Duty to Warn
Another few thousand bit the dust.
Chalk another one up for the Bush administration. That’ll be President Bush’s long lasting legacy when we look back on the first few years of the 21st Century. Thousands of people killed on U.S. soil because the president failed to protect them.
There won’t be any admission of guilt, no one to take responsibility, no one fired for screwing up, just lies and spin, and mudslinging.
You may be familiar with some of that already.
“I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees,” President Bush told Diane Sawyer in an interview last week.
That’s a page right out of Condoleeza Rice’s playbook.
No one "could have predicted that they [al-Qaeda] would try to use a … hijacked airplane as a missile," Rice told the commission investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2003.
Wrong and wrong. Or rather, liar, liar.
There were warnings, memos, emails, phone calls, newspaper reports, meetings, threats, and cries for help. They were just ignored by the presidet and his administration.
Chalk another one up for the Bush administration. That’ll be President Bush’s long lasting legacy when we look back on the first few years of the 21st Century. Thousands of people killed on U.S. soil because the president failed to protect them.
There won’t be any admission of guilt, no one to take responsibility, no one fired for screwing up, just lies and spin, and mudslinging.
You may be familiar with some of that already.
“I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees,” President Bush told Diane Sawyer in an interview last week.
That’s a page right out of Condoleeza Rice’s playbook.
No one "could have predicted that they [al-Qaeda] would try to use a … hijacked airplane as a missile," Rice told the commission investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2003.
Wrong and wrong. Or rather, liar, liar.
There were warnings, memos, emails, phone calls, newspaper reports, meetings, threats, and cries for help. They were just ignored by the presidet and his administration.
At a pre-trial hearing, federal U.S.
district Judge Algenon L.
Marbley questioned FBI Special Agent James Turgal concerning the agency's handling of Nuradin Abdi, the so-called "mall bomber."
The August 26 Dispatch headline read: "Judge questions lack of warrant in terrorism arrest."
Judge Marbley probed the timing of Abdi's arrest on November 28, 2003 ? the day after Thanksgiving and the busiest shopping day of the year. Turgal conceded that the agency had "probable cause" to arrest Abdi two months earlier.
Equally curious is the fact that Abdi's arrest, and allegations that he wanted to blow up a mall, were dramatically announced by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on Monday, June 14, 2004. That day marked the eve of John Kerry's first major fund-raising stop in Columbus, Ohio, where Abdi lives. Kerry's two-day visit to Ohio's capital city raised more than a million dollars but was overshadowed by the Ashcroft announcement.
Ashcroft sternly warned, "The American heartland was targeted for death and destruction by an al-Qaeda cell allegedly which included a Somali immigrant who will now face justice."
The August 26 Dispatch headline read: "Judge questions lack of warrant in terrorism arrest."
Judge Marbley probed the timing of Abdi's arrest on November 28, 2003 ? the day after Thanksgiving and the busiest shopping day of the year. Turgal conceded that the agency had "probable cause" to arrest Abdi two months earlier.
Equally curious is the fact that Abdi's arrest, and allegations that he wanted to blow up a mall, were dramatically announced by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on Monday, June 14, 2004. That day marked the eve of John Kerry's first major fund-raising stop in Columbus, Ohio, where Abdi lives. Kerry's two-day visit to Ohio's capital city raised more than a million dollars but was overshadowed by the Ashcroft announcement.
Ashcroft sternly warned, "The American heartland was targeted for death and destruction by an al-Qaeda cell allegedly which included a Somali immigrant who will now face justice."
I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the
apartment I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp.
If anyone wants to examine the attitude of federal and state officials
towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of
the refugee camps.
Why is President Bush more concerned with the state of marriage than the state of Louisiana?
That’s what the New Orleans City Business paper asked in early February, a couple of weeks after Bush’s State of the Union address, in which the president called for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages, upon learning that Bush’s budget proposal recommended slashing $34 million from the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, leaving the city with a $581 million shortfall for flood control and coastal erosion improvement projects.
Despite more than four hurricanes that have whipped through New Orleans since 2002, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake, and personal pleas to the president by Louisiana’s local and state officials to provide much needed funding to rebuild the state’s rapidly disappearing wetlands, the Bush administration declined, shifting its priorities—and federal funds—into its foreign policy initiatives.
Bush said Thursday no one expected the levees in New Orleans to break after Hurricane Katrina. There were warnings.
That’s what the New Orleans City Business paper asked in early February, a couple of weeks after Bush’s State of the Union address, in which the president called for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages, upon learning that Bush’s budget proposal recommended slashing $34 million from the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, leaving the city with a $581 million shortfall for flood control and coastal erosion improvement projects.
Despite more than four hurricanes that have whipped through New Orleans since 2002, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake, and personal pleas to the president by Louisiana’s local and state officials to provide much needed funding to rebuild the state’s rapidly disappearing wetlands, the Bush administration declined, shifting its priorities—and federal funds—into its foreign policy initiatives.
Bush said Thursday no one expected the levees in New Orleans to break after Hurricane Katrina. There were warnings.
CHICAGO – One day after rescuing about 450 students stranded in dorms and on thoroughfares in New Orleans, Rev. Jesse Jackson returned to the predominantly black city with more buses to transport some of the hungry and desperate citizens who remained in the city five days after it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
“President Bush has come very late with very little,” said Rev. Jackson, describing the dire scene in New Orleans as looking like “the hull of a slave ship.” “I’m leaving once again from the City of New Orleans and there still is no plan to rescue, nor is there a plan to relocate them. The president has not put together a federal program or a coordinated effort to address this massive crisis. Mr. Bush came today and did what can be described as a ceremonial tour of the area. He would not touch the ground in New Orleans where suffering black people are dying”
“President Bush has come very late with very little,” said Rev. Jackson, describing the dire scene in New Orleans as looking like “the hull of a slave ship.” “I’m leaving once again from the City of New Orleans and there still is no plan to rescue, nor is there a plan to relocate them. The president has not put together a federal program or a coordinated effort to address this massive crisis. Mr. Bush came today and did what can be described as a ceremonial tour of the area. He would not touch the ground in New Orleans where suffering black people are dying”
Two years ago this month, a Blackout plunged 50 million people in
Northeastern U.S. and the Canadian province of Ontario into total darkness
for more than a day, wreaking havoc on the U.S. economy. Now, it's the
devastation in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi wrought by Hurricane
Katrina that has killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of people.
The common thread in both disasters is that energy and environmental experts sounded early alarms about the potential for catastrophes like this unless the White House immediately took the necessary steps to upgrade the country's aging power grid to stave off widespread power failures, and in the case of Hurricane Katrina, backed the Kyoto protocol, which aims to curb the air pollution blamed for severe climate changes that is no doubt the reason Katrina turned from a relatively small hurricane to a destructive monstrosity due to high sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Weather Service.
The common thread in both disasters is that energy and environmental experts sounded early alarms about the potential for catastrophes like this unless the White House immediately took the necessary steps to upgrade the country's aging power grid to stave off widespread power failures, and in the case of Hurricane Katrina, backed the Kyoto protocol, which aims to curb the air pollution blamed for severe climate changes that is no doubt the reason Katrina turned from a relatively small hurricane to a destructive monstrosity due to high sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Weather Service.
"Sarah, if the people had ever known the truth about what we Bushes have done to this
nation, we would be chased down in the streets and lynched."
-- Bush 41 to reporter Sarah McClendon, Dec. 1992
It's an amazing thing. Doctors' offices in New York and Washington will likely be standing-room-only in a couple of months. I can see it now -- the look on a nurse's face when she asks the vacuous, target-eyed media twits when they are "due," and each one chirps happily, "May 25th!" As she comes to the end of the line, the nurse notices a slender, auburn-haired woman fast asleep, her lips slightly open in a half-smile. She is snoring gently.
Hesitating to awaken her, the nurse spies a blonde whom she recognizes as CNN's "White House" correspondent, Dana Bash, "What about her?" the nurse asks Bash, pointing to the woman. "Is she due on May 25th too?"
-- Bush 41 to reporter Sarah McClendon, Dec. 1992
It's an amazing thing. Doctors' offices in New York and Washington will likely be standing-room-only in a couple of months. I can see it now -- the look on a nurse's face when she asks the vacuous, target-eyed media twits when they are "due," and each one chirps happily, "May 25th!" As she comes to the end of the line, the nurse notices a slender, auburn-haired woman fast asleep, her lips slightly open in a half-smile. She is snoring gently.
Hesitating to awaken her, the nurse spies a blonde whom she recognizes as CNN's "White House" correspondent, Dana Bash, "What about her?" the nurse asks Bash, pointing to the woman. "Is she due on May 25th too?"
Aho my relations,
As I sit here in my solitary confinement cell at USP Terre Haute, and reflect over the past month’s events, I can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of love and gratitude for each and every one of you who have so diligently stood by me in this time of crisis. As you already know by now, on June 30, 2005, I was transferred from Leavenworth Facility, to Terre Haute USP. The reason for my transfer, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons Administrative staff was that the Leavenworth Facility was downgraded from maximum security level to medium, and therefore I could not remain at Leavenworth due to my illegal sentencing and consequent maximum security rank.
As I sit here in my solitary confinement cell at USP Terre Haute, and reflect over the past month’s events, I can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of love and gratitude for each and every one of you who have so diligently stood by me in this time of crisis. As you already know by now, on June 30, 2005, I was transferred from Leavenworth Facility, to Terre Haute USP. The reason for my transfer, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons Administrative staff was that the Leavenworth Facility was downgraded from maximum security level to medium, and therefore I could not remain at Leavenworth due to my illegal sentencing and consequent maximum security rank.
[In 1963, historian Howard Zinn was fired from Spelman College, where he was chair of the History Department, because of his civil rights activities. This year, he was invited back to give the commencement address. Here is the text of that speech, given on May 15, 2005.]
I am deeply honored to be invited back to Spelman after forty-two years. I would like to thank the faculty and trustees who voted to invite me, and especially your president, Dr. Beverly Tatum. And it is a special privilege to be here with Diahann Carroll and Virginia Davis Floyd.
I am deeply honored to be invited back to Spelman after forty-two years. I would like to thank the faculty and trustees who voted to invite me, and especially your president, Dr. Beverly Tatum. And it is a special privilege to be here with Diahann Carroll and Virginia Davis Floyd.
August 10, 2005?
?Dear Ms. Sheehan,
?From your grief over the loss of your son, Casey, in Iraq has come the courage to spotlight nationally the cowardly character trait of a President who refuses to meet with anyone or any group critical of his illegal, fabricated, deceptive war and occupation of that ravaged country. As a messianic militarist, Mr. Bush turned aside his own father's major advisers who warned him of the terroristic, political, and diplomatic perils to the United States from an invasion of Iraq. He refused to listen.?
?Dear Ms. Sheehan,
?From your grief over the loss of your son, Casey, in Iraq has come the courage to spotlight nationally the cowardly character trait of a President who refuses to meet with anyone or any group critical of his illegal, fabricated, deceptive war and occupation of that ravaged country. As a messianic militarist, Mr. Bush turned aside his own father's major advisers who warned him of the terroristic, political, and diplomatic perils to the United States from an invasion of Iraq. He refused to listen.?