The Bushies started trying to cover up their failures pretty quickly by rewriting history. http://tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=50&mode=&order=0&thold=0 Washington, DC -- March 24, 2004 --12:15 EST -- FBI translator Sibel Edmonds was offered a substantial raise and a full time job to encourage her not to go public that she had been asked by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to retranslate and adjust the translations of [terrorist] subject intercepts that had been received before September 11, 2001 by the FBI and CIA. Edmonds, a ten year U.S. citizen who has passed a polygraph examination, speaks fluent Farsi and Turkish and had been working part time with the FBI for six months--commencing in December, 2001. . . . Then there's the fact that the FBI knew there was a threat serious enough for them to stop having John Ashcroft fly on commercial airliners before 9/11. They didn't see such a threat when Janet Reno was attorney general.
You just like to tromp over the subtleties, don't you.... I'd like to hear about how LBJ was called a liar and a crusader. I was in middle and high school during the VietNam war and while I was paying adolescent attention, I don't remember vehement criticism of LBJ while I do remember anti-war activities. And, for the record, the war in VietNam lasted for 5-6 more years afer LBJ left office; those 5-6 years carried over into a Republican administration of Nixon-- up until 1973-74. And another thing-- the War on Terror has come to our homeland. You can argue that Iraq is not part of that concern if you like but understand that not all feel that way. Macroscopic or microscopic. Big Plan versus revenge and punish. VietNam was and remains a far-off exotic location and was the result of a peculiar pre-emptive action tied to a particular Domino Theory of Communism.
Well, I wasn't alive back then but even I know about "hey hey LBJ how many kids did you kill today!"; "baby killer" was the other standard insult. He was vilified by the anti-war movement, with some justification.
And why did LBJ leave office? He could have run in 68 but he chose not to because he became so unpopular due to the war.
I haven't been able to follow this thread too closely so I apologize if these points have been made already. Lets not get too caught up in turning this into a Clinton vs GW Bush thing. Its pretty obvious that both Admin's share blame in regards to 9/11. What is important right now is that GW Bush is up for reelection and has made the war on terror a critical issue. It is only proper that that issue be upheld for scrutiny. If the Clinton admin was up the same would apply. As for GW Bush not trying to gain political capital out of this please seem my post in the Peggy Noonan thread on the same issue. If you look at the timeline regarding the buildup to Iraq, Republican campaign strategy in the 2002 elections and now the timing and suddeness of the handover of sovereignity there is a plenty of evidence to trying to gain political advantage from Iraq. This goes further than just the president defending his record to one where the timing was set to tip the 2002 elections.
I found this on the web. You Bush critics will love the conclusion. If you guys think LBJ didn't run because a few war protestors yelled a few unflattering remarks toward him... well, I don't know. Reading the article below, it sounds as if LBJ couldn't be the president he wanted to be and so walked away. I think he was also in poor health and he died in 1973. Anyway here's the article: http://www.thehollandsentinel.net/stories/012302/opi_012302020.shtml Web posted Wednesday, January 23, 2002 Bush could learn from LBJ's presidency By William McKenzie The Dallas Morning News March 6, 1965. Lyndon Johnson talking to Democratic Sen. Richard Russell, his friend and former colleague: "I don't know, Dick. The great trouble I'm under -- a man can fight if he can see daylight down the road somewhere. But there ain't no daylight in Vietnam. There's not a bit." Those are the worried words of a man who envisioned becoming a great domestic president, only to feel trapped, even crushed, at the outset of his first elected term by a growing foreign policy worry. Fortunately, George W. Bush remains far from that point. The war against terrorism continues to run America's way. Still, as President Bush and his advisers plan next week's State of the Union address and the White House's strategy for the next few months, they should take stock from history. Being forced to go from a domestic president to a wartime leader, and still pay attention to matters like Medicare and civil rights, challenges the most skilled politicians. LBJ certainly belongs in the category of the skilled who faced enormous tests. If nothing else, reading historian Michael Beschloss' new book, "Reaching for Glory," gives one a sense of the immense struggle that Texas' first president underwent. A presentation of Lyndon Johnson's secret White House tapes from 1964 to 1965, the book peels back layers of the Johnson presidency and psyche. In poring over his conversations with leaders like Sen. Russell, readers feel as if they are peering into the heart and mind of a very vulnerable president who was trying to balance his beloved domestic agenda of civil rights and care for the poor with an escalating war in a far-off land many Americans couldn't find on a map. In a recent interview with The Dallas Morning News editorial board, Beschloss said LBJ wanted to keep the war at bay so he could get his domestic program through Congress in 1965. But he found himself having to look strong on Vietnam so he could get Capitol Hill to go along with his domestic priorities. Too bad the public didn't know more about those doubts. Johnson's prosecution of the war perhaps could have been different. At least he wouldn't have suffered the "credibility gap" he developed by hiding certain features about the war in Vietnam, like the commitment needed to win. Bush has the advantage of appearing more as a Harry Truman-like figure. As with Truman, Beschloss notes, people often don't doubt Bush means what he says, even if they don't like what he says. But that appeal could vanish very quickly if he starts developing his own credibility gap. And don't ever think President Bush won't feel terrific pressure to fudge if the war against terrorism with a global reach starts getting messier, which it invariably will do. The heat he feels about Enron's collapse will seem like child's play. Shooting straight throughout the war against terrorism will help Bush domestically as much as internationally. Like Lyndon Johnson, George W. Bush has a natural feel for domestic politics. He is good at it, as was Johnson. But he will lose that advantage if he fails to speak plainly and truthfully when the heat intensifies. Beschloss notes that President Truman easily could have shied away from asking Americans to fight the Cold War after they had just won World War II. But he strode right up and asked them for a new commitment, providing an object lesson in plain speaking for presidents. Too bad Lyndon Johnson didn't learn it well enough. The lesson in "Reaching for Glory" is clear, if not tragic, for LBJ and the families who lost loved ones as Vietnam worsened. Presidents undermine themselves -- and harm the country -- when they don't level with the public.
What a crazy article. To say that Bush, like LBJ is good at domestic issues is insane. To claim that Bush appears straight shooting like Truman is also nuts. LBJ, was all about civil rights on the domestic front and got more legislation through on civil rights and trying to achieve equality than any other president in our history. To compare that to Bush who wants have a constitutional amendmnt to make sure that a certain part of our population will never be able to marry a consenting adult of their choice is ridiculous. That's just one issue. As far as being a straight shooter like Trum concerning the War on Terror, that's been blown out of the water countless times.
The article doesn't begin to say that Bush, like LBJ, is good at domestic issues. I think they are saying he hasn't had a chance with all the distraction about concerns of terrorism. He was forced fairly early in his administration to be a war-time president-- unlike no other-- we suffered an attack on our continental soil in our largest city in our financial district. What president can compete with that? It's not nuts to say that Bush is not straight-shooting; it has gotten him much-criticism. "Wanted: Dead or Alive." I know you are only tying it into what you consider to be mis-represenation about WMD stuff but there ARE other aspects to consider.
This from a NY Daily News article... At the White House, nailing Clarke is now Job 1. "We're all on Clarke patrol," said a senior Bush political strategist." And here I thought terrorism was their number one concern.
The quote from the article that lead me to that conclusion was this "Like Lyndon Johnson, George W. Bush has a natural feel for domestic politics. He is good at it, as was Johnson." That is what I took exception too. That Bush is tough talking I will agree with, but I don't think that means the same thing as straight shooting.
This sums up what is wrong with this administration. Rather than addressing any issues raised by a person they attack the presenter of the criticism. Scarecrow politics at the highest level. Scary.
Boy Clarke must have really touched a nerve. -------------------------------------------- GOP Moves to Declassify Clarke Testimony (AP) - In a highly unusual move, key Republicans in Congress are seeking to declassify testimony that former White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke gave in 2002 about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Friday. Frist said the intent was to determine whether Clarke lied under oath — either in 2002 or this week — when he appeared before a bipartisan Sept. 11 commission and sharply criticized President Bush's handling of the war on terror. More... http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=3&u=/ap/20040326/ap_on_go_co/clarke_congress_4
More political fumbling....just keep pumping life into the story. I wonder if they're going to investigate if pre-Iraq congressional testimony like this was perjury: "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon" Paul Wolfowitz, 2003
We are ruled by a party with a sick, twisted leadership whiich believes that their end justifies any means. It is past time to get that party out of power and for Republicans to reclaim their party from the small group of well-financed radicals which has it in their grip.
Here's a later version... note the quotes... _______________ GOP Moves to Declassify Clarke Testimony Fri Mar 26, 2:49 PM ET Add Politics - U. S. Congress to My Yahoo! By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent WASHINGTON - Top Republicans in Congress sought Friday to declassify two-year-old testimony by former White House aide Richard Clarke, suggesting he may have lied this week when he faulted President Bush (news - web sites)'s handling of the war on terror. "Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said in a speech on the Senate floor. The Tennessee Republican said he hopes Clarke's testimony in July 2002 before the House and Senate intelligence committees can be declassified. Then, he said, it can be compared with the account the former aide provided in his nationally televised appearance Wednesday before the bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said he supports the move. "We need to lean forward in making as much information available to the public as possible, without compromising the national security interests of the nation," he said in a statement. Hastert said the initial request had been made by Rep. Porter Goss, the Florida Republican who heads the House intelligence committee. The developments marked the latest turn in a Republican counterattack against Clarke, who has leveled his criticism against Bush in a new book as well as in interviews and his sworn testimony before the commission. In his testimony, Clarke said that while the Clinton administration had "no higher priority" than combatting terrorists, Bush made it "an important issue but not an urgent issue" in the eight months between the time he took office and the Sept. 11 attacks. Clarke also testified that the invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) had undermined the war on terror. In a sharply worded speech, Frist said that Clarke himself was "the only common denominator" across 10 years of terrorist attacks that began with the first attack on the World Trade Center. Additionally, he accused Clarke of "an appalling act of profiteering" by publishing a book that relied on access to insider information relating to the worst terrorist attacks in the nation's history. He also accused him of making a "theatrical apology" to the families of the terrorist victims at the outset of his appearance on Wednesday, saying it was not "his right, his privilege or his responsibility" to do so. "Mr. Clarke can and will answer for his own conduct — but that is all," he said. Frist, without elaborating, said Clarke's testimony in 2002 was "effusive in his praise for the actions of the Bush administration." Frist also noted that Clarke, appearing as an anonymous official, had praised the administration's actions in an appearance before White House reporters in 2002. Clarke on Wednesday dismissed that appearance as the fulfillment of the type of request that presidential appointees frequently receive. But, Frist said, "Loyalty to any administration will be no defense if it is found that he has lied to Congress." No immediate information was available on how the declassification process works, but one GOP aide said the CIA (news - web sites) and perhaps the White House would play a role in determining whether to make the testimony public. Without mentioning the congressional Republicans' effort, White House spokesman Scott McClellan continued the administration's criticism of Clarke on Friday. "With every new assertion he makes, every revision of his past comments, he only further undermines his credibility," McClellan told reporters. Asked about Bush's personal reaction to the criticism from a former White House aide, McClellan said, "Any time someone takes a serious issue like this and revises history it's disappointing." ------------------------ Here's Sen. Graham... "I concur with Senator Frist's call for de-classification of Richard Clarke's testimony to the Joint Inquiry. To the best of my recollection, there is nothing inconsistent or contradictory in that testimony and what Mr. Clarke has said this week. I would add three other recommendations: First, if Mr. Clarke's testimony is to be released, it should be released in its entirety -- not, as the Bush administration has done in the past, selectively edited so that only portions favorable to the White House are made public. Second, the Bush administration should de-classify other documents that surround the Clarke testimony, such as his January 25, 2002, plan for action against al Qaeda, in order to clarify the issues that are in dispute. And finally, the Bush administration should release all other testimony and documents related to 9-11 for which classification can no longer be justified -- including the 27 pages of the Joint Inquiry's final report that address the involvement of a foreign government in supporting some of the 19 hijackers while they lived among us and finalized their evil plot. The American people deserve to know what their government has done -- and should be doing -- to protect them from terrorists, and who should be held accountable for shortcomings that have left our country vulnerable."
I hope they really are so stupid and vindictive that they pursue a perjury charge. Can you imagine the number of lawyers in DC that would line up just to do the defense discovery pro bono?
Professional Revolt Many conscientious civil servants, including Richard Clarke, relied on empirical data while working for Bush. Then were forced to leave. By Harold Meyerson, TAP Web Exclusive: 3.25.04 Just a few minutes after 8 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1941, with the bombs still falling on Pearl Harbor, Pacific Fleet intelligence officer Lt. Cmdr. Edwin Layton, who'd been predicting a Japanese attack for that very weekend, was scurrying through fleet headquarters when two of his superiors stopped him. "Here is the young man we should have listened to," said Capt. Willard Kitts, the fleet gunnery officer. "If it's any satisfaction to you," added Capt. Charles "Soc" McMorris, the fleet war plans officer, "you were right and we were wrong." You can read any number of accounts of our latter Day of Infamy, Sept. 11, 2001, without coming across any equivalent verbal acknowledgments addressed to Richard Clarke, the chief of counterterrorism in the Clinton and second Bush administrations, who'd been predicting a major al Qaeda attack on the United States to the point that some colleagues thought him obsessed. But, then, an assault from al Qaeda did not fit into the Bush administration's view of the world. Just one day later, the president was directing Clarke's attention to Iraq, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was all but insisting that the proper response to al Qaeda's murder of thousands of Americans was to bulldoze Baghdad. Acknowledging that Clarke had been right might mean that there was more to heaven and earth than the neocons had dreamt of in their philosophies. But Clarke did receive a huge if unspoken acknowledgment on the morning of Sept. 11: National security adviser Condoleezza Rice declined to run the so-called principals meeting in the White House Situation Room, choosing Clarke instead to coordinate the urgent information-gathering and to formulate the security responses to put before the president. Rice repaired, with Dick Cheney, to the White House basement's bomb shelter. A hijacked plane over Pennsylvania was headed toward Washington, and the rest of the White House evacuated at full sprint -- with the exception of Clarke and a handful of security professionals, who remained in the West Wing to continue their work. But the security professionals who stayed at their station on Sept. 11 soon found they had philosophical differences with the neos in the shelter. They were empiricists: They took in as much information as they could and derived their conclusions on that basis. And, as Clarke and many of his fellow professionals were soon to discover, this has been a tough administration for empiricists. Step back a minute and look at who has left this administration or blown the whistle on it, and why. Clarke enumerates a half-dozen counterterrorism staffers, three of whom were with him in the Situation Room on Sept. 11, who left because they felt the White House was placing too much emphasis on the enemy who didn't attack us, Iraq, and far too little on the enemy who did. But that only begins the list. There's Paul O'Neill, whose recent memoir recounts his ongoing and unavailing battle to get the president to take the skyrocketing deficit seriously. There's Christie Todd Whitman, who appears in O'Neill's memoir recalling her own unsuccessful struggles to get the White House to acknowledge the scientific data on environmental problems. There's Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, who told Congress that it would take hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to adequately secure postwar Iraq. There's Richard Foster, the Medicare accountant, who was forbidden by his superiors from giving Congress an accurate assessment of the cost of the administration's new program. All but Foster are now gone, and Foster's sole insurance policy is that Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress were burnt by his muzzling. In the Bush administration, you're an empiricist at your own peril. Plainly, this has placed any number of conscientious civil servants -- from Foster, who totaled the costs on Medicare, to Clarke, who charted the al Qaeda leads before Sept. 11 -- at risk. In a White House where ideology trumps information time and again, you run the numbers at your own risk. Nothing so attests to the fundamental radicalism of this administration as the disaffection of professionals such as Foster and Clarke, each of whom had served presidents of both parties. The revolt of the professionals poses a huge problem for the Bush presidency precisely because it is not coming from its ideological antagonists. Clarke concludes his book making a qualified case for establishing a security sub-agency within the FBI that would be much like Britain's MI5 -- a suggestion clearly not on the ACLU's wish list. O'Neill wants a return to traditional Republican budget-balancing. The common indictment that these critics are leveling at the administration is that it is impervious to facts. That's a more devastating election year charge than anything John Kerry could come up with.
Yes, the line would be around the block. I'm serious about Republicans needing to take back their own party. Ironically, the best way to do that would be a decisive defeat of Bush in November. As long as the big contributors think they are backing a winner, they will hold their nose and continue to do so. Let Bush go down in flames and they will be looking to put their money somewhere else. A more moderate Republican Party would be a possible result from that. I'm a Democrat, but I think a healthy, more moderate Republican Party is good for the country. The current group that has it in their grip are like a sickness bringing this nation down. Get rid of that disease in November and we'll all be headed for a more moderate future.
