American Terrorists

Keith Olbermann on terrorism and the modern Republican Party:

…The dictionary definition of the word ‘terrorize’ is simple and not open to misinterpretation: ‘To fill or overpower with terror; terrify; coerce by intimidation or fear.’ Note please that the words ‘violence’ and ‘death’ are missing from that definition. For the key to terrorism is not the act–but the fear of the act. That is why bin Laden and his deputies and his imitators are forever putting together videotape statements and releasing virtual infomercials with dire threats and heart-stopping warnings.

But why is the Republican Party imitating them? Bin Laden puts out what amounts to a commercial of fear; the Republicans put out what is unmistakable as a commercial of fear….

and more:

…This administration has derived benefit and power from terrorizing the very people it claims to be protecting from terror. It may be the oldest trick in the political book: scare people into believing they are in danger and only you can save them. Lyndon Johnson used it to bury Barry Goldwater. Joe McCarthy leaped from obscurity on its back. And now the legacy has come to President George W. Bush….

and more:

…But to forgive you for terrorizing us, we would have to believe that you somehow competent in keeping others from terrorizing us. Yet last week, construction workers repairing a subway line in New York City were cleaning out an abandoned manhole on the edge of the WTC site, when they stumbled on the horrific and impossible: human remains from 9/11. Bones and fragments, eighty of them. Some as much as a foot long. The victims had been lying literally in the gutter for five years and five weeks. The families and friends of each of the 2,749 dead, who had been grimly told in May 2002, that there were no more remains to be found, were struck anew as if the terrorism of that day had just happened all over again.

And over this weekend, they have found still more remains. And now this week will be spent looking in places that should have already been looked at a thousand times, five years ago.

For all the victims in New York, Mr. Bush, the living and the dead, it is a touch of 9/11 all over again. And the mayor of this city, who called off this search four and a half years ago is a Republican. The governor, with whom he conferred, is a Republican. The House of Representatives, Republican. The Senate, Republican. The President, Republican. And yet you can claim that you and you alone can protect us from terrorism?

You can’t even recover our dead from the battlefield. The battlefield in an American city. When we’ve given you five years and unlimited funds to do so….

Here’s the video, long at 10 minutes, but worth every second: