Such was the case when, the day before yesterday, the CIA announced that it had closed Alec Station, the unit responsible for capturing Osama bin Laden...almost a year ago.

After the attack on the Twin Towers, President Bush stood up and proudly promised that the US would get bin Laden "dead or alive." He promised that those responsible for the cowardly acts would be held accountable. And we believed him, because he mourned with us as we buried 3,030 innocent citizens who had done nothing more heinous than go to work or catch a plane.

As time went on though, we questioned. Why were members of bin Laden’s family flown out of the US immediately after the attack without the CIA being able to question them? Why is he taking military manpower away from Afghanistan to start a war with Iraq? Why is he spying on peace demonstrators and checking civilian phone records? Why were civil rights being stifled and freedoms withheld? Why hasn’t he caught bin Laden? And we were told to trust him and remember 9/11. Anyone questioning was said to be siding with the terrorists, to be un-American, to be forgetting 9/11.

Now we discover that the CIA office designated to find the man responsible for the worst terrorist attack is and for some time has been closed. The Administration apparently doesn’t think he’s that big of a threat anymore so the man who murdered over 3,000 of our parents, siblings, spouses and children gets to go free.

The promises of justice were empty. The tears of compassion were merely the crocodile tears of a politician wanting to expand his power. He used our loss for his own aggrandizement. He used this country’s biggest national tragedy and the death of thousands as a means of keeping a job. My mother always told me that you can tell the truth of a man by his actions, not by his words. With the closing of Alec Station, George W. Bush has told us in no uncertain terms exactly what 9/11 meant to him.

Rene' Thompson
July 07, 2006

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