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I'm what you might call an amateur ranter... I recently made a rant on this subject, and I'd be very grateful for some feedback. (I would've made a seperate post about this, but I'm a newb, and therefore can't).
You may or may not have noticed, but recently, it has come to light that at a black-tie dinner last year, George W. Bush decided that the best way to break the ice would be to "playfully" lift up things around him and pretend to peek around the room while saying "Where are those weapons of mass destruction? Gee, I just can't find those weapons of mass destruction!"
Let's look at that again. Except now let's put it in a timeline with a number of other events.
1. George W. Bush and the right wing think tank PNAC (or "Project for a New American Century), which includes almost all of his current administration members, want to invade Iraq. Articles on PNAC's website expressing wishes to do so are dated as early as 1998.
2. George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, and Katherine Harris wipe thousands of legit black voters (who would almost certainly have voted Democrat) off the voting lists in Florida under the pretense that they are felons, whereas in fact the vast majority of them have either only committed misdemeanors or even just share the same last name or street as a felon. This, along with the counting of overseas ballots in favor of Bush despite the fact that they were submitted after the election and therefore null and void, allows George W. Bush and his PNAC cronies to illegally steal the White House from under Al Gore's nose.
3. George W. Bush is inaugurated as President of the United States (hereafter referred to as POTUS). His cabinet is almost entirely composed of PNAC members.
4. Shortly after George W. Bush takes power, Condoleezza Rice and Sandy Berger - Bill Clinton's National Security Advisor - hold meetings so that Berger can explain the necessity of focusing on terrorism, and especially Al-Qaeda. Berger informed Rice that "terrorism - and particularly Mr. Bin Laden's brand of it - would consume far more of her time than she ever imagined". After Berger, Richard Clarke - one of Clinton's top counterterrorism officials - lays out a plan to eliminate Al-Qaeda. Rice is seriously impressed and asks Clarke to stay on as head of counterterrorism. Rice later pretends that the meetings with Berger never occured.
5. Al-Qaeda flies two hijacked planes into the World Trade Center. Nothing has been done to prepare for this, despite the fact that as early as August 6 CIA director George Tenet had sent a report to the POTUS entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike at U.S.". Richard Clarke's plan - despite a great deal of effort by Clarke himself to get it formally approved - has not reached George W. Bush's eyes until September 4th. Between then and the 11th, Donald Rumsfeld threatened a presidential veto to a Congressional program that would shift money from the "Star Wars" missile defense program to anti-terrorism purposes.
6. Almost immediately after the WTC crumbles, Bush starts trying to find an excuse to attack Iraq. Paul O'Neill will later call Bush a "blind man in a room full of deaf people" during the counterterrorism meetings that occured after 9/11.
7. Mid-2002, Bush makes his desire to attack Iraq known. The administration puts forth statements saying that Saddam Hussein has vast stacks of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, that he poses an imminent threat, and that he is closely connected to Al-Qaeda. Every single one of these statements will later be proven false. The exaggeration is so great that Colin Powell, when asked to give a speech describing Iraq's supposed WMD capabilities, throws it in the air and says "I'm not saying this. This is bullshit."
8. In March of 2003, George W. Bush ignores the U.N. reports of no WMD and invades Iraq anyway. More than 500 soldiers will be killed, more than 3,000 injured, and approximately 10,000 Iraqi civilians will die as a result. No weapons are found.
9. Paul O'Neill breaks away from Bush and states that Bush was willing to exaggerate as much as possible in order to be able to invade Iraq.
10. Saddam Hussein is put into custody of the United States.
11. Colin Powell states that there may not have been any WMD after all and that the intelligence leading up to the war may well have been faulty.
12. Richard Clarke publicly explains the Bush administration's reluctance to halt 9-11 before it happened. He also publicly apologizes to the 9-11 families for failing to prevent it, and gains much support from them as a result.
And now, after this long series of disaster, George W. Bush JOKES ABOUT HOW HE SENT UNITED STATES SOLDIERS INTO A FOREIGN COUNTRY - TO DIE - ON THE BASIS OF A LIE. HE JOKES AND LAUGHS ABOUT IT TO A LARGE AUDIENCE OF MEMBERS OF THE PRESS. HE LAUGHS AT THE DEATHS AND INJURIES OF UNITED STATES SOLDIERS AND INNOCENT IRAQI CIVILIANS.
And there is nothing funny about that at all.
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