Bush: Bin Laden Should Be Taken Seriously – Yahoo! News

FORT MEADE, Md. –
President Bush, defending the government’s secret surveillance program, said Wednesday that Americans should take
Osama bin Laden seriously when he says he’s going to attack again.

“When he says he’s going to hurt the American people again, or try to, he means it,” Bush told reporters after visiting the top-secret National Security Agency where the surveillance program is based. “I take it seriously, and the people of NSA take it seriously.”

It was Bush’s first comment about bin Laden since the al-Qaida leader warned in a tape aired last week that his fighters are preparing new attacks in the United States. Bin Laden offered a truce, without specifying the conditions, and the White House responded that the United States would never negotiate with the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Gosh, there’s been a bunch of pre-State of the Grunion speeches. Bush was always doing a heckuva job beating the shit out of that 911 drum, and he recently added a big one labeled “Anti-Terror Surveillance Is Legal,” and now this week he’s got a new health care one to beat on, too. Gosh, I hope that one doesn’t go bust the way the “Medicare Reform” one did.

Remember this Farside comic? Of course you do. The Government, on the other hand, assumes you don’t. They keep saying the same thing, over and over, because they cynically think that we will believe their many and myriad Big Lies. Bush beats his drums, and Cheney beats his drums, and the Homeland Security/FEMA honchos beat their drums. But they don’t seem to realize that no matter how loudly they shout and thump and repeat themselves, fewer and fewer people believe the message they so desperately keep drumming into the airwaves via their pet commentators, “journalists,” and Big Name Pundits.

Slowly, more and more people are doing small and large things to indicate this unbelief, but for the most part it doesn’t get a lot of “press.” One reason for this may simply be that the conventional press has been worked over so many times by the loudest bullies on the Right that it tends to roll right over, Rover.

Meanwhile, people in the center, who don’t yell and scream “FOUL!” on the issues, don’t get a lot of press when they object to the excessive polarization of the political discourse in this country. Further, people more to the left are either waved aside as spineless conciliators, or are dismissed as the political equivalent of a small, irritable Chihuaua named “Killer.”

In any case, whenever someone manages to embarass this Government with a protest of some kind, it’s noteworthy, because usually the sort of people who might kick up a fuss at a public appearance by a Government official are usually kept well away, or screened, or prevented from attending by being required to sign a loyalty oath in blood or whatever.

So when someone manages to stage a protest that puts Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez in the same frame as a big banner with a (lightly condensed) quote by Benjamin Franklin, it’s definitely noteworthy. There’s video available at Democracy Now! along with panelists’ responses.

I’d seen a quote like that earlier in the day; I was reading all about the “comments closed” debacle at the Washington Post. In the “response” post by their ombudsperson, whose “truthiness” was called into question over her assertion that Jack Abramoff gave some money, or directed that some money be given to Democrats by his “clients,” several more-rational posters kept repeating this, over and over:

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

– Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776

There’s a diary at Kos up that covers the interesting side-issue of what comments remained “deleted” when most comments were later restored by the Washington Post. The best of them are insightful, well-written, factual, and totally slaughter Howell’s original assertion and her later “clarification.” More from Atrios on this, too. Yes, yes, all from the leftward echosphere. Deal.

It’s kind of bracing and exciting to read the Founding Fathers’ words being used against the people who claim to be the upholders of the very Constitution they’re sneakily trying to undermine. And it reminds me of something that’s been going on in New York for a while – you’ll be waiting for a train, or entering the lobby of the library, and someone will stand up and start reading the First Amendment aloud. And then someone else. And then someone else. And then the crowd, which evidently was tipped off via the Internets, will disperse. I heard about this a while ago on National Public Radio, but I can’t find the story to cite.

Oh, I can hardly wait for the text of the State of the Union address… it’ll be carefully crafted to be strong, forceful, and unintentionally hysterical. Because no matter what Bush says, I’ll be hearing “Blah blah blah blah 9/11 blah blah war on terror blah blah Fundamental Incident blah blah cannot take our freedom blah blah 9/11 blah blah surveillance is legal blah it is legal blah blah foreign combatants blah terrorists blah blah will not stand blah blah blah blah legal interrogation not torture blah blah time of war blah. Thank you, and 9/11.”