The Real News Couldn’t Be Worse

And yet, most Americans, me included, are more interested in the Oscars tonight or whether Anna Nicole Smith’s various cosmetic implants will biodegrade by the year 6050, than in listening to or reading more hogwash from the White House. One could argue that we Americans are so shallow and self-absorbed that our only concern is fun, games and entertainment, and that we have tuned out regarding the woeful state of the world. Or, one could argue that Americans have been so lied to by the Bush administration that we no longer believe anything we hear that is remotely called news. Or, one could argue that the Bush administration is so concerned with saving face and its own aggrandizement that it refuses to listen to intelligence reports that run counter to Bush administration propaganda. And in any case, the Bush administration has no intention of disseminating the truth even if it could recognize it. This morning Frank Rich said in his New York Times Op/Ed article that we are back to the Bush administration’s MO of 2001. The White House refused then to believe information it received about terrorist plots against the US. Rich says, “The White House doesn’t want to hear it now, either. That’s why terrorism experts are trying to get its attention by going public, and not just through The Times. Michael Scheuer, the former head of the C.I.A. bin Laden unit, told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann last week that the Taliban and Al Qaeda, having regrouped in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 'are going to detonate a nuclear device inside the United States' (the real United States, that is, not the fictional stand-in where this same scenario can be found on '24'). Al Qaeda is 'on the march' rather than on the run, the Georgetown University and West Point terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman told Congress. Tony Blair is pulling troops out of Iraq not because Basra is calm enough to be entrusted to Iraqi forces — it’s 'not ready for transition,' according to the Pentagon’s last report — but to shift some British resources to the losing battle against the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.” Is the White House so bent on rewriting history that it is putting the US in jeopardy? Rich thinks so. “This is why the entire debate about the Iraq 'surge' is as much a sideshow as Britney’s scalp. More troops in Baghdad are irrelevant to what’s going down in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The surge supporters who accuse the Iraq war’s critics of emboldening the enemy are trying to deflect attention from their own complicity in losing a bigger battle: the one against the enemy that actually did attack us on 9/11. Who lost Iraq? is but a distraction from the more damning question, Who is losing the war on terrorism?” Rich concludes by saying, “Five years after 9/11, the terrorists would seem to have us just where they want us — asleep — even as the system is blinking red once again.” I believe that the people in the White House Insane Asylum are so malevolent and crazed that they have made it inevitable for terrorists to use a nuclear device against us right here in the US. In which event, they can say they have been predicting all along that Al Qaeda will fight us here if we don’t win the war in Iraq. I believe the WHIA is capable of inviting an Al Qaeda attack just so it can say it was right. Are we asleep as Frank Rich suggests? No. The citizens of the US are not asleep. And the Bush administration is not asleep. It’s worse than that. The citizens don’t know what to do about its leaders being treasonous madmen. And the treasonous madmen are maniacally awake to the worst-case scenario involving Al Qaeda because they are behind it.