PDB Day: Never Forget

Often, we are encouraged to remember unpleasant events in our lives. Collectively, as Americans, we learn iconic messages from our history classes like "Remember the Alamo!" or "Remember the Maine!" We know that the memories of the devastation at Pearl Harbor motivated thousands, maybe even millions, to support American involvement in World War II and ultimately to win it.

Our generation, of course, is reminded regularly to remember 9/11, and those reminders almost always come from the Bush crime syndicate, Rudy "America's Cross-Dresser Mayor" Giuliani, or other such people or groups who want to capitalize on 9/11 for political gain.

However, I'm sure for everyone reading these words, it takes little if any effort or encouragement to remember 9/11. We all know where we were and what we were doing when the planes hit the towers, and we've seen the Constitution trampled over and over again in the aftermath of that terrible day.

But we've been missing a day that truly needs to be remembered. A day that ought to be seared into every American's memory as the day that could have made future generations see 9/11 as just that -- September 11, a nice early fall day -- and nothing more. That day was August 6, 2001.

On that day, six years ago today, Drunky McStagger received, as he does every day, the President's Daily Briefing, or PDB. The 8/6/01 PDB was a little different, though. It contained the words, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." Intelligence gathered over a period of months, if not years, had revealed that Osama bin Laden was readying his al-Qaeda network for an unprecedented terrorist attack on American soil. The PDB was the intelligence community's method for warning the White House and ensuring that all available resources could be brought to bear against al-Qaeda, preventing an historic catastrophe.

Of course, as we all know, that's not what happened. Drunky read the PDB, set it aside, and turned his attention to other, apparently more pressing matters. And just five weeks later, it was September 11. And that historic catastrophe has been compounded by the ongoing historic catastrophe of the Bush crime syndicate. August 6, 2001, turned a merely incompetent presidency into a malevolent dictatorship, and we will endure the consequences therefrom for generations.

So, today, August 6, 2007, take a moment to think about those consequences and the events that were set into motion six years ago. Join the blogswarm and write about it. And, above all, commit yourself to doing something about it. Whether it's talking with others, campaigning for candidates, writing letters to the editor or op-eds, or whatever you think is best, August 6, 2007 could be the beginning of the end -- the end of the political, economic, and diplomatic quagmire that was created on August 6, 2001.

We can only hope. And act.

(I'll have had more to say about this on Blast Off! Radio today at 12:30 Eastern -- archives linked in left sidebar.)

(Cross-posted at Pax Americana)