I was struck by the huge range of ages, ethnicities, and types of people in the demonstration today.

This is how the NY Times presents that diversity:

The protesters were middle-aged mothers, tongue-pierced students, veterans and bearded professional dissenters, who all came together in what organizers described as a broad-based protest of the Bush administration’s foreign policy not just in Iraq, but in Haiti and Israel.

This is what the Washington Post, not particularly good on coverage of the Iraq War, had to say:

The crowd along Madison Avenue represented an array of professions, ages and backgrounds from the East Coast. They arrived by bus, caravan and subway.

Look at the photos that James took of the people we saw today. The Times is becoming Fox-like in its approach to news.

Right now, the NY Times home page has no mention of the anti-war demonstration here in NYC (we just got back but it’s not finished yet). Instead they have a photo of G.W. Bush at a rally in Florida. The Times doesn’t want to acknowledge that such as thing is happening in the city, but it’s hard to ignore 100,000 marchers.

There is a small link lower down on the page under another Iraq story about worldwide demonstrations, but if fails to mention the New York one.

Newsday has an AP story, which is where I got the 100,000 number. Also, on the page with the story is a link to a photo gallery.

James now has a photo gallery of his own up.

Of course, that won’t happen while the GOP is in charge of Congress. War and terrorism threats are useful tools to hold onto power, not things our country should actually do anything about.

They wanted to bomb Iraq after 9/11, even though they new it had nothing to do with it — dead Iraqis for “revenge.”

Frankly, I don’t understand right-wingers at this point. Do they honestly believe what this administration is doing will make us (or anyone else) safer?

See you all tomorrow!

From an article that TBOGG pointed out:

In truth, however, September 11 became a political football on September 11. Conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, blamed the Clinton administration. “The decision to get down and dirty with the terrorists, to take their threat seriously and counter them aggressively, was simply never taken,” wrote Sullivan. Senator Orrin Hatch referred in 1996 to the terrorist threats, threats which compelled Clinton to attempt the passage of a comprehensive anti-terrorism bill that would have gone a long way to stopping 9/11, as “Phony threats.” After September 11, he joined the ‘Blame Clinton’ chorus.

During his administration, Clinton offered legislation that would give the Treasury Secretary broad powers to ban foreign nations and banks from accessing American financial markets unless they cooperated with money-laundering investigations that would expose and terminate terrorist cash flows. The legislation was killed by Texas Republican Senator Phil Gramm, who was chairman of the Banking Committee. At the time, he called the bill “totalitarian.” It was revealed later, of course, that Gramm killed the bill because it would have blocked Enron officers from laundering stolen stockholder money through the same offshore conduits the terrorists were using. Gramm, from Texas, was beholden to Enron, and killed the bill at their behest. Of course, he joined the ‘Blame Clinton’ chorus after the attacks, and never mind the facts.

…

The Bush administration received a blizzard of warnings before September 11 that something huge was about to happen. The security agencies of Germany, Israel, Egypt and Russia delivered specific warnings about airplanes being used as bombs against prominent American targets. FBI agents were raising alarms in Minnesota and Arizona. Donald Kerrick was a deputy National Security Advisor in the late Clinton administration. He stayed on into the Bush administration. He was a three-star General, and absolutely not political. He has reported that when the Bush people came in, he wrote a memo about terrorism, al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The memo said, “We will be struck again.” As a result of writing that memo, he was not invited to any more meetings. No one responded to his memo. He felt that, from what he could see from inside the National Security Council, terrorism was demoted.

Richard Clarke was Director of Counter-Terrorism in the National Security Council. He has since left. Clarke urgently tried to draw the attention of the Bush administration to the threat of al Qaeda. Richard Clarke was panicked about the alarms he was hearing regarding potential attacks. Clarke is at the center of what has since become a burning controversy: What happened on August 6, 2001? It was on this day that George W. Bush received his last, and one of the few, briefings on terrorism. According to reports, the briefing stated bluntly that Osama bin Laden intended to attack America soon, and contained the word “hijacking.” Bush responded to the warning by heading to Texas for a month-long vacation. It is this briefing that the Bush administration has refused to divulge to the committee investigating the attacks.

Regarding Clarke, this was a non-partisan anti-terrorism professional and member of the National Security Council. His latest revelations are that the Bush administration wanted to bomb Iraq on 9/12, even though they knew it had nothing to do with 9/11:

A former White House anti-terrorism advisor says the Bush administration considered bombing Iraq in retaliation after Sept. 11, 2001 even though it was clear al Qaeda had carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Richard Clarke, who headed a cybersecurity board that gleaned intelligence from the Internet, told CBS “60 Minutes” in an interview to be aired on Sunday he was surprised administration officials turned immediately toward Iraq instead of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

“They were talking about Iraq on 9/11. They were talking about it on 9/12,” Clarke says.

Clarke said he was briefing President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld among other top officials in the aftermath of the devastating attacks.

“Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq. … We all said, ‘but no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan ,” recounts Clarke, “and Rumsfeld said, ‘There aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.”‘