connecting*the*dots

(originally uploaded by Caitlinite)

The Village, NYC.

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Keith Robinson dropping science and experiences on the crowd last week at the C37Words production, Poetry GSO Slam, in Greensboro, NC.

If you felt that as much as I did in person, I’ll leave it up to you to transcribe the lyrics in the comment field.

National Poetry Month is coming to a close in a few days, but Clement Mallory might have just put it to bed last night with a bang.

With a packed house in the lecture hall of the Greensboro Historical Museum, Clement effortlessly moved the crowd as the emcee of the competition, displaying a rare range of lyrics and emotion, delivered across numerous poems as the judges tallied their results.

But there’s something other than talent that separates Clement from his peers.

While he’s making moves as an up and coming performer, it’s his foundation as a teacher and his Brooklyn born and raised personality that makes his approach unique.

The first half of the show consisted of a teen competition and by any “standard” of a spoken word competition, the kids delivered more poetry than passion — mostly standing behind a podium and reciting their words.

But as a teacher, Clement’s concern was visibly focused on the kids growth as poets, performers and their confidence with their own voice, not their current ability to rock the stage. His realness, casualness and sense of humor seeped from his soul each time he addressed the crowd — whether killing time between acts, giving advice to the kids after the adults slammed or while making connections with his next opportunity through an ill shout out.

Before the show was even half-way through, he had the audience completely eating out of his hands.

In the end, the finals of the adult slam came down to two poets battling it out for the first place prize — Monica Daye and Keith Robinson (A.K.A. The Arsonist). If it were up to me, they both would’ve walked away with top honors.

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Keith Robinson (A.K.A. The Arsonist) ended up bringing home the $250 first prize, but it wasn’t because of this powerful drop. Let’s just say that this Marine veteran of the first Gulf War wasn’t feeling the actions of our current president.

Look for that winning slam on next week’s Lyricist Wednesday.

Another great night in GSO.

Earth Day, 2007 by Mr. Fish.

In five days, it’ll be the four-year anniversary of “Mission accomplished.”

Unbelievable.

btw, Steven Connell is amazing.

Artists: Mos Def - Immortal Technique - Eminem

=============

[Mos Def - talking]
Man, you hear this bullshit they be talkin’
Every day, man
It’s like these motherfuckers is just like professional liars
YouknowwhatI’msayin? It’s wild
Listen

[Hook - Mos Def]
Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects
It was you, nigga
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga

Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects
It was you, nigga
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]

[Verse 1 - Immortal Technique]
I pledge no allegiance, nigga fuck the president’s speeches
I’m baptized by America and covered in leeches
The dirty water that bleaches your soul and your facial features
Drownin’ you in propaganda that they spit through the speakers
And if you speak about the evil that the government does
The Patriot Act’ll track you to the type of your blood
They try to frame you, and say you was tryna sell drugs
And throw a federal indictment on niggaz to show you love
This shit is run by fake Christians, fake politicians
Look at they mansions, then look at the conditions you live in
All they talk about is terrorism on television
They tell you to listen, but they don’t really tell you they mission
They funded Al-Qaeda, and now they blame the Muslim religion
Even though Bin Laden, was a CIA tactician
They gave him billions of dollars, and they funded his purpose
Fahrenheit 9/11, that’s just scratchin’ the surface

[Hook - Mos Def]
Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects
It was you, nigga
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga

Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects
It was you, nigga
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]

[Verse 2 - Immortal Technique]
They say the rebels in Iraq still fight for Saddam
But that’s bullshit, I’ll show you why it’s totally wrong
Cuz if another country invaded the hood tonight
It’d be warfare through Harlem, and Washington Heights
I wouldn’t be fightin’ for Bush or White America’s dream
I’d be fightin’ for my people’s survival and self-esteem
I wouldn’t fight for racist churches from the south, my nigga
I’d be fightin’ to keep the occupation out, my nigga
You ever clock someone who talk shit, or look at you wrong?
Imagine if they shot at you, and was rapin’ your moms
And of course Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons
We sold him that shit, after Ronald Reagan’s election
Mercenary contractors fightin’ a new era
Corporate military bankin’ off the war on terror
They controllin’ the ghetto, with the failed attack
Tryna distract the fact that they engineerin’ the crack
So I’m strapped like Lee Malvo holdin’ a sniper rifle
These bullets’ll touch your kids, and I don’t mean like Michael
Your body be sent to the morgue, stripped down and recycled
I fire on house niggaz that support you and like you
Cuz innocent people get murdered in the struggle daily
And poor people never get shit and struggle daily
This ain’t no alien conspiracy theory, this shit is real
Written on the dollar underneath the Masonic seal

(I don’t rap for dead presidents
I’d rather see the president dead
It’s never been said but I set precedents)–[Eminem]

[Hook - Mos Def]
Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects
It was you, nigga
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga

Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects
It was you, nigga
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]

(Shady Records was 80 seconds away from the towers
Some cowards fucked with the wrong building, they meant to hit ours)– [Eminem]

It goes real deep.

Electric Six, Gay Bar.

R.I.P.

(originally uploaded by -Kerryn-)

Fun Fact: “Hell” is a pizza chain in New Zealand.

I had stopped shooting once I came across the funnel cake (luckily for my arteries, I didn’t have any cash), but then I turned to check out the parade and low and behold, there was an effigy of George W. Bush in a make-shift jail cell float, pulled by a United For Peace truck with a sign that read, “Impeach Bush for his Crimes Against Humanity.”

That received the loudest cheer of the day — even more than the HS girls doing the tootsie roll.

Jill Williams was nice enough to send me a number of photographs from yesterday’s anti-surge protest in downtown Greensboro.

If I could’ve made the protest (I was/am as sick as a dog), my sign would’ve been, well, a little different. It probably would’ve read something like this:

20,000 more soldiers for what?
A death-wish assault on Sadr City?
Training a United Iraqi Army?
Guarding more Halliburton convoys?
Or to buff W’s huge ego and faded legacy?

I need to work on my brevity… and incorporating links into signs, somehow.

UPDATE: Joe Killian has a great behind-the-scenes take on the protest, including the moronic signs of the day.

The Black Iris
The Charade

The leader never carries out the killing himself but will always get his hands dirty. So how will the execution of Saddam be seen 200 years from now?

A quarter of a million American troops invade Iraq. Hunt down its leader and set up a tribunal with all the trappings of ‘fairness’ and he is in the end found guilty for being involved in the killing of 148 Shias over two decades ago during a time when America was openly heavily funding Saddam and silent over all these killings.

Americans hand over Saddam to Iraqis to carry out the hanging. On Eid Al-Adha no less; a good PR move to make sure every Arab is at home watching on TV.

In the last 3 years the presence of a quarter million of American forces on Iraqi soil have been responsible for killing an estimated quarter of a million Iraqis.

American forces are still occupying Iraq.

What will a student of history ask himself 200 years from now? Or will history still be written by the victors at that time?

Will they ask about why so many Arabs remained silent? Will they ask whether it made sense that one leader be executed for killing 148 people while another be praised for killing a quarter of a million of those same people? Will they see ancient footage of Colin Powell at the UN displaying doctored satellite photos of now unfound WMDs? Will they understand that 200 years ago, suggesting that a leader from a ’superior’ nation be held to the same standard of accountability as everyone else in the world was unheard of? That suggesting an American is equal to an Arab is equal to a Brit is equal to an African is preposterous? Will they understand that someone like me who had no love for Saddam thought the whole situation to be preposterous?

Bush was right today: ‘a dark and painful era is over in Iraq’, but a new one, that he as a leader is directly responsible for, has already begun.

And the charade goes on and on and on… more Iraqis are being slaughtered…

So to anyone celebrating the execution of Saddam I’m forced to ask: what the fuck are you cheering for?

If you’re cheering the execution of Saddam Hussein, you damn well better be doing everything you can to voice your opinion that this war is illegal and that this administration needs to be held accountable.

Otherwise, you’re nothing but a hypocrite.

(originally uploaded by BURИBLUE)

In Following His Own Script, Webb May Test Senate’s Limits
By Michael D. Shear

[…]

“How’s your boy?” Bush asked, referring to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

“That’s not what I asked you,” Bush said. “How’s your boy?”

“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

[…]

If the exchange with Bush two weeks ago is any indication, Webb won’t be a wallflower, especially when it comes to the war in Iraq. And he won’t stick to a script drafted by top Democrats.

“I’m not particularly interested in having a picture of me and George W. Bush on my wall,” Webb said in an interview yesterday in which he confirmed the exchange between him and Bush. “No offense to the institution of the presidency, and I’m certainly looking forward to working with him and his administration. [But] leaders do some symbolic things to try to convey who they are and what the message is.”

[…]

Bush is an asshole; point conveyed.

Great catch, Kevin.

Add your vote to the mix, people!

(originally uploaded by twotone streetart)

“If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road.”
- George W. Bush, October 3, 2000

(originally uploaded by Hawk Eyes)

Don’t you just love it how he and Bush waited until the shift in power was obvious? As if Donald Rumsfeld didn’t do a terrible job over the years — particularly with the accountability of the Abu Ghraib scandal — and that only a moderate loss of power in Congress would’ve allowed him to stay on?

Later, asshole.

Noam Chomsky once explained the driving force behind the war machine as one that won’t begin to slow down until corporate America realizes that the majority of its customers are against a particular conflict. For when advertisers adjust to the collective vibe of the people (in order to sell product), the message is brought home to politicians in ways they must take seriously in a state-capitalism system.

I can’t remember where I read that — probably in Understanding Power — but it reminded me of his synopsis of the Vietnam Syndrome:

[…]

The bewildered herd never gets properly tamed, so this is a constant battle. In the 1930s they arose again and were put down. In the 1960s there was another wave of dissidence. There was a name for that. It was called by the specialized class “the crisis of democracy.” Democracy was regarded as entering into a crisis in the 1960s. The crisis was that large segments of the population were becoming organized and active and trying to participate in the political arena.

Here we come back to these two conceptions of democracy. By the dictionary definition, that’s an advance in democracy. By the prevailing conception that’s a problem, a crisis that has to be overcome. The population has to be driven back to the apathy, obedience and passivity that is their proper state. We therefore have to do something to overcome the crisis. Efforts were made to achieve that. It hasn’t worked. The crisis of democracy is still alive and well, fortunately, but not very effective in changing policy. But it is effective in changing opinion, contrary to what a lot of people believe.

Great efforts were made after the 1960s to try to reverse and overcome this malady. It was called the “Vietnam Syndrome.” The Vietnam Syndrome, a term that began to come up around 1970, has actually been defined on occasion. The Reaganite intellectual Norman Podhoretz defined it as “the sickly inhibitions against the use of military force.” There were these sickly inhibitions against violence on the part of a large part of the public. People just didn’t understand why we should go around torturing people and killing people and carpet bombing them. It’s very dangerous for a population to be overcome by these sickly inhibitions, as Goebbels understood, because then there’s a limit on foreign adventures.

It’s necessary, as the Washington Post put it the other day, rather proudly, to “instill in people respect for the martial virtues.” That’s important. If you want to have a violent society that uses force around the world to achieve the ends of its own domestic elite, it’s necessary to have a proper appreciation of the martial virtues and none of these sickly inhibitions about using violence. So that’s the Vietnam Syndrome. It’s necessary to overcome that one.

[…]

Enter into the conversation: The Dixie Chicks.

These three woman made plain what they felt was true in the run up to war in Iraq and now — three and a half years into this unjust war — their message is shared by a majority of Americans (65% want out of Iraq and more than 60% disapprove President Bush’s job).

So if you buy into the analysis that it’s necessary for a state-capitalism system to overcome such “sickly inhibitions about using violence” in order to flex all foreign policy options, then the actions of one of the last defenses in the current corporate line — the über-conglomerate NBC Universal — shouldn’t surprise you.

Even though CBS moved forward with an ad buy, NBC has steeled up and decided to not run ads for the Dixie Chicks documentary entitled, Shut Up and Sing. Here’s part of their rationale (with my emphasis):

[…]

While the Weinstein Co. had shown NBC its ads, it had not inquired about buying commercial time, he said. Generally, when an ad is rejected, prospective advertisers return and work with the network on ways to make it acceptable — as was done with the Michael Moore film “Fahrenheit 9/11,� he said.

But NBC heard nothing more from makers of “Shut Up & Sing� until portions of what NBC executives thought were confidential business correspondence showed up in a news release, he said.

“There was no attempt to come back and have a conversation,� Wurtzel said. “There are times when some advertisers get more publicity for having their ad rejected.�

[…]

NBC’s positioning for making the trailer more acceptable is akin to the central theme of a documentary called Shut Up & Sing. Are they really surprised that they walked away and went to the press?

10 years ago, such a tactical play by NBC could’ve crippled an independent film’s message due to lack of exposure, but not now, not in the information age. NBC can stick to their “standards” and play all the games they want, because as Chomsky so eloquently analyzed, the people are on it.

Decide for yourself if the trailer is unacceptable.

UPDATE: Lawrence Lessig talks about a previous media denial encounter with NBC that fell into the same “not very flattering to the president� category.

(via Baron over at TwangNation)

(Artist: HelloBard, Oslo, Norway)

If anyone deserves a coloring book that illustrates their colorful quotes, it’s Pat Robertson.

And if 56 artist’s perspectives of Pat Robertson’s most discusting utterances isn’t enough for you, be sure to pick up David Kuo’s Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction — a well reviewed read about the Bush administration’s attempt to use Christianity for purely political ends.

Kuo’s two-part 60 Minutes interview can be found here and here.

(coloring book via Neatorama)

(originally uploaded by ConjugalVisitor)

McClatchy Washington Bureau
Rumsfeld, Ashcroft received warning of al Qaida attack before 9/11
By Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The State Department’s disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don’t remember the warning.

One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a “10 on a scale of 1 to 10″ that “connected the dots” in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.

Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report. According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet testified to commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste and to Philip Zelikow, the panel’s executive director and the principal author of its report, who’s now Rice’s top adviser.

[…]

And people called Clinton’s interview with Chris Wallace “crazed?” Sounds much more like it was a factual explosion.

(originally uploaded by TJOY)

If so, man, does that guy have a set of balls on him; he plays God and then quotes a reference to God’s will to back his devilish actions?

Forget a comma — that’s !^&*$%.

(originally uploaded by anotherview)

Times Herald-Record
We came, we saw, we made enemies
By Nicole Belle

[…]

Short version: Iraq wasn’t a terrorist threat when we attacked it; it is now because we did attack and botched the job so badly that terrorists are dying to go there and learn how to kill Americans anywhere. So the world is safe from Saddam (who was never a threat) but more vulnerable to terrorism, which (back to the beginning) was on the ropes in the early days in Afghanistan.

* * *

This NIC report, revealed this week in stories in The New York Times and Washington Post, is devastating to the Bush administration argument for continuing the fight in Iraq. John Negroponte, Bush’s national intelligence director and the boss of all 16 intelligence agencies, cautions not to form conclusions based solely on these news reports. There’s more to the assessment, he says, and many more judgments than the one linking the war to more terrorism. He says to do that would be a distortion.

Fine. Then release the 30-page National Intelligence Estimate for all Americans to read. Have congressional committees black out the really classified data, if necessary. But let us know what our intelligence agencies say firsthand, not what Bush decides to tell us they said. We’ve been here before, and there are now 2,600-plus reasons to doubt what the president says.

[…]

Someone, anyone, come up with a scenario for me where invading Iraq wouldn’t have created a similar state of affairs.

Take your time…

Now, it probably would’ve helped if we had taken this operation seriously and created a reconstruction plan before trucking into Iraq, but as Donald Rumsfeld so eloquently stated in the pre-war planning stages, “the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war.”

The result of such rhetoric, you ask?

Rumsfeld intimidated his planners out of creating any plans for reconstruction following the capture of Saddam — you know, these last 3 years come December.

Now we have jihadists and near enemy soldiers training and killing in the sandbox of our creation, using Iraqi citizens as pawns, targets and propaganda to rile up even more anti-American fury across the middle-east and the world.

But I digress…

Here are my three top reasons for why Iraq has become a hotbed of terrorist activity:

1. The Project For The New American Century
   If PNAC is the neoconservative playbook, this administration is an all-pro team for its execution. If I stumbled across this direct and coded language for the invasion of Iraq (and anywhere else for that matter) just ten days into the Iraq invasion, I’m betting that this document has been used by a few terrorists to up their enrollment prior to 9/11. And as soon as the invasion of Iraq was a sure bet, I’m guessing it became a major recruitment tool. The only reason I can come up with as to why (potential) leaders of this nation would publicize a document such as PNAC, is that they wanted the reality we now find ourselves knee-deep within and they needed their own recruitment stake-in-the-ground.
2. Poverty, Chaos And Fear: A Perfect Storm For Revenge
   If a child is killed in Iraq nowadays, we’re ultimately held responsible by his/her family. If a child’s father is killed, that child will most likely grow up with a propensity towards revenge. If a child’s uncle’s wedding is wiped out with a car bomb… well, you get the picture.
3. Let’s Talk About Sects, Baby
   Compare how much you know about, say, the Shia/Sunni relationship today with what you knew in 2003. You probably didn’t even know the names of any Islamic sects back then, right? And now I hope you realize that there is more internal conflict within Islam itself than with the West in general. Now realize that our government absolutely understood the issues between these sects — from their religous differences to their standing within the entire middle-east region to how they would respond to the overthrow of Saddam. I’m not cynical; if you believe we went in there without a clue, you’re only kidding yourself.

What are yours?

(originally uploaded by Eleventh Earl of Mar)

Colin Powell (.pdf):

[…] “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism” […]

White House reporter last Friday:

Mr. President, former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, says “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.”

If the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State feels this way, don’t you feel that Americans and the rest of the world are beginning to wonder whether you’re following a flawed strategy?

President Bush:

“If there’s any comparrison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it’s flawed, flawed logic. It’s just, it’s just, I simply can’t accept that. It’s unnaceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparrison between the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children and to understand, to ah, to achieve an objective.” […]

Don’t you love how President Bush hides behind the compassion and decency of us, the American people, in order to segue into a defense of his administration? I love how he says that it’s unnaceptable to think that we are fighting a flawed and immoral fight against terrorism, as if we have any say in the matter whatsoever.

As for his administration’s war, here are the facts:

• > 50,000 dead Iraqi citizens
• Abu Ghraib
• Secret torture facilities
• Guantanamo Bay

Man, those are some seriously evil, rhetorical skills President Bush is flexin’ about. People really need to stop calling this man an idiot. He’s not. He’s an evil genius. Too bad for him and his neo-con buddies we’re all starting to call him on this type of shit.

Keith Olbermann wasn’t enunciating as clearly in October of 2002 — when President Bush urged us, the American people, to call our congressmen to back the invasion of Iraq — as he has these past few weeks. Thankfully, he seems to have found his groove:

This president has no shame, whatsoever.

(photo by jewschool)

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.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast — of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds — none of us could have predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country’s wound is still open.

Five years later this country’s mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial — barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field — Mr. Lincoln said, “we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. “We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground.” So we won’t.

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they’re doing instead of doing any job at all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party — tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election — ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications — forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President — and those around him — did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, “bi-partisanship” meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, “validate the strategy of the terrorists.”

They promised protection, and then showed that to them “protection” meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ’something to do’ with 9/11 is “lying by implication.”

The impolite phrase is “impeachable offense.”

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced — possibly financed by — the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you — or those around you — ever “spin” 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded — are still succeeding — as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney’s continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

And long ago, a series called “The Twilight Zone” broadcast a riveting episode entitled “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street.”

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An “alien” is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, “they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves.”

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: “The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

“For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn.”

When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have “forgotten the lessons of 9/11″… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

Keep bringing the truth Keith, hard and fast — no matter what you’re called.

While you’re finding enunciating your voice, do know that you’re speaking for many of us in the process; people that don’t believe that a hundred thousand dead Iraqi’s will ever bring back our dead and our shallow innocence lost of five-years past and will only give birth to the repeat cycle of violence.

You’re speaking for a people who want justice, first and foremost, with bin Laden put away in a cell or a pine box, his choice.

Most importantly, the people you speak for don’t buy into the much marketed fear of the future, because we refuse to climb aboard a self-fulfilling prophesy to live in such a state.

The people you speak for are Americans, and we are not afraid.

Get us to 2008, Keith. We’ll take care of the rest.