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Tue. Mar 23, 2004

Proving We Were Less Wrong

Proving We Were Less Wrong – Like a sudden swelling boil, the intelligence issue has grabbed the focus of the news lately. The beginning of scheduled testimony before the 9/11 Commission would have been enough on its own, but we’ve also been treated to the spectacle of Richard Clarke’s charges and the spontaneous eruption of the undead it caused, as Zombies took over Washington and broadcast news.

Wait, I think I got a movie review of ”Dawn of the Dead” mixed up in there. Maybe not. It’s hard to say. Susan got home from work the other day, and asked me ”what’s the deal with Clarke and the things he’s saying.” She assumed I’d been able to make some sense of the world while she worked. Silly girl. I told her, ”I don’t know. These days, the second someone opens their mouth with a charge, it is immediately obscured by an absolute sh*tstorm of spin from the right and the left” (I didn’t use the asterisk when speaking to my wife).

So I let it rest. I knew this week would bring much more, along with the slim possibility things might … settle out. They haven’t yet, but the stage is set: ”Senior Clinton administration officials called to testify [this] week before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks say they are prepared to detail how they repeatedly warned their Bush administration counterparts in late 2000 that Al Qaeda posed the worst security threat facing the nation and how the new administration was slow to act.”

”They said the warnings were delivered in urgent post-election intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 for Condoleezza Rice, who became Mr. Bush’s national security adviser; Stephen Hadley, now Ms. Rice’s deputy; and Philip D. Zelikow, a member of the Bush transition team, among others.”

”One official scheduled to testify, Richard A. Clarke, who was President Bill Clinton’s counterterrorism coordinator, said in an interview that the warning about the Qaeda threat could not have been made more bluntly to the incoming Bush officials in intelligence briefings that he led [...] ’It was very explicit,’ Mr. Clarke said of the warning given to the Bush administration officials. ’Rice was briefed, and Hadley was briefed, and Zelikow sat in.’”

Well, Rice refuses to give public testimony, so one would assume Hadley will as well, being her assistant. So what about this other guy, Zelikow? Can’t he testify and resolve this? ”The testimony could also prove uncomfortable for the commission, since Mr. Zelikow is now the executive director of the bipartisan panel.”

Oh.

The one guy who could verify whether Clarke or Rice is telling the truth is the head of the bipartisan panel. The head of the bipartisan panel … was a part of Bush’s transition team. And he’s recused himself on this specific matter. Very convenient. Reassuring, too. And it truly is a bipartisan panel, as today I heard partisan tone from both the right and the left. No favorites are being played, everybody gets a shot for their team.

OK, maybe we should try somebody other than Zelikow. How about Rice’s predecessor, Samuel R. Berger? ”In the past, Mr. Berger has said that he and his staff organized the intelligence briefings in December 2000 at which Ms. Rice, Mr. Hadley and Mr. Zelikow were warned in detail about the Qaeda threat and that on his departure, he advised Ms. Rice that he believed the Bush administration would be forced to spend more time on dealing with Al Qaeda than on any other subject.”

But he’s just a pansy Democrat, sure to have an axe to grind. Who else is there?

Fred Kaplan points out ”the basic charges themselves should not be so controversial; certainly, they’re nothing new. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill wrote in his book, The Price of Loyalty, that Bush’s top officials talked about invading Iraq from the very start of the administration. Jim Mann’s new book about Bush’s war Cabinet, Rise of the Vulcans, reveals the historic depths of this obsession.”

”Most pertinent, Rand Beers, the official who succeeded Clarke after he left the White House in February 2003, resigned in protest just one month laterfive days before the Iraqi war startedfor precisely the same reason that Clarke quit.”

You’ll find a similar dissection of the White House counterattack in ”Logic Jam”
by Ryan Lizza. And I wish I could show you Jon Stewart’s devastating side-by-side comparison of Rice and McClellan speaking to the press (on his 3/23/04 broadcast), saying nearly identical things (and now I can link it, thanks to Zack). Almost like robots. He did it for laughs, but it made a pretty devastating point: these people don’t appear to be speaking from their own recollection, they seem to be following a scripted assault.

It’s easy to brush off an attack by someone like Joe Wilson, by claiming he’s a Democrat playing politics. It’s possible to try and minimize another attack by Paul O’Neill, as a random loose cannon within the administration. Even say ugly things that make you look worse than him, like ”’We didn’t listen to him when he was there,’ said a top aide. ’Why should we now?’”

But it’s beginning to pile up, and thus harder to sweep away simply. When three insiders that you hired or retained (O’Neill, Beers, and Clarke) are singing a similar tune … people listen. And personally, when I listen to the White House response over the past couple of days (a strong coordinated assault involving Rice, Cheney, and McClellan, with a cameo appearance by George himself), it smells of desperation. An obvious effort to quickly squash something ugly, not the kind of calm deliberate refutation you’d expect from people with the facts on their side.

In addition to all of the above, while working today I had the testimony from the 9/11 Commission on most of the time (does anyone get CSPAN3?). Maybe I’m just becoming overly sensitized, but it seemed most of the people on the panel had quite a partisan tone to their questions. In fact, many times their ”questions” seemed more like statements. And every time ”Executive Director” Zelikow spoke, it made me wonder if anything of value will result from this investigation at all. All indications are to the contrary.

I find all of this very reassuring. It makes me feel so cozy and safe to know that everyone in sight is more concerned about the well being of this country than their own political concerns. God Bless America.

As if that weren’t enough, I’ve recently been reading Gerald Posner’s book, ”Why America Slept.” Entirely aside from what appears to be a decade of intelligence failures regarding Iraq’s capabilities (failures echoed at the intelligence departments of many countries), the book paints a picture of US intelligence services that at times have shown the operational efficiency and professionalism of an unruly kindergarten class. It has taken me a while to read it, because I can only do so in small segments. It makes me angry to read too much of it at one time.

In fact, all of the above has collectively gotten me a bit steamed.

Remember back when Bush used to tell us he planned to be a uniter, not a divider? Remember back in September of 2001, when members of Congress gathered on the steps of the Capitol to sing a patriotic song together? I have a very faint recollection that it actually meant something, something about ”doing what’s right for the country, not the party.” But now it all just seems like so much clichéd hokum.

Looking back from the partisan perspective of today, it all just looks like a big steaming pile of crap. The pile’s been growing bigger ever since. And somewhere within that pile … is our future. Our safety.

And I can dump all of the above on our ”leaders.” The elected representatives from both parties over the past couple of decades. But the blame goes much further, as was pointed out in today’s testimony by Richard Cohen.

We now know there was a plan to attack Al Qaeda that was passed on from the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration developed their own plan to topple the Taliban … on September 10. Those plans didn’t happen. But prior to the attacks on 9/11, who would have supported them?

You?

Imagine if late in his term, Clinton announced he was going to take military action against a serious threat to our national security, and launched a sustained attack against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He would have been savaged by Republicans and the press, and there would have been questions about whether it was too late to ramp up impeachment proceedings.

Imagine if Bush had taken office, and then one month later announced an even more pronounced military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, saying he’d determined it was the number one priority the nation faced. Just two months after the Supreme Court had made the ruling that put him in office.

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, we know today that both Clinton and Bush would have been quite justified in taking those actions. But either one of them would have been politically crucified. You want to talk about charges of unilateral action? There wouldn’t have been one nation that would have backed us. There would have been an uproar in Congress, and no hope of a supporting resolution there.

And then there’s you. In one case (Clinton attacks) or the other (Bush attacks), you would have screamed bloody murder.

And you would have been wrong.

Everybody was wrong.

And that’s why I find this dance of Proving We Were Less Wrong to be so disgusting. A pox on all of them.