How fitting that the guy who hated the "industrial-technological system" has his stuff auctioned off using that system.
Although the proceeds will go to the Unabomber's victims, I have no idea who would really want to buy this stuff or how much they'd be willing to spend. However, some of you guys might want to save your money in case one day they decide to auction off Osama's porn collection.
"The idea that the birth certificate is the real story and Osama bin Laden is the distraction from it tells you everything you need to know about the people who are really invested in the birth certificate story." — Rachel Maddow, on The Daily Show.
"But it is also a deservedly bad moment for some of the destructive forces in American public life, for those who have substituted for ordinary politics a sustained campaign to brand Obama as an outsider, as un-American, as non-American." — David Frum, CNN.
U.S. officials are saying that documents seized from Osama bin Laden's compound indicate that al-Qaeda wanted to carry out a 9-11 anniversary attack.
I couldn't bring myself to participate in any of the boisterous celebrations over bin Laden's death. It all seemed kind of crass. But I do know the world is way better off without this guy.
You'd think this news about an anniversary attack would convince Republican's to give Obama some credit -- or at least admit he's not some kind of socialist alien. But oh I forget, catching one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists is just a distraction.
"So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him... to be honest with you." — George W. Bush, March 13, 2002.
"Tonight I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that has killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children." — Barack Obama, May 1, 2011.
So it's been nearly a decade. When the news started rolling in tonight that Osama bin Laden was dead, I half expected that he died of old age. But no, the CIA got him. It's a victory for certain, but not the kind that will put to end any of our wars.
Fireworks are going off in my neighborhood.
How long until Trump demands to see a death certificate?
Oh, so it's out? Decision Points by George W. Bush is not only on the shelves but also a best seller on Amazon.com. Bush's memoir is described as a "candid and gripping account" of the "critical decisions that shaped his presidency and personal life." That's funny because when I first heard the title, I assumed it would explain who the hell decided to make him president.
But whatever. I don't think I'm going to read it -- not even the free Kindle sample. I've had enough of this guy, so I will settle for scathing reviews, video mashups, and exclusive interviews (if they include a handy transcript I can easily skim):
LAUER: Did you ever ask yourself the question, "What more could I have done," to prevent this from happening?
BUSH: Well, we just didn't have any solid intelligence that gave us a warning on this. We didn't have any clear intelligence that said you know, "Get ready. They're gonna fly airplanes into New York buildings."
Wow. He's still spreading that horseshit that there was just no way he could have known? Despite the fact that he had been presented with 36 Presidential Daily Briefs that year that related to Bin Ladin or al Qaeda, and that 36th one was actually titled 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.' What more did he want? Bin Ladin to personally pencil in the attack date in his day planner?
But wait, there's more crazy:
LAUER: Here's something else from the book: “I could never forget what happened to America that day. I would pour my heart and soul into protecting this country, whatever it took." It took two wars. It took thousands of lives, American lives. Billions of dollars. You could say it taking Guantanamo and Abu Gharib and government eavesdropping and waterboarding. Did it take too much?
BUSH: We didn't have an attack. 3,000 people died on September the 11th and I vowed that I would do my duty to protect the American people.
We didn't have an attack? WTF? The Republicans are trying to rewrite history again and nobody is objecting?
Finally, here is the heart of the interview, but it's no surprise. In fact, it's Bush's most famous talking point -- you know, the one where he claims he kept us safe:
BUSH: We believe America's going to be attacked again. There's all kinds of intelligence comin' in. And-- and-- one of the high value al Qaeda operatives was Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the chief operating officer of al Qaeda… ordered the attack on 9/11. And they say, "He's got information." I said, "Find out what he knows.” And so I said to our team, "Are the techniques legal?" He says, "Yes, they are." And I said, "Use 'em."
LAUER: Why is waterboarding legal, in your opinion?
BUSH: Because the lawyer said it was legal. He said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act. I'm not a lawyer., but you gotta trust the judgment of people around you and I do.
LAUER: You say it's legal. "And the lawyers told me."
BUSH: Yeah.
LAUER: Critics say that you got the Justice Department to give you the legal guidance and the legal memos that you wanted.
BUSH: Well—
LAUER: Tom Kean, who a former Republican co-chair of the 9/11 commission said they got legal opinions they wanted from their own people.
BUSH: He obviously doesn't know. I hope Mr. Kean reads the book. That's why I've written the book. He can, they can draw whatever conclusion they want. But I will tell you this. Using those techniques saved lives. My job is to protect America and I did.
No, torture didn't keep us safe. Bush and Cheney decided to torture for political gain, torture results in false intelligence, and the fact that we torture was used as a powerful recruiting tool for al Qaeda.
But now we have Bush's memoirs which should have been titled "I Approved Waterboarding," and might as well be used as a signed confession if anybody has the balls to prosecute.
Nine years have come and gone since September 11, 2001. I thought things were getting better. I mean, despite the senseless wars, I thought we were losing some of that irrational fear that gripped us in the days following the terrorist attacks.
But now I believe that fear and bigotry were laying dormant in some Americans as we were preoccupied with oil spills and unemployment.
In the last few months we've seen some crazy fear-mongering over the so-called "Ground Zero mosque," which was quickly followed by some idiotic hillbilly pastor organizing "burn a Quran day." I can only conclude that many misguided Americans honestly believe that we are at war with the Islamic faith. It makes me literally sick to see religious intolerance becoming part of our mainstream political discourse.
We are just as irrational as ever.
The story of how one lone idiot, pimping an 18th-century brand of community terrorism, held the media hostage and forced some of this nation's most powerful people to their knees to fitfully beg an end to his wackdoodlery is an extraordinary one.
I suppose that quote from Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post would make one think first of Osama bin Laden, but Linkins is of course referring to the aforementioned hillbilly pastor, Terry Jones.
Terry Jones has certainly found a way to make himself famous. Pat Robertson is surely jealous that some novice nobody trumped him on anti-Muslim rhetoric?
But what I've found most dangerous about the media's elevation of this story is the ability of one little fanatic in the U.S. to engage and enrage fanatics on the other side of the world -- bypassing all statesman, military Generals, and responsible adults. Consequently, the Secretary of Defense had to call this nimrod and tell him to shut up!
And though the Quran burning was canceled, I think the damage is done. Religious fanatics have been provoked into another round of hatred and intolerance. Haven't we learned anything?
President Obama wants us to know that "This is a difficult time for our country. And it's often in such moments that some try to stoke bitterness -- to divide us based on our differences, to blind us to what we have in common. But on this day, we are reminded that at our best, we do not give in to this temptation."
There are probably more relaxing ways to spend your vacation.
A 52-year-old Californian construction worker named Gary Brooks Faulkner packed a gun, a 40-inch sword, night goggles, and Christian literature on his solo mission to Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden.
These kind of news stories (which we don't hear often enough considering there is a still a $25 million reward for OBL's capture) hold a special place in my heart. Some of my first blog posts in 2001 were about bin Laden...
It still baffles me that our CIA and special forces with all their high-tech equipment haven't found the 9/11 mastermind in the nine years since the terrorist attacks.
Faulkner might not have been that far from his prey. He was trying to enter Nuristan, a region the U.S. military decided to abandon last year as being too remote and indefensible, and widely considered a Taliban stronghold. Rumors of bin Laden’s presence in this area abound: As recently as last year, U.S. officials were speculating Osama might be hiding in the mountains of Chitral or just across the border in Nuristan.
So I have this feeling that, despite not succeeding on this terrorist assassin mission, Faulkner will still enjoy a bit of hero status at home. And maybe more crazies with 40-inch swords will give the OBL hunt a try.
For nine years I've had this strange feeling that our government isn't even trying.
It's even clearer now how Osama bin Laden provoked and baited us. Well, I thought it was easy to see in 2004, but apparently most of the country thought it was a good idea to reelect Bush. But I digress. We're fighting these wars on al Qaeda's terms running off to whatever impoverished and unstable country they're hiding out in.
The interview with Evan Kohlmann (about 7:40 into the above video) was the really insightful part. Anybody (me included) can point out what's wrong with our homeland security tactics, but Kohlmann points out what we could be doing differently in the Muslim world. For example, we could do proper intelligence work and continuously draw attention to the fact that more Muslim civilians die at the hands of al Qaeda than Americans do.
By the way, if you're keeping score on how many Muslim countries we're entangled in, don't count out Iraq just yet. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has plans to double in size. What was it that bin Laden said about "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy"?
Retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney wants to be very serious and harsh about profiling. He wants to strip search all 18-28 year old Muslim men at the airport. This isn't "racial profiling" according to him. It's just "profiling."
Also, relying on stereotypes is ineffective and dangerous. Being against this type of profiling is not "political correctness."
And I said this a few days ago, but it's worth repeating: this isn't security. It's a useless, knee-jerk reaction.
On a related note, another bloviating radio host wants to "scrutinize anybody with the name Abdul." What? She's not even on American Idol anymore. Leave her alone.
Did you hear the rumors earlier this month that President Bush wanted Osama bin Laden captured or killed by November 4? That was basically the NPR headline two weeks ago, and I thought that the goal of election day (instead of say January 20) sounded transparently cynical and political even for Bush. But when I went looking for the article today, I found it had been reworked a bit to now read Bush Puts New Focus On Bin Laden, Al-Qaida... which still sounds cynical and political to me.
Though I've stated several times that the abandoned objective to capture bin Laden was a huge failure for Bush, I believe his current hot pursuit into Pakistan is a recipe for disaster. The President's new orders allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government.
So why would we want to destabilize such a country further? Bush's new plan of bombing tribal regions along the borders could clearly be taken as an act of war.
I don't think this new operation is about catching Osama bin Laden or members of al Qaida. The surge in Iraq appears to be a success at this moment, so why not repeat it elsewhere? For a few more hundred billion dollars we can install a new puppet government in Pakistan. Our government will tell us we're liberating them or fighting terrorism or whatever... but nobody ever bluntly asks the American people if we want another war, another decades long commitment, another disaster on our hands.
Seven years ago today, the United States of America was attacked by al-Qaeda. The series of coordinated hijackings killed 2,974 people. Another 24 are missing and presumed dead. The overwhelming majority of these victims were civilians. The world mourned with us.
A revealing videotape showed Osama bin Laden as the mastermind behind the attacks.
The Bush administration claimed they never could have predicted the attacks. We now know this is false. The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefmade it clear that a terrorist attack inside the United States was imminent. But while the terrorist warnings were "blinking red," Bush was on a very long vacation at his ranch.
We know these facts now. No doubt, the public knows a lot now that Bush wouldn't tell us back then. He wouldn't tell us. He didn't want us to know. He stonewalled an investigation into the incompetence leading up to that fateful day. But eventually we got the 9/11 Commission Report... which held nobody accountable.
In the days and months after September 11, 2001, it seemed we had slipped into some kind of alternate universe where down was up, left was right, false was true, and wrong was the way we were headed.
Our government responded to the attacks by declaring a War on Terrorism, enacting the USA Patriot Act, drafting torture memos, and invading Afghanistan which was harboring al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Bush vowed to get bin Laden "dead or alive." But soon it seemed he forgot his mission:
"So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him... to be honest with you." -- George W. Bush, March 13, 2002.
Sadly, there are still people living in that alternate universe where the disaster of 9/11 is somehow seen as a the shining moment of the Bush administration. They cling to the notion that we were saved by George W. Bush when in reality he failed us. Yet the Republican party continues to use the tragedy for blatant propaganda and political gain. (Warning: the following video was shown at the RNC and is very offensive.)
"During the spring and summer of 2001, President Bush had on several occasions asked his briefers whether any of the threats pointed to the United States. Reflecting on these questions, the CIA decided to write a briefing article summarizing its understanding of this danger. Two CIA analysts involved in preparing this briefing article believed it represented an opportunity to communicate their view that the threat of a Bin Ladin attack in the United States remained both current and serious. The result was an article in the August 6 Presidential Daily Brief titled 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.' It was the 36th PDB item briefed so far that year that related to Bin Ladin or al Qaeda, and the first devoted to the possibility of an attack in the United States." --The 9/11 Commission Report
Domestic issues seemed to bore her. Her deputy, Stephen Hadley, had told the commission something remarkable in his private interview the month before: He and Rice had not seen themselves as responsible for co-ordinating the FBI and other domestic agencies about terrorism. But if they weren't responsible, who was? There was no separate domestic security adviser in the White House. They had just demoted Clarke.
Seven years later, Bush, Cheney, and Rice are still in the White House, and bin Laden is still free. Happy Anniversary.
Last weekend I watched Charlie Wilson's War -- a political movie based on the true story of the backroom negotiations of playboy Congressman Wilson's efforts to obtain Stinger missiles for Afghanistan to shoot down Soviet helicopters in the 1980s. With sex, drugs, and politics, the movie is anything but dull.
Of course, I don't think I need to declare a "spoiler alert" before reminding everybody how the situation in Afghanistan played out after we left. The first Bush administration failed to calm the warring Afghan factions, and the resulting chaos contributed to the rise of the Taliban. The Taliban offered protection to Osama bin Laden and his extremist al-Qaeda organization.
The Hollywood film made this failure painfully clear. However, the film ignored or obscured other key facts. On ConsortiumNews.com, a former CIA analyst comments on the film:
But surely the most glaring omission in the film is the fateful trade-off accepted by President Ronald Reagan when he agreed not to complain about Pakistan’s efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons capability in exchange for Pakistani cooperation in helping the Afghan rebels.
On page 463 of his book, Crile characterizes this deal or understanding as “the dirty little secret of the Afghan war” –- General Zia al-Haq’s ability to extract not only “massive aid” from Washington but also to secure Reagan’s acquiescence in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program via a congressional waiver of U.S. nonproliferation laws in December 1981.
This bargain may have been dirty but it certainly was no secret. Indeed, Washington’s acquiescence via the congressional waiver was the subject of continuing press coverage throughout the 1980s.
U.S. Marshals will sell the personal effects of Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, via online auction beginning May 18, 2011.
by Philip Shenon: