Condoleezza Rice testified on April 8 that a memo was sent out on Aug. 6, 2001, warning of impending terrorism on U.S. soil, and President Bush responds by going on vacation to Texas the next day?

After reading that I immediately thought of Chapter One of Michael Moore’s “Dude, Where’s My Country?”

The chapter is researched well, with numerous footnotes. In it, Moore states that immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration canceled all flights in the United States.

Only one plane was allowed to leave, and that was a jet to Saudi Arabia carrying members of the bin Laden family.

Who authorized the go-ahead for that flight, and why was the airplane allowed to leave in the first place?

When it became known that the president’s father, George Bush Sr., has a long history of business dealings with the bin Laden family, my question is, why wasn’t news of this flight more widely reported?

Why is information such as that Bush Sr. served on the board of directors of a global oil cartel with Osama bin Laden’s father Mohamad bin Laden also not known to the public, or at least more a topic of discussion?

Why do we have to find out in a book that our president’s family is on very close personal terms with the bin Laden family? There is definitely conflict of interest there. Finally, why did President Bush make so much out of Iraq being a threat? (Which we know now was a sham.)

Why didn’t Bush just come out and say “We must focus on Iraq, because it couldn’t have been bin Laden — he’s a close friend of mine!”

These are things American people need to know before going to the polls in November.

Devery Fairbanks

Lecturer

American Indian Studies