judgment day

While the NYT doesn't offer a whitewash here, this story does seem to me like a fairly successful administration effort to shape a story that could help frame the testimony coming from Rice.

Bad political news for the Bush Adminsitration here:
"Poll says 9/11 hearings hamper Bush rating

NEW YORK, April 2 (UPI) -- A new poll indicates U.S. President Bush's credibility and approval ratings are down in apparent response to hearings on the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The latest CBS News poll, conducted Tuesday through Thursday, indicates 59 percent of those polled think the Bush administration is hiding something it knew before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and 11 percent believe it is lying. Only one in four think the administration is telling the entire truth.
When asked whether Bush administration policies have made the U.S. safer from terrorism, 53 percent say they have, but that is a decline of nine points in two weeks. And assessment of the president's handling of terrorism, also still positive, is now the lowest it has been since the attacks -- 58 percent approve, down six points in two weeks.
The president receives a 49 percent approval rating overall. The poll indicates his approval ratings on the economy, foreign policy and Iraq are lower."

I'm sure he was just calling to make sure that their hotel rooms were comfortable, in spite of the innuendo here.

The GOP must have paid him to stay a Democrat to say stupid sh*t like this: "WASHINGTON (AP) - The Sept. 11 commission's public quarrels with the Bush administration could 'energize our enemies and demoralize our troops,' Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., said Tuesday.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Miller, the Senate's lone Democrat to endorse Bush for re-election, also denounced former Bush counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke, who has criticized the president as being slow to act against the al-Qaida terrorist network.
'The vindictive Clarke has now had his revenge, but what kind of hell has he, his CBS publisher, and his ax-to-grind advocates unleashed?' Miller said.
Miller has backed Bush on practically every major foreign and domestic initiative. He said if there were intelligence breakdowns, Clarke was most to blame because he was in the 'catbird seat' for a decade.
'It's obvious to me that this country is rapidly dividing itself into two camps - the wimps and the warriors,' Miller said. 'The ones who want to argue and assess and appease, and the ones who want to carry this fight to our enemies and kill them before they kill us.'"

Yeah, everyone knows that Richard Clarke is a long-time wimp.

Many people mistakenly, and foolishly, believe that the editorial board at the Chicago Tribune turns out their quadrennial displays of fact- and logic-defying razzle-dazzle (a.k.a., their presidential endorsements) without any effort. But no, such masterpieces of irrationality requrie a level of skill not everyone can attain, and require that the Tribune board keep its hand in during the intervening four years. Sagely recognizing that their inevitable endorsement of Dubya is going to rival their 1984 endorsement editorial, they have engaged in diligent practice, which they have entitled: The next bin Ladens.

In case you worried that he might have written something cogent, read Creative writing enlivens Clarke's controversial book to assuage your fears. He argues like some of my students do in their papers: I'll quote something and say, See?!

What I especially love comes late in the "essay," when he can't understand why Clarke would think it was a big deal that, unlike Bush, Clinton was a voracious reader. Can't imagine how that would help someone make decisions.

U.S.-led coalition shuts down Iraqi paper doesn't exactly play to the images Dubya et al. have been promoting. It may be there's some legitimate concern (though I wonder how many people think, well, that article makes me want to join the isnrugency), but it's hard to argue that we're making great advances when we're forced to shut down newspapers.

Decent article here:

"Rice and her deputy national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, kept Clarke as a terrorism adviser, though they recognized, according to the commission, that Clarke had a reputation for being headstrong and difficult to work with.

One of Clarke's first acts was to share with Rice the Clinton administration's plans for dealing with Al Qaeda. One was a general set of ideas adopted in 2000. But an earlier, 1998 Clarke plan called for diplomacy, covert operations, efforts to restrict Al Qaeda's financial resources and military operations. It never went anywhere within the Clinton administration, and it apparently was not taken up directly by Rice. But its four key elements are now central to the administration's war on terrorism.

The lumbering nature of the terrorism review was in direct conflict to the urgent action that Clarke and others thought was necessary to deal with the Al Qaeda threat. When an increasing number of intelligence reports warning of impending Al Qaeda attacks began to stream in during the summer of 2001, some government analysts were alarmed that Rice's staff was not giving the reports urgent treatment.

One of the most concerned was John McLaughlin, the deputy director of central intelligence.

'Some CIA officials expressed frustration about the pace of policymaking during the stressful summer of 2001,' the commission reported last week. 'Although [CIA Director George] Tenet said he thought the policy machinery was working in what he called a rather orderly fashion, Deputy DCI McLaughlin told us he felt a great tension, especially in June and July 2001, between the new administration's need to understand these issues and his sense that this was a matter of great urgency."

pops it up.

First, perhaps a minor point, she says erroneously that we'd been at war with Iraq twice so of course Dubya asked about whether they were linked to 9-11 -- I'd think the National Security Advisor would have a clear count in her head, but I'm picky.

Then, she's asked about the underestimation of the threat posed by al Qaeda and weakly tries to change the subject to what they did (for which we have next to no evidence because everything is classified). When pushed to respond to the fact that even the president said (to Woodward) that he didn't have a sense of urgency about them, she replies that she's not sure what difference a greater sense of urgency would have made. Gee, maybe there might have been a greater effort to coordinate information, maybe FBI reports that were seen as inconsequential would have appeared more significant . . . but mostly, that's not the point -- the attack dogs ahve gone after Clarke for that characterization, so the point is why are you trying to paint him out as a liar or as distorting things if you're now conceding the accuracy of his assessment?

And why have there been more al Qaeda attacks since we went to war with them than there were in the period before, if we're doing such a great job? Because they didn't know we were at war with them before but now that they do, they're ramping up the attacks -- but, gee, I thought the story was that they had been at war with us for years but the Clinton Administration thought it was just a series of criminal violations. Were they attacking less before because they didn't think it was fair to do more when we didn't know we were at war?

It'll be interesting to see the reporting on this and the spin the Bushies put out . . . and what they'll do as it sinks in that their rationale for her not talking under oath, publicly, just isn't selling.