I Cogitate

Traumatized U.S. still vulnerable
BUSH ADMINISTRATION SQUANDERED NATION'S RESOURCES AND INTERNATIONAL GOOD WILL THROUGH INVASION OF IRAQ
San Jose Mercury News Editorial
September 11, 2006

Today is the fifth anniversary of an awful morning that changed a nation.

The reminders are everywhere. Disturbing memories and flashbacks are irrepressible.

Americans were traumatized then by the events of Sept. 11; they remain anxious now, with cause, about their safety in a dangerous world.

Al-Qaida has not struck within our borders since that day, though not for want of effort or desire. Credit vigilance by national security agencies and cooperation from their counterparts abroad. Also credit luck.

But the arrest last month in England of two dozen men planning to blow up airliners over the Atlantic is further evidence that plots to commit spectacular acts of terror continue.

Contrary to what President Bush has claimed in the past week, America is less safe and far more vulnerable to attacks than it should be. His administration has made it so.

Within months of the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, the Bush administration shifted its focus from Afghanistan to Iraq -- a decision that has cost the nation dearly. It was based on bad intelligence, sheer arrogance and a claim that stemmed from either idealism or ignorance: the premise that overthrowing Saddam would tip the pivotal domino that would lead to democracy throughout the Mideast.

Bush sold the plan to invade Iraq to the people with hyperbole and lies.

Only a pre-eminently powerful nation could conceive of conducting two large-scale wars while scaling up defenses at home to ward off an unseen, unconventional enemy. The Bush administration, by squandering its resources, dividing its attention and overextending its military, has faltered in each of the endeavors.

Many of the top leaders of Al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden notwithstanding, have been killed or captured -- a significant achievement. But a decentralized Al-Qaida is potentially more dangerous, and anti-American fervor spurred by the invasion of Iraq has been a boon for recruiting Al-Qaida spinoffs. In Afghanistan, the effort at reconstruction has been sparse and under-funded. The Taliban is resurgent.

Now America is mired in Iraq for fear that if we left, civil war and chaos would create conditions for another Afghanistan. There is no credible plan for getting out.

There was never the link between Saddam and Al-Qaida that the administration asserted, but Bush's early claim that Iraq would be the front line of the war on terror became disastrously self-fulfilling. Iraq has become a magnet for Islamic terrorists in training.

Complacency endangers security at home. Thomas Kean, Republican co-chair of the Sept. 11 commission, continues to criticize the Bush administration for failing to carry out key recommendations. He is particularly alarmed at the potential for terrorists to secure a nuclear weapon.

Five years ago, the outpouring of sympathy for America throughout the world was heartwarming. ``Nous sommes tous Americains,'' commiserated the headline in Paris' Le Monde. But unity evaporated with the invasion of Iraq. America's power of persuasion and moral authority went with it.

Five years after the calamity of Sept. 11, American deaths in Iraq near 3,000, the same number who perished that day. And Islamic terrorists are no less threatening. Mistakes by America's own leaders have played into their hands.

Sept. 11, 2006

This hole in the ground
Keith Olbermann

Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space.   And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and -- as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul -- two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

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