Okay, so Sarah Palin doesn’t seem to know what the world changing Bush Doctrine is, has no understanding regarding her boss’s stand on pork barrel spending, and has no idea what NATO does, but that she still, in 2008, has the audacity to link Iraq to the events of 9/11 is unforgivable.
Those of us who lived in or near the epicenter of events that day or just survived the upheaval of those awful events on September 11, 2001, will never forget the fear, horror and the angst we all felt as we struggled to understand what was happening. We will never forget the anxiety we felt as we tried to get news to our family that we were fine, or tried in vain, to get news about others that were, unfortunately, not always fine.
I worked for a defense contractor in a Washington D.C. suburb at the time, and I will never forget the people I passed in the hallway that day, sobbing uncontrollably, fearful that an unreachable loved one had died at the Pentagon, or in the World Trade Center.
We heard President Bush following the 9/11 attacks telling us how he was going to track down the offending terrorists, but he has yet to explain how he planned to catch Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan by invading Iraq. No credible military or political source today says that Iraq has anything to do with 9/11, and even President Bush finally quit spouting that particular bit of nonsense.
So here we have Sarah Palin, on September 11, 2008, while attending a faux deployment ceremony, staged to coincide with the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, using the horror of the 9/11 events to fabricate a fictional link between Iraq and the terrorists who perpetrated those fateful attacks. In her speech Palin said, to the Iraqi bound military youth, “You’ll be there to defend the innocents from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the deaths of thousands of Americans.”
This is not only a blatant lie, but is a proliferation of the Chenyesque vice-presidential tactics used to distract us from the real issues related to the 9/11 attacks in the hopes we would not notice the illegal invasion of a completely unrelated country.
For Sarah Palin to use this propaganda suggests she really is either as clueless as Ms. South Carolina, who thought our nation’s geographical education deficits could be solved by sending maps to Iraq, or she is ruthlessly using a tried and true scare tactic from the 2004 republican play book as a political ploy.Since the deployment speech was arranged before she was selected to be the vice-presidential candidate, I am inclined to think she is just as uninformed on this issue as she is on NATO. Her actions as Mayor and Governor prove that she is not above using her political power; however, to satiate what seems to be a rather ravenous ambition.
Even if her opinion regarding the Iraq war is based on mistaken information, it is a dangerous mistake, that when made by another White House official, led us into an unnecessary war. We cannot afford, at this time in our nation’s history, to have another mistaken, uninformed or ruthlessly ambitious person in the White House.
We definiely cannot afford Sarah Palin.
The entire speech is available in this video.
Sources: Fox News, Palin Speaks at Army Deployment Ceremony for Son, Shushannah Walshe, Sept, 11, 2008, ConsortiumNews.com Palin’s Reformer Myth, Jason Leopold, Sept. 3, 2008, MNBC, Countdown with Keith Olberman, Sept. 12, 2008. Your Government Failed You, Richard. A. Clarke, HarperCollins Publishers, 2008
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Joan Walsh
Kerry Lauerman
suede
Joe Blow
seachell2
Salon.com
Comments