"Bush thwarted our attempts at every turn" (9/11Widows endorse Kerry)

[Kolesar]

www.Salon.com
subscription or one-day pass required. "Better use of money than public radio"
President Bush thwarted our attempts at every turn


Sept. 15, 2004 | WASHINGTON -- Over the last three years, the group of 9/11 widows turned activists dubbed the "Jersey Girls" have become a fixture on the Washington political scene. Some of them are Republicans, others Democrats or independents. But they are all determined to hold official Washington accountable for the attacks that killed their husbands and nearly 3,000 others. They have held news conferences, lobbied members of Congress, pored over documents, and forced the White House to accept an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Along the way, the women have learned about coverups, obfuscation, political cowardice, deceptions and the dangers of eschewing international alliances for a go-it-alone foreign policy. And their conclusion: For the sake of the country's future, John Kerry must replace George W. Bush.
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Watching the (gop) convention on television, Breitweiser felt not teary-eyed, she said, but frightened. She found the speakers angry and bellicose, and she worried that the Bush administration seemed to revel in war.
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On Tuesday I was unable to reach Deena Burnett, whose name is not listed in the phone directory, for comment about the Jersey Girls' endorsement of Kerry. But a telephone interview I conducted with her two years ago was revealing for her lack of knowledge about the origins and funding sources of al-Qaida. Burnett is a lead plaintiff in a massive lawsuit against wealthy members of the Saudi royal family and Saudi establishment filed by South Carolina trial lawyer Ron Motley, who is trying to prove that the 9/11 attacks were financed out of the kingdom. Interestingly, many people who share those suspicions about the Saudi role in 9/11 also tend to question the Bush family's close ties to the House of Saud, but not Burnett. When I spoke with her for the profile, I expected to talk with her about the substance of the case. Instead, she directed me back to the lawyers, pleading ignorance of such details as which Saudi prince made which overtures to the Taliban. She clearly wasn't a document hound.
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On Tuesday, the widows cited the invasion of Iraq as one of their top reasons for supporting Kerry. "Unfortunately, before the work in Afghanistan was complete ... this administration moved our most precious resources, America's sons and daughters, into Iraq, without the support of our allies. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and that is what we learned from the 9/11 commission's final report," said Lorie Van Auken of East Brunswick, N.J. "Sept. 11 was an enormous intelligence failure, and yet nothing was done to fix our intelligence after 9/11, and that same intelligence apparatus took us into Iraq. So it's doubly frustrating to learn that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11."

[chelaque liberal]

1. "She found the speakers angry and bellicose"

The speakers were frightening, but was even worse was the reaction of the delegates and a large part of the population. I looked at them and thought, "These are people like the kids my mother wouldn't let me play with when I was little."

What does it say about Americans if that type of behavior is cheered?

[robbedvoter]

2. "invasion of Iraq as one of their top reasons for supporting Kerry "

Quick, someone go tell that to Kerry!

[atreides1]

3. I Salute These Women

But it won't be long before the repugnant RW media starts to attack them. And they will have no peace.

But they are brave and have shown more courage with this one thing then Bush has shown in his entire life.

[aquart]

4. I hate the "intelligence failure" meme.

Looks to me like the intelligence was damn good. BushCo deliberately ignored the intelligence, protected their own asses and let us die.

"Intelligence failure" reminds me of the exit polls in 2000 saying Bush lost. When he stole the election, exit polls were eliminated because they were obiously false since Bush won. But the reality is that they were accurate and provided a good idea where to look for ballot frauds.

Our intelligence operations told us Bin Ladin was determined to strike, warned us that the summer was likely, told us which buildings were under surveillance and that planes were being explored as weapons against those buildings. BushCo not only did nothing to prevent any of this or make it more difficult, they changed the Norad command routine. Instead of automatically scrambling jets in the event of a hijacking, it was now necessary to wait for Rumsfeld's blessing. A man who made himself impossible to find and whose smug explanation is completely unconvincing.

It was NOT an intelligence failure. It was an executive failure.

[sattahipdeep]

6. What the hell is this?

``If we're going to do some construction on the executive branch,
we ought to do some construction on the legislative branch,''
Reid said. What the hell is this?

Wednesday September 15, 2004 6:01 PM

Congress Works to Overhaul
Intelligence

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4497046,00.html

[yellerpup]

5. Crawl covering this on CNN

quotes them as saying: "anyone would be better than Bush." Of course, a lot of people feel this way, but I'm sure they had to have said something more affirming to Kerry than ABB.

[illiteratepresident]

7. 9.11.04 the day the lie died

9/11 In Plane Sight

"Shocking - Thought provoking - Raises serious questions about the government's honesty in conducting the 9-11 investigation"
"Absolutely awesome. This is the one September 11 video that everyone should see."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6847.htm

[stickdog]

8. Without the Jersey girls' courage and dedication, all 9/11 questioners

would have simply been dismissed as "America haters." But nobody, not even Karl Rove, dared insinuate that those brave women didn't deserve some answers to their boatload of unanswered questions.