So à propos for this weekend....

[hornplayer]

today in the New York TImes:

Ground Zero Is So Over

By FRANK RICH

IN its not-so-brief and thoroughly unhappy life, ground zero has been a site for many things: tragedy and grief, political campaigns and protests, battling architects and warring cultural institutions, TV commercials and souvenir hustlers. Perhaps it was inevitable we'd end up at pure unadulterated farce.

That's where we are as of this Memorial Day weekend. A 1,776-foot Freedom Tower with no tenants - and no prospect of tenants - has been abruptly sent back to the drawing board after the Marx Brothers-like officials presiding over the chaos acknowledged troubling security concerns about truck bombs. But truck bombs may be the least of the demons scaring away prospective occupants. The simple question that no one could answer the day after 9/11 remains unanswered today: What sane person would want to work in a skyscraper destined to be the most tempting target for aerial assault in the Western world? As if to accentuate this obvious, if frequently suppressed, psychological bottom line, news of the Freedom Tower's latest delay was followed like clockwork by a Cessna's easy penetration of supposedly secure air space near the White House, prompting panicky evacuation scenes out of the 50's horror classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still."

And so ground zero remains a pit, a hole, a void. As The New York Post has noticed, more time has passed since George Pataki first unveiled the "final design" of the Freedom Tower than it took to build the Empire State Building. For New Yorkers this saga is a raucous political narrative whose cast of characters includes a rapacious real-estate developer, a seriously irritating architect with even more irritating designer eyeglasses, a governor with self-delusional presidential ambitions and a mayor obsessed with bringing New York the only target that may rival the Freedom Tower as terrorist bait, the Olympics.

But there is another, national narrative here, too. Bothered as New Yorkers may be by what Charles Schumer has termed the "culture of inertia" surrounding ground zero, that stagnation may accurately reflect most of America's view about the war on terror that began with the slaughter of more than 2,700 at the World Trade Center almost four years ago. Though the vacant site is a poor memorial for those who died there, it's an all too apt symbol for a war on which the country is turning its back.

This is a dramatic change from just a year ago. In the heat of election season, the Bush-Cheney campaign set off a melee by broadcasting ads that featured the shell of the World Trade Center and shrouded remains being borne away by firefighters. Ground zero was hallowed ground, and the outcry against its political exploitation was so fierce that the ensuing Republican National Convention went nowhere near the site that had made New York its cynical choice of venue in the first place. Instead, the prospect of terror and the hot-button-pushing invocations of 9/11 were shoveled into the oratory at Madison Square Garden, where Rudolph Giuliani had a star turn. All the post-election talk of "moral values" notwithstanding, the terrorism card proved the decisive factor in the defeat of John Kerry, a character whose genius for equivocating on just about any issue rendered him a pantywaist against an opponent who had stood with a bullhorn in the smoky wreckage and had promised to round up the bad guys "dead or alive."

But once the election was over, ground zero was tossed aside like a fading mistress. The only time it has figured in national public discourse since was when the president nominated Bernard Kerik director of homeland security. The most damaging of the subsequent allegations against this 9/11 hero - that he had used an apartment for rescue workers overlooking the site as a hot-sheets motel for an extramarital tryst - didn't just end his government career; it effectively downsized ground zero from sacred ground into crude comic fodder for late-night comics. The fallen cultural status of the site in the months since is epitomized by the recent news conference at which Donald Trump thought nothing of showcasing his own stunt plan for ground zero (building replicas of the twin towers, only a story higher) as a promotional tie-in to the season finale of his reality show, "The Apprentice." Though there was some outrage among the 9/11 families, everyone else either giggled or shrugged (and "The Apprentice" was still eviscerated by "CSI").

Such lassitude about the day that was supposed to change everything is visible everywhere. Tom Ridge, now retired as homeland security czar, recently went on "The Daily Show" and joined in the yuks about the color-coded alerts. (He also told USA Today this month that orange alerts were sometimes ordered by the administration - as election year approached, anyway - on flimsy grounds and over his objections.) In February, the Office of Management and Budget found that "only four of the 33 homeland security programs it examined were 'effective,' " according to The Washington Post. The prospect of nuclear terrorism remains minimally addressed; instead we must take heart from Kiefer Sutherland's ability to thwart a nuclear missile hurling toward Los Angeles in the season finale of "24." The penetration of the capital's most restricted air space by that errant Cessna - though deemed a "red alert" - was considered such a nonurgent event by the Secret Service that it didn't bother to tell the president, bicycling in Maryland, until after the coast was clear.

But what has most separated America from the old exigencies of 9/11 - and therefore from the fate of ground zero - is, at long last, the decoupling of the war on terror from the war on Iraq. The myth fostered by the administration that Saddam Hussein conspired in the 9/11 attacks is finally dead and so, apparently, is the parallel myth that Iraqis were among that day's hijackers. Our initial, post-9/11 war against Al Qaeda - the swift and decisive victory over the Taliban - is now seen as both a discrete event and ancient history (as is the hope of nailing Osama bin Laden dead or alive); Afghanistan itself has fallen off the American radar screen except as a site for burgeoning poppy production and the deaths of detainees in American custody. In its place stands only the war in Iraq, which is increasingly seen as an add-on to the war provoked by 9/11 and whose unpopularity grows by the day.

Take a look at any recent poll you choose - NBC/Wall Street Journal, Harris, CNN/Gallup/USA Today - and you find comparable figures of rising majority disapproval of the war. Or ignore the polls and look at those voting with their feet: the Army has missed its recruiting goals three months in a row, and the Marines every month since January, despite reports of scandalous ethical violations including the forging of high-school diplomas and the hoodwinking of the mentally ill by unscrupulous recruiters. Speaking bitterly about the Army's strenuous effort to cover up his son's death by friendly fire, Pat Tillman's father crystallized the crisis in an interview with The Washington Post last week: "They realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about this death got out. They blew up their poster boy."

THE cost of the war is rapidly becoming the routine stuff of mainstream popular culture. July 27 will bring the debut of "Over There," a powerful new weekly TV drama by Steven Bochco ("NYPD Blue") and Chris Gerolmo ("Mississippi Burning") that takes no political stand on the war but dramatizes the ripped torsos, broken homefront lives and unknown expiration date of our Iraq adventure in the unsparing detail that has often been absent from network news. The show is being presented not by some liberal cabal but by the rising cable network that "Nip/Tuck" built - FX - a franchise of Rupert Murdoch. On June 21 FX is also bringing back Denis Leary's jaundiced look at post-9/11 firefighters, "Rescue Me." In the first new episode, the hero throws a bag of "twin-tower cookies" back at the vendor selling them, heaving in anger that those who died that fateful morning have been usurped by kitsch.

Tomorrow, Memorial Day itself, will bring another "Nightline" reading of the names of the fallen: the more than 900 Americans who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since Ted Koppel's previous recitation. When he read 721 names in April 2004, Mr. Koppel was labeled a traitor by the right for daring to call attention to the casualties, and some affiliates even refused to broadcast the show. This time the prospect of a televised roll call of the dead has caused little notice at all. Like the latest setbacks at ground zero, it is a troubling but increasingly distant event to those Americans who, unlike the families and neighbors of the fallen, can and have turned the page.

[Gary Sisco]

"More than 900"? I'd say.

We might also remember the tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, and also the many thousands of dead Afghani civilians as well.































But most of us won't and many don't even know they once existed or care, either.

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by hornplayer

Tom Ridge, now retired as homeland security czar, recently went on "The Daily Show" and joined in the yuks about the color-coded alerts. (He also told USA Today this month that orange alerts were sometimes ordered by the administration - as election year approached, anyway - on flimsy grounds and over his objections.)

Oh, but the Bush Administration would NEVER play politics with terrorism.

[RonF]

A Sorry Mess
Baghdad still isn't secure? The Bush administration blames the press.

by Sydney H. Schanberg
May 31st, 2005 10:56 AM

It's two years and two months since we invaded Iraq to bring down its dictator, Saddam Hussein. Our military quickly rolled into Baghdad, sent the government oppressors fleeing, and shortly thereafter, on May 2, 2003, President Bush, in a shiny new flight suit, with a huge "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him, announced from the deck of an aircraft carrier that "major combat operations have ended." As we now know, that was premature declamation. Or worse, just fodder for his re-election campaign.
The latest war news is an announcement that 40,000 Iraqi troops backed by 10,000 U.S. soldiers are surrounding Baghdad to seal it off, clean out the insurgent nests that are all over the place, and make the city safe. Two years and two months after the mission was accomplished, the capital city itself is still not secured.

The Bush administration says the press has hurt its mission by telling too much truth. That's why every time the press makes a mistake, the White House celebrates and demands apologies and retractions and atonement. Yet the president and his people—who made deadly mistakes and misrepresentations to cheerlead the country into war—have never allowed any contrition or apology to get close to their lips.

I submitted a single question to six of these officials by fax today, starting with the president. The question was (in various wordings, depending on the official): "Given subsequent events and information, do you wish to retract or apologize for or amend any mistakes or statements you have made in relation to the Iraq war—from the preparation for the war to the present?" Their responses, should they come, didn't make the Voice's early holiday deadline for this issue. But I will keep you posted.

Newsweek retracted and apologized for its recent flawed item about interrogators desecrating the Koran at the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay. Nothing like that ever comes from the White House or the civilian leaders of the Pentagon.

The Bush White House has demanded that the press stop using any information from unidentified sources, yet insists it has no equivalent obligation. The government frequently assigns officials to feed information and give briefings to the press, on the condition that the officials' names or their specific jobs not be revealed. That's a different species of anonymity entirely, says White House press secretary Scott McClellan. The difference? The press's sources, McClellan explains, are usually critical of the government. My oh my, what on earth could they possibly be critical of?

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was quick to offer his wisdom on the Newsweek incident. "People need to be careful what they say," he offered, "just as people need to be careful what they do." On both counts, he's right. It brought to mind his visit on December 8 to Kuwait, where he held a "town meeting" with a gathering of troops who were readying to move into Iraq.

Specialist Thomas Wilson, a scout with the Tennessee National Guard, asked the Pentagon chief why his unit's battle vehicles were not properly armored: "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal?"

Rumsfeld told the soldier he had missed part of the question: "Could you repeat it for me?" Maybe Rumsfeld needed a few extra moments to gather his thoughts?

"Yes, Mr. Secretary," replied Wilson. "Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north [into Iraq] relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We're digging [up] pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north."

Rumsfeld told him: "As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time." It was a complete put-down. Until that moment, I don't think Specialist Wilson knew that he was cannon fodder.

Rumsfeld's failed plans for Iraq were founded more on ideology and wishful thinking than on the experience of history. In the lead-up to the war, battle-seasoned Pentagon generals told him that more troops and equipment were needed for the Iraq undertaking. He brushed them aside.

A defense chief in Japan, to avoid disgrace, might have committed ritual suicide for such blunders and arrogance. Rumsfeld, however, has never apologized publicly to the country, or to Specialist Wilson. And he still has his job.

Yet it's the press that the Bush entourage continually wants to hold responsible for its failures. Rumsfeld, at a recent speech to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, said that a globalized press in this digital age can instantly spread damaging information. He lamented "a global Internet with universal access and no inhibitions, e-mails, cell phones, digital cameras wielded by anyone and everyone," and "a seemingly casual disregard for the protection of classified information, resulting in a near continuous hemorrhage of classified documents, to the detriment of the country."

Classified documents? Once again the White House mantra defies reality. The Bush government is the most sealed-up presidency in our history. Classification of routine documents has mushroomed. Files are classified not because they contain matters of national security but because they reveal discussions and decisions that might prove embarrassing or that might further erode this presidency's credibility.

Almost from the day of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the administration's traveling bards—Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Rumsfeld, and others—have spun fairy tales about the urgent threat we faced from Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction (including nuclear weaponry) and therefore the need for a quick strike to bring down Hussein, who was said to be working with the 9-11 terrorists. Well, now we know the stockpiles of banned weapons did not exist. And while Al Qaeda operatives had made some contacts with Iraqi officials, no operational connection has ever been discovered.

The administration's own chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, delivered his final report last October. It said that Saddam Hussein was a diminishing danger at the time of the U.S. invasion and that while he possessed the desire, he did not have the means to produce unconventional weapons that could threaten his neighbors or the West.

Then why do President Bush and Vice President Cheney keep saying they believe the weapons were there and will be found someday? It must be the press messing with their minds, perhaps through their bridgework. Yes, the press makes them do it. The press must keep apologizing.

[Dr Dave]

The Bush Administration went into Iraq because they had to be seen to be doing something about Terrorism, and they thought Iraq would be easy. Needless to say, they were misinformed.

[patricia]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

The Bush Administration went into Iraq because they had to be seen to be doing something about Terrorism, and they thought Iraq would be easy. Needless to say, they were misinformed.

I agree, Dr Dave. Had they actually thought that Iraq had WMD, chemical and biological weapons, as well as a powerful standing military, they wouldn't have lauched an attack on them.
I think that the whole reason, as you say, that Iraq was chosen, as opposed to Saudi Arabia, where all but two of the Sept 11 terrorists as well as bin Laden hailed from, was that they knew that there would be an easy military victory.
Of course, they didn't count on the "insurgency", which has turned out to be a powerful, bloody and I think, potentially endless resistance to dominance of the country by the U.S.
If anything, the fact that this has become a ground fight has become the achilles heel of this seemingly effortless take-over. These so-called "dead enders" will fight to the last man. Is the U.S. prepared to do that??

Misinformed would be a mild term to describe the utter ignorance and overly simplistic thinking that went into the decision to launch an attack on Iraq. In other word, DUMB.