Saturday, April 10, 2004
AND A-ONE, AND A-TWO, AND A-THREE
After watching Condi spin for 2-1/2 hours, all we can say is, that girl sure can tapdance!
There was no "plan", but there was a "series of actionable items".
There was a PDB (presidential daily briefing) entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States", but it was actually about "overseas targets".
Even though the PDB in question is still currently classified, it reportedly contains specific warnings about hijackers, yet "this kind of analysis about the use of airplanes as weapons actually was never briefed to us".
Etc. Man, that girl can dance.
Bush Memo Included Possible Plot Warning
By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - President Bush 's August 2001 briefing on terror threats included information that federal agents were investigating reports three months earlier about a possible plot on U.S. soil. And, it said, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden 's desire to strike inside America surfaced as long as four years before Bush took office, according to several people who have seen the memo.
The document has emerged as a key point of interest to the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, airborne attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
Some of the most current information in the so-called presidential daily briefing, or PDB, delivered to Bush on Aug. 6, 2001, came from reports U.S. intelligence had received in May 2001 about a possible plot for an explosives attack inside the United States, the sources told The Associated Press this week.
Also in August 2001, U.S. intelligence officials received two uncorroborated reports suggesting that terrorists might use airplanes, including one that suggested al-Qaida operatives were considering flying a plane into a U.S. embassy, current and former government officials said.
Those reports — among thousands of varied and uncorroborated threats received by the government each month — weren't deemed credible enough to tell Bush or his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, the officials said.
None of the information in the president's briefing or the August reports involved the eventual Sept. 11 plot.
But former Indiana Rep. Timothy Roemer, a Democratic member of the Sept. 11 commission, has said: "Something was going to happen very soon and be potentially catastrophic. I don't understand, given the big threat, why the big (national security) principals (officials) don't get together."
The sources who read the presidential memo would speak only on condition of anonymity because the White House has yet to declassify the highly sensitive document, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States."
That declassification process is expected to be completed soon, allowing the administration to make the document public in a historic disclosure of presidential intelligence briefing materials.
The sources said the memo included a series of items that brought Bush through a history of mostly uncorroborated intelligence that cited al-Qaida's interest in hijacking planes to win the release of Islamic extremists who had been arrested in 1998 and 1999.
It also included the trips of suspected al-Qaida operatives, including some U.S. citizens, in and out of the United States. It suggested al-Qaida might have a support system in place on U.S. soil, the sources said.
The document also included FBI analytical judgments that some al-Qaida activities were consistent with preparation for airline hijackings or other types of attacks, some members of the commission looking into the Sept. 11 attacks said this week.
The second-to-last item told Bush there were numerous — at least 70 — terror-related investigations under way by the FBI in 2001 involving matters or people on U.S. soil, the sources said.
And the final notation, they said, was based on a May 2001 intelligence report indicating al-Qaida operatives were trying to get inside the United States from Canada to carry out an attack with explosives. There were no specifics about the timing or target of the attack, but the memo said the FBI and other agencies were investigating.
A joint congressional inquiry report into Sept. 11 intelligence failures disclosed the May 2001 threat report last year but did not reveal it was included in Bush's briefing. The congressional inquiry described the intelligence this way:
"In May 2001, the intelligence community obtained information that supporters of Osama bin Laden were reportedly planning to infiltrate the United States via Canada in order to carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives."
In her testimony Thursday to the Sept. 11 commission, Rice described Bush's Aug. 6 daily briefing as including mostly "historical information" and said most threat information in the summer of 2001 involved overseas targets.
Rice also said she did not recall seeing any warnings before Sept. 11 that a plane might be used a terrorist weapon, though it was possible others in the White House did.
Current and former government officials told the AP that in the same month Bush received his briefing, U.S. intelligence received two uncorroborated reports — among hundreds — suggesting terrorist might use planes but that neither reached the president or Rice.
The officials said one report in August 2001 said there was uncorroborated information that two bin Laden operatives had met in October 2000 to discuss a plot to attack the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi with an airplane.
That report said the operative would either use the plane to bomb the embassy or crash into it, according to information provided congressional investigators and cited in their report released last year.
Separately, the CIA asked the Federal Aviation Administration in August 2001 to advise commercial airlines that six Pakistanis in Latin America, not connected to al-Qaida, were considering a hijacking, bombing or sabotage of an airliner.
That warning did not have specifics on a time or location but said it could involve Britain, Canada, Mexico, Malaysia or Cuba, among others, according to information made public by the congressional inquiry.
Rice said emphatically Thursday she did not see any such reports about al-Qaida using a plane as a weapon until after Sept. 11, suggesting the intelligence may have reached someone lower in the White House.
"To the best of my knowledge ... this kind of analysis about the use of airplanes as weapons actually was never briefed to us," she told the Sept. 11 commission. "I cannot tell you that there might not have been a report here or a report there that reached somebody in our midst."Thursday, April 08, 2004
MY DICKHEAD IS BIGGER THAN YOUR DICKHEAD
Searching for a real man to fight the real wars
Maureen Dowd, New York Times August 26, 2003
John Kerry is going to announce his candidacy for the presidency next week (who knew?) standing in front of an aircraft carrier.
That's a relief If he had used the usual town square or high school gym backdrop, what would we have thought about his manliness?
Dropping his heroic military service into almost every speech has not been enough, nor has mounting his Harley in a bomber jacket whenever a TV camera's near.
Three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star in Vietnam should trump one lackadaisical Texas National Guard record, but we live in an age when "reality" is defined by ratings. So the issue is illusion: Can Senator Kerry match President George W Bush's ability to appropriate an aircraft carrier as a political prop?
Kerry, a Boston Democrat, had thought about announcing in front of a warship, wrote The Boston Globe's Glen Johnson, but felt the need for something bigger, to stage a more chesty confrontation with Bush.
Even though his "Mission Accomplished" backdrop turned out to be woefully premature, W's "Top Gun" moment is immortalized with an action figure in a flight suit and the leg-hugging harness that made Republican women's hearts go boom-boom.
In presidential races, voters look for the fatherly protector In the 90's, contenders showed softer sides, crying, wearing earth tones, confessing to family therapy.
But Sept 11 and the wars that followed have made pols reluctant to reveal feminine sides Howard Dean struts and attacks like a bantam, and wonky Bob Graham paid half a mil to plaster his name on a Nascar truck.
Out-he-manning the cowboy-in-chief, Arnold Schwarzenegger strides into the arena in a cloud of cordite, cigar smoke, Hummer fumes and heavier bicep reps.
Spike TV, the first men's channel, offers "Baywatch," a Pamela Anderson cartoon called "Stripperella," "The A-Team," "American Gladiators," "Car and Driver" and "Trucks!".
Conservatives want to co-opt all this free-floating testosterone and copyright the bravery shown on Sept 11. They disparage liberals as people who scorn "traditional" male traits and sanction gay romance.
The cover of the American Enterprise Institute's magazine bellows: "Real Men: They're Back".
A round-table discussion by conservative women produced the usual slavering over W in his flight suit and Rummy in his gray suit.
"In George W Bush, people see a contained, channeled virility," said Erica Walter, identified as "an at-home mom and Catholic writer" "They see a man who does what he says, whose every speech and act is not calculated".
Yeah Nothing calculated about a president's delaying the troops from getting home and renting stadium lights so he can play dress up and make a movie-star landing on an aircraft carrier gussied up by his image wizards, at a cost of a mil.
Kate O'Beirne of The National Review gushes: "When I heard that he grew up jumping rope with the girls in his neighborhood, I knew everything I needed to know about Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton couldn't credibly wear jogging shorts, and look at George Bush in that flight suit".
On the men's round-table, David Gutmann, a professor emeritus of psychology at Northwestern, notes that Bush "bears important masculine stigmata: He is a Texan, he is not afraid of war, and he sticks to his guns in the face of a worldwide storm of criticism".
Stigmata, schtigmata. Shouldn't real men be able to control their puppets? The Bush team could not even get Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraq Governing Council to condemn the UN bombing or feign putting an Iraqi face on the occupation .The puppets refused because they didn't want to be seen as puppets.
Shouldn't real men be able to admit they made a mistake and need help? Rummy Co bullied the United Nations and treated the allies like doormats before the war, thinking they could do everything themselves, thanks to the phony optimistic intelligence fed to them by the puppet Chalabi. No wonder they're meeting with a cold response as they slink back.
Shouldn't real men be reducing the number of Middle East terrorists rather than increasing them faster than dragon's teeth?
Could the real men please find some real men?Wednesday, April 07, 2004
ON THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT
Why the American operation in Iraq is doomed: we just don't understand the peoples we are "liberating". The current violence is not just some isolated wingnuts, it's the peoples themselves rising up against their occupiers. Some sobering reading from "Raed in the Middle" http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/
Lost between the East and the West
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
shouldn't I be proud of this?
Guerrilla of the Week
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 4:29 AM
The uprising in Iraq is still expanding…
But I still feel that Bush and Bremer are totally out of the picture…
All what we can hear from the coalition governments’ spokesmen, and from the international media news are some fake explanations and explanations…
Let me declare some points:
AsSadr is NOT reflecting a minority of Iraqis, this is a stupid big lie.
Whether we liked him or not, he is the political and religious leader for MILLIONS of Iraqis in the southern region…
There are 15 million Iraqis living in the south, and another 5 million in Baghdad, I can say that 5 to 7 millions of them can be considered as AsSadr followers.
AsSadr is NOT a mere twenty-something year old guy, that is playing games.
Whether we liked him or not, he is a phenomenon. When people in the south of Iraq look at Muqtada AsSadr, they see the history of his father, the deep roots of his religious supporter: AlHaeri.
AsSadr is NOT a small follower of the Iranian Government; he has very bad relations with the official government of Iran, unlike Sistani and Hakim.
AsSadr is THE GOVERNMENT in most of the cities of the south: Amara, Kut, Nasryya and Diwanyya and Simawa partially, and Najaf partially (Kufa is a small city in Najaf that is the center of AsSadr).
I mean… from my secular point of view… it is a disaster to have all of these extremist religious right-winged militias… but this is the direct result of the lost policy of the Bush administration, which are exactly what the expected problem of imported “democracy” would be, I used to call this cul-de-sac that we are stuck in: The Algerian Dead End. Algeria went through the exact scenario some years ago… do you want elections and democracy? The powerful extremist religion people are going to win :*)
You don’t want democracy and elections? Don’t start the mess.
It is the lack of vision that gives space and time for extremists to grow and build armies. Didn’t anyone think what the Anti-American army of Al-Mahdi is going to do?!
Arrange the election rooms?
Or play American football with the Army of the USA?
I mean… please… let me see a single integrated movement in Iraq!
You either act like Mr. Firm that can destroy everything with his tanks from the early beginning, or you act like Mr. Democratic and give the “majority” what they want!
All I can see is a collage, a random collection of rules, a bipolar mood in solving problems.
I am totally against the super imposed democratic experience of the west on Iraq, and as a secular left-winged Muslim I used to have my theories for modifying our communities even before the war. It is such a complicated task… to modify the values of our Patriarchal culture, and to change the social hierarchy based on power and strength. But this is a real long procedure, and a very sophisticated one.
Most of the people that I know (including myself) were against this war… and still are…
Why? Because we are Baathists and Saddamists? Because we are masochists who enjoyed living in the horrible life under the Iraqi government?
NO.
It was because we understood that the modifying must come from INSIDE… even if it took decades or centuries.
I know that I can’t come to Texas and tell people what to do…
Or to London… or to Madrid…
Not because I don’t have enough ideas… it is because my ideas will be OUT OF CONTEXT.
This is the exact situation of the Ideas of the Bush administration in Iraq, they are not bad at all… they are completely out of context…
And when they try to act like Iraqis sometimes, everything starts looking more paradoxical.
Iraq is not a part of the “Global Village”, and it won’t be a peaceful part if it was added by using tanks and bombs.
When I see the gradual evolution of the Jordanian community, and compare it with the Iraqi one, I feel really sad. The culture and behavior of the citizens of Amman (the capital of Jordan) went through a very gradual and comfortable period of changing, they joined the global village without explosions. Now you can find girls with pierces, tattoos, and red hair sitting in the same place with a religious Sheikh with long beard. People learned how to accept the other, and how to keep their national trend too. It doesn’t mean at all that I LOVE the lifestyle of Amman, but it is a good example of how can a community go some steps ahead and join the international regime without exploding OR imploding.
The case of Iraq is different; people feel that their personality, history and culture are being attacked. Everyone is defensive now, “they destroyed our museums, they want to delete our history”, “they are increasing prostitution and trafficking, this is against our religion”, “we don’t want Jewish people to come to our country”, “they are killing the Iraqi scientists”, you can hear dozens of those statements that are mere illusions most of the time, but the point is that a defensive community cannot be a friendly one. Attacking Iraq made people more conservative and self-protective.
All of these military steps that Bremer is taking now remind Iraqis of the Palestinian crisis, everything related to mass-public punishment will not give good results. Falluja under the siege is the wrong thing to happen, bombing Shia residential areas is the wrong signal to give, and saying lies in public is killing the hope that the CPA would be credible ever.
And the thing happening in Iraq right now, killing hundreds of Iraqis and dozens of coalition soldiers, is NOT just another mob. It is an uprising.
I am criticizing without giving answers, because the time of giving suggestions has not come yet.
As Guoying, my Chinese ex-girlfriend, used to say: “hold your sword still, until the right moment”.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
CONFIRMED: REPUBLICANISM IS GENETIC
The discovery that affiliation with the Republican Party is genetically determined was announced by scientists in the current issue of the journal NURTURE, causing uproar among traditionalists who believe it is a chosen lifestyle. Reports of the gene coding for political conservatism, discovered after a decades-long study of quintuplets in Orange County, CA, has sent shock waves through the medical, political, and golfing communities.
Psychologists and psychoanalysts have long believed that Republicans' unnatural disregard for the poor and frequently unconstitutional tendencies resulted from dysfunctional family dynamics -- a remarkably high percentage of Republicans do have authoritarian domineering fathers and emotionally distant mothers who didn't teach them how to be kind and gentle.
Biologists have long suspected that conservatism is inherited. "After all," said one author of the NURTURE article, "It's quite common for a Republican to have a brother or sister who is a Republican."
The finding has been greeted with relief by Parents and Friends of Republicans (PFREP), who sometimes blame themselves for the political views of otherwise lovable children, family, and unindicted co-conspirators.
One mother, a longtime Democrat, wept and clapped her hands in ecstasy on hearing of the findings. "I just knew it was genetic," she said, seated with her two sons, both avowed Republicans. "My boys would never freely choose that lifestyle!"
When asked what the Republican lifestyle was, she said, "You can just tell watching their conventions in Houston and San Diego on TV: the flaming xenophobia, flamboyant demagogy, disdain for anyone not rich, you know." Both sons had suspected their Republicanism from an early age but did not confirm it until they were in college, when they became convinced it wasn't just a phase they were going through.
The NURTURE article offered no response to the suggestion that the high incidence of Republicanism among siblings could result from their sharing not only genes but also psychological and emotional attitude as products of the same parents and family dynamics.
A remaining mystery is why many Democrats admit to having voted Republican at least once -- or often dream or fantasize about doing so. Polls show that three out of five adult Democrats have had a Republican experience, although most outgrow teenage experimentation with Republicanism.
Some Republicans hail the findings as a step toward eliminating conservophobia. They argue that since Republicans didn't "choose" their lifestyle any more than someone "chooses" to have a ski-jump nose, they shouldn't be denied civil rights which other minorities enjoy. If conservatism is not the result of stinginess or orneriness (typical stereotypes attributed to Republicans) but is something Republicans can't help, there's no reason why society shouldn't tolerate Republicans in the military or even high elected office -- provided they don't flaunt their political beliefs.
For many Americans, the discovery opens a window on a different future. In a few years, gene therapy might eradicate Republicanism altogether.
But should they be allowed to marry?Tuesday, April 06, 2004
TACKING AND TRACKING THE MICE
Can you believe these cheeseballs. "Retailers selling its goods can be trusted to guard consumers' privacy without laws", sez guileless spokeshead for megacorp. Yeah. Right. And we have some lovely Kansas beachfront property we'd like to sell them...
Watchdogs Push for RFID Laws
By Mark Baard (Wired News)
CHICAGO -- RFID is too powerful a technology and Wal-Mart and its suppliers are too cozy with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for the companies to be trusted with the data gathered from radio tags on consumer goods, say a civil rights lawyer and a privacy law expert.
But the companies, led by Procter & Gamble, are opposing RFID legislation, and want consumers to allow them to keep RFID tags active after checkout, and to match shoppers' personal information with particular items.
The civil rights lawyer, Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Program at the American Civil Liberties Union, spoke at the RFID Journal Live conference in Chicago last week. He said companies could use RFID tags to profile their own customers and share their information with the government -- violating the companies' own privacy policies.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, is working with companies like Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble to develop RFID (which stands for radio-frequency identification) to monitor America's consumer supply chains.
Homeland Security may find the combination of live tags and customer profiles hard to resist when investigating suspected terrorists, or as a means to monitor entire groups of people, said the privacy expert.
"The surveillance potential for RFID is huge," said Scott Blackmer, a lawyer and board member of the International Security, Trust and Privacy Alliance.
ISTPA has developed a privacy framework that organizations can use to comply with emerging privacy laws and policies.
P&G and other companies last week suggested they want to keep RFID tags active after checkout, rather than disabling them with so-called "kill machines." The companies also want to match the unique codes emitted by RFID tags to shoppers' personal information.
RFID will make it easy for companies and government investigators to establish the whereabouts of citizens, by reading the active tags on their clothing and other items in private and public places.
Investigators in divorce cases and criminal investigations already regularly subpoena E-Z Pass automatic toll records, which come from RFID readers, to figure out where an individual's car was at a particular time.
P&G said retailers selling its goods can be trusted to guard consumers' privacy without laws, even if they decide to match their personal information with the serial numbers from the RFID tags.
"If someone selling our products violates our (RFID) privacy policies, we will stop doing business with them," said Sandra Hughes, P&G's global privacy executive.
P&G opposes laws restricting the use of RFID tags in the consumer supply chain and in retail stores, said Hughes.
But without laws preventing businesses from abusing RFID data, U.S. businesses selling RFID-tagged goods may be shut out of overseas markets, where privacy laws are more stringent.
"We have a cowboy mentality about privacy in this country," said the ACLU's Steinhardt. "But we will eventually suffer for it, because we are not complying with global norms."
Companies belonging to EPCglobal, the organization that will keep track of the serial numbers emitted by RFID tags, are counting on Americans to let them read RFID tags, even after purchase.
The companies argue that consumers with active RFID tags on their products can return those goods without a receipt. P&G's Hughes also said that active tags and shoppers' personal information could speed recalls of contaminated and defective products.
Another EPCglobal company is developing smart consumer appliances that read active RFID tags.
"Privacy is cheap," said Peter Glaser, senior manager of client workshops at Accenture Technology Labs, which is developing a smart medicine cabinet and a smart closet, which use RFID readers to encourage people to take their medicine and help them coordinate their wardrobes. "Companies just need to tell consumers what's in it for them."
Monday, April 05, 2004
THE REAL WAR IN IRAQ HAS BEGUN.
We are sooo fucked. The locals are fighting back in an organized manner. We're not liberators, we are occupiers, foreign invaders.
Goddamit, we should never have gone in there like we did...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/international/middleeast/05IRAQ.html?hp
"A coordinated Shiite militia uprising against the American-led occupation rippled across Iraq on Sunday."
"An Iraqi health official in Najaf said 24 people had been killed and about 200 wounded in clashes that ensued when armed militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, a 31-year-old firebrand Shiite cleric"
"Within hours of a call by Mr. Sadr to his followers to "terrorize your enemy," his militiamen, said to number tens of thousands across Iraq, emerged into the streets of Baghdad, Najaf, Kufa and Amara, a city 250 miles south of Baghdad"
"In effect, the militia attacks confronted the American military command with what has been its worst nightmare as it has struggled to pacify Iraq: the spread of an insurgency that has stretched a force of 130,000 American troops from the minority Sunni population to the majority Shiites, who are believed to account for about 60 percent of Iraq's population of 25 million.
Privately, senior American officers have said for months that American prospects here would plummet if the insurgency spread into the Shiite population, leaving American and allied troops with no safe havens anywhere except possibly in the Kurdish areas of the north."
It's gonna be Vietnam all over again. *$^%&$#%@!Monday, April 05, 2004
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National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
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Fax It is vital to get these criminals under oath.
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afelzenberg@9-11commission.gov
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1 (800) 839 - 5276 - TOLL FREE Capitol Hill Switchboard number. They'll transfer you to any House/Senate office you name.Monday, April 05, 2004
THE 911 'STAND DOWN ORDER' - INTERCEPT ORDER WAS RUMMY'S RESPONSIBILITY
Holy cow. Turns out that even if commanders wanted to scramble fighters to intercept the hijacked 9/11 planes they were legally prevented from doing so. The order could only come from Rumsfeld. What the fuck were these administration idiots thinking? Someone forward this document to the 9/11 commission, stat!
---
Found - The 911 'Stand Down Order'?
From Jerry Russell
http://www.911-strike.com
jerry-r@comcast.net 3-30-4
Jim Hoffman has discovered a document which I believe may be very important to the 911 skeptic movement. This document superseded earlier DOD procedures for dealing with hijacked aircraft, and it requires that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is personally responsible for issuing intercept orders. Commanders in the field are stripped of all authority to act. This amazing order came from S.A. Fry (Vice Admiral, US Navy and Director, Joint Staff) so it appears to me that responsibility for the US armed forces "Failure to Respond" rests directly with Fry for issuing this instruction, as well as with Donald Rumsfeld for failing to execute his responsibility to issue orders in a timely fashion.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction CJCSI 3610.01A (dated 1 June 2001) was issued for the purpose of providing "guidance to the Deputy Director for Operations (DDO), National Military Command Center (NMCC), and operational commanders in the event of an aircraft piracy (hijacking) or request for destruction of derelict airborne objects." This new instruction superseded CJCSI 3610.01 of 31 July 1997.
This CJCSI states that "In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses as authorized by reference d, forward requests for DOD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval." Reference D refers to Department of Defense Directive 3025.15 (Feb. 18, 1997) which allows for commanders in the field to provide assistance to save lives in an emergency situation -- BUT any requests involving "potentially lethal support" (including "combat and tactical vehicles, vessels or aircraft; or ammunition") must still be approved by the Secretary of Defense. So again, the ability to respond to a hijacking in any meaningful fashion, is stripped from the commanders in the field.
While none of this relieves the Bush Administration from ultimate responsibility from 911, nevertheless there is the possibility that this discovery could somewhat diffuse the power of our movement's message about the "Stand Down", since it is now clear that it was implemented through a routine administrative memo.
If this comes up as an issue at the Washington 911 cover-up commission, it would be interesting if Fry could testify as to the reasoning behind making it bureaucratically impossible for the DOD to respond to hijackings in a timely fashion.
The relevant documents are on the Web at:
http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/norad/docs/intercept_proc.pdf
http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/d302515_021897/d302515p.pdf
Best regards,
Jerry Russell
http://www.911-strike.comMonday, April 05, 2004
WARRIOR PRINCESS GIRDS LOINS - CONDI GEARING UP FOR PUBLIC TESTIMONY
This is gonna be really interesting. We predict that all in all, Condosleezza's testimony will be a wash for both sides. She'll screw up a little, giving ammo to the Dims, and she'll hold her ground in other places, giving the Repugs a little traction. Why do we say this? 'Coz on the one hand, Condi is smart and ruthless, and on the other hand she's at the center of a corrput, arrogant group of major league fuckups, and it's gotta be a beeOTCH to keep all the lies straight.
Adviser to Face Sept. 11 Commission
By Douglas Jehl and David E. Sanger (New York Times)
WASHINGTON - Condoleezza Rice was, perhaps, in the best position to galvanize the government to take action against terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks because as national security adviser she sat at the nexus of the intelligence, foreign policy, defense and law enforcement agencies who shared responsibility for counterterrorism measures.
That is why -- as the White House scrambles to defend against charges that President Bush and his advisers paid too little heed before Sept. 11, 2001, to the threat of terrorist attacks -- Rice finds herself at the center of the storm.
Thursday, finally testifying publicly in front of the commission examining the attacks, she will be pressed to square her account of events -- one of heightened alerts and the development of new policies to deal with Al-Qaida and the Taliban -- with accusations by Richard A. Clarke, who served under her as counterterrorism adviser, that the new administration paid far less attention to these threats than President Clinton's did.
Senior White House aides concede that Bush has a huge amount riding on how Rice does. ``She's the one who can make our most forceful case,'' one close colleague of Rice said this weekend. ``They don't call her the `Warrior Princess' for nothing,'' a reference to the moniker her staff gave her after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But a review of the record, from testimony and interviews, suggests that Rice faces a daunting challenge, because her own focus until Sept. 11 was usually fixed on matters other than terrorism, for reasons that had to do with her own background, her management style, and the unusually close, personal nature of her relationship with Bush.
Coit Blacker, a longtime friend and colleague of Rice at Stanford who is now director of that university's Institute for International Studies, said any blind spots she had upon taking office in January 2001 may have been rooted in the fact that she emerged from a generation of scholars who trained to focus on great-power politics, with terrorism seen as a deeply troubling but subordinate element.
``It wasn't until after Sept. 11 that most of us realized that for the first time in human history, a non-state actor, a group of religious extremists at the very bottom of the international system, had the capability to inflict devastating damage on the very pinnacle of the international system,'' Blacker said. ``That was without precedent.''
Rice, 49, is widely recognized as one of the most poised and effective public advocates of the administration, and she won praise from Democrats and Republicans for her private testimony before the commission.
Even so, as she prepares for her public testimony this week, friends have been warning her that her personal style -- which combines fierce loyalty to the president with the abiding self-confidence of a woman who ascended to powerful jobs, including the No. 2 post at Stanford, at a young age -- leaves her prone to two potential missteps.
One would be to reveal the depth of her anger toward Clarke, whom she believes she protected against those who wanted to oust him because of his closeness to the Clinton White House. Directly contradicting him, her colleagues fear, would exacerbate the politically polarizing debate that has captivated Washington for more than two weeks.
The other possible minefield, they said, would be to give no ground, to offer no room for self-doubt that the issue was handled with the right urgency and the right approach.
Still, the reality is that Rice has virtually no public utterances about Al-Qaida to point to as evidence that she was as engaged in the issue as she was in Bush's other foreign-policy agendas. In February 2001, George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told Congress that terrorism was the top threat facing the United States.
Even four months later, as intelligence warnings about possible attacks by Al-Qaida began to surge, a June 2001 address that Rice delivered to the Council on Foreign Relations on ``Foreign Policy Priorities and Challenges of the Administration'' made no mention whatsoever of terrorism.
Her background, as she herself acknowledged, was as ``a Europeanist.'' And when she briefly dropped her self-confident tone, the then-46-year-old professor and former provost at Stanford University conceded that as a campaign adviser to Bush, she found herself ``pressed to understand parts of the world that have not been part of my scope.''Sunday, April 04, 2004
WHY YOUR TAX CUT DOESN'T ADD UP
From Newsweek's April 12, 2004 issue:
The blather from both sides obscures the real, but largely hidden, agenda behind the Bush tax cuts. Bush has been open about each item he wants: lowering taxes on capital income, such as dividends and capital gains; creating two big new income-sheltering investment plans; eliminating the estate tax. But he's not been at all forthcoming about the ultimate effect of his program. If Bush gets what he wants, the income tax will become a misnomer—it will really be a salary tax. Almost all income taxes would come from paychecks—80 percent of income for most families, less than half for the top 1 percent. Meanwhile taxpayers receiving dividends, interest and capital gains, known collectively as investment income, would have a much lighter burden than salary earners—or maybe none at all. And here's the topper. In the name of preserving family farms and keeping small businesses in the family, Bush would eliminate the estate tax and create a new class of landed aristocrats who could inherit billions tax-free, invest the money, watch it compound tax-free and hand it down tax-free to their heirs.
By drastically favoring investment income over salary, fees and other "earned income," Bush would make it harder for people who start out with nothing to earn their way up the economic ladder, because they'd pay full taxes on almost everything they make, but he'd shower rewards on people who have already made it to the top rungs.
With the current rate of spending and tax-cutting, there's no way the government can even remotely balance its books without huge spending cutbacks, which are unlikely, or new sources of revenue.
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We are SOOOOO fucked....