9/11 -- as a Hallmark card
Can I be the only American who is disgusted by the media circus's morbid and obscene obsession with September 11, 2001?
I know the Republican Party desperately needs to scare the shit out of every possible voter to keep control of Congress (and therefore the White House) this coming November, but this 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week orgy of falling building flashbacks and 'where-they-are now?'s that's plaguing every news outlet has turned my stomach.
I suspect I'm not the only person who feels this way.
Frankly, if you put it in perspective, it was never that big a deal anyway.
What? 2,992 people died in several incidents spread across the country? Big deal.
More than ten times that number of Americans died in 2001 by firearms. Over 45,000 Americans died that year from automobile accidents. A much, much larger and still uncounted number of Americans die every year from exposure to toxic chemicals and manufacturing bi-products contaminating our environment including 123,013 people from chronic respiratory diseases and another half million from cancer in 2001 alone! The very same year as 9-11! Ever hear those stories? Is ABC doing a five-hour mini-series without commercial interruption to examine those horrific disasters?
Don't count on it.
If the American people actually cared about the people who died on September 11, 2001, they'd hold someone accountable. (Blaming Monica Lewinsky doesn't count.) But as a people, we just don't care. After all, everyday we go about our business,quietly complicit in the murder of 2670 Americans. (Click the red number to see today's body count, 2670 dead American soldiers was the total on September 11, 2006).
And who is counting the damaged lives of our returning American soldier-heroes? Who's talking about the poor boys and girls who are already coming home with incredible, unbelievable physical and psychological damage? It's certainly not "News at 11"
Did you know that it's estimated that for every dead soldier there are seven to eight soldiers who have suffered catastrophic physical injury? Many of these people will never fully recover. And that does not include Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome sufferers, who are estimated to number at least one out of three returning soldiers.
Those soldiers are the boys and girls we sent off be killed in an illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq. For those folks who don't know Iraq is an independent and autonomous country that also is known as the historic forge of modern civilization.
These soldiers are someone's children -- perhaps yours, perhaps your neighbor's, or your friend's children. I have friends whose children are in Iraq.
And for what?
For Iraq's role in the destruction of the World Trade Center?
Naah.
Even the CIA has recently admitted Iraq had nothing to do with the destruction of the WTC.
Perhaps we invaded Iraq because they had "Weapons of Mass Destruction!"
We all remember Condi Rice's histrionic "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud!” (On CNN with Wolf Blitzer, televised September 7, 2003.)
Nope. Taint so.
It's now widely acknowledged that we'd wiped out all of Iraq's weapons facilities and even their "weapons programs" in the early 1990s.
It's true, the Prince of Darkness, Dick Cheney, our very own Hermann Goering, still claims Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but he's alone in the world. Every other knowledgeable and credible authority has acknowledged loudly and clearly that it ain't so. Then again Cheney claims the world is safer now because we've destroyed Iraq causing the deaths of more than 100,000 civilians. I guess he never heard of the Hatfields and the McCoys.
So there has to be another reason we're doing this. There has to be another reason we're squandering our youth and our national treasure: $313,580,559,350 as of September 11, 2006!
It's because we want Iraq's oil, right?
You've seen the bumperstickers: "How did our oil get under their land?!"
You heard the White House's original name for this new war: "Operation Iraqi Liberation" or O.I.L.? Right?
Naah.
There's plenty of oil. Besides the folks who own America don't want or need Iraq's oil. The more limited or unstable the oil market, the more money the oil companies, and the oil producing nations make. And after all, didn't we elect the "Oil President" so he could chat with his pals in the business and make sure we got fair and reasonable gas prices?
What a crack-pipe fantasy that turned out to be.
So why did we invade Iraq?
Why has the American media circus turned September 11th into a national holiday -- half Easter, half Halloween, all nightmare playing everywhere all the time?
It's for the fear, baby.
As long as we're scared witless we seem to be willing to give up anything and everything for the promise of safety, including the very qualities that made us Americans. And the Republican Party sure knows how to pretend to be a strong and powerful Daddy.
Father knows best!
So who's your Daddy?
Who's keeping us safe now?
A new attack on America inevitable, experts say.
feeling queasy?
I know the Republican Party desperately needs to scare the shit out of every possible voter to keep control of Congress (and therefore the White House) this coming November, but this 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week orgy of falling building flashbacks and 'where-they-are now?'s that's plaguing every news outlet has turned my stomach.
I suspect I'm not the only person who feels this way.
Frankly, if you put it in perspective, it was never that big a deal anyway.
What? 2,992 people died in several incidents spread across the country? Big deal.
More than ten times that number of Americans died in 2001 by firearms. Over 45,000 Americans died that year from automobile accidents. A much, much larger and still uncounted number of Americans die every year from exposure to toxic chemicals and manufacturing bi-products contaminating our environment including 123,013 people from chronic respiratory diseases and another half million from cancer in 2001 alone! The very same year as 9-11! Ever hear those stories? Is ABC doing a five-hour mini-series without commercial interruption to examine those horrific disasters?
Don't count on it.
If the American people actually cared about the people who died on September 11, 2001, they'd hold someone accountable. (Blaming Monica Lewinsky doesn't count.) But as a people, we just don't care. After all, everyday we go about our business,quietly complicit in the murder of 2670 Americans. (Click the red number to see today's body count, 2670 dead American soldiers was the total on September 11, 2006).
And who is counting the damaged lives of our returning American soldier-heroes? Who's talking about the poor boys and girls who are already coming home with incredible, unbelievable physical and psychological damage? It's certainly not "News at 11"
Did you know that it's estimated that for every dead soldier there are seven to eight soldiers who have suffered catastrophic physical injury? Many of these people will never fully recover. And that does not include Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome sufferers, who are estimated to number at least one out of three returning soldiers.
Those soldiers are the boys and girls we sent off be killed in an illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq. For those folks who don't know Iraq is an independent and autonomous country that also is known as the historic forge of modern civilization.
These soldiers are someone's children -- perhaps yours, perhaps your neighbor's, or your friend's children. I have friends whose children are in Iraq.
And for what?
For Iraq's role in the destruction of the World Trade Center?
Naah.
Even the CIA has recently admitted Iraq had nothing to do with the destruction of the WTC.
Perhaps we invaded Iraq because they had "Weapons of Mass Destruction!"
We all remember Condi Rice's histrionic "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud!” (On CNN with Wolf Blitzer, televised September 7, 2003.)
Nope. Taint so.
It's now widely acknowledged that we'd wiped out all of Iraq's weapons facilities and even their "weapons programs" in the early 1990s.
It's true, the Prince of Darkness, Dick Cheney, our very own Hermann Goering, still claims Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but he's alone in the world. Every other knowledgeable and credible authority has acknowledged loudly and clearly that it ain't so. Then again Cheney claims the world is safer now because we've destroyed Iraq causing the deaths of more than 100,000 civilians. I guess he never heard of the Hatfields and the McCoys.
So there has to be another reason we're doing this. There has to be another reason we're squandering our youth and our national treasure: $313,580,559,350 as of September 11, 2006!
It's because we want Iraq's oil, right?
You've seen the bumperstickers: "How did our oil get under their land?!"
You heard the White House's original name for this new war: "Operation Iraqi Liberation" or O.I.L.? Right?
Naah.
There's plenty of oil. Besides the folks who own America don't want or need Iraq's oil. The more limited or unstable the oil market, the more money the oil companies, and the oil producing nations make. And after all, didn't we elect the "Oil President" so he could chat with his pals in the business and make sure we got fair and reasonable gas prices?
What a crack-pipe fantasy that turned out to be.
So why did we invade Iraq?
Why has the American media circus turned September 11th into a national holiday -- half Easter, half Halloween, all nightmare playing everywhere all the time?
It's for the fear, baby.
As long as we're scared witless we seem to be willing to give up anything and everything for the promise of safety, including the very qualities that made us Americans. And the Republican Party sure knows how to pretend to be a strong and powerful Daddy.
Father knows best!
So who's your Daddy?
Who's keeping us safe now?
A new attack on America inevitable, experts say.
feeling queasy?
posted by Fred Dodsworth at 7:12 PM
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