No, Bush Was NOT a Hero On 9/11--or Afterward

Bob Cesca has ripped into the preposterous mythology surrounding George W. Bush's handling of the 9/11 attacks, especially the actions he took in the months and years after it. Here is a spectacularly good summary:

What I recall is a litany of awful, illegal and destructive responses to September 11 on behalf of the president. I'm thinking specifically about White House-sanctioned torture. I'm thinking about extraordinary rendition. I'm thinking about Abu Ghraib and illegal invasions and interminable occupations. I'm thinking about how a CIA agent tasked with tracking loose nukes was outed as part of effort to lie about the justifications for that invasion and occupation. I'm thinking about 35,000 American military casualties. I'm thinking about post traumatic stress disorder. I'm thinking about a system that allowed many September 11 heroes to die of respiratory-related illnesses. I'm thinking about illegal and unconstitutional searches and seizures. I'm thinking about the USA PATRIOT Act, the Military Commission Act and the "terrorist surveillance program." I'm thinking about known-knowns, "bring 'em on" and "watch what you say" warnings. I'm thinking about orange alerts, duct tape, bottled-liquids bans, cable news animations of exploding airplanes and national waves of hysteria tweaked by well-orchestrated fear-mongering campaigns. I'm thinking about the tens of thousands of terrorist attacks -- some of them on American soil, most of them against American interests and all having occurred despite the lie that the Bush administration has "kept us safe." To that point, I'm thinking about decades of future blowback which historians and foreign policy experts might attribute directly to President Bush's reaction to September 11

Excellent. I would also add that Bush must be held responsible for ignoring warnings from the outgoing Clinton Administration about the danger of Al Qaeda, for ignoring the findings of the Rudman-Hart Commission which found that America was in imminent danger of an attack, and for ignoring the Presidential Daily Briefing  of 6 August 2001 that warned him of an impending attack. (Bush went on vacation for five weeks after telling the person who presented the report, "OK, you've covered your ass.") Bush's actions add up to criminal negligence, and he and his toadying acolytes cannot be allowed to rewrite the history of his shameful, incompetent conduct.

Bush: The Ultimate Gift to Bin Laden.