The Bulletpoint Blog

The Daily World letter: where's our outrage?

Whe're's our sense of outrage.:

"The last five years have desensitized Americans. In 2000, few believed that the United States was vulnerable to systematic vote theft. However, it was later (quietly) determined that Al Gore did in fact get more votes than George W. Bush in Florida — as he did nationwide. Further, the Government Accountability Office has determined that we “rely on voting systems that were not developed, acquired, tested, operated or managed in accordance with rigorous security and reliability standards.” The vulnerability of these systems “affect the reliability of elections.”

Chalk two up for the conspiracy theorists.

In 2002, war critics were ridiculed for suggesting that Bush was illegitimately picking a fight with Iraq. Later, when rumors surfaced of widespread use of torture, the conspiracy theorists again took abuse.

History vindicates them too.

Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a captured al-Qaida official, was a ( maybe the) primary source of intelligence that Saddam was training al-Qaida terrorists in the use of Iraq’s (obviously nonexistent) Weapons of Mass Destruction. According to the New York Times, in February 2002, U.S. interrogators informed the administration that al-Libi was a “fabricator” and that his story was not credible.

Nevertheless, Bush subsequently used al-Libi’s stories as the cornerstone of his claims that al-Qaida and Saddam were linked.

Incredibly enough, there’s more to the story. According to Newsweek, al-Libi was one of the first subjects of Dick Cheney’s CIA-run global torture network. Intelligence gained through torture is unreliable? Go figure.

Bush ran for office on a promise to “return honor and dignity to the White House.” What did we get? Bush used the office to sell an unnecessary war on the basis of torture-induced confessions that he knew to be fabrications.

It’s a trifecta of evil. A bases-loaded home run of malevolence. A couple of years ago that was considered crazy talk, slanderous, treasonous, outrageous and dangerous conspiracy theories. Today, it’s a source of mild concern, perhaps even some modest disapproval, because it’s inescapably true.

My unofficial count is: Conspiracy theorists — 4, Bush apologists — 0.

On Monday, George Bush stated unequivocally that “We do not torture.” Simultaneously, his vice president is twisting arms to coerce Congress into defeating a law that forbids torture.

My suggestion to the press is to use the accurate verb for this kind of misstatement and the appropriate noun to describe one who says it: “lie” and “liar.”

What happened to American outrage? Our tolerance level is far too high.

posted by Lumberjack @ 1:38 PM