Kerrey with an "e", that is.
From the WaPo:
In the summer of 2001, veteran counterterrorism officers privy to reports on al Qaeda threats "were so worried about an impending disaster that one of them told us that they considered resigning and going public with their concerns," according to one of two staff reports issued by the commission yesterday. Senior CIA officials were also frustrated by some Bush appointees who were not familiar with surges in terrorist threat information and questioned their veracity, the report said.
[...]
The two staff reports issued yesterday appeared to confirm many of Clarke's key allegations and criticisms...
So the 9/11 commission has, in essence, responded to the bitter sniping between BushCo (fighting for their political lives) and Clarke, by backing up Clarke's account and undermining that of the administration. Ouch! That's gonna leave a mark. <g>
Another excellent Dana Milbank story from the same edition highlighted how impressive Clarke was under GOP fire:
The Sept. 11 commission shed its bipartisan spirit and turned a Senate hearing room into a courtroom yesterday for the testimony of Richard A. Clarke, the White House counterterrorism chief-turned-Bush administration whistle-blower.
[...]
There was good reason for the tension. If the critique presented by Clarke, who left the Bush White House after two years, is to be accepted, a key rationale for Bush's reelection has been lost. In Clarke's view, the Bush administration ignored his pleas to make terrorism a high priority before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, reacted inadequately to the attacks and then strengthened terrorists by persistently pursuing war in Iraq. Bush aides are not about to let that version stand.
Shortly before the hearing, the White House violated its long-standing rules by authorizing Fox News to air remarks favorable to Bush that Clarke had made anonymously at an administration briefing in 2002.
[...]
Back at the hearing, former Illinois governor James R. Thompson, a Republican member of the commission, took up the cause, waving the Fox News transcript with one hand and Clarke's critical book in the other. "Which is true?" Thompson demanded, folding his arms and glowering down at the witness.
Clarke, appearing unfazed by the apparent contradiction between his current criticism and previous praise, spoke to Thompson as if addressing a slow student.
"I was asked to highlight the positive aspects of what the administration had done, and to minimize the negative aspects of what the administration had done," he explained. "I've done it for several presidents."
With each effort by Thompson to highlight Clarke's inconsistency -- "the policy on Uzbekistan, was it changed?" -- Clarke tutored the commissioner about the obligations of a White House aide. Thompson, who had far exceeded his allotted time, frowned contemptuously. "I think a lot of things beyond the tenor and the tone bother me about this," he said. During a second round of questioning, Thompson returned to the subject, questioning Clarke's "standard of candor and morality."
"I don't think it's a question of morality at all; I think it's a question of politics," Clarke snapped.
Thompson had to wait for Sept. 11, 2001, victims' relatives in the gallery to stop applauding before he pleaded ignorance of the ways of Washington. "I'm from the Midwest, so I think I'll leave it there," he said. Moments later, Thompson left the hearing room and did not return.
It was a masterful bit of showmanship by the former bureaucrat who became a household name in the past week with his charges about Bush. Though more prominent personalities testified in the commission's two-day public hearings, the longtime foreign policy bureaucrat stole the show.
Speaking of the commission, how do Kossacks feel about Bob Kerrey? I always liked him (got to meet him in '96); but I was especially impressed by the following, from yet another WaPo story:
Citing Rumsfeld's testimony and Rice's recent news interviews about a Bush plan to fight al Qaeda before Sept. 11, Kerrey says, "I was briefed this morning on that plan, and I would say fortunately for the administration it's classified because there's almost nothing in it. . . . I mean, it's not, in my judgment, what it was sold to be, and I just -- I have to say that for the record. I would love to get Dr. Rice in front of this commission in the public to have her answer a series of questions about that."
At that point he was interrupted by applause from the victims' families.
Basically, Kerrey wishes some official had the vision to invade Afghanistan before Sept. 11. That might have taught the terrorists a lesson, maybe even disrupted the plot.
The witnesses listen politely and respond the same way: It's easy to say that with a post-Sept. 11 perspective, but there would have been little domestic or foreign support for such dramatic action at the time.
"Better to have tried and failed than not to try at all," Kerrey tells Cohen.
He praises the hottest witness of all, former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, he of the scathing inside account of failings in the Clinton and Bush administrations. Then Kerrey proceeds to tell Clarke he didn't completely agree with him either: Clarke says the Iraq war undermined the war on terrorism. Kerrey says the invasion was the right move.
Whoa, talk about a Democrat after my own heart! What say you decidedly dovish Kossacks about that? You can't totally dog him--he's not exactly carrying water for Bush, after all. I'm just very pleased to have a prominent Democratic Bush critic that can serve as a personal inspiration and example.