Reply #72: Perhaps it should be pointed out that the Bush Administration doesn't talk or act about terrorism

[Garbo 2004]

in a serious way. When they do talk about "terra" it's to justify the continued occupation of Iraq with silly slogans like "fight them over there." And to justify the overriding of law and the Constitution. And using "terra alerts" and bogus "plots" to rule the populace by fear. Odd how after the 2004 election the terra alerts stopped for a long time. They had served their purpose.

Now with the 2008 campaign ramping up, we have the head of Homeland Security informing us of the state of his "gut." Gastric rumblings replace actual intel, although these guys have so politicized what they claim is "intel" that only the most credulous would blindly believe their claims. They have cried wolf too many times, playing politics with our security concerns.

This Administration has already shown that they are willing to blow secret operations against terrorism and potential threats for political purposes. Remember when the Brits had to act prematurely because the US was going to reveal the capture of a fellow in Pakistan and the information he had? The Brits were working the info obtained and the leads it gave them; the US just wanted to go public and use the PR for political purposes.

And then of course there's the revelation of Valerie Wilson's CIA employment. That's been so politicized from the get go that many people who only rely on corporate media don't realize the potential consequences to our national security. We don't know the actual impact on operations and assets. Before her assignment to the Iraq joint task force (looking for evidence of Iraq's alleged WMD programs that didn't exist) she worked on nuke counterproliferation. While the Administration was chanting about "mushroom clouds" and "dirty bombs" they outed a covert CIA agent whose work had been in nuclear counterproliferation, work intended to keep us safe from the potential threats that the Bush administration adopted as mere marketing slogans.

For this Administration, political purposes trump national security. These are the same folks who came into office and sneered at the "Clintonistas' obsession" with Bin Laden and the threat of terrorism. After a history of attacks on the US (WTC 93) and US assets overseas, Bush's response to a CIA briefer on the August 6, 2001 PDB was "ok, you've covered your ass now" and went back to "clearing brush" on his ranch.

The Clinton Administration took terrorism seriously as a potential threat. But they didn't use it as a free pass to an imperial presidency, above the law and not subject to oversight and accountability.

The majority of people are against staying in Iraq and the continued bleeding off of resources in human lives and money. Iraq had nothing to do with the alleged "war on terror," another marketing slogan. Our continued involvement in Iraq is not making us safer. On objective reality based grounds, the claims of the Bush administration ("we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here") should be held up to the scorn and ridicule it deserves, as the feeble and dangerously deceptive attempt it is to prop up catastrophic policies that in fact do not serve and are indeed contrary to our security interests.

What is needed (and it's hard for many politicians to do, especially when they're in campaign mode) is to quit adopting the language, memes and scarifying of the Bush Administration and tell the damn truth. The Bush Administration hasn't been serious about terrorism from the beginning. And the real serious approach is not using terrorism, national security issues for political purposes (people are sick of that). A better international approach & cooperation with other nations since terrorism knows no borders and getting serious about the real threats out there and those who bankroll those ops. And from the beginning, the Bush Administration knew it wasn't Iraq.

And most seriously, which few politicians are willing to do, is to put the threat of terrorism in its proper perspective after the years of the Bush Administration making it the great boogeyman in order to usurp power, justify its actions and to hold itself above accountability. They should stop accepting and using the "war on terror" meme as if it's something that can be "won," where victory will one day can be declared and there will be no more potential threats.

There is serious work to be done, but first is to not deal in and further the propaganda bullshit and fearmongering of the last 6 years, to point out the extreme politicization and crippling of our genuine intel gathering and analysis which was done to serve a policy agenda, to restore effective oversight and to deal with the reality as it is in a serious fashion. Not to buy into and further the kind of inflated rhetoric used to prop up and continue failed and catastrophically wrongheaded policies which do not make us safer.