The Bush Administration and its media lapdogs

The Bush Administration and its media lapdogs

The traditional media never have gotten this one right, and they're certainly not going to now. Not today. Probably not ever. They reported the facts as they happened, but tying them all together is beyond their ability, interest and/or intent. Tying together the facts that they themselves reported.

I've posted this many times, in many forms. This is a cut-and-paste from a previous post, and no doubt I will need to post it again. The Bush Administration failed on so many fronts, from crashing the economy to ignoring climate change to allowing the people of a great American city to be devastated by a natural disaster for which there was plenty of time to be prepared, to lying the nation into a failed war against a nation that had never attacked us and had no ability to attack us even it had so desired, to spying on American citizens, to authorizing torture ... the list is nearly endless. But the Bush Administration was defined by the September 11 terrorist attacks. The media even allowed the Bush Administration to cast itself as heroes because of its response to the September 11 terrorist attacks. All of it wrong. And so to reiterate ...

Just a month before the 9/11 attacks, while on a month long vacation, Bush was personally handed a presidential daily briefing titled:



Bin Laden determined to strike in US.

All right. You've covered your ass, now.

With characteristic intelligence and class, Bush responded with the words:And went fishing.

But Bush wasn't the only member of his administration to blow off warnings, and ignore the threat of terrorism. Indeed, his attorney general, John Ashcroft, revealed his own lack of concern just a day before the attacks:



In his final budget request for the fiscal year 2003 submitted on Sept. 10 to the budget director, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the attorney general called for spending increases in 68 programs, none of which directly involved counterterrorism. Upgrading the F.B.I.'s computer system, one of the areas in which he sought an increase, is relevant to combating terrorism, though Mr. Ashcroft did not defend it on that ground. But in his Sept. 10 submission to the budget office, Mr. Ashcroft did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators. Mr. Ashcroft proposed cuts in 14 programs. One proposed $65 million cut was for a program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants for equipment, including radios and decontamination suits and training to localities for counterterrorism preparedness.

(More Bush failures over the fold)