I'm Completely Bloody Sick of This

Hello, Shakers! I'm back, sort of... in a halfassed fashion. We still don't have internet service in our new building, so I'm sneaking in posts when I can. Man... I really miss having access at home... you don't realize how much you depend on it until you go without for a week or two!

That's not what I'm grousing about this morning, though. I'm grousing about this:

No shit.

I saw this headline on yahoo this morning, and my snorts were indeed derisive. Of course Bush is beating the 9/11 drum once again... as their popularity sinks deeper and deeper into the muck, the Bush Administration has nothing to lean on but the horror of that day. I'm not going to go on and on about this; everyone certainly seems to be aware of it, and I'm sure you've read plenty of blog posts over the last five years grousing about the same thing. I'm just so goddamed tired of the 9/11-Iraq links that are constantly being spun by the Bush Administration. It doesn't matter a bit that, in his address last night (and in other speeches recently), Bush is saying:

On September the 11th, we learned that America must confront threats before they reach our shores, whether those threats come from terrorist networks or terrorist states. I'm often asked why we're in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat.

when he continues to, in the same speech, constantly mention Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and Iraq in the same sentences. It's a more subtle way of creating an association between all of them, without directly saying that Hussein was partially, if not completely responsible for the attacks. One direct sentence won't affect an entire speech of blurring. And, of course, Cheney is using the same tactics. Same shit, different day.

While Sen. John Rockefeller is saying the obvious; Iraq would be better off if we left it alone, the Right can offer no solutions, other than the usual "stay the course" dribble, and brazenly, send more troops.

As if the Bush Administration's lies haven't killed enough Americans already.

One more thing:

I realize this is never going to happen, but for the luvva pete, could the media find some other way to visualize 9/11 without showing the burning, collapsing towers? I realize some people are numb to those pictures at this point, but for others, the pain is still very real. One of my best friends is a 9/11 survivor; she ran down over a hundred flights of stairs and escaped before the building she was temping in collapsed. She still has nightmares, and the constant visuals shoved in her face every year just brings the pain back. Hell, I was a mile away from ground zero, and when I hear the recordings and see the pictures, all of the emotion comes flooding back. (Air America played a montage of 9/11 sound bytes while I was driving home yesterday; I was blubbering like an idiot by the time I got home.) It's been especially bad this year, since apparently, five years is the limit on exploiting a national tragedy, and there seems to be no end to the movies.

The concept of "too soon" appears to be lost on most people.

(Everything's coming up cross-posts...)