...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Tuesday, September 12, 2006
      ( 5:31 AM )
 
Stunning

There was a speech far more meaningful and thoughtful and true than the President's speech last night.

I thought that Keith Olberman's soliloquy about Rumsfeld last week was amazing (as did most everyone) and it boggled my mind that he could keep his job afer that. But LAST NIGHT I watched the conclusion of Countdown with my jaw dropped completely open. If you didn't see it - WATCH IT - it's called "This Hole in the Ground."

I'm hoping, like his Rumsfeld comments, this commentary will be all over the airwaves this week. It was incredible. He told the truth. Why is that so incredible? Because until now, I have heard no news person, no commentator, no media personality whatsoever actually question the President's veracity or speak the truth about the squandered 5 years since 9/11. Olbermann put the onus purely where it belongs. On George W. Bush. Speaking about the footprint of the World Trade Center Towers, Keith Olbermann:

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President -- and those around him -- did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

Enough Said. Thank you, Mr. Olbermann.

UPDATE: Crooks & Liars is carrying the video as well - so hopefully it will be up on You Tube, etc. soon. Atrios links as do several Kossacks. Let the word be spread.

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