Maureen Dowd's imagined correspondence: VP Cheney to ......

Two more U.S. soldiers died today. George II has now caused the deaths of more young people than his father — George I — in Gulf War I. In honor of that great accomplishment, I thought it appropriate to supply Maureen Dowd's latest column from the NYTimes on the real enemy: Saudi Arabia. Not a single 9/11 terrorist was an Iraqi; most were from Saudi Arabia. It is Osama bin Laden, not Saddam Hussein, who attacked the U.S. You must supply words to replace ..... in Dowd's most excellent portrayal of the Bush (George II) administration. If this be treason, make the most of it.

[x NYTimes]

July 23, 2003

Weapons of Mass Redaction

By MAUREEN DOWD

This correspondence from the Office of the Vice President to the ..... ambassador to the U.S. was redacted by the Office of the Vice President for national and electoral security reasons:

Dear Prince ..... bin .....,

Thank you, my friend, for the falcon. It survived the trip on your Gulfstream. It is now eating small endangered woodland creatures at my Jackson Hole ranch.

We are pumped about the double rubout of the Hussein boys. We really needed that win. It could be a game-changer for us. The stock market killed on the killings. And the timing will help cover your royal ..., too.

When the 9/11 commission report comes out tomorrow, I think you will be well satisfied with our efforts to keep you guys out of it.

We have almost as much experience as you at keeping private matters veiled. It's not good to overburden the American people with too much complicated information.

We didn't let a thing slip on our private energy meetings where we took care of our mutual friends in the ... industry; we kept the bidding closed on the Halliburton contracts to rebuild Iraq, and we set up our own C.I.A. within the Pentagon to produce the intelligence we wanted to link Al Qaeda to Saddam rather than to your country.

We've classified the entire section of the 9/11 report that deals with the ..... family's support of charitable groups that benefit terrorists, including mentions of your wife's checks inexplicably winding up in the bank accounts of two of the hijackers. (Lynn says to tell Princess ..... we have four tickets for the ..... ballet at the Kennedy Center.)

We're not even letting Bob Graham mention the name of your country. We threatened to throw him in the federal slammer if he calls ..... ...... anything but "a foreign government."

Not to worry that the report will shed any light on the ties between the hijackers and your government agent ....al- ....... .

I know you're worried that the whiny widows of 9/11 will throw another hissy-fit when they see all the blacked-out material, like they did when you whisked Osama's family out of the U.S. on a private jet right after the attacks. But we didn't go this far down the road of pushing aside incriminating evidence about you guys and blaming 9/11 on Saddam to turn back now because a few thousand families can't get their darn closure.

Buddy, we go back a long way. You've been a great host to the Bushes and you've been generous with rides on your Airbus and Gulfstream and with invites to your beautiful estates in ...... and ..... and ....... .

But now you have to throw us a bone. Al Qaeda cells are crawling all over your kingdom, planning attacks around the world. They've gotten even stronger since the May bombing of Western compounds in ...... . We need a little more than lip service about quelling anti-American fervor over there and cracking down on phony charities. You've got to at least give the F.B.I. something to work with. Don't worry. They'll screw it up anyway.

Rest assured that the F.B.I.'s taking the heat for 9/11 in the report tomorrow, not you.

I hear you want to behead that ex-spook Robert Baer, who's been all over TV talking about the way you lavish money to influence U.S. politics, donating millions to presidential libraries and the like. But after all, every million spent on a congressman's favorite charity is one less million for a terrorist's fake charity.

Here in the ..... House, we've mastered the art of moving beyond what people once thought was important to look for. First, we switched from looking for Osama to looking for Saddam. Then we switched from looking for "weapons" to looking for "weapons programs." Now Wolfie has informed the public that we need to worry less about finding weapons in Iraq than building democracy.

The trick is to keep moving. Just yesterday, we shifted the blame for the uranium debacle in the president's State of the ..... speech from George Tenet at the C.I.A. to Stephen Hadley at the N.S.C.

I'd like to return your many acts of generosity. Why not come to dinner at my Secret Undisclosed Location? Here's the address: ... ......... .. in .........

All the best, Dick.

© 2003 The New York Times Company

KVII Editorial, ca. 1968

A few weeks ago, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) announced —for the first tme in thirty years — that no colleges or universities had been placed on the AAUP Censure List this year. In addition, 4 institutions — including a community college — had been removed from the Censure List this year. At one of the 4 institutions — the University of Central Arkasas — the newly installed president made getting the Censure List the first priority of his administration. As he put it, Any thinking person would ask themselves why is a university being censured? His correct conclusion was to gain the removal of censure of the University of Central Arkasas. I concluded my rant about the sorry fact that Amarillo College has been on the Censure List since 1968. I have been told by an Amarillo College administrator that the AAUP made outrageous demands upon Amarillo College. My thinking is that if the University of Central Arkansas can do, why can't Amarillo College? Toeay, I received — from an anonymous (but reliable) source — an historical artifact: the editorial comment of KVII-TV (ABC affiliate in Amarillo) in 1968 after the AAUP censured Amarillo College. Those words of nearly 40 years ago are as true about Amarillo College today as they were then. Perhaps, the administrators of Amarillo College are slightly more circumspect in choosing words, but they remain contemptuous of academic freedom and the obligations of academic leadership. If this be treason, make the most of it.

KVII Editorial

It has been a year since the heavy-handed boss of Amarillo College succeeded in giving the school a nationwide black eye. And from the looks of things, President A. B. Martin (Albert B. Martin was president of Amarillo College from 1960 to 1974.) is determined to follow up with still another exercise in clumsiness, this time on a regional basis.

The original administrative flub came when Dr. Martin high-handedly and somewhat airily dismissed a member of the College faculty, Miss Mary Miesse, a porfessor of business and secretarial subjects, that resulted in the blacklisting of Amarillo College by the American Association of University Professors, a blacklisting which stands to this day. It wasn't the dismissal of Miss Miesse that ired the academic group — but, rather the fact that she was fired without benefit of academic due process, without, in short, a full airing of her differences with the College administration. The result was that not only Miss Miesse's reputation suffered — but, eventually, so did Amarillo College.

Everyone enjoys the respect of his professional colleagues, but that, apparently, does not include Dr. Martin, who in his singularly breezy fashion dismisses the American Association of University Professors as not much more than a labor union. As he put it to this reporter: They have as much to do with us as we have to do with the Los Angeles Association of Topless Go-Go Dancers.

Nor is that the only bon mot coming from Dr. Martin's non-ivy tower this week. For no obvious reason, he took it upon himself to issue a public statement that may go some distance in sabotaging a much wanted and much needed technical facility for Amarillo. That would be the technical training center planned for Amarillo Air Force Base. And what incensed the academic world's Nervous Nellie was the possibility that the tech center might include a school for dental technicians. He hoped, said Dr. Martin, that the tech school would not offer the facility, which would duplicate a dental tech school for Amarillo College, which is patently ironic since Amarillo College now has no dental school for dental technicians (Amarillo College added a Department of Dental Hygiene in 1971 after an unsuccessful earlier attempt to offer dental assisting only.) and the one they once had was generally unaccredited by the dental profession.

Instead of trying to win back the approval of the American Association of University Professors, Dr. Martin apparently prefers the ostrich theory — if he sticks his head in the sand and keeps it there long enough — the legitimate academic world will go away.

Well, it won't, and neither will the troubles of Amarillo College, which, in a year of record college enrollments, is barely holding its enrollment to last year's totals. On the other hand, the ostrich theory may have some value. If we all adopt it, maybe Dr. Martin'll go away.

That's the KVII editorial — for now.

That's 30.

I was struck by the irony of the editorial. AC administrators in 2003 are as prone to the ostrich strategy as they were 40 years ago. Dr. Martin was overthrown in a palace revolt and replaced by the man (Charles D. Lutz, Jr.) that Martin had brought on board to repair relations between the College and the community. Martin, in retirement, committed suicide a few years after leaving the College. The tech center at the closed Amarillo Air Force Base became the Texas State Technical College (TSTC)-Amarillo. After more than 20 years of duplicating vocational-technical programs offered by Amarillo College, State Senator Teel Bivins (R-Amarillo) grew tired of the waste of tax dollars and engineered the merger of TSTC-Amarillo with Amarillo College. So, instead of two institutions wasting tax dollars on quickly outdated vocational-technical education, Amarillo now has just one. When Amarillo College had an athletic program, its teams were the Badgers. They should have been the Ostriches.