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NBC News Confirms Bush WH Forced Premature Terror Arrests, Compromised Evidence

Today's BuzzFlash editoral writes that NBC has confirmed suspicions some of us, including BuzzFlash, had about the timing of the alleged British terror plot. The White House used it to make political points and actually compromised national security.

"The White House forced the UK to move up the timing of the alleged terror cell arrests, against the recommendations of the British intelligence agencies. By so doing, the Bush Administration compromised the investigation and kept it from obtaining further evidence and contact names. In short, for purposes of political timing -- in order to make partisan points from the election of Ned Lamont -- the Bush Administration compromised our national security." (BuzzFlash)

This BuzzFlash Editorial is reprinted here with the kind permission of BuzzFlash.

August 13, 2006

As BuzzFlash has repeatedly editorialized, the Bush Administration is a detriment to America's national security. Our lives are increasingly at risk every day that they are in office.

They will never seriously battle the sources of terrorism in an effective, strategic fashion. That is because politically they need the terrorists as much as the terrorists need them. And the goals of the Bush Administration are the consolidation of power and the acquisition of natural resources and economic dominance, not the eradication of terror.

Only the naive and the Rush Limbaugh Stepford-Red Staters can possibly draw any other conclusion.

NBC just confirmed -- as BuzzFlash editorialized earlier this week about the politics of terrorism -- that the White House forced the UK to move up the timing of the alleged terror cell arrests, against the recommendations of the British intelligence agencies. By so doing, the Bush Administration compromised the investigation and kept it from obtaining further evidence and contact names. In short, for purposes of political timing -- in order to make partisan points from the election of Ned Lamont -- the Bush Administration compromised our national security.

Furthermore, NBC confirms that UK sources indicate that the alleged terrorist plan was not near operational. Indeed, the hijackers -- who are British citizens -- did not even have passports! (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14320452/)

This is an extraordinary betrayal of America's national security, purely done so that Cheney, Snow and Bush could attack the Democrats as weak on national security, knowing that the arrest announcement was going to be made on Wednesday, because they picked the day of the arrest.

These use of Rovian-timed terrorist announcements -- often extremely, extremely exaggerated (as in the case of the Liberty City Insane Clown Posse and the alleged Manhattan Tunnel explosions that would have defied the laws of gravity if they were planned to "flood" lower Manhattan) -- are basically treason.

They are meant to frighten Americans into voting Republican. The only viable winning platform of the Busheviks now (and remember that they cannot afford either House of Congress to become Democratic, because it would likely lead to investigations and the impeachment and prosecution of the senior Bush Administration staff) is something like: "You see what the terrorists will do if the Republicans are not here to protect you. The Democrats will just mollycoddle them. Fear for your lives and vote Republican."

After six years of cynical rule and five years of an alleged "war on terrorism" that has killed tens of thousands more people than the terrorists have, all the White House has to do is invoke premeditated fear into Americans.

And it has worked up to now.

Look at the media this week. The alleged British terror plot dominates the leads in television, radio and newpapers around the nation. Fear is a powerful tool. It goes right from the media into the brain. It appeals to our Reptilian sense of self-protection.

That is why it is the tool of demagogues.

Yes, there are terrorists out there who wish to do citizens of the United States harm. But yes, we also unleashed them in Iraq to do us and each other harm. Bush is breeding new ones every day in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush hasn't reduced terrorism; he has increased its threat.

And that is fine with Rove, because Rove has been out front and openly stated through three election cycles that the GOP will win by painting the Democrats as soft on terrorism.

The Bush White House and GOP campaign apparatus will lie, cheat, steal, manipulate our emotions -- and even carry out policies that breed terrorists, because they need terrorism in order to win elections. They would lose in a landslide if people were to vote on public policy issues.

So they need fear. It is the only fuel that will help them achieve a one-party dictatorial state for a century, as Grover Norquist and Karl Rove have promised.

Who is creating a new generation of terrorists? Not the Democrats (except for Joe Lieberman, but he has clearly cut a deal with the White House a long time ago to be one of them – and remain a Democrat on foreign policy in name only.)

Now, more than 60% of Americans oppose the war in Iraq. Ned Lamont -- a descendant of the robber Baron J.P. Morgan, a fourth-generation Harvard graduate, and a self-made millionaire -- is no radical.

It is the Bush Administration that is radical, extremist, and basically treasonous.

At the same time it was politically manipulating the arrests of the alleged British terrorists, it was trying to decrease a Congressional allotment of millions of dollars to increase our ability to detect explosives that could be carried on planes. It has already allowed box cutters, nail clippers, scissors and razors back on airplanes. It has done almost nothing to ensure the security of cargo that is shipped on planes, which is how the Pan Am plane was blown up over Scotland. (You don't even need a suicide terrorist to blow up a plane in mid-air.)

Bush blew off the warnings of an impending 9/11 and told the CIA briefer who came to him with them to get out and then used an expletive deleted. Bush then did nothing. He didn't want his vacation disturbed -- and then 9/11 happened. And when it did happen, after Bush failing to take steps to protect us, he read "The Pet Goat" for several minutes before his handlers could write "comments" for him. And then he inexplicably got on Air Force One and flew AWAY from Washington, D.C.

As Americans, all of us have our lives at stake while these cynical, power hungry, demagogues are ruling the nation.

Yes, there are terrorists in the world who wish us harm.

Many of them, have indeed, been drawn to terrorism as a result of Bush Administration action.

The goals of the White House are not to stop terrorism; the goal of the White House is to allow terrorism to fester in order to -- as is the basic game plan for dictators goes -- use fear to consolidate tyrannical power and do away with our Constitutional checks and balances of government and guarantee of individual liberties.

If you can't see that they are traitors in the White House, then you are risking your own lives and the lives of your families.

If you value those lives – and your own – we cannot, as a nation, any longer afford a White House and a Republican party that only knows the politics of using terrorism as a political tool, while running only an ineffective “show war” to reduce the threat of terrorists.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

Tags for this entry: Bush, USA, politics.

posted by Annamarie at 5:14 PM