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Download | Play (last few seconds were clipped)Keith Olbermann lets the Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, know how insecure the homeland must be if we are to rely on his “gut.”
So there are your choices: bureaucratic self-protection, political manipulation of the worst kind, the dropping of opaque hints, a gaffe backfilled by an “instant report,” or the complete disintegration of our counter-terror effort.
Even if there really is never another terror attempt in this country, we have already lost too much in these last six years, to now have to listen to Michael Chertoff’s gut, no matter what its motivation.
John Amato: “I wrote about Chertoff’s “gut” remark the other day which resonated throughout the blogosphere and said he should be fired for it. O’Reilly liked it because he’s paid to say that about “Chertgut.”….Olbermann had a few choice words of his own.” Transcripts below the fold…
And now as promised, a Special Comment — on Michael Chertoff’s gut.
You have by now heard the remark — instantly added to our through-the-looking glass lexicon of the 21st Century, a time when we suddenly started referring to this country as “the homeland” as if anybody here has used that term since Charles Lindbergh or the German-American Bund in 1940.
Michael Chertoff’s “gut feeling.”
Which, he took pains to emphasize, was based on no specific nor even vague intelligence — that we are entering a period of increased risk of terrorism here.
He got as specific as saying that Al-Qaeda seems to like the summer, but as to the rest of it, he is perfectly content to let us sit and wait and worry - and to contemplate his gut.
His….. gut!!
We used to have John Ashcroft’s major announcements.
We used to have David Paulison’s breathless advisories about how to use duct tape against radiation attacks.
We used to have Tom Ridge’s color-coded threat levels.
Now we have…. Michael Chertoff’s gut!
Once, we thought we were tip-toeing along a Grand Canyon of possible and actual freedoms and civil liberties destroyed, as part of some kind of nauseating but ultimately necessary and intricately-designed plan to stop future 9/11’s or even future Glasgow car bombers who wind up having to get out and push their failed weapons.
Now it turns out we are risking all of our rights and protections — and risking the anger and hatred of the rest of the world — for the sake of Michael Chertoff’s gut.
I have pondered this supreme expression of diminished expectations, for parts of three days now. I have concluded that there are only five possible explanations for Mr. Chertoff’s remarkable revelations about his transcendently important counter-terrorism stomach.
Firstly, Mr. Chertoff, you are as Richard Wolffe said here the other night, actually referencing not your gut but your backside — as in, “covering it.” C-Y-A.
Not only has there not been a terrorist attack stopped in this country, but your good old Homeland Security hasn’t even unraveled a plausible terrorist plan.
And you and your folks there have a different kind of stomach pain, knowing that with a track record that consists largely of two accomplishments — inconveniencing people at airports, and scaring them everywhere else — your department doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing, and even you Mr. Chertoff, know it.
Secondly, of course, there is the explanation of choice for those millions of us who have heard the shrill and curiously timed cries of wolf over the past six years — what we’ve called here “The Nexus of Politics and Terror” — that there isn’t anything cooking, and your “gut feeling” was actually that you’d better throw up a diversion soon on Mr. Bush’s behalf, or… something real – like the Republicans’ revolt about Iraq, and the nauseating “gut feeling” that we have gotten 3,611 Americans killed there for no reason — was actually going to seep into the American headlines and consciousness.
It’s impossible to prove a negative, to guarantee that you and your predecessors deliberately scared the American public just for the political hell of it — even though your predecessor Mr. Ridge admitted he had his suspicions about exactly that.
Suffice to say, Mr. Chertoff, if it ever can be proved, there will be a lot of people from Homeland Security, and other outposts of this remarkably corrupt Administration, who will be going to prison.
Thirdly, and most charitably, I guess, Mr. Chertoff, is the possibility that you have made some credible inference that we are really at greater risk right now, but that any detail might blow some sort of attempt at interruption. There is some silver lining in this one.
But the silver lining would have been a greater one if this National Counter-Terrorism Center Report hadn’t leaked out the day after you introduced us to your gut; a report suggesting Al-Qaeda had re-built its operational capacity to pre-9/11 levels.
Not only did this latest hair-on-fire-missive remind us that Al-Qaeda’s re-growth has been along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border…
Not only did it remind us that your boss let this happen by shifting his resources out of Afghanistan to Iraq for his own vain and foolish purposes, to say nothing of ignoring Pakistan…
Not only did it underscore the ominous truth that if this country is victimized again by Al-Qaeda, the personal responsibility for the failure of our misplaced defenses would belong to President Bush and President Bush alone…
But on top of all of it, Mr. Chertoff, it revealed you for the phony expert you are — the kid who hears in confidence something smart from somebody smart, and then makes his prediction, that what the smart kid said confidentially, is about to happen.
It reads just as you revised the “gut” remark this morning, sir — the “informed opinion.” The kid telling stories out of school.
The fourth possibility is a simple reversal of the third, Mr. Chertoff.
You shot off your bazoo, and then this National Counter-Terrorism Center report was rushed out — even created — to cover you, to give you credibility, to cloud the reality that you actually intoned to the Chicago Tribune, the 21st Century equivalent of “by the pricking of my thumb, something wicked this way comes.”
But the fifth possible explanation of your gut, Mr. Chertoff, is the real nightmare scenario.
And it is simple.
That you, the man who famously told us “Louisiana is a city that is largely under water,” meant this, literally.
That we really have been reduced to listening to see if your gut will growl.
That your intestines are our best defense.
That your bowels are our listening devices, your digestive tract is full of augurs, your colon produces the results that the torture at Gitmo does not.
All hail the prophetic gut!
So there are your choices: bureaucratic self-protection, political manipulation of the worst kind, the dropping of opaque hints, a gaffe backfilled by an “instant report,” or the complete disintegration of our counter-terror effort.
Even if there really is never another terror attempt in this country, we have already lost too much in these last six years, to now have to listen to Michael Chertoff’s gut, no matter what its motivation.
We cannot and will not turn this country into a police state.
But even those of us who say that most loudly and insistently, acknowledge that some stricter measures, under the still-stricter supervision of as many watchdogs as we can summon, are appropriate.
But you’re not even going to wring any of that from us, Mr. Chertoff, if we’re going to hear remarks about your “gut feelings.”
You have reduced yourself to the status of a hunch-driven clown, and it’s probably time you turned your task over to somebody who represents the brain and not the gut…
Certainly to somebody who does not, as you do now, represent that other part of the anatomy — the one through which the body disposes of what the stomach doesn’t want.
2 Trackbacks To “Special Comment: On Michael Chertoff’s Gut“
YOU GO DUDE , KEITH!!!!!!!!!
i wonder how bill O sleazy will come back with this,, oh what happend to fat ass rush? hes been so silent lately.
perhaps his oxy contin drugs have taken the full effect :) ?
Does KO check C&L?
Site monitor, I have to do this now and then.
I have started emailing all congress and the senate with the following letter. Copy and paste it and send to your reps. Boxer has gone to Pelosi to try to get Impeachment back on the table. Let’s see if we can help.
Dear Congress Members and Senators:
It has come to the attention of the citizens of the United States of America that you have been hamstrung by politics in the matter of impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W Bush.
May I remind you that, the grievances against King George III are very much the same as the grievances “WE THE PEOPLE” have against the present administration.
“WE THE PEOPLE” expect the congress and the senate to respect our forefathers, the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Over 50 percent of our citizens favor impeachment. “WE THE PEOPLE” expect the congress and senate to act in our behalf. I hear that many of you think that impeachment would divide our country and cause too much controversy. You may look around your own halls of congress and see that, we are already divided.
My challenge to you is, take this adapted “DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE” to the floor and share it with the other members and bring it up for discussion.
My second challenge to you is, send copies of this adapted Declaration of Independence out in your newsletters and emails, to your constituents and ask them for a response.
Declaration of Independence
[Adapted In The United States Of America July 4, 2007]
The Unanimous Declaration of the Citizens United States of America From the George W Bush Administration, Corporate Control, Shadow Government, Right Wing Main Stream Media and The Military Industrial Complex
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present President of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Congress to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation With Signing Statements till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to Obey them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has Divided representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; With Voter Caging and Suppression of Votes, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to Increase the population of these states; for that purpose
Ignoring the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and Lowering the conditions of Seeking Employment In The U.S.A, Therefore Driving Down The Wages Of The Working Class.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He Has Misled The American Citizens To Invade A Sovereign Nation To Gain Control Of Their Oil Resources At The Expense Of Taxpayer Funds And The Lives Of Our Young Men And Women In The Military.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with Corporations And The Free Press to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off FAIR trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on While Lowering Taxes On The Most Wealthy Among us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of Constitutional laws in a neighboring States, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these States:
For taking away our Freedoms, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For Hamstringing our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war Against Foreign Nations.
He has Ignored Our Citizens On Our Ravaged Gulf Coasts, Torn Down Our Educational System, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our Fellow Citizens And Citizens Of Other Nations taken captive In All Lands to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections Of Foreign Nations, and has endeavored to bring on the Civil Discourse In Iraq And The Middle East Oil Producing Nations, whose known Rule Does Not Conform With Our Democratic System.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A President, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the Leader of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our Republican brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our Disappointment With Them. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the Citizens of the United States of America, in Objection To The Current Administration Are , assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these States, solemnly publish and declare, that these united Citizens are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the George W Bush Administration, and that all political connection between them and the state of Corporate Oligarchy, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
Notwithstanding the above, I believe the only way to remove this administration will be by force.
Yes, that’s what is has come to.
Rarely am I inspired to propound thusly, but:
Holy Fuck Toad in a Basket. What have we come to???
Chertoff can’t account for 40% of his budget. Chertoff claimed to not know the levees had broken in New Orleans a full week after they had broken. Clearly, he is incompetent, a scaremonger, and a liar.
Perpetually Disappointed @ 5:
A Rouge State apparently
Take your country back. Repeal the Patriot Act 1 & 2
Giving up your liberties is not protecting your freedoms.
IT’S GIVING THEM UP. They are the same thing.
Stop the Future Shock and the Double Think!
now for that hooked on a feeling gut feeling,, i am glad i said what i said in my blog lastnight.
JERKOFF is nothing more the gobbles,, the new properganda machine.
FUCK YOU MIKEY AND THE BEND OVER AND COUGH TRICKS YOU HAD TO TO , TO BE FOLLOW THE SAME FOOT PATHS AS THE SOVIETS AND THE NAZIS!
http://theprogressivepost.blog.....-work.html
Keith is at his snarky best here. Go Keith, Go!
TYKO
Ron @ 3:
Is it a gut feeling or is Chertoff and other Neo-Cons like Santorum and Arkansas Republican Party Dennis Milligan preparing us for another inside job? In the last week these comments have been made.
Santorum - “Between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public’s going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK. But I think the American public’s going to have a very different view,”
Milligan - “At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001],”
Now I ask you, are these people hoping for another attack? These people are psychopaths..
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[Deleted. 9/11 conspiracy discussion is best left to the sites that specialize in the topic. Not here-Sitemonitor]
the last man with a hunch worth listening to was Igor in that Mel Brooks movie.
Chertof is no Igor.
That being said, I noticed the Homeland security folks are putting out a radio show on NPR called “Homeland Security inside and out”. it was on Wednesday on WAMU.org.
Sounds like either its part of a Public relations ploy, or a growth industry opportunity operation to get you to worry about a lot of things..
its originationg from Texas A n M http://homelandsecurity.tamu.edu/
We have nothing to fear but fear itself….
(HA..not with these rubes..)
skeletor spoke and someone recorded it!!!!!!!!!!! good!!
folks are getting sick and tired of the same karl rove that fat faced fuck who could use a few lipsucktions .
SHOVE it up your ass whitehouse and all its lap dogs. you and you alone HAVE failed the USA! a place where i used to be proud of,, where i was born and grew up in for 29 yrs of my life.
Like the song from BOSTON says,, ´´dont look back´´ and thats the only thing that keeps me to not weep for the USA.
time and time again, ppl were given a chance to vote less extream and they,,,,,,,,didint! after 9/11 aheeeemmm, it was back to my country right or wrong do or die.
and look at pat tillman. fragged for his belief that the iraq war was a illegal one. He was right and well shot dead!
so now over 3,500 service ppl have died,, the war is costing YOU the american tax payer,, 12 billion a month and where the fuck is congress?????? still bitching about the little things,, i mean soon its vactaion time ,, again for congress, and they cant seem to vote on jack shit. Ok pay raise yes. As for all the rest of which you and i voted for , in hopes congress would act,,,,,,,,,its become like that a seeing a mamoth sink into a tar pit,, and just up the hill , a jackass brayyyyyyyyyy its laughter, as it too goes off the beaten path and falls into the same damn tar pit.
MEANWHILE BACK AT THE REG FOLKS CAVE,,
i,,,,,,,,gotta go and get ready for work. thanks folks for a cool time here and danke for alles for the siteowners auch.
Mitt best regards to all,
The Baker!!
;)
Wow, Kieth at his razor sharp best!!! (holding her sides from laughter)
Keith sure as hell has guts, but speaks from the cerebral cortex. We need more like him in media if we are to survive as a vibrant nation!
I find it shocking that Chertoff is still around. Doesn’t that blow your mind?
And I didn’t know he referred to Louisana as a “city”! Thanks, KO!
Compare KO to O’Reilly. One speaks so intelligently and eloquently, the other not so much.
Any football fans?
Starting with the 2007 NFL season, Olbermann will also serve as co-host of NBC’s Football Night in America with Bob Costas.
Am I the only one to notice how the MSM and various point people in the government are lamenting the “likelihood of another terrorist attack” this summer? These bastards are up to something, and I wouldn’t put it past them to orchestrate an ‘attack’ to justify martial law and the Bushites completely taking over.
BE PROUD TO GET LOUD, END THE BUSH REGIME!! If we have to do it ourselves, so be it.
Olberman: “We will not have a police state in this country. That said, police state is appropriate under these times”
paraphrasing
WTF?
In the 1960s it was the summer of love.
Now we have the Summer of Fear.
With the Bush Doctrine of no safe havens, preemptive war and democracy in tatters, the President remains focused on staying the course in Iraq at all costs. In Washington, House Minority Leader John Boehner calls Senate GOP rebels on Iraq “wimps” and Tony Snow slanders the press corps as “defeatist.” Meanwhile, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff announces his “gut feeling” about the increased threat of terror attacks within the United States.
Meanwhile, the resurgence of Al Qaeda on their watch continues unabated.
For the disturbing details, see:
“CIA: Resurgent Al Qaeda Now at Pre-9/11 Capability.”
I have a gut feeling that America is doomed.
Bic @ 22:
His point at the end there was that we need to be diligent and smart about it but obviously, not a “police state” the way the Bushies want.
And all this talk is rather disconcerting — could they possibly know another attack is coming? Or are they crazy enough to have it happen so we’ll support their ideological war?
Kick-Ass Keith!
Cheney out of the side of his mouth: You make goddamn sure that by the time this summer’s false flag hits, that everyone is thankfull it just didn’t happen sooner!
MSM: Yessiree Dick.
This seems to prove that Al-Qaeda does indeed follow events in the US, and there attacks are timed to coincide with the release of bad news for the Bush administration.
Personally, I think they should do away with the Department of Homeland Security and let the FBI, the CIA and our law enforcement people nationwide do their jobs. I lived in Florida during and after three hurricanes in 2004 and the DHS was a total joke then, with corruption scandals all over the place. And we have all seen what they did in Katrina, almost nothing. They are useless and nothing more than political hacks.
I lived in Ohio when a big tornado came through and demolished Xenia, Ohio. The President declared an emergency, called out Army and Air Force personnel from nearby bases to help the National Guard, and they cleaned up the mess. Interestingly, that President was Richard Nixon (Yeah, really). So, tell me again, why do we need the DHS?
As usual, KO kicks some serious ass. I know in my gut these assholes are tuned into every comment by Keith. They don’t have the balls to respond to his comments. They have no answer for truth. Keep up the great work, Keith.
Good interview with Moore too.
Dunbar @ 26:
I too wonder about about Chertoff’s “gut” statements.
Ron @ 3:
Phej Omatic
Do me a favor and send it to your reps.
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