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Tales from the Twilight Zone-June

Becky Burgwin

 OpEdNews.Com

(I don’t know about you but I think Bush could

behead John Kerry on TV and still get elected.)

High Level High-Jinx:

There are only 150 shopping days until Election Day so I’d like to take a little overview of the last 3½  years.

·        Despite warning after warning, our government doesn’t even deem it necessary to inform first responders who could maybe, just possibly be clued in enough to evacuate government buildings after one of the country’s tallest buildings has just been hit by a hijacked jumbo jet…3 thousand plus innocent people dead.

·        Our commander in chief sits in a schoolroom for a full 7 minutes after the second plane hits and has this to say. “I thought to myself, wow, dude, there’s one terrible pilot.”

·        The family of the fellow who took credit for this mass murder was flown on private jets out of the country even as people were dying because the organs they were waiting for could not be flown in for transplant.

·        The investigation into the worst terrorist attack in history is obstructed for years by our fine, upstanding and always-willing-to-move-heaven-and-earth government and then, when it finally becomes a reality; the leaders of the free world refuse to testify in public or under oath.

·        They made a case for starting a pre-emptive war using forged documents that no one bothered to even investigate.

·        A CIA operative in charge of keeping WMD’s out of the hands of terrorists was outed as revenge for the questioning of these claims, endangering her life and breaking federal law.

·        The investigation into this, having been stonewalled by the White House for over a year, has caused our president to seek legal counsel.

·        We invade a country under false pretenses; kill thousands and thousands of innocent civilians and subject thousands of prisoners with no connection to terrorism at all, to disgusting torture and TAKE PICTURES!!!

·        We pay an exiled Iraqi over $35,000,000 while he sells the state secrets to Iran and then our president claims he barely knows the guy.

·        The New York Times issues a mea culpa for falling for the hogwash that got us into this bogus, deadly war.

·        And still, as of today, Bush is 10 points ahead of Kerry in Ohio, one of the hardest hit states in the country by this man’s indecorous economic debacles.

I don’t know about you but I think Bush could behead John Kerry on TV and still get elected. (Deepest apologies to the Pearl and Berg families.)

Ronald Reagan died today. How benign and honorable he seems in retrospect. Well, maybe not.

Media Malfeasance:

Wow, I am distressed to hear that Tucker Carlson and William Kristol had to come out with statements saying, “I’m closer to anger than angst.” (Kristol) And, “I supported the war and now I feel foolish.”(Carlson) NOT !!! I’m getting my resume together for The Weekly Standard and Crossfire because I KNEW it was a sham from the start. And I hope Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Paul Begala and James Carville are lining up for their apologies at not only being told how incredibly stupid they are, but being told that they’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy for their questioning of the validity of this shameful war. If anyone has a tape of Tucker Carlson’s little “I-forgot-to-be-humble speech,” I will pay big bucks. I’m guessing he’s cleaning out his desk as his effectiveness as a raving, bow-tie wearing neocon has just taken a huge hit.

Well, it’s no surprise that the media can’t say anything nice about John Kerry. He’s about as inspiring as a soggy box of Saltines. His wife has more chutzpa and charisma than he’s been able to drum up in an entire lifetime of public service. Teresa for President. My question is this, though. Kerry is obviously a good man. He’s given everything he’s got to his country since the day he left for Viet Nam. He has a good heart and he’s smart and I think he’ll make a decent president. But, compared to Dubya, he’s Mother Theresa, Albert Einstein, George Washington and John Lennon rolled in to one. If he’s incapable of giving a speech that could ignite a bucket of gasoline, why can’t someone help him out? What about acting lessons or something? Can we get Robin Williams in there to get him revved up before every speech? What about B12 shots or a 6 pack of Mountain Dew or a pint of Scotch, for god’s sake…? I mean, come on. We’re playing for keeps here.

Questions Concerning The Elephant in the Living Room:

1.      Does Dubya remind anyone else of Eddie Haskell, and not in a warm, fuzzy Leave-It-To-Beaver kind of way?

2.      Has anyone else noticed that when the scandal-du-jour breaks, the tracks invariably lead to our illustrious vice-president and his little sidecar, Scooter?

3.      Does anyone find it telling that when they had a 21 million dollar estate in Texas, the Cheneys claimed they lived in Wyoming to get around the little constitutional guideline that the president and vice-president should be from different states?

4.      Where does one go in Baghdad to purchase a dog collar and leash?

5.      Do they have leash laws there?

6.      Do they have dogs?

7.      Why, when Rumsfeld has admitted that indeed they have been using “unusual” interrogation techniques on prisoners that have fallen through the cracks of the Geneva Convention, do Dubbie and Cheney keep saying that these were abhorrent acts by a few lowly enlistees?

8.      When did Dubya learn the word abhorrent?

9.      When will Kerry get on with the job of selecting John Edwards as his running mate so he can start energizing voters and making old ladies swoon?

10.  Is there really no one out there besides me who thinks Cheney looks and sounds like Mr. Burns. Look how he tilts his bald head. How about Darth Vader? …anybody?

Connecting the Dots:

Has anyone but me figured out that Pvt. Jeremy Sivits has apparently already been bought off? He has pled down his sentence to a year in jail by ratting on those who were supposedly on the front line of these atrocities…one Pvt. Lynndie England. In other words, he’s not going to rat on the higher-ups. He’s going to say it was all the fault of these lowly privates who didn’t have anything better to do than humiliate wrongly imprisoned Iraqi prisoners. I’m sorry, but I don’t even buy the fact that these soldiers were smart enough to think of some of these bizarre forms of torture and if their superiors didn’t know, why not? And why on earth didn’t they get caught? And, as Chris Matthews keeps asking, where did they get the dog collar and the leash? Are dog collars and leashes traditional military issue?

Thank god for Chris Matthews and Lou Dobbs.

Keep an eye on Lynndie England’s Court Martial. I think she’ll sing. I mean she has absolutely nothing to lose.

Absurdities:

Boy, I have been thinking, “Where’s Rosemary Woods when you need her?” For any ill-informed youngsters in the crowd, she was the secretary in the Nixon White House who kept track of all the taped conversations and then took the fall for the glaring 26 minutes of tape that were “accidentally” erased. So how great would it be if these guys were stupid enough to tape everything like Nixon did? Well, guess what. It’s better than that. They took photos and videos.

And now we have Enron traders caught on tape gleefully talking about ripping off little old ladies in Pasadena while purposely causing an energy crisis and bankrupting the state of California. You know…Bush’s pal Kenny Lay, who, when asked about him after the Enron implosion, said, “Ken who?” The Ken who gave your campaign thousands and thousands of dollars and hosted the Texas Republican Convention when you were running for governor you ignorant moron. (I think I just departed from my vow to start writing about PEACE.)

AND MARTHA’S GOING TO JAIL FOR A PHONE CALL!!! Sorry, I just have to get that off my chest now and then.

Now it’s, “Ahmed who?” “Mr. President, what do you think about the new developments with Mr. Chalabi?” “Oh Chalabi. Well, you know, I really only met him twice that I can think of. Once at the State of the Union (WHERE HE SAT NEXT TO YOUR WIFE!!!!) and then on a rope line or something.” Yes, it looks pretty bad to have put all of your trust and 35 million dollars into a guy, who everyone, including me, knew was a sleaze. But, you see, it’s going to take the heat off of them for fabricating WMD’s to take us into Iraq so Cheney could have his oil wells and his buddies their multi-billion dollar contracts

Fall guys as of June 6, 2004:

·        General Sanchez

·        George Tenet

·        Ahmed Chalabi

·        Lynndie England

          …and counting.

Good News:

I received this letter from a gentleman in France in response to my letter that was published in Time a few weeks ago. Here is my letter and his response.  Time   4/12:

Unhappy Anniversary

One year after the invasion of Iraq, the world doesn't seem a safer place at all [March 22]. Murderous attacks by terrorists all over the globe show that they are everywhere. Whether Americans were told the truth about Iraq from the get-go is something for the investigative commissions to decide, but it is horrifying that the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqis and hundreds of coalition troops have served only to increase the threat of global terrorism. When will it end?

BECKY BURGWIN
Pittsburgh, Pa.

“Hello Becky,  I am a retired Frenchman and I read a letter with your name in Time and I think it is you who wrote this letter. I was wanting to tell you how much I am all right with you. To your question " When will it end? " I am afraid there isn’t any reply. The world is entered in a phase of convulsions that nobody can control. Too many persons are interested by the violence, terrorism is outside of all logic. How to stop this tidal wave conceal behind a population apparently neuter, often kindly or compelled. Responsibles are way out of the range and have the use of troops pratically in the whole world. Like a veteran of the war of Algeria I know how much is difficult to struggle against the terrorism and often I think of  American soldiers in the trap of Iraq. Forgive me to have taken the freedom to write to you and excuse my bad English.        

Jean”

We need to get some Europeans over here to teach Americans how to protest. You’d think we’d have it in our blood.

Humor:

As of last month, there is nothing humorous that can be said about these guys; The Abu Ghraib scandal has finished us. At least it has finished anyone in America who is in his or her right mind and knows that we, The United States of America, have been exposed for the brutal, lying hypocrites that everyone thinks we are. We are torturing, or as Rush Limbaugh puts it, hazing, a bunch of Iraqi civilians with no more link to Al Qaeda than I have. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time after their country was invaded by a bunch of brutal, lying hypocrites. And all the while our young soldiers, who willingly enlisted to fight for their country, are being killed by a bunch of brutal, lying hypocrites who, if they weren’t so deadly, would resemble the 3 Stooges.

Apologies to the real 3 Stooges who no doubt would be doing a better job than these guys.

Ms. Burgwin’s writings have appeared in Time, Newsweek, New York Magazine, Counterpunch, AlterNet and OpEdNews as well as several other online Op Ed sites. She is on the Board of Aid Afghanistan and is a contributor to The Peace Project in Assisi, Italy.