Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Department of Ironic Mycterismus

What is the Medal of Freedom? A history of the honor notes that:
“In 1945, President Harry Truman, searching for a way to honor the contributions of American civilians in World War II, created the Medal of Freedom as the nation's highest civilian honor to be the equivalent of the military Medal of Honor. The honorific went dormant after the war ended.
The revival occurred in 1962 following a Gallup poll indicating that Americans favored the establishment of some sort of National Honors List to recognize individuals who made outstanding contributions to United States life in such endeavors as the arts, science, literature, education, religion, or community service. Within three months of the release of the poll results, President John F. Kennedy issued an Executive Order creating the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”
And that medal is going to Bremer, Tenet and Franks. Arts? Science? Literature? Community service? Where do they fit in? Let us examine the evidence:

Paul Bremer? Mr. "Things are getting better all the time”? Paul Bremer whose decision to shut down the newspaper in Baghdad was probably the moment when we really lost hearts and minds, and the shit hit the fan. That Paul Bremer?!?!?

And George Tenet, whose piss-poor job as CIA Director was surely capped by his refusal to stand up for his analysts when they were scapegoated by the 9/11 Commission for the stovepiped, cherry-picked information that the neo-cons forced out of them in order to create an onion-skinned layer of lies with which to push the nation into an illegal invasion.

And finally Tommy Franks!! Who was visiting Bush to talk about military “options” while the clusterfuck at Tora Bora went down; who is probably single-handedly more responsible for the decision-making that allowed bin Laden to get away than any other person; and in whose defense Bush later so facilely dismissed bin Laden as a main target, or even a “concern”.

Are you liking this? Does this make you proud to be an American? Is this a desperate attempt to cover up the glaringly obvious incompetence of every single blessed thing this administration has done, or just a massive-fuck-you-if-you-can’t-take-a-joke to the American people?

1 comment:

Riggsveda said...

Bush cheapens everything he touches. That much of the media doesn't notice or care is an indication of how cheap they've become, as well.