THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
September 2004, Week Four
Page One
- September 22: A bill passed by the House could deny as many as 11 million Americans their right to vote. H.R. 4844 would, if confirmed by the Senate and signed into law by Bush, require every American citizen to produce either a birth certificate, passport, or proof of naturalization in order to vote. A January 2006 survey by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that as of now, 11 million American citizens lack such identification. A large number of those will have difficulty obtaining such documentation, because of poverty or other reasons. The bill would disproportionately affect such groups as low-income citizens, African-Americans, the elderly, people lacking a high-school diploma, rural residents, and residents of the South and Midwest. Under current rules, US citizens who are registered voters can demonstrate their identity by producing one of several kinds of documents, including a photo ID, a current utility bill, or a current bank statement. (Despite the rhetoric of many Republican politicians, non-citizens are not permitted to vote in federal elections.) The new House bill, in contrast, would require all US citizens who have completed the voter registration process to present a photo ID in order to vote in federal elections in 2008. Then, starting in the 2010 elections, all voters would be required to present a photo ID that proves the voter is a US citizen. Persons who vote by mail would have to mail in a copy of the required documentation along with their completed ballot. The CBPP writes, "The effect, if not the intent, of the House bill would be to make it more difficult for millions of eligible US citizens to vote, and most likely to disenfranchise a significant number of these citizens. The bill would be especially hard on certain already vulnerable groups, such as individuals who are elderly or have low incomes. (It can cost $5 to $23 to get a birth certificate, while a passport costs $87 to $97.) In addition, in the case of many elderly African-Americans, the bill would likely reinforce previous racial discrimination that prevented some of them from having birth certificates in the first place. For these reasons, the bill likely would do more to weaken Americans' voting rights than to protect them."
- The New York Times observes, "If the bill passed the Senate and became law, the electorate would likely become more middle-aged, whiter and richer -- and, its sponsors are anticipating, more Republican." Demos, a national public policy organization, reports that the legislation would disproportionately impact people of color, individuals with disabilities, rural voters, people living on reservations, the homeless, and low-income people -- all of whom studies show are less likely to carry a photo ID and more often have to change photo ID information. Senate Democrats have asked that Majority Leader Bill Frist not bring the bill to the floor. In a letter to Frist, Senators Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, Christopher Dodd, and Barack Obama wrote: "The burdensome and costly requirements of obtaining [citizenship] documents not only could prevent many eligible voters from participating, but...[w]orst of all, this bill recalls a dark era in our nation when individuals were required to pay a poll tax to cast their ballot and has been termed a 21st century poll tax." Georgia, Missouri and Indiana have passed similar ID requirements; the laws were overturned by the courts in Georgia and Missouri while in Indiana, the law was upheld by district court and is now under appeal.
- "This is the most sinister scheme I've ever seen," says former Georgia governor Roy Barnes, "and it's going on nationwide." "Voter suppression doesn't happen with intimidation on election day,"adds Michael Waldman, executive director of The Brennan Center for Justice, "but rather through silent and sometimes secret government actions in the weeks leading up to an election." Robert Pastor, director of a commission on electoral reform organized by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, recently told the Washington Post, "The Carter-Baker commission identified 87 steps that need to be undertaken. Regrettably, almost none of them are being done right now. I would start by establishing statewide, nonpartisan election administration." (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, The Nation)
NIE confirms that US occupation of Iraq has spawned terrorism and made America less, not more, safe from terror attacks
- September 23: The National Intelligence Estimate, a classified report using information from all 16 separate US intelligence agencies, reports that the US occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism, and that the country is less, not more, safe from terrorist attacks since 9/11. "The war in Iraq has exasperated the global war on terror," says Robert Hutchings, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council. The NIE, in preparation for over a year and approved by Intelligence Director John Negroponte, flatly contradicts the rosy statements from Bush, Cheney, and other officials who have claimed for years that the invasion and occupation of Iraq have worked to decrease global Islamist terror and made America safer from attack; it also goes much farther than the more partisan and politicized assessment recently produced by the House Intelligence Committee. The still-classified report was completed in April and shared with senior administration officials, but only now is being made public in any fashion. The NIE is the first formal assessment of global terrorism carried out by US intelligence agencies since the Iraqi war began, and is a consensus view of the 16 separate organizations. It is titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States," and it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe. An opening section of the report, "Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement," cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology. The report "says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse," says one American intelligence official. The report avoids specific judgments about the likelihood that terrorists would once again strike on United States soil.
- The New York Times, who breaks the story of the NIE, interviewed over a dozen US goverment officials and outside experts for the article; all chose to remain anonymous because they were discussing a classified document. Reporter Mark Mazzetti notes, "The officials included employees of several government agencies, and both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts. These officials discussed some of the document's general conclusions but not details, which remain highly classified." NIEs are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on exhaustive analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies. The NIE was overseen by David Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats on the National Intelligence Council.
- The NIE has been in the works since 2004, but has remained incomplete until April 2006, partly because some administration officials objected to the structure and focus of earlier versions of the document. Previous drafts described actions by the US government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat. It is unclear whether the final draft of the intelligence estimate criticizes individual policies of the United States, but intelligence officials involved in preparing the document said its conclusions were not softened or massaged for political purposes. (Editor's note: considering the history of this administration, this assertion is hard to countenance.) A White House spokesman says the White House "played no role in drafting or reviewing the judgments expressed in the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism." According to experts, the estimate's judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives.
- Bush officials attempt to soften the blow delivered by the NIE by releasing statements and documents emphasizing the "success" that the US has had in dismantling some of al-Qaeda's leadership. "since the Sept. 11 attacks, America and its allies are safer, but we are not yet safe," concludes one, a report titled "9/11 Five Years Later: Success and Challenges." The document reads, "We have done much to degrade al-Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism." The White House document virtually ignores the impact of the Iraqi war and occupation on global Islamist terrorism, saying only, "The ongoing fight for freedom in Iraq has been twisted by terrorist propaganda as a rallying cry." It does mention the possibility that Islamic militants who fought in Iraq could return to their home countries, "exacerbating domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies."
- The Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee recently released its own report, emphasizing the threat of terrorism without going into detail about the nature or source of the threat. Based entirely on unclassified documents, the report is little more than a partisan attempt to frighten Americans into voting Republican in November. It can be summed up nicely by the single phrase, "al-Qaeda leaders wait patiently for the right opportunity to attack." (Note: the judgment expressed about the House report is the editor's, not Mazzetti's or the Times's.)
- According to the NIE, radical Islamist movements have expanded from a core of al-Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of "self-generating" cells inspired by Al Qaeda's leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants. It also examines how the Internet has helped spread jihadist ideology, and how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan. In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake al-Qaeda's current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad leadership. The new intelligence estimate is the first report since the war began to present a comprehensive picture about the trends in global terrorism.
- There has been ongoing dissension between Bush administration officials and US intelligence agencies over the occupation of Iraq and the possibility for a stable democracy there. Many intelligence officials have said time and again that Bush and his officials have consistently presented an unrealistically optimistic picture of the situation in Iraq, one not justified by intelligence reports and analysis by the experts. This NIE has, apparently, been prepared with an eye to avoiding the rampant politicization and exagerration of the October 2002 NIE, which was skewed to justify Bush's imminent invasion of Iraq by asserting, falsely, the stores of biological and chemical weapons supposedly maintained by Saddam Hussein, and the Hussein regime's putative progress towards developing a nuclear weapon. Although quite useful politically, that NIE was almost entirely false and misleading. This report's broad judgments seem more consistent with assessments of global terrorist threats by American allies and independent terrorism experts. For example, the panel investigating the London terrorist bombings of July 2005 reported in May 2006 that the leaders of Britain's domestic and international intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, "emphasized to the committee the growing scale of the Islamist terrorist threat." More recently, the Council on Global Terrorism, an independent research group of respected terrorism experts, assigned a grade of "D+" to United States efforts over the past five years to combat Islamic extremism. The council concluded that "there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking."
- The response of Bush administration officials, Republican lawmakers, and conservative talk-show pundits is revealing. After years of steadily escalating rhetoric, capped by recent accusations that Democrats are "appeasers" of Hitler-like adversaries, "traitors," "un-American," and "cut-and-run defeatists," Now that the NIE has undercut almost every assertion the administration and its supporters have made about the purposes behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the administration is reacting two ways: by attacking the report, and by spinning the report to claim that it actually supports their own assertions. The attack is led, unusually, by former Reagan-era Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who accuses the various intelligence agencies of having written the report "for the Democrats." Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a possible 2008 presidential candidate, says the report actually shows why it is vital that the US "stay the course" in Iraq, and proves that the administration is correct in refusing to, in the now-standard refrain, "cut and run." Frist also says, once again, that "we are going to be fighting this battle, this war overseas, or it's going to be right here in this country." Republican senator Mitch McConnell says ingenuously, "Attacks here at home stopped when we started fighting al-Qaeda where they live, rather than responding after they hit," ignoring the realities as stated in the report. The administration has also tried to downplay the report by saying press coverage of the report is "nowhere near complete," though it refuses to release the document itself. Nowhere have we heard any administration official or conservative supporter actually express any concern about how the war in Iraq is making America and its people more vulnerable to terrorism, or that the war is creating ever-larger numbers of terrorists. Judging by their responses, their only concerns are for the political fortunes of George W. Bush and their own hides.
- Perhaps the most egregrious statement is made by Bush himself. He makes what appears to be one of the most callous dismissals of America's shed blood and other ramifications from the invasion of Iraq in recent history, when he said in reference to the likelihood of a civil war in Iraq, during a September 24 CNN broadcast of an interview conducted earlier in the week, "Yes, you see -- you see it on TV, and that's the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there's also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people.... I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is -- my point is, there's a strong will for democracy." (Emphasis mine -- editor) Editor and Publisher editor Greg Mitchell asks, "All that bloodshed as merely a comma -- a pause in a long sentence -- leading to a hopeful phrase or conclusion? Comma, 'and they all lived happily ever after?'" (Mitchell writes on September 26 that he believes he has tracked down the source of the "comma" phrase, a reference to Jesus's death popular in current Christian teaching, that can be summed up in the phrase, "Don't put a period where God puts a comma.")
- Other responses from Republicans and White House officials have followed the same pattern: spin and smear. White House press secretary Tony Snow, the former Fox News talk show host, attempts to flip the NIE around 180 degrees by saying, "One thing that the reports do not say is that war in Iraq has made terrorism worse." That, of course, is exactly what the NIE says. "The NIE "is not limited to Iraq. The false impression has been created that the NIE focuses solely on Iraq and terrorism. This NIE examines global terrorism in its totality, the morphing of al-Qaeda and its affiliates and other jihadist movements. It assesses that a variety of factors, in addition to Iraq, fuel the spread of jihadism, including longstanding social grievances, slowness of the pace of reform and the use of the Internet. And it also notes that should jihadists be perceived to have failed in Iraq, fewer will be inspired to carry on the fight." All these points already have been stated publicly by Bush, Snow asserts. "Obviously, we're not going to go into what the classified report does say, but what we did see in the newspapers yesterday, the substance, is precisely what the president has been saying." Snow's spin is clear, and clearly at odds with the information presented from the NIE. Dick Cheney launches the smear, accusing Democrats of advancing a "strategy of resignation and defeatism in the face of determined enemies," harking back to the "cut and run" accusations leveled at any Democrat who criticizes the handling of the war in any fashion. He singles out Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Reid's Senate colleague John Rockefeller, and DNC chairman Howard Dean for specific criticism. Reid fires back, saying, "As we make our case to the voters in this election season, it's vital to keep issues of When the U.S. intelligence community confirmed that America is losing the war on terror because of Bush failures in Iraq, this White House lost all credibility on matters of national security. With Iraq in a civil war, Afghanistan moving backwards and our own borders unsecured, it's clear George Bush and Dick Cheney are desperate to hide their record and distort the truth." Bush himself disputes the idea that the report should lead anyone to think that going into Iraq was a mistake: "some people have guessed what's in the report and concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree." He says that the report's conclusions were leaked to the media for political reasons involving the upcoming midterm elections, and criticizes the media for choosing to print the reports.
- Democrats and less bloodthirsty Republicans have a different take on the controversial NIE. The assessment "should put the final nail in the coffin for President Bush's phony argument about the Iraq war," says Democratic senator Edward Kennedy, and his Republican colleague Arlen Specter says, "[M]y feeling is the war in Iraq has intensified Islamic fundamentalism and radicalism." Jane Harman, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and one of the few lawmakers who have actually read the report, says she agrees that the Iraq war had caused the spread of jihadist ideology. "Every intelligence analyst I speak to confirms that." Liberal news and commentary Web site Buzzflash says bluntly: "This is THE smoking gun. This is Bush's own 16 revamped intelligence agencies who have concluded that the Iraq War has expanded terrorism. Thousands upon Thousands of American and Iraq lives destroyed. Billions of dollars wasted. Congress will be won or lost based on the ability of the Democrats to bring truth to power on this intelligence finding by ALL of the top 16 Bush spy agencies. ...The future of America, our national security and democracy is at stake." (New York Times, Toronto Daily News, Washington Post, AP/Yahoo! News, ABC News, Progressive Daily Beacon, Editor and Publisher, Editor and Publisher, Editor and Publisher, Buzzflash)
- September 23: The Bush administration is pushing for the same kind of legislation passed by the repressive governments of Argentina and Chile, laws that are in essence legal amnesty for government officials, up to and including Bush himself, for any charges of human rights violations or war crimes. The legislation currently being passed by Congress is largely focused on Bush's demands to redefine torture and to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, but it also would block any prosecutions for violations committed during the administration's war on terror. Investigative journalist Robert Parry writes, "The compromise legislation bars criminal or civil legal action over past violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, according to press reports. Common Article 3 outlaws 'violence to life and person,' such as death and mutilation as well as cruel treatment and 'outrages upon personal dignity.' The legislation now before Congress also would prohibit detainees from citing the Geneva Conventions as a legal basis for challenging their imprisonment or for seeking civil damages for their mistreatment." The legislation would block, or at best severely limit, anyone trying to hold any administration officials accountable for the commission of these crimes. Bush officials claim that these provisions are meant to protect CIA and other government operatives in the field, but as currently written, the provisions would also shield any Washington officials from prosecution, including the ones who granted the authority for acts of torture and abuse. The law would protect, among others, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, military commanders, and the president himself. "In effect, this legislation could be interpreted as a broad amnesty law, like those enacted by legislatures in Argentina and Chile to give cover to government officials who waged 'dirty wars' against leftists and other political opponents in the 1970s," writes Parry. "Because of those amnesty laws, many perpetrators of torture, 'disappearances' and extrajudicial killings were spared punishment even after the grisly details of their crimes against humanity emerged from the secret records." It is quite possible that the same laws would shield former government officials, such as former president George H.W. Bush, for any violations while they were in office. The new law would not even allow for the acknowledgement that any offenses had been committed, and would make it difficult for Congress to hold hearings to determine exactly what Bush officials may or may not have done that would require amnesty. Parry writes, "By also barring victims from seeking enforcement of the Geneva Conventions in US courts, the bill would give the Bush administration wide latitude for future acts of abuse. Yet, this troubling 'amnesty' signpost -- for an America rushing down a path marked by previous 'dirty war' states -- has been passed with barely a comment on its significance." (Consortium News)
"Jihadistan"
- September 24: Five years after it was invaded by US troops and its Taliban government overthrown, Afghanistan has become what many have warned about for years: the central breeding ground for Islamic jihadists from around the globe. A Taliban provincial commander in Anbar province says that the situation for the Taliban and for jihadist warriors in Afghanistan are steadily improving. "One year ago we couldn't have had such a meeting at midnight," he says . Now we gather in broad daylight. The people know we are returning to power." The Taliban is moving back into the center of the country from the fringes, both physically and metaphorically, with little to stop them outside of the US/NATO forces (only around 40,000 troops) and a weak government that has almost no influence outside of Kabul. Newsweek writes, "In Ghazni and in six provinces to the south, and in other hot spots to the east, Karzai's government barely exists outside district towns. Hard-core Taliban forces have filled the void by infiltrating from the relatively lawless tribal areas of Pakistan where they had fled at the end of 2001. Once back inside Afghanistan these committed jihadist commanders and fighters, aided by key sympathizers who had remained behind, have raised hundreds, if not thousands, of new, local recruits, many for pay. They feed on the people's disillusion with the lack of economic progress, equity and stability that Karzai's government, NATO, Washington and the international community had promised."
- The Taliban's alliance with prosperous opium traffickers has been good for both sides. Taliban fighters are flush with cash, at least by local standards, and the shortage of local police has forced Afghan president Hamid Karzai to allow local warlords to rebuild their militias, after three years of UN efforts to dismantle the militias, and in many instances those militias are populated and controlled by Taliban members or sympathizers. Because of all of this, Afghanistan is, in the words of NATO's supreme commander, General Jim Jones, "unfortunately well on its way" to becoming a "narco-state."
- Although the Bush administration still points to Afghanistan as a model for success, a formerly "failed state" into a functioning, responsible member of the international community, nothing could be farther from the truth. Newsweek writes, "In speech after speech, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior US officials ticked off the happy stats: the Taliban and al-Qaeda had been routed, democratic presidential and parliamentary elections had been held, more than 3 million refugees had returned and 1.75 million girls were attending school. But the harsh truth is that five years after the US invasion on Oct. 7, 2001, most of the good news is confined to Kabul, with its choking rush-hour traffic jams, a construction boom and a handful of air-conditioned shopping malls. Much of the rest of Afghanistan appears to be failing again.
- With heavy irony, Newsweek points to the huge area of no-man's land straddling the Afghan-Pakistan border that it calls a "failed-state sanctuary," or, most ironically, "Jihadistan." Mostly populated by fiercely religious Pashtuns who have little use for the border imposed by British colonialists in 1893, it contains a ever-widening area encompassing mountain sanctuaries in Afghanistan's southernmost provinces, Afghan farmland, and well across the Pakistani border into Waziristan, where militants openly call themselves "Pakistani Taliban." They impose their own harsh discipline and jurisprudence throughout this region, and openly recruit idealistic young Pakistanis to fight in Afghanistan.
- While the rhetoric from Bush officials about Osama bin Laden has resumed, with Bush comparing bin Laden to Hitler and Lenin and vowing once again to hunt the terrorist leader down, Bush's own top commander in the field, Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, says not enough money is being invested in creating a new Afghanistan. Improving Afghan lives is the only way to rout the Taliban or quell al-Qaeda. "We need more in terms of investment in Afghan infrastructure," Eikenberry says. "We need more resources, for road building, counternarcotics, good governance, a justice system. ...Where the roads end, the Taliban begin." The amount of aid given to Afghanistan has been paltry. In the first years of reconstruction after the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, aid amounted to only $67 per year per citizen, says Beth DeGrasse of the government-funded US Institute for Peace. She compares that figure with other recent nation-building exercises such as Bosnia ($249) and East Timor ($256): "You get what you pay for in these endeavors, and we tried to do Afghanistan on the cheap. And we are going to pay for it." International conferences since 2002 have pledged some $15 billion, but countries have actually provided less than half of that so far. The Karzai government estimates it will need $27.5 billion through 2010 to rebuild the country and its institutions.
- Many point to what Newsweek calls "a jarring mismatch between Bush's rhetoric and the scant attention paid to Afghanistan." Afghanistan is "the most under-resourced nation-building effort in history," says former Bush special envoy to Kabul, Jim Dobbins. Unlike many of the inexperienced ideologues utilized by the Bush administration, Dobbins knows what he is talking about, having led Clinton-era efforts to rebuild in Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, and Somalia. Former Bush reconstruction coordinator Carlos Pascual, who retired in December 2005, does not dispute this assessment. He says the State Department has "maybe 20 to 30 percent" of the people it needs. Even Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, fretted last week that for five years the administration and Congress have failed to create a powerful nation-building czar, despite their enthusiasm for regime change. "We have a long way to go," he said.
- The prospects of peace and democracy in Afghanistan are increasingly grim. Not only is it ever more likely that bin Laden and his deputies will live out their lives collecting followers and bringing death and destruction to the West, but the Taliban grows ever more confident and even more brazen, carrying out larger and more bold attacks against targets, even in Kabul. And al-Qaeda, and other groups like it, have a safe haven from which to plan future 9/11-type attacks. "This standoff could go on for 40 or 50 years," says a retired US general who served in Afghanistan, speaking only on condition of anonymity. "It's not going to be a takeover by the Taliban as long as NATO is there. Instead this is going to be like the triborder region of South America, or like Kashmir, a long, drawn-out stalemate where everyone carves out spheres of influence."
- Another factor is Pakistan. Never a strong ally of the US against terrorism and Islamists in its region, the increasingly resurgent Taliban has given Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf cause to show increasing support for the organization. Recently Musharraf allowed Taliban forces to set up a headquarters near the southwestern city of Quetta; he has made a deal allowing militants free rein in North Waziristan, which in turn has led to more and stronger cross-border attacks. Musharraf reassured Bush last week that the Waziristan tribal leaders had agreed not to permit Taliban or al-Qaeda cross-border activity, but the militants say no such commitment was made. "Instead of eliminating the militants, the Pakistani military operation only added to their strength," says Ayaz Amir, a respected political columnist for the daily Dawn newspaper. The Afghan Taliban's recent offensive has only raised the morale of their Pakistani brethren. (MSNBC)
- September 24: In support of the previous item's assertion of Pakistan's renewed cooperation with the Taliban, it is revealed that Taliban spiritual and military leader Mullah Mohammed Omar is the key player behind the movement's peace deal with the Pakistani government. Omar signed a letter explicitly endorsing the truce earlier this month. In return for an end to the US-backed government campaign in Waziristan, the tribal leaders, who have harbored Taliban and al-Qaeda units for more than five years, agreed to halt attacks on Pakistani troops. The deal has been widely criticized as over-generous, with no way to enforce the Taliban's promise not to enter Afghanistan to attack coalition troops. "Had they been not asked by Mullah Omar, none of them were willing to sign an agreement," says Lateef Afridi, a tribal elder and former national assembly member. "This is no peace agreement, it is accepting Taliban rule in Pakistan's territory." (Daily Telegraph)
- September 24: The CIA paid Pakistan millions of dollars in return for sending 369 suspected al-Qaeda terrorists to the US, according to Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf in his new book In the Line of Fire. Musharraf doesn't specify how much Pakistan was paid for the suspects, but does note that such payments are banned by the US government. US Justice Department officials deny any knowledge of such payments: "We didn't know about this. It should not happen. These bounty payments are for private individuals who help to trace terrorists on the FBI's most wanted list, not foreign governments." Musharraf also says in the book that he was angered by American demands in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that he "war-gamed the United States as an adversary." Musharraf says he was well aware that "[t]here would be a violent and angry reaction if we didn't support the United States. The question was: if we do not join them, can we confront them and withstand the onslaught [of a US bombing and possible invasion]? The answer was no." He says that two days after the attacks, the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlain, brought to him a set of seven demands including "blanket overflight and landing rights" and "use of Pakistan's naval ports, air bases, and strategic locations on borders." Musharraf says Pakistan gave no "blanket permission" for anything. He says that he decided to make the revelations to counter claims that Pakistan had not done enough to combat al-Qaeda in the war on terror. (Agence France-Press/Yahoo! News)
- September 24: Former president Bill Clinton is interviewed by Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace. Early in the interview, Wallace asks Clinton, in part, " Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and al-Qaeda out of business when you were president?" He lists several "failures" of Clinton's administration -- Somalia, the embassy bombings in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole -- and says, "Why didn't you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?" Wallace doesn't seem to expect Clinton's forceful, almost angry answer, and really doesn't seem to expect Clinton's insistence on responding to what he calls the "context in which [the question] arises." He says, "I'm being asked this on the Fox network. ABC just had a right-wing conservative run in their little Pathway to 9/11 [Clinton means the ABC/Disney movie The Path to 9/11], falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 Commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report. And I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans, who now say I didn't do enough, claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush's neo-cons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office. All the right-wingers who now say I didn't do enough said I did too much -- same people. They were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day after we were involved in Black Hawk down, and I refused to do it and stayed six months and had an orderly transfer to the United Nations.
- Clinton continues, "OK, now let's look at all the criticisms: Black Hawk down, Somalia. There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk down or was paying any attention to it or even knew al-Qaeda was a growing concern in October of '93." Wallace tries to interrupt, but Clinton refuses to be distracted: "[Y]ou asked me why didn't I do more to bin Laden. There was not a living soul. All the people who now criticize me wanted to leave the next day. You brought this up, so you'll get an answer...." He sets Wallace straight on Somalia -- that the Somalian intervention had nothing to do, to anyone's knowledge in the West, with al-Qaeda: "That was about Mohammed Adid, a Muslim warlord, murdering 22 Pakistani Muslim troops. We were all there on a humanitarian mission. We had no mission, none, to establish a certain kind of Somali government or to keep anybody out. ...There was no al-Qaeda." Wallace attempts to redirect the questioning away from 1993, but Clinton refuses: "No, no. You asked it. You brought it up."
- Having made his point, Clinton allows Wallace to redirect the questioning to a criticism from the 9/11 commission: "The US government took the threat seriously, but not in the sense of mustering anything like the kind of effort that would be gathered to confront an enemy of the first, second or even third rank." Clinton responds, "First of all, that's not true with us and bin Laden. ...Let's look at what Richard Clarke said. He worked for Ronald Reagan; he was loyal to him. He worked for George H. W. Bush; he was loyal to him. He worked for me, and he was loyal to me. He worked for President Bush; he was loyal to him. They [the second Bush administration] downgraded him and the terrorist operation. Now, look what he said, read his book and read his factual assertions -- not opinions -- assertions. He said we took vigorous action after the African embassies. We probably nearly got bin Laden. ...I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill him. The CIA, which was run by George Tenet, that President Bush gave the Medal of Freedom to, he said, 'He did a good job setting up all these counterterrorism things.' The country never had a comprehensive anti-terror operation until I came there. Now, if you want to criticize me for one thing, you can criticize me for this: After the Cole, I had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and launch a full-scale attack search for bin Laden. But we needed basing rights in Uzbekistan, which we got after 9/11. The CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible [for the Cole bombing] while I was there. They refused to certify. So that meant I would've had to send a few hundred Special Forces in in helicopters and refuel at night. Even the 9/11 Commission didn't do that. Now, the 9/11 Commission was a political document, too. All I'm asking is, anybody who wants to say I didn't do enough, you read Richard Clarke's book." Wallace asks bluntly, "Do you think you did enough, sir?" and Clinton replies just as bluntly, "No, because I didn't get him." Wallace seems to think he has Clinton in a corner now, but Clinton retakes the offensive: "But at least I tried. That's the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted."
- Having answered the question, he then calls Wallace out on his own agenda. "so you did Fox's bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me." After some crosstalk, Wallace asks, "You don't think that's a legitimate question?" Clinton replies, "It was a perfectly legitimate question, but I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of. I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, 'Why didn't you do anything about the Cole?' I want to know how many you asked, Why did you fire Dick Clarke? I want to know how many people you asked." Wallace counters, "Do you ever watch Fox News Sunday, sir?" and Clinton retorts, "I don't believe you asked them that." Wallace says, "We ask plenty of questions of...." and Clinton cuts him off: "You didn't ask that, did you? Tell the truth, Chris." Wallace retorts, "With Iraq and Afghanistan, there's plenty of stuff to ask." But Clinton refuses to allow Wallace off the hook: "Did you ever ask that? You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch's supporting my work on climate change. And you came here under false pretenses and said that you'd spend half the time talking about -- you said you'd spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7-billion-plus in three days from 215 different commitments. And you don't care." Wallace splutters, "But, President Clinton, if you look at the questions here, you'll see half the questions are about that. I didn't think this was going to set you off on such a tear." Clinton responds, "You launched it -- it set me off on a tear because you didn't formulate it in an honest way and because you people ask me questions you don't ask the other side." Wallace denies the accusation: "That's not true. Sir, that is not true."
- Unfortunately for Wallace, it is true. According to Lexis-Nexus database searches, Wallace and his predecessor Tony Snow (now the White House press secretary; Wallace took over in December 2003) have had Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Andrew Card, and Stephen Hadley on Fox News Sunday a total of 47 times. At no time were any of them ever asked about the Cole bombing. Neither Wallace nor Snow has ever asked any of these guests why Richard Clarke was demoted; the only time Clarke was mentioned by either of the hosts was when, during an October 2001 interview with Rumsfeld, Wallace attempted to smear Clarke's credibility. And when Wallace had Rice on his show on April 6, 2004, just days after her testimony before the 9/11 commission, Wallace did not ask Rice about the now-infamous PDB of August 6, 2001. Instead, he took the opportunity to attempt to smear Democratic commissioner Jamie Gorelick by accusing Gorelick of making it more difficult for governmental agencies to exchange information with one another about terrorist activities, a charge that was quickly debunked. Wallace did ask Rumsfeld once, on March 28, 2004, why it didn't seem as if the administration's top priority was fighting terrorism, but that exchange was brief and Wallace quickly let Rumsfeld off the hook. Compare these 47 Fox News Sunday interviews with Clinton's single appearance on the program. (Middle East expert Juan Cole posts transcripts of various Wallace interviews with Rumsfeld and Cheney, to demonstrate what he calls the "softballs" Wallace tossed at his Republican interview subjects.)
- Blogger Glenn Greenwald provides numerous examples of Republicans who wanted to "cut and run" from Somalia in 1993. Republican senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson said on the floor of the Senate on October 6, 1993: "I supported our original mission, which was humanitarian in nature and limited in scope. I can no longer support a continued United States presence in Somalia because the nature of the mission is now unrealistic and because the scope of our mission is now limitless.... Mr. President, it is no small feat for a superpower to accept setback on the world stage, but a step backward is sometimes the wisest course. I believe that withdrawal is now the more prudent option." Republican senator Dirk Kempthorne said the same day, on the Senate floor, "Mr. President, the mission is accomplished in Somalia. The humanitarian aid has been delivered to those who were starving. The mission is not nation building, which is what now is being foisted upon the American people. The United States has no interest in the civil war in Somalia and as this young soldier told me, if the Somalis are now healthy enough to be fighting us, then it is absolutely time that we go home.... It is time for the Senate of the United States to get on with the debate, to get on with the vote, and to get the American troops home." Republican Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole said the day before, "I think it is clear to say from the meeting we had earlier with -- I do not know how many members were there -- 45, 50 Senators and half the House of Representatives, that the administration is going to be under great pressure to bring the actions in Somalia to a close...." Republican senator Jesse Helms said in the Senate on October 6, 1993: "All of which means that I support the able Senator from West Virginia -- who, by the way, was born in North Carolina -- [Democratic] Senator Robert C. Byrd, and others in efforts to bring an end to this tragic situation. The United States did its best to deliver aid and assistance to the victims of chaos in Somalia as promised by George Bush last December. But now we find ourselves involved there in a brutal war, in an urban environment, with the hands of our young soldiers tied behind their backs, under the command of a cumbersome UN bureaucracy, and fighting Somalia because we tried to extend helping hands to the starving people of that far-off land. Mr. President, the United States has no constitutional authority, as I see it, to sacrifice US soldiers to Boutros-Ghali's vision of multilateral peacemaking. Again, I share the view of Senator Byrd that the time to get out is now." Greenwald quotes Clinton on October 8 arguing for remaining in Somalia, and Democratic senator John Kerry echoing those views the day before. Clinton and Kerry are supported by Republican senator John McCain, conservative columnist (then a reporter) Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, and the Times editorial page.
- After some more crosstalk, Wallace asks if Clinton wants to discuss his Global Initiative program, but Clinton says, "No, I want to finish this now. ...All I'm saying is, you falsely accused me of giving aid and comfort to bin Laden because of what happened in Somalia. No one knew al-Qaeda existed then." Wallace asks about bin Laden's declaration of jihad against the US in 1996, about the embassy bombings in 1998, and the attack on the US Cole in late 2000; Clinton responds, "What did I do? What did I do? I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president, we'd have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him. Now, I've never criticized President Bush, and I don't think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is only one-seventh as important as Iraq. And you ask me about terror and al-Qaeda with that sort of dismissive thing? When all you have to do is read Richard Clarke's book to look at what we did in a comprehensive, systematic way to try to protect the country against terror. And you've got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever. But I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it. But I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could. The entire military was against sending Special Forces in to Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter. And no one thought we could do it otherwise, because we could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that al-Qaeda was responsible while I was president. And so, I left office. And yet, I get asked about this all the time. They had three times as much time to deal with it, and nobody ever asks them about it. I think that's strange."
- Wallace says he "always intended to" ask about the Clinton Global Initiative, but Clinton retorts, "No, you intended, though, to move your bones by doing this first, which is perfectly fine. But I don't mind people asking me -- I actually talked to the 9/11 Commission for four hours, Chris, 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 yields [sic], where they ask me one-sided questions. And the other guys notice that. And it always comes from one source." Wallace asks ingenuously, "[W]hat's the source [of your irritation]? I mean, you seem upset, and I...I'm asking you this in good faith because it's on people's minds, sir." Clinton responds, "Well, there's a reason it's on people's minds. That's the point I'm trying to make. There's a reason it's on people's minds: Because there's been a serious disinformation campaign to create that impression. This country only has one person who's worked on this terror. From the terrorist incidents under Reagan to the terrorist incidents from 9/11, only one: Richard Clarke. And all I can say to anybody is, you want to know what we did wrong or right, or anybody else did? Read his book. The people on my political right who say I didn't do enough spent the whole time I was president saying, 'Why is he so obsessed with bin Laden?' That was 'wag the dog' when he tried to kill him. My Republican secretary of defense -- and I think I'm the only president since World War II to have a secretary of defense of the opposite party -- Richard Clarke and all the intelligence people said that I ordered a vigorous attempt to get bin Laden and came closer, apparently, than anybody has since. ...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. The same exact crowd. ...And so, if you're going to do this, for God's sake, follow the same standards for everybody." Wallace avers, "I think we do, sir."
- Clinton accused conservatives of charging him with an attempt to "wag the dog" during his tenure, a reference to accusations that he was deliberately using his attempts to find Osama bin Laden and other terrorists as a distraction from the Whitewater/Lewinsky controversy. Though conservatives have long disputed that charge, Think Progress has documented a number of instances that bear out Clinton's statement. (Others can be found throughout this site.) All lawmakers cited in this section are Republicans; the sources for each quote can be found on the Think Progress web page. Representative Jim Gibbons said on August 21, 1998, "Look at the movie Wag the Dog. I think this has all the elements of that movie. Our reaction to the embassy bombings should be based on sound credible evidence, not a knee-jerk reaction to try to direct public attention away from his personal problems." Senator Arlen Specter said the day before, "There's an obvious issue which will be raised internationally about the response here as to whether there is any diversionary motive involved. ...I have deliberated consciously any references to Ms. Monica Lewinsky, but when you ask the question in very blunt terms, the president's current problems have to be on the minds of many people." Then-senator John Ashcroft said on August 21, 1998, "'We support the president out of a sense of duty whenever he deploys military forces, but we're not sure -- were these forces sent at this time because he needed to divert our attention from his personal problems?" Representative Pete Sessions said that same day, "I'm very supportive of the strike that has happened, but I will tell you that the timing is very questionable. This was the day that Monica Lewinsky has gone back to the grand jury, evidently enraged. Certainly that information will be overshadowed." Then-senator Dan Coats said, "While there is clearly much more we need to learn about this attack and why it was ordered today, given the president's personal difficulties this week, it is legitimate to question the timing of this action." On that same day, representative Dave Weldon said, "The obvious question is, are the two connected? That's the unthinkable, and I would hope it would never occur in America, but I can tell you, a lot of people are wondering about it today." Then-representative Bob Barr said on August 20, 1998, "All I'm saying is if factors other than good intelligence, military necessity, being prepared for the consequences entered into it, then it is wrong, and it appears that one of those factors that may have entered into it is to take something that could have been done a week ago and do it today in an effort to divert some attention."
- After a short, pro forma exchange about Clinton's Global Initiative program, Wallace returns to political questioning. "[Y]you say that you are tired of Karl Rove's BS," Wallace says, "although I'm cleaning up what you said." Clinton responds, "But I do like the -- but I also say I'm not tired of Karl Rove. I don't blame Karl Rove. If you've got a deal that works, you just keep on doing it." Wallace asks, sensibly enough, "so what is the BS?" Clinton replies, "Well, every even-numbered year, right before an election, they come up with some security issue. In 2002, our party supported them in undertaking weapons inspections in Iraq and was 100 percent for what happened in Afghanistan, and they didn't have any way to make us look like we didn't care about terror. And so, they decided they would be for the homeland security bill that they had opposed. And they put a poison pill in it that we wouldn't pass, like taking the job rights away from 170,000 people, and then say that we were weak on terror if we weren't for it. They just ran that out. This year, I think they wanted to make the questions of prisoner treatment and intercepted communications the same sort of issues, until John Warner and John McCain and Lindsey Graham got in there. And, as it turned out, there were some Republicans that believed in the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions and had some of their own ideas about how best to fight terror. The Democrats -- as long as the American people believe that we take this seriously and we have our own approaches -- and we may have differences over Iraq -- I think we'll do fine in this election. But even if they agree with us about the Iraq war, we could be hurt by Karl Rove's new foray if we just don't make it clear that we, too, care about the security of the country. But we want to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations, which they haven't for four years. We want to intensify our efforts in Afghanistan against bin Laden. We want to make America more energy-independent. And then they can all, if they differ on Iraq, they can say whatever they want on Iraq. But Rove is good. And I honor him. I mean, I will say that. I've always been amused about how good he is, in a way. But on the other hand, this is perfectly predictable: We're going to win a lot of seats if the American people aren't afraid. If they're afraid and we get divided again, then we may only win a few seats."
- Wallace asks, "And the White House, the Republicans want to make the American people afraid?" Clinton replies, "Of course they do. Of course they do. They want us to be -- they want another homeland security deal. And they want to make it about -- not about Iraq but about some other security issue, where, if we disagree with them, we are, by definition, imperiling the security of the country. And it's a big load of hooey. We've got nine Iraq war veterans running for the House seats. We've got President Reagan's secretary of the navy as the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Virginia. A three-star admiral, who was on my National Security Council staff, who also fought terror, by the way, is running for the seat of Curt Weldon in Pennsylvania. We've got a huge military presence here in this campaign. And we just can't let them have some rhetorical device that puts us in a box we don't belong in. That's their job. Their job is to beat us. I like that about Rove. But our job is not to let them get away with it. And if they don't, then we'll do fine."
- The Newshounds media watchdog site charges Wallace with failure to abide by his agreement with Clinton over the interview. Wallace says in the introduction to the interview that half of the interview will be devoted to Clinton's Global Initiative project and half to whatever Wallace wants to ask. He then says, "that's not how it turned out." No, indeed. Less than eight minutes of the 30-minute interview were devoted to the Global Initiative project. Wallace tried to dodge the breach of agreement, when Clinton pointed it out, by saying that most of his questions had been written about the project, and only returned to the subject toward the interview when Clinton prodded him on the subject. "Would Wallace have returned to the topic had Clinton not called him on his dishonesty?" the site asks. The site's report on the interview concludes, "Wallace landed this interview for one reason and one reason only in my book -- because he rightly criticized ABC for its mock-u-drama about the lead-up to 9/11 which it falsely claimed was based on the 9/11 Commission Report."
- As an interesting side note that gives some insight into Wallace, he said in December 2005 that his father, eminent investigative journalist Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes fame, had "lost it" after the elder Wallace criticized George W. Bush in an interview: "He's checked out. I don't understand it." The younger Wallace said that the family was considering a "competency hearing" for his father, and makes it clear to the reporter doing the story that he is quite serious and by no means joking. By all accounts, the elder Wallace, though 87 at the time of his son's comments, is somewhat frail, but still mentally agile. Wallace is still active at CBS as a journalist. Apparently, what provoked the younger Wallace's sally against his father's mental stability was Mike Wallace's response when he was asked what he would ask Bush if given the chance to interview him: "What in the world prepared you to be the commander-in-chief of the largest superpower in the world? In your background, Mr. President, you apparently were incurious. You didn't want to travel. You knew very little about the military.... The governor of Texas doesn't have the kind of power that some governors have.... Why do you think they nominated you?.... Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that the country is so f*cked up?" In the same interview, Chris Wallace compared DNC chair Howard Dean to "Tokyo Rose" for daring to criticize the Iraq occupation. (Think Progress, NewsMax, Think Progress, Unclaimed Territory, Think Progress, Think Progress, Think Progress, NewsHounds [includes video excerpts from the interview], Media Matters, Juan Cole, Think Progress [full transcript of interview], Think Progress [excerpt from video of interview])
