5/22/2002
It's a small step, but a critical one. The story that's broken in the press lately, the vague (and sometimes not so vague) premonitions of a hijacking plot by al Qaeda that are now known to have been available to Bush and his merry men, is of little account by itself. It's hard to hold anybody accountable for failing to forestall a secret attack, even if you can show that he didn't make half as much effort as he should have. The accusation is really fairly flimsy in the end.
But in this case the perception matters more than the substance. The press doesn't think this is small potatoes, and neither does the public--and neither does George W. For a week now his photo has been on the front page time and again, scowling, scolding, denying. Defensive. We all know that face; the face of a politician scrambling to shoo us away from the part of the story we haven't found yet. The public senses something is amiss, and the press scents blood.
Here's why "Resident Bush" is so unhappy: not because he's at any serious risk from the widely published allegations, but because any further investigation of 9/11 will turn up other allegations that are infinitely more damning. And that's what the people on the street can sense; he's unnaturally sensitive about this seemingly vague and minor rebuke in the media.
If you haven't seen my massive earlier writeup of the more haunting irregularities in the official government story of 9/11, check it out. And even if you did read that, you should get up to speed at the newest and bestest repository of such observations and theories at questionsquestions.net which I didn't link to back in March because it didn't exist yet. The information keeps coming out of the woodwork, ever faster; questionsquestions is a mountain.
Bush has reason to be uneasy; his loyal press corps has been his greatest asset ever since the attack, and it could be disastrous for him if the media gets bored with deifying him and turns to mining him for scandal value instead. They've had a nice long taste of front-page material already, based on these leaks; if they were to dive full-force into the questions about 9/11, they could have a ratings bonanza to leave O.J. in the dust. It must be crossing some of their minds. No less an eminence than Dan Rather recently admitted to the BBC that the American press, himself included, had been swept up in patriot fever since September and had consciously neglected to ask hard questions of the administration.
What Rather and all his colleagues need to know, if they don't already, is that the public is good and ready to hear it. As followers of independent media have known for over a month, an Atlanta newspaper ran an online poll asking whether something was being covered up about 9/11. When more than half the respondents thought something was up, the poll was promptly and unceremoniously yanked. So the people are asking questions, quietly--and the media has some idea what those questions are, and is to some extent choosing not to ask them. But the momentum is turning, and now the press has found that the warrior-god-king Bush can be turned back into the original unreliable-dimwit Bush with a minimum of direct needling.
He and his entourage are trying to extend the once irresistible mantra of unity for the sake of safety during the big war, but it's ringing pretty flat now. The administration folks start with the menacing implication that conducting any investigation would somehow endanger the pansy "investigation" now being mimed without transparency--or, even, threaten the ongoing Big Vague Patriotic War that they'd rather we be thinking about. How exactly the war would be jeopardized is being left to our imaginations; you might hope that sending a few temps to pull files for investigators would represent any significant reduction in the workforce of our intelligence agencies, though it might explain their lapses. More vaguely, the phrase "give aid and comfort to the enemy" continues to be mouthed all over D.C. The hypocrisy of it is insulting in a dozen ways.
Failing all that, they wag their fingers at the Democrats of Congress, admonishing them not to play this proto-scandal for political advantage; but only a couple of years have passed since Congress' Republicans dragged us all through an outright impeachment supported entirely by a goddamned blow job. We're talking about treason, potentially, and you want that not to be too political? But for your opponent, telling a lie about sex is grounds for impeachment? "Politics" here is code for "opinions counter to ours, spoken out loud." But this is no partisan crusade. I'm none too fond of the Democrats myself and I sure as hell want to see an investigation. I'm not alone, and a lot of people are starting to realize they're not alone either. There's even a petition going around now--a fairly fluffy one, but I signed it anyway--demanding the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.
Bush still has a trump card to play, and it's his favorite--even more reliably than by invoking hazy patriotism, even better than by threatening us with aided and comforted "enemies," he can make the populace love him by killing thousands of people. In this climate it might not seem quite so safe to kill any Americans, but there's a world full of brown people in poor countries who are just waiting to die for his approval rating. He's already impatient to attack Iraq; he'll probably figure that it's coming soon enough to save him, probably early fall sometime. After that, he's looking at loads of other potential targets; to the earlier roster we can now add Venezuela, Syria and (emphatically) Cuba. Plenty to keep us busy til election day.
A little later, I have to add this: the administration strategy has become crystal clear. They will revert to doomsaying, prophesying more attacks on our cities, naming beloved targets and generally trying to drive us all back into our gibbering post-September panic by more or less commanding us to be fearful. Anything to get those questions out of the headlines. And unfortunately, it seems to be working. At the moment anyhow. It won't be enough to make everyone forget the questions, though.
Seriously: can we imagine that now, at this supremely convenient moment, the "intelligence" and "security" folks have got sudden new information about an impending attack? Absurd. One of three things is the case. First: they've had vague warnings and want to make that known to forestall further criticism of the most recent sort. See? We told you! But disclosing the actual substance of their supposed intelligence would be more convincing than saying vague and scary-sounding things. Second: they haven't really had any particular warnings, but as described above, they're desperate to keep us afraid, and to stop those accusations of negligence from getting front-page coverage. Third: assuming for a moment that the administration was complicit in the first place, arranging 9/11 to function as their own Reichstag fire (which it has, admirably), they might then be imagined to be genuinely planning a reprisal, hoping it will work exactly the same way. Particularly chilling since we're now hearing specific warnings of a nuclear attack.
The brief rally by congressional Democrats as wilted with a damnable readiness, still too ginger to speak out against the man with the ratings. And the press hubbub has quieted as well, since executive warnings of evil people nuking Brooklyn are just as sensational as executive screwups. That much of the plan is working. But this stuff wavers from day to day. The White House junta will need something more compelling and lasting if they want to make it to election day with the public still confused and intimidated.
What I don't think they understand is that they can't duplicate what happened last year. Bush can't make another war, even stage another attack, and expect the people to rally behind him in the same numbskulled way they did the last time. This time there will be no novelty. This time the press isn't going to go with him. The problem with his strategy is that it's largely based on faith in some simple suppositions: that people want to love a leader when they're afraid, that they will not ask questions if they can be made to believe that they're at risk, and that what has worked once will probably work again.
But we are not so stupid. And even when the attack on Iraq is announced with a meaningless fanfare about terror and freedom and just wars, we will remember this week, and wonder for the thousandth time what it is he doesn't want us to know.