The Incurious Lightness of Being (Republican)
Mon Oct 02, 2006 at 11:01:36 AM PDT
As we consider the defensive posture of Hastert & Co. for why no effort was made to protect the House pages from a widely recognized (among Republican insider circles) threat from the predator drone known as Rep. Mark Foley, it is striking just how very familiar this situation is. In fact, on Stage 2 now, we are being treated to the Condileeza Rice version of that same old song and dance, as she takes to the media to defend her failure to anticipate the September 11 attacks.
We remember Condi's
plea for understanding about her lack of action in her testimony before the 9/11 Commission back in April, 2004:
In fact, the information that was specific enough to be actionable referred to terrorist operations overseas. More often, it was frustratingly vague. Let me read you some of the actual chatter that we picked up that spring and summer: "Unbelievable news coming in weeks," "Big event ... there will be a very, very, very, very big uproar," "There will be attacks in the near future."
Troubling, yes. But they don't tell us when; they don't tell us where; they don't tell us who; and they don't tell us how.
But should we have expected her to put this information together? According to Condi, no:
there was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks. In hindsight, if anything might have helped stop 9/11, it would have been better information about threats inside the United States, something made difficult by structural and legal impediments that prevented the collection and sharing of information by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Should someone in a position of power--no, in
the position responsible for anticipating these kinds of things be expected to have
imagined the possibility of an attack?
I think that concern about what I might have known or we might have known was provoked by some statements that I made in a press conference. I was in a press conference to try and describe the August 6 memo, which I've talked about here in my opening remarks and which I talked about with you in the private session.
And I said, at one point, that this was a historical memo, that it was -- it was not based on new threat information. And I said, "No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon" -- I'm paraphrasing now -- "into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile."
As I said to you in the private session, I probably should have said, "I could not have imagined," because within two days, people started to come to me and say, "Oh, but there were these reports in 1998 and 1999. The intelligence community did look at information about this."
To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Chairman, this kind of analysis about the use of airplanes as weapons actually was never briefed to us.
Now, we have learned that on August 6, Ms. Rice and Mr. Bush were presented with a PDB which bore the headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the U.S.".
And we learned last week from Bob Woodward that Rice was visited by George Tenet and Cofer Black on July 10 specially to warn her of the accumulation of evidence of an impending threat by Bin Laden, but she "brushed them off".
And we are all aware of the accumulation of evidence by the FBI prior to 9/11 that individuals with ties to Bin Laden were attending flight schools in the U.S.:
Two months before the suicide hijackings, an FBI agent in Arizona alerted Washington headquarters that several Middle Easterners were training at a U.S. aviation school and recommended contacting other schools nationwide where Arabs might be studying.
"FBIHQ should discuss this matter with other elements of the U.S. intelligence community and task the community for any information that supports Phoenix's suspicions," the agent recommended in the memo obtained by The Associated Press.
And
by her own admission, Rice was briefed by Clarke, Tenet and Sandy Berger previously about the serious nature of the terror threat from Bin Laden:
(Terrorism) was on the radar screen of any person who studied or worked in the international security field. But there is no doubt that I think the briefing by Dick Clarke, the earlier briefing during the transition by Director Tenet, and of course what we talked with about Sandy Berger, it gave you a heightened sense of the problem and a sense that this was something that the United States had to deal with.
Would not a memorandum from the National Security Advisor, addressing these various indications of a threat, going out to the FBI and CIA to take seriously and look out for more suspicious acitivites or behavior, have possibly led us to the hijackers prior to their 9/11 mission?
I imagine it might have.
So what are we to make of the fact that Condi couldn't imagine an attack on U.S. soil? The same conclusion we can draw about Denny Hastert's failure to imagine that some "naughty emails" from a 50-year old Congressman to a 16-year old boy might not be the whole problem but perhaps smoke from a troubling fire, if not a "warning in the form of a mushroom cloud"?
Of course, Condi finds it "incomprehensible" that she would ignore a threat that was so obvious. On this we can agree, especially when she suddenly began seeing flashing lights and hearing warning bells that Saddam had WMD and was a threat to us all that had to be stopped, at any cost in American blood and treasure.
Incomprehensible and inexcusable.
It is the signal, self-confessed inability of these lightweight GOP leaders to anticipate and prevent trouble that marks them incompetent and undeserving of the public trust. Till recently, public opinion has been slow to react to news we all here read with anger and disgust. Great slack has been cut these idiots and doers of dark deeds.
National patience with these clowns is about to run out, and when this worm turns, it will turn hard and fast and with finality. Like a boss that has suddenly realized she doesn't have to put up with this shit anymore, the mood of America will turn and turn hard.
I don't know if the Foley Affair is the straw that breaks the Bush camel's back, but we are nearing that point. And I wouldn't want to be in fat pantload Denny's drawers or Condi's designer shoes when that hurricane hits.
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