This is what I warned about in my January 2004 article, What Was George W. Bush Thinking on 9/11 (.pdf).
A poll conducted last week by the New York Times and CBS news found that just 16% of Americans believe the Bush Administration is telling the truth about what they knew prior to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Poll participants were asked, “do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?”
53% of respondents indicated they believe the Bush Administration was hiding something, and another 28% reported that they think the administration is mostly lying “when it comes to what they knew prior to September 11th, 2001, about possible terrorist attacks against the United States.”
Back in January 2004, the 9/11 Commission was still doing their work and the White House was still stonewalling. The report, when it finally came out in August 2004, was a whitewash. It didn’t even address dozens of questions that the 9/11 widows had requested be addressed. This is how I summarized the problem of stonewalling the 9/11 Commission.
If we give the President the benefit of the doubt that he is not a mass murderer, it
appears that the White House has tried to gloss over this failure, as well as the extent of specific warnings to our civil aviation, in the interest of calming a jittery nation and
protecting the image of the President. In the process, they have made inconsistent and incompatible and sometimes misleading statements, while consistently resisting all formal investigations. But as international unease and distrust of Bush’s handling of the War on Terrorism grows, it is more important than ever that the administration come clean about the mistakes that were made. If they initially obfuscated in the wake of a devastating attack to buck up American confidence in the President, that
can be forgiven. But if they don’t explain the President’s actions on the morning of 9/11, the failure of our air defenses, and cooperate with investigators they will inadvertently promote theories that America perpetrated the attacks on ourselves.The risk, that Dean so sloppily tried to explain, is that Bush will cause damage in our international relations that could extend well beyond the current administration.
Half a lifetime ago when I told my friends that the Warren report was BS, everyone said that’s crazy. When the 9/11 commission came out and I told my friends (mostly different ones by now) that it was BS, they pretty much agreed: those who wouldn’t go so far as to think the “New Pearl Harbor” people had something to do with it at least thought that they allowed it to happen. Now with Condi’s July briefing, Ashcroft’s switching to private planes, the August PDB, the apparent stand-down of our air defences, the Let It Happen on Purpose point of view seems to be a “slam-dunk.”
I don’t think it is a slam-dunk. But I do think that they had fed that perception by trying avoid responsibility for the enormous magnitude of their failure.
Booman, these guys live with such amazing levels of grandiosity that they really believed they were “good enough” to get away with any level of lie or deception, and that they would remain in office long enough to completely control all the information that came out on the lead up to 9/11.
Don’t forget, they had just stolen the election in Florida and they were riding high. They had no real idea how limited the powers of government really are, and how the various forms of media were eliminating the privacy that they imagined government to be able to maintain.
If it isn’t a slam-dunk, then they were so blinded by their successes in stealing the election that they were willing to try such an idiotic operation.
They have been trying to make it successful and simultaneously hide what they did to bring Iraq about ever since. Neither is working.
I’m not saying they had foreknowledge and did nothing. To an extent, that is established. What is not established is why they did nothing. Katrina is a perfect parallel.
What is certain is that they obstructed the investigation to hide what they did, what they knew, and to distract from the Pet Goat incident, which is still totally inexplicable.
And that cover-up spawned the theories, both legitimate and whacked.
Iraq has shown us that the President is in fact a mass murderer. One of historic proportions.
Then, to give him the benefit of the doubt, we would have to assume he wouldn’t “do” his “own people”. Which may or may not be true, but by looking at every decision he’s made in the White House, it’s clear that we here in the US ain’t his people, unless of course you happen to own a Fortune 500 company.
The proof that 9/11 was an inside job may not be beyond ALL doubt, but it is compelling. Beyond reasonable doubt, I think.
The case in defense of Bush amounts to, “but he is a nice guy, and wouldn’t DO that!”
Having known psychopaths personally, the “but he wouldn’t” defense cuts no ice with me.
We have motive, we have capability, we have some facts from the crime itself, and we have guilty actions afterward. Enough to warrant a grand jury investigation, I would think.
So 81 percent of Americans think their president (and presumably his asskissing Congress) is lying about the terrorist attack the “changed everything”. And yet they reelected him (well, sorta). And 40 percent or so still approve of his administration. So 20 percent think it’s OK for a president to lie to them about the most vital issues of security and war. This HAS to be a bad dream version of America. It ain’t where I grew up.
It’s hard to believe that something like 45 million people still believe. PT Barnum was right.
There are only 217.8 million Americans over 18 years old.
That 16% comes to 34.8 million adult Americans. Down from 62,040,610 who purportedly re-elected him in 2004.
That’s at least a 44% drop among folks who voted for him in 2004–before enough crap had happened for them to realize that the media were lying to them.
And since the 2004 election, there have been the intervention in the the Schiavo family’s business by the Congress, the aborted attempt to privatize Social Security, the failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina, the collapse of the government elected with purple fingers, civil war in Iraq.
That there are still 34.8 million is depressing. When/if Democrats take a house of Congress and they find out they’ve been had, there are going to be 34.8 million very angry folks. Minus the 101st keyboarders and Jonah Goldberg who will ride this disaster down to its end.