The same administration also allowed or caused investigation into the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole to be stymied.
Administration fiscal policy supported business practices including off-shoring, outsourcing, and privatizing that undermine security at U.S. ports and borders.
For obvious reasons, the administration failed to reveal and clarify what business ventures Bush, Cheney, and their cronies and relatives engaged in, including business associations with foreign businesses and governments.
While calling on the general public to join in the ‘war on terror’ and to maintain vigilance, the administration opposed every move to open up transmission of valid information to the public.
All these issues raise questions still unanswered to this day, and all of them are relevant to security.
As said, political consequences are by no means the most important consequences. Still, the danger to our political system, the enfeebling of a vital participatory democracy that replaces its public officials rather than keeping them for life and makes their positions hereditary, is significant. Flying in the face of reason, evidence and common sense, the Bush White House got away for eight years with arguing that government secrecy must be the sign of something good. We’re doing this for you.
The argument would be reasonable if law enforcement and intelligence personnel were eager to admit incarcerating the wrong person or other mistakes. But observation and experience remind us that secrecy is much more often the sign of a cover-up than of anything effective, favorable or beneficial.
Questions remain regarding the Cole bombing; the assassination of Massoud at the same time as 9/11; the deaths of so many Loya Girga soon after 9/11; the head of the ISI in the U.S. during 9/11; the 9/11 hijackers’ involuntary trips around the U.S., including to Las Vegas; and Riggs Bank’s financing persons of interest. Questions still remain regarding the anthrax mailings. Questions still remain regarding vote suppression and other anti-election efforts under the previous administration. Questions remain about even the lead-up to the Iraq war and the conduct of the war, the issue that has been most nearly investigated thoroughly. Questions definitely remain about the construction of the world’s biggest U.S. embassy in Iraq and about the construction of so many U.S. installations encircling Saudi Arabia.
It is an open shame that current GOP officeholders, probably all of them, are eagerly urging President Obama to ‘look forward’ rather than ‘backward’—the metaphor used to justify failing to apply reasonable standards of professional responsibility. But the Democrats have no obligation to go along with a rejection of accountability and a ratification of false history. Quite the contrary.
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