Saturday, July 24, 2004

Cynthia McKinney's come-back

On Tuesday this week, Cynthia McKinney was vindicated.

McKinney...passed the 50% mark, narrowly giving her the edge she needed to avoid a run-off in the 4th Congressional District's Democratic primary here in suburban Atlanta. The (still unofficial) result will all but assure her a return to Congress.

...The former congresswoman known for her no-holds-barred criticism of the corporate and political elite lost her seat in 2002 when a maelstrom of post-9/11 media hysteria and right-wing fear-mongering combined to knock her out of office and nearly off the mainstream political map.

In the months following September 11, few public figures had the courage to openly ask how and why America was attacked that day, and who stood to benefit in the attack's wake. McKinney was one of the lone politicians to ask the questions no one seemed to want to face. In the spring of 2002, it proved a dangerous move. Already known as a political lighting-rod for speaking out on issues that even so-called liberals in the her own party avoided, McKinney had recently broached a series of politically taboo subjects. In March 2002, McKinney held back-to-back hearings investigating the Florida election debacle and alleged human rights violations by the George H.W. Bush-connected mining company, Barrick Gold. Shortly after, she made what would be her most serious political misstep. McKinney appeared on KPFA's Flash Points radio program and made statements that would all but end her ten-year congressional run. As Greg Palast told GNN, "Her words were taken, put through a media mix master, and changed around so that Cynthia McKinney was accused of saying that George Bush knew all about the September 11th attack in advance, and that he kept it to himself to make sure that the his buddies would from the wars to come." The only problems was that was not exactly what McKinney said.


That's okay. I'll say it for her.

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