Crispy Rice Treats - Part XII
From the Thompson Segment of the Rice Testimony:I don't believe in beating dead horses, but there's a bunch of lame ones running around here today. Let's see if we can't finally push them out the door.A truer statement has not been uttered in these proceedings.
Please describe to us your relationship with Dick Clarke, because I think that bears on the context of this _ well, let's just take the first question.Someone misrepresented their importance in the grand scheme of things and it isn't someone in the chamber today. Clearly Clarke has some explaining to do. Wonder if we'll see emergency bookings for the Sunday morning talk show circuit.
He said he gave you a plan. You said he didn't give you a plan. It's clear that what he did give you was a memo that had attached to it, not only the Delenda plan _ or whatever you want to describe Delenda as _ but a December 2000 strategy paper.
Was this something that you were supposed to act on, or was this a compilation of what had been pending at the time the Clinton administration had left office but had not been acted on, or was this something he tried to get acted on by the Clinton administration and they didn't act on it?
THOMPSON: What was it? How did he describe it to you? What did you understand it to be?
RICE: What I understood it to be was a series of decisions, near-term decisions that were pending from the Clinton administration, things like whether to arm the Uzbeks _ I'm sorry _ whether to give further counterterrorism support to the Uzbeks, whether to arm the Northern Alliance _ a whole set of specific issues that needed decision. And we made those decisions prior to the strategy being developed.
He also had attached the Delenda plan, which is my understanding was developed in 1998, never adopted and, in fact, had some ideas. I said, Dick, take the ideas that you've put in this think piece, take the ideas that were there in the Delenda plan, put it together into a strategy, not to roll back Al Qaida _ which had been the goal of the Clinton _ of what Dick Clarke wrote to us _ but rather to eliminate this threat. And he was to put that strategy together.
But by no means did he ask me to act on a plan. He gave us a series of ideas. We acted on those. And then he gave me some papers that had a number of ideas, more questions than answers about how we might get better cooperation, for instance, from Pakistan. We took those ideas. We gave him the opportunity to write a comprehensive strategy.
THOMPSON: I'd like to follow up on one of Commissioner Roemer's questions, the principals meetings.That's rather point blank, don't you think? I never bought the load that Clarke was selling about the lack of engagement on the part of the senior staff. It just doesn't make sense and makes even less sense in light of this testimony.
With all due respect to the principals, Cabinet officers of the president of the United States, Senate confirmed, the notion that when principals gather the heavens open and the truth pours forth is, to borrow the phrase of one of my fellow commissioners, a little bit of hooey, I think.
Isn't it a fact that when principals gather in principals meetings they bring their staffs with them? Don't they line the walls? Don't they talk to each other? Doesn't the staff speak up?
RICE: Well, actually when you have principals meetings they really sometimes are to tell _ for the principals to say what their staffs have said _ have told them to say.
THOMPSON: Right.
RICE: I just have to say we may simply disagree on this with some of the commissioners. I do not believe that there was a lack of high-level attention. The president was paying attention to this. How much higher level can you get?
The secretary of state and the secretary of defense and the attorney general and the line officers are responsible for responding to the information that they were given and they were responding.
The problem is that the United States was effectively blind to what was about to happen to it and you cannot depend on the chance that some principal might find out something in order to prevent an attack. That's why the structural changes that are being talked about here are so important.
THOMPSON: The Cole _ why didn't the Bush administration respond to the Cole?Right on the money, Condi. My assessment is that the Cole Incident should have been responded to by the Clinton administration. That happened on their watch. Criticisms of the Bush administration for the Cole Incident boils down to Clinton people trying to peg even more of their blunders on to the Bush team. Don't buy it, because its cheap.
RICE: I think Secretary Rumsfeld has perhaps said it best.
We really thought that the Cole incident was passed, that you didn't want to respond tit-for-tat. As I've said, there is strategic response and tactical response.
And just responding to another attack in an insufficient way we thought would actually probably embolden the terrorists. They had been emboldened by everything else that had been done to them. And that the best course was to look ahead to a more aggressive strategy against them.
I still believe to this day that the Al Qaida were prepared for a response to the Cole and that, as some of the intelligence suggested, bin Laden was intending to show that he yet survived another one, and that it might have been counterproductive.
THOMPSON: Well, I'm going to sound like my brother Kerrey, which terrifies me somewhat.I've never heard a more clear and concise explaination for why containment and/or appeasement is not the right policy for dealing with terrorism.
(LAUGHTER)
But blowing up our destroyers is an act of war against us, is it not?
THOMPSON: I mean, how long would that have to go on before we would respond with an act of war?
RICE: We'd had several acts of war committed against us. And I think we believed that responding kind of tit-for-tat, probably with inadequate military options because, for all the plans that might have been looked at by the Pentagon or on the shelf, they were not connected to a political policy that was going to change the circumstances of Al Qaida and the Taliban and therefore the relationship to Pakistan.
Look, it can be debated as to whether or not one should have responded to the Cole. I think that we really believed that an inadequate response was simply going to embolden them. And I think you've heard that from Secretary Rumsfeld as well, and I believe we felt very strongly that way.
THOMPSON: I'll tell you what I find remarkable. One word that hasn't been mentioned once today _ yet we've talked about structural changes to the FBI and the CIA and cooperation _ Congress.An excellent question follwed by an equally excellent answer. The executive branch isn't the only division of our government. While we're piling a lot of scrutiny on the executive leadership, and we should, we need to be looking at what Congress did and did not do as well. this Commission won't be interested in that because the Democrats can't use any of that for political gain against the President.
Congress has to change the structure of the FBI. The Congress has to appropriate funds to fight terrorism. Where was the Congress?
RICE: Well, I think that when I made the comment that the country was not on war footing, that didn't just mean the executive branch was not on war footing.
The fact is that many of the big changes, quite frankly, again, we were not going to be able to make in 233 days. Some of those big changes do require congressional action.
The Congress cooperated after September 11th with the president to come up with the Patriot Act, which does give to the FBI and the CIA and other intelligence agencies the kind of ability, legal ability, to share between them that was simply not there before.
You cannot depend on the chance that something might fall out of a tree. You cannot depend on the chance that a very good Customs agent, who's doing her job with her colleagues out in the state of Washington, is going to catch somebody coming across the border of the United States with bomb-making materials to be the incident that leads you to be able to respond adequately.
This is hard, because, again, we have to be right 100 percent of the time, they only have to be right once. But the structural changes that we've made since 9/11 and the structural changes that we may have to continue to make give us a better chance in that fight against the terrorists.
THOMPSON: I read this week, an interview with Newsweek, with your predecessor, Mr. Brzezinski, he seemed to be saying that there is a danger that we can obsess about Al Qaida and lose sight of equal dangers. For example, the rise of a nuclear state, Iran, in the Middle East, and the apparent connection to Hezbollah and Hamas, which may forecast even more bitter fighting, as we're now learning in Iraq. Or the ability of Hezbollah or Hamas to attack us on our soil, within the Untied States, in the same way Al Qaida did.One criticism of an otherwise outstanding response. I think it is a bit specious to say if we smack al Qaeda we can't hug Hamas if we tell Israel not to take action against Palestinian terrorists. The world must come to understanding of what a terrorist is and then apply that standard to all terrorists regardless of whether or not they've won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Are we keeping an eye on that?
RICE: We are keeping an eye and working actively with the international community on Iran and their nuclear ambitions.
I think the one thing that the global war on terrorism has allowed us to do is to not just focus on Al Qaida. Because we have enlisted countries around the world, saying that terrorism is terrorism is terrorism _ in other words, you can't fight Al Qaida and hug Hezbollah or hug Hamas _ that we've actually started to delegitimatize terrorism in a way that it was not before.
We don't make a distinction between different kinds of terrorism. And we're, therefore, united with the countries of the world to fight all kinds of terrorism. Terrorism is never an appropriate or justified response just because of political difficulty. So, yes, we are keeping an eye on it.
As it relates to 9/11 though, Rice was right on target.
THOMPSON: Last simple question. If we come forward with sweeping recommendations for change in how our law enforcement and intelligence agencies operate to meet the new challenges of our time, not the 20th century or the 19th century challenges we faced in the past, and if the president of the United States agrees with them, can you assure us that he will fight with all the vigor he has to get them enacted?Well, if you're going to end it with a love song, might as well let the lady sing the high note too.
RICE: I can assure you that if the president agrees with the recommendations, and I think we'll want to take a hard look at the recommendations, we're going to fight.
Because the real lesson of September 11th is that the country was not properly structured to deal with the threats that had been gathering for a long period of time. I think we're better structured today than we ever have been. We've made a lot of progress. But we want to hear what further progress we can make.
And because this president considers his highest calling to protect and defend the people of the United States of America, he'll fight for any changes that he feels necessary.
All under oath. And in public. Next?
Mark's Remarks
Lord, I love Mr. Thompson....he appears to get what this commission has become the most....it has become about beating dead horses, dead black helicopter theories, etc. At least he is trying to get to the truth....
In the first segment, again it is hammered home that Dick Clarke is not a hero, he is not omniscient, and he obviously cannot read facial expressions....Dick Clarke is a disgruntled ex-employee opportunist out to make a buck and get a new government job in a possible Kerry Administration. In this effort, he appears to be joined by several Commission members.
In the next segment, again, Dick Clarke is a liar, or simply the most forgetful and stupid man on the face of the planet...either way, he is not to be believed.
The third segment reveals the depths to which hamsters will go to try to paint Bill Clinton's "legacy." Bill Clinton's legacy is the missteps taken in dealing with terror. The Cole was his responsibility. Tell me, Mr. Kerrey, why didn't CLINTON swat THAT fly? Why didn't Clinton GET TOUGH on bin Laden and take Sudan's offers? The Clintonistas are out trying to salvage the worst President since Carter, and one of the most morally reprehensible leaders ever. Isn't it sad they are doing so in a Commission that is supposed to be finding answers, not rewriting history?
And, Matt hits it dead on....Appeasement/Containment/Detente are not effective strategies for winning wars....they are effective for losing wars or prolonging them. Look at the Cold War...it was supposed to last forever, with two sides staring each other down....WAIT! Here comes Ronald Reagan, that careless cowboy! He only singlehandedly destroyed the Soviet Union, in the face of doubts by many, even some in his own inner circle! And he didn't use containment! He fought to WIN! In WWII, we didn't seek to contain the Germans, that is what appeasement was supposed to be about...we sought to eliminate them from their stolen lands, and to eradicate the Nazi menace....HELLO!!!! ANYONE GETTING IT YET?
Congress and its barriers should be looked at, and we need to finally cast away everything from the hated Church Committee so many years ago. Sadly, this commission will only look at the present executive, and will continue to attempt to hack away, even as we continue to ask questions....Where is the dedication to truth and fact finding? Where is the honor? Shameful and reprehensible...
Condi and Thompson do their best to stay on the proper track for this commission, but I am sure bin Vineste and Co. had their fingers in their ears with their tongues out screaming "I can't hear you, I can't hear you!" like the petulant children they act like.
Condi's analysis of the changing paradigm of how the world views terror is great. We cannot allow countries to be in bed with one terror group and then blow up others. We must stick to the simple words: with us or against us. And, the Nobel committee that gave that murderer Arafat the prize should be strung up.....Condi was right on, as she was during this whole testimony.
Dr. Rice was brilliant in her testimony. She cited facts and refuted the hacks on the commission with facts, and she did not lose her temper...she did not allow them to get the upper hand. I am sure there was lots of thumb sucking in the nursery for Bin Vineste and Kerrey and Co. after this testimony.
