Old News, But Still Relevant

A Senate panel report released today shows no evidence linking Iraq to al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion, according to news articles.

On Monday, I will be asking some serious questions pertaining to this report, to 9/11's fifth anniversary, and to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. They will be unpleasant questions, but they deserve honest answers (not that they'll get any).

As Bush's failures, lies and abuses of power grow ever more outrageous and tiresome, what friends he has left in Hollywood have come out with a TV movie full of lies and distortions, trying to pin the blame for failure to protect America on that dreadful day five years ago this Monday on the Clinton administration.

I'll be asking some unpleasant questions about that, too.

But the "old news," as Bush's spokesliar Tony Snow flippantly dismissed it as, is still relevant. It's relevant because while Osama bin Laden was making his escape from Tora Bora, Bush & Co. were busy plotting how they were going to conquer a nation they knew full well had nothing to do with the attacks of September 11, 2001. And five years after those attacks that took the lives of almost three thousand Americans, with thousands more Americans dead in Iraq and untold tens of thousands of Iraqis killed, the chief mastermind of 9/11 is still at large.

Five years is plenty of time to have gotten the job of finding bin Laden and holding him accountable for his crimes. Americans deserve to know the truth of why this hasn't happened.