"Unacceptable, to think" George W. Bush.
I heard it.  Ray

Olbermann: "The President of the United States owes this country an apology"
By: Jamie Holly on Monday, September 18th, 2006 at 6:25 PM - PDT
 Keith Olbermann delivered another stunning special comment tonight, this
time attacking Bush's Rose Garden press conference from last Friday.
Olbermann: Finally tonight, a Special Comment about the Rose Garden news
conference last Friday. The President of the United States owes this country
an apology.There are now none around him who would tell him - or could. The
last of them, it appears, was the very man whose letter provoked the
President into the conduct, for which the apology is essential. An apology
is this President's only hope of regaining the slightest measure of
confidence, of what has been, for nearly two years, a clear majority of his
people.
Rough transcript below the fold.
Finally tonight, a Special Comment about the Rose Garden news conference
last Friday.
The President of the United States owes this country an apology. It will not
be offered, of course. He does not realize its necessity.
There are now none around him who would tell him - or could. The last of
them, it appears, was the very man whose letter provoked the President into
the conduct, for which the apology is essential. An apology is this
President's only hope of regaining the slightest measure of confidence, of
what has been, for nearly two years, a clear majority of his people.
Not "confidence" in his policies nor in his designs nor even in something as
narrowly focused as which vision of torture shall prevail - his, or that of
the man who has sent him into apoplexy, Colin Powell. In a larger sense, the
President needs to regain our confidence, that he has some basic
understanding of what this country represents - of what it must maintain if
we are to defeat not only terrorists, but if we are also to defeat what is
ever more increasingly apparent, as an attempt to re-define the way we live
here, and what we mean, when we say the word "freedom."
Because it is evident now that, if not its architect, this President intends
to be the contractor, for this narrowing of the definition of freedom. The
President revealed this last Friday, as he fairly spat through his teeth,
words of unrestrained fury.
.directed at the man who was once the very symbol of his administration, who
was once an ambassador from this administration to its critics, as he had
once been an ambassador from the military to its critics. The former
Secretary of State, Mr. Powell, had written, simply and candidly and without
anger, that "the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight
against terrorism."
This President's response included not merely what is apparently the
Presidential equivalent of threatening to hold one's breath, but - within -
it contained one particularly chilling phrase. Mr. President, former
Secretary of State Colin Powell says the world is beginning to doubt the
moral basis of our fight against terrorism. If a former chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and former secretary of state feels this way, don't
you think that Americans and the rest of the world are beginning to wonder
whether you're following a flawed strategy? BUSH: If there's any comparison
between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist
tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic. It's just - I simply can't accept
that. It's unacceptable to think that there's any kind of comparison between
the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic
extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.
Of course** it's acceptable to think that there's "any kind of comparison."
And in this particular debate, it is not only acceptable, it is obviously
necessary. Some will think that our actions at Abu Ghraib, or in Guantanamo,
or in secret prisons in Eastern Europe, are all too comparable to the
actions of the extremists. Some will think that there is no similarity, or,
if there is one, it is to the slightest and most unavoidable of degrees.
What all of us will agree on, is that we have the right - we have the duty -
to think about the comparison. And, most importantly, that the other guy,
whose opinion about this we cannot fathom, has exactly the same right as we
do: to think - and say - what his mind and his heart and his conscience tell
him, is right.
All of us agree about that.
Except, it seems, this President.
With increasing rage, he and his administration have begun to tell us, we
are not permitted to disagree with them, that we cannot be right. That Colin
Powell cannot be right.And then there was that one, most awful phrase.
In four simple words last Friday, the President brought into sharp focus
what has been only vaguely clear these past five-and-a-half years - the way
the terrain at night is perceptible only during an angry flash of lightning,
and then, a second later, all again is dark.
"It's unacceptable to think." he said. It is never unacceptable. to think.
And when a President says thinking is unacceptable, even on one topic, even
in the heat of the moment, even in the turning of a phrase extracted from
its context. he takes us toward a new and fearful path - one heretofore the
realm of science fiction authors and apocalyptic visionaries.
That flash of lightning freezes at the distant horizon, and we can just make
out a world in which authority can actually suggest it has become
unacceptable to think. hus the lightning flash reveals not merely a
President we have already seen, the one who believes he has a monopoly on
current truth.
It now shows us a President who has decided that of all our
commanders-in-chief, ever. he, alone, has had the knowledge necessary to
alter and re-shape our inalienable rights. This is a frightening, and a
dangerous, delusion, Mr. President.
If Mr. Powell's letter - cautionary, concerned, predominantly supportive -
can induce from you such wrath and such intolerance - what would you say
were this statement to be shouted to you by a reporter, or written to you by
a colleague?
"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new government."
Those incendiary thoughts came, of course, from a prior holder of your job,
Mr. Bush. They were the words of Thomas Jefferson.
He put them in the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Bush, what would you say
to something that annti-thetical to the status quo just now? Would you call
it "unacceptable" for Jefferson to think such things, or to write them?
Between your confidence in your infallibility, sir, and your demonizing of
dissent, and now these rages better suited to a thwarted three-year old, you
have left the unnerving sense of a White House coming unglued - a chilling
suspicion that perhaps we have not seen the peak of the anger; that we can
no longer forecast what next will be said to, or about, anyone. who
disagrees.
Or what will next be done to them.  On this newscast last Friday night,
Constitiutional law Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington
University, suggested that at some point in the near future.some of the
"detainees" transferred from secret CIA cells to Guantanamo, will finally
get to tell the Red Cross that they have indeed been tortured.
Thus the debate over the Geneva Conventions, might not be about further
interrogations of detainees, but about those already conducted, and the
possible liability of the administration, for them. That, certainly, could
explain Mr. Bush's fury.
That, at this point, is speculative. But at least it provides an alternative
possibility as to why the President's words were at such variance from the
entire history of this country. For, there needs to be some other
explanation, Mr. Bush, than that you truly believe we should live in a
United States of America in which a thought is unacceptable.
There needs to be a delegation of responsible leaders - Republicans or
otherwise - who can sit you down as Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott once sat
Richard Nixon down - and explain the **reality** of the situation you have
created.
There needs to be. an apology from the President of the United States.
And more than one.
But, Mr. Bush, the others - for warnings unheeded five years ago, for war
unjustified four years ago, for battle unprepared three years ago - they are
not weighted with the urgency and necessity of this one. We must know that,
to you.thought with which you disagree - and even voice with which you
disagree - and even action with which you disagree - are still sacrosanct to
you.
The philosopher Voltaire once insisted to another author, "I detest what you
write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to
write." Since the nation's birth, Mr. Bush, we have misquoted and even
embellished that statement, but we have served ourselves well, by
subscribing to its essence.
Oddly, there are other words of Voltaire's that are more pertinent still,
just now. "Think for yourselves," he wrote, "and let others enjoy the
privilege to do so, too."  Apologize, sir, for even hinting at an America
where a few have that privilege to think - and the rest of us get yelled at
by the President.
Anything else, Mr. Bush, is truly. unacceptable.
Update: John Amato:
I don't expect an apology coming anytime soon, but I'm sure we'll get more
letters written to MSNBC-complaining about Keith's honesty-I mean calling
him a traitor. This type of "Special Comment" that Keith is using now drives
the Bush cultists wild.Thank you Keith- and buy his book.order it here.

















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