Like the father of a young girl who was raped in his own house, he still feels the guilt. George W. Bush was the father and the rape occurred on the morning of September 11, 2001. It was a gang rape. It was so stunning that he sat mindlessly, in shock, in an elementary classroom for many minutes before deciding to heed the Secret Service pleas to take cover.
That taped scene on that tragic morning is etched in my memory as it surely is for millions of Americans. And another: Mr. Bush standing on the site of the former World Trade Center with his megaphone assuring both the NY rescue workers and the American citizens, "“I can hear you! I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”
But they didn't. The masterminds are still on the loose in the mountains of Pakistan/Afghanistan. The botched Tora Bora mission just one more insult to the raped nation. Days, then months went by with enormous amounts of ordinance blasting mountain tops but to no avail. By mid 2002, the hunt for bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri had led nowhere.
Prodded by his neocon advisers who had, years before, pushed for an invasion of Iraq, Mr. Bush agreed to a bait-and-switch tactic to substitute Saddam Hussein for Osama bin Laden. The American people apparently were ready for any kind of revenge for the rape and were fed many false statements that implicated Saddam in the rape, specifically that he had ties to al-Qaeda.
It brings to mind vigilante justice as demonstrated in the lawless days of the Old West. Hang'em from the old oak tree just in case they may have been guilty. Of course it was rather easy to pin the rape on Saddam as he was an 'evil' man already for his aggression in Kuwait eleven years earlier. Americans were willing to take the bait and use Saddam as the scapegoat for bin Laden.
Minions in the Bush Administration made regular appearances on the Sunday morning shows the rest of 2002, warning of WMD's, mushroom clouds, aluminum tubes, and the al-Qaeda connection. Then the grand power point presentation by Colin Powell at the United Nations with photographs of WMD locations, rolling biological vehicles and other sordid nasty stuff. Saddam was, in fact, part of the gang rape.
Finally, the clincher. The father stood before his family in the SOU address in 2003 and told us that Saddam did, in fact, acquire uranium from Africa. It was a lie, but he said it anyway to close the deal for the suffering family. It was now crystal clear that Saddam was a co-conspirator in the rape. And early on March 20, 2003, Shock 'n Awe was unleashed on Baghdad.
Today we know better. Saddam, although a dastardly dictator and murderer in his own right, was in no way involved in the 9-11 gang rape. There are still some hard core citizens who still believe all of the propaganda fed to them by the Bush Administration, but most Americans have turned away from all of that, realizing that they had been duped.
Yet, still, the invasion goes on, four thousand military deaths later. John McCain, the probable GOP presidential candidate still lauds the invasion, still talks about more and more wars. He touts his support of the surge and encourages the United States to stay in Iraq for decades if not permanently. Mr. Bush has no plans on leaving before his term ends.
What has happened to us, the rape victims? Here we are still waiting resolution of the crime but the masterminds are not awaiting trial. They are not even in jail. The open wound festers, the psychological shock remains because it is untreated, unresolved.
"We're fighting them over there so that we don't have to fight them over here!" There's a classic line still in vogue these days. Apparently the Bush administration [and John McCain] likes to drop that line from time to time to assure us that another rape will not occur. The question must be asked, are we really being kept safe from another rape by fighting in Iraq? Does that foil the next set of rapists?
Many Bush apologists will eagerly say, "We haven't had another attack since 9-11 because Bush has kept us safe." Of course, we hadn't had an attack in 230 years prior to that. Further, al-Qaeda is patient, unlike we impatient Americans. They are waiting for the right time, the right place, and the right planning before the next rape. No doubt, bin Laden and Al Zawahiri would love to do it on Bush's watch if possible, but that is not necessary if all of the other factors do not come together at that time.
As Col. Larsen has advised [previous post], there will be another attack, another rape of America. He is sure of that. And it will not be complex. He suggests it will be a biological attack, anthrax for example. Blasting insurgents in Iraq hardly eliminates a vile of weaponized anthrax from being opened at a sports gathering or a busy shopping mall.
The next band of barbarians are not going to carry guns and bury IED's along the roadways of America. They will be unarmed people who blend in nicely with the crowds, a vile of germs in their pocket.
Mr. Bush cannot stop the next rape, but he can stop pretending he will. He should stop building up false security in us, the rape victims. He is not protecting us, he is bamboozling us. That so-called war on terror going on in Iraq is just a ruse to lure us into false security. A good father would not do that to his children. A good father would do all that he could to instruct his children on how to protect themselves from and after another attack. To borrow a trite line from John McCain, he ought to give us some straight talk, not a trip to Disneyland.
