Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Bridget Gibson

"When the government fears the people, you have liberty. When the people fear the government, you have tyranny."~Thomas Jefferson

A few years ago there was quite a stink about a Clinton policy that basically said "we won't ask and you won't have to tell" about your personal life. With all of the fuss surrounding this policy, it was amazing that the sky just did not cave in. Today we have an administration that has a similar policy with much more far reaching effects. It's called "Don't Ask Because We Tell Nothing." If you have the audacity to ask, you will be labeled as unpatriotic and they don't have to tell anything about any subject because they have their magic shield of "executive privilege."

This privilege applies to any communication that has ever been had from the cradle to current regarding any and all subjects that may be of particular interest to anyone with a brain.

We don't get to know exactly why the Bush administration called off the hunt for bin Laden in March of 2001, but we get to blame Bill Clinton for not finding him prior to that time. We don't get to know why the nation's energy policy seemed written for Enron, but we get to pay the utility bills for the Vice President's residence. We don't get to know why the FBI had an undercover agent as a roommate to two September 11, 2001, hijackers and did not disclose it, but we get to mourn and bury our dead.

We don't get to ask why the bin Laden family was flown from the United States when all other civilian flights were grounded last September, but we get to pay for the interment camps at Guantanamo Bay for an "indefinite" period of time. We don't get to ask why we are not adhering to the Geneva Convention rules for Prisoners of War, but we get to know that George Bush has taken more personal time than any other president in history (42%).

We don't get to ask why John Ashcroft was warned in July 2001 not to fly commercial flights, but we get to hear that acting on any warnings would have "shut down" civilian air traffic from Condoleesa Rice. We don't get to ask if there is any connection between Condoleesa Rice's former employer, Exxon, and their desire for the oil reserves in Iraq, but we get to know that Saddam is a very "evil" man. We don't get to ask why Dick Cheney, as Defense Secretary to GHWB, had no comment during the late eighties about Saddam's use of chemical weapons and continued to supply Iraq with materials, but we now get to hear that Dick Cheney wants to use our military service personnel to perform a "regime change."

We don't get to know why our fellow citizens are stripped of their rights and we don't get to ask what the charges are against hundreds or possibly thousands of other "non-citizens," but we get to pay the bills for George to fly around the country raising funds for the GOP. We don't get to ask why Kenny Boy Lay has escaped any criminal charges, but we get to see Martha Stewart on television like a commercial. We don't get to ask why the anthrax terrorist is still at large, but we get to hand over our medical privacy rights like candy.

We don't get to ask why George is so fired up about Iraq and why Donald Rumsfeld had the Iraqi war plans drawn up since September 11, 2001, but we get to be treated to a declining domestic economy (that we also don't get to ask about).

We don't get to ask about the 2+ million jobs that have been lost since January 2001, but we get to pay for a worthless "Star Wars" charade.

I guess that George agrees with Ronald Reagan in that "trees cause pollution" because George wants to cut them all down to prevent forest fires. I would love for someone to ask him, but we don't get to have press conferences anymore. Haven't had one in a year and a half that wasn't a staged question and answer session with the questions supplied by the White House.

There are a million more questions that have not been asked of this administration. It appears that there are no journalists that have any interest in the answers. We have a massive media failure to dig into the questions that need answering. The current administration likes it like that. Just remember folks, don't ask because they won't tell.