The Promotion of Failure in Bush Administration
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
Wednesday 12 September 2007
Transcript from Crooks and Liars.
To this day, millions of Americans believe we invaded Iraq because of 9/11.
33 percent still believe there was some interconnection between Saddam Hussein
and the nightmares here and in Washington and in Pennsylvania.
Iraq, of course, had nothing to do with 9/11. Then. Six years later, that has
changed.
Iraq has distracted us from punishing those responsible for 9/11.
If another 9/11 comes, our focus on Iraq will surely have been central to that
nightmare.
How did we get here? What consequences have been paid by those who brought
us here?
In our number one story tonight, no one person is to blame. And only some of
those who are, recognize it.
As we reported yesterday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell tells G-Q
magazine he is "sorry" he gave the world wrong information when
he told the U-N of the threat Iraq supposedly posed.
He was not fired for doing so.
He paid no price we know of, other than the admitted "blot" on
his record, and whatever toll his conscience exacted.
Unrepentant, however, is former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, also talking
to G-Q;
Saying he does not lose sleep over the war… declining to apologize for
it… despite pushing for it… despite using 9/11 - the day after
9/11 - for his own benefit, to pursue his goal of bombing Iraq.
Rumsfeld, not fired for his performance, but for politics… now in private
life… reportedly trying to see how much he must tell, to make for a profitable
tell-all. Rumsfeld was served, and the nation ill-served, by a flock of Pentagon
hawks, bent on war, seeing 9/11 not as an obligation to answer,. but an opportunity
to exploit.
Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who also tied Iraq to 9/11, who ridiculed warnings
we needed more troops to invade Iraq - not fired - named head of the
World Bank, until resigning in disgrace.
Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle - not fired - forced
to retire not for pushing the war, but for allegedly profiting off it.
Undersecretary Doug Feith, who cherry-picked anti-Iraq intel - not fired -
despite a Pentagon report later refuting Feith's claim that Iraq and al
Qaeda were in league.
And as you go higher in the administration, your reward for being wrong on
the war grows proportionately.
Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley - responsible for the
16-word lie about Iraqi pursuit of yellowcake from Niger - not fired -
promoted to National Security Advisor.
His boss, Condoleezza Rice, who threatened us with mushroom clouds - not
fired - promoted to America's chief diplomat: Secretary of State.
CIA Director George Tenet, who called the case for war a "slam dunk" -
not fired - given the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
And within the president's circle of advisors, marketing the war:
Andy Card and Dan Bartlett - neither fired. Card retired, Bartlett promoted,
then retired.
Karen Hughes - not fired - promoted, stunningly, to the task of winning
hearts and minds in the Muslim world.
But let us go higher still.
Vice President Dick Cheney, creator of his cherry-picking intel apparatus,
gave its poisoned fruit to the media and then fed the lie to us on national
television - even after truth, and shame, rendered its mendaciousness,
manifest. He continues to do so to this day. Not fired.
Cheney's aide, Lewis Libby, came closest of all to suffering genuine
consequences. Convicted of covering up Mr. Cheney's role in sliming critics
of the war, his consequences nullified at the last minute. When the president
commuted his prison sentence -ensuring that no one in his circle, least
of all him - paid any price for selling us the lie of Iraq; for failing
to punish the bombing of the U-S-S Cole; for neglecting the warnings pre-9/11;.
for turning back at Tora Bora; for ultimately ensuring that while the rest of
the world suffers painful, deadly consequences for his actions, only he does
not.
Only he and one other. Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, his reach,
and recruiting, all benefiting from Mr. Bush's war, his group's
strength today at a six-year high. His Afghan allies, the Taliban, as NBC reported
tonight, also resurgent, planning the death of Americans, just 25 miles from
Kabul.
All while bin Laden himself operates freely, unmolested, with his own media
operation, thanks to a regional Pakistani truce endorsed by Mr. Bush in a region
where Mr. Bush will not go - cannot go even if he chose to.
Because he has spent so much American blood and treasure, in the desert of
a nation that had neither means nor motive to threaten us, but that tempted
Mr. Bush and those around him who wished to transform the Middle East, so much
so that he forswore the vow he made, standing here, literally atop New York's
dead… that their killers would hear us soon.
Six years later, we still hear them, because now, finally, Iraq and 9/11 really
are connected - by him.
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