Reflecting on 9/11, Bush Administration

A good editorial in the LA Times today re-raises some issues about the events surrounding 9/11 that we should not soon forget.

The most important of these is that the action (or rather, inaction) of the Bush Administration leading up to 9/11 directly impacted the eventual level of devastation that occured on that September morning.

"The terrible fact is that the administration took none of the steps that would have put the protection of human life ahead of a diverse set of economic and political interests, which included not offending our friends the Saudis and not hurting the share prices of airline corporations."

From ignoring the warnings of dozens of security briefings regarding Al Qaeda to the grounding of a portion of our air marshalls out of deference to airline industry profits, our government failed in its primary responsibility to do everything it could to protect its citizens.

It's true what the right wing loves to say, that everything changed on 9/11.

What changed was the Bush Administration's ability to spend us recklessly into debt, wage bloody wars under false pretenses, revoke our civil liberties while promoting intolerance, and systematically roll back and dismantle the social programs of The New Deal. And they've been able to do all of this nearly unchecked by a press and mainstream media that has become so lazy that they can't even raise a cry over the fact that a male hooker has been posing as a press gaggle journo for the last two years. Even their territory has been invaded, and, so far, they have overwhelmingly looked the other way.