I made the choice to defend the security of the country. You can’t see what you think is a threat and hope it goes away. You used to could when the oceans protected us. But the lesson of September 11th is, is when the president sees a threat we must deal with it before it comes to fruition, through death, on our own soils, for example.
Setting aside the supreme irony of his comments about hoping the threat goes away and dealing with it before it comes to fruition (not to mention the atrocious grammar) what is this thing about the oceans protecting us?
My entire childhood, indeed my entire life, was spent under the cloud of a possible nuclear attack. I lived in Kansas for a time as a child during the 60’s where my father worked on the missile silos. We did duck and cover drills twice a day. I had nightmares for years about being incinerated like the Japanese at Hiroshima from the instructional movies they showed in my elementary school.
We lived for more than 40 years in this country under the threat of TOTAL ANNIHILATION. It was a real possibility that the entire world would end in a nuclear holocaust. We even came damned close to finding out in October of 1962.
So spare me this melodrama about our shores being penetrated for the very first time as if we were a bunch of naive virgins until terrorists slammed into the WTC. We’ve lived with far worse threats than this to our “homeland.” 9/11 did not change anything in that regard.
Tim: We’ll get to that particular debate, but let me go back to September 11 and what led up to it. The Washington Post captured this way: “On July 5 of 2001, the White House summoned officials of a dozen federal agencies to the Situation Room. ‘Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it’s going to happen soon,’ the government’s top counterterrorism official, Richard Clarke, told the assembled group, including the Federal Aviation Administration, Coast Guard, FBI, Secret Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service. Clarke directed every counterterrorist office to cancel vacations, defer non-vital travel, put off scheduled exercises, place domestic rapid-response teams on much shorter alert. For six weeks in the summer of 2001, at home and overseas, the U.S. government was at its highest possible state of readiness — and anxiety — against imminent terrorist attack.”
Did Dr. Rice instruct you to organize that meeting?
Clarke: No. I told her I was going to do it. And I had already been doing it two weeks before, because on June 21, I believe it
was, George Tenet called me and said, “I don’t think we’re getting the message through. These people aren’t acting the way the Clinton people did under similar circumstances.” And I suggested to Tenet that he come down and personally brief Condi Rice, that he bring his terrorism team with him. And we sat in the national security adviser’s office. And I’ve used the phrase in the book to describe George Tenet’s warnings as “He had his hair on fire.” He was about as excited as I’d ever seen him. And he said, “Something is going to happen.”
Now, when he said that in December 1999 to the national security adviser, at the time Sandy Berger, Sandy Berger then held daily meetings throughout December 1999 in the White House Situation Room, with the FBI director, the attorney general, the head of the CIA, the head of the Defense Department, and they shook out of their bureaucracies every last piece of information to prevent the attacks. And we did prevent the attacks in December 1999. Dr. Rice chose not to do that.
Frankly, a lot of us didn’t take terrorism seriously enough before 9/11, so I’m not sure there’s any great shame in all this. Still, the Bush White House should quit smearing Clarke and own up to the truth: terrorism wasn’t a top priority during their first few months in office. 9/11 was a wakeup call for them, just as it was for the rest of the country.
Kevin Drum keeps taking that position and I don’t understand it. According to all the people who Kevin cites in his post as backing up Clarke, the Clinton administration took terrorism much more seriously. And you don’t have to rely on the “impressions” of civil servants because actual real world results show even to those of us not privy to the classified documents that the Clinton team had terrorism as a top priority. They did, after all, thwart the millenium plots.
Clarke surely knows that it would have helped his credibility if he had treated the Clinton and Bush administrations more evenhandedly, but he obviously thought the differences between them ran too deep to do that. During the Clinton years the problem was one of turning a battleship, but he felt that at least everyone took it seriously and helped to push.
The way he phrases that leads me to believe that he may not completely share Clarke’s view. Or perhaps he’s internalized the old political saw that says there’s not a dimes worth of difference between the parties or something. In any case, credibility is not determined by some phony “even handedness.” This man’s credibility rests on his history as a nonpartisan career civil servant and the facts and witnesses that back up his claims.
As kevin notes he does not say that Clinton was a one man terrorist wrecking crew. He and everybody else were slow off the mark as the terrorist threat emerged in the mid 90’s. But, it is indisputable that by January of 2001 the professional national security establishment KNEW that al Qaeda was a huge threat and within months they were warning of a major attack. Unlike Clinton two years before (and from whom they could have learned a thing or two) the Bush team chose to keep their fingers crossed rather than raise the issue to the top of their list of priorities.
Our bi-partisan tradition of foreign policy has meant that a new administration depends upon career civil servants like Clarke to keep national security running smoothly over changes of parties in the White House. They are non-partisan for that reason. He and others had made forward progress in getting the Clinton administration to make terrorism a priority and it was naturally expected that once it had hit the top of the threat food chain it would stay there until it was either defeated or proved to be mistaken. You just don’t drop national security threat assessments for partisan ideological reasons.
That is what happened. The Bush team ignored the warnings of the Clinton appointees and they also ignored the warnings of the permanent national security establishment, all of whom had experienced the rise of the terrorist threat during the preceding eight years and who were not kidding when they warned them about it.
Clarke admits that we will never know if we could have prevented 9/11, but it is clear that if the Clinton administration (and probably the Gore administration) had been in office during the summer of 2001, they would have treated the intelligence they received more seriously. It is shameful that the Bush administration failed to take the threat of terrorism at least as seriously as the previous administration did and it is even more shameful that they have resisted any attempts to change the way they do business, as amply illustrated by their misguided adventure in Iraq.
They are not responsible for 9/11, but they most certainly are responsible for the mistakes they made leading up to it. They should feel some shame for not having having taken the advice of those who warned them. That’s what that whole “grown-up” thing was supposed to be about.
And for some serious “evenhanded” pooh-poohing about “futile recriminations” and 9/11’s inevitability, Gregg Easterbrook takes the cake:
It has taken two and a half years to get to the carnival of futile recriminations about September 11, 2001, but we’re now at that point, and it’s time for the futile recriminations to stop. No one, Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, knew September 11 was coming. Looking back, all that matters is what was said before September 11, not afterward, and, while many before that day offered generalized cautions about terrorism, no one made a firm warning about what actually happened. That’s because no one knew what was coming.
Easterbrooks’ straw man is very smug, but he’s wrong. Nobody says that there was perfect information that was ignored. But we know that there were dots that could have been connected as Colleen Rowley and other in the FBI prove. Clarke, the consummate bureaucrat, says that the way to get the behemoth federal government to move on an urgent issue is to shake the trees from the top down and flush the information to the top. The Bush team refused to do that. He believes that it may have been possible to put together some of the clues that we know existed and take some action. It is simply not true that nothing could have been done.
Perhaps this is one of those cases where believing that something could have been done and wasn’t is rejected because it’s too bad to be true.
There was a fraction of a moment when no one knew how to react. Outside the Park Plaza Hotel — where a boisterous crowd of protesters was chanting, beating drums, and bristling with antiwar signs meant for President Bush — a group of about a dozen approached. They were in ball gowns and suits and drinking champagne. “Bush and Cheney are good for us,” they chanted.
“Look at all these liberal hippies coming around with their boo-hoo signs,” said one of them, a woman in a silver lame wrap and designer sunglasses.
Some of the protesters turned, stunned. But then someone pointed to the signs the fancy-dresssed group was carrying — “Free the Enron Seven” and “Corporations are People Too!” — and the crowd erupted with shouts of approval. “We should let them get up front,” somebody shouted, telling the crowd to part and let them pass toward the hotel.
The group is, in fact, part of a well-organized, liberal-leaning protest machine calling itself Billionaires for Bush. With founding members in Massachusetts and New York, it plans to dog the Bush campaign through November, using satire as its gimmick. Staging swanky protests in which they enthusiastically defend tax loopholes for the rich and war contracts for friends of the president, they claim to be winning a loyal following — donors and members at 25 chapters in several states. And they say they’re making a more lasting impression with their anti-Bush message.
[…]
The Billionaires for Bush group is among several activist organizations sprouting up in recent years whose main tactics include humor and irony. “Reverend Billy” and his “Church of Stop Shopping,” an anticonsumerism organization, stages church-revival-type rallies with a preacher. Then there is a group that purports to be made up of “housewives” from Bush’s hometown of Crawford, Texas, with proverbs such as “A bomb, in time, saves 9” and “A country bribed is an ally earned.” The “housewives” have made appearances at Times Square in New York, where they dressed up in red, white, and blue, and straddled plastic missiles.
Proponents say such humor is helping political groups attract younger participants. “This makes it fun, it makes it hip,” said Andrew Boyd, “director of high-level schmoozing” for the Billionaires. “It gives it that ironic sensibility, which is a deep current in youth culture. Witness `The Daily Show’ and Michael Moore.”
Fake and scathing 1, fair and balanced 0. CNN and MSNBC have gotten used to losing to Fox News. But during the Democratic primaries, an unexpected foe stole the ratings crown from all three. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, a mock news program airing on Viacom’s (VIA) Comedy Central, attracted more viewers at 11 p.m. than any of the cable news channels in the last two weeks of January, outdoing Fox by 20 percent even as the news network was running live campaign coverage. Stewart’s fake news show has won ever-growing audiences with help from real politico guests like John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards.
Thanks to commenter Pontificator, here’s an interesting little follow up to the Bob Woodward item from the great piece by Michael Massing in the NY Review of Books called Now They Tell Us:
In the weeks following the [UN] speech, one journalist—Walter Pincus of The Washington Post—developed strong reservations about it. A longtime investigative reporter, Pincus went back and read the UN inspectors’ reports of 1998 and 1999, and he was struck to learn from them how much weaponry had been destroyed in Iraq before 1998. He also tracked down General Anthony Zinni, the former head of the US Central Command, who described the hundreds of weapons sites the United States had destroyed in its 1998 bombing. All of this, Pincus recalled, “made me go back and read Powell’s speech closely. And you could see that it was all inferential. If you analyzed all the intercepted conversations he discussed, you could see that they really didn’t prove anything.”
By mid-March, Pincus felt he had enough material for an article questioning the administration’s claims on Iraq. His editors weren’t interested. It was only after the intervention of his colleague Bob Woodward, who was researching a book on the war and who had developed similar doubts, that the editors agreed to run the piece—on page A17.
The White House is right to be worried.
reading this reminded me of a post I wrote last July:
Is it possible that there are no WMD in Iraq today because Bill Clinton led a coalition of the willing and disarmed Saddam Hussein 5 years ago?
We wouldn’t want to let an idea like that take hold, now would we?
White House officials strongly dispute Clarke’s conclusion, saying it reflects an old-fashioned approach to dealing with terrorism. “Those who question Iraq have an outdated and one-dimensional view of what is really a multi-dimensional threat to our nation,” said Jim Wilkinson deputy national security adviser for communications. “Some think the solution is to kill Osama bin Laden, finish Afghanistan and then go back to a defensive posture and hope we’re not attacked again. This approach represents the old way of thinking because it ignores the fact that the modern terrorist threat is a global threat.”
Tucker Carlson said on Matthews’ weekly show tonight that the White House is worried about Bob Woodward’s new book, Plan of Attack which chronicles the lead up to the Iraq War. Carlson said they were worried about Powell using this book to distance himself from the neocon crazies.
Now, this is Tucker talking and this is Woodward and Powell we are talking about, so there’s no point in expecting anything earthshattering. However, it will not help them if this book has Powell arguing with Rummy, Wolfie and Cheney on Iraq or shows Condi clueless or has the president being led around by the nose on the WMD threat. (Powell wasn’t exactly toeing the Party line with enthusiasm yesterday.)
I doubt Woodward is going to be the same drooling sycophant he was with Bush At War because he took a lot of shit for it and risked ruining his journalistic reputation forever. Besides,Woodward’s always been a trendie. When it was in to worship Bush, he was there to lead the prayer but he may find it more profitable to be skeptical this time. He must have known that Clarke and O’Neill were writing books, too. It would be embarrassing to be too gushing this time.
Whether it breaks any new ground or not, I don’t think it can possibly be good for them to have people discussing this in May. The book is due out on April 30th.
Ezra comments on Insty’s post about the shocking political hate speech emanating from the left and the horrible, horrible violence and impending totalitarianism running rampant in the Democratic party. Excuse me, I have to loosen my corset. I can hardly breathe I’m so upset about it.
Insty says:
Something I never wanted to believe seems to be playing out daily: the Democratic party has been overrun by totalitarians. The party is marginalizing old-guard Dems who might (might!) hold differing opinions but who also could be counted on for civility and a rational basis for their arguments. . . .There is no room for dissent, discourse, debate. My experience is that people behave this way when they hold indefensible beliefs, and they know just how weak their position is. A dog with this behavior is called a “fear-biter” and I can think of no better description for these people.
Somebody bring me a shot of laudenum and a mint julep. I’m feeling one of my fevahs comin’ on!
Ezra intelligently rebuts Insty’s hysteria in his inimitable fashion:
There are debates going on here everday. This whole exchange is taking place in a medium that consists almost entirely of debates between the Left and the Right! The context of this is a presidential election in which the Democrat is running slightly ahead of Bush and has been proving day in and day out that our ideas are more than defensible, they are quite suited to offense as well. And through all this, the Right has remained dependent on character attacks rather than the invocation of a less-than-stellar record.
[…]
The idea that our arguments and ideas are indefensible is patently ridiculous. Yet Glenn repeats it anyway, highlighting an argument accusing Democrats of being totalitarians unable to rationally support their arguments. And somewhere the truth sits, crying in the corner, wondering why Glenn insists upon abusing it so.
Just so. But, aren’t Republicans (and their useful idiot libertarian supporters) getting more and more, you know, weak these days? As in flabby, flaccid, whiny, ineffectual, weepy and emasculated? They can’t seem to handle any kind of adversity without resorting to shrieks of maidenly finger pointing saying “you sirrah, are no gentleman!” They strut around, their codpieces stuffed with sock-puppets, name calling, hurling insults, verbally assaulting anybody who disagrees with them and when somebody gets fed up and turns it back on them they quiver like a herd of frightened deer and claim that their adversaries are mean and greedy and just plain icky.
Now, I expect pacifists like nuns and priests and vegans to decry physical violence under all circumstances. Indeed, I myself think that violence at political events is never a good thing and I don’t condone it. But, I probably wouldn’t expect to avoid it if I baited and insulted a bunch of great big thugs who hold a different political point of view. That’s just the way the world works. I thought the Republican-kill-the-bastards-quick-hand-me-your-AK47 freepers knew all that, but apparently not.
Our self-proclaimed steely eyed tough guys may spend a lot of time playing one handed Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance but they don’t seem to have much real life follow through. They certainly don’t follow a stupid macho edict like “never complain, never explain” these days, what with all their weeping and wailing. Why, there used to be a time when they would have been embarrassed to admit to something like this …
Can we really trust American security to these little t-ball players playing dress up in Daddy’s uniform? I don’t think so. They aren’t tough and they aren’t smart. Big problem.
If you’d like to see the way in which this poor ‘lil fella sees the people who took a shot at him, check his picture page which features the description of people at the rally as mindless thugs, dykes, pillow biters and bench rats. I don’t know if he called one of those teamster fellas one of those names to his face, but if he did it may fall into the category of fighting words.
Anybody who has been paying attention to these hearings will know that all of the witnesses have started their testimony with a lengthy statement explaining this or that about their role in the lead up to 9/ll, much of it self-justifying, much of it saying, well, you know, we were busy with other stuff. So on and so forth.
Mr. Clarke did otherwise. His statement was brief and to the point.
He made a heart-felt apology to the American people for failing to stop 9/ll. He said he did his best. He said a lot of people did their best. But in the end, it didn’t matter because they had failed the American people, most especially the victims, and the families of the victims who died on 9/11.
The members victim’s families who were in the room broke into applause.
I stared at the screen shocked.
And then I, yep, I will admit it here: I started crying.
Well, that’s nice and all, but I think Senator Frist has something to say about that:
In his appearance before the 9-11 Commission, Mr. Clarke’s theatrical apology on behalf of the nation was not his right, his privilege or his responsibility. In my view it was not an act of humility, but an act of supreme arrogance and manipulation. Mr Clarke can and will answer for his own conduct but that is all.
And to all of the 9/11 families, Dr. Frist added, “Fuck you.”
This is one of those moments where I want to put my foot through the TV. The chutzpah, the nerve, the unalloyed balls of these cowardly little fucks makes me very, very angry. I need to take a little walk.