Olbermann does it again

Keith Olbermann, in a "Special Comment" during his Countdown segment on MSNBC, does another excellent Edward R. Murrow imitation and tears a strip off Bush for Bush's reprehensible behavior since 9/11 in general and for his speech on September 11th 2006. Crooks and Liars has the video and a full transcript here.

Here are some excerpts:

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is, its symbolism --— of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution. The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it… was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support. Those who did not belong to his party --— tabled that. Those who doubted the mechanics of his election --— ignored that. Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government, by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation'’s wounds, but to take political advantage. Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people. The President --— and those around him --— did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused; as appeasers; as those who, in the Vice President'’s words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists." They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken… a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated Al-Qaeda as much as we did. The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had '’something to do'’ with 9/11, is "lying by implication."The impolite phrase, is "impeachable offense."

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space… and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

[...]

When those who dissent are told time and time again --— as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus --— that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…
When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me: Who has left this hole in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr. President. You have.