Abraham Lincoln, whose 195th birthday is coming up, is remembered as a moral force in American history. He was also a shrewd politician. He was in shrewd mode when he said, “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
The puff pieces written about presidential doppelganger Karl Rove routinely gush over Mr. Rove’s grasp of American political history, but he seems to have forgotten – or perhaps never learned – Mr. Lincoln’s dictum. The time has come when all of the people are not fooled and we are seeing the fabrications of George W. Bush’s White House collapse on all sides.
Let’s start with 9-11. After months of resisting calls for an investigation into the intelligence failures that allowed the September 11th attacks to occur, Mr. Bush did an about-face the same week that an FBI whistleblower was telling Congress about how her superiors ignored her specific warnings about the terrorists. Mr. Bush tried to appoint Henry Kissinger, himself an unindicted war criminal, to lead the probe but that fooled none of the people none of the time.
Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton now head the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, but the investigation has run into a series of stone walls erected by the White House. I don’t think the Bush people are sitting on a terrible secret. The information is out there; it seeped into the media, a bit at a time over the past few years. What White House officials are afraid of is being confronted with all this information in one ugly pile and having to admit, under oath and on the record, that they did nothing about the warnings that al Quaeda members might hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings.
That exact scenario was predicted in a 1999 federal security report. It’s true the federal government produces many security reports, but since that report was about al Quaeda, it should have been in the “al Quaeda” file at the White House. Throughout the summer of 2001, counter-terrorism experts, picking up on increased “chatter” among suspected terrorists, repeatedly warned the Bush staffers that an attack was likely, even imminent and may involve commercial aircraft and al Quaeda.
The most damning piece of information, the one George Walker Bush most wants to hide, is the briefing he received on August 6, 2001 from Richard Clarke, who was then director of counter-terrorism for the National Security Council. That day, Mr. Clarke warned Mr. Bush that Osama bin Laden and al Quaeda were determined to strike targets in the United States. George Bush’s response to that briefing was to go on vacation for 35 days. Mr. Bush was given more than enough information to avoid the 9-11 tragedy.
Covering his butt in the face of public outcry, Mr. Bush yesterday said he will support a two-month extension of the 9-11 investigation; whether his cronies in the Republican-controlled Congress allow that to happen remains to be seen.
The other wing of the White House of cards – the Iraq war – is also collapsing. This week, Mr. Bush agreed to allow an independent panel to investigate his fraudulent claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in the months preceding last March’s invasion. Maybe he can get an assist from Henry K. on this one.
From recent testimony from WMD-hunter-in-chief David Kay, we now know we had good intelligence on the state of Saddam’s WMD programs and it was all from the once-maligned UN weapons inspectors. Mr. Kay says former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz told him an increasingly delusional Saddam demanded weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi scientists, not wanting to die, promised they were building them, but that international sanctions prevented them from actually doing so. Only the delusional occupants of Baghdad’s Republican Palace and Washington’s Republican White House actually believed the WMD fiction.
Until George Bush became president of the United States, he was sheltered from unpleasant truths. So, when the National Security Council told him in the summer of 2001 that al Quaeda was about to attack America, he didn’t believe it, because he didn’t want to. When UN weapons inspectors told him in the winter of 2003 that Saddam had no WMDs, he didn’t believe that because again, he didn’t want to.
Those are just two examples of Mr. Bush’s willful ignorance on foreign policy. The budget he released this week is just as ignorant. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time and by now the only person George Bush is fooling is himself.
Bush Knew
Abraham Lincoln, whose 195th birthday is coming up, is remembered as a moral force in American history. He was also a shrewd politician. He was in shrewd mode when he said, “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
The puff pieces written about presidential doppelganger Karl Rove routinely gush over Mr. Rove’s grasp of American political history, but he seems to have forgotten – or perhaps never learned – Mr. Lincoln’s dictum. The time has come when all of the people are not fooled and we are seeing the fabrications of George W. Bush’s White House collapse on all sides.
Let’s start with 9-11. After months of resisting calls for an investigation into the intelligence failures that allowed the September 11th attacks to occur, Mr. Bush did an about-face the same week that an FBI whistleblower was telling Congress about how her superiors ignored her specific warnings about the terrorists. Mr. Bush tried to appoint Henry Kissinger, himself an unindicted war criminal, to lead the probe but that fooled none of the people none of the time.
Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton now head the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, but the investigation has run into a series of stone walls erected by the White House. I don’t think the Bush people are sitting on a terrible secret. The information is out there; it seeped into the media, a bit at a time over the past few years. What White House officials are afraid of is being confronted with all this information in one ugly pile and having to admit, under oath and on the record, that they did nothing about the warnings that al Quaeda members might hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings.
That exact scenario was predicted in a 1999 federal security report. It’s true the federal government produces many security reports, but since that report was about al Quaeda, it should have been in the “al Quaeda” file at the White House. Throughout the summer of 2001, counter-terrorism experts, picking up on increased “chatter” among suspected terrorists, repeatedly warned the Bush staffers that an attack was likely, even imminent and may involve commercial aircraft and al Quaeda.
The most damning piece of information, the one George Walker Bush most wants to hide, is the briefing he received on August 6, 2001 from Richard Clarke, who was then director of counter-terrorism for the National Security Council. That day, Mr. Clarke warned Mr. Bush that Osama bin Laden and al Quaeda were determined to strike targets in the United States. George Bush’s response to that briefing was to go on vacation for 35 days. Mr. Bush was given more than enough information to avoid the 9-11 tragedy.
Covering his butt in the face of public outcry, Mr. Bush yesterday said he will support a two-month extension of the 9-11 investigation; whether his cronies in the Republican-controlled Congress allow that to happen remains to be seen.
The other wing of the White House of cards – the Iraq war – is also collapsing. This week, Mr. Bush agreed to allow an independent panel to investigate his fraudulent claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in the months preceding last March’s invasion. Maybe he can get an assist from Henry K. on this one.
From recent testimony from WMD-hunter-in-chief David Kay, we now know we had good intelligence on the state of Saddam’s WMD programs and it was all from the once-maligned UN weapons inspectors. Mr. Kay says former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz told him an increasingly delusional Saddam demanded weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi scientists, not wanting to die, promised they were building them, but that international sanctions prevented them from actually doing so. Only the delusional occupants of Baghdad’s Republican Palace and Washington’s Republican White House actually believed the WMD fiction.
Until George Bush became president of the United States, he was sheltered from unpleasant truths. So, when the National Security Council told him in the summer of 2001 that al Quaeda was about to attack America, he didn’t believe it, because he didn’t want to. When UN weapons inspectors told him in the winter of 2003 that Saddam had no WMDs, he didn’t believe that because again, he didn’t want to.
Those are just two examples of Mr. Bush’s willful ignorance on foreign policy. The budget he released this week is just as ignorant. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time and by now the only person George Bush is fooling is himself.
(c) Mark Floegel, 2004