The Root Cause

Liz Cheney, every channelling the inane blatherings of her father, was on television yesterday continuing the meme that "civilian trials will lead to more terrorist attacks".

What you have is a situation, unquestionably we went through a period in the nation's history we dealt with terrorism as law enforcement matter....As Attorney General Mukasey pointed out when we prosecuted and convicted people after the '93 World Trade Center bombing and East Africa bombing, what it got us was 9/11 and 3,000 dead Americans.

That's a rather flaccid thesis, as there was ample intelligence to support the fact that bin Laden was ready to carry out an attack within the first year of George W. Bush's initial term in office. So, to use Cheney's model for what does and what doesn't cause a terrorist attack, it would stand to reason that Bush's ignoring of a domestic agenda from January 20th 2001 up until Sept. 12 2001 was a cause of what happened on Sept. 11th.

The only difference between Liz's statements and mine is that there are multiple examples of how the later can be verified. From the Bush cabinet ignored warnings put forth by the intelligence community and advisers as early as five days after being sworn in as President.

I'm reminded of how John Brennan is being put under fire for calling out Republicans for politicizing terror. Isn't that precisely what Liz Cheney is doing?

The Man Who Should Be There

Richard Clarke, the man that knew and continues to know more about terrorism than anyone the Bush administration has ever paraded in front of a flank of press members and network news cameras, has a new piece in the New York Daily News that sheds some light on the "Bush has kept us safe because we haven't been attacked since 9/11" meme:

George Bush, still President, is engaging in a legacy tour of media outlets. This comes despite his earlier having said he did not know how history would judge the Iraq war "because we'll all be dead."

Actually, many people are already dead because of Bush, and that is the point to keep in mind when he talks about his legacy.

Among the themes Bush is striking are that through action at home and fighting "them" over there, not over here, his administration stopped terrorist attacks and prevented another 9/11. There is a surface plausibility to those claims, as there has often been with the messaging served up by the Karl Rove spin machine. But let's look beneath the surface of the assertions.

Bush stopped terrorist attacks? Yes, some of the many alleged plots cited by the White House probably would have matured into attacks had not the U.S. intelligence community acted. Many were more aspirational than operational, and others were the pure inventions of FBI informants. (In the Miami Liberty City case, an FBI informant apparently bribed people who previously had no interest in Al Qaeda. When they swore the oath to Osama Bin Laden, they were then arrested for doing so.)

To hear a mouth-agape conservative spout that pathetic line of "we haven't been attacked since...." is something truly telling of the conservative-republican movement.

Whereas certain moments in a person's life can be seen in a realistic, linear fashion ( ie: I didn't screw that guy after the senior prom, and my best friend did and she got crabs that would have surely infested me ). To use this logic in relation to terrorism is utterly laughable.

To say that Bush has protected us is like saying that if you wear purple socks for a month straight and you aren't diagnosed with cancer, then purple socks obviously prevent cancer.