Homeland Insecurity== The INcompetence of Dick Cheney
mod...@espmail.com
a cabinet member and thus responsible to congress.
Dick Cheney blasts the senator and then Bush announces
a "new" Department of Homeland Security,.... "just
before the F.B.I. agent Coleen Rowley began to testify
about why Arlen Specter's 'veritable blueprint' for
impending terrorist acts was ignored".
The quote above and the 4 paragraphs below are
extracted from Frank Rich's NYTimes June 8 op-ed
article. The material is being used under "fair use"
use provisions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/08/opinion/08RICH.html
.... Bob Woodward at The Washington Post, portrayed
[the bush adminisration] as a steely, no-nonsense team
of razor-sharp executives running government like a
crack Fortune 500 corporation. When it comes to
domestic security, the administration turns out to
mirror America's C.E.O. culture all right but not that
of Thomas Watson's I.B.M. or Jack Welch's General
Electric so much as that laid bare by the dot-com
crash. It's a slipshod business culture in which
arrogant C.E.O.'s, held accountable by no one
(including their own boards), cash out just before
their own bad deals take their companies south. It's
the culture that has wrecked Americans' trust in the
market and that this week prompted Henry M. Paulson
Jr., the chief of Goldman Sachs, to speak out,
chastising "the activities and behavior of some
C.E.O.'s" and concluding, "I cannot think of a time
when business over all has been held in less repute."
Mr. Paulson, whose firm's clients include Global
Crossing and Tyco, didn't name names. I'll name one:
Dick Cheney, who from 1995 to 2000 ran Halliburton, the
energy services company whose stock collapsed after he
went to Washington. Halliburton has suffered not
because of Mr. Cheney's departure but because of the
damage he inflicted while there. It was his disastrous
decision to merge with Dresser Industries, a company
whose huge asbestos liabilities were somehow minimized
during the due diligence that was his responsibility.
It was also on his watch that Halliburton allegedly
pulled a cute, Enron-like accounting trick, now under
S.E.C. investigation, that allowed it to inflate
revenues.
"C.E.O.'s are the ones who know what's going on in
their companies," said Paul O'Neill, the Treasury
secretary, in a blistering February speech. "There's no
excuse for them not to know." But this tough talk
doesn't apply to Mr. O'Neill's own peers in the
administration. We are asked to believe that Mr. Cheney
didn't know what was happening at his own company — he
was a "hands-off" manager, says one Halliburton crony —
much as Ken Lay, in the words of his wife, Linda,
"wasn't told" about what was going down at Enron.
For those of us without a stake in Halliburton, it's
not our problem. What is everyone's problem is the
extent to which Mr. Cheney brought his management style
into the White House. No one seems to remember anymore
that President Bush put Mr. Cheney in charge of not one
but two task forces last year. The first, of course,
was the energy task force, whose secret deliberations
have landed the vice president in court. But even more
intriguing is the second. On May 8, 2001, the president
charged Mr. Cheney with overseeing a "national effort"
to coordinate all federal programs for responding to
domestic attacks in league with a new Office of
National Preparedness at the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
**
It appears from this article that the entire bush
administration wears horse blinkers provided of course,
by the Bush ranch's chief vaquero.
usual suspect
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/08/opinion/08RICH.html
Michael Moore Announces the Opening of "MIKE'S OFFICE OF HOMELAND SECURITY" 6/7/02
My fellow Americans,
We live in really, really, scary, scary times. BOO! See, you jumped, didn't you? I don't blame you. I did too, as I typed it! SCAAARRY TIMES!
Yes, there are thousands of evildoers who are working 24/7 to mess us up. Well, actually, it may only be a few hundred.
OK, fine. I'll come clean: It's just three guys -- and they go by the names of bin Bush, al-Ashcroft and Abu Cheney.
Yes, these three have put us all in grave danger. Whether it was their inaction before September 11th, or their actions since September 11th, they have made this a less-safe country -- and they are doing their damnedest to destroy our constitution and our American way of life. They must be stopped. Or at least sent on a very long cruise.
That is why today I am announcing the creation of MIKE'S OFFICE OF HOMELAND SECURITY.
This Office will, each day, issue the necessary warnings to the American people (and to the other freaked-out inhabitants of this planet) about what precautions and action you and they will need to take. Though not yet a cabinet-level department (this would first require removing the squatters at 1600 Penn. Ave.), Mike's Office of Homeland Security will act as THE one-stop shopping and command center charged with monitoring the movements of the doers of true evil. This Office will dispatch the forces of the American Public (the vast majority of whom never elected a single damn one of the men who now "lead" us) to conquer evil wherever it may be, from DC to Wall Street to texas.
Let's face it, folks, it's not that these are simply bad men. It's just that now, with all the recent revelations, it has become sadly evident they are just plain stupid ("Mr.'President,' we think Osama is going to hijack planes and crash them into buildings!" Bush: "Hey, I'm on vacation -- send my aides a memo!"). When George W. promised last week to "securitize" the country, who among us felt really safe (or "safetized")? When General Ashcroft (as the Democratic senators on the "oversight" panel reverently addressed him recently) spends our money on expensive drapes to cover up the statue of Lady Justice at the Justice Department because he does note want to see a stone breast exposed, who among us feels the cover-up at Justice stops there? When Dick Cheney disappears
So the CIA knew this, and the FBI knew that. And they did nothing. But THEY will not be part of Bush's new cabinet department for HIS Office of Homeland Security. No, of course not! Why have the two of them stinkin' up the room? And what do THEY have to do with making sure SICKOS DON'T KILL US??!! No, instead, W. is going to whip the Coast Guard and the fruitfly inspectors at Immigration into shape, those lazy bastards! No wonder our lives are still in jeopardy -- it's the out-of-control toll collectors at the Windsor Tunnel in Detroit! Thank God the FBI and the CIA will be allowed to continue on their own separate paths, kicking the crap outta each other, and answerable to no one. AS IT SHOULD BE!! I mean, where would we be today (and how many may have lived) had the FBI not siphoned off the resources of 200 full-time FBI agents who spent the better part of the late '90s on the Clinton-Lewinsky case -- investigating the national security crisis of how to get a stain out of a blue dress! What if they had been doing their REAL job -- like investigating dip-shit flight training schools in Florida and Texas and SAVING PEOPLE’S LIVES?! What a waste of time! And still, to this day, not a single apology from any Republicans for that costly misdirection of police protection. (You see, if I were to go call 9-1-1 right now and send the cops off to some stupid non-crime scene, I would be arrested. When the Republicans did it, they got the White House.)
Well, enough carpin' about these losers. Nothing they do will prevent the next attack, sad to say. So, at the very least, I can offer to help protect our constitution, our civil liberties, and our precious right to watch football, eat Tostitos, and NOT fall off couch.
Plus, my Office of Homeland Security will give out prizes! All the Bush Office is doing is giving out secret warrants to arrest Americans, throw them in secret prisons
My color codes of various security levels will come in everything from CODE MAUVE to CODE PERIWINKLE. I will explain the day's "Crisis Situation" and give you "Your Mission." By turning to Mike's Office of Homeland Security you may not survive the next terrorist attack, but you will definitely make it to November 2, 2004. And wake up happy on Nov3.
By what authority do I establish this Office? Well, I may not be the President, but they've just told me I've sold more books this year than Harry Potter -- and, dammit, that should bestow some sort of superpowers on me to protect the rest of us, right?
Thank you. Good night. And God Bless America Except Florida.
Michael Moore ,filmaker, Author & Evildoer .............. mi...@michaelmoore.com
--
"An eye for an eye, leaves the world Blind." Gandhi