A moment of silence, some remembrances of 9/11

by folkbum

















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Land of the Little People

By Keith R. Schmitz

The terror trials are coming to New York City and there is a possibility that a prison in North Illinois (with the lusty urging of the locals) will take some of the Gitmo inmates. And like clockwork the exploitation begins.

This morning Politico.com tells us that in predictable fashion and like dogs salivating to Pavlov's bell, the GOP will look to exploit the ginned up concern in next year's midterms. And why not. They have little else to offer us and how can they when they hate government. Several GOP members in Congress have already jumped in on the panic.

So no surprise mistress-marrying, criminal crony promoter, 9/11 parrot Rudy Guiliani is whipping this issue like a rented mule. Locally one TV station did a 10:00 news promo the other night with the alarmist statement "are terrorists coming to Illinois near the Wisconsin border?"

The question is if we are the strongest nation on earth, how come those who spout that statement the most are acting like it the least?

What If?

By Keith R. Schmitz

Let's toss this cow into the piranha pool.

When we were attacked eight years ago, we all pulled behind the President. Practically all of us -- 90% of the country.

That certainly included Democrats who swallowed their anger over their suspicions that the election was stolen. They readily recognized the country was in assaulted and did what every good American should do -- pull behind the President out of respect for the office regardless of who is in it.

What do you think will happen if it happens again? What do you think Charlie Sykes, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Joe Wilson, Newt Gingrich and all the rest will tell their minions to do if we are visited by another black day?

9/11 Music

by folkbum

On the Saturday after 9/11/01, the country was still in a little bit of, I don't know, a fog. Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer were in town that night, and, given Dave Carter's generally atavistic spirituality as a songwriter, that show was one of the singular most moving concerts I've been to. They opened with this track:



Dave Carter died of a heart attack less than a year later, robbing the world of, probably, decades of fantastic songwriting.

Here's one specifically about the events of that week, from a New Yorker and another of my favorite songwriters:



And a hopeful one, because we need it. I've linked this one before, by Mark Erelli, but it's totally worth the repeat:

In Memoriam

by folkbum

Take some time to reflect today.

Anniversary

by folkbum

How are you celebrating?

Today marks seven years since the day President Bush received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” [. . .] At the time, Bush was vacationing at his ranch in Crawford, TX and stayed on vacation the rest of August 2001. [. . .] The day after he received the memo, “Bush seemed carefree as he spoke about the books he was reading, the work he was doing on his nearby ranch, his love of hot-weather jogging, his golf game and his 55th birthday,” the Washington Post noted. Today — 2,557 days later — Bin Laden still remains free and “determined to strike in U.S.”

And let's not forget just how upset Bush was about the memo--so upset he started swearing at his staff:

[A]fter Bush was briefed by a CIA officer on the memo, Bush replied, "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

Guiliani May Be Hazardous to Your Health

By Keith Schmitz

No wonder the Guiliani campaign is tanking.

Today the New York Times reported the findings of a study suggesting obsessing over terrorism can take a greater toll on one's health than terrorism itself:

After the attacks of Sept. 11, the scientists monitored people’s fears of terrorism over the next several years and found that the most fearful people were three to five times more likely than the rest to receive diagnoses of new cardiovascular ailments.

“It’s amazing how enduring these feelings of fear are, but look at what’s been going on,” said Alison Holman, a professor of nursing science at the University of California, Irvine, the lead author of the study. “I’d be surprised if those terrorist alerts didn’t contribute in some way to the ongoing worry about terrorism in our sample.”

Here's the payoff pitch:

After controlling for various factors (age, obesity, smoking, other ailments and stressful life events), the researchers found that the people who were acutely stressed after the 9/11 attacks and continued to worry about terrorism — about 6 percent of the sample — were at least three times more likely than the others in the study to be given diagnoses of new heart problems.

If you extrapolate that percentage to the adult population of America, it works out to more than 10 million people. No one knows what fraction of them might consequently die of a stroke or heart attack — plenty of other factors affect heart disease — but if it were merely 0.0003 percent, that would be higher than the 9/11 death toll.

The article talks about that these people will rationalize away the real risk against the imagined one because of the prospect (albeit slim) of masses of people dying at once. Sort of when someone has a fear of flying and will take to the road, despite the reality that a long trip in a car presents greater odds of dying in a crash than sitting in an airplane seat.

So it turns out constant mentioning of 9/11 can spark these fatal anxieties. Someone stop Guiliani before he kills again.

Can This Be Cured

By Keith Schmitz

Although Charlie might disagree with this, the 9/11 thing has become some kind of psychotic disorder with Guiliani:

He flatlined in Iowa and he's struggling in New Hampshire, but
Rudy Giuliani shook off the early-state blues Thursday as only he can.

"None of this worries me - Sept. 11, there were times I was worried," Giuliani said.

"We're sitting in a pretty good position right now. So we're not worried and not concerned," he told a news conference here. "Maybe other people acted nervous in a situation like this, but this is not unexpected."

I always scandalously wondered what why Princess Dianne was revered for basically appearing at social functions, proving Woody Allen's phrase "80% of the job is just showing up." At least Di did go out to the real rugged places to show solidarity with her causes. For Rudy, the only rugged place he's been is to stop in on Bernie Karek, and pretty much 80% of his campaign is based on just showing up on 9/11.

The Onion by the way has a great take on Rudy's 9/11 fixation.

For Those of You Who Thought the Jackass Was Just the Symbol of the Democratic Party

By Keith Schmitz

Rudy Giuliani before the good folks in Londonberry, NH:

"This is the world we live in. It's not this happy, romantic-like world where we'll negotiate with this one, or we'll negotiate with that one and there will be no preconditions, and we'll invite (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad to the White House, we'll invite Osama (bin Laden) to the White House," Giuliani said.
"Hillary and Obama are kind of debating whether to invite them to the inauguration or the inaugural ball," he added.

We don't have to imagine what would happen if a Democrat or progressive said something as outrageous. There would be constant repetition by the "liberal media" to pound into people's heads how tasteless this remark is. There would be constant baying on rant radio to stampede the sheep. There would be a censure vote in Congress.

But then you got to wonder about the voters who have a psychological need to lap up this crap. In this world there is no such thing as self-control, but the political equivalent of road rage.

There is probably something else you probably won't hear much about. Rudy, who has rode for all its worth his questionable performance post 9/11 -- and leading up to it, built a lucrative consulting firm off of his so-called reputation. Turns out he is meshing his campaign with his business despite promises to uncouple.

Let's not hold our breath. Recall John Huang, the renegade donor to the Hillary Clinton campaign, running afoul of the law that made fodder for days of news coverage? Let's see if this story about Rudy makes it past Wednesday night -- if that long.

The Conservative Blog Telephone Game

by folkbum

Over the weekend, Keith Schmitz wrote a long post that started in a great restaurant and ended with a cogent analysis of where Rudy Giuliani's campaign for president has gone off the rails. Well, not so much as gone off the rails as stalled in its tracks: Whatever actual success Rudy has had over the years has been subsumed in his insistence that his ability not to freak out in front of a camera on 9/11 makes him some kind of American hero.

Reality, of course, is not Rudy's friend: It is now clear that dozens, if not hundreds, of firefighters died becuase of Rudy's incompetence. Rudy credits 9/11 for his use of a treacly cell phone gag. Rudy supporters are doing "911" fundraisers (donations from which, to his credit, Rudy's trying to return). Rudy's made 9/11 his brand, which is offensive and denigrating to the day and the memory of those who died (including those who died because of his office's ineptitude).

Rudy is doing this not (solely) because Rudy is a bit of a tone-deaf idiot. He's doing this because the base that will be voting in the Republican primary eats it up--which is why, nationally, Rudy is leading big in the polls.

However, this post is not about Rudy, or even Republicans. This post is about right-wing bloggers, and what is clearly the bigger insult to 9/11 in their minds: A math error.

Here's how it went down. Keith's post included this:

[Rudy's] speeches have been diagnosed with being afflicted with 9/11 Tourette Syndrome, though lately Hillary Clinton Tourette Syndrome has crept into the spiel.

The answer in part lies in the fact that Rudy is desperate to become president, and he has to appeal to the base of the Republican base to get to the nomination.

In part this impugns on the people who are active in the Republican party who want to be treated like rubes. Yes, 9/11 was terrible, but 5,000 planes went up that day and 4997 planes landed, as have pretty much all the planes since 9/11.

Yes, there are people who want to kill around the world but there always have been people around the world who are so motivated. But it does us no good to be as irrational as they are. That to these old eyes looks like winning for the other side. [. . .]

This country is hungry for positive leadership, for vision and for our cities to be rebuilt. This is the type of boldness many of our Democratic leaders sad to say lack.

This is the type of leadership that a great country has, and Rudy could run on that if he didn’t have to cater to those in his party who spout macho but who cower in fear when they see someone in a turban get on their plane. Rudy could do this but his die has been cast and it would be tough to shift gears at this point.

This fear that politicians have ginned up through this decade has cost us and squandered opportunity in ways we have yet to appreciate.

You probably saw it right away, too, and the response in comments was quick: "4997? You count United 93 as a landing?" Keith, pretty quickly, responded with an "oops" and corrected himself. From there, it just got worse.

Aaron, whose comment that was, above, was first out of the gate with a lament that mostly mirrored--and preceded--the comment (thus preceding Keith's correction, too). But Aaron added, "In the effort to whitewash 9/11, do we really need to forget what actually happened?" I'm not convinced that there is anything in Keith's post to whitewash anything; I think his 5000 planes sentence was a bit clumsy, but if you kept reading, you could easily see that trying to forget or ignore (or "whitewash," even) what really happened on 9/11/01 was the last thing Keith was up to.

I made a comment to precisely that effect at Wiggy's place, when the Wigmaster joined the fray:

I remember when Jay Bullock thought it was unfair that I linked his blog with Cindy Sheehan and the Fighting Bob fest types. You're right Jay. You've got people writing on your blog right now that are writing things far wackier than anything Cindy Sheehan has said or done. No wonder Jay's fleeing to the Journal Sentinel.

Even more amazing, Schmitz must really think 9/11 wasn't a big deal because he can't even remember the number of planes.

The Wiggy Wiggy One is referring, I think, to this lovely moment, when he noted that I was depressed over thousands of war dead and that Cindy Sheehan was depressed because no one was paying attention to her anymore. You tell me if I was right to question that association. You can also tell me whether His Wigness is right to think that Keith feels that 9/11 "wasn't a big deal" based on What Keith Actually Wrote.

But Aaron and Jimmy the Wig are generally good-natured folk, and below the concern in Jim's post, there's an off-hand tone. But this is the Conservative Blog Telephone Game, remember. So the next post to pop up with outrage is from John McAdams, in a post titled Folkbum: 9/11 No Big Deal. Now, I can't prove that McAdams came to Keith's post from Wigderson's. But note that the post title "9/11 No Big Deal" plays on Wiggy's "wasn't a big deal" line. Also note that McAdams has responded to this blog only one other time ever, when he went after guest-poster Bryan Kennedy--after being alerted to Kennedy's post via Owen at Boots and Sabers. This suggests that McAdams doesn't really read this blog unless appropriately directed here first. Wigderson is on McAdams's blogroll; Aaron's Subject 2 Change is not. Anyway, here's McAdams:

That’s what being a liberal does to your mind. You not only label as “rubes” those people who care about 9/11, you assert that the murder of 3,000 Americans is no big deal! [. . .] And it can’t be that there is a real terrorist threat, or people who really want to kill Americans (an odd notion coming from folks who are constantly touting the death toll of American soldiers in Iraq). It’s all just the invention of those evil politicians.

In the process, McAdams quotes almost as much of Keith's post as I did--except for the paragraph where Keith explains that he thinks terrorism is a big deal! (The "people who want to kill us" one.) And McAdams seems to miss Rudy's creative campaigning:

Giuliani said the United States has disrupted 23 terrorist attacks against the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. That number seems high. Even if you count attacks that were disrupted in their infancy, there have not been more than a dozen that were targeting the United States. [. . .] A quick check of homeland security experts found some bafflement at the 23 number. Maybe Giuliani knows some things we don't, which would be surprising considering he has not held a public sector job since 2001. [...]

Another terrorism expert, speaking on anonymity, also said he was not confident in the idea of 23 thwarted terrorist attacks. He points out that President Bush declassified aspects of several thwarted terrorist plots in May, but mentioned only about a dozen. He notes that it would have been in the White House's best interest to discuss more if there were so many others.

No . . . no "invention" of "evil politicians" there! (There are more Giuliani falsehoods for your reading pleasure at that link.)

So the story so far: Keith complains that Giuliani can't talk about his real successes because he has to pander to a base than thrives on FUD. In the process, Keith misses a number, and, when caught, corrects himself. Wigderson uses it to take a good-natured potshot at me, and then McAdams is aghast! that Keith doesn't think 9/11 and terrorism is a big deal.

Enter the 800-pound gorilla:

John McAdams points out a local liberal blogger who seems to think that 911 was no big deal. [. . .] Read the whole thing. And the left still wonders why some of us don't think they take the threat of terrorism seriously enough.

Sykes clearly didn't read What Keith Actually Wrote, missing the whole "fear [. . .] has cost us and squandered opportunity" line, which suggests Keith wants to take terrorism more seriously than Rudy's attack-inflation (not to mention radio-non-replacement) business. The title of Sykes's post? "NO BIG DEAL?"

It wasn't long until 9/11 NO BIG DEAL? was showing up elsewhere, from people back to knocking the error that Keith had long before corrected--which should not be all that surprising from someone who thinks we need another 9/11 anyway.

Oh, and not a one of them addressed the substance of Keith's post. Purple monkey dishwasher.

Off Base

By Keith Schmitz

While my wife and I were on holiday last weekend in New York we took the "recommendation" of Bill O'Reilly and went up to Harlem to have the Gospel Brunch at Sylvia's Restaurant. When we emerged from the Red Line subway 125th St. stop at 11:00 Syliva's was about to open and there was already a line formed of people waiting to get in the place.

Turns out Sylvia's is somewhat large and the initial crowd was quickly seated.

We enjoyed a brunch off a rather savory plate of chicken livers and home fries for my wife and I did the ribs, black eyed peas and mashed potatoes. Both worth coming back for some other time.

We also had the pleasure to meet the diminutive soft spoken powerhouse Sylvia Woods.

Our server told us about how Sylvia struggled through the rough days of the 60's and 70's in Harlem, started to really make it in the 80's and 90's with somewhat of a setback just following 9/11 -- as suffered by other New York restaurants. Sylvia nevertheless supplied the first responders down at Ground Zero with her fine food. Sylvia's, who had just arrived from church, has the expressed protection of the Muslin Brotherhood.

Our server also mentioned that Bill O'Reilly has been good for business. Hopefully some of his audience made it up to Sylvia's for an education.

What they would see would be the main street of Harlem, Lenox Ave going through the process of gentrification with everything from a Starbucks and an Office Depot on the way up to Adam Clayton Powell's old church St. Abyssinian.

About 20 years ago many of us smartly wouldn't have wanted to make that journey, and the menu at Sylvia's pretty much said so. Among the mostly white crowd at the restaurant I talked to a number of international travelers including Brits, Germans and Swedes who are not Bill O'Reilly fans to say the least, but said Sylvia's is prominently mentioned in their Fodor's and DK guidebooks.

The leadership of Rudy Giuliani had a lot to do with the second Harlem Renaissance and the revival of the rest New York City. You have may agreed with his efforts to bring investment into New York City but troubled with his policing methods. But there were many places that were not safe in the city, including Times Square. Since the 90's investment and tourists have poured back in the Big Apple.

So why are we not hearing about this from his campaign?

Instead, his speeches have been diagnosed with being afflicted with 9/11 Tourette Syndrome, though lately Hillary Clinton Tourette Syndrome has crept into the spiel.

The answer in part lies in the fact that Rudy is desperate to become president, and he has to appeal to the base of the Republican base to get to the nomination.

In part this impugns on the people who are active in the Republican party who want to be treated like rubes. Yes, 9/11 was terrible, but 5,000 planes went up that day and 4997 planes landed, as have pretty much all the planes since 9/11.

Yes, there are people who want to kill around the world but there always have been people around the world who are so motivated. But it does us no good to be as irrational as they are. That to these old eyes looks like winning for the other side.

Rudy's ploy is not without risks. As formidable as the clueless inside the beltway feel Rudy is on his 9/11 "leadership," his actions of not fixing the first responder radio problems -- based on cronyism -- and locating the emergency response center at the WTC -- out of vanity -- leaves Rudy quite vulnerable should he make it to the general election. And don't think the even more desperate candidates in the GOP would go to these soft white underbelly issues.

Furthermore that authoritarian GOP base is going to look quite small versus those more numerous other voters who will be more skeptical.

It's too bad. This country is hungry for positive leadership, for vision and for our cities to be rebuilt. This is the type of boldness many of our Democratic leaders sad to say lack.

This is the type of leadership that a great country has, and Rudy could run on that if he didn't have to cater to those in his party who spout macho but who cower in fear when they see someone in a turban get on their plane. Rudy could do this but his die has been cast and it would be tough to shift gears at this point.

This fear that politicians have ginned up through this decade has cost us and squandered opportunity in ways we have yet to appreciate.

Don't look at this being in anyway an endorsement of this campaign, certainly not this fear-based juggernaut that has been rumbling through the primaries. But I'm open to any one who can get things done without compromising our principles.

Run on your record Rudy. Don't run like a record.

Fire + Steel = ?

To: Kevin Barrett and your Nutty Professor Friends
From: your humble folkbum
Date: The day your music died
Re: Fire and Steel

Kevin, et al., have you heard the news from San Francisco?

he driver whose truck sparked a spectacular freeway fire in Oakland early Sunday escaped with his life--a miracle, police say--but there will be no escaping the Bay Area traffic nightmare his accident has unleashed. [. . .]

At the heart of the traffic knot is the MacArthur Maze, a tangle of freeways at the east end of the Bay Bridge and the site of Sunday's crash and fire.

At 3:45 a.m., a truck carrying 8,600 gallons of unleaded gasoline overturned on a freeway transition road, creating an inferno with flames leaping 200 feet high and temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees. The heat weakened the steel supporting a connector road above.

One of the major foundations of you 9/11 conspiracy theorists' crackpottery is that a liquid-fuel fire can't melt steel enough to bring down the World Trade Center towers, or that structural damage combined with sustained fires could not have brought down World Trade Center building seven.

Over the weekend we saw a collapse of a steel-supported concrete section of bridge, much lighter than the towers, that was weakened and brought down by fire. A perfect test, it seems, of whether or not the fire caused by the impact of the hijacked planes could have done sufficient damage to the steel to cause the collapses we all witnessed. Since it didn't take any thermite to bring down the bridge, I'd say that you've lost any chance at ever making the explosives case again.

We'll see you the next time your idiocy gets sliced to pieces by the real world--toodles!

Academic Freedom, Incompetence, and 9/11

I love academic freedom. I'd eat it for breakfast if I could, and I take breakfast seriously.

But Kevin Barrett--you remember him, right? bearded guy? absolutely off his nut about 9/11?--is confusing academic freedom with something else; he is insisting that if only we'd listened to him in 2002, we wouldn't be embroiled in Iraq right now.

Well, duh. They didn't ask me, either.

There are many of us who made the argument in 2002 that we shouldn't be going to war in Iraq. We were shot down by those whom Duncan Black calls Very Serious People. Many of those same people are now, of course, saying that Our Iraqi Adventure was a bad idea, without admitting their own culpability in the disaster. Whatever the size of our chorus back then--i.e., whether Kevin Barrett had the "freedom" to spin his impossible yarns or not--we were going to war with Iraq, given who held the keys to the war machine and the Very Serious People driving from the backseat.

And, you know what? I would have told you in 2002 (I wasn't blogging then, but, trust me) that they'd screw it up, too.

Much of Barrett's screed here is not just the wouldacouldashouldas about listening to the bearded sages such as himself. Instead, it's a defense of his belief that the Bush administration was responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001 (his ellipses):

Every Middle East Studies colleague I know understood from the start that Iraq could not possibly threaten the United States with WMDs even if it had them, which it almost certainly did not, and that the Iraqi people would resist a U.S. invasion with every ounce of their strength. The only way Cheney's criminal war of aggression could be sold was by terrorizing the American people with 9/11 and the anthrax attacks, lying about a nonexistent WMD threat to take advantage of the people's fear. . . and intimidating scholarly experts into silence.

The Professors™ would have saved us, if it weren't for those meddling Cheneyites!

Barrett, in fact, ends his whine with this: "It is long past time for a rational, evidence-based debate on the facts and meaning of 9/11. Any takers?" I'm not "taking," but here's how I know he's wrong. It's simple. Bush (Cheney?) has been in charge for six years, give or take--roughly 2150 days by now. And, if you're to believe Barrett and his ilk, 9/11/01 was an unbelievably successful day for them. An elaborately complicated plot, involving scores or hundreds of co-conspirators, was executed with immaculate precision, and the evidence to support this plot is invisible to all but a handful of crank academics and a college dropout with iMovie.

Right.

Because the other 2149 days of the Bush administration have been a cascade of utter incompetence. There is nothing that Bush-Cheney have tried that has not turned to crap. It started with flubbed policy on North Korea and Irseal-Palestine in the opening months of 2001, then onto Bush's inability to hold the Senate during tax-cut season, his half-hearted stem-cell thing, right up through seven minutes of Hukt on Fonix in a Florida classroom after Bush was told America Was Under Attack. Incompetence run wild.

And what since then has come up roses for the administration? Seriously. That's my challenge. Whether you're a 9/11 conspiracy nut like Kevin Barrett or a die-hard Bush defender, tell me what has happened in the least six years, under the direction of this administration, that has worked. Afghanistan? (If Iraq was Cheney's real target, why even bother with Afghanistan?) Iraq itself? Cheney's oil buddies sure are rolling in that Iraqi oil now, eh? Medicare D? FEMA? Social Security reform? The budget?

2149 days of Cluseauvian bumbling versus one day of clockwork perfection? Please. It's the incompetence, Kevin. And there is not enough academic freedom in the world to make up for that.

Update: See also Michael Mathias.

McIlheran Watch: Patrick McIlheran is a liar and a smarmy fraud

There are times when I treat the Mac with humor or condescension. Not today. I'm feeling pessimistic this weekend, in large part because of the divisiveness apparent in this country's approach to the anniversary of 9/11. Republicans are politicizing it; ABC is lying about what happened; and George W. Bush is trying to make us think that our continuing presence in Iraq is the moral and military equivalent of World War II. Democrats just want some peace.

That's why I have no patience for McIlheran this week: He is a liar and a smarmy fraud.

I'm not even going to touch his op-ed from today, which is based on research from noted liar, dissembler, fraud, chicken, and sock-puppeteer John Lott, who should never ever be given credence on any matter again after the crap he's pulled. That alone ought to be enough to get McIlheran's "Junior Wurlitzer League" card revoked.

No, I'm talking about McIlheran's blogging from this weekend. This will be long, but, sorry, I have a blog and I must vent.

You can read McIlheran's blog here, and I'll link to the specific posts when I talk about them. But right now the links to the individual posts are turning up runtime errors from the Journal Sentinel's servers. (One can hope that maybe it's the engineers working on adding comments to the Journal Corp blogging software!) If the permalinks aren't working, just click the link above and read down to the appropriate dates.

See if you can see what is is about this entry from Saturday that raised my ire:

But Italy never attacked us at Pearl Harbor

I cheated; I only gave you the headline, which was it. Kind of gave it away. He's trying to make an equivalence between anti-Iraq war activists, who rightly say that Iraq didn't attack us on September 11, and World War II. The duh answer to that is twofold: One, Italy's ally attacked us at Pearl Harbor. Two, Italy declared war on the United Stated on December 11, 1941, just four days after the Pearl Harbor attack.

I guess the United States was just supposed to sit around while a world military power currently beating up on our own allies declared war on us? When the US was attacked in 1941, we responded miliatrily against those who attacked us, and against their allies who declared war on us. When the US was attacked in 2001, we responded militarily against those who attacked us and their allies in Afghanistan.

Sadly, since 2001, we have let those who attacked us escape and allowed their allies to make a resurgence. In 1941--and in pressing that fight in the years following--the US and our allies fully defeated not only Japan but their allies in Europe. At no point did we find ourselves distracted by a second, unrelated and unnecessary fight.

But back to Mac. He derides a Senate Intelligence Committee report from this past week which makes it clear that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were not in cahoots. He does this by citing conservative commentators who lack access to the classified information and by attacking ad hominem one of the staffers involved in writing the report. (He does not deride President Bush for making the same claim in a press conference two weeks ago.) But then he says,

Iraq was unconnected to 9-11 only if you view 9-11 as a matter of al-Qaida vs. the U.S.

Oh, well that explains it! Maybe we weren't al Qaeda's target five years ago--maybe the hijackers overshot Mexico and hit New York and Washington, DC, on accident. Or maybe they weren't al Qaeda after all, but renegade Cubans. Let's see how McIlheran explains this away:

The point President Bush had been making from the beginning was that al-Qaida, while bad, was part of something larger, something he's finally gotten around to calling Islamic fascism--the anti-Western impulse that is similarly behind a swath of violence since the 1970s.

And while rounding up al-Qaida was imperative, their places would be taken by other bomb-wearers unless the rotted political culture that spawned them were fixed. Bush was citing the spread of democracy as a reason to topple Saddam before the war began, while in 2001 he was warning that anyone not cooperating with us after 9-11 was in for it. By either measure, Iraq, with its unparalled culture of oppression and its known sheltering of jihadists of a variety of stripes, fits the indictment.

When the left complains, then, that Iraq didn't cause 9-11, ask: Where would have have [sic] taken the war on the jihadists?

This is staggeringly wrong. Just . . . staggeringly wrong. Go back and re-read those three paragraphs again, slowly, and just soak in their wrongness. This sentence, for example, blows me away:

And while rounding up al-Qaida was imperative, their places would be taken by other bomb-wearers unless the rotted political culture that spawned them were fixed.

I think we can all agree that the sentiment behind this sentence is not wrong. Clearly, there is a political, social, and economic confluence that allowed some parts of the middle east to produce anti-Western jihadists who attacked us and our interests throughout the nineties and on September 11, 2001.

None of those jihadis were from Iraq, and to use this logic as justification for our entry or perhaps even our continued presence in Iraq is misdirection and lying on a grand scale. I don't know how someone can do that and face himself in the mirror every day.

I'm not sure what he means in his last sentence--"Where would have have taken the war on the jihadists?"--but I can only assume he wants to know where Democrats would have taken the war on jihadists. I doubt they would have taken that war to Iraq. Consider:

• While we know Hussein was supporting Palestinian suicide bombers, we also know that he was not the only one; at least two US allies in the region, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, were allowing charities based in those coutries to pay terrorists. Beyond that, the Palestinian terrorists are a different flavor of terrorist than the jihadis typified by al Qaeda. Rather than exercising general anti-Western sentiment--the Palestinians were out to win concessions from Israel, a country they saw as occupying land rightfully theirs. And as we have seen, removing Saddam from power has not slowed down the onslaught of Palestinian suicide bombers. Strike one.
  
• It is true that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Iraq; he was in a part of Iraq not under Saddam's direct control and Saddam, in fact, tried to have him captured or killed (a fact Dick Cheney seems to be unaware of, calling Zarqawi this morning "the link" between Iraq and al Qaeda). It is also true that the US had the chance to get Zarqawi in 2002 and chose not to, expressly because it "could undercut [the US] case for war against Saddam." There were plenty of nations and world leaders who harbored and supported al Qaeda more readily and more thoroughly than Iraq and Hussein--many of them our allies, like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. al Qaeda operated throughout West Africa, as well. The one place al Qaeda was not welcome was in the secular dictatorship of Iraq. Strike two.
  
• In addition to not breeding jihadis who were a threat to the US, Hussein's Iraq was simply not a threat to us as a nation, either. We can debate whether Bush lied, or whether evidence was deliberately suppressed showing that intelligence pointing to an active and threatening WMD program was weak and likely wrong. Either way, it was clear by the time the first bombs fell in March 2003 that there was no WMD program, no large stockpiles of dangerous WMD, and no chance that Saddam would have a nuclear weapon before his mustache turned gray and fell into his bowl of humus. There were plenty of places that had active WMD programs--North Korea and Iran, for example--and places where there was (and remains) a real danger of WMD falling into terrorists' hands (like former Soviet republics). Strike three.

Democrats, Mr. Mac, would have put all of that together and recognized that, wherever the best place to take the war on jihadists might have been, Iraq was not it.

The deception and contortion necessary to believe that Iraq was the logical next step in the war on terror--as changed by the events five years ago tomorrow--are enormous, and any columnst of any stature should be embarrassed to engage in them willingly. McIlheran is an apologist for a presidency that has not made us safer and has not made the world safer. Indeed, McIlheran is a willing dupe, condescendingly wagging his finger at us know-nothings while whitewashing what is an agenda that, for anyone paying attention, is not related to terror at all.

Glenn Greenwald brought this home last week when considering the lies perpetrated by ABC's "Path to 9/11" docu-drama, which lays almost all of the blame for 9/11 at the feet of Bill Clinton. Don't you think, Glenn asks, if the Republicans really believed that Clinton-Gore blew it on terror, that would have been a central part of Bush's 2000 campaign? Makes sense. But it is not so:

Prominent Republican elected officials were not criticizing Clinton for paying insufficient attention to Al Qaeda. George Bush barely said a word about Islamic terrorism during the entire presidential campaign--throughout 1999 and then through all of 2000--and to the extent Republicans spoke about Clinton's anti-terrorism efforts at all, it was to criticize them for being too bellicose, too militaristic, and just unnecessary.

The 2000 Republican Party Platform contains 13 specific criticisms of the Clinton Administration's foreign and military policies. Not a single one mentions or refers in any way to Al Qaeda or terrorism generally. [. . .] Even the section of the Platform entitled "Terrorism, International Crime, and Cyber Threats" makes not one reference to Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, or Islamic extremism. It does not contain a single claim that the Clinton administration was insufficiently aggressive towards Islamic terrorists, nor does it advocate increased militarism in the Middle East or against terrorists. In fact, to the extent Republicans advocated a new approach at all, it was to emphasize the need for the very "law enforcement" and "domestic preparedness" approaches which they now claim to disdain.

George Bush's 2000 Republican National Convention acceptance speech contained a slew of specific criticisms of the Clinton administration, along with a series of specific foreign policy goals. He never mentioned or even alluded to the threat of terrorism, Islamic extremism, or the need for increased aggression against Middle Eastern supporters of terrorism. In fact, to the extent Bush criticized the use of military force at all, it was to imply that it was not used sparingly or discriminatingly enough. [. . .] Then-Governor Bush also engaged in three lengthy presidential debates with Al Gore and never once criticized the Clinton administration's handling of terrorism. He never once advocated increased aggression or urged that more attention be paid to that threat. Again, to the extent he criticized the Clinton administration's foreign policy, it was to criticize the excessive use of military force.

"Well, 9/11 changed everything," you may be thinking in response. Well, no, it didn't change enough. More from Greenwald, with my emphasis:

After that, there is an entire section entitled "The Middle East and Persian Gulf" that deals extensively with Iraq and the alleged threat posed by Saddam Hussein, but it does not say a word--not a single word--about Islamic extremism, Al Qaeda, or Osama bin Laden. [. . .]

In the second presidential debate, Bush was specifically asked what differences there would be between his foreign policy and the Clinton administration's policy towards the Middle East:

MODERATOR: People watching here tonight are very interested in Middle East policy, and they are so interested they want to base their vote on differences between the two of you as president how you would handle Middle East policy. Is there any difference?

GORE: I haven't heard a big difference in the last few exchanges.

BUSH: That's hard to tell. I think that, you know, I would hope to be able to convince people I could handle the Iraqi situation better. . . .

In 2000, the Republicans and candidate Bush were concerned about one thing: Iraq. Barbara O'Brien writes today about how Iraq was in the cards within the first days after 9/11. And, of course, there was Bob Woodward's book. McIlheran, by continuing to make excuses for the president and the war in Iraq that clearly he wanted before he was elected, is doing a tremendous disservice to his readers, and he makes himself look like nothing more than a patsy. "Where would you have attacked," he mockingly wonders, and then, probably, pats himself on the back for showing us libs what's what. In reality, Mr. Mac, you're the one getting played. You're the one looking foolish.

And that smarmy question--"Where would have have taken the war on the jihadists?"--is just the second biggest crock in the post, though important. It buys completely into the presupposition that the best way to fight stateless jihadi terrorists is to invade a state. I am not the Democrats' premiere foreign policy expert, but even I can see that the way to stop terror cells in Madrid or London or Bali or even Saudi Arabi and the Sudan is not to invade Iraq.

The biggest crock in the post is, of course, that the current conflict is the equivalent of World War II. It is not, for several reasons. As noted, we are not fighting states. We cannot go off and invade and take and hold territory belonging to a military power the way we did in the Pacific, Europe, and Africa. Calling al Qaeda and its ilk fascists no more makes them fascists than my calling a banana an orange makes that banana into an orange. When you start calling what we fight to day fascism, you lose a perfectly good word to describe actual fascists--people like Italy's Moussolini. When Roosevelt took us to war, he asked Americans to sacrifice and set a somber and severe tone for the fighting that assuredly would take many thousands of American lives. When taking us to war against terror, Bush asked us to keep shopping, morphed Democratic US Senator Max Cleland into bin Laden in a campaign commercial to win in 2002, used images flag-draped coffins at Ground Zero to win in 2004, will use 9/11 families to promote torture to win in 2006, and gets completely flustered and petulant when asked what winning this war might mean. If you want us to believe we're fighting WWIII, then give us something more than dirty tricks and directions to the mall. Give us something more than unrelated invasions and belligerent demands to "stay the course."

I know I have ranted through too many screens already, but consider my verbiage to be a correlate to how infuriating McIlheran is to me. In today's post (a reminder that the link may not work), McIlheran goes off on Juan Cole:

[Cole, in today's paper] mainly is saying that al-Qaida's kind of winning, it's provoked by our policies, and the war is all really a plot by Bush to hold on to the prerogatives of being a war president. This must all somehow seem self-evident to people who have plugged their heads into the MoveOn Matrix.

But consider: As another Crossroads piece, this one by William Dobson, points out, from 9-11 through 2005, 18,944 people around the world died via terrorism. Eight of them were on American soil. Not that fate needs tempting, but the fact that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the 9-11 mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, who planned the '93 World Trade Center hit, and dozens of other al-Qaida leaders are in the slam or dead suggests that the failure of al-Qaida to kill a few thousand more Americans is no mere coincidence.

Beyond that, Cole contends that far from being a clash of civilizations, the jihadist assault on us (though he never manages to say "jihadist," tellingly) is really the reaction to what we've done--supported Israel, sent soldiers to the Middle East.

This belies a number of widely available facts: first, bin Laden himself made it clear at the start that his campaign against, in particular, the United States, was predicated on a US presence in Saudi Arabia (notice that Bush "cut and ran" from Saudi Arabia as soon as he had bases in Iraq). In addition, it's clear that there is "growing evidence [in the intelligence community] that al Qaeda might not have been trying to attack the United States in the three years since its singular triumph of 9/11." In other words, al Qaeda hasn't hit us not because of Bush's almighty wall of fire around us, but rather because they have been biding their time. It took eight years between al Qaeda attacks on US soil, not because we stopped one every other week, but because there is a method to their madness.

To top it off, there is no question that the frequency and intensity of terror activity--particularly attacks planned, whether executed or not, by al Qaeda--has skyrocketed around the world since 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. Every day, it seems, we learn of some plot somewhere that belies the notion that we are fighting them in Iraq so we don't have to fight them somewhere else.

So, again, Patrick McIlheran is spinning and fronting for this administration, peddling half-truths and outright fraud to, smiling, repeat the Bush line on Iraq. The amount of dishonesty in just one weekend's worth of blog posts is staggeringly offensive.

McIlheran takes the opportunity of the fifth anniversary of the most deadly attack ever on American soil to wag his finger, talk down to those who disagree with him, and lie about it all.

Ironically--if you've made it this far, you deserve something positive--it is my rival Cheddarspherean Rick Esenberg who provides perhaps the best of the 9/11 pieces in the paper this morning. He captures much of what I feel on this anniversay, writing,

I recall Sept. 11 as a numbing day. It was impossible to work and hard to think. At least for me, a more considered reaction came later. Even five years after, there is little that can provoke the same combination of grief and anger, of tears and resolve. [. . .] How could such destruction happen so quickly? How could it have been brought about by a small and unremarkable group of men who seemed, in their misguided beliefs, more pathetic than dangerous What is it in the grotesqueries of radical Islam that would prompt someone to self-immolation and indiscriminate slaughter? We all saw what happened, but it seemed then--and still seems today--implausible.

If you walk across the street, you enter the grounds of St. Paul's Episcopal Chapel. St. Paul's became a respite for emergency responders in the days following 9-11 and is today something of a memorial to what followed the collapse of the towers. Its tiny sanctuary is filled with badges and patches from responders across the nation. There are letters from loved ones of those who died a few hundred feet away and condolences from those who lived on the other side of the planet. There were drawings from children and photographs of the heroism that followed hard upon the hijackers' bloodlust.

St. Paul's is a reminder that the incredible evil wrought by a few was met by the self-emptying love and charity of the many. We must remember the threat that resulted in that gaping emptiness where the towers once stood.

We must also remember the hope that was found at the little church across the street.

I began this long post--if you can remember that far back--by saying that I felt pessimistic about the way this fifth anniversary is happening, and this is very much because I remember the near-instant unity and hope that came on 9/11. On September 10, we were a vividly divided nation. On September 12, we were united. We're not united anymore, ladies and gentleman. And while radical Islamic jihad may not be the fault of George W. Bush, this disunity is. When Patrick McIlheran shills for that man and the hope he exploited in the months after 9/11, he spits on the grave of every American who died that day.

And I cannot let it happen in silence.

Hey.

I've been avoiding the internet for most of the day, having just now gotten to see the TiVo'd World Cup Final (congrats, Italy). I'm hoping maybe to get a little more blogging done this week than last. Some notes:

RIP, Frank Zeidler.

No matter how many emails you 9/11 conspiracy theorists send me, nor how "overwhelming" you say the evidence is that 9/11 was an "inside job," I still say you're all nuts. I may write more later this week--not to debunk, which is done well enough elsewhere, but to try to explain why.

Along those lines, Dave has an urgent question: Have the allegations of government involvement in [Buddy] Holly's assassination been conclusively disproven?

The Nutty Professor

So there's this lecturer in the University of Wisconsin system, who is quickly getting a reputation not for knowledge and expertise in the subject taught, but rather for outspoken political views--views that some people consider to be outside of the mainstream and perhaps a disqualification for teaching, at least at taxpayers' expense.

That person, surprisingly, is not Jessica McBride, whose unfettered and occasionally bitter partisanship is the antithesis of good journalism.

The target here is a guy named Kevin Barrett, who is a member of the "9/11 Scholars for Truth" (no link to those nutballs from me), a group that does not believe the official story of what happened in September 11, 2001, and instead advances patently false theories about explosives in the World Trade Center towers and government involvement in the plot.

Let me be clear, in case the "nutballs" comment above was not enough: I despise the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

But I've seen two things going on from the press and the Right Cheddarsphere regarding Barrett that I also don't like. One is the smearing of the left generally for conspiracy theories like this among some fringe nutball element. The left generally, Democrats particularly, me specifically, hate these guys. For one thing, they're wrong; watch "moonbat central," the Daily Kos, when someone posts a 9/11 conspiracy diary. Immediately, the post fills up with hundreds of comments, almost all of them from the sane people telling the conspiracy theorists both why they're wrong and where they can stick their baloney. I keep a special bookmarks folder around just in case I happen on them first.

For another thing, these conspiracy theorists distract from reasonable questions about both the Bush administration's pre-9/11 anti-terror activities (hint: there were virtually none, despite warnings by the Clinton administration, a very clear prediction by Hart and Rudmann, and, of course, that PDB) and post-9/11 reactions. There is a conversation to be had, there, and it is not helped by people claiming the towers fell by controlled demolition with Dick Cheney at the switch.

The second thing I've noticed is that the right seems unwilling to believe that anything else barrett believes or does could possibly be within the mainstream, or any good at all. Notice that I didn't--and have never, as far as I remember--called for McBride's ouster from UWM, even though I don't think she practices what she should--if she's doing it right--be preaching. The irony is, of course, that the person leading the charge--catapulting the propaganda, if you will--against Barrett is Jessica McBride. Dave Diamond, in what may be my favorite post on the matter so far, snarkily calls for her ouster:

McBride is saying that she's OK with a taxpayer-funded university firing an untenured instructor for their political beliefs. You know what you have to do, Chancellor Santiago; science demands a test of this hypothesis!

I don't endorse that, though I do think that, as Tim Rock suggests, Barrett needs the kind of fair treatment that McBride gets: This guy isn't teaching "9/11" (though some on the right probably don't see the difference between that and "Intro to Islam," a course he is teaching), where we know he's off-base. Let's see if he can do the job he was hired to do before we drive him out.

After all, I'd hate to see--and so would some conservative blogger/ radio hosts I could name--a purge of the UW system based on how outspoken one is in one's politics.

No Wizard of Oz: Straw Men in United 93

There is very little more frustrating to me as a reader of blogs and news than the straw man, the phony opponent cooked up to provide a blogger or politician with a ready-made--if fictional--foil. The AP made quite a splash last month in outing President Bush for his use of the device.

I saw it yesterday, several times. Here's one example:

See this trailer. It is so powerful liberals are demanding it be withdrawn from theaters because of the shock value.

Here's a second, similar one:

There are a lot of people that say this movie should not be shown [. . .].

And three examples make a trend:

The Coward AntiAmerican left in this country, the Party of Russ Feingold doesn't want the people to see movies like this [. . .].

The movie, of course, is the upcoming release, United 93, about the fourth plane on September 11, 2001. From what I've read, it is apparently tastefully done; the writer-director had full support from the victims' families to make the film. I saw the trailer for it recently attached to the movie Inside Man. You can see the trailer for yourself at Apple's Quicktime depot.

What all three of these examples, gleaned from the shining halls of the right cheddarsphere, lack entirely is evidence that there really are "some" or "liberals" or identifiable members of the "coward anti-American left" demanding that the film not be released, or that the trailer be pulled for political reasons. Instead, the bloggers in question, in classic straw-man fashion, throw the false bad example out there to do battle against, leaving them the high road of moral outrage and righteous indignation. I mean, I certainly would understand their positions if the accusation were true, but it is not.

As far as I can tell, with my minor Googling prowess, the source for this idea that liberals don't want Americans to see United 93 is an incident in Manhattan (a place where they are understandably a might touchy about 9/11 issues). Here's a Newsweek piece:

If movie trailers are supposed to cause a reaction, the preview for "United 93" more than succeeds. Featuring no voice-over and no famous actors, it begins with images of a beautiful morning and passengers boarding an airplane. It takes you a minute to realize what the movie's even about. That's when a plane hits the World Trade Center. The effect is visceral. When the trailer played before "Inside Man" last week at the famed Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, audience members began calling out, "Too soon!" In New York City, where 9/11 remains an open wound, the response was even more dramatic. The AMC Loews theater on Manhattan's Upper West Side took the rare step of pulling the trailer from its screens after several complaints. "One lady was crying," says one of the theater's managers, Kevin Adjodha. "She was saying we shouldn't have [played the trailer]. That this was wrong ... I don't think people are ready for this."

No protesting, America-hating liberals there. Even other actual news reports do not turn up mention of "liberals" or "the left" trying to block the film. It simply was patrons objecting to content--something that happens, I would imagine, everytime they release a new Saw movie, for example. The Newsweek column goes on to wonder if the national zietgiest is really ready for a 9/11 movie yet, and offers the proof-pudding non-answer that we'll find out when we see the box office.

Further Googling turned up a pretty-widely distributed column by a freelancer named Justin Darr:

No matter what the subject or the person involved, people who react this way are just trying to avoid the facts showing they made a mistake, and are now unwilling to admit it.

Well, sorry to tell you, but, if you have been fortunate enough to avoid dealing with people like this, your time in blissful paradise is over because the liberals are yet once again gearing up with another “How can you be so insensitive to tell the truth” campaign.

Darr also points fingers without so much as a single popcorn kernel of proof. In fact, when I challenged the bloggers quoted above to provide evidence, links, or anything, I mostly got bupkis. There was one "Then why did the people In NYC ask to have the trailer pulled?," as if that provides evidence of either a conspiracy to shut the film down or that liberals are behind it. The studio's statement makes it clear that the problem was images, not ideology:

Universal Pictures is standing by its trailer for United 93, Paul Greengrass's film about the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11 2001, despite viewer complaints that led to the trailer being pulled from one New York City cinema. "We expect that some moviegoers will have a strong response to its images and narrative," Universal Studios said in a statement, but said that it had no plans to pull the trailer or produce a substitute.

One of the challenged bloggers offered up "comments made on the official website of the movie." The site offers no statement on the incidents, such as the one quoted just above from the studio, but it does include free public message boards. A half hour of reading--and some time with the forum's search function--didn't turn up any evidence of actual liberals trying to shut down the film, although there were calls to boycott the film because liberal Hollywood was exploiting the victims.

It's all straw, all imagination; there is no man behind the curtain. The right's Liberal Derangement Syndrome is so strong, they have to blame us even when we do nothing--nothing at all on the scale of what the right can do when it wants to shut a movie down.

Peter DiGaudio owes me $1000

Tucked in behind his wishing death upon liberal celebrities (is that "the job the Mainstream Media used to do"?), and buried in a long ranting post about those horrible liberals, is this:

No one ever said Iraq was tied to 9/11 and I have a standing offer of $1,000 cash to anyone who can produce a quote from President Bush or any official who ever said that.

I know, I know--you're all clamoring for the cash prize, but I'm claiming it first. We can start here, when Bush said "The war reached our shores on September the 11th, 2001. Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war.” Bush said that just a week or so after he said, "We went to war because we were attacked." This was less than a year ago.

And then there's Dick Cheney, who said, famously, in direct response to the question "Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?" that it's "been pretty well confirmed, that [9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack." Cheney, of course, later denied having said that (despite the White House web site transcript), leading to one of my favorite "Daily Show" moments ever.

More? You want more? Here's one list, with, among others, classics like Tom Ridge's "Well...Iraq was not the first stage of the war. The first was on September 11." Here's a second list. And who can forget that "Mission Accomplished" moment when Bush said "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001"? Here's a good Christian Science Monitor article from around the beginning of the Iraq war that traces many of the ways the administration linked 9/11 and Iraq.

That ought to be enough to satisfy the requirements, eh? I'll just assume my check is in the mail.