June 19, 2002
The truth eeks out, piece by piece

Brad Carlton of The Baltimore Chronicle examined the record and discovered that Bush made an important change in his rhetoric in late August 2001. During the campaign he had solemnly promised not to raid the Social Security fund. But his tax cut for the rich made it inevitable that the government would have to dig into the fund to finance the programs that were going forward. On August 21, Bush's rhetoric shifted when he said there should be "special consideration" for recession or war. On August 24, he said, "I've said that the only reason we should use Social Security funds is in case of an economic recession or war." According to Carlton, this was the first time Bush introduced that idea. It was a mere 17 days before the disaster.

Many times he has repeated his unbelievably calloused, sick joke "I hit the trifecta" about how the disaster of 9-11 gave him the out to break the promise he was determined to break one way or another.

Carlton lays out clearly the motive the Bush administration clearly had for failing to stop the terror attacks. We know the warnings were there. We know it was their job to stop it and they didn't. It was a massive, many-layered failure that just happened to further the right wing agenda point for point. Now we're down to this: either they were inexcusably irresponsible and incompetent or unspeakably foul.

--David Cogswell