Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Savior this while it lasts! The Yankees have the worst record in all of baseball! The Red Sox magic number is 162. 4:47:17 PM    Comment []  trackback []

	Monday, March 29, 2004

The Dog That Didn't Bark Condi's defense of Bush's pressing Clarke to find an Iraqi connection to 9/11 is correct, up to a point. It was a question that had to be asked, even though the answer was as certain as a sunset. Clearly, our rule-by-his-gut President was going with his gut on this one -- after all, Cheney, Condi, Wolfie and Rummy had all been tutoring him on the state-based theory of combatting terrorism from day one. Rule-By-His-Gut may be a slow learner, but after 8 months something probably sunk in. That the only question Bush asked of Clarke was "what's the connection to Iraq" is the real butt scorcher here. Here you are, the President of the United States, your country had just been attacked by terrorists, and you're in the room with the man who been deeply involved in the anti-terrorist efforts of four presidents, who knew more about terrorism's roster, financing, networks, activities, locations and tactics than just about anyone else on the planet. And the only question you can come up with is "What's up with Iraq?"??? No request for recommendations, no discussion of tactical options, nothing. The next time a red-stater proclaims that Bush wasn't asleep at the switch, remind him that when the heat was on, when the country had just been attacked, Bush sent one of his best men on a fool's errand. 8:12:54 AM    Comment []  trackback []

	Sunday, March 28, 2004

My hair is on fire Friedman, Friedman, Friedman. The World's Smartest Man In The Realm Of Foreign Policy (as determined by a poll of one, with an error margin of +/- 100 percent) starts his column today thus: I have a confession to make: I am the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and I didn't listen to one second of the 9/11 hearings and I didn't read one story in the paper about them. Not one second. Not one story. Lord knows, it's not out of indifference to 9/11. It's because I made up my mind about that event a long time ago: It was not a failure of intelligence, it was a failure of imagination. We could have had perfect intelligence on all the key pieces of 9/11, but the fact is we lacked — for the very best of reasons — people with evil enough imaginations to put those pieces together and realize that 19 young men were going to hijack four airplanes for suicide attacks against our national symbols and kill as many innocent civilians as they could, for no stated reason at all. Imagination is on my mind a lot these days, because it seems to me that the only people with imagination in the world right now are the bad guys. As my friend, the Middle East analyst Stephen P. Cohen, says, "That is the characteristic of our time — all the imagination is in the hands of the evildoers." Maybe The World's Smartest Man In The Realm Of Foreign Policy should have watched the hearings. It would then have become apparent that Richard Clarke was exercising impressive feats of imagination in anticipating and predicting the depth of the threat posed by al Queda, and how and where its next acts might happen. Perhaps The World's Smartest Man In The Realm Of Foreign Policy should spend less time toking from hookahs in remote bazaars and focus more on the countless faceless bureaucrats in Washington, those in charge of imagining threats, of taking slivers of questionable intelligence and imagining the consequences we may be facing, and imagining effective responses.. The problem has never been that we couldn't "imagine" enough; the problem is that we have an administration that imposed a layer of policy pre-disposed intelligence vetters ordered not to use any imagination, or let that of the smart, experienced people filter through. 9:13:27 AM    Comment []  trackback []

	Saturday, March 27, 2004

Declassify deslashify The inimitable Bill Frist is calling for declassifying Clarke's earlier testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate the possibility that Mr. Clarke committed perjury, either then, or in his sworn testimony to the 9-11 commission this week. I don't know if Clarke lied in either instance. I imagine that his Senate testimony is pretty much an effort to support the Bush administration's anti-terrorism efforts without wandering too far from the truth. The senators were not, after all, asking him for his ideas on how to pursue al Queda and other terrorist groups. They were grilling him on administration policy and activity. All well and good. What seems to be lost in the debate, however, is that ther is absolutely no need to declassify the earlier testimony to investigate a charge of perjury. The senate surely has the transcripts; anyone with Tivo or a VCR can supply them the 9-11 testimony. They can sit down and compare, and if they find bad, bad things, they can forward it to the Justice Department, which itself can handle classified information. So why declassify? I mean, these guys aren't just looking for a way to get it into the public record so fair and balanced press coverage can nit it and pick it and slime Mr. Clarke? That just wouldn't be right. It would be unpatriotic for our august leaders to behave that way, surely. 11:47:50 AM    Comment []  trackback []

	Friday, March 26, 2004

Notion of the day Ricard Clarke is the left's Ollie North. ..'cept with a long resume of honorable service, honesty, and being right on critical issues.  2:10:04 PM    Comment []  trackback []

	Monday, March 22, 2004

Lies, damn lies, and Republican lies Lifted in its entirety from the Center for American Progress (http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&;b=39828): In the wake of Richard Clarke's well-supported assertions that the Bush Administration neglected counterterrorism in the face of repeated terror warnings before 9/11, the Bush Administration has launched a frantic misinformation campaign – often contradicting itself in the process. CLAIM #1: "Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: Clarke sent a memo to Rice principals on 1/24/01 marked "urgent" asking for a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with an impending Al Qaeda attack. The White House acknowledges this, but says "principals did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat." No meeting occurred until one week before 9/11. – White House Press Release, 3/21/04 CLAIM #2: "The president returned to the White House and called me in and said, I've learned from George Tenet that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: If this is true, then why did the President and Vice President repeatedly claim Saddam Hussein was directly connected to 9/11? President Bush sent a letter to Congress on 3/19/03 saying that the Iraq war was permitted specifically under legislation that authorized force against "nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11." Similarly, Vice President Cheney said on 9/14/03 that "It is not surprising that people make that connection" between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, and said "we don't know" if there is a connection. CLAIM #3: "[Clarke] was moved out of the counterterrorism business over to the cybersecurity side of things." – Vice President Dick Cheney on Rush Limbaugh, 3/22/04 FACT: "Dick Clarke continued, in the Bush Administration, to be the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and the President's principle counterterrorism expert. He was expected to organize and attend all meetings of Principals and Deputies on terrorism. And he did." – White House Press Release, 3/21/04 CLAIM #4: "In June and July when the threat spikes were so high…we were at battle stations…The fact of the matter is [that] the administration focused on this before 9/11." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: "Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's 'Strategic Plan' from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism 'the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area.'" – Washington Post, 3/22/04 CLAIM #5: "The president launched an aggressive response after 9/11." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: "In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows. The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the attacks." – Washington Post, 3/22/04 CLAIM #6: "Well, [Clarke] wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff…" – Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/22/04 FACT: "The Government's interagency counterterrorism crisis management forum (the Counterterrorism Security Group, or "CSG") chaired by Dick Clarke met regularly, often daily, during the high threat period." – White House Press Release, 3/21/04 CLAIM #7: "[Bush] wanted a far more effective policy for trying to deal with [terrorism], and that process was in motion throughout the spring." – Vice President Dick Cheney on Rush Limbaugh, 3/22/04 FACT: "Bush said [in May of 2001] that Cheney would direct a government-wide review on managing the consequences of a domestic attack, and 'I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts.' Neither Cheney's review nor Bush's took place." By comparison, Cheney in 2001 formally convened his Energy Task Force at least 10 separate times, meeting at least 6 times with Enron energy executives. – Washington Post, 1/20/02 , GAO Report, 8/22/03, AP, 1/8/02 CLAIM #8: All the chatter [before 9/11] was of an attack, a potential al Qaeda attack overseas. – Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, 3/22/04 FACT: Page 204 of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 noted that "In May 2001, the intelligence community obtained a report that Bin Laden supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States" to "carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives." The report "was included in an intelligence report for senior government officials in August [2001]." In the same month, the Pentagon "acquired and shared with other elements of the Intelligence Community information suggesting that seven persons associated with Bin Laden had departed various locations for Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States." [Joint Congressional Report, 12/02] Looks like the only open question is when will the horse's head show up in Mr. Clarke's bed. 5:51:03 PM    Comment []  trackback []

	Sunday, March 21, 2004

Let's hope this isn't a trend http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3555257.stm Afghanistan's Civil Aviation Minister, Mirwais Sadiq, has been killed in the western city of Herat. One report said Mr Sadiq died after a rocket propelled grenade hit his car. The attack followed a failed bid to kill his father, the governor of Herat. After Mr Sadiq's death, heavy fighting broke out between troops loyal to his father and a senior local military commander Zahir Nayebzada, police said. There are reports that up to 100 people have been killed in the clashes. Of course, Afghanistan isn't a democracy.  It's torn by ethnic, tribal, religous factions, ruled by warlords, and struggling mightily under a foreign-appointed government trying to rule from within the walls of its enclave. Not at all like Iraq, of course.  4:03:37 PM    Comment []  trackback []

Let's hope this is a trend I am far, very far, from being an expert on Malaysian politics... but it appears that Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has won re-election in a landslide, with the Islamic Party, Pas, losing control of the two states they control. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3554137.stm Now, this could be all upside down...I'm assuming that the winners are more moderate, and less tolerant of radical jihadists, than the Pas people. I hope so, and that this will prove to be the start of a trend in the politics of countries with substantial Islamic populations. Those that actually have elections, of course. 3:52:48 PM    Comment []  trackback []

Reconstruction progress The Christian Science Monitor's Dan Murphy has a nice, brief recap of progress in Iraq on the first anniversary of the invasion (complete with charts!). The lead grafs: BAGHDAD – Andy Bearpark, the soft-spoken Briton in charge of the US-led coalition's reconstruction efforts in Iraq, was detailing an impressive list of achievements Wednesday morning. Phone services, basic sewage, electricity, and oil production have all improved to near prewar conditions. A nationwide poll found that 70 percent of Iraqis say their lives are going well since the US invasion. Iraq's infrastructure "is roughly back to where we were before the war,'' Mr. Bearpark says. "Roughly back to where we were before the war" seems like a fairly low level of achievement. As I recall, the military campaign was both swift, and about as gentle on the infrastructure as all the prognosticators at the time could have projected. The initial "shock and awe" bombing was intense, but brief. There was virtually no grand, last stand "Battle of Baghdad", which was a great fear of all the military experts. Saddam did nothing like 1991, when he torched thousands of wells. Basically, we got Iraq in as whole a condition as could have been hoped. So why are we only back to square one? How bad would things be now if there had been a brutal, bloody, prolonged Battle of Baghdad, or if Saddam had blown up everything in a bitter, scordhed earth last act? Or both? It boggles the mind. Let's not forget, too, that much of the sorry state of the Iraqi infrastructure was due to the nature of the post-1991 war sanctions. Anything that had the remotest possibility of so-called "dual use" was banned. Among other things, this meant the almost total degradation of Baghdad's water purification and sewage treatment facilites -- as pumps failed, parts to repair them were unavailable. (For a good, if dry, accounting of 90's Iraq sanctions and diplomacy, Dilip Hiro's "Neighbors Not Friends" is indispensable). So, let's not go patting ourselves on the backs too much for rebuilding the infrastructure. There's a certain amount of "we opened/painted a school!" level of analysis I see in the press, which always makes me thing, "Uh, didn't they already open schools? This isn't reconstruction." 9:46:55 AM    Comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2004 Jon Moyer. Last update: 3/30/2004; 4:48:39 PM.