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Inside U.S.A.: Blood, guts, game show hosts, and September 11
Posted on Wednesday, February 19 @ 09:25:35 UTC
Topic: USA
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 By Ben Roberts
Part one of a two-part series
The famously popular singer Sting croons in one of his songs: 'I don't believe in politicians / They all look like game show hosts to me.'
Far be it from me to put words in Sting's mouth, because he can speak for himself, and does so very eloquently, and with lucidity. What I do gather from this song is that his take is that politicians operate in much the same way as game show hosts, whose currency is selling themselves and their glitzy prop-filled shows by offering hopes and dreams, and the chance of increased wealth, fame, and fortune. Now don't get me wrong. I have nothing against game show hosts. But when it comes to some of our politicians that is a different matter entirely. I am stunned and alarmed by how certain of our politicians are conning, using, and abusing American citizens to do as they like, especially in the context of September 11th and its aftermath. First, we begin with the Commander in Chief of the United States, and his actions on that fateful day.
President George W. Bush, the leader of the most powerful country in the world was in Florida reading to schoolchildren when the savage tragedy that we now call 9/11 unfolded. While buildings in New York became hellish infernos claiming sons and daughters we were told that the President was on his way to Washington on Air Force One. While The world's tallest buildings collapsed, raining down death on mothers and fathers, we were told that the President was on his way to Washington on Air Force One. While young ordinary Americans thought it was better to fight and die than be led like lambs to slaughter over Pennsylvania, we were told the President was on his way to Washington on Air Force One. While Americans toiling at work defending the United States were engulfed in an instant inferno of fire and smoke that could not be tamed, we were told that the President of the United States was on his way to Washington on Air Force One. While citizens employed in the extraordinarily secure home of the leader of the free world fled for their lives, and elected officials in the sacred halls of democracy were shuttled away for safe keeping, we were told that the President was on his way to Washington on Air Force One. While innocent mothers, fathers, children, friends and coworkers from the next cubicle over held hands and jumped to their deaths in heart rending fashion, we were told that the President was on his way to Washington on Air Force One. In short, while Americans burned, bled and died in our streets we were told the leader was on his way to Washington on Air Force One. The President never came.
Next we were told that the President of the United States was at an undisclosed location. What exactly does that mean? In hiding or something. Then we were told that the President of the United States was at a secure airbase in Indiana. Then we saw the President wearing some kind of flak jacket as if he was under attack, while he addressed America from a base in Colorado. Near nightfall we saw the leader of the free world gingerly step on the White House lawn looking as if someone had told him the coast was finally clear. This is the worst I have seen America look. The leader unavailable in a time when his people suffered the the most mortal blow this country has ever endured.
In my lifetime there are a few things that are indelibly impressed upon my mind. There was the time while in high school, when my distressed mother shook me awake from a deep sleep to tell me there had just been an auto accident involving both my father and oldest brother, and they were probably badly injured, or dead. In college it was the space shuttle explosion. I had just finished a filler swim class, and was sitting in the student lounge catching up on the news on the tube. One moment the astronauts were walking out gung ho and enthusiastic, with teacher Christie McAuliffe's smiling face showing all the eagerness, hopefulness, and radiance of a child. The next moment the explosion and her parents despairing faces looking up at the heavens, and wondering why, as their daughter and all the souls aboard left them, and us all. Then the time in the delivery room sweating in the green scrubs watching, and allegedly helping the obstetrician and his team, as my first child came into this world. That was without a doubt a happy special event, which was dulled by sadness that very evening as children and parents were lost in a fiery airplane bomb blast over Lockerbie, Scotland. Later in life, it was while driving on a highway to my graveyard shift night job, and hearing the radio announce that Dennis Brown, one of the most prolific, humble, and pleasant reggae performers the world has ever seen, had died. I thought and hoped desperately that I had heard wrong. My ears had heard right. Then on September 11th, watching the world trade center towers disintegrate amid screams and shouts of terror and chaos, as it extinguished so many vibrant lives, will forever be branded on my mind. That same day, as night fell, the memory of the supposedly most powerful leader of the free world, gingerly approaching the most safe and secure home in the world, is a memory I will not soon forget. Then, to hear the President's excuse for not coming to Washington promptly is to assume myself and the rest of America were born yesterday, and are a bunch of dopes.
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman and spin doctor, when taken to task on this apalling behavior by his President, explained it away with some 'horse dead and cow fat' story about Air Force One being under threat by the terrorists because in intercepted communications they had used the plane's codename, and there was reason to believe it might come under missile attack or be rammed by another plane. To that I say, !Absolute hogwash! Air Force One is, without a doubt, the most protected and secure civilian aircraft flying the skies. At the very least is has to be chock full of state of the art electronic countermeasures to avoid hostilities, and is surely plugged into the Air Force at the higest levels to have assistance scrambled at the first sign of danger. It is one thing to successfully attack a tall undefended building in a city center. It is next to impossible, and quite a sophisticated undertaking to successfully attack Air Force One.
Ram Air Force One? Not a chance. Here's the scenario. There is a major crisis in America. The President needs to fly back north to Washington. There are numerous airbases along the way. The man is Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful country and military on the face of the earth. All he has to do is order an F-14 Tomcat airborne as his escort. Just one. Problem solved. The Tomcat is a decades old fighter, built by Grumman. Given its age it should be retired. It is so potent and versatile that it is basically unretirable now, or anytime soon. The warbird uses a combination of the powerful Hughes AGP-65 radar coupled with the exceptional heavyweight long range Phoenix missile. It can engage up to six oncoming hostile targets simultaneously from over one hundred miles in fire-and-forget mode. In other words it can fire on its targets and go home, or do something else while those targets are obliterated. No nation has anything in its arsenal that comes even close to the Tomcat. Not even the impressive Soviet MiG-29 Fulcrum. Now how can a group of terrorists get anywhere remotely close to Air Force One, codename or not, with that kind of opposition to deal with. Moreover, everything airborne had been promptly grounded by the U.S military, and the hijacked planes had been quickly accounted for. Anything up there besides Air Force One and the U.S military would be suspect and promptly shot down before getting anywhere close to the gunsights of a Tomcat escort.
For those uninformed about what the Tomcat is or does, it was the sleek and powerful fighter Tom Cruise flew throughout the movie ' TopGun.' Remember how awesome it was in the movie? It is distinctive because it is one of the only warplanes where the wings can pivot back for high mach speeds. And as to the argument that there was reason to believe that terrorist would shoot down Air Force One, I say 'Quite lame.' If a group of terrorist had some prior knowledge of Air Force One flight plan, and were lounging around shooting the breeze hefting a ground-to-air missile waiting for the plane to lumber overhead, then all that would be necessary would be for Air Force One to alter its flight plan. It could travel north over water. Given the crisis situation, and the fact that there was nothing else in the air anyway, this would definitely be the thing to do. I guess to this Mr. Fleischer would chime 'there was reason to believe that the terrorists were intent on commandeering a U.S Navy guided missle cruiser, or who knows maybe an aircraft carrier off the U.S. east coast.' Yeah right.
Now onto John Ashcroft, the Attorney General and head man at Justice Department. How much appeal and believability does this man have? How much trust and faith does he engender? Here's something on that score. Did he not lose an election to someone who was deceased, in Mel Carnahan? Something worth noting took place on the eve of Ashcroft's appearance to testify before a Congress uneasy and grumpy about mass arrests without charge, excessive lengths of detention, lack of due process, lack of an accounting of who was imprisoned, unprecedented new laws by Justice Department allowing the government to eavesdrop on conversations between imprisoned clients and their lawyers, and an all round concern for a trampling of civil liberties in the name of security. That evening the Justice Department put out a terrorism alert, warning America that the bin Laden family owned a shipping fleet and, ' based on unconfirmed reports there was reason to believe (those majic words again) that the al Qaeda network might put a nuclear device on one of these ships and detonate it in a commercial harbor on the east coast.' Special reference was made to the port of Baltimore. There was no incident. The next morning Ashcroft testified before Congress, and sailed through with flying colors, getting all he wanted. Why wouldn't he. A nuclear detonation in Baltimore would encompass Washington and Capitol Hill, the home and domain of the very officials he was testifying before. After all, self preservation is great motivation. They signed just about everything he wanted. He even chided the Congress for being such doubters, and naive about the big bad world outside. The 'grave' threat was never mentioned again. Now forgive me for not being too bright, or to be more exact, for the politicians thinking that myself and the American public are not too bright. But this question needs to be asked. Did the U.S. government and its Justice Department suddenly know on the eve of crucial testimony that the Bin Laden group included a shipping enterprise? The Bin Laden name in the Arab world is synonymous with the Rockefeller name in America. A lot of U.S. government officials, past and present, are closely linked to the Bin Laden business group. Former president George Bush, father of the current president, is one of many such luminaries.
Then there is Condeleeza Rice. In a shrill alarming announcement just prior to the major television networks airing a Bin Laden tape, she 'divulged' that the tape was a threat because Bin Laden was using coded messages in the recordings to communicate with his top lieutenants, and mobilize the radical Islamic elements. She berated the networks for being irresponsible and unpatriotic for airing any tapes having to to with Bin Laden. Oddly enough, an antiterrorism expert and top consultant for the Bush Administration on a public radio show, To The Point took issue with this notion of coded messages. He said it was ludicrous to think that an amateur video, shot in a remote locale in Afghanistan, then sent to the tv network Al Jazeera, could be so sophisticated to have coded messages, given all the disconnects along the way. Furthermore, is America not a paragon of democracy, free speech, and its citizens right to be informed. It seems to me me that they should hear what their adversary has to say, so they will know what he is all about. And the news media should be free to see that the citizens are fully informed. Is the government itself afraid that Bin Laden, on his tapes, might divulge unsavory information about them that they would rather their citizens not know about? There's more. And this is laughable. The Bush Administration, by way of Condeleeza Rice challenged the news networks for airing or wanting to air Bin Laden tapes. Yet not long after a tape, supposedly accidentally found in a seemingly hastily abandoned house in Afghanistan, with recordings that is difficult to explain chronologially, was touted as a smoking gun to indict Bin Laden as the mastermind of 9/11. It was hastily aired. Why? I thought we were disinterested in anything Bin Laden had to say.
And what can be said about Donald Rumsfeld? He seems to have a patent on the phrases: 'we have credible information that...' and, 'we cannot reveal the sources of this information because it would compromise national security and our war effort.' This is alarming and dangerous. We live in a democracy, and pride ourselves on the right of our citizens to know. Yet, on the pretext of protecting the nation we are left in the dark, and are unable to verify what is being said. In one tragic situation in eastern Afghanistan the U.S military bombed a housing location killing a number of people, including many children, since many articles of children's clothing were found in the smoking rubble. When asked about the possibility that the U.S. had accidentally hit a civilian target, causing major loss of life, with many children as victims, Rumsfeld replied with something to the effect that the location was apparently where the Al Qaeda fighters housed their families, and frequented from time to time. This is incredible. Does this then mean that we can kill women and children under such circumstances? When civilians in the area strongly refuted this, arguing that the location was in no way an al Qaeda stronghold, and demanded an explanation for the gruesome loss of life, Rumsfeld's angry retort was that those citizens on the ground did not know what they were talking about. Imagine that. The victims of an attack don't know what they are talking about. One thing Rumsfeld has not told America is that, one of the first things the U.S. military did on arrival in Afghanistan was parcel out, like Halloween candy, a staggering number of cell phones to local friendlies on the ground. Not a bad decision since they wanted to coordinate actions and have information at their fingertips, which only the locals could provide. Well, the Afghanis are very smart. They did not survive Alexander the Great, the British army, and the Russian army by being dolts. They quickly realized that they had the resources of the most potent military at their disposal by just dialing a few numbers. Given that Afghanistan is a tribal society, with many warlords engaged in turf battles and feuds that go way back, they promptly went to work calling in air strikes on their longstanding arch rivals. All they had to say was the majic words al Qaeda stronghold, and the good old U.S.A. had B-52s, C-130's, F-16 Falcons, A-10 Warthogs, and whatever else on its way. Result? One adversary down. This has to have been one of many such incidents. However, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld will not tell us this because, 'it would compromise national.....' Yeah. Yeah. Whatever.
The one person in the Bush Administration who stands head and shoulders above the others is Secretary of State, General Colin Powell. This man commands respect, and it is clearly obvious that he is a person of conviction. The General did not crave the job he now holds, which is more than can be said for some of the handpicked political appointees and elected officials, who want to stay in office at all costs, and ensure that their elected bosses who picked them stay in office. But even General Powell has been marred by the dirty business of politics. The man casts a huge shadow of respect, principle and American integrity. He could easily be in the cabinet of either political party and still command the same respect. However, as the days go by with him out on the forefront of a Bush Administration policy that is incoherent, disjointed, lopsided, and without substance and decency, he appears to be losing his political capital and shrinking like Alice in Alice in Wonderland. On his trip to the Middle East to calm some of the most brutal violence between the Israelis and Palestinians, where quick response was the order of the day, the Secretary went on a we'll-get-there-when-we-get-there day-trip. Forgive the added reference to a kindergarten story, but he was like Little Red Riding Hood, who, instead of going straight to her Grandma stopped along the way, talked to the Big Bad Wolf, picked flowers, and walked a different longer path, allowing Mr. Wolf the time to go and cannabilize her grandmother. Guess who fits the role of the cunning Big Bad Wolf?
On his 'tour', the king of Morocco asked the general why he was visiting him, instead of heading directly for the crisis. He was asked the same question on arrival for meeting with the head of the United Arab Emirates. Hosni Mubarak of Egypt refused the see him. Can you believe that? But I do have to say, the General is a man of conviction, not a game show.....um... I mean politician. He met with Ariel Sharon, then with Arafat. When he was done and was about to leave the region the news showed a tv photo op of him with Sharon in Israel. Nuances can be very revealing if we pay attention. Sharon, usually an ebullient self assured man, seemed tentative, unsure, and unenthusiastic about giving General Powell a farewell handshake. He looked at him with dismissal, and what appeared to be a certain lack of acknowledgement. It reminds me of the expression I grew up hearing in my house, 'He looked at him like cow look at last year calf.' While the General smiled constantly for the camera. It is clear that he told Sharon in no uncertain terms what was on his mind. After all General Powell does not have to be bogus and say what he thinks based on a voting constituency back home, or the support of a particular ethnic group. The man transcends party politics. America needs more leaders and citizens like this.
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