This week there will be two editions of Inspection: one pure political; one a mix of personal and political… in that order. This edition is a postscript: something I’ve had to vent for a long, long time. I felt a lot better after writing and publishing it.

“We’ll never know how much you protected America.”

Surrounded by glowing, reverent, worshiping, words; thus starts the recent Right Wing attempt to rewrite history and make sure we all know we’ve always been at war with Eurasia, the truth belongs down memory holes; Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney were clear thinking freedom fighters who stood boldly like Supermen next to the flag: protecting America. It’s being blathered all over the net, out of the wretched pie hole of at least one Neo Con Congressman and, where else, but the Goebbels-ish FOX propaganda network.

Let’s really be clear: to me Cheney is more Lex Luthor and those aren’t super shorts our former President was metaphorically wearing as he used the American flag for political purposes. They’re more like dirty, smeared, full to the brim, American flag diapers that Mr. Bush insisted on dropping while constantly waving his bootie in front of the rest of world and Americans who dared to disagree with him. How? When? Here are just a few of the many examples: I call them, “Our nation’s nightmarish, unlucky; 13.”

1. When our country is attacked by terrorists, who is responsible in the end for protecting us and our Constitution? The Commander-in-Chief. Now, Mr. Bush certainly can’t control everything; I had little desire to hold him responsible for anything in regard to the attack at first… until I found out how many warnings he ignored; avoided, told to literally walk away because “now you’ve covered your ass.” But claiming we didn’t need to investigate the biggest terrorist attack ever on America soil? Then; when you lose that battle, refusing to testify? Then; when you lose that one too; agreeing to testify, but only if not under oath, and only with a baby sitter in the form of his Darth Vader-ish VP? That’s not “protecting” the country. And doing his damnedest to gut the Constitution is the opposite of protecting it.

2. Firing translators just for being Gay whose job it is to find out what the terrorists are saying and planning was not “protecting America.”

3. When we hire people to go to Iraq, hiring… not the best… but those who are politically and financially connected to the Right was not “protecting America.”

4. Guns for hire; mercenaries with over eager trigger fingers, creates terrorists; encourages terrorism: not prevents it.

5. Kissing and holding hands with the leaders of a country from where almost all the hijackers on 9/11 came from wasn’t “protecting us.” Continuing to kiss and hold hands year after year, and even post… supposedly… requesting a drop in gas prices, and then still kissing and holding hands after being laughed at for even asking, wasn’t either. It’s more like being someone’s bitch; who gets bitch slapped, and then meekly obeys when told to shut up. It’s also like helping the Saudis to send a fourth plane straight into our economy. And we wonder why some conspiracy prone thinkers believe Mr. Bush had something to do with 9/11?

6a. Stopping Elliot Spritzer in NY from investigating banking practices by using an antiquated Civil War law helped create our current economic slide from mere hell into hellish chaos and a probable Great Depression; the sequel… and, of course, bank failures. Leading to a massive bailout we can not afford. Leading to those we gave this money to throw tax money away on parties and bonuses for those who led us into this mess. Why? Why did you do worse than nothing? Because actual responsibility for those who have loads of money and influence, like you Mr. Bush, is something you have never had the slightest interest in, for obvious political and personal reasons?

Protecting us?

Not.

Protecting yourself, your cronies and your financial backers: those you called your “base?”

Yes.

6b. Plus, we didn’t have the money. We had to borrow it from enemies of freedom: the Communist Chinese? Would we have been safer if we had borrowed money from Stalin or Mussolini? If we are to be protected, a strong economy is important.

6c. Intentionally unregulated markets, coupled with tax breaks for billionaires, combined with billions of billions of bailout money without any oversight: nothing I’ve listed so far “protected” Lady Liberty. Add in the “right” declared for the president to declare anyone, anywhere, a terrorist, or terrorist sympathizer, or somehow terrorist “connected,” and then the “right” to lock that person up without due process… forever. That’s like sticking nukes under Lady Liberty’s dress while performing a form of economic gang rape.

7. Halliburton and KBR not delivering on their no bid contracts but still getting those contracts endangers our soldiers; hence America.

8a. Creating chaos rather than awareness through a confusing, meaningless color coded warning system; while rambling on about how we might get attacked through multiple nutsy ways, wasn’t creating the kind of atmosphere that helps government officials protect us.

9b. Then… encouraging us to “report anything suspicious;” including people getting gas in portable containers at gas pumps, didn’t “protect us,” Though it certainly might get farmers, outboard motor owners, those who are mowing their lawns, people trying to save a buck or fill a car that didn’t make it to the gas station, off the streets and into prison without due process. Nothing I’ve listed here “protects us.” Instead it was more like the Twilight Zone episode where neighbors fear each other; accuse each other: and society starts to crumble under the weight of what one could compare to the kind of severe partisanship you and your sick attack mongrel; Karl Rove, encouraged.

10. Locking people up without a chance of due process; or to see their relatives, and tormenting them, wasn’t “protecting” us.

11. Hacking into Democratic computers for political gain election time wasn’t protecting us. Neither was giving a Gay male prostitute posing as a “reporter” total; free access to press meetings with the former President and the White House at odd hours. How can national security so easily be sacrificed on an altar of pure partisan political chicanery?

12. Revealing Valerie Plame’s position did not “protect us.” Someone who isn’t an agent and brings on a court case around such a falsehood endangers America. But you can’t win here… if you really thought she wasn’t an agent then you would have had her, and the head of the CIA who also said she was, charged with perjury. Of course you didn’t; behaving much like most liars and traitors do who attain high office: those who pretend to have, but really have no interest in protecting us… or the Constitution. Either you were a coward who refused to protect us from those who commit perjury concerning national security, or you compromised national security. Of course, it’s pretty damn obvious what the real truth is here. You screwed over the security of the nation for the sake of petty, childish, revenge.

13. Attempting to sell a major port to a company run by a country with known terrorist connections: how obvious could your intent not to protect have been?

Think that’s a long list? I had to severely edit it. I’m sure Inspection readers alone can provide a hell of a lot more.

And while the rage I feel over these betrayals; these acts of treason, is still intense… I do admit: assuming that George Bush and Dick Cheney were to blame for absolutely everything in regard to even this truncated list of concerns is unreasonable. Yes, it is, though like any CEO, Mr. “CEO” President, you are responsible for all that goes wrong within that organization, that company: something in this case that our founders never meant to be a corporation: America. But to assume that he was really to blame for nothing; or even little in regard to these matters, is beyond absurd: it’s dangerous; partisan stupidity of the highest order. Yet this is what the Neo Cons and much of the media would rather we believe. No, not “rather.” Wrong word. “Demand:” “insist” we believe every foul word uttered by Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Coulter and the rest of the Right Wing puppet punditry brigade. And puppets they are: for they will willingly vent any talking point lie spewed out by think-less tanks and Rovian manipulators, no matter how absurd, how vile, how 180 degrees opposite from the truth.

A few days ago I heard a discussion on NPR with a former Bush administration appointee and a Barack appointee. The smarmy, sarcasm dripping Bush appointee; which pretty much describes every appointee Bush had, rattled off a list of supposed events that had been stopped through the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques:” torture by any other name still being torture. The Barack appointee remain respectfully quiet, and when asked to respond, he told the audience and the Bushie that as far as he knew none of that had happened, unless he was willing to provide evidence: proof; specifics.

After 8 years, it’s about damn time someone actually started protecting America from those who would bring it down: and it’s not just terrorists.

Bravo.

-30-

Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.

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Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
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