Terrorist Strike in Paris and the Other Major News Story of the Day

Today we mourn and send our sympathies to the families and friends of the dead and wounded in yesterday's attacks in Paris. Killing innocent men, women and children is the coward’s way, and those responsible for the Paris attacks must be brought to justice for the crime of murder. Acts of terror such as this are just that, actions intended to terrorize and intimidate enemies, so the best way to battle these atrocities is for the citizens of France to stay strong, courageous and unified.

 That said, I want address a related comment I saw on Reddit. A person added a post with the headline: Pay close attention to what events that are being overshadowed by the Paris attacks. Now this can be understood in two ways. The author could be implying that the attacks were staged to cover up an important piece of news or that we shouldn’t lose sight of other significant news happening during this time period. I lean toward the second interpretation, but either way, there is a major story in the news today that is probably not getting the attention it deserves.

In an article in Slate, we now know that in the months prior to 9/11 Bush, Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice received urgent intelligence on numerous occasions that there was an imminent attack about to happen on U.S. soil, and did nothing. Here is an excerpt: 

"In a blockbuster account by Chris Whipple, based on interviews he did for a Showtime documentary, former chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism center Cofer Black and former CIA director George Tenet described how they spent the months leading up to 9/11 trying to warn the White House that a spectacular attack was imminent and that the country needed to take urgent action, but to no avail."

Tenet became so alarmed by the intel the CIA was receiving that he called for an urgent meeting with Rice to warn of an imminent terrorist attack. Rice did nothing in response.

 What this means is that there were many more serious and specific warnings about a terrorist attack in American than the Bush administration ever admitted to. Condi Rice’s statement after 9/11 that nobody could have imagined planes hitting skyscrapers turns out to be a blatant lie, as there were many such warnings. The question of course, is why?

 Was it the sheer incompetence of the Bush White House to brush off such dire warnings or was something else going on? Why weren’t Tenet’s concerns addressed and serious efforts made to thwart such a terrorist plot? Was it incompetence or the “new Pearl Harbor” that Cheney and the neocons in Washington needed to initiate their wars in the Middle East?

College Student Goes Where Mainstream Media Dares Not Tread

At a town hall meeting in Reno, Nevada yesterday, a 19-year old college student had the courage/temerity to lay some truth on the GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush, and told him, “Your brother created ISIS.” This was after a speech by Bush alleging Obama was responsible for the rise of terrorists groups in the Middle East.

It is such a sad state of affairs in political media coverage when a simple statement of truth from a teenager becomes national headlines. Stop the presses, someone confronted Jeb Bush with the truth. How dare this young hooligan drag reality into the political realm. Doesn’t she know the script? Isn’t she aware of how the game is played?

That’s where we're at, folks. The mainstream news media has abrogated its responsibilities for so long now that confronting a politician with the truth in a public setting is now headline worthy news. George Bush did help create ISIS, and his father helped build al Qaeda when it was fighting the Russians in Afghanistan.

The mainstream media cowers in fear at the feet of people like Bush, following the narrative set by its owners to avoid the truth at the risk of looking biased and turning away viewers. As a result, we need courageous citizens like Ivy Ziedrich who are willing to stand up to people running for public office and call them out on their lies and distortions. Thank you Ivy for doing what our news media is afraid to.

Should the Republican Party be classified as a terrorist organization?

How could anyone propose such a horrendous idea? Well, it’s actually quite easy. Today’s Republican Party is doing more to destroy those ideas and principals that made America a great country than all the actual terrorist organizations combined. I present my case:

They want to destroy our form of government – The conservative propaganda is relentless: government is bad, government is bad, government is bad. We get it. You hate our government. So does ISIS. Ignoring everything good that government has done, the ongoing attacks on our leadership and active efforts to weaken the executive branch have zombefied many Americans who repeat the chant without giving it a second thought. By overtly working daily to destroy our form of government, conservatives in Congress and their Right Wing megaphone are accomplishing what al Qaeda and ISIS and the Taliban could never dream of achieving. Their conscious and unconscious ineptness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

They want to destroy our educational system – A strong system of public education during the forties, fifties and sixties truly made America the envy of the world. Young people from all economic strata and ethnic backgrounds could (theoretically) get the same education as sons and daughters of the elite. Republicans reject the idea that Americans should have a strong, healthy public education system, and have spent decades criticizing, defunding and demonizing the public education sector. As with everything else having government ties, they want to completely privatize education, allowing schools across the country to teach whatever they feel like, filling the minds of young people with whatever religious beliefs or political propaganda the local community desires.

They are at war with science – In recent years there has been a relentless attack from Tea Party Republicans on science and scientific findings that clash with their religious beliefs or campaign funding sources. Like their Middle East brethren, many conservatives refuse to accept established science and continue propagating myths and superstitious mumbo jumbo. How can America possibly compete on the world stage if our children are being taught religious theory instead of scientific facts? There is a subset of Republicans who attack science to protect their funding sources. Climate change deniers often fall into this camp, doing the oil and energy industries bidding at the expense of the world’s future health. In both cases, the result is an assault on science that is dooming not only the United States, but the world at large.

They are intent on crippling our economy – Conservatives slavish devotion to illogical and demonstrably wrong economic theories like austerity, free markets, supply side economics and deregulation have resulted in an economy that is as unequal as it’s been in over 100 years. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, conservatives continue to believe, and act on the belief, that tax breaks for the already wealthy will stimulate the economy. Ignoring the fact that this has been tried over and over with the same dismal results, it remains an article of faith among Republicans. The Republican Party is the party of the elites, and whatever they can do to please their financial supporters, that is the course they will follow with no regard for anyone else. The middle class is being destroyed as a result of their misguided economic policies. The great irony is that American voters have been convinced to vote against their best economic interests by double-talking conservatives who play on their emotions and religious beliefs.

They want to turn America into a theocracy – Conservatives have been more than willing to rewrite history to try and support a major tenet of theirs; that the United States is a Christian nation. Ignoring accepted history surrounding the founding of our country, the right wing continues to promote the idea that the founding fathers were fundamentalist Christians who built this nation on biblical principals. They want to rewrite and revise our fundamental documents to align with the Bible, and rule the country using a Biblical foundation. Like their Middle Eastern counterparts, they want their particular religious views woven into the entire fabric of our country, from schools to the workplace to the halls of power in Washington, D.C.

From shutting down the government to conducting illegal foreign policy to flagrant attacks on the very institutions that once made America a true world power, I think the evidence is irrefutable that the Republican Party is intent on destroying the current version of American and replacing it with a theocracy. What would you call that?

Black (fools) gold

Oil.

It’s pretty much the answer to any question you have about what’s going on in the Middle East. We remain mired in that desolate, sandy patch of planet not because we care about the freedom or welfare of the Iraqis or Pakistanis or Iranians, but because we are still highly dependent on oil and the products that require oil. Unfortunately for us, the oil is in the ground under countries that either a) hate us, or b) are ruled by weak American tools or puppets.

Think about it. If the U.S. had put the billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars we’ve spent waging an unwinnable war against terrorism over the past half-century (as a cover for our ultimate goal of controlling oil fields) into creating sustainable forms of energy, we would be energy independent right now. Short-sighted, industry owned Republicans and Democrats are to blame, but you have to give a special shout-out to Dick Cheney and the neocons for at least being honest and clearly stating their intent to grab Middle East oil fields in their 2000 report Project for a New America.

By increasing our military involvement in the ISIS situation, we are once again falling into a trap that will cost more billions of dollars and probably American lives. We are like Charlie Brown who always falls for Lucy’s football trick. Our greed and unwillingness to change course has us behaving like idiots doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It also puts us right where the terrorists want us.

Our country’s priorities have become seriously skewed over the years by wealthy elites who put profits over people and wealth over the welfare of America.

America's fatal addiction to violence

So we’re back in Iraq bombing the country again for “humanitarian purposes.” What have we as a nation become? Every time there is an international challenge, from Syria to Libya to Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan, our response is to use violence. The horrible irony is that the actions of the Bush Administration created the conditions for the rise of ISIS in Iraq, and, despite the failures of our past approach we are responding with more violence. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

America’s knee-jerk reaction to resort to violence as the solution of first choice illustrates how morally bankrupt we’ve become as a nation. These aren’t the actions of a powerful, confident country, but reflect a weak, fearful America that thinks it can shape the world in its image by intimidation. It didn’t work for Rome or France or Britain or Spain, and it won’t work for us.

It’s Friday and many Americans are planning weekends lounging around a pool, playing golf, going to a baseball game or heading to the cabin. Unlike Iraqi’s, they won’t have to worry about bombs raining from the sky on their homes or hospitals or churches. Thirteen years later we continue to use 9/11 as an excuse to unleash violence anywhere we want for any reason we choose. History clearly demonstrates that a nation with his attitude is a nation in decline.

Cheney's bold move to rewrite history

“Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”

No single sentence could so accurately encapsulate the tenure of George Bush than this one.

• Missed or ignored warnings about potential terrorists plans
• Worst attack on American soil happens under his watch
• Makes case for war based on lies and false assumptions
• Invades country that has no ties to terrorism and no WMDs
• Kills hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
• Nearly 5,000 Americans lose their lives
• Completely misreads post-invasion needs of the country leaving millions in misery
• Post-invasion American overseers lose billions of dollars
• Allows torture and indefinite detention without trial
• Vacuum in Iraq emboldens terrorists and incites sectarian violence
• Dismisses then stalls investigation into 9/11, then sets up commission with predetermined outcomes
• Opium production rises in Afghanistan after the American invasion
• U.S. backed Maliki government mired in graft

The irony is that the above statement wasn’t from some liberal commentator about Bush, but comes from a recent Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal by Dick Cheney trying to shift blame for the failures of the Bush Administration onto Obama.