Lie and You Thrive

By James Bovard, AlterNet. Posted September 17, 2004.

George Bush is seeking re-election as the Hero of 9/11 and as the Strong Leader against terrorism. At the recent Republican convention, speaker after speaker portrayed Bush's reaction on and shortly after 9/11 as an entitlement to extending Bush's power over the American people.

Perhaps never before has a president sought a second term by endlessly hyping the catastrophic failures of his first four years in office. On both 9/11 and Iraq, the Bush campaign team long ago decided that truth is a luxury American voters can no longer afford.

Instead of admitting that 9/11 was the biggest U.S. intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor, the Bush administration turned 9/11 into a moral Dunkirk. From the first days after 9/11, the Bush administration created a mythology that would spur reverence for both the president and the government. Bush wrapped himself in a flag drenched with the blood of Americans who died due to the failure of the federal government he commanded, and sadly the people bought it – and still continue to buy it. In a September 7-9 national poll, Bush led Kerry on who the people believed would keep the United States safe by 23 points.

In the days after 9/11, Bush and his top officials again and again falsely denied that the government had received prior warnings of a terrorist attack. If Americans had learned in mid-September 2001 how badly federal agencies failed across the board, the number of Americans who trusted the government to do the right thing would not have doubled in the days after the attacks. The government failed – so the government declared itself infallible.

As public confidence in government soared, the Bush administration raced to capitalize on the window of gullibility. The Bush administration strong-armed Congress to speedily enact the Patriot Act, and issued orders gutting habeas corpus and nullifying all rights of those Bush labeled enemy combatants. Bush exploited people's grief and fear to add new fetters to American citizens, to empower federal agents to intrude further into private lives, and to seek to change the permanent balance of power between the federal government and American citizens.

Bush's manipulation of 9/11 for his re-election campaign helps explain why his administration fights so doggedly to suppress the details of what happened that day. Bush promised to cooperate fully with the congressional Joint Intelligence Committee investigation in 2002. The Bush administration blocked the committee from interviewing an FBI informant who rented rooms to two of the 19 hijackers, refused to disclose whether the Office of Management and Budget had slashed counterterrorism budget requests, refused to permit an interview with CIA chief George Tenet, refused to disclose the National Security Agency's plans to cope with new technology challenges, and fought to prevent congressional investigators from learning when Bush received specific warning information about terrorist plots. The report was finished in late 2002 but the White House blocked its publication until July 2003.

Congress responded to the Bush stonewall to its committee by passing a law creating an 9/11 commission. Bush made his intentions clear when he appointed cover-up connoisseur Henry Kissinger as commission chairman. (Kissinger resigned after public demands that he disclose his business clients). Bush proclaimed that he wanted the commission to "uncover every detail and learn every lesson of September 11." But the White House fought the commission staff tooth-and-nail to prevent them from seeing a President's Daily Brief from August 6, 2001 entitled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." Prior to the memo's public disclosure, National Security Advisor Condi Rice misled the commission, claiming it was a historical document. Patty Casazza, one of a group of "Jersey girls" who lost their husbands on 9/11 and subsequently publicly turned up the heat on the government to open its records, commented recently: "It was President Bush who thwarted our attempts at every turn."

And the Washington establishment effectively blessed Bush's stonewall. After he and Vice President Cheney met with the 9/11 commissioners for several hours on April 29, Bush cheerfully announced in the Rose Garden, "We answered all their questions.... I think it was important for them to see our body language, as well, how we work together." But the commissioners were presumably seeking historical evidence, not scoping out prospects in a singles bar. Bush's light-hearted manner after the meeting revealed that the commissioners had genuflected to the man and the office.

The Bush administration's ability to con the American people on 9/11 helped fuel their frauds on Iraq. It is now beyond dispute that many of the specific statements made by Bush on Iraqi weapons were false. Even Bush has conceded that his frequent efforts to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11 were unfounded (though this has not stopped Cheney from repeating the link to audiences which have pre-signed loyalty oaths to the Bush administration).

James Bovard is the author of The Bush Betrayal (Palgrave MacMillan, 2004) and seven other books. You can visit his website at jimbovard.com.

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