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Tuesday, April 13, 2004

Matt Bevins' 'The Daily Outrage'
I'm going to have to link to this guy. I like his style! Consider an excerpt from his post "Keystone Kounter Terrorism" from The Daily Outrage:

Only George W. Bush could study a memo titled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US", and then blithely assert that it "said nothing about an attack on America."

Note to the President: "US" is a common abbreviation for "the United States of America", the country we live in and of which you are the highest elected official, a country also often referred to in shorthand as "America." Good luck with that whole national security thing from hereon out.

The "Bin Laden Determined to Strike" memo, reluctantly released this weekend, was first presented as an intelligence briefing for the President on Aug. 6, 2001 -- while he was in Texas enjoying a near-record-setting month-long siesta. Ever since -- and outrageously, even to the present day, when the actual document is out there contradicting them -- Bush and Condoleeza Rice have slyly characterized it as a brief history lesson about al-Qaida, when it is actually a reasonably specific warning.

"There was nothing in there that said, you know, 'There is an imminent attack'," Bush insisted again as late as today. "That wasn't what the report said. The report was kind of a history of Osama's intentions."

Horsefeathers. You can read the whole memo here and judge yourself. It says, among other things, that "al-Qaida members -- including some who are US citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks"; that "FBI information ... indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks"; that this suspicious activity includes "recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York;" that the FBI is conducting 70 full field investigations across the country that are "bin-Laden related"; and that an anonymous tip in May 2001 warned "that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks."

In fact, this "Bin Laden to Strike" memo is a truly damning piece of evidence. If the President and his team had acted appropriately on it -- by which I mean, if he'd simply ordered his top people to get together to discuss how serious it was -- 9/11 might well have been prevented.

9:09:34 PM | COMMENT [] | TRACKBACK []

My Problem
Upon returning home from vacation in Denver (thanks J and R for the extraordinary weekend–the Nuggets rocked da’ house BIG TIME!), I scanned over a few of the hits the blog received yesterday. One of them was an AskJeeves search. The question of the search was "What is Michael Parker’s problem?"

Granted, there are many Michael Parker’s out in the world and logically it might not even be in reference to me. Nonetheless, I was impacted by this question.

I never considered that I write because I have a problem with the world, an axe to grind. Nonetheless, I can see how someone might feel I have a problem. I do feel passionately about politics and end up writing about that more than anything else. (I’d much rather write about film; that’s where my heart lies.)

I realize that some of my topics are on the edge, seemingly more fit for a conspiracy theorist. That’s due to the movie buff sitting in the creative side of my brain saying: "Damn, that story makes for a great script!" (By the way, did you hear that the writers and producers of the Watergate film All The President’s Men is going to produce the film version of Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies? Can't wait!)

Most assuredly though, I realize that I attack the legitimacy of anything this presidency says it has accomplished. I didn’t like the way this administration took office (on the back of a conservative Supreme Court); I didn’t like the way they quickly began separating themselves from global participation and responsibility; I didn’t like the way our surplus was squandered, which created a debt that has America’s economy and it’s citizens financial outlook hanging off a cliff above another great Depression. And I have not liked how they have used 9/11 to legitimize their agenda and wage war on Iraq.

They’ve hit the world like an earthquake of a seven-point-plus magnitude. The repercussions of this presidency could likely take decades to resolve.

So there you have it–Michael Parker’s problem.

Shouldn’t this be every American’s problem too?

8:58:47 PM | COMMENT [] | TRACKBACK []