Binge, Purge and Repeat

"I don’t remember the Al Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about."

Remember? That was Condoleeza Rice, replying to the piece-of-work-in-his-own-right Richard Ben-Veniste, on April 8 before the Kean Commission. In some long-ago, non-bizarro era, someone would have passed a note to Miss Chevron Oil right then that she was fired. She would have never had the opportunity to say, regarding the August 6 "historical" accounting of al Qaeda activities, that "I believe the title was bin Laden determined to attack within the US." Or at least she wouldn't have been heard for the sound of her ass hitting the door.

If the times were less grave they'd be hilarious. By all rights the prospect of inveterate liar - worse: incompetent liar - Condoleeza Rice as Secretary of State should be making the world's sides ache with laughter. But as the world watches America, there's only the odd nervous giggle.

Perhaps George Tenet is angling to carve out Richard Clarke-like respectability among bleeding heart neoliberals, as he reportedly "trashes" Rice in his book proposal. The funniest news is this: Tenet, according to a publishing source, says terrorists want to explode a dirty bomb, and "are looking for a symbolic, high-value target - presumably in Washington or New York. He says the terrorists' only difficulty is getting it into the country."

"Difficulty getting it into the country"? That will sound rich to anyone who knows the impunity the 9/11 crew enjoyed. For years, they were coming and going with any number of "red flags" on their visas. They were even training at US military installations. The CIA took over the visa bureau in Jeddah, bin Laden's Saudi base, to streamline the entry of al Qaeda operatives into the US whom the State Department wanted to block. Fifteen of the hijackers passed through the Jeddah station.

I wish CNN would ask Michael Springman, formerly of the State Department's Jeddah bureau, about the CIA's facilitating terrorists into America, and why it would do such a thing. But I may as well wish for Santa to bring me a unicorn. Canada's CBC interviewed the 20-year veteran bureaucrat nearly three years ago, and he told a national radio audience that he suspected the victims of September 11 "may have been sacrificed in order to further wider US geopolitical objectives," because, "it's only a few thousand dead, and what's that against the greater gain for the United States in the Middle East?" But Springman's is not a story for American ears.

All we've learned through the Bush looking glass suggests that if al Qaeda carries radiological material into the United States, chances are it will be on account of the same permissive will that ghosted 9/11. "Let one happen, stop the rest," and all that.

While Rice begins her ideological purge of the State Department, Porter Goss's purge of the CIA is in full swing. Nothing but abject obeisance to the imperial agenda of the Bush White House will be permitted. But his purge is not indiscriminate. It's targetted, and full of foreboding. From The New York Times: Goss's memo "did not make clear why the focus of overhaul efforts to date appeared to be on the operations directorate, which carries out spying and other covert missions around the world."

Why would that be?

Perhaps, the better to let one happen.

The pace has quickened since November 2. Can you feel the ground shake? The pale horse is galloping.

There's a new version of eminem's Mosh that is a must see. It's identical to the first, until the rebels force their way through the doors. Now this is more like it. (Or rather, when America's death cult is at last overthrown, it's more likely to resemble this scene than an orderly queue at a rigged polling station.) And the brief image of an applauding Dennis Kucinich is a deserved nod to a good man.

Watching it I thought, to the degree things have felt upside down and inside out for four full years now, it's because we've allowed the neocons' faith-based construct to substitute for our reality-based community. The real world - the world in which a Condoleeza Rice would not only be out of work, but serving a prison sentence - still exists, even if we only carry it in our hearts. Theirs is a bubble of blood, and it cannot be sustained forever.

Anything yet can happen. Even the good stuff.

Along with everything else, Bob Dylan said this first:

We're gonna blow up your home of Voodoo
And watch it burn without any regret
We got the power we're the new government
You just don't know it yet.