Life Imitates Cynthia McKinney

Washington is in full scandal mode over the old news that the president had generalized warnings of terrorist threats in August 2001. As I watch Ari Fleischer defending the administration's reaction to the Democrats' adoption of the McKinney tactic, I realize that things are much worse for them than I had thought. First, it was the charge that Bush was misusing his office because the RNC was offering a photo taken on Air Force One in exchange for contributions. Now it's the wild charge that the president could have prevented the 911 attacks and failed to take action.

The shame of the Washington Press Corps is in full flower today. NPR this morning was beating this story like a drum, even though it's own reporters noted that there was nothing to it, the headlines were all that Congressional leaders were calling for investigations.

We should be able to rely on the press to tell us what's important to know about, but instead of treating this as another piece of political baiting, they act like its Watergate II. If the people have a right to know, they also have a right to know when a story is nothing new or nothing to worry about. The Moussaoui story has been given new life by the Phoenix memo, but it's still old news. Why is everybody acting like we just learned that the intelligence and law enforcement agencies failed us on 9/11/01? Been there, done that.

Michael Medved, yesterday, had it right. When the bomb went off in Oklahoma City, what was everybody's first thought? Arab Terrorists. When we first heard about the attacks on the WTC, everybody knew immediately who did it. WE WERE WARNED. It was in the media. They had already tried to blow up the WTC in 1993, and we should have known from the past decade of terrorist attacks that another was possible at any time. But nobody wanted to think about it. These terrorists had gone through dry runs at Logan Airport. They had been noticed, and commented on to airline personnel, but STILL, NOBODY DID ANYTHING!

Instead of trying to make political hay for the Democrats, the press ought to asking itself why it didn't do any more investigative reporting and warning us of this danger. If this was an intelligence failure, it was even more a failure of the media to keep this danger before our eyes.

Watching reporters badgering Ari Fleischer, trying to make something out of these latest charges by Daschle, Gephardt and Clinton, makes me sick. How have the press responded to the most recent alerts? With a big yawn, and complaints that they aren't more specific.

I don't think it's true to say that nobody could have seen this coming, as some are saying, but making George Bush a scapegoat is despicable, when Congressional leaders had the same information as he had.




What we should be up in arms about is that our airport security is still abysmal, that we've allowed our fixation on civil liberties to prevent us from defending ourselves.