June 9, 2003

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

You know it's coming.

As BuzzFlash and many other Internet sites pointed out again and again beginning last fall, Bush and Blair were lying about WMD's to mount a war for oil. There were other covert reasons for the Iraq war (see BuzzFlash's "The Perfect War" http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/03/03/27.html -- and "Endgame" http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/03/03/17.html ), but the WMD's were clearly the "red alert" that was the justification for attacking Iraq immediately to achieve those publicly unrevealed goals.

Despite the vaunted KGB-like secrecy apparatus of the Bush Cartel, evidence is now leaking out that Bush and Blair blatantly and brazenly lied. The truth is spilling out in the British press like a sieve. Even the American press is starting to report that disgruntled American intelligence agents were furious that they were forced to churn out doctored data to provide the Bush Cartel with political cover to justify an immediate invasion of Iraq. After all, it turns out, Dick Cheney started hanging out at the CIA just to make sure that the spooks got the message that Cheney wanted them to know that Iraq HAD to have WMD's (with a wink, a nod, and a slap upside the head).

So what will Karl Rove do to distract the lapdog press, which is beginning to actually report the truth, from the serial lying of the Bush Cartel being exposed?

Well, let's take a look at a couple of examples from 2002. In the spring of that year, revelations were coming out that Bush had been warned of an imminent terrorist attack on the U.S. during a briefing in the summer of 2001, but ignored the warning and went off to vacation on his ranch for a month. Then came September 11th and the Bush Cartel acted as if it were all a big surprise. Other information about the Bush Cartel being asleep at the wheel in preventing the terrorist attack also began to emerge. There were starting to be rumbles in Congress about an independent investigation of 9/11 being created. Cheney even called Tom Daschle to threaten that an independent investigation would make the United States more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

The Bush Cartel hauled out Condi to "explain" that it was true that Bush had been warned that Al-Qaeda hijackings might occur in the near future, but that Bush wasn't told about plans to attack the World Trade Center or Pentagon so he didn't take action to protect them. The press dutifully accepted this explanation. But as BuzzFlash pointed out at the time -- and we assume most second graders would understand this, but apparently not the mainstream press -- the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon WERE hijackings. If Bush had taken steps after his pre-9/11 security briefing to put law enforcement on heightened alert, he might very well have prevented the hijacking attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. But the American press and the TV pundits couldn't figure out this little bit of basic common sense and convinced the American public that Condi had cleared everything up. It staggers the mind that they could get away with this transparent, nonsensical, lie. Condi admitted that Bush was warned about potentially imminent hijackings, the source of the 9/11 attacks. That is the bottom line, period.

Furthermore, if Bush was warned in the summer of 2001 that Al-Qaeda was planning spectacular hijackings and did nothing significant to increase airport security, what does that tell you? Another point that seemed to cast doubt on Condi's claims of Bush innocence in terms of having failed to prevent 9/11 was that she claimed that no one had known that Al-Qaeda was planning to attack buildings with planes. But that was quickly disproved by BuzzFlash and other sites who pointed out that Bush had attended a G-8 conference in Genoa, where anti-aircraft missiles were deployed for the specific reason that intelligence gathering had revealed Al-Qaeda was planning to attack buildings in the Italian city, targeting the G-8 conferees. That was one reason Bush slept on a boat offshore. And that occurred before the "smoking gun" briefing in the summer of 2001!

Karl Rove knew that sooner or later, people with brains (which is to say people other than mainstream news reporters) were going to start catching on to the transparent lies of the White House about how George W. Bush dropped the ball in preventing 9/11, so he had Tom Ridge and John Ashcroft unleash a barrage of terrorist alerts in the spring of 2002. Among the more notable and laughable alerts were that: terrorists were planning on targeting apartment buildings (that means you've got half of the country scared right off the bat); that terrorists were planning on disguising themselves as beggars (that way you can also get people to avoid beggars who deserve their poverty according to the Bush extremists); that terrorists were going to use hydrofoils to ride up through the Everglades and attack Florida (better get the anti-terrorist crocodile squad activated); that terrorists were going to disguise themselves as delivery men (now you got everyone in the country scared); that terrorists were going to seize trucks and drive them into big cities and explode them (that should have cleared traffic off of the interstates); and so on and so on. Then they sent Laura Bush up to NYC to bemoan that she didn't understand why everyone was so scared.

We wish we were making this all up. We really do.

In any case, an "unnamed White House Official" (widely believed to be Ari Fleischer), ADMITTTED that the White House needed to gin up the terrorist alerts to quell the rising Congressional demands for a hearing on how 9/11 happened. In short, we were scared half to death to save Bush's hide, because if the American public ever realized that he didn't do anything to prevent the hijackings, even though he was warned, he might be in a little hot water -- as in impeachment -- for a change.

Of course, the media being what is -- and Tom Daschle being the "red state" Democrat he is (sort of our "Silent Cal") -- Rove succeeded in getting the calls for a 9/11 investigation derailed at the time.

Not long after that explosion of terrorist alerts subsided somewhat, an FBI agent was about to testify before Congress that the Bush FBI refused to authorize an investigation of the man (Moussaoui) some argue was supposed to be the 20th hijacker, prior to September 11th. If the FBI had examined his computer, they might very well have obtained information sufficient to prevent the hijackings. Well, lordy me, barely did the conscientious FBI agent start testifying before Congress when the White House announces that it is proposing to establish a Department of Homeland Security and -- in the same breath -- that the Democrats are impairing national security by holding up passage of the bill to create the department.

Now, the only problem with this charade was that the Democrats had been advocating a Department of Homeland Security for months and the Bush administration had firmly blocked it. The Bush Cartel had claimed that such a department might impair the war on terrorism! But, on the verge of another embarrassing revelation that the Bush Cartel might have been able to prevent 9/11, the White House switched positions 180 degrees and -- in true grand hypocrisy fashion -- blamed the Democrats for holding up creation of the Department. And what about the brave FBI agent who testified, under oath, that the FBI blew it when it came to investigating Moussaoui? The White House drowned her out with their Department of Homeland Security announcement. It's enough to make a true patriot puke.

Maureen Dowd took note in a June 9, 2002, column:

"After weeks of scalding revelations about a cascade of leads and warnings prefiguring the 9/11 attacks that were ignored by the U.S. government, the president created the Department of Political Security.

Or, as the White House calls it for public consumption, the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Bush's surprise move was a complete 180, designed to knock FBI Cassandra Coleen Rowley off front pages. He had resisted the idea of a cabinet department focusing on domestic defense for nine months.

But clearly, Iago Rove saw his master's invincibility cracking and did a little whispering in W.'s ear. Why not use national security policy for scandal management?

So the minimalist Texan who had sneered about the larded federal bureaucracy all through his presidential campaign stepped before the cameras to slather on a little more lard -- and nervous Republicans all over town found themselves suddenly praying that bigger government could save those in need (of re-election), after all."

So you just got to figure that any day now, Karl Rove is going to role out some grand distraction. As BuzzFlash has predicted many a time, the Bush Cartel will plant WMD's in Iraq if they can be assured that they will get away with it. So that's the first thing to watch out for. (That's probably the major reason Bush won't allow U.N. arms inspectors to monitor or participate in the search: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/06/1054700387263.html ) The terror alerts have lost their punch. (Have you noticed how low profile they are now, even though there have been a series of terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Mighty curious, isn't it? And they have Tom Ridge out touring fire stations or something like that.)

So what does Karl Rove have up his sleeve to diffuse the growing momentum that is revealing that the Bush Cartel has once again engaged in serial lying? Surely, Rove's probably worn out the value of trying to blame Clinton for the WMD debacle. And without Clinton to blame, they have a hard time coming up with ways to evade personal responsibility.

But whatever Karl comes up with, we are sure that the press will jump onto it like a grasshopper onto stalks of Kansas wheat. Karl knows that he controls the mainstream media like a circus trainer controls his elephants. It doesn't matter if his little sideshow does damage to America or our psyche; the Bush Cartel knows that to keep absolute power, you have to use absolute power.

Along with the rest of our readers, we will just have to sit back and wait. Karl will come up with something spectacular enough to get the media and the wimpy Democratic Congressional leadership off the scent of the truth about the lies that led this country into the Iraq war.

Karl's very good, you know, at distracting Americans from the truth.

His middle name, some might say, is Lucifer.

His favorite song?

"Sympathy for the Devil," of course.