There He Goes Again
In today’s Washington Post article on Condi’s undelivered speech, called “Top Focus Before 9/11 Wasn’t on Terrorism Rice Speech Cited Missile Defense,” professional liar Jim Wilkinson proves once again that brass balls can’t substitute for Googling before you speak.
The president’s commitment to fighting terrorism isn’t measured by the number of speeches, but by the concrete actions taken to fight the threat,” said James R. Wilkinson, deputy national security adviser for communications, when asked about the speech. “The first major foreign policy directive of this administration was the new strategy to eliminate al Qaeda that the White House ordered soon after taking office. It was eliminating al Qaeda, not missile defense, not Iraq, and not the [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty,” he said.
The administration requested such a directive in May 2001, but it did not take shape until a week before Sept. 11, according to a staff report of the commission investigating attacks. Bush signed the final directive in October, weeks after the attack.
OK. In May 2001, Bush asked why we didn’t stop “swatting flies” and just find a way to take out al Qaeda. Condi yawned and said “sure, I’ll get right on that.” He never asked about it again. That was the directive that was “requested” but not signed until after 9/11. And, the president didn’t take any more significant action on missile defense, Iraq or the ABM treaty, right? Wilkinson couldn’t be dumb enough to suggest that if it weren’t true.
No, he just thinks we are. Here is the speech that Bush gave to the National Defense University on May 1, 2001.
“…this is still a dangerous world, a less certain, a less predictable one. More nations have nuclear weapons and still more have nuclear aspirations. Many have chemical and biological weapons. Some already have developed the ballistic missile technology that would allow them to deliver weapons of mass destruction at long distances and at incredible speeds. And a number of these countries are spreading these technologies around the world
Most troubling of all, the list of these countries includes some of the world’s least-responsible states. Unlike the Cold War, today’s most urgent threat stems not from thousands of ballistic missiles in the Soviet hands, but from a small number of missiles in the hands of these states, states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life.
[…]
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the world joined forces to turn him back. But the international community would have faced a very different situation had Hussein been able to blackmail with nuclear weapons. Like Saddam Hussein some of today’s tyrants are gripped by an implacable hatred of the United States of America. They hate our friends, they hate our values, they hate democracy and freedom and individual liberty. Many care little for the lives of their own people. In such a world, Cold War deterrence is no longer enough.
[…]
We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today’s world. To do so, we must move beyond the constraints of the 30 year old ABM TreatyThis treaty does not recognize the present, or point us to the future. It enshrines the past. No treaty that prevents us from addressing today’s threats, that prohibits us from pursuing promising technology to defend ourselves, our friends and our allies is in our interests or in the interests of world peace.
[…]
Today,I’m announcing the dispatch of high-level representatives to Allied capitals in Europe, Asia, Australia and Canada to discuss our common responsibility to create a new framework for security and stability that reflects the world of today. They will begin leaving next week.
The delegations will be headed by three men on this stage: Rich Armitage, Paul Wolfowitz, and Steve Hadley; Deputies of the State Department, the Defense Department and the National Security staff. Their trips will be part of an ongoing process of consultation, involving many people and many levels of government, including my Cabinet Secretaries.
We will seek their input on all the issues surrounding the new strategic environment. We’ll also need to reach out to other interested states, including China and Russia. Russia and the United States should work together to develop a new foundation for world peace and security in the 21st century. We should leave behind the constraints of an ABM Treaty that perpetuates a relationship based on distrust and mutual vulnerability.
[…]
This is a time for vision; a time for a new way of thinking; a time for bold leadership. The Looking Glass no longer stands its 24-hour-day vigil. We must all look at the world in a new, realistic way, to preserve peace for generations to come.
You really have to wonder where people might have gotten the idea that the Bush administration placed a higher priority on missile defense, the ABM treaty and Iraq than on terrorism, don’t you? And sending three of your top national security guys to all the world’s capitals wouldn’t be considered, you know…action. It was more like direction.
Now, maybe asking why we are “swatting at flies” in a meeting is more of a “directive” than dispatching Armitage, Wolfowitz, and Hadley across the globe as part of an “ongoing process of consultation, involving many people and many levels of government, including my Cabinet Secretaries” to discuss our “new security framework.”
And maybe it is a mistake to assume that just because the president announced that this new security framework consisted of elimination of the ABM treaty and the building of a missile defense system it means that he believed these things to be of a higher priority than terrorism, which he never mentions at all as part of his new security framework.
And just because he specifically mentions Saddam Hussein and Iraq as the prime example of the dreaded rogue state that missile defense is supposed to guard against does not mean that the Bushies had Iraq on the brain when they were fashioning their new security framework.
And maybe Jim Wilkinson is a low life, political hack who lies even when the White House web site contradicts his statements in minute detail. President Bush and the rest of his fossilized cold war retreads were focused on missile defense and Iraq on May 1, 2001 and they were still focused on missile defense and Iraq on September 11, 2001.
And again, it must be noted that these observations are not really new. The American Prospect’s Jason Vest, wrote about this stuff ages ago. Here’s one from June of 2002, called “Why Warnings Fell On Deaf Ears”
There’s no need to take this critic’s word for it; just visit the Center for Security Policy’s Web site. Judging from the dozens of “reports” the center has issued since the August 1998 embassy bombings, the most urgent threats to American national security are, in no particular order: China, ballistic missiles, Cuba, Iraq, and threats posed to Israel by Syria and Yasir Arafat. Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network doesn’t make the cut. Indeed, only two of the center’s “reports” since 1998 have dealt with al-Qaeda, and even those have done so only indirectly. According to the center, the most important lesson learned from the 1998 attacks was one illustrated by the U.S. retaliation against the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant: that there’s no way “chemical weapons can be effectively and verifiably banned,” which proves that it’s necessary to kill any form of chemical weapons control
It would be tempting to laugh this off if Gaffney’s group weren’t so influential. As one page on the Center for Security Studies Web site proudly notes, no fewer than 22 of the center’s advisory council members now occupy key national security positions in the Bush administration. So no matter what congressional or other inquiries reveal about the failures of intelligence, it should come as no surprise that whatever intelligence was put in front of policy makers about hijacked airplanes (as missiles or otherwise) got little traction. With Iraq spawning terrorist legions, China girding for World War III, North Korea looking to launch a missile at Alaska, and Fidel Castro plotting to destroy the Colossus of the North, there simply wasn’t any room for bin Laden in the pantheon of threats that govern the Bush security orthodoxy.
There really is no point in the Bush administration trying to claim that they ever gave a damn about terrorism. They didn’t believe that asymetrical terrorism even existed. What’s more, they may not even believe it exists today. They still care more about missile defense and American global military dominance. I don’t think we’ve seen any evidence whatsoever that 9/11 or the lack of WMD in Iraq has changed their minds at all.