I love this Washington Post hit piece on Condoleezza Rice. While attempting to paint Rice as having failed to heed the threat of Osama Bin Laden, it efficiently rebuts former President Clinton’s assertion that the the Bush Admin “didn’t have a single meeting about Bin Laden for the nine months after [he] left office.” Not only does the article report on a meeting between Rice and CIA Director George J. Tenet (and others) that was dedicated to the topic of Bin Laden, but it also contains this helpful little section in paragraph 11:

As they all knew, a coherent plan for covert action against bin Laden was in the pipeline, but it would take some time. In recent closed-door meetings the entire National Security Council apparatus had been considering action against bin Laden…

Huh, that’s odd. I thought Clinton handed them a fully-formed plan with a pretty pink bow and a cherry on top, and left them with the one guy (Clarke) who could make it all happen.

Wait, does that mean Clinton… lied? And people… died?

Somebody put that on a bumper sticker.

UPDATE: Think Progress has a related post, so we can probably expect this one to get some more attention.

UPDATE II: I didn’t realize this was an excerpt from Bob Woodward’s book, State of Denial. I clicked the link from an RSS reader, going directly to the page. I looked for an author, but it wasn’t listed in either of the familiar places — at the beginning or the end, and there was no clear indication that this was a book excerpt, either. Now I see that it has a little box in the sidebar with the headline “about the author.” I wouldn’t have guessed the only attribution would be found there. Seems like a strange place to put it, but maybe it’s just me.

UPDATE III: Rice disputes the story. [This link now points to a different story, for whatever reason. Do a search at the Washington Post site, and you get the same result. So, I don't know what to tell you. Updated link discovered.]

UPDATE IV: State Dept. confirms a meeting took place on that date. A State spokesman says “the information presented in this meeting was not new, rather it was a good summary from the threat reporting from the previous several weeks,” and that “materials from this meeting were made available to the independent Sept. 11 Commission, and Tenet was asked about the session when interviewed by the commission.” Rice apparently asked Tenet to give the same briefing to the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General. Given AG John Ashcroft’s astonished reaction of not having received such a dire warning about an attack within the U.S., it’s difficult to imagine Woodward’s account of Tenet’s briefing holding up.

My wingman A.C. adds:

After some hem-hawing the White House now admits the meeting. Rice said there were ‘many such meetings’. Several present denied Woodward’s decription of a “brush off”. Clarke has apparently dummied up.

Here’s what we know. Rice briefed the federal agencies during that time about impending threats, confirmed by the 9/11 Commission and anecdotal sources. On Sunday two democrat members of the 9/11 Commission erupted into indignation about not being briefed on the meeting only to walk back their cats Monday after discovering it was included in their report. Obvisouly their faulty memories support Rice and strongly suggest there was nothing out of the ordinary about it.

Taken together it backs up Mick’s point–Clinton was once again bending the truth. It also suggests Woodward has either lost his edge, is a charlatan, or a double agent.

And wouldn’t it be cool if all parties were primarily interested in seeking the truth and defeating the enemy, rather than staging media controversies in an election season. At this point, Woodward and Clinton are looking the worst, but there’s also a degree of CYA on the Administration’s side. Everyone failed to a degree; but now that we’re taking it to the enemy, you’d expect a little more comity and seriousness.

UPDATE V: Another part of Woodward’s story disputed: “Former CIA director George Tenet told the 9/11 Commission that he had warned of an imminent threat from al-Qaeda in a July 2001 meeting with Condoleezza Rice, adding that he believed Rice took the warning seriously, according to a transcript of the interview and the recollection of a commissioner who was there.”

Woodward had said, “Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off.”

Hmm, maybe not so much, Bob.

There’s also this:

Members of the commission — an independent, bipartisan panel created by Congress to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks — have said for days that they were not told about the July 10 meeting and were angry at being left out. As recently as yesterday afternoon, both commission chairman Thomas H. Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said they believed the panel had not been told about the July 10 meeting.

But it turns out that the panel was, in fact, told about the meeting, according to the interview transcript and Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, who sat in on the interview with Tenet. The meeting was not identified by the July 10 date in the commission’s best-selling report.

Which knocks out our other friend Bob’s contention that “this meeting BTW, was deliberately withheld from the 911 Commission,” as we predicted.

To review: Woodward says Tenet told Rice about an imminent domestic attack, and that Rice brushed him off. Rice doesn’t remember it that way, neither does Rumsfeld or Ashcroft, neither does Richard Ben-Veniste, and neither does the 9/11 Commission. The only one who remembers the meeting going down as described is someone who wasn’t even there — Woodward himself.

UPDATE VI: Condi elaborates.

UPDATE VII: The White House issues “The Rest of the Story: The Rice-Tenet Meeting,” in its “Setting the Record Straight” area.

UPDATE VIII: Now the wheels are really starting to come off for Woodward, if we’re to believe this statement by Brent Scowcroft: “there are statements in the book, directly or implicitly attributed to me, that did not and never could have come from me.”

UPDATE IX: Here’s an intriguing find by the Kos crowd, via Bob of 55-40: An old CBS News hit piece on the AG now takes on new meaning; the FBI apparently advised Ashcroft against flying commerical airlines just after the period in question. It’s interesting given Ashcroft’s latest statement, “I didn’t get called on by Black or Tenet if they were going around doing such briefings [as suggested by Woodward]… If in fact they were making visits to emphasize the severity of the domestic threat, I’m a little disappointed they didn’t bring that information to my attention.” On the other hand, this move by the FBI wouldn’t necessarily have anything to do with any particular (or any, period) Al Qaida briefiing, seeing as how:

the intelligence reporting focused almost entirely on the attacks occurring overseas, Tenet told the commission.

Of course, Bob believes this latest development backs up his crackpot theory that “Condi didn’t take it seriously,” another notion contradicted by Tenet and the 9/11 Commission.

On the basis of this circumstantial evidence and a few now-disproved assertions by Bob Woodward, Bob and the Kossites would like us to believe the Administration’s only response was to save itself. But, as we know, the overall chatter was intense and the administration was aware of the looming threats from Al Qaeda, which explains the administration’s advance planning, including the intention to sweep through Afghanistan — a plan that quickly unfolded after the attacks, and wouldn’t have been possible without such preparation.

But we shall see where this latest turn takes us, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing from the FBI, Rice, Ashcroft and/or members the 9/11 Commission again soon. Interesting how the Left continues to jump to conclusions, each time falling flat on its face. The trend surely can’t continue indefinitely, but it’s been quite entertaining thus far.

Mr. President,

I’m disappointed that you have labeled Democrats as the “Party of Cut and Run.” I believe we ought to respect Democrats by allowing them their own chosen labels; that’s why you should have gone with the “Party of Strategic Redeployment.”

To make up for this faux pas, I propose that you pull your weight and use the powers of your office in order to help them secure a good site for their 2008 convention. Since our party seems to have already chosen the Twin Cities, I think it would be altogether fitting and proper to make sure Democrats find another location that is close, convenient and centrally-located… like, say, Okinawa.

Humbly yours,

Fishkite

Have you looked around recently? Do you really think these people need to be voting? They need to have a vote, sure. The option. But do we need to encourage people[?] I don’t think so. If people don’t want to take the time to register and go to the polls without provocation, they shouldn’t be voting.

I disagree with Kleinheider.

People need to be encouraged and reminded to do all sorts of things: give blood; donate to this cause; buy this product; visit your doctor; file your taxes; set back your clocks; check out your child’s school; excercise more and eat better foods; plan ahead for an emergency; save money; do unto others…

Looking at the list, you might think people are just a bunch of bumbling idiots walking through life aimlessly. I just don’t think that’s necessarily true, at least not in this sense.

This list could (and probably does) include all of us, and it explains the need for public service announcements, press releases, advertisements, information campaigns, community groups, charitable organizations, etc.

The objection I anticipate is this: but voters need to be informed; it’s a decision they’re making, not just some rote task.

But just because we need to be encouraged and reminded to do something, it doesn’t follow that the result will be an uninformed or unthoughtful action: how often should I give blood; how much should I donate, and which causes need it most, and which charities will use this money wisely; which doctor should I choose; how much should I pay in taxes; what time should I set my clock back to; what kind of food should I eat; what should I stockpile in case of emergency; how much money should I save from each paycheck.

These campaigns are invitations to thought just as much as they are invitations to action.

Coble says,

But the older I get the more I feel like registering people to vote without giving them any further access to information is like handing out drivers’ licenses without a road manual.

So, would she say we need some kind of test to make sure voters are informed? If so, let me go ahead and disagree with that one, too.

I’m all in favor of information, and informed votes. We should do everything possible to make sure people know what, and who, they’re voting for (or against). But the solution isn’t to exclude people who might be uninformed, or misinformed, or to keep registration and election days our little secret — known only by insiders and people who spend all their time with politics.

How exactly do we encourage informed voting by failing to register voters in the first place, or by being cautious about it?

Which population do you think is going to be more informed and responsible in the long run: the one that is encouraged to vote, or the one that is written off in advance?

Check out Marmaduke Explained; that darn dog has never been so funny. I’m particularly fond of the August 8th entry.

CA letter:

Cartoonist should study recent history

It might be helpful for Bill Day to further test his personal conviction about the existence and comparable nature of the “splinter groups” of various faiths by having The CA publish another cartoon with a different perspective. This time, rather than choosing to make his point using a disrespectful cartoon of Jesus Christ, he can illustrate his cartoon using a caricature of the prophet Muhammad. Alternatively and to avoid placing his life in danger, Day may simply want to study the experience of the cartoonists and publisher of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published cartoons last year using the caricatures of the prophet Muhammad.

I expect any writer or political cartoonist to have made some effort to study recent history before he expresses his conclusions about the comparability of “splinter groups” of various faiths. He owes such honesty to himself and his readers.

Jim Selberg
Germantown

(more…)

This baby llama:

The College Republicans have two guest speakers this Thursday: Memphis Flyer reporter Jackson Baker and WREC talk radio host Mike Fleming. Because both pundits have been covering the Senate race and the House race in District 9 recently, I thought I’d offer readers a little pre-meeting quiz. Can you guess who is responsible for the following quotes? Answers are below the fold. Good luck.

1. Ford’s strategy has been to woo middle-of-the-road and conservative voters in Middle and East Tennessee while holding on to party-line Democrats and the solid bloc of black voters in home-town Memphis.

2. As I said, he tries to massage every single bill that comes up, and I know that they change sometimes, but he tries so hard to be on every side of this and to impress as many people, and I heard this the other day, and I want to say this with emphasis: I had two people tell me they were going to vote for Harold Ford, Jr. because he’s such a nice young man.

3. A respected, sometimes pugnacious legislator, Cohen is probably the Tennessee General Assembly’s best-known liberal.

4. Mr. Cohen is a long-time member of the general assembly as a State Senator.

5. Does the size shoe he wears and the style shoe he wears enough to impress somebody to vote for him?

6. On the other hand, the younger Ford brother, an Unknown Quantity if there ever was one, has surprised everyone with two consecutive strong showings — in a radio interview and in a health-care debate last week where he put in an well-prepped performance.

7. The political history of Rep. Ford’s extended family is interesting, to say the least, and could be a factor.

8. It just shows me that you don’t know anything about his record — it doesn’t factor in — and then we are the first to yell — those individuals, two of them, one woman and one man, I’m not going to embarrass them by using their name, but that is the exact reason why people are so adamant about and critical of politicians after they vote for them.

9. Jake, if elected as an independent, has promised to caucus with House Democrats.

10. Well his brother, Jake, is running as an independent. Ok, fine, he’s not going to endorse his brother. But he’s a Democrat. He said, “I support Democrats.” Why won’t he endorse Steve Cohen? Why won’t he do that? Well, I think that says a lot about Junior.

11. Could it possibly be that he’s told Steve Cohen that he will work for him, or whatever, but he won’t endorse him, because of the Ford family?

12. Rep. Ford himself has said he’ll stay neutral regarding Cohen and his brother Jake. But the rest of the family is splitting over the race.

(more…)

Leftists who love the fake news format, and who already consider the Presidency a joke, will love this film.

But what is this fascination with the cliche of stodgy politicians who are left speechless by the one real man brave enough to speak truthiness to power, and why does that always equal an attitude that is the epitome of crude, base, vile and self-centered?

Why can’t America’s political savior be someone who is idealistic, optimistic, intellectual, decent, morally-grounded and inspiring?

I just prepared this for an email exchange, but figured it might benefit others reading this blog as well.

Let’s begin with a comment at Powerlineblog:

JOHN AGREES: That’s right. I’d go farther in defense of President Bush, too. The record is clear that he believed more effective, definitive action needed to be taken against al Qaeda and ordered a plan for such action to be prepared early in his Presidency. As I recall, such a plan was either just complete or almost so, when the terrorists struck first. Also, while one can argue that Bush didn’t act aggressively enough soon enough, he didn’t pass on an opportunity to collar bin Laden, as Clinton did. How do we know this? Clinton said so, and you can listen to him say it here.

So what of that plan? Is he right?

Here’s what Bill Clinton told Mike Chris Wallace on Sunday:

“All of President Bush’s neocons claimed that I was too obsessed with finding Bin Laden when they didn’t have a single meeting about Bin Laden for the nine months after I left office.”

No meetings? No plans?

Well, Clinton is wrong about that, and John’s memory is correct.

Here’s (then national security advisor) Condoleezza Rice, in her testimony before the 9/11 commission:

We also moved to develop a new and comprehensive strategy to eliminate the al-Qaida terrorist network. President Bush understood the threat, and he understood its importance. He made clear to us that he did not want to respond to al-Qaida one attack at a time. He told me he was “tired of swatting flies.”

This new strategy was developed over the Spring and Summer of 2001, and was approved by the President’s senior national security officials on September 4. It was the very first major national security policy directive of the Bush Administration — not Russia, not missile defense, not Iraq, but the elimination of al-Qaida.

Of course, Rice’s goal was to defend the administration, so one might not choose to believe her account. Alternatively, one can turn to the 9/11 Commission itself, which verifies Rice’s testimony, though it casts the administration’s efforts as a slower, more bureaucratic process.

The Commission staff’s seventh report states the following:

The CIA briefed President-elect George W. Bush and incoming national security officials on covert action programs in Afghanistan. Deputy DCI McLaughlin said that he walked through the elements of the al Qaeda problem with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, including an explanation of the special authorities signed by President Clinton. DCI Tenet and Deputy Director for Operations Pavitt gave an intelligence briefing to President-elect Bush, Vice President-elect Cheney, and Dr. Rice, which included the topic of al Qaeda. Pavitt recalled conveying that Bin Ladin was one of the gravest threats to the country. President-elect Bush asked whether killing Bin Ladin would end the problem. Pavitt said he and the DCI answered that killing Bin Ladin would have an impact but not stop the threat. CIA later provided more formal assessments to the White House reiterating that conclusion. It added that the only long-term way to deal with the threat was to end al Qaeda’s ability to use Afghanistan as a sanctuary for its operations…

Developing a New Strategy

In March 2001, National Security Adviser Rice tasked DCI Tenet to draw up a new document on covert action authorities for Afghanistan that would consolidate existing authorities and add new, broader ones. DCI Tenet presented these draft documents to Deputy National Security Adviser Hadley later that month, but observed that ordinarily policy should be developed first and then the authorities should be devised to implement the policy, rather than doing it the other way around. Hadley agreed and, with Rice’s evident approval, the draft authorities were put aside until the new administration had finished determining what its new policies would be for al Qaeda, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

This policy review apparently began in March and continued throughout the spring and summer of 2001. At the end of May, National Security Adviser Rice met with DCI Tenet and their counterterrorism experts. She asked about “taking the offensive” against al Qaeda, and asked Clark and the CTC chief Cofer Black to develop a full range of options. A plan for a larger covert action effort was a major component of the new al Qaeda strategy, codified in a draft presidential directive that was first circulated in early June. The emerging covert action plan built upon ideas the CIA and Clarke had been working on since December 2000. A notable change was that Rice and Hadley wanted to place less emphasis on the Northern Alliance, and more on anti-Taliban Pashtuns. Clarke was impatient to get at least some money to the Northern Alliance right away in order to keep them in the fight.

Meanwhile, the Intelligence Community began to receive its greatest volume of threat reporting since the Millennium plot. By late July, there were indications of multiple, possibly catastrophic, terrorist attacks being planned against American interests overseas. The CTC identified 30 possible overseas targets and launched disruption operations around the world.

Some CIA officials expressed frustration about the pace of policymaking during the stressful summer of 2001. Although Tenet said he thought the policy machinery was working in what he called a rather orderly fashion, Deputy DCI McLaughlin told us he felt a great tension — especially in June and July 2001 — between the new administration’s need to understand these issues and his sense that this was a matter of great urgency. Officials, including McLaughlin, were also frustrated when some policymakers, who had not lived through such threat surges before, questioned the validity of the intelligence or wondered if it was disinformation, though they were persuaded once they probed it. Two veteran CTC officers who were deeply involved in UBL issues were so worried about an impending disaster that one of them told us that they considered resigning and going public with their concerns. DCI Tenet, who was briefing the President and his top advisers daily, told us that his sense was that officials at the White House had grasped the sense of urgency he was communicating to them.

By early August, DCI Tenet said that intelligence suggested that whatever terrorist activity might have been originally planned had been delayed. At the same time, the Deputies Committee reached a consensus on a new Afghan policy, paving the way for Northern Alliance aid. NSC principals apparently endorsed the new presidential directive on al Qaeda at their meeting on September 4.

On September 10, Deputy National Security Adviser Hadley formally tasked DCI Tenet to draw up new draft authorities for the broad covert action program envisioned in that directive, including significant additional funding and involving Pashtun elements as well as the Northern Alliance. Hadley also asked Tenet to include a separate section in these new authorities authorizing a further range of covert action activities to disrupt command-and-control elements of al Qaeda.

Events would, of course, overtake this tasking. Within days of the September 11 attacks, a new counterterrorism policy was in place.

And without this planning, the administration wouldn’t have been able to act as quickly as it did in Afghanistan after the attacks.

Both of these sources support the essential, simple fact: the Bush administration was indeed addressing the threat of Al Qaeda prior to the attacks on 9/11, but they didn’t get it ready in time to prevent them.

The same things can probably be said of the previous administration, though it appears rather obvious that Clinton’s policies and priorities were different from what Bush’s have been.

UPDATE: For what it’s worth, here’s more evidence of the pre-9/11 plan, via Fore Left:

A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week’s attacks.

Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.

See Also: Patterico’s post on the Clinton interview and Richard Clarke’s take on pre-9/11 planning. Devastating stuff.

Our Islamic response is to forgive and reach out in efforts to build better interfaith relations to promote peace and harmony.

- Muhammad K. Zaman, President of the Muslim Society of Memphis

That seems to have been the response of Sister Leonella Sgorbati, as her Islamic murders were killing her.

The “Islamic response,” on the other hand, seems to have been rather different from what Mr. Zaman claims. In fact, Zaman’s own letter to the Commercial Appeal was dedicated to defending the leader of his faith and contained no words of forgiveness for the Catholic faith’s leader, who has apologized repeatedly for the way his remarks were received.

But where are the apologies for the murderous, threatening, mob-driven response of those “deviants” of your own faith, Mr. Zaman? Their actions are telling us more about your faith’s leader than any scholar you can quote.

I’m not one who is inclined to think poorly of Muslims. My first best friend growing up was a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan. As an adult, I’ve worked with Muslims and befriended Muslims. I don’t want their reputations to be tarnished by the actions of these Islamic “deviants.”

So it is time for you, and other leaders of the Muslim community, to start practicing what you preach, and to start showing us, not telling us, how peaceful and forgiving and harmonious Islam’s teachings are. Like it or not, the burden of proof is on you. And when you encounter criticism, you need to take it seriously and do something to counter the “criminal element” of your faith who already take it seriously — to the point of riots, murder and terrorism.

UPDATE: James Dowd has a nice follow-up in today’s CA, including a quote from Zaman: “We’re here for understanding and we want a dialogue with other faith traditions… To have that we need to be patient and to listen.” Sounds good to me.