Mike Luckovich
EXACTLY HOW HAS BUSH MADE AMERICA SAFER IN THE LAST FOUR YEARS?
By Mike Luckovich | Monday, January 2, 2006, 03:30 PM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
from americablog.blogspot.com by John in DC - 1/02/2006 11:55:00 AM
Its one thing to give up our civil liberties in exchange for the safety of our children. Its quite another to give them up and get little in return. Lets examine just how much safer George Bush has made America since September 11.
Osama is still free, and Bush never even talks about him anymore.
Our military is bogged down in a war that had nothing to do with Osama or Al Qaeda UNTIL WE INVADED AND MADE IRAQ AL QAEDAS NEW HOME.
Weve turned Iraq into the biggest terrorist training camp in the world:
Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of professionalized terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA directors think tank.
President Bush has frequently described the Iraq war as an integral part of U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. But the councils report suggests the conflict has also helped terrorists by creating a haven for them in the chaos of war.
Before the U.S. invasion, the CIA said Saddam Hussein had only circumstantial ties with several al Qaeda members. Osama bin Laden rejected the idea of forming an alliance with Hussein and viewed him as an enemy of the jihadist movement because the Iraqi leader rejected radical Islamic ideals and ran a secular government.
Far too many of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, recommendations to make us safer, have still not been implemented.
The Homeland Security budget is being spent on frivolous pork:
The District of Columbia used part of its grant to buy leather jackets and to send sanitation workers to self-improvement seminars. Newark bought air-conditioned garbage trucks. Columbus, Ohio, bought body armor for fire department dogs. These are not the priorities of a nation under threat.
The 9/11 Commission gives Bush a grade of D under the category: Maximum effort to prevent terrorists from acquiring WMD - i.e., he gets a D for his efforts to stop terrorists from getting nuclear bombs. Heres what the 9/11 Commissioners had to say about Bushs efforts to stop Osama from getting a nuclear bomb and dropping it on an American city:
Countering the greatest threat to Americas security is still not the top national security priority of the President and the Congress.
Most of the world now hates us.
Iraq has joined the list of conflicts including the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, and independence movements in Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao in the Philippines, and southern Thailand that have deepened solidarity among Muslims and helped spread radical Islamic ideology.
And let me leave you with the words of the head of Republican head of the 9/11 commission, just a few weeks ago:
Four years after 9/11 it is scandalous that police and firefighters in large cities still cannot communicate reliably in a major crisis, said Thomas Kean, the Republican who was chairman of the commission.
It is scandalous that airline passengers are still not screened against all names on a terrorist watch list.
It is scandalous that we still allocate scarce homeland security dollars on the basis of pork barrel spending, not risk.
While the terrorists are learning and adapting, our government is still moving at a crawl.
Tell me again how Bush has made us safer?