WTF Is It Now?!?

Rick Salutin: 'Bush: Dumb by choice': Bush security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the warnings weren't "precise" enough to, as people said all week, connect the dots. Well, isn't that why it's called intelligence? If Osama bin Laden sent a detailed plan, you wouldn't really need intelligence to deal with it, would you? In a similar vein, The New York Times learned from a "Bush associate" that the President said "no one knew" Mr. bin Laden would make "the leap" from traditional hijacks to suicide attacks on buildings.

Let me pause a moment at the notion of George W. Bush actually thinking. I have seen no evidence of it. I'm not saying he doesn't, but how would you know if he had the ability? Well, he might answer a question with an argument, rather than a homily or a bromide.

But has anyone seen him work through a thought or have an idea? Since Sept. 11, he has presented prepackaged phrases, and worked on his walk (decisive, quasi-military). Just asking. It may well make no difference, given the kind of engineered politics we have.




Mark Morford kicks ass!: This is the pattern. This is the message. Like some horrible clockwork they come, fresh terrorist attack warnings from the Bush administration or possibly a stern-faced government security agency, paced out every month or so just so you don't get too complacent, too wary, too, you know, suspicious.

Just so you don't possibly become a little too skeptical and maybe start looking around and noticing you seem to have misplaced a great many of your civil liberties and maybe your healthy cautious patriotism not to mention all those nail clippers at the airport and hey, aren't we still bombing the hell out of Afghanistan every day, nonstop, costing millions per diem? Is there anything even left over there?

And by the way, when's that huge government investment in alternative energy and fuels coming to get us away from our hate-inducing oil gluttony in the first place? Whoops, sorry. Bad question. Shhh.

No no no we don't need any special commission to look into just how poorly the pre-9/11 terrorist information was mishandled, grouses Bush and the GOP, shuffling their feet and looking all indignant while quietly checking their ExxonMobil and Lockheed Martin stock. And by the way, how's our new oil pipeline through Kandahar coming along? Whoops - did I say that out loud?