No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 

My response to Clarke's Op Ed

Richard Clarke presented three major points in his New York Times Op Ed today. I want to respond with my views mostly on his first point, that there is a major war of ideas going on in Islam today.

Clarke makes the point that the true war in the middle east is a civil war within Islam between moderate and radical extremist Muslims. They have to decide how Islam will develop and the moderates will win. In their desperation the radical extremists are trying to stop all movement into the future through terrorism leading to Islamic states.

The West is involved because it is at least to some extent the conflict between Islam and the progressive ideas of democracy and free trade that has led to the civil war within Islam. As the moderates move towards adopting some of the better aspects of Western ideas and practices into Islamic societies, the extremists are attempting to make such adoptions extremely expensive.

The bombs and bullets and, yes, terrorism, are only the tools in the real battle of ideas that is going on. The Bush administration is reacting only to the bombs and bullets, with more bullets and bombs. They are ignoring the war of ideas and are losing it rapidly.

If I make the conflict within Islam sound like a battle between conservatives and progressives, I think that is an accurate description of it. It is a war of ideas, conducted in societies which for the most part do not have democratic traditions of government. Each side believes that they will win if they control government, but control will change only through civil war. Fear of change and control of the government are the only tools available to the conservatives. Any adaptation to the changes caused by moving into the future is a loss to them.

Does it sound like I am describing the Islamic extremists as being much like our American social conservatives? It should. I think the motivation is the same. The difference is that we have a tradition of change in our government through means other then violent revolution.

The similarity is that our extremists also are people who do not work well with ideas. Bush was ready to start a war to change the world as soon as he was elected, but has no respect for the ideas held in the rest of the world.

He proved it by abrogating the Kyoto treaty and the ABM treaty immediately upon taking office, and by ignoring the views of the rest of the world when he invaded Iraq. He deals with the ideas of others by ignoring them, by personally attacking the individuals or nations who have differing ideas, by attempting to bribe them to accept his ideas, and by suppressing their speech by things like removal of funding or even getting laws or regulations prohibiting the communication of certain ideas as he has done in the abortion arena.

I am not surprised that Richard Clarke views the current problems of terrorism from the middle east as a result of a civil war between extremists and progressives there. I see much the same conflict going on here in the United States, with the social conservatives in both places using many of the same extreme weapons.
In both societies the people who do not adapt well to change are attempting to fight a war against social movement into the inexorable future. They fight with simplistic slogans and memorized catechisms since real analysis rarely provides the certainty they demand. When the slogans are not enough, they use police and armies where they can, and terrorists like the KKK where they can't.

Since modern government requires highly sophisticated analysis to function, it is no surprise that the Bush administration was not ready for 9/11. Clarke, having spent 30 years at the highest levels of our federal government effectively getting things done, is a master of analysis and converting that analysis into action. The Bush administration is a political operation which is staffed primarily by individuals who disdain such analysis and instead search for simply answers. Such people will revert to the military very quickly, and will perform poorly in an environment requiring Intelligence collection, analysis, and conversion to action. I think that is the real message that Clarke conveyed to us with his book, his testimony before the 9/11 Commission and his recent Op Ed piece.

Those are my reactions to the first of the three points Clarke presented in his Op Ed piece. His other two points were:
2. The changes needed in the CIA and FBI and the dangers of focusing on structural changes, and
3. The need for civil discourse between those in charge of fighting the two wars we now have (one against terrorism and the other in Iraq) and their critics and opponents.

I can't add to what he said about number 2.

As for number 3. I would refer you to my argument above about how extremist social conservatives have to battle their opponents. I don't see any civility returning to our political discourse until the conservatives are totally discredited.

posted by Richard at 11:33 PM

 

How to fight terrorism - Richard Clarke

The Wrong Debate on Terrorism
New York Times
April 25, 2004
By RICHARD A. CLARKE

The last month has seen a remarkable series of events that focused the public and news media on America's shortcomings in dealing with terrorism from radical Islamists. This catharsis, which is not yet over, is necessary for our national psyche. If we learn the right lessons, it may also prove to be an essential part of our future victory over those who now threaten us.

But how do we select the right lessons to learn? I tried to suggest some in my recent book, and many have attempted to do so in the 9/11 hearings, but such efforts have been largely eclipsed by partisan reaction.
One lesson is that even though we are the world's only remaining superpower — as we were before Sept. 11, 2001 — we are seriously threatened by an ideological war within Islam. It is a civil war in which a radical Islamist faction is striking out at the West and at moderate Muslims. Once we recognize that the struggle within Islam — not a "clash of civilizations" between East and West — is the phenomenon with which we must grapple, we can begin to develop a strategy and tactics for doing so. It is a battle not only of bombs and bullets, but chiefly of ideas. It is a war that we are losing, as more and more of the Islamic world develops antipathy toward the United States and some even develop a respect for the jihadist movement.

I do not pretend to know the formula for winning that ideological war. But I do know that we cannot win it without significant help from our Muslim friends, and that many of our recent actions (chiefly the invasion of Iraq) have made it far more difficult to obtain that cooperation and to achieve credibility.

What we have tried in the war of ideas has also fallen short. It is clear that United States government versions of MTV or CNN in Arabic will not put a dent in the popularity of the anti-American jihad. Nor will calls from Washington for democratization in the Arab world help if such calls originate from a leader who is trying to impose democracy on an Arab country at the point of an American bayonet. The Bush administration's much-vaunted Middle East democracy initiative, therefore, was dead on arrival.

We must also be careful, while advocating democracy in the region, that we do not undermine the existing regimes without having a game plan for what should follow them and how to get there. The lesson of President Jimmy Carter's abandonment of the shah of Iran in 1979 should be a warning. So, too, should we be chastened by the costs of eliminating the regime of Saddam Hussein, almost 25 years after the shah, also without a detailed plan for what would follow.

Other parts of the war of ideas include making real progress on the Israel-Palestinian issue, while safe-guarding Israeli security, and finding ideological and religious counter-weights to Osama bin Laden and the radical imams. Fashioning a comprehensive strategy to win the battle of ideas should be given as much attention as any other aspect of the war on terrorists, or else we will fight this war for the foreseeable future. For even when Osama bin Laden is dead, his ideas will carry on. Even as Al Qaeda has had its leadership attacked, it has morphed into a hydra, carrying out more major attacks in the 30 months since 9/11 than it did in the three years before.

The second major lesson of the last month of controversy is that the organizations entrusted with law enforcement and intelligence in the United States had not fully accepted the gravity of the threat prior to 9/11. Because this is now so clear, there will be a tendency to overemphasize organizational fixes. The 9/11 commission and President Bush seem to be in a race to propose creating a "director of national intelligence," who would be given control over all American intelligence agencies. The commission may also recommend a domestic security intelligence service, probably modeled on Britain's MI-5.

While some structural changes are necessary, they are a small part of the solution. And there is a risk that concentrating on chain-of-authority diagrams of federal agencies will further divert our attention from more important parts of the agenda. This new director of national intelligence would be able to make only marginal changes to agency budgets and interactions. The more important task is improving the quality of the analysts, agents and managers at the lead foreign intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency.

In addition, no new domestic security intelligence service could leap full grown from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security. Indeed, creating another new organization while we are in a key phase in the war on terrorism would ignore the lesson that we should have learned from the creation of Homeland Security. Many observers, including some in the new department, now agree that the forced integration and reorganization of 22 agencies diverted attention from the missions of several agencies that were needed to go after the terrorists and to reduce our vulnerabilities at home.

We do not need another new agency right now. We do, however, need to create within the F.B.I. a strong organization that is vastly different from the federal police agency that was unable to notice the Al Qaeda presence in America before 9/11. For now, any American version of MI-5 must be a branch within the F.B.I. — one with a higher quality of analysts, agents and managers.

Rather than creating new organizations, we need to give the C.I.A. and F.B.I. makeovers. They cannot continue to be dominated by careerists who have carefully managed their promotions and ensured their retirement benefits by avoiding risk and innovation for decades. The agencies need regular infusions throughout their supervisory ranks of managers and thinkers from other, more creative organizational cultures.

In the new F.B.I., marksmanship, arrests and skill on the physical training obstacle course should no longer be prerequisites for recruitment and retention. Similarly, within the C.I.A. we should quash the belief that — as George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told the 9/11 commission — those who have never worked in the directorate of operations cannot understand it and are unqualified to criticize it.

Finally, we must try to achieve a level of public discourse on these issues that is simultaneously energetic and mutually respectful. I hoped, through my book and testimony, to make criticism of the conduct of the war on terrorism and the separate war in Iraq more active and legitimate. We need public debate if we are to succeed. We should not dismiss critics through character assassination, nor should we besmirch advocates of the Patriot Act as fascists.

We all want to defeat the jihadists. To do that, we need to encourage an active, critical and analytical debate in America about how that will best be done. And if there is another major terrorist attack in this country, we must not panic or stifle debate as we did for too long after 9/11.

Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, is the author of "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror."

posted by Richard at 10:00 PM

 

Iraq and Ahmed Chalabi

Who is Ahmed Chalabi? Here is Jaun Cole on Chalabi.

Chalabi is wanted for embezzling $300 million from a Jordanian bank. He cannot account for millions of US government money given him from 1992 to 1996. He was flown into Iraq by the Pentagon (Perle was on the Defense Advisory Board, a civilian oversight committee for the Pentagon) with a thousand of his militiamen. The US military handed over to Chalabi, a private citizen, the Baath intelligence files that showed who had been taking money from Saddam, giving Chalabi the ability to blackmail large numbers of Iraqi and regional actors. It was Chalabi who insisted that the Iraqi army be disbanded, and Perle almost certainly was an intermediary for that stupid decision. It was Chalabi who insisted on blacklisting virtually all Baath Party members, even if they had been guilty of no crimes, effectively marginalizing all the Sunni Iraqi technocrats who could compete with him for power. It was Chalabi who finagled his way onto the Interim Governing Council even though he has no grassroots support (only 0.2 percent of Iraqis say they trust him).

Now Chalabi's nephew Salem has been put in charge of the trial of Saddam Hussein. Salem is a partner in Zell and Feith, a Jerusalem-based law firm headed by a West Bank settler, in which Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of Defense for Planning, is also a senior partner when not in the US government. You can be assured that the trial will be conducted on behalf of the Bush administration and the Neocons, and on behalf of the Chalabis. Since the Chalabis have been trying to overthrow Saddam for decades, it is hard to see how this can have even the appearance of an impartial tribunal.

But Bremer and the Bush people may have finally decided that Chalabi is not providing enough benefit to be worth what he has cost. Josh Marsall today predicts his ouster.

He bases it on the Washington Post article by Robin Wright and Walter Pincus.

The United States and the top U.N. envoy to Iraq have decided to exclude the majority of the Iraqi politicians the U.S.-led coalition has relied on over the past year when they select an Iraqi government to assume power on June 30, U.S. and U.N. officials said yesterday.

At the top of the list of those likely to be jettisoned is Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite politician who for years was a favorite of the Pentagon and the office of Vice President Cheney, and who was once expected to assume a powerful role after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials acknowledged.

It appears that both Iraq and the U.S. will be much better off of Chalabi ceases to have power in Iraq. Since Cheney has been important support for Chalabi, does that mean that Cheney will also lose some power in the Iraqi government?

Nah, we can't be that lucky.
posted by Richard at 6:52 AM

 

Corruption in Iraq

The oil business, from which both Bush and the real Presiden, Cheney, come, has long been known for its' corruption and cronyism. NPR's "Marketplace" has been doing a series on the corruption in Iraq, and estimates that at least 20% of the money we are pumping onto that sad nation has failed to reach the correct destination.

This is the model that both George and his brother Jeb want to apply to government. Outsourcing government work to private contractors has the purpose of making private contractors like Haliburton richer, not doing more with fewer resources.

The study by Marketplace on corruption in Iraq is good. We also need to study the outsourcing contracts in Florida to see how much of the money has been misused and inappropriately spent to make individuals richer while not providing adequate service to the taxpayers there. That is the inevitable result of the right-wings' unrestrained ideologically-based outsourcing of government functions.
posted by Richard at 12:33 AM

 

As usual, Krugman is spot on.

Our Presidential election in November will be a referendum on the Presidency of George Bush. The latest news from Iraq certainly provides more about his effectiveness to consider. This is from Paul Krugman in the New York Times of April 23, 2004.


It's now widely accepted that the administration "failed dismally to prepare for the security and nation-building missions in Iraq," to quote Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies — not heretofore known as a Bush basher. Just as experts on peacekeeping predicted before the war, the invading force was grossly inadequate to maintain postwar security. And this problem was compounded by a chain of blunders: doing nothing to stop the postwar looting, disbanding the Iraqi Army, canceling local elections, appointing an interim council dominated by exiles with no political base and excluding important domestic groups.

The lesson of the last few weeks is that the occupation has never recovered from those early errors. The insurgency, which began during those early months of chaos, has spread. Iraqi security forces have walked off their jobs, or turned against us. Attacks on convoys have multiplied, major roads have been closed, and reconstruction has slowed where it hasn't stopped. Deteriorating security prevents progress, lack of progress feeds popular disillusionment, and disillusionment feeds the insurgency.

Regardless of whether he was ready to fight terrorism on 9/11, or whether his invasion of Iraq was the best use of American resources in that fight at the time, his management of the war itself has been so poor that he really needs to be replaced.


posted by Richard at 12:12 AM

 

Republican response to the 9/11 Commission

This is from the Center for American Progress. It is clear that the Conservative Republicans are scared that we will learn they were asleep at the switch prior to 9/11.

None of this is new, but look at the pattern when it is presented together.

<>------<>
Right Wing Attacks 9/11 Commission, Commissioners and Witnesses

April 21, 2004

As the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States – the 9/11 Commission – continues its investigation, conservatives have called into question the integrity of the commission, commission members, and witnesses who have testified. These conservative attacks follow the usual pattern: discrediting anyone who challenges the Bush Administration in any way. Just ask former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson or former Army Chief-of-Staff General Eric Shinseki.

DELAY ATTACKS 9/11 PANEL FOR ASKING TOUGH QUESTIONS:

ASHCROFT ATTEMPTS TO SHIFT BLAME TO GORELICK:

SESENBRENNER IMPUGNS GORELICK, THEN GETS REBUKED BY REPUBLICAN CHAIRMAN:

HERITAGE FOUNDATION QUESTIONS NEED FOR 9/11 COMMISSION:

MURDOCH MACHINE OVERLOOKS FACTS IN COMMENTING ON TESTIMONY:

FRIST ATTACKS CLARKE, THEN IS CONTRADICTED BY PARTY COLLEAGUES:
<>------<>

Read the article for the explanations of each heading.

This is a list of “All the usual suspects”. Note that this is entirely attempts to discredit the people who question the Bush machine without in any way addressing the issues they raise.


posted by Richard at 7:16 AM

 

Letter to the Washington Post

This letter to the Washington Post states the current situation in Iraq very clearly.

Charles Krauthammer's April 16 op-ed column, "This Is Hardly Vietnam," protested too much. Officials of this administration, most of whom avoided service in Vietnam, do not want to be reminded of that fact or that war. They reject comparisons between the war they ducked and the war they started. The differences between the two are important, but so are at least three critical similarities.

First, we entered both wars on lies. The Gulf of Tonkin attack never occurred. And Saddam Hussein posed no threat to us from weapons of mass destruction or from ties to al Qaeda.

Second, the dominant ideology of the times (anti-communism for Vietnam and the war on terrorism for Iraq) masked our ignorance of our enemy's history, culture and dynamics.

Third, as a result of our ignorance and arrogance, our military strategy was based on our capabilities -- mass firepower and high technology -- and not on the requirements of a successful counterinsurgency strategy.

We are now doing in Iraq what we did in Vietnam. We are creating more enemies than we are killing. Our military never lost a major battle in Vietnam, and we will not lose one in Iraq. But we lost the Vietnam War, and without a radical change of course soon, we will lose the war in Iraq too.

DICK KLASS

Arlington

The writer, a retired Air Force colonel, is a consultant to veterans groups and a founder of a veterans political action committee.


© 2004 The Washington Post Company


posted by Richard at 5:17 AM

 

The mismanaged Iraqi War

How has the invasion of Iraq been mismanaged?

First, there is the obvious. It was intended to prove that the U.S. military could invade and occupy a nation ?on the cheap?. We invaded with 130,000 troops in February, and by summer we were supposed to have no more than 30,000 troops there. A year later 135,000 troops are not enough with another 15,000 or so in Kuwait. Now our Army is tied down in Iraq, training, resupply and reorganization are being ignored for the last year. Reenlistments already are dropping even with stop-loss orders in place. The Guard and Reserves will be useless for a decade after this year and next, much as they were through the 70's.

The fact that Rumsfeld does not want to increase the number of troops in Iraq means that there are not enough to provide security for the Iraqi civilians. One result is an utterly lawless nation. This is Iraq, which was previously one of the most stable and law-abiding nations in the world. Another result is that there are not enough troops to protect our supply lines. Without enough people on the ground to watch for mines and snipers, our casualty rate is much higher than it should have been.

The invasion of the country sitting on top of a quarter of the worlds? supply of oil was supposed to pay for itself. Instead, the Bush administration was forced to ask for a supplemental budget request of $85 billion in 2003. In 2004 the budget has been requested with no ? that is NO ? plan for how to pay for the next years? occupation. The Bush administration refuses to submit such a request prior to the election in November 2004.

As pointed out by Richard Clarke (p. 271-272) prior to the invasion we told the Iraqis that all we wanted to do was replace Saddam and a few people around him. During the war we convinced many of the Generals ?Don?t fight.? We would just remove Saddam and let them get on with running their country. Many commanders sent their troops home based on those assurances. Then Jerry Bremer came in and told them ?You?re fired.? Not only the entire military was fired, but all individuals who had been members of the Baath Party were removed. Yet to get a management job, people had to join the Baath Party. The result is that Bremer fired all the capable experienced managers in Iraq and informed them that in addition to not being able to work, they were not going to get pensions they had earned. Now the key infrastructure of Iraq doesn?t work and there are hundreds of thousands of experienced managers who will do what it takes to get rid of the Americans and get their jobs back from Halliburton. Some will be guerrillas, the rest will support them. None will support the Americans. Why shoud they? The American are the problem!

In short, over and above the issue of whether invading Iraq was a good idea or not, it has been so badly bungled that even if it had the potential to do every grandiose thing the Bushies promised, none of that could have been achieved.

Anyone really wonder why the Iraqis are killing Americans at the highest rate since the invasion, or why the members of the so-called Coalition of the Willing are bailing out one after another since the Spanish broke the log-jam?

posted by Richard at 10:32 AM

 

The Republicans are correct

America has a choice. This November we can continue to let the Republicans who occupy and believe that they deserve to own the ~our~ government or we can kick them out and send them back to the Wyoming sticks where they belong.

These people really have a sense of entitlement. The government is THEIR playtoy, and we are all suppose to pay for it - unless we are wealthy, and then we don't have to.

What am I pissed about now? Here. First read this.

"America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the President's policies are doing; or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation."

Clearly RNC propaganda, right? Only, guess who paid for it? Here at the bottom of a press release from FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

Not government spread RNC propaganda? Really? Look at the bottom of this page in the next to the last paragraph of the G. O. P. Fact Sheet. Look at the part in bold.

"America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the President's polices are doing; or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation. A pro-growth economic agenda, a strong education system, and help for American workers to gain the skills to secure good jobs are the right ways to respond to the challenges of our growing and changing economy. " [Note - this was copied April 21, 2004 at 11:21 AM Central Time.]

We DO have a choice. If we let them continue to steal from us, we deserve it.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo who pointed out this outrage.
posted by Richard at 9:25 AM

 

Krugman on the economy

Paul Krugman has weighed in on the economy. Here it is.

NYTimes


April 20, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Questions of Interest
By PAUL KRUGMAN


Yes, the republic is in danger," a friend said. "But what's going to happen to interest rates?" O.K., let's take a break from politics.

Over the past two years, interest rates have been very low. Last June the 10-year bond rate hit a 48-year low. Even three weeks ago the rate was still below 4 percent, a level last seen in 1963.
If the economy fully recovers — or even if investors just think it will — interest rates will rise sharply. In its World Economic Outlook report, to be issued tomorrow, the International Monetary Fund urges the Federal Reserve to prepare the economy for higher rates to "avoid financial market disruption both domestically and abroad."

But how far will rates rise? Let's not get into Greenspan Kremlinology, parsing the chairman's mumbles for clues about the Fed's next move. Let's ask, instead, how much rates will rise if and when normal conditions of supply and demand resume in the bond market.

My calculations keep leading me to a 10-year bond rate of 7 percent, and a mortgage rate of 8.5 percent — with a substantial possibility that the numbers will be even higher. Current rates are about 4.3 and 5.8 percent, respectively; you can see why the I.M.F. is worried about "financial market disruption."
Why 7 percent? Well, in the past 20 years the average yield on 10-year bonds has, in fact, been about 7 percent. Why shouldn't we think of that as the norm?

Some people say that unlike past interest rates, future interest rates won't include a premium for expected inflation. Indeed, over the past 20 years the average inflation rate was 3 percent, considerably higher than recent experience. But in the first three months of 2004, prices rose at an annual rate of more than 5 percent. That number included soaring gasoline prices, but even the "core" price index, which excludes food and energy, rose at a 2.9 percent rate.

More to the point, investors expect considerable inflation over the next 10 years. The spread between "inflation protected" bonds, whose payments are indexed to the Consumer Price Index, and ordinary bonds indicates an expected inflation rate of 2.5 percent during the next decade.
So you can't claim that interest rates will be far below historical levels because inflation is gone. And on the other side, we need to think about the impact of budget deficits.

That last sentence will send the deficit apologists to battle stations (sorry, I can't avoid politics completely). For many years, advocates of tax cuts have insisted that the normal laws of supply and demand don't apply to the bond market, and that government borrowing — unlike borrowing by families or businesses — doesn't affect interest rates. But there's no argument among serious, nonideological economists. For example, a textbook by Gregory Mankiw, now the president's chief economist, declares — in italics — that "when the government reduces national saving by running a budget deficit, the interest rate rises."
The Congressional Budget Office estimates this year's structural budget deficit — what the deficit would be if cyclical factors like a depressed economy went away — at 3.9 percent of G.D.P. That's almost twice the average during the past 20 years. Standard estimates say this should push up 10-year interest rates by around one percentage point.

Finally, there's the upside risk. As I've pointed out before, the twin U.S. budget and trade deficits would set alarm bells ringing if we were a third world country. For now, America gets the benefit of the doubt, but if financial markets decide that we have turned into a banana republic, the sky's the limit for interest rates.
Now for the obvious point: many American families and businesses will be in big trouble if interest rates really do go as high as I'm suggesting. That's why the I.M.F. is urging the Fed to get the word out.

And one suspects that the fund, which, like Alan Greenspan, tends to convey messages in code, is firing a shot across Mr. Greenspan's bow. A number of analysts have accused Mr. Greenspan of fostering a debt bubble in recent years, just as they accuse him of feeding the stock bubble during the 1990's. Just two months ago, Mr. Greenspan went out of his way to emphasize the financial benefits of adjustable-rate, as opposed to fixed-rate, mortgages. Let's hope that not too many families regarded that as useful advice.

posted by Richard at 9:27 PM

 

Bush is Insane

William Saletan of Slate wrote an article that explains how Bushs’ mind actually works. Here are some excerpts.

1. “To Bush, credibility means that you keep saying today what you said yesterday, and that you do today what you promised yesterday.” “The only words and deeds that have to match are his. No correspondence to reality is required. Bush can say today what he said yesterday, and do today what he promised yesterday, even if nothing he believes about the rest of the world is true.”

2. “Bush does occasionally cite other people's statements to support his credibility. Saddam Hussein "was a threat to the region. He was a threat to the United States," Bush told Moran. "That's … the assessment that Congress made from the intelligence. That's the exact same assessment that the United Nations Security Council made with the intelligence." Actually, the Security Council didn't say Iraq was a threat to the United States.”

3. “The more fundamental problem with Bush's appeal to prewar assessments by Congress and the Security Council is that these assessments weren't reality. They were attempts—not even independent attempts, since the administration heavily lobbied both bodies—to approximate reality. When they turned out not to match reality, members of Congress (including Republicans) and the Security Council (including U.S. allies) repudiated them. Not Bush. He's impervious to evidence.

4. "The United Nations passed a Security Council resolution unanimously that said, 'Disarm or face serious consequences.' And [Saddam] refused to disarm." Never mind that the Security Council didn't see what Bush saw in terms of Iraqi disarmament and didn't mean what Bush meant in terms of serious consequences. Never mind that this difference in perception was so vast that Bush ducked a second Security Council vote on a use-of-force resolution.

5. As Tuesday night's questions turned to the 9/11 investigation, Bush retreated again to the incontrovertible truths in his head. "There was nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think [in] the prior government, that could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale," Except that Richard Clarke had envisioned exactly that scenario for the 1996 Olympics. These were external phenomena and therefore irrelevant. What mattered was that Bush couldn't "envision" the scenario.


6. "I wanted Tenet in the Oval Office all the time. And we had briefings about terrorist threats." This was Bush's notion of dealing with terrorism: being briefed by the CIA director. The world that mattered was the Oval Office. Did the briefings lead to action outside the office? No, because there was no "threat that required action."

7. Bush's answer to Chen: "What was interesting in [the brief] was that there was a report that the FBI was conducting field investigations. And that was good news, that they were doing their job." Here is a president who reads that the FBI has found "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijacking" and concludes that all is well because the FBI is "investigating" such activity. Why does Bush make this mistake? Because he doesn't understand that the "suspicious activity" is the subject of the brief. He thinks the "investigations" are the subject. He thinks he's being told about his version of reality—the world inside his administration—not the world of plots beyond his awareness.

8. After 9/11, the world changed for me," he explained Tuesday night. That's Bush in a nutshell: The world changed for him. Out went the assumption of safety, and in came the assumption of peril. In the real world, Bin Laden was still a religious fanatic with global reach, and Saddam was still a secular tyrant boxed in by sanctions and no-fly zones. But in Bush's head, everything changed.

9. Bush doesn't measure his version of the world against anybody else's. He measures his version against itself. He says the same thing today that he said yesterday. That's why, when he was asked Tuesday whether he felt any responsibility for failing to stop the 9/11 plot, he kept shrugging that "the country"—not the president—wasn't on the lookout.

Bush is a man who believes what he believes, and if outside evidence (what most of us call reality) conflicts with his beliefs, then he acts on his beliefs, not on any outside evidence.

Bush is clearly acting on the basis of the dream world within his head rather than reacting to the evidence of outside reality. Although some conservatives have called it “Leadership”, most of us call this behavior “Insanity”.

posted by Richard at 3:53 PM

 

The Bush administration is insane

Forbes
Steve Forbes 04-15-2004
“We must prepare ourselves for a bloody year. Terrorists will make every effort to pull off Madrid-like atrocities in the U.S. as our elections near. The forces of good, however, when combined with consistency and determination have always triumphed. This war will be no exception.”

New York Times
David Brooks 04-10-2004
“Maybe we should calm down a bit. I've spent the last few days talking with people who've spent much of their careers studying and working in this region. We're at a perilous moment in Iraqi history, but the situation is not collapsing. We're in the middle of a battle. It's a battle against people who vehemently oppose a democratic Iraq. The task is to crush those enemies without making life impossible for those who fundamentally want what we want.”

Newsweek
by Fareed Zakaharia
“It is conventional wisdom that the United States should stay engaged with Iraq for years. Of course it should, but for this to work Iraqis must welcome the help. In the face of escalating anti-Americanism, U.S. involvement in Iraq will be unsustainable ... Washington has a final window of opportunity to end the myriad errors that have marked its occupation and adopt a new strategy.”

Alcoholics Anonymous
“Insanity is doing the same thing that fails over and over always expecting a different result the next time you to it.”

posted by Richard at 10:50 AM

 

Iraq - get out or get serious

Bush has no idea how to handle Iraq. He is trying one thing after another, hoping something will work. But he isn't willing to try anything likely to work. Here is Barry McCaffery on what is needed in Iraq. Time Magazine - 04/19/2004

"We need 80,000 or more troops added to the U.S. Army."

When a grass fire first starts, you can jump right in the middle of it and stomp it out. But if you wait too long, it just becomes uncontrollable. We should immediately jump onto the opposition and end it, and then launch smart diplomatic moves to get NATO and the U.N. and other Arab forces involved in a bigger way.

There are no more U.S. troops to send to Iraq. That's why we need 80,000 or more troops added to the U.S. Army. Congress is allowing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to dig in his heels and try to maintain a foreign policy based on a grossly undermanned U.S. military. The key question isn't whether the 1st Cavalry Division is going to get run out of Baghdad—it's not. The key question is, if you've got 70% of your combat battalions in the U.S. Army deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, South Korea and elsewhere, can you maintain this kind of muscular presence in that many places? The answer is no. But if we take action now to increase the size of the Army by 80,000 soldiers, we'll be able to handle this global reach. The key would be to activate nine National Guard brigades in the next 18 months and convert them into active-duty soldiers, allowing the reservists to go back to their communities.

The transfer of political authority on June 30 is extremely premature. By that date, there will not be a sovereign government with any political legitimacy. And here's another challenge we face: we need to put the training of Iraqi security services—the police, army, border patrol and others—solely under the control of the U.S. military instead of the Coalition Provisional Authority and give these Iraqi recruits more money. Iraq is costing us $4 billion a month, and only a tiny percent of that has gone directly to support the creation of Iraqi security forces. We should also transfer authority for security policy in Iraq from Rumsfeld to Secretary of State Colin Powell because the most important tasks are now diplomatic.

We need to invest two to 10 years in Iraq, and we'll have a good outcome. But if we think we're dumping this responsibility in the coming year, we're going to end up with a mess on our hands that will severely impair our international role for the coming 20 years.

— By Barry McCaffrey


posted by Richard at 9:49 PM

 

Decoding The PDB

Tom Paine.com

Here is more about what the government should have done with the August 6th PDB, according to an Intelligence professional.

Larry C. Johnson is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He served with the CIA from 1985 through 1989 and worked in the State Department's office of Counter Terrorism from 1989 through 1993. He also is a registered Republican who contributed financially to the Bush Campaign in 2000.

Are George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice really as clueless as they are claiming to be? Bush and Rice are both on the record misstating what was in the 6 August 2001 PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing). They both insist the information was only “historical” and “not actionable.” They apparently are not alone in their faux ignorance. Republican partisans and even some members of the media are busy bolstering the spin that this was “an historical memo.” Absolute nonsense!

I wrote about 40 PDB’s during my four year tenure at the CIA. This particular PDB article was written in response to a presidential request. I am told that Bush’s request was a reaction to the intelligence warnings he was hearing during the daily CIA morning briefings. Something caught his attention and awakened his curiosity. He reportedly asked the CIA to come back with its assessment of Bin Laden’s intentions. The CIA answered the question—Bin Laden was targeting the United States.

The PDB article released Saturday is a classic CIA response to such a request. It lays out the historical and evidentiary antecedents that undergird the analyst’s belief about the nature of the threat and provides current intelligence indicators that reinforce the basic conclusion of the piece—i.e., Bin Laden was determined to attack the United States. It is true that the piece did not contain specific details about the plot that was launched subsequently on 9/11. However, the details that are included in the piece are so alarming that anyone familiar with the nature of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda should have asked, “What are they planning and what can we do to stop it?”

Remember the furious attacks against Richard Clarke during the past month? Now that we have seen the content of the PDB we know he was telling the truth when he said that President Bush and Condoleezza Rice did not make fighting Al Qaeda a priority prior to 9/11. At a minimum, the details in the 6 August PDB should have motivated Rice to convene a principals’ meeting. Such a meeting would have ensured that all members of the president’s national security team were aware of the information that had been shared with the president. George Bush should have directed the different department heads to report back within one week on any information relevant to the Al Qaeda threat. Had he done this there is a high probability that the FBI field agents concerns about Arabs taking flight training would have rung some bells. There is also a high probability that the operations folks at CIA would have shared the information they had in hand about the presence of Al Qaeda operators in the United States. While Condoleezza Rice is correct that there was no “silver bullet” in that PDB, she conveniently ignores the huge pieces of the puzzle that were in the hands of various members of the U.S. government.

None of these steps were taken. Bush was on vacation and Condi—the smartest woman in Washington we are told—was asleep at the switch.

The PDB revealed another very fascinating item—the analyst who wrote the piece had access to details about FBI investigations. This is something I never had access to when I was writing PDBs. It was forbidden territory. In other words, Bill Clinton has opened some level of cooperation between the FBI and CIA. The FBI, in a break with tradition, was telling the CIA what it was doing in some measure. Unfortunately, with the benefit of hindsight, not enough was shared.

According to Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly "The 9/11 commission is going to want to know what was the White House's reaction to the analysis and judgment of the CIA and the FBI about the threats" according to Roger W. Cressey. The Commission will hold hearings on this subject Tuesday and Wednesday.
posted by Richard at 10:09 AM

 

Terrorism versus Nonviolent Resistance

This is from Charles Peters of the Washington Monthly.

Wrong targets

Buried in a recent Maureen Dowd column is a good point by former Sen. Bob Kerrey. He said that once 9/11 happened, our target should have been Osama bin Laden, not terrorism in general. "To declare war on terrorism would seem to me to have the wrong target. It would be like after the 7th of December 1941, declaring war on Japanese planes. We declared war on Japan. We didn't declare war on their tactic. Terrorism is a tactic."

Colonial terrorists

Kerrey might have added that, by making terrorism the enemy instead of al Qaeda, we took on an immensely complicated--should we war on the Chechens?--and ever-shifting target. One man's terrorist is another man's patriot. In the 18th century we were terrorists to the British, as were the Israelis to the British in the 1940s, and the Palestinians to the Israelis today.

[My note: there is also the major problem that terrorism has been with us forever, under different names. In the Peninsular Wars against Napoleon it gained the Spanish name "Guerilla War." When President McKinley was assasinated, it was by an "Anarchist." A war against terrorism will never end. There is no way to determine that you have won.]

Mahatma Arafat

This doesn't mean I'm a big fan of terrorism. I was happy to see a report in The New York Times by our alumnus, James Bennet, that some Palestinians are using peaceful demonstrations to protest against the wall. I've long felt that non-violent resistance would be the Palestinians' best tactic. Jewish guilt could get them more than terrorist bombs.

It's not a slam dunk, however. "In advocating civil disobedience," writes Bennet, "Gandhi and Martin Luther King had a bedrock faith in the essential humanity of their oppressors." It is, unfortunately, a faith that Arab extremists do not possess, and that Israeli right-wingers have not earned.

[My note 2: The Marine reaction to the killings in Fallujah, invasion of the city, amounts to state-supported terrorism. Some very organized terrorists planned and executed the klling fo the four security men there. The Marines are now attacking the entire city for not catching those people and turing them over. It is not likely to build trust in the Marines or the Americans. Nor is it likely to catch the terrorist cell that conducted the killings.

The real question is whether it advances the war against terrorists in Iraq, or if it causes more terrorism. It is the approach the Israelis used in Lebanon. It didn't work for the Israelis there. Why should it work for us in Iraq?]

[My note 3: No, I don't have another solution. My first reaction to the killing of the four American security men in Fallujah was that we should go in with bulldozers and level the city, leaving the denizens to live in refugee centers if they could find them. Then I cooled down a little, and decided that wouldn't do any good at all. It wouldn't even make me feel much better for long.

The question is, what WILL work? Both for us and for the Iraqis?]

posted by Richard at 5:55 AM

 

The August 6 PDB in context

The following is written by Josh Marshall in today?s Talking Points Memo. Both the quotes from the Senior Administration Official (SAO) and Marshall?s discussion provide important background to the nature of the August 6, 2001 PDB.

(April 12, 2004 -- 01:01 AM EDT)
I?M GOING TO try to comment later on various issues surrounding Saturday?s release of the August 6th PDB. But there?s one point about the White House?s explanation that I don?t understand. It stems from this line in the 8/6 PDB ...

FBI information since that time [presumably since 1998] indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

Now, in a conference call two senior administration (SAO) officials held with reporters Saturday evening, one SAO was asked just what those 'patterns' were.

Here?s the exchange ?

Q: You mentioned earlier about patterns of suspicious activity and cited one. What other patterns? I mean, this is July -- in July you have the Phoenix memo and you have some other things popping up.

SAO: Glad you asked that question, because I think that's one of the things that is, in fact, somewhat difficult to understand here, which is, what are the patterns of suspicious activity? Let me just reemphasize something that my colleague said, is that the patterns of suspicious activity here are not patterns based on FBI investigative observations, other than the one observation of the surveillance of buildings. The pattern was the CIA analyst's judgment that if you connect -- having talked to the FBI analysts -- that if you connect the threat spike overall with the information from the East Africa defendant that bin Laden might be interested in retaliating if people were convicted, and, in fact, they had just been convicted, and that people had recently been seen surveilling the courthouse where they, in fact, had been convicted, even though -- although she did not know it at this time -- that this surveillance turned out to be tourist-related; that if, in her judgment, if you connected those dots, that seemed to be a pattern of possibly suspicious activity in this country.

[ed. note: You?ll note the SAO?s reference to what his or her colleague had said earlier in the briefing. I believe that was a reference to this statement: ?The CIA author of the PDB item judged, after consulting an FBI colleague, that there was suspicious patterns of activity that were worrisome, even though nothing pointed to a specific operation in a specific location.?]

But just to be clear here, this was not based on FBI information -- FBI observations of patterns of suspicious activity derived from their investigative observations, other than that one of surveillance of the courthouse later determined to be tourist-related.

Q: But to put it a different way, to prepare this paper, no one went back to the FBI to ask for all the information they had relative to potential hijacking?

SAO: The analyst called -- the CIA analyst called an FBI analyst for information that would be relevant. And the FBI analyst provided the information that we just described to you.

On the face of it, this seems to misstate what the PDB actually says. The document refers to a pattern of suspicious activity ?including recent surveillance ??

It doesn?t say it?s limited to the surveillance but that it includes it. If this were a Venn Diagram we?d have one big circle which would be the ?patterns of suspicious activity? and then you?d have a smaller circle inside it that would be the surveillance information.

Now, it seems to me there are two issues here. One is a misrepresentation of what intelligence analysis is about --- specifically that it?s two words, intelligence and then analysis. The senior administration official here seems to want to say that since the judgment about hijackings was based on the CIA analyst?s piecing together a series of seemingly disparate, yet possibly interconnected, pieces of information that that judgment was somehow irrelevant or insignificant.

But, as I say, this is precisely what intelligence analysis is about --- taking isolated pieces of information and making analyses of them which make them meaningful. The quality of the analysis is another matter; but that's what intelligence analysis is.

So that?s point one.

Yet even on the merits, the SAO?s argument doesn?t make sense to me. He or she seems to be saying that the CIA analyst took a) the threat spike, b) the fact that bin Laden would try to retaliate if the embassy bombers were convicted and c) the fact that the courthouse where they were convicted was being cased and then concluded from that there were signs of preparations for a hijacking.

That just makes no sense.

Let?s grant the SAO the benefit of the doubt and include the other piece of information in the PDB: that there were hints bin Laden might try to hijack a plane to gain the release of some of his imprisoned fighters.
That moves the pieces a little closer together. But it still seems very hard to believe --- just based on logic and the construction of the sentence itself --- that the only information from the FBI pointing to hijackings was this casing of the federal building by the two Yememis.

There?s a lot more I want to say about this. But here what you have is the White House trying to retrospectively (and with the benefit of retrospective information) deconstruct the plain text and meaning of what this report was telling the president. And even at that, the deconstruction doesn?t really hold up.
-- Josh Marshall

Copyright 2004 Joshua Micah Marshall

It should be clear that the PDB is important as an indicator of what was happening in the White house, not just for what the document itself states.

Before the memo was written, we should determine who wrote the PDB? What research and analysis went into it? What motivated someone to write it in the first place? What did that person or those persons expect the President to do with the information he was being given?

Who handled the PDB before and after President Bush received it? What did they do with it?

What did Bush himself do as a result of reading the PDB? What should he have done? Especially, should the memo have caused him to want additional information? What does his behavior or his lack of it say about his motivation to act in terrorism cases at that time?

Consider all this, and remember, the White House wants us to reduce our questions to parsing a few phrases in the document itself with the recognition that by themselves, those phrases did not lay out any specific action that Bush obviously had to take. This is an attempt to justify the fact that they took no action. If they had taken any action, they would have told us by now.

Ultimately, the question comes down to the issue of whether they were justified in taking no action at all as a result of this PDB. Their efforts to conceal this memo and now to downplay it when it has been forced from them strongly indicates that they, themselves, do not believe that their inaction is justified or justifiable.

posted by Richard at 5:07 AM

 

Two Views of Iraq

This is two different views of what is happening in Iraq.

Washington Post April 11, 2004

President Bush, after Easter prayers for the safety of U.S. troops, acknowledged Sunday that it has been a "tough week" in Iraq and said it is difficult to know when the violence will subside.

Bush, on a trip from his ranch here to nearby Fort Hood, said he is praying daily for fewer casualties in Iraq, where nearly 50 Americans have been killed in an uprising over the past week. But Bush said he sees no need for more troops and characterized the violence in Iraq as the work of "a few people" and "violent gangs."

Washington Post - Politics

When the U.S. troops entered the abandoned factory shed Sunday, they found a hastily abandoned campsite full of jumbled clothing and bedrolls, scattered sneakers and gym bags, broken eggs and dirty cooking pots.

"This was a 16-man terrorist cell," pronounced a Marine captain, rifling through the mess. "See? All the bags and sneakers are brand new, all the same make. This took money and planning. Someone sponsored them."

The evidence -- Islamic books, pamphlets, tapes and farewell letters in Arabic -- suggested that some of the men were not Iraqis from the area, but foreign Sunni Muslims who had traveled to this urban Sunni stronghold to fight and die in a holy war, both against the U.S. forces and the country's Shiite Muslim majority.


My questions:

1. What evidence will Bush accept that outside Arabs/Muslim extremists are directing attacks in Iraq?

2. How many more America deaths will it take to convince Bush that more troops are needed?
posted by Richard at 4:33 AM

 

More on the August 6, 2001 PDB

The Washington Post has more on the Presidential Daily Bulletin that was declassified and released last Saturday. Two key paragraphs in the story are:

Democratic commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor, said in an appearance on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer" that the PDB "is not a silver bullet" but that it should have prompted a more aggressive government response. "They didn't know 9/11 was going to happen, but I think the author of this memo was alerting the president to the possibility that the strike that we were all anticipating in the summer of 2001 might well occur within the United States," Ben-Veniste said.

and from George Bush:

President Bush said yesterday that a memo he received a month before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks did not contain enough specific threat information to prevent the hijackings and "said nothing about an attack on America."

In his most extensive public remarks about a briefing he received Aug. 6, 2001, titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," Bush also said that he "was satisfied that some of the matters were being looked into" by the FBI and the CIA that summer and that they would have reported any "actionable intelligence" to him.

"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," Bush told reporters after Easter services in Fort Hood, Tex. "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?"

Bush agreed with a reporter who characterized the memo as containing "ongoing" and "current threat information." But he added that if the FBI or CIA "found something, they would have reported it to me. . . . 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."

The PDB itself in .pdf format from Josh Marshall's archives here.

Both George Bush and Richard Ben-Veniste are speaking of the same document. The difference is the reaction that each expected to result from that document. Bush clearly views it as a document that is essentially a status report to let him know that the FBI or someone is on top of the issue. Ben-Veniste views it as an alert document provided to cause the President to take some action.

Clearly I am on the side of Ben-Veniste. Had this been a PDB on the subject of stem-cell research, something that Bush was heavily involved in at that time, it would have at a minimum caused Bush to ask for more information. That he took no action on the memo indicates that it was not a subject that he considered to be high-priority for him at that time.

This confirms what Richard Clarke has said, and clearly shows that what Condi Rice said to the 9/11 Commission was not true. The Bush White House did NOT consider possible terrorist attacks on the U.S. in the Homeland to be of as great an urgency for Presidential action as, for example, tax cuts or stem-cell research.
posted by Richard at 3:56 AM

 

PDB of August 6, 2001

The real issue is stated here in the Christian Science Monitor.

"The question is not whether you had enough specific intelligence to know where or when they would attack," says Jim Walsh, an international security expert at the Kennedy School of Government. "The question is: Did you engage a series of actions that would be sent throughout the system so you could protect yourself?"

Read it here in a .pdf format from Josh Marshall's archive files.

The question the White House wants us to ask is if this was enough to stop 9/11. The question we should ask is if, given this briefing on August 6, 2001, Bush acted correctly by remaining on vacation in Crawford, TX and taking no action.

Richard Clarke clearly thought that Bush and his people did not act adequately based on what they knew. Rice and Bush think they did, but the argument I have been presenting is that this represents their ignorance of how government should and does function rather than being a well-reasoned judgement on their part. Should they keep their jobs because their failure was based on ignorance rather than on bad faith? I really don't think so.

It is true that this PDB did not give enough information to direct a targeted action to prevent 9/11. While that is a fact, it is also irrelevant. The real issue is whether there were actions that Bush could have taken that would have reduced the likelihood of 9/11 occurring. Since we know he took no actions, then his fault is in not trying to stop the attack on 9/11 rather than in not succeeding in stopping it.

Even the actions that they did take were inadequate. Condi Rice andthe White HOuse clearly believe that they placed the government on a higher level of alert. The evidence is clear that the people in the various departments in the field did not receive any indication that a higher level of alert had been declared, and had no idea that there was a greater likelihood of terrorist activity even though Bush himself had been warned that there was. This was true in the FBI, the CIA and the FAA based on statements already made by the Commissioners of the 9/11 Commission.

Another quote from the Christian Science Monitor supports this.

More recently, former Rep. Tim Roemer (D) of Indiana reported that after thousands of interviews, "We have found nobody ... at the FBI who knows anything about a tasking of field offices" to step up investigation of the terrorist threat that summer.

"The FBI does have to answer this question that Rice put on the table so bluntly: Why don't you cooperate with the CIA and why didn't you before 9/11, when we know Al Qaeda had become such a serious threat to the US," says Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution.

Critics say that, ultimately, the answer to that question goes all the way to the top of the Bush administration.

This is what represents the failure of both George Bush and Condi Rice in the leadup to 9/11 and what justifies their removal.
posted by Richard at 10:44 PM

 

Bremer angrily rejects deal with Muqtada al-Sadr

Juan Cole reports from Reuters that members of the Iraqi governing council have been seeking a compromise with al-Sadr that would reduce the violence in Iraq's southern cities. Paul Bremer rejects such negotiations, saying that Muqtada faces three possibilities: He can surrender, he can be arrested by US troops, or he can be killed resisting that arrest.

Any of those three choices will lead to more violence throughout Iraq for an extended period of time. Muqtada's family has been standing up to that kind of bullying talk for decades, when it issued from the Baath, and they are not the surrendering kind. If the US arrests Muqtada, it can only do so by desecrating among the most sacred shrines in Islam. If you want to see waves of attacks on American interests from Beirut to Tehran and from Kabul to Manama, just go ahead. And once the US has Muqtada, that will simply provoke daily demonstrations in all the southern cities demanding his release. If the US kills Muqtada, his followers will likely go underground and wage a long-term guerrilla war against the US, of the sort Mr. Bremer has failed to put down in the Sunni Arab areas after a year of trying.

Bremer will be back in Washington on July 1, but the Iraqis and the US troops and all the rest of us will have to live with the results of his failed policies and his arrogant obstinacy for the next decade.

Since the attack on four America contract security experts in Fallujah that caused Bremer and the military to attack that city was apparently a response to Isreal's earlier assasination of the spiritual leader of Hamas, and the violence from al-Sadr's Madhi militia is a result of Bremer's efforts to close down his newspaper and get tough with him, most of the problems in Iraq recently have been the direct result of mismanagement by Paul Bremer as he tries to gain advantage in the planned handoff of sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30th.

The result is the the Coalition Profisional Authority (CPA) has taken a stand against the U.S. attacks on Fallujah and the al Sadr militia. Members of the CPA have either resigned, gone into hiding, or in one case been fired by Paul Bremer. Many Iraqia government workers in the ministries are not showing up for work. Attacks on contractors, U.S. allies like Japan, and Iraqis employed by the government are sharply increased. More Jaun Cole. Juan Cole thinks that this indicates the likely collapse of the Iraqi government as presently set up under the U.S. auspices.

Josh Marshall has a rather scary report from a friend of his currently doing security work in Iraq. It provides an "on-the-ground" report of what is really happening, rather than the sugar-coated pablum that the Bremer public relations people or Donald Rumsfeld are providing.

The intention of the Bush administration to hand over "sovereignty" to an Iraqi government on June 30th will be clearly a sham if the only government remaining at that time is the one operated by the U.S. military. That seems to be the direction that Bremer and the Bush administration hard-liners are taking the situation.



posted by Richard at 1:49 AM

 

What Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz predicted for Iraq last year

Thanks to Kevin Drum for pointing this article out from February 2003.

From the New York Times by Eric Schmitt:

Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops. Mr. Wolfowitz then dismissed articles in several newspapers this week asserting that Pentagon budget specialists put the cost of war and reconstruction at $60 billion to $95 billion in this fiscal year. He said it was impossible to predict accurately a war's duration, its destruction and the extent of rebuilding afterward.

"The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far off the mark," Mr. Rumsfeld said. General Shinseki gave his estimate in response to a question at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday: "I would say that what's been mobilized to this point — something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers — are probably, you know, a figure that would be required."

Enlisting countries to help to pay for this war and its aftermath would take more time, he said. "I expect we will get a lot of mitigation, but it will be easier after the fact than before the fact," Mr. Wolfowitz said. Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high, and that the estimates were almost meaningless because of the variables. Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said.

At the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld said the factors influencing cost estimates made even ranges imperfect. Asked whether he would release such ranges to permit a useful public debate on the subject, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "I've already decided that. It's not useful."

Now that General Shinseki's best estimates appear conservative and those of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were clearly Blue Sky Dreams, it is Iraq and America who are paying the price they committed us to. Were Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz lying to us, or did they simply fail to understand what they were really getting us into?

Either is a scary scenario, but the ignorance option is the more dangerous one. Yet as the theme of the recent article in this forum indicate it is the more likely scenario. They really believed their own rhetoric and refused to accept that others disagreed for good reasons.



posted by Richard at 9:57 AM

 

Bushies do not know how to run a government

Condi really would have stopped the 9/11 terrorist attack if she could have.

Yeah, sure. If Condi had known that the terrorists were going to attack New York and Washington they would have moved heaven and earth to prevent it.

But - barring a signed letter from bin Laden telling Condi that he was going to attack New York and Washington on 9/11 and giving the flight numbers that were to be hijacked there was never going to be enough information to get Condi and Bush off their dead asses!

Move heaven and Earth? Just doing something would have been an improvement over their ignorant dithering.

These people do not believe in government and so have no idea how it works. More important, they have no idea how to make it work! Clarke does, but they weren't going to listen to him! He was merely a subordinate, and worse, a holdover from the Clinton Administration.

Bosses give orders and underlings carry orders out. Underlings from outside the favored political few do not make plans or tell bosses what to do. Oh, and when bosses give orders, they don't need to follow up to make sure they are carried out. Nor do they need to tell subordinates what to do when given an order. Knowing what to do is a subordinate function, not something a boss needs to bother with.

So the intelligence on increased chatter in the Summer of 2001 doesn't tell what the chattering terrorists might do or when they might to it, so it is useless. It is a waste of time to have principles meet over useless intelligence. Wait until bin Laden sends a telegram telling the date and target of the attack, the names of each hijacker and what flight numbers will be hijacked. No conservative politician from the White House will be able to decide to act with any less information.

Never mind that Clinton was able to prevent three bin Laden attacks planned for the millenium celebration of 2000 based on similar radio/telephone chatter combined competently with other intelligence. That must have been pure luck! No one could plan how to use such useless intell to prevent terrorist attacks!!Besides, Clinton never did anything against terrorists, and what he did failed. No grand plan like the PNAC, you see.

In short, Condi essentially stated that she had no idea how to do her job and that she isn't competent to organize and coordinate a dog-fight with willing, angry dogs!

Bush is, of course, even more ignorant that Condi. Which is why he has to testify to the 9/11 Commission privately, not under oath, with Dick Cheney (his boss) also present to explain what is really going on when Bush gets over his head. Which will be right after someone greets him.

Beverly Mann in the previous (slate) article believes that Condi was asked to fall on her sword for the Cheney/Bush White House. I disagree.

I really don't think that Condi has any clue regarding how the job of National Security Advisor which she holds down could be performed, and should be performed if she were going to be effective. However, with the immenesly stupid Bush occupying the office she reports to, and with the ideologial blindness of Cheney who actually performs the more critical security functions of that job without any connection to Condi, there is no one who could give her any clue what should be done.

They simply do not have any idea how to run a government. Any of them.

posted by Richard at 12:40 AM

 

Bush/Cheney/Condi deconstructed

This from Slate to add to the previous analysis. This is an analysis with which I concur completely.


Vox Populi
Rice is tasked to fall on her sword.
Compiled by Kevin Arnovitz
Updated Friday, April 9, 2004, at 1:59 PM PT


Subject: "Rice is Tasked to Fall on Her Sword"
Re: "Condi Lousy: Why Rice is a bad national security adviser."
From: BeverlyMann
Date: Fri Apr 9 1229h

One clear inference can be drawn from Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission this morning: She has been a bad national security adviser—passive, sluggish, and either unable or unwilling to tie the loose strands of the bureaucracy into a sensible vision or policy. In short, she has not done what national security advisers are supposed to do.

Actually, what is clear to me now—after watching Rice's testimony and then reading some of the more astonishing quotes from it last evening in various news reports—is that Rice isn't a national security adviser at all. That is, her job—unlike that of all the others, such as Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, John Poindexter, Anthony Lake and Sandy Berger—was, and is, not to give the president national security advice but instead to carry out orders given by those who actually were devising national security policy: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith.

Rice was simply a glorified supervisory bureaucrat. Her job was to take and carry out orders—or, as she repeatedly put it, to be "tasked"—to carry out this or that bureaucratic aspect of the national security policy set by Cheney and Rumsfeld with the input of Wolfowitz and Feith. Rice was almost as much out of the loop as was Richard Clarke; she was present at these principals' meetings, but only to receive her marching orders.

Rice didn't get Clarke a meeting with the principals because Rice couldn't get Clarke a meeting with the principals. Rice didn't order the FBI director to "shake the trees" of that agency—nor even to notify the field offices of the stunningly clear indications from al Qaeda intercepts about a very, very, very, very big and imminent terrorist attack possibly within this country, or even inquire whether the field offices that were tracking al Qaeda cells within this country had any information that, viewed in light of the intercepted messages, might help pinpoint any such plot within the U.S.—because Rice lacked the authority to do so on her own.

Nor, apparently, did she even have the authority to decide on her own to demand that the FBI director (and later the acting FBI director) do so. Apparently, she lacked the authority even to notify the FBI director of the threats—excuse me, of the non-threats—about some "unbelievable news in coming weeks," about a "big event" that will cause "a very, very, very, very big uproar," about the announcement that "there will be attacks in the near future".

And she didn't have the authority—or maybe the proper word here is clout—to persuade Bush meet not just with the CIA director but also with the FBI director. In that dramatic exchange between her and Ben-Veniste in which Ben-Veniste demanded a yes-or-no answer to his question whether Rice had told Bush "at any time prior to August 6th, of the existence of al-Qaida cells in the United States" although Rice herself had been told of this in early 2001, she answered, finally, that she didn't recall whether or not she had done so.

Rice wasn't tasked to tell the president of the existence of al Qaeda cells in the United States, and so she didn't. Rice was tasked with furthering Cheney's and Rumsfeld's goals of pushing the missile defense system's funding and development and of toppling Saddam Hussein.

The threat posed by Al Qaeda cells in the U.S. didn't further either of these two goals, and in fact hindered the first of them; a big argument against the obscenely expensive and scientifically unperfected missile system was precisely that with the end of the Cold War, the biggest security threat to the U.S. was the potential for terrorists to wreak havoc simply by infiltrating the country. So Rice, untasked to tell the president of the presence of al Qaeda cells within the U.S., didn't tell the president of the presence of al Qaeda cells within the U.S.

Bizarre though it was, her weirdest statement was not the one in which she says that the intercepts about "a very, very, very, very big uproar" that will be caused by "unbelievable news in coming weeks" about "attacks in the near future" were "[t]roubling, yes," but because "they don't tell us when; they don't tell us where; they don't tell us who; and they don't tell us how" they were not quite troubling enough for her to task herself to notify the FBI director and the field offices about them.

No, of all the many bizarre comments Rice made yesterday, the loopiest, in my opinion— and anyway the most starkly factually inaccurate—was her incessant claim that because of "structural" and legal prohibitions, the CIA director couldn't tell the FBI director that there were certain known al Qaeda operatives who had entered the country.

Is she claiming that at the "battle stations" shake-the-trees meetings that Clarke and others say occurred in late 1999 among the various national security "principals" including the CIA director and the FBI director didn't really occur because of structural problems? Or that those meetings occurred but that the CIA director didn't tell the FBI director any valuable information he had because it would have been illegal to do so? Or that the CIA director did pass along to the FBI director the information he had, and that his doing so violated the law?

Good heavens. What law, pray tell, is she talking about? What law would have prevented George Tenet from giving to the FBI director the pertinent information he had—about the contents of the al Qaeda intercepts and about the few al Qaeda operatives the CIA knew already had entered the country?

"Every day now in the Oval Office in the morning," Rice said in answer to a question about whether the structural problems that hampered communications between the CIA and the FBI had been resolved, "the FBI director and the CIA director sit with the president, sharing information in ways that they would have been prohibited to share that information before." Indeed. And that's precisely what Clarke said transpired during the Clinton administration in the weeks before the millennium, in order to try to thwart any planned terrorist attacks then. And it's exactly what Clarke says he tried to communicate with Bush, via Rice, that he, Bush should do.

Perhaps the most revealing answer Rice gave yesterday was in answer to a question inquiring about the steps, if any, Bush took in response to the information in the Aug. 6 security briefing that said [according to Bob Kerrey and Ben-Veniste] "that the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking." Rice said Bush met every day with the CIA director.

Not with the CIA director and the FBI director. Just with the CIA director. The structural problem that kept the FBI director and the CIA director from communicating the most critical information to each other during the months preceding 9/11 was, in other words, a structural problem of the Bush administration's own making.

That structural problem was, in turn, created by a truly profound one, a thoroughly stunning one—even to me. It's a structural problem revealed most starkly by Bush's failure, upon being told on Aug 6, 2001 that "that the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking" especially in light of George Tenet's warnings to him throughout that summer that al Qaeda intercepts were speaking of a very, very, very big event.

The structural problem is simply this: Bush was the president in name only, a genuine figurehead, with no intellectual decisionmaking capability whatsoever, and that Cheney was the actual president at least with respect to national security matters. The information in the Aug. 6 "PDB"—the presidential daily briefing—wasn't given to the actual president. Nor were Tenet's daily oral and written reports. They were given only to the figurehead president, and not transmitted to the real one, who already had determined the administration's national security agenda and therefore wasn't interested in them.

Thus Rice's constant references to policy rather than to responding to—acting in light of—information being received. Rice wasn't tasked to attempt to learn of the nature and locale of the impending very, very, very big event al Qaeda was planning because the policy regarding invading Afghanistan, and what they thought was the requisite of getting Pakistan on board, wasn't yet in place.

Among the more annoying euphemisms in currently in vogue among the punditry is the one they use to acknowledge that Bush is very seriously lacking in intellectual capacity: they say he is "incurious." But stupid as I recognize him to be, even I wouldn't have suspected that, handed information that the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking, and handed information that al Qaeda was planning an attack it thought would cause a huge uproar, George W. Bush would be so incurious as to not phone the FBI director and ask what exactly were those patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking.

But now, thanks to Rice's testimony yesterday, I and all the world know that that wasn't tasked to Bush. It was tasked to Cheney—or rather it would have been, had Cheney rather than Bush been the one to receive the Aug. 6 PDB, and had he been the one to meet daily with Tenet.

I had thought throughout the Clarke controversy, until yesterday, that the real political damage to Bush from would come from the recognition by a majority of the public, finally, that it makes us less rather than more safe—both physically and economically—to have a strong-'n-decisive leader whose strength-'n-decisive leadership amounts to determining policy based purely on ideology and patronage rather than on the actual needs of the county and on facts, and who forces through these polices irrespective of circumstances and evidence about their actual effects on the country.

But I think now that that, even more than that, the political damage Bush will suffer will come from the ultimate epiphany that the most damning caricature of this president is true: He's jaw-droppingly stupid, and so Dick Cheney is the actual president. Cheney isn't obsessively secretive for nothing.

Troubling, yes. Very.

Condi Rice was asked to fall on her sword in order to try to keep this secret from escaping. She obliged and destroyed herself, but didn't succeed in her mission.


posted by Richard at 12:27 AM

 

Condi deconstructed.

The Center for American Progress offered this analysis of Condi's speach.
Condi Gets A Reality Check
Alternet

David J. Sirota and Christy Harvey and Judd Legum, Center for American Progress
April 8, 2004
Viewed on April 9, 2004

Opening Statement
CLAIM: "We decided immediately to continue pursuing the Clinton Administration's covert action authorities and other efforts to fight the network."
FACT: Newsweek reported that "In the months before 9/11, the U.S. Justice Department curtailed a highly classified program called 'Catcher's Mitt' to monitor al-Qaeda suspects in the United States." Additionally, AP reported "though Predator drones spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times in late 2000, the Bush administration did not fly the unmanned planes over Afghanistan during its first eight months," thus terminating the reconnaissance missions started during the Clinton Administration. [Sources: Newsweek, 3/21/04; AP, 6/25/03]

CLAIM: "The strategy set as its goal the elimination of the al-Qaeda network. It ordered the leadership of relevant U.S. departments and agencies to make the elimination of al-Qaeda a high priority and to use all aspects of our national power -- intelligence, financial, diplomatic, and military -- to meet this goal."
FACT: 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick: "Is it true, as Dr. Rice said, 'Our plan called for military options to attack Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership'?" Armitage: "No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11." [Source: 9/11 Commission testimony, 3/24/04]

CLAIM: "We bolstered the Treasury Department's activities to track and seize terrorist assets."
FACT: The new Bush Treasury Department "disapproved of the Clinton Administration's approach to money laundering issues, which had been an important part of the drive to cut off the money flow to bin Laden." Specifically, the Bush Administration opposed Clinton Administration-backed efforts by the G-7 and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that targeted countries with "loose banking regulations" being abused by terrorist financiers. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration provided "no funding for the new National Terrorist Asset Tracking Center." [Source: "The Age of Sacred Terror," 2003]
CLAIM: "We moved quickly to arm Predator unmanned surveillance vehicles for action against al-Qaeda."

FACT: According to AP, "the military successfully tested an armed Predator throughout the first half of 2001" but the White House "failed to resolve a debate over whether the CIA or Pentagon should operate the armed Predators" and the armed Predator never got off the ground before 9/11. [Source: AP, 6/25/03]

CLAIM: "We increased funding for counterterrorism activities across several agencies."
FACT: Upon taking office, the 2002 Bush budget proposed to slash more than half a billion dollars out of funding for counterterrorism at the Justice Department. In preparing the 2003 budget, the New York Times reported that the Bush White House "did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators" and "proposed a $65 million cut for the program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants." Newsweek noted the Administration "vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism." [Sources: 2001 vs. 2002 Budget Analysis; NY Times, 2/28/02; Newsweek, 5/27/02]

CLAIM: "While we were developing this new strategy to deal with al-Qaeda, we also made decisions on a number of specific anti-al-Qaeda initiatives that had been proposed by Dick Clarke."
FACT: Rice's statement finally confirms what she previously – and inaccurately – denied. She falsely claimed on 3/22/04 that "No al-Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." [Washington Post, 3/22/04]

CLAIM: "When threat reporting increased during the Spring and Summer of 2001, we moved the U.S. Government at all levels to a high state of alert and activity."
FACT: Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush Administration "did not give terrorism top billing in their strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI." Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until Oct. 1, 2001, said during the summer, terrorism had moved "farther to the back burner" and recounted how the Bush Administration's top two Pentagon appointees, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, "shut down" a plan to weaken the Taliban. Similarly, Gen. Don Kerrick, who served in the Bush White House, sent a memo to the new Administration saying "We are going to be struck again" by al Qaeda, but he never heard back. He said terrorism was not "above the waterline. They were gambling nothing would happen." [Sources: Washington Post, 3/22/04; LA Times, 3/30/04]

CLAIM: "The threat reporting that we received in the spring and summer of 2001 was not specific as to...manner of attack."
FACT: ABC News reported, Bush Administration "officials acknowledged that U.S. intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks that bin Laden's terrorist network might try to hijack American planes." Dateline NBC reported that on August 6, 2001, the President personally "received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane." Rice herself actually admitted this herself, saying the Aug. 6 briefing the President received said "terrorists might attempt to hijack a U.S. aircraft." [Sources: ABC News, 5/16/02; NBC, 9/10/02]

Q&A Testimony
Planes as Weapons

CLAIM: "I do not remember any reports to us, a kind of strategic warning, that planes might be used as weapons." [responding to Kean]
FACT: Condoleezza Rice was the top National Security official with President Bush at the July 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa. There, "U.S. officials were warned that Islamic terrorists might attempt to crash an airliner" into the summit, prompting officials to "close the airspace over Genoa and station antiaircraft guns at the city's airport." [Sources: Los Angeles Times, 9/27/01; White House release, 7/22/01]

CLAIM: "I was certainly not aware of [intelligence reports about planes as missiles] at the time that I spoke" in 2002. [responding to Kean]
FACT: While Rice may not have been aware of the 12 separate and explicit warnings about terrorists using planes as weapons when she made her denial in 2002, she did know about them when she wrote her March 22, 2004 Washington Post op-ed. In that piece, she once again repeated the claim there was no indication "that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles." [Source: Washington Post, 3/22/04]

August 6 PDB

CLAIM: There was "nothing about the threat of attack in the U.S." in the Presidential Daily Briefing the President received on August 6. [responding to Ben Veniste]
FACT: Rice herself confirmed that "the title [of the PDB] was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'" [Source: Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04]
Domestic Threat

CLAIM: "One of the problems was there was really nothing that look like was going to happen inside the United States...Almost all of the reports focused on al-Qaeda activities outside the United States, especially in the Middle East and North Africa...We did not have...threat information that was in any way specific enough to suggest something was coming in the United States." [responding to Gorelick]
FACT: Page 204 of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 noted that "In May 2001, the intelligence community obtained a report that Bin Laden supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States" to "carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives." The report "was included in an intelligence report for senior government officials in August [2001]." In the same month, the Pentagon "acquired and shared with other elements of the Intelligence Community information suggesting that seven persons associated with Bin Laden had departed various locations for Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States." [Sources: Joint Congressional Report, 12/02]

CLAIM: "If we had known an attack was coming against the United States...we would have moved heaven and earth to stop it." [responding to Roemer]
FACT: Rice admits that she was told that "an attack was coming." She said, "Let me read you some of the actual chatter that was picked up in that spring and summer: Unbelievable news coming in weeks, said one. Big event -- there will be a very, very, very, very big uproar. There will be attacks in the near future." [Source: Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04]

Cheney Counterterrorism Task Force

CLAIM: "The Vice President was, a little later in, I think, in May, tasked by the President to put together a group to look at all of the recommendations that had been made about domestic preparedness and all of the questions associated with that." [responding to Fielding]
FACT: The Vice President's task force never once convened a meeting. In the same time, the Vice President convened at least 10 meetings of his energy task force, and six meetings with Enron executives. [Source: Washington Post, 1/20/02; GAO Report, 8/03]
Principals Meetings

CLAIM: "The CSG (Counterterrorism Security Group) was made up of not junior people, but the top level of counterterrorism experts. Now, they were in contact with their principals." [responding to Fielding]
FACT: "Many of the other people at the CSG-level, and the people who were brought to the table from the domestic agencies, were not telling their principals. Secretary Mineta, the secretary of transportation, had no idea of the threat. The administrator of the FAA, responsible for security on our airlines, had no idea." [Source: 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, 4/8/04]

Previous Administration

CLAIM: "The decision that we made was to, first of all, have no drop-off in what the Clinton administration was doing, because clearly they had done a lot of work to deal with this very important priority." [responding to Kean]
FACT: Internal government documents show that while the Clinton Administration officially prioritized counterterrorism as a "Tier One" priority, but when the Bush Administration took office, top officials downgraded counterterrorism. As the Washington Post reported, these documents show that before Sept. 11 the Bush Administration "did not give terrorism top billing." Rice admitted that "we decided to take a different track" than the Clinton Administration in protecting America. [Source: Internal government documents, 1998-2001; Washington Post, 3/22/04; Rice testimony, 4/8/04]

FBI

CLAIM: The Bush Administration has been committed to the "transformation of the FBI into an agency dedicated to fighting terror." [responding to Kean]
FACT: Before 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft de-emphasized counterterrorism at the FBI, in favor of more traditional law enforcement. And according to the Washington Post, "in the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows." And according to a new report by the Congressional Research Service, "numerous confidential law enforcement and intelligence sources who challenge the FBI's claim that it has successfully retooled itself to gather critical intelligence on terrorists as well as fight crime." [Source: Washington Post, 3/22/04; Congressional Quarterly, 4/6/04]

CLAIM: "The FBI issued at least three nationwide warnings to federal, state and law enforcement agencies and specifically stated that, although the vast majority of the information indicated overseas targets, attacks against the homeland could not be ruled out. The FBI tasked all 56 of its U.S. field offices to increase surveillance of known suspects of terrorists and to reach out to known informants who might have information on terrorist activities." [responding to Gorelick]
FACT: The warnings are "feckless. They don't tell anybody anything. They don't bring anyone to battle stations." [Source: 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, 4/8/04]
Homeland Security

CLAIM: "I think that having a Homeland Security Department that can bring together the FAA and the INS and Customs and all of the various agencies is a very important step." [responding to Hamilton]
FACT: The White House vehemently opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland security. Its opposition to the concept delayed the creation of the department by months.

CLAIM: "We have created a threat terrorism information center, the TTIC, which does bring together all of the sources of information from all of the intelligence agencies -- the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and the INS and the CIA and the DIA -- so that there's one place where all of this is coming together." [responding to Fielding]
FACT: "Knowledgeable sources complain that the president's new Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which reports to CIA Director George Tenet rather than to Ridge, has created more of a moat than a bridge. The ability to spot the nation's weakest points was going to make Homeland Security different, recalled one person involved in the decision to set up TTIC. But now, the person said, 'that whole effort has been gutted by the White House creation of TTIC, [which] has served little more than to give the appearance of progress.'" [Source: National Journal, 3/6/04]

posted by Richard at 9:41 PM