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From American Progress Action Fund, by email.
Karl Rove Needs Therapy
On October 26, 2001, President Bush said, "The elected branches of our government, and both political parties, are united in our resolve to fight and stop and punish those who would do harm to the American people." That was before the administration's unwise, unfocused and unsuccessful approach to combating terrorism helped push Bush's approval ratings to historic lows. Out of answers, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove went back to his biggest strength, political mudslinging. On Wednesday, Rove said that "iberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." We don't need an apology, we need a new anti-terrorism strategy.
1,382 DAYS AFTER 9/11 – TERRORIST ATTACKS AT AN ALL TIME HIGH: By objective measures, the Bush administration's approach to combating terrorism is an abject failure. Last year "he number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled." According to State Department data, "attacks grew to about 655 last year, up from the record of around 175 in 2003." How did the administration respond? By halting the publication of the State Department report. The year before, "the State Department retracted its annual terrorism report and admitted that its initial version vastly understated the number of incidents."
1,382 DAYS AFTER 9/11 – OSAMA BIN LADEN STILL AT LARGE: More than three and a half years ago Bush vowed to capture terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." He's failed. The administration wants you to think we are hot on his tracks. CIA Director Porter Goss said he had "an excellent idea" where bin Laden is hiding. Vice President Cheney said he had "a pretty good idea of a general area that he's in." Note to the Bush administration: close doesn't count in terrorist manhunts.
1,382 DAYS AFTER 9/11 – IRAQ WAR MAKING THINGS WORSE: According to the CIA, "he war in Iraq is creating a training and recruitment ground for a new generation of "professionalized" Islamic terrorists." An in-house CIA think tank concluded that, since the U.S.-led invasion, Iraq has served as "a training ground, a recruitment ground." In the poorly planned aftermath of the invasion "hundreds of foreign terrorists flooded into Iraq across its unguarded borders." There is a serious risk Iraq is now "creating newly radicalized and experienced jihadis who return home to cause trouble in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and elsewhere."
1382 DAYS AFTER 9/11 - LOOSE NUKES: The Bush administration has repeatedly asserted that nuclear weapons in the hands of our enemies is the greatest threat to America. Yet administration efforts to stop nuclear proliferation have been lackluster. In May, "a monthlong conference to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty ended in complete failure." U.S. diplomacy was so anemic the parties "never engaged in a detailed discussion of how to fix the gaping loopholes that many experts say have allowed a resurgence in the spread of the most dangerous nuclear technologies." And the pace at which we secured fissile materials -- the "gunpowder" used to spark nuclear explosions -- in the former Soviet Union did not accelerate after 9/11, according to a May 2005 study by scholars at Harvard University.
AN INDEFENSIBLE PHILOSOPHY: Rove said that after 9/11 conservatives "prepared for war." He's right. Immediately after the attacks Paul Wolfowitz and others in the Bush administration prepared for war in Iraq -- a country that, by the president's own admission, had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. After years of deception, more Americans understand what happened. That's why now most people think the war in Iraq wasn't worth it and hasn't made us safer. Now, Rove is desperate to create distractions.
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