Bush, in insisting on spinning the Spanish election result as “surrendering to terror,” again displays his uncanny ability to miss the important data in his myopic focus on “terrorism” as he wants to see it.
Analysts have noted that the Spanish election was volatile well before the terrorist attack, with the Socialists ahead early on, then the incumbent conservatives taking the lead but losing ground in recent weeks. Their bungling, Bush-like insistence on spinning the attacks in a politically convenient - and obviously false - way fueled the anger that tipped the vote against them just enough to cost them their offices.
In other words, the real message of the Spanish upset is that lying about terrorism, scapegoating convenient targets for political advantage, and political grandstanding over a national tragedy create voter backlash severe enough to tip a close election. The only good thing about Bush’s pigheaded insistence otherwise is that he may be too dumb to get that message until it’s too late for him, also.
March 22nd, 2004
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Politics |
one comment
From the Center for American Progress:
CLAIM #1: “Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to.” - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: Clarke sent a memo to Rice principals on 1/24/01 marked “urgent” asking for a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with an impending Al Qaeda attack. The White House acknowledges this, but says “principals did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat.” No meeting occurred until one week before 9/11. - White House Press Release, 3/21/04
CLAIM #2: “The president returned to the White House and called me in and said, I’ve learned from George Tenet that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.” - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: If this is true, then why did the President and Vice President repeatedly claim Saddam Hussein was directly connected to 9/11? President Bush sent a letter to Congress on 3/19/03 saying that the Iraq war was permitted specifically under legislation that authorized force against “nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11.” Similarly, Vice President Cheney said on 9/14/03 that “It is not surprising that people make that connection” between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, and said “we don’t know” if there is a connection.
CLAIM #3: “[Clarke] was moved out of the counterterrorism business over to the cybersecurity side of things.” - Vice President Dick Cheney on Rush Limbaugh, 3/22/04
FACT: “Dick Clarke continued, in the Bush Administration, to be the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and the President’s principle counterterrorism expert. He was expected to organize and attend all meetings of Principals and Deputies on terrorism. And he did.” - White House Press Release, 3/21/04
CLAIM #4: “In June and July when the threat spikes were so high…we were at battle stations…The fact of the matter is [that] the administration focused on this before 9/11.” – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: “Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft’s ‘Strategic Plan’ from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department’s seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft’s predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism ‘the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area.’” - Washington Post, 3/22/04
CLAIM #5: “The president launched an aggressive response after 9/11.” – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: “In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows. The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the attacks.” – Washington Post, 3/22/04
CLAIM #6: “Well, [Clarke] wasn’t in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff…” - Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/22/04
FACT: “The Government’s interagency counterterrorism crisis management forum (the Counterterrorism Security Group, or “CSG”) chaired by Dick Clarke met regularly, often daily, during the high threat period.” - White House Press Release, 3/21/04
CLAIM #7: “[Bush] wanted a far more effective policy for trying to deal with [terrorism], and that process was in motion throughout the spring.” - Vice President Dick Cheney on Rush Limbaugh, 3/22/04
FACT: “Bush said [in May of 2001] that Cheney would direct a government-wide review on managing the consequences of a domestic attack, and ‘I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts.’ Neither Cheney’s review nor Bush’s took place.” - Washington Post, 1/20/02
What does it say about this Administration that its rebuttal to Clarke’s testimony is so easily refuted by the evidence? What does it say about this Administration that its response is a lie to begin with?
March 22nd, 2004
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Politics |
2 comments
From the Center for American Progress:
ENERGY TASK FORCE MET AT LEAST TEN TIMES: In 2001, Vice President Cheney formally convened his Energy Task Force “10 times between January 29, 2001, and May 16, 2001. All but two of the meetings were held in the Vice President’s Ceremonial Office.” His staff also met at least 6 times with Enron energy executives. [Source: GAO Report, 8/22/03; AP, 1/8/02]
VERSUS
COUNTERTERRORISM TASK FORCE NEVER MET: “Bush said [in May of 2001] that Cheney would direct a government-wide review on managing the consequences of a domestic attack, and ‘I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts.’ Neither Cheney’s review nor Bush’s took place.” - Washington Post, 1/20/02
March 22nd, 2004
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Politics |
no comments
I had jury duty last week (explaining the sad paucity of my wisdom amongst these pages of late - but rejoice!, readers, I return).
It’s an interesting experience, as anyone who’s done it will know. I wasn’t selected for a jury - I observed voir dire for a child-molestation case that everyone was trying desperately to get out of, but they filled the jury before I was questioned; then I was questioned for a drug-selling case but was not selected for the jury - but simply confronting the process was provocative.
It took a lot of thought for me to finally decide to commit perjury during voir dire.
March 22nd, 2004
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Politics |
2 comments
Eric Wasserman, of the Miami Herald, points the finger at the news media for their complicity in the Bush Administration’s deceptions and manipulations regarding terrorism and the war in Iraq.
Stripped to their basics, the far-reaching actions that our country has taken in the past year seem bereft of logic: Under the banner of avenging the attacks of 9/11, the United States went to war against a ruler who had nothing to do with them, and in the name of combating weapons of mass destruction, invaded a country that had none.
Breathtaking, when you put it like that. But that isn’t the way these matters have been put. . . .
As a sobering new report from the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies suggests, our news media have casually bought into the same conceptual muddle, particularly in reporting on weapons of mass destruction.
Then he gets down to business.
March 22nd, 2004
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Politics, Iraq |
6 comments
How do you knock The Passion of the Christ from its throne as the #1 movie in America? Release another movie about people who rise from the dead, that’s how! But why have just one guy rise from the dead when you can have hundreds? (Reminds me of a purported quote from the production of an old Cecil B. DeMille movie [paraphrased]: “Why only twelve disciples? This is a DeMille picture, there should be thousands!”)
Yes, I know: My ticket to hell has already been punched.
March 22nd, 2004
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I do too have a life |
no comments
There may be a good reason for this, but someone better come up with one soon:
In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows.
The document, dated Oct. 12, 2001, shows that the FBI requested $1.5 billion in additional funds to enhance its counterterrorism efforts with the creation of 2,024 positions. But the White House Office of Management and Budget cut that request to $531 million. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, working within the White House limits, cut the FBI’s request for items such as computer networking and foreign language intercepts by half, cut a cyber-security request by three quarters and eliminated entirely a request for “collaborative capabilities.”
The document was one of several administration papers obtained and given to The Washington Post by the Center for American Progress, a liberal group run by former Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta. The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the attacks.
The first two items on the list are particularly troubling. How anyone could think that we had good enough inter-office communications or were capturing and translating enough foreign language traffic a month after 9/11 is beyond me.
Not all programs are good, of course, and perhaps there was some waste in that bill. but two thirds of it? In those critical areas? Someone needs to do a detailed justification of that decision, or we can only assume that even after the country had been shattered by 9/11, the Bush Administration was as unfocused on terrorism as it was before 9/11:
The group released two other administration documents, parts of which have already been made public, showing that just before the Sept. 11 attacks, Ashcroft did not agree to $588 million in increases that the FBI was seeking for 2003. That request included funds to hire 54 translators and 248 counterterrorism agents and support staff. But in his 2003 request sent to the White House, dated Sept. 10, 2001, Ashcroft did not propose that any FBI programs get increases above previously set levels and proposed small cuts to some programs related to counterterrorism.
Other documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft’s “Strategic Plan” from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department’s seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. After the attacks, fighting terrorism became the department’s primary goal. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft’s predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism “the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area.”
Link via Atrios
March 22nd, 2004
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Politics |
3 comments
Eschaton points out that Condi is lying in her “rebuttal”:
They may not have had specific intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack using airplanes as missiles. But, she switches mid-sentence between “evidence” and “speculation,” implying that no analysts had even “speculated” that hijacked planes could be used as weapons, which is of course completely false. Bob Somerby reminds us:
WOODWARD AND EGGEN: But a 1999 report prepared for the National Intelligence Council, an affiliate of the CIA, warned that terrorists associated with bin Laden might hijack an airplane and crash it into the Pentagon, White House or CIA headquarters.
The report recounts well-known case studies of similar plots, including a 1995 plan by al Qaeda operatives to hijack and crash a dozen U.S. airliners in the South Pacific and pilot a light aircraft into Langley.
“Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida’s Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House,” the September 1999 report said.
It is also worth nothing that the Bush Administration was warned by the Italians that terrorist would try to kill him by crashing a plan into the Group of Eight Genoa Summit in 2001. The threat was serious enough for the Italians to place anti-aircraft weapons around the Genoa airport.
March 22nd, 2004
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Politics |
no comments
What I found most stunning about the 60 minute story with Clarke was the way in which the Bush Administration simply did not offer a factual rebuttal to Clarke’s assertions. The tone was more offended innocence, as if we weren’t supposed to ask questions of the Great Man. It is offensive in a lot of ways:
As for the alleged pressure from Mr. Bush to find an Iraq-9/11 link, Hadley says, “We cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the president ever occurred.”
When told by Stahl that 60 Minutes has two sources who tell us independently of Clarke that the encounter happened, including “an actual witness,” Hadley responded, “Look, I stand on what I said.”
Whats worse, and perhaps more damming, is that they trotted out the lie that al-Quada used Iraq as a “haven”:
Hadley maintained, “Iraq, as the president has said, is at the center of the war on terror. We have narrowed the ground available to al Qaeda and to the terrorists. Their sanctuary in Afghanistan is gone; their sanctuary in Iraq is gone. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are now allies on the war on terror. So Iraq has contributed in that way in narrowing the sanctuaries available to terrorists.”
Their obsession with Iraq is almost palpable. They just cannot conceive of a world in which stateless terrorists are more important than pseudo-Stalinist states. Even on 9/11 itself, they continued to be obsessed to the point of coming within an inch of letting al-Queda and the Taliban get away clean:
“Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq,” Clarke said to Stahl. “And we all said … no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, ‘Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.
“Initially, I thought when he said, ‘There aren’t enough targets in– in Afghanistan,’ I thought he was joking.
“I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we’ve looked at this issue for years. For years we’ve looked and there’s just no connection.”
Unfortunately, we don’t lie in a world where state based terrorism is the primary threat. With modern technology, terrorists do not need state sponsors. They need communications and a way to get money, neither of which require a nation. The Bush Administration does not understand that today, they did not understand it on 9/11, and they did not understand it in the months leading to 9/11. And because of that, they apparently did not take al-Queda as seriously as they should have. They downgraded Clarke’s position from a Cabinet level position, they did not discuss the issue in a timely manner with Clarke, Ashcroft’s budget took money form anti-terrorism programs and emphasized porn instead of terrorism, and they never properly responded to the increase in chatter:
By June 2001, there still hadn’t been a Cabinet-level meeting on terrorism, even though U.S. intelligence was picking up an unprecedented level of ominous chatter.
The CIA director warned the White House, Clarke points out. “George Tenet was saying to the White House, saying to the president - because he briefed him every morning - a major al Qaeda attack is going to happen against the United States somewhere in the world in the weeks and months ahead. He said that in June, July, August.”
Clarke says the last time the CIA had picked up a similar level of chatter was in December, 1999, when Clarke was the terrorism czar in the Clinton White House.
Clarke says Mr. Clinton ordered his Cabinet to go to battle stations– meaning, they went on high alert, holding meetings nearly every day.
That, Clarke says, helped thwart a major attack on Los Angeles International Airport, when an al Qaeda operative was stopped at the border with Canada, driving a car full of explosives.
That last part is the hardest to read. If going to “battle stations” had prevented an attack before, could it have prevented the attack on 9/11? That answer is unknowable, of course, but until now I always believed the failing was systematic. Now, now it looks as if the failure was as much in the personal at the top as in the system they oversaw. I cannot shake the feeling that if we had competent men in power, 9/11 could have been prevented.
At any rate, the picture Clarke paints is scary: an administration at least eight years behind the times, and too inflexible to overcome their biases and prejudices even in the face of the overwhelming evidence of 9/11. The Bush Administration offers no defense, no point by point rebuttal, other than “Trust us, Clarke is lying.” Taken together, the two 60 minutes segments paint a picture of an Administration that is almost physically incapable of keeping the country safe.
March 22nd, 2004
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Politics |
3 comments
