Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) remarked yesterday
that the 9/11 Commission should stay on the job for
another year and a half, ostensibly to see that their
recommendations are really implemented, but, of
course, it occurs to the LNS that if they are still in
business that could go back and take a deeper and
unrestricted look at some of these painful and
disturbing issues...
MEANWHILE, Robert Scheer, as usual, is doing the work
that NotBeSeen, SeeBS and AnythingButSee should be
doing, and Scheer is not paid the millions of dollars
each (quite literally) that Brokaw, Jennings and
Rather are paid to feign objectivity, knowingness and
a commitment to keeping you informed.
Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times: Without dissent,
five prominent Republicans joined an equal number of
their Democratic Party peers in stating unequivocally
that the Bush administration got it wrong, both in its
lethargic response to an unprecedented level of
warnings during what the commission calls the "Summer
of Threat," as well as in its inclusion of Iraq in the
war on terror.
Although the language of the commission's report was
carefully couched to obtain a bipartisan consensus,
the indictment of this administration surfaces on
almost every page.
Bush was not the first U.S. president to play footsie
with Muslim extremists in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia
and Pakistan, nor was the Clinton administration
without fault in its fitful and ineffective response
to the Al Qaeda threat. But there was simply no excuse
for the near-total indifference of the new president
and his top Cabinet officials to strenuous warnings
from the outgoing Clinton administration and the
government's counter-terrorism experts that something
terrible was coming, fast and hard, from Al Qaeda.
Osama bin Laden's gang, they said repeatedly, was
planning "near-term attacks," which Al Qaeda
operatives expected "to have dramatic consequences of
catastrophic proportions."
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer27jul27,1,7719764.column
ROBERT SCHEER
An Excuse-Spouting Bush Is Busted by 9/11 Report
Robert Scheer
July 27, 2004
Busted! Like a teenager whose beer bash is interrupted
by his parents' early return home, President Bush's
nearly three years of bragging about his "war on
terror" credentials has been exposed by the bipartisan
9/11 commission as nothing more than empty posturing.
Without dissent, five prominent Republicans joined an
equal number of their Democratic Party peers in
stating unequivocally that the Bush administration got
it wrong, both in its lethargic response to an
unprecedented level of warnings during what the
commission calls the "Summer of Threat," as well as in
its inclusion of Iraq in the war on terror.
Although the language of the commission's report was
carefully couched to obtain a bipartisan consensus,
the indictment of this administration surfaces on
almost every page.
Bush was not the first U.S. president to play footsie
with Muslim extremists in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia
and Pakistan, nor was the Clinton administration
without fault in its fitful and ineffective response
to the Al Qaeda threat. But there was simply no excuse
for the near-total indifference of the new president
and his top Cabinet officials to strenuous warnings
from the outgoing Clinton administration and the
government's counter-terrorism experts that something
terrible was coming, fast and hard, from Al Qaeda.
Osama bin Laden's gang, they said repeatedly, was
planning "near-term attacks," which Al Qaeda
operatives expected "to have dramatic consequences of
catastrophic proportions."
As early as May 2001, the FBI was receiving tips that
Bin Laden supporters were planning attacks in the
U.S., possibly including the hijacking of planes. On
May 29, White House counter-terrorism chief Richard
Clarke wrote national security advisor Condoleezza
Rice that "when these attacks [on Israeli or U.S.
facilities] occur, as they likely will, we will wonder
what more we could have done to stop them." At the end
of June, the commission wrote, "the intelligence
reporting consistently described the upcoming attacks
as occurring on a calamitous level." In early July,
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft was told "that preparations
for multiple attacks [by Al Qaeda] were in late stages
or already complete and that little additional warning
could be expected." By month's end, "the system was
blinking red" and could not "get any worse," then-CIA
Director George Tenet told the 9/11 commission.
It was at this point, of course, that George W. Bush
began the longest presidential vacation in 32 years.
On the very first day of his visit to his Texas ranch,
Aug. 6, Bush received the now-infamous two-page
intelligence alert titled, "Bin Laden Determined to
Attack in the United States." Yet instead of returning
to the capital to mobilize an energetic defensive
posture, he spent an additional 27 days away as the
government languished in summer mode, in deep denial.
"In sum," said the 9/11 commission report, "the
domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the
threat. They did not have the direction, and did not
have a plan to institute. The borders were not
hardened. Transportation systems were not fortified.
Electronic surveillance was not targeted against a
domestic threat. State and local law enforcement were
not marshaled to augment the FBI's efforts. The public
was not warned."
In her public testimony to the commission, Rice argued
that the Aug. 6 briefing concerned vague "historical
information based on old reporting," adding that
"there was no new threat information." When the
commission forced the White House to release the
document, however, this was exposed as a lie: The
document included explicit FBI warnings of "suspicious
activity in this country consistent with preparations
for hijackings or other types of attacks, including
recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."
Furthermore, this briefing was only one of 40 on the
threat of Bin Laden that the president received
between Jan. 20 and Sept. 11, 2001.
Bush, the commission report also makes clear,
compounded U.S. vulnerability by totally misleading
Americans about the need to invade Iraq as a part of
the "war on terror."
For those, like Vice President Dick Cheney, who
continue to insist that the jury is still out on
whether Al Qaeda and Iraq were collaborators, the
commission's report should be the final word, finding
after an exhaustive review that there is no evidence
that any of the alleged contacts between Bin Laden and
Saddam Hussein "ever developed into a collaborative
operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence
indicating that Iraq cooperated with Al Qaeda in
developing or carrying out any attacks against the
United States."
So, before 9/11, incompetence and sloth. And after?
Much worse: a war without end on the wrong
battlefield.
If you want other stories on this topic, search the
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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times