judgment day

There's no definitive proof, but there's enough here to make you wonder.

White House, 4/01: Focus on Bin Laden "A Mistake"



A previously forgotten report from April 2001 (four months before 9/11) shows that the Bush Administration officially declared it "a mistake" to focus "so much energy on Osama bin Laden." The report directly contradicts the White House's continued assertion that fighting terrorism was its "top priority" before the 9/11 attacks1.

Specifically, on April 30, 2001, CNN reported that the Bush Administration's release of the government's annual terrorism report contained a serious change: "there was no extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden" as there had been in previous years. When asked why the Administration had reduced the focus, "a senior Bush State Department official told CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden."2.

The move to downgrade the fight against Al Qaeda before 9/11 was not the only instance where the Administration ignored repeated warnings that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent3. Specifically, the Associated Press reported in 2002 that "President Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions"4. Meanwhile, Newsweek has reported that internal government documents show that the Bush Administration moved to "de-emphasize" counterterrorism prior to 9/115. When "FBI officials sought to add hundreds more counterintelligence agents" to deal with the problem, "they got shot down" by the White House.

Sources:
Press Briefing by Scott McClellan, 03/22/2004.
CNN, 04/30/2001.
Bush Was Warned of Hijackings Before 9/11; Lawmakers Want Public Inquiry, ABC News, 05/16/2002.
"Top security advisers met just twice on terrorism before Sept. 11 attacks", Detroit News, 07/01/2002.
Freedom of Information Center, 05/27/2002.

Rice Discusses Terror, but Not Under Oath: So, is it unblinking dedication to the principle that we won't tell anyone anything that we don't want to tell them? Is there some reason she doesn't want to testify under oath (or did she do so behind closed doors)? They're trying to distinguish her refusal from past instances in which National Security Advisers have testified by saying those instances involved allegations of wrong-doing -- not sure what wrong-doing Berger was testifying about -- and that this isn't a case of that. If that's their position, they sure don't want to declasify those documents and investigate Clarke, because, guess what, there goes their ditinction.

Chicago Tribune: GOP Moves to Declassify Clarke Testimony

Do they really want to get into a pissing match with a guy who clearly is (1) very sharp; (2) has outmaneuvered them every step of the way this week; and (3) shows no signs of backing down like DiIullio nor of fading away like O'Neill? They're gonna have an investigation into whether he perjured hmself and they think he won't fight back? They think he doesn't know where all the embarrassing documents are and won't fight to have them declassified in order to defend himself from criminal charges? I know Frist is protected from slander suits for statements on the floor, but this really seems like a dumb move. If he doesn't tuck tail and run -- which I can't believe he will -- getting the documents declassified and getting an investigation means this story stays in the news for weeks, if not months. Makes it kind of hard to "define" Kerry and draws extended attention to allegations that undercut Dubya's supposed strength. To quote the Andover Texan, Bring it on!

David Corn was not amused:

MIA WMDs--For Bush, It's a Joke
03/25/2004 @ 11:57am
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Only in Washington.

Last night I was at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association Dinner. It's a formal-and-fun affair where thousands of media folks assemble at the Hilton for a fancy dinner and fab pre- and post-parties. I'm not going to denigrate such soirees. I enjoy them. While bookers and producers jiggled and jostled on the dance floor and media and political celebs dissected the news du jour (this time it was Richard Clarke's dramatic appearance before the 9/11 commission), I was able to chat with former weapons hunter David Kay and learn about some troubling developments in the intelligence community (more on that down the road). And there was free sushi.

But an awful you're-all-alone moment came during George W. Bush's comments that followed the sit-down dinner. The current president is often the honored guest at this annual affair, and the audience toasts him in what is supposed to be a sign of communal and nonpartisan spirit. And, the tradition is, that the president has to be funny; he has to provide us with an amusing speech that pokes fun at himself and his political foes. After all, political journalists love to see politicians engage in self-deprecating humor. Bill Clinton was quite good at these performances. Bush seems to enjoy them less. Rather than do straight standup, he sometimes relies on a humorous slide show, and that was how he chose to entertain the media throng this time.

It's standard fare humor. Bush says he is preparing for a tough election fight; then on the large video screens a picture flashes showing him wearing a boxing robe while sitting at his desk. Bush notes he spends "a lot of time on the phone listening to our European allies." Then we see a photo of him on the phone with a finger in his ear. There were funny bits about Skull and Bones, his mother, and Dick Cheney. But at one point, Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office, and he said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere."

The audience laughed. I grimaced. But that wasn't the end of it. After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. "Nope," he said. "No weapons over there." More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: "Maybe under here." Laughter again.

Disapproval must have registered upon my face, for one of my tablemates said, "Come on, David, this is funny." I wanted to reply, Over 500 Americans and literally countless Iraqis are dead because of a war that was supposedly fought to find weapons of mass destruction, and Bush is joking about it. Instead, I took a long drink of the lovely white wine that had come with our dinner. It's not as if I was in the middle of a talk-show debate and had to respond. This was certainly one of those occasions in which you either get it or don't. And I wasn't getting it. Or maybe my neighbor wasn't.

At the end of the slide show, Bush displayed two pictures of himself with troops and noted these were his favorites. The final photograph was a shot of special forces soldiers--with their faces blurred to protect their identities--who were posing in Afghanistan where they had buried a piece of 9/11 debris in a spot that had once been an al Qaeda camp. Bush spoke about the prayer the commander had said during the burial ceremony and noted he had this photograph hanging in his private study.

So what's wrong with this picture? Bush was somber about the sacrifice being made by U.S. troops overseas. But he obviously considered it fine to make fun of the reason he cited for sending Americans to war and to death. What an act of audacious spin. One poll recently showed that most Americans believe he either lied about Iraq's WMDs or deliberately exaggerated the case to justify the war. And it is undeniable that in seeking public support for the war he made many false assertions that went beyond quoting intelligence that turned out to be wrong. (I've written about this in many other places. If you still don't believe Bush mugged the truth, check out this short guide.) As the crowd was digesting the delicious surf-and-turf meal, Bush was transforming serious scandal into rim-shot comedy.

Few seemed to mind. His WMD gags did not prompt a how-can-you silence from the gathering. At the after-parties, I heard no complaints. Was I being too sensitive? I wondered what the spouse, child or parent of a soldier killed in Iraq would have felt if they had been watching C-SPAN and saw the commander-in-chief mocking the supposed justification for the war that claimed their loved ones. Bush told the nation that lives had to be sacrificed because Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that could be used (by terrorists) against the United States. That was not true. (And as Kay pointed out, the evidence so far shows these weapons were not there in the first place, not that they were hidden, destroyed or spirited away.) But rather than acknowledge he misinformed the public, Bush jokes about the absence of such weapons.

Even if Bush does not believe he lied to or misled the public, how can he make fun of the rationale for a war that has killed and maimed thousands? Imagine if Lyndon Johnson had joked about the trumped-up Gulf of Tonkin incident that he deceitfully used as a rationale for U.S. military action in Vietnam: "Who knew that fish had torpedoes?" Or if Ronald Reagan appeared at a correspondents event following the truck-bombing at the Marines barracks in Beirut--which killed over 200 American servicemen--and said, "Guess we forgot to put in a stop light." Or if Clinton had come out after the bombing of Serbia--during which U.S. bombs errantly destroyed the Chinese embassy and killed several people there--and said, "The problem is, those embassies--they all look alike."

Yet there was Bush--apparently having a laugh at his own expense, but actually doing so on the graves of thousands. This was a callous and arrogant display. For Bush, the misinformation--or disinformation--he peddled before the war was no more than material for yucks. As the audience laughed along, he smiled. The false statements (or lies) that had launched a war had become merely another punchline in the nation's capital.

Is it just me, or are the allegations in this story incoherent? Rice cites one email of Clarke's from September 2001 only to argue that it's self-serving and misleading, while they give Fox an exclusive (gee, interesting that Fox happens to ask permission at a time that serves Bush's interests) that says, See, he said good things about us! I guess they figure they've got the "he's a flip-flopper" routine down cold, so they'll try it here. And notice, the "self-serving" email attached a pre-9/11 email he'd sent warning of an impending spectacular attack -- just like he says he did and they've been trying to say he didn't.

Carrying water for the Bush Administration is surely the job of a member of the 9/11 Commission, isn't it?

The White House redoubled efforts to undermine Clarke, the author of a recent book critical of the president.

Officials also took the unusual step of identifying him as the senior official who had praised the president's anti-terrorism efforts in an anonymous briefing for reporters the year following the attacks.

"He needs to get his story straight," said Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser and Clarke's boss while he served in the administration.

Former Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson, a Republican, took up the president's cause inside the commission hearing. "We have your book and we have your press briefing of August 2002. Which is true?" he challenged the witness.

Despite the flare-up, commission members worked later to distance themselves from the sort of partisanship that could undermine the credibility of the final report they are expected to release this summer.

Analysis: Iraq Charges Against Bush Begin to Mount: Reuters sees the possibility of the charges achieving critical mass with voters, leading them to wonder if all these people can be lying, sour grapes opportunists.

More bad news for the White House can be found a few grafs into this story:

Although some Republican leaders defended the White House and joined in denouncing Clarke, others expressed concern that the former aide's accusations would compound a recent fall in Americans' perception of Bush's honesty that began with the flawed charges about Iraq's weapons and the understatement of the costs of Bush's prescription drug initiative.

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said he believes the White House has to respond directly to Clarke's allegations rather than question his credibility. "This is a serious book written by a serious professional who's made serious charges, and the White House must respond to these charges," he said.

That, after a day of multiple assaults by top Bush officials on Clarke's allegations, is not good news. Interestingly, in his interview with Cheney, Rush had tried to get the Veep to criticize McCain and Hagel for their critical comments about BC04 efforts to paint Kerry as soft on defense. Cheney didn't bite; wonder if he wishes now that he had.

Makes sense to me -- ah, the wonders of strict constructionism.

So, it's no surprise how they're handling this: Cheney to Rush: Clarke "Not in the Loop". Of course, as VP, you can see why he'd have time to be interviewed by the drug-addicted dweeb, and where better to play fast and loose with the facts. Let's go to the tape:

Rush: All right, let's get straight to what the news is all about now, before we branch out to things. Why did the administration keep Richard Clarke on the counterterrorism team when you all assumed office in January of 2001?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I wasn't directly involved in that decision. He was moved out of the counterterrorism business over to the cyber security side of things, that is he was given a new assignment at some point here. I don't recall the exact time frame.

Q Cyber security, meaning Internet security?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, worried about attacks on the computer systems and the sophisticated information technology systems we have these days that an adversary would use or try to the system against us.

Q Well, now that explains a lot, that answer right there explains -- (Laughter.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, he wasn't -- he wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff. And I saw part of his interview last night, and he wasn't --

Q He was demoted.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It was as though he clearly missed a lot of what was going on. For example, just three weeks after the -- after we got here, there was communication, for example, with the President of Pakistan, laying out our concerns about Afghanistan and al Qaeda, and the importance of going after the Taliban and getting them to end their support for the al Qaeda. This was, say, within three weeks of our arrival here.

So I guess, the other thing I would say about Dick Clarke is that he was here throughout those eight years, going back to 1993, and the first attack on the World Trade Center; and '98, when the embassies were hit in East Africa; in 2000, when the USS Cole was hit. And the question that ought to be asked is, what were they doing in those days when he was in charge of counterterrorism efforts?

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And, of course, throw in a little character assassination here and there, letting Rush put words into Clarke's mouth that he never said and acting as if it must be true:

Q Mr. Clarke, to get back to him for a moment, is saying that actually if we would just take some more time and talk to these people, understand why they hate us, we might be able to forge some kind of peace with them.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think that's totally unrealistic. At least, I fundamentally disagree with his assessment both of recent history, but also in terms of how to deal with the problem. As I say, he was the head of counterterrorism for several years there in the '90s, and I didn't notice that they had any great success dealing with the terrorist threat. I think what we've done since, going into Afghanistan, taking down the Taliban, closing the camps, killing al Qaeda, wrapping up a significant percentage of the total leadership of al Qaeda, that's an effective policy.
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Well, if Clarke actually had taken that position, that would be a good response, Dick, but now, if you're called on this, you can say that you just responded to Rush's characterization, and yuo don't have time to be watching Clarke on 60 Minutes, so you took Rush's word.

Other good parts include the exchange where Rush despearately tries to get Dick to suggest that the attack squads are going after Condi Rice because she's a black woman -- at which point, Rush, I'm sure, would have tsk-tsked about who the real racists are. These m-f's need to be stopped before they can utterly wreck the country.

The start of a bad news day for the Bush Administration: the paper with an editorial page that makes Fox seem fair and balanced front pages all the inconsistencies with their reports about what went on Spetember 11th.

here it is. The cahrges are serious, but, of course, if Stephen Hadley denies them, they can't be true.

Probably left over from Bill & Hill.