A Sane Voice In Amarillo (and it isn't mine)

A regular Op-Ed contributor to the daily fishwrap made me late for a meeting this AM. I couldn't believe I was reading anti-W rants in the local paper. Oh, the letters are gonna fly now. One of my students in my 9:25 USHIST I class showed up with a T shirt that read: Don't Mess With Bush! Support Our Commander-in-Chief. The student's father is a Republican honcho in the Texas Panhandle. I make comparisons between earlier presidents and the current officeholder. Wait until Republican daddy gets an earful of something I will probably say about W when the student gets home from school. Milk and cookies and gossip about the bald-headed geek who teaches history at Amarillo College. Hell, I've been called a pinko, I've been called a commie, and I've been called a doper. Just don't call me late for supper. Perhaps I ought to slip the URL for this Blog to the Republican student. Wouldn't that be a lot of fun? If this be (fair & balanced) treason, make the most of it.

[x Amarillo Fishwrap]
President applies final, back-breaking straw
By GREG SAGAN

In an extraordinary exercise of reverse spin, President Bush last week announced that the United States has "had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th."

But polls of Americans show that upward of 70 percent of us believe Saddam was involved in the attacks of two years ago.

Where did the American people get this idea?

This administration is showing itself to be absolutely shameless in its twistings and turnings with respect to our "war on terror." Before Sept. 11, 2001, we knew nothing of any threat. But only a couple days after, we "knew" al-Qaida was behind it; that Osama bin Laden was behind al-Qaida; that the Taliban in Afghanistan was behind bin Laden; and that Iraq, Iran and North Korea formed an axis of evil. We demanded that the Taliban deliver bin Laden and any of his henchmen in Afghanistan, and when the Taliban refused, we invaded.

Before we could round up either bin Laden or Mullah Mohammed Omar, we turned our sights on Iraq.

Over the past 12 months, this administration has asserted repeatedly that Iraq was "a terrorist nation" with ties to "al Qaida-like organizations"; that Iraq had thousands of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the means to deliver them to our soil; and that we knew where these weapons were. Since March we have dealt with our utter inability to find a single nuclear, chemical or biological weapon by saying it will take a long time to actually locate them (maybe even longer than we gave the United Nations), by saying the possession of these weapons is not essential for justifying our invasion and by saying Iraq certainly intended to develop these weapons even if they don't have them now.

Now we see this administration covering its tracks by saying Saddam Hussein was not behind the 9/11 attack and that, goodness gracious, it simply can't understand why more than two-thirds of us believe he was.

("dis-in-gen-u-ous" - 1. Withholding or not taking account of known information. 2. Not genuinely sincere, giving a false impression of sincerity or simplicity - Encarta World English Dictionary).

Well, I've reached my limit. I've had it with people like President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice assuming the pose that truth is whatever we're saying today, that accountability is something for chumps and suckers and high school students, that any blowback we suffer over the next 50 years will be just the next round of trouble the other guy wants to start, that America is always the good guy no matter what we do, and that bad actions taken for good reasons based on our own bad intelligence are still good deeds.

If I were one of the 200 million Americans convinced that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, I would be feeling defrauded about now. I would be strongly tempted to move rapidly past the bill of goods I bought and confront the ones who sold it to me.

America is in a first-class mess and the people who put us there are still in office. But there is a way out, a way to reclaim our honor and to begin the painful process of undoing what we've done.

First, the president should accept personal responsibility for starting two wars that are draining American blood and money without gain.

Next, we should surrender the administration of Iraq and Afghanistan to the United Nations and bring back our troops.

Then we should throw out the PATRIOT Act and any other legislation that grants the federal government extraordinary powers over American citizens and turn the terrorist problem over to police forces both here and abroad to prosecute as crimes. Then, Bush, Cheney, the Cabinet secretaries and key advisers should resign in favor of the speaker of the House for the remainder of this term.

President Bush is rapidly hemorrhaging moral authority, credibility, control of his administration and common sense. From where I sit, he's finished. Time to throw in the towel, bind our wounds, own up to a monstrous failure and accept history's judgment.

The problem, Mr. President, is you.

Greg Sagan can be contacted in care of the Amarillo Globe-News, P.O. Box 2091, Amarillo TX 79166, or letters@amarillonet.com. His column appears Tuesday.

Copyright © 2003 The Amarillo Globe-News