Now, that’s really unfair. You do realize the 9/11 families were a major impetus for the whole commission happening at all, right?
Gail Sheehy has been writing articles about these women for months now in the pages of the NY Observer. Go to their homepage and search for her. The articles are fascinating. And they were far from cutting Condi a break–they walked out to protest her not coming.
That’s what’s going on in the back of that hearing room, folks. There comes a time when the sniping and clutching at pearls should stop.
Those structural deficiencies didn’t prevent Clarke, under Clinton, from successfully foiling the planned “millenium” attacks.
It would be one thing if Bush & Co. had employed the same strategy in the summer and fall of 2001, and still failed to stop 9/11. It’s quite another to more or less ignore the warning signals and then retroactively blame “structural deficiencies.”
By the way, they’re reporting on Swedish news that Karbala has also fallen to Shiite forces. I haven’t seen it announced on any of the blogs yet. Don’t know if its already common knowledge stateside, didn’t know where to post it, so I thought I’d just drop it in here.
I do realize that the 9/11 families were a major impetus for the whole commission. I apologize, I do not mean to take a broad-swipe at the families of the 9/11 victims and my comments could clearly be taken that way. Let me try to explain.
I am a private citizen. I do not know, personally, anyone who died on 9/11. I want the truth about what happened that day and in the months/years leading up to that day. I do not seek to “place blame” to one administration or another. To be honest, I do not think you can place blame in this - it was a horrible, mostly un-preventable, act by extremists and to believe you can anticipate such actions is just naive. Regardless, I emphasize again, I want The Truth.
I cannot fathom, if I was one of the families of the victims of 9/11, why they are not seeing the same thing I see - that this has degenerated into blatant politicing by a supposedly impartial non-partisan commission. I am not blaming Democrats or Republicans alone, I am blaming them all - each and every damn one of them. They (the families) wanted this commission, we (the general public) all deserved this commission and we all deserve The Truth. Why, on the blood of your family members, do they applaud partisan snipping? Why do they not stand up and demand more? I do not have the power of a voice in the court-room as they do. If I did, I’d damn sure not applaud partisan snipping and political power plays. I’d boo them each time a member of the commission tried it and I’d boo each “witness” who did the same. I’d applaud those who spoke up for The Truth in a non-partisan way.
I just cannot explain it or understand it but I am certainly open-minded enough to listen to a reasonable explanation.
Let me suggest, and trust that everybody understands, that the testimony of the celebrity witnesses like Dr. Rice, and Mr. Clarke, the present and former Secretaries of State and Defense, the CID Director and even the President and Vice-President (present and former) is sort of the A-1 sauce—the real meat is going to be found in the staff reports that will give us details that will either confirm or impeach the glittering and self serving rationalizations of the celebrity witnesses. These people are all smart enough to justify every thing they did or failed to do and to make a superficially persuasive case for their own wisdom, strength and energy. Before we can come to any firm conclusion about what went wrong we have to see the staff reports, assuming they are released. Otherwise we have a bunch of people with an ax to grind and a ass to cover proclaiming that they were right in every particular and every one else was wrong.
I keep wondering however, if the use of hijacked airplanes to crash into building was anticipated (apparently it was) why didn’t a simple directive go out to lock the cockpit doors? If word had gone out to aircrews only that there was a fair chance that hijackers might want to drive airliners into the ground, rather than get a free trip to Cuba or Tripoli, would a half dozen guys with box cutters have been able to take over a flight? You don’t need to know the specifics of a plot to take that sort of simple precausion.
You would have learned this from Clarke’s book if he hadn’t testified. Everything he said in his public testimony he had also said in his book with greater detail. Give me an example of something you learned from the hearings that wasn’t already published in a book or article or TV news segment.
The Bush Administration did increase spending on counter-terrorism. The budget submission in mid-2001 included nearly $600M for anti-terrorism programs across several agencies (mostly within the DOD). They cut spending on the failed law enforcement strategy and shifted to a military one.
Too bad Clarke didn’t publish his book under oath. We could have saved $40 million by asking Clinto to publish the Lewinski Memoirs instead of putting him on the stand.
No, I’m talking about the plans to bomb LAX and other sites (in the US) that was foiled in 1999. I admit that I don’t know much about it, though, other than Clarke’s testimony before the commission. There he claims, under oath, that his aggressive policy of “shaking the tree” was responsible, at least to a large extent, for successfully undermining the planned attacks. Humpty:
Well, much of what I learned from the hearings I learned news reports about the hearings.
I agree with you (I think) that much, maybe all, of the information is available in other forms. I haven’t read Clarke’s book, however, and doubt if I’ll ever have time for it. You have known a great deal about these issues prior to the commission; I didn’t. For that reason alone, the commission must surely be a good thing.
In addition, I think they’ve shown what the Bush administration really goes for. He and his backers have done virtually everything in their power to block the work of the commission. He’s “brave” enough to send American boys to fight and die for him, but doesn’t dare to face the commission alone. Stuff like that.
Oops, I was confused. I had seen ties between the Philippines event and the Millennium Plot mentioned in other places. Must be some other ppl confused as well. There is a connection, but not like I thought. Turns out that Ressam was trained by the guy in the Philippines. So in my best Gilda Radner voice, “Never mind.”
I thought at least some of the clapping was appropriate… in a few instances, Rice was clearly trying to run out the clock instead of answering the question, and the commissioners who insisted on staying on subject (starting with Mr. Ben-Veniste) deserved a hand.