Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [40]
Lie #7: Hannity uses “powerful arguments, clear thinking, and fact-based analysis.” This is a quote from Newt Gingrich on the book’s back cover.
LIE #8: HANNITY MAKES IT SOUND LIKE IT WAS THE DEMOCRATS WHO WEREN’T INTERESTED IN INVESTIGATING THE CAUSE OF 9/11, WHEN ACTUALLY IT WAS THE REPUBLICANS, ESPECIALLY THE WHITE HOUSE, WHO DID EVERYTHING THEY COULD TO BLOCK AN INDEPENDENT PROBE INTO THE MASSIVE INTELLIGENCE FAILURE
No matter what Ann Coulter may say, 9/11 is no joking matter. On that we can all agree. After 9/11, I wanted to know what had gone wrong. So did most Americans. Except, Hannity claims, the Democrats in Congress. He says that “liberal Democrats at first showed little interest in the investigation of the roots of this massive intelligence failure.”
If the Democrats were the bad guys, Hannity knows who the good guys were. Bush and his team, he says, “made it clear that determining the causes of America’s security failures and finding and remedying its weak points would be central to their mission.”
He must have been referring to the October 6, 2001, New York Times article “House Votes for More Spy Aid and to Pull in Reins on Inquiry,” which said that “Democrats, who offered their own amendment, continued to push for a commission that would examine the events leading up to September 11 and the failure to stop the attacks.” No, I guess that can’t be it.
But you know, you can’t trust The New York Times like you can trust the Washington Times. I guess Hannity must have been thinking of their May 24, 2002, “Bush Rejects Probe of 9/11: Will Not Give Up Sensitive Terror Papers.” Wait! Bush “rejects”? That makes it sound like Bush was rejecting the probe instead of the Democrats.
So maybe Hannity was talking about the May 20, 2002, New York Times article “Cheney Rejects Broader Access to Terror Brief.” That article began, “Vice President Dick Cheney said today that he would advise President Bush not to turn over to Congress the August intelligence briefing that warned that terrorists were interested in hijacking airplanes.” Ooh. That almost sounds like the opposite of Hannity’s point.
Wait. Must be the October 21, 2002, Newsweek article, “Cheney: Investigators, Keep Out.” No. That doesn’t sound too promising. But what about the first sentence? “Dick Cheney played a behind-the-scenes role last week in derailing an agreement to create an independent commission to investigate the 9/11 attacks.” Hmm. Well, what about the article’s last sentence? “ ‘There’s just this general philosophical orientation that the less the world knows, the better,’ says one GOP staffer.”
Of course, the fact is the Bush administration fought a 9/11 commission every step of the way, even though the families of the victims were begging for an independent probe from day one.
When political reality finally forced the Bushies to give in, whom did they appoint to head the commission? The families’ choice? Former New Hampshire Senator Warren Rudman, who cochaired the Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security? No. Rudman had backed John McCain in New Hampshire.
Instead, Bush picked Henry Kissinger. You can tell someone wants to get the truth out about cover-ups, mass killings, and mistakes made at the highest levels of government when they appoint Henry Kissinger to lead the investigation.
Critics complained that Kissinger had a history of being overly secretive and had potential financial conflicts of interest. When Kissinger resigned a couple of weeks later, he said it was because he wanted to be secretive about his financial conflicts of interest.
So why does Hannity go out of his way to lie about who wanted to look into 9/11 and who didn’t? It’s because, like so many conservative henchmen, he is doing the dirty work for the Bush administration. Democrats, according to Hannity, wanted to cover up the intelligence failure that led to 9/11 because it was all Bill Clinton’s fault.
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The Blame-America