Hullabaloo

Sunday, March 28, 2004

 
Woodward and Pincus

Thanks to commenter Pontificator, here's an interesting little follow up to the Bob Woodward item from the great piece by Michael Massing in the NY Review of Books called Now They Tell Us:

In the weeks following the [UN] speech, one journalist—Walter Pincus of The Washington Post—developed strong reservations about it. A longtime investigative reporter, Pincus went back and read the UN inspectors' reports of 1998 and 1999, and he was struck to learn from them how much weaponry had been destroyed in Iraq before 1998. He also tracked down General Anthony Zinni, the former head of the US Central Command, who described the hundreds of weapons sites the United States had destroyed in its 1998 bombing. All of this, Pincus recalled, "made me go back and read Powell's speech closely. And you could see that it was all inferential. If you analyzed all the intercepted conversations he discussed, you could see that they really didn't prove anything."

By mid-March, Pincus felt he had enough material for an article questioning the administration's claims on Iraq. His editors weren't interested. It was only after the intervention of his colleague Bob Woodward, who was researching a book on the war and who had developed similar doubts, that the editors agreed to run the piece—on page A17.

The White House is right to be worried.

reading this reminded me of a post I wrote last July:

Is it possible that there are no WMD in Iraq today because Bill Clinton led a coalition of the willing and disarmed Saddam Hussein 5 years ago?

We wouldn't want to let an idea like that take hold, now would we?




digby 3/28/2004 09:52:00 PM |

 
Total Incoherence

White House officials strongly dispute Clarke's conclusion, saying it reflects an old-fashioned approach to dealing with terrorism. "Those who question Iraq have an outdated and one-dimensional view of what is really a multi-dimensional threat to our nation," said Jim Wilkinson deputy national security adviser for communications. "Some think the solution is to kill Osama bin Laden, finish Afghanistan and then go back to a defensive posture and hope we're not attacked again. This approach represents the old way of thinking because it ignores the fact that the modern terrorist threat is a global threat."

Clarke's Critique Reopens Debate on Iraq War (washingtonpost.com)

Fixed link
digby 3/28/2004 09:12:00 AM |

Saturday, March 27, 2004

 
Another Shoe?

Tucker Carlson said on Matthews' weekly show tonight that the White House is worried about Bob Woodward's new book, Plan of Attack which chronicles the lead up to the Iraq War. Carlson said they were worried about Powell using this book to distance himself from the neocon crazies.

Now, this is Tucker talking and this is Woodward and Powell we are talking about, so there's no point in expecting anything earthshattering. However, it will not help them if this book has Powell arguing with Rummy, Wolfie and Cheney on Iraq or shows Condi clueless or has the president being led around by the nose on the WMD threat. (Powell wasn't exactly toeing the Party line with enthusiasm yesterday.)

I doubt Woodward is going to be the same drooling sycophant he was with Bush At War because he took a lot of shit for it and risked ruining his journalistic reputation forever. Besides,Woodward's always been a trendie. When it was in to worship Bush, he was there to lead the prayer but he may find it more profitable to be skeptical this time. He must have known that Clarke and O'Neill were writing books, too. It would be embarrassing to be too gushing this time.

Whether it breaks any new ground or not, I don't think it can possibly be good for them to have people discussing this in May. The book is due out on April 30th.





digby 3/27/2004 06:58:00 PM |

 
The Violent Dems

Ezra comments on Insty's post about the shocking political hate speech emanating from the left and the horrible, horrible violence and impending totalitarianism running rampant in the Democratic party. Excuse me, I have to loosen my corset. I can hardly breathe I'm so upset about it.

Insty says:

Something I never wanted to believe seems to be playing out daily: the Democratic party has been overrun by totalitarians. The party is marginalizing old-guard Dems who might (might!) hold differing opinions but who also could be counted on for civility and a rational basis for their arguments. . . .There is no room for dissent, discourse, debate. My experience is that people behave this way when they hold indefensible beliefs, and they know just how weak their position is. A dog with this behavior is called a "fear-biter" and I can think of no better description for these people.

Somebody bring me a shot of laudenum and a mint julep. I'm feeling one of my fevahs comin' on!

Ezra intelligently rebuts Insty's hysteria in his inimitable fashion:

There are debates going on here everday. This whole exchange is taking place in a medium that consists almost entirely of debates between the Left and the Right! The context of this is a presidential election in which the Democrat is running slightly ahead of Bush and has been proving day in and day out that our ideas are more than defensible, they are quite suited to offense as well. And through all this, the Right has remained dependent on character attacks rather than the invocation of a less-than-stellar record.

[...]

The idea that our arguments and ideas are indefensible is patently ridiculous. Yet Glenn repeats it anyway, highlighting an argument accusing Democrats of being totalitarians unable to rationally support their arguments. And somewhere the truth sits, crying in the corner, wondering why Glenn insists upon abusing it so.

Just so. But, aren't Republicans (and their useful idiot libertarian supporters) getting more and more, you know, weak these days? As in flabby, flaccid, whiny, ineffectual, weepy and emasculated? They can't seem to handle any kind of adversity without resorting to shrieks of maidenly finger pointing saying "you sirrah, are no gentleman!" They strut around, their codpieces stuffed with sock-puppets, name calling, hurling insults, verbally assaulting anybody who disagrees with them and when somebody gets fed up and turns it back on them they quiver like a herd of frightened deer and claim that their adversaries are mean and greedy and just plain icky.

Now, I expect pacifists like nuns and priests and vegans to decry physical violence under all circumstances. Indeed, I myself think that violence at political events is never a good thing and I don't condone it. But, I probably wouldn't expect to avoid it if I baited and insulted a bunch of great big thugs who hold a different political point of view. That's just the way the world works. I thought the Republican-kill-the-bastards-quick-hand-me-your-AK47 freepers knew all that, but apparently not.

Our self-proclaimed steely eyed tough guys may spend a lot of time playing one handed Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance but they don't seem to have much real life follow through. They certainly don't follow a stupid macho edict like "never complain, never explain" these days, what with all their weeping and wailing. Why, there used to be a time when they would have been embarrassed to admit to something like this ...

Can we really trust American security to these little t-ball players playing dress up in Daddy's uniform? I don't think so. They aren't tough and they aren't smart. Big problem.





If you'd like to see the way in which this poor 'lil fella sees the people who took a shot at him, check his picture page which features the description of people at the rally as mindless thugs, dykes, pillow biters and bench rats. I don't know if he called one of those teamster fellas one of those names to his face, but if he did it may fall into the category of fighting words.



digby 3/27/2004 03:16:00 PM |

Friday, March 26, 2004

 
Scumsucking Pig


Avedon Carol led me to this comment on Electrolite about Richard Clarke's apology:

Anybody who has been paying attention to these hearings will know that all of the witnesses have started their testimony with a lengthy statement explaining this or that about their role in the lead up to 9/ll, much of it self-justifying, much of it saying, well, you know, we were busy with other stuff. So on and so forth.

Mr. Clarke did otherwise. His statement was brief and to the point.

He made a heart-felt apology to the American people for failing to stop 9/ll. He said he did his best. He said a lot of people did their best. But in the end, it didn't matter because they had failed the American people, most especially the victims, and the families of the victims who died on 9/11.

The members victim's families who were in the room broke into applause.

I stared at the screen shocked.

And then I, yep, I will admit it here: I started crying.

Well, that's nice and all, but I think Senator Frist has something to say about that:

In his appearance before the 9-11 Commission, Mr. Clarke's theatrical apology on behalf of the nation was not his right, his privilege or his responsibility. In my view it was not an act of humility, but an act of supreme arrogance and manipulation. Mr Clarke can and will answer for his own conduct but that is all.

And to all of the 9/11 families, Dr. Frist added, "Fuck you."

This is one of those moments where I want to put my foot through the TV. The chutzpah, the nerve, the unalloyed balls of these cowardly little fucks makes me very, very angry. I need to take a little walk.



digby 3/26/2004 03:56:00 PM |

 
Boiling It Down To One Simple Image

Via TAPPED

Richard Clarke: "...we were readying for a principals' meeting in July, but the principals' calendar was full, and then they went on vacation, many of them, in August, so we couldn't meet in August, and therefore the principals met in September."


According to a CBS piece on presidential vacations:

Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, The Manchester Guardian calculated that Mr. Bush, in his first seven months of office spent 42 percent of his time on holiday, "a whopping 54 days at his Texas ranch, 38 days at the presidential retreat at Camp David and four more at his parents' place in Kennebunkport, Maine."

Hardworking Americans understand why this might have been a problem. The guy was a lazy bastard from the get-go.




digby 3/26/2004 03:20:00 PM |

 
Official Minutes Of The MSNBC Junior Varsity Girls Cheerleading Try-outs


Oh my Gawd, like Democrats are like such total geeks, dude. It's like totally funny to watch them all get together and like act like they're sooo kewl --- NOT! I'm soo shurr. We are sooo much kewler. And cuter, too.

MATTHEWS: ... There are the presidents all walking out on the stage, Jimmy Carter, behind him, Bill Clinton. Boy, it‘s an unusual picture here. I guess it is not exactly Mount Rushmore, but it‘s all the Democrats have this time.

Here they come. There‘s John Kerry looking great, dark hair. I love it when they point at people.

We‘re sitting here with Howard Fineman and Karen Tumulty of TIME magazine. Howard is of course with Newsweek and with us.

You know, it‘s amazing. What is this where they all do this? They walk out. Karen, they do this all the time. They go and they go like this. And golike, what is that about? They see like they see some old buddy in the audience? What is that?

HOWARD FINEMAN, NBC CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It is a way to establish intimacy. Hey, I see you. We‘ve known each other forever. You‘re not just here as a contributor. You did not just give $1,000 to get here. We grew up together. We went to school together.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: I‘m stunned by the three the three pictured.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Jimmy Carter can‘t stand Bill Clinton. They‘re doing a little oh, talk about disliking each other.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Anybody Karen, you‘ve got a moment here. Does anybody on that stage like anybody else?

(LAUGHTER)

KAREN TUMULTY, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, TIME: That‘s a very good question.

MATTHEWS: Like anyone else? Try to do a permutation here. Howard, you‘re good at this.

FINEMAN: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Permutations. Oh, Terry McAuliffe. Well, he likes Bill Clinton. Those two like each other. Any president like any other president or vice president?

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: Clinton and Carter don‘t particularly like each other.

MATTHEWS: Howard Dean and John Kerry are not too close.

FINEMAN: Yes.

TUMULTY: I wonder how things are between Gore and Dean these days.

FINEMAN: Now Gore now, Al Gore was not originally supposed to be in the original shot.

MATTHEWS: Right.

FINEMAN: But he managed to do a pretty good job of getting in there as the almost president.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Almost.

(LAUGHTER)

FINEMAN: As the guy who got more...

MATTHEWS: There‘s Dick Gephardt.

FINEMAN: ... popular votes. So he was pretty instantly in the instant Mount Rushmore up there. This is a symbol...

MATTHEWS: Is that Al Sharpton there? Yes, it is Al Sharpton.

FINEMAN: There you go.

(CROSSTALK)

TUMULTY: I don‘t know. They all look like flight attendants for the same airline.

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: Now, there is Bill Clinton with John Edwards, which is significant only because Edwards keeps claiming that Clinton is his big supporter in the vice presidential hunt.

MATTHEWS: Is that Charlie Rangel? Who is the guy on the left? I just thought it was an odd picture.

TUMULTY: That was Sharpton, wasn‘t it?

MATTHEWS: Was that Sharpton?

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: I think that was Al Sharpton.

MATTHEWS: Was it really?

TUMULTY: And somebody didn‘t give them memo that this was not black tie. So...

MATTHEWS: Maybe that‘s the suit he has got clean this week.

(LAUGHTER)

[...]

TUMULTY: Yes, not Kerry. He is having more fun now.

MATTHEWS: What about Gore and Clinton? That‘s a recent injury to

both. I mean, Gore jumps into the campaign forthere we go. Watch

this. We‘re watching this right now. There‘s Gore

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: See, now, that was very carefully choreographed.

MATTHEWS: That was the quickest one.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: How fast did Gore get past Clinton there?

TUMULTY: I didn‘t see any eye contact there.

MATTHEWS: How fast?

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: He is about to give him a high-five.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: No response to that high-five.

FINEMAN: You know, what the thought balloons are there is, Gore is thinking, if it hadn‘t been for that guy, I would have won this election. And Clinton with a thought balloon is thinking, you dummy. How could you have blown that election that I set up for you?

MATTHEWS: Oh, God, and this sort of practiced hand clapping. Most people don‘t clap like that. They clap like this.

FINEMAN: That‘s the Democratic clap. Don‘t you agree, Karen?

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: ... an official clap.

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: Democrats stand up on the stage and clap.

MATTHEWS: It is official clapping.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: And then they really want to go like this up on top of their heads when they‘re really enthusiastic.

TUMULTY: Well, you remember, though, when Al Gore was running, somebody actually had to coach him on clapping.

MATTHEWS: Really?

TUMULTY: That is a true story. Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: How was he doing it wrong?

FINEMAN: Like Herman Munster. It was...

MATTHEWS: I don‘t think he was doing the back beat handshake, do you?

I think he was probably doing the front beat.

Gag me with a weapon of mass destruction.





digby 3/26/2004 12:21:00 PM |

 
Lowering The Veil

Via Reuters:

Political consultants and analysts said Clarke's allegation that Bush ignored the al Qaeda threat before the Sept. 11 attacks and was obsessed by a desire to invade Iraq were especially damaging because they confirmed other previous revelations from policy insiders.

"Each of these revelations adds to the others so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and the message gets reinforced with voters," said Richard Rosecrance, a political scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

[...]

"The administration can huff and puff but if there are enough bricks in the structure, they can't blow the house down any more," said American University historian Allan Lichtman.

"Right now, you have quite a number of bricks. It's not just scaffolding any more," he said.

[...]

"Bush has chosen national security and his response to the terrorist attack as a cornerstone of his campaign and now comes this guy Clarke, their guy, who says that the administration was intentionally or unintentionally not paying enough attention to the terrorist threat," said Rick Davis, a Republican political consultant.

[...]

"If people start to doubt that claim and if the message from Clarke and O'Neill and others begins to stick, it would seriously weaken Bush on his strongest point," said Fordham University political scientist Tom DeLuca.

The administration response has usually been to try to destroy the reputations of its critics. It suggested O'Neill had illegally used classified documents and said he was motivated by sour grapes after having been forced to resign from the Cabinet. A Treasury probe has cleared him of misusing documents.

Similarly, White House aides said Clarke was bitter about having been denied a promotion and "out of the loop" in the administration. They also said he was a closet Democrat working as a proxy for Bush's presidential opponent, John Kerry.

"This administration has shown a tremendous ability to demonize its opponents. But at some point, people start to ask themselves, could all these people be pathological liars? At some point, they can't all be liars," said Democratic consultant Michael Goldman.

Billmon thinks:

Now that Against All Enemies has gone into its fifth printing, and the 9/11 commission hearings have generated a huge amount of press coverage -- and, judging from the anecdotal evidence, a fair amount of kitchen table and coffee break conversation as well -- it looks like the events of the past week may be evolving into something much more significant than just another political mud fight.

I agree that with Clarke's charges, aside from the fact that they were very effectively delivered by a very credible source, the central complaint about the Bush administration is finally reaching critical mass. There was the outing of Valerie Plame, the phony Jessica Lynch story, the AWOL charges, Paul O'Neill's book, Halliburton corruption, the strong arming of the Richard Foster and much more, all layering upon the other until it's impossible to ignore the idea that there might be something to all this. And, of course, there is the humongous elephant in the middle of the room --- the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. That alone is such an enormous, jarring failure, especially in light of the unspeakably arrogant way in which they told the rest of the world to shove it, that all these other things can no longer be shoved aside.

The air of desperation in the furious character assassination of Clarke actually plays into that concept. They are rattled and it shows.

In the piece linked above, Billmon comments on the rather strange (and unprecedented) national sense of denial after 9/11, which I think is an important element of the George W. Bush mystique:

One of the things I found most remarkable about 9/11 -- at least when compared to past national traumas like the Kennedy assassination or Pearl Harbor -- was how willing the American public was to put questions of responsibility and accountability out of mind, seemingly indefinitely.

I think the reason for this is that subconsciously most people did not really believe that George W. Bush was capable of leading the country through a serious national security crisis. In order to keep from panicking, they simply went into denial. It's a natural reaction in a situation over which you have very little control.

There was nothing particularly inspiring about Bush standing on the rubble saying "The people who knocked down these buildings are going to hear all of us soon." (It was hardly "we have nothing to fear but fear itself.") People just knew that they had no choice but to put their faith in this shallow fellow and so they did.

Deep down, everyone has always feared that this inarticulate son of a failed president was not up to the job. It's been the undercurrent of his entire life. One of his strongest selling points was that he would bring "the grown-ups" back into government. Nobody ever thought he was one of them. He himself said on Oprah in the 2000 campaign that "the public's biggest misconception of him is that 'I'm running on my daddy's name.'"

But a politician can't be tarred with something that isn't believable. One of the reasons that most of the public didn't give a damn about corruption charges against Clinton was that he had no money. It never made sense that a smart guy like him would have been corrupt without getting rich. Yet, most believed immediately that he'd strayed with Monica. They simply didn't find such a personal matter relevant to his job as president.

Bush's appearance on Meet The Press a few weeks ago was a disaster. His public statements are increasingly annoying in their stale and repetitive rhetoric. Loyal civil servants are coming forward and complaining about the errors, lies and thuggish tactics that the Bush administrtation is perpetrating. Nothing seems to be working.

And, deep down, the American people are not surprised. With more than three years to go and a national security crisis on their hands they closed their eyes and held on for dear life, hoping against hope that he would rise to the occasion. He didn't, despite all the phony media hooplah that insisted he was Churchill in ermine and epaulets. We are now only eight months away from our first chance to replace him with someone more capable. People are starting to let go of their desperate need to believe.

The veil is being lowered because it finally feels safe to do so.



digby 3/26/2004 10:50:00 AM |

Thursday, March 25, 2004

 
He Was Right

Mark Kleiman says:

In a world dominated by uncertainty, having made a correct prediction is no proof of having had the right underlying model. Maybe the guy who was right when almost everyone else was wrong just drew to an inside straight. And of course every bureaucrat thinks his political masters would have been well-advised to take his expertise more seriously than they did.

Still, the past performance sheet has to count for something. Someone who got something important right when most other people didn't deserves to be listened to. And those who didn't listen to him before he was proven right by events can legitimately be asked whether their refusal to do so was a mistake.

Every single person who is called upon to defend Richard Clarke should just say, "He was right, wasn't he?"

It's really that simple. He said it was going to happen, nobody believed him and it happened. He's not the one with a credibility problem.




digby 3/25/2004 09:47:00 PM |

 
Random Observations

Bill Clinton was great at the Democratic Unity dinner. He was smart, funny, self-deprecating and even a bit inspiring.

His words about Kerry, in which he wove the story of Kerry's life as a series of missions for which he volunteered was just excellent. When the going gets tough, John Kerry says, "send me." From Kerry's Vietnam heroism (which Clinton deftly framed in contrast to the current president, the current vice president and himself) to his fight for kids on the streets, he praised him for volunteering for the tough assignment. And then he asked that the members of the Party go to John Kerry and say, "send me." It was perfect for the zeitgeist of the moment.

I was struck by the music that was used for these guys, too. Clinton's upbeat, optimistic "Don't Stop Thinkin' About Tomorrow" has been replaced by Kerry's "I Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty. This election is all about balls.

Also...

I am really kind of stunned that Bush is making jokes about not being able to find the WMD. That the entire press corps laughed like a bunch of would be sorority girls during pledge week doesn't surprise me.

On the other hand, if the patriotic correctness police have been dismissed then fine with me. Up until recently you couldn't ask for a glass of water in a restaurant without prefacing it with "I support the troops." "The War" was sacred. Even here in Soviet Monica people were flying flags right along side their "War Is Not The Answer" bumper sticker. If the Republicans are abandoning their position as the steely eyed and serious national security grown-ups, I'm all for it.

We've got a few guys who are more than ready to step in and fix this goddamned mess.




digby 3/25/2004 09:36:00 PM |

 
And Don't Forget T-Ball

Politus has a great post up about Bush's urgent priorities before September 11th.

Yeah, he was focused on terrorism all right.

Before the events of September 11, 2001, Bush had signed 24 executive orders. How many of them dealt with counterterrorism?

In his first month in office Bush threw a bone to the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons by setting up the vehicle to give them boatloads of taxpayer money. No time for counterterrorism in January:


Jan 29. Establish Office of Faith Based Initiatives (Remember that?)

Jan 29. Require federal agencies to establish their own Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives

February was whack-a-union month. No time for counterterrism in February either, unless you consider union members to be terrorists. Bush and the Low-Wage Republicans may think union members are terrorists, but the focus was on bin Laden, right?

Feb 12. Extend life of President’s Information Technology Committee

Feb 21. Dissolves Labor-Management Partnerships

Feb 21. Dissolves a labor-friendly executive order, allowing new contractors to fire everybody and hire scabs

Feb 21. Requires contractors to display anti-union messages

Feb 21. Encourage the use of non-union contractors

Bush couldn’t be bothered with any stinkin’ counterterrorism executive orders in March, either. The unions were causing trouble for his boys at American Airlines and something had to be done:


Mar 9. Establish an “Emergency Board” to interfere in the Mechanics Union strike against American Airlines

Likewise for April. The pesky bin Laden guy could wait ‘til next month. There was more union busting to do, and Hispanic voters needed to know that Bush was really worried about the Status of Puerto Rico:


Apr 4. Perfunctory termination of export controls

Apr 5. Slight change in pay for government employees working abroad

Apr 6. Exempt certain contractors from some requirements to hire union workers

Apr 30. Extend the President’s Task Force on the Status of Puerto Rico

Now we are up to May, when the terrorist chatter picked up by intelligence was spiking. Clarke and Tenet knew something was coming, and Clark was nearly apoplectic in his warnings. So, did Bush finally focus his administration on bin Laden, signing an executive order to that effect? No… May is the month for Social Security Privatization and phat payback to his oily buddies:


May 2. Create President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security, the first step toward privatization

May 18. Actions to Expedite Energy-Related Projects, fast track for environmental rapers and scrapers

May 18. Ditto, for Big Energy supply and distribution

May 23. Prohibit import of rough diamonds from Liberia

May 28. President's Task Force to Improve Health Care Delivery for Our Nation's Veterans, a sham committee to look for ways to improve the VA

Terrorist chatter from intelligence intercepts was at a crescendo in June of 2001, yet Bush was focused on the “compassionate” part of his resume, after spending the last few months working on the “conservative” part. But not a peep about UBL or terrorism:


Jun 1. Very slight changes to the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee

Jun 6. Extend by 2 years initiatives to Increase Participation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Federal Programs

Jun 19. Community-based Alternatives for Individuals with Disabilities

Jun 20. 21st Century Workforce Initiative; as if the Clinton boom was going to last forever

In July Bush was getting ready for his month-long vacation in Crawfish, and mumbling about “vampire” cellular phone power supplies. Wasn’t Usama bin Laden at least as important to his administration as trade with Belarus?


Jul 2. Waiving anti-communist trade restrictions against Belarus

Jul 31. Requiring government agencies to purchase energy efficient power supplies for things like cellular phones

August in Crawfish is too frikkin’ hot to think about terrorists:

Aug 17. Perfunctory extension of the cold war-era Export Control Act

This was the last executive order Bush signed before 9/11. Even though he and his lackeys now claim they were consumed with UBL and counterterrorism was a top priority to them, there is not a peep of any of that in any of the documents Bush signed to set the direction and functioning of his government. And then?

September 11.

At which point he decided to invade a country that had nothing to do with terrorism, destroy half a century of alliances and alienate the entire world.


digby 3/25/2004 06:47:00 PM |

 
Shaking The Trees

Fred Kaplan writes another fine article in Slate today about Richard Clarke. He again notes Clarke's legendary reputation as a brilliant bureaucratic infighter as he did in his first piece on the subject a couple of days ago. This skill is mentioned frequently by those in Washington who know Clarke.

Clarke demonstrated his insight into the process with this statement on Larry King Live last night:

CLARKE: Well, we'll never know. But let me compare 9/11 and the period immediately before it to the millennium rollover and the period immediately before that. In December, 1999, we received intelligence reports that there were going to be major al Qaeda attacks. President Clinton asked his national security adviser Sandy Berger to hold daily meetings with the attorney general, the FBI director, the CIA director and stop the attacks. And every day they went back from the White House to the FBI, to the Justice Department, to the CIA and they shook the trees to find out if there was any information. You know, when you know the United States is going to be attacked, the top people in the United States government ought to be working hands-on to prevent it and working together.

Now, contrast that with what happened in the summer of 2001, when we even had more clear indications that there was going to be an attack. Did the president ask for daily meetings of his team to try to stop the attack? Did Condi Rice hold meetings of her counterparts to try to stop the attack? No.

And if she had, if the FBI director and the attorney general had gone back day after day to their department to the White House, what would they have shaken loose? We now know from testimony before the Commission that buried in the FBI was the fact that two of the hijackers had entered the United States. Now, if that information had been able to be shaken loose by the FBI director and the attorney general in response to daily meetings with the White House, if we had known that those two -- if the attorney general had known, if the FBI director had known, that those two were in the United States, Larry, I believe we could have caught those two. Would that have stopped...

Michael Isikoff added this on the subject later in the show:

I do want to say, though, on the question of -- I was struck -- the most fascinating thing that Clarke said, to me, during the hearings today was he laid out a scenario by which -- actually, a plausible one, by which September 11 could have been prevented if there had been the kind of urgency to the issue that he thought it could be. And that was, we did know. The government did know. The CIA knew and the FBI late in August knew that two of the hijackers -- Nawaf al Hazmi (ph), Khalid al Midar (ph) -- were inside the United States. Two suspected al Qaeda operatives were inside the country. Yet there was no concerted government attempt to find these guys. There was a late bulletin from the FBI.

What Clarke suggested he would have done -- he says he would like to think he would have done, had he known about this, was an all-out public manhunt. Put these guys' pictures all over the place, "America's Most Wanted," have their pictures in the paper. And had that been done, which does sound like a plausible thing that could have been done, it might at least have deterred those two guys...

KING: Yes.

ISIKOFF: ... from getting on the planes, and it might well have disrupted the plot. It's the first time I've heard a plausible scenario by which the government could have taken the little information it did have and actually stopped the plot.

KING: Putting their pictures where everybody gets on board an airplane.

I think that this is a very interesting insight. Clarke, a 30 year veteran of the government and one who has a fierce reputation for cutting through the bureaucracy to get things done, says that the way to deal with an urgent national security threat is to force the issue to the top of the agenda by having the president personally lean on the cabinet heads to "shake the trees" in their own bureaucracies. That makes sense to me. When people are called to account by the boss on a certain issue they turn up the heat on their underlings. It's human nature and its certainly been my experience in the workplace.

And, he says that if that had been done in the spring and summer of 2001, when by all accounts there was a lot of intelligence that something "big" was about to happen, it's entirely possible that some of the "dots" would have been connected before they blew up the world trade center and the pentagon.

Clarke himself says that we will never know if we could have uncovered or disrupted the plot, but certainly it is clear that the system he describes in the Clinton administration was successful previously in disrupting the millenium bombing plot. That should count for something.

But, the bigger issue, I think, is that this illustrates once again what a grave mistake it is to have a president who is arrogant yet intellectually incurious and whose inexperience in life and government makes him manipulable by others. Clarke had previously worked for Reagan who was surrounded by highly professional foreign policy realists and Bush Sr who was a highly professional foreign policy realist himself. With Clinton he found a nimble, intelligent thinker who was open to new ideas and methods for dealing with post cold war threats and who was accessible and personally engaged in the decision making process.

But, George W. Bush was an inexperienced and overly protected executive with little personal depth and too much faith in a cabal of neocon radicals. He relied on an intellectually weak staff whose main job was to create unnecessary layers of bureaucracy to protect their boss from difficult problems. These layers of bureaucracy insulated him from the important issues of the day and made it impossible even for a brilliant bureaucrat like Clarke to cut through the maze and convince the ossified Iraq obsessives to look up from their dusty PNAC wish-lists and deal with the terrible threat we faced right that very minute.

The failure stemmed directly from the president because he is not in charge. No organization works under that kind of leadership much less a sophisticated bureaucracy. The system completely broke down under the effect of no real leadership, competing agendas and focus in the wrong direction.

The Bush administration's image of competence and cool collected professionalism is completely phony. From DiUllio to O'Neill to Clarke we see first hand that this is a highly dysfunctional White House, one that spends much more time on politics than policy and that is philosophically incoherent and at constant war with itself. It has been reduced to issuing thuggish threats of reprisal to any civil servant who insists upon doing his job. The president is hardly more than a public relations flack, his national security advisor is a cipher, his various cabinet departments are wholly owned subsidiaries of special interests, he's been completely manipulated by a radical Vice President and a slightly insane Secretary of Defense and his economic policy has been entirely directed toward short term political ends. And yet, amazingly, in virtually every single action it has taken, his administration has failed spectacularly.

In light of this we really need to let go of this "well, these things happen," attitude and recognize that we have been duped into thinking that 9/11 could not have been prevented. Clearly, it could have. Other plots were thwarted and they were thwarted because the government focused attention on it and directed its resources toward that end.

It is true that the bigger question of how badly Bush dealt with the issue of terrorism AFTER 9/11 is probably a more potent campaign issue, because the results of going into Iraq are still fresh and easily observable. But, after listening to Dick Clarke for the last few days and beginning to read through is book, I am convinced that Bush dropped the ball.

But then, it was entirely predictable that he would drop the ball because he was never qualified to be president and that lack of qualification led him to make very poor choices in advisors and very poor judgements about the nation's priorities.

The bigger lesson in all of this, and one which I'm sure will go inheeded by many, is that you should not elect stupid people to the presidency. Smart ones can screw up, but it's not guaranteed that they will. But, a stupid yet arrogant president is bound to fail. The job is just too complicated for someone like that.


Update: Brad DeLong and Matt Yglesias discuss the related topic of Condi Rice's obvious lack of proper qualifications for the job of NSA under the current circumstances.




digby 3/25/2004 02:14:00 PM |

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

 
Potent



Former U.S. counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke hugs and greets family members of victims of the September 11 attacks following testimony before a national commission investigating the attacks on Capitol Hill March 24, 2004. Clarke, a senior adviser to Bush and the three previous administrations, has accused Bush of paying insufficient attention to the al-Qaeda threat before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and afterward focusing on Iraq (news - web sites) at the expense of efforts to crush the network. REUTERS/Win McNamee. Via Catch.com

From Billmon:

If you watched Clarke today, you now have a pretty good idea of why the administration and the VRWC wind machine are so terrified of him. If anything, he was even more effective than he was on 60 Minutes. From his opening statement (a simple, but eloquent, apology for failing to stop the 9/11 attacks) to his final answer to the final question, he was absolutely calm, completely lucid and utterly authoritative.

Clarke simply rolled over his only aggressive challenger -- former Illinois Governor Jim Thompson -- reducing him to not much more than a greasy spot on the pavement. Thompson (who should have known better) made the strategic blunder of nailing his inquisitorial flag to a transcript ofa background briefing that Clarke gave in the summer of 2002, which was leaked to Fox News by the White House and released just hours before he testified.

In that briefing, Clarke supposedly lauded the administration's conduct of the war against terrorism in words which were not exactly consistent with the picture painted in his new book.

But the ploy backfired on Big Jim after Clarke refused to play the role of evasive double talker (Kerry could learn a lot from him.) He didn't back down an inch. The briefing, Clarke replied, was simply an exercise in spin doctoring -- "maximizing the positives and minimizing the negatives" -- as he had been instructed to do by his political superiors. It was also no different, he said, from simliar background briefings he had conducted for previous presidents. Clarke managed to make it very clear he didn't just mean Clinton. And every member of the commission, and every reporter in the room, knew exactly what he meant.

Thompson decided he didn't want to go there.

[...]

John Lehman, Reagan's former Tailhook, I mean, Navy Secretary, was a much more subtle. If Big Jiim went after Clarke with a sledge hammer, Lehman tried a straight razor -- first him lathering up with praise (he called Clarke the "Rosetta Stone" of understanding 9/11) and then trying to slice open his jugular by implying that Clarke's book was at odds with his private testimony before the commission.

But Clarke ducked the blade with ease, simply noting that much of his criticism of the Bush administration's counter-terrorism record related to its obsession with Iraq -- something the commission had not even asked him about in private session.

Fred Fielding took a crack next, and tried impeaching Clarke for his testimony before the sham congressional 9/11 investigation. But Clarke again fell back on the Bush administration's usual standard of official conduct in such situations: He didn't lie to the congressional panel, he said, he just used his supply of candor judiciously. Fielding was left muttering about the "integrity" that public officials should show in their jobs -- this from Richard Nixon's Watergate lawyer!

[...]

But I don't think the base is their big problem now -- it's the middle, the mainstream, even (or especially) the mainstream media, which has been forced by today's testimony to award Clarke the legitimacy it has denied to other administration critics, even Paul O'Neill. Now they'll expect the White House to give them the steak, not just the sizzle. They're going to demand more serious answers. So far, though the administration has shown no sign it thinks it can hold its own in that kind of debate.

digby 3/24/2004 08:33:00 PM |

 
Attack Dogs Go Rabid

"By invading Iraq the President has greatly undermined the war on terrorism."

Well, it doesn't get any more stark than that. When he said it, you could hear a pin drop in the hearing room. Reminded me of when I was just a pup listening to the Watergate hearings and John Dean uttered his famous "cancer on the presidency" line. (Fred Fielding and Richard Ben-Veniste were even there.)

Wolf Blitzer thinks, however, that the FOXNEWS "backrounder" released by the White House totally undermines Clarke's case and Peter Bergen agrees. He says that some of the stuff about Iraq might still be worth thinking about, but well...Clarke's pretty much a lying piece of shit.

When asked in the hearings about whether it was moral to put the best face on an administration you work for when briefing the press, Clark said:

"I don't think it's a question of morality at all. I think it's a question of politics." [big applause]

That, as we know, is total crap. The Bush administration has always been scrupulously honest with the press in every conceivable way and never, ever would have required that any of its members not tell the press every single problem they had within the administration. Politics is a dirty word to republicans. It's all about honor and integrity.

Now, Wolf reports that the administration is claiming Clarke has "problems" in his personal life, although they don't say what those things might be. Check Drudge frequently. The real shit is about to start flying.




digby 3/24/2004 02:28:00 PM |

 
Tough Guys

I don't know the real reason they refuse to let Condi testify (although their "separation of powers" rationale is patent bullshit and unpatriotic, to boot.) I can certainly see a public relations reason why they might have done it, though.

Richard Clarke comes across as a no nonsense, take no prisoners tough guy. Just the kind of guy you'd expect to be in charge of counter terrorism. Condi, however intelligent and articulate she may be, exudes timidity and nervousness in public. The contrast wouldn't be very positive for the Bush administration.

Dick Armitage, on the other hand, is from tough guy central casting. For those people who will just catch a glimpse of this hearing in passing, Armitage looks just as tough as Clarke. As Uncle Karl likes to say, "politics is TV with the sound turned off."




digby 3/24/2004 01:34:00 PM |

 
More on Mylroie and Wolfowitz's Grand Delusions

From the Washington Post - June 5, 2003

Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda, creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives, according to senior intelligence officials.

With Cheney taking the lead in the administration last August in advocating military action against Iraq by claiming it had weapons of mass destruction, the visits by the vice president and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here," one senior agency official said yesterday.

[...]

In a signal of administration concern over the controversy, two senior Pentagon officials yesterday held a news conference to challenge allegations that they pressured the CIA or other agencies to slant intelligence for political reasons. "I know of no pressure," said Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary for policy. "I know of nobody who pressured anybody."

Feith said a special Pentagon office to analyze intelligence in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks did not necessarily focus on Iraq but came up with "some interesting observations about the linkages between Iraq and al Qaeda."

Officials in the intelligence community and on Capitol Hill, however, have described the office as an alternative source of intelligence analysis that helped the administration make its case that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat.

[...]

Former and current intelligence officials said they felt a continual drumbeat, not only from Cheney and Libby, but also from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Feith, and less so from CIA Director George J. Tenet, to find information or write reports in a way that would help the administration make the case that going into Iraq was urgent.

"They were the browbeaters," said a former defense intelligence official who attended some of the meetings in which Wolfowitz and others pressed for a different approach to the assessments they were receiving. "In interagency meetings," he said, "Wolfowitz treated the analysts' work with contempt."

[...]

A senior defense official also defended Wolfowitz's questioning: "Does he ask hard questions? Absolutely. I don't think he was trying to get people to come up with answers that weren't true. He's looking for data and answers and he gets frustrated with a lack of answers and diligence and with things that can't be defended."

A major focus for Wolfowitz and others in the Pentagon was finding intelligence to prove a connection between Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.

On the day of the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center,Wolfowitz told senior officials at the Pentagon that he believed Iraq might have been responsible. "I was scratching my head because everyone else thought of al Qaeda," said a former senior defense official who was in one such meeting. Over the following year, "we got taskers to review the link between al Qaeda and Iraq. There was a very aggressive search."

In the winter of 2001-02, officials who worked with Wolfowitz sent the Defense Intelligence Agency a message: Get hold of Laurie Mylroie's book, which claimed Hussein was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and see if you can prove it, one former defense official said.

The DIA's Middle East analysts were familiar with the book, "Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War Against America." But they and others in the U.S. intelligence community were convinced that radical Islamic fundamentalists, not Iraq, were involved. "The message was, why can't we prove this is right?" said the official.

I hope that members of the newly formed Iraq intelligence failure committee are informed of this Wolfowitz/Mylroie information. The 9/11 committee is charged with only dealing with events leading up to 9/11, so they won't address this particular case of intellectual dysfunction. I would hope that the other would, however. This delusional thinking wasted huge amounts of time because one of the nation's top foreign policy intellectuals turns out to be in thrall of a tin foil hat conspiracy theory. And, that thinking helped lead this country into an unnecessary war that has made this country more vulnerable to its enemies.


Thanks to Antiwar.com for the link.


On TAPPED, Matt Yglesias notes Wolfowitz dancing on the head of a pin as he avoids answering questions about this very thing in the hearings yesterday.


Update: In an amazing moment of Hullabaloo synergy none other than Bob Kerrey seemed to be giving credence to Mylroie and Wolfowitz's apparent beliefs that the '93 WTC attacks were perpetrated by Iraq during Clarke's testimony earlier. Clarke knocked it down very effectively, but I have to wonder just how many people in high places have drunk this noxious kool-aid, anyway?


digby 3/24/2004 11:28:00 AM |

 
Bi-Partisan Putz

I notice that Bob Kerrey is back on his hobby horse today insisting to Sandy Berger that Clinton was a sissy because he didn't declare war on Afghanistan. It must be nice to live in bizarro-utopia where it was possible to persuade the American people and the entire world that the US should unilaterally invade countries based upon the bombing of embassies in africa or a rowboat attack on a warship. And he should have done these things during times of extreme domestic political crisis.

Perhaps Bob doesn't realize that even the honorable and integrity-filled George W. Bush had had a little bit of difficulty persuading large chunks of the planet, including here at home, that it's a good idea to unilaterally invade countries even after 9/11.

Let's review what was really going on during the periods in question:

Read the rest over on The American Street




digby 3/24/2004 09:48:00 AM |

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

 
Fruitcake soaked in Anthrax

Here's Laurie Mylroie on a CNN online chat in October of 2001:

CNN: You believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in both attacks the 1993 and September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Why?

MYLROIE: You can demonstrate to the high legal standard of beyond a reasonable doubt, which is used for criminal conviction, that Iraq was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, by showing that Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of that bomb, was an Iraqi intelligence agent. I do that in "Study of Revenge." That bomb, in 1993, aimed to topple the north tower onto the south tower. Eight years later, someone came back and finished the job. Since Iraq was behind the first attack, it is suggestive of the point that Iraq was behind the second attack.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Is there any proof at all that Hussein is involved in the anthrax scares?

MYLROIE: There is no proof that Saddam is involved in the anthrax scares, but proof is different from evidence. Proof, according to the dictionary, is conclusive demonstration. Evidence is something that indicates, like your smile is evident of your affection for me. There is evidence that Iraq is behind the anthrax scares. First, it takes a highly sophisticated agency to produce anthrax in the lethal form that was in the letter sent to Senator Daschle. Not many parties can do that. Second, there is an additive in that anthrax, bentonite, which is used to cause the anthrax to not stick together, and float in the air. Iraq is the only party known to have produced anthrax with bentonite.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Should the U.S.take action against Iraq?

MYLROIE: Yes. It is necessary for the United States to take action against Iraq. The 1991 Gulf War never ended. We continue it in the form of an economic siege whose origins lie in the Gulf War. And also, we bomb Iraq on a regular basis, and Saddam continues his part of the war in the form of terrorism. It is unlikely that that anthrax will remain in letters. It is likely that it will be used at some point, for example, in the subway of a city, or in the ventilation system of a U.S. building. Saddam wants revenge against us. He wants to do to the U.S. what we've done to Iraq. One way he can do that is terrorism, particularly biological terrorism.

CHAT PARTICPANT: What is the connection between bin Ladden and Saddam?

MYLROIE: Bin Laden and Hussein work together. The contact between the two was made in the 1990s when bin Laden was based in Sudan. Iraq intelligence also had a major presence in Sudan then. There were other widely reported contacts between bin Laden and Iraq intelligence, such as in December, 1998 when Farook Hajazi traveled to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden. Hajazi is a senior intelligence officer. Bin Laden provides the ideology, he recruits the foot soldiers, and he provides a smokescreen. Iraqi intelligence provides the direction and training for the terrorism.

CNN: You hold the Clinton administration responsible for Hussein's involvement in all of these attacks. Why?

MYLROIE: Iraq is a difficult problem, and has been since the Gulf War. Many mistakes have been made, because it's inevitable that in human endeavor there are mistakes. Under the Clinton administration, specifically in February 1993 with the first attack on the Trade Center, Clinton dealt with the issue dishonestly. New York FBI believed in 1993 that Iraq was behind the Trade Center bombing. That was accepted by the White House, that New York FBI might well be right. In June, 1993, Clinton attacked Iraqi intelligence headquarters. He said that that was punishment for Saddam's attempt to kill George Bush when Bush visited Kuwait in April, but Clinton also believed that it would deter Saddam from all future attacks of terrorism, and that it would address the WTC bombing, too, so that Saddam would not think to carry out further attacks against the U.S.

And then the Clinton administration put out a false and fraudulent explanation for terrorism, saying that terrorism was no longer state-sponsored, but carried out by individuals. That false and fraudulent explanation was accepted and allowed Saddam to continue to attack the U.S. The reason Clinton dealt with terrorism in that fashion was because he did not understand the kind of threat that Saddam could pose, and by taking care of the terrorism in New York in that fashion, he avoided riling American public opinion, which might have demanded then, back in 1993, that he do a great deal more.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Do you believe this will eventually escalate into a much broader conflict as other states are identified as helping terrorist organizations?

MYLROIE: I believe that it is necessary to shift the war to Iraq and to do so as soon as possible, because Iraq is a primary threat, the primary terrorist threat to the United States, and as the anthrax shows, that threat can become very, very great. It's necessary to get rid of Saddam.

CNN: The George W. Bush administration publicly focuses on Osama bin Laden and remains internally at odds over whether to implicate Hussein and Iraq in the current war. Is that a mistake?

MYLROIE: Yes, it is a mistake to avoid implicating Iraq, or to be unable to reach a decision about that. If we do not say that we suspect Iraq in the anthrax attacks, then Saddam will have no reason not to escalate to the next step. The next step could be that anthrax used in another fashion which is more deadly, or it could be anthrax that is resistant to antibiotics. We won't be able to treat it, as we can now.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Have you spoken with officials about this information?

MYLROIE: Yes I have spoken with officials, in particular in the Pentagon. The Pentagon shares this view.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: You mentioned the bentonite in the anthrax, and yet we hear that the CIA and FBI are looking at home sources of that anthrax? Why are they not also viewing that as from Iraq rather than a U.S. source?

MYLROIE: That is a good question. Bob Bartley in the Wall Street Journal takes on that question. While one might say it is not impossible that an individual who is very knowledgeable, with access to a good lab, could have produced that in the U.S., it is also extremely unlikely. Iraq is a much more likely candidate. Bartley compares it to the situation of the elephant in the room that some people just don't want to see, including, apparently, the FBI and the CIA. But the American people can see the elephant in the room, and Iraq is a much more likely suspect than an individual in the U.S.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Is it possible that perhaps Iraq is waiting for us to accuse them and then take anthrax to the next level?

MYLROIE: We are in a very, very difficult situation. If we say clearly that it is Iraq, and we're going to get Saddam, then it is likely that he will do his best to bring his enemies down with him. It is true that we face the danger then of more deadly attacks, including anthrax attacks. If we do not say it is Saddam, we will also face the danger of more deadly attacks. This is a terrible situation. Yet I prefer to deal with the losses that will come by taking on Saddam than to be subject to the losses that will occur if we remain sitting ducks. It would seem that some ambiguity in the beginning is the best thing. If we shift the focus from Afghanistan to Iraq, we are indeed at war, and during war, extreme measures may have to be taken. For example, we might think to get children and all non-essential personnel out of U.S. cities while this war goes on, which we will carry out very quickly, or to have people remaining in U.S. cities where they are a target, wearing masks pretty much all the time, in order to deal with this problem which we should address quickly rather than slowly.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Is the reason behind the government not admitting to Iraq's involvement over the oil situation?

MYLROIE: I don't think that the oil situation is a factor. I think that at least two things are at work. First, there is a great confusion because for eight years Clinton treated terrorism as a law enforcement issue, with the emphasis on arresting individuals and bringing them to justice, trying and convicting them. That had the effect of obscuring the role of states in terrorism, particularly Iraq. But in addition, those who went along with his view of terrorism are now personally invested in it, and they are reluctant to give up that view. That would include George Tenet, a Clinton appointee who still heads the CIA, and I believe, the intelligence coming from the CIA is skewed. It may also be that there is an influence of former President Bush and Bush's top advisors from the 1991 Gulf War on President Bush. Some of those people, including former President Bush, Brent Scocroft, his national security advisor, Colin Powell, have not acknowledged that it was an error to end the war in 1991 with Saddam in power, and that may color their judgment now.

This is what Clarke is talking about when he relates Wolfowitz's seemingly bizarre contention that the terrorism priority was "Iraqi terrorism against the United States." And it explains why these fruitcakes were able to convince lil' Junior that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. We should all feel much safer knowing that this total nutcase is one of the Right's leading intellectuals, influencing the highest reaches of the Bush administration.

Say, has anybody talked to Laurie lately about Saddam's anthrax stocks that were all set to be released in balsa wood drone planes over Baltimore and Cleveland? What ever happened with that?

Update:Josh says that the usual suspects are parroting the same lies even today...



digby 3/23/2004 04:10:00 PM |

 
The Bad Kerrey

I am reminded why I came to loathe Bob Kerrey. He's one of those self-serving "bi-partisan" iconoclasts who refuses to deal in the real world. His questioning of Cohen is typical.

The idea that Clinton, in the fall of 2000, could have invaded Afghanistan without the support of congress, any of our allies or the American people is so ludicrous I can't believe he's even making the argument. Apparently, Bob thinks that it is perfectly permissable, indeed it is required, that a president make military decisions in a complete political vacuum.

Clearly, the Clinton administration could only prepare a response to the Cole bombing, (which nobody in the entire world saw as such an imminent threat that it required all out war) that they had every reason to believe would likely be carried out by the next administration, be it Gore or Bush. That's the way our bi-partisan foreign policy used to work and it is the way it should work. If Bob Kerrey or anybody else thinks that a lame duck president should go it alone and invade a country without any political support at home or abroad just one month before the presidential elections he has a hole in his head.

As Cohen pointed out, the Republican congress was a bunch of rabid dogs who had no qualms about accusing Clinton of everything from rape to treason. Invading Afghanistan against the wishes of the military and the rest of the world, ignoring all of the political considerations would have been insane. Kerrey is, as he's always been at least half the time, a useless grandstanding tool for the GOP on this stuff. You can certainly criticize Clinton for a lot of things in this matter, but this isn't one of them.

I don't even think Bush could could have invaded Afghanistan before 9/11. Up to now, I was just wishing he would have, you know, acted like he gave a shit and did what he could to thwart what everybody seemed to know was a big plot, likely on American soil. It had worked with the millenium bombing and there is ample evidence that we might have "connected the dots" if a little more attention had been paid. I didn't realize that we are now saying that Clinton or Bush should have willy nilly invaded Afghanistan without any support of anybody, including the military.

Update: Yglesias has more on Kerrey's backing of Chalabi and the INC (along with --- surprise --- our good friend Joe Loserman.)

He also appeared on Matthews making the same self-serving tough guy points. However, Trent Lott came on soon after and had the predictable effect of making Kerrey look moderate, sane and reasonable by comparison. Context is everything, I guess.



digby 3/23/2004 11:50:00 AM |

 
Chapter One

For those who are curious about the juicy details of Clarke's book, Tim at the road to surfdom is excerpting and commenting on it. Here's just one little tasty bit:

On one screen, I could see the Situation Room. I grabbed Mike Fenzel. "How's it going over here?" I asked.

"It's fine, Major Fenzel whispered, "but I can't hear the crisis conference because Mrs Cheney keeps turning down the volume so she can hear CNN...and the Vice President keeps hanging up the line to you." Mrs Cheney was more than just a family member who had to be protected. Like her husband, she was a right wing ideologue and she was offering her advice and opinions in the bunker.

Try to imagine if Hillary....

These excerpts are in addition to his interesting posts from yesterday on The Age Of Sacred Terror, one of the authors of which, Daniel Benjamin, appeared on CNN yesterday backing Clarke up all the way.

BLITZER: Clarke is the latest former Bush administration official to question the handling of the war on terror. The former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has said the Bush White House was looking to out of Saddam Hussein from the very start of the administration.

And the former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay who found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has questioned the intelligence the Bush administration used to justify the war against Saddam Hussein.

So is Richard Clarke a courageous whistle-blower or an angry ex- employee with an axe to grind? Joining us is another former national security council staffer, Dan Benjamin, was director of counterterrorism in the Clinton administration. He's the co-author of the book "The Age of Sacred Terror." You worked for Richard Clarke the Clinton White House.

DAN BENJAMIN, DIRECTOR, COUNTERTERRORISM IN CLINTON ADMINISTRATION: That's correct. For the last two years of the '90s.

BLITZER: So what do you make of his allegations?

BENJAMIN: His allegations track with what the discontent he was expressing for quite awhile after the new team came into office in January of 2001.

And I have to say that his critique of the emphases in the war on terror also tracks with what a lot of us in the counterterrorism community have been saying. It very much stands up to what we have said in our book, "The Age of Sacred Terror."

BLITZER: But the White House is coming back and saying, you know what? You had eight years in the Clinton administration to get rid of Osama bin Laden, to destroy the al Qaeda. You had repeated terror threats, the first World Trade Center, the Cole, the twin embassy bombings. You didn't do it over eight years.

BENJAMIN: Well there's no question it was a tragedy that we couldn't get him in those first eight years. But what is also the case is that we were working flat-out to get him. We found out how hard it is to get him. We've been working flat-out since 9/11 and have still not been able to find and to capture, kill bin Laden.

I think Dick's argument here is that we could have done better and might have had more successes and possibly even more prevention had we been working flat-out after the new team came in in January 2001.

BLITZER: Which raises this question, he was a career federal civil servant, highly respected going back to earlier Republican administrations as well. Were you surprised when he was held over into the Bush administration?

BENJAMIN: Not very. Dick is first of all deeply patriotic, he is eager to work for the government. I think that his whole life was invested in this kind of work. And I think he found it deeply rewarding to be so close to these issues, to really work on national security.

This has been his entire life. So I wasn't very surprised. And I must say he's also been very, very highly valued in Washington. He's known as an insider's insider who knows where all the levers and pullies are in government.

BLITZER: At the same time he was demoted at the beginning. During the Clinton administration, he had a cabinet-level jobs as counterterrorism czar. And he was demoted to a certain degree in the Bush administration.

BENJAMIN: During the Clinton administration, at end, he had a place at table as someone who was going to speak specifically for counterterrorism issues. And he was made national coordinator for counterterrorism.

He was stripped of that rank when the new team came in because frankly they didn't think that terrorism was such a big issue that any one person should be at the table to speak for it.

And historically, that has meant that terrorism has not been taken as seriously in the discussions of national security policy.

BLITZER: The other charge that they're making against Richard Clarke is that his -- one of his best friends, Rand Beers, worked for you on the Clinton administration on the National Security Council. He teach, of course, with him at Harvard, at the Kennedy School. And that Rand Beers is now one of the top national security advisers to John Kerry.

In other words, politics behind these allegations.

BENJAMIN: I don't think it's politics because I think Dick is doing so well in the private sector with his consulting and with his speaking that I don't think he's looking for a way to get back in.

And what's more is everyone in Washington, everyone in the political world knows exactly what Dick's strengths are and his failings.

I don't think he needs to audition for a job. This is because he felt strongly about the issues.

BLITZER: Are you surprised the way the White House is now going after him?

BENJAMIN: I'm not surprised. These are very, very serious accusations. And in fact, they go to the president's perceived strength in the election. Of course, they're going to fight back hard.

BLITZER: One final question. One of the charges the vice president made and others in the White House is once he was demoted at the start of the administration, he didn't attend a lot of the high- level meetings where the decision were made.

So as a result, he didn't know what the president and vice president were really doing to fight Osama bin Laden.

BENJAMIN: Well that's impossible. Dick was the pointman in charge of coordinating counterterrorism policy. If he didn't know what the policy was, and he didn't know what steps were being taken, then no one did. And there was no policy.

So it's simply inconceivable. If there were principals' levels meetings on terrorism, he had to be there.

One of Tim's commenters mentions that my good friend Jim Wilkinson was all over FOXNews calling it "a book of lies." He also appears on this Blitzer transcript rebutting Benjamin, in full character assassination mode, almost frothing at the mouth:

JAMES WILKINSON, DEP. NATL. SECURITY ADVISER: You know when I go try to buy this book tonight I'm going to look probably in the fantasy fiction section of my local bookstore. But there are so many inaccuracies in this book. For example, he says that he could never get a meeting. He asked for one meeting with the president of the United States. He asked for that during this time of research and he to briefed on cybersecurity. I brought an email I want to read to you. He claims he could never get a meeting yet, Wolf, I work for Condi Rice and we meet with her every single morning in the situation room. Anyone is welcome to come to those meetings and Dick Clarke refused to come to those meetings. He thought they were beneath him. Let me read you a note that was sent to him.

"Condi noted your absence this morning and asked me to remind you of the importance she attaches to the meeting and her expectation that all senior directors will be there."

Why didn't Dick Clarke go to these meetings? Let me remind you, it was Dick Clarke that was in charge of terrorism for this country when the attacks on the USS Cole happened. It was Dick Clarke who was in charge of terrorism for this country when the attacks on the embassies in Africa happened. It was Dick Clarke who was in charge of terrorism for this country when the threat was building towards 9/11 and it was Dick Clarke who was in charge of terrorism for this country in June when the FBI said 16 of 19 hijackers were already here, Wolf. And on the day of 9/11, he was giving a speech on cybersecurity. This book is full of so many inaccuracies.

BLITZER: What about...

WILKINSON: Wolf, let me finish. The terrorists weren't overseas, the terrorists were here in America. By June, the FBI says 16 of 19 terrorists in the 9/11 attacks were already here. I just don't see what this focus on process and titles and meetings. Let me also point something. If you look in this book you find interesting things such as reported in the "Washington Post" this morning. He's talking about how he sits back and visualizes chanting by bin Laden and bin Laden has a mystical mind control over U.S. officials. This is sort of "X-Files" stuff, and this is a man in charge of terrorism, Wolf, who is supposed to be focused on it and he was focused on meetings.

BLITZER: What about the other charge that he makes is that the president and the vice president, the secretary of defense, the deputy secretary of defense, they were all literally obsessed with Saddam Hussein and Iraq after 9/11, even though the CIA and the FBI repeatedly told them Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden or 9/11.

WILKINSON: Let me ask the question this way, let me go even further than you. Wouldn't your viewers have found it strange if the president didn't ask about Iraq? Wouldn't they have found it strange if they didn't order his counterterrorism team and his FBI director and his intelligence director to look in every corner of the globe for who might be involved? I just don't see the point with all this Iraq business.

I was working at central command for the last year as you know from our time together. In the northern and southern no-fly zone, Iraq was shooting at our pilots hundreds of times a day. Iraq had dug in deep. Iraq was threatening its neighbors. I just don't see the point of this Iraq connection. I think the American people would be comforted to know that this president wanted to know everything possible. I want to bring up another point, Wolf.

I brought with me a copy of the January issue of "Publisher's Weekly." It shows that this was supposed to come out April 27 of this year. Do you think it's a coincidence, and you've been in this town a long, could it be a coincidence that this book is released the very week he's giving his public testimony before the 9/11 commission. A commission we've spent hours with. We've given documents, 800 tapes, cooperating with fully and private, working on these sorts of issues. Is that a coincidence? I think the publisher and Dick Clarke have some answering to do. Why is he focused on book tours and these sorts of things. He should have been focused on terrorism like this president is.

Can you believe this shit? Clarke shouldn't be "focused on book tours" because he should have been focused on terrorism like the president is now. OK. And, you've got to love, "I just don't see the point of this Iraq connection."

Wilkinson needs to lay off the coffee and krispy kreme's. He's bordering on incoherence.

Tim also mentions Kevin Drum's opinion that the Bush administration is being foolish not to admit to what he thinks is a reasonable explanation as to why they didn't care much about terrorism:

The answer seems pretty simple to me: most people before 9/11 thought of terrorism as simply one among many foreign policy problems. There wasn't really any compelling reason to develop a crash program to deal with it.

I think that is missing the whole point of Clarke's story, frankly. I don't think it's unreasonable that the administration might not have known the scope of the terrorist threat before taking office. But, the minute they entered the White House, the entire national security establishment was warning them about it and they blew them off. That's the entire thrust of what Clarke, Benjamin, Kerrick and others have all said which is that the Bush administration was distinctly uninterested in terrorism even though throughout the spring and summer of 2001 people were screaming that there was a huge amount of chatter and something really big was about to happen. They were focused on Iraq and missile defense and the rest of their fossilized agenda despite what all of the experts were telling them.

And besides, it really shouldn't have been a surprise. I knew that al Qaeda was the likely culprit the minute I saw the WTC with a big hole in it and I'm no terrorism expert. The African embassy bombings were in 1998. The USS Cole was bombed in October of 2000 (which, considering the total lack of bipartisan patriotism on the part of Republicans, explains why Clinton didn't move on al Qaeda then. The GOP thugs would have tried to impeach him again for wagging the dog on behalf of Gore in the presidential campaign. I'm sure that was another reason why they counterterrorism guys were were just a little bit surprised when the Bush people told them to take a hike.)

The issue of terrorism may not have been on a hot burner in most Americans' minds, but after the millenium plot was foiled I think everybody certainly assumed that the government was very much aware of and working on the threat. The Clinton team was. The Bushies weren't --- and we paid, bigtime. That's why Clarke came forward.


Update: Read this great post by Avedon on the subject. Fiesty and wise.



digby 3/23/2004 02:08:00 AM |

Monday, March 22, 2004

 
Running Of The Bullshit

In an interview on PBS television Thursday, Wolfowitz said Zapatero's withdrawal plan didn't seem very Spanish.

"The Spaniards are courageous people. I mean, we know it from their whole culture of bullfighting," Wolfowitz said. "I don't think they run in the face of an enemy. They haven't run in the face of the Basque terrorists. I hope they don't run in the face of these people."

I'm beginning to think that the lead in the water in DC is a much bigger problem that we realize.



digby 3/22/2004 09:20:00 PM |

 
All Hail Howard Dean

I knew he was the right man for the job. I am still not as sangiune about Nader as everyone else seems to be:

Dr. Dean's new Rx:

"To that end, according to a well-placed source close to Dean, Kerry and Dean have discussed Dean's projected role in challenging Ralph Nader, whose fourth run for president has Democrats, Independents and even some Greens apoplectic. Dean has been careful to praise Nader's accomplishments before urging people not to be seduced by a quixotic campaign. This is a tactical move to avoid driving people into Nader's arms by being too combative. But should Nader manage to get on the ballot in some key states and threaten to throw them to Bush, expect the gloves to come off."

digby