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Read other letters about this article
My first thought was conspiracy: the Bush Administration was not happy about that peace march, after all.
But my second thought was that the Bush Administration is made up of the same people who brought us the mess in Iraq and the botched disaster management in the Gulf States. It's Crony, Inc. -- these days they can't seem to organize a Supreme Court nomination!
My guess, from this article, is that it was a botched terrorist attack, and as with other early warnings received and ignored by this administration, this one will go under the rug, too. Reports warned of 9/11; they did nothing. We knew that Katrina was coming; the Administration seems to have been the last folks to notice it on CNN.
Karl Rove and Company are very, very good at things like "Swift Boat Veterans" -- they are very good at fooling some of the people some of the time. Dealing with terrorism, though, is not about managing perception and information; it requires discipline and the proper use of information. (For instance, it involves making good use of CIA operatives instead of busting them to reporters in an act of petty vengeance.)
It is time for right minded people to demand better leadership than this: we need more than speeches about "staying the course." We need a president willing to read and heed memos, willing to leave vacation for a hurricane, willing to admit that a threat is a threat, even if it isn't going to help his popularity.
And more than anything, we need to quit thinking in terms of "us" and "them" when we look at each other across the aisle. Republican or Democrat, Independent or Green, we're all going to be in a heap of trouble if we don't quit fussing with each other and start paying attention to the world.
