do not replace leadership. Leaders must lead by example. Leaders must be responsible, and in our great democracy, the top responsibility rests with the President of the United States."
 

All of these statements were made by George W. Bush at various times. Responsibility has been one of the words he has used most often, either during campaigns, or while in office. Unfortunately, he hasn't publicly said anything even close to this lately. Responsibility is one of his favorite words, but he doesn't seem to really grasp the concept of true responsibility. The questions are flying from every direction about the news that the White House knew about the possibility of the terrorist attacks in Sept. 2001. It's too bad that now Bush doesn't have Karen Hughes around to put the words in his mouth. Taking responsibility has been in short supply, even when she was there.

Karen Hughes sure decided to get out of the administration while the getting was good, didn't she? This year hasn't been a good one for Bush Inc. so far, and it looks like she was the smart one, leaving just at the right time.

She was there, keeping Bush and the White House 'on message' when the Enron scandal broke (and has broken wider with the "smoking gun" memos showing they manipulated energy prices), the coup attempt in Venezuela that this administration is implicated in, and severe criticism for mishandling the Middle East. But she jumped ship in time to miss the Big One: The recent news that the administration had advance knowledge that, if acted on, could have prevented or limited the loss of life on Sept. 11, 2001.

This White House is famous for how tightly controlled and coordinated its public statements have been up until now. If the subject weren't so grim and tragic, it would almost be amusing to watch the people who have stayed in office squirming through the questions being asked now. Karen must be doing cartwheels right now that she's not one of them.

Most of the questions have been tough, but they could get much tougher. So far, the spin from the White House has been no less than inept and unconvincing. There has been nothing even close to taking responsibility-it's all been about shifting responsibility to someone else for the lapses that allowed the tragedy to occur. The responses we have gotten so far seem to be in two categories: 1. "The buck didn't even make it here" and 2. Trying to rephrase the question about Bush's knowledge, or lack of, as "What didn't he know, and when didn't he know it"?

There's a lot of screaming from the Right that the Democrats are just playing politics and want to make this a campaign issue. This, from the party who was taking instruction from Karl Rove to milk the war on terror for all it's worth for political gain in the elections this fall. And the new Sept. 11 news came right in the middle of a criticism of the GOP for selling photos of George on Air Force One on that day. So, who is playing politics here?

Anyone who is suggesting that there ought to be a full-blown investigation is accused of being "partisan". Cynthia McKinney is still being called "crazy". The "patriot" card is being played from the bottom of the deck lately; Cheney, for one, has questioned the patriotism of anyone who wants answers. In his case, though, it could merely be that he is trying to also confuse issues about the news recently that Cheney's previous employer, Halliburton, had some Enron-like accounting problems brought to light; Arthur Andersen was Halliburton's accounting firm, too.

New information comes out every day, and none of it makes the White House look good. The more explanations the White House tries to float, the higher the skepticism level rises, and the more questions are raised. The more they try to deflect the question of an investigation, the more it looks like we need one. Cheney and Condi Rice have been trotted out to do damage control  Cheney's claim that we shouldn't have an investigation because that would open up the possibility of leaks is a head-scratcher that doesn't address the problem and doesn't hold water.

Blaming the tragedy on Clinton won't fly, either. Reports are starting to come out that in 1995, a terrorist tied to bin Laden was arrested in the Philippines. He admitted that he had planned to get flight training in the U.S., then to pack a plane with explosives and fly it into CIA headquarters. He had also planned to hijack and blow up a dozen U.S. jets. He was convicted in a U.S. court for that plot. This administration still says it had no idea planes could be used as weapons.

Also, in 1999, the Clinton administration caught a terrorist trying to enter the United States. He was arrested, his partners were tracked down, and terrorist attacks in New York and Los Angeles were prevented. A Clinton-ordered attack on bin Laden just missed killing him, but his detractors said he was just trying to deflect attention away from Monica. And besides, Boy George Bush, on his month-long vacation, was given a briefing memo on August 6, 2001 about bin Laden plans to attack U.S. targets. The Washington Post says the report was titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike the United States in U.S.”, but Ari Fleischer says the memo didn't contain the words "in U.S.". The White House also says the memo was "not specific", and that besides, members of Congress got the same memo. But Senator Dick Durbin of the Senate Intelligence Committee says that the version his committee received was just an incomplete summary of what the White House had.

It goes on and on: The FBI memos, the Hart-Rudman report on anti-terror recommendations, the warnings from the governments of Israel, Italy, France and Germany, and other information ignored by Bush Inc. Each point made, and each evasion by the White House make it more and more clear that we are not going to get to the bottom of what happened, and what needs to be done, without an investigation.

I don't have any delusions that Bush or Cheney will ever read this (Ashcroft may be a different story, though), but here goes.

I suggest they read the quotes from George W. I included above. If there is any responsibility to be taken, it needs to start at the top. The murders last September could have been avoided. The highest single day death toll in American history was totally avoidable, and while Americans did not cause it, Americans could have prevented it.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, along with the rest of this administration and the Republican Party, have not been above exploiting this tragedy for political gain. The loss of security, in our personal lives, in our freedoms and liberties, and in our sense of well-being is not totally attributable to terrorists from foreign countries, but from the actions of our own government. These people had the plans drawn up in advance of Sept. 11 for the particulars of the USA-PATRIOT Act, and the terrorist attacks gave them an excuse to move us toward a more insecure totalitarian dictatorship. I don't hesitate to use that word. They have played on xenophobic fear, and have used the force of government to coerce this population into accepting Draconian laws and harsh measures that any society in its collective right mind would be up in arms about. From the underhanded way that the "election" was manipulated, to the restriction of information to the rest of us, to the forcing of a hard-right, pro-business, anti-environment agenda, on down the line, these people have much to answer for and explain. Asking for answers about why the murders happened, and to what extent they have to answer for their part is not treason. It is not playing "armchair quarterback", nor is it playing "partisan games". It is wanting to get to the bottom of, and finding out the truth, about a disaster that did not need to happen.

Bush, Cheney, and most of the rest of this administration are multi-millionaires, which means they can buy and sell most of us multiple millions of times. Fine. But when they decided they wanted to run the government, they decided to work for me, and for you, too. The presidency is not an imperial position. The government is our servant, not our master. Each one of us who has been forced to live with the decisions of this administration, its policies and priorities, and their consequences, deserve to know all there is to know about how we got there. They say there are national security concerns, and they're right. As a nation, we need the security that comes from peace of mind, from being able to trust our leaders, and as long as they evade answering the hard questions, that security is not possible. The more they twist in the wind and dodge questions, the more they make clear that we are asking the right questions.

The current administration, and Bush in particular, have traded so far to a large extent on trust. Bush claimed repeatedly while campaigning for his office that he trusts the people of this country. Opinion polls say that many of our citizens trust him. But trust has to be earned and maintained. One of the comments made most often about this administration is that it runs like a machine. But while I may trust my car to get me where I'm going, the government, like any machine, works best when you open the hood and take a good look around at what is under there. We have the right to know.

And if these people have nothing to hide, they should quit hiding the answers.
 

isaac

I report. I decide.