The Promotion
of Failure in Bush Administration
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
Wednesday 12
September 2007
Transcript from
Crooks and Liars.
To this day,
millions of Americans believe we invaded Iraq because of 9/11.
33 percent still
believe there was some interconnection between Saddam Hussein and the
nightmares here and in Washington and in Pennsylvania.
Iraq, of course,
had nothing to do with 9/11. Then. Six years later, that has changed.
Iraq has
distracted us from punishing those responsible for 9/11.
If another 9/11
comes, our focus on Iraq will surely have been central to that nightmare.
How did we get
here? What consequences have been paid by those who brought us here?
In our number one
story tonight, no one person is to blame. And only some of those who are,
recognize it.
As we reported
yesterday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell tells G-Q magazine he is
"sorry" he gave the world wrong information when he told the U-N of the
threat Iraq supposedly posed.
He was not fired
for doing so.
He paid no price
we know of, other than the admitted "blot" on his record, and whatever toll
his conscience exacted.
Unrepentant,
however, is former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, also talking to G-Q;
Saying he does not
lose sleep over the war… declining to apologize for it… despite pushing for
it… despite using 9/11 - the day after 9/11 - for his own benefit, to pursue
his goal of bombing Iraq.
Rumsfeld, not
fired for his performance, but for politics… now in private life… reportedly
trying to see how much he must tell, to make for a profitable tell-all.
Rumsfeld was served, and the nation ill-served, by a flock of Pentagon
hawks, bent on war, seeing 9/11 not as an obligation to answer,. but an
opportunity to exploit.
Deputy Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz who also tied Iraq to 9/11, who ridiculed warnings we needed
more troops to invade Iraq - not fired - named head of the World Bank, until
resigning in disgrace.
Defense Policy
Board Chairman Richard Perle - not fired - forced to retire not for pushing
the war, but for allegedly profiting off it.
Undersecretary
Doug Feith, who cherry-picked anti-Iraq intel - not fired - despite a
Pentagon report later refuting Feith's claim that Iraq and al Qaeda were in
league.
And as you go
higher in the administration, your reward for being wrong on the war grows
proportionately.
Deputy National
Security Advisor Stephen Hadley - responsible for the 16-word lie about
Iraqi pursuit of yellowcake from Niger - not fired - promoted to National
Security Advisor.
His boss,
Condoleezza Rice, who threatened us with mushroom clouds - not fired -
promoted to America's chief diplomat: Secretary of State.
CIA Director
George Tenet, who called the case for war a "slam dunk" - not fired - given
the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
And within the
president's circle of advisors, marketing the war:
Andy Card and Dan
Bartlett - neither fired. Card retired, Bartlett promoted, then retired.
Karen Hughes - not
fired - promoted, stunningly, to the task of winning hearts and minds in the
Muslim world.
But let us go
higher still.
Vice President
Dick Cheney, creator of his cherry-picking intel apparatus, gave its
poisoned fruit to the media and then fed the lie to us on national
television - even after truth, and shame, rendered its mendaciousness,
manifest. He continues to do so to this day. Not fired.
Cheney's aide,
Lewis Libby, came closest of all to suffering genuine consequences.
Convicted of covering up Mr. Cheney's role in sliming critics of the war,
his consequences nullified at the last minute. When the president commuted
his prison sentence -ensuring that no one in his circle, least of all him -
paid any price for selling us the lie of Iraq; for failing to punish the
bombing of the U-S-S Cole; for neglecting the warnings pre-9/11;. for
turning back at Tora Bora; for ultimately ensuring that while the rest of
the world suffers painful, deadly consequences for his actions, only he does
not.
Only he and one
other. Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, his reach, and recruiting,
all benefiting from Mr. Bush's war, his group's strength today at a six-year
high. His Afghan allies, the Taliban, as NBC reported tonight, also
resurgent, planning the death of Americans, just 25 miles from Kabul.
All while bin
Laden himself operates freely, unmolested, with his own media operation,
thanks to a regional Pakistani truce endorsed by Mr. Bush in a region where
Mr. Bush will not go - cannot go even if he chose to.
Because he has
spent so much American blood and treasure, in the desert of a nation that
had neither means nor motive to threaten us, but that tempted Mr. Bush and
those around him who wished to transform the Middle East, so much so that he
forswore the vow he made, standing here, literally atop New York's dead…
that their killers would hear us soon.
Six years later,
we still hear them, because now, finally, Iraq and 9/11 really are connected
- by him.
