Weapons of Mass Discussion

Dem Spin of 9/11 Bombshells & Bush's Press Conference

From CBS News/The New Republic:

Today's "fisking" is of an article by Johnathan Chait.

From a moral standpoint, the question of whether the Bush administration should have done more to prevent the September 11 attacks is of the utmost gravity. But if you put aside moral considerations for a moment, the administration's defense against charges of negligence can be appreciated on the level of sheer comic virtuosity. After first launching a flurry of scattershot, mutually exclusive, and largely-unsuccessful charges against their main antagonist, former terrorism czar Richard Clarke, the Bushies have settled onto two main lines of argument -- one that involves playing defense, and another that seems designed to seize the initiative in the debate. Both were on display at the president's press conference last night.

From a moral standpoint, journalists like Chait should really try objective reporting for a change. But if you put moral considerations aside for a moment, the Partisan Media's defense of the Clinton administration as the Bubba tries to repair his legacy is simply farcical. After witnessing the partisan hacks on the 9/11 Commission fail miserably to make any of their accusations stick, the Kossacks (like Chait) have settled for trying to re-write recent history as well as the past. Both were on display in this article.

"Largely unsuccessful" debunking of Richard Clarke? Perhaps Chait missed this tidbit from Rasmussen:

Seventy-one percent (71%) of Americans said they followed news stories of the Rice testimony somewhat or very closely.

Among those who were following the story closely, Rice was viewed favorably by 56% and unfavorably by 28%.

Rice's numbers are far better than those for Richard Clarke, the former Clinton and Bush official whose testimony two weeks ago kicked off a media frenzy. Following yesterday's testimony, Clarke is viewed favorably by just 27% of voters and unfavorably by 42%.

Sounds pretty successful to me, Johnathan.

The general thrust of the defensive arguments has been to question the quality of intelligence available to Bush before September 11. When it came out that Bush had received a detailed memorandum on August 6, 2001, the administration dismissed the memo as "historical" -- you know, probably some musty old professor ruminating on the development of Wahhabism. Then, after the 9/11 Commission revealed the memo's decidedly non-backward looking title -- "BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO ATTACK INSIDE THE UNITED STATES" -- Bush had to retrench yet again. The new defense had several elements. At his Sunday press conference in Waco, Bush defined the memo as merely reporting that "Osama bin Laden had designs on America. Well, I knew that." Later in the same conference, Bush stretched the point slightly further: "Of course we knew that America was hated by Osama bin Laden. That was obvious." In fact, the memo didn't merely say bin Laden "had designs on" or "hated" America, but that he was planning an imminent attack, one that might involve hijacking airplanes or targeting federal buildings in New York.

The general thrust of this paragraph is to continue the illusion that bin Vineste and company actually got something with their cute little bluff. The shocker to folks like Chait is that when the Aug. 6th PDB was released, the bluff called, none of these peddlers of retract this rubbish. In fact, there was no "silver bullet" contained in this memo and nothing remotely like what transpired on 9/11. The memo is exactly as the President characterized it: a historical reference of al Qaida actions.

Second, Bush pointed out that the memo did not predict the "hijacking of an airplane to fly into a building." But what difference would that have made? Even if we had known that al Qaeda planned to crash the hijacked planes, we wouldn't have let the hijackers take control of the planes and then tried to fortify the World Trade Center against a crash; we would have put the government on high alert against hijackers.

Second, Chait points out that the memo had no actionable intelligence in the memo yet fails to give the President the benefit of the doubt about the actions that were taken by the administration after he saw the PDB. (See the Rice Testimony for more on that.) The FAA did send out warnings about possible hijackings. "Fortify the World Trade Center" in a month? Surely Chait is pulling our leg and trying for a laugh; that just isn't technologically or logisitcally possible.

Third, Bush insisted that the memo did not specify a "time and place" for the attack. Was our domestic law enforcement so incompetent and understaffed that it could only act against a terrorist attack if we knew the precise time and place? (On September 11, send a squad car over to Logan airport and arrest any Arab men found with box cutters!) Presumably the government had more resources at its disposal than a couple guys in a squad car, and could have, I don't know, put the federal government on alert against all hijackings. Since then, the government has received intelligence about terror attacks that doesn't reveal the precise time and place or come attached with a signed confession from bin Laden. Presumably the response is not simply to throw up our hands and decry its uselessness.

Third, Chait tries to diminish the role of intelligence in counter-terrorism. It shows just how ignorant he is about this subject. I don't know a whole lot about it, but I know enough to know that you have to have information in order to prevent an event from happening. Only liberals get the pass when they don't consult the Great Carsini or the Amazing Kreskin and something bad happens. Presumably Chait would rather the administration had taken action that he would surely have condemned if 9/11 were prevented.

Finally, Bush has sought to change the question from his competence to his intent. "Had I had any inkling whatsoever that the people were going to fly airplanes into buildings," he said at his press conference last night, "we would have moved heaven and earth to save the country." But of course no serious person is saying Bush deliberately ignored the threat. It's as if former Boston Red Sox manager Grady Little responded to questions about his baffling failure to relieve Pedro Martinez in Game 7 against the Yankees by insisting that of course he wanted to win the game.

Finally, Chait sought to change the focus from the facts to the same old tired smears. "But of course no serious person is saying Bush deliberately ignored the threat." Uh-huh, then I take it you don't spend much time on John Kerry's campaign blog or the Democratic Underground or The Daily Kos or Atrios' blog or... Oh, I get it, you said no serious person would do that. Okay. I'll give you that one.

An old political aphorism holds that if you're explaining, you're losing. So, in keeping with that, Bush's allies have shifted from defense to offense. The developing line is that those who criticize Bush for doing too little to thwart the al Qaeda attacks are hypocrites, because the very same people accuse him of doing too much on Iraq.

Well, I wouldn't characterize it in those terms because Chait makes it sound like this is some sort of tactic; but the administration has a very valid point to make along those lines. You can't very well claim preemption should have happened in the 9/11 case and not with the threat that Saddam Hussein represented. Speaking hypothetically, imagine if the Iraq Battle hadn't taken place and Saddam gave weapons to al Qaeda and then Osama's boys detonated a dirty bomb in your precious Manhattan?

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this peculiar line of reasoning is to observe the way it has developed and mutated into an official talking point. It first burbled up on The Wall Street Journal editorial page last month:

"There is a profound contradiction at the heart of this 20-20 hindsight. On the one hand, the critics want to blame the Bush Administration for failing to prevent 9/11, but on the other they assail it for acting "pre-emptively" on a needless war in Iraq. Well, which do they really believe?"

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this particular article is that instead of focusing on the issues, Chait prattles on about "talking points." Come on, man, you're supposed to be a professional...

The Journal editors apparently thought so highly of this point that they used it as the beginning of a subsequent editorial:

"Give President Bush's critics credit for versatility. Having spent months assailing him for doing too much after 9/11 -- Iraq, the Patriot Act, the 'pre-emption' doctrine -- they have now turned on a dime to allege that he did too little before it."

And what does this have to do with the price of tea in China? So, the Wall Street Journal likes to reinforce their opinions. That has NEVER happened in the Partisan Media (tm) has it?

One obvious problem with this line of attack is that it assumes that all of Bush's critics opposed the Iraq war. Well, I supported the Iraq war, and I still think Bush should have reacted to the warnings he received about al Qaeda in 2001. What do you have to say to me?

Oh, look, Chait supported the war. That's nice.

Johnathan, there was no actionable intelligence with which to act. Your hero Dick Clarke even had to admit that...

A more glaring flaw with this critique -- so glaring, in fact, that it's almost demeaning to have to point it out -- is that it completely elides the objection to the Iraq war. Most critics of the Iraq war argued it would deplete our military, intelligence, and diplomatic resources, weakening us in the fight against al Qaeda. Nobody argued that Iraq was a central part of the war on terror but it wasn't worth fighting. What's so funny is that the Journal seems to recognize this -- it accurately accuses critics of calling the war "needless" -- yet fails to grasp the implication: There's nothing hypocritical about opposing actions you think aren't necessary and supporting actions you think are. Suppose that after the World Trade Center fell, Bush decided to ignore Afghanistan and instead invade Canada. By the Journal's logic, anybody who criticized both policies would be a hypocrite. Is Bush invading too many countries, or too few? Make up your minds!

I thought this article was supposed to expose the flaws of the Bush administrations handling of the 9/11 event? Why are you railing against the Wall Street Journal? The WSJ didn't drive those planes into the Towers; al Qaida did that. Is Chait trying to say that WSJ should have torn down Gorelick's wall and connected the dots? Chait's premise at the end of this paragraph is just too silly to comprehend: say what you want about Candian politicans, but I don't think they rank among the wrost despots in history. The comparison between Canada and Iraq is just laughable, but I am not amused by Chait's "logic."

Chait has no grasp on the War on Terror and I have to say that is Bush's fault. The President really needs to come out and spell out what it is we are trying to accomplish once and for all. The War on Terror is not about retribution for 9/11. It is about making sure that those who would consider taking or support such action think about something else. Something like breathing.

By Tuesday the Journal's line had been taken up by administration spokeswoman Mary Matalin, who told Don Imus, "You cannot on the one hand say [Bush] did too little before 9/11 and say he did too much after." The same day, a slightly more sophisticated version of this spin appeared in David Brooks's New York Times column:

"The critics savage the Clinton and Bush administrations for not moving aggressively enough against terror. Al Qaeda facilities should have been dismantled before 9/11, the critics say.

Then you look at the debate over Iraq and suddenly you see the same second-guessers posing as Weinbergerians [which Brooks defines as cautious about responding to uncertain risks]. The U.S. should have been more cautious. We should have had concrete evidence about W.M.D.'s before invading Iraq.

Step back and you see millions of people who will pick up any stick they can to beat the administration."

For an article entitled "White House Goes On The Attack," Chait seems to think the WSJ has gone on attack. Johnathan, the WSJ is not a wing of the White House. Scott McClellan wishes he were that good. So do I, now that I think about it.

Get on with it already...or is this all you got?

Here Brooks ignores all the details that set apart the threat from al Qaeda and the threat from Iraq. For one thing, there's the question of the cost of action. Responding to al Qaeda threats in the summer of 2001 could have entailed as little as convening some high-level meetings, dispatching more FBI agents, alerting airport security, and so on. Responding to the Iraq threat required starting a major theater war. So, even if the two threats were equivalent, there'd be nothing hypocritical about supporting the easy response and opposing the hard response.

When did the White House hire Brooks?

The cost of the action. I would hope that Chait would advocate spending whatever it took to prevent another 9/11 event. I know I do. "So, even if the two threats were equivalent, there'd be nothing hypocritical about supporting the easy response and opposing the hard response." Oh, Johnathan, now you're just making it too easy for me. It doesn't matter if it is easy or hard, defeating terrorist organizations and the states who sponsor them is a vital effort for the safety and security of the nation. Otherwise, 9/11 could potentially happen ANY day.

But, more importantly, the two threats were not equivalent. The intelligence Bush had on al Qaeda in 2001 warned of an imminent attack within the United States. Intelligence on Iraq suggested no such thing. The only credible intelligence anybody had produced connecting Saddam Hussein to terrorism concerned Ansar al-Islam, which was based in Iraqi Kurdistan, outside of Saddam's control. The best argument that Saddam represented a threat was the prospect that he could obtain a nuclear weapon within the next few years. But even that threat -- as it was understood at the time -- was nowhere near as imminent as the al Qaeda threat.

This "article" is dated April 14, 2004, so I know you are aware that there was no actionable intelligence which could have been used to prevent 9/11. In addition to Ansar al-Isalm, there is plenty of credible intelligence that states Saddam supported suicide bombings by Hamas in Israel. And while we're talking about Ansar al-Islam, if you think for a minute that the Kurdish region of northern Iraq was not under Saddam's rule, you've been drinking the Kool-Aid too long. Set it down, man.

If Saddam had obtained a nuclear weapon, he would have used it. Was Saddam a threat or not? Let me put it this way, if we wait until that threat is imminent, wouldn't it be too late? I think so. And let's not forget that Clinton and Congress made regime change the official US policy towards Saddam.

Plus, Iraq has strategic importance to the War on Terror. In order for democracy to flourish in the Middle East, it has to start somewhere. I think Iraq is as good a candidate as any over there. The key weapon in the War on Tterror is freedom. true freedom only comes with democracy. Iraq is at the heart of the Middle East. We are already seeing the effects that freedom in Iraq is having on their neighbors: there are uprisings in Iran and Syria; and Libya is starting to play ball too.

Perhaps Bush was supposed to repeat this argument in his press conference last night. But he failed to bring it up, and had to be prompted by a friendly reporter, who asked him, "You have been accused of letting the 9/11 threat mature too far, but not letting the Iraq threat mature far enough. First, could you respond to that general criticism?" (Of course, what Bush was being asked to respond to was the opposite of "criticism.") The President replied, "Yes. I guess there have been some that said, Well, we should've taken preemptive action in Afghanistan, and then turned around and said we shouldn't have taken preemptive action in Iraq."

Finally, we get back to the White House being on the attack. I thought we'd never get here.

Johnathan, if you ask the question, you'll get the answer. What did you expect him to say? This is war. We're fighting it. Now. We weren't fighting it when all this started on 9/11, but we sure are in it now. And we are winning.

Bush's version was more refined still than previous iterations but remains wholly ignorant. Yes, some critics objected to the "preemptive" quality of the Iraq war, but most Democrats, rightly or wrongly, would have supported a preemptive attack if the U.N. Security Council had given its blessing. Anyway, the key point is that taking action against al Qaeda, even before September 11, would not have been preemptive. Al Qaeda attacked the United States in 2000, 1998, and 1993.

Chait's version of history may be more refined to fit his world view, but it remains wholly ignorant of reality. The UN wasn't going to give "blessing" to any attack in Iraq: there were too many people on Saddam's payroll that could effect the UN's decision.

Mr. Chait does make a valid point: al Qaeda did indeed attack the United States in 2000, 1998, and 1993. President Bush was governor of Texas at the time; Bill Clinton was in the White House. Clinton failed to take adequate action against al Qaeda which could have deterred further attacks. Imagine the outrage if the day after taking office, the Bush team invaded Afghanistan...

I've always been inclined to believe that the Bush administration could not have done anything different that would have prevented the September 11 terrorist attacks. But it's kind of suspicious that, when they defend themselves on this point, Bush and his allies are spectacularly unpersuasive. Perhaps their habit of dissembling has become so ingrained that they do it even when they're right. On the other hand, maybe they do it because the president has something to hide.

Wrong again Johnathan. Check out Rice's Rasmussan numbers again from after her testimony.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of Americans said they followed news stories of the Rice testimony somewhat or very closely.

Among those who were following the story closely, Rice was viewed favorably by 56% and unfavorably by 28%.

Rice's numbers are far better than those for Richard Clarke, the former Clinton and Bush official whose testimony two weeks ago kicked off a media frenzy. Following yesterday's testimony, Clarke is viewed favorably by just 27% of voters and unfavorably by 42%.

Appears the Bush team is better at it than the Clinton team. And Kerry will never gain ground on the President so long as national security is the issue of the day.