March 3, 2006
Note: Moderators: I am the author of this editorial and give permission for it to be published here in full.
National Insecurity
By Miriam Raftery
President Bush is an intelligence failure. He has repeatedly claimed to have no prior knowledge of impending catastrophes, only to have those statements later proven to be lies.
The President insisted that no one could have known that the levees would break in New Orleans. But videotape obtained by the Associated Press clearly shows the President being briefed before Hurricane Katrina. In no uncertain terms, FEMA director Michael Brown warned the President that the levees could be topped – and that this storm was “the big one.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060301/ap_on_go_pr_wh/katrina_video_3 View the video here:
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/ap_bush_pre-katrina_ta... This is hardly the first case of Presidential amnesia. After 9/11, Bush told the American people that no one could have predicted terrorists would use planes to topple buildings. Apparently he “forgot” about a presidential briefing paper presented to him by Condoleeza Rice just weeks before 9/11 – a paper titled “Bin Ladin determined to strike in U.S.” That memo specifically warned of an Al Qaeda plot to hijack planes.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0409041pdb1.html If the President is too inept to take action to protect Americans in the face of such dire warnings, then he should resign – or Congress should perform its Constitutional duty and remove the President from office.
Bush’s lies aren’t confined to life-or-death issues for major U.S. cities. When asked about wiretaps over a year ago, the President stated that any wiretaps of U.S. citizens would require a court order. Yet the New York Times revealed that Bush has authorized illegal spying on thousands of ordinary Americans without a court order – in direct defiance of the FISA laws. Moreover, he authorized illegal wiretapping of Americans BEFORE 9/11:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011306Z.shtml After a public outcry arose over the President’s proposal to sell U.S. ports to a Dubai company owned by the United Arab Emirates, a country strongly linked to terrorism, Bush backpedaled again, claiming he didn’t know about the proposal.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060222/ap_on_go_pr_wh/ports_security If true, this indicates a President dangerously out of touch with what his senior officials are doing. In any case, he has failed to do anything to block the deal, which could close within days unless Congress succeeds in passing legislation to block it.
Bush also “forgot” about meetings with crooked lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whom the President claimed to have never met. Photos have proven otherwise, and Abramoff himself sent a letter to the editor of the Washingtonian to refresh the President’s memory:
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/02/08/exclusive-abramoff-emails/ Then there’s the mother of all whoppers – Bush’s insistence to Congress, the U.N. and the American people that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The Downing Street Memos have since shown that the Bush administration “fixed the facts” to justify invasion of Iraq for ulterior motives, knowing full well that Iraq had no nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction and posed no imminent threat to the U.S. Numerous whistleblowers and former administration officials have since offered evidence to support the fact that our President was brief about the real facts – and chose to lie in order to launch a war.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/8440 http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030606.html Prior to invading Iraq, Bush also insisted that Saddam Hussein was linked to the 9/11 attacks. He later retracted that contention, stating there is no evidence to link Iraq’s deposed president to the 9/11 terrorist acts.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3118262.stm In the documentary “Why Do We Fight?” a man whose son died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 expressed shock and feelings of betrayal upon viewing a videotape of Bush making this astounding admission. “Then why are we there?” he asked. Previously, the man had supported the war and even asked that his son’s name be written on a bomb dropped on Iraq.
Those of us who believe the President’s lack of integrity and judgment make him unfit to lead ought to be asking our Congressional representatives, “Why is Bush still here?”
originally published in Liberty Belle Log.
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