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 Two
- September 24: New York Times book reviewer Jennifer Senior reviews two books by progressive authors Sidney Blumenthal and Lewis Lapham, How Bush Rules and Pretensions to Empire, respectively. (Both books are collections of essays and columns by the writers; full disclosure: the editor of this site has not yet read either.) Senior's review is an interesting example of how some media mavens are still offended by the very idea of someone publishing criticism of Bush or of conservatives. She calls Lapham a stereotypical liberal -- "smug [and] condescending" for actually using his "breathtaking lyricism of voice [and] remarkable erudition." (My question: is Lapham supposed to play dumb?) She accuses Lapham of "heckling" instead of contributing anything solid to the political discourse, and concludes by saying Lapham is the liberal mirror to Ann Coulter. All valid opinion, but hard to countenance in light of Lapham's long and widely admired body of work. (Senior also makes a huge blunder, attacking Lapham for not including an essay about the Republican National Convention that she found particularly objectionable; the essay is actually the prologue to the book.) Senior find Blumenthal's book less objectionable, so she resorts instead to personal attacks and insinuations. She resurrects old, long-disproven attack points from the Whitewater era and calls him "predictabl[y] partisan," before grudgingly admitting that some of Blumenthal's writing, research, and even conclusions are valid. Most astonishing is her attack on Blumenthal over his comment about Rudolph Giuliani and 9/11: Blumenthal points out, as have so many others, that Giuliani became a heroic figure on that tragic day in large part because he was visibly providing leadership and Bush was nowhere to be found. Senior writes, perhaps doing her own channeling of La Coulter, "Was Blumenthal anywhere near New York that morning?" (So, are only those in Manhattan now allowed to have opinions regarding 9/11? And, since Senior writes for the Times and New York magazine, it's likely that she herself was in the city on that day. I don't remember seeing footage of Senior rushing to aid the firefighters and paramedics after the towers were struck. Such rhetoric is far worse than anything she cites by Blumenthal as being unacceptable.)
- In itself, Senior's review is of negligible import, and ordinarily would not be worthy of inclusion in these pages. However, I find Blumenthal's response, published as a letter to the editor in the October 6 Times, far more interesting. Blumenthal writes, "In her discussion of my new book, How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime (Sept. 24), Jennifer Senior neglects to mention, much less engage, the book's central idea, that George W. Bush is a uniquely radical president seeking to concentrate power in an unaccountable executive. I have presented this argument in a 10,000-word introduction, 'The Radical President,' and woven it throughout the book's 420 pages, drawn from my reporting on the Bush administration since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Unfortunately, Senior began by dredging up scurrilous innuendo about me connected to the Clinton impeachment trial of 1998, allegations that the Senate and the special prosecutor dismissed out of hand (a fact omitted from her article). Senior concluded by saying 'even the angriest people on the right tend to be funny.' Listing the intervening distortions would take up more space than the original article itself. Was this supercilious piece intended to be a book review?" Blumenthal's succinct response points up just how the right-wing media -- of which Senior seems to align herself -- handles cogent dissent and criticism -- mock it, attack the writer with slander and innuendo, but never, ever, actually engage in a discussion of the ideas raised. Too dangerous, presumably. On the same day, journalism professor Todd Gitlin writes in the Times's letters column, "Relentless criticism and cogent analysis of a relentlessly dangerous and hard-to-believe administration make Senior uncomfortable. Her squeamishness is all too typical of the mentality that for years obscured the recklessness of the Bush White House." Indeed. (New York Times, New York Times)
Global warming causes planetary temperature increases not seen in thousands of years
- September 25: Global warming has forced planetary temperatures to reach levels not seen in thousands of years, and both plant and animal life are being harshly impacted, says a report from the National Academy of Sciences. The mean temperature of the surface of the Earth has risen steadily by over a third of a degree Fahrenheit for the last 30 years, bringing the temperature to a level not seen since the beginning of the current interglacial period which began around 12,000 years ago. Plant, animal, and insect species are steadily retreating from the hot areas of the center of the globe towards the poles. Warming has been strongest in the far north, where melting ice and snow expose darker land and rocks beneath allowing more warmth from the sun to be absorbed, and more over land than water. Water changes temperature more slowly than land because of its great capacity to hold heat, but the researchers noted that the warming has been marked in the Indian and western Pacific Oceans. cThose oceans have a major effect on climate and warming that could lead to more El Nino episodes affecting the weather. "This evidence implies that we are getting close to dangerous levels of human-made pollution," says chief researcher James Hansen. He has been warning of drastic levels of warming for decades, and says the chief cause is human-made greenhouse gases, mostly from human-made pollutants. The study said the recent warming has brought global temperature to a level within about one degree Celsius -- 1.8 degree Fahrenheit -- of the maximum temperature of the past million years. Hansen says, "If further global warming reaches 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know. The last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about 3 million years ago, when sea level was estimated to have been about 25 meters [80 feet] higher than today." (AP/Yahoo! News)
- September 25: Three retired military officers, two generals and a colonel, call for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. During a Democratic "oversight hearing" on Capital Hill, they testify that Rumsfeld botched the planning for the invasion, refused to hear about or plan for any possible insurgency, and allowed US troops to go into battle with obsolete and inadequate equipment.
- Major General John Batiste, who commanded the First Infantry Division in Iraq and served as a senior military assistant to former Rumsfeld deputy Paul Wolfowitz, tells the committee that Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration "did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq." He says, "If we had seriously laid out and considered the full range of requirements for the war in Iraq, we would likely have taken a different course of action that would have maintained a clear focus on our main effort in Afghanistan, not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents." Batiste says that unless US troops significantly increase their presence in Iraq, a civil war is almost a certainty. Batiste, who describes himself as a lifelong Republican, charges that Rumsfeld "reduced force levels to unacceptable levels, micromanaged the war," and created an environment where US troops "are doing unconscionable things." A former commander of the Army's 1st Division in Iraq, he has been complaining about the handling of the Iraq war since he retired 11 months ago, but until today, no one has ever invited him to testify before Congress. "I find that outrageous," he says. "I have a sense for what I'm talking about."
- Batiste is joined in his call for Rumsfeld's resignation by Major General Paul Eaton, who was responsible for training Iraq's military and police in 2003 and 2004, and Colonel Thomas Hammes, who served in Iraq in 2004 and helped establish bases for the reconstituted Iraqi armed forces. Batiste says that Rumsfeld "is not a competent wartime leader" and surrounded himself with "compliant" subordinates. "secretary Rumsfeld ignored 12 years of US Central Command deliberate planning and strategy, dismissed honest dissent, and browbeat subordinates to build 'his plan,' which did not address the hard work to crush the insurgency, secure a post-Saddam Iraq, build the peace and set Iraq up for self-reliance," he says. Additionally, Rumsfeld "refused to acknowledge and even ignored the potential for the insurgency. At one point, he threatened to fire the next person who talked about the need for a post-war plan. ...Secretary Rumsfeld's dismal strategic decisions resulted in the unnecessary deaths of American servicemen and women, our allies, and the good people of Iraq. He was responsible for America and her allies going to war with the wrong plan and a strategy that did not address the realities of fighting an insurgency."
- Batiste also says that the tales of Bush and Rumsfeld listening to commanders in the field, and being willing and ready to send more troops if requested, are false. Generals have made repeated requests for more troops and have routinely been denied. "Many of us routinely asked for more troops," he says. "There simply aren't enough troops there to accomplish the task. It's a shell game we're playing in Iraq, and we've been doing it since day one. And we're still doing it today." Later in his testimony, Batiste says of the administration's assurances that the amount of soldiers deployed was sufficient to secure Iraq, "The whole thing is absolutely disingenuous. We started with a strategy and a plan that was under-resourced in soldiers and Marines and airmen and sailors by a factor of three." Eaton and Hammes concur in their own statements, and Batiste infers that the lack of troops on the ground contributed to the rampant abuses at Abu Ghraib and other prisons.
- Eaton tells the panel, "We went in with a bad plan. ...[S]tay the course is not a strategy." He says planning for the postwar period was "amateurish at best, incompetent a better descriptor." Rumsfeld "has tried and continues to fight this war on the cheap," says Eaton. "The Army is in terrible shape, and the Marines aren't much better." Hammes says that removing the Hussein regime "introduced major instability not just in Iraq, but in the greater Middle East." He adds that not providing the best equipment was a "serious moral failure on the part of our leadership." And while the Bush administration has repeatedly said the war in Iraq is critical to US security, "it has asked nothing of the majority of U.S. citizens," Hammes says. "While asking major sacrifices, to include the ultimate sacrifice, from those Americans who are serving in Iraq, we are not even asking our fellow citizens to pay for the war. Instead we are charging it to our children and grandchildren." Hammes also addresses the issue of obsolete and inadequate materials: The US "did not ask our soldiers to invade France in 1944 with the same armor they trained on in 1941. Why are we asking our soldiers and Marines to use the same armor we found was insufficient in 2003?" Hammes concludes, "It is time for [Rumsfeld] to provide the nation the last in a long series of services and step down."
- Committee members are lavish with their praise of the three former officers. "Your statement, I believe, defines the word 'courage,'" Democratic senator Byron Dorgan tells Batiste; fellow Democrat Harry Reid says, "This hearing today could change our country." Senator Charles Schumer adds, "I hope this here will be a wake-up call to our Republican colleagues in the House and Senate to start having hearings, to start doing their congressional responsibility."
- Rumsfeld, asked at a news briefing whether he intended to resign, shook his head and mouthed "no" before taking a different question. Some Republicans are quick to leap to Rumsfeld's defense, hauling out the usual accusations about partisan politicking, even though neither Batiste, Eaton, or Hammes are aligned with the Democratic party. Senator John Cornyn calls the entire hearing "an election-year smoke screen aimed at obscuring the Democrats' dismal record on nationl security." (Cornyn fails to note that the entire record on national security for the last six years belongs solely to the Republicans.) Fellow senator Mitch McConnell adds, "Today's stunt may rile up the liberal base, but it won't kill a single terrorist or prevent a single attack. "He calls Rumsfeld an "excellent secretary of defense." Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter says that election-season politics may be what's standing in the way of finding a solution to the insurgency in Iraq. "My instinct is, once the election is over, there will be a lot more hard thinking about what to do about Iraq and a lot more candid observations about it." Only one Republican takes part in the hearings, Representative Walter Jones, a North Carolinian whose district includes Camp Lejeune Marine Base. "The American people have a right to know any time that we make a decision to send Americans to die for this country," he says, and opens his section of the hearings by quoting Rudyard Kipling: "If any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied."
- Democrats, many of whom have tried to speak up about their concerns over the war's planning for years, are joining the retired military officers in calling for Rumsfeld's resignation and hammering on the administration's Middle East policies. They point to the hearings themselves as evidence of a disconnect between the realities of Iraq and the priorities of the administration and its Republican allies -- Democrats had to hold their own meeting outside of the regular congressional process because Republicans have consistently blocked any attempts to hold such hearings on an official level. "On the heels of the disclosure that America's intelligence community has concluded that the war in Iraq has increased the terrorist threat, today's hearing deals a fatal blow to any claim that staying the current course is an acceptable strategy for success in Iraq," says Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. (Washington Post, AP/AOL News, Los Angeles Times, The Hill, Washington Post)
- September 25: US troops in Baghdad say that the slum area known as Sadr City is once again a haven for militants and insurgents, and that most of the gunfire and IEDs directed towards them come from this area. So far the US has not taken serious action against the Sadr City insurgents, as US and Iraqi leaders continue to try to avoid a third confrontation with radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his "Mahdi Army," the largest Shi'ite militia in Iraq. Some US troops believe that the only way to curb Shi'ite militias and halt the sectarian violence in the area will be to enter Sadr City in force. Al-Sadr and his followers own 30 of the 275 seats in the Iraqi Parliament, and five posts in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's cabinet, and are a major pillar of the prime minister's political support. Al-Maliki denounced an American raid into Sadr City in August. Ostensibly, Sadr City is under the control of Iraq forces, not the Mahdi Army. When U.S. troops formally handed over the area to Iraqi soldiers in March, one Iraqi colonel promised, "We can handle the security inside Sadr City." This is not the case. The Mahdi Army "claims they control Sadr City, and all the attacks are coming from Sadr City. Then the [Mahdi Army] is doing the attacking or allowing others to," says Captain Chris L'Heureux, a troop commander. "We're seeing more instances, more indications that we have religious militias interfering with the Iraqi army and Iraqi police affairs," says Colonel Greg Watt, the chief U.S. trainer for one of two Iraqi divisions in the city. L'Heureux says, "I'll be honest with you. I hope for a political solution. Sadr can influence more through the mechanism of government than flexing his militia might." But if the order comes to control Sadr City, "We are absolutely prepared to do it. There's no question about that." (AP/Yahoo! News)/LI>
- September 25: General Peter Schoomaker, the Army Chief of Staff, says that the Army is underfunded by "billions of dollars," and cannot continue to maintain its current level of activity in Iraq along with maintaining its other commitments without receiving billions in additional funding. Schoomaker has refused to submit a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders last month after repeatedly protesting, without success, to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the Army's critical budget needs. The refusal to submit the budget is an unprecedented bureaucratic move and, as the Los Angeles Times reports, "signals a widespread belief within the Army that in the absence of significant troop withdrawals from Iraq, funding assumptions must be completely reworked." A senior Pentagon official involved in the budget discussion says simply, "This is unusual, but hell, we're in unusual times." Schoomaker refused to submit the budget by an August 15 deadline after a further series of budget cuts in the Army's requests by both the White House and Congress. Schoomaker wants at least $25 billion more than is currently budgeted, for a total of nearly $139 billion in 2008 and a 41% increase over current levels. "These are just incredible numbers," says the Pentagon official.
- Since 2001, most of the funding for the Afghan and Iraqi wars has come from annual emergency spending bills, with with the regular defense budget going to normal personnel, procurement and operational expenses, such as salaries and new weapons systems. About $400 billion has been appropriated for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars through emergency funding measures since 9/11, with the money divided among military branches and government agencies. The Army has argued that since the primary strain of the Iraq occupation and the war on terror falls on its shoulders, and since its role is slated to expand if strategic plans issued this year are to be followed, then it cannot continue to function under present budget levels. "It's kind of like the old rancher saying: 'I'm going to size the herd to the amount of hay that I have,'" says Lieutenant General Jerry Sinn, the Army's top budget official. Schoomaker "can't size the herd to the size of the amount of hay that he has because he's got to maintain the herd to meet the current operating environment." The Army, with an active-duty force of 504,000, has been stretched by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. About 400,000 have done at least one tour of combat duty, and more than a third of those have been deployed twice. Commanders have increasingly complained of the strain, saying last week that sustaining current levels will require more help from the National Guard and Reserve or an increase in the active-duty force. Bush officials as well as Pentagon officials from Rumsfeld's office have become involved in the Army's budget negotiations. "Now the discussion is: Where are we going to go? Do we lower our strategy or do we raise our resources?" says the senior Pentagon official. "That's where we're at."
- While Schoomaker has argued eloquently for his budget in terms of broken and worn-out equipment and overstretched troop levels, military budget expert Steven Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments says that some of the new budget requests would actually go to new weapons systems, especially the $200 billion Future Combat System, a group of new armored vehicles slated to eventually replace the Army's tanks and transports. "This isn't a problem one can totally pass off on current military operations," says Kosiak. "The FCS program is very ambitious -- some would say overly ambitious." (Los Angeles Times)
- September 25: An interview with a brigade commander of the Army's Third Infantry Division, Colonel Tom James, makes it clear that the lack of support for US military forces in Iraq is endemic and systematic. The division is preparing for its third tour of duty in Iraq. James says that his Fourth Brigade's equipment levels have fallen so low that it has no tanks or other armored vehicles to use in training, and therefore his soldiers are rated as largely untrained in attack and defense. It has been an axiom in the Army since the Vietnam War that units need to train together -- it isn't enough to put a soldier through basic training, then drop him into a unit and expect that unit to function together. Yet this unit is going to return to Iraq for a third tour with little useful training. (Most of the troops' training has been done on simulators, with little experience in real tanks or armored vehicles.) The 4th is also drastically short on manpower, going back to Iraq with only half of its unit strength of 3,500. James says that a few years ago, having a combat brigade in a mechanized infantry division at such a low state of readiness would have been "unheard of."
- The Second Brigade is hardly alone in being drastically undermanned and undertrained: aside from the 17 brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan, only two, possibly three Army brigades, totalling 10,000 troops at maximum, are fully trained and sufficiently equipped to respond quickly to crises, according to a senior Army general. Another brigade in the Third ID suffers from the same manpower and equipment shortages as the 4th; the other two are close to fully manned and have most of their required equipment, but most of their troop complement is very raw, straight out of basic training. Of the 42 active-duty brigades in the Army, 17 are deployed now in Iraq and Afghanistan; the others are either serving in other postings in other countries, or are at home. The Army's policy is to give brigades and their troops two years between active deployments for rest, reorientation, and additional training, but that two-year cycle has been cut to less than a year due to the heavy drain caused by the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Specialist George Patterson, who re-enlisted after returning from Iraq in January, says he was surprised to learn he could end up being home with his wife and daughter for only a year. "I knew I would be going back," he says. "Did I think I would leave and go back in the same year? No. It kind of stinks." Even at home, Army soldiers get little rest: they are called out to answer natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, and many are being asked to prepare themselves for immediate deployment in Korea. Major General Rick Lynch, the Third ID's commander, says he is asked every month if his troops are ready for emergency deployment to Korea in case of a crisis. His answer is that the division is getting there.
- The National Guard is in even worse shape than the active duty Army. Guard officials say the Guard needs $23 billion over the next five years to make up for training and equipment shortfalls. The head of the National Guard, Lieutenant General Stephen Blum, says, "There is no brigade in the United States Army, active, Guard or reserve, that is completely ready back at home. That [$23 billion] is to ensure that every brigade overseas is completely ready. And by ready I mean completely equipped. Right now, the key to readiness of the total force is equipping it, resetting it and modernizing it. It is a function of time and money." (New York Times, New York Times/AOL News, Daily Kos)
- September 25: The Department of Homeland Security intends to slash federal funding allocated to protect California's biggest ports from terrorist attacks. The twin-port complex of Los Angeles and Long Beach will have its funding halved, and the port of Oakland, the fourth largest port in the country, will get no money whatsoever. Many state and federal officials are outraged, noting that California's ports handle 47% of the country's imported goods but only receives 8% of port security grant funding. Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, says, "This grant award decision is beyond outrageous, it is dangerous." Matthew Bettenhausen, head of California's Office of Homeland Security, adds, "DHS has constantly said that their intent is to direct valuable homeland security funds to the nation's assets most at risk or where the consequences of an attack would have the most devastating effect. Unfortunately, DHS has failed in this attempt." California Democratic representative Jane Harman has introduced a bill to force exposure of the overall pool of funding for port security. Many Democrats and other observers believe that DHS allocates money for regions based more on an political agenda -- i.e. which region might be persuaded to swing towards the Republicans during elections -- than because of a real need for security. California is a traditionally Democratic state, though it frequently has Republican state governors. (San Francisco Chronicle)
- September 25: The National Journal prints what it terms a "fact sheet" from the Republican National Committee refuting many of Bill Clinton's assertions during his September 24 on Fox News Sunday. After the Journal calls Clinton's stern refutations of Chris Wallace's accusations "a calculated bid to frame the debate, by example, and prep his party for the fight they face," the magazine prints the RNC list. Predictably, the list is full of misinformation and outright lies. The most egregrious instance is the RNC's assertion: "MYTH: President Clinton Said No One Knew Of al-Qaeda In 1993: Former President Bill Clinton: '[No one] even knew al-Qaeda was a growing concern in October of '93.' ...FACT: Osama Bin Laden And al-Qaeda Were Well Known By The Time Clinton Was Inaugurated." This assertion is flat wrong. It is sourced from a single interview in 2003 with conservative author Richard Minter, who said in the interview that bin Laden was known to the Clinton administration after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. This is true, but what was not known until 1996 at the earliest was that bin Laden had a terrorist network called al-Qaeda. This is confirmed by the 9/11 commission, which reported, "In 1996-1997, the intelligence community received new information making clear that bin Laden headed his own terrorist group." The RNC "fact sheet" also claims, "MYTH: President Clinton Said He Was Besieged By 'Conservative Republicans' Who Thought He Was 'Too Obsessed' With Osama Bin Laden." See the "wag the dog" section above for extensive proof about this "myth." The RNC also asserts that it was well known that al-Qaeda was behind the Somalia incursion in 1993. This is true...as of 1996, not 1993, as Clinton made quite clear. Even the RNC "proof" is an AP article from June 1996, a UPI article from July 1996, and Mark Bowden's 1999 book Black Hawk Down. It is true, as the RNC artlcle asserts, that some -- not all, but some -- conservatives opposed an immediate withdrawal from Somalia after the "Black Hawk Down" debacle, but many conservatives who called for immediate withdrawal are not cited in the article.
- The list asserts that Clarke was not a "loyal" advisor to Reagan or either of the Bushes, a "fact" "proven" by the list's documentation of Clarke's status as an advisor to the Kerry campaign in 2000; what it does not list is the fact that, while serving under Reagan and the two Bushes, Clarke was in every way an exemplary advisor. Only after he left the Bush administration did he begin asserting his own criticisms of Bush's foreign policy. The list also asserts, falsely, that Clinton never provided Bush officials with any comprehensive policy on countering Islamic terrorism. As "proof," the RNC quotes former Clinton national security Sandy Berger as saying, accurately, that they never provided Bush officials with a finalized "war plan" for invading Afghanistan. (Clinton did leave such an impression in his statement to Wallace.) What the Clinton officials, including Berger, did leave Bush was a comprehensive plan on addressing the threat of Islamic terrorism, a plan that was ignored until after 9/11. (Hotline-National Journal, Think Progress)
- September 25: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attempts to refute some of Bill Clinton's assertions during his Fox News Sunday interview with Chris Wallace. She says that Clinton's assertions that Bush failed to do anything to stop terrorism before 9/11 are "flatly false:" "The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false -- and I think the 9/11 commission understood that. What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years." She also disputed Clinton's claim that his administration left her and other Bush officials a comprehensive plan to counter Islamic terrorism: "We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaeda," she says. "Big pieces were missing, like an approach to Pakistan that might work, because without Pakistan you weren't going to get Afghanistan." Unfortunately, Rice is lying. As the 9/11 commission reported, and as is covered elsewhere in this site, after a Presidential Daily Briefing of December 4, 1998, entitled "Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks," counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke convened an emergency meeting of the Counterterrorism Security Group that same day, and implemented a number of heightened security measures at US airports and other entry points. Contrast this with Bush's reaction to the August 6, 2001 PDB entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike US," where Bush could not even recall for the commission whether he had read the briefing, and no security measures were implemented by the Bush administration between August 6 and September 11. Many other references to Bush's failure to take the threat of Islamic terrorism seriously before 9/11 can be found throughout this site, particularly on the 9/11 page.
- Rice also claims that Clinton officials did not leave a comprehensive strategy to combat al-Qaeda. The 9/11 commision reported, "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." Clarke, who also worked for the Bush administration, wrote Rice a memo as soon as the Bush administration took office, stating, "[W]e urgently need...a Principals level review of the al Qida [sic] network." His request was denied. Five days after Bush was sworn into office, Clarke sent the above-mentioned memo to Rice, which included the 2000 document, "strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects." The document contains specific strategies to ensure Pakistan's cooperation in airstrikes against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. (New York Daily News, Raw Story [includes a link to the Clarke memo], Think Progress, Think Progress)
- September 25: MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann gives a harsh review of the Clinton interview on Fox News Sunday, focusing on the lies and misstatements Clinton has endured from the right for years, as well as lambasting interviewer Chris Wallace. The video of Olbermann's commentary can be downloaded from the Crooks and Liars site linked below. Olbermann opens almost savagely: "It is not essential that a past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back. It is not important that the current President's 'portable public chorus' has described his predecessor's tone as 'crazed.' Our tone should be crazed. The nation's freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as al-Qaeda; the nation's 'marketplace of ideas' is being poisoned, by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would've quit. Nonetheless. The headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done, in five years. He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration. 'At least I tried,' he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. 'That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried.' Thus in his supposed emeritus years, has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by anyone, in these last five long years. The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama Bin Laden before 9/11. The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors. The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled 'Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US.' The Bush Administration did not try. Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest 'pass' for incompetence and malfeasance, in American history." Olbermann continues, "To hear [Bush] bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been president on September 11th, 2001 -- or the nearly eight months that preceded it. That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the Executive."
- Olbermann continues with a slam on Wallace, the "monkey posing as a newscaster:" "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 rewriting 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, the sandbag effort by Fox News, Friday afternoon. Consider the timing: The very same weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is -- not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it. The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat. It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired -- but a propagandist, promoted: Promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless. And don't even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for 'e-mailing' you the question." Olbermann reminds us that the slander against Clinton did not start with Wallace, or even with the execrable ABC/Disney movie The Path to 9/11, aired on September 10 and 11, 2006. Of the "wag the dog" accusations, which Olbermann refutes, he says, "And of course, were it true Clinton had been 'distracted' by the Lewinsky witch-hunt -- who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt? Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years? Who corrupted the political media? Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air, the counter-terrorism analysts like Dr. Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from the Middle East who sought to attack us, here? Who preempted them in order to strangle us with the trivia that was 'All Monica All The Time?' Who distracted whom?"
- "The full responsibility for 9/11 is obviously shared by three administrations, possibly four," Olbermann says, rightly enough. "But, Mr. Bush, if you are now trying to convince us by proxy that it's all about the distractions of 1998 and 1999, then you will have to face a startling fact that your minions may have hidden from you. The distractions of 1998 and 1999, Mr. Bush, were carefully manufactured, and lovingly executed, not by Bill Clinton but by the same people who got you elected president. 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 read 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. 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.' That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair -- writing as George Orwell -- gave us in the novel 1984. The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me. 'The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution, is persecution. The object of torture, is torture. The object of power is power.' Earlier last Friday afternoon, before the Fox ambush, speaking in the far different context of the closing session of his remarkable Global Initiative, Mr. Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln's State of the Union address from 1862. 'We must disenthrall ourselves.' Mr. Clinton did not quote the rest of Mr. Lincoln's sentence. He might well have. 'We must disenthrall ourselves -- and then we shall save our country.' And so has Mr. Clinton helped us to disenthrall ourselves, and perhaps enabled us, even at this late and bleak date to save our country." (MSNBC/Crooks and Liars)
- September 25: In a likely response to the overwhelming outpouring of support and enthusiasm generated for Bill Clinton in reaction to his September 24 interview by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, Fox News pundits and guests have delivered a barrage of criticism of the former president and thrown their support behind Wallace. The theme seems to be that Wallace was an innocent journalistic victim of an overbearing, hysterical Clinton. (Readers are invited to refer to the item above concerning the interview, and to watch the video of the interview for themselves.) Fox hosts and guests refer to Clinton's behavior during the interview as a "complete meltdown," an "angry explosion," a "volcanic reaction," and a "tirade." Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, a longtime enemy of Clinton's, compared Clinton's remarks to the anger expressed by many Muslims to the controversial remarks of Pope Benedict XVI, saying, "[I]t's like the way they've attacked the pope, you know -- they want to put certain questions out of...bounds," such as "[a]re you [Democrats] tough enough -- do you have the right understanding in fighting radical Islam and fighting the jihadists?" Fox analyst Tammy Bruce can't resist bringing up Clinton's sex life, saying, "I know that Bill Clinton's probably been told by a number of women to stop touching them, but never necessarily by a man." Wallace himself is interviewed four times by various Fox anchors and pundits after the Clinton interview, and contributes to the Fox storyline of his victimization, at one point saying that interviewing Clinton "was like being on the -- at the bottom of a mountain and suddenly seeing an avalanche come down." One after another, Fox anchors and guests lambast Clinton for reacting angrily to Wallace's "legitimate questions," and laud Wallace for "standing up" to the ex-president.
- Neither can Fox resist trotting out the usual old, long-debunked lies about Clinton's record. Fox News contributor Liz Trotta says, falsely, that the 9/11 commission confirmed that Clinton's reaction to al-Qaeda was largely in response to the media attention focused on his affair with Monica Lewinsky, when in fact the commission reported that it "found no reason to question" Clinton officials' claims to have undertaken their attacks on terrorist facilities and training camps "solely on national security considerations." A new show, The Live Desk, hosted by Martha MacCallum, reiterates the long-disproven tales that counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke "demoted himself," and that Clinton officials deliberately let Osama bin Laden escape from several near-certain capture or assassination operations. MacCallum also led the cheering section for Bush's handling of terrorism and bin Laden, ignoring the facts of the matter.
- MediaMatters gives exhaustive transcripts of a number of Fox reactions to the interview, along with a large amount of material from the subsequent, rather fawning interviews with Chris Wallace. (MediaMatters, Media Matters)
- September 25: In another example of how the US media softens and "celebritizes" its news presentations, Newsweek chooses to run a very different cover story for the US edition of its October 2 issue than for its international edition. The cover of the international editions, aimed at Europe, Asia, and Latin America, displays in large letters the title "Losing Afghanistan," illustrated with a photograph of an armed jihadi. The cover of the US edition, in contrast, is dedicated to celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz and is captioned "My Life in Pictures." The Afghanistan cover story begins with the story of a young Taliban fighter; the Leibovitz cover story begins with a discussion of the photographer's recent session with actress Angelina Jolie. (Raw Story)
- September 25: In what is believed to be an unprecedented move, White House press secretary Tony Snow, a former radio talk show and Fox News television host, will begin raising money for Republican candidates running for election in 2006. "They asked, and I thought about it a lot and we went back and forth," he says. "It's one of those things where I certainly want to help the president. But you have to make sure it's a fine line, and that's why I don't want to get into opponent bashing. The approach I'm going to take is not going to be one of going out and whacking Democrats by name, but straightforward comments about what the president has accomplished. ...If there's a conflict between that and my day job, then the day job wins." (CBS News)
