Weapons of Mass Discussion

Crispy Rice Treats - Part IV

From the Hamilton Segment of the Rice Testimony:

[HAMILTON:] You know very well that the commission is focusing on this whole question of, what priority did the Clinton administration and the Bush administration give to terrorism?

The president told Bob Woodward that he did not feel that sense of urgency. I think that's a quote from his book, or roughly a quote from Woodward's book.

The deputy director for Central Intelligence, Mr. McLaughlin, told us that he was concerned about the pace of policymaking in the summer of 2001, given the urgency of the threat.

The deputy secretary of state, Mr. Armitage, was here and expressed his concerns about the speed of the process. And if I recall, his comment is that, We weren't going fast enough. I think that's a direct quote.

There was no response to the Cole attack in the Clinton administration and none in the Bush administration.

Your public statements focused largely on China and Russia and missile defense. You did make comments on terrorism, but they were connected _ the link between terrorism and the rogue regimes, like North Korea and Iran and Iraq.

And by our count here, there were some 100 meetings by the national security principals before the first meeting was held on terrorism, September 4th. And General Shelton, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said that terrorism had been pushed farther to the back burner.

The Vice Chairman for the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States is engaging in politics rather than focusing on the solutions. This will be a theme that we will see again and again from commissioners aligned with the Democratic party. Hamilton is setting up questions that his comrades will ask that seeks to fix blame. Blame is not the focus; this commission "is chartered to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks. The Commission is also mandated to provide recommendations designed to guard against future attacks." (Source) Now I understand that the Commission is rightfully investigating the level of preparedness that our government was at pre-9/11, but the partisan attacks instigated by the democratic members of the Commission go beyond the mandate of the Commission.

[RICE:] Let me begin with the Woodward quote, because that has gotten a lot of press. And I actually think that the quote, put in context, gives a very different picture.

The question that the president was asked by Mr. Woodward was,

Did you want to have bin Laden killed before September 11th? That was the question.

The president said, Well, I hadn't seen a plan to do that. I knew that we needed to _ I think the appropriate word is 'bring him to justice.' And, of course, this is something of a trick question in that notion of self-defense which is appropriate for ...

I think you can see here a president struggling with whether he ought to be talking about pre-9-11 attempts to kill bin Laden. And so, that is the context for this quote.

And, quite frankly, I remember the director sitting here and saying he didn't want to talk about authorities on assassination. I think you can understand the discomfort of the president.

The president goes on. When Bob Woodward says, Well, I don't mean it as a trick question; I'm just trying to your state of mind, the president says, Let me put it this way. I was not _ there was a significant difference in my attitude after September 11th. I was not on point, but I knew he was a menace and I knew he was a problem. I knew he was responsible. We felt he was responsible for bombings that had killed Americans. And I was prepared to look at a plan that would be a thoughtful plan that would bring him to justice and would have given the order to do just that.

I have no hesitancy about going after him, but I didn't feel that sense of urgency and my blood was not nearly as boiling. Whose blood was nearly as boiling prior to September 11th?

And I think the context helps here.

You can clearly see the partisan attack when you apply the context of the Woodward quote. This is an example of "Gotcha Politics" that backfired because Rice was prepared to deal with this misrepresentation of the President.

We show 33 Principals Committee meetings during this period of time, not 100. We show that three of those dealt at least partially with issues of terrorism not related to al-Qaida. And so we can check the numbers, but we have looked at our files and we show 33, not 100.

Now this is just ridiculous partisanship on the part of Vice Chairman Hamilton. The Commission is, I'm sure, well aware of the exact number of meetings that the principals had, why fabricate a number? Hamilton hoped that he could slip one in and make the administration look bad by padding the number of meetings. Pathetic.

The quotes by others about how the process is moving, again, it's important to realize that had parallel tracks here. We were continuing to do what the Clinton administration had been doing under all the same authorities that were operating. George Tenet was continuing to try to disrupt al-Qaida. We were continuing the diplomatic efforts.

But we did want to take the time to get in place a policy that was more strategic toward al-Qaida, more robust. It takes some time to think about how to reorient your policy toward Pakistan. It takes some time to think about how to have a more effective policy toward Afghanistan. It particularly takes some time when you don't get your people on board for several months.

Another factor to this situation is the fact that the election was contested by Al Gore and wasn't resolved by the Supreme Court until much later. The result of that was that the administration did not have their entire team on station until much later in the game than they should have. That being said, Rice makes it clear that there was some activity taking place and that the Clinton strategy was still being prosecuted while the new strategy was being drafted. 20/20 hinsight, being what it is, the process did move too slow. Ultimately, the question has to be even if the Bush team were in place and the strategy was developed sooner, would the 9/11 attacks been prevented? I highly doubt it. The 9/11 plot had been brewing for a number of years, and the pieces were already in place. In my opinion, taking action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan sooner probably would have accelerated the time table of the 9/11 attack. Hamilton can call this a "careful" answer if he likes, but Rice called it correctly: the Clarke plan would not have prevented 9/11 and the Bush plan would have come to late to prevent 9/11.

[HAMILTON:] At the end of the day, of course, we were unable to protect our people. And you suggest in your statement _ and I want you to elaborate on this, if you want to _ that in hindsight it would have been _ better information about the threats would have been the single _ the single most important thing for us to have done, from your point of view, prior to 9-11, would have been better intelligence, better information about the threats.

Is that right? Are there other things that you think stand out?

Now, what you don't get from this transcript is hamilton's demenor and vocal inflection. When I first read the transcript, I was taken aback by Dr. Rice's immediate response:

Well, Mr. Chairman, I took an oath of office on the day that I took this job to protect and defend. And like most government officials, I take it very seriously. And so, as you might imagine, I've asked myself a thousand times what more we could have done.

I know that, had we thought that there was an attack coming in Washington or New York, we would have moved heaven and earth to try and stop it. And I know that there was no single thing that might have prevented that attack.

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.

Dr. Rice gets rather defensive here at the top of this clip. And when you see the testimony, you'll understand why. The question, such as it was, was asked in a manner that gave Rice the impression that Hamilton was questioning her dedication to the job of National Security Advisor. Her answer was appropriate to that point.

Her explaination of the "structural" problem within the government agencies charged with gathering and interpreting intelligence starts to unfold here. It is a topic that we'll see again later in the testimony with greater detail, but here is the key point:

But when it came right down to it, this country, for reasons of history and culture and therefore law, had an allergy to the notion of domestic intelligence, and we were organized on that basis. And it just made it very hard to have all of the pieces come together.

We've made good changes since then. I think that having a Homeland Security Department that can bring together the FAA and the INS and Customs and all of the various agencies is a very important step.

I think that the creation of the terrorism threat information center, which brings together all of the intelligence from various aspects, is a very important step forward.

Clearly, the Patriot Act, which has allowed the kind of sharing, indeed demands the kind of sharing between intelligence agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, is a very big step forward.

I think one thing that we will learn from you is whether the structural work is done.

If this Commission were interested in checking out solutions, they would be more focused on examining the changes that occurred after 9/11 in response to those tragic events. Sadly, it appears that affixing blame on someone other than bin Laden and the al Qaeda network seems to be the order of the day for some commissioners.

Hamilton does ask one important "big picture" question about getting at the source of the problem. Rice answers:

I believe very strongly, and the president believes very strongly, that this is really the generational challenge. The kinds of issues that you are addressing have to be addressed, but we're not going to see success on our watch.

We will see some small victories on our watch. One of the most difficult problems in the Middle East is that the United States has been associated for a long time, decades, with a policy that looks the other way on the freedom deficit in the Middle East, that looks the other way at the absence of individual liberties in the Middle East.

And I think that that has tended to alienate us from the populations of the Middle East. And when the president, at White Hall in London, said that that was no longer going to be the stance of the United States, we were expecting more from our friends, we were going to try and engage those in those in those countries who wanted to have a different kind of Middle East, I believe that he was resonating with trends that are there in the Middle East. There are reformist trends in places like Bahrain and Jordan. And recently there was a marvelous conference in Alexandria in Egypt, where reform was actually was on the agenda.

So it's going to be a slow process. We know that the building of democracy is tough. It doesn't come easily. We have our own history. When our Founding Fathers said, We the people, they didn't mean me. It's taken us a while to get to a multiethnic democracy that works.

But if America is avowedly values-centered in its foreign policy, we do better than when we do not stand up for those values.

So I think that it's going to be very hard. It's going to take time.

One of the things that we've been very interested, for instance, in is issues of educational reform in some of these countries. As you know, the madrassas are a big difficulty. I've met, myself, personally two or three times with the Pakistani _ a wonderful woman who's the Pakistani education minister.

We can't do it for them. They have to have it for themselves, but we have to stand for those values.

And over the long run, we will change _ I believe we will change the nature of the Middle East, particularly if there are examples that this can work in the Middle East.

Brilliant summary of the challenges we face in the Middle East. Her analysis of the importance of Iraq is also dead on:

And this is why Iraq is so important. The Iraqi people are struggling to find a way to create a multiethnic democracy that works. And it's going to be hard.

And if we stay with them, and when they succeed, I think we will have made a big change _ they will have made a big change in the middle of the Arab world, and we will be on our way to addressing the source.

Now, I think it is not appropriate to bring Iraq in to the 9/11 discussion outside of establishing the fact that Iraq was not involved in the planning and/or execution of the attack, but you have to admit that success in Iraq is a big part of the strategy to deal with the source of terrorism.

Mark's Remarks

1. In his first diatribe, Vice Chair Hamilton engages in the very partisan attacks he claims is not part of the commissions duty from Rice Treats Part I. This will be typical of the Commissioners associated with the Dimocrapic party. Think about that...this commission is supposed to find facts and solutions, and these commissioners are playing the political blame game to swing an election. I hate to admit it, but last night on Hannity and Colmes, Geraldo Rivera was right. This commission doing what it is doing in an election year in a time of war is reprehensible. Geraldo and I don't agree very much, but this is one of those times. This commission is not doing its stated job of finding answers to the problems that led to 9/11. It is engaging in political attacking, having been hijacked by hacks like Bin Vineste and Co. It is shameful that a Commission investigating such a tragedy would turn to this, but this is the state of the Left today--all about power, screw the country. Use whatever you can, victims' pent up rage, anger at death, whatever, and who cares who gets burned. It is shameful that such a distinguished legislator as Mr. Hamilton is getting into this, but hey, he wants to line up at the Dim banquet table, so he has his marching orders.

2. Dr. Rice slams to death the myth of the Woodward quote. Bob Woodward knew what the President said and the context. Why hasn't he clarified it? Could it be he has an AGENDA? She slams home Woodward's agenda and lays further light on how this commission has become a farce and nothing more than a group out to play the Blame Game.

3. Equivocating and misrepresenting numbers is an old tactic of Dims, remember Al Gore's Fuzzy Math? Look at John Kerry's ridiculous 10 million jobs promise--if that happened, we would have negative unemployment, a condition that does not exist....there are too many improbable numbers in Kerry's formula, and this commission is following in the long tradition of twisting numbers and even faking them.

4. Matt is dead on in regards to the Clarke plan not preventing and the Bush plan not being up quick enough to prevent. 9/11 was GOING TO HAPPEN.... It was a tragedy, and we need to learn from it, not go out for political blood to make some people feel better....we need to develop better plans, not hack away for political gain.

5. This country was not ready for the attack because of many reasons, both historic and cultural an structural....Quite frankly, we still rested on the notion that two oceans protected us, especially with the Soviet threat no longer around. We were told that terror was law enforcement, and these events were played down as just random acts, even though previous administrations had known war had been declared on us. And, there were structural and other barriers to information. These were not all done by George Bush, they were not all done by Bill Clinton, they were in place over a long period of time; and the terrorists took advantage of that.

This administration acted quickly and boldly to change the culture and structure. As Matt said, the commission should be evaluating those programs to see if they are an effective paradigm for being better prepared. Instead, many commissioners are breaking their trust to the American people for partisan politics.

AND LASTLY, IT WAS AL QUEDA, NOT BUSH, THAT DID THIS! Remember that, commissioners!