Obama Derangement Syndrome is Real!

In the last few days I'd been thinking about writing this diary, then President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize and Rachel Maddow let the cat out of the bag and halfway down the street.

I've come to realize that Obama Derangement Syndrome (or Baracknophobia) isn't just a cute way to play turn-about on the Right Wing, it's the dangerous deadly truth of how the Wingnuts have turned literally against their own country.



Obama loses the Olympics and they Cheer, Obama wins the Nobel Prize and they Cry - "He doesn't Deserve it!" (Except for the fact that Pound for Pound based on what he actually has done - HE DOES! - not to mention the potential of what he may yet accomplish)

Obama ordered Gitmo Closed and Torture Banned. He presided over the UN Security Council voting Unanimously to Bring the World Ultimately to ZERO Nuclear Weapons. His approach to Diplomacy has brought Iran to the table, exposed their Nuclear deceit and allowed them to agree to have IAEA inspectors brought in to ensure their compliance with International Mandates. Those are all good things, but not the Right.

So for a moment lets look seriously at where the original version of the phrase 'Bush Derangement Syndrome" comes from (Dr.) Charles Krauthhammer who suggested it in relation to an offhand comment by Howard Dean that President Bush's attempts to suppress the 9-11 Report was because he didn't want information coming out that he'd already aware of it ahead of time.

Diane Rehm: ``Why do you think he (Bush) is suppressing that (Sept. 11) report?''

Howard Dean: ``I don't know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I've heard so far -- which is nothing more than a theory, it can't be proved -- is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis. Now who knows what the real situation is?''

Bush Derangement Syndrome: the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush.

Now, I cannot testify to Howard Dean's sanity before this campaign, but five terms as governor by a man with no visible tics and no history of involuntary confinement is pretty good evidence of a normal mental status. When he avers, however, that ``the most interesting'' theory as to why the president is ``suppressing'' the 9/11 report is that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance, it's time to check on thorazine supplies.

It's clear from Dean's comment that he doesn't seriously support the theory that Bush was warned by the Saudis prior to 9-11, and that he was doing nothing more than speculating.

However... years later we do know that Bush Received this in the August 6th PDB which at the time of the 9-11 Commission Hearings remained classified. He may not have received a warning from the Saudis but THIS IS WHAT HE DID KNOW more than a month before the attack.

The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of bin Laden's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the U.S.

Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that in ---, Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own U.S. attack.

Ressam says bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation. Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Laden associates surveyed our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.

Al Qaeda members -- including some who are U.S. citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.

Two al-Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were U.S. citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.

A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ---- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

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

They had a ton of information right there - including methods and targets, everything but the date - and Bush did nothing. Nothing. Zero. Zip. ZILCH about it.

In addition to this it was revealed by Bob Woodward that an urgent meeting between CIA director Tenet and then National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice calling a Four Alarm Warning about Bin Laden and al Qeada in July of 2001 was Concealed from the 9-11 Commission.

"The July 10 meeting of Rice, Tenet and Black went unmentioned in various investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks, and Woodward wrote that Black 'felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn't want to know about.' "Jamie S. Gorelick, a member of the Sept. 11 commission, said she checked with commission staff members who told her investigators were never told about a July 10 meeting. 'We didn't know about the meeting itself,' she said. 'I can assure you it would have been in our report if we had known to ask about it.'

"White House and State Department officials yesterday confirmed that the July 10 meeting took place, although they took issue with Woodward's portrayal of its results."

It may not have occurred as Dean theorized, or even as Michael Moore suggested in Fahrenheit 9-11 that Bush was slow in his response, and more interested in ready "My Pet Goat" because of his families long standing direct financial ties to the Bin Laden family.

It was not about George W. Bush the person it wasn't just because some people simply had a pathological dislike for George W. Bush - in fact at this point in his career just a month after 9-11 Bush approval ratimgs were in the high 80 percent range - this was because of HIS ACTIONS!

But to Krauthhammer, the intense dislike an eventual calls for "Impeachment" by his most vocal critics had nothing to do with George Bush's Policies... it has to do with those who suffered from "Compromised Intellectual Immune Systems" like of course Barbara Streisand.

Now it's clear Krauthhammer had at least half his tongue in his cheek, never the less the term has stuck - and is even more appropriate now in reverse.

People had good reason to question President Bush on his reasons and rationale for rushing headlong into the Iraq War before the nearly re-inserted Inspectors had finished their job. People had good reason to question Bush's rationale for by-passing the FISA Court to implement broadbased surveillance of U.S Citizens, Journalists and Servicemen without a warrant. People had good reason to question Indifinate Detention in Secret Prisons and Gulags of suspects without Trail access to Habeus Corpus or protections from Mistreatment and Torture.

People had good reason to wonder why it took FIVE FUCKING DAYS to get Fresh Water to New Orleans.

Bush's decision to attacked killed more Americans in a pointless Iraq War than died in 9-11.

Bush CRASH OUR FRACKING ECONOMY by ignoring dangerous lending practices until it was far too late - just like he ignored Bin Laden, just like he ignore Katrina, just like he ignored Afghanistan and Tora Bora, just like he ignored everything - and slammed the country head first into a thick Stone Reality Wall.

These were not Fever Dreams. These were not the Phantasms of a Deranged Mind!

Those of us were bothering to notice had good reason to be upset about all this.

But Death Panels?

Using the Census Bureau to Round Up Republicans and send them to Detention Camps?

We have to fear Socialism and Fascism by Barack Obama when it was George W. Bush who implemented the TARP, took over the Banks and Auto Industry?

We have to fear that Barack Obama is trying to Indoctrinate our School Children by telling them to Stay In School?

Barack shouldn't have bothered even trying to get the Olympics for Chicago unless we pretty much were going to have them anyway?

Barack Obama Doesn't Deserve the Nobel Prize but Yasar Arafat did when the Peace agreement he signed with Izhak Rabin ultimately led to Rabin's assassination? When Desmond Tutu received it years before South African Apartheid ended - a long before there was even any strong evidence that it ever would?

If you have to look for people who are suffering from a serious issue of DERANGEMENT - it's the right wing of this country who have been throwing a massive Temper Tantrum for the last ten months because they think they lost "Their America" - the one where all the really SHITTY things only happened to the Poor and the Brown.

When George W. Bush was first elected, they told the Democrats and those who support Al Gore through the long month of Hell that was Florida to Suck It Up, that they need to Just GET OVER IT and MOVE ON!!

I'm thinking these people are far behind any such good and reasonable advice, and worse -- Thorazine is probably too good for 'em.

Obama Derangement Syndrome is Real! Get the Flynets, the padded rooms are waiting.

Vyan

Rudy's Untold 9-11 Story

Olbermann reports on how Rudy Guiliani's single degree of seperation ties to 9/11 Mastermind - Khallid Sheik Muhammad.

Three weeks after 9/11, when the roar of fighter jets still haunted the city's skyline, the emir of gas-rich Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, toured Ground Zero. Although a member of the emir's own royal family had harbored the man who would later be identified as the mastermind of the attack—a man named Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, often referred to in intelligence circles by his initials, KSM, al-Thani rushed to New York in its aftermath, offering to make a $3 million donation, principally to the families of its victims. Rudy Giuliani, apparently unaware of what the FBI and CIA had long known about Qatari links to Al Qaeda, appeared on CNN with al-Thani that night and vouched for the emir when Larry King asked the mayor: "You are a friend of his, are you not?"

American Mayor, St. Rudy the First, the man who couldn't be bothered to attend meetings of the 9/11 Commission, because he was too busy cashing-in on 9/11, personally invited to Ground Zero a man who harboured one of the masterminds behind the plot?

What's most shocking is that Abdallah al-Thani has been widely accused of helping to spirit KSM out of Qatar in 1996, just as the FBI was closing in on him. Robert Baer, a former CIA supervisor in the region, contends in a 2003 memoir that the emir himself actually sanctioned tipping KSM. The staff of the 9/11 Commission, meanwhile, noted that the FBI and CIA "were reluctant to seek help from the Qatari government" in the arrest of KSM, "fearing that he might be tipped off." When Qatar's emir was finally "asked for his help" in January 1996, Qatari authorities "first reported that KSM was under surveillance," then "asked for an alternative plan that would conceal their aid to Americans," and finally "reported that KSM had disappeared."

Although there's been quite a brujah over Rudy's Shag Fun, aka Sex On the City, I strongly suggest that this story, which smacks at the very least of criminal cluelessness just might be much more dangerous to Rudy's Presidential hopes than his tendency to have the NYPD walk his mistresses Dog.

Limbaugh and the GOP are having a Nutty!

They know it's coming - the massive Perfect Shit Storm that's going to sweep them right out of Congress. The Congress they fought, connived, cheated and swindled their way into. They can feel it and chiggers crawling on their skin - and it's driving them over the freaking edge.

They're having a full on nutty.

This is what happens when you find yourself in a corner, sweating and desperate. You begin to lash out uncontrollably.

Sometimes you might even hit yourself in the process, and that's exactly what were seeing from the GOP these last few weeks before the Mid-Team Bloodbath Elections.

Neat aint it?

First of course we had Senator Felix Macaca-witz, who decided, like oh-so-many neo-cons that he was the smartest guy in the room so he'd sling the absolutely perfect racial slur at a Camera-man from the Jim Webb campaign. The fact that his own mother happens to have been a french speaking woman from North Africa - and the slur french slang for dark skinned people in North Africa - and the Camera-man was of Morrocan Indian desent with dark skin - was all just some odd concidence.

The fact that this was said on camera somehow didn't occur Felix.

Then you've got Republican candidate Tan Nguyen from Orange County California who is himself an immigrant, deciding it was a good idea send a fradulent letter to every person with a spanish surname in the county threatening them with arrest or deportation if they tried to vote. Of course he claimed he had nothing to do with, unless you count personally purchasing the voter list that was used for the mailing.

In Tennesee we've got the RNC and Republican Senate Candidate Bob Corker playing the Mandigo-Card with their ads against Harold Ford Jr. Not just once, but twice (audio).

Dennis the Menace Hastert in the House is going after Nancy Pelosi for ignoring immigration by claiming

Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi has NEVER visited the border. She claims to understand the needs of those on the front lines but has never visited those agents and offers no solutions.

Yeah, well that's great except that she has backed numerous border security measures and has been to the border and visit with border patrol agents in El Paso. They're are even pictures and stuff.

Rep. Jean (Murtha's a Coward) Schmidt is having her nutty over the fact that her Democratic opponent Victoria Wulsin is actually daring to use her own words on the house floor attacking Murtha against her in campaign ads. Specifically her accusations against John Murtha who nearly a year ago called for a timetable (much like the one the President is now crowing about) for redeploying our troops out of Iraq.

"Her continued violation will land her in serious trouble with the House Ethics Committee," Schmidt's spokesman Matt Perin said in a release, referring to the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, which the release mistakenly referred to elsewhere as the "House Committee on Official Standards and Conduct."

Yeah, that's nice except that Wulsin isn't in Congress yet - and therefore isn't under the perview of the House Ethnics(less) Committee. This is the dim-bulb that beat Paul Hacket two years ago? Sheesh.

Lastly we have Rush (The Oxy-Viagra King) Limbaugh, who thought it would be humorous to talk about Micheal Fox going off his meds to do a pro stem-cell research commercial. He's claimed that Fox hasn't done any commercial like this for Republicans. He's wrong. Fox did an ad for Arlen Spector as was shown on Countdown.

FOX: Biomedical research could cure hundreds of diseases, save thousands of lives, and prevent millions of tears. I understand that, and so does Arlen Specter. He helped double the funding for biomedical research, more dollars for more research, for more cures.

Arlen gets it. It`s that simple.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER ®, PENNSYLVANIA: I`m Arlen Specter and approved this ad to tell you there is hope for the future.

After issuing his non-apology apology, Rush went on to state:

I believe Democrats have a long history of using victims of various things as political spokespeople because they believe they are untouchable, infallible, they are immune from criticism.

This sort of tact seems to bring us right back to Ann Coulter the those "Harpies" that lost their husbands and sons in the destruction of the World Trade Center and dared to support Democrats who want to actually implement the suggestions of the 9-11 Commission which they fought hard to have convened doesn't it?

Fox's Response to Limbaugh : I could give a damn about Rush Limbaugh's pity or anyone else's pity. I'm not a victim.

All of this stuff is not an accident. Limbaugh's comment is itself very telling. You see all of these people that Republicans are attacking - Immigrants, Blacks, the parents of our fallen Soldiers such as Cindy Sheehan, the survivors of 9-11 and their families, the survivors of debilitating disease, the people of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans - the most vulnerable, the canaries in the coal mines of our society are exactly the people that their party has failed time and time again.

They aren't being exploited by Democrats - they have chosen to embrace Democrats (and some Republicans) because they share values and they share goals. This is what a great many people are slowly beginning to realize, people such as former Republican Michael Schiavo.

Oops, lost another one to Dietech The Democrats

The GOP isn't looking out for the best interests of the vast majority of the American public. They're only out to line their own pockets with graft from the U.S. Treasury.

Not long ago they wouldn't have dared to be this blatant - they would simply railed against "Libruls" who almost always were nothing more than a surrogate for Black, Hispanic, Poor and Sick people and their interests. They tried to buy off the Black and Hispanic vote by going after them through their Churches - but the cover's been blown on that scam thanks to former White House Official David Kuo.

They've run out of options. There are no more pre-set plays to put on the field. They're winging it.

And now the deep-seated Racism, Sexism and disdain for those in need that is at the core of the Republican Party is finally bubbing back up to the surface.

• They failed to address Osama Bin Laden after the Bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and gave him free pass to attack us again on 9/11.


• They've allowed millions of Americans to lose their health insurance and pensions.


• They were wrong to invade Iraq without a valid justification using lies they gained through TORTURE, and have completely bungled the occupation and reconstruction of that country.

Faced with the truth of their own abject failure, they've reflexively falling back on that old standby - Blame the Victim Survivors or their incompetence and negligence.

Contrary to the claims of commentators on Disney/GOP TV's Nightline that Democrats have been "just as nasty" - they simply don't need to be. The facts and the truth are an automatically negative ad against Republicans.

Just watch and share the DNC's New Web Ad.

All we have to do is point out that Republicans have no plan. Are they going to "Stay the Course" or are they going to "Adapt to Win" - or maybe they're going to "Stay the Win" by "Adapting the Course"... do they really know? Does anyone? Obviously they don't.

In response Democrats have a duty, a sacred responsibility to rise above the muck - to raise the level of debate and discourse in this country, to bring honor back to the nation.

Let the Republicans flail away in the mud, it's is a fitting end for their ideological kind.

Vyan

Al Qaeda Threat Warning to Rice : 10 on a Scale of 10

From Judd at Thinkprogress:

Condoleezza Rice describes her briefing with CIA officials George Tenet and Cofer Black on July 10, 2001 as relatively unremarkable. Here’s how her spokesman Sean McCormack described it yesterday:

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack [said]… the information Rice got “was not new'’ and didn’t amount to an urgent warning. “Rather, it was a good summary from the threat-reporting from the previous several weeks,'’ McCormack said in a statement from Saudi Arabia where Rice is traveling.

Earlier in the day, Rice questioned whether the meeting even happened and said that it was “incomprehensible” the meeting included a warning that U.S. interests faced an imminent threat from al-Qaeda.

Here’s how the briefing was described by the officials who prepared it, according to McClatchy:

One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a “10 on a scale of 1 to 10″ that “connected the dots” in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again…

“The briefing was intended to `connect the dots’ contained in other intelligence reports and paint a very clear picture of the threat posed by bin Laden,” said the official, who described the tone of the report as “scary.”

Rice also considered the August 6 President’s Daily Brief, entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike US,” an historical document.

A lot has been said about this meeting ever since it was revealed by Bob Woodard in his new book "State of Denial" that George Tenet and Cofer Black went to Condoleeza Rice with this intense Powerpoint Presentation.

Of course our good friends over at RedState have been johnny-on-the-ball with this one.

I've just about had it with the “he said, she said” game by the press. Why are we not more skeptical of these "experts" who criticize the Bush Administration after talking to a few "insiders" looking for publicity? A journalist writes a book, and suddenly he's an expert on what essentially amounts to gossip.

The NY Times reported today that members of the 9/11 commission were "alarmed" to learn that Condoleezza Rice was informed in July of 2001 by CIA Director George Tenet about an imminent attack from al Qaeda, according to a new book, State of Denial, by journalist Bob Woodward. Secretary of State Rice of course denies this saying she has no recollection of any such meeting. Who could blame her? Big surprise there. So who’s right?

Ignoring the obvious ridiculousness of claiming that Bob ("All the President's Men/Bush At War Parts I &II") Woodard is just "suddenly" becoming on expert on various White House goings on. But it turns out, yet again, that Rice is the one whose wrong as was explained by Roger Cressey on Countdown last night.

OLBERMANN: My first question, you‘re now consulting within a firm with Richard Clarke, who was at that meeting on July 10, on the central question of whether Rice was warned then of an attack on the U.S. Do we know who‘s right here, Woodward or Secretary Rice?

CRESSEY: Yes, she was warned. I mean, there was a meeting. It was George Tenet, Dick Clarke, another individual from the agency, Cofer Black, and Steve Hadley. And what it was, Keith, was a briefing for Dr. Rice that was similar to a briefing the CIA gave to us in the situation room about a week before, laying out the information, the intelligence, laying out the sense of urgency. And it was pretty much given to Dr. Rice and Steve Hadley in pretty stark terms.

OLBERMANN: The $500 million Cofer Black action plan against bin Laden, would have read like crazy talk if that had been presented to her as Woodward describes it?

CRESSEY: Not crazy talk, but because in some respects, that‘s what we did after 9/11, although, as much as I love and respect Cofer, I don‘t think we would have been able to bring his head back in a box then, because, frankly, all the CIA sources in Afghanistan stunk, and that was part of the problem.

But that type of aggressive, robust covert action is ultimately what was implemented after 9/11.

CRESSEY: There have been reports that neither Secretary Rice nor director Tenet nor Mr. Black had told the 9/11 commission about the meeting on July 10. NBC News learned that the 9/11 commissioner Richard Ben Veniste and Rice‘s friend Philip Zelikow (ph), who was the executive director on the panel, in fact did interview Tenet about the meeting. Can you reconcile those two accounts for us?

CRESSEY: Yes, actually Andrea Mitchell did some great reporting on this today. There was that meeting, it was January 28, 2004. George Tenet spoke about the July 10 meeting extensively. And as a matter of fact, it is in the notes, the transcripts of that meeting that are now contained in the National Archives.

But according to the Right, this is all just payback for "Path to 9/11". Redstate revisted:

Conservatives know what really drives all of this. In the aftermath of Bill Clinton's emotional debacle of an interview with Fox News Sunday, the Left is poised to replace the blame for 9/11 on the shoulders of the current Clinton family counterpoint, Condoleezza Rice or any other poor sap in the Bush Administration at which they can throw mud.

Ok, when exactly did Bob Woodward join the left? He's been a staunch Republican and supporter of Bush for quite some time, some would argue that up until this book he'd tossed journalistic integrity out the window in exchange for access. In fact, I'd argue that point -- particularly regarding his previous two books about Bush at War:

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: He is terrific. He’s a great journalist, and I look forward to reading it. He’s talking about a pretty complex set of discussions about military issues and diplomatic issues, and I’m sure it will be — be fantastic. [CNN, 4/25/04]

DAN BARTLETT: I think Bob Woodward has done a pretty — particularly good job of describing how complicated of a process it is for a commander in chief to do two real important but sometimes conflicting responsibilities. [CNN, 4/25/04]

BARTLETT: We’re urging people to buy the book. What this book does is show a president who was asking the right questions and showing prudence as well as resolve during very difficult times. This book undermines a lot of the critics’ charges. [Washington Post, 4/21/04]

JOHN KING, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: But what is most striking is that, here at the White House, they say read the book. They believe it shows — it paints the picture of a president who asks the right questions, the tough questions, before going to war and then decided that he was right in launching that war. [CNN, 4/19/04]

But now it's clear that once he started asking questions that the Bushies didn't like, his access, particularly to the President was completely cut-off.

The right may cover their eyes and pretend this is "he said, she said" - or that Woodward suddenly has an "agendy", his information is "poorly sourced" or dissappears like "cotton candy" - but as you truly look closer it doesn't dissappear, it hardens into cold hard reality.

Rice was warned, repeatedly, and did nothing - except call for more meetings.

But wait it gets worse, Richard Ben-Veniste, who had originally claimed that the 9/11 Commission had no knowledge of this meeting has reversed his position and now states that they did know (just as Cressey describes). To me, these revelations have echoes of the Ben Sliney incident.

Sliney who played himself in the film United 93 (as a forward thinking man of action and basically the films lead character) was the FAA Hijack Co-ordinator on 9/11, which was also his first day on the job. In reality Sliney initially declined the offer of military assistance for an "intercept" of the aircraft even after they had realized that a hijacking was underway, but of course - this fact was left out of the film.

Intercepts of this type were in fact extremely common. According the Sen Mark Dayton's statements during the Condoleeza Rice confirmation for Secratary of State there were 62 successful intercepts of the "normal" type (where fighter planes are scambled to shadow and follow a no responsive aircraft), during 2001 prior to the 9/11 hijacking and over 100 such intercepts during 2000.

"I'm tired of the lies" Dayton stated in exasperation.

Such intercepts were under within the power of the FAA Hijack Coordinator (Sliney) to request. Not fully understanding his own authority, Sliney made no such request until after American Flight 11 had already hit the World Trade Center Tower 1.

History is being re-written right under our noses.

What this also reminds me of is the fact that in 2001 the FAA distributed a CD-ROM presentation to airlines and airports that cited the possibility of a suicide hijacking. This information and the fact the FAA's own Intelligence unit received over 50 warnings of possible suicide hijackings during that summer was kept Classified by the Bush Administration for five months after the completion of the 9/11 Report, and not released until after the 2004 election was over and Rice had been confirmed as the new Secretary of State replacing the just fired Colin Powell.

It's quite possible and in fact highly likely that portions or even all of the Powerpoint briefing that Tenet provided to Rice -- and according to McClatchy Newspapers were later to also shown to Rumsfeld and Ashcroft -- were also Classifed.

In all fairness to all involved, even Rice, federal law would prevent them from revealing any details of this meeting - even to the 9/11 commission unless they had the proper security clearances. It appears that Tenet's interview with the commission was done privately, and may have been restricted IMO -- (just as the full contents of the infamous Aug 6th PDB once were) - but since that time has been declassified. This would explain why they might first deny any knowledge, but it doesn't explain why they didn't take any action what so ever against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda even after their involvment in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole was confirmed.

The very temerity of the arguement that this is some kind of journalistic payback for "Path to 9/11" or that ABC's timing on revealing the Foley scandal are some clumsy attempt at "balance" is just plain insulting. "Path to 9/11" was packed with politically charged lies and distortions of the truth.



But the truth is clear: Clinton tried (to stop al Qaeda), while Bushco simply stood by and let 3000 people die.

Vyan

On Keith, Clinton and Courage

When Keith Olbermann gave his ball-busting critique of President Bush this Monday - I cheered and then I worried. I knew the reaction would be intense, unrelenting and hysterical - because he'd just done the one thing that hadn't yet been done in much of the various criticism Bush has received.

He correctly noted George W. Bush's repeated failures and Cowardice!

He'd shown something Bush and his cronies are incapable of - Courage.

Naturally the shrill counter-attack didn't come from George personally. It never does.

It wasn't George Bush himself who slandered John McCain claiming he'd been driven a bit batty after his time in the Hanoi Hilton, or that he'd had an illegitimate black child out of wedlock. It wasn't George Bush himself who claimed John Kerry wanted to throw "Spitballs" at our enemies, had lied about the circumstances of his Bronze Star and had betrayed our soldiers by accusing them of War Crimes (by telling the truth). It wasn't George Bush who accused Bill Clinton of being asleep at the switch before 9/11 - and it wasn't George Bush who sent fake Anthrax to Keith Olbermann's home and then laughed at him in print.

MSNBC loudmouth Keith Olbermann flipped out when he opened his home mail yesterday. The acerbic host of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" was terrified when he opened a suspicious-looking letter with a California postmark and a batch of white powder poured out. A note inside warned Olbermann, who's a frequent critic of President Bush's policies, that it was payback for some of his on-air shtick.

[Let me re-emphasize that this letter went to Olbermann's Home - not the MSNBC Offices - which begs the question whether it was sent by someone who either knows Keith personally or was able to get his home address from other "journalists"?]

All these things were done by people even worse than Bush - the people that got him elected.

It seems amazing to me that these people would go to these lengths, but it shouldn't be. We should know by now exactly who we're dealing with. We should know by now that they'll stop at nothing, not the law - not the Constitution - not FISA - not even torture and Terrorism (which is exactly what they attempted with Olbermann) to get and keep what they want.

Which is nothing short of Absolute Power.

No, it wasn't Bush - it was Rupert Murdock's Fox News Network that attempted to sandbag President Clinton last Friday, provoking his highly animated response.

WALLACE: Can I ask you about the Clinton Global Initiative?

CLINTON: You can.

WALLACE: I always intended to sir.

CLINTON: No you intended to move your bones by doing this first. But I don't mind people asking me. I actually talked o the 9/11 commission for four hours and I told them the mistakes I thought I made. And I urged them to make those mistakes public because I thought none of us had been perfect. But instead of anybody talking about those things. I always get these clever little political...where they ask me one sided questions... It always comes from one source.

...

CLINTON: And you guys try to create the opposite impression when all you have to do is read Richard Clarke's findings and you know it's not true. It's just not true. And all this business about Somalia -- the same people who criticized me about Somalia were demanding I leave the next day. Same exact crowd..

WALLACE: one of the...

CLINTON: ...So if you're going to do this for gods sake follow the same standards for everybody.

Olbermann responded forcefully to the attacks on Clinton, by turning the tables onto Bush and exactly what he did and didn't do prior to 9/11. (Which was nothing!)

Thus instead of some commendable acknowledgment that you were even in office on 9/11 and the lost months before it... we have your sleazy and sloppy rewriting of history, designed by somebody who evidently redd the Orwell playbook too quickly.

Thus instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us "safe" ever since -- a statement that might range anywhere from Zero, to One Hundred Percent, true.

We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.

And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush -- you got the name of the supposedly targeted Tower in Los Angeles... wrong.

Thus was it left for the previous President to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:

You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.

Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be the textbook definition... Sir, of cowardice.

Then we have Condoleeza Rice arguing before - you guessed it - Rupert Merdock's New York Post Editorial Board that Bush Administration "did as much to stop Al-Qaeda before 9-11 as the Clinton Administration".

QUESTION: By now I assume you've seen Bill Clinton's performances. How do you respond to his specific accusation that the eight months before 9/11 the Bush Administration, in his words, didn't even try to go after al-Qaida?

SECRETARY RICE: I'd just say read the 9/11 report. We went through this. We went through this argument. The fact of the matter is I think the 9/11 Commission got it about right. Nobody organized this country or the international community to fight the terrorist threat that was upon us until 9/11. I would be the first to say that because, you know, we didn't fight the war on terror in the way that we're fighting it now. We just weren't organized as a country either domestically or as a leader internationally.

But what we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton Administration did in the preceding years. In fact, it is not true that Richard Clarke was fired. Richard Clarke was the counterterrorism czar when 9/11 happened and he left when he did not become Deputy Director of Homeland Security some several months later. We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida. For instance, big pieces were missing, like an approach to Pakistan that might work, because without Pakistan you weren't going to get Afghanistan. And there were reasons that nobody could think of actually going in and taking out the Taliban, either the Clinton Administration or the Bush Administration, because it's true you couldn't get basing rights in Uzbekistan and that was the long pole in the tent.

So I would make the divide September 11, 2001 when the attack on this country mobilized us to fight the war on terror in a very different way. But the notion that somehow for eight months the Bush Administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false. And you know, I think that the 9/11 Commission understood that.

QUESTION: So you're saying Bill Clinton is a liar?

SECRETARY RICE: No, I'm just saying that, look, there was a lot of passion in that interview and I'm not going to - I would just suggest that you go back and read the 9/11 Commission report on the efforts of the Bush Administration in the eight months, things like working to get an armed Predator that actually turned out to be extraordinarily important, working to get a strategy that would allow us to get better cooperation from Pakistan and from the Central Asians, but essentially continuing the strategy that had been left to us by the Clinton Administration, including with the same counterterrorism czar who was Richard Clarke. But I think this is not a very fruitful discussion because we've been through it; the 9/11 Commission has turned over every rock and we know exactly what they said.

To be fair: Getting a foothold in Pakistan was indeed a great help, but the Armed Predator Drone project had been started under President Clinton, it simply wasn't completed until after he was out of office. The project had begun because Bin Laden's hiding place in Afghanistan was out of the reach of Helicopters, which restricted the ability of a Special Forces attack. Cruise missles launched against him had to travel for two hours over Pakistan airspace, giving him ample warning and time to escape. The Predator Drone however had already sighted Bin Laden at least twice during the Clinton Administration, but was unarmed at the time.

In contrast Condoleeza Rice did not even have a meeting to discuss use of the Armed version of the Predator until September 4th 2001 [Although Richard Clarke had begged for the urgent need for such a meeting on January 25th) This means that the Armed Predator did not even fly from the time Clinton left Office until after September 11th.

In his book Clarke accurate describes some genuine failures of the Clinton Administration - not having an Armed Predator ready, missing Bin Laden on August 20, 1998 with the Cruise Missle attack and yes, also missing him with other missle attacks that were called off by CIA. But this is how Clarke describes that fateful meeting - one month after the August 6th PDB "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States" and establishes exactly what the Bush Administration did about Al Qaeda prior to 9/11.

In preparation for [the Sept 4th] meeting I urged Condi Rice to see the issue cleanly, the Administration could decide that al Qaeda was just a nuisance, a cost of doing business for a superpower (as Reagan and the first President Bush had apparently decided about Hezbollah and Libya when those groups had killed hundreds of Americans), and act accordingly, as it had been doing. Or it could decide that the al Qaeda terrorist group and its affiliates posed an existential threat to the Ameican way of life, in which case we should do everthing that might be required to eliminate that threat. There was no in-between. I concluded by noting that before choosing from these alternative, it would be well for Rice to put herself in her own shoes when in the very near future al Qaeda had killed hundreds of Americans. "What will you wish then that you had already done?"

The Principals meeting, when it finally took place, was largely a noneevent. Tenet and I spoke passionately about the urgency and seriousness of the al Qaeda threat. No one disagreed.

Powell laid out an aggressive strategy for putting pressure on Pakistan to side with us against the Taliban and al Qaeda. Money might be needed, he noted, but there ws no plan to find the funds.

Rumsfeld, who looked distracted througout the session, took the Wolfowitz line that there were other terrorist concerns, like Iraq, and whatever we did on this al Qaeda business, we had to deal with the other sources of terrorism.

Tenet agreed to a series of things that CIA could do to be more aggressive, but the details would be worked offline: what would be the new authorities given CIA, how much money would be spent, where would the money come from. I doubted that process would be fruitful anytime soon. CIA had said it could not find a single dollar in any other program to transfer to the anti-al Qaeda effort. It demanded additional funds from Congress.

The only heated disagreement came over whether to fly the armed Predator over Afghanistan to attack al Qaeda. Neither CIA nor the Defense Department would agree to run that program. Rice ended the discussion without a solution. She asked that I finalize the broad policy document, a National Security Presidential Directive, on al Qaeda and send it to her for Presidential signature.

Just over a week after this meeting, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were in flames. This fact is what the right can't stand to admit. This is what their so afraid of. This is why they attack Clinton, they attack Clarke, and they attack Olbermann -- all of whom have done nothing but show exactly what they're made of in the face of the snears, jeers, and mysterious white powder appearing in thier Personal Mail [not from al Qaeda, but from Domestic Terrorists who Support Bush]. All of whom have done what America needed them to do - none of them may have completely suceeded in their tasks, not even Olbermann - yet - but all have tried. All have shown exactly what Bush's minions - Murdock, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, The Swiftboaters, The Republican Congress - have all failed to show.

Courage.

Vyan

Bush was Asleep at the Wheel!

After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts — that he was President on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.

Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.

As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.
From Thinkprogress:

In her interview with the New York Post, Condoleezza Rice falsely claimed that President Bush’s pre-9/11 anti-terror efforts were “at least as aggressive” as President Clinton’s. In fact, the 9-11 Commission disputes that account. While the Bush administration should have been preparing for a potential terrorist attack, it was instead focused on developing a costly missile defense system.

[S]enior officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations…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.” [Time, 8/4/02]

In a speech on May 1, 2001, Bush said, “Unlike the Cold War, today’s most urgent threat stems not from thousands of ballistic missiles in the Soviet hands, but from a small number of missiles in the hands of these states, states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life.” [Bush, 5/1/01]

“After his first meeting with NATO heads of state in Brussels in June 2001, Bush outlined the five top defense issues discussed with the closest U.S. allies. Missile defense was at the top of the list, followed by developing a NATO relationship with Russia, working in common purpose with Europe, increased defense spending in NATO countries, and enlarging the alliance to include former East European countries. The only reference to extremists was in Macedonia, where Bush said regional forces were seeking to subvert a new democracy.” [Washington Post, 4/1/04] expand post »

Providing more than just a briefing, In January of 2001, Richard Clarke also presented a memo request and the URGENT NEED TO ADDRESS AL-QIDA.

Attached to that memo was THE DELENDA PLAN that Clarke had developed to fight Al Qaeda both Politically and Militarily.

After the bombing of the Cole the Clinton Administration had two months to respond before leaving office. During that time the CIA and FBI could not come to an agreemen on whether Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden was responsible. That confirmation came while Bush was in office - and he did nothing.

That is the bottom line point, as Keith Olberman so eloquently stated last night on Countdown.

After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts — that he was President on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.

Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.

As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.
...

Thus instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us "safe" ever since -- a statement that might range anywhere from Zero, to One Hundred Percent, true.

We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.

And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush -- you got the name of the supposedly targeted Tower in Los Angeles... wrong.

Thus was it left for the previous President to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:

You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.

Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be the textbook definition... Sir, of cowardice.

To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.

Vyan

Spin Control on Pre-9/11

After the devastating interview between Chris Wallace and President Clinton, I wondered to myself just how are is the Right-Wing going to respond to this?

Well, the first thing they've done is - surprise - try to demonize Clinton and bolster Wallace. You see, Wallace was just being a responsible journalist - a victim of Clinton's "bullying tirade".

Yeah, right. Poor little Chrissy Wallace. Crushed by the avalanche that was Bubba Clinton. And just how do the Redstaters see this entire thing, particularly after taking their talking points from Bill Kristol?

Clinton wants to make it incorrect, or at least impolite, to criticize his record on terror. Chris Wallace stood up to him. Will others? Will his next interviewer raise the same set of questions? Will they be willing to take the criticism of being "conservative hit men" or part of the vast, Fox-centered right-wing conspiracy? Bullying and intimidation sometimes work. Clinton has used both effectively in the past. Now he wants to put out of bounds certain perfectly legitimate and straight-forward questions. Can we debate which party--based on their practice when in power--can better deal with the jihadist/terror threat? No, according to Clinton. That's illegitimate right-wing propaganda. Whose personal reputation benefits from putting such issues out of bounds? Which political party benefits? Which 2008 presidential candidate?

Bill Clinton is a smart (and calculating) politician.

Redstate:

... discussions of which President may have failed in the past to successfully take on the terrorist threat are not as important policywise as actually taking on the terrorist threat. But that is certainly not to say that people should be intimidated from taking on the issue. It is one thing to recognize priorities. It is quite another to give in to bullying. If we are willing as a body politic to call a cease-fire on the issue of past Presidential actions--an across the board and bipartisan cease-fire at that--then I would be in favor of it. But I am most certainly not in favor of allowing one side to get a pass merely because one of the former Presidents on that side blew a gasket.

Allowing "one side to get a pass"? When exactly did Clinton ever get a pass? Did these guys actually see "Path to 9-11"?

Now I had thought that Thinkprogress had already settled this matter, by pointing out that Clinton's issue with Wallace - that they were asking him a question that they'd never asked the Bush Administration - was absolutely true.

Neither Chris Wallace, nor his predecessor, Tony Snow ever asked anyone in the Bush administration why they failed to respond to the bombing of the USS Cole, according to a Lexis-Nexis database search. Wallace and Snow have had plenty of opportunities:

– Vice President Dick Cheney has been on Fox News Sunday 6 times.

– Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been on Fox News Sunday 9 times.

– Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been on Fox News Sunday 23 times.

– National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley has been on Fox News Sunday 4 times.

For the record, this was Bill Clinton’s first solo appearance on Fox News Sunday.

Not so, according to a link provided by Redstate.

In 2004, Wallace asked almost the exact same question of Donald Rumsfeld that he asked Clinton today.

Here’s what Wallace asked Clinton today:

[H]indsight is 20 20 . . . but the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

And here is what Wallace asked Donald Rumsfeld on the March 28, 2004 episode of Fox News Sunday:

I understand this is 20/20 hindsight, it’s more than an individual manhunt. I mean — what you ended up doing in the end was going after al Qaeda where it lived. . . . pre-9/11 should you have been thinking more about that?

. . . .

What do you make of his [Richard Clarke’s] basic charge that pre-9/11 that this government, the Bush administration largely ignored the threat from al Qaeda?

. . . .

Mr. Secretary, it sure sounds like fighting terrorism was not a top priority.

Like Clinton, Think Progress shifts the argument to specific questions about the U.S.S. Cole, in order to argue that Clinton is correct:

Ooh, it looks like the Reds have a "gotcha". Although neither Wallace (or Tony Snow) ever asked specifically about the response to the U.S.S. Cole - they did ask one person, Rumsfeld, about pre-9-11 responses one single time among the 42 times that they've had Bush Administration Officials on their show. This is classic Right-wing debate strategy -- point out one minor questionable factoid in the midst of an mountain of information and poof, the mountain disappears like magic or the careful application of some "Shout" on a grass stain.

But here's the thing - I actually followed the interview link to the DOD site and found that the question Wallace asked Rumsfeld wasn't about the Bush Administration pre-9/11 response, it was about Richard Clarke.

MR. WALLACE: I think a lot of people in Washington are trying to figure out, to understand, Richard Clarke; to make sense of what he has said and of apparent contradictions in his story. Is he telling the truth or is he pushing an agenda? What do you make of his basic charge that pre-9/11 that this government, the Bush administration largely ignored the threat from al Qaeda?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, I don't know the man. I have probably met and been in meetings with him two or three times, but it seems to me that apparently he was there for 10 years, and the reality is that a terrorist can attack any time at any minute, 24 hours a day, using a variety of techniques in any place at all. And it's not possible to defend in every place against every technique, against every conceivable approach. Now, what does that mean? It means that you can't stop every terrorist attack. We know that throughout history, which you keep innocent men, women, and children are going to be killed if terrorists are determined to do it. What you must do, then, is to go after the terrorists where they are and get them before they have that opportunity to have the advantage of an attack.

So basically - Rumsfeld doesn't know if Wallace's suggestion that "Clarke has an agenda" is true - which of course leaves he possibility that he does hanging in the air without Rumsfeld himself having to launch the smear - and as far as stopping 9/11 there was "nothing they could do"....

But Wallace wasn't done, he had more smearing of Clarke and back-filling for the Bush Administration to do:

MR. WALLACE: Let me follow up on that, if I can, sir, because you talked to the 9/11 Commission in private before you talked to them in public, and in your public testimony this week, and according to the Commission, the staff, this is what you told them in private. Let's put it up here, if we can --

"He [Rumsfeld] did not recall any particular counterterrorism issue that engaged his attention before 9/11 other than the development of the Predator unmanned aircraft system for possible use against bin Laden. He said the DOD," the Department of Defense, "before 9/11 was not organized or trained adequately to deal with asymmetric threats."

Mr. Secretary, it sure sounds like fighting terrorism was not a top priority.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, Chris, if you look at how our government is organized historically, the Department of Justice has the responsibility for law enforcement in the United States. The Department of Defense is, in fact, by law, under the posse comitatus law, prohibited from the engaging in frontline law enforcement, police-type activities.

In other words - "It's not my job, man". Terrorism is a law enforcement issue for the DOJ. But my-oh-my isn't that pre-9/11 thinking?

MR. WALLACE: But the terrorists were based overseas.

SEC. RUMSFELD: The terrorists were in the United States. They used a U.S. airplane, and they attacked a U.S. target, and those are things that are outside the purview of the Department of Defense.

MR. WALLACE: But what about --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Let me just make sure you understand this. The way the government instructions were laid out, the Department of State had the responsibility for the diplomatic side of it, the Department of Justice has the responsibility for the law enforcement side for domestic intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency has responsibility for foreign intelligence, and the Department of Defense has responsibility for external threats and force protection. Now, it was not something that the Department of Defense historically, in our history, was organized, trained, and equipped to do. We were organized, trained, and equipped to fight armies and navies and air forces -- not to do individual manhunts.

Aint that the truth. Still it should be pointed out that Clinton had charged Gen. Hugh Shelton (then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) with finding a way to have Special Forces go after Bin Laden, but was stymied by logitistical issues in the region. They couldn't get Helicopters with a Special Forces team deep enough into Afghanistan without performing a night refuel operations and the Joint Chiefs and Pentagon Brass refused. Only after 9-11 did we Special Forces get the access to Uzbekistan and Pakistan that they needed.

In fact, there have been occasions in the history of the Department when the Department was chastised for investigating things locally, if you'll recall, during the Army investigations back in the '60s in the Vietnam War period.

MR. WALLACE: But looking back, sir, and I understand this is 20/20 hindsight, it's more than an individual manhunt. I mean -- what you ended up doing in the end was going after al Qaeda where it lived.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Which is the only way to do it, in my view. I think you simply have to go out --

MR. WALLACE: -- pre-9/11 should you have been thinking more about that?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, we were thinking about what to do about al Qaeda. Any suggestion that the administration was not would just be incorrect. Now, as I think it was Rich Armitage said, were we able to stop that attack? The answer is no. Were we ahead of those particular terrorists and what they were doing? Obviously not. George Tenet put it well, I thought, when he said, "Look" -- they said, "Why did it happen?" He said, "Because we didn't have a source inside that particular terrorist cell." That would have enabled it to being stopped.

Pardon me for a short moment of factiness, but we did have a source inside that particular terrorist cell. The San Diego landlord for two of the hijackers was an FBI Informant. Carry on. We also had an FBI agent in Arizona who had noticed several people leaning to fly planes, but not neccesarily how to land. He was ignored by FBI brass.

MR. WALLACE: Clarke makes one other specific charge that I'd like to give you the opportunity to respond to here today. He says that on September 12th, the day after the attack, that when all the evidence was pointing to al Qaeda that you wanted to hit Iraq. Let's look at this.

MR. CLARKE: Rumsfeld said "There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq." I said, "Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it."

MR. WALLACE: Mr. Secretary, true or false?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, I don't know the context that he said that. I said publicly at one stage during our effort in Afghanistan, which was, of course, a highly successful effort to deal with the al Qaeda there and run them out and deny them that haven, that Afghanistan had run out of targets. That is a correct quote. It's out of context here, but it is a correct quote.

This entire line of questioning wasn't so much about whether the Bush Administration did enough pre-9/11, it was entirely about "Is Clarke Crazy or just plain nuts?" Rumsfeld tries not to directly smear Clarke, but in the end he does state :

Any suggestion that the administration was not [thinking about Al Qaeda] would just be incorrect.

Technically he's correct since Richard Clarke himself was a part of the Bush Administration and he was certainly thinking about it. But he was just about the only one. Condoleeza Rice, who was Clarke's boss and was the one who demoted him and deprioritized the entire Counter Terrorism Group - has herself has been sharply critical of Clinton's comments:

In her interview with the New York Post, Condoleezza Rice claims that the Clinton Administration did not develop a strategy to fight al Qaeda:

The secretary of state also sharply disputed Clinton’s claim that he “left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy” for the incoming Bush team during the presidential transition in 2001.

“We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda,” Rice responded during the hourlong session.

Here’s what the 9/11 Commission Report has to say about it:

As the Clinton administration drew to a close, Clarke and his staff developed a policy paper of their own [which] incorporated the CIA’s new ideas from the Blue Sky memo, and posed several near-term policy options. Clarke and his staff proposed a goal to “roll back” al Qaeda over a period of three to five years …[including] covert aid to the Northern Alliance, covert aid to Uzbekistan, and renewed Predator flights in March 2001. A sentence called for military action to destroy al Qaeda command-and control targets and infrastructure and Taliban military and command assets. The paper also expressed concern about the presence of al Qaeda operatives in the United States.” [p. 197]

Clarke, who also worked for the Bush administration, wrote Condoleezza Rice a memo as soon as the Bush administration took office, stating, “[W]e urgently need…a Principals level review of the al Qida network.” His request was denied.

Not only was his request for an urgent Principals meeting denied, no meetings what-so-ever took place on Al Qeada with key members of the Bush Administration for over 8 months.

Clinton's principle arguement was "I tried and I failed. They didn't try!".

On that point there is absolutely no denying the facts, even if that is exactly what Condi is now claiming. She's wrong. So is Redstate.

Clinton pointed out, accurately, that Fox News has a known right-wing bias. Conservatives have frequently claimed that the non-Fox and Rupert Murdock owned media has as "left-wing bias", suddenly it's unfair for a Democrat to make the exact same claim about Fox when this is the first time they've interviewed him - Ever - and the very first question is an attempt to bash his Administration for something the Bush Administration failed to do? Ridiculous.

But not at all unexpected.

Vyan

Fox Tries to Relight PT9-11 Smear

Saturday on Heartland with John Kasich, the issue of the Clinton Administrations attempts to "get Bin Laden" were once again brought out and flogged. Kasich asked former CIA Operative Gary Berntsen if Clinton had "tried hard enough" to capture or kill the terrorist leader.

In response Mr. Berntsen claimed that "they had approached this as a law enforcement problem" and that "there was one oppurtunity in 2000, where we were up in the mountains of Afghanistan - chasing bin Laden - where they refused to pull the trigger"

The claim is identitical to the one made by the ABC/Disney docudrama "Path to 9-11" which asserted that U.S. forces had bin Laden "in their sights", but Clinton Administration Officials simply refused to do what needed to be done to get him.

Former NSA Counter-terrorism Chief Richard Clarke in response to the allegations made by the film has already stated:

1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.

2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Ladin camp and did not see UBL.

3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.

Thinkprogress also noted:

According to the 9/11 Commission Report (pg. 199), then-CIA Director George Tenet had the authority from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden. Roger Cressy, former NSC director for counterterrorism, has written, "Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda."

So just what the heck is Berntsen, who is a decorated CIA veteran office with over 20 years experience - and was there in person at Tora Bora when Bin Laden escaped - talking about?

Apparently according to Frontline it's this:

Can you talk about the [2000] attempted capture of an Al Qaeda aide?

Well, I'm, of course, at home in the morning, 7:00, ... and I receive a phone call. It's the deputy in the bin Laden shop, and he's panicked, and said, "Gary, how's your Persian?" I said: "Well, actually, my Persian's pretty good at the moment. I'm in language review." ...He says: "Can you come in? We're having a crisis." So of course I drive in, go to the office, and he said: "Look, we have a team. We've been training these guys for the last two months to ... undertake some highly dangerous missions in Afghanistan. Would you be willing to go, because we only have one Persian speaker on the team?" I said, "Well, when are you leaving?," and he said, "Well, in a couple of hours." I said, "Well, how long is this mission going to be?" They said, "Several months." So I said: "OK, I'm in, let me pass the bad news to my spouse." Then, of course, I went on the mission. Went home, grabbed a couple of thousand dollars, went and bought several thousand dollars' worth of camping gear, good equipment -- told the young sales boy that I was moving to Alaska -- and then, of course, showed up several hours later.

We are flown into the Panjshir Valley [in Afghanistan] ... on a North[ern] Alliance helicopter, which looks like it's held together with bubblegum and bailing wire. I had been a crash firefighter in the Air Force; I knew an aviation accident when I saw one getting ready to happen. It was unbelievable. The aircraft tires had big bubbles the size of 50-cent pieces. There were holes from ground fire throughout the bird. There was an internal fuel tank which shouldn't have been in the middle of the body of the aircraft; it was leaking. We had to open the windows because we would have been asphyxiated. Then we flew in on that. It was quite an exciting flight. ...

That was your first time in Afghanistan?

That was my first time in Afghanistan, and it was fabulous. I was thrilled to be there. ... Unfortunately, there were some reports that came out of left field ... that said, "Bin Laden is aware that there are Americans in the country." He had put a bounty on the life of any CIA officer that could be captured in Afghanistan and brought to him for $3 million. Our headquarters panicked, and they said, "You have to come out." ...

Tell me what the mission was.

Well, we were in there to collect intelligence and, working with the Northern Alliance, to identify one of those key lieutenants near bin Laden ... and to snatch him, to kidnap him.

Did you know who you were after?

We had two or three choices. ... We knew several of the ones that we were looking at.

... Now we come back after being withdrawn. First they tell us, "You have to leave." ... We said, "We can't, because it's cloudy." Well, we were lying. It wasn't cloudy; it was blue sky, but we were trying to do anything possible to extend our mission on the ground. Finally, [there was an] intervention on the seventh floor [of CIA headquarters]: "No, you have to come out, or we'll discipline you, because we know you're not telling us the truth. We're looking at weather maps." This is what we were told. So we had to fly, and the Afghans were horrified. They were horrified that we would tell them that we wanted to come ... and then [at] the slightest threat we would abandon them. It was disgraceful.

Who was it?

It was the CIA's leadership. I would put that on [Director George] Tenet and [Deputy Director of Operations Jim] Pavitt, put that right on them. It was heartbreaking. When I came back, of those six men, two of those men would resign -- ... good men -- because they were just disgusted. They said, "We'll go do something else with our lives."

So first of all, they weren't there to capture or kill Bin Laden himself, there were after a few of his deputies -- second the recall order didn't come from Bill Clinton, it didn't come from anyone in the White House, it came from George Tenet.

Mr-Slam-Dunk-Mobile-Labs-Medal-o-Freedom himself.

As he will be shown saying to Chris Wallace today on Fox News Sunday, Bill Clinton, following the bombing of the U.S. Cole had invasion plans for Afghanistan drawn up and ready to go, but the CIA -- Tenet -- refused to certify that bin Laden had been responsible, so those plans remained on hold.

Berntsen was definately a "hard charger" one who was involved in the hunt for bin Laden fairly early, long before he became a topic of common dicussion among government officials.

Do you remember the first time you heard the words "Al Qaeda"?

I think that it was in the early '90s, and it was because Mike Scheuer had formed that group within CIA, the bin Laden Group [UbL] and was talking about the Sunni terrorism and this individual, [Osama] bin Laden, this financier. It was Scheuer who first brought that up, ... and he convinced me early on that this was a growing problem. Later, when the bombs in East Africa go off [in the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998], I'm sent to lead the team because we think this is possibly Hezbollah. Hezbollah had done the attacks on the embassy in Beirut, had done the Marine barracks [there]; they had done the Israeli Embassy in ... Argentina in '92 and '94. They had been involved in [the bombing of] Khobar Towers [in Saudi Arabia] in '96. So it looked like yet another attack done by Hezbollah. Of course, I get out there on the ground, and it's not; bin Laden has gone big.

... Where are you when you hear about [the bombings in] Dar es Salaam, [Tanzania]?

Well, of course, I'm sleeping; it's 4:20 in the morning in my townhouse in Virginia. The phone rings. I have a telephone that is encrypted in my house. I got up, turned the key and go secure, and now I'm told by the watch center that bombs have just gone off in East Africa, and that Jeff O'Connell, chief of CTC, would like me to come in immediately. I throw my clothes on, fly out the door, and go in. Then I'm with this small group -- O'Connell, [former CIA analyst] Paul Pillar, myself and a couple of others. ... O'Connell was a very decisive guy, and said, "Gary, you're going to Dar es Salaam," and he gave out the air assignments. Then we proceeded. ...

And the meaning of it being an Al Qaeda attack?

Something else big now we have to worry about. Bin Laden's gone big. Scheuer's [bin Laden] unit was about to be closed; there was discussion about folding it into something else, and there was a
lot of politics around that. Of course Scheuer got new legs after that bomb went off.

But why would Berntsen give the impression on Heartland that someone in the White House was the one pulling the plug? Maybe because, well, he's kinda of a dick. Aka - a Neo-con.

So when does it cross your field of vision that there's a real interest in the agency and in the American government ... to go kill Osama bin Laden or capture him if we can?

That's years later before we feel that they're serious. Those embassies are blown up, and the response is cruise missiles. It was a pathetic response. Bin Laden was on the ground there. We had realized it was him. We should have just sent troops in and taken him at that point. It [was] an act of war doing what he did, but the administration wanted none of it. ...

... Why, do you think?

They didn't want to have to pay the price of conflict. Now, individually, in my unit, I'm aggressive; I'm always going after these guys. I continue as aggressively as I can in every operation, every day that I'm there, ... and frequently force people's hands so they have to do the operations in the way I design them.

Why?

It's easier to get forgiveness than permission. When pursuing terrorists, I would do as much as I could, and at the last moment, you'd execute the capture and say, "Here we are; we have these guys."

You mean you were actually capturing them?

We would use some of our sources and influence other governments to do that, yes. ... I'm sort of the guy in CIA -- I was like the sixth or seventh man on the basketball team: Any time they needed a tough foul delivered or something done, I get sent in, and I always got the best playing time.

I was very, very lucky, because I'm the guy who gets to go to East Africa for the bombings. I get sent in to Afghanistan 15 months before, at the last minute. I get to go [back] on the 11th of September and replace Gary Schroen [of the CIA's Directorate of Operations] on the battlefield there. ... Whenever they needed something, I was always ready to put my hand up and go. ...

Berntsen is a field guy, hanging his ass way out there in the wilds of Afghanistan -- what does he know about conversations at the White House? Did he know that Clinton had authorized bin Laden to be killed. Did he know that he had requested Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to implement exact the plan that Gary suggested - bring in Special Forces and blow bin Laden away - but that it was the Pentagon Boys, the big bad macho military guys, who refused because of logistical issues?

Clarke speaking with Mike Sheehan, the top State Dept Counter-terrorism official in about the lack of response to the Cole bombing in 2000:

"What's it gonna take, Dick?" Sheehan demanded, "Who the shit do they think attacked the Cole, fuckin' Martians? The Pentagon brass won't let Delta go get bin Laden. Hell, they won't even let the Air Force carpet bomb the place. Does al Qeada have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?"

When it comes to Tora Bora, when the finally did let Delta and the Air Force lose - yet Bin Laden still got away, Berntsen feels that the reins were pull back not by Tenet, but by CENTCOM (Central Command) --- that's Rumsfeld and the Pentagon Brass.

[But couldn't the president (Bush) have ordered the troops in?]

... Of course. During the 2004 campaign, when you had the Kerry/Bush discussion on this, and John Kerry says, "The president contracted this all out to the Afghans to do this," well, that's not exactly true. ... It was mostly us. We had our teams out there calling in air strikes. We did use Afghans as blocking forces, and Delta Force would go in. ... The Afghans didn't want to fight. ... We had to pay them, had to yell at them, had to threaten them, had to do all sorts of things to get them to get into combat.

There was truly a fog over what occurred, and it doesn't surprise me, because there is often lots of bureaucracy between that man in the field, whether he's a CIA officer or a military commander, and the commander in chief back there. ... And the president, of course, relied on the people around him. I don't think the president was served well. ... I know the president would have done anything possible to kill bin Laden at that point, but I'm certain my requests never got to him.

You blaming Tenet?

... It was CENTCOM's decision. ... I think Tenet stepped up on that.

So with [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld?

There's a book written by [CENTCOM deputy commander] Mike DeLong [with Noah Lukeman] called [Inside] CENTCOM: [The Unvarnished Truth About the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq]. In that book, DeLong talks about a conversation that he has with Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld calls CENTCOM and says, "Send in troops," and CENTCOM's response is: "The altitude's too high. It's too cold." It's this, it's that -- makes up a lot of reasons. And Rumsfeld says, ... "I ski at 14,000 feet, and I'm 70," and the response is, "You don't have to carry a pack." And he says, "OK, do what you think is right."So the secretary of defense wanted them in there, but he left the final decision to the commanders on the ground, and they didn't want to do it, based on the reading of Mike DeLong's book.

Nice to see that he reads books, maybe he should try reading Clarke's.

And by the way, Fred Barnes says the President told him this month that “bin Laden doesn’t fit with the administration’s strategy for combating terrorism.

Fancy that?

Vyan

Our Deep National Shame

This week Senate Republicans have reached a compromise on Torture with the Bush Administration that effectively guts the Geneva Conventions and our nations Moral Authority.

If this legislation is signed into law - the United States will officially become a Rogue Nation. A Terrorist State that sanctions the commission of War Crimes, by simply redefining them out of existence.

The President will be allowed to become the sole Deciderer of what is legal and constitutes a "grave breach" of human dignity and what doesn't. Establishing law and fact via Executive Fiat, like the decrees of an Emperor - not a President.

Someone needs to tell Senators Graham, Warner and McCain that what they've just done by handing this authority over to Bush, is the equivelent of letting the head of the Gambino Crime Family define what is and isn't Racketeering and Murder.

From Federalist 47:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

Make no mistake - this is indeed Tyranny - and will be a stain on our national character that will last with us for generations, just as we continue to live with the shame of the Tuskegee Experiment and Interment of Japanese Americans during WWII.

But this... this is worse. We didn't torture the internees.

I'm almost at a loss for words.

The idea that the technique used by Jack Bauer on 24 are soon to become part of our official anti-terrorism policy is shocking. And mindnumbingly stupid as well.

U.S. officials do not use the word torture to describe their own methods. Instead, American intelligence officials speak of "aggressive interrogation measures," sometimes euphemistically known as "torture lite." According to human-rights activists who have consulted with Senate staffers involved in the negotiations, Bush administration officials are trying to redefine the Geneva Conventions, which bans "cruel practices," to allow seven different procedures: 1) induced hypothermia, 2) long periods of forced standing, 3) sleep deprivation, 4) the "attention grab" (forcefully seizing the suspect's shirt), 5) the "attention slap," 6) the "belly slap" and 7) sound and light manipulation. As NEWSWEEK reported this week in its story The Politics of Terror, a harsh technique called "waterboarding," which induces the sensation of drowning, would be specifically banned.

Thank God for small favors - no "Waterboarding". Yippee.

There is a one single good reason why U.S. courts do not allow for coerced testimony -- IT. CANT. BE. TRUSTED.

The TV Show that Bush and his Cronies should be watching isn't 24 - it's CSI.

According to data obtained by the Innocence Project, which has used DNA evidence to exonerate 180 persons who had been condemned to death row, 35 times (out of the first 130 cases - or 27%) there was a False Confession and another 21 times (16%) the wrongful conviction was the result of bad information provided by informants and snitches.

All indications are that part of the bad intelligence information indicating links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, which led us wrongly into a War with Iraq, were the result of the torture of Ibn Sheik al-Libi at Gitmo - who was a "known fabricator" according to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Yet Administration Officials such as Cheney continue to believe al-Libi's lies, and our President, the so-called "Leader of the Free World" claims with a straight face that...

this agreement preserves the most single -- most potent tool we have in protecting America and foiling terrorist attacks, and that is the CIA program to question the world's most dangerous terrorists and to get their secrets.

More potent than actually protecting the ports, instead of handing them over to the United Arab Emerites? Um,... not so much.

Both the New York Times and Washington Post seem less than enthused.

In editorials entitled "A Bad Bargain" (NYT) and "The Abuse Can Continue" (WaPo), the two papers minced no words declaring not only their opposition to the bill but its effect on the war on terror, global opinion, and history's judgement of the president.

Washington Post: "In effect, the agreement means that U.S. violations of international human rights law can continue as long as Mr. Bush is president, with Congress's tacit assent. If they do, America's standing in the world will continue to suffer, as will the fight against terrorism. . . .

"Mr. Bush will go down in history for his embrace of tortue and bear responsibility for the enormous damage he has caused."

New York Times: "[The bill] allows the president to declare any foreigner, anywhere, an 'illegal enemy combatant' using a dangerously broad definition, and detain him without any trial. .

"The Democrats have largely stood silent and allowed the trio of Republicans to do the lifting. It's time for them to either try to fix this bill or delay it until after the election. The American people expect their leaders to clean up this mess without endangering U.S. troops, eviscerating American standards of justice, or further harming the nation's severely damaged reputation."

In response to this issue when speaking with Keith Olbermann on last nights episode of Countdown, former President Bill Clinton had this to say.

Clinton: Like you take this interrogation dealing. We might all say the same thing if, let's say Osama bin Laden's number three guy were captured and we knew a big bomb was going off in America in three days.

It turns out right now there's an exception for those kind of circumstance in an immediate emergency that's proven in the military regs. But that's not the same thing as saying we want to abolish the Geneva Convention and practice torture as a matter of course. All it does is make our soldiers vulnerable to torture. It makes us more likely to get bad, not good information.

OLBERMANN: Right.

CLINTON: And every time we get some minor victory out of it, we'll make a hundred more enemies, so I think these things, I really think we need to think through all of this and debate more.

The point that has to be repeatedly made here - is that these men have not been proven guilty of anything. They haven't been tried, in fact they are being denied access to the courts -- habeas corpus, one of the founding principles of our nation, is being scraped.

Even when the Military knows that some of these people, particular the "Ghost Detainees" who have been kept hidden from the Red Cross, are innocent of any connection to terrorism, al-Qaeda or the Taliban - they have refused to released them.

Majority of Detainees "Of No Intelligence Value" or Innocent. One statement refers to "a lot of pressure to produce reports regardless of intelligence value." Brig. Gen. Karpinski's deposition also cited the comments of another official, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, who told her, "I don't care if we're holding 15,000 innocent civilians! We're winning the war!" A former commander of the 320th Military Police Battalion notes in a sworn statement, "It became obvious to me that the majority of our detainees were detained as the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and were swept up by Coalition Forces as peripheral bystanders during raids. I think perhaps only one in ten security detainees were of any particular intelligence value."

"Releasaphobia" Keep Innocent Detainees Jailed. One member of the Detainee Assessment Board said people were afraid to recommend release of detainees, "even when obviously innocent." Similarly, Brig. Gen. Karpinski spoke of "releaseaphobia" on the part of a review board. According to another report, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez allegedly said of the detainees, "Why are we detaining these people, we should be killing them." The unidentified solider who reported the comment added that it "contributed to a command climate" where "deeds not consistent with military standards would be tolerated if not condoned."

Former detainees, who were "rendered" to their native countries (Syria and Egypt), where they were tortured and then released such as Abu Omar and Maher Arar were apparently the lucky ones.

Tens of thousands of others, haven't been so lucky.

Hundreds of detainees have died in custody - including 26 which died directly as a result of abuse - and have been considered homocide. Under the War Crimes Act of 1996 (18 USC § 2441) these crimes are punishable by the Death Penalty.

From the ACLU's FOIA Documents:

Several statements refer to "ghost detainees" who died in custody, including one who died after being chained up in a shower area. Interrogators packed the body in ice and "paid a local taxi driver to take him away." (Note: this report may refer to Manadel a-Jamadi, whose death in Abu Ghraib has been widely reported in the news media.)

Is this how a nation that calls itself "civilized" behaves?

I didn't used to think so... but now I have little choice, don't I?

Instead of leading by example and giving the people of the world a strong and compelling reason to hope and struggle to create the kind of freedom, prosperity and democracy that exemplify the best of our ideals - we are now on the verge of departing from the ranks of lawful nations, and becoming exactly what bin Laden and his ilk has long claimed we were. We have become the "Great Satan".

Yeah, this will really change all those "hearts and minds' to our way of thinking any day now. "Just Wait" is not a viable foreign policy.

Unfortunately I think time is running out, and if the Democrats in Congress don't find a way to block the passage of this bill before the end of this Congress -- Game Over.

Congressional Switchboard Toll Free: 866-808-0065

Vyan