Because it wasn't specific, doesn't mean that the National security advisor and President shouldn't divert more funds, energy and focus, into flushing out the specifics that were missing.
Is this more than razor-sharp hindsight with political motivations? Anytime, something goes wrong it is easy to look back and critically evaluate. I endorse the evaluation but deplore the political machinations underneath it all. It was pretty easy to tell who was whom on the commission, wasn't it?
I think the Bushies could have caught OBL prior to 9/11, and he could have admitted they were going to hijack airliners, and 9/11 still would have happened because the Bushies were looking for and spending money to intercept ICBM's from rogue states and the apologists would still be making excuses for him and his incompetent stooges. OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR One Hearing, Two Worlds By ROBERT WRIGHT Published: April 9, 2004 ow did Condoleezza Rice do in defending the Bush administration's antiterrororism policies yesterday before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks? Better if you kept your eyes on her than if you glanced down at the CNN headlines rolling across the bottom of the TV screen. Just as she said that invading Iraq had removed a source "of violence and fear and instability in the world's most dangerous region," the bottom of the screen read, "IRAQ'S INTERIM INTERIOR MINISTER NURIL AL-BADRAN ANNOUNCES HIS RESIGNATION; INTERIOR MINISTRY IS IN CHARGE OF POLICE FORCES." You have to admire Ms. Rice, the national security adviser, for so staunchly defending the invasion of Iraq even amid the current turmoil there. But the effect of her defense — and of her testimony generally — was to raise questions about this administration's grasp of reality. The many grim surprises Iraq has brought over the past year seem to have had no effect on official thinking about terrorism. There were two parallel universes on display yesterday — the top of the screen and the bottom — and they were very different. Throughout the public phase of these hearings, attention has centered on a pseudo-scandal: could 9/11 have been prevented? Probably not. Even a quite vigilant administration would have needed some luck to catch wind of Al Qaeda's plans. Moreover, President Bush was hardly alone in the central confusion that kept him from being quite vigilant: the idea that "rogue states" are a bigger threat than terrorism per se, and indeed that terrorists can't do much damage without a state's help. More scandalous, as some have noted, is that the administration didn't change this view after 9/11, when terrorists based in places like Germany killed 3,000 people using weapons (in this case airliners) acquired in America. Hence the war in Iraq. The polar opposite of a preoccupation with state support of terrorism is the view that, in the modern world, intense hatred is self-organizing and self-empowering. Information technologies make it easy for hateful people to coalesce and execute attacks — and those same technologies can also help spread the hatred. That's why opponents of the Iraq war so feared its effect on Muslim sentiment. If Ms. Rice didn't appreciate that fear before the war, she should now. The current insurgency seems to have spread from city to city in part by TV-abetted contagion. And insurgents are handing out DVD's with deftly edited videos featuring carnage caused by the war. But Ms. Rice is unfazed. Yesterday she said the decision to invade Iraq was one of several key choices President Bush made — "the only choices that can ensure the safety of our nation for decades to come." Meanwhile, down at the bottom of the screen: "IRAQIS SAY AIRSTRIKE KILLED DOZENS GATHERED FOR PRAYERS." Do headlines like that make us safer? And as Ms. Rice lauded the president for putting states that help or tolerate terrorists "on notice" and recognizing that the war on terrorism "cannot be fought on the defensive," the crawl read: "DEFENSE SECY DONALD RUMSFELD WARNS OF POSSIBLE VIOLENCE AGAINST PILGRIMS IN IRAQI HOLY CITIES, PARTICULARLY NAJAF, IN DAYS AHEAD." Yesterday even Bob Kerrey, a committee member who stoutly favored the war in Iraq, said that it is now helping terrorist recruitment through televised images of "largely a Christian army in a Muslim nation." He didn't pose the observation as a question, and Ms. Rice offered no comment. There is one rationale for the Iraq war that might appeal even to those who see raw hatred as the root problem: a prosperous democracy would serve as a model, creating a Muslim world marked by less frustration and resentment. Yesterday Ms. Rice cited this rationale, criticizing a pre-Bush American policy that "looks the other way on the freedom deficit in the Middle East." Good point. But what of our current cozying up to an Uzbek regime that represses Muslim dissidents? This is a natural consequence of a state-based approach to fighting terrorism — of viewing the world as a realpolitik chessboard across which we project military force so that all governments will either like us or fear us (regardless of how the masses feel). Once you understand how easily hatred morphs into terrorism in the modern world, new concerns arise. What about the feelings of American Muslims, who needn't cross a border to do damage? If they're alienated — by the Iraq war or just by the sense that they're viewed with suspicion and hostility — that could be a problem. Nobody mentioned American Muslims yesterday, but the bottom of the screen featured this news: "SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, POLICE CHIEF SAYS SERIES OF ARSON FIRES TARGETING BUSINESSES RUN BY MUSLIMS WERE PROBABLY HATE CRIMES." True, it may be unfair to hold Ms. Rice accountable for yesterday's dire headlines. She stressed that the war on terror will be a long haul, with setbacks. And that's true no matter whose strategy you use. Still, there is no evidence that she or anyone else in the White House anticipated anything like the trouble we've seen since Baghdad "fell" a year ago. And many of the things that have brought the trouble — electronically contagious sentiment, elusively fluid terrorist networks, widely available recipes for homemade weapons — will similarly haunt a heavy-handed approach anywhere else in the world. Iraq is a microcosm of the administration's larger war or terrorism, and the verdict is coming in. All the technological trends that are making hatred more lethal (not just in communications, but in biotechnology and other realms) will continue for a long time. A sound strategy for fighting terrorism in this environment will require extreme creativity — more than President Bush or his presumptive opponent, Senator John Kerry, has shown. Yesterday Ms. Rice, praising the counterterrorism strategy adopted after 9/11, said, "Bold and comprehensive changes are sometimes only possible in the wake of catastrophic events — events which create a new consensus that allows us to transcend old ways of thinking and acting." Let's hope Iraq doesn't have to completely implode for America to transcend the administration's archaic worldview. Robert Wright is the author of "The Moral Animal" and "Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/09/opinion/09WRIG.html?ex=1396843200&en=67c4d25792bf4c20&ei=5007
re: dates Aug 4 - Start of Crawford vacation Aug 9 - first speech to nation on ... stem cell research At least we know where the Bushies priorities were.
once again...who gives a f-ck. The point is, uncorroborated or not, she lied about what it said. I don't think anybody has disputed that point, 24 posts in, so I'm feeling good about it right now.
"RICE. You said did it not warn of attacks. It did not warn of attacks inside the United States. It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States. " 4-8-2004 I don't think commentary is even necessary.
The president and his administration is being brutalized on FTN this morning - the gloves have come off. The latest poll numbers: Kerry 50% Bush 43%. The most striking comment today, "Where is the president" referring to Bush hiding away in Crawford AGAIN during a time of crises.
Here's Fla. Senator Bob Grahm, from May 2002, speaking of the relevance of the Aug. 6th PDB, which his committee had seen: http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=3558 -- Sen. Bob Graham (D.-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told HUMAN EVENTS May 21 that his committee had received all the same terrorism intelligence prior to September 11 as the Bush administration. "Yes, we had seen all the information," said Graham. "But we didn't see it on a single piece of paper, the way the President did." Graham added that threats of hijacking in an August 6 memo to President Bush were based on very old intelligence that the committee had seen earlier. "The particular report that was in the President's Daily Briefing that day was about three years old," Graham said. "It was not a contemporary piece of information." so, Grahm and Condi agree...
"I am satisfied that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America -- at a time and a place, an attack," Bush told reporters. ____________________ Well as long as Bush is satisfied this matter is closed. Oh and reread that statement a few times - WTF ... "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike Inside the US"
I can give the Admin the benefit of the doubt about whether 9/11 could've been stopped. The vagueness of this PDB and other intel certainly wouldn't lead investigators automatically to the 9/11 plot or those that carried out the plot. The problem that I see the Admin has is that even while they can be excused for being not being able to stop 9/11 is that they still had good knowledge that Al Qaeda was planning attacks in the US but still did very little. We can reasonably say, like Clarke has, that there might've been nothing that the Admin. could do about 9/11 but why didn't they do more about dealing with the possibilty of terror attacks in general? To say that the Admin is totally excused in regard to dealing with terrorism before 9/11 because there probably was very little chance they could've stopped 9/11 is like saying that if my car breaks down because of snapped timing belt it was fine that I didn't change the oil before hand. Whether I can predict that my car will break down to something I can't predict is still no excuse for not being dilligent about regular maintenance. That's basically the same thing as Rice's excuse for "not shaking the trees to see what will fall out." Has anyone considered that if there is a known threat (Bin Ladin plans attacks in the US) that maybe you should be shaking the trees?
To make a full judgment on this issue, it would be necessary to compare this PDB to all the other ones he receives. I know they're classified information, but what if each one has some section on potential threats to America? If GWB gets a new threat from some group each day of the year, this warning loses a lot of its credibility. It's very important to understand this PDB in the context of every other one he receives.
rimrocker in the office: "Gee, humidity's at 4%, 1,000 hour fuels are at 7%, winds are gusty at 20-25, and there are reports of possible dry lightning in the Sangre de Christos. What to do? I know, I won't tell the engines and patrols about the forecast, I won't extend hours, I won't coordinate with my neighboring agencies, and I'll take the rest of the day off. After all, should we need to coordinate a response or activate the helicopter and call for tankers, I can delegate that stuff to the seconds." result of rimrocker's decision: rimrocker relieved of all duties.
Why did Timothy Noah and Slate just steal my post? http://slate.msn.com/id/2098631/ Does he hate america or somethin'?
IT isn't more than razor-sharp hindsight. IT's what the previous President did. When the chatter level rose, but there were no specifics, Clinton's team set about beating the Bush's. The LAX bombing was stopped and evidence needed to piece the plot together was gathered after an alert agent stopped the perp.
This is a reasonable point. However, it does [edit] not explain the administrations statements about the lack of intelligence on an Al Qaeda attack in the U.S.
