Conservative Central

1. Ed Asner Not Happy with Hillary

Actor and political activist Ed Asner told a group of Democrats last week that President Bush "made it easy" for 9/11 to occur - then exploited the tragedy to sell the war in Iraq and bolster his own re-election campaign.

"We might easily have been spared 9/11 if the president had heeded expert advice and made terrorism one of his highest priorities, as the previous administration had done," Asner said.

"The 9/11 hijackers would have faced great difficulty had the president simply convened a cabinet meeting to require protection of commercial aircraft -- just that one simple thing."

Asner seemed to have conveniently forgotten that the "previous administration" took no such step.

The actor also said about Hillary Clinton's prospects for winning the Oval Office in 2008: "So far, she's not my kind of candidate."

Asner, who is promoting his book "Misuse of Power," made his remarks to the Palm Beach Democratic Club in West Palm Beach, Fla.

An audience member asked Asner if he thought the anthrax scare that followed 9/11 was actually a plot to silence congressional opposition to Bush's policies.
 
Neither Asner nor his co-author, Burt Hall, wanted to touch that one. Asner did reply, however: "I'll always wonder about 9/11 myself."

The former "Lou Grant" star told his audience the 9/11 Commission feared that holding the Bush administration accountable for the terrorist attacks would be bad for the economy, and could ultimately damage Bush's chances of winning re-election.
 
"By allowing politics to influence the report," Asner said, "the commission permitted Bush to campaign on the grounds that only he could keep our country safe. He was re-elected using Ground Zero as his Republican Convention, and 3,000 dead as his major platform."

The sympathetic audience interrupted Asner frequently to applaud his remarks.

"Unfortunately," Asner said, "President Bush made it easy for 9/11 to happen, and then exploited that tragedy to sell an unnecessary war and further his own re-election. Remarkable, but true."

Other Asner statements:

• In an effort to drive President Bill Clinton from office, "Tom DeLay railroaded the impeachment. And if there is a God in heaven, he will be found guilty," Asner said, referring to the legal troubles facing the former House majority leader.
• It's not true that Congress had access to the same intelligence the president had when it voted for the war, according to Asner. "Members of Congress," he said, "pointed out they had nothing close to the president's access. Congress only got a summarized, sanitized version without all the dissents and the caveats."
• Iraqi terrorist attacks are ultimately the fault of the U.S. "Our presence in the region created the resistance in the first place, and now we are actually impeding progress."
• "Beware, the far right will have no scruples when it comes to doing whatever it takes to hold on to power."
• America faces a "clear and present danger" because "the far right has solidified its control, and is moving us toward a one party system" by remapping political districts.

In response to a suggestion that he should rally more actors to actively promote the Democratic Party, Asner said: "There is a world out there, the Rush Limbaughs and the Hannitys, the O'Reillys -- they can't wait for politics to come out of Hollywood, so they can brand it, and scarify it and castrate it.

"And they speak of us as the 'Hollywood rabble.' That would be the most dangerous thing in the world, to have future ideas of the Democratic Party come out of Hollywood."