Dude, Where's My Country_ - Michael Moore [50]
• And, a twelfth-grade teacher at English High School in Lynn, Massachusetts, was forced to stop showing my film Bowling for Columbine to her classes because the principal said the movie contains “anti-war messages.”
As you can see, the effects of Bush’s actions go far beyond issues related to terrorism. There is an atmosphere that has been created that people had better watch what they say or do, every day. (In fact, no less an authority than White House spokesman Ari Fleischer warned critics of the Bush administration—and specifically comedian Bill Maher—to “watch what they say, watch what they do.”)
What really gets to me is the way this band of deceivers has used September 11 as the excuse for everything. It’s no longer just to pass measures to protect us from a “terrorist threat.” September 11 is now the answer. It is the manna from heaven the right has always prayed for. Want a new weapons system? Have to have it! Why? Well . . . 9/11! Want to relax the pollution laws? It’s a must! Why? 9/11! Want to outlaw abortion? Absolutely! Why? 9/11! What does 9/11 have to do with abortion? Hey, why are you questioning the government? Someone call the FBI!
To the rest of the world, it looks like we’ve gone mad. People in most other countries have been living with acts of terrorism for years, some for decades. What do they do? Well, they don’t go crazy with fear. The average German doesn’t stock up on duct tape or stop using the subway. They just learned to live with it. Shit happens.
But what do we do? We invent color-coded threat charts. We frisk ninety-year-olds in wheelchairs. We attack the Bill of Rights. Yeah, that’ll show those terrorists! Let’s dismantle our way of life so they won’t have to blow it up.
This makes no sense.
None of this is to say that certain rational precautions shouldn’t be taken to prevent those few acts of terror that do occur.
Perhaps George W. Bush should have made it a point to read the reports the CIA sent him. On August 6, 2001, according to the Washington Post, just weeks before September 11, Bush was given a comprehensive report marked “URGENT” warning him that al Qaeda was planning a major attack on the U.S. (The full contents of the memo are not known because Bush has refused to release it, despite Condoleezza Rice saying repeatedly that there was nothing specific in the report. If there’s nothing specific, then why can’t they release it?) Worse, a 1999 report had already warned that al Qaeda was looking into using planes as missiles with the intention of crashing them into government buildings.
Why didn’t Bush, with an intelligence memo in his hands warning that attacks were imminent, coupled with the reports passed along by the Clinton administration, alert the nation? Was he too busy taking his month-long vacation in Crawford, Texas? Bush failed to do his job and it may have cost 3,000 people their lives. That alone should be enough to haul him before an impeachment tribunal. Lying about sex, as far as I know, cost no one their life in the Clinton White House.
For instance, what if, during the late 1990s, the Republicans had let the FBI do its real job—protecting the lives of our citizens—instead of having them spend countless hours investigating the sex habits of the president or some rinky-dink land deal of the first lady’s? At one point, more than 200 FBI agents were assigned to some portion of the witch hunt to get the Clintons. Two hundred agents who—maybe—should have been returning calls from flight schools in Texas that were worried they had strange guys not wanting to learn how to take off or land a plane. Two hundred FBI agents who should have been checking how terrorists got to stay in the country long after their visas expired. Two hundred FBI agents who should have been training airport security.
Two hundred FBI agents who should have been doing ANYTHING other than having their time wasted by vindictive, sex-obsessed, right-wing Republicans wanting to write a $50 million