There Are Days When I Am Surprised
This isn’t one of them. Sickened? Yes. Angered? Yes. Surprised? Hell no.
According to this article posted on US News and World Report, Tom Ridge, the first head of the idiotically-named and redundant Department of Homeland Security, is releasing a new tell-all titled
- The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…and How We Can Be Safe Again
. In this book, he discusses his experiences with the frustration he felt at infighting in the Bush Administration while he was trying to build an effective department, but that isn’t the big news. This is the big news:
Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election
…Excuse me…WHAT? I mean, I’m not surprised that the Bush Administration raised the “terrorist alert level” to boost the chances of Bush being re-elected–after all, when Americans are afraid of the scary brown people, Republicans get elected.
But I am sickened that an elected official–no matter how slimey George W Bush has proven to be and have been during the mass incompetence that was his administration–would use shameless, baseless fear, just three years after the worst terrorist attack on American soil in our country’s history, to hold on to their own power. And to make my nausea worse, no one in major media other than Keith Olbermann and MSNBC are covering this story. I suppose, instead of blowing the whistle on the most incompetent and criminal administration of the 20th century, and possibly the entire history of the United States, major news networks would rather talk about death panels that don’t exist.
But, hey, I’m just keeping it real.
