Four years later

And so this is 9/11/05. And what have we done?

Osama bin Laden is still nowhere to be found. The Bush administration cut off the pursuit of bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan to pursue war against Iraq, which we have since learned had nothing to do with the horrific attacks of 9/11/01 and has no weapons of mass destruction (for me, a clue that these weapons didn't exist was that Iraq didn't use them to defend itself when the "coalition" was advancing toward Baghdad). And George Bush has gone from

"The most important thing is for the U.S. to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number-one priority and we will not rest until we find him." (September 13, 2001)

to

"I don't know where he is ... I just don't spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you ... I truly am not that concerned about him." (March 13, 2002)

to

not mentioning bin Laden at all.

Iraq is a quagmire and the administration has no plan for getting out of it. Bush will not discuss publicly a timetable for the withdrawl of troops from Iraq, claiming that such a discussion would "send the wrong message" to the troops. Bush apparenlty believes that the troops don't want to hear any discussions about bringing them home. Sending the troops into harm's way with unarmored vehicles and no body armor, what kind of message does that send the troops? To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, an expert in sending troops the wrong message, you have to go to war with the administration you have, not the administration you want.

The National Transportation Safety Board has not given any of the 9/11 plane crashes an official investigation. From Anthony Lappe and Stephen Marshall's interesting book "True Lies":

"According to the NSTB, none of the four 9/11 plane crashes has been given a formal investigation due to the fact they were 'criminal acts,' and thus placed under the jurisdiction of the FBI. (Former NSTB member Vern) Grose is highly critical of that answer, saying that though the NTSB statute states the leadership of the investigation will defer to the FBI, the NTSB has still completed formal investigations into crashes deemed criminal acts. ... Grouse describes the absence of any credible investigation (into the 9/11 crashes) as 'unacceptable.' "

We, of course, mourn the vicitms of the evil events of 9/11 and feel sympathy for their families. We also believe that they deserve the truth from their government.