reyonthehill

For nine months, the administration did nothing. Bush and Cheney refused to accept Bill Clinton's advice that Islamic fundamentalist terrorists were the gravest threat to the United States. They refused to meet with Richard Clarke. They refused to accept reality.

(1) Did George W. Bush cause the events of nine-eleven? No.

(2) Was George W. Bush the reason there was (and is) much hatred for the U.S.? No.

(3) Did the events of nine-eleven occur under George W. Bush's watch? Yes.

(4) Did George W. Bush do anything (move heaven or earth) to prevent the horrific attacks? No.

Were the horrific events of nine-eleven preventable? We will never know. Bush says they were not; he refers to it as that "fateful day." What we do know is that the Bush administration was negligent in its pursuit of terrorist networks and ignorant of the threat they posed. We also know that the administration put Iraq, Russia, and China, illegal drugs and prostitution on a higher priority than terrorism.

The famous August 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing warned Bush that terrorists were determined to strike. Was this information dated? Was there actionable intelligence? We have no idea. What we do know is that after reading that memo (during his month-long vacation at his Crawford ranch in Texas) he played a round af golf and told reporters that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world. (Even then he played that angle.)

It is despicable for Bush to use that day to further his political career. No sitting president has presided over an attack of that magnitude on home soil. Yet Bush uses it as campaign cry at rallies. Bush attacks Kerry and all critics of the administration as being unpatriotic. Republicans send fliers to voters emblazoned with the infamous date and how they will fight terror and liberals simply will not. The GOP applies fear tactics in its campaigns as the only means to garner support.

Bush didn't cause nine-eleven, but surely he did nothing to stop it.

Image: Yahoo!

Lawrence O'Donnell speaking of Bush's intelligence failure, as stated during the October 1, 2004, edition of The McLaughlin Group, is an instant classic.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Issue Two: The Global Test. Listen closely, please, to the first sentence and the second sentence for the words "global test."

SEN. KERRY: (From videotape.) No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, nor would I, the right to preempt, in any way necessary, to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it, Jim, you've got to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test, where your countrymen, your people, understand fully why you're doing what you're doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

PRESIDENT BUSH: (From videotape.) I'm not exactly sure what you mean, "passes the global test." You take preemptive action if you pass a global test? My attitude is you take preemptive action in order to protect the American people, that you act in order to make this country secure.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: "Global test." This language was immediately seized on by President Bush, as you saw, and later that night by Vice President Cheney, who continued the "global test" attack in Colorado.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: (From videotape.) On the one case, we've got in George Bush a man who's done it, who's been there, done it for four different years now and done a superb job; and the wannabe senator who says that, in response to the question on preemptive action, he would support it as long as it passed some kind of global test.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Question: Is this a cheap trick by Bush and Cheney, or is it a true reading of Kerry's two sentences on the subject of preemptive strikes? Lawrence O'Donnell.

MR. O'DONNELL: It's a cheap trick. What Kerry is obviously saying is there's no specific test involved here. It's just that you have to have the sense that if you're doing a preemptive strike that your country is with you, which is where he began, and that the world will understand it.

That's the test: Will the world understand it? Not necessarily get the world to approve it, not even a majority of the world, but will he be able to communicate to the world why he's done it?

Now, it didn't surprise me when President Bush said, "I don't think I understand what you mean by a global test." I'm not sure the president understood anything that Kerry said.

[...]

MR. O'DONNELL: He was lost. The president was lost last night.

Source: mclaughlin.com

My most recent post about Bush clarifying that he is indeed not god has been trumped today by a photo that was taken along the campaign trail.

"Demons be gone! Your soul is saved." Bush continues his crusade to save the world.

Image: Yahoo!

During Charles Gibson's interview of President Bush for ABC News, Bush clarified to the American people that he is not God.

Gibson: "Do Christians and nonchristians and Muslims go to heaven in your mind?"

Bush: "Yes, they do. We have different routes of getting there. But I will -- I want you to understand, I want your listeners to understand, I don't get to decide who goes to heaven. The almighty God decides who goes to heaven. I am on my personal walk."

Thank you, Mr. President, for pointing that out. Over the past few years, I have been a bit disoriented and readily assumed you were the all-powerful supreme being. Thank you, once again, for clarifying for the American people this fundamental and critical issue before the election.

Source: Washington Post

The Los Angeles Times released its findings with a new poll and the Times' Ron Brownstein provided the following analysis:

The survey finds voters split exactly in half on Bush's performance as president - and almost exactly in half on his decision to invade Iraq...

Bush's message is helping him gain ground among lower middle income and less well-educated voters ambivalent about his economic record - but costing him with more affluent and better-educated families that have historically supported Republicans. Strikingly, Bush leads Kerry among lower- and middle-income white voters - but trails the Democrat among whites earning at least $100,000 a year.

Bush also runs best among voters without college degrees, while Kerry leads not only among college-educated women (a traditional Democratic constituency), but among college-educated men - usually one of the most reliably GOP groups in the electorate. Consistently in the poll, cultural indicators prove more powerful predictors of candidate support than economic status.

Although the differences in support for Bush and Kerry among men and women each is within the survey's margin of error, the poll finds a huge "marriage gap." Married voters, who traditionally take more conservative positions on social issues, give Bush a 12-percentage-point lead, whereas singles (usually more liberal on social and economic issues) prefer Kerry by 20 points.

Nearly two-thirds of likely voters who attend a house of worship at least weekly said they would vote for Bush; among whites who attend that often, Bush's support soared to nearly three-fourths.

But Kerry draws three-fifths of those who attend a house of worship less often, including 55% of whites. Some of these voters recoil against Bush's heavy use of religious imagery.

Bush is backed in the poll by just more than three-fifths of Americans who own a gun; among those who don't, just fewer than three-fifths prefer Kerry. The Democrat is supported by almost two-thirds of urban voters, Bush by nearly three-fifths of rural and small-town voters, with suburbanites split almost in half.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Enough said.

Tony Blankley, columnist for the conservative Washington Times, equated John Kerry's "Mary Cheney is a lesbian" comment to former President Gerald Ford's gaffe alleging that there was no soviet domination of Poland at the 1976 debate with Jimmy Carter. Blankley made the assertion on the October 15, 2004, edition of The McLaughlin Group on PBS.

MR. BLANKLEY: Look, I think that the lesbian comment could be the equivalent of Ford's Poland comment in the '76 debate. [...] And the fact that here you [Lawrence O'Donnell] are, a Kerry supporter, talking about this days after the debate, just like Ford's supporters had to do about Poland after the '76 debate, it was a blunder of the first order and it may have cost him the election.

Source: mclaughlin.com

Blankley has made a couple errors in his analysis however: (1) Mary Cheney is a lesbian and (2) Poland was a victim of Soviet domination. Although the outrage after the debates may have been similar, it is because the right purposefully created a diversion from the much more important statement and outright lie from Bush during the final debate.

KERRY: Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, "Where is Osama bin Laden? " He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned."

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?

BUSH: Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.

Source: Commission on Presidential Debates

During a news conference at the White House on March 13, 2002, Bush said, "I truly am not that concerned about him [bin Laden]."

Source: Yahoo!

Scarborough believes Bush will win. So does Buchanan. So does Frank Luntz. This exciting and revealing information is what the front page of the Scarborough Country webpage has to offer this morning. Of course, we knew this years ago.

Under the headline, "Scarborough: Polls show Bush in the lead," the web site states, "Frank Luntz, Pat Buchanan, and Joe Scarborough predict a Bush win based on polling data."

Source: MSNBC

On Thursday, Bush sat down for an interview with Telemundo. Here is an excerpt: "And it's very important for people to recognize that in this dangerous world, America must not show weakness, or uncertainty that will lead to tragedy. So I'm thoughtful, I listen, I respect the opinion of others, but this is a job, where there's, you know, where the buck stops here." (Washington Post)

When Bush was asked who is at fault in Iraq at the second debate, Bush said the fault lies solely with U.S. military:

"I remember sitting in the White House looking at those generals, saying, 'Do you have what you need in this war? Do you have what it takes?'

"I remember going down to the basement of the White House the day we committed our troops as last resort, looking at Tommy Franks and the generals on the ground, asking them, 'Do we have the right plan with the right troop level?'

"And they looked me in the eye and said, 'Yes, sir, Mr. President.' Of course, I listen to our generals. That's what a president does. A president sets the strategy and relies upon good military people to execute that strategy."

Forget about admitting any mistakes; have you any shame Mr. President?

Source: Commission on Presidential Debates

I knew it was a possibility and I have thought about it endlessly, but I didn't write about it, or even speak of it. Out of respect for the curse.