WKGB-TV: Putting the big dots together

All we heard, after 9/11, was that the intelligence community had failed, and failed miserably - failed to " put the dots together." And we accepted it, in the haze of a traumatic aftermath, just as the South Vietnamese were once upon a time in the early 1970s, told that they would have to accept being ruled by the communist North Vietnamese.

We accepted it as a function of traumatic stress and the state of partial cognitive incapacitation it induced, which is why many Americans sympathize with the alleged " enemies " who've been tortured. Americans have also been tortured, by the trauma of 9/11, and then the fact that we'd be forced to accept our own willingness to believe things that have since been dispelled and disproven, things like WOMDS, things like " Saddam attacked us on 9/11;" things that are, in fact, not little things, but big things, things intent on deceiving the American public into supporting an illegal invasion and now longstanding occupation in Iraq that has strained alliances across every continent.

Things that could get us attacked again by Osama bin Laden, who will never have the explicit support of the International Community, but will have gain the willingness of many to look the other way because of how America is currently perceived as a function of the actions and decisions of the Bush administration.

Why are the lies important and serious ? Because a democratically-controlled Congress would normally have the ability to end a war that could result in terrorist attacks on the American people, a war that would threaten the public safety of every American in the face of a government incapable of stopping attacks that prior to 9/11, countless governments warned the adminstration were imminent. It didn't matter. 9/11 was not stopped even though the CIA knew was told by French Intelligence, and the Director of the CIA, George Tenet, told the National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice. John Ashcroft wanted to know why the FBI didn't know. Maybe he could have asked Agent Hanssen. Or, better yet, maybe Hanssen should never have been prosecuted.

So the problem here is not entirely in the intelligence ranks, but also in the diplomatic ranks.

Somehow it's our fault. Either we've done wrong in the Middle East at some point and probably aren't aware of it because we're in the process of being systematically deceived by our own government and Pentagon-controlled media which, together form what President Dwight Eisenhower, Noam Chomsky, C. Wright Mills and others called the " military-industrial complex," which might also be referred to as the " media-industrial " complex; or we've been deceived and can't respond as a result of the trauma of 9/11 combined with the denial that resulted from 9/11 and an increased willingness to fall victim to deception, which compounds that same denial, because we're forced to accept our own fallibility, or that we can be deceived, and those doing it will never be held accountable.

Truth be told, the Vietnam war will always be a part our both our politics and our national identity, as it is very much a part of the current war in Iraq, both in rhetorical form, and in real strategic and domestic political-ideological terms. Why was south bombed by the north when American troops finally vacated in 1975 ? Did it have anything to do with Russian and Chinese military support ?

That's only a part-rhetorical question ? Again, it has real connotations. 9/11 was entirely surreal, or symbolic, even as watching it on television may have led us to believe otherwise. The surreal, although vile and evil in the most hideous of ways, is also captivating to the human imagination. Our response is invariably a rhetorical, diplomacy-seeking one; hence, we were against the war, and we were right. Saddam was exonerated. Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. But neither did he possess weapons on mass destruction, even as Washington still occupies Iraq while the vast majority of Americans are against it.

Bush appears to be incapable of understanding the American people in as much what has evolved since Vietnam is a very keen distaste for war. Republicans still whine that public opposition to the Vietnam war is the reason why we lost.

We lost a proxy war we were fighting, and still are, with Russia and China, in Vietnam, only now it's in Iraq. Did we fight a second proxy war in Afghanistan in late 1970s, that included support for Osama bin Laden and the mujahideen, against Russia ? Yes. And Russia has suffered dramatically because of it and Vladimir Putin is capitalizing, as any nationalistic dictator might be inclined to do. It's not entirely politically irrational at 'this particular juncture ? to either demonize the west or join in the spirit of demonization that permeates much of the extremist Islamic Middle East, and parts of Europe, South America, Africa and Asia.

Our response to 9/11 was invariably rhetorical, and bureacratic, because we're invariably human and we want to know why they'd want to kill us, whomever they are. and what we did wrong in some foreign land, again probably unbeknownst to most Americans, as were many of the sins of Vietnam, some of which, like waterboarding, have appeared to recur, or repeat themselves in Iraq.

Does that make Iraq, Vietnam ? Strategically, no, but relative to public perception and support competing with opposition to the war, and war competing for the human soul, or where " soul meets body, " yes. Was it, as in Vietnam, agent orange, which is - for those of us Generation X'ers who have, even though we still listen to R.E.M., religiously, lost our religion - also known as " Orange Crush " ?

Probably not. But for Saddam it may have been. He did not hesitate to use gas during Desert Storm which many inside of the Beltway believe is the real reason Bush went to war. Hundreds of thousands of veteran's suffer from Gulf War Syndrome today.

So now that Russia appears to have tested and featured on Russian television, which one might might be inclined to refer to as KGB-TV, or, better yet, WKGB-TV, and which I'm sure every cable operator in the West would die to be able to offer as part of a package that might also include Al-Jazeera and the Red Hugo Channel, featured " the bomb " which actually is, according to some, the most powerful non-nuclear weapon known to the intelligence and miltary community; featured the bomb on, of all days, 9/11, hopefully, in the spirit of a vast departure from the failure to put the together prior to 9/11, Washington will be able to, in the very least, begin a process of putting the big dots together.