[Infowarrior] - Olbermann: Special Comment for Sept 11

[Richard Forno]

Brilliant comment by Keith.....which I agree with 100%    -rf


Sept. 11, 2006 | 8:32 p.m. ET
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/#060911b

This hole in the ground

Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space.   And for 40 days
after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what
happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of
thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and --
as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul --
two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen
and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our
ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall
be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have
"forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping,
opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a
commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could
have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and
the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us could have
predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance
that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country's wound is still open.

Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial -- barely four months after the
last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field -- Mr. Lincoln said,
"we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The
brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far
above our poor power to add or detract."

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their
reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can
not hallow this ground." So we won't.

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle
to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on
irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off
columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of doing any job at
all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these
streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres.  The terrorists
are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you
mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city,
and in the fabric of our nation.  There is its symbolism of the promise
unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and
painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the
country. The government, the President in particular, was given every
possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be
taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by
those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political
advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American
first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media.
Nor did the people.

The President -- and those around him -- did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them,
"bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have
to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or
intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's
words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant
going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who
we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as
much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on
the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by
implication."

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume
responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this,
the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and
fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears
the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he
has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own
administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most
radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be
televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced
lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry
story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and
impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity
and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death,  after
monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear
into the campaign slogan of three elections?  How dare you -- or those
around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as long as
there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this
government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March
of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country)
suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting
episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials
disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm.
Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests he must be
the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and
panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced.  An "alien" is shot
-- but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for
help.  The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials
are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran
tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn
off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous
enemy they can find, and it's themselves."

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up
with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight:
"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and
fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices,
to be found only in the minds of men.

"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a
thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own --
for the children, and the children yet unborn."

When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not
tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus --
that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are
somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we
have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this empty space behind me
and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build,
and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.