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Bob Parks - Contributor

Bob Parks is a former Republican congressional candidate (California 24th District), ex-Navy, father, graphic designer, producer/composer, life-long New England Patriots fan, and member/writer for the National Advisory Council of Project 21. Bob is Campaign Manager for Steven Adam for Congress (www.stevenadam.com). Other columns by Bob Parks can be found at The Black Conservative. [Go to Parks index.]

The 9/11 Hearings Are All Wrong
When we there will be terrorist hearings?...
[Bob Parks] 4/13/04

The so-called 9/11 Hearings are a sham.

Not for the obvious reasons like so-called lawmakers posturing for face time on network and cable live coverage. Those of us who were paying attention know that close to 100 briefings were given to some of those very lawmakers, briefings that were vague and gave no direct premonition of the September 11 attack.

These hearings have been a service. We’ve seen politicians warn each other not to make this partisan just to see that warning egregiously ignored. We’ve seen untouchable victims’ spouses launch into well-coordinated and political attacks on the present administration. Of course, these are victims’ spouses so they get the kid glove treatment. Their allegations are unchallenged and if anything, they get a comforting pat on the hand.

We have the ongoing saga of Richard Clarke; a government aide turned backstabbing stoolie after he got passed over for a position HE decided HE deserved to get. He sold out his country for money, attention, got a book and now a movie deal. Again proving it does pay to bash Republicans.

There was the ramp up (or countdown) to the appearance before the panel of Dr. Condoleeza Rice, President Bush’s National Security Advisor. Being a black conservative, she’s also subjected to the usual liberal racism. Doonesbury’s Gary Trudeau created an illustrated version of George Bush calling Condoleeza “brown sugar”.

Daily Show host Jon Stewart, while reporting on Rice’s testimony, cleared an on-screen photo insert of her with the caption underneath that read “MeAin’t Culpa”.

Obtaining the truth was not the main goal here as evidenced by aloof but rude Senator Bob Kerrey who kept on calling Dr. Rice "Dr. Clarke". During testimony that displayed Democrat former congressman and Commission Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton’s amazement by her being "articulate", Condoleeza Rice has yet to display her bilingual expertise in English and Ebonics and utter a phrase such as the one quoted by Stewart. But again, liberal tolerance (putting up with people) is always suspended for black conservatives and racial slurs are their weapons of choice.

But what gets me about these hearings are the narcissistic performances delivered by the questioned and the questioners. These selfish people have no regard for what these hearings are really doing: debriefing us to the enemy.

During this sideshow, although the information is supposedly declassified, I’d be willing to bet the terrorists are gaining a great amount of free intelligence. We’re not only telling them how we failed to detect the 9/11 plot, we’ve described in dumbed down fashion, what protocols failed, which law enforcement agencies didn’t talk to each other, what has been suggested to fix the problems and the progress to date.

We’ve told the world how piss poor our intelligence was, how it should have been collected, and where, who, and how much it will cost to create a spook machine the terrorists won’t see coming.

Now if we’re talking about being as fair liberals always expect our enemies to be, when are the Terrorist 9/11 Hearings going to be held? I’m just waiting for a panel of clerics and mullahs looking down on Osama asking him how long did it take to plan the Twin Tower attacks, and why it took so long for the buildings to collapse? I’d love to see them grill him and demand answers for the foiled attacks and the failure to acquire and detonate a nuclear weapon on the continental United States?

Do you know why we’ll never see such hearings coming from the terrorists? The quick response is that we’re an open, free society that seeks to inform the public of government activities. The real answer is simple: they consider this a war, and in war you don’t tell the enemy what your moves were and will be.

When they wheel these spouses, some who we’ll probably see more of in Boston this summer at the DNC Convention, it’s obvious they prefer to blame a Republican president and not the Muslim fanatics who carried out the attacks.

One thing these women should remember is that when President Bush launched the War on Terror, it was to protect them too.

The people who wish us to convert to Islam or die have little regard for women and definitely have a place for women who dare speak out against men. Without a War on Terror, these spouses could and probably would be subject to beatings, rape, and stoning (or burning) to death for daring to criticize a male politician. They could be brutally murdered in plain view in the middle of the street and it would be totally legal.

Think about that….

But instead we are, as a free and open society, giving the terrorist a better public education than our own kids get.

They are learning how we wish to recruit agents for later terrorist organization infiltration. They are learning where we may wish to place them. They are learning who we trust and don’t, thus providing them with our possible next target coordinates.

We are showing them how weak we are when we are willing to let our own lawmakers sell out our national security on behalf of an upcoming election. If you don’t think Senator Ted Kennedy’s comparison of Iraq to Vietnam doesn’t give optimism to sleeper cells, you’re probably as drunk as he is.

The reason we are relatively terror-free today is because of the response of the Bush Administration. Instead of being a naïve liberal who would want to meet with Osama on September 12 and ask him why he doesn’t like us, Bush is gradually pushing them all into a corner where we can and should kill them all.

The sooner these hearings are over, the better. The intelligence debriefings we’re giving terrorists, free of charge, are doing more to undermine our future efforts than any budget cut.

I sincerely hope the blaming, scapegoating, lying, crying, consoling, posturing, and movie deal is worth it. I hope one day we don’t capture a terrorist who just detonated a dirty bomb in Chicago, who tells us he devised his deadly plan after watching C-SPAN.

We can have these open hearings after the War on Terror is over, preferably during sweeps… CRO

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