Asleep at the switch

Bushists and neocons might have given their best efforts and still not prevented 9/11. But they didn't even try, despite many warnings:

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous.

Unconscionable.

Everyone helped everyone

Larger than Dunkirk - in nine hours.

(h/t Mario Vittone)

Debasing the brand

It's an inevitable result of capitalism that every quality brand is doomed eventually to debasement. (In Boston, Filene's De-Basement.) The reputation one entrepreneur has built will, in the depth of some business downturn, become the easy asset that some lazy bastard can exploit. This B-school grad will work the numbers and think he's an entrepreneur.

Fox owns National Geographic TV, which for no apparent reason from its origins is reporting on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, exploring the execrable Duhbya's memories of that day and time. The teasers for their show bear all the marks of soft propaganda.

I knew from the day I learned that Fox had bought Nat Geo that it too would become a propaganda vehicle. We'll see for sure tomorrow whether that has indeed happened.

Thank god

Thank god we don't have any armed lunatic wingnuts here in America.

Police identified the suspect as Anders Behring Breivik, 32, a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, while acquaintances described him as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threats of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.

Hmm, lots of familiar grievances... Unemployment, however, is below 4% in Norway and not part of Breivik's grievance list. Damn socialist economy!

Will this attack damage Norway's social democratic consensus, as 9/11 and the Bushists' exploitation of it did ours?

Thomas Hegghammer, a terrorism specialist at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, said the manifesto bears an eerie resemblance to those of Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders, though from a Christian rather than a Muslim point of view. Like Mr. Breivik’s manuscript, the major Qaeda declarations have detailed accounts of the Crusades, a pronounced sense of historical grievance and calls for apocalyptic warfare to defeat the religious and cultural enemy.

It's worth noting that 93 dead (known so far) from a total population of under 5 million has close to twice the demographic impact of 9/11. In their awful grief, Norwegians now have the chance to show resoluteness or panic, just as we did ten years ago. Most likely, they will show a mix, just as we did.

Principal over principle

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Media comment: Well, the Republicans may all be assholes, but they're really really good at all saying the same thing.

Nine years

Too long. Not long enough.

I remember.

Update (9/13): Go and read Tom Levenson. You'll be glad you did.

No Cuban cigars

Click image for full Mike Keefe/Denver Post cartoon.

Wrong kind of crazy

Republicans don't embrace all kinds of conspiratorial crazy - not even Texas Republicans. Birther? No problem. Black helicopter paranoid? Come on in. Socialist takeover? You're our guy!

Truther? No way! That's nutty (true!), but more important, it makes a Republican look bad.

No liberal could get this coverage

Rudy Giuliani, who holds no position of importance in any organization, said something critical of Barack Obama. O.K., fine, he once executive officer over New York City on 9/11, and it's much bigger than many states whose Republican governors get attention waaay out of proportion with the population they represent. So maybe Giuliani's opinion is news.

Now, though, he's going to repeat his criticism on an RNC teleconference. Maybe there's some slow news day on which that would be news.

But there is no day when news is so slow that the mere announcement that Rudy's going to disagree again with Obama in the future is news. Only a Twitter twit would think otherwise.

Mark Preston mush think that his job is the regurgitate every damn press release he gets - as long as it's from a Republican. No Democrat (well, maybe a pretend Dem) could ever get coverage like this. Ever. From anyone.

On this strange and mournful day

Republicans are fond of claiming that Duhbya "kept us safe" after 9/11. Well, I would not give you false hope, but today Obama's record by their standards is undeniably better than Duhbya's.

As a defender of rationality rather than sticking my head in the sand, I know that there's no guarantee of the continued providence of safety. But maybe we can all agree on the hope of our continued safety and argue about credit at leisure.

Empire strikes back

Darth Cheney's every statement still requires the belief that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. That alone is reason enough to discount everything he says as insane.

Cheney's excuse for the cupboard being bare is that the Bushists had to spend the money. Yet nearly all of the spending was on Iraq, not on attacking Afghanistan.

Then of course the other big contributor to the deficit was a vast tax cut for the wealthy.

Asking the right questions

Some interrogators refused to torture. They learned what they needed. Here are the conclusions of one of them:

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

This is the Bushist legacy.

(h/t Philosoraptor)

Accountability

U.S. intelligence sources warned India about an attack over water against Mumbai. The Indian authorities did a little but then stopped. We all know the consequences.

U.S. intelligence sources warned Duhbya about a less specific attack against America. He did nothing at all. We all know the consequences.

The Indian security minister resigned.

Were any of the Bushists so chastened, so responsible, so accountable that they stepped down? Yeah, that's a rhetorical question. Instead, they fired people who warned them.

Out of sight, out of mind

The apparent al Qaeda attack on our embassy in Yemen is part of a series of attacks that I don't remember getting much attention.

The State Department ordered the departure of all non-emergency American staff from the embassy, along with their family members, in April, after attacks against the embassy and a residential compound. That order was lifted last month.

In March, three mortar rounds landed near the embassy, wounding Yemeni students at a nearby school and Yemeni government security personnel, the State Department said.

What's that again about no terrorism since 9/11? Sadly, the list of exceptions grows.

Al Qaeda is just not a priority

Here's the stark admission:

"The chairman of the Joint Chiefs has said time and time again Iraq is a mission we must do. Afghanistan is a mission we do as we can," [Pentagon spokesman Geoff] Morrell said.

The people who had nothing to do with 9/11? Enemy! The people who attacked us on 9/11? No big deal.

How long until the White House backtracks on that?

Update: I mean, really, they're saying that they're willing to let the situation in Afghanistan totally go to hell. What a craven bunch of shitheads.

McCain, more Bushist every day

McCain flip-flops on the surveillance state. It turns out that he loves Big Brother after all.

It's especially amusing when a politician does a 180 and then sends out a message that gratuitously and dishonestly insults people who hold the position he himself used to hold:

Mr. McCain believes that “neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the A.C.L.U. and trial lawyers, understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin wrote.

Four more years! Who needs the Fourth Amendment? Who needs Congress?

More Bushist depredations of the Constitution.

Survival

Stories of survival such as this small collection have fascinated me for almost as long as I've been able to read. I remember a specific book of stories from second grade.

I've long prepared mentally for all sorts of disasters - finding the gap in a pi-cross-sectioned concrete garage form if an earthquake hits Boston, not going gently in a terrorist situation, finding the exit in a plane crash (yes, I do read the cards and orient myself to all the exits), swimming down an avalanche, getting lost in the mountains, preventing hypothermia, surviving if shipwrecked or cast away.

Much of it is the romance of imagining myself in danger, but I have gotten lost in the mountains. Since it was in familiar territory and there was no immediate danger, I quelled my rising fear, took off my cotton sweatshirt to keep it dry in case I had to spend the night out, and sat down to think. Panic, says Time, can be useful. The trick is not to panic when that would be counterproductive.

Preparation also makes it easier to help others caught in a disaster. Unlike Rick Rescorla, I'm no hero, but I am ready enough to help that I'll never be classified with Kitty Genovese's neighbors.

Oops!

NYC firefighters despise Rudi. Giuliani's spokesman then steps in it:

"There are many, many 9/11 families who lost relatives who are very, very supportive of Rudy and what he did before and after 9/11," Safir said. "It's sad when people get used politically."

Oops!

Of course, Howard Safir wants to be used. Not sure about the others.

House of Saud

Call Duhbya! There's no justice, no human rights, and no democracy in Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi Arabian human rights attorney is asking the government to allow him to represent a woman who was gang-raped -- and then sentenced to prison for speaking out about the case.

The attorney, Abdulrahman al-Lahim, had his license revoked last week by a judge for speaking to the Saudi-controlled media about the case, al-Lahim told CNN.

The judge more than doubled the sentence against al-Lahim's 19-year-old client because she spoke to the media about the case, a court source told Arab News, an English-language Middle Eastern daily newspaper.

The woman -- who was initially sentenced in October 2006 to 90 lashes -- had her sentenced increased to 200 lashes and was ordered to serve six months in prison under Saudi Arabia's strict Islamic law.

I'm sure a democracy advocate as resolute, barrel-chested, and big-packaged as Duhbya will want to invade immediately to rectify that. Plus, fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, so he'll be able to convince Americans, despite our lack of will in spreading his kind of democracy.

The House of Saud is a blight on the earth. What comes after may be worse.

Sunday comics blogging

Depends what the meaning of strike is.