Story of the Day
In the rest of society, when one is exposed for being lethally incompetent, he is summarily relieved of his duties and often, in shame and remorse, seeks another form of employment. Or, at the very least, mindful of the pain and suffering caused, he maintains a low profile. Of course, he may even be charged with a crime and made to pay for his transgressions.
But not in Bush World. No, in this magical realm, accountability is antithetical to governance.
It's a ghoulishly surreal existence where you can be the chief of Homeland Security, cause the needless deaths of thousands due to your criminal negligence and retain your job. Moreover, you can follow up your deadly miscarriage of public trust by making a mockery of your basic duties to secure the country – specifically, in this case, our ports. Then, as if that weren't enough, you taunt the public and policy makers for rejecting your harebrained plan that would have turned over security of eight of our largest ports to, not just some company - as he, the administration and many in the mainstream media disingenuously or irresponsibly framed the debate - but rather directly to the UAE government. And you do this by delivering thinly veiled threats that we should have gone along with the deal, because, as ludicrous as it seemed, whatever deal will follow will push further the limits of our already jangled imaginations.
From today’s Reuters story:
“U.S. ports would have been safer with an Arab company running the terminals than they will be now that a political firestorm killed the deal, the chief of U.S. homeland security said on Thursday.”
And Michael Chertoff's only failure, according to MC Insecurity himself?
"It's clear to me from a public messaging standpoint, we dropped the ball. It may be that it was a classic case of people who knew the facts weren't paying enough attention to the perception of the facts."
And we all know that "perception of the facts" is key in Bush World.
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