America attacked as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney dithered (video)

November 8, 11:09 PMLouisville Independent ExaminerGreg Skilling

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While the administration of former President George W. Bush and his erstwhile partner former Vice-President Dick Cheney dithered about with two foreign wars, America was under attack. Sunday, on CBS' 60 Minutes, reporter Steve Kroft interviewed Project Director for the Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency, Jim Lewis regarding the attacks.

"In 2007 we probably had our electronic Pearl Harbor. It was an espionage Pearl Harbor," Lewis said. "Some unknown foreign power, and honestly, we don't know who it is, broke into the Department of Defense, to the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, probably the Department of Energy, probably NASA. They broke into all of the high tech agencies, all of the military agencies, and downloaded terabytes of information."

In December 2008, another devastating attack took place.

"This was the CENTCOM network," Lewis explained. "The command that's fighting our two wars. And some foreign power was able to get into their networks. And sit there and see everything they did. That was a major problem. And that's really had a big effect on D.O.D." 

When Steve Kroft noted that most Americans don't know this is happening, Mr. Lewis had this to say.

"You know, I've been trying to figure out why that is. And some of it is the previous administration didn't want to admit that they had been rolled in 2007. There's a disincentive to tell people, 'Hey, things are going badly.' But it doesn't seem to be sinking in. And some of us call it 'the death of a thousand cuts.' Every day a little bit more of our intellectual property, our innovative skills, our military technology is stolen by somebody. And it's like little drops. Eventually we'll drown. But every day we don't notice,"

Is it any wonder former Vice-President Cheney has been engaging in a relentless campaign of misdirection and misinformation regarding national security? While Bush and Cheney neglected the situation in Afghanistan and desperately attempted to clean up the mess they created in Iraq, America's enemies were busy stealing massive amounts of data and possibly leaving behind embedded programs designed to cripple America's infrastructure. To be fair, the commission headed by Jim Lewis was established during the Bush administration after the 2007 attacks. However, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did too little too late to prevent yet another attack on America.

How many times does America have to be shown the destructive ineptitude of fear-mongering ideologues before we wake up and support the soft-spoken voices of reason?