What Condi meant

Let's not forget who the real culprits are in the 9/11 tragedy: the terrorists themselves. As Condoleeza Rice reminded us yesterday:

The threat reporting that we received in the spring and summer of 2001 was not specific as to time, nor place, nor manner of attack. Almost all of the reports focused on al Qaeda activities outside the United States, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. In fact, the information that was specific enough to be actionable referred to terrorist operations overseas.

Most often, though, the threat reporting was frustratingly vague. Let me read you some of the actual chatter that was picked up in that spring and summer:

"Unbelievable news coming in weeks," said one.

"Big event -- there will be a very, very, very, very big uproar."

"There will be attacks in the near future."

Troubling, yes. But they don't tell us when; they don't tell us where; they don't tell us who; and they don't tell us how.

She's absolutely right, isn't she, you trouble-making, nay-saying pundits?: how can you expect the administration to do anything about the attacks when the terrorists didn't even tell us where, when and how they were going to attack? I mean, you just have to realise, those guys weren't playing fair. You could almost say they were trying to trick us. How can you expect the biggest security organisations in the history of the world to see through such dastardly subterfuge?

More seriously, doesn't anybody else find it strange that in the Administration's mind, despite some pretty dodgy intelligence, Saddam Hussein rose to the level of gathering immediate threat, something that couldn't be put off for a second longer, while--despite the fact that senior intelligence officials were running around the White House in the summer of 2001 with their "hair on fire" saying things like "there's a big one coming"--the pre-9/11 intelligence didn't rise to the level of imminent threat, that it rose merely to the level of cue for a holiday, causing Bush to snap into action and pack his bags for Crawford?

Do you want any more proof that they took Iraq more seriously--gave it higher priority--than they gave to the threat of terrorism?

Rice wants us to believe that because there were no specifics in the summer 2001 terrorist threats that they, the decision makers in the White House, were justified in not doing much about it. On the other hand, they also want us to believe--and they've spent the past two years trying to ram down our throats--that it was completely necessary to act in Iraq despite the fact, as they are now fond of telling us, that intelligence interpretation is more art than science, that they had an obligation to respond and not wait no matter how generalised the Iraq intelligence was.

Why was it wrong (to the point of being anti-American and objectively pro-Saddam Hussein) to wait for specific information on the Iraq threat (for instance, by allowing the weapons inspections to finish up), but okay to wait for specifics on the terrorist attack information? Why were they willing to gamble on al Qaeda but not on Saddam?

It's partly a matter of engagement, focus and priorities. But mostly it's a matter of judgement.

So, set two major tests on intelligence gathering and interpretation, the administration made the wrong call in both: they underreacted to the pre-9/11 intelligence and, to put it at its most polite, they overreacted to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. That's two pretty major stuff-ups when it mattered most.

Tell me again why we should trust these guys with national security?

Age of Sacred Terror

Former Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam had a great deal of success in that role--though she was eventually replaced--so her opinions in such matters are not to be lightly dismissed. Nonetheless, I think she is on completely the wrong track with the suggestion that the West negotiate with Osama bin Laden:

Former Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam has called on the British and American governments to open talks with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda around a negotiating table.

... Interviewer Tony Cartledge asked if she could imagine "al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden arriving at the negotiating table".

She replied: "You have to do that. If you do not you condemn large parts of the world to war forever.

"Some people couldn't conceive of Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness getting to the table but they did."

She added: "If you go in with guns and bombs, you act as a recruitment officer for the terrorists."

She is certainly right to point out the shortcomings of current approaches, such as the invasion of Iraq being a recruiting tool for that we are seeking to defeat, and she is right to suggest that negotiations and other "soft power" approaches to moderate Islamic groups and governments and peoples need to be encouraged or at least rethought, but bin Laden and the boys aren't for negotiating with. The comparison with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness is also way off. However abhorrent their methods, their goal was not the complete overthrow of Western civilisation.

This raises something else I've been meaning to post on.

I've been asked what Richard Clarke thinks motivates al Qaeda and I must admit it is, to my way of thinking, one of the weaknesses of the book, that he doesn't really address the issue at length. In this way he is, once again, much more like the warhawks than the liberals he is accused of shilling for -- he doesn't give a lot of consideration to the terrorists motivations and just wants to blow them up. Those who suggest he is running with some sort of party political agenda are simply missing the point. His clear--sole--aim is to eliminate fundamentalist Islam.

Still, he is quite clear that they represent a threat that must confronted at the ideological level as well as at the military level, something I pointed out in this post. So, unlike the Bush administration, he recognises the need for the uses of soft power as well as big guns.

If you pushed on him on the motivations of al Qaeda and their ilk, I suspect he would refer to the book written by his former NSC colleagues, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror. In that, the authors discuss at some length the historical, ideological and theological underpinnings of al Qaeda and it is completely fascinating. If you read what they've written in conjunction with Paul Berman's book Terror and Liberalism and, say, some stuff by Sayyid Qutb, who is theologian-of-choice of the bin Laden boys and who is described by Benjamin and Simon as "for better or worse...the Islamic world's answer to Solzhenitsyn, Sartre, and Havel" you start to get an idea of what lies behind the phenomenon of jihadist terrorism and some sense of the best way to respond to it.

I've been thinking I might do an occasional series discussing this sort of material, using Sacred Terror as the guide. I won't (can't) do it like I did the Clarke book--which I haven't finished with either--but I thought people might be interested to hear some of it. Anyway, we'll see how we go, but here's an opening section that puts the problem as plainly as I've seen it put (pp.39-41) and that I think shows why the negotiation option favoured by Mowlam is pointless.

They (Benjamin and Simon) begin by speaking of George W. Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech, made in the wake of 9/11, where he sought to clarify that the fight was not with Islam, but with its fundamentalist counterpart.

They are full of praise for the speech, describing it as necessary and useful:

...There is no gainsaying President Bush on this account. He said what needed to be said...These were words of condemnation but also of reassurance. To the millions of American Muslims...they sent a message of solidarity and understanding at a time of harassment and alienation....These acknowledgements were important not only for atmospherics, but to enable foreign governments to sustain law-enforecement and intelligence cooperation with the United States in the fight against the new breed of terrorists.

These acknowledgements aside, they suggest we shouldn't let it obscure the bigger point:

There were other benefits to the President's rhetoric, but the sum of all these virtues is not the same as the truth. For the fact is that the attack against America on September 11, 2001 was an act of consumate religious devotion. Those who committed it were deeply pious. They expressed their motives in indisputably religious terms, and they saw themselves as carrying out the will of God. "Consider that this is a raid on a path," Muhammed Atta wrote in the document that he and his coconspirators used as a kind of final psalm. "As the Prophet said, 'A raid on the path of God...is better than this world and what is in it.'" The hijackings were the performance of a kind of sacrament, one intended to restore to the universe a moral order that had been corrupted by the enemies of Islam and their Muslim collaborators.

But neither [sic] President's necessary and useful political speech should obscure the realities of September 11: the motivation for the attack was neither political calculation, strategic advantage, nor wanton bloodlust. It was to humiliate and slaughter those who defied the hegemony of God; it was to please Him by reasserting His primacy. It was an act of cosmic war. What appears to be senseless violence actually made a great deal of sense to the terrorists and their sympathizers, for whom this mass killing was an act of redemption.

Only by understanding the religious nature of the attacks...can we make any sense of their unprecedented scale and their intended effects. And only by doing so will we have any chance of understanding and arriving at a plan to defeat it--a task that began with the war in Afghanistan but could take a generation to finish.

This seems to me to be about the most realistic account of the motivations of these terrorists and those like them and it really doesn't seem that negotiation with them is a useful strategy to be holding out.

Anyway, as I say, I'll come back to this topic and go through in a bit more detail Benjamin and Simon's account (which takes up about 150 pages in the book).

Wanker

Does anyone else feel the Rumsfeld-is-quaint moment has well and truly passed?

An argument against joint testimony

Of course I'm in no position to know the truth about who is right here but it makes for an interesting comparison. Here's something Rice said today in 9/11 Commission testimony about the relationship between the CIA and the FBI:

In looking back, I believe that the absence of light, so to speak, on what was going on inside the country, the inability to connect the dots, was really structural. We couldn't be dependent on chance that something might come together.

And the legal impediments and the bureaucratic impediments _ but I want to emphasize the legal impediments. To keep the FBI and the CIA from functioning really as one, so that there was no seam between domestic and foreign intelligence, was probably the greatest one.

The director of central intelligence and I think Director Freeh had an excellent relationship. They were trying hard to bridge that seam. I know that Louis Freeh had developed legal attaches abroad to try to help bridge that.

And here's what former National Security Council directors, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon write on the topic in their book The Age of Sacred Terror (p.238):

Relations between the two government bureaucracies were historically poisonous. (The FBI chafed at the CIA's unwillingness to allow its intelligence to be used in court, and the CIA was irritated by the increasing number of legal attaches--FBI officers--in embassies. Unwittingly, the LEGATTs, as they are called, were recruiting CIA sources. Tony Lake ultimately had to sit Directors Woolsey (CIA) and Freeh (FBI) down for a reconciliation lunch to reduce infighting.)

Could you get two more disparate accounts of virtually the exact same topic?

For more on the problems Freeh allegedly caused, see this earlier post.

Viva le flip-flop

How do rightwingers manage to keep straight who they're meant to be angry and snitty with when their glorious leaders keep talking the talk but not walking the walk?:

The United States has asked more than a dozen countries to join a new international military force to protect the United Nations in Iraq, a proposal critical to persuading the world body to return there after two massive suicide attacks against its Baghdad headquarters last year, State Department officials said.

Washington has approached France, which led opposition to the war in Iraq, as well as India, Pakistan and other nations that were reluctant to join the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq, U.S. and European officials said.

And the UN; we hate the UN, right?:

The new force is considered essential to the fragile political transition because the Bush administration is relying on the United Nations to return to Iraq to help organize elections after the occupation ends on June 30.

And we don't need no stinking international/UN legitimacy right?:

Meanwhile, the State Department is also preparing a draft resolution to win U.N. cover for the current U.S.-led military coalition after June 30, U.S. officials said. The proposed resolution would also confer international legitimacy on the new Iraqi government and define the U.N. role in Iraq.

Actually, I was "just wondering" about all this back in January.

Rice fried

More to say later, but do you think Condoleeza Rice knew she was under oath during this morning's testimony?

And just briefly, the other thing to note is that the questions were really bad (on the whole). They should've let the family members at her.

Al-Sadr blinks

Christopher Allbritton has a translation up of a declaration from Muqtada al-Sadr saying that his group will cease fighting. Christopher is wary about the authenticity of the document, but seems reasonably convinced. Still, keep an open mind, I guess. There is a tone of defiance in the letter, demanding, for instance, that their newspaper be reopened, but in total it reads like a huge backdown.

My guess is that al-Sadr has received some sort of indication from Sistani that he (Sistani) will not support armed resistance. There is no offical indication of this, but it seems the most likely explanation. On that topic, Juan Cole mentions today Sistani's ambivalent position on supporting al-Sadr, which is pretty much in line with what I've collected from other sources:

Sistani attempts to take a middle position. He condemns the United States for its "methods." He also, however, condemns the Sadrists for their excesses. In both cases, he feels that the two parties have acted unwisely and have caused chaos and damage to property. Sistani's juridical tradition, like Hobbes, evinces tremendous fear of public disorder and condemns all actions that produce a breakdown in security. Thus, he sees the US as reckless in having gone after Muqtada, and as having used disproportionate force. But he sees the Sadrists likewise as hotheads who have helped provoke anarchy and bloodshed.

This analysis is based on a fatwa issued yesterday by Sistani and Cole (who has translated the document) goes on to say that there is little comfort in it for the Americans, despite its failure to offer full support for the Sadrists:

The US needn't take any heart from Sistani's fatwa, which seems to equate the US military with the Army of the Mahdi insofar as both have acted unwisely, used unseemly methods, and been responsible for a breakdown in public order.

Still, I think the letter that Christopher reproduces, if it's genuine, does give the US some breathing space. Nonetheless, they still have to work out how they are going to disarm the Sadrist miltia--remember, they have promised to "destroy" them--and, just as importantly, how they are going to execute the arrest warrant they have out for al-Sadr himself. Still a lot of landmines to negotiate.

Compare and contrast

There is a news account of fighting in Kut and then there is this first-hand account from someone who was there. I'm not saying one is better or more accurate or whatever, just that it's interesting to read both of them.

Blogjammeur

The new Blogjam is up at Web Diary. Just a reminder: if you have a post you want me to mention, send me an email with the link and a description and put blogjam in the subject line. So far I've mentioned every blog that I've been sent something from and although that probably won't always be the case, you never know. Only thing to remember is that I'm more likely to link to a substantial piece than some clever-dick one-liner you want to share with the world. Also, I prefer linking to posts, not blogs, so don't just tell me you have a blog; give me a link to a particular piece you've written. Any other issues or suggestions, let me know.

"He has captured a moment of acute frustration and desperation"

As the last few posts suggest, I've been reading through reports that are dealing with and assessing the actions taken over recent days by Moqtada al-Sadr. He is the thirty year old Shiite cleric who ran the Iraqi newspaper that the US closed down because it incited resistance to the US occupation. In fact, up until then, al-Sadr had encouraged non-violent resistance, but that action, closing the newspaper, seems to be what prompted him to change tactics.

The odd couple

The official Pentagon position on the importance of al-Sadr is expressed in this DoD article:

The Mahdi Army, a militia group led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, is losing influence among Shiia in Iraq, a Defense Department official said here today.

Speaking on background, he said the Mahdi Army was a group of about 3,000 lightly armed devotees of Sadr before operations against the group started Sunday. "It was a small group on the margins," said the official, adding that while it is unknown how large the group is now, it has been degraded.

Muqtada al-Sadr

The situation arising around the role of Muqtada al-Sadr is becoming very interesting. As I mentioned below, he has offered himself to Ayatollah Sistani, the key player in the success of US plans for Iraq (to the extent that the Bush administration can be said to have "plans"), as his "military wing." From all accounts, this would not be a welcome development for the Americans. For instance, here's The U.S. military's deputy head of operations, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, on the subject of al-Sadr:

One Nathan, under siege

The line between justifiable upset and confected outrage was crossed very early in the affair de Kos that has recently played out in the the blogosphere. I said my piece earlier, but it is worth mentioning that the self-appointed guardians of the of the moral blogiverse have now turned their attention to Nathan Newman. You probably want to stay away from all this, but fair dinkum, you could cut the hypocrisy with a knife. The thing is: nobody's mind is changed by any of this and it is simply venting of the worst order, not that we don't all vent from time to time. But that's the point, ain't none of us perfect. Still, as far as blogging is concerned, there are few better than Nathan and if he isn't on your regular read list, then he is definitely worth adding. In fact, ignore the nonsense and go to this post instead. You won't agree with everything he says, but for some of us, that's a good thing.

Strange bedfellows?

John Quiggin posted the other day about available options for stabilising Iraq and suggested that Ayatollah Sistani was the key figure:

The urgent requirement is to dump both Bremer and Chalabi and try to find a path that can shift Sistani's position from passive resistance to active support. This almost certainly entails a commitment to direct elections as soon as possible and an agreement that once an elected government has taken power it should have actual sovereignty, including control over its own military and the right decide what foreign forces if any, are wanted in Iraq. Ideally, the US should bind itself to this course by subordinating its command to the UN (or, failing that, some other international body such as NATO) as soon as the June 30 deadline is reached.

As John says, this is a least worst alternative in a difficult situation. However, after yesterday's violence, especially in regard to the attempted apprehension of Moktada al-Sadr, the so-called "rebel Shiite clerk" whose forces currently control the town of Najaf, this least worst alternative might just have got a whole more complicated. A piece in the NYTimes this morning not only suggests that support for al-Sadr is strong and growing, but that al-Sadr himself is trying to align himself with Sistani:

"I proclaim my solidarity with Ali Sistani and he should know that I am his military wing in Iraq,'' Mr. Sadr said.

Mr. Sadr, whose followers launched the most serious insurrection of the post-invasion period starting on Sunday, said, ``I will put the city with the golden dish between Ali Sistani's hands after liberation.''

The golden dish refers to the golden shrines of Najaf, some of the holiest sites in Shia Islam. Najaf, south of Baghdad, is the home of Ayatollah Sistani, who is considered much more moderate than Mr. Sadr. On Sunday, Ayatollah Sistani issued a religious decree urging Iraq's Shiites to stay calm.

Remember, the Americans have issued an arrest warrant for al-Sadr and intend to break up his militia and restore control of Najaf to the Iraqis they have trained as police. To my untrained eye, any indication by Sistani that he accepts al-Sadr's support is going to be major development casting some real doubts on the sovereignty handover scheduled for the middle of the year.

ALSO: Actually, interesting comment from Juan Cole in light of Sadr's comments, attempting to align himself with Sistani:

It seems inevitable to me that the US military will pursue a war to the death with the Army of the Mahdi, the Sadrist movement, and Muqtada al-Sadr himself. They will of course win this struggle on the surface and in the short term, because of their massive firepower. But the Sadrists will simply go underground and mount a longterm guerrilla insurgency similar to that in the Sunni areas.

The United States has managed to create a failed state, similar to Somalia and Haiti, in Iraq.

So how likely is it that Sistani will be interested in Sadr's proposal?

In, damn spot

We saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind the other day. I gotta say, I thought it was stunningly executed. In fact, it beats me how they kept the whole thing under control as it flicked between different stories and time frames. But under control it was kept. I enjoyed it much more than the other films I've seen by writer Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation). This was a much more grown up effort. Kate Winslet was fantastic and they got away with using Jim Carrey. Carrey was very good, but what I felt was more relief that he wasn't bad rather impressed that he performed well - which means, yes, I had low expectations of him going in. But anyway, time well spent.

Incidentally, the title comes from a poem by Alexander Pope:

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.

The poem is Eloisa to Abelard and the rest of it is here.

Which way is up?

How bad are things in Iraq at the moment? It's difficult to tell, but it is obvious the situation has moved into a new phase. The occupying force is not simply dealing with a bunch of random terror attacks generated by opportunisitc jihadists or disgruntled Baathists, but a multifactional shooting war, as is illustrated in this report about the city of Najaf, which is now, apparently, under the control of forces working for Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Supporters of maverick Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr controlled government, religious and security buildings in the holy city of Najaf early Tuesday evening, according to a coalition source in southern Iraq.

The source said al-Sadr's followers controlled the governor's office, police stations and the Imam Ali mosque, one of Shia Muslim's holiest shrines.

Iraqi police were negotiating to regain their stations, the source said.

The source also said al-Sadr was busing followers into Najaf from Sadr City in Baghdad and that many members of his outlawed militia, Mehdi's Army, were from surrounding provinces.

Business people are closing their shops and either leaving the city or hoarding their wares in their homes, the source said.

In brief, it is no longer accurate to describe Iraq as the central front in a broader war on terrorism. If the reports coming through are true, this has kicked up something much more than that. It is simply inaccurate to describe the attacks against US and international forces as terrorism.

We can only hope that sanity prevails, that order can be established and that the killing stops. But one thing should be perfectly clear: if it doesn't, if this turns into a protracted war against the occupying forces, and/or a civil war, with Iraqi factions fighting each other as well as the American and international forces, then this is not the unfortunate side-effect of an otherwise well-meaning undertaking that happened to go wrong. It is, instead, the easily predictable outcome of an unneccessary war hatched for unclear motives by a bunch of people either too arrogant or too stupid to plan it properly, and who seem to still be in denial about what is happeneing and with no clear idea of what to do.

And they should be held accountable.

On that subject, this is another one of those times when I wish America used a parliamentary system of government. Under such a system, Bush would be obliged to come in and answer questions about just what is going on. Under the US system, he is able to dodge all such questioning and continue dishing up his hack phrases about "staying the course" in carefully stage-managed presentations in front of tame audiences.

In the President's absence, his proxies like Bremer are left doing the spin, and, as this post indicates, doing a thoroughly unconvincing job.

Both sides now

You've gotta love this if you've been following the GOP attacks on John Kerry. One recent campaign ad recycled a proposal Kerry made around 10 years ago for an extra tax on gas. Basic theme of ad: ooh, evil John Kerry; elect him and the price of gas (petrol) will skyrocket.

So it was nice to see this apposite quote from then-congressman Dick Cheney (before he became the President's president):

In October 1986, when Dick Cheney was the lone congressman from energy-rich Wyoming, he introduced legislation to create a new import tax that would have caused the price of oil, and ultimately the price of gasoline paid by drivers, to soar by billions of dollars per year. "Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States," Mr. Cheney, who is now vice president, said shortly after introducing the legislation.

Cheney's office was unavailable for comment, the article goes on to say. So ask them again.

Freeh at last

Interesting to see this article suggesting that former FBI head, Louis Freeh, is likely to come in for tough questioning at the 9/11 Commission. Certainly Richard Clarke is critical of the FBI in general and Freeh in particular in regards to how they dealt with terrorism prior to 9/11, but a more comprehensive account is given by Benjamin and Simon in their book, The Age of Sacred Terror (pp.296-307 passim). They pretty much finger the FBI as the agency most responsible for the failures that culminated in 9/11. And the stuff about Freeh and the White House is pretty amazing:

Of the core agencies in the counterterrorism community, the one least troubled by the rise of al-Qaeda was the FBI.

...The problem was that the Bureau moved only in one direction. There seems to have been no reflection on the fact that Islamist terrorists had bombed American sites on two continents in five years and were showing an unprecedented level of skill, or the on the possibility that these conspiracies might be linked. There was little or no analysis of the phenomenon, and, at least in the Bureau's headquarters, no effort to see the big picture.

...An essential part of counterterrorism work involves intelligence gathering, but for a generation of special agents in charge, the barons of the FBI, this was unattractive work...The Bureau was not about this kind of tedious work...Matthew Levitt, a leading expert on Hamas who was a terrorism analyst at the FBI until early 2002, says that agents and the institution's leadership "don't understand that they are part of the national security apparatus....Terrorism is just another case....They don't understand intelligence, and they don't appreciate analysis."

...The Bureau's independence and unresponsiveness were reinforced by Louis Freeh....He had never managed anything remotely like the twenty-thousand-employee Bureau, and that lack of experience became an enduring problem.

...Throughout Freeh's tenure, White House officials found that the FBI director did not feel the same rules applied to him as to other top government officials: he refused, for example, to come to meetings on the weekend and, to demonstrate his independence of the nation's political leaders, he turned in his White House pass, saying that he would go there only as a visitor.

..For the national security team, the FBI was at its most difficult in its refusal to share investigative material that had a critical bearing on U.S. foreign policy; as far as the Bureau was concerned, it was not their problem...After fours years, Sandy Berger gave up trying to sign the FBI on to a memorandum of understanding about sharing information relevant to national security matters....No one outside the Bureau could acquire any sense of the scope of FBI knowledge on a particular issue....For NSC staff working on counterterrorism, this was crippling--but how crippling was also something they could not know. Every day a hundred or more reports from the CIA, DIA, the National Security Agency, and the State Department would be waiting in their computer queues when they got to work. There was never anything from the FBI. The Bureau, despite its wealth of information, contributed nothing to the White House's understanding of al-Qaeda.

...Freeh...showed little interest in the growing phenomenon of Sunni terrorism and played no notable role in the U.S. strategizing against al-Qaeda. His example undoubtedly influence his subordinates.

Benjamin and Simon deliver their final verdict on the FBI and their role in counterterrorism pre-9/11 on page 387:

As for the FBI, its record is indefensible; its leadership must bear much of the blame for not preventing the deaths of three thousand people.

Freeh testifies to the 9/11 Commission next Tuesday.

Radio days

With the speakers on my computer fried, and not being in the broadcast area of America's new left-dressing radio network, I haven't yet heard any of it yet. So I was interested to read Maja's review.

Blog-like

Since the topic of alternative approaches to terrorism came up in the post below, let me also link to this piece by Keith Suter, over at his new-to-me blog-like website.

Name that blog

New blogger Roxanne is offering a $250 prize to the person who can come up with a good name for her blog.

Hitch and miss

Interesting that Christopher Hitchens argues in favour of the invasion of Iraq by pointing out that had we not, Iraq would have ended up in the same sort of mess that it is in now:

So, what about the "bad news" from Iraq? There was always going to be bad news from there. Credit belongs to those who accepted--can we really decently say pre-empted?--this long-term responsibility. Fallujah is a reminder, not just of what Saddamism looks like, or of what the future might look like if we fail, but of what the future held before the Coalition took a hand.

Huh? Fallujah, under US control, is a reminder of what Saddamism looks like. It will look like this if we fail (therefore leaving open the possibility of failure). It was going to look like this anyway. Pretty odd justification. In fact, it may be the strangest, least coherent thing he has written since his ascension to the right hand of the political spectrum.

In the same article, he also poses some questions he claims are never answered by anti-war people he talks to. The questions themselves don't strike me as the most important or difficult that could be asked They also, of course, frame the argument as if there were no alternatives between the status quo c.2002 and exactly what happened in March 2003. In other words, they are worded in such a way as to force you into false choices. But let's answer them anyway:

Do you believe that a confrontation with Saddam Hussein's regime was inevitable or not?

Hitchens himself mentions in the article the long-term interest in regime change shown by people like Paul Wolfowitz (dating from the 1980s), and we know that such a policy was a high, if infrequently mentioned, priority of the incoming Bush administration, so I'd say that a confrontation with Iraq was inevitable once the Bush administration came to power.

Do you believe that a confrontation with an Uday/Qusay regime would have been better?

What an odd question. What does "better" mean in this context? The answer is no. Or yes. I'm sure if the gruesome twosome were in charge in March 2003 the US would have prevailed just as easily. Is that "better"?

Do you know that Saddam's envoys were trying to buy a weapons production line off the shelf from North Korea (vide the Kay report) as late as last March?

Yes I did. It was all part of Saddam's, to quote Kay, "dozens of WMD-related program activities." Here's what the interim Kay report says:

"Documents found by ISG describe a high level dialogue between Iraq and North Korea that began in December 1999 and included an October 2000 meeting in Baghdad. These documents indicate Iraqi interest in the transfer of technology for surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 1300km (probably No Dong) and land-to-sea missiles with a range of 300km. The document quotes the North Koreans as understanding the limitations imposed by the UN, but being prepared "to cooperate with Iraq on the items it specified". At the time of OIF, these discussions had not led to any missiles being transferred to Iraq. A high level cooperating source has reported that in late 2002 at Saddam's behest a delegation of Iraqi officials was sent to meet with foreign export companies, including one that dealt with missiles. Iraq was interested in buying an advanced ballistic missile with 270km and 500km ranges."

Rumour has it that Saddam also "had an interest" in marrying Jennifer Aniston. As far as I can tell, he didn't. Look, we get it. He wanted all this stuff. But did he rise to the level of immediate, imminent, really, really likely threat to the United States as the administration said? No. At the time of the invasion, did he have any useable WMD, especially nukes? No. Were there higher fp priorities than Iraq in March 2003? Yes. Would regime change in Iraq have been nice and the sooner the better? Only if it was planned properly, had good international cooperation and didn't interfere with dealing with the real threat, al Qaeda, and wasn't executed in a way that created "a hundred bin Ladens." Did the invasion in 2003 fulfill any of these criteria? No. In the absence of WMD (a fact which could have been established with finished inspections) and the distraction it caused from eliminating al Qaeda in Afghanistan, might it have been better to wait a bit longer (6 months to a year) and get all our ducks in row? Yuh-ha.

Why do you think Saddam offered "succor" (Mr. Clarke's word) to the man most wanted in the 1993 bombings in New York?

I think CH is referring to Abdul Yasim, whom the FBI released after questioning about the 1993 WTC bombing. In the book Clarke says: "...he convinced the FBI that he was not involved (duh! ed.) and would cooperate. He flew immediately to Iraq, where, we believe, he was incarcerated by Saddam Hussein's regime." It's the only thing that rings a bell in Clarke's book, but maybe CH means someone else?

Anyway, whoever it was, why the hell wouldn't Saddam give succor to someone who had damaged one of his (Saddam's) enemies? If the implication is that this somehow proves an al Qaeda/Saddam link and that Saddam had something to do with the WTC bombing or the al Qaeda attack of 9/11, then Hitchens is suggesting a connection that not even the President accepts. He is basically clutching at straws. It all sounds a touch Laurie Mylroie.

Would you have been in favor of lifting the "no fly zones" over northern and southern Iraq; a 10-year prolongation of the original "Gulf War"?

Oh, geez. Sort of depends on a lot of things, doesn't it? Probably not. But you might as well ask, in the context of a '10-year prolongation of the original "Gulf War"', and the circumstances under which the no-fly zones were promulgated, would you have been in favour of taking out Saddam after kicking him out of Kuwait in 1991? It's so hypothetical as to be not worth asking, except in an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin sort of way. Incidentally, it's a bit tricky of CH to place this question ahead of the next question as it tends to decontextualise the circumstances under which the no-fly zones became necessary. So onto......

Were you content to have Kurdish and Shiite resistance fighters do all the fighting for us?

No, but the US was when, in the aftermath of the first Gulf War, they urged a Shia and Kurdish uprisings and then did nothing to support them. Or, no, but that doesn't leave as the only option the invasion we had, when we had it, in the circumstances under which we had it. CH is simply trying to force us into false choices here. Besides, I doubt the Kurdish and Shiite resistance fighters would have been "fighting for us." A brief summary of what happened after liberating Kuwait:

"A peace conference was held in allied-occupied Iraq. At the conference, Iraq negotiated use of armed helicopters on their side of the temporary border. Soon after, these helicopters, and much of the Iraqi armed forces, were refocused toward fighting against a Shiite uprising in the south. In the North, Kurdish leaders took heart in American statements that they would support a people's uprising, and began fighting, in the hopes of triggering a coup. However, when no American support was forthcoming, Iraqi generals remained loyal and brutally crushed the Kurdish troops. Millions of Kurds fled across the mountains to Kurdish areas of Turkey and Iran. These incidents would later result in no-fly zones in both the North and the South..."

Do you think that the timing of a confrontation should have been left, as it was in the past, for Baghdad to choose?

On the whole, I'm sure most states would prefer to choose for themselves when they involved themselves in a war. But you don't always get to choose. Still, I can't see how that automatically justifies pre-emption, which is what CH seems to be implying. Again, he is trying to suggest the only choice we had was to leave things exactly as they were or do exactly as we did. Clearly that's not true.

ELSEWHERE: Chris at Crooked Timber points to the same CH article and suggests that Hitchens tends to find justification for his position in any set of facts.

Jam de blog

If you've got any suggestions or submissions for this week's Blogjam, now's the time to send them through. Remember make 'blogjam' the subject of the email, include a link to specific post and a brief description.

What does victory look like?

Sean-Paul asks the question and it's a good question. My brief thoughts on it are that the "war on terror" has been allowed to expand to such an extent--particularly with the invasion of Iraq--that victory can only be defined as the elimination of all terrorism. This is so patently impossible to achieve that we simply undermine more feasible, narrow goals. We risk delivering ourselves into an eternal, unending, unwinnable battle and the despair that comes from such an undertaking. Not to mention the collateral damage it inflicts on our institutions and values.

"Narrow" here does not mean "unambitious." It means focussing on the core issue which is quite simply al Qaeda or what Richard Falk calls "meggaterrorism" (not a great word, but it gets the idea across). The case was well put a few months back by Jeffrey Record (pdf):

In the wake of the September 11,2001, al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the United States, the U.S.Government declared a global war on terrorism (GWOT).The nature and parameters of that war,however, remain frustratingly unclear.The administration has postulated a multiplicity of enemies,including rogue states;weapons of mass destruction (WMD)proliferators; terrorist organizations of global, regional,and national scope;and terrorism itself. It also seems to have conflated them into a monolithic threat, and in so doing has subordinated strategic clarity to the moral clarity it strives for in foreign policy and may have set the United States on a course of open-ended and gratuitous conflict with states and nonstate entities that pose no serious threat to the United States.

Of particular concern has been the conflation of al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein ’s Iraq as a single,undifferentiated terrorist threat. This was a strategic error of the first order because it ignored critical differences between the two in character, threat level, and susceptibility to U.S. deterrence and military action. The result has been an unnecessary preventive war of choice against a deterred Iraq that has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable al-Qaeda. The war against Iraq was not integral to the GWOT, but rather a detour from it.

Additionally, most of the GWOT ’s declared objectives, which include the destruction of al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorist
organizations,the transformation of Iraq into a prosperous, stable democracy, the democratization of the rest of the autocratic Middle
East,the eradication of terrorism as a means of irregular warfare, and the (forcible,if necessary)termination of WMD proliferation to
real and potential enemies worldwide,are unrealistic and condemn the United States to a hopeless quest for absolute security.As
such, the GWOT unsustainable.

This is the sort alternative the Dems should be putting forward, it seems to me. Unfortunately they haven't and we are stuck with the high-risk, heavy-handed approach of the Bush administration. Some of what Bush has done is perfectly fine, but other stuff has undermined the whole project. Basically, his administration, from his faux-leadership down, is simply too incompetent to leave in charge of such an important project.

Get rich

The notion that the way to success in business is to provide great service and a trouble-free product is severely undermined by this revelation:

Ingvar Kamprad, the Swede who founded furniture retail chain IKEA, has overtaken Microsoft's Bill Gates as the world's richest man, Swedish TV news reported today.

Citing next week's edition of the Swedish business weekly Veckans Affarer, public service SVT2 television said Kamprad, 77, has a personal fortune of 400 billion crowns ($A69.2 billion).

Gates's fortune is put at $US47 billion ($A61.4 billion), according to the latest list of the world's rich in US Forbes magazine, SVT2 said.

Is it possible to cite two more annoying, frustrating and angst-inducing product lines than the Windows OS and Ikea furniture!!!! Clearly the way to extreme fortune is to piss off as many of your customers as possible. Maybe there's money in blogging after all.

Indonesian election roundup

Indonesia is voting today (or more accurately, has already voted), and as Alan reminds us, the last vote, in 1999, took two months to count. At the same link, he has some information about how the election works and who the parties represent. For a good overview of the issues, try this brief article:

More than 147 million Indonesians vote on Monday in a parliamentary election that will help determine the candidates for the country's first direct presidential poll on July 5.

``It's probably the biggest and most complex election the world has ever seen,'' said Glyn Ford, a British member of the European Parliament and head of an EU election observer mission.

A total of 7,800 candidates from 24 parties are competing for 550 seats in Parliament.

The article also talks about the issue of radical Islam, remembering of course, that Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim state:

Indonesia has been put to the test in recent years by religious violence, separatist war, bomb attacks by Islamic militants, ineffective government and rampant graft.

Indeed, William Liddle, an Indonesia expert at Ohio State University, said successful elections this year were needed to consolidate democracy after decades of military-backed rule.

``It is easy to imagine in the next few years a combination of economic decline, ethnic/religious conflict and squabbling among the civilian political elite that would encourage the military to take over and cancel the democratic progress that has been achieved.''

The vote will also test the popularity of conservative Islamist parties in the wake of bomb attacks by militants linked to Osama bin Laden. So far there is little sign political disillusionment has flowed into support for Islamist politics.

After making waves in 1999 with platforms focused on implementing Islamic syariah law, Islamists have publicly turned to bread and butter issues such as jobs and prices.

No-one should think Indonesia is about to be taken over some sort of Taliban-like entity. In fact, according to some Islamic parties are not expected to do very well:

Perhaps most striking, Indonesia's smaller Islamic-based parties seem to have made little progress over the past five years. Islam appeared to have been making bigger inroads into Indonesia's political life during the 1990s and many had expected that the polarisation between Islam and the West since September 11 would have amplified that trend, pushing a more stridently Islamic strain politics to the fore.

Instead, the polling suggests the Islamic vote will stagnate - which, if true, will reinforce the result of Malaysia's recent elections in which the strongly Islamist party PAS was mauled.

However, the robustness of their democracy is an issue, as the same article points out, viewing the elections through a lense of Australian interest (remember, Indonesia is only a couple of hundred miles north of Australia):

Australia's security depends on an Indonesia that is stable, prosperous, cohesive and democratic. It seems our chances of getting all four are slim.

Next Monday, 147 million Indonesians go to the polls to elect Indonesia's Parliament. It is the first step in a months-long process that will lead to the elections for the president later in the year. So far the campaign has been peaceful.

The fact that this is all happening at all is a kind of miracle. Indonesia's experiment with democracy is about to pass a critical milestone. It has survived a full five-year electoral cycle since the first truly democratic election in 1999.

The five years since then have been mixed for Indonesia. The economy has staged at least a temporary recovery, and the constitution has survived the removal of the former president, Abdurrahman Wahid ("Gus Dur"), and his replacement by his deputy, Megawati Soekarnoputri.

The military has stayed on the sidelines, and important constitutional reforms were made to provide for the direct election of the president.

But at the same time, deeper reforms to Indonesia's institutions needed to foster long-term economic development have been shelved. Apathy and cynicism about the value of democracy has grown, and with it a certain nostalgia for the authoritarian but effective ways of president Soeharto.

The open market in political ideas provided by democracy has not thrown up any new or compelling ideas for Indonesia's future direction.

So on Monday, Indonesia's voters will face a familiar line-up. The two big parties between them are expected to win more than half the vote. Last time Megawati's party, PDI-P, won 34 per cent and Golkar, which was Soeharto's political machine, won 22 per cent. This time the pundits expect their positions to be reversed, as Megawati suffers the political consequences of an ineffectual and disappointing incumbency.

And according the NYTimes, it's the economy, stupid:

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, will vote on Monday in parliamentary elections that surveys indicate will turn on the country's widespread dismay with the limping economy rather than on questions about Islam.

...About one-third of the 100-million-member labor force is either unemployed or underemployed, according to Western economists. The World Bank said last December that Indonesia's economic growth could not absorb the 2 million to 2.5 million new entrants in the labor force every year. The bank said child health had deteriorated to such an extent that the rate of immunization of children was lower than in 1990, and that one quarter of all children were underweight. To add to the dark picture, the bank noted that Indonesia had one of the world's weakest education systems.

Finally, you might want to check out this blog, written by an Australian in Indonesia, who is promising detailed coverage over the next few weeks.

UPDATE: Here's an account of election day:

Indonesians voted in legislative elections Monday with the party that once supported ex-dictator Suharto expected to win the most seats - a result likely to hurt President Megawati Sukarnoputri's re-election prospects.

It was Indonesia's second free parliamentary election since Suharto's ouster amid pro-democracy protests six years ago.

Security was tight across the world's most populous Muslim nation, which is fighting separatist rebellions and Islamic militants who have mounted deadly attacks, including the October 2002 bombing of two Bali nightclubs that left 202 people.

Police have warned that militants may try to disrupt the ballot, but the election campaign went off peacefully and no incidents were reported on Monday.

But the election campaign focused on chronic unemployment and corruption, not terrorism. The main drama centered on how much support Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle will garner, indicating the extent of her chances for victory in direct presidential elections in July.

...Many voters said they were confused by the huge ballot sheet - the size of a broadsheet newspaper - which featured dozens of candidates and party symbols.

"So many choices. I'll just wait until I have the ballot sheet in front of me before I select who to vote for," said Dewi Sudika, a 25-year-old housewife.

Complicating matters, voters for the first time will be choosing candidates along with parties. In addition, citizens will elect numerous governing bodies - the national legislature, a regional representatives council that will advise the government and local legislative councils.

Official results are to be announced by April 28, although the authorities have promised to have the first numbers by Monday night.

Mission accomplished

When Vice President Dick Cheney decided to invade Iraq, one of the things critics told him was that it would increase not just anti-Americanism amongst moderate Muslims, but turn Iraq itself into a happy hunting ground for al Qaeda and its franchisees. Not long after the invasion, Cheney's frontman proudly announced that Iraq was now the "central front" in the war on terror.

Yay.

Last Thursday, Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department, Ambassador Cofer Black, addressed the House International Relations Committee, Subcommittee on International Terrorism and told them everything was going as predicted:

Iraq is currently serving as a focal point for foreign jihadist fighters, who are united in a common goal with former regime elements, criminals and more established foreign terrorist organization members to conduct attacks against Coalition and Iraqi civilian targets. These jihadists view Iraq as a new training ground to build their extremist credentials and hone the skills of the terrorist. We are aggressively rooting out the foreign fighters in Iraq, and we will continue to devote the resources necessary to ensure that al-Qaida and other terrorist groups will be unable to use Iraq as a training ground or sanctuary.

...A few words now on how al-Qaida’s influence has spread to other terrorist organizations. There are growing indications that a number of largely Sunni Islamic extremist groups are moving to pick up al-Qaida’s standard and attempting to pursue global jihad against the United States and or allies.

There are also growing indications that al-Qaida’s ideology is spreading well beyond the Middle East, particularly its virulent anti-American rhetoric. This has been picked up by a number of Islamic extremist movements which exist around the globe. This greatly complicates our task in stamping out al-Qaida, and poses a threat in its own right for the foreseeable future.

Literally scores of such groups are present around the world today. Some groups have gravitated to al-Qaida in recent years, where before such linkages did not exist. This has been, at times, merely an effort to gain greater public renown for their group or cause, but more troubling have been the groups seeking to push forward al-Qaida’s agenda of worldwide terror.

In particular, groups like Ansar al-Islam and the Zarqawi network pose a real threat to U.S. interests. This has been shown very clearly by their deadly activities in Iraq. Other groups of great concern include the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC), which operates mainly in the countries of North Africa and Salifiya Jihadia, which claimed responsibility for the May 2003 Casablanca bombings. Jemaah Islamiya (JI) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) should also be on this short list.

While it would be a mistake to believe that we are now confronted by a monolithic threat posed by legions of like-minded terrorist groups working in concert against our interests, it would be fair to say that we are seeing greater cooperation between al-Qaida and smaller Islamic extremist groups, as well as even more localized organizations.

Identifying and acting against the leadership, capabilities and operational plans of these groups poses a serious challenge now and for years to come.

In addition to these groups, there are literally thousands of jihadists around the world who have fought in conflicts in Kosovo, Kashmir, Chechnya and elsewhere. As I said earlier, we see these “foreign fighters” operating in Iraq, where we are fighting them on a daily basis with the Coalition and Iraqi partners. These jihadists will continue to serve as a ready source of recruits for al-Qaida and other affiliated terrorist organizations.

Once again it just highlights the opportunity that was missed in the wake of 9/11 to properly deal with the actual threat, by going into Iraq instead of completing the action in Afghanistan and combining this necesarry force with other tactics elsewhere. For 9/11 to happen on the Bush/Cheney watch is one thing; for them to deal so badly with terrorism in the wake of 9/11 is the real reason they should lose office.

CODA: Actually, the entire testimony is interesting, especially what he says about apparent and actual successes against al Qaeda, and comments he makes about its structure, which I think miss the point. I hope to do another post on this.

Melihat!

The largests Islamic nation on earth, Indonesia, is about to have elections. It'll be interesting to see how much coverage it gets here in insular America; so far not much. Fundamentalist Islam is an issue as this article suggests:

Radical Islam in Indonesia has been dangerously squeezed. A simmering frustration with the perceived oppression of Muslims across the world has galvanised a solid proportion of the electorate, but the movement's adherence to the tenets of sharia law (which include whipping and hand-lopping) and its connection with terrorism have alienated many others.

The tide of overlap between the extremist Indonesian Muslims who have been accused (and convicted) of terrorism and the hardline Islamic parties is unsettling.

And the new election rules are adding a Rumsfeldian unknown to the mix:

An Australia-funded Centre for Democratic Institutions report released last month concluded that the new election rules could shift support from the Islamic parties (especially the smaller ones) to the two secular giants, the Golkar party and President Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). "The longer-term effect might even be to increase the splintering of an already fragmented political Islam in Indonesia," the report says.

Anyway, it's a big story and deserves attention and it looks like the place to go in the blogosphere is Southerly Buster. Start at this post and scroll down for several others. Actually, this might be a better one to start with.

Just wondering

You probably remember that Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, was in Washington DC on September 11, 2001 and so was, so to speak, a firsthand witness to the terrorist attacks. I seem to remember he was due to address Congress that day, but was, naturally, evacuated to the basement of the Australian embassy instead. Just reading this post at the Washington Monthly, I was wondering if something was said to Howard too:

President George Bush first asked Tony Blair to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power at a private White House dinner nine days after the terror attacks of 11 September, 2001.

According to Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to Washington, who was at the dinner when Blair became the first foreign leader to visit America after 11 September, Blair told Bush he should not get distracted from the war on terror's initial goal - dealing with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Bush, claims Meyer, replied by saying: 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.' Regime change was already US policy.

We now know that invading Iraq was on the Bush administration's agenda from day one (in fact, for many of them, from 1991). And we know from Richard Clarke and others that there was a strong desire within the administration to connect Iraq to the 9/11 attacks and to invade post haste, even before doing anything about Afghanistan. Given that Blair was being worded up about an invasion just days after the attack, I wonder if anything was said to Howard at the time, that Australia's support might soon be sought for an invasion of Iraq? And if he was asked, I wonder if he gave any sort of commitment? He has often said what an effect being in the US on 9/11 had on him, quite understandably, so it's easy to imagine, under the tragic circumstances, that the PM would say yes to any request for help. In fact, it's almost impossible to imagine him saying no. Somebody should ask him, if they haven't already.

Poor arguments

Just as Methodists object to having sex while standing for fear it might lead to dancing, libertarian/free market fundamentalists tend to have a fear of helping people for fear it may lead to government.

A little while ago, the Australian Senate released a report into poverty in Australia. It was commented on by Senator Meg Lees on her blog (here and here). She noted:

No-one who has sat through even one of the hearings of the Senate Poverty Inquiry can doubt the fact that we have far too many Australians, particularly children, living in poverty.

The evidence is clear that somewhere between 9 and 13 per cent of Australians are living in situations which mean that they can not regularly put food on the table or afford to buy for their children what other children take for granted.

On the other hand, Peter Saunders has written a paper for the CIS think tank suggesting that the Senate report is badly flawed:

A recent Senate Report claims that 'poverty' in Australia is widespread and has been getting worse. It estimates that the number of Australians living in poverty is as high as 3.5 million. In a paper to be released on Thursday 1 April by The Centre for Independent Studies, Lies, Damned Lies and the Senate Poverty Inquiry Report, Professor Peter Saunders demonstrates that the Report is 'seriously flawed' and its use of evidence is is 'partial and selective.'

'They make assertions about poverty and inequality that are false, they ignore evidence which does not fit the arguments and proposals they want to advance, they use measures of poverty which they were warned are misleading, and they use income statistics which they were told were wrong.'

Hopefully Senator Lees will respond to Saunders, but in the meantime, it all makes for interesting reading. (Incidentally, the full Sanders paper is here in pdf format)

Who rules? Dick or Bush?

I'm glad to see the Democrats finally going after President Bush and making the obvious point in regard to his joint-testimony with Unkie Dick:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says it's baffling and embarrassing that President Bush is appearing before the Sept. 11 commission with Vice President Dick Cheney at his side instead of by himself.

"I think it speaks to the lack of confidence that the administration has in the president going forth alone, period," Pelosi, D-Calif., said Friday. "It's embarrassing to the president of the United States that they won't let him go in without holding the hand of the vice president of the United States."

"I think it reinforces the idea that the president cannot go it alone," she said. "The president should stand tall, walk in the room himself and answer the questions."

Absobloodylutely.

It is an utter embarassment and disgrace that the President doesn't front the Commission alone. Imagine Tony Blair insisting that Gordon Brown come with; or john Howard saying he won't show up to a hearing without Peter Costello. It's laughable. The fact that Cheney is so central to the executive government is worrisome enough and should be open to more scrutiny than it already is. To compound that transgression by blithely allowing the President to offer this sort of testimony only when accompanied by Cheney is taking it too far. At the very least, they should have to come forward and explain why it is necessary.

Bush touts himself as the commander in chief, the person who has to hug the families when the soldiers he sends off die (it's unclear if he hugs the families of mercenaries whom he pays), and, most importantly, as the only guy tough enough to stand up to the likes of Osama bin Laden. And yet, here he is, so lacking in confidence that he needs a hand-holder to take him along to appear before the 9/11 Commission. Talk about reality not matching the image.

Time for another flip-flop, Mr President.

In the meantime, the Dems should be asking at every opportunity, including in their advertisements: who is actually in charge?

(Via Atrios)

Against one enemy

The likelihood that Richard Clarke got through writing an entire book without making a major error of fact is unlikely I would think. You'd think, then, that the Republicans and their support garments in the media might have found it (or them) by now. When they do, they can stop fabricating stuff like this.

Your Steve Winwood moment

As I suggested a few days ago, traffic to The Road to Surfdom was high during March. Clearly this has been because of the coverage the rolling review of the Clarke book has been getting, so I'm really grateful to the many sites, left and right, who have linked to them. The five top referrers were as follows: Washington Monthly; Buzzflash, The Agonist; Atrios; and Brad de Long. Hopefully I've sent some traffic in their direction too. On that subject, I notice I was one of Web Diary's top five referrers, thanks no doubt to the Blogjam series, and that I sent some hits Chris Sheil's way too.

One odd thing is that the comments-to-traffic ratio is low. I'm not sure why. Actually, the other odd thing is that although most of my hits come from the US, the majority of commenters are Australian. Who'd have thought the Americans would be the shy ones! Anyway, it'd be good to encourage a few more of you regular readers out there to chime in with your thoughts on any given post. Remember, you can do so anonymously, or under a blog-de-plume, though I must admit I prefer real names. But the option is there, and it's up to you. And so while I'm on the subject, thanks also go to those who do comment, especially regulars like Nabakov and Andjam and Sean and John Isbell and Whippy and all the others.

Anyway, the main thing I wanted to do was thank you all for dropping in here and to say how much I appreciated it.

Do not send

The Daily Kos is a great weblog, but geez, what was he thinking with this? Hey Kos, pull your head in.

That said, the role of mercenaries as part of US actions is a major concern and Jeanne covers it well, including what others in the blogosphere are saying.

UPDATE: Kos has taken the post down and replaced it with an explanation (same link). Good. What he said was offensive. As I say, he offers an explanation for his comments and you can make your own judgements about that. Predictably, many on the right are taking the opportunity to pile on Kos, and by extension, the entire left. Yawn. Like I said, Kos's comment was offensive but the idea that it was indicative of some malaise on the left is disingenous tripe, led, of course, by you-know-who:

Reader Ricky West emails to ask "What's up with the left? Have they gone completely bonkers?" Beats me, but there seems to be a lot of hate out there, and it's no longer limited to marginal settings like Democratic Underground.

...Sentiments like Kos's are distressingly common among Democrats of the political class, but they're far from universal.

Distressingly common but far from universal is a delightful juxtaposition. By all means condemn the comments if you find them offensive, but spare me the hypocritical political sideshow.

ELSEWHERE: Max gets it right here and here.

Clouting Clarke

If you want a fairly complete compendium of the criticisms being levelled at Richard Clarke, then Bargarz has a post that collects many of them. I'm not going to go through it in detail, but I did want to respond to one comment that highlights, I think, the way in which an attempt to be balanced serves to hide the facts. I mention it because it indicates that some might have the wrong idea of what the book does and does not say. Bargarz writes:

No-one is discounting that pre-9/11 Administrations on both sides of politics failed to come to grips with the reality of Islamist terrorism. 9-11 itself is the biggest counter to such a position and 9-11 is why everything changed and the failed old policies went out the window. Clarke and his supporters are playing a very partisan game in trying to slide responsibility for years of failure to one person - namely Bush.

This is wrong in just about every sense. For a start, someone is discounting the idea that Administrations on both sides failed to come to grips with the reality of Islamist terrorism: Clarke. That is precisely what he does. He is convinced that the Clintons had come to grips with the threat, that they had adjusted their thinking, and had made solid progress in dealing with it. The foiling of the Millennium plot is the classic example. That doesn't mean Clarke's not critical of their performance, but it is absolutely central to his case that there was a quantum leap in the thinking by the Clinton administration that wasn't matched by those in the new Bush administration. Clarke summed up the difference in attitudes in his 9/11 Commission testimony: for the Clintons, Islamic terrorism was the most important issue, the top priority. For the Bush administration it was important but not urgent, a fact acknowledged by Bush himself to reporter Bob Woodward.

Further, Clarke's other very strong point is that everything didn't change in the Bush administration after 9/11. Sure, they were finally forced to confront the notion of global terrorism, but they still didn't really get it, and for Clarke, nothing underlined their failure to comprehend the problem more than their immediate and relentless pursuit of Saddam Hussein. The war against Iraq was an abdication of their responsibility to fight the war on terrorism as far as he was concerned. It was not just a distraction, it drained resources from the attack on al Qaeda in Afghanistan and, what's worse, it gave al Qaeda exactly what they wanted:

We invaded and occupied an oil-rich Arab country that posed no threat to us, while paying scant time and attention to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. We delivered to al Qaeda the greatest recruitment propaganda imaginable and made it difficult for friendly Islamic governments to be seen working closely with us.

As for playing "a very partisan game", well, I think that is in the eye beholder. Any criticism of a particular administration is going to look partisan, especially to supporters of that administration, but I'm convinced that if the Bush administration had been a Democrat administration, Clarke would have written the same book. I have no way to prove this, but you can't read the book and think he is anything other than a fanatical, one-eyed proponent of stopping al Qaeda and fundamentalist terrorism in general. The guy is a career public servant who served administrations of both persuasions and the record suggests he did so with distinction, a record that includes the handwritten note of thanks he received from George W. Bush on his retirement. To dismiss his criticisms as merely partisan is, well, partisan, not to mention lame, unless you can show that what he says is wrong in fact and motivated by political support for the Democrats. Until people can do that conclusively, they should drop the charge of partisanship.

Finally, does he try and slide responsibility for years of failure to one person - namely Bush? Again, the answer is no. The people he blames are those inside the administration, including the neo-conservative cabal, who failed to grasp what they were up against. He is particularly critical of Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice, and in that order. His criticism is that they were still operating within a state-based, Cold War-influenced mindset and had utterly failed to internalise that the game had changed. He blames these people for feeding Bush unbalanced information and for downplaying to him the threat of independent operators like al Qaeda. He blames them for the invasion of Iraq. Certainly he is critical of Bush for allowing all this to happen, for his "bumper-sticker" approach to policy, but his real ire is reserved for those others, especially Wolfowitz, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

The key points are that Clarke was right about al Qaeda and the Bushies were wrong. His claim that they didn't place high enough priority on fundamentalist terrorism is not in dispute; in fact, it is verified by Bush himself. No-one has come forward with any proof that the substantial facts in his book and his testimony are wrong. You can argue with his assessment of the efficacy of the Iraq war, but given his track record on everything else to do with terrorism, we would do well to take his comments seriously. His arguments when in government didn't stop the invasion of Iraq, but his book might just get people to think twice about any future misadventures. Well, that is, if they read the book.

Barnes ignoble

Fred Barnes at The Weekly Standard has figured out what's wrong with Iraq. It's the Iraqis:

There's a serious obstacle remaining--the attitude of many Iraqis. Kurds, educated exiles who've returned from London and Detroit, and a good number of other Iraqis have embraced what Paul Bremer calls the "new Iraq." But many Iraqis haven't. They don't want Saddam back, but they look unfavorably on the American occupation. Like the French, they may never forgive America for having liberated them.

...Iraqis want help. Indeed, they demand it and are angry and frustrated when they don't get it instantly. But they appear to hate being helped. Their expectation was an America capable of supplanting Saddam in less than three weeks would improve everything overnight. When that didn't happen, they grew frustrated. Now they're conflicted between lashing out at the American occupation and trying to get the full benefit of it. For success to be achieved, they need to buy into the program fully--democracy, free markets, rule of law, property rights, political compromise, and patience. They need an attitude adjustment.

...The truth is the difficulty with Iraqis--their whining, their ethnic squabbling, their anti-Americanism--hasn't diverted Bremer from his relentless nation-building.

So there you go. Just a bunch of whiny ethnic ingrates. I tell you what, the sooner we invade this place, the better.

Richard Clarke 19

Tim Blair provides a useful introduction to this installment of the Richard Clarke book. In a post that asks with whom are we are war?, Tim quotes approvingly Britain's most prominent Muslim leader:

Interesting. This guy seems to support the “radical Islamic fundamentalists” option:

Britain's most prominent Muslim leader last night demanded a crackdown on "rogue" Islamic preachers, blaming them for brainwashing young men with sermons promoting holy war against the West.

Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, was backed by the families of some of the eight men arrested in Tuesday's anti-terrorism raids in south-east England.

The father of one of those arrested, Lal Hussain, makes a good point:

"This version of Islam is spoiling it for everyone else. They have not arrested them; they arrested these kids. They are the extremists, making inflammatory speeches on the pavement, yet nothing is done."

Richard Clarke agrees completely and it is one of his biggest complaints about the Bush administration's response to terrorism in general and their invasion of Iraq in particular: that they are not doing enough to offer an alternative philosophy to that offered by fundamentalist Muslims, and that the invasion of Iraq played precisely into Osama bin Laden's hands, giving him recruiting leverage he (and those like him) would not have had otherwise (pp.26-63 passim):

The second agenda item post-September 11 should have been the creation of a counterweight ideology to the al Qaeda, fundamentalist, radical version of Islam because much of the threat we face is ideological, a perversion of a religion.

Incidentally, for an excellent account of the history of that background, let me recommend again the relevant chapter in the book The Age of Sacred Terror. I know I've been saying you should read the Clarke book, but if you've only got time to read one book on the subject, then Sacred Terror is it.

Anyway, back to the Clarke:

Bombs and bullets, handcuffs and jail bars will not address the source of that ideological challenge. We must work with our Islamic friends to craft an ideological and cultural response over many years, just as we fought Communism for almost half a century...with a more powerful and more attractive ideology.

...Yet [those] in the Pentagon and the white House do not seem to understand how to fight the battle of ideas or the limits on the ability of our shooters to defeat the al Qaeda ideology.

...The only way to stop it is to work with the leaders of Islamic nations to insure that tolerance of other religions is taught again, that their people believe they have fair opportunities to participate in government and the economy, and that the social and cultural conditions that breed hatred are bred out.

Rather than seeking to work with the majority in the Islamic world to mold Muslim opinion against radicals' values, we did exactly what al Qaeda said we would do. We invaded and occupied an oil-rich Arab country that posed no threat to us, while paying scant time and attention to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. We delivered to al Qaeda the greatest recruitment propaganda imaginable and made it difficult for friendly Islamic governments to be seen working closely with us.

He then takes a moment to revise his credentials as a Saddam hater to underline the fact that he can hardly be characterised as "objectively pro-Saddam" in his opposition to the invasion of Iraq, and then outlines his overall injection, not to invading Iraq, but to the way that it was done:

I know that in one sense the world is better off without him (Saddam) in power, but not the way it was done, not at the cost we have paid and will pay for it; not by diverting us from eliminating al Qaeda and its clones' not by using the funds we needed to eliminate our vulnerabilities to terrorism at home; not at the incredibly high price of increasing Muslim hated of America and strengthening al Qaeda.

The next section of the chapter, which I won't summarise, is his account of why he thinks the administration really went to war, how they oversold the WMD angle, how Saddam was no threat to the United States, and how the US mishandled, and continues to mishandle the occupation, all of which ultimately leaves the US military dangerously overstretched and the US more vulnerable than it needs to be. It's uncomfortable reading for those who deify Saint George of the Bush. Anyway, it ultimately brings him back to a summary of his main criticism, that invading Iraq, for a number of reasons, undermined the war on terrorism (pp.273-74):

The invasion (of Iraq), when it came in 2003, lost us many friends. Polling data had already suggested that the U.S. was not trusted or liked by majorities in Islamic countries. After the invasion, those numbers hit all-time highs not only in Muslim countries but around the world. In Muslim countries, the U.S. invasion of Iraq increased support for al Qaeda and radical anti-Americanism. Elsewhere, we were now seen as a super-bully more than a superpower, not just for what we did but or the way we did it, disdaining international mechanisms that we would later need.

When the United States next needs international support, when we need people around the world to believe that action is required to deal with Iranian or North Korean nuclear weapons, who will join us, who will believe us?

...Instead of energetically pursuing the priority of creating an ideological counterweight for al Qaeda, we invaded Iraq and gave al Qaeda exactly the propaganda fuel it needed.

Okay, so we've seen endless reams of insults against Clarke but has anyone in the administration addressed this particular criticism? Is there anyone who thinks it's fundamentally wrong? And why do I get the feeling that the only response will be, if Richard Clarke had his way, Saddam would still be in power? Maybe not, in Tim Blair's post is any indication.

I've got two more things I'd like to cover before wrapping up this review. I'd like to record what he says about the Clinton administration, and also his thoughts on future priorities, specifically, dealing with Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Stay tuned.

Finders fee

For anyone spotting rightwing commentators getting excited about yesterday's testimony by Charles Deulfer, David Kay's replacement as chief weapons' finder in Iraq. Or have they all learned their lessons?

Interesting to note that Richard Clarke mentions Duelfer (p.267):

Charles Duelfer was the leading American expert on the (WMD) issue, having spent over a decade working on Iraqi WMD analysis for the U.S. and U.N. Duelfer thought in 2002 that there was no remaining large and threatening stockpile. He was ignored before the invasion and for months after and only asked by the Administration to go to Iraq to lead the investigation in 2004.

Which makes this bit from the article linked above interesting:

While Duelfer did not contradict Kay's conclusions, he appeared to inject a tone more in line with White House statements that the hunt is still going on and that searchers could find weapons.

Duelfer said he was not ready to say there were no weapons. Credible reports of their existence continue to arise and must be checked out, he said.

Ah, ain't politics grand!

ELSEWHERE: Kevin Drum.

Richard Clarke 18

Dear Sean-Paul,

Your last letter asks: "Finally, take a look at page 209-210. What's your opinion on our unwillingness to get our hands dirty while dealing with 'shady' characters; and how do we take shady actions without the resultant ripple effects? How do we as a people make this decision?"

The section to which you refer deals with Clarke's efforts to get the Clinton administration, on the eve of the Millennium, to act more aggressively against the Taliban in Afghanistan. He wants them to fund and support the Northern Alliance under the command of Massoud to fight against the Taliban (p.209):

Richard Clarke 17

UPDATE: Abu Aardvark

This is a bit tangential to the rolling review of Clarke's book but it is highly relevant and offered in response to a query raised in comments below about what Clarke says and doesn't say about Ramzi Yousef, one of those arrested for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre. It arises because of a post by Edward Jay Epstein, a post, as Digby suggests, that seems to have been the basis for an exchange involving Fox journalist, Brit Hume. The post says:

Question:

Richard A. Clarke makes assertions in his book Against All Enemies that can be easily checked against external and unambiguous sources. Is Clarke truthful in verifiable assertions he makes?

Answer:

No, in at least one instance Clarke totally fabricates a position he attributes to Laurie Mylroie, author of Study Of Revenge (2000), and then he use his own fabrication to discredit that author's position.

On p.95 of his Against All Enemies, Clarke states that "author" Laurie Mylroie had asserted "Ramzi Yousef was not in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Manhattan but lounging at the right hand of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad." He then debunks this "thesis" by stating that, in fact, Ramzi Yousef "had been in a U.S. jail for years," which was true.

Obviously, if Yousef had been in prison in America, he could not be in Baghdad at the right hand of Saddam, and Mylroie's theory would be demonstratively untrue-- a discreditation Clarke considers important enough to feature on the dust jacket of his book, noting that prior to 9-11 "[Paul] Wolfowitz was actually spouting the totally discredited Laurie Mylroie theory."

The problem here is that the straw man Clarke demolishes is an invention entirely of his own creation. Mylroie did not write anything remotely like it before 9-11 (or after it). On the contrary, she explicitly states on p. 212 of her book Study Of Revenge, "Ramzi Yousef was arrested and returned to the U.S. on February 7, 1995." While she questions the provenance of documents he used prior to his capture in 1995, she does not claim in her book or any other writing that Yousef resides anywhere but a maximum security federal prison.

Clarke himself makes up the absurd assertion Yousef was in Baghdad with Saddam, falsely attributes it to Mylroie, then uses it to discredit Mylroie.

Collateral question:

Why Did Clarke go to such extreme lengths-- including a blatant fabrication-- to discredit Mylroie's book?

Epstein's claim that "Mylroie did not write anything remotely like it before 9-11 (or after it)," is demonstrably wrong. If he had said she didn't use those exact words, then maybe he would be right (I'm in no position to judge having not read everything she has ever written on the topic), but he doesn't. He says she never said anything "remotely like it."

Blogjammers

New Blogjam up. Typos are mine, unfortunately.

Linus's blanket

The revelation that the White House has organised for George W. Bush to be accompanied by his Vice President when he appears before the 9/11 Commission is about he most pathetic thing I've ever heard. Imagine Dubya's father, George I, insisting that he be accompanied by Dan Quayle. Is there another President in history who would require his deputy to come with him to hold his hand? Is there another Vice President in history whose role in such matters would even warrant him appearing at all, let alone jointly with the President? The office of Vice President, after all, is technically just about powerless. Clearly, our Dick is a cut above, as this article acknowledged, though even they didn't see quite how central Cheney would be:

And now it is Dick Cheney's turn (to be VP). In running the Bush transition team, and screening cabinet and other high-level appointments, Cheney may be the most influential vice president to ever take office.

Still, he will be the vice president. And like his predecessors on January 20, he will not be the focus of our attention.

Maybe he should've been.

First Bush flip-flops over Condoleeza Rice's testimony and now he needs Unkie Dick to come with him to speak to the nasty people from the 9/11 Commission. Great to have such a strongman in the White House.

Goodbye to all thatsic

Aboriginal activist, Gary Foley, once said that ATSIC, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, actually stood for, "Aborigines talking shit in Canberra."

Nuggett Coombs, the uber-bureaucrat who was instrumental in the formation of a forerunner organisation to ATSIC, the Council for Aboriginal Affairs, and who was a long-time champion of Indigenous causes, was also highly sceptical about ATSIC, especially in regard to the manner in which it elected officals, arguing that the organisation didn't really give autonomy to Indigenous people:

The formation of ATSIC has not offered any significant transfer of authority or improvement in indigenous political and economic power or bargaining capacity. ATSIC has no access to information, knowledge, research capacity or objective advice except through the existing bureaucracy which is responsible to, and controlled by, the government. (Dr. H.C. Coombs 1996)

In fact, some of the strongest criticism of ATSIC comes from the strongest advocates of Aboriginal affairs, and their criticisms are similar to Coombs'.

So Mark Latham's committment to get rid of ATSIC should he be elected PM is probably going to be welcomed by a lot of people. In fact, it will play well on a number of fronts.

Interestingly, I think it is one of those things that only a Labor leader could do, as any move by a conservative government to do it would tend to meet with knee-jerk, if not understandable, opposition, probably more concerned with ulterior motives than the policy prescription itself. As it is, the important thing for Latham to articulate is less the abolition of ATSIC than how he intends to proceed with Indigenous affairs after it's gone. Nonetheless, politically, this steals the jump on Howard (again), as Chris Sheil points out.

Dial left

Here's all the information you need, including a full first-week schedule, for the new liberal radio programs that are starting this week. Good to see a number of bloggers are going to be amongst the featured guests. (Thanks to Julia for the info.)

Clarke: annotated blogliography

Just for convenience sake, here are the links to the separate posts so far that make up my rolling review of the new book by Richard Clarke. Also note, many of the posts include links to other material on the story that erupted over the course of last week, from the time of his 60 Minutes interview, the release of the book, and his testimony before the 9/11 Commission.

Clarke 1 - Introduction to the book and extracts from opening chapter.

Clarke 2: There is no Clarke 2. I think I did I brief post and then deleted it and then jumped ahead. Perhaps I can't count

Clarke 3: More on chapter 1.

Clarke 4: Final section on Chapter 1, including dismissive comments by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

Clarke 5: Some info on the author other must-read book on all this, The Age of Sacred Terror.

Clarke 6: Chapter 2 extracts about the Reagan era.

Clarke 7: More on Reagan and Soviet involvement in Afghanistan.

Clarke 8: Quick quotes.

Clarke 9: Where I link testimony given to the 9/11 Commission last week with extracts from the book.

Clarke 10: As in 9.

Clarke 10a: Did anyone say planes flying into buildings?

Clarke 11: First part of the discussion with Sean-Paul from the Agonist, talking about why liberals and the left mightn't want to embrace Clarke wholeheartedly.

Clarke's testimony: to the 9/11 Commission.

Clarke - a correction: Is he or is he not a Republican?

Clarke 12: About his so-called demotion.

Clarke 12a: A clarification of the exchange between Clarke and the President.

Clarke 12b: Some reaction to Clarke's affect on the GOP.

Clarke 13: Brief comment about Cheney.

Clarke 14: Extract dealing with al Qaeda in Indonesia (creepy).

Clarke 15: Clarke's criticism of the response to 9/11, early extracts.

Clarke 15a: Link to tabulation of responses to Clarke.

Of Clarke and loops: Second part of exchange with Sean-Paul - comment about how citizens are kept away from real authority.

Clarke 15b: Senator Frist wants Clarke charged with perjury.

Next train to Clarkesville: Clarke supported by Powell.

Clarke 16: Extracts dealing with the failures of homeland security.

I've got a few more posts to go, so I'll update this list when they are done.

Song remains the same

Condoleeza Rice says she won't testify before the 9/11 Commission because "it is a long-standing principle that sitting National Security Advisors do not testify before the Congress." Pushed on the fact that 9/11 was such an extraordinary event that an exception might be made, Rice refused to buckle. And there was me thinking 9/11 changed everything.

A rush of blood

My niece is staying with us at the moment, down from New York for a about a month while she interns on Capitol Hill. Today was her first day, and on that first day she got to go the White House to hear Bush give a speech at the NATO Enlargement ceremony. I'm no Washington insider, and I've never worked on Capitol Hill, and I know it's a different President, but I obviously would have counselled her against attending: it simply seems prudent to me that an intern should avoid anything at the White House called an "enlargement ceremony."

Lest we forget who forgot

The Australian Federal government is commissioning a white paper on terrorism, and, as is only responsible, they are looking at root causes, a concept that still gives many on the right impacted wisdom teeth:

The white paper, a public document due to be released by the middle of this year, will examine the origins, ideology, motivation and financing of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network and other major international terrorist groups .

The document is the personal initiative of Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and will be prepared by a team led by his counter-terrorism ambassador, Les Luck, with the assistance of ASIO and the Office of National Assessments.

Downer is saying that they need it because the public has become complacent, but given it has been over two and half years since the 9/11 attacks and this is the first investigation the government has ordered into the matter, then I think we know who has actually been complacent. Kevin Rudd quite rightly points out the political angle on this, but I'm less concerned about that than the fact that they are finally doing it. The only thing that concerns me is that it won't be comprehensive enough, and that it will not highlight areas of concern that have been neglected so far. In other words, I'd prefer a more comprehensive and independent inquiry into the issue.

Richard Clarke 16

He doesn't phrase it this way, but one way of understanding key arguments in the final chapter of Richard Clarke's book is this: imagine a polling company asking Americans the following question: Would you support the war in Iraq if it was shown that such a war would drain resources from protecting the American homeland against terrorist attack?

Now, in the run up to the war, most people were not in a positing to give an informed answer to that question. Richard Clarke was and it is probably that fact alone--the invasion of Iraq--that has most influenced his low opinion of the Bush administration's record in dealing with terrorism. There's a few points to touch on here, but to start with, I'll just quote a couple of brief sections that give some idea as to how he would answer that hypothetical poll question, the sorts of things he'd consider.

The set up here, the overall context, is his assessment of the Department of Homeland Security. He is highly critical of the way it was organised, the way it has been administered, its role (his comments on the color-coded alert system, for instance, are scathing), and the way it has been funded. He doesn't think it is beyond redemption, and makes a number of suggestions for improvement, but is less than confident that the current administration will do what is necessary:

Regrettably, the Administration sought to do homeland security on the cheap, telling Ridge that the creating the new department had to be "revenue neutral," jargon for no new money to implement the largest government reorganisation in history.

It is worth making the point here that some of what he offers is simply his opinion, and it is reasonable to note that people of goodwill could reach different conclusions. Nonetheless, some of what he says seems to be valid, fact-based criticism of what was done.

Anyway, his comments point about underfunding tie into the hypothetical poll question and the two sections I wanted quote. They are classic illustrations of how the war in Iraq has made America less safe. I must admit, this first example was something that had never occurred to me, though it is obvious when it is pointed out to you. It has to do with one of his main concerns about the Bush approach to homeland security, the failure to prepare at the frontline level, at the level of local police, fire and related services (p.258):

Just as the Administration shortchanged the creation of the new Department, it sought to keep aid to police, first, and other emergency responders as constrained as possible under the circumstances.

In 2000, I asked DOD and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) to determine what units would be needed to deal with a small nuclear weapon going off in a midsize U.S. city. Both agencies said I had to be more specific, so I chose Cincinnati because I had just been there. The kind of federal plan and units needed to help metropolitan Cincinnati officials deal with such a calamity simply did not exist. Nonetheless, many city officials assumed that there were federal units somewhere that would come to help them in extreme emergency. They also noted that it is the first twenty-four hours in which the injured can be saved, and most local officials I spoke with doubted the U.S. Cavalry would appear that fast.

Here's the bit I found most interesting:

In fact, many of the kinds of federal units that city officials assume will help them will never show up. Large MASH-style military field hospitals are no longer in the force structure. Military police are in short supply and stretched with overseas deployments. Now, because of Iraq, many National Guard units are also overseas, taking with them mobilized police and fire personnel from cities and towns. The new northern Command created to assist in homeland emergencies has not developed a single new field unit to meet domestic requirements; it merely has the ability to plan to call on units that already happen to exist and still in the homeland.

Logical isn't it? Amongst those most likely to volunteer for Guard duty are local cops and firemen, and because the war in Iraq has created an unprecedented demand for such forces, towns and cities are seeing their supply of cops and firemen and other emergency workers depleted. So that's one fact our hypothetical sample might want to keep in mind for our hypothetical poll question. Here's the other, and the context for this is that he was asked after he left the White House by former Senator, Warren Rudman, to help write a report on the preparedness of "first responders" (local police, fire and emergency services) to deal with a WMD attack in the United States (pp.250-60):

A survey of 168 cities showed that 90 percent of them had not received any significant additional federal assistance since the September 11 attacks. Emergency services organizations were understaffed and utilizing archaic equipment. Few had detailed or realistic plans to deal with a major terrorist attack using chemical, biological, or radiological devices. Emergency 911 systems, fire-police radio units, public health departments, emergency hospitals, and other first responders all had long lists of unmet requirements.

...when our report, "Emergency Responders: Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously Underprepared" (not to put too a fine a point on it, eh? ed.) was released, an Administration spokesman dismissed it as probably calling for "gold-plated telephones."...Warren Rudman responded to the criticism by telling a House committee, "We don't want gold-plated telephones, we just want reliable communications devices so that we never again lose hundreds of firefighters because they couldn't hear the evacuation order, as happened in the World Trade Center."

Indeed. It continues (pp.260-261):

We called for $98 billion over five years, plus an unquantified amount for assisting local police, over and above the Administration;s requests....As Warren Rudman put it to me, "We need a transparent process that says you can get this much done for this much money over these many years. If you think more metropolitan areas need more capability, fine, this is how much it will cost. without that, these guys in the White House are just pulling the homeland security budget level out of their ass."

And so here is the second section that goes to the heart of how invading Iraq has undermined homeland security:

...Equipped or not, when the call comes our first responders around the country will answer it. They are our first line of defense against terrorists. The Bush administration contends that the additional resources we sought for aiding our first responders "simply did not exist." Yet, in the "war on terrorism" we are spending in Iraq in the first year of war and occupation six times what the Rudman study called for as an annual supplement to equip our defenders here at home. The resources for Iraq did not exist either. The Administration chose to run up the national debt to pay for Iraq, but not to pay for what our police and fire personnel need to defend us here at home.

That hypothetical question again: Would you support the war in Iraq if it was shown that such a war would drain resources from protecting the American homeland against terrorist attack?

More later, including some unkind words for John Ashcroft.

Mother of all Perle

Over at Kos there is an account of an interview with Richard Perle, talking about his reaction to 9/11. I wanted to pick up on something else in the interview, namely this section:

WOODRUFF: Where is the link between al Qaeda and...

PERLE: Let me explain the link, because it's a geopolitical link -- although there were links between Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda.

We know that al Qaeda were trained in Saddam's facilities at Salman Pak. But the link is a much more fundamental one than that.

You may remember a little while back I mentioned this mysterious terrorist training facility, and you can read the bigger story there. The main point to extract is this, that post-invasion investigations of Iraq have found that the Salman Pak facility did not exist. At the time I wrote that original post, there was only one source for that claim, but it has subsequently been more widely reported in light of other revelations about the false information given by Ahmed Chalabi and his band of merry fabricators:

The former Iraqi exile group that gave the Bush administration exaggerated and fabricated intelligence on Iraq also fed much of the same information to leading newspapers, news agencies and magazines in the United States, Britain and Australia.

...Some of the information, such as the charge that Iraq ran a terrorist training camp in Salman Pak, found its way into administration statements, including a Sept. 12, 2002, White House paper.

And yet, here is Richard Perle, just yesterday, March 28, still offering this as evidence of an al Qaeda/Saddam link. He's either incredibly dense, or lying his head off.

Sorry lot

Donald Rumsfeld was on Fox Sunday and got asked an obvious question, but a necessary one:

WALLACE: Now, Clarke took personal responsibility and apologized to the families and the victims of that terrible day. I know as secretary of defense that you're responsible for external threats, not an attack within the United States. But I wonder, do you think it would be appropriate for someone in the administration, from the president on down, to consider making a similar statement to the families?

Sounds like a yes-or-no answer is all that is required. Right.

RUMSFELD: Well, I think the president has, and the government has, and the country has. I mean, it was a terrible, terrible event. And these families and loved ones of those that were killed, everyone's heart goes out to them. And clearly an attack in our country, one of the first responsibilities of government is to protect the American people. And when an attack like that takes place, clearly it's a failure.

So he thinks the President has apologised a la Clarke. That's nice. I'm glad he thinks that. I think I'm gorgeous and I must admit it cheers me up no end. As to the continuation of that sentence: he thinks the government has and the country has? What does that mean? Funnily enough, the interviewer wasn't quite satisfied:

WALLACE: I just want to press this a little bit more to ask you, though, I think what the families said they liked so much, what they were gratified to hear from Clarke, was a statement not just of sorrow but of personal responsibility.

RUMSFELD: It had that, you could feel it when you showed that. And I...

WALLACE: Do you think the president should do the same?

RUMSFELD: I can't speak to that. I think the president has recognized the failure that existed and the concern he has for those people and the fact that the government, our government, was there and that attack took place. I don't know quite what else one would do.

I've talked to many of the families that were killed at the Pentagon and their loved ones. I've talked to a few of the people from New York. And it is a heartbreaking thing to see the suffering and the grieving that they feel.

So having a mere breath before told us that he thinks the President has apologised, he nows says he can't comment. But he doesn't "know quite what else one would do"?

Um, one would apologise. Remember the topic?

And I love that last bit - no apology but "it is a heartbreaking thing to see the suffering and the grieving that they feel." Well, not so heartbreaking as to stop the GOP goon squad from going after various family members who criticised the President's use of 9/11 images in his political ads. They weren't objects of sympathy then, but Democrat operatives. So spare me the heartfelt concern - and if you really feel it, call off the attacks dogs; tell Rice to testify in public under oath; tell the president to do the same thing and tell him to give up more than hour of his precious fundraising time.

Meanwhile on another channel, Richard Clarke was asked the same question:

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that President Bush should apologize to the families?

MR. CLARKE: Everyone has to make their own decisions about that. If he doesn't feel it in his heart that he has anything to apologize for then, no, he shouldn't.

MR. RUSSERT: How about President Clinton, when the planning for September 11 largely occurred?

MR. CLARKE: Again, I think if they feel it in their heart, they should do it. If they don't, they shouldn't. It's a matter of personal decision.

Not much else to say. But really, if you want to see the difference between someone with nothing to hide and someone trying to hide everything read or watch both those interviews.

ELSEWHERE: Jeanne.

Political passion

Kevin Drum considers the ramifications of John Kerry being a Catholic and notes that "at the same time that Americans have gotten over their anti-Catholic bigotry of days past the Catholic Church itself has become far more politicized."

I don't know if that's true in the US (Atrios suggests it isn't) but I think the opposite is true in Australia. Apart from religion generally being a non-issue in Australian politics (to which I can only say, having now lived in a country where it is a big issue, "thank God!") the Catholic Church plays a much less partisan role than it did during, say, the fifties and sixties, when it was an open advocate of the Labor Party. In fact, I can remember in 1972 (I was 12) being at Mass and hearing the priest tell the congregation during his sermon that they should all go and vote for Gough Whitlam the next Saturday. I'm pretty sure it was that as much as anything that turned my Mum off going to Mass, good conservative that she has always been!

Anyone else remember similar advocacy from the Church?

Moral compass

Some liar worded up by Ahmed Chalabi to give the Bush administration "intelligence" about Saddam's WMD is fine, but that nasty Mr Clarke, the nation's foremost counterterrorism expert and advisor across one Democrat three Republican Presidents who apologised under oath for his personal failures that allowed 9/11 to happen, well, hey--let's string him up. That guy's beyond the pale. As for Mr Chalabi, let's keep paying him a few million a year for information. Hell, let's install him as the grand wazzoo of Iraq.

Pretty weird the sort of things that outrage this administration and their laptop lapdogs, not to mention the rest of the conservative press.

Of velvet gloves

Sean-Paul has posted a response to my previous questions as the next installment of our exchange about issues arising from the Richard Clarke book. I'm giving some thought to my answers to his latest questions and will respond asap.

I also want to bring the main part of the rolling review of the Clarke book to an end this week, and so will be continuing with that too. The point to keep in mind--and this often seems absent from the media coverage--is that Clarke's main complaint against the Bush administration is not what they did before the war but what they did afterwards. This means he is a harsh critic of the invasion of Iraq--and I'll deal with that part of the book--but in a way that is only emblematic of his greater concerns. So the other interesting thing he writes about is how he thinks they should've responded.

Incidentally, the other thing you should keep in mind, and I've given it some attention, is to not fall for the GOP porpaganda doing the rounds the moment that Clarke is some sort of liberal partisan, blindly aping their positions. My guess is that Richard Clarke is the sort of person most liberals would run a mile from, a hardline shoot-first-ask-questions-later type whose main complaint against the Bush administration is that they have been too soft on terrorists. It is precisely this fact, however, that makes his longterm strategy for dealing with jihadist terrorism so interesting - despite his no-holds-barred mentality, he nonetheless stresses the importance of understanding roots causes and of using soft-power approaches as well as the big stick. Anyway, more later.

Hypocritic oath

As I said below, if Richard Clarke is guilty of perjury or any other serious deception, then release his earlier testimony and let's find out. I'm willing to judge the case on the facts.

But here is the totally pathetic thing about the rightwing attacks on his integrity, attacks that have so far failed to refute a single substantial point he has made: the same people calling Clarke dishonest or just plain wrong in his acount of what the Bush administration did and didn't do in the run up to 9/11 (and after) are exactly the same people who have been running around telling us for the past year that all the stories we were told by the Bush administration about the the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction don't matter.

Having been party to a war campaign that was either thoroughly dishonest or thoroughly ill-informed, and that was certainly wrong, they are now chastising Richard Clarke for his supposed lack of credibility.

These are the people who spun a single test-tube of botox found in a fridge in Iraq into proof that the WMD existed. They did the same with discredited reports about vans as mobile labs and aluminium tubes as evidence evidence of nuclear capabilities. These are the people who told us Saddam was seeking yellowcake in Niger. These are the people who endorsed the he-can-attack-in-45-minutes claim. These are the same people laughing at Bush's jokes the other night about not being able to find the WMD they insisted were there.

So far, no-one in the administration has come forward and admitted, as David Kay has suggested they should, that they were wrong about WMD. So far no-one has come forward and offered a reasonable explanation of what went wrong with the gathering and handling of intelligence that sent us to war. In fact, some of them are still running around pretending that we still might find exactly the stores of CBW and the nuclear programs that they insisted were there before the war. They are still pretending that Iraq was a gathering threat capable of launching attacks on the US mainland.

These are the people now insisting that we can't trust that nasty Mr Clarke. What a pathetic bunch of hypocrites.