When the next major terrorist attack hits America, either on our shores or abroad, it is going to be our fault.
Whose fault precisely?
Well, it will be John Murtha's fault for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
It will be the fault of Common Dreams, and Buzzflash, and AmericaBlog, and AlterNet. It will be the fault of Mother Jones, The Progressive, The Nation, and The American Prospect.
Rachel Maddow, Maureen Dowd, and Arianna Huffington will be held up as traitors.
It will also somehow be Hillary Clinton's fault despite her wishy-washy support of the continuing Iraq war.
Certainly John Kerry, and Bill Clinton, Howard Dean, and Jimmy Carter will be held to blame.
It will be the fault of the New York Times and anyone else who supposedly leaked information about the NSA surveillance program.
Literally, anyone who has criticized the Bush administration's war in Iraq and its foreign policy will be held to blame.
Vice President Dick Cheney, just yesterday, reminds us in his television interview with Jim Lehrer on PBS's The News Hour that another major attack along the lines of 9/11 has not come because of this administration's superb work in defending Americans. But Cheney warns, menacingly, that all bets are off now because the administration never intended any information about the NSA's surveillance program to get out and the very fact that it did has been damaging to America's security. Without providing one shred of evidence, he claims that thousands of lives have been saved because of the program. Cheney then says:
This program has been an important part of that intelligence capability. And as I said, the tragedy is, now that it has become the subject of so much discussion in the press and in the public arena that there is a real danger here that we will lose our capabilities in this area and will not have the kind of intelligence going forward that we've had in the past that has made it possible for us to successfully defend the nation against terrorist attacks. It doesn't mean there won't be future attacks. There may well be.
It's a curiously elliptical way of Cheney saying: "we were able to defend you, fellow Americans, but now because these bad people are talking about what we are doing to defend you, which I remind you has been working, it might not work anymore, because we may get attacked anyway because, even while the program was underway and NOT being talked about, we might have been attacked anyway, but now we may well be attacked because it IS being talked about."
The entire thrust of Cheney's position is one of covering his ass while at the same time, a priori, placing the blame for whatever happens squarely on his opponents and critics. Certainly don't expect from him any kind of accountability, responsibility, or self-examination.
4 comments:
Goering would be proud of Cheney's fear-mongering and traitor baiting.
And fear can make people do other things that they would not do if they were thinking rationally. During the war crimes trials at Nuremberg, psychologist Gustave Gilbert visited Nazi Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering in his prison cell. "We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction," Gilbert wrote in his journal, Nuremberg Diary.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," Gilbert pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good," Goering responded, "but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." - Weapons of Mass Deception, Sheldon Rampton & John Stauber
I fear that if another major terrorist attack takes place on American shore there's a good chance fascism will take root here.
I saw Cheney last night and quickly became apopleptic. That snarling disgusting self-serving lying manipulating traitor is a profound threat to our country and to the entire world.
I also have a pet rock that keeps elephants away.
I see no elephants. Must be working.
Of course, if someone comes and steals my pet rock, I expect to be hip-deep in elephants before sundown.
Alexis in Canada
National Nitwit has the NRA's response to the hunting tragedy.
Post a Comment