THE NEW WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION

I am having trouble concentrating today because my attention has been redrawn to the first year of the previous Presidential Administration.

I start thinking about these matters and become so enraged I have to get onto other matters. Of course I go to Donal’s post that discusses Wisconsin gun laws and I am again in touch with this rage.

Ron Suskind  and Paul O’Neill (former Secretary of the Treasury) wrote a book that was published in January of 2004; The Price of Loyalty.

I had recalled the fact that Congress and the President were working together in late 2001 to get our troops into Afghanistan to track down the lousy bastards who planned the attack upon our country nine years ago.

I recall the propaganda campaign to get us all to hate the Taliban which had ties of some sort to a bunch of Saudis calling themselves al Qaeda. They must have played that 30 second tape depicting a Taliban law enforcement officer caning ladies on the dirt street of some small village ten thousand times!!!

And I recall the push to change course and get Americans fired up to invade Iraq. I recall thinking: What in the hell does Iraq have to do with all this?

I had recalled a sudden effort of the Cheney/Bush Administration to link Saddam to WMD’s, to al Qaeda, to atom bombs and to French Fries.

Before I knew it Captain America is dropped onto an aircraft carrier (some ten miles off our California shore) declaring that the United States was safe once again.

There were so few voices in opposition to this nonsense at the time. At least until MSNBC hired Keith O.

Then, in January of 2004 Paul O’Neill shows up on Letterman in order to sell his book, telling us that the plans for invading Iraq were already being drawn up in January of 2001.

Suskind has followed up with other books about this conspiracy by neocons since then and many authors have published their own books on the same subject.

Okay, so I run across this gem at Crooks & Liars:

All of us knew it but couldn't prove it. Now we can prove it. Newly declassified documents published at the National Security Archive prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the Bush administration planned to topple Saddam Hussein and invade Iraq as early as January, 2001, and were making strategic plans and resource allocations as early as November, 2001.

January 30, 2001 – Bush administration principals (agency heads) meet for the
first time and discuss the Middle East, including Bush’s intention to disengage from the Israel-Palestine peace process and “How Iraq is destabilizing the region.” Bush directs Rumsfeld and JCS chairman Hugh Shelton to examine military options for Iraq; CIA director George Tenet is directed to improve intelligence on the country. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke are both struck by the emphasis on confronting Iraq, an aim consistent with Rumsfeld’s hiring of Wolfowitz and later Feith, well known for their bellicosity on the issue, for high-level Pentagon
positions. (Source: EBB/Franks Timeline (PDF))

When did we invade Afghanistan? Oh, that's right...it was October 7, 2001.

Walking through these documents makes it clear that the Bush Administration -- from Day One -- intended to invade Iraq at some point in their reign of terror. Here is a memo (PDF) dated January 23, 2001 outlining the "Origins of the Iraq Regime Change Policy". This was requested by Vice President-elect Dick Cheney before taking office, presumably as a way to justify policy formation around aggressive US efforts for "regime change" in Iraq.

http://crooksandliars.com/

Well what does the writer mean we all knew it but could not prove it? Rummy was in this think tank planning all of this in the 90’s while cheney was licking his chops about the potential billions and billions of dollars his company was going to make from all this; in the 90’s for chrissakes.

See, I am all pissed off again. I knew all this for sure in January of 2004. Bugliosi’s book  The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder two years ago really lays out the case for putting these motherfrickers in prison, ALL OF THEM.

See, the rage just keeps getting worse.

But this is all only peripheral to what I am writing about today. My friend Jon Wisby sends me this gem from ThinkProgress:

In an interview with Bob Woodward earlier this year, President Obama said, “We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever. … We absorbed it and we are stronger.” That confident portrayal of American resilience has been seized upon by right wing pundits. As Ken Gude notes on the Wonk Room, “conservative critics won’t tolerate this kind of reasoned leadership” from Obama. For instance, consider the following statement Liz Cheney released today:

This comment suggests an alarming fatalism on the part of President Obama and his administration. Once again the President seems either unwilling or unable to do what it takes to keep this nation safe. The President owes the American people an explanation.

Recall, Cheney’s father — the former vice president of the United States — told Meet the Press’s Tim Russert in 2002 that another terrorist attack was “almost a certainty.” He added it that it was only a matter of time before the U.S. got hit again:

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: The prospect of another attack against the United States is very, very real. It’s just as real, in my opinion, as it was September 12.

TIM RUSSERT, NBC News: Not a matter of if, but when?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Not a matter of if, but when.

Is Liz Cheney outraged that her father stated that another terrorist attack on the homeland is a certain eventuality? She’s probably unaware that the Bush White House put out the following national security document that laid out a strategy of being “better able to absorb the impact” of a terrorist attack:

For each CI/KR [critical infrastructure and key resources] sector, we must collectively work to ensure the ability of power, communications, and other life sustaining systems to survive an attack by terrorists, a natural disaster, and other assessed risks or hazards. In the past, investments in redundant and duplicative infrastructure were used to achieve this objective. We must now focus on the resilience of the system as a whole – an approach that centers on investments that make the system better able to absorb the impact of an event without losing the capacity to function.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/09/22/liz-cheney-absorb-attack/

I saw Keith O do a rant on this rant spewed out of the mouth of Liz Cheney.

Woodward is back using White House backrooms and bathrooms again and has published another of his insider’s books.

So he writes that Obama and his folks have always figured that we could ‘absorb’ terrorist attacks. Of course we can.

As a nation we absorbed terrorist attacks since the British attacked us in 1812; since the terrorists from our own Southern States attacked us; hell every single year there are terrorist attacks in this country whether they originate amongst postal workers or high school kids.

But Liz Cheney opens her goddamn mouth and does not just insinuate but declares that somehow Obama has conceded victory to al Qaeda.

And all ThinkProgress had to do was go to its own archives and reprint interviews with Dick Cheney.

I know all about sticks and stones and free speech and all that. But I cannot help feeling this strong urge to get a great big apple pie and smash it into that fricking face of Liz Cheney. Emotionally I wish to do the bitch harm, real bodily harm.

I have just had it.

Picture cheney and rummy with their team of neocons planning to invade Iraq, illegally, and while they are reviewing the plans a team of 12-15 Saudis, WHO HAVE BLOOD LINKS TO THE BUSH FAMILY’S BUSINESS PARTNERS, attack NYC and the Pentagon.

One of the people who headline Dagblog commented to me on one of my posts that the American People as a whole have an eighth grade education and the attention span of four year olds playing in the school yard.

And we, that is the American People, just let cheney and rummy and bush and feith and a number of crooks get away with their incompetence and then we went ahead to give them the power they needed to make their own corporations hundreds of billions of dollars pursuing a war in which 99% or more of all Americans had no interest.

Like Bugliosi, I think all these bastards should be in prison after all of their fortunes have been confiscated by our government. And Liz Cheney should be part of those rounded up since she worked with her dad at the time the felonies were committed.

And if the repubs win the elections that are being held in a little more than a month, they will relentlessly attack the Obama Administration for chicken shite with subpoenas and hearings and calls for independent investigations and god knows what.

THE DUMBEST THING THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION EVER DID WAS TO FORGO ANY MEANINGFUL CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS AGAINST THE MEMBERS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WHO CONSPIRED TO TAKE US INTO AN ILLEGAL WAR.

Previous version posted at:  http://onceuponatpm.wordpress.com/