Chief Bones
Forums Grumpy Old Man
Posted by a member of a local forum:
I believe that my opinion of King George is well known on this forum ... I have made no 'BONES" about how I feel (excuse the pun).
LEAVE THE REALISATION THAT WE WOULD HAVE HAD TO DEAL WITH IRAQ SOONER OR LATER OUT OF YOUR DISCUSSIONS ... IT HAS NO BEARING ON THIS POST.
WAS THIS GENTLEMAN VERY FAR OFF THE MARK?
I realise that he does a lot of Bush bashing in this post ... but ... his reasoning and his rationale coincides with the findings of many investigations and historical observations of the last 4 1/2 years.Here it is 4.5 years on from the 9-11 attacks and I'd like to look at what has changed, what has not, and what has or has not been done.
Justice. First target should have been the man who attacked us, Osama bin Laden. He is still free. He is still organizing attacks. He is still issuing public statements. We have not really even done anything serious to look for him since Bush began his misadventure in Iraq. Bush went from two days after 9/11, declaring: "The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our No. 1 priority, and we will not rest until we find him.” He also made several references to old west, WANTED: Dead or Alive posters. Sadly only six months later, laying political groundwork for the Iraq war, the president said: "I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." He has shown this to be true. The man who caused this 9-11 attacks is being left to do as he will so Bush can settle his old family score in Iraq.
Rebuilding the Damage. Everybody from President Bush to the most ordinary of New York citizen declared over and over again, we will rebuild. We have not even begun that process. We have made and then later rejected several plans for new office complexes at Ground Zero. None of them match in any way the scope and majesty of what had been destroyed. People keep talking about not making a target. Fear is a lousy factor in making up urban planning. Yes plan the construction to minimize dangers but don't make not offending people who hate us a major priority.
National Security. The other big bugaboo Bush and Company talked about was National Security. They used these attacks to consolidate yet more power in Washington DC. They used it to create an entire new government bureaucracy called the Homeland Security Department. This is the department that was supposed to protect us from all danger. From Chemical attacks. From Nuclear attacks, and from biological attacks. Yet it has been completely flummoxed by that biological agent known as standing water in the Gulf Coast and one of its sub-agencies FEMA has been exposed as utterly and completely incompetent and a place friends of campaign donors get put in charge of rather than professionals at disaster management, well at least under the Bush administration. So with the exception of Patriot Acts one and two which attack our Constitutional freedoms and creating a concentration camp in Cuba not much has been done here. The one real victory was overthrowing the Taliban, but Afghanistan is still a mess where we control only those areas where we have actual boots on the ground, and we have very few boots there.
International Relations. After the 9-11 attacks the sympathy and good will of all the non-Muslim world was with the USA, how has that changed? Well first we created a naziesque concentration camp in Cuba, because what we do there is illegal under both our law and international laws and treaties we are signatory meant it had to be somewhere not really US soil. A military base in Cuba fit the bill. Then Bush created out of a tissue of lies, a war the rest of the world told him over and over again were lies and the war was not needed. For months Cheney and the rest of the administration outright lied and told the American people Saddam had massive quantities of weapons of mass destruction and had serious ties to 9-11 and was in fact one of those responsible for the attacks on our soil. Not only were all of these lies, but they had the evidence that shows all of them were lies and they didn't care, they wanted this war and they created it. This administration of chicken hawks who all avoided Vietnam, and none of whom have children in the fight are sending our kids to die in Iraq so Bush could avenge his father and Cheney can add to the bottom line of Halliburton. Iraq continues to degrade as more and more people are radicalized by all the violence. Trying to teach Muslims democracy is as doomed to fail as trying to teach pigs to sing. Corporations make huge money, politicians use the war to scare and control us, and all this for only the cost of a few thousand ordinary lives. . . .
What really sickens me looking at this list is that all of those Bush backers and apologists point to his Post 9-11 leadership as his greatest asset. What leadership? Someone needs to send his kids, and then him to Iraq to see what he made first hand, in the front lines and without his bodyguards. But no, he would only get drunk and go AWOL again I am sure. It is the chicken hawk way of his. Of course he'd blame some combat vet for it though. Always refusing to take blame for his mistakes is his way as well. The guy simply sickens me.
I believe that my opinion of King George is well known on this forum ... I have made no 'BONES" about how I feel (excuse the pun).
LEAVE THE REALISATION THAT WE WOULD HAVE HAD TO DEAL WITH IRAQ SOONER OR LATER OUT OF YOUR DISCUSSIONS ... IT HAS NO BEARING ON THIS POST.
WAS THIS GENTLEMAN VERY FAR OFF THE MARK?