CrimQuips
Quips & Comments 6-4-02 Tuesday, June 4, 2002
by Barry Crimmins
http://www.barrycrimmins.com
The next time anyone suggests that all liberals know how to do is throw money at problems, ask them to consider how many billions have been hurled by the Court-appointed Bush Administration at futile and wrongheaded post-911 boondoggles.
Why don't these conservatives understand that you can't have Big Brother without Big Government? Of course Republicans never consider it Big Government when it pours billions into the military, the prison-industrial complex or corporate welfare. It's only Big Government when it feeds, houses, clothes, educates or tends to medical needs. The US intelligence community's 9-11 impotence can be traced directly to its unwieldiness so what is the proposed remedy? Engorge it with billions of dollars and bloat the bureaucracy so that there will be that many more chains of command to use as a downward conduits for blame the next time the system fails miserably.
Intelligence "reform" is nothing more than a make-work program for authoritarians.
Judging by the 112 contacts between Enron officials and the Court-appointed Bush Administration in 2001, it's clear the only terror that concerned the White House prior to 9-11 was that which it felt about the possibility of anyone discovering just how closely it was lashed to the odious corporation.
We are being blasted by a double pork-barreled shotgun of militarism and authoritarianism.
Court-appointed President Bush told a Little Rock rally that his administration is working to strengthen its intelligence capacity and that he's doing his part by working diligently with his "Hooked on Phonics" instructor. After terrorist warnings from Egypt, Israel, France, Italy and others were ignored and the FBI, CIA, INS, Justice Department, Defense Department and White House dropped balls implicating Tenet, Muellar, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush and others; it seems that the only thing the government didn't do wrong concerning 9-11 was send along a memo to Cardinal Law in hopes that he'd take proper action. W told graduating West Point cadets that the US will engage in more preemptive strikes against its enemies. "We're gonna use the same approach that we used on minority and elderly voters in Florida in 2000, hit them hard and incapacitate as many of them as possible before they can hurt us," said the court-appointed prez.
Despite the FBI's confession it dropped the 9-11 ball, officials who blew it got promotions, the organization received a huge increase in funds and almost any constraints against its use of police-state tactics are now history. It just goes to show you that when you take the fall for the Court-appointed Bush Administration, you land somewhere soft!
Kaiser Ashcroft said, "... to leave us with agents who have their hands tied in the field so that they can't get the information that they need to get, I think, is foolhardy." That's right, Herr AG, we have to make sure there are enough FBI agents to spot the next Coleen Rowley before she blows another whistle. Besides, the tying of agents' hands should remain the job of their superiors, just like it was last summer. Otherwise there'd be an increased risk of a few of them actually defusing the threat of terrorism, leaving Aschroft with an even flimsier alibi for shredding the Bill of Rights.
FBI Director Mueller now says he doesn't think there was "a substantial likelihood" the organization could have prevented the 9-11 attacks. Considering the ineptitude of FBI upper management, we should count ourselves fortunate they were able to detect the attacks after they occurred.
The old joke name other law enforcement agencies use for the FBI has never been more apt: Famous But Incompetent.
Court-appointed President Bush said the 9-11 terror strikes were an attack on our freedom. Now Ashcroft has decided that it's better to destroy those freedoms than to leave them exposed as such an easy target.
Ashcroft, the Christian who up until recently religiously appeared on Sunday morning talk shows, reappeared Sunday and said, "We have a new responsibility. The American people rightfully expect it of us. That's to prevent." Apparently he thinks some of those things we want prevented include: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unlawful search and seizure, freedom NOT to be a religious dogmatist, freedom from really bad public officials who think they can sing....
So what is Donald Rumsfeld going to tell the Indians and Pakistanis? Idle nuclear threats are best left to the United States?
And why send Rumsfeld, a man who impatiently and condescendingly explains away all sorts of carnage, out as a peacekeeper? The United Nations World Food Programme's Emergency Operation in Afghanistan currently faces a shortfall of 215,400 tons of food worth approximately $123 million - or 43 per cent of the total requirements. The Court-appointed Bush Administration says it feels it has already done more than its part by helping eliminate several thousand hungry Afghan mouths. Perhaps if all foster kids in Florida would just remember to register Republican, Jeb Bush's state child welfare workers wouldn't lose so many of them.
Maybe the 1,000 missing Florida foster children accidentally got buried under uncounted ballots.
•----
NO JOKE
The only way the USA can truly reduce terrorism is to stop practicing it. No more bombing of innocent people to "demonstrate resolve," no more support for brutal dictatorships, no more disregard for international law, no more blindly siding with one group in a conflict simply because we haven't the patience or courage to look at both sides, no more arrogantly filling our foreign embassies with ambassadors who cannot speak the local language and therefore are impervious to what is truly happening in those countries, no more support for coups, no more assassinations, no more death squads, no more foreign policy that is corporate-friendly and humanphobic.... in short what the US needs to do is behave more intelligently and when it does, there will be a greatly reduced need to gather intelligence on enemies because enemies will be few and far between. And that's no joke.
2002 Barry Crimmins
http://www.barrycrimmins.com
The next time anyone suggests that all liberals know how to do is throw money at problems, ask them to consider how many billions have been hurled by the Court-appointed Bush Administration at futile and wrongheaded post-911 boondoggles.
Why don't these conservatives understand that you can't have Big Brother without Big Government? Of course Republicans never consider it Big Government when it pours billions into the military, the prison-industrial complex or corporate welfare. It's only Big Government when it feeds, houses, clothes, educates or tends to medical needs. The US intelligence community's 9-11 impotence can be traced directly to its unwieldiness so what is the proposed remedy? Engorge it with billions of dollars and bloat the bureaucracy so that there will be that many more chains of command to use as a downward conduits for blame the next time the system fails miserably.
Intelligence "reform" is nothing more than a make-work program for authoritarians.
Judging by the 112 contacts between Enron officials and the Court-appointed Bush Administration in 2001, it's clear the only terror that concerned the White House prior to 9-11 was that which it felt about the possibility of anyone discovering just how closely it was lashed to the odious corporation.
We are being blasted by a double pork-barreled shotgun of militarism and authoritarianism.
Court-appointed President Bush told a Little Rock rally that his administration is working to strengthen its intelligence capacity and that he's doing his part by working diligently with his "Hooked on Phonics" instructor. After terrorist warnings from Egypt, Israel, France, Italy and others were ignored and the FBI, CIA, INS, Justice Department, Defense Department and White House dropped balls implicating Tenet, Muellar, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush and others; it seems that the only thing the government didn't do wrong concerning 9-11 was send along a memo to Cardinal Law in hopes that he'd take proper action. W told graduating West Point cadets that the US will engage in more preemptive strikes against its enemies. "We're gonna use the same approach that we used on minority and elderly voters in Florida in 2000, hit them hard and incapacitate as many of them as possible before they can hurt us," said the court-appointed prez.
Despite the FBI's confession it dropped the 9-11 ball, officials who blew it got promotions, the organization received a huge increase in funds and almost any constraints against its use of police-state tactics are now history. It just goes to show you that when you take the fall for the Court-appointed Bush Administration, you land somewhere soft!
Kaiser Ashcroft said, "... to leave us with agents who have their hands tied in the field so that they can't get the information that they need to get, I think, is foolhardy." That's right, Herr AG, we have to make sure there are enough FBI agents to spot the next Coleen Rowley before she blows another whistle. Besides, the tying of agents' hands should remain the job of their superiors, just like it was last summer. Otherwise there'd be an increased risk of a few of them actually defusing the threat of terrorism, leaving Aschroft with an even flimsier alibi for shredding the Bill of Rights.
FBI Director Mueller now says he doesn't think there was "a substantial likelihood" the organization could have prevented the 9-11 attacks. Considering the ineptitude of FBI upper management, we should count ourselves fortunate they were able to detect the attacks after they occurred.
The old joke name other law enforcement agencies use for the FBI has never been more apt: Famous But Incompetent.
Court-appointed President Bush said the 9-11 terror strikes were an attack on our freedom. Now Ashcroft has decided that it's better to destroy those freedoms than to leave them exposed as such an easy target.
Ashcroft, the Christian who up until recently religiously appeared on Sunday morning talk shows, reappeared Sunday and said, "We have a new responsibility. The American people rightfully expect it of us. That's to prevent." Apparently he thinks some of those things we want prevented include: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unlawful search and seizure, freedom NOT to be a religious dogmatist, freedom from really bad public officials who think they can sing....
So what is Donald Rumsfeld going to tell the Indians and Pakistanis? Idle nuclear threats are best left to the United States?
And why send Rumsfeld, a man who impatiently and condescendingly explains away all sorts of carnage, out as a peacekeeper? The United Nations World Food Programme's Emergency Operation in Afghanistan currently faces a shortfall of 215,400 tons of food worth approximately $123 million - or 43 per cent of the total requirements. The Court-appointed Bush Administration says it feels it has already done more than its part by helping eliminate several thousand hungry Afghan mouths. Perhaps if all foster kids in Florida would just remember to register Republican, Jeb Bush's state child welfare workers wouldn't lose so many of them.
Maybe the 1,000 missing Florida foster children accidentally got buried under uncounted ballots.
•----
NO JOKE
The only way the USA can truly reduce terrorism is to stop practicing it. No more bombing of innocent people to "demonstrate resolve," no more support for brutal dictatorships, no more disregard for international law, no more blindly siding with one group in a conflict simply because we haven't the patience or courage to look at both sides, no more arrogantly filling our foreign embassies with ambassadors who cannot speak the local language and therefore are impervious to what is truly happening in those countries, no more support for coups, no more assassinations, no more death squads, no more foreign policy that is corporate-friendly and humanphobic.... in short what the US needs to do is behave more intelligently and when it does, there will be a greatly reduced need to gather intelligence on enemies because enemies will be few and far between. And that's no joke.
2002 Barry Crimmins