Let's take a stroll down memory lane because apparently Bush and the Republicans think they're the ones that should be in charge of protecting American soil and avenging the 9/11 attack by bringing Osama Bin Laden to justice.
The war on terror is on it's fifth anniversary and the only continuity to this train-wreck of a terror war is our Republican congressional leadership's consistently adamant refusal to hold George W. Bush resposible for his big bag of failures and his underwhelming lack of focus on his own stated mission objective destroy to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
9/14/01
I don't care how bin Laden is brought to justice, dead or alive, either way. It doesn't matter to me. - George W. Bush
Remember all that tough talk by Bush about "wanted posters in the Wild West?" Back then Republicans were telling us we had to cut off the head of the terrorist snake, Osama Bin Laden. We have short memories, don't we? Five days after the 9/11 attack Dick Cheney went on Meet the Press and stated that al Qaeda was the focus on the war on terror and unequivocally stated that there was no evidence linking Iraq to the 9/11 attack:
3/16/01- Meet the Press
(Videotape, September 16, 2001):
VICE PRES. CHENEY: At this stage, the focus is over here on al-Qaeda and the most recent events in New York. Saddam Hussein is bottled up at this point.
MR. RUSSERT: Do we have any evidence linking Saddam Hussein or Iraqis to this operation?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No.
On 3/13/02, six short months later, Bush did the biggest flip-flop in history by telling the American public he didn't care about bin Laden and capturing him was no longer a priority. This was almost exactly one year prior to the date Bush invaded Iraq on the grounds that it was Saddam Hussein, not Osama Bin Laden, who had WMD destruction and posed an imminent threat to our national security.
Back in the good ole days of the world on terror there wasn't any "overwhelming" evidence against Saddam, because it hadn't been cooked up yet.
The turning point on the administration's resolve to capture bin Laden was 3/13/02. Bush should have been thrown out of office in 2004 on the basis of one remark made under pressure by a determined reporter at a press White House conference who had the courage to demand a straight answer from the president on his resolve to capture bin Laden.
3/13/02- Six months after 9/11 Attack
Q. But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either or killed?
A. I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not important. It's not our priority. - George W. Bush
Then Americans get the bad news on April 17, 2002. A couple months prior to Bush's notorious "3/13/02 Bin Laden" statement, he had blown a perfectly good opportunity to capture or kill Bin Laden. After months of denying that Osama Bin Laden was present at Tora Bora, the Bush's administration admit that Bin Laden was indeed present at Tora Bora.
4/17/02- Washington Post
The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.
Yet today the Republicans propagate the myth that Clinton was a ball-dropper for a fictional incident.
The Myth of the Ball Dropper is now the Republican's conventional wisdom that Clinton dropped the ball, when indeed there was no ball for Clinton to fumble.
To this day, Americans don't know why Bush "cut and run" on such a golden opportunity. Was he incompetent? Mr. Bush had already stated a month earlier that he didn't care about capturing Bin Laden, but Americans did. Bin Laden was the perpetrator of the 9/11 attack.
Wasn't the entire point of the war on terror is to capture and punish the fanatical demon who planned and executed this hideous attack? Bush didn't care about Osama because he had a new plan in the works.
Shift the blame for 911 on Saddam and Iraq and take a stab at securing the oil supply of the in the oil fields of Basra Iraq, the world's second largest oil field. The plan sounded good at the time to Bush. He believed that a successful 6-8 week war in Iraq that captured and deposed Saddam would make his reelection as both a war president and the avenger of terrorism, another Karl Rove slam dunk. The residual benefits of invading Iraq was that the United States could sieze the control of the Basra oil fields and also provide a payback to Bush loyalists in the form of contracts to rebuild the nation we were about to level to the ground with a "shock and awe" bombing campaign.
Bush and company may not have gotten thier shower of liberator roses from the people of Iraq but that didn't stop Bush and Cheney from showering their campaign contributors with no-bid contract, invoking an obscure wartime measure that allows the president to bypass the bidding process in times of national emergency.
Iraq was always about oil and bling-bling for the big boys, ladies and gentleman. When every Bush explanation for the war in Iraq has an expired shelf life, The Oil and Bling-Bling Theory remains as fresh as the day the stockboy put it on display nearly four years ago.
At no time prior to hitting the ground with American troops did Bush claim that the objective of the mission in Iraq was to bring democracy and freedom to the people. To state the case in that manner would have been a violation the Geneva accords. To invade a nation on grounds of"democracy and freedom" isn't enough. Even Hitler claimed to be "liberating" the nations he invaded. A nation must pose an "imminent threat" to your nation's national security to launch an unprovoked attack on another nation. In other words, you must have a concrete reason beyond imposing your own ideology on a nation to invade it. So to solve their dilemma the Bush administration went about cooking up evidence that Iraq posed a threat to our national security. Bush got his war in Iraq.
Now five years away from Ground Zero WTC and 3000 American lives and nearly 50,000 Iraqi lives later, Bush is still insisting that Iraq, not capturing Bin Laden is the objective of the Bush administration on its global war on terror.
8/28/06 Policy Speech
Iraq is the central front on the war on terror. George W. Bush
Being the shameless opportunist he is, however, Bush is not above railing against Bin Laden in order to win votes in the midterm elections so he can still have a rubber stamp GOP Congress that won't investigate his transgressions and failures in Iraq. The most damning evidence against Bush has been classified by Dick Cheney far from the reach of Congress, the media, and the American public.
9/11/06- Fifth Anniversary of the 9/11 Attack
"Osama bin Laden and other terrorists are still in hiding. Our message to them is clear: No matter how long it takes, America will find you, and we will bring you to justice" George W. Bush
Last weekend's docudrama the Path to 911 was a calculated ploy to in the Republican campaign to create the perception that Bill Clinton and the Democrats were responsible for the 9/11 attack. David Horowitz, the Rove connected GOP operative has been established as a prime mover in the campaign to get a prime time docudrama to do a hit-job on Clinton for causing 9/11 because of poor judgment calls in 1998. Nothing could be further from the truth. In 1998, the GOP congress was raking Clinton over the coals for his air strikes against al Qaeda targets and refusing to pass a piece of Clinton sponsored omnibus legislation to make our borders secure from terrorist and to launch preemptive strike on terrorist bases.
Republicans claim that Clinton was "wagging the dog" to divert attention from their own impeachment investigation of him. As much as the Republicans create fictional docudramas to change public perceptions about Clinton in 1998 it doesn't change the facts of the record. It wasn't about homeland security in 1998; it was all about them, and their reckless campaign to undermine Clinton's effectiveness by impeaching him as a liar.
Let me ask the Republican partisans: How many times has the Bush administration lied to the American public in the last six years? How many times have President Bush and Vice President Cheney refused to testify under oath before Congress or a grand jury for fear of a perjury charge? The answer to the question is Mr. Bush has refused to testify under oath on four occasions and Mr. Cheney has 4 refusals on the record. The investigations involved for Mr. Bush are the Abu Ghraib congressional investigation, the 9/11 Commission investigation, the Katrina investigation, the Valerie Plame grand jury investigation and most recently the investigation into illegal spying on the American public by the Bush administration.
The do-nothing but lie cheat & steal, GOP Congress has turned into such a bunch of Bush lackeys, they don't even bother to ask the principal White House functionaries if they'd care to take an oath to tell the truth, before they testify. It's simply assumed by the Republicans that Bush is not to be held accountable for anything he does.
By contrast, Bill Clinton never refused to take an oath to be truthful in a congressional investigation and was always a cooperative witness, and never took the Fifth once. His cooperation with the Republicans showed that Clinton's downfall was his goodwill and respect for the duty of Congressional oversight of the chief executive. Perhaps, like Bush and Cheney, Clinton should have shown an arrogant contempt for Congress and refused to testify or refuse to take an oath to tell the truth. Telling what he thought to be the truth to a bunch of self-righteous, morally comprised snakes was Clinton's downfall, not sex.
The Republicans have proven their own disloyalty to America by attempting a palace coup and impeachment smear and ignoring the barbarians at the door of America who would deliver their message three short years later on 9/11/01.
On that rare occasion when Bush was not lying to us, he was telling us he doesn't care bin Laden and capturing him is not a priority. History has proven Bush being truthful in his "Don't Care about Osama" comment, four years agao, and proven Bush to be a liar on nearly everything else. For Bush, Osama is little more than a Halloween boogie man costume he pulls out the closet for elections every two years.
Not that it matters in the least to Bush and the Republicans: Where in the world is Osama bin Laden today?
9/12/06 Washington Post:
WASHINGTON, Sept 12: The clandestine US commandos whose job is to capture or kill Osama bin Laden have not received a credible lead in more than two years. Nothing from the vast US intelligence world--no tips from informants, no snippets from electronic intercepts, no points on any satellite image--has led them anywhere near the al-Qaeda leader, according to US and Pakistani officials.
In other words, Osama is deadgone and will stay that way because Osama owns the Republicans and their "give it a shot" cowboy president George W. Bush. Osama hasn't bombed the United States in the past five years because he wants the Republicans in power!
The choice is up to Americans in November. Are we going to elect a responsible Congress that challenges Bush on policy debacles and his endless stream of lies to the American public or pretend everything is okey dokey and give Bush yet another mandate to fail?
We can turn the tables on the Rebublicans and "defeatocrat" them in November. History is ours to make and write.
Our only barrier is altering public perceptions about Who's Been Zooming Whom during the past five years.