Six years after the worst terror attack on U.S. soil, we are, in my view, at a dark place in America. Our political fabric has never been so worn. Our president has been proved a liar at worst, and an incompetent fool at best. He twisted the collective rage that we all felt after those towers came down in New York, in order to service a paranoid neocon fantasy of Middle East domination. "Get the Arabs!" That's what the neocons have been shrieking since George H.W. Bush failed to take his oil war all the way to Baghdad. They begged Clinton to do it, but he wouldn't. They whined that the only way America would see the light is with a "galvanizing, Pearl Harbor style event." It took a fool like George W. Bush to do their bidding. And after 9/11 he found a way to twist America's outrage into a thirst for war, not just against Afghanistan, where al-Qaida is, but also against Iraq. In fact, Bush was talking about invading Iraq well before those towers came down, including allegedly, before he became president, and it's clear now that the attacks provided merely the excuse.
But even before that, George W. Bush shamed himself, utterly, when on September 11, 2001, a Tuesday, just like today, he hid from the American people for nine long hours, leaving the stage to New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who for once, behaved like a man, instead of a snake. By ceding his presidency to Giuliani, and then having his henchmen orchestrate the destruction of any journalist or writer who dared to call a coward a coward, George W. Bush became what he ultimately was destined to be shown to be: a small man, an arrogant man, a self-centered and inadequate man, in every possible way. And it is that man who is leading us into the quagmire of Iraq.
To paraphrase the Dixie Chicks: this man embarasses me. He is an embarassment to this country.
And as for Rudy, he pimped 9/11 for his own financial gain, and is now doing so in order to get himself into the White House. Meanwhile, the bodies of scores of firefighters and other victims of the Towers' attack are languishing in mounds of rubble at Fresh Kills Landfill in New York.
And on this day, like many Americans, I still have questions...
Did George H.W. Bush turn to his breakfast buddy, Safiq Bin Laden, on the morning of 9/11 and ask him where his younger brother Osama might be? (More on the Bush-Bin Laden ties here.)
Just where did George W. Bush disappear to for those nine, long hours on September 11, 2001?
Why did Bush bother to talk to Robert Draper, and give away his secrets? (I'm definitely going to read the book...)
Is al-Qaida a trumped-up fantasy designed to perpetuate Bush's corporate wars? Or is it a real threat to the security of the United States that the administration is simply incapable of containing (or worse, inadvertently expanding...)?
Has it been resolved to most people's satisfaction that the Bush administration had nothing to do with 9/11? (I think the answer here is clearly, no.)
...and six years after the attacks, and the Iraq catastrophe that the Bush administration concocted from it, can the United States ever fully recover its good name?
<%
dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
