Whether you think you Can or you Can't, You are Right!!!

Henry Ford said that along time ago. I believe we are all in agreement that the bush administration is evil and untruthful. The evidence is overwhelming. But anytime someone on this site suggests we DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, the poster is overwhelmed with whining negativism. We can't do this and we can't do that because of the press or their spin machine or, fill in the blank. I'm glad you folks who are so negative about positive action weren't in uniform fighting hitler. Seldom is there an agreeable post. Seldom does one come up with an alternate solution which is better than the original.

Obviously many of you think you can't. Obviously many of you are right.

I contend that the white house should be held accountable for the outing of valerie plame (a federal crime). I will continue the fight, with or without you.

here, and Valerie Plame.

Which one do you want a discussion about? Can't do both in one thread.
:shrug:

Here's a statement for consideration. Please note the intensity, the directness, and the absolute adherance to FACTS:

General Wesley K. Clark
Comments On 9-11 Commission

New Hampshire
December 18, 2003


Last night, CBS News reported that Governor Tom Kean, Chairman of the 9-11 Commission made a disturbing public statement on the September 11th tragedy. He confirmed what we suspected all along: that we could have done more to prevent September 11th.

Let me be clear: there is only man responsible for the attack on 3,000 innocent people. There is only one man who changed forever the lives of families across this country - and forever undermined America's sense of security.

That man is Osama bin Laden. And the people who killed innocent men and women that day were operatives from his al Qaeda network.

But in the months that followed the attacks, all Americans wanted to know one thing - could more have been done to prevent it?

Today, more than two years later, we have an answer. The answer is yes.

George Bush was sworn in January 2001 - a full nine months before the attacks. That day he took the oath that every Commander-in-Chief of our nation has taken: to defend our nation and to protect the lives of the American people.

But for nine months he did not live up to that oath. For nine months, the focus of his national security policy was not terrorism. It was not tracking down the perpetrators of the USS Cole bombing. It was not rooting out al Qaeda. Instead, President Bush was focused single-mindedly on missile defense, the centerpiece of his foreign policy.

According to news reports, the Bush Administration consistently ignored strong warnings about bin Laden from lower level national security advisors and from field offices of the FBI.

The best way to tell an administration's national security priorities is to look at the number of meetings it holds. According to press accounts, for the first nine months of the Bush Administration, there were few if any official, high level meetings about terrorist activity in Afghanistan. Instead, they held meetings on missile defense - the wrong issue for the wrong time.

And even after September 11th, they continued this pattern of focusing on the wrong threat at the wrong time.

This time it was Iraq. Instead of capturing bin Laden and destroying the al Qaeda network, President Bush took us to war in Iraq, monopolizing our time, energy, and resources.

Of course, as I said yesterday, now that we're in Iraq, we must succeed. Early exit or retreat would be a defeat for the United States. And capturing Saddam increases our chances for success.

But capturing Saddam doesn't change the simple fact that Osama bin Laden remains the biggest threat to the United States and that Osama bin Laden is still at large.

I have a real strategy to find bin Laden and take down al Qaeda.

Now, in conclusion, let me say this: Governor Kean's comments today make one thing clear: there was failure of leadership at the highest levels of the Bush Administration. We will never know for sure if September 11th could have been prevented. But we do know that President Bush was simply not focused on the real threat to our national security.

Stopping terrorism requires the full resources of the United States government. There is only one person who can galvanize those resources necessary to confront terrorism -- and that is the president. President Bush failed to do so - and America is damaged and less safe today because of it.