Does it ever occur to you that tearing down a reputation is easy, building it is hard, and that once Bush is out of office, that ruined reputation remains? But hey, that would require long term thinking, something not to be found here.

Keep up the good work.

One of the hallmarks of adulthood is admitting one's mistakes and then apologizing for them.

That is far more likely to maintain and rebuild a reputation than just denying, denying and denying, like the little boy standing by the broken cookie jar on the kitchen floor claiming that "it just fell off the shelf all by itself".

To deny the obvious is far more damaging to a reputation than simply admitting error and mending one's ways.

They don't bother to hide this stuff. It's right out there.

They don't need to, the anthrax mailer is still out there.

In doing that, the legal system has suffered damage that will take decades to repair.

Power never willingly cedes power.

Freedom must always be fought for, it is never willingly given.

Our elected representatives enjoy the fruits of the power they gain when elected.

Call me a pessimist, but I don't think the US will ever get back to where it was pre-9/11, which was already a pretty sorry place.

Absolutely, but the contribution from those to whom one admits mistakes, is forgiveness. Waterboarding has been discussed and outlawed, but the opportunity to open old wounds is too much to pass up for the BDS crowd. There will never be forgiveness, so why bother to admit anything? Reconciliation isn't possible.

You are speaking of the Bush administration, I am speaking of the nation.

Your statements make it clear that you are only worried about the reputation of the Bush administration and could give a fig about the reputation of America.

The reputation of America is what the Bush administration has drowned in an ocean of sewage. Some crimes are simply too horrendous to be forgiven.

I care about America, not Bush and his legion of despicable henchmen and fellow travelers.

There was no gov't involvement in 9/11 period.

And you know this how?

Through the open and exhaustive investigation of 9/11?

You know, the investigation the Bush administration publicly and vociferously called for.

Why didn't the Secret Service hustle Bush out of that schoolhouse in Florida immediately upon finding out that the nation was under an air attack of totally unknown nature and scope?

Recall that Bush zigzagged across America for the rest of the day, on a warning that later turned out to be completely fabricated.

9-11 truthers go grind your axes somewhere else.

If and when Glenn decides I'm not welcome here then I will stop posting.

Until then I'm going to post what I please when I please.

You grind your ax as you see fit and I shall grind mine.

Essentially you've decided that destroying the reputation of the US in order to fulfill some other goal is worthwhile.

Which is exactly what PNAC, the Bush administration and the neocons have done.

Why do you complain about the one and not the other?

It's perfectly obvious whose reputation you care about and it is not that of America.

I wonder how many of us on 9/10/2001 could have imagined the events of the last six years?

That Habeas Corpus would be destroyed?

That the US, post Vietnam, would once again occupy an Asian nation?

One of the problems I see with what is happening now is that the sheer scale of events and the number of outrages has multiplied beyond our ability to even remember and much less comprehend them.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I

Watch the video I link to above and ask yourself one single question.

Why did Ctheney have America jump into the quagmire?

In the answer to that question likes the sword to cut this Gordian knot.

I think tempus lays out a very plausible scenario of intentional government neglect, expecting to get an excuse for war at the cost of 100-200 innocent civilian lives.

100-200 civilian lives, off camera, does not a new Pearl Harbor make.

The PNAC documents expressly pine for a new Pearl Harbor.

The Bush administration got a new Pearl Harbor.

It was mainly Saudi citizens that were the hijackers, the Bush family has a long involvement with the Saudi hierarchy and indeed with the bin Laden family itself.

Osama bin Laden was a creature of the CIA..

Bush 41 was once director of the CIA..

I can buy some coincidences, I have had at least one very strange one in my own life.

The sheer number of coincidences arrayed around 9/11/2001 would make Occam reach escape velocity in his grave.

Once is happenstance, twice is circumstance and three times is enemy action.

Just answer the question..

Why did Ctheney have America jump into the quagmire?

And yes, I do equate Cheney and Cthulhu.

Oh, and Lincoln and FDR abrogated Habeas Corpus during declared war against defined adversaries, wars which at least in theory could come to a close.

The current war on terror, like the war on drugs, is undeclared and has no prospect of ever ending.

_It Can't Happen Here_

And it will not be an ironic warning but a blunt statement.