mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: We will continue to fight for the truth.
“Isn’t it true that instead of fixing airline security, port security, mass transportation, local response, and securing loose nukes and biological components, we spent billions on starting a war with Iraq—a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11? And, instead of capturing Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, we captured Saddam Hussein in Iraq with no weapons of mass destruction? Isn’t it true that because of our invasion of Iraq terrorist recruitment for Al Qaeda has soared, making us even less safe than we were before the Iraq war? Remember that we were supposed to go to war in Iraq to eliminate a real threat. Isn’t it true that now because of our foreign policy in Iraq, we have only created a real threat to the world’s security and ours? Isn’t it true that instead of successfully prosecuting Al Qaeda terrorists and bringing them to justice, all we hear about is torturing ‘enemy combatants’ and detaining them indefinitely–a concept far removed from the American ideal of justice? Isn’t it true that instead of opening up government to restore trust and faith, we created the Patriot Act? And, isn’t it true that instead of pursuing alternative energy resources to decrease our dependency on foreign oil, we invaded oil-rich countries and passed no alternative energy legislation in the meantime?
“Why do we accept these choices? Why do we condone a government that uses over-classification to obfuscate such choices? …
“We–the American public–find ourselves adrift and overwhelmed. Pre-occupied with fear, we fail to unearth the truth or understand what choices we should or can make to effectively make our world safer. We are simply told that this is our ‘new norm.’ …
“Alarmingly, we accept all of this in the name of our ‘ongoing fight against the enemy.’ But, with a timeless, faceless, nameless and stateless enemy, when will our ‘fight’ ever end so we can return to our sensibilities and the truth? How can we ever define what success or victory might ever mean? …
“How can we trust a Congress that holds hearings on steroids in baseball and yet does not want to find out why our FAA received 52 warnings about hijackings in the summer of 2001? … How do we trust a Congress willing to work through a Sunday night on the Shiavo debate yet unwilling to hold public hearings on the ‘dead wrong’ intelligence that brought us to war in Iraq? …
“We will continue to fight for the truth. … And, respectfully, our hope is that in future years this award might be rendered obsolete. Simply because there will be no need to bestow an award or any special status onto a truth-seeker because truth-seekers will have become our new norm.” — Kristin Breitweiser, accepting one of the second-annual Ron Ridenhour Awards [read her whole speech]