We are owed an apology

We were called traitors. We were told to leave the country. We were called every name in the book because we said that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. We were called un-American when we questioned why Osama bin Laden was allowed to escape at Tora Bora. We questioned the need for the kinds of 4th Amendment violations to which the Bush Administration was committed and we were told that only terrorists would be targeted, not Americans. And we also noticed that imminent threats seemed to always appear when George Bush was in trouble -- and wrote that we thought such threats were being ginned up for political reasons. Keith Olbermann noted this in a continually-updated series:

And once again, we were right:

Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security, asserts in a new book that he was pressured by top advisers to President George W. Bush to raise the national threat level just before the 2004 election in what he suspected was an effort to influence the vote.

After Osama bin Laden released a threatening videotape four days before the election, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pushed Mr. Ridge to elevate the public threat posture but he refused, according to the book. Mr. Ridge calls it a “dramatic and inconceivable” event that “proved most troublesome” and reinforced his decision to resign.

The provocative allegation provides fresh ammunition for critics who have accused the Bush administration of politicizing national security. Mr. Bush and his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, were locked in a tight race heading into that final weekend, and some analysts concluded that even without a higher threat level, the bin Laden tape helped the president win re-election by reminding voters of the danger of Al Qaeda.

The progressive blogosphere was called every name in the book because unlike those who dove under the bed with a plastic tarp in one hand and a roll of duct tape in the other every time George Bush or Dick Cheney said "Boo!", we looked at the evidence and what was going on OUTSIDE the Administration and rightly concluded that they were full of shit. Unlike those who dove under the bed with a plastic tarp in one hand and a roll of duct tape in the other every time George Bush or Dick Cheney said "Boo!", we noted that when warnings came in of an impending attack, George Bush and Dick Cheney did nothing -- and yet they insisted they were the ones who kept us safe. By the time they left office, they'd convinced the plastic sheeting and duct tape crowd that 9/11 had happened on Bill Clinton's watch. But on every single issue on which we noted the truth, we were called traitors by the right. But we were correct and they were wrong.

They owe us an apology, but I know full well it isn't coming. Because as we are now seeing in the health care debate, the right and their frothing, screaming, spittle-caked willfully ignorant minions don't care about truth. Because to them, ideology trumps everything. The next time a conservative says "Country first", I hope people recognize that it's just another lie out of a right-wing mouth. Because it's NEVER "Country first" with these people. It's always about ideology and power.

Keith Olbermann will have an update tonight.