[Osx-nutters] another special comment

[Kevin Callahan]

<http://movies.crooksandliars.com/CountDown-SpecialComment-Bush-911.mov>

Full Transcript:

And lastly tonight a Special Comment on why we are here. Half a  
lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space.
       And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying  
to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.
And all the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the  
remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in  
the planes and — as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared  
still into my soul — two more in the Towers.
       And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New  
York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen  
or more, as our ancestors.

       I belabor this to emphasize that, for me… this was, and is,  
and always shall be, personal.
       And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft", or  
have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here — is at best a  
grasping, opportunistic, dilettante — and at worst, an idiot —  
whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.
       However. Of all the things those of us who were here five  
years ago could have forecast — of all the nightmares that unfolded  
before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds… none  
of us could have predicted… this.

       Five years later this space… is still empty.
       Five years later there is no Memorial to the dead.
       Five years later there is no building rising to show with  
proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by  
cowards and criminals.
       Five years later this country’s wound is still open.
       Five years… later this country’s mass grave is still unmarked.


       Five years later… this is still… just a background for a photo- 
op.
       It is beyond shameful.
       —
       At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial — barely four  
months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania  
field, Mr. Lincoln said "we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate  
— we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead,  
who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to  
add or detract."
       Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.
       Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize  
their reprehensible inaction. "We can nto dedicate — we can not  
consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground." So we won’t.
       Instead they bicker and buck-pass. They thwart private  
efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere.  
They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self- 
congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job  
they’re doing — instead of doing any job at all.
       Five years later, Mr. Bush… we are still fighting the  
terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir — on these 16  
empty acres, the terrorists… are clearly, still winning.
       And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic  
sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.
       —
       And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole  
in this city, and in the fabric of our nation.
       There is, its symbolism — of the promise unfulfilled, the  
urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.


       The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so  
slowly and painfully followed it… was the unanimous humanity, here,  
and throughout the country. The government, the President in  
particular, was given every possible measure of support.
       Those who did not belong to his party — tabled that.
       Those who doubted the mechanics of his election — ignored that.
       Those who wondered of his qualifications — forgot that.


        History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a  
government cannot be taken away from that government, by its critics.
        It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a  
nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage.
        Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of  
being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats.  
Nor did the media. Nor did the people.
        The President — and those around him — did that.
        They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them,  
"bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest  
would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria,  
as morally or intellectually confused; as appeasers; as those who, in  
the Vice President’s words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the  
terrorists."
        They promised protection, and then showed that to them  
"protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had  
once shaken… a despot who we now learn from our own Senate  
Intelligence Committee, hated Al-Qaeda as much as we did.
        The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into  
supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ’something to do’  
with 9/11, is "lying by implication."
         The impolite phrase, is "impeachable offense."


         Not once in now five years has this President ever offered  
to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty  
space… and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved  
country.

         Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of  
respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never  
suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.
         Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently  
treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible —  
for anything — in his own administration.


         Yet what is happening this very night?
         A mini-series, created, influenced — possibly financed by —  
the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis,  
continues to be televised into our homes.
         The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced  
by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime  
parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party  
out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office,  
seem like the only option.
        How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage  
of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and  
needless death… after monstrously transforming it into fear and  
suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three  
elections… how dare you or those around you… ever "spin" 9/11.
        —
        Just as the terrorists have succeeded — are still succeeding  
— as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground  
Zero…
        So too have they succeeded, and are still succeeding — as  
long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against  
Americans.
        This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially  
one from March of 1960. But as Disney’s continuing sell-out of the  
truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be  
powerful things.



        And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a  
riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."
        In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra- 
terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A  
neighbor pleads for calm.
        Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone  
suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on.
        As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns  
are inevitably produced.
        An "alien" is shot — but he turns out to be just another  
neighbor, returning from going for help.
        The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra- 
terrestrials areseen, manipulating a small device that can jam  
electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to  
actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines  
and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s  
themselves."

        And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling  
sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find  
ourselves tonight.
        "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and  
explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts,  
attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men.
        "For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can  
destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a  
fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn."
        —
        When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we  
will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his  
portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that  
if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…
        When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have  
"forgotten the lessons of 9/11"… look into this empty space behind me  
and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not  
build, and tell me:
        Who has left this hole in the ground?
       We have not forgotten, Mr. President.
       You have.
       May this country forgive you.