Present in the room: Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al and Tipper
Gore, John Kerry, Tom Daschle,
Dick Gephardt, Al Franken, Joe Lieberman, Nancy Pelosi, Terry
MacAuliffe, Mario Cuomo,
Carl Levin, Ted Kennedy, Bob Graham, the whole crowd.
The crowd is in a group behind Daschle and silently looks into
the camera during the speech.
Daschle speaks (because he’s Senate Minority leader and because
he’s not running for President).
My fellow Americans, good evening.
What you have just heard resonates with an experience that many
Americans have had at one time or another
- the experience of being scammed by a salesman who is
trying to sell a junk car. We hear
a carefully crafted story of what a great car this is and all the wonderful
things we can do with the car in the future.We
have sensible sounding explanations as to why the car is
currently not moving, why the car is missing
three out of four tires, why someone has punched out the
windshield and what their motivations were,
and why the car is currently being looted for spare parts
by the manager and his friends. In
spite of the slick presentation, it becomes obvious, at some point,
that something is horribly wrong.
Unfortunately, we must report that something is horribly wrong with
the state of the union and it has gotten
to the point where we are in grave peril if we continue to ignore it.
As your representatives, it was our duty
to prevent this from happening. It was our duty to sound the alarm.
We have failed. We have been silent
when no one who knows should be silent. We have been steamrolled
and sucker-punched again and again.
We have been afraid to speak out and afraid to lose our privileged
positions. Frankly, we no longer
deserve anyone’s support. Nevertheless, we have decided that
for the
good of the nation, this cowardice ends
today. We now pledge to expose these problems and to decide,
as a nation how to solve them. This
begins now and will continue with hearings held either in within Congress
or, if necessary, in an outside forum.
We will not rest until these problems are fully aired and resolved.
The charges below are shocking and almost
unbelievable. Unfortunately, they are true.
We must now face the facts.
We have had our democracy for so long in
America that we have taken for granted that no one would dare
to simply grab political power by means
sadly familiar in corrupt societies around the world. We assumed
that should anyone be so foolish as to
try this, the basic integrity of our democratic institutions would prevent
them from succeeding. This applies
to any political office in the nation, but, most of all, it applies to
the
Presidency. Nevertheless, we must
report that in the year 2000, the Bush campaign systematically rigged
the election process in Florida and got
into power by illegally purging Democratic voters and by using a
corrupted Supreme Court. Even more
regretfully, just when our most trusted democratic institutions
were needed, we failed to even object.
Unfortunately, this is only the beginning
of the problem. It has become clear that the horrendous terrorist
attacks on 9-11-2001 were known in advance
by the Bush administration. Efforts by the FBI and other
agencies to prevent these attacks were
not “bungled” they were halted upon orders from the administration.
Knowing of these attacks in advance, the
administration officials took steps to protect themselves but did
nothing to warn the FAA or anyone else.
We had no warning and thousands of Americans lost their lives.
The terrorist attacks ensued following
the administration’s planned invasion of Afghanistan. One of the
goals
of this invasion was to secure a pipeline
deal for interests friendly to the Bush administration. In fact,
this plan
has succeeded. The current president
of Afghanistan is a former oil company consultant and the desired
pipeline deal has been signed.
In the aftermath of the attacks, fake terrorist alerts have been manufactured
in order to keep up support for the administration.
Efforts by Democrats in the Congress to have an open,
thorough, impartial investigation of these
events have been consistently blocked by the administration.
They will be blocked no longer.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks,
our constitutional rights are under attack as never before in our
lifetimes. Almost unbelievably, the
administration has asserted, in court, that the President has the right
to
arrest and indefinitely detain anyone –
U.S. citizen or not – if the President suspects that person of being
tied to terrorism. This has already
happened and citizens and non-citizens have been detained indefinitely
with no right to speak to an attorney and
no right to see the evidence against them. As in a nightmare
totalitarian state, such people may not
even know the charges against them. We cannot afford to wait until
this happens to someone we know.
By then, it will be too late. This is a crude assault on the foundations
of our system of government which cannot
be allowed to continue.
In addition to a presumed right to arrest
U.S. citizens with no charges, the President asserts the right to
make War on any nation on earth that he
deems to be a potential threat without the approval of Congress.
He asserts that the U.S. will preemptively
attack before any action is taken, or even before any threats are
made or implied by the target nation.
In other words, he asserts that the United States will wage war against
a nation if the President alone determines
that such nations might attack us in the future. The President also
asserts that the U.S. will not allow rival
powers to emerge that would threaten U.S. world domination.
Not allowing such a power to emerge can
only be done by war. The president is, in effect, declaring that
we will wage war on other nations for the
purpose of keeping them weak. This policy is a moral outrage
and must not be allowed to continue.
Since gaining office, parts of the U.S.
Government have been corrupted and are now working for the
interests of business who have contributed
to the Bush campaign rather than working for the public interest,
as they should. Energy policy is
an example of this where energy company executives actually decide US
energy policy in secret. This is
one of many examples which will be thoroughly aired in our hearings.
Many of you remember the crushing debt crises
of the1980’s when the national debt was considered a true
threat to national security as well as
a threat to the well being of ourselves and future generations. Many
of
you also remember the tremendous progress
made in this area during the Clinton administration. The problem
is back. We have gone from massive
government surpluses to massive government debt. How this happened
must be thoroughly investigated.
It is already clear, however, that the treasury has been and continues
to be
looted by interests close to the president.
This looting occurs under various guises including “missile defense,”
“tax reform” and, most recently, “economic stimulation.”
We must get to the bottom of this immediately and
stop the massive red ink that threatens
us all.
Over the past ten years, the dominant news
media in the U.S. have been allowed to accumulate into a few
hands and have been systematically corrupted.
Rather than serving the public interest, the main news media
now serve immensely wealthy business interests
who want to promote the agenda of the Bush administration.
News is suppressed and distorted for this
purpose and persons who attempt to deviate from the story that
the administration wants to put out are
systematically intimidated and suppressed. Alternative views are
extinguished and only a narrow discussion
emerges which takes the administrations requirements as
preconditions. Subverting the fourth
estate into a propaganda arm of the right-wing has extremely
dangerous consequences for the health of
our democracy.
I am sure that it is shocking for many of
you to hear a view of the state of the union that is so different from
the picture painted by the president. Unfortunately,
the picture painted by the president is an illusion. It is a
flim-flam designed to keep you from realizing
what is going on until it is too late. This attempted flim-flam is
an insult to all Americans. We are
deeply ashamed to admit that our silence has indirectly helped the
flim-flam to work.
We will be silent no longer.