More Bush Administration Doublethink

On February 9th, 2006, President Bush gave a speech to the National Guard in the National Guard Building in Washington, D.C. A white House press release billed it as "President Discusses Progress in War on Terror to National Guard". The Prez invoked the words “September the 11th” or “9/11” twelve times. And he said “Al-Qaeda” 19 times. Bush said, “The attacks in London and Madrid and other cities are grim reminders of how lethal Al-Qaeda remains.” At the time Bush gave his impassioned speech about the deadly Al-Qaeda, the CIA had already closed its unit for hunting Osama bin Laden late last year. The NYT reported this morning that intelligence officials say the Bin Laden unit (called “Alec Station”) was shut down because “Al-Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was.” Oh, and another reason it was shut down was because members of Alec Station “had acquired a reputation for crazed alarmism about the rising Al-Qaeda threat." Let’s see, what was it Bush said when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed on June 8th? “The death of the Jordanian-born Zarqawi is a severe blow to Al Qaeda," and “the killing of Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, offers a chance to ‘turn the tide’ in the war.” And how much cash money did MSNBC report the US government was offering for “information leading to al-Zarq1awi’s killing or capture”? Oh yeah, it was $25 million. What was that about crazed alarmism? So the White House isn’t hunting Osama anymore and Al-Qaeda has been downgraded to “no longer hierarchical”, and we didn’t attack Iraq because of WMD’s, and our spreading of Bush-style freedom has been as productive as spreading manure on a saltflat. So what are we doing in Iraq? Oh that’s right…we’re running Republican election campaigns for this coming November and for 2008.