May 21, 2002

The Know Nothings

The administration's new mantra is "We didn't know nothin'"

That really inspires confidence. We didn't know nothin'. No one told anyone anything. No one communicated with anyone else in the government agencies that had other related intelligence about terrorist threats. No one read reports of the CIA for the last 10 years. No one ever imagined that terrorists would fly highjacked planes into buildings. We just assumed it was "traditional" highjacking. We didn't pay any attention when missiles were placed around the headquarters of the G8 summit to defend against a possible attack by Osama bin Laden against George W. Bush using highjacked aircraft. It never occurred to us that that could happen here in the good ole U.S.A.

An article in The New York Times on March 20, was headlined "Ashcroft Learned of Agent's Alert Just After 9/11 but Bush Was Not Told". The headline was stated as a fact without qualification, as if endorsed by the paper. But reading into the article you see the phrase "government officials said today."

The paper is lending, in a sense, its editorial voice to these unnamed "government officials," who could have been mailmen as far as we know. And what these unnamed voices allege is that no one knew nothin'. Or no one knew nothin' except what you already know we knew. Which we didn't tell you before. But that doesn't mean we are still withholding any information from you. Oh no.

From here on out, we're going to tell the truth!

Yeah, we really believe that, guys.

--David Cogswell