After 9-11 Bush remarked, 'it looks like I hit the trifecta' and someone was so offended by his out of place remark that they leaked it to the media. Note that a 'trifecta' connotates something that you gamble on. Bush's August 6, 2001 briefing memo was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S." John Ashcroft received FBI intelligence that caused him to quit catching the planes that summer. All airports were shut down for Bush at the Genoa summit, the summit was ringed by anti-aircraft guns, and Bush spent the evenings on the U.S.S. Enterprise, bristling with anti-aircraft guns, because, as I like to say it, perhaps the Americans were afraid that the Italians couldn't shoot straight.
Now you might recall how a 'whistle blower' named Crowley appeared to complain that the FBI had to many layers of beaurocracy. Very rarely is a true whistle blower celebrated in congress and praised by her bosses, but that is what happened this time. (Normally whistle blowers get into a lot of hot water, become unemployable, and pushed into the wilderness, denied opportunities and promotions, despite legislation that is supposed to protect them.) I am not suggesting that Crowley's complaints about the beaurocracy at the FBI were not feelings she might have sincerely held, but we know that despite whatever flaws there might have been in the beaurocracy at the FBI, the intelligence regarding the dangers posed by Osama bin Laden to the nations passenger jets worked its way right to the top, and convinced Ashcroft to stop taking passenger jets during the summer of 2001. So her complaints were invalid as a description of a systemic failure at the FBI, and rather what we are left with is a systemic failure at the very top of the totem pole, where great power has been concentrated, and thus becomes wide open to abuse. Crowley was feted as a 'whistle blower' only because her complaints drew attention away from the top and focused it below on FBI beaurocrats, and her criticism also conveniently fit into the agenda of imposing a super domestic spy agency on the country (the notorious Total Information Awareness which is temporarily in limbo).
Recently such people as Ramsey Clark have written articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. While I sympathize with the effort, and feel that the grounds are also legally sound, politically this effort is inadequate, and yes, sometimes you do have to get down and fight and roll and in the muck. Its called politics. The strongest grounds for impeachment of George W. Bush will in the end prove to be obstruction of justice, the poisoned arrow that brought down the Nixon White House. To this day even the 9-11 families, arguably the most powerful latent political force in America at the present time, have not been able to force through an investigation of 9-11, the stonewalling at the top being just that powerfully entrenched, but this can't last forever. And here we begin to see the grounds for obstruction of justice being firmly established by the main subjects of our investigation, and so in the long run, you can see how that is not such a bad thing after all.
I should warn you that attempts have been made by the establishment progressive media in America to squelch this investigation of 9-11. It is wide spread and prevalent, but that won't last forever either.
I feel that it might be good to direct your attention to the Online Journal site, which recognizes the value of this strategy I have just outlined...
http://onlinejournal.com/ of particular interest is their link to the page exposing the corporate funding connections of the Gate Keepers of the Establishment left, something anyone who wants this impeachment to proceed must be very wary of...
http://www.questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html My suggestion here is that this line of action is much more powerful and will be much more fruitful and productive over the long run than simply carrying signs and marching. Think about it... There is something here that is painfully obvious and it is only a matter of recognizing this fact, and then deciding what you are going to do about it. Will you take action, or will you join the powerful forces that are currently working to obstruct justice in the United States of America? Follow the link at the bottom of the page for my own personal page on Impeaching George W. Bush, which relies heavily on this tactic of 'rolling in the muck' rather than simply taking the high moral ground like the articles written by such people as Ramsey Clark, which stand very little chance of being successful, because we are talking not just morality or legal justification here, but rather politics. Sometimes you have to get dirty in the world of politics, and thus you must fight fire with fire, as it were...
Sometimes there are islands in the Mainstream media that can just leave a person astonished, and the following piece is just one such example...
How Bush Hit the 'Trifecta' on 9/11--and the Public Lost Big-Time
http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/trifecta_jun02.shtml It is sickening to contemplate an administration intentionally looking the other way while terrorists scheme so that whatever havoc they wreak can provide cover for the president to raid Social Security.
by Brad Carlton
See letters sent us in response to this OP-ED
Bush, in the weeks before September 11, pledged to honor the sanctity of the Social Security lockbox except in the event of recession, war, or a national emergency. But after "everything changed" on 9/11, he reportedly gloated to his budget director, Mitch Daniels, "Lucky me--I hit the trifecta!" At the time, this comment (a variation of which is being recycled for laughs at current GOP fundraisers) seemed merely offensive. But in light of revelations that Bush's August 6 briefing memo was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S.," Bush's "luck" and weird prescience are worth more than passing scrutiny.
Whenever someone is suspected of a crime, investigators look for a motive in addition to actual proof of guilt to determine, a posteriori, whether there was malice aforethought. In cases of criminal negligence, motive must also be deduced, a priori, to answer the question: were preventive failures due to craftiness or mere cluelessness?
The serial apologists of the Bush Is Not Stupid crowd are rather incongruously opting for the latter, this in the wake of the scandal about pre-9/11 failures to issue precisely the kinds of public warnings and security directives that accompanied the also "non-specific" Y2K threats. For now, it is difficult to say who knew what when because the administration is not exactly being forthcoming, preferring instead to use the scandal as an excuse to broaden the FBI's snoop powers. However: there was a potential motive for the administration to sit on perceived terrorist threats.
Think back to the days before 9/11. The topic on everyone's lips (Condit aside) was: what will happen when budget realities force Bush to raid Social Security? He had explicitly promised during his campaign to establish a contingency fund for severe emergencies that would keep Social Security untouched. But the economy was tanking and the costs of the tax cut made the raid inevitable. Even Daniels acknowledged that the government would be forced to tap Social Security to the tune of $14 billion to fund pending legislation. Strangely, Bush kept insisting, "We can work together to avoid dipping into Social Security." But, beginning August 24, he gave himself an escape clause: "I've said that the only reason we should use Social Security funds is in case of an economic recession or war." (Three days earlier he had said that there should be "special consideration" in the budget for these contingencies. Otherwise, this was completely new rhetoric.)
September 4: businessman and commentator Ben Cohen ran a mock "help wanted" ad reading, "Serious enemy needed to justify Pentagon budget increase. Defense contractors desperate." Same day: a CBS poll found that 66 percent of Americans did not think a recession (extant, but not yet confirmed) was reason enough to tap Social Security. September 6: Bush invented another exception. "The only time to use Social Security money is in times of war, times of recession, or times of severe emergency." September 11: he had all three. Lucky Bush.
These extraordinary coincidences have gone unremarked in the media, who have entirely missed that the terms of the "trifecta"--note that the word connotes something you bet on--was never mentioned until two-and-a-half weeks after Bush's August 6 briefing and days before 9/11. (He has since claimed the 'trifecta' was a campaign promise. This is a lie.) It is sickening to contemplate an administration intentionally looking the other way while terrorists scheme so that whatever havoc they wreak can provide cover for the president to raid Social Security. But we journalists are paid to have strong stomachs.
the Campaign to Impeach George W. Bush
http://www.awitness.org/journal/impeach_george_bush.html