Funny, We Tried to Cancel Rumsfeld in 2003

Too bad he was so good at cancelling so many human beings during his tenure. Not all of them were terrorists – in fact most of them were likely innocent of anything other than being Iraqi.

Rumsfeld doesn’t really own any big boy pants, does he?

I couldn’t figure this out, because Krugman’s column was a rather wonkish piece on the European Central Bank. I’m guessing this post from Krugman’s blog set Rummy off:

The Years of Shame
Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?
Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.
What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.
I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.

Looking at the Twitters just now with the #Krugman tag, you would have thought Krugman had just admitted he had sex with Osama bin Laden and wiped of the residues and his ass with the American flag.

“As you know, you read the paper you have, not the paper you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

Rummie can go fuck himself. Krugman is right and the wingnutters and neocon boobs are wrong. The outrage is fueled by the fact that they were wrong and know it.

@Mistress Cynica: And he had more to say today:

More About the 9/11 Anniversary

It looks as if I should say a bit more about yesterday’s anniversary. So:

The fact is that the two years or so after 9/11 were a terrible time in America – a time of political exploitation and intimidation, culminating in the deliberate misleading of the nation into the invasion of Iraq. It’s probably worth pointing out that I’m not saying anything now that I wasn’t saying in real time back then, when Bush had a sky-high approval rating and any criticism was denounced as treason. And there’s nothing I’ve done in my life of which I’m more proud.

It was a time when tough talk was confused with real heroism, when people who made speeches, then feathered their own political or financial nests, were exalted along with – and sometimes above – those who put their lives on the line, both on the evil day and after.

So it was a shameful episode in our nation’s history – and it’s one that I can’t help thinking about whenever we talk about 9/11 itself.

Now, I should have said that the American people behaved remarkably well in the weeks and months after 9/11: There was very little panic, and much more tolerance than one might have feared. Muslims weren’t lynched, and neither were dissenters, and that was something of which we can all be proud.

But the memory of how the atrocity was abused is and remains a painful one. And it’s a story that I, at least, can neither forget nor forgive.

@SanFranLefty: Late to the game, but this was one of the better editorial cartoons in my local fishwrap that I thinks sums up the amount of sacrifice made by the average ‘murrican post-9/11.

I watched the “Concert for NYC” on Sunday (after the Stillers got blown up by the Bal’more Birds), and it was very very disconcerting to see Michael J. Fox hugging Ru911 Gul911ani knowing what we know now. Well, and also sitting through some really awful performances :cough: Paul McCartney :cough:

@Nabisco: But we weren’t supposed to sacrifice! The Preznit told us to go shopping.

Although if I was representing The Preznit before St. Peter, I’d have to add that he also told us not to blame the mooslims. I’ll always give him credit for that.

A question I ask repeatedly these days: What is disdain on the carpet?