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Kean: Commissioner Ben-Veniste, you may begin.Make sure you have your Depends on before you read the rest.
Ben-Veniste: Mr. President, what did you know and when did you know it?
Bush: Say what?
Ben-Veniste: (chuckles) Sorry, Mr. President. I couldn't resist that one. (clears throat, grows more serious) Mr. President, you were inaugurated as president on January 20th, 2001, were you not?
Bush: (evasive) You mean as president of the U.S. of A.?
Ben-Veniste: Yes sir, that's right.
Bush: Well, I, that is, um ... I think ... (Cheney loudly stamps his foot under the table, twice)
Bush: (carefully pronouncing each word) Yes, Commissioner, that statement is correct.
Ben-Veniste: And as president, you bear the ultimate responsibility for your administration's performance, do you not?
Bush: Responsibility? I'm not sure I like the sound of that ... (Cheney loudly stamps his foot, once.)
Ben-Veniste: (annoyed) Is something wrong, Mr. Vice President?
Cheney: It's just my foot, Commissioner. I'm afraid it's gone to sleep. (stamps it again, once.)
Bush: (slowly and precisely) No Commissioner, I must disagree with you about that.
Ben-Veniste: About what?
Bush: What?
Ben-Veniste: You must disagree about what?
Bush: (flustered) Whatever you just said, that's what.
Ben-Veniste: (sighs, consults his papers) Mr. President, we've heard testimony from Director Tenet, and others, that you were briefed on August 6, 2001 about the threat of terrorist hijackings -- either in the United States or abroad -- and that your senior counter-terrorism advisor urged you to take the federal government to "battle stations." Do you recall these conversations?
(Cheney drums his fingers on the table, loudly.)
Bush: (grins at Cheney) Could you repeat your question, Commissioner? A little more slowly?
Ben-Veniste: (exasperated) Mr. President, on August 6, 2001, were you or where you not warned that Al Qaeda terrorists might be planning a major hijacking?
Bush: (slouches back casually in his chair) Welllll, lessee now. August 6th, you say? Hmmmm...you know Commissioner, that was a mighty long time ago. (he glances at Cheney, who nods sympathetically)
Bush: I'm going to have to think real hard about that one, Ben.
Ben-Veniste: My name's Richard.
Bush: Whatever. August 6th ... August 6th ... You know, I think I was on vacation that month, back in Crawford. Ain't that right, Dick? (Cheney nods) You ever been down to that part of Texas, Ben? Awful pretty country ... (Cheney looks at his watch, smiles)
Ben-Veniste: (wearily) Let's move on, Mr. President, maybe we can return to that question later. (Cheney makes a scoffing noise in the back of his throat.)
Ben-Veniste: Mr. President, have you ever had any business dealings with any members of the Bin Laden family?
Bush: (gives Ben-Veniste a shifty look) Have I ever had any what?
Ben-Veniste: Business dealings. Have any members of the Bin Laden family ever invested in any of the companies you've been associated with, or served as directors with you on any corporate boards ...?
Gonzales: (interrupts) Mr. Ben-Veniste, the administration wants to cooperate with the commission's work, but we have clearly stipulated as a condition for this session that questions about the president's relationship with the Bin Laden family are entirely out of bounds.
Ben-Veniste: (frowns) You have? I've seen no record of it.
Gonzales: That's because there isn't any. (snorts) We just made it up. (Cheney gives Gonzales a high five)
Following his defeat in a bid for reelection, President Bush had sent the troops into Somalia to insure the delivery of the relief supplies. Brent Scowcroft had asked me to be the White House coordinator for the operation, and in January 1993 he had asked me to brief his successor, Tony Lake, on the subject.
... "Well, thank you for coming, but I gather we won't have to worry too much about Somalia because the U.S. will largely be out by Inauguration Day," Lake said.
"Ah, no, actually, the U.S. troop movement into Somalia will not be complete until the end of January," I replied, pulling out a Pentagon chart that showed the staged deployment of U.S. units.
Lake looked suspiciously at the charts. "We were told that the U.N. would take over. That the U.S. troops would be out." He did not say precisely who told him, but I gathered it was my bosses at the White House.
"The U.N. is dragging its feet, Mr. Lak. Boutro-Ghali thinks it would strain the U.N. who would take over." Lakes reaction made him look like a man who had just been told he had cancer. In a way, he had.
Furious Iraqis hacked up the charred bodies of two people, believed to be foreign civilians, and hung the remains from a bridge after their car was ambushed, saying this rebellious Iraqi town would be the "cemetery" of US-led occupation forces.And then there's this evocative detail:
"Down with the occupation, down with America," they shouted as they hurled rocks at the bodies, one of them headless, that dangled from the bridge over the Euphrates River, an AFP correspondent witnessed.
The bodies were then taken down and placed on the ground for people to kick them and slash with knives.
Young men also strung a severed hand and a leg on an electricity pole on the main street of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, where the attack took place early Wednesday.
Four policemen in a car who were near the bridge at the time were seen leaving the scene without intervening.
The identities of the two dead, among several occupants of a convoy of civilian cars, were unknown. The coalition had no immediate comment on the incident, although US troops later sealed off the town.
***
The two vehicles burst into flames, and young men threw rocks and stones at the blazing wreckage. One body was seen burning inside one of the cars.
As the flames died down men pulled one of the bodies out, laid it on the ground and mutilated it with shovels, hacking off parts and shouting "long live Islam."
"The people of Falluja hanged some of the bodies on the old bridge like slaughtered sheep," Mohammed said. "I saw it myself."
The identities of the dead men were unclear.
Footage from Associated Press Television News showed one American passport near a body and one resident displayed what appeared to be military dog tags.
Eason Jordan, a CNN news exec who was deeply involved in the network's coverage of the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl, is now romantically involved with Pearl's widow, Mariane, people familiar with the relationship told us yesterday.This is the Washington Post, not the National Enquirer. (The way you can tell the difference is, the Enquirer has more integrity. They pay for their stories with cash, so the whore relationship is right up front.)
"I'm neither confirming it nor denying it," Matt Furman, a CNN spokesman, told us yesterday. "He's not going to speak. I can tell you we don't discuss the personal matters of any of our employees."CNN and ethics, all in the same sentence. From the network that pays Howard Kurtz to assess his own publication.
Said Jordan's wife, Susan, "I have absolutely no comment."
Some CNNers mulled the ethical implications of the relationship. Pearl, who earlier this month was turned down for compensation from the 9/11 victims' fund and is appealing, appeared on CNN yesterday with her attorney. "While she's a source, what kind of source is she?" one staffer wondered. "She's a source about her husband's death."
* "There has never been a vice president -- ever (and even including Spiro Agnew who was Nixon's) -- who needed to be investigated more than Cheney. Nor has there ever been such a secretive vice president. Dick Cheney is the power behind the Bush throne. Frankly, I am baffled why the mainstream news media has given Cheney (not to mention Bush) a free ride. I don't know if it is generational, or corporate ownership, or political bias, but it is clear that Cheney has been given a pass by the major news organizations."
* "Bush can't dump Cheney, for it is Cheney, not Rove, who is Bush's backroom brain. He is actually a co-president. Bush doesn't enjoy studying and devising policy. Cheney does. While Cheney has tutored Bush for almost four years, and Bush is better prepared today than when he entered the job, Cheney is quietly guiding this administration. Cheney knows how to play Bush so that Cheney is absolutely no threat to him, makes him feel he is president, but Bush can't function without a script, or without Cheney. Bush is head of state; Cheney is head of government."
* Comparing Karl Rove to Chuck Colson: "Colson, on the other hand, was as nasty a political operative as could be found. Indeed, to this day we don't know the full extent of Colson's activities. He even refused to tell Nixon some of the things he had done (while boasting to Nixon he had done things he didn't want to tell the president). Colson walked out of the White House with any of his papers and records that might cause him a problem. Karl Rove, from what I've seen, makes Colson look like a novice."
* On why he agrees with Gen. Tommy Franks that another major terror attack will be used as an excuse to suspend the Constitution: "As I state in the book, I agree for reasons that probably differ from those of Gen. Franks. The short summary of what is really a thread that runs through the book is that when you have a presidency that has no regard for human life, that develops and implements all (not just national security) policy in secrecy, and is driven by political motives and a radical philosophy, it is impossible not to conclude that they will overreact -- and at the expense of our constitutional safeguards. Bush and Cheney enjoy using power to make and wield swords, not ploughs. They prefer to rule by fear. We've had three years to take the measure of these men."
* "I didn't write this book for those who believe that Bush and Cheney have got it right, and don't want to hear otherwise. Rather I wrote it because a lot of people suspect that they've gotten it wrong, and needed someone who knows the workings of the White House to explain what is going on and why. "
For starters, Clarke presented a memo to Condi Rice outlining the URGENT (this tag is on the document) threat presented by Al Qaeda in January 2001. While Dr. Rice insists she made terrorism a top priority, one of her first decisions in the early days of 2001 was to downgrade Clarke's position as the National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism. How is that making terrorism an elevated priority? It is not. Clarke also requested in January 2001 that President Bush convene a meeting of principal Bush officials (e.g., the secretary of state, secretary of defense and the attorney general) but this meeting was postponed by Dr. Rice until Sept. 4, 2001. That seven-month gap represents time that, in retrospect, could have been used to prevent the 9/11 attacks.
The Clarke bashers also insist that that no more could have been done before 9/11 than what was done during the first eight months of the Bush presidency. Oh? If that was the case, then why did Bush direct the airlines to lock cockpit doors after 9/11? Why did the Bush administration decide to arm pilots, put more air marshals on planes and federalize the security force doing screening at airports? Why did the Bush administration order attacks on Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan if, in the words of the Bush spinners, "we did all that we could do prior to 9/11"? Why did Bush officials establish emergency financial task forces composed of intelligence and law enforcement officials to hunt down the trails of terrorist financing if all had been done prior to 9/11?
Jubilant Iraqis dragged the burned body of what appeared to be a foreigner through the streets of Falluja on Wednesday, and doused another with petrol as it lay burning in the road.And this is good news, too.
At least three people were killed, and parts of their charred bodies hung from a pole near their burning cars. Iraqis threw stones at a corpse still inside one of two cars engulfed in flames in the volatile town.
In a separate incident also west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said five of its coalition soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb on Wednesday morning.
Reuters Television footage from Falluja showed two civilian cars ablaze. Residents shouted "Long Live Islam" and "Allahu Akbar" ("God is Greatest") as they danced around waving their arms in the air and making the victory sign.
Two burned bodies still lay in the street several hours after the attacks. Some witnesses said four people were killed, but it was not possible to confirm.
Pictures showed at least one person kicking a burned corpse and stamping on its head. A dead man with fair hair and in civilian clothes lay in the road beside one of the cars, his feet on fire and blood stains on his white shirt.
Rohrabacher’s post-Sept. 11 finger-pointing was a fraud designed to distract attention from his own ongoing meddling in the foreign-policy nightmare. Federal documents reviewed by the Weekly show that Rohrabacher maintained a cordial, behind-the-scenes relationship with Osama bin Laden’s associates in the Middle East—even while he mouthed his most severe anti-Taliban comments at public forums across the U.S. There’s worse: despite the federal Logan Act ban on unauthorized individual attempts to conduct American foreign policy, the congressman dangerously acted as a self-appointed secretary of state, constructing what foreign-affairs experts call a "dual tract" policy with the Taliban.You got that? You should have heard this guy ranting and raving about how Clinton did nothing to stop the Taliban.
A veteran U.S. foreign-policy expert told the Weekly, "If Dana’s right-wing fans knew the truth about his actual, working relationship with the Taliban and its representatives in the Middle East and in the United States, they wouldn’t be so happy."
Nowadays, Rohrabacher and his numerous aides are quick to provide copies of the congressman’s pre-Sept. 11 rants against the Taliban. They will tell you that he labeled them "a pack of dogs killing anyone" and "the most anti-Western, anti-female, anti-human rights regime in the world." They will also show you records of the congressman berating Clinton administration foreign-policy advisors for misreading Taliban intentions and for trying to negotiate peace in Afghanistan with the militant Islamic group’s Mullah Mohammed Omar, a bin Laden associate.
What they won’t mention is that Rohrabacher also once lobbied shamelessly for the Taliban. A November/December 1996 article in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs reported, "The potential rise of power of the Taliban does not alarm Rohrabacher" because the congressman believes the "Taliban could provide stability in an area where chaos was creating a real threat to the U.S."
Well, I guess the soundbite version is that he's an economic nationalist with a strong record on national defense. Maybe that sounds good to some of the people around Kerry, since it helps him with the working class and shores up his national security credentials.Not to mention it would be a good idea if at least one of the Dems running had some charisma.
Maybe, but color me unconvinced. Democrats are simply sticking their heads in the sand if they don't believe that this entire campaign is going to be about national security first last and always, regardless of whether or not that's what they wish it were about. What Kerry needs is a veep who gives him the maximum possible national security oomph.
An emotional former President George H.W. Bush on Tuesday defended his son's Iraq (news - web sites) war and lashed out at White House critics.Buncha pussies.
It is "deeply offensive and contemptible" to hear "elites and intellectuals on the campaign trail" dismiss progress in Iraq since last year's overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), the elder Bush said in a speech to the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association annual convention.
"There is something ignorant in the way they dismiss the overthrow of a brutal dictator and the sowing of the seeds of basic human freedom in that troubled part of the world," he said.
The former president appeared to fight back tears as he complained about media coverage of the younger Bush that he called "something short of fair and balanced."
"It's obvious to me that this country is rapidly dividing itself into two camps _ the wimps and the warriors," Miller said. "The ones who want to argue and assess and appease, and the ones who want to carry this fight to our enemies and kill them before they kill us. And in case you haven't figured it out, I proudly belong to the latter."
Broadly speaking, Kerry's plan aims to improve price signals. It could be called marginalist in inspiration. That's what's wrong with it. Elevating improved price signals as a fundamental job creator is supply-side economics. At bottom, it's a crock. It's amusing to see conservatives say price signals don't matter much. Except when Larry Lindsey is waving the semaphore flags, apparently. Supply-sider Bruce Bartlett provides background and relevant citations.
Readers looking for West Wing intrigue will be disappointed by the Hughes book; when the subject is the President or Hughes' colleagues in the Administration, Ten Minutes from Normal is all kiss and no tell. Bush is presented as "humble," "wonderful," "tough-minded," "decent and thoughtful," with a "laserlike ability to distill an issue to its core" and "a knack for provoking discussion." Even his tendency to mangle words is a sign, to Hughes, of a "highly intelligent" mind outpacing a sluggish tongue.World O'Crap springs the big surprise of the book: Hughes voted for Carter in 1976, although she later regretted it. WOC writes:
So, now that you know the big surprise in the book, I've ruined it for you, and you don't have to read it.Thank you, thank you, thank you.
The first time I had proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, "That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass."Of course, the Republicans will say it only proves Al Gore is gay. They spend an awful lot of time thinking about hot man-on-man sex, don't they?
The global housing boom that has propped up the world economy in the face of falling share markets in the past few years is teetering on the edge of a crash, The Economist has concluded.
Pam Woodall, economics editor of the British weekly, said it had conducted global housing surveys and sector research over the past year.
"House prices look seriously overvalued in Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Britain and the US and will fall by at least 20 per cent in many economies over the next four years," Woodall told a conference organised by Investment Property Databank.
The trigger for a crash could be a relatively modest increase in interest rates as total levels of household debt were at record highs fuelled by borrowing and housing equity withdrawal on the back of historically low rates.
Woodall said it was a fallacy to assume rate rises on the scale of the late 1980s would be required to hit house prices as the major indicator for the residential market - the ratio of house prices to average income - was at record highs in the US, Australia and Britain.
The US had had the biggest rise in house prices in its history since the mid-1990s, and a sharp fall in the market in the largest global economy would tip the world into recession.
"The US has very little fiscal or monetary ammunition left to support its economy if house prices collapse," said Woodall. "If the US falls it would be the first global property bust in history."
Look at what this is: using the CIA and the classification process for an explicitly and exclusively partisan purpose, at the direct behest of the White House. Call me old-fashioned but back in the good-old-days this used to be done with a bit more indirection, subterfuge and cover, no?
It's one thing to declassify the whole thing. Perhaps there's some rationale for that -- though why Clarke's testimony and no one else's should be released seems questionable.
But the whole thing won't be released -- which would be the only way to really judge what he said -- only portions which can be selected to highlight apparent contradictions.
We're moving on to dangerous enough ground when the White House starts using the nation's intelligence agencies for explicitly domestic political purposes. But you know we're really in trouble when they don't even try to hide it.
An activist with ties to anti-abortion violence went on trial Monday charged with molesting a teenager at a home he ran for troubled girls and women in this Florida Panhandle city.
The trial of John Burt, 66, began with jury selection. He is accused of improperly touching and propositioning the girl last year, when she was 15.
***
Burt, who ran a home he called Our Father's House, has a long history of anti-abortion activities in Pensacola. He spent 141 days in jail for resisting arrest without violence after he pushed his way into a Pensacola women's clinic, now known as the Community Health Care Center, and broke equipment in 1986.
He also demonstrated in support of two young couples during their trial for the Christmas Day 1984 bombings of Community Health Care and the offices of two Pensacola abortion doctors.
He prayed with an anti-abortion killer, Michael Griffin, a volunteer at Our Father's House, three days before Griffin shot and killed a doctor at another Pensacola clinic in 1993. He was with Paul Hill while photographing a physician Hill later fatally shot at Community Health Care in 1994.
Hill, who also killed a clinic escort, was executed last year. Griffin is serving a life sentence.
For older children, caffeine consumption and a television in the bedroom were identified as major sleep disrupters.
Broch said lifestyle issues such as children and parents having overly-booked schedules and eating out more often result in later bedtimes than in prior generations.
Even on weekends, children are not catching up on their sleep, the poll found. In fact, about one-quarter of pre-school and school-age children actually sleep less on weekends than on weekdays.
"It's not just on the parents, it's in the community, it's in the after-school activities and play dates. Everything can start piling on top of each other. The process of naturally winding down and going to sleep doesn't happen until much later," she said.
Indeed, many sleep problems in children arise from a failure on the part of parents to establish routines early in life that allow the child to fall asleep at a reasonable hour, said Kendall Sprott, director of community pediatrics at Children's Hospital of New Jersey at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. Parents also can unknowingly reinforce undesirable behaviors by playing with children or giving them food when they wake up in the middle of the night.
"I have found a lot of parents would rather continue the pattern of having their sleep interrupted than trying to get the child to change their patterns because it might be met with resistance like crying," he said.
On the terrorism front, here's one story that deserves special mention. One of the few successful post-9/11 terror prosecutions — a case in Detroit — seems to be unraveling. The government withheld information from the defense, and witnesses unfavorable to the prosecution were deported (by accident, the government says). After the former lead prosecutor complained about the Justice Department's handling of the case, he suddenly found himself facing an internal investigation — and someone leaked the fact that he was under investigation to the press.
Where will it end? In his new book, "Worse Than Watergate," John Dean, of Watergate fame, says, "I've been watching all the elements fall into place for two possible political catastrophes, one that will take the air out of the Bush-Cheney balloon and the other, far more disquieting, that will take the air out of democracy."
Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff received $10 million in previously undisclosed payments from a public relations executive whom he recommended for work with wealthy Indian tribes that operate casinos, congressional investigators have determined.
Abramoff, one of Washington's best-connected Republican lobbyists, this month was forced out of his firm, Greenberg Traurig, after revelations that he and the executive -- Michael S. Scanlon, a former spokesman for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) -- had persuaded four newly wealthy tribes to pay them fees of more than $45 million over the past three years. That amount rivals spending on public policy by some of the nation's biggest corporate interests.
That is one reason that GOP activists have been pressuring interest groups to hire Republicans for upper-echelon lobbying positions. The K Street Project, spearheaded by Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, has been widely criticized by Democrats for strong-arming interest groups into filling vacancies with GOP stalwarts.I saw Grover just the other day coming out of that great new Vietnamese place in Georgetown. He was singing to himself and I happened to overhear as I walked behind:
Sunny dayI had no idea he had such a beautiful singing voice, and as I followed, he switched to one of my favorites:
Sweepin’ the clouds away
On my way to where the air is sweet
Can you tell me how to get
Every job there is on K Street
It’s a magic carpet ride
Every door will open wide
To happy people like you
When green is all there is to grabI may not have mentioned it, but this Cute N'Cuddly administration has another major Sesame Street fan. A friend whose cousin's roommate is a chambermaid in the White House told me she's heard Condi singing to the President as she gives him his nightly bath (and this is one of those cases where the stories about Condi are true - like Grover, she has a beautiful voice, too). He's got a favorite little ditty that goes like this:
It could make you wonder why,
But why wonder, why wonder?
I love green and it'll do fine,
It's beautiful!
And I think it's what I want to be
Rubber Duckie, you're the oneThis is the really cute thing: apparently the preznit loves to shout out the "Woh woh bee doh!" part. And Condi always lets him.
You make bathtime lots of fun
Rubber Duckie
I'm awfully fond of you
At the order of a federal appeals court, a Federal District Court judge in Portland, Me., has reopened the sentencing hearing for a boy who as a 14-year-old in 2002 set fire to a boatyard containing an engine that belonged to former President George Bush and was sentenced to 30 months in a maximum security juvenile prison.See, the kid was really a terrorist. He set fire to a boathouse that, in addition to other boats, contained one belonging to Der Fuehrer's DNA pool.
The reopening will give the family of the teenager, Patrick Vorce, a chance to argue that he was treated illegally when Judge George Singal, of Federal District Court in Portland, had him sent to a juvenile prison in Pennsylvania that is under contract to the federal Bureau of Prisons, said his lawyer and stepfather, Robert Mongue. The prison is a 13-hour drive from Patrick's home in Kennebunk, Me., and provides little education or counseling services, his family and lawyers say.
American soldiers shut down a popular Baghdad newspaper on Sunday and tightened chains across the doors after the occupation authorities accused it of printing lies that incited violence.You mean, like Newsmax? Or the Moonie Times?
Palacios said that Rove was "very upset" and was "yelling in our faces" and that Rove told them "he hoped we were proud to make his 14-year-old and 10-year-old cry."Boy, he just can't help lying, can he? It seems to be a given in this administration.
A White House spokesman said one of the children was a neighbor.
Palacios, trembling and in tears herself, said, "He is very offended because we dared to come here. We dared to come here because he dared to ignore us. I'm sorry we disturbed his children, but our children are disturbed every day.
"He also said, 'Don't ever dare to come back,' " Palacios said. "We will, if he continues to ignore us."
“The Scriptures say, what does it profit, my brother, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?” Kerry said. “When we look at what is happening in America today, where are the works of compassion?”
Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said Kerry’s comment “was beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and a sad exploitation of Scripture for a political attack.”
RICE CLAIM: "The administration took seriously the threat" of terrorism before 9/11.
FACTS: President Bush himself acknowledges that, despite repeated warnings of an imminent Al Qaeda attack, before 9/11 "I didn't feel the sense of urgency" about terrorism. Similarly, Newsweek reports that his attitude was reflected throughout an Administration that was trying to "de-emphasize terrorism" as an overall priority. As proof, just two of the hundred national security meetings the Administration held during this period addressed the terrorist threat, and the White House refused to hold even one meeting of its highly-touted counterterrorism task force. Meanwhile, the Administration was actively trying to cut funding for counterterrorism, and "vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism" despite a serious increase in terrorist chatter in the summer of 2001.
Source: "Bush At War" by Bob Woodward
Source: Newsweek & vetoed request -
Source: Refusal to hold task force meeting
Source: Only two meetings out of 100
RICE CLAIM: "I don't know what a sense of urgency any greater than the one we had would have caused us to do anything differently. I don't know how...we could have done more. I would like very much to know what more could have been done?"
FACTS: There are many things that could have been done: first and foremost, the Administration could have desisted from de-emphasizing and cutting funding for counterterrorism in the months before 9/11. It could have held more meetings of top principals to get the directors of the CIA and FBI to share information, especially considering the major intelligence spike occurring in the summer of 2001. As 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick said on ABC this morning, the lack of focus and meetings meant agencies were not talking to each other, and key evidence was overlooked. For instance, with better focus and more urgency, the FBI's discovery of Islamic radicals training at flight schools might have raised red flags. Similarly, the fact that "months before Sept. 11, the CIA knew two of the al-Qaeda hijackers were in the United States" could have spurred a nationwide manhunt. But because there was no focus or urgency, "No nationwide manhunt was undertaken," said Gorelick. "The State Department watch list was not given to the FAA. If you brought people together, perhaps key connections could have been made."
Source: Slash counterterrorism funding
Source: CIA knew 2 hijackers in the U.S.
RICE CLAIM:“Nothing would be better from my point of view than to be able to testify, but there is an important principle involved here it is a longstanding principle that sitting national security advisors do not testify before the Congress.”
FACTS: Republican Commission John F. Lehman, who served as Navy Secretary under President Reagan said on ABC this morning that "This is not testimony before a tribunal of the Congress…There are plenty of precedents for appearing in public and answering questions…There are plenty of precedents the White House could use if they wanted to do this.” 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick agreed, saying “Our commission is sui generis…the Chairman has been appointed by the President. We are distinguishable from Congress.” Rice's remarks on 60 Minutes that the principle is limited to "sitting national security advisers" is also a departure from her statements earlier this week, when she said the principle applied to all presidential advisers. She was forced to change this claim for 60 Minutes after 9/11 Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste “cited examples of non-Cabinet presidential advisers who have testified publicly to Congress." Finally, the White House is reportedly moving to declassify congressional testimony then-White House adviser Richard Clarke gave in 2002. By declassifying this testimony, the White House is breaking the very same "principle" of barring White House adviser's testimony from being public that Rice is using to avoid appearing publicly before the 9/11 commission.
Source: Quote from Tony Snow Show
RICE CLAIM: "Iraq was put aside" immediately after 9/11.
FACTS: According to the Washington Post, "six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2-and-a-half-page document" that "directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq." This is corroborated by a CBS News, which reported on 9/4/02 that five hours after the 9/11 attacks, "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq." The President therefore did not put Iraq aside -- he merely deferred it to a second phase, after Afghanistan. To the question of Iraq or Afghanistan, Bush replied: let's do both, starting with Afghanistan. In terms of resources, the Iraq decision had far-reaching effects on the efforts to hunt down Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. As the Boston Globe reported, "the Bush administration is continuing to shift highly specialized intelligence officers from the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to the Iraq crisis."
Source: September 17th directive
Source: Rumsfeld orders Iraq plan
Source: Shifting special forces
Reading this in Clarke's book, and listening to him at the hearing in Washington on Wednesday, I was struck with the sameness in the story about her. Condoleezza Rice always is introduced as a former provost of Stanford University. You can't get anything to sound much better. Provost! She must be in charge of science you can't even imagine. Economics! Graphs and formulas. Ancient literature. Anything ancient. If it is impossible to understand, she knows it.
It turns that as provost she was in charge of assigning lecture halls. If they were for decent conservative visiting lecturers they were given good places. Some cheap liberal had to speak on the other side of the school, with one foot in the bay. I know a scientist who is on the staff out there and he brought out Paul Glimscher from NYU to lecture. Rice found him to be a dastardly New York liberal and they couldn't get a place for three days.
***
Ben-Veniste was pretty exciting as a prosecutor in the Watergate case. I don't think he was being entirely light hearted when on Wednesday, he asked only one question of a witness and then turned to another member and said, "You can have all my time, if I can have yours with Condoleezza Rice."
She sure heard that. And she acts as if she has something to hide. She has at least a couple of things that people want to talk to her about in public.
And watch how far away she stays from Ben-Veniste.
In his book ``Against All Enemies,'' Clarke predicted retribution from a White House ``adept at revenge.''
But Bush and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, are essentially following the same game plan that the late Lee Atwater - an early political mentor of Rove's - used to get the first President Bush elected in 1988: define and undercut an opponent early with a fusillade of negative attacks.
``This team is tough. You cross them and they go after you and raise questions about you and your credibility rather than what you have to say,'' said Thomas Mann, a scholar with the Brookings Institution.
Others who have fallen out of favor over Iraq include former economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki. All voiced concerns about either the expense or number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. All were treated dismissively by the White House. All are gone, but their estimates proved accurate.
You heard right - today on NPR, Richard Clarke answered the thermonuclear attack of the Bush administration on his 2002 testimony with his Giant Fucking Armageddon Beam - declassify everything.Yee haw!
The Bush Administration has no choice but to come back with the Ultimate Nullifier: Richard Clarke is the Dirty Bomber. Either that, or we're all of a sudden going to find out about an elevated terrorist threat right...about...now.
Too many politicians figure they can get away with little things because everyone knows you can't be bought for a free dinner or a plane ride. That's how it starts. In Connecticut, Gov. John Rowland's career began unraveling over such vacation-home accouterments as a hot tub.It was frustrating as a reporter to see politicians - many of them who thought of themselves as decent, honorable people - stretch themselves into knots to rationalize unethical behavior like this.
Former Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, renowned for his death-penalty moratorium, now faces charges ranging from racketeering to tax fraud. Within the pages of a very long indictment, which Mr. Ryan has vowed to fight, there are accusations of trips to Jamaica and Palm Springs, courtesy of an associate who had a knack for landing state contracts.
Petty, cheesy morsels of corruption are like the proverbial "broken windows" of violent crime. If we all shrug our shoulders and look the other way, the consequences can be dire.
George W. Bush tries to facilitate this process by shutting out the real news media as much as possible. By the start of this year, he had held only 11 solo press conferences, as opposed to his father's count of 71 by the same point in his presidency. (Even the criminally secretive Richard Nixon had held 23.) Mr. Bush has declared that he rarely reads newspapers and that he prefers to "go over the heads of the filter" — as he calls the news media — and "speak directly to the people." To this end, he gave a series of interviews to regional broadcasters last fall — a holding action, no doubt, until Karen Ryan and Alberto Garcia could be hired to fill that role. When the president made a rare exception last month and took questions from an actual front-line journalist, NBC's Tim Russert, his performance was so maladroit that the experiment is unlikely to be repeated anytime too soon.
“We can’t just get overly obsessed with getting people into homeownership,” says Nicolas Retsinas, director of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “We have to make sure they stay in homeownership.” He notes that the biggest revolution in mortgage lending in the past seven years is an automated underwriting system that has expanded lending opportunities for low-income families, but it has yet to be tested in a slow economy. (See Shelterforce #125.)
Such tests appear to be coming. Defaults on loans in 2000 amounted to approximately one million households losing their homes to foreclosure, during the height of an unprecedented economic expansion. As the economy has softened, those numbers have worsened, with delinquencies and foreclosures on all loans rising steadily and reaching an all-time high in the second quarter of 2002. Foreclosures on FHA-backed loans to low-income households have risen the fastest, to a rate of nearly 3 percent, with an additional 12 percent behind in their payments in the second quarter of 2002.
It is good to be the national security adviser.
Others have to be sworn in and undergo days of detailed testimony on the events of Sept. 11, 2001. As the national security adviser, you merely have to make the claim that you'd really love to testify, but there is a constitutional principle to be honored.
If others make detailed allegations of incompetence against the administration you work for, all you need do is walk to the nearest television camera, call them nasty names and impugn their integrity. You get to declassify anything you think might help your case and keep secret everything that does not. Regular people cannot decide for themselves what is secret.
Never mind that your claim that national security would be endangered if you should answer important questions looks more ridiculous with every television appearance you make and op-ed article you write.
Condoleezza Rice has it easy. She should not.
Richard Clarke held high positions in the Bush administration (as well as the Reagan, first Bush and Clinton administrations). He has made serious charges about our country's lack of preparation for terrorist attack and its choice to pursue other goals, other targets than terror. He is a man of calm substance who merits answers. The exchange of slogans with some fawning Fox News anchor is not an answer.
National security advisers have testified in public when the issue was important enough. Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1980 and Sandy Berger in 1997 both gave testimony. The republic did not fall on either occasion.
Rice should not be permitted to function as a mere heckler of those who do not agree with those who employ her. She doubtless knows what went on in the nine months before Sept. 11 and in all the time since. She knows the rationales and the priorities that have brought us to where we are today. If there are answers to Clarke's charges, she has them.
She should give them under the same circumstances he faced.
In public.
Under questioning by friendly and hostile questioners.
Under oath.
Without those three things, she is irrelevant.
Barring the unexpected, oil prices have no place to go but up -- and the United States isn't well prepared for a high-cost oil future. It has made only feeble efforts to develop alternatives to oil or to improve fuel efficiency, especially in cars. And though some of this reluctance is cultural -- Americans like big cars and hate being forced to conserve -- the main factor is economic: Oil has been so cheap for so long that most consumers simply don't worry about the risks of relying so heavily on a single fuel."
For two days, 19-year-old Bedur Ibrahim lay in the mortuary of the al-Kindi hospital. Her family refused to collect her body, and the city authorities failed to provide a pathologist's report on her death.Let's see Karen Hughes turn that into a warm fuzzy for the soccer moms.
Like all victims of violence here, Bedur's remains should have been brought to the city morgue. But doctors in Baghdad have admitted that - at the request of her parents - she was buried without ceremony in a common grave at the municipal cemetery.
The reason was as shameful as it was routine. Like many other women in Baghdad since the Anglo-American invasion a year ago, Bedur had been abducted from her home by armed men, gang-raped and murdered.
Even the head of the city mortuary, Dr Faqr Bakr, admitted to the Independent on Sunday that he knew her family would not have collected her body had it been sent to him.
Most women who suffer Bedur's fate leave no record of their ordeal. But she lived just long enough after being shot to tell nurses at the hospital what had happened.
Hanan Abdullah, the al-Kindi nurse who looked after Bedur until she died of her extensive injuries, described "a very distressed human being" who was looking for comfort in her last hours because she had been shunned by those she cared for most - her own family. "She told me what happened. She said: 'They took me at gun point from my home, raped me for 16 days and then they shot me.' "
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The day after Saddam Hussein's capture, the US proconsul Paul Bremer told Iraqis that there would be "no more suffering". But Yannar Mohammed, chairwoman of the Iraqi Women's Coalition (IWC), says that since the end of the war, about 350 women have been abducted. The few who survive their ordeal require protection from "honour" killings by their family. The IWC is about to open the first women's shelter in Baghdad, with no financial help from the occupation authorities.
The US State Department criticises countries which fail to curb human trafficking, but the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq has treated the fate of kidnapped women as an isolated phenomenon.
George Bush's vision of the nation's future will undoubtedly be one focus of the presidential campaign. We suggest the debate start with the question of whether Mr. Bush actually has one. The White House has been driving Congress — and the nation — in wildly contradictory ways that suggest a deeply muddled, or perhaps nonexistent, set of domestic goals.
Ms. Hughes is stepping up her engagement with the president's re-election campaign just as she is beginning a six-week tour for a new book, "Ten Minutes From Normal," an autobiography that friends say paints a predictably glowing portrait of her longtime boss, the president of the United States.
To the relief of Bush aides who acknowledge that the White House has been on the political defensive since January, the memoir hits bookstores Tuesday, the week after a book by Richard A. Clarke that blasted the administration with the charge that Mr. Bush ignored warnings about the Sept. 11 attacks.
But advisers to the president say that Ms. Hughes's impending return to a more full-time role has stirred some unease within a campaign that has been wholly the province of Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political adviser. The president trusts Ms. Hughes like almost no one else on his staff, so much so that some Bush aides say they are worried that a return of the two-headed Rove-Hughes team could lead to internal disputes about strategy and message that so far have been muted. Others point out that even though Ms. Hughes and Mr. Rove have a history of tension, they also have a history through three campaigns of working it out.
Polling has shown that the Clarke's assertions have resonated as more than mere Beltway sniping and that voters are beginning to question the president's handling of terrorism.
A Newsweek poll released Saturday found that public approval of Bush's handling of terrorism and homeland security had eroded, with his approval rating on those issues dropping to 57 percent from 65 percent just over a month ago. It was 70 percent two months ago. However, 65 percent said Clarke's testimony had not affected their opinion of Bush.
Officials in both parties agreed that if Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) were able to pull even on those issues, the president's prospects would dim considerably. But Bush-Cheney campaign officials expressed relief that the Newsweek poll, taken Thursday and Friday, found Kerry had failed to capitalize on Bush's woes. Bush's overall approval rating was statistically unchanged, at 49 percent, and he remained in a dead heat with Kerry. The poll, of 1,002 adults, had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
The man who uncovered evidence that the FBI tailed presidential candidate John Kerry for months in 1971 said some of those files were stolen this week.Wonder what it is someone doesn't want him to see?
Author Gerald Nicosia reported to police Friday that three of the 14 boxes of once-secret FBI files he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act were taken from his Corte Madera home Thursday.
Particular files from the remaining 11 boxes were also taken, Nicosia said, including files containing documents about Kerry that hadn't been reviewed yet by others.
"The three files folders about John Kerry were taken," Nicosia said. "Those revelations are lost now, at least to me."
Condoleezza Rice says the Bush administration has a good story to tell about fighting terrorism and she's pouring it out in television appearances, interviews and newspaper articles. The one place she won't talk is in public, under oath, before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
That is blossoming into a public relations nightmare.
The White House finds itself in the awkward position of trying to explain why Rice, the national security adviser to President Bush, can talk at length to reporters but not at the commission's televised hearings because of the constitutional principle of separation of powers.
"This is mostly about politics, not about the legalities," said Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the College of William and Mary who specializes in separation of powers. "There's not much they can point to as settled law to prevent this. This is a matter of political judgment, not legal judgment. ... It hasn't kept her from talking to the press."
Federal agents launching the largest investigation ever into Internet child pornography have discovered a vast underground market involving thousands of customers. But equally alarming is that many of those charged have direct access to children.
Those arrested so far include a campus minister at a New Jersey Catholic school for girls; a seventh-grade teacher in Fresno, Calif.; a New Jersey Boy Scout volunteer and substitute teacher; a New York Catholic priest who stored child porn on the computer in the church rectory; and in Las Vegas, a Mormon camp counselor.
Federal agents also arrested Chicago pediatrician Dr. H. Marc Watzman. Police say he had more than 3,000 images of child pornography stored on his computer.
During the cold war, the paradigm of "state-sponsored terrorism" was useful, if not entirely correct. Most terrorists did receive help from states, and there were some links between disparate groups, although not to the extent that many in the United States believed. And some of the worst atrocities — like the 1983 attack on United States military headquarters in Beirut — were in fact carried out by groups that had been created by "rogue states" like Iran, Libya and Syria.A coherent thesis on how we got here.
With the end of the cold war, however, things changed. While there was no longer a prime state sponsor for any "terror network," there was also no longer any need for one. It became easy to travel from one country to another. Money could be collected and transferred around the globe. Cell phones and the Internet made it possible to maintain tight control of an elusive group that could move its "headquarters" across continents. In fact, by the end of the decade, it seemed as if the model of state-sponsored terrorism had effectively been reversed: Al Qaeda was now in charge of a state — Afghanistan under the Taliban — rather than vice versa.
But the Washington hawks failed to see what was happening. The world around them had changed, but their paradigm hadn't. For them, states continued to be the only real movers and shakers in the international system, and any serious "strategic" threat to America's security could only come from an established nation.
Consider an article in the January/February 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine by Condoleezza Rice, titled "Campaign 2000 — Promoting the National Interest." Ms. Rice, spelling out the foreign policy priorities of a Bush White House, argued that after years of drift under the Clinton administration, United States foreign policy had to concentrate on the "real challenges" to American security. This included renewing "strong and intimate relationships" with allies, and focusing on "big powers, particularly Russia and China." In Ms. Rice's view, the threat of non-state terrorism was a secondary problem — in her to do list" it was under the category of "rogue regimes," to be tackled best by dealing "decisively with the threat of hostile powers."
Damn! Do you believe they pay me to write the same column over and over again?
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry challenged President George W. Bush to prosecute former national security aide Richard Clarke if they can show that he lied about terrorism policy.Understand: If they go after Clarke, pre-trial discovery allows Clarke access to EVERYTHING.
"My challenge to the Bush administration would be, if (Clarke) is not believable and they have reason to show it, then prosecute him for perjury because he is under oath, Kerry told CBS's MarketWatch.
"They have a perfect right to do that," said Kerry.
Republicans in Congress want to declassify testimony Clarke gave before Congress in 2002 that they claim is at odds with accounts critical of the administration in the aide's recently published book.
COLOURFUL US boxing promoter Don King has thrown himself into the political arena by lending his voice to a Republican Internet "game" attacking Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, the Republican National Committee announced today.And here the Dems thought they'd locked up the black vote.
The game, found on the web at www.gop.com/kerryvskerry, shows King in a boxing ring announcing a fight between Kerry and Kerry.
Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed this week that Rice had asked, in her private meetings with the commission, to revise a statement she made publicly that "I don't think anybody could have predicted that those people could have taken an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center . . . that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." Rice told the commission that she misspoke; the commission has received information that prior to Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence agencies and Clarke had talked about terrorists using airplanes as missiles.And then there's this:
Among the most serious discrepancies in Rice's claims to emerge this week is about a briefing on terrorism Bush received on Aug. 6, 2001.And now they want to smear Clarke as a perjurer?
Rice had said on May 12, 2002, that the briefing was produced because Bush had asked about dangers of al Qaeda attacking the United States. But at the commission hearing, Ben-Veniste said that the CIA informed the 9/11 panel last week that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA.
McCormack said that when the CIA briefer presented the paper, he said it was in response to the president's questions.
The vehemence with which administration officials have attacked Mr. Clarke's motives brings to mind the old lawyer's joke: When the facts are with you, pound the facts. When the facts are against you, pound the table.
Why are administration officials pounding the table so hard? Because confirmation of Mr. Clarke's basic accusations comes from none other than George W. Bush himself.
Take the charge that the Mr. Bush did not make fighting al-Qaeda a priority before Sept. 11. In late 2001, Mr. Bush told the journalist Bob Woodward that "there was a significant difference in my attitude after Sept. 11. I was not on point." Mr. Bush knew Osama bin Laden was a menace. "But I didn't feel the sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling."
Or take Mr. Clarke's charge that Mr. Bush immediately sought to link the attacks in New York and Washington to Iraq. According to the notes of national-security meetings that the White House gave Mr. Woodward so he could write his book, Bush at War, the President ended an early debate over how to respond to Sept. 11 by saying, "I believe Iraq was involved, but I'm not going to strike them now." At a later meeting, he linked Saddam Hussein to the attacks: "He was probably behind this in the end."
Those admissions highlight a broader, more troubling point that Mr. Clarke's accusations raise, which is that Mr. Bush does not understand the threat we confront. For Mr. Bush and his advisers it is not al-Qaeda that is the real danger so much as the states that supposedly support it. Thus, a Defence Department spokesman, responding to Mr. Clarke's claim that Mr. Wolfowitz did not take the al-Qaeda terrorist threat seriously, said Mr. Wolfowitz did see al-Qaeda "as a major threat to U.S. security, the more so because of the state support it received from the Taliban and because of its possible links to Iraq."
The assumption driving Mr. Bush's war on terrorism is that the United States can win by targeting rogue states and the tyrants who rule them. The war in Afghanistan was about ousting the Taliban and denying al-Qaeda a sanctuary; the Iraq war was about ousting Saddam.
That view of the terrorist threat is deeply flawed, quite apart from the dubious claims about ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Al-Qaeda is a transnational network of terrorists, less like a state than like a non-governmental organization or multinational corporation with multiple independent franchises. It thrives on an Islamist ideology, and extends its presence to the far reaches of the globe -- not just in rogue and failed states, but within the West as well. Its terrorists can strike -- whether in Bali, Casablanca, Riyadh, Istanbul, Madrid or New York and Washington -- without the direct support of states. That is what makes it so frightening.
Mr. Clarke's charges have stung the Bush administration not just because of the stature of the accuser, but because at their core, they say that more than two years after the worst terrorist attack in history, the President and his advisers still don't get what happened.
That is the true, and alarming, message of this week's debate.
Bear in mind that top White House aides have told the press that the president personally initiated and is directing this campaign against Clarke. Not outside rabble-rousers, not nefarious aides operating on their own account, but the president himself. This is all his doing, according to his own staffers.Doesn't this arrogant frat boy have any ACTUAL WORK TO DO?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday warned U.S. drugmaker Wyeth over circulating misleading claims that its antidepressant Effexor outperforms other popular competitors.Repeat after me: Anything that fucks with my brain chemicals.... fucks with my brain chemicals.
Several print materials, including a journal advertisement, misuse data to say more patients suffered fewer symptoms of depression with Effexor than with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, the FDA said.
Wyeth's claim that Effexor is better "has not been demonstrated by substantial evidence or substantial clinical experience," the FDA said in a letter to the company. The letter was released to the public on Friday.
Surely, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, a key player on all the fronts that were in play, had a very long list of responsibilities. No time for diversions on Friday, right? Wrong.
Rice took time out of the middle of the day to address a secretive gathering that included global media mogul Rupert Murdoch and top executives from television networks, newspapers and other media properties owned by Murdoch's News Corp. conglomerate. Rice spoke at some length via satellite to Murdoch and his cronies, who had gathered at the posh Ritz Carlton Hotel in Cancun Mexico, according to reports published in the British press.
The Guardian newspaper, which sent a reporter to Cancun, revealed that Rice was asked to address the group by executives of the Murdoch-controlled Fox broadcast and cable networks in the US. The Fox "family" includes, of course, the Fox News cable channel, which the Guardian correctly describes as "hugely supportive of President George Bush."
In January, I made my own trip to Franklin County, 175 miles southwest of Philadelphia, with a simple goal: I wanted to see where David Brooks comes up with this stuff. One of the first places I passed was Greencastle Coffee Roasters, which has more than 200 kinds of coffee, and a well-stocked South Asian grocery in the back with a product range hard to find in some large coastal cities: 20-pound bags of jasmine rice, cans of Thai fermented mustard greens, a freezer with lemongrass stalks and kaffir-lime leaves. The owner, Charles Rake, told me that there was, until a few years back, a Thai restaurant in Chambersburg, run by a woman who now does catering. "She's the best Thai cook I know on Planet Earth," Rake said. "And I've been to Thailand."Read the whole thing, it's a hoot. Especially the part where the reporter confronts him on his, uh, factesque approach:
I stopped at Blockbuster, where the dvd of Annie Hall was checked out. I went to the counter to see how Scott, the clerk, thought it compared to Allen's other work. "It's funny," said Scott. "What's the funny one? Yeah, Annie Hall, that's the one where he dates everyone -- it's funny."
"In Montgomery County we have Saks Fifth Avenue, Cartier, Anthropologie, Brooks Brothers. In Franklin County they have Dollar General and Value City, along with a plethora of secondhand stores," Brooks wrote. In fact, while Franklin has 14 stores with the word "dollar" in their name -- plus one Value City -- Montgomery County, Maryland, has 34, including one that's within walking distance of an Anthropologie in Rockville.
As I made my journey, it became increasingly hard to believe that Brooks ever left his home. "On my journeys to Franklin County, I set a goal: I was going to spend $20 on a restaurant meal. But although I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu -- steak au jus, 'slippery beef pot pie,' or whatever -- I always failed. I began asking people to direct me to the most expensive places in town. They would send me to Red Lobster or Applebee's," he wrote. "I'd scan the menu and realize that I'd been beaten once again. I went through great vats of chipped beef and 'seafood delight' trying to drop $20. I waded through enough surf-and-turfs and enough creamed corn to last a lifetime. I could not do it."
Taking Brooks's cue, I lunched at the Chambersburg Red Lobster and quickly realized that he could not have waded through much surf-and-turf at all. The "Steak and Lobster" combination with grilled center-cut New York strip is the most expensive thing on the menu. It costs $28.75. "Most of our checks are over $20," said Becka, my waitress. "There are a lot of ways to spend over $20."
I called Brooks to see if I was misreading his work. I told him about my trip to Franklin County, and the ease with which I was able to spend $20 on a meal. He laughed. "I didn't see it when I was there, but it's true, you can get a nice meal at the Mercersburg Inn," he said. I said it was just as easy at Red Lobster. "That was partially to make a point that if Red Lobster is your upper end? " he replied, his voice trailing away. "That was partially tongue-in-cheek, but I did have several mini-dinners there, and I never topped $20."
I went through some of the other instances where he made declarations that appeared insupportable. He accused me of being "too pedantic," of "taking all of this too literally," of "taking a joke and distorting it." "That's totally unethical," he said.
Satire has its purpose, but assuming it's on the mark, Brooks should be able to adduce real-world examples that are true. I asked him how I was supposed to tell what was comedy and what was sociology. "Generally, I rely on intelligent readers to know -- and I think that at the Atlantic Monthly, every intelligent reader can tell what the difference is," he replied. "I tried to describe the mainstream of Montgomery County and the mainstream of Franklin County. They're both diverse places, and any generalization is going to have exceptions. But I was trying to capture the difference between the two places," he said. "You've obviously come at this from a perspective. I don't think if you went to the two places you wouldn't detect a cultural difference."
I asked him about Blue America as a bastion of illegal immigrants. "This is dishonest research. You're not approaching the piece in the spirit of an honest reporter," he said. "Is this how you're going to start your career? I mean, really, doing this sort of piece? I used to do 'em, I know 'em, how one starts, but it's just something you'll mature beyond."
In a highly unusual move, key Republicans in Congress are seeking to declassify testimony that former White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke gave in 2002 about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Friday.Billmon compares and contrasts this previous statement by Frist:
Frist said the intent was to determine whether Clarke lied under oath — either in 2002 or this week — when he appeared before a bipartisan Sept. 11 commission and sharply criticized President Bush's handling of the war on terror. "Until you have him under oath both times you don't know," Frist said.
The request for declassification applies to Clarke's appearance in July 2002 before a meeting of the intelligence committees of both the House and Senate.
For a quarter-century there has been a consensus in the Senate that the [intelligence] committee's nonpartisan tradition must be carefully safeguarded. Nothing else is acceptable. Why? Because this committee deals with information that is unique, that is privileged information, because of the dangerous and sensitive nature of the subject matter for which the Intelligence Committee ... has unique oversight.
A previously forgotten report from April 2001 (four months before 9/11) shows that the Bush Administration officially declared it "a mistake" to focus "so much energy on Osama bin Laden." The report directly contradicts the White House's continued assertion that fighting terrorism was its "top priority" before the 9/11 attacks1.
Specifically, on April 30, 2001, CNN reported that the Bush Administration's release of the government's annual terrorism report contained a serious change: "there was no extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden" as there had been in previous years. When asked why the Administration had reduced the focus, "a senior Bush State Department official told CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden."2.
The move to downgrade the fight against Al Qaeda before 9/11 was not the only instance where the Administration ignored repeated warnings that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent3. Specifically, the Associated Press reported in 2002 that "President Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions"4. Meanwhile, Newsweek has reported that internal government documents show that the Bush Administration moved to "de-emphasize" counterterrorism prior to 9/115. When "FBI officials sought to add hundreds more counterintelligence agents" to deal with the problem, "they got shot down" by the White House.
Sources:
Press Briefing by Scott McClellan, 03/22/2004.
CNN, 04/30/2001.
Bush Was Warned of Hijackings Before 9/11; Lawmakers Want Public Inquiry, ABC News, 05/16/2002.
"Top security advisers met just twice on terrorism before Sept. 11 attacks" , Detroit News, 07/01/2002.
Freedom of Information Center, 05/27/2002.
Q Scott, Secretary Snow today, speaking to the House Financial Committee, said that the President -- he believes the President would sign any extension on unemployment benefits. Is that something new?
MR. McCLELLAN: I haven't seen his comments. Obviously, the President's focus, first and foremost, is on creating as robust an environment as possible for job creation. And we are in a changing economy. In fact, the President will be talking about that today. And it's important that we make sure that workers in this changing economy have the skills they need to fill the high-paying jobs being created in the 21st century. And so that's where our focus is, first and foremost. We've always said that we would work with Congress on the issue of unemployment benefits.
Q What about the fact that all the reports that are coming in show almost no job growth? How do you explain that?
MR. McCLELLAN: I disagree with that. In fact, we've had six straight months of new jobs being created. The unemployment rate at 5.6 percent is below the average of the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Productivity is high; disposable income is up. The economy is strong and growing stronger. It's moving in the right direction. There's more that we need to do, and the President talks about that all the time. He's got a six-point plan, but it's also important to keep in mind that we are in a changing economy and there are a lot of high-growth sectors in the changing economy, and we need to make sure workers have the kind of training and skills they need to fill those jobs. And that's one of the things he'll be talking about today.
Q There was a 4.4 percent GDP figure that came out this morning. Do you have any reaction to that?
MR. McCLELLAN: -- 4.1? Well, no, that's another sign that the economy is strong and growing stronger. We're seeing sustained economic growth. Obviously, there are people that are still looking for work that cannot find work, and we need to continue to act to make sure that we're creating as robust an environment for job creation as possible.
Q Scott, can you talk about the extent of the distraction to the White House and the West Wing, in particular, caused by the 9/11 hearings and the ongoing investigation?
MR. McCLELLAN: Look, the 9/11 -- the work of the 9/11 Commission is very important. That's why we have been working very closely and cooperatively with the commission, to make sure they have all the information they need to do their job. We have provided unprecedented access in the information -- more than 2.3 million pages of documents; hundreds of administration officials providing interviews and briefings to the 9/11 Commission. Their work is very important. September 11th taught us that we must confront threats before it's too late, and that's why we have taken significant steps to make sure we are doing everything we can to protect the homeland, in the aftermath of September 11th --
Q That's not what I'm asking --
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, one more point. Obviously, if there's more information that the 9/11 Commission finds, in addition to what we're already doing, that can help us prevent another September 11th from happening, we want to know about that information.
Q Well, what about all the time being pushed into responding to Clarke? You know, Condi is out there; Dan is out there; the Vice President is out there. What work isn't being done because of --
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, but look, in terms of Dick Clarke, I mean, Dick Clarke has a growing credibility problem. He stands by his past comments which contradict his new assertions. And he continues to struggle to reconcile his changing story with those past comments. He continues to make statements that are flat-out wrong. He talked about how the Deputies Committee was pushing for substantially eroding al Qaeda, not eliminating al Qaeda, and that's just flat-out false. The first draft the Deputies Committee circulated on the comprehensive strategy to eliminate al Qaeda called for eliminating al Qaeda. And then that went to the principals; all those subsequent drafts continued to talk about the elimination of al Qaeda. Mr. Clarke continues to say that because of the meetings at the White House, they were able to prevent the plot -- the Millennium plot. Well, we know from news reports at that time that it was the hard work of an individual Customs agent who was able to thwart the Millennium plot, by stopping this individual at the border. And I think her --
Q It's not what I asked you, but it's a good answer.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, no, go ahead.
Q -- asking you, isn't that a distraction --
MR. McCLELLAN: You brought up Dick Clarke, and I think that's --
Q Yes, but I'm asking about the White House staff, senior staff having to devote so much time to the --
MR. McCLELLAN: Let's remember why we're having this conversation. It is because of the new assertions that Dick Clarke is making that are contradicted by his past comments.
Q A lot of the September 11th families were very moved by Clarke's apology. Does the President plan to apologize, as well?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, first and foremost, our thoughts and concerns are always with the families of the victims of September the 11th. And through our grief and anger, I think it's important to remember that it is the terrorists that were responsible for the attacks of September the 11th.
Q Dr. Rice said that she'd be glad to go back and address the commission again under the same terms as before. Do you know if that's --
MR. McCLELLAN: Absolutely, she would welcome the opportunity to visit with the commission further. As you're aware, she spent more than four hours with the commission previously. It was scheduled for a much shorter amount of time. But she would very much welcome the opportunity to talk to the commission further --
Q Has she been asked by --
MR. McCLELLAN: -- particularly given some of the assertions that were made in yesterday's hearing.
Q Do you know if she's been asked at this point?
MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know that she's been formally asked at this point. But she would welcome the opportunity to visit with the commission further.
Q What about the President? Now that the public hearings are done in this phase --
MR. McCLELLAN: I think the Chairman and Vice Chairman talked a little bit about that the other day. Obviously, they've been focused on the public hearings. And the President looks forward to sitting down with the commission and we'll continue to work with them on when that will happen.
Q Is an hour still the time frame?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, look, again, he wants to sit down with them and answer all their questions. And we've said that, given all the information that they've already had access to, there's a reasonable amount of time you want to set aside to talk about these issues. And so I think you need to keep that in mind.
Q Scott, why do you think it is that Clarke -- as you said, his past statements seem to contradict his new assertions. What in your mind, or in the White House's thinking, is the reason that he seemed to make contradictory --
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think that that goes to his credibility. I think that those are questions he needs to answer. Even yesterday when he was presented with those inconsistencies and contradictory statements, he continued to stand by his past comments. I think those are questions --
Q But why do you think he is doing that?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think those are questions he needs to answer.
Q Do you have any theories --
MR. McCLELLAN: But I think it's clear that he has a growing credibility problem.
Q Who was it that made the decision that Dr. Rice shouldn't testify in a public hearing? Was it Dr. Rice, herself, or was it the White House legal counsel?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, as you've heard from Dr. Rice, this is not a matter of her personal preference. This is --
Q Yes, but who made the call?
MR. McCLELLAN: This is a matter of principle. This is -- I'm speaking on behalf of the White House -- it's a matter of principle. It's a matter of separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches. And I noticed yesterday that there's a congressional research report that was cited about national security advisors appearing before Congress, and I would just point out that we looked at that congressional research study that was cited, and the fact is that two of those national security advisors testified -- did so because it was relating to criminal or personal wrongdoing. The third one, according to congressional records, indicates that that person testified in a private session, as Dr. Rice did.
So I'm not aware -- it's an apples and oranges comparison when you're talking about that. I'm not aware of any instance where a national security advisor has testified publicly to members of Congress about policy. I'm just not aware of that.
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