When to call a smoking gun a smoking gun

While President Bush was taking an unprecedented month-long vacation at his ranch in Texas, his August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing was entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike In U.S.” According to Sunday’s New York Times, the report cited evidence of active Al Qaeda cells within the U.S., “as well as reports that members of the terrorist organization had conducted recent surveillance of a federal building in Manhattan and could be preparing to stage hijackings. The briefing cited threats logged as recently as May 2001.”

In response, the administration did nothing, according to both Condi Rice in her testimony before the 9/11 Commission last week and the president himself on Sunday. That seems to me to be enough, given what happened a month later, to make the case that this administration had been adequately warned, prior to 9/11, that something terrible could occur, and it didn’t take the threat seriously. Despite the administration’s many statements along the lines of “who would ever have thought they would hijack airplanes and crash them into buildings?” their briefings included specific mention of that very possibility.

So what’s their excuse? Rice and the president claim that the August 6 PDB contained no new intelligence, and that they were already hard at work addressing the threat described. Yet there is very little evidence that suggests this administration was treating terrorist threats as a major foreign policy priority in the summer of 2001, again, despite ample warnings by former Clinton administration officials, including Richard Clarke, who stayed on in the Bush White House.

Their next line of defense is pointing fingers at the FBI. Bush said on Sunday that he was under the impression the FBI was looking into domestic threats.

Now ask youself, if you were president and you received a PDB with the warning contained in the August 6, 2001 briefing, wouldn’t you damn sure tell your people to go out and make doubly sure everyone was on the case – the CIA, FBI, transportation officials, and so on? How hard would that have been? And if Condi Rice and Dick Cheney responded that the PDB didn’t really contain anything we didn’t already know, wouldn’t you tell them to go out and check on it anyway? You're the president, dude. You can DO things like that.

But Dubya doesn’t operate that way. He is a lazy, disengaged president who just didn’t bother. Now he’d like to pass the buck.

I used to think it was highly unlikely that 9/11 could have been prevented. I'm not so sure anymore. Had the August 6 PDB led to a re-check on what everyone was doing, maybe the Transportation department would have gotten wind of it and would have strengthened airport security. Maybe the FBI would have rounded up the flight school guys who weren't interested in learning take-offs and landings. And maybe Al Qaeda would have concluded that we were onto them and it wasn't worth the risk.

Al Hunt takes on Bush

As I browsed through the fusty conservative pages of the Wall St. Journal, I found two columns by Al Hunt that just tore into Bush. The links for those of you who have subscriptions.

The Real Flip-Flopper, March 18, 2004 A17
“The president depicts himself as a straight-shooting Texan -- a guy who means what he says and says what he means -- agree with him or not. The reality: More than any president in memory he puts his finger to the wind to test the political currents and, if necessary, adjusts. This is not about misstatements or faulty staff work or flawed policies; it's the gap between promise and performance on big issues.”

Hunt goes on to document the gap between promise and performance on trade, nation-building, gay marriage, and federal spending, before concluding:

“These issues aren't isolated. Other flip-flops include the creation of the Homeland Security Department, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation, negotiating with North Korea, the Sarbanes-Oxley business reform measure, and an independent commission to investigate September 11. Agree or disagree with either Bush position, there's a pattern: He always flops to the side of popular opinion.”

Bush’s Credibility Canyon, April 1, 2004 A15
“‘Credibility gap,’ the dictionary defines in political terms as ‘perceived discrepancy between statements and actual performance.’ The Bush White House qualifies.
What non-Bush partisan believes the administration's current contention that counterterrorism was a big priority prior to 9/11? Or that the White House straightforwardly evaluated intelligence before going to war in Iraq? Or that the administration didn't deceive Congress on the true cost of a Medicare bill in order to ensure the measure's passage?”

Later – same article:
“The misinformation on Iraq has been well documented. The Bush administration still refuses to admit there was no significant Saddam-al Qaeda connection and that they -- and many others -- were simply wrong on weapons of mass destruction. It wasn't too long ago that the president, well after Saddam had been toppled, unequivocally declared, ‘We've found the weapons of mass destruction,’ alluding to the supposedly infamous mobile units to produce biological weapons. Now the president says he doesn't like to read newspapers, but it'd be good to make an exception and look at last Sunday's Los Angeles Times front page. He'd find a brilliantly reported story that these much-ballyhooed mobile units were based on a discredited Iraqi defector with the appropriate code name of Curveball. His story was totally bogus, the former Bush weapons inspector David Kay told the Times, as Curveball ‘was an out-and-out fabricator.’

“All politicians, including presidents, spin or frame matters to their benefit, and sometimes out-and-out lie on personal matters, as Bill Clinton did about Monica Lewinsky. But terrorism, the Iraqi war and Medicare are big items, and this president hasn't leveled with the American people.”

Ouch!

WWJ(K)D in Iraq?

Although opposition and dissatisfaction with the administration’s handling of the Iraq is growing, one line of defense for Bush is to wonder openly what exactly Kerry would do differently about the situation as it currently exists. For his part, Bush can say, the administration remains “resolute,” whatever that means in this context, and “won’t cut and run.”

Against that backdrop, the Wall St. Journal today assesses “What Would Kerry Do” (subscriber site) and finds two major thrusts to Kerry’s still-evolving approach to Iraq:

• take steps to partner with the U.N. and our major European allies as quickly as possible
• support the creation of a U.N. high commissioner in Iraq to replace Paul Bremer.

Seems about right – we need to de-Americanize the situation. There is also this general argument that needs to be pressed openly in the campaign, articulated here by Ivo Daalder, a former National Security Council staff member and another Kerry foreign-policy adviser, “After12 months of arrogance and ignorance, only a Democratic administration would have the credibility" to enlist greater NATO and U.N. support that would help take the American face off the occupation.

But General Zinni (ret) says it’s already too late to expect the U.N. or our allies to help us out in Iraq

From the same Wall St. Journal article:

Outside critics, such as retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, say the Bush administration's moves may have sealed Washington's fate in Iraq. Having too few troops on the ground for the invasion led to widespread looting and destruction of Iraq's infrastructure, Gen. Zinni argues, while carrying out a regime purge and dismantling the army may have fatally destabilized the country. Drawing allies into the fray would have been easier if the Bush administration had thrown out a few reconstruction contracts to its allies instead of awarding them almost exclusively to U.S. companies. Meanwhile, Gen. Zinni, who once led U.S. troops in the region, says postponing a handover of sovereignty would probably just enrage Iraq.

"It's an American problem and we're stuck with it," Gen. Zinni says.

Required Reading: Iraq

Why are we in Iraq?

The Administration’s Defense Department-based Iraq hawks – Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz – came into office determined to oust Saddam. Before 9/11, they weren’t winning the argument inside the Administration with the more reasoned State Department forces led by Colin Powell. After 9/11, they argued that the U.S. can’t afford to let Saddam remain in power for fear that he would distribute his weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. See these two New Yorker articles from before 9/11 and just after 9/11.

But were there any WMDs?

No. The international intelligence community had concluded that Saddam must have WMDs because he threw the inspectors out in 1997, but this wasn’t based on any actual evidence, except some second-hand claims made by Iraqi exiles and their front organization, the Iraqi National Congress, which was busy lobbying the U.S. to topple Saddam and install the INC in power.

This is why we must rely on the kind of intelligence that’s in at least some of our brains to interpret the intelligence that the spies come up with.

Let’s see, why else might Saddam have wanted the inspectors out in 1997? Perhaps because he simply wanted to plant seeds of uncertainty within Iraq and the Middle East that maybe he DID have such weapons, to keep domestic opposition under control. The weapons inspections were emasculating to Saddam, which isn’t a good thing for a dictator who relies on terror to hold power. If he didn’t actually HAVE the weapons, however, he could keep the Gulf War alliance and the UN off his back indefinitely.

Not to toot my own horn – because I’m far from a foreign-policy expert – but my colleague Langdon H. and I were making this very point by e-mail during the fall of 2002. Now, it’s something close to the conventional wisdom as to why Saddam kicked out the inspectors but didn’t revive his WMD program. Of course, he never calculated that 9/11 would happen, and that a new Bush Administration would use 9/11 as a pretext to settle old scores in Iraq.

Or you can read Ken Pollock's piece in the Atlantic. Pollock is the guy who wrote a book about why we should topple Saddam. Now he says,

"The intelligence community did overestimate the scope and progress of Iraq's WMD programs, although not to the extent that many people believe. The Administration stretched those estimates to make a case not only for going to war but for doing so at once, rather than taking the time to build regional and international support for military action."

And were there any connections between Ql Qaeda and Saddam?

No. This was obvious to most careful observers from the beginning. Al Qaeda is based on Islamic fundamentalist ideology; Saddam was motivated solely by the thirst for power. By all accounts, Osama hates Saddam. While Al Qaeda’s ideological aims were furthered by attacking the U.S., teaming up with Al Qaeda on a terrorist strike against the U.S. would be the last thing Saddam would want to do, because it could have so easily deprived him of the one thing he wanted/had – absolute power in Iraq.

What about the aftermath of a war to topple Saddam?

Whatever happened to the concern with what would come after Saddam? The above-referenced New Yorker article from late 2001 quoted a former senior foreign-policy official as saying,

"We have no idea what could go wrong in Iraq if the crazies took over that country… Better the devil we know than the one we don't."

And James Fallows writes in the Atlantic that despite significant efforts to assess and plan the aftermath of Saddam’s ouster, the Cheney-Rumsfeld forces in the Administration systematically and blithely ignored it, dismissing any postwar planning by saying they couldn’t predict the future. Yet, as Fallows points out, the postwar planning documents actually DID a pretty good job of predicting the problems that we now face in Iraq.

All we are saying, is give Al a chance!

After one show, the So-Called Liberal Media jumped all over Al Franken. If you read the reviews, summarized in Slate, and written after the first show, you’d think the program was an utter disaster. The main compliant seemed to be that Franken hadn’t suddenly transformed himself into a fire-breathing lunatic of the left. Fire-breathing lunacy, the argument seems to be, is the key to right-wing radio’s success, so therefore it’s also the standard by which we’re to judge Franken.

Here’s what Jason Zengerle wrote in The New Republic:
“Even when he's ticking off all the reasons he thinks Bush is a dishonest, horrible president, he tends to do so in a discursive, analytical style--one that doesn't exactly grab hold of listeners and make them want to listen to more of his observations. Contrast that with Limbaugh, who sounds (and acts) like the voice of God on his program, and you can see how Franken's personal style might not be that effective.”

Come again? It seems to me that the last thing liberals want is someone who is a loud obnoxious self-righteous bully brow-beating the audience with simplistic bromides. Conservatives seem to like that crap, but liberals don’t. What liberals would like to have, however, is a place to tune in to hear someone articulate their side of things.

Anyway, imagine my surprise when I tuned in the last two days to “The O’Franken Factor.” I found it interesting, informative, and OK, I admit – analytical. It was also very funny. And don’t worry. Al Franken is still Al Franken.

For a list of radio stations carrying the show or to listen live on the Internet, click here for Air America Radio or here for the show's own site.

Off the Campaign Trail with John Kerry

I apologize for the lack of entries lately. I’ve been hanging out with John Kerry, who seems to think that he deserves a snow-boarding vacation for winning the Democratic nomination. If Kerry isn’t going to bother campaigning, then I’m not going to blog about it.

And today we find that Kerry has had shoulder surgery and every hand he shakes from here on out will be painful, a nice recipe for sweetening his already charming demeanor, don’t you think?

Meanwhile, the Bush AMDs (ads of mass destruction) are driving up Kerry’s negatives, just as they are designed to do, defining Kerry as a flip-flopping liberal with poor judgment. According to today’s New York Times:
A USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll this week found the number of voters who view Mr. Kerry unfavorably had increased to 36 percent from 26 percent over the past five weeks, while the number of voters who called him "too liberal" jumped to 41 percent from 29 percent. A New York Times/CBS News Poll this month found that about 6 out of 10 registered voters believed that Mr. Kerry said what he wanted people to hear, rather than what he believed, suggesting some success by Mr. Bush in portraying Mr. Kerry as a flip-floppers.

On the other hand, there is a theory that perhaps it’s better for Kerry to stay off the campaign trail, for two reasons:
• So he won’t say things like, “I voted against the Iraq appropriation, but first I voted for it,” which should work well in a future Bush ad.
• So we can watch the Bushies squirm over the latest bad news on Iraq and the war on terror without it being tied too closely to campaign politics.