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...coming off a number of "black boxes." (ahem) And I think it may have been the Libby indictment. Suddenly, it occurs to people who may have been keeping their lips zipped--out of fear, or wise strategy (or both)--that the Bushite criminals CAN be held accountable. The veil of fear begins to lift.
My own nettling little problem with 9/11--the thing that nags at me, like a burr under the saddle--is the stand-down of NORAD and the US Air Force, their failure to follow standard procedure for off-course aircraft on that day, and that day only; the lack of defense of our nation's capitol (with an hour's notice); and the peculiar circumstance that Donald Rumsfled had pulled all NORAD decision-making into his own hands only three months before, and then was AWOL ("in a meeting") during the critical hour just after the WTC was hit.
I keep thinking--hoping--that some patriotic AF jet pilot, or NORAD official, or Pentagon secretary, or someone with smarts and knowledge of this business, is biding his/her time, hiding out, kept good notes, and will soon come forward.
The failure of the US Congress to hold Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld accountable for this egregious breach of national security, and criminal negligence (or worse) was the starting point of Bushite fascist rule. I don't want to underestimate the fear that was rampant in that period--the understandable terror and confusion--but Congress DIDN'T EVEN REQUIRE AN INVESTIGATION, let alone impeach Bush/Cheney, as they should have--and Bush/Cheney have been breaking laws, and usurping more and more power, and getting more secretive and more unaccountable ever since. Now they think they can openly break the law and brag about it, with impunity. The "enemy combatants" classification (just freely inventing their own laws), Guantanamo Bay and the widespread use of torture should also have been turning points. Nothing. Nada. Go ahead and incinerate the Constitution! See if we care!
Maybe we need a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission," like they did in South Africa. That, too, was a situation of widespread wrongdoing under official sanction, and abuse of blacks was so pervasive that it would have torn society apart to prosecute it all. So they forgave those who told the truth. It was a wise decision. Truth is the beginning of healing.
The truth, in the case of Bush/Cheney and this junta, is largely still hidden. We've had hints of just how bad it might be. With so little accountability--and a whole generation of Republicans led to believe that they can commit crimes without any consequences, and in some (maybe many) cases positively encouraged to commit crimes (election fraud, for instance)--we may have a similar situation, where immunity should be granted to truth-tellers. Some might not want that for the top decision makers, but I would--provided that ALL the money they've made, from any source, between 9/11 and now, is voluntarily given up. (It is all tainted with blood and crime.) With that condition, I would forgo wanting prison terms for the topmost Bushites, provided they told the whole truth (in so far as we could determine).
We owe a lot to our most courageous truth-tellers, who spoke up when it was most dangerous to do so--people like Colleen Rowley (who stood right up to Bush/Cheney, in '02 (!), on the matter of Zacharias Moussaoui's computer), Paul Wellstone (who led the opposition to the Iraq war in summer '02), Sibel Edmonds, Joseph Wilson, the whistleblower of the Abu Ghraib torture photos, David Kelly in England (whistleblower on the exaggerated prewar intel; found dead, four days after Valerie Plame was outed), lesser know heroes like Capt. James Yee (still under a gag order; former chaplain at Guantanamo, unfairly prosecuted for "espionage"; unfairly jailed--we still don't know his story, but I suspect it has to do with Guantanamo Bay abuses), Red Cross, Amnesty International and other human rights investigators and Guantanamo Bay defendant attorneys, Clint Curtis (election fraud programmer), Richard Clarke, the 9/11 widows, and others, both known and anonymous. These are the people who kept the idea of truth alive, at great risk to themselves, through very dark times, indeed.
Do I think those dark times are over? Let me say a qualified "yes." This revelation that the 9/11 "black boxes" did survive the WTC collapses, and that the Bushites lied about it, tells me that 'the times they are a-changing.' I don't hold out much hope of finding anything in those "black boxes," after four years of their possession by a lying, criminal government with unlimited technological and financial resources. They may have erased evidence that could lead to insiders; or created evidence to bolster a false story. Still, their disappearance and reappearance is a story of deception all by itself.
It's time that all the "black boxes" were opened.
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