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http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2002-05-22/fishwrapper.html
'No warnings'
Truth launches surprise attack on Bush and critics of McKinney
BY JOHN SUGG
To comprehend the real hilarity of the current meltdown at 1600
Pennsylvania Ave., review (and relish) the very un-presidential
activities of the occupant during the last week.
First, there was this tidbit: Maximum Commandante Dick Cheney sends
out invitations to GOP loyalists for a June 19 dinner to honor
President-Figurehead "W" for, among other things, confronting and
fighting terrorism. Wrapping the administration in the flag and
castigating critics as treasonous is, of course, the favorite spin-
tactic of this hell-bent-on-authoritarianism administration.
That I got one of these invites (sorry, Dick, but our publisher won't
let me write off $25,000 for a table for 10 to my expense account)
shows just how utterly incompetent the administration is at assessing
friends and foes.
Among the perks for stuffing the GOP's pockets, the White House
promised some photos, including one of Bush on Air Force One Sept.
11.
Without a doubt, that's raising campaign cash while standing on a
pile of corpses. The awful tastelessness of the gutter-level ploy
gagged even the docile, fearful-to-be-called-unpatriotic Democrats
and mainstream media.
Just as that rather tepid little bit of Bush smarminess was beginning
to subside, the really big, smelly chunk of merde hit the air-
circulating system.
Prior to Sept. 11, Bush had had warnings -- oh yes he had -- about a
terrorist threat. His mouthpiece, Ari Fleischer, had lied -- oh yes
he had and despicably so -- when shortly after 3,000 innocent people
died in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the spokesman
proclaimed "no warnings."
The press has acted as if this story smashed into their computers
with "no warnings." But it's been there all along. The Los Angeles
Times' very savvy Washington reporter, Richard Serrano, reported
Sept. 20 -- nine days after the terrorist attack -- that "FBI and CIA
officials were advised in August that as many as 200 terrorists were
slipping into this country and planning 'a major assault on the
United States.'"
No one paid much attention to Serrano, because to have done so would
have risked the ire of the administration. As with other emperor-has-
no-clothes stories -- such as the suspicious activities of more than
a hundred of Israelis, dozens of whom were collared while trying to
penetrate federal facilities, reported by CL, Fox News, Salon.com,
among others -- most of the establishment suck-up press put on
blinders.
Even after CBS broke the story mid-week that there had been credible
warnings of a terrorist attack, many in the press did their damnedest
to see no evil. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for example, buried
a teensy report on page B4 of last Thursday's paper. The national
press was equally slow to react until the mounting howls of outrage
from Capitol Hill made reporting on the debacle unavoidable.
But let's talk about Cynthia McKinney for a minute. This is the fun
stuff.
On March 25, the DeKalb congresswoman, who certainly isn't shy about
stating her mind (that's called "understatement"), gave an interview
on a Berkeley, Calif., radio station in which she raised two points.
First, she made this statement: "We know there were numerous warnings
of the events to come on Sept. 11th. What did this administration
know and when did it know it, about the events of Sept. 11th? Who
else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York
who were needlessly murdered? What do they have to hide?"
And she raised the issue that people close to the Bush administration
were "poised" to make a bundle off the war -- especially the Carlyle
Group, a sort of shadow government that is the perfect expression of
the "military-industrial complex." Carlyle, McKinney commented, made
a quarter-billion bucks in one day recently by selling stock in its
subsidiary United Defense Industries, a scheme made possible by the
post-9-11 arms build-up.
And, yes, W's dad, former President George H.W. Bush, is busily
bellying up to the Carlyle feeding trough. And, yes, as Republican
Sen. John McCain and others have noted, there is an orgy of arms
profiteering going on -- some of it obvious (a Boeing deal that would
have gouged taxpayers for $20 billion to lease 100 tankers, then re-
gouged us when the company took the planes back) and some not so
obvious (the total cave-in to globalization).
What McKinney did not say was that W had allowed the Sept. 11 attack
to occur so that Dad and his billionaire buddies could profit. But by
putting the two thoughts in relatively close temporal proximity, she
all but hung a target on herself.
And, boy, did the critics have a mud-splattering orgy at McKinney's
expense! Bush spokesman Scott McLellan called her
comments "ludicrous, baseless views." Georgia U.S. Sen. Zell Miller
derided McKinney as "loony," "dangerous" and "irresponsible."
In a bit of journalist flatulence, an AJC editorial chided that not
only was McKinney the "most prominent nut" among conspiracy
theorists, but that merely calling for a congressional investigation
of what happened Sept. 11 was "nutty."
(Memo to AJC: Now that Sens. Joe Lieberman and McCain have introduced
legislation to create an independent National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States, are they also "nutty" or merely fond
of overly long names?)
Laying it on even thicker was the AJC editorial page editor, Cynthia
Tucker, who harrumphed that "the ability to grapple with
complexities -- to ponder a complicated issue and propose rational,
nuanced solutions -- should be a prerequisite for service on the
national stage. That alone renders McKinney ... unfit for Congress."
(Memo to Tucker: Would your standard preclude Bush from public
office, too?)
Creative Loafing joined in the braying, running a piece last week by
columnist Richard Shumate, who called McKinney's statement "deluded
drivel."
The Atlanta-based, ultra-right Southeastern Legal Foundation called
for an investigation -- not of what happened on 9-11 and who knew
what when, but of McKinney. "Upsetting and so outrageous," foundation
President Phil Kent sniffed about the congresswoman.
The conservative National Review indulged in a bit of racism,
declaring this month of McKinney's comments: "The political culture
of black America is almost as paranoid as that of the Mideast."
Timothy Noah, writing for the online magazine Slate, dismissed
McKinney's suggestion that Bush had warnings prior to 9-11 as "ugly
and unfounded."
And, nationally, the most acrid vitriol splattered forth from
syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker, who on April 17 positively
frothed with indignation at McKinney, calling her "idiotic, absurd
and -- under other circumstances, hilarious, if you like slapstick."
(By comparison, the press is almost entirely mute at the most obscene
and racist statements by white-guy members of Congress. To wit,
earlier this month, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, called
for the ethnic cleansing of all Arabs from Palestine and Israel --
something not seriously advocated by any but the most extreme-right
Israelis. Did anyone call that Slobodan Milosevic-style
bellicosity "idiotic" or "absurd"? Hardly.)
Two more derisive comments deserve note. Carlyle Group spokesman
Chris Ullman asked: "Did she say these things while standing on a
grassy knoll in Roswell, N.M.?" And Bush arch-dissembler Fleischer
proclaimed: "All I can tell you is the congresswoman must be running
for the hall of fame of the Grassy Knoll Society."
I find it interesting that the spokesmen for, in effect, two
generations of Bushes, use precisely the same allusion, "grassy
knoll" -- which, in case you've been in suspended animation for the
last four decades, refers to the much-derided theory of other gunmen
involved in the assassination of President John Kennedy. If I
believed in "X-Files"-caliber conspiracies, I'd wonder if the White
House gave orders to Carlyle about how to attack McKinney -- or if
Carlyle gave orders to the Bush flunkies.
But observe that neither Fleischer nor Ullman exactly deny McKinney's
allegations. It's called the non-denial-denial, a favorite tool of
deception honed by Richard Nixon and, now refined by Bush.
So, as the week drew to a close, we see Bush touts and McKinney foes
resorting to furious obstinacy and frantic repositioning.
The AJC's Tucker, in what is becoming a Vendetta of the Cynthias,
told me she still regards McKinney as "outrageous" and "outlandish."
Tucker wouldn't budge an inch on her criticism -- despite the fact
that McKinney absolutely hit the bull's-eye in her call for a
congressional investigation.
More interesting is what's happening in Washington as the
administration confronts headlines such as the New York Post's "Bush
knew!" How do you explain a CIA briefing delivered to Bush Aug. 6
while he kicked up his cowboy boots at his Crawford, Texas, ranch?
How do you explain Attorney General John Ashcroft heeding warnings
and deciding to fly chartered jets -- while leaving the American
public uninformed of the threats? How do you explain the FBI memo
from Phoenix concerning an unusual number of Arabs in flight
training? How do you explain the pay-attention shout from a
Minneapolis FBI agent who warned terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui
was the sort of guy who "could fly something into the World Trade
Center?"
If you're Bush, the answer is easy. Hoist up the flag. If that
doesn't work, obfuscate.
For a start, the Bushies tried claiming that the pre-9-11 warnings
had, as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice maintained, "no
specific" details. That didn't work because Rice was forced to
concede that the Aug. 6 briefing contained two references -- I guess
you could call them "specific" references -- to airline hijackings.
Cheney (bring up the Darth Vader theme music, please) denounced
critics as "thoroughly irresponsible" for even hinting that a probe
might clear the air.
There's no dispute that McKinney can be strident and abrasive, which
last time I checked was still permitted by what's left of the Bush-
savaged Constitution. But she made the best summation I can find of
last week's events:
"It now becomes clear why the Bush administration has been vigorously
opposing congressional hearings. The Bush administration has engaged
in a conspiracy of silence. If committed and patriotic people had not
been pushing for disclosure, today's revelations would have been
hidden by the White House."
By Friday, Bush had waded in by denouncing Democrats whom he said
were "second guessing" him. Of course, that raises the question about
whether one can "second guess" someone who hasn't got a clue.
Senior Editor John Sugg -- whose motto is, "When criticizing the
government, always keep your passport handy" -- can be reached at 404-
614-1241 or at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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