Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Olbermann lays the smackdown on Bush
This is better than an Olberpornn post....much better. Tonight, Keith responded to Bush's speech yesterday, attempting to link the media writ large with Al Qaeda. After last week's Rumsfeld Rumble, our illustrious seeker of truth pulled out the really big guns:
It is to our deep national shame--and ultimately it will be to the President's deep personal regret--that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies--or even question their effectiveness or execution--to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.
Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 -- without ever actually saying so--the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, "a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government."
Make no mistake here--the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the "media."
Because, you know, it did work rather well with Saddam and Iraq and 9/11. Just keep saying it over and over in the same sentence and a certain small percentage of the population will completely buy the notion that our media is somehow a terrorist organization. Lather, rinse, repeat. They will buy it, too - but that doesn't make it any more true than the aforementioned Saddam 9/11 nonexistent linkage.
And still more:
Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.
More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek--a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.
Which is a question all thinking people need to ask themselves: if our government and those that wish to do us harm are both after the same listed goals above, how different are they, truly? Both seek to intimidate the American populace. Both offer bombs and weaponry in lieu of diplomacy and peace. Both want what they want when they want it and they'll be damned to get anything less than that.
And, finally:
It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration's recent Nazi "kick" is an awful and cynical thing.
And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush:
"Have you no sense of decency, sir?"
Surely that last can only be a rhetorical question on Olbermann's part.
