Bare-knuckled mud wrestling

September 20th, 2006

I don’t get MSNBC, I wish I did … Keith Olbermann has become a Voice we all need to hear — here in Missouri he’s like a dose of penicillin to counteract a bad case of the clap, because the Rightys have pulled out all the stops … you may have noticed that when your smirking president looked into the camera yesterday and declared “We’re at war … they want to kill your families.” Or you might have seen their new ad that says “Vote like your life depended on it … because it does.”

An ad that will air only in this state … a swing state … is so contemptible that it makes my eyes roll back in my head; clearly, we are not going to be able to deal with these next few months without an overwhelming wave of anger and outrage, and that is worrisome … we need our wits about us … but it’s very difficult not to get riled when paranoid manipulators with the sensibilities of schoolyard bullies are shoving inflammatory junk like this in your face. And frankly, here, it’s scaring the natives — but I’ll give the local newscasters their due … they are exposing it as an offering from a questionable fringe element. Here, sitting Senator Jim Talent will face off against blue candidate Claire McCaskill … it’s one of those bellweather races, up for grabs … and it’s a tad of encouragement that Himself showed up to help raise $600,000 for Talent … but the Big Dog, Bill, showed up for Claire and raised a cool million.

Meanwhile, as the gloves come off and bare knuckles are showing, some of us are worried about Friend Keith … we’ve seen what the Boyz do to those who buck them; Greg Palast could tell him. He gave a lovely 9/11 commentary yesterday — you’ll find transcript and link below.

A note: I think there are those who come to this plane with a special mission, Angels of a kind. Nicola Tesla, for instance — Gandhi and Martin — they come bringing gifts, to open us to possibilities and help us enlarge our hearts. Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry were of this remarkable line. When television was very young, and so was I, we found one another … I don’t think I’d be who I’ve become without their profound influence.

Below, Olbermann … and then check out a usually benign Matt Lauer getting his gumption on. Last piece, Dan Froomkin with his daily press notes from yesterday takes a pretty good bite out of the Administrations ass, as well.

It’s good we’re growing teeth … but it’s not pretty.

Jude

Tom Toles ‘toon

Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on Bush:
Who has left this hole in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr. President. You have. May this country forgive you
Jamie Holly, Crooks and Liars
Monday, September 11th, 2006
http://tinyurl.com/g68w9

Keith Olbermann blasts President Bush in his latest “Special Comment” section on Countdown tonight. He leaves no stone unturned…

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(This was probably the most powerful special comment yet by Keith. If you would like, please feel free to use the Spotlight link below to help spread the word about this incredible commentary to others in the media)

Full Transcript:

And lastly tonight a Special Comment on why we are here. Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space.

And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

And all the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and — as I discovered from those “missing posters” seared still into my soul — two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me… this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are “soft”, or have “forgotten” the lessons of what happened here — is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante — and at worst, an idiot — whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However. Of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast — of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds… none of us could have predicted… this.

Five years later this space… is still empty.

Five years later there is no Memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country’s wound is still open.

Five years… later this country’s mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later… this is still… just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.
—

At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial — barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field, Mr. Lincoln said “we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. “We can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground.” So we won’t.

Instead they bicker and buck-pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they’re doing — instead of doing any job at all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush… we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir — on these 16 empty acres, the terrorists… are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.
—

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation.

There is, its symbolism — of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it… was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party — tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election — ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications — forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government, by its critics.

It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President — and those around him — did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, “bi-partisanship” meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused; as appeasers; as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, “validate the strategy of the terrorists.”

They promised protection, and then showed that to them “protection” meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken… a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated Al-Qaeda as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ’something to do’ with 9/11, is “lying by implication.”

The impolite phrase, is “impeachable offense.”

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space… and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible — for anything — in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced — possibly financed by — the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death… after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections… how dare you or those around you… ever “spin” 9/11.
—

Just as the terrorists have succeeded — are still succeeding — as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero…

So too have they succeeded, and are still succeeding — as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney’s continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

And long ago, a series called “The Twilight Zone” broadcast a riveting episode entitled “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street.”

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm.

Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on.

As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced.

An “alien” is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help.

The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials areseen, manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, “they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves.”

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight.

“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men.

“For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn.”
—

When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…

When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have “forgotten the lessons of 9/11″… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you. ++

Matt Lauer goes after Bush over secret prisons and torture
Nicole Belle
Monday, September 11th, 2006

Matt Lauer went after Bush over his secret prisons and the use of torture on the captured terrorists via The Today Show this morning. He was uncommonly strong and didn’t back down when Bush gave his pet answer. He hits the right note because if what we’ve been doing is legal then why was there the need for secret prisons? When Bush gets cornered–he starts saying he’s not going to talk about it anymore…(Glenn Greenwald has a post up now about John Yoo–Bush’s torture man.)

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Matt Lauer: And yet you admitted that there were these CIA secret facilities. OK?

President Bush: So what? Why is that not within the law?

Matt Lauer: The head of Amnesty International says secret sites are against international law.

President Bush: Well, we just disagree with him. Plus, my job is to protect you. And most American people, if I said [to them] that we had who we think is the mastermind of the 9/11, they would say, “Why don’t you see if you can’t get information without torturing him,” which is what we did.

Matt Lauer: I don’t want to let this “within the law issue” slip though. I mean, if, in fact, there was water boarding used with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and for the viewers, that’s basically when you strap someone to a board and you make them feel as if they’re going to drown by putting them underwater, if that was legal and within the law, why couldn’t you do it at Guantanamo? Why did you have to go to a secret location around the world?

President Bush: I’m not going to talk about techniques. And, I’m not going explain to the enemy what we’re doing. All I’m telling you is that you’ve asked me whether or not we’re doing things to protect the American people, and I want the American people to know we are doing so. ++

Everything’s Political
Dan Froomkin
Monday, September 11, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/09/11/BL2006091100545.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
[open for links]

The White House would like you to believe President Bush is putting politics aside as he leads the nation in remembrance of the September 11 terrorist attacks of five years ago.

But it’s not true.

Yesterday was largely a day of images as the president and the first lady silently laid two wreaths at Ground Zero before attending a memorial service. But Bush couldn’t resist making a few comments to reporters as he visited a lower Manhattan firehouse, quite possibly previewing his prime-time address tonight. Here’s the transcript.

And while his comments were superficially apolitical and personal, his words were in fact carefully chosen to advance his agenda.

“I’m never going to forget the lessons of that day,” Bush said.

He also called today’s anniversary a “day of renewing resolve.”

And calling attention to “the relatives of those who still grieve” he said: “I just wish there were some way we could make them whole.”

Had Bush taken a less divisive course five years ago, those words could well have been embraced by all Americans.

But consider the context.

The president and his party are in grave political danger because most Americans believe he learned the wrong lessons from Sept. 11 — certainly when it came to using the attacks as a rationale for embarking on war in Iraq.

Indeed, there’s a compelling argument to be made that by learning the wrong lessons, Bush compounded the disaster of Sept. 11 — creating more terrorists than he has killed, for instance, and endangering America’s moral standing across the globe.

With a clear majority of Americans now advocating a withdrawal from Iraq, Bush’s talk of “renewing resolve” was transparently self-serving. He doesn’t have to say “Iraq” for everyone to know exactly what that means.

And — while this is more speculative — his comment about making the relatives whole could be the first sign of a White House PR campaign to use select Sept. 11 families to cast opponents of Bush’s controversial anti-terror tactics as delaying justice for the victims.

What’s also telling, as usual, is what Bush didn’t say yesterday, and doesn’t say, period.

He doesn’t say we won’t allow ourselves to be terrorized, and we won’t be afraid. (That would run counter to the central Republican game plan for the mid-term election.) He doesn’t say that in our zeal to fight the terrorists, we won’t give up the qualities that make America great. He acknowledges no mistakes, he calls for no sacrifice, he refuses to reach out to those who disagree with him.

The Current Game Plan
David E. Sanger and Sheryl Gay Stolberg write in Saturday’s New York Times: “When President Bush and his top aides gathered in July to sketch out a strategy for the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, it was clear to all that they had to try to reset the clock — back to a time, before Iraq, when portraying Mr. Bush as a steely commander in chief was a far simpler task, and before Hurricane Katrina, when questions about the administration’s competence did not weigh so heavily . . . .

“‘You can never turn back the clock,’ Dan Bartlett, the counselor to the president, said on Friday when asked about the strategy. ‘But we knew that news organizations and everyone else would be using this moment to define where we were five years later, and the president wanted to articulate his view, too.’ . . .

“Mr. Bartlett, like Mr. Bush two weeks ago, said this was a moment of remembrance and a reminder of national resolve, not a moment for politics. But nine weeks before a midterm election that many Republicans fear they may lose, it is impossible to separate remembrance and politics.”

The Next Game Plan?
Andrew Sullivan blogs for Time: “Next week, I’m informed via troubled White House sources, will see the full unveiling of Karl Rove’s fall election strategy. He’s intending to line up 9/11 families to accuse [dissenting Republican Senators John] McCain, [John] Warner and [Lindsey] Graham of delaying justice for the perpetrators of that atrocity, because they want to uphold the ancient judicial traditions of the U.S. military and abide by the Constitution. He will use the families as an argument for legalizing torture, setting up kangaroo courts for military prisoners, and giving war crime impunity for his own aides and cronies. This is his ‘Hail Mary’ move for November; it’s brutally exploitative of Sept. 11; it’s pure partisanship; and it’s designed to enable an untrammeled executive.”

Opinion Watch: What Was Lost
Frank Rich writes in his New York Times opinion column about Bush quoting Franklin Roosevelt at the National Cathedral prayer service on Sept. 14, 2001.

Said Bush : “Today, we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called the warm courage of national unity. This is a unity of every faith, and every background. It has joined together political parties in both houses of Congress . . . . And this unity against terror is now extending across the world.”

Writes Rich: “The destruction of that unity, both in this nation and in the world, is as much a cause for mourning on the fifth anniversary as the attack itself. As we can’t forget the dead of 9/11, we can’t forget how the only good thing that came out of that horror, that unity, was smothered in its cradle . . . .

“When F.D.R. used the phrase ‘the warm courage of national unity,’ it was at his first inaugural, in 1933, as the country reeled from the Great Depression. It is deeply moving to read that speech today. In its most famous line, Roosevelt asserted his ‘firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.’ …

“What followed under Roosevelt’s leadership is one of history’s most salutary stories. Americans responded to his twin entreaties — to renounce fear and to sacrifice for the common good — with a force that turned back economic calamity and ultimately an axis of brutal enemies abroad. What followed Mr. Bush’s speech at the National Cathedral, we know all too well, is another story.”

Agence France Presse reports that international newspaper editorials “remembered the victims of the Septebmer 11 attacks and condemned those responsible, but many also expressed deep unease at the US government’s reaction to the atrocity.

“Britain’s Independent newspaper remembered five years ago ‘images of a world briefly united in sympathy for an America reeling and grieving from the attack on the Twin Towers and the deaths of almost 3,000 New Yorkers.’

“‘How moving but dated they seem today,’ the paper said, lamenting the daily slaughter in Iraq, the nuclear crisis in Iran, the growing insurgency in Afghanistan and the failure to address the Israeli-Palestine issue.

“The Financial Times said: ‘The way the Bush administration has trampled on the international rule of law and Geneva Conventions, while abrogating civil liberties and expanding executive power at home, has done huge damage not only to America’s reputation but, more broadly, to the attractive power of Western values.’”

Not Partisan?
Michael Tomasky blogs for the American Prospect: “Both the Times and the Post note this morning that Bush laid two wreaths at ground zero last night in the company of George Pataki, Mike Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani. The Post goes well out of its way to remark that the event ‘left aside the partisan rancor’ that . . . well, that Bush & Co. have enforced on the country since about 9-14.

“If this event was so nonpartisan, where were [Democratic Senators] Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton? . . .

“In what sense does an event that features four Republicans but excludes the two senators who were representing New York at the time of the event, but who happen to be Democrats, leave aside partisan rancor?”

Tonight’s Address

Here’s how press secretary Tony Snow previewed Bush’s address at 9 p.m. ET at yesterday’s gaggle :

“It’s not going to be a political speech — there are no calls to action, there are no attempts to segregate Democrats from Republicans, but instead to talk about what we learned about the world and how Sept. 11 reshaped the way in which we view the growing menace of what we now refer to — the Islamist terrorist threat represented by bin Laden, Zarqawi and others, and that as a nation we don’t have the luxury of sitting around and waiting for them to hit us again . . .

“And it will be a time to reflect on how we move forward so that we can fight as vigorously as possible the conditions and the terror network that gave rise to Sept. 11 in the first place.”

Sounds pretty political to me. ++

What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves