Better Feet Than Brain....

Glenn Reynolds presents a... curious ad hominem attack:

Everybody's angry, to judge from my email, about Paul Krugman’s typo-burdened 9/11 screed. Don’t be angry. Understand it for what it is, an admission of impotence from a sad and irrelevant little man. Things haven’t gone the way he wanted lately, his messiah has feet of clay — hell, forget the “feet” part, the clay goes at least waist-high — and it seems likely he’ll have even less reason to like the coming decade than the last, and he’ll certainly have even less influence than he’s had.

What caused Reynolds to get his knickers in such a twist? Krugman's assertion,

The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

Reynolds could attempt to rehabilitate the reputations of Kerik, Giuliani or G.W., but perhaps that would take too much effort - perhaps he agrees that his heroes have fallen. Whatever his reason, he chooses to sneer, "Your hero fell, as well", painting President Obama as Krugman's messiah with "feet of clay". How many seconds would you have to spend, actually reading Krugman's columns or blog, to recognize the flaw in Reynolds' argument?

I suspect that Reynolds never reads Krugman, and his logic goes something like this:

1. I don't like President Obama.

2. I don't like Paul Krugman.

3. Therefore Paul Krugman must like President Obama.

But for those who read Krugman, who saw him question and challenge Obama during the primary campaign that led to his nomination, and who have seen him challenge the Obama Administration from day one on its economic agenda and legislative compromises, the notion that Krugman worships Obama is beyond ludicrous. It's almost as if Reynolds is trying to embarrass himself.

My prediction: The overwhelming majority of Reynolds' readers won't care. They like his vitriol and, as with Reynolds in his screed against Krugman, don't actually care about facts or accuracy. They, like Reynolds, would rather idolize those who happily exploit a national tragedy than call them out.

9/11 Occurred When "Mr. Nobody" Was Vice-President?

Pat Buchanan brings us this rather... astonishing observation about Obama:

There is a high probability, if not a near certainty, that, one day, al-Qaeda is going to conduct some spectacular attack on this country or its allies, and Americans will say, “This didn’t happen when people like Cheney were running the show.”

I guess I can accept that, if Buchanan means that Dick Cheney and G.W. were too busy giving away the country to the rich and to various special interest groups to actually be said to be "running the show", but if that's not what he means...

I recognize that when 9/11 is mentioned, some like to pretend that everything that happens under a President's first nine months (or year?) in office didn't occur under that President's "watch", due to it's somehow being attributable to the prior administration. I'm sure they're jumping all over people like David Brooks for falsely attributing the auto and financial industry bailouts to Obama. But even assuming that were an honest argument, Buchanan seems to be attempting to invoke the "Cheney's so tough and mean, nobody would ever do anything like that during 'his watch', while Obama's an effete liberal" line of nonsense so he has no excuse.

Torture and Morality

Typical of his way of thinking, which is to say... poorly, Richard Cohen today argues that we can't prosecute Bush Administration officials for torture because we're all guilty.

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." So goes an aphorism that needs to be applied to the current debate over whether those who authorized and used torture should be prosecuted. In the very different country called Sept. 11, 2001, the answer would be a resounding no.

Back then, a Post poll gave George W. Bush an approval rating of 92 percent, which meant that almost no one thought he was on the wrong course.

This shouldn't have to be explained, but then... it's Richard. No, the high approval rating for a President immediately after a moment of national crisis does not translate into equivalent approval for his policies, let alone each and every one of his policies. Nor could it. How smart do you have to be to recognize that Bush hadn't even stated his policies on torture on 9/11. He hadn't declared an intention to invade Iraq. It was Bush's bad policy choices (and their consequences) that caused his popularity to plummet.

What Cohen really means here is that after 9/11 he got climbed onto a "Bush can do no wrong to avenge this" bandwagon, and he saw nothing wrong with the use of torture to achieve Bush's objectives, stated and unstated. That's fine - he can put himself on the dock next to G.W. for his stupid, credulous, thoughtless acceptance of everything Bush did as being right. But please - leave the rest of us out of it.

At the same time, questions about the viability of torture were very much in the air. Alan Dershowitz was suggesting the creation of torture warrants -- permission from a court to, in effect, break some bones.

Dershowitz, mind you, was not in favor of torture but argued that if torture was going to be done, it was best that it be done legally.

Actually, I think the better argument is that Dershowitz is very much in favor of torture, but chooses to dance around the subject rather than approaching it honestly.

In a similar vein, the thoughtful Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter mulled the legality, the morality and the efficacy of torture. In the end, Alter ruled it out -- although not sodium pentothal (truth serum) or offshoring terrorism suspects "to our less squeamish allies." In fact, the government was already sending suspects abroad to be interrogated.

So... an intellectually dishonest law school professor favored torture and a Newsweek columnist ended up endorsing extraordinary rendition... and this proves what, exactly? That when confronted with extraordinary circumstances, people like Dershowitz increase the volume of their calls for us to abandon our values, and people like Alter wonder if they're right? (While sheep like Cohen go, "Baaaaaah"?)

Around the same time, historian Jay Winik wrote about the usefulness of torture, how Philippine agents in 1995 got a certain Abdul Hakim Murad to reveal a plot to blow up 11 American airliners over the Pacific and send yet another plane, this one loaded with nerve gas, into CIA headquarters in Langley. After being beaten nearly to death, Murad was finally broken by the hollow threat to turn him over to Israel's Mossad.

The moral of this story being what? That the Mossad would have finished beating Murad to death, as opposed to beating him almost to death, and that fear caused him to reveal additional information? That the Bush Administration was correct to insist that nobody could possibly have conceived of a plan to crash airplanes into buildings? That if you torture somebody until they reveal a horrible terrorist plot, no matter how ludicrous, you will eventually get them to "confess" such a plot? Really... other than as an idea in Murad's mind, this notion of crashing a plane loaded with nerve gas into the CIA headquarters is supported by... what? There was a ton of documentary and physical evidence that Murad was planning to hijack and blow up airlines. Was there any to support this special new plot, or that any other person even knew of this supposed plot, learned of through the tactics Cohen approves?

According to journalists Marites Vitug and Glenda Gloria, authors of the book Under the Crescent Moon, agents hit him with a chair and long piece of wood when Murad did not talk. They forced water into his mouth, and crushed out lit cigarettes on his genitals. Murad's ribs were completely cracked. Agents were surprised that he survived.

To be clear, is Cohen in the Dershowitz, "Get a warrant before putting out your cigarettes on a prisoner's genitals" camp, or is he in the Alter "Send the prisoner to a foreign nation where somebody else's steel toed boots can get dirty while kicking in his rib cage" camp? If we're going to pretend Murad was a "ticking time bomb", what actionable evidence was obtained through his torture that prevented the fanciful "CIA nerve gas attack" from being carried out? And if we're not pretending that he was a "ticking time bomb", such that his torture did not provide us any information or evidence useful in preventing a future attack, let alone an imminent attack on Langley, what's Cohen's point?

Cohen continues with his insipid analysis:

The Philippine example was widely mentioned at the time, even by those who opposed the use of torture. The conventional wisdom that torture never works - so counterintuitive as to be an absurdity - was not yet doctrine.

No, Richard. The argument isn't that "torture never works". The argument is that evidence obtained through torture is not reliable. For example, I take Cohen prisoner, and he denies his association with al-Qaeda. After a few rounds of torture, he finally admits his affiliation. So now I ask him to identify his contacts. He denies having any contacts, or claims not to know their names. A few rounds of torture later, I have names. But none of that information is reliable.

Frankly, as a torturer, I probably don't care. If I let Richard Cohen live, return him to the streets hobbled, covered with cigarette burns, he serves first as a message of my ruthlessness - this is what I do do people who challenge state power. If Cohen's lucky it ends there. If not, he's treated as an informant - he wouldn't have been released, after all, had he not talked. Maybe I even put out the word that he talked, and my agents watch to see who takes revenge - that's actionable intelligence. Or I can whisper to the next person I pick up, "If you give me the information I want, right now, I can let you go and nobody will ever have to know you were in custody. (Or you can end up like Cohen.)" That could be true. It's more likely a lie, but it may scare some information out of the guy before the torture sessions begin.

Whatever information I get, I can act on it. I can pick up the friends Cohen named and start round two with them. Their confessions, with or without torture, will either confirm or refute Cohen's. It doesn't matter. Then round three, round four.... After I torture enough people, I'll have enough confirming information to have a pretty good idea of whether Cohen gave me real names. If he didn't and he's still alive, whether he's in custody or has to be picked up yet again, I can torture Cohen to find out why he lied. By that time I may think that Cohen was wrongly accused in the first place but, no matter. He lied during an official investigation, and that's a crime in and of itself. Besides, we're back to sending a message - and what message would an apology send?

Torture is very intimidating to dissidents - perhaps Cohen is too obtuse to have noticed that particular use of torture by oppressive regimes, but I'm sure they'll confirm that it "works". Also, if you're intent on getting information at any cost and are willing to act on the information you obtain no matter how dubious it may be, torture gets you lots of information you can act upon, usually faster and in much greater volume than would interrogation. Who's arguing that would be ineffective? The debate is over the measure you use for "effectiveness", and... silly things like American values and morality.

At the same time, we have to be respectful of those who were in that Sept. 11 frame of mind, who thought they were saving lives - and maybe were - and who, in any case, were doing what the nation and its leaders wanted. It is imperative that our intelligence agents not have to fear that a sincere effort will result in their being hauled before some congressional committee or a grand jury. We want the finest people in these jobs - not time-stampers who take no chances.

When we had the finest people in those jobs, we didn't need or use torture. When we had immoral, stupid, sociopathic people in those jobs, we got Abu Ghraib. There's a term that I've heard used for people who claim, "I was only following orders," when their on-the-job atrocities are challenged. Do you know that term, Richard?

The best suggestion for how to proceed comes from David Cole of Georgetown Law School. Writing in the Jan. 15 New York Review of Books, he proposed that either the president or Congress appoint a blue-ribbon commission, arm it with subpoena power, and turn it loose to find out what went wrong, what (if anything) went right and to report not only to Congress but to us.

"If anything"? Richard doesn't see any tension between his implication that nothing went right under Bush, and his blind endorsement of everything Bush did post-9/11?

We were the ones, remember, who just wanted to be kept safe.

It's quite reasonable for the citizens of a nation to ask that their government protect them from foreign enemies. That's part of the government's job. It's quite another for the government, or hacks like Richard Cohen, to read into that, "At all costs." Unlike Cohen, some of us were never ready to surrender our core values. But then, perhaps Cohen never had any.

Popularity

His editorial deserves greater ridicule, but I don't have time to keep up with all of Gerson's nonsense. Let's focus on this:

The real lesson in the years since Sept. 11 is different from what the Democratic candidates imagine: It is easy to be loved when you are a victim. It is harder to be popular when you act decisively to protect yourself and others.

Well, first of all we have a false dichotomy - our choices are either to "be a victim" or to "act decisively to protect yourself and others". Obviously, between the two, people are going to choose the flattering depiction - "Of course we want to be decisive! Of course we want to defend ourselves! Of course we defend others as well." Never mind that Gerson's "lesson" is not even close to reflecting reality. If Gerson were writing about the two World Wars and adhered to this style, he would elide the gratitude received by the nations the U.S. helped liberate, and would write something along the lines of, "Twice now, we have fought to free Europe, and both times Germany hated us for it."

If anybody has been playing the "victim" card since 9/11, it would be the Bush Administration. Being a "victim" is its excuse for everything, from secret detentions, to torture, to limiting habeas corpus, to warrantless spying, to entering into a massive war of choice despite the doubts and, in some cases, opposition of our allies. And the rift with the world did not start with a war in the defense of ourselves or others - it came by virtue of Bush's war of choice with Iraq. His decision that he was going to reinvent the region by war, whatever the doubts of our allies. What happened? He proved to be wrong in his professed rationale for the invasion and, despite an extremely competent invasion by the U.S. military, he proved to be beyond incompetent in the aftermath of the invasion.

Had Bush listened to "old Europe", he may well have learned within months that there were no "WMD's" in Iraq. But then, that was a pretext - he didn't want confirmation that Iraq had abandoned its weapons programs before the war, as it might have cost him the opportunity to start the war. Had he listened to "old Europe", or even to experienced voices within his own Administration, the military, or the State Department, he would have heard that successful occupation is difficult, requires a massive troop commitment, and that democratizing a nation and introducing market principles into a controlled economy is a touch more complicated than, say, growing a Chia Pet. Instead he sent in a band of incompetents like L. Paul Bremer to reinvent the nation, whatever the will of the people. And he decided to disband the Iraqi military, sending hundreds of thousands of armed, unemployed young men off to joblessness (i.e., to engage in street crime, join the "insurgency", or both.) What's not to love?

You can argue that once he got past his "The Pet Goat" moment, Bush started to act "decisively", sure. But decisive or not, you don't earn anybody's respect when every major decision you make is wrong. (I know that some people will choose to give him respect despite his incompetence, but let's not pretend that he earned it.) A half-competent President could have used his post-9/11 popularity boost, combined with the enormous "benefit of the doubt" initially afforded by the rest of the world, and could have embarked on a plan to eliminate Al Qaeda and to press for reforms in the Middle East. Bush had other plans.

Gerson follows his standard mendacious line that when the Democrats speak of improving our reputation in the world, it can only mean that we want to make this nation's enemies like us more. He is contemptuous of "old Europe" - "pacifists" (like the French in Chad?) who fought alongside us in the First Gulf War and Afghanistan.... er., I mean, who thought invading Iraq was a really bad idea. Gerson illustrates this idea by arguing that even when we're popular in other countries, they still may oppose our policies and pursue their own self-interest... well, duh. And even more idiotic, his notion that improving our international reputation will inevitably mean rolling over and giving our enemies everything they want. While this type of idiocy may be mistaken for brilliance during Bush Administration speechwriting sessions, it's unfortunate that Gerson's White House experience has apparently left him unable to write anything more than bad fiction.

Another Disaster Relief Scandal

CJR Daily congratulates the AP for covering a neglected story:

A disaster relief company that took supplies that were supposed to go to Sept. 11 rescuers at the World Trade Center escaped punishment after the government discovered its own employees had stolen artifacts from ground zero, once-secret federal documents show.

* * *

The FBI developed evidence from whistleblowers that the company had dispatched trucks to the warehouse and loaded hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of donated bottled water, clothes, tools and generators to be moved to Minnesota in a plot to sell some for profit, the records show.

Better a cover-up than a scandal, right?

George Will Gets It Right

I have to make sure I'm picking the right adjective....

Whoring, intr v., "To compromise one's principles for personal gain."

But if you don't have principles that's not quite right... Oh yes, here we go....

The Washington Post gives Bush Administration shills William Kristol and Gary Schmitt the opportunity to argue why the President should feel free to ignore the Constitution:

A U.S. president has just received word that American counterterrorist operatives have captured a senior al Qaeda operative in Pakistan. Among his possessions are a couple of cell phones -- phones that contain several American phone numbers. In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, what's a president to do?

Well gosh, golly gee... a hypothetical Al Qaeda operative is picked up, his hypothetical cellular phones contain hypothetical phone numbers of American citizens within the United States, and (although they can monitor the numbers for up to 72 hours under FISA before submitting a back-dated application for a warrant) a hypothetical Administration official fears that their hypothetical application might be denied for hypothetical reasons, which might cause them to lose hypothetical evidence. What is a President do do, other than flout the Constitution?

George Will outthinks them both, even before you get past the headline of his editorial - "Why Didn't He Ask Congress?"

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

I doubt that Senator Roberts expects anything in return for his setting the record straight on Clarke's testimony, which apparently was in fact consistent with his prior testimony, but it does take a certain amount of gumption to stand up to the Senate Majority Leader of one's own party, and the desire of certain partisans to undercut Clarke's testimony.

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"Threat" or "No Threat"

The Bush Administration helpfully explained yesterday that the Presidential Daily Briefing titled "Osama bin Laden Determined to Attack the U.S." was not a threat because "There was not a time and place of an attack".

Let's see how the Bush Administration tackles real threats....

* December, 2002: A Bellbrook, Ohio High School student is interrogated by the Secret Service because he wore a t-shirt which had a picture of Bush with a target on his forehead which read, "Not My President".

* March, 2003: A student at Eastern Washington University whose family had immigrated from Iran is interrogated by the Secret Service after advocating against the invasion of Iraq during class, apparently after somebody called the Secret Service with the allegation that he had a picture of Bush on a dartboard in his dorm room.

* May, 2003: Two sixteen-year-old students at Oakland High School are interrogated and threatened with deportation after one commented in class that "Bush is whacked" and the other joked about getting a sniper to "take care" of Bush.

You see, the Bin Laden information suggested a manner of attack, but did not have specifics as to time and place, and thus was not a threat. While the comments and actions by the various students were... um... well... er... Well, they were threats. Let's leave it at that.

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On the Edge of a Sword

Watching Condoleezza Rice testify, I don't expect any real surprises or revelations. After a surprisingly unpracticed reading of her long introductory statement, Ms. Rice demonstrated a range of reactions to questions, including what appeared to be anger and fear. Audience applause resulted when a commission member reminded her of the time limits, and that it would be nice if she would simply answer the questions as posed to her rather than eating up his time with self-serving, peripheral commentary. But it seems clear that Ms. Rice has a typical strategy for a witness whose testimony is artificially constrained to a limited amount of time - eat up as much time as possible with long, rambling, indirect, and sometimes non-responsive answers.

When Ms. Rice suggested that she wanted to read certain passages of a classified report, the commissioner asked that she declassify the entire report. She asserted, repeatedly, that the commission had been given access to the full report - as if that is the same thing as declassifying the report. The commissioner noted that until today, even the headline of the report had been classified.

Although the headline suggested otherwise, Ms. Rice argued that its description of Al Qaeda activity, delivered shortly before the 9/11 attacks, were historic in nature - detailing Al Qaeda's domestic activities and terrorist plans in the past, but not warning about the future. That's the sort of hair-splitting which might impress the author of a TownHal.com idiotorial, but c'mon. A warning that Al Qaeda operatives were traveling to the U.S., residing in the U.S., and operating cells within the U.S., had no relevance to Al Qaeda's future activities? Assuming she is being honest, I don't know what she was smoking when she made that assessment, but it wasn't something that improved her judgment.

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Saving Face....

The Bush Administration has reportedly refused to release the speech that Condoleezza Rice was going to present in public on September 11, 2001, on the basis that it is "confidential".

The Washington Post, citing former U.S. officials who have seen the Rice speech, reported last week that the speech was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy. It said the speech included no mention of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups.

Granted, disclosure would help rip the curtain away from the truths the Bush Administration fears, but even with the continued stonewalling one would have to be rather dense not to be able to read between lines this wide.

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Looking for Something In All The Wrong Places

Today, Bill Safire (like several columnists before him) complains that the 9/11 Commission is focused on the wrong questions:

Today we are engaged in the wrong debate. The brouhaha about whether the new Bush administration treated the threat of Al Qaeda as "important" versus "urgent" is history almost as ancient as whether F.D.R. did enough to avert Pearl Harbor.

Funny.... When the 9/11 Commission was formed, numerous columnists from the political left and center complained that its focus was too narrow, and that it appeared to be designed (by the Bush Administration and the Republican majority in Congress) to avoid a full inquiry into the most crucial issues surrounding 9/11 and terrorism prevention for fear that the President might be embarrassed - with particular criticism focused on the selection of Henry Kissinger as its proposed Chair. Now that it looks like the President is going to be embarrassed anyway, the right has started to whinge (while the left remains silent), making it appear that this inquiry has become far less about finding out "what happened and why it happened" and much more a game of political "gotcha". Safire concludes,

Let the floo floo birds look back in anger, scheduling the 9/11 commission's report on the opening day of the Democratic convention, hoping to persuade voters that Bush's concern with Saddam's threat diminished our suppression of Osama.

Other birds who dare to look ahead will wonder: Are those fixated on fixing blame avoiding the needed debate about how best to get to the root of terror in the Middle East today?

Safire deliberately fails to mention the fact that the 9/11 Commission asked the Bush Administration for an extension that would have delayed the release of its report until after the election, and Bush refused. And Safire conveniently forgets to mention the drooling loonies on the right who are so backward-focused they want to blame everything that has happened during Bush's watch on the Clinton Administration.

But beyond that, why is it only now that he is asking us to look ahead? Those of us who have been looking ahead for years had concerns about domestic terrorism before 9/11, and had grave concerns about the Bush Administration's so-called "war on terror" even before it became strangely focused on Iraq. "Don't look back - only look ahead" isn't great advice when it only comes after somebody has taken you down a blind alley.

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The Stakes Increase

While the Bush Administration continues to attack Richard Clarke for his testimony to the 9/11 commission, the media has been paying attention to the details of the alleged contradictions and errors, and has been drawing its own conclusions, as demonstrated by the Washington Post:

But the broad outline of Clarke's criticism has been corroborated by a number of other former officials, congressional and commission investigators, and by Bush's admission in the 2003 Bob Woodward book "Bush at War" that he "didn't feel that sense of urgency" about Osama bin Laden before the attacks occurred.

In addition, a review of dozens of declassified citations from Clarke's 2002 testimony provides no evidence of contradiction, and White House officials familiar with the testimony agree that any differences are matters of emphasis, not fact. Indeed, the declassified 838-page report of the 2002 congressional inquiry includes many passages that appear to bolster the arguments Clarke has made.

* * *

Eleanor Hill, staff director of the House-Senate intelligence committee inquiry, said last week that she heard some of Clarke's March 24 presentation before the 9/11 commission and remembered his six-hour, closed-door appearance.

"I was there," she said of Clarke's 2002 testimony, "and without a transcript I can't have a final conclusion, but nothing jumped out at me, no contradiction" between what he said last month and his testimony almost two years ago. She also noted that Rice refused to be interviewed by the joint intelligence panel, citing executive privilege.

* * *

While the commission staff has found that Clarke did agitate for the armed Predator, several Bush administration officials, reading from a memo prepared by Clarke's staff for a Sept. 4, 2001, meeting of national security principals, said the recommendation about the Predator was this: "We believe concerns about the warhead's effectiveness argue against flying armed missions this fall."

* * *

With the exception of the Predator issue, Clarke's alleged misrepresentations are largely peripheral to his central argument about Bush's lack of attention to terrorism before Sept. 11. The White House believes this nevertheless suggests flaws in Clarke's overall credibility.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is examining how the Bush Administration's narrative of its supposed emphasis on terrorism before 9/11 aligns with the facts, and points out that Condoleezza Rice's account is not always consistent with the stories of other Bush Administration insiders.

Meanwhile, it has been alleged that while President Bush was planning to invade Afghanistan nine days after the 9/11 bombings, he was placing an enormous emphasis on Iraq as the next target.

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As if we didn't know....

As I have previously mentioned, I recall watching a political program shortly before 9/11 during which the Republicans were attempting to make their case for a "missile shield", and brushed off a response from Senator Joe Biden that the biggest threat was not of a rogue state firing a missle at us, and that a nuclear attack was far more likely to come in the form of a bomb welded into the bow of a freighter that was sailed directly into a U.S. port. Before 9/11, there was no public sign that the Bush Administration viewed terrorism as a significant issue. After 9/11, there were numerous accounts, including a quote from President Bush in Bob Woodward's book, suggesting that the Bush Administration had underestimated the significance of al Qaeda and terrorism:

Until September 11, however, Bush had not put that thinking [that Clinton's response to al Qaeda emboldened bin Laden] into practice, nor had he pressed the issue of bin Laden. Though Rice and others were developing a plan to eliminate al Qaeda, no formal recommendations had ever been presented to the president.

"I know there was a plan in the works. . . . I don't know how mature the plan was," Bush recalled. . . . He acknowledged that bin Laden was not his focus or that of his national security team. There was a significant difference in my attitude after September 11. I was not on point [before that date], but I knew he was a menace, and I knew he was a problem."

And today, courtesy of the Washington Post, we get insight into the Administration's thinking on 9/11.

On Sept. 11, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to outline a Bush administration policy that would address "the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday" -- but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals.

The speech provides telling insight into the administration's thinking on the very day that the United States suffered the most devastating attack since the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. The address was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups, according to former U.S. officials who have seen the text.

The speech was postponed in the chaos of the day, part of which Rice spent in a bunker. It mentioned terrorism, but did so in the context used in other Bush administration speeches in early 2001: as one of the dangers from rogue nations, such as Iraq, that might use weapons of terror, rather than from the cells of extremists now considered the main security threat to the United States.

David Broder got it right today, writing:

For nine days the White House and its allies did everything in their power to discredit Clarke, while trying to shield his old boss, Rice, from the commission's unanimous request that she give sworn public testimony in response to Clarke's stunning indictment.

When the effort to shoot the messenger failed to halt the political erosion, Bush did what he never should have done: He threw Rice to the commission. And, worse, he failed to do what he could have done long before: Offer the American people and the world a clear, coherent and detailed account of his own activities and state of mind in the months leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Instead of acting as the man in charge and saying to the commission, "No, you may not put my national security adviser on the mat, but I will answer to the public for what happened," he did just the opposite. He gave up Rice and then turned on his heel and walked out of the briefing room even as reporters were trying to ask him questions.

The most obvious reason for the years of Bush Administration stonewalling since 9/11 is that Bush fears being embarrassed, and perhaps having his reelection bid mortally wounded, by the truth. It's within his power to provide a different reason for his refusal to candidly speak to the facts, but I don't expect to hear one.

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Conservative Fiction

Joel Mobray, who TownHall.com brags "his start with" them, idiotorializes:

As we’re learning from the 9/11 commission, if the United States hadn’t squandered its many opportunities to kill Osama bin Laden before 2001, there’s a good chance 3,000 Americans would not have perished on September 11th.

What credible or informed person would make such an assertion? This loosely knit organization, and its plan for 9/11 which was years in the making, would have toppled like dominoes had its leader been killed? To support his nonsense, Mobray adds,

Israel is finally starting to figure out that terror is a top-down plague, not some grassroots “uprising.” If only they had killed the head of Hamas and his minions years ago, many of the 377 innocent Israelis Hamas slaughtered might be alive today.

Perhaps Mobray somehow missed the fact that assasssination is not a new tool in the Israeli anti-terrorism kit - it's one they have applied for years? With former Prime Minister Ehud Barak bragging of his covert missions to assassinate Palestininans, when serving as a young commando in the IDF - most notably the 1973 assassination of three organizers of the Munich Olympic Games massacre? That being about five years before Israel made the choice to fund Hamas in the hope that it would grow and thereby weaken the secular PLO, instead of stamping it out in its formative stages? (And let's not forget that it wasn't Israel who first started the "top down" notion that executing leaders of resistance groups in the Holy Land would end their violence - Britain created that model. And Britain arrested and executed a lot of people without ending either terrorism or resistance to the Mandatory Government.)

In 1938 alone the number of Palestinians killed in action by the British was conservatively estimated at not less than one thousand, while 54 Palestinians were executed by hanging, and 2,463 Palestinians were detained. The Palestinian population at the time did not exceed one million. In spite of all these measures the Palestinian rebellion continued unabated during 1938, and several areas of the country, including the Old City of Jerusalem, fell under rebel control.

Additionally, Israel's history suggests that assassinations are often followed by a spike in violence, which in theory will precede a lull. In "big picture" terms, we're still waiting for the lull. In "real world" terms, an assassination of Bin Laden might have accelerated the 9/11 attack plan - while there is considerable evidence to demonstrate his knowledge and approval, there does not appear to be any evidence that Bin Laden was actively involved in that plot.

Mobray also displays abject ignorance over North Korea:

If we had dropped a daisy cutter on Kim Jong-Il’s North Korean palace in 1994 instead of signing a worthless nonproliferation treaty, more than two million North Koreans would be alive today—and they’d be breathing freedom. Would some civilians have died? Of course. But nowhere near two million. Not even close.

Well, we can start with the thirty-seven thousand or so troops we had stationed near the DMZ, and about half a million South Koreans in Seoul. (We couldn't have moved our thirty-seven thousand troops without triggering a "preemptive" strike by the North, because they know that we would only move them to remove them from harm's way in an anticipated battle.) North Korea probably could also have lobbed some missiles into Japan. But hey - that's still less than two million. Unless you count the North Koreans, South Koreans, and U.S. soldiers who would have been killed in the subsequent war which only somebody like Mobray would be too dumb to anticipate following such a strike.

But I guess all is fair in the Brooks/Safire school of editorializing, where all opinions are valid, and you can make stuff up as long as you do so to make a joke or if it may "resonate" as true.

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Friedman Explains Himself....

If you've been reading Thomas Friedman in the New York Times over the past few years, you've probably seen a great deal of ego, a great deal of self-justification, a great deal of after-the-fact rationalization, and a diminishing association between what he writes and claims and what seems to be happening in the real world. Today he explains,

I have a confession to make: I am the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and I didn't listen to one second of the 9/11 hearings and I didn't read one story in the paper about them. Not one second. Not one story.

Lord knows, it's not out of indifference to 9/11. It's because I made up my mind about that event a long time ago: It was not a failure of intelligence, it was a failure of imagination. We could have had perfect intelligence on all the key pieces of 9/11, but the fact is we lacked — for the very best of reasons — people with evil enough imaginations to put those pieces together and realize that 19 young men were going to hijack four airplanes for suicide attacks against our national symbols and kill as many innocent civilians as they could, for no stated reason at all.

It's "stuff and nonsense", of course, and a rather pathetic excuse for not bothering to examine and analyze actual facts, events, and testimonies.

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And there you go....

The right-wing reactionaries who accuse Clinton of ignoring Al Qaeda and who attempt to blame his administration for 9/11 should perhaps read what Condoleezza Rice has to say:

The al Qaeda terrorist network posed a threat to the United States for almost a decade before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Throughout that period -- during the eight years of the Clinton administration and the first eight months of the Bush administration prior to Sept. 11 -- the U.S. government worked hard to counter the al Qaeda threat.

During the transition, President-elect Bush's national security team was briefed on the Clinton administration's efforts to deal with al Qaeda. The seriousness of the threat was well understood by the president and his national security principals.

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The Import of Pakistan

A couple of years ago I read Shame by Salman Rushdie - a tale set in a "fictional" nation which obviously represented Pakistan. I was left with a greater understanding of Pakistan, and the firm conviction that Salman Rushdie absolutely detests that nation. President Musharref seems, in many ways, like he stepped off the pages of that book.

Prior to 9/11, the United States was not exactly in Pakistan's cheering corner. In fact, there was considerable strain and concern, relating to Pakistan's rumored trade of weapons technology (including nuclear technology), its development of its own nuclear arsenal, and its conflict with India over Kashmir (with at best indifference and at worst support for cross-border terrorism). There was also the fact that the Taliban was largely a Pakistani movement that had found a home in neighboring Afghanistan, but the significance of that had not yet sunk completely in - the Bush Administration, in fact, was at that time happy to reward the Taliban for its role in suppressing heroin production.

After 9/11, Pakistan became an important but vexing ally in the war against Afghanistan, and it remains crucial to our fighting that war. Musharref seems to recognize that his future is most assured if he has the backing of the United States, and (given his circumstances) has made a considerable effort to do what the Bush Administration asks of him. It was obvious from the outset that this was putting him into greater conflict with Pakistan's religious extremists. Over the past two weeks, that conflict has produced two significant assassination attempts, which were obviously made on the basis of inside information. Musharref escaped in both cases by a matter of seconds. Unless a highly placed mole (or perhaps more than one highly placed mole) is identified, and the flow of information ended, it is unlikely that Musharref's luck will hold.

In today's London Guardian, Peter Preston examines some of the issues surrounding Musharref, his importance in the continuing war effort in Afghanistan, and the improbability that a successor will be as accomodating of the United States.

Pervez Musharraf, for all his evasions, is a pretty determined man. He has India's prime minister coming to town for talks about peace. He has chosen a necessary course and, by and large, sticks to it. But Washington and London, applauding benignly, can take absolutely nothing for granted. Here is a teeming country boasting its own brand new weapons of mass destruction. Knock one piece off the board (or blow up one bridge on time) and everything, including the nature of the finger on the button, changes.

Another 9/11 attack on the White House lawn - or the back side of Downing Street? Maybe. The awful warnings of homeland security are always, rather hysterically, with us. But a calculating, canny Osama has a much easier and more tempting place to strike: and is doing just that. Pakistan is the frontline of 2004, with only one lonely (almost) ex-soldier guarding the gate. When the WMD go off there, then the connections engulf us all.

It's an unpleasant possibility for those of us who have long been concerned that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal might end up in the hands of an extremist government not far removed from the Taliban, or be funneled by a successor government (or during the chaotic period between governments) into the hands of a terrorist group that would like to plant a megaton or two in Los Angeles, London, New York, or Tel Aviv.

Of course, there's also the possiblity that following the assassination of Musharref, Bush might roll in some troops to maintain order, producing yet another occupation of yet another nation that is largely ungovernable. So I guess we should all be rooting for the survival of a self-serving, corrupt, non-elected third world despot "because the alternative is worse". Happy New Year.

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