Jim Austin

His previous columns are archived HERE.

JIM AUSTIN

It's the stupidity, Stupid

Last Sunday, Dick Cheney took some time off from babysitting George Jr. to appear on Meet the Press. Uncle Dick told Tim Russert that he didn't want a Congressional Committee to investigate what the White House knew and when they knew it as regards 9/11 warnings.

"It would just turn into a circus" he said in that avuncular Freddie Krueger way of his.

Was Dick a member of the Republican Party when they organized endless committees to investigate what Monica blew and when she blew it?

Is it the aura of self-righteousness that makes this administration's hypocrisy so startling?

Take Cuba for example.

Currently there is a trade embargo and a travel restriction -- we do not have the freedom to travel to Cuba.

Why? Because Cuba is not free.

Make sense to you? Me neither. I am having my civil rights trampled to teach Cuba not to trample the civil rights of their citizens.

"Civil rights" is used as an excuse to attack Castro in order to satisfy the lust for revenge in Miami's Cuban community.

The power of these expatriate Cubans is immense. They were of major importance in delivering Florida's electoral votes to George Jr. over the hapless idiot Al Gore. Georgie was in Miami just last week licking the flamenco boots of the Miami Cuban voters and screeching that we would never see the embargo lifted until there were free elections in Cuba and no more human rights violations.

Mainland Chinese viewers must have had a seizure laughing at that one. China hasn't had a free election in about 2000 years and Georgie's sneakers are probably made by slave labor from some Chinese prison factory. You can cut the hypocrisy with a knife.

When Jimmy Carter went to Cuba recently he merely reminded us of a belief that many of us hold.

"It's been 40 years, the embargo isn't working."

I have gone without Cuban cigars, hot white sandy beaches, samba music, and a diverse and scintillating culture only a few miles from Key West so that a parade of nine American Presidents in a row can spit in Castro's eye at the behest of a nest of disaffected Cubans.

We've destroyed the Cuban economy and created mass poverty in a country that we used to exploit like a 5-dollar whore in the 50s. The one person we wanted to ruin in those forty years is still in power.

Remind you of anyone in Iraq? At least we're consistent.

Take it from me Jimmy; you'll see George Jr. score above 100 on his IQ test before you see that embargo lifted. Uncle Dick knows that he'll need Florida in the next election. Miami Cubans are the tail that's wagging this dog, for sure.

How about some more hypocrisy?

It seems to me that we are on the verge of going into Iraq with guns blazing because they won't allow U.N. inspectors into the country to see what Saddam is cooking up to nuke or bio-bomb us with. Well, Israel just barred U.N. inspectors from viewing damage done to Palestinian settlements.

I didn't expect George to threaten Israel with annihilation but he might have at least recommended that the inspectors be permitted to have a look around. The silence from George was deafening.

You may think that I am blaming the Bush administration for everything except dust storms on Mars. It's true, I can't find much right with this bunch. They may have conducted the immediate response to 9/11 in a competent manner but what about those warnings?

In the January previous to September 11, the White House knew that Osama Bin Laden was planning a major terrorist incident on U.S. soil (so did Clinton) .This is the same Bin Laden whose imprimatur was already on the two foreign-embassy bombings and the bombing of the USS Cole.

Any intelligence with Bin Laden's name attached to it should have been taken very seriously.

If airlines had been warned of possible hijackings and the public had been informed of the threat then, just maybe they would have had another look at the several Arab men flying out of Boston with one-way tickets to LA. At least they would have had a chance to prevent the disaster.

Finally, a little comic relief.

The Bush Administration has said "No" to arming airline pilots. The most trigger-happy band of tub-thumping NRA cowboys ever to sashay down Pennsylvania Avenue thinks it would be too dangerous.

"Pilots should concentrate on flying their airliners" was one of the cogent reasons given.

Another knee-slapping raison d'etre was, "Guns in the cockpit offer a false sense of security because it doesn't do anything to protect the people in the back of the cabin that are left to die if there's an attacker on board."

Who is making these decisions? Carol Channing? How much protection will passengers in the back, front or middle get if terrorists gain access to the cockpit? How hard will pilots have to concentrate if a terrorist is busy slitting his throat with a box cutter?

Finally, a good reason for arming someone and the answer is 'no'. This from a government containing Attorney General John Ashcroft who has "Property of the National Rifle Association" tattooed on his butt.

Does the White House have "It's the stupidity, Stupid" signs up in the halls of power? If so, they're doing a great job. Oh yeah, and those dust storms on Mars have George Bush Jr. written all over them.