Sirs,
It has been less than 24-hours since the airing of the Osama bin Laden videotape to the world and the US airwaves seem awash in `talking heads' handicapping for America just what a political boon this appearance is to President Bush's re-election chances.
All I can say is, "are we seeing the same world?" How can the fact that bin Laden is even capable of launching a videotape 4-days prior to the upcoming election be thought of as anything short of complete and incontrovertible proof of the abject failure of the President and his administration to execute the "war on terror"?
For the purposes of simplicity and some semblance of brevity, I choose not to include all the miserable failings of this administration on the domestic front, the debt he has heaped on our children and their children for decades into the future, and all the enmity George Bush has conspired with the neo-conservative cabal of his inner-circle to create in the broad world of geopolitical relations.
Instead, let's focus in on what the administration and its minions like to consider W's strong suit: the "war on terror".
First off, and most current, we have the fact that Mr. bin Laden and his sidekick Ayman al-Zawahiri are still "on the lamb"; "scott free" and otherwise roaming the Earth and breathing our air. These are the two most notorious and gutless killers of Americans since Admiral Yamamoto engineered the attacks on Pearl Harbor on 7th December 1941. Do you know how President Roosevelt and Pacific Fleet commander, Admiral Nimitz handled Yamamoto? They tracked him for over a year and when they had conclusive evidence of a Japanese military plane he was flying in, they managed our military to shoot him out of the sky and kill him.
Contrast this with President Bush's decision NOT to pursue bin Laden & al-Zawahiri into the mountain passes around Tora Bora when they were cornered and could haven been subject to the ruthless fighting efficiency of US Special Forces. Instead, Bush and Rumsfeld waited, hesitated and then used local Afghan militia, many of whom had just days previous been fighting AGAINST the US, to "hunt down" these two most wanted killers of over 3,000 Americans.
In fact, so interested in shifting his attention to Iraq to establish a new massive foothold in the Middle East (the Saudis and Qataris definitely thought we had overstayed our welcome since 1991) and to settle old familial scores were Bush and the neo-con team, that just six months after the 9/11 attacks on the US, the President stated he wasn't concerned about him. He further stated he had only been concerned about bin Laden when he was leading the Taliban in Afghanistan. Here's a brief timeline on Mr. Bush's pertinent comments on the subject:
- September 2001: "There's an old poster out West, as I recall, that said, `Wanted. Dead or Alive.'" "We'll hunt him down and bring him to justice." "We'll smoke `em out of their caves."
- March 2002: "Eh, you know, again, I don't know where he is. I, uh, heh, heh. Uh, I, uh, I, I, I, repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."
- October 2004: "Uh, gosh, I - I don't think I ever said I was not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those ex-ag-ger-a-tions."
So, we've established that Mr. Bush lost interest (or at least, "
concern") in Mr. bin Laden roughly 180 days after he had murdered over 3,000 Americans. And next, he turned his attention to Iraq.
Let's examine Mr. Bush's record in Iraq, shall we? After all, he is a self-proclaimed "War President". Against the advice of some of his highest ranking military and State Department officials, President Bush and the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz cabal went to war in Iraq prematurely, based on trumped-up and glossed-over intelligence, and without the proper number of troops - not to win the war, but to win the peace.
The outcome of the "war" versus Iraq was never in doubt - the Iraqi military complex, for all the stimulating talk, high-tech graphics, and former generals pointing to 4-color maps of the country on CNN, MS/NBC, Fox and the major networks, was a shadow of its former self; gutted by the first Gulf War and 12 years of UN-sponsored sanctions.
But the peace - that was different. Ahmed Chalabi, an old friend of Donald Rumsfeld and a confidante of the neo-conservative "wing" of the administration had convinced all the President's men that American troops would be greeted with flower petals and hugs. With limited troops at their disposal, the primary concern was for the oil fields and oil ministries, as Saddam Hussein might attempt a last-gasp scorched Earth policy and hinder the ability of the free flowing of the "black gold" to pay for the war reparations. Nothing could have been further from the truth. We have lost nearly 1,100 US military personnel (including another eight just today), several score more civilian contracts and have thousands of wounded and maimed souls looking to put their lives back together as a result of the President's hasty exercise in machismo.
While the administration and, by extension, its military arm secured the oil as their primary objective (a fact reinforced this week in a "press gaggle" by White House press secretary, Scott McClellan), it allowed looters and insurgents to cart off nearly 760,000 pounds of highly explosive HMX and RDX from the sealed compound at al-QaQaa.
Again, the White House and Pentagon have tried to mix the messages and confuse the public from seeing the truth, but an embedded TV film crew from Minneapolis-St. Paul has provided irrefutable proof that on the 18th of April, 2003, the United States came across this tremendous cache of materiel, quite literally held it in its hand and then simply walked away, leaving the door unlocked. Today, the administration tries to claim it was already gone - and even poor Major Pearson whom the Pentagon trotted out as the front-man for their latest version of the truth - could not give anything more than the most tepid responses concerning what was destroyed or not. So now, we've had the following responses from the administration as a result of the woeful loss at al-QaQaa:
- "Let's not tell the terrorists they've stolen highly explosive materials" - leaning on the Interim Iraqi Authority NOT to expose the losses to the IAEA or to allow the information to go public until AFTER the election, per National Security Advisor, Dr. Condoleeza Rice last weekend;
- "We had other priorities and secured the oil fields and ministries first" - Scott McClellan's ill-advised, though quite telling and candid excuse for allowing this, when the story first broke;
- "There were a lot less explosives there than you're talking about" - try to slice the IAEA reports thinly and only looking at one of the two types of explosives in the compound so as to create FUD about the UN data;
- "Saddam moved them before the war, see we have a picture of one truck" - saying he had moved them to Jordan or Iran;
(By the way, it would have taken approximately FORTY LARGE TRUCKLOADS to empty the plastique from that facility in a controlled fashion - you would think that at a location under 24x7 satellite surveillance before the war, a 40-truck operation would be noticed and targeted and at the very least, we would have more than one satellite photo of ONE TRUCK!)
- "The Russians moved them, by pulling them out through air vents" - this laughable claim suggested that 380 tons of material were hauled up through small roof vents over 2-weeks;
- And, finally(?) "Maybe we blew a lot of it up ourselves" - wherein Maj. Pearson can't say it was al-QaQaa, can't say it was HDX or RDX, and can't say how much he destroyed.
Meanwhile, we have irrefutable evidence in the form of an objective videotape and long-documented records from the UN/IAEA.
I think there's a tremendous, Grand Canyon-sized, credibility gap for the administration here and yet, the media keeps treating each of the above ever-shifting `stories' from the administration with the same level of credibility as a video and UN documents that are as plain as your face. This is irresponsible journalism, and given the consequences of the failure, this behavior by the press is unconscionable.
So, what else does the administration do to "spin" the situation to their favor? Cynically, it compares the weight of all the armaments it has destroyed to the 380 tons of high-explosive plastique - as if a 10-pound mortar shell, composed mostly of steel, has the same destructive capacity as a 10 pounds of HDX. Only 1 pound of this nasty stuff was enough to take down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie - there's enough HDX and RDX missing from al-QaQaa alone to take down EVERY passenger jetliner on Earth, with plenty left over for additional nasty work.
Secondly, from the campaign stump, Mr. Bush claims that had we not invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein would be in control of those same explosives and able to give them to the terrorists around the world. Here's a note for the President. First, had we continued UN sanctions and weapons inspection, those explosives would have been subject to inspection regimes and would have REMAINED UNDER SEAL of the UN, NOT in Saddam's control, as the President falsely claims. Secondly, Mr. President - the terrorists now DO HAVE THE EXPLOSIVES - and on your watch!
When someone is telling a clearly false "story" to the public by way of your medium, the press has AN OBLIGATION to point out that fact and not simply be a megaphone, amplifying the falsehoods.
In the end, we have provided the terrorists - you remember, those "folks" the President talked about in the presidential debates, led by Osama bin Laden (in case you'd forgotten, he made his video to remind the world that he was responsible for 9/11, not Saddam and that he's still quite well and running quite free) - a cache of explosive materiel that can be used to blow up tanks, HumVees, personnel carriers and cars in Iraq; airliners over Russia and anywhere else in the world; school children in Chechnya; trains in Spain; and possibly even major buildings in the US and Europe.
On a broader scale, there is the proliferation of nuclear weaponry. While Mr. Bush and his crack team of freedom-loving neo-cons have been cleansing the deserts of Iraq of Saddam Hussein and 100,000 other Iraqis (mostly women and children non-combatants), Iran has made great strides in moving to nuclear weapon-equipped state status; North Korea has seen it nuclear weapons arsenal increase by a factor of 4 to 8X; we've witnessed a veritable "bake sale" of nuclear technology from Pakistan; and the loosely guarded nuclear weaponry and materiel of the former Soviet Union continues to threaten leaking onto the terrorist black market in a steady drip, drip, drip that the world all hopes won't end in a mushroom-cloud shaped splash in some major western city. Mr. Bush does this make America and world safer? I think not.
Are you thinking, "those poor slobs in Iraq," while feeling safe here in America? 5% of the incoming cargo containers in this nation's ports are inspected - and even if they were, it is very difficult to detect RDX or HMX, because the stuff is very pliable and inert in the absence of blasting cap or other detonation element. This is a VERY BIG DEAL that the world will be living with for quite some time!
So, Mr. President, can you please explain to the American people and the people of the world again how you've made the world "safer" for all of us? More people than ever hate us, AND you've help restock their arsenal with a veritable lifetime supply of high explosives.
"Incompetence!" you say, dear readers? Well, I can't argue with you there, although it should be pointed out that the President Bush did a bang-up job of surrounding, guarding and securing, ever since, the Iraqi oil fields and the Oil Ministry in Baghdad.
These terrible mistakes by the Bush administration will make terrorism more likely, or even certain to happen, rather than making America safer, as proven by the increasing number of suicide bombings every week and the ghastly haunting presence of Osama bin Laden on videotape on the cusp of both All Hallow's Eve and the Election.
No, the Bush administration's self-serving choices have continued to make us less and less secure every time, despite their politically motivated, cynical assurances to the contrary.
And the United States press and mass media has been complicit in this, by cheerleading false "wars" from the sidelines and in not pointing out the obvious falsehoods that have been right in front of all of us, in the name of "fair and balanced" reporting. The last four years have done great damage to the press' reputation as objective seekers and reporters of the "truth".
We need to elect John Kerry as President, and work together to make America safer, before it's too late.
With deepest sincerity,
[frisco]
