Bush Anti-terrorist aid quits as policies make us " less secure, not more secure,"

glynch · Jun 16, 2003

By Laura Blumenfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 16, 2003; Page A01

Five days before the war began in Iraq, as President Bush prepared to raise the terrorism threat level to orange, a top White House counterterrorism adviser unlocked the steel door to his office, an intelligence vault secured by an electronic keypad, a combination lock and an alarm. He sat down and turned to his inbox.

"Things were dicey," said Rand Beers, recalling the stack of classified reports about plots to shoot, bomb, burn and poison Americans. He stared at the color-coded threats for five minutes. Then he called his wife: I'm quitting.

Beers's resignation surprised Washington, but what he did next was even more astounding. Eight weeks after leaving the Bush White House, he volunteered as national security adviser for Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), a Democratic candidate for president, in a campaign to oust his former boss. All of which points to a question: What does this intelligence insider know?

"The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They're making us less secure, not more secure," said Beers, who until now has remained largely silent about leaving his National Security Council job as special assistant to the president for combating terrorism. "As an insider, I saw the things that weren't being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got up and walked out."

No single issue has defined the Bush presidency more than fighting terrorism. And no issue has both animated and intimidated Democrats. Into this tricky intersection of terrorism, policy and politics steps Beers, a lifelong bureaucrat, unassuming and tight-lipped until now. He is an unlikely insurgent. He served on the NSC under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and the current Bush. The oath of office hangs on the wall by his bed; he tears up when he watches "The West Wing." Yet Beers decided that he wanted out, and he is offering a rare glimpse in.

"Counterterrorism is like a team sport. The game is deadly. There has to be offense and defense," Beers said. "The Bush administration is primarily offense, and not into teamwork."

In a series of interviews, Beers, 60, critiqued Bush's war on terrorism. He is a man in transition, alternately reluctant about and empowered by his criticism of the government. After 35 years of issuing measured statements from inside intelligence circles, he speaks more like a public servant than a public figure. Much of what he knows is classified and cannot be discussed. Nevertheless, Beers will say that the administration is "underestimating the enemy." It has failed to address the root causes of terror, he said. "The difficult, long-term issues both at home and abroad have been avoided, neglected or shortchanged and generally underfunded."

The focus on Iraq has robbed domestic security of manpower, brainpower and money, he said. The Iraq war created fissures in the United States' counterterrorism alliances, he said, and could breed a new generation of al Qaeda recruits. Many of his government colleagues, he said, thought Iraq was an "ill-conceived and poorly executed strategy."

"I continue to be puzzled by it," said Beers, who did not oppose the war but thought it should have been fought with a broader coalition. "Why was it such a policy priority?" The official rationale was the search for weapons of mass destruction, he said, "although the evidence was pretty qualified, if you listened carefully."

He thinks the war in Afghanistan was a job begun, then abandoned. Rather than destroying al Qaeda terrorists, the fighting only dispersed them. The flow of aid has been slow and the U.S. military presence is too small, he said. "Terrorists move around the country with ease. We don't even know what's going on. Osama bin Laden could be almost anywhere in Afghanistan," he said.

As for the Saudis, he said, the administration has not pushed them hard enough to address their own problem with terrorism. Even last September, he said, "attacks in Saudi Arabia sounded like they were going to happen imminently."

Within U.S. borders, homeland security is suffering from "policy constipation. Nothing gets done," Beers said. "Fixing an agency management problem doesn't make headlines or produce voter support. So if you're looking at things from a political perspective, it's easier to go to war."

The Immigration and Naturalization Service, he said, needs further reorganization. The Homeland Security Department is underfunded. There has been little, if any, follow-through on cybersecurity, port security, infrastructure protection and immigration management. Authorities don't know where the sleeper cells are, he said. Vulnerable segments of the economy, such as the chemical industry, "cry out for protection."

"We are asking our firemen, policemen, Customs and Coast Guard to do far more with far less than we ever ask of our military," he said. Abroad, the CIA has done a good job in targeting the al Qaeda leadership. But domestically, the antiterrorism effort is one of talk, not action: "a rhetorical policy. What else can you say -- 'We don't care about 3,000 people dying in New York City and Washington?' "

When asked about Beers, Sean McCormack, an NSC spokesman, said, "At the time he submitted his resignation, he said he had decided to leave government. We thanked him for his three decades of government service." McCormack declined to comment further.

However it was viewed inside the administration, onlookers saw it as a rare Washington event. "I can't think of a single example in the last 30 years of a person who has done something so extreme," said Paul C. Light, a scholar with the Brookings Institution. "He's not just declaring that he's a Democrat. He's declaring that he's a Kerry Democrat, and the way he wants to make a difference in the world is to get his former boss out of office."

Although Beers has worked in three Republican administrations, he is a registered Democrat. He wanted to leave the NSC quietly, so when he resigned, he said it was for "personal reasons." His friends called, worried: "Are you sick?"

When Beers joined the White House counterterrorism team last August, the unit had suffered several abrupt departures. People had warned him the job was impossible, but Beers was upbeat. On Reagan's NSC staff, he had replaced Oliver North as director for counterterrorism and counternarcotics, known as the "office of drugs and thugs."

"Randy's your model government worker," said Wendy Chamberlin, a U.S. Agency for International Development administrator for Iraq, who worked with Beers on counterterrorism on the NSC of the first Bush administration. "He works for the common good of the American people. He's fair, balanced, honest. No one ever gets hurt feelings hearing the truth from Randy."

The first thing Beers noticed when he walked into his new office was the pile of intelligence reports. The "threat stuff," as Beers calls it, was 10 times thicker than it had been before the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.

He was in a job that would grind down anyone. Every day, 500 to 1,000 pieces of threat information crossed his desk. The typical mix included suspicious surveillance at a U.S. embassy; surveillance of a nuclear power plant or a bridge; a person caught by airport security with a weapon, or an airplane flying too close to the CIA; a tanker truck, which might contain a bomb, crossing the border and heading for a city; an intercepted phone call between suspected terrorists. Most of the top-secret reports -- pumped into his office from the White House Situation Room -- didn't pan out. Often they came from a disgruntled employee or a spouse.

When the chemical agent ricin surfaced in the London subway, "we were worried it might manifest here," he said. The challenge was: "Who do we alert? How do you tell them to organize?"

Every time the government raises an alarm, it costs time and money. "There's less filtering now because people don't want to make the mistake of not warning," he said. Before Sept. 11, 2001, the office met three times a week to discuss intelligence. Now, twice a day, at 7 a.m. and 3 p.m., it holds "threat matrix meetings," tracking the threats on CIA spreadsheets.

It was Beers's task to evaluate the warnings and to act on them. "It's a monstrous responsibility," said William Wechsler, director for transnational threats on Clinton's NSC staff. "You sit around every day, thinking about how people want to kill thousands of Americans."

Steven Simon, director for counterterrorism in the Clinton White House, said, "When we read a piece of intelligence, we'd apply the old how-straight-does-your-hair-stand-up-on-your-head test."

The government's first counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, who left his White House job in February after more than 10 years, said officials judged the human intelligence based on two factors: Would the source have access to the information? How reliable was his previous reporting? They scored access to information, 12345; previous reporting, abcd. "A score of D5, you don't believe. A1 -- you do," Clarke said. "It's like a jolt of espresso, and you feel like -- whoop -- it pumps you up, and wakes you up."

It's easier to raise the threat level -- from code yellow to code orange, for example -- than to lower it, Beers said: "It's easier to see the increase in intelligence suggesting something's going to happen. What do you say when we're coming back down? Does nothing happening mean it's not going to happen? It's still out there."

After spending all day wrestling with global jihad, Beers would go home to his Adams Morgan townhouse. "You knew not to get the phone in the middle of the night, because it was for Dad," said his son Benjamin, 28. When the Situation Room called, Beers would switch to a black, secure phone that scrambled the signal, after fishing the key out of his sock drawer. There were times he would throw on sweats over his pajamas and drive downtown.

"The first day, I came in fresh and eager," he said. "On the last day, I came home tired and burned out. And it only took seven months."

Part of that stemmed from his frustration with the culture of the White House. He was loath to discuss it. His wife, Bonnie, a school administrator, was not: "It's a very closed, small, controlled group. This is an administration that determines what it thinks and then sets about to prove it. There's almost a religious kind of certainty. There's no curiosity about opposing points of view. It's very scary. There's kind of a ghost agenda."

In the end, Beers was arriving at work each day with knots in his stomach. He did not want to abandon his colleagues at such a critical, dangerous time. When he finally decided to quit, he drove to a friend's house in Arlington. Clarke, his old counterterrorism pal, took one look at the haggard man on his stoop and opened a bottle of Russian River Pinot Noir. Then he opened another bottle. Clarke toasted Beers, saying: You can still fight the fight.

Shortly after that, Beers joined the Kerry campaign. He had briefly considered a think tank or an academic job but realized that he "never felt so strongly about something in my life" than he did about changing current U.S. policies. Of the Democratic candidates, Kerry offered the greatest expertise in foreign affairs and security issues, he decided. Like Beers, Kerry had served in Vietnam. As a civil servant, Beers liked Kerry's emphasis on national service.

On a recent hot night, at 10 o'clock, Beers sat by an open bedroom window, wearing a T-shirt, his bare feet propped on a table.

Beers was on a three-hour conference call, the weekly Monday night foreign policy briefing for the campaign. The black, secure phone by his bedside was gone. Instead, there was a red, white and blue bumper sticker: "John Kerry -- President." The buzz of helicopters blew through the window. Since Sept. 11, 2001, it seemed, there were more helicopters circling the city.

"And we need to return to that kind of diplomatic effort . . . ," Beers was saying, over the droning sound. His war goes on.

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GreenVegan76 · Jun 16, 2003

Why are the media running these stories now? This isn't new stuff. The rest of the world was saying these exact things six months before the war, but the American media was too busy beating the war drums to pay notice.

glynch · Jun 16, 2003

Greenvegan, that is a very interesting question. I have a theory that the mainstream media will not go against the consensus or the perceived consensus on an important isssue like going to war at the time the decision is being made as it might be bad for business.

One theory is that this time around big media wanted the media deregulation changes at the FCC, so they didn't want to piss off the Bush Administration.

One favorite is to withhold facts till they are no longer that important. In Gulf War I it only came out later that the US doctored satellite photos to convince Saudi Arabia that the Iraqis were going to attack so that Saudi would allow their country to be a US base and staging area. It goes on and on and on.

I think that by eventually writing the truth they try to maintain their reputation. This current war and its rationales are very interesting as the CIA, the inteligence agencies and now it appears the mainstream media might actually be pissed off by the sheer brazenness of the disinfo.

Woofer · Jun 16, 2003

a a bit of different slant
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/16/politics/main558874.shtml

SamFisher · Jun 16, 2003

All I know is that Rand Beers is one sweet ass name. I would kill to be named Rand Beers.

rimrocker · Jun 16, 2003

"It's a very closed, small, controlled group. This is an administration that determines what it thinks and then sets about to prove it. There's almost a religious kind of certainty. There's no curiosity about opposing points of view. It's very scary. There's kind of a ghost agenda."

The circumstantial evidence seems to be mounting, though the weak-ass dems in Congress aren't doing their job. How can a party that had the guts to tear itself apart over civil rights just sit on their hands and whistle while stuff like this is happening?

wouldabeen23 · Jun 16, 2003

Originally posted by rimrocker
"It's a very closed, small, controlled group. This is an administration that determines what it thinks and then sets about to prove it. There's almost a religious kind of certainty. There's no curiosity about opposing points of view. It's very scary. There's kind of a ghost agenda."

The circumstantial evidence seems to be mounting, though the weak-ass dems in Congress aren't doing their job. How can a party that had the guts to tear itself apart over civil rights just sit on their hands and whistle while stuff like this is happening?
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That my friend is the million dollar question--why am I a member of a party with no cojones?

Woofer · Jun 16, 2003

Originally posted by wouldabeen23
That my friend is the million dollar question--why am I a member of a party with no cojones?
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Because we have this weird slightly unrepresentative two party system instead of a chaotic but more representative anything goes system?

Woofer · Jun 16, 2003

A article on current events relevant to this discussion:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printed...6jun16,1,3975055.story?coll=la-news-a_section

NEWS ANALYSIS
Foreign Hot Spots Holding America's Feet to the Fire

By Robin Wright, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's three boldest foreign policy interventions — Afghanistan, Iraq and now the Arab-Israeli conflict — are all losing critical momentum and the U.S. ability to control events may slip away unless bolder action is taken, according to experts, current and former U.S. officials and two new reports.

Hanging in the balance, they warn, are America's credibility abroad and the direction of the Islamic world — moving toward moderation or deeper extremism.

"We were overconfident that American power could somehow intimidate or inhibit the local sources of power and violence. But those power centers — Hamas, Afghan warlords and anti-American forces in Iraq, be they Saddam Hussein loyalists or others — are proving resilient and extremely powerful," said Ellen Laipson, former vice chair of the National Intelligence Council and now president of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a foreign policy think tank in Washington. "And they're all proving to be significant and stubborn challenges for the United States."

Two weeks after President Bush's summits with Israeli and Mideast leaders produced pledges on a new "road map" to peace, the Arab-Israeli conflict is instead escalating. The militant Palestinian group Hamas is now threatening to target all Israeli civilians, while Israel is pledging a "war to the bitter end" against the militants.

Differences between Israel and the Palestinian Authority about how to pursue peace have now been eclipsed by extremist groups, and so far, military clampdowns have only fueled support for them.

"Control of events seems to be slipping away," said Robert Malley, a former National Security Council staff member in the Clinton administration who is now Mideast program director at the International Crisis Group, a conflict watchdog organization. "The history of U.S. initiatives has often been too little, too late — whether the Mitchell plan, the Tenet plan and perhaps now the road map. These are initiatives whose shelf life had expired by the time they were put on the table."

In Iraq, the war may be over, but the country remains a dangerous combat zone. The political transition has proved messier than anticipated and reconstruction more complex and costly.

"American forces are in a race against the clock. If they are unable to restore both personal security and public services and establish a better rapport with Iraqis before the blistering heat of summer sets in, there is a genuine risk that serious trouble will break out," the International Crisis Group concluded in a report issued last week.

And Afghanistan, where Bush launched military action to root out Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is the most precarious arena. Despite vehement American pledges not to abandon Afghanistan again, as the U.S. did a decade earlier, the nation is again in trouble.

The Western-backed interim government — now halfway into its two-year term to stabilize the country, write a new constitution and transform political and economic life — essentially controls only the capital. An estimated 100,000 Afghans in various militias hold sway in much of the country. The economy is still in tatters.

"Without greater support for the transitional government of President Hamid Karzai, security in Afghanistan will deteriorate further, prospects for economic reconstruction will dim and Afghanistan will revert to warlord-dominated anarchy," concludes a report by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society to be released this week. "This failure could gravely erode America's credibility around the globe and mark a major defeat in the U.S. war on terrorism."

Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden and Taliban leaders remain elusive. And Al Qaeda operatives continue to mount terrorist strikes.

U.S. officials say that much has been achieved in Afghanistan, Iraq and on the Israeli- Palestinian front. All three are long-term challenges that will eventually turn around — and the alternative of doing nothing would have been much worse, they add.

"People have often been in too great a rush to judgment, drawing grand conclusions from one event or one day's developments," said Judith Yaphe, a former CIA analyst who is a senior research fellow at the National Defense University.

Even critics of the administration agree that it defied dire predictions with almost breathtaking military victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. And the new Middle East road map sets the most specific goals and deadlines — and has the widest world and regional backing — of any effort in a decade, they say.

Yet there is a growing sense of unease among foreign policy experts as well as some U.S. officials that the problems in each area will increase America's vulnerability rather than diminish it.

The enormous time required to transform these three arenas — each pivotal to the administration's broader goals of fighting terrorism and Islamic extremism and spreading democracy — is working against the U.S., they say.

"It's hard for us to produce results weeks or months after presidential proclamations," said Laipson, the Stimson Center president. "We've been humbled or reminded of what a slow and uneven path true political change takes. It is a generational experiment, and it doesn't happen in one season or one U.S. election cycle."

Short-term expectations, among both local populations and American voters, of near- miraculous transformations are now working against long-term goals in each area.

"People think wars solve problems. They don't. They simply turn over responsibilities to someone else — while the core problems remain the same," Yaphe said.

A history of failed peace efforts is undermining the Middle East road map, analysts say. Both Israelis and Palestinians had "tremendous cynicism and skepticism" about the peace process even before the latest initiative was introduced, said Shibley Telhami, a Brookings Institution fellow and holder of the Anwar Sadat chair for peace and development at the University of Maryland.

"People on both sides are so tired of promises. They've seen it so often in the past: handshakes and pictures and conferences that don't end up changing anything and, instead, more people die," he said.

Also, what happens in one arena shapes both public attitudes and U.S. prospects for success in another, analysts say.

The problems in Afghanistan have made many Muslims wary of U.S. pledges to follow through in democratizing Iraq or helping to create a Palestinian state. The failure to find chemical or biological arms in Iraq to back up U.S. claims that Baghdad posed an imminent threat has made Arabs suspicious of U.S. motives throughout the Middle East. And deployment of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in two Muslim nations has triggered fears about American intentions and possibly an even greater confrontation between the West and the Islamic world.

"You have only one chance to make a good first impression," Telhami said. "In Iraq, a lot of people hated the regime, so the United States had something going for it. But then we ended up unprepared for what followed. So a lot of people who expected the war with Iraq to make the U.S. stronger in the eyes of the world, and therefore able to do more in the region, have found instead that the U.S. has been weakened."

The array of challenges has produced recommendations for bolder U.S. action in each arena.

On the Israeli-Palestinian front, Washington is abuzz with ideas from Congress, think tanks and former U.S. envoys about a more muscular international presence, including U.S. or North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops, to separate the two sides and allow the Palestinian government to build a new security force.

The International Crisis Group's report on Iraq urges the U.S. to empower Iraqis faster to craft policy and accelerate local elections to maximize popular support and participation. It also calls for funding an international force to conduct joint patrols with Iraqis to end disorder.

To prevent anarchy in Afghanistan, the report from the Council on Foreign Relations and Asia Society says, Washington needs to move quickly to help extend government control outside the capital and inject at least $1 billion for reconstruction in each of the next five years.

"We've been quite fortunate that not one of these crises has yet to blow up in our faces," a well-placed diplomat said last week. "Unfortunately, any one of them still could — at any moment."

treeman · Jun 16, 2003

I didn't bother reading the whole thing, so I'm not sure if it mentioned that Mr. Beers is now presidential hopeful John Kerry's right hand man on security issues. Yes, he is now an aide to a Democratic presidential rival of Bush's...

Gee, I wonder if that could have anything to do with his assessment?

Still, for some reason none of the fear expressed seem to be materializing. The Taliban is still a long way from regaining power in Afghanistan (never happen as long as we're there), Saddam is no longer any sort of threat, the other Arab states appear to have been cowed, Iran is in a box, Al Qaeda's operations have been seriously degraded... I fail to see any substance to the argument.

Deckard · Jun 16, 2003

Originally posted by treeman
I didn't bother reading the whole thing, so I'm not sure if it mentioned that Mr. Beers is now presidential hopeful John Kerry's right hand man on security issues. Yes, he is now an aide to a Democratic presidential rival of Bush's...

Gee, I wonder if that could have anything to do with his assessment?

Still, for some reason none of the fear expressed seem to be materializing. The Taliban is still a long way from regaining power in Afghanistan (never happen as long as we're there), Saddam is no longer any sort of threat, the other Arab states appear to have been cowed, Iran is in a box, Al Qaeda's operations have been seriously degraded... I fail to see any substance to the argument.
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This is the man who replaced Oliver North during the Reagan Administration. He is a thoroughly experienced career professional at the highest levels of National Security. Your dismissive attitude towards this is weak and unworthy. This is a pretty big deal, imo. It doesn't make me feel any better about how the Administration is handling things, either.

The "rolling eyes" thing is getting pretty tiresome as well.

SWTsig · Jun 16, 2003

Originally posted by treeman
I didn't bother reading the whole thing, so I'm not sure if it mentioned that Mr. Beers is now presidential hopeful John Kerry's right hand man on security issues. Yes, he is now an aide to a Democratic presidential rival of Bush's...

Gee, I wonder if that could have anything to do with his assessment?

Still, for some reason none of the fear expressed seem to be materializing. The Taliban is still a long way from regaining power in Afghanistan (never happen as long as we're there), Saddam is no longer any sort of threat, the other Arab states appear to have been cowed, Iran is in a box, Al Qaeda's operations have been seriously degraded... I fail to see any substance to the argument.
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you are hopeless. udderly hopeless. i'd say some more, but Deckard summed it up well enough for me.

Achebe · Jun 16, 2003

I didn't bother reading the whole thing, so I'm not sure if it mentioned that Mr. Beers is now presidential hopeful John Kerry's right hand man on security issues. Yes, he is now an aide to a Democratic presidential rival of Bush's...
Click to expand...

I realize that you always write whatever comes out of your ass, but I felt that I should record this for posterity.

The entire frigging point of the article is that a respected civil servant left his post and joined Kerry's campaign, so that he could assist in getting his former boss (the president) fired.

So yeah, suffice it to say, the article mentions that Beers works with Kerry. Thanks for the scoop Sherlock.

giddyup · Jun 16, 2003

<b>achebe</b>: is this your first post in I-don't-know-how-long?

Achebe · Jun 16, 2003

hey giddyup!

Yeah, I've been in lurk mode for a while. I am finally riding my bike a lot more (a couple of big rides this past weekend, whoohoo!) so I feel as if I am human enough to reenter 'the web thingey'.

I didn't like the image of myself as a pastey white geek typing away at the keyboard. Now I'm a nice cut shade of pink, my luck, sprinkled w/ a bit of melanoma here and there, so I feel comfortable sitting back down and typing out a post or two... lol.

underoverup · Jun 17, 2003

"The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They're making us less secure, not more secure," said Beers, who until now has remained largely silent about leaving his National Security Council job as special assistant to the president for combating terrorism. "As an insider, I saw the things that weren't being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got up and walked out."
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Interesting article(s), I will be learning more of this man and his strong statement to the Bush/ Republican party with his switch to the Kerry camp. I'm sure everyone will be hearing more about him actually, he didn't switch parties with the hope he would gain more power with Kerry and the Democrates.

FranchiseBlade · Jun 17, 2003

Originally posted by underoverup
Interesting article(s), I will be learning more of this man and his strong statement to the Bush/ Republican party with his switch to the Kerry camp. I'm sure everyone will be hearing more about him actually, he didn't switch parties with the hope he would gain more power with Kerry and the Democrates.
Click to expand...

I agree. It obviously wasn't a power move. The guy was already working for the President of the most powerful nation in the world. Now he quits and joins with a man who doesn't even have the nomination, and from a party that isn't favored to win in the next election anyway. This guy is just one to a long list of people whov'e resigned from this administration over their handling of the war on terrorism, and foreign policy in general.

Achebe · Jun 17, 2003

hey guys, don't nominate him for sainthood yet. The man is a democrat... it's not like it is unfathomable that he was preparing to retire, and decided to try a cute political trick.

That being said, he is apparently well respected in Washington, so if the media sells his departure up to the masses, maybe Kerry will get some movement or respect by the people that later chose which candidates will win the nomination (ie Will Saletan, people at the note, people at tnr, al from, terry mcpoopforbrains, etc.).

Maybe he'll give some of Kerry's arguments a nice bite to them... but all in all... noone will notice this other than the die hard partisans that are talking about this stuff right now. And even those guys will forget it in 3 or 4 mos. Do you guys remember the names of those people that retired from the Clinton administration out of frustration?

Neither do I.

RocketMan Tex · Jun 17, 2003

Originally posted by treeman
I didn't bother reading the whole thing, so I'm not sure if it mentioned that Mr. Beers is now presidential hopeful John Kerry's right hand man on security issues. Yes, he is now an aide to a Democratic presidential rival of Bush's...

Gee, I wonder if that could have anything to do with his assessment?

Still, for some reason none of the fear expressed seem to be materializing. The Taliban is still a long way from regaining power in Afghanistan (never happen as long as we're there), Saddam is no longer any sort of threat, the other Arab states appear to have been cowed, Iran is in a box, Al Qaeda's operations have been seriously degraded... I fail to see any substance to the argument.
Click to expand...

The Taliban is a long way from regaining power in Afghanistan, yet the Warlords rule the countryside, and chaos rules the day.

Saddam is no longer any sort of threat, yet American soldiers are dying nearly every day in Iraq, even though Bush essentially declared the "Battle of Iraq" over. Chaos rules the day there as well.

The Administration has great battle plans, but they have no clue what to do once the battle is over.

If you fail to see any substance to the argument, may I recommend Mann Berkeley Eye Center. You obviously need a checkup. Either that or "blinder removal" surgery.

treeman · Jun 17, 2003

As for Beers being a stalwart defender of the integrity of the intelligencve community, too experienced to be nonbiased, treeman's an ass, etc - yada, yada, yada. I find it amazing that you guys are totally incapable of thjinking that any Re[ublicans in the administration could do anything that is not politically motivated, a stunt for the press, or on some level just a cynical move to gain more power. You guys are completely incapable of even considering that any of them actually do anything because they feel it's the right thing to do.

Yet here comes a man who switches sides right before a presidential race, stands to become the new Secretary of Defense or National Security Advisor rather than just a bureaucrat... And there can be no ulterior motive here? Oh, of course not, I forgot - he's a Democrat. Democrats are of course always altruistic, unselfish, and motivated by honorable intentions.

Silly me. How could I have forgotten?

RM Tex:

The Taliban is a long way from regaining power in Afghanistan, yet the Warlords rule the countryside, and chaos rules the day.
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And yet curiously Al Qaeda no longer has any training camps there, and no Al Qaeda from that are are busy plotting against the continental US. They, with their Taliban bretheren, are too busy calculating how to not die in the next American patrol.

Who cares if the warlords rule the countryside? Al Qaeda and the Taliban don't, and that's what counts. To say that that does not improve our security is idiotic.

Saddam is no longer any sort of threat, yet American soldiers are dying nearly every day in Iraq, even though Bush essentially declared the "Battle of Iraq" over. Chaos rules the day there as well.
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That chaos is almost certainly temporary, and is to be expected (look up Germany and Japan occupations for examples). It will be replaced by a stable, nonhostile, free government of the people. Oh what a horrible thing!

Saddam's armies will never again invade a neighboring country, sending the global economy into a downward spiral. Saddam will never again give tens of thousands of dollars to suicide bombers' families. He will never again host training camps for terrorists who despise the US. He will never again have an opportunity to build or use WMD.

If you think that leaving Saddam in power would have made us more secure, then I don't know what to say. You're an idiot of the highest order.

The Administration has great battle plans, but they have no clue what to do once the battle is over.
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Well, let's see, in Afghanistan the plan was to drain the swamp (overthrow the Taliban) and then conduct pest control (patrols, raids, etc - what they're doing now), so... I don't follow. The plan was never to control and thereby restructure Afghan society, just to eliminate the place as a base of operations for Al Qaeda. Mission accomplished.

In Iraq the jury is still out, but it should be noted that there has been no Iraqi civil war, and there will not be one, precisely because of what we have done after the war there. Unlike what many of your ilk had predicted.

If you fail to see any substance to the argument, may I recommend Mann Berkeley Eye Center. You obviously need a checkup. Either that or "blinder removal" surgery.
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Thanks. I'll look into that. May I recommend a good psychiatrist to treat your paranoid delusions?

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Bush Anti-terrorist aid quits as policies make us " less secure, not more secure,"

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Bush Anti-terrorist aid quits as policies make us " less secure, not more secure,"

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