Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Brain Damage

Q Mr. President, could you tell us, did you see the presidential — the President’s Daily Brief from August of ’01 as a warning —

THE PRESIDENT: Did I see it? Of course I saw it; I asked for it.

Q No, no, I’m sorry — did you see it as a warning of hijackers? And how did you respond to that?

THE PRESIDENT: My response was exactly like then as it is today, that I asked for the Central Intelligence Agency to give me an update on any terrorist threats. And the PDB was no indication of a terrorist threat. There was not a time and place of an attack. It said Osama bin Laden had designs on America. Well, I knew that. What I wanted to know was, is there anything specifically going to take place in America that we needed to react to?

As you might recall, there was some specific threats for overseas that we reacted to. And as the President, I wanted to know whether there was anything, any actionable intelligence. And I looked at the August 6th briefing, I was satisfied that some of the matters were being looked into. But that PDB said nothing about an attack on America. It talked about intentions, about somebody who hated America — well, we knew that.

Yes, Dave.

Q Just to follow up on that, Mr. President. There was, in that PDB, specific information about activity that may speak to a larger battle plan, even if it wasn’t specific. So I wonder if you could say what specifically was done, and do you think your administration should have done anything more?

THE PRESIDENT: David, look, let me just say it again: Had I known there was going to be an attack on America, I would have moved mountains to stop the attack. I would have done everything I can. My job is to protect the American people. And I asked the intelligence agency to analyze the data to tell me whether or not we faced a threat internally, like they thought we had faced a threat in other parts of the world. That’s what the PDB request was. And had there been actionable intelligence, we would have moved on it.

I’m not exactly sure what you’re referring to in the PDB, but if you’re referring to the fact that the FBI was investigating things, that’s great, that’s what we expect the FBI to do.

Q Wasn’t that current threat information? That wasn’t historical, that was ongoing.

THE PRESIDENT: Right, and had they found something, they would have reported it to me. That’s — we were doing precisely what the American people expects us to do: run down every lead, look at every scintilla of intelligence, and follow up on it. But there was — again, I can’t say it as plainly as this: Had I known, we would have acted. Of course we would have acted. Any administration would have acted. The previous administration would have acted. That’s our job.

Q Are you satisfied, though, that each agency was doing everything it should have been doing?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, that’s what the 9/11 Commission should look into, and I hope it does. It’s an important part of the assignment of the 9/11 Commission. And I look forward to their recommendations, a full analysis of what took place. 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. Of course we knew that America was hated by Osama bin Laden. That was obvious. The question was, who was going to attack us, when and where, and with what. And you might recall the hijacking that was referred to in the PDB. It was not a hijacking of an airplane to fly into a building, it was hijacking of airplanes in order to free somebody that was being held as a prisoner in the United States.

“I am very aware of the cameras,” [Bush] recalled later. “I’m trying to absorb that knowledge. I have nobody to talk to. I’m sitting in the midst of a classroom with little kids, listening to a children’s story and I realise I’m the Commander in Chief and the country has just come under attack.”

Update: Skippy has some questions for the Teacher’s Aid In Chief.

What, Charles Manson Turned Them Down?

Tim at The Road To Surfdom notes that the good news is they don’t seem likely to appoint Paul Wolfowitz as Ambassador to Iraq. The bad news is that the new name being floated is a war criminal:

In Washington, two U.S. officials said John Negroponte, now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is expected to be the first U.S. ambassador to post-Saddam Iraq.

One of the officials said Negroponte, a favorite of Secretary of State Colin Powell, (wtf?) has been asked whether he would take the job. But no imminent announcement is expected from the White House, because President Bush and his aides do not want to turn U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer into a lame duck.

If nominated and confirmed, Negroponte would oversee what is expected to be one of the largest U.S. embassies in the world. He has held numerous top posts before, including ambassador to Honduras during the Reagan administration’s covert war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

That’s certainly true. He has tons of experience with the kinds of “harsh measures” that the hawks now believe are going to be called for. What this article fails to mention is that:

…Negroponte — ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 — was doing his best to make sure that news of torture, disappearances and killings by the U.S.-trained Honduran military didn’t make it back to Congress or the American people, where it might discourage funding for the covert wars.

More than $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer money flowed to the Honduran military during the 1980s. The country served as the primary U.S. base for waging its clandestine wars against communism — specifically in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. The CIA trained and financed a Honduran army unit known as Battalion 316, which kidnapped and tortured hundreds of people. Negroponte denied knowing of the human rights violations though the abuses were widely publicized in the Honduran press. A CIA document declassified in 1998 and made available by the nonprofit National Security Archive, acknowledged that the Honduran military had committed abuses which were politically motivated and officially sanctioned.

“The focus of my efforts were in shoring up Honduras’s own defenses,” Negroponte said in a 1999 CNN interview. “So we worked on building up their military, and building their self-confidence. … We served as a sort of rear area, if you will, on a modest scale for the efforts in El Salvador.” Some 75,000 Salvadorans died in the civil war in that country.

Just a cursory look at the record shows that Negropont is being much too “modest.”

Negroponte supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras and which critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.

Records also show that a special intelligence unit of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnaped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including US missionaries. Critics charge that Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while lying to Congress.

In May 1982, a nun, Sister Laetitia Bordes, who had worked for ten years in El Salvador, went on a fact-finding delegation to Honduras to investigate the whereabouts of thirty Salvadoran nuns and women of faith who fled to Honduras in 1981 after Archbishop Oscar Romero’s assassination. Negroponte claimed the embassy knew nothing. But in a 1996 interview with the Baltimore Sun, Negroponte’s predecessor, Jack Binns, said that a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women Bordes had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981, and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, and then later thrown out of helicopters alive.

In early 1984, two American mercenaries, Thomas Posey and Dana Parker, contacted Negroponte, stating they wanted to supply arms to the Contras after the U.S. Congress had banned further military aid. Documents show that Negroponte brought the two with a contact in the Honduran armed forces The operation was exposed nine months later, at which point the Reagan administration denied any US involvement, despite Negroponte’s participation in the scheme. Other documents uncovered a plan of Negroponte and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush to funnel Contra aid money through the Honduran government.

During his tenure as US ambassador to Honduras, Binns, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, made numerous complaints about human rights abuses by the Honduran military and he claimed he fully briefed Negroponte on the situation before leaving the post. When the Reagan administration came to power, Binns was replaced by Negroponte, who has consistently denied having knowledge of any wrongdoing. Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Negroponte himself of human rights violations.

Speaking of Negroponte and other senior US officials, an ex-Honduran congressman, Efrain Diaz, told the Baltimore Sun, which in 1995 published an extensive investigation of US activities in Honduras:

Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed.

The Suns’s investigation found that the CIA and US embassy knew of numerous abuses but continued to support Battalion 3-16 and ensured that the embassy’s annual human rights report did not contain the full story.

Is this the right man for the job, or what? Saddam would be proud to know that we were considering sending in a man who understands the unpleasant “necessities” required to lead Iraq — torture, kidnapping and mass graves. If John Negropont becomes the ambassador, we will be making sure that Saddam’s legacy lives on. And, I think we can safely put to bed any more protestations about freedom, democracy and “liberation.”

Sending A Message

Several American and Iraqi officials now regard Bremer’s move to close the newspaper as a profound miscalculation based on poor intelligence and inaccurate assumptions. Foremost among the errors, the officials said, was the lack of a military strategy to deal with Sadr if he chose to fight back, as he did.

[…]

as with the campaign against Sadr, the military plan to quell Fallujah appears to have been based on faulty assumptions. Instead of disgorging the insurgents, many residents rallied to support them by joining the fight against the Marines. People in other cities, including Shiites who used to regard Fallujah’s residents as the hillbillies of Iraq, rushed to donate blood and money. Sunnis in Fallujah and elsewhere in central Iraq who had deemed Sadr a troublemaker began to laud him as a hero.

All of a sudden, Bremer had not just a two-front war on his hands, but one in which each side was drawing strength from the other.

Does anyone in this administration ever make a decision based upon sound intelligence and accurate assumptions? Do they even try to obtain them? And, they have never planned anything beyond the next morning or developed a fall back strategy in case something goes wrong.

The military began to assemble plans to go after Sadr, an initiative that was blessed by Bremer and the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz also favored taking action against Sadr, a senior military officer at the Pentagon said.

But the overall commander for the Middle East at the U.S. Central Command, Gen. John P. Abizaid, was hesitant to move on Sadr out of concern that arresting or killing him would simply elevate his stature, the officer said. Moderate Shiite clerics also advised the occupation authority against an arrest.

Well, Abazaid is the grandson of Lebanese immigrants, speaks fluent Arabic and has an understanding of the people and the region. Thank goodness nobody listens to him. Wolfowitz is the guy with the great track record, after all:

When Bremer ordered the shutdown of al-Hawza, there was no intention to use force to apprehend Sadr or leaders of his militia, according to occupation authority officials familiar with the decision.

One U.S. official said there was not even a fully developed backup plan for military action in case Sadr opted to react violently. The official noted that when the decision was made, there were very few U.S. troops in Sadr’s strongholds south of Baghdad. That area has been under the jurisdiction of multinational military divisions that had failed to move aggressively against the cleric’s militia.

The newspaper closure was intended “to send another signal to Sadr, just like telling him about the arrest warrant,” the official said. “In hindsight, it was a huge mistake. The best-case scenario was that he would ignore it, like the earlier threat, or that he would capitulate. The worst case was that he would lash back. But we weren’t ready for that.

[…]

At the time, occupation authority officials figured that Sadr had between 3,000 and 6,000 militiamen, only 2,000 of whom were armed fighters — a figure that turned out to be a vast underestimate. “We were relying on the most optimistic predictions possible,” the official said.

Officials in Washington familiar with the deliberations of both the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff said they knew of no high-level meetings before the closure of Sadr’s paper in which either group reviewed military plans girding for a possible violent backlash.

But the officials said that the decision to move against Sadr was fully supported by senior Bush administration officials. And while top officials may not have been familiar with military details, one senior administration official said that Washington had repeatedly advised Bremer and U.S. commanders in Iraq to ensure they were prepared for trouble if they went after Sadr.

“Every time we talked with Baghdad about taking any action against Sadr, we always talked about the need to have proper preparations in place to deal with a violent reaction,” the official said.

Looks like Bremer’s being cut loose. No wonder he looked like he’d ben hit between the eyes with a 2×4 this morning on Press the Meat.

Senor said the decision to move against Sadr in late March was prompted by “a real trend in the ramping-up of very inciteful, highly provocative rhetoric” from Sadr “that was directed at promoting violence against Americans during a very emotional time.”

“We believe we had a responsibility to address it head-on,” he said. “We had a concern that if he was left unchecked, Americans could wind up getting killed.”

That certainly worked out well.

I think Americans have to give some serious thought to this entire concept of “sending a message.” From abstinence education to “shock and awe” this method of governance almost seems designed to invoke the law of unintended consequences. Perhaps it’s time to think about real policies based upon sound information and contingency plans.

The messages we are sending — hubris, incompetence and ignorance — are toxic. And it’s going to get increasingly dangerous to you and me personally. Anti-Americanism isn’t necessarily directed at “the American people” at this point. However, if we give this administration another term that is going to change. Right now, most people understand that the majority of Americans did not vote for this man. But, the rest of the world will hold us responsible if we elect him legitimately in spite of what we now know about him. That, after all, is the message that Democracy sends.

PBDing His Pants

William Schneider on CNN just said that the memo is very damaging to the president. He said that basically the only thing they didn’t know in advance was the date the attacks were to take place.

First Bush lost Fineman. Now he’s lost Schneider.

Dream Team

Kevin at catch.com finds Instapundit sinking to a new low. Novak and Coulter must be so pleased.

A Madame Zoya Foreign Policy

Via Roger Ailes I found this remarkable example of total incoherence on the Right:

Fighting terrorism as well as rogue dictators requires a policy of pre-emption. During the 1930s, there should have been a pre-emptive strike on Nazi Germany. If Britain and France had the guts to do that, 60 million lives lost in World War II might have been spared. After World War II, when we held a monopoly on nuclear weapons, we should have told the Soviet Union that if it started making nuclear weapons we’d bomb its facilities. We would have avoided Soviet adventurism and trillions of dollars fighting a Cold War. Today, we should give axis-of-evil member North Korea notice to destroy its nuclear weapons or we’ll do it for them.

Well, it would be nice if our intelligence services could find their way out of a paper bag and provide us with, you know, real information about threats before we go around blowing shit up, but why sweat the small stuff?

I do like this new crystal ball theory of history, though. Just think, if France and Britain had pre-emptively “struck” Germany they could have prevented WWII. If we had pre-emptively “struck” the Soviets we could have prevented the Cold War. And presumably if the British had pre-emptively invaded France they could have prevented the Napoleonic Wars, too. But, I have to suppose that by “strike” he means some kind of magical incantation that paralyzes the population, because otherwise he’s talking about starting wars and that usually means that those who are “struck,” strike back. Which also means that unless you are willing to nuke the population or occupy it with an iron hand indefinitely, a war is going to result when somebody strikes. He apparently thinks that’s fine it’s just best if we do the starting.

But, not to worry. I think he also believes that the world will be so impressed by our ability to accurately foretell who is and isn’t a threat that they’ll just take our word for it and capitulate before we are forced to get really ugly. America is omnipotent and the sooner everybody gets with the program the safer they’ll all be. That’s what our great success in Iraq is all about. And it’s working beautifully.

Let Us Pray

Apparently, we should not be overly upset about the casualties in Iraq because there haven’t been as many as in World War II.

One of Instapundit’s readers says:

About 2,500 young men from the Allied nations died on June 6, 1944. 12,000 Americans died in three months’ fighting for Okinawa. While some members of the press (Fox included) might consider themselves honoring the fallen by referring to 12 heroes as “heavy casualties,” they in fact have done a disservice to the concept of sacrifice and a nation’s endurance of it in war. Andrew Sullivan asked us to pray for the Marines in Fallujah; I think we ought to start a prayer with “Dear Lord, please lead members of the press to a doggoned history book. Or Google.”

“Dear Lord, please lead Instapundit’s readers to the chapter on WWII in which it says that Germany declared war on the US, overran most of Europe and invaded Russia and may they read the part where it shows the US was attacked by Japan. After that perhaps they could be led to Google to find out how many casualties were suffered over all in WWII in countries from one end of the globe to the other. May you then remind them that the war we fought then was one of survival, not one of choice based upon lies, bad information and optimistic scenarios — and that the lesson of that war was that wars of aggression would never again be sanctioned by the civilized world. Until now.

Finally, Dear Lord, may you hand them each an apple and an orange and explain to them the difference. Amen.”

Why Do You Hate Civilization So Much?

Thank goodness we finally have somebody dispassionately assessing the situation in Iraq and telling it like it is. You see, when David Brooks isn’t scarfing up mini meals at Red Lobster, our intrepid war correspondent is bravely chatting to people who are “familiar with the region” and they fill him in on the real skinny in Iraq. It’s a coupla opportunistic thugs and some ungrateful punks trying to take advantage of our goodness, that’s all. Lucky for us our leaders are resolved and bold while being cool, bold and resolved:

Most important, leadership in the U.S. is for once cool and resolved. This week I spoke with leading Democrats and Republicans and found a virtual consensus. We’re going to keep the June 30 handover deadline. We’re going to raise troop levels if necessary. We’re going to wait for the holy period to end and crush Sadr. As Joe Lieberman put it, a military offensive will alienate Iraqis, but “the greater risk is [Sadr] will grow into something malevolent.” As Charles Hill, the legendary foreign service officer who now teaches at Yale, observed, “I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the boldness and resolve.”

Nonetheless, yesterday’s defections from the Iraqi Governing Council show that populist pressure on the good guys is getting intense. Maybe it is time to pause, to let passions cool, to let the democrats marshal their forces. If people like Sistani are forced to declare war on the U.S., the gates of hell will open up.

Over the long run, though, the task is unavoidable. Sadr is an enemy of civilization. The terrorists are enemies of civilization. They must be defeated.

Nevah Give Up, Nevah Give In, nevah, nevah, nevah!

(Oh, sorry about that. I just got carried away with Field Marshall Brooks’s gripping call to arms for a minute.)

So, Sadr is an enemy of civilization, now, not just the US. (Or have the two words become synonymous?) Jeez, you used to have to commit genocide or gas your own people or mastermind a huge terrorist act to be an enemy of civilization. Now all you have to do is incite a couple of days of violence in Iraq. If that’s the new definition I have a feeling that the list of enemies of civilization is going to get mighty unwieldy.

These people are going to be liberated, goddamit, whether they like it or not! Civilization depends on it.

Update:

I’m aware that Sadr is a fundamentalist extremist in the mode of the Taliban. He is the last person anyone would want to see in power. But, it is not helpful to simplify this problem by saying that we are dealing with “thugs” or to unnecessarily inflate it to a clash of civilizations.

The problem in Iraq is political. We are witnessing the entirely predictable struggle for power that the US refused to admit would happen and for which they refused to prepare. Our bedfellows, from the likes of Chalabi on the one hand to Bahr Ul Iloom on the other, illustrate that we had no principles in choosing the new leaders of Iraq and the result is that the hothead we marginalized is making use of the anti-Americanism that predictably resulted from a badly run occupation. Kill Sadr tomorrow and he’ll be replaced by somebody just like him. Meanwhile the IGC is coming apart at the seams.

This isn’t a clash of civilizations. It’s the beginning of another civil war that the US finds itself in the middle of because of a feckless foreign policy. I’m beginning to think that the chickenhawks are simply reliving their youth. Once again they are sitting comfortably at home, cheering from the sidelines, willfully misinterpreting the facts while others die for the cause they support. These are the good old days.

A Beautiful Vacant Mind

President Bush’s August 2001 briefing on terrorism threats, described largely as a historical document, included information from three months earlier that al-Qaida was trying to send operatives into the United States for an explosives attack, according to several people who have seen the memo.

The so-called presidential daily briefing, or PDB, delivered to Bush on Aug. 6, 2001 – a month before the Sept. 11 attacks – said there were various reports that Osama bin Laden had wanted to strike inside the United States as early as 1997 and continuing into the spring of 2001, the sources told The Associated Press.

[…]

The sources said the presidential memo included a series of bullet items that brought Bush through a history of mostly uncorroborated intelligence that cited al-Qaida’s interest in hijacking planes to win the release of Islamic extremists who had been arrested in 1998 and 1999 as well as the travelings of suspected al-Qaida operatives, include some U.S. citizens, in and out of the United States. It suggested al-Qaida might have a support system in place on U.S. soil, the sources said.

The document also included FBI analytical judgments that some al-Qaida activities were consistent with preparation for airline hijackings or other types of attacks, some members of the commission looking into the Sept. 11 attacks said earlier this week.

The second-to-last bullet told the president that there were numerous – at least 70 – terror-related investigations under way by the FBI in 2001 involving matters or people on U.S. soil, the sources said.

And the final bullet told the president of a recent intelligence report indicating al-Qaida operatives were trying to get inside the United States to carry out an attack with explosives, the sources said. There was no specifics about the timing or target, the sources said.

This finally explains why just 5 weeks later, one day after the attacks, Bush dragged Richard Clarke into a room and insisted he investigate Iraq’s possible involvement. You wouldn’t have wanted him to go off half cocked and blame the wrong guy…

Number One With A Bullet

If anyone still doubts that politics has left the realm of reality and entered the world of show business, I would suggest that they tune into “Hardball” where television critic Tom Shales is critiquing Condi Rice’s “performance” yesterday. He rated the hearings for drama and suspense and reviewed the various exchanges between the commissioners and Condi as dramatic scenes and sequences.

Personally, I didn’t think there was enough sex and violence in that show. Thankfully there was the gory Iraq footage of bloodied marines and iraqi civilians later in the day to sate my bloodlust. It’s almost as good as Survivor. And that footage of the Japanese hostages is just super. “Will they be rescued or will the bad guys burn them alive?” Stay tuned….

As for sex, I’m just glad that President Clinton testified in secret immediately after Condi, so we can assume that some press ho will report a breathless account of his “testimony” at some point (they always do.) All I can say is those commissioners emerged later in the day looking downright limp with satisfaction:

HAMILTON: Well, it was fascinating, absolutely fascinating. And I think every commissioner would agree with that. He was exceedingly generous with his time, very candid in his discussions of even the most delicate kinds of relationships … I think the commissioners were all favorably impressed, both Republican and Democrat, and very appreciative of the amount of time that he gave to us.

KEAN: And he was just totally frank — totally frank, totally honest, and forthcoming… he said, “I’ll stay just as long as you all want me to.”

Oooh La La. A 240 minute man.

I can hardly wait for Ashcroft’s testimony next week. Maybe he’ll share some of the naughty bits about the porn investigations and sing a chorus or two of “Let The Ego Soar.”

I love Show Biz.