We Came So Close

Recently there’s been a phrase that keeps popping up … “During the Bush Administration we came sooooo close …” and then whoever is talking lists the terrible things The Bush Crime Family did to destroy the country and alludes to the change of direction the country took after the election last November.

Well …

Wherever we came close to … we’re still there. We haven’t pulled back from the brink. We’ve slid closer to the crumbling edge. Millions of us have gone over.

Between now and Dec. 31, 2011 … for the next 17 months … every soldier and civilian killed in Iraq will have slipped off the edge into the pit.

And what about Afghanistan?

Remember way back when on September 24th, 2001 Secretary of State Colin Powell promised that the Bush Administration would finally provide the definitive proof of Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center?

Powell told Tim Russert on Meet The Press, “I think in the near future, we will be able to put out a paper, a document, that will describe quite clearly the evidence that we have linking him to this attack.”

Less than 24 hours later, President Bush quashed that idea.

Powell then quickly backtracked saying, “As we are able to provide information that is not sensitive or classified, I think we will try to do that in every way,” – a much more cautious approach.

What was never made clear was how much information – classified or otherwise – pointed directly to Bin Laden or al Qaeda.

But in October we started bombing Afghanistan anyway. The Bush administration never told us what the damning evidence was against Bin Laden … and that was OK with us.

Afghanistan’s deputy prime minister Haji Abdul Kabir said “If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved and the bombing campaign stopped, we would be ready to hand him over to a third country.”

Not good enough. Why would Bush show any evidence to the government of a country he’s already bombing when he wouldn’t even show it to us?

Bush said, “There’s no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he’s guilty.”

But Bush didn’t commit US ground troops during the Battle of Tora Bora in late 2001 which led to bin Laden’s escape. He didn’t want bin Laden … guilty or not … He wanted a puppet government in Afghanistan.

8 years later we’re still killing and propping up our puppet government. Obama’s going to throw thousands upon thousands of new troops into Afghanistan and today the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Navy Adm. Mike Mullen said it is crucial that U.S., NATO and Afghan forces make progress in Afghanistan in the next 12 to 18 months.

Over the next 12 to 18 months how many Americans and Afghanis await extinction in the pit? How much longer will we feed human beings into it?

On the home front …

Every week 46,000 homes go into foreclosure. One in every eight Americans is now late on a house payment or already in foreclosure. Into the pit they go.

We could have saved them but Bush and then Obama decided that our trillions should save Wall Street instead.

Forty-one of the nation’s 100 major labor markets are now saddled with double-digit unemployment rates.

The people want National Healthcare while our elected representatives are hard at work tweaking Private Healthcare insurance to our detriment. But the mouth breathers, led by corporate mouthpieces, believe Obamacare is hell bent on killing everybody’s grandparents.

Right Wing Talking Heads are inciting their rabid base against Obama with their version of King Henry’s “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

As long as Beck, O’Reilly, Limbaugh and the rest keep telling their audience that Obama is a threat to America … it’s only a matter of time before one the lunatics behind one of the thousands of death threats Obama receives every day … tries to “save” the country.

This is where the Corporatocracy commanded Bush and Cheney to take us.

This is where the Corporatocracy is commanding Barack Obama to leave us.

This is where they like us.

I’ve heard that if you look into the abyss … it looks back.

People say, “We came so close … “

I say, “Don’t Look Down.”

We Came So Close August 5, 2009