When I watched Ms. Breitweiser(sp?) and the other 9/11 widows on Hardball last night, I was amazed at how articulate they were in comparison to the media. She stressed the fact that the dots were not hard to connect on 9/11 (the PDB, Clarke's warnings, the warnings in Italy, the warnings from the Clinton administration, the fact that Ashcroft was not flying, etc.). She mentioned the fact that when the first plane hit the WTC, Tenet said "I hope that doesn't have anything to do with that guy taking flying lessons" while Bush, a supreme intellectual, said "That's one bad pilot." As a result, Bush and his people sat around and watched cable TV until the Pentagon and both Towers were hit. How could they have not connected the dots--at least on 9/11?
This made me think of Steve Martin's character, Navin Johnson, in "The Jerk." A crazy man is trying to shoot Navin Johnson and keeps missing and hitting the cans around Navin at a gas station. Any moron would realize he is being shot at, but Navin laughs and says "Hey, Harry...these cans are defective." When he finally realizes a man is shooting, Navin is still so thickheaded that he thinks the man is shooting at cans and not him. Perhaps-- just maybe--Republicans were wrong in believing that the President doesn't need to be educated, knowledgeable, and intelligent so long as he has "good" people around him. How long until a majority of Americans realize that Navin Johnson is in the White House?