“it’s no time for politics”

Yup. I guess it’s that time of year again. Time for the Republicans to remind us all that our country was attacked, and they did nothing to stop it… Actually, they don’t, as a rule, generally mention that last part. It interferes with the central message, which is that we desperately need them to protect us. So, expect to see lots of footage of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center, and no reenactments of, say, the President, months prior to the attack, being handed a memo entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike within the U.S.” It’s a formula that’s worked well for six years, so there’s no reason to think that they’ll change it now.

So, don’t count on hearing any mention of how Bush kept reading that book about the pet goat after being told that our nation was under attack. And don’t expect any mention of the fact that a conscious decision was made to focus our military efforts on Iraq instead of going after Osama bin Laden, the man who orchestrated the attacks against us. And don’t get your hopes up for any mention of the fact that the administration had its eyes set on Iraq well before 9/11. And don’t expect to see any mention of that secret Energy Task Force meeting of Dick Cheney’s, in which oil executives sat around a map of Iraq and carved it up. And you can bet there won’t be any mention of the war profiteering, the corruption, or that fact that it’s predominantly kids from poor families that we’re sending off to Iraq to fight and die. But, they sure do love those images of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center. It’s powerful stuff, and they know just how to use it.

This 9/11 season they’re rolling out a new $15 million ad campaign that questions the patriotism of everyone calling for an end to the war in Iraq and suggests, once again, that Iraq and 9/11 are somehow connected. Today’s “Washington Post” has a good piece on it. Here’s a clip:

The television commercial is grim and gripping: A soldier who lost both legs in an explosion near Fallujah explains why he thinks U.S. forces need to stay in Iraq.

“They attacked us,” he says as the screen turns to an image of the second hijacked airplane heading toward the smoking World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. “And they will again. They won’t stop in Iraq.”

Every investigation has shown that Iraq did not, in fact, have anything to do with the Sept. 11 attacks. But the ad, part of a new $15 million media blitz launched by an advocacy group allied with the White House, may be the most overt attempt during the current debate in Congress over the war to link the attacks with Iraq…

The new ad campaign drives that home more emotionally than any speech. Sponsored by a group of Bush allies under the name Freedom’s Watch, four spots are airing in 60 congressional districts in 20 states. The commercials urge Congress to stick with the president’s strategy in Iraq. The most poignant of them stars a soldier identified as John Kriesel, who was wounded on Dec. 2, 2006, and is shown walking with two artificial legs.

Former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, one of the group’s founders, said the ad is not misleading by saying “they attacked us” in the context of Iraq and showing the image of the Sept. 11 attack. “Iraqis did not attack us on 9/11,” he agreed. But it does not matter, Fleischer added, because some of the same sorts of people who did are now fighting U.S. forces in Iraq…

And, yes, one of the ads in this campaign does include the phrase, “It’s no time for politics.” God forbid that someone would politicize something as sacred as 9/11.