|
UNIVERSITY OF COMPASSIONATE
CONSERVATISM (what
is this?)
You have selected
COMPASSIONATE
CONSERVATISM
215*
*Bush administration's lies
and deception moral clarity,
honesty and integrity
in response to Richard Clarke's statements
In this course you will learn about the
abundant lies, deception or
intent to deceive or smear or slime moral clarity, honesty and integrity displayed by President George W. Bush
(and his administration/campaign) - in response
to Richard Clarke. [To see their abject
dishonesty, fakery and fraud compassionate conservatism
on other topics, click on one of the following: Election
2000, the Economy,
Iraq.] Please
note that the statements made by Bush or his
spokespersons/administration3 - as
cited in column 3 of the tables below - are by default extracted from
one or more of the links shown in column 4. If the source of the
statements is different from the link(s) in column 4, then a URL is
explicitly provided in column 3. For feedback and corrections, please go
here. I would like to acknowledge the
following sites where I get the vast majority of my links from: Atrios/Eschaton,
Buzzflash, Daily
Howler, Center
for American Progress.
A special thanks to Buzzflash
for disseminating the information on this page!
Also, a special thanks to Tim
Dunlop of the Road to Surfdom for his link to this page.
(Visit Tim's website to enjoy passages from Richard
Clarke's book "Against All Enemies"!)
Total Compassion Con credits 2
available from this course to date = 43
Last
Update: April 13, 2004
Once you are done with this course, you may choose another course by picking one of the options
below
| PREFACE
(bold text is my emphasis)
New
York Times review of Clarke's book: "...Given the howling
political firestorm over Richard A. Clarke’s new book,
“Against All Enemies,” it is surprising how familiar many of
his assertions sound, his recitation of pre-9/11 antiterrorism
missteps by the Bush and Clinton administrations echoing earlier
books and old newspaper and magazine articles…Many of its
most debated charges about the Bush administration’s handling of
the war on terrorism have been leveled before. Some have been
corroborated or openly acknowledged by other members of the
administration..." Washington
Post: "...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..." |
Compassion Con
credits total = 43
| # |
Pres.
Bush or his representative's Compassionate statement
|
Some
Uncompassionate Facts |
Compassion
Con Credits |
| 1 |
Rice
for Bush
"...Despite what some have suggested, we
received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to
attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some
analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack airplanes to
try to free U.S.-held terrorists...."
|
Walter
Pincus and Dana Milbank (Washington Post):
"...Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste
disclosed this week that Rice had asked, in her private meetings
with the commission, to revise a statement she made publicly
that "I don't think anybody could have predicted that those
people could have taken an airplane and slam it into the World
Trade Center . . . that they would try to use an airplane as a
missile." Rice told the commission that she misspoke; the
commission has received information that prior to Sept. 11, U.S.
intelligence agencies and Clarke had talked about terrorists
using airplanes as missiles.
.."
David
Johnston and Eric Schmitt (New York Times):
"...A Congressional inquiry into intelligence activities
before Sept. 11 found 12 reports over a seven-year period
suggesting that terrorists might use airplanes as weapons..."
Scott
Paltrow (Wall Street Journal) via Cooperative Research:
"...Despite official assertions that
the U.S. had little reason to suspect before Sept. 11 that
airliners would be used as weapons, there is new evidence that
the federal government had on several earlier occasions taken
elaborate, secret measures to protect special events from just
such an attack.
The events that were protected included the 1996 Olympics and
President Bush's inauguration in 2001. Planning for similar
special protection for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah was
under way at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials say...
In the aftermath of those attacks, Bush
administration officials have said they received no intelligence
warning of such a tactic. "I don't think anybody could have
predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it
into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into
the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a
missile," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said
in a May 2002 news briefing.
Yet on several occasions starting in the mid-1990s, U.S.
intelligence agencies had passed on information concerning such
a possibility, including early plans by al Qaeda officials to
use passenger jets as kamikaze weapons, according to records and
current and former government officials...
In addition, the plan was used for Mr. Clinton's second
inauguration in 1997, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's
50th anniversary celebration in Washington in 1999, the
Republican and Democratic conventions in 2000 and the Bush
inauguration in 2001...
...a stream of intelligence beginning in 1995, which reached the
White House, did indicate that terrorists were plotting attacks
using hijacked jets...
John F. Lehman, a Republican on the 9/11 Commission and a former
secretary of the Navy, agreed that the idea of using aircraft as
weapons by crashing them into something wasn't new on Sept. 11.
"You can't say that the idea of using them as kamikazes is
not something people should have been worried about," Mr.
Lehman says in an interview. "The fact is that kamikazes
were first used in 1944, so it's not exactly a new
concept."
Warning Signs
A look at some intelligence reports in the 1990s that warned of
terrorist attacks with airliners: 1994 Eiffel Tower threat:
"Algerian Armed Islamic Group terrorists hijacked an Air
France flight.and threatened to crash it into the Eiffel
Tower." 1995 Bojinka Plot to blow up American jets over the
Pacific: "An accomplice of Ramzi Yousef told police in the
Philippines [and the FBI] that a variant of the plot involved
flying a plane on a suicide mission into CIA headquarters."
1996 Iranian plot to crash Japanese jet in Israel: "A
passenger would board the plane in the Far East, commandeer the
aircraft, order it to fly over Tel Aviv, and crash the plane
into the city." 1998 Alleged plan by al Qaeda-linked
terrorists to crash plane into World Trade Center: ".A
group, since linked to al-Qa'ida, planned to fly an
explosives-laden plane from a foreign country into the World
Trade Center." Alleged Osama bin Laden plot to crash plane
into a U.S. airport: ".Bin Ladin's next operation might
involve flying an explosives-laden aircraft into a U.S.
airport." 1999 Federal Research Division Report on
terrorism: "Suicide bomber(s). could crash-land an
aircraft.into the Pentagon.or the White House."..."
Atrios:
"...This echoes her previous
statement about this:
I don’t think anybody could have
predicted that these people…would try to use an airplane as a
missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.
They may not have had specific intelligence that
terrorists were preparing to attack using airplanes as missiles.
But, she switches mid-sentence between "evidence" and
"speculation," implying that no analysts had even
"speculated" that hijacked planes could be used as
weapons, which is of course completely false. Bob
Somerby reminds us:
WOODWARD AND EGGEN: But a 1999 report
prepared for the National Intelligence Council, an affiliate of
the CIA, warned that terrorists associated with bin Laden might
hijack an airplane and crash it into the Pentagon, White House
or CIA headquarters.
The report recounts well-known case studies of similar plots,
including a 1995 plan by al Qaeda operatives to hijack and crash
a dozen U.S. airliners in the South Pacific and pilot a light
aircraft into Langley.
“Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida’s Martyrdom
Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high
explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters
of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House,”
the September 1999 report said..."
Eric
Boehlert (Salon.com):
"...A former FBI
wiretap translator with top-secret security clearance, who has
been called "very credible" by Sen. Charles Grassley,
R-Iowa, has told Salon she recently testified to the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States that the
FBI had detailed information prior to Sept. 11, 2001, that a
terrorist attack involving airplanes was being plotted.
Referring to the Homeland Security Department's color-coded
warnings instituted in the wake of 9/11, the former translator,
Sibel Edmonds, told Salon, "We should have had orange or
red-type of alert in June or July of 2001. There was that much
information available." Edmonds is offended by the Bush
White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of
attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. "Especially after reading
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post
Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific
information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use
airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove
it's a lie."...
Edmonds, who is Turkish-American, is a 10-year U.S. citizen who
has passed a polygraph examination conducted by FBI
investigators. She speaks fluent Farsi, Arabic and Turkish and
worked part-time for the FBI...
"President Bush said they had no
specific information about Sept. 11, and that's accurate,"
says Edmonds. "But there was specific information about use
of airplanes, that an attack was on the way two or three months
beforehand and that several people were already in the country
by May of 2001. They should've alerted the people to the threat
we're facing."
Edmonds testified before 9/11 commission staffers in February
for more than three hours, providing detailed information about
FBI investigations, documents and dates..."
Also see: Barry
Ritholtz (The Big Picture) commenting on Altercation; Scott
Paltrow (Wall Street Journal) via Big Picture
|
1
(being very very very very compassionate here)
|
| 2 |
Bush
"...Had I known that the enemy was going
to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have
used every resource, every asset, every power of this government
to protect the American people..."
|
Geraldine
Sealey (Salon.com):
"...CAP quickly found previous
reports that the president was told of the possibility that al-Qaida
was exploring the use of airliners as terror weapons, including
against U.S. targets:
FACT: On August 6, 2001, President Bush 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."
-- Dateline NBC, 9/10/02 (Transcript in Nexis)
FACT: U.S. and Italian officials were warned in July 2001 that
Islamic terrorists had considered "crashing an airliner
into the Genoa summit of industrialized nations."
-- LA Times, 9/27/01.
FACT: A 1999 report prepared by the Library of Congress for the
National Intelligence Council "warned that Osama bin
Laden's terrorists could hijack an airliner and fly it into
government buildings like the Pentagon." The report
specifically said, "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's
Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with
high explosives … into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the
CIA, or the White House."
-- CBS News, 5/17/02.
CAP also found this nugget, showing that the State Department
under Bush downplayed the importance of the threat of Osama bin
Laden in its annual terrorism report in early 2001.
"The State Department officially released its annual
terrorism report just a little more than an hour ago, but unlike
last year, there's no extensive mention of alleged terrorist
mastermind Osama bin Laden. A senior State Department official
tells CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much
energy on bin Laden and 'personalizing terrorism.'"
-- CNN, 4/30/2001..."
Sen.
Gary Hart interviewed on Salon.com:
"...Hart was co-chair (with former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H.)
of the U.S. Commission on National Security, a bipartisan panel
that conducted the most thorough investigation of U.S. security
challenges since World War II. After completing the report,
which warned that a devastating terrorist attack on America was
imminent and called for the immediate creation of a
Cabinet-level national security agency, and delivering it to
President Bush on January 31, 2001, Hart and Rudman personally
briefed Rice, Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. But,
according to Hart, the Bush administration never followed up on
the commission's urgent recommendations, even after he repeated
them in a private White House meeting with Rice just days before
9/11...
[Sen. Hart:]...I met with Rice not long
after the president was in Crawford and being briefed by CIA
officials on the possible use of aircraft against American
targets. This was all happening in the weeks before 9/11. So I
think it's terribly disingenuous for the president of the United
States to say, "If somebody had told us they were going to
use aircraft against the World Trade Center, we would of course
have taken action." I think it's just ridiculous to say,
"We're not going to do anything until someone tells us
where, when and how."..."
Also see item ABOVE this one.
|
1 |
| 3 |
Rice
for Bush
"...[Rice] said administration officials
felt, as a precaution, they could not rule out an attack in the
United States, but that if Clarke had any specific information
suggesting attacks in the United States, "he never
communicated that to anyone."..."
|
Center
for American Progress:
"...For instance, the President received a CIA warning on
August 6th, 2001, headlined, "Bin
Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." noting the "plot
could include the hijacking of an American airplane."..."
|
See above |
| 4 |
Hadley for Bush
"...All the chatter [before 9/11] was of
an attack, a potential al Qaeda attack overseas..."
|
Center
for American Progress:
"...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."
[Joint Congressional Report, 12/02]..."
|
1 |
| 5 |
Rice
for Bush
"...In response to my request for a
presidential initiative, the counterterrorism team, which we had
held over from the Clinton administration, suggested several
ideas...We adopted several of these ideas. We committed more
funding to counterterrorism and intelligence efforts..."
Rice for Bush
"...on
NBC Nightly News, [claimed] that the "the president
increased counterterrorism funding several-fold" before
9/11..."
|
Center
for American Progress:
"...But the real story is far different, as the following
internal Department of Justice (DoJ) documents obtained by the
Center for American Progress demonstrate. The Bush
Administration actually reversed the Clinton Administration's
strong emphasis on counterterrorism and counterintelligence.
Attorney General John Ashcroft not only moved aggressively to
reduce DoJ's anti-terrorist budget but also shift DoJ's mission
in spirit to emphasize its role as a domestic police force and
anti-drug force. These changes in mission were just as critical
as the budget changes, with Ashcroft, in effect, guiding the day
to day decisions made by field officers and agents. And all of
this while the Administration was receiving repeated warnings
about potential terrorist attacks..."
[Read the
entire post to see how anti-terrorism budgets were proposed
to be cut before and after 9/11, among other things.]
Rice
for Bush on NBC:
"...the problem was that we were, as a country, somewhat
blind to what was happening inside the country. Because
we had had a very big wall between domestic intelligence,
domestic collection and — information and what the CIA did.
It was only after September 11th that the country came to terms
with the fact that the FBI and the CIA needed to be able to
coordinate on collection and on sharing of intelligence in a way
that would let us know what was going on in the country..."
Center
for American Progress:
"...Meanwhile, the
Administration "downgraded
terrorism as a priority" and ended such key
counterterrorism efforts as the "highly classified program
to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States." Among
the victims of the Administration's "downgrading
of terrorism as a priority" was "a highly
classified program to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United
States," which the White House suspended in the months
leading up to 9/11...
As
the WP reports on the new documents released by American
Progress, "in the early days after the Sept. 11 attacks,
the Bush White House cut
by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism
funds by the FBI." When congressional Democrats
sponsored amendments to substantially increase this funding, the
President
threatened to veto them, and they were voted down."
Center
for American Progress:
"...In reality, the
Bush Administration was preparing a FY2003 budget (the first
budget fully authored by the new Administration) that proposed
serious cuts to key counterterrorism programs. As the 2/28/02
NYT reported, 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." See a display of Rice's dishonesty in
this American
Progress video clip...."
Also see Uggabugga
and Atrios
|
1 |
| 6 |
Rice for Bush
"...In the same article, Rice belittled
Clarke's proposals by writing: "The president wanted more
than a laundry list of ideas simply to contain al Qaeda or 'roll
back' the threat. Once in office, we quickly began crafting a
comprehensive new strategy to 'eliminate' the al Qaeda
network." Rice asserted that while Clarke and others
provided ideas, "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the
new administration." That same day, she said most of
Clarke's ideas "had been already tried or rejected in the
Clinton administration."..."
|
Walter
Pincus and Dana Milbank (Washington Post):
"...But in her interview with NBC two days later, Rice
appeared to take a different view of Clarke's proposals.
"He sent us a set of ideas that would perhaps help to roll
back al Qaeda over a three- to five-year period; we acted on
those ideas very quickly. And what's very interesting is that .
. . Dick Clarke now says that we ignored his ideas or we didn't
follow them up."
..."
Condi
Rice to 9/11 Commission:
"...Dick Clarke is a very, very fine counterterrorism
expert -- and that's why I kept him on...He had some very good
ideas. We acted on them...Dick Clarke -- let me just step back
for a second and say we had a very -- we had a very good
relationship...
He also had attached the Delenda plan, which is
my understanding was developed in 1998, never adopted and, in
fact, had some ideas. I said, "Dick, take the ideas that
you've put in this think piece, take the ideas that were there
in the Delenda plan, put it together into a strategy, not to
roll back al Qaeda" -- which had been the goal of the
Clinton -- of what Dick Clarke wrote to us -- "but rather
to eliminate this threat." And he was to put that strategy
together.
But by no means did he ask me to act on a plan. He gave us a
series of ideas. We acted on those..."
Compassiongate note: See how Condi phrases it - he did
not ask me to "act on a plan"! In other words,
he did give her a [Delenda] plan by her own statement.
Center
for American Progress:
"...Rice claimed this
week that "No
al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new
administration." But the 9/11 Commission reported, "On
January 25th, 2001, Richard
Clarke forwarded his December 2000 strategy paper and a copy
of his 1998 Delenda plan to the new national security adviser,
Condoleezza Rice."..."
Frank
Rich (New York Times):
"...Last Sunday on "60 Minutes" Ed Bradley dipped
a toe into it by noting that there were fewer attacks in the
30-month period leading up to 9/11 than there have been in
"the 30 months afterward when you had this war against
it."..."
|
1 |
| 7 |
Rice for Bush
"...Dick Clarke was counterterrorism czar
for a long time with a lot of attacks on the United States. What
he was doing was--what they were doing apparently was not
working. We wanted to do something different..."
|
Condi
Rice to 9/11 Commission:
"...Dick Clarke is a very, very fine counterterrorism
expert -- and that's why I kept him on...He had some very good
ideas. We acted on them...Dick Clarke -- let me just step back
for a second and say we had a very -- we had a very good
relationship."
Ryan
Lizza (TNR):
"...She didn't get a chance to explain how this statement
comports with Hadley's insistence that "one of the
decisions we made was to keep Mr. Clarke and his
counter-terrorism group intact" because "we wanted an
experienced team to try and identify the risk, take actions to
disrupt the terrorists."..."
Walter
Pincus and Dana Milbank (Washington Post):
"...She criticized Clarke for being the architect of failed
Clinton administration policies, but also said she retained
Clarke so the Bush administration could continue to pursue
Clinton's terrorism policies...
Rice implicitly criticized Clarke on CNN on Monday, saying that
"he was the counterterrorism czar for a period of the '90s
when al Qaeda was strengthening and when the plots that ended up
September 11 were being hatched." But in a White House
briefing two days later, she said she kept Clarke on the job
because "I wanted somebody experienced in that area
precisely to carry on the Clinton administration policy."
...
"
David
Johnston and Eric Schmitt (New York Times):
"...Mr. Clarke was in charge of responding to immediate
threats, one senior official said. He had been counterterrorism
chief in the Clinton administration, and Ms. Rice had decided to
keep him in the job because she wanted continuity. "It was
because everyone respected Dick Clarke and knew he was a pile
driver," the official said..."
Rice
for Bush:
"...In response to my request for a
presidential initiative, the counterterrorism team, which we had
held over from the Clinton administration, suggested several
ideas...We adopted several of these ideas. We committed more
funding to counterterrorism and intelligence efforts..."
Talkingpointsmemo:
"...On a more substantive note
compare Wilkinson's description of Clarke's pitiful proposal to
this one from an August 4th, 2002 article
in Time. Note particularly the comment from the
"senior Bush administration official" at the end ...
Berger had left the room by the time Clarke, using a Powerpoint
presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. A senior Bush
Administration official denies being handed a formal plan to
take the offensive against al-Qaeda, and says Clarke's materials
merely dealt with whether the new Administration should take
"a more active approach" to the terrorist group. (Rice
declined to comment, but through a spokeswoman said she recalled
no briefing at which Berger was present.) Other senior officials
from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, however, say
that Clarke had a set of proposals to "roll back" al-Qaeda.
In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation
reads, "Response to al Qaeda: Roll back." Clarke's
proposals called for the "breakup" of al-Qaeda cells
and the arrest of their personnel. The financial support for its
terrorist activities would be systematically attacked, its
assets frozen, its funding from fake charities stopped. Nations
where al-Qaeda was causing trouble-Uzbekistan, the Philippines,
Yemen-would be given aid to fight the terrorists. Most
important, Clarke wanted to see a dramatic increase in covert
action in Afghanistan to "eliminate the sanctuary"
where al-Qaeda had its terrorist training camps and bin Laden
was being protected by the radical Islamic Taliban regime. The
Taliban had come to power in 1996, bringing a sort of order to a
nation that had been driven by bloody feuds between ethnic
warlords since the Soviets had pulled out. Clarke supported a
substantial increase in American support for the Northern
Alliance, the last remaining resistance to the Taliban. That
way, terrorists graduating from the training camps would have
been forced to stay in Afghanistan, fighting (and dying) for the
Taliban on the front lines. At the same time, the U.S. military
would start planning for air strikes on the camps and for the
introduction of special-operations forces into Afghanistan. The
plan was estimated to cost "several hundreds of millions of
dollars." In the words of a senior Bush Administration
official, the proposals amounted to "everything we've done
since 9/11."..."
|
1 |
| 8 |
Wilkinson for
Bush
"...I want to make a very point here,
that all of his ideas he presented were not a strategy.
This is a president who wanted a comprehensive strategy to go
after al Qaeda where it lives, where it hides, where it plots,
where it raises money. All the ideas that -- except for one --
that Dick Clarke submitted, this administration did..."
|
Talkingpointsmemo:
"...On a more substantive note
compare Wilkinson's description of Clarke's pitiful proposal to
this one from an August 4th, 2002 article
in Time. Note particularly the comment from the
"senior Bush administration official" at the end ...
Berger had left the room by the time Clarke, using a Powerpoint
presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. A senior Bush
Administration official denies being handed a formal plan to
take the offensive against al-Qaeda, and says Clarke's materials
merely dealt with whether the new Administration should take
"a more active approach" to the terrorist group. (Rice
declined to comment, but through a spokeswoman said she recalled
no briefing at which Berger was present.) Other senior officials
from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, however, say
that Clarke had a set of proposals to "roll back" al-Qaeda.
In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation
reads, "Response to al Qaeda: Roll back." Clarke's
proposals called for the "breakup" of al-Qaeda cells
and the arrest of their personnel. The financial support for its
terrorist activities would be systematically attacked, its
assets frozen, its funding from fake charities stopped. Nations
where al-Qaeda was causing trouble-Uzbekistan, the Philippines,
Yemen-would be given aid to fight the terrorists. Most
important, Clarke wanted to see a dramatic increase in covert
action in Afghanistan to "eliminate the sanctuary"
where al-Qaeda had its terrorist training camps and bin Laden
was being protected by the radical Islamic Taliban regime. The
Taliban had come to power in 1996, bringing a sort of order to a
nation that had been driven by bloody feuds between ethnic
warlords since the Soviets had pulled out. Clarke supported a
substantial increase in American support for the Northern
Alliance, the last remaining resistance to the Taliban. That
way, terrorists graduating from the training camps would have
been forced to stay in Afghanistan, fighting (and dying) for the
Taliban on the front lines. At the same time, the U.S. military
would start planning for air strikes on the camps and for the
introduction of special-operations forces into Afghanistan. The
plan was estimated to cost "several hundreds of millions of
dollars." In the words of a senior Bush Administration
official, the proposals amounted to "everything we've done
since 9/11."..."
|
None assigned for
compassionate reasons |
| 9 |
Rice for Bush
"...what's very interesting is that, of
course, Dick Clarke was the counterterrorism czar in 1998 when
the embassies were bombed. He was the counterterrorism czar in
2000 when the Cole was bombed. He was the counterterrorism czar
for a period of the '90s when al Qaeda was strengthening and
when the plots that ended up in September 11 were being hatched..."
|
Center
for American Progress:
"...Vice
President Cheney echoed the very same criticism
on Rush Limbaugh's radio show. Rice and Cheney conveniently ignored
the President's own "buck stops here" declaration
and desire for a "culture
of personal responsibility": Both refused to mention
that they were Clarke's bosses in the lead up to 9/11, and that
they ignored Clarke's repeated efforts to get the Administration
to take terrorism more seriously. They also failed to elucidate
why, if Clarke's record was so terrible, they called him an
"outstanding
public servant" and decided to keep him on board at the
White House...."
Condi
Rice to 9/11 Commission:
"...Dick Clarke is a very, very fine counterterrorism
expert -- and that's why I kept him on...He had some very good
ideas. We acted on them...Dick Clarke -- let me just step back
for a second and say we had a very -- we had a very good
relationship."
|
None assigned --- for
compassionate reasons |
| 10 |
Cheney
for Bush
"...As I say, he was the head of
counterterrorism for several years there in the '90s, and I
didn't notice that they had any great success dealing with the
terrorist threat..."
|
Clarke
on Salon.com:
"...It's possible that the vice president has spent so
little time studying the terrorist phenomenon that he doesn't
know about the successes in the 1990s. There were many. The
Clinton administration stopped Iraqi terrorism against the
United States, through military intervention. It stopped Iranian
terrorism against the United States, through covert action. It
stopped the al-Qaida attempt to have a dominant influence in
Bosnia. It stopped the terrorist attacks at the millennium. It
stopped many other terrorist attacks, including on the U.S.
embassy in Albania. And it began a lethal covert action program
against al-Qaida; it also launched military strikes against al-Qaida.
Maybe the vice president was so busy running Halliburton at the
time that he didn't notice..."
Clarke
on CNN:
"...Well, a great deal was done. The administration stopped
the al Qaeda attacks in the United States and around the world
at the millennium period, they stopped al Qaeda in Bosnia, they
stopped al Qaeda from blowing up embassies around the world,
they authorized covert lethal action by the CIA against al Qaeda,
they retaliated with cruise missile strikes into Afghanistan,
they got sanctions against Afghanistan from the United Nations.
There was a great deal the administration did, even though at
the time, prior to 9/11, al Qaeda had arguably not done a great
deal to the United States.
If you look at the eight years of the Clinton administration, al
Qaeda was responsible for the deaths of fewer than 50 Americans
over those eight years. Contrast that with Ronald Reagan, where
300 Americans were killed in Lebanon and there was no
retaliation. Contrast that with the first Bush administration
where 260 Americans were killed on Pan-Am 103 and there was no
retaliation.
I would argue that for what had actually happened prior to 9/11,
the Clinton administration was doing a great deal. In fact, so
much that when the Bush people came into office they thought I
was a little crazy, a little obsessed with this "little
terrorist" [Osama] bin Laden. Why wasn't I focused on
Iraqi-sponsored terrorism..."
|
None assigned --- for
compassionate reasons |
| 11 |
Cheney for Bush
"...[Bush] wanted a far more effective
policy for trying to deal with [terrorism], and that process was
in motion throughout the spring..."
|
Center
for American Progress:
"...Over the weekend, the Bush-Cheney campaign issued a
statement saying the Administration "changed its policies
to address the terrorism problem, even before 9/11"
claiming that the Bush team "went from a policy of swatting
flies to putting
al Qaeda at the top of the list." But a look at the
record shows just how dishonest this statement is: In the face
of warnings before 9/11, the Administration deemphasized
counterterrorism; never
once convened its own counterterrorism task force; threatened
to veto efforts to divert national missile defense funds
into counterterrorism; delayed
arming the unmanned Predator drone flying over
Afghanistan; terminated
"a highly classified program to monitor al Qaeda suspects
in the United States"; attacked
previous Administrations for focusing too much on Osama bin
Laden; rejected
security recommendations from the government's bipartisan
national security commission; and downgraded the
counterterrorism office within the White House. In fact, al
Qaeda was so
low on this list of priorities, that neither Bush, Vice
President Cheney or Rice ever once uttered the terms "al
Qaeda" or "Osama bin Laden" between the time the
Bush team took office and 9/11. Want to know more? American
Progress has compiled an exhaustive,
day-by-day overview of the Bush administration's public
statements on national security, defense and international
issues from January 20, 2001 to September 10, 2001..."
Center
for American Progress:
"...The Center for American Progress has compiled an
exhaustive, day-by-day overview of the Bush administration's
public statements on national security, defense and
international issues from Jan. 20 to Sept. 10, 2001...While the
Bush administration maintains it was focused extensively on
terrorism, our analysis of 557 public statements reveals only
one mention of al Qaeda by the administration over the 8-month
period. Notably, this single mention of al Qaeda was found in a
signed notice from President Bush continuing an executive order
– issued by President Clinton – prohibiting transactions
with the Taliban. Osama bin Laden was mentioned only 19 times
during the same period, 17 of which occurred in the context of
press briefings or questions from journalists..."
Center
for American Progress:
"...Bush said [in May of 2001] that Cheney would direct a
government-wide review on managing the consequences of a
domestic attack, and 'I will periodically chair a meeting of the
National Security Council to review these efforts.' Neither
Cheney's review nor Bush's took place." By comparison,
Cheney in 2001 formally convened his Energy Task Force at least
10 separate times, meeting at least 6 times with Enron energy
executives.
– Washington Post, 1/20/02
, GAO Report, 8/22/03,
AP, 1/8/02..."
Daily
Howler:
"...According to Clarke, the threat
of terror wasn’t “urgent” for the Bush Admin before 9/11.
In this case, Clarke himself told scribes where to go. Yep! He
sent them straight to this passage in Woodward:
WOODWARD (page 39):
[Bush] 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…I didn’t have that sense of urgency, and my blood was
not nearly as boiling.”
Oof! The White House would love to get
that one back! Of course, the pundits would have missed it too.
But Clarke just keeps bringing it up..."
David
Talbot (Salon.com):
"...Former Democratic Sen. Gary Hart
of Colorado also directly told senior Bush officials loudly and
clearly that, in his words, "The terrorists are coming, the
terrorists are coming."
Hart was co-chair (with former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H.) of
the U.S. Commission on National Security, a bipartisan panel
that conducted the most thorough investigation of U.S. security
challenges since World War II. After completing the report,
which warned that a devastating terrorist attack on America was
imminent and called for the immediate creation of a
Cabinet-level national security agency, and delivering it to
President Bush on January 31, 2001, Hart and Rudman personally
briefed Rice, Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. But,
according to Hart, the Bush administration never followed up on
the commission's urgent recommendations, even after he repeated
them in a private White House meeting with Rice just days before
9/11...
[Sen. Hart:] ...George Bush -- and this is
often overlooked -- held a press conference or made a public
statement on May 5, 2001, calling on Congress not to act
and saying he was turning
over the whole matter to Dick Cheney.
So this wasn't just neglect, it was an active position by the
administration. He said, "I don't want Congress to do
anything until the vice president advises me." We now know
from Dick Clarke that Cheney never held a meeting on terrorism,
there was never any kind of discussion on the department of
homeland security that we had proposed. There was no vice
presidential action on this matter.
In other words, a bipartisan commission of seven Democrats and
seven Republicans who had spent two and a half years studying
the problem, a group of Americans with a cumulative 300 years in
national security affairs, recommended to the president of the
United States on a reasonably urgent basis the creation of a
Cabinet-level agency to protect our country -- and the president
did nothing!
By the way, when our final report came out in 2001, it did not
receive word one in the New York Times. Zero. The Washington
Post put it on Page 3 or 4, below the fold..."
Michael
Isikoff and Mark Hosenball (Newsweek):
"...In fact, the commission staff released a wealth of new
details over the past two days that tend to corroborate
Clarke’s basic story: that the Bush White House did not treat
Al Qaeda as an “urgent” priority in the months before
September 11. In one staff report, the commission stated that
deputy CIA director John McLaughlin had told the panel there was
“great tension” in the summer of 2001 between the Bush
administration policymakers and intelligence officials who
believed, like him, “that this was a matter of great
urgency.” The report added that two CIA analysts who
specialized in monitoring Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden
“were so worried about an impending disaster that one of them
told us that they considered resigning and going public with
their concerns.”
Yet the commission’s staff reports
suggest the new Bush administration was moving slowly on many
fronts: Clarke himself was upbraided in January 2001 when he
asked for an immediate “principals” meeting of cabinet
chiefs to develop an urgent new anti-Al Qaeda policy and was
told to instead work with a committee of “deputy” chiefs. By
the summer of 2001, when this committee had finally drawn up
recommendations, many of the "principals" had already
departed Washington for their annual vacations and the meeting
was not held until Sept. 4, a week before the attacks.
At the time, Clarke said, intelligence warnings of a
“spectacular” attack were pouring in at a level higher than
anything top intelligence officials had ever seen. Yet at the
Pentagon, according to another commission report, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld had devoted little time to the issue and
some of his aides “told us that they thought the new team was
focused on other issues”—such as dissolving an
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that was impeding the
administration’s plans to develop a new Star Wars antimissile
defense system. The commission noted that the Defense Department
post that traditionally deals most with counterterrorism, an
assistant secretary for special operations and low-intensity
conflict, hadn’t even been filled at the time that one of the
hijacked airlines slammed into the Pentagon.
Clarke himself was so deeply dismayed with the results of the
Bush White House policy review on Al Qaeda—and thought it was
so ineffective—that he fired off a memo to national-security
adviser Condoleezza Rice just before the Sept. 4 meeting of
cabinet chiefs. The memo, according to the commission staff,
laid out Clarke’s frustrations with the Pentagon and the CIA
for resisting his proposals for immediate, aggressive
actions against bin Laden. In the memo, the commission staff
stated, Clarke “urged policymakers to imagine a day after a
terrorist attack, with hundreds of American dead at home and
abroad, and ask themselves what they could have done.” ..."
Talkingpointsmemo:
"...On a more substantive note
compare Wilkinson's description of Clarke's pitiful proposal to
this one from an August 4th, 2002 article
in Time. Note particularly the comment from the
"senior Bush administration official" at the end ...
Berger had left the room by the time Clarke, using a Powerpoint
presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. A senior Bush
Administration official denies being handed a formal plan to
take the offensive against al-Qaeda, and says Clarke's materials
merely dealt with whether the new Administration should take
"a more active approach" to the terrorist group. (Rice
declined to comment, but through a spokeswoman said she recalled
no briefing at which Berger was present.) Other senior officials
from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, however, say
that Clarke had a set of proposals to "roll back" al-Qaeda.
In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation
reads, "Response to al Qaeda: Roll back." Clarke's
proposals called for the "breakup" of al-Qaeda cells
and the arrest of their personnel. The financial support for its
terrorist activities would be systematically attacked, its
assets frozen, its funding from fake charities stopped. Nations
where al-Qaeda was causing trouble-Uzbekistan, the Philippines,
Yemen-would be given aid to fight the terrorists. Most
important, Clarke wanted to see a dramatic increase in covert
action in Afghanistan to "eliminate the sanctuary"
where al-Qaeda had its terrorist training camps and bin Laden
was being protected by the radical Islamic Taliban regime. The
Taliban had come to power in 1996, bringing a sort of order to a
nation that had been driven by bloody feuds between ethnic
warlords since the Soviets had pulled out. Clarke supported a
substantial increase in American support for the Northern
Alliance, the last remaining resistance to the Taliban. That
way, terrorists graduating from the training camps would have
been forced to stay in Afghanistan, fighting (and dying) for the
Taliban on the front lines. At the same time, the U.S. military
would start planning for air strikes on the camps and for the
introduction of special-operations forces into Afghanistan. The
plan was estimated to cost "several hundreds of millions of
dollars." In the words of a senior Bush Administration
official, the proposals amounted to "everything we've done
since 9/11."..."
Talkingpointsmemo:
"...[Outgoing Deputy National
Security Advisor Lieutenant General Donald L. Kerrick], who
stayed through the first four months of the Bush administration,
said, "candidly speaking, I didn't detect" a strong
focus on terrorism. "That's not being derogatory. It's just
a fact. I didn't detect any activity but what Dick Clarke and
the CSG [the Counterterrorism Strategy Group he chaired] were
doing." General Hugh Shelton, whose term as chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff began under Clinton and ended under Bush,
concurred. In his view, the Bush administration moved terrorism
"farther to the back burner."
America
Unbound, p. 76
Ivo Daalder & James Lindsay..."
|
1 |
| 12 |
Rice
for Bush
"...Through the spring and summer of
2001, the national security team developed a strategy to
eliminate al Qaeda -- which was expected to take years. Our
strategy marshaled all elements of national power to take down
the network, not just respond to individual attacks with law
enforcement measures. Our plan called for military options to
attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other
targets -- taking the fight to the enemy where he lived...."
|
Spencer
Ackerman (TNR):
"...Rice has refused to testify
publicly before the 9/11 Commission. In her stead yesterday, the
White House sent the gregarious Deputy Secretary of State,
Richard Armitage. Gorelick confronted him with the difference
between what Rice described in her op-ed and NSPD-9:
GORELICK: So I would ask
you whether it is true, as Dr. Rice said in The Washington
Post, "Our plan called for military options to attack
Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other
targets, taking the fight to the enemy, where he lived" ?
Was that part of the plan as prior to 9/11?
ARMITAGE: No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11..."
David
Johnston and Eric Schmitt (New York Times):
"...There were also no specific new military plans for
attacking Qaeda forces or the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The
Pentagon's priorities that summer were developing a national
missile defense plan and conducting a broad strategy and budget
review. Military planners had previously offered a comprehensive
plan to incorporate military, economic, diplomatic and political
activities to pressure the Taliban to expel Al Qaeda's leader,
Osama bin Laden. But the plan was never acted on by either the
Clinton or Bush administrations..."
|
1 |
| 13 |
McClellan for
Bush
"..."Dr. Rice, early on in the
administration started holding daily briefings with the senior
directors of the National Security Council, of which he was one.
But he refused to attend those meetings, and he was later asked
to attend those meetings and he continued to refuse to attend
those meetings."...."
|
Brad
Delong:
"...Rice: "To somehow suggest that the attack on 9/11
could have been prevented by a series of meetings--I have to
tell you that during the period of time we were at battle
stations," Rice said yesterday. McClellan added, "He's
been out there talking about whether or not he was participating
in certain meetings. So it appears to be more about the process
than the actual actions we have taken."..."
Brad
Delong:
"...Ms. Rice said, Mr. Clarke was very much involved in the
administration's fight against terrorism. "I would not use
the word `out of the loop,'... He was in every meeting that was
held on terrorism," Ms. Rice said. "All the deputies'
meetings, the principals' meeting that was held and so forth,
the early meetings after Sept. 11."..."
Atrios:
"...I really just can't even follow
all of the Bush admin lies about this stuff. First we
have this:
Ms. Rice painted a distinctly
different picture of the involvement of Mr. Clarke, who has
prompted furious responses since he asserted in a new book and
in testimony on Capitol Hill that President Bush did not heed
warnings before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"He was in every meeting that was held on terrorism,"
Ms. Rice said. "All the deputies' meetings, the principals'
meeting that was held and so forth, the early meetings after
Sept. 11."..."
Atrios:
"...AP 6/28/02 Link:
WASHINGTON - President Bush's national
security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months
prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during
only two of those sessions, officials say.
(thanks to ensley)..."
|
2 |
| 14 |
Rice for Bush
"...Richard Clarke had plenty of
opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought
the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he
chose not to..."
|
Center
for American Progress:
"...Clarke sent a memo to Rice principals on 1/24/01 marked
"urgent" asking for a Cabinet-level meeting to deal
with an impending Al Qaeda attack. The White House acknowledges
this, but says "principals did not need to have a formal
meeting to discuss the threat." No meeting occurred until
one week before 9/11.
– White House Press Release, 3/21/04..."
Kansas
City Star:
"...President Bush's top
counterterrorism adviser warned seven days before Sept. 11,
2001, that hundreds of people could die in a strike by al-Qaida.
Richard Clarke also said that the administration was not doing
enough to combat the threat, the commission investigating the
attacks disclosed Wednesday.
Clarke, who served as a senior White House counterterrorism
official under three successive presidents, wrote to national
security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Sept. 4, 2001, urging
“policy-makers to imagine a day after a terrorist attack, with
hundreds of Americans dead at home and abroad, and ask
themselves what they could have done earlier,” according to a
summary of the letter included in a commission staff report.
Clarke cites the same plea in his new book..."
|
1 |
| 15 |
Rice
for Bush
[asserted] "...that Bush had requested a
CIA briefing in the summer of 2001 because of elevated terrorist
threats..."
|
Walter
Pincus and Dana Milbank (Washington Post):
"...At the same time, some of Rice's rebuttals of Clarke's
broadside against Bush, which she delivered in a flurry of media
interviews and statements rather than in testimony, contradicted
other administration officials and her own previous statements.
...the CIA contradicted Rice's earlier assertion that Bush had
requested a CIA briefing in the summer of 2001 because of
elevated terrorist threats..."
Dan
Eggen and Walter Pincus (Washington Post):
"...The CIA now says that a
controversial August 2001 briefing summarizing potential attacks
on the U.S. by al-Qaida was not requested by President Bush, as
Rice and others had long claimed. The Aug. 6, 2001, document,
known as the President's Daily Brief, has been the focus of
intense scrutiny because it reported that al-Qaida leader Osama
bin Laden advocated airplane hijackings, that al-Qaida
supporters were in the United States and that the group was
planning attacks here.
After the existence of the highly classified document was first
revealed in news reports in May 2002, Rice held a news
conference in which she suggested that Bush had requested the
briefing because of his keen concern about elevated terrorist
threat levels that summer. But Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic
commission member, disclosed at the hearing yesterday that the
CIA informed the panel last week that the author of the briefing
does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to
compile the briefing came from within the CIA..."
|
1 |
| 16 |
Rice
for Bush
"...KING: Clarke says Mr. Bush pressured
him the day after the 9/11 attacks to find evidence blaming Iraq
and that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and other senior officials
also wanted to blame Saddam Hussein. White House aides say Mr.
Bush and others did initially suspect Iraq but that in the end
they followed the evidence.
RICE: He told me Iraq is to the side. We're going after
Afghanistan and we're going to eliminate the Taliban and the al
Qaeda base in Afghanistan..."
Rice
for Bush
"...Not a single National Security
Council principal at that meeting recommended to the president
going after Iraq. The president thought about it. The next day
he told me Iraq is to the side..."
White
House
"...The President
then advised his NSC Principals on September 17 that Iraq was
not on the agenda, and that the initial US response to 9/11
would be to target al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan.
Dick Clarke did prepare a memo for the
President regarding links between Iraq and 9/11. He sent this
memo to Dr. Rice on September 18, after the President, based on
the advice of his DCI that that there was no evidence that Iraq
was responsible for the attack, had decided that Iraq would not
be a target in our military response for 9/11. Because the
President had already made this decision, Steve Hadley returned
the memo to Dick Clarke on September 25 asking Clarke to
"please update and resubmit," to add any new
information that might have appeared. Clarke indicated there was
none. So when Clarke sent the memo forward again on September
25, Dr. Rice returned it, not because she did not want the
President to read the answer set out in the memo, but because
the President had already been provided the answer and had
already acted based on it..."
|
Walter
Pincus and Dana Milbank (Washington Post):
"...Rice's assertion this week that Bush told her on Sept.
16, 2001, that "Iraq is to the side" appeared to be
contradicted by an order signed by Bush on Sept. 17 directing
the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion
of Iraq.
.."
Center
for American Progress:
"...According to the Washington Post, "six days after
the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
President Bush signed a 2-and-a-half-page document" that
"directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options
for an invasion of Iraq." This is corroborated by a CBS
News, which reported on 9/4/02 that five hours after the
9/11 attacks, "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was
telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq."
In terms of resources, the Iraq decision had far-reaching
effects on the efforts to hunt down Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. As
the Boston Globe reported, "the Bush administration is
continuing to shift highly specialized intelligence officers
from the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan
to the Iraq crisis."..."
Daily
Howler:
"...Here are four of Clarke’s
“controversial” charges, along with the supporting material
from Woodward’s much-loved book:
Rummy’s targets: Pundits found it hard to believe that
Rummy really said it! On September 12, Clarke alleged, the wise
old owl was prowling the White House, looking for someone to
bomb:
CLARKE (page 31):
Later in the day, Secretary Rumsfeld complained that there were
no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan and that we should
consider bombing Iraq, which, he said, had better targets.
At first I thought Rumsfeld was joking. But he was serious and
the President did not reject out of hand the idea of attacking
Iraq.
Pundits wondered if this could be true.
They should have studied their Woodward—for example, his
account of Camp David on 9/15:
WOODWARD (page 84):
When the group reconvened, Rumsfeld asked, Is this the time to
attack Iraq? He noted that there would be a big build-up of
forces in the region, and he was still deeply worried about
the availability of good targets in Afghanistan.
In Bush at War, a string of
advisers note that Iraq would provide better targets. (Hence the
word “still” in the passage above.) Last weekend, Rumsfeld
was asked about Clarke’s troubling claim by Chris Wallace of Fox
News Sunday. Rummy gave two rambling replies; in the course
of his non-answer answers, he never denied making the statement
which Clarke records in his book...
...read Woodward—same day:
WOODWARD (page 49):
Rumsfeld raised the question of Iraq. Why shouldn’t we go
against Iraq, not just al Qaeda? he asked. Rumsfeld was speaking
not only for himself when he raised the question. His deputy,
Paul D. Wolfowitz, was committed to a policy that would make
Iraq a principal target in the first round of the war on
terrorism.
Not that there was anything wrong with it,
but that’s what Woodward records! Indeed, Woodward
shows Cheney voicing a similar view:
WOODWARD (page 43):
“To the extent we define our task broadly,” Cheney said [at
a 9/12 NSC meeting], “including those who support terrorism,
then we get at states. And it’s easier to find them than it is
to find bin Laden.”
Again, rumination on easier targets...
...[Woodward] records Bush’s view on
September 17:
WOODWARD (page 98):
Bush said he wanted a plan to stabilize Pakistan and protect it
against the consequences of supporting the U.S.
As for Saddam Hussein, the president ended the debate. “I
believe Iraq was involved, but I’m not going to strike them
now. I don’t have the evidence at this point.”
In fact, he didn’t have the
evidence, but according to Woodward, he asserted belief..."
Center
for American Progress:
"...Britain's former
ambassador to the United States is now confirming that nine
days after 9/11, President Bush asked for Prime Minister
Tony Blair's support in confronting – and potentially
attacking – Iraq. The White House has denied that President
Bush was focused on Iraq after 9/11, despite the Washington Post
confirming the President
signed a directive in the days after the attacks ordering
the Pentagon to begin drawing up Iraq invasion plans. The
British ambassador's charges have already been corroborated by
former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and former
Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. And Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL)
confirms that the result of the President's focus on Iraq after
9/11 was a loss of focus on the hunt for al Qaeda: Graham said
that on a visit to MacDill Air Force Base in February 2002, a
senior commander of Central Command told him, "Senator, we
have stopped fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan. We
are moving military and intelligence personnel and resources out
of Afghanistan to get ready for a future war in Iraq."..."
Center
for American Progress:
"...Despite all
evidence pointing to al Qaeda and bin Laden as behind the 9/11
attacks, just as Dick Clarke asserted, the Administration
immediately discussed invading Iraq. Powell testified that on
September 15, 2001, "Iraq
was discussed, and Secretary Wolfowitz raised the issue of
whether or not Iraq should be considered for action during this
time." According to Powell, the President said, "first
things first...we'll start with Afghanistan." Powell could
not rule out the possibility that Wolfowitz suggested attacking
Iraq "instead of Afghanistan."..."
|
2
(1 for lying compassion about
Bush's position and 1 for lying compassion
about other "National Security Council principal's"
positions) |
| 17 |
Rice for Bush
"...The president returned to the White
House and called me in and said, I've learned from George Tenet
that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and
9/11..."
|
Daily
Howler:
"...Clarke’s “controversial”
charges, along with the supporting material from Woodward’s
much-loved book...
...[Woodward] records Bush’s view on
September 17:
WOODWARD (page 98):
Bush said he wanted a plan to stabilize Pakistan and protect it
against the consequences of supporting the U.S.
As for Saddam Hussein, the president ended the debate. “I
believe Iraq was involved, but I’m not going to strike them now.
I don’t have the evidence at this point.”
In fact, he didn’t have the
evidence, but according to Woodward, he asserted belief..."
Center
for American Progress:
"...If this is true, then why did the President and Vice
President repeatedly claim Saddam Hussein was directly connected
to 9/11? President Bush sent a letter to Congress on 3/19/03
saying that the Iraq war was permitted specifically under
legislation that authorized force against "nations,
organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or
aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11."
Similarly, Vice President Cheney said on 9/14/03
that "It is not surprising that people make that
connection" between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, and said
"we don't know" if there is a connection...."
|
1 |
| 18 |
Rice
for Bush
"...I don't know what a sense of urgency
any greater than the one we had would have caused us to do
anything differently. I don't know how...we could have done
more. I would like very much to know what more could have been
done?..."
|
Center
for American Progress:
"...There are many more things that could have been done:
first and foremost, the Administration could have desisted from
de-emphasizing and cutting funding for counterterrorism in the
months before 9/11. It could have held more meetings of top
principals to get the directors of the CIA and FBI to share
information, especially considering the major intelligence spike
occurring in the summer of 2001. As 9/11 Commissioner Jamie
Gorelick said on ABC this morning, the lack of focus and
meetings meant agencies were not talking to each other, and key
evidence was overlooked. For instance, with better focus and
more urgency, the FBI's discovery of Islamic radicals training
at flight schools might have raised red flags. Similarly, the
fact that "months before Sept. 11, the CIA knew two of the
al-Qaeda hijackers were in the United States" could have
spurred a nationwide manhunt. But because there was no focus or
urgency, "No nationwide manhunt was undertaken," said
Gorelick. "The State Department watch list was not given to
the FAA. If you brought people together, perhaps key connections
could have been made."..."
Robin
Wright (Washington Post):
"...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.
.."
Center
for American Progress:
"...new evidence has
surfaced that the Bush Administration was asleep at the wheel
before 9/11. The NYT reports that in the summer of 2001,
warnings became "more dire and more specific" and
"were communicated
repeatedly to the highest levels within the White
House." Nevertheless, the Administration's "priorities
that summer were developing a national missile defense
plan" (evidenced by Rice's
plan to make missile defense the national security
centerpiece in a speech on 9/11) while "money for fighting
terrorism had to be justified against an array of other
priorities," including tax cuts. In one instance, the White
House threatened to veto
an effort to shift $800 million from missile defense into
critical counterterrorism programs. Rice's "own focus until
Sept. 11 was usually fixed on matters
other than terrorism" despite Clinton National Security
Adviser Sandy Berger (and others) imploring
her to focus on terrorism...."
Center
for American Progress:
"...According to
Daniel Benjamin's "The
Age of Sacred Terror," the Bush White House before 9/11
halted previous multilateral efforts to press various countries
to strengthen banking regulations which terrorist networks were
abusing...."
Gail
Sheehy (New York Observer):
"...[Rumsfeld] said that on the
morning of Sept. 11, 2001, he was "hosting a meeting for
some of the members of Congress."
"Ironically, in the course of the conversation, I stressed
how important it was for our country to be adequately prepared
for the unexpected," he said.
It is still incredible to the moms that their Secretary of
Defense continued to sit in his private dining room at the
Pentagon while their husbands were being incinerated in the
towers of the World Trade Center. They know this from an account
posted on Sept. 11 on the Web site of Christopher Cox, a
Republican Congressman from Orange County who is chairman of the
House Policy Committee.
"Ironically," Mr. Cox wrote, "just moments before
the Department of Defense was hit by a suicide hijacker,
Secretary Rumsfeld was describing to me why … Congress has got
to give the President the tools he needs to move forward with a
defense of America against ballistic missiles."..."
Center
for American Progress:
"...President Bush
yesterday claimed that "Prior to September the 11th, we
thought oceans could protect us." That is a troubling
statement from a President, considering that in January of 2001,
the U.S.
Government's Commission on National Security gave the White
House a bipartisan report that warned of an attack on the
homeland and urged the new Administration to implement its
specific "recommendations to prevent acts of domestic
terrorism" (an intelligence warning of a domestic attack
was also given
to the White House in May of 2001). Unfortunately,
according to Sens. Warren Rudman (R-NH) and Gary Hart (D-CO),
the Administration rejected the Commission's report, "preferring
to put aside the recommendations." Instead, the White
House said it would have Vice President Cheney head up a task
force to analyze the threat himself. The Administration then waited
five months to officially create the task force, and then failed
to convene a single meeting of the task force in the four
months before 9/11...." |
1 |
| 19 |
Rice for Bush
"...The president launched an aggressive
response after 9/11..."
|
Center
for American Progress:
"...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. The papers show that
Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority
than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for
more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the
attacks."
– Washington Post, 3/22/04..." |
1 |
| 20 |
Rice for Bush
"...so far has refused to provide
testimony under oath to the commission that could possibly
resolve the contradictions. On Wednesday night, she told
reporters, "I would like nothing better in a sense than to
be able to go up and do this, but I have a responsibility to
maintain what is a long-standing constitutional separation
between the executive and the legislative branch."
..."
Rice
for Bush
| |