Friday, April 16, 2004
Outtasite (Outta Mind)*
Roemer then asked Tenet if he mentioned Moussaoui to President Bush at one of their frequent morning briefings. Tenet replied, "I was not in briefings at this time." Bush, he noted, "was on vacation." He added that he didn't see the president at all in August 2001. During the entire month, Bush was at his ranch in Texas. "You never talked with him?" Roemer asked. "No," Tenet replied. By the way, for much of August, Tenet too was, as he put it, "on leave."
And there you have it. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has made a big point of the fact that Tenet briefed the president nearly every day. Yet at the peak moment of threat, the two didn't talk at all. At a time when action was needed, and orders for action had to come from the top, the man at the top was resting undisturbed.
So much for that "in touch with the CIA" alibi.
*Wilco
posted by chris at 5:21 PM
Inside Bush's head
To Bush, credibility means that you keep saying today what you said yesterday, and that you do today what you promised yesterday. "A free Iraq will confirm to a watching world that America's word, once given, can be relied upon," he argued Tuesday night. When the situation is clear and requires pure courage, this steadfastness is Bush's most useful trait. But when the situation is unclear, Bush's notion of credibility turns out to be dangerously unhinged. The only words and deeds that have to match are his. No correspondence to reality is required. Bush can say today what he said yesterday, and do today what he promised yesterday, even if nothing he believes about the rest of the world is true.
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As Tuesday night's questions turned to the 9/11 investigation, Bush retreated again to the incontrovertible truths in his head. "There was nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think [in] the prior government, that could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale," he told NBC's David Gregory. Never mind that somebody who had worked in Bush's administration and the prior administration—namely, counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke—had raised precisely this concern about the 1996 Olympics. Never mind that the president's daily intelligence brief on Aug. 6, 2001—titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in U.S."—had warned Bush, "FBI information since [1998] indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." These were external phenomena and therefore irrelevant. What mattered was that Bush couldn't "envision" the scenario.
Three times, Bush repeated the answer he gave to Edwin Chen of the Los Angeles Times: "Had there been a threat that required action by anybody in the government, I would have dealt with it." Outside Bush's head, the statement was patently false: The 9/11 threat required action, and Bush failed to deal with it. But inside Bush's head, the statement was tautological: If there were a threat that required action, Bush would have dealt with it; Bush didn't deal with it; therefore, there was no threat that required action. The third time Bush repeated this answer—in response to a question about whether he owed an "apology to the American people for failing them prior to 9/11"—he added, "The person responsible for the attacks was Osama Bin Laden." This is how Bush's mind works: Only a bad person can bear responsibility for a bad thing. I am a good person. Therefore, I bear no responsibility.
On 9/11, as on WMD, Bush mistakes affirmation for verification, description for reality, and words for deeds. "I was dealing with terrorism a lot as the president when George Tenet came in to brief me," he told Chen. "I wanted Tenet in the Oval Office all the time. And we had briefings about terrorist threats." This was Bush's notion of dealing with terrorism: being briefed by the CIA director. The world that mattered was the Oval Office.
Did the briefings lead to action outside the office? No, because there was no "threat that required action." What about the Aug. 6 brief? "I asked for the briefing," Bush told Chen. "And that's what triggered the [Aug. 6] report." Tuesday's Washington Post tells a different story: "According to senior intelligence officials familiar with the document, work on it began at the end of July, at the initiative of the CIA analyst [who] wanted to raise the issue" of Bin Laden's threat to the U.S. mainland. But Bush can't believe that someone outside his head was trying to tell him something. He's certain he "triggered" the brief. That's why, as he explained to Chen, he "didn't think there was anything new" in it: He assumed it was his idea. He doesn't understand that the point of a briefing is to be told something you hadn't already thought of.
More.
posted by chris at 5:14 PM
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Thursday, April 15, 2004
Man, if the IMF is saying it, you know you're in trouble
Uncontrolled U.S. budget deficits would pose a serious threat to global prosperity in coming years as rising interest rates depress economic growth in the United States and around the world, the International Monetary Fund warned Wednesday.
The IMF released a new analysis that predicted if nothing is done to get control of the soaring U.S. deficits, it would shave global economic output by 4.2 percent by 2020 and reduce U.S. economic growth by 3.7 percent during the same period.
IMF economists said much of the adverse impact would occur because of increased borrowing demands in the United States to finance the budget deficit. This would drive up U.S. interest rates and interest rates in other countries as the global supply of available capital is reduced, they said.
Not that the administration really cares about rising interest rates or anything. Whatever happened to the Party of Fiscal Responsibility?
posted by chris at 5:04 PM
Honesty in politics
The new wave of political ads can be found here. Thanks to Jason for pointing out the refreshing rhetoric.
posted by chris at 5:01 PM
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Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Pick a bin Laden memo, any bin Laden memo
By the time a CIA briefer gave President Bush the Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief headlined "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," the president had seen a stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda's intentions. So had Vice President Cheney and Bush's top national security team, according to newly declassified information released yesterday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community headlined some of those reports "Bin Laden planning multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden threats are real."
The intelligence included reports of a hostage plot against Americans. It noted that operatives might choose to hijack an aircraft or storm a U.S. embassy. Without knowing when, where or how the terrorists would strike, the CIA "consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil," according to one of two staff reports released by the panel yesterday.
But things got all messed up.
posted by chris at 5:04 PM
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Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Fallujah
Jeanne at Body and Soul has a long post on the varying reports coming out of Fallujah. It's well worth the read.
posted by chris at 5:19 PM
The rise of the machines
Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the March 13 "race" was part of the US Department of Defense's (DOD's) plan to make one-third of the military's combat vehicles driverless by 2015. The push to replace soldiers with machines is impelled by an over-extended military searching for ways to limit US casualties, a powerful circle of arms manufactures, and an empire-minded group of politicians addicted to campaign contributions by defense corporations.
This "rise of the machines" is at the heart of President George W Bush's recent military budget. Sandwiched into outlays for aircraft, artillery and conventional weapons are monies for unmanned combat aircraft, robot tanks, submarines and a supersonic bomber capable of delivering six tons of bombs and missiles to any place on the globe within two hours.
The article continues to discuss various aspects of a "robot military" - the collusion of the military industrial complex, how such a project factors into campaign contributions, and the fact that replacing human soldiers with robots doesn't mean that there won't be human casualties. (Via Cursor.)
posted by chris at 4:52 PM
Playing with numbers
Statistical expediency and fiscal obfuscation have become hallmarks of this White House. In the past three years, the Bush Administration has had the Bureau of Labor Statistics stop reporting mass layoffs. It shortened the traditional span of budget projections from ten years to five, which allowed it to hide the long-term costs of its tax cuts. It commissioned a report on the aging of the baby boomers, then quashed it because it projected deficits as far as the eye could see. The Administration declined to offer cost estimates or to budget money for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A recent report from the White House's Council of Economic Advisers included an unaccountably optimistic job-growth forecast, evidently guided by the Administration's desire to claim that it will have created jobs. And a few weeks ago the Treasury Department put civil servants to work'at Tom DeLay's request, evaluating a tax proposal identical to John Kerry's, then issued a press release saying that the proposal would raise taxes on "hardworking individuals."
Politics as usual? Not really. Hard as it may be to believe, in economic matters the executive branch has traditionally succeeded at hewing to the ideals of objectivity and nonpartisanship. Under Republicans and Democrats, in good times and bad, the Commerce Department and the Labor Department have produced reliable numbers, even when those numbers have made sitting Presidents look worse. Presidents have tried to put their spin on the data, of course, and there have been notable episodes of deliberate manipulation, as when Lyndon Johnson moved the Social Security Trust Fund into the general budget, or when David Stockman fabricated numbers in the first Reagan budget. On the whole, though, good economics has trumped politics.
Except in the current Administration.
posted by chris at 4:30 PM
Good point
The Center for American Progress makes this point:
9/11 QUESTION – HOW WAS THE INTEL GOOD ENOUGH FOR WAR, BUT NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO PROTECT AMERICA?: In his single-minded push to go to war in Iraq, President Bush defended his lack of definitive proof of a WMD threat by saying, "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late." However, he used exactly the opposite rationale to justify why he ignored far more compelling evidence about the terrorist threat leading up to 9/11. Despite explicit warnings that al Qaeda might be planning attacks inside the United States, he said, "There was nothing in [the PDB] that said, you know, there's an imminent attack. There was nothing in this report to me that said, oh, by the way, we've got intelligence that says something is about to happen in America."
posted by chris at 3:00 PM
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Monday, April 12, 2004
Lessons in empire
Scott brings up an intersting comparison between the fall of Rome . . .
By the time of Hadrian's (r.117-138CE) rule, the Roman Empire had reached its maximum size. It stretched from Judea, in the East, to the isles of Great Britain in the West, from the Rhine and the Danube Rivers in the West to the Sahara Desert in the South, and surrounded the Mediterranean sea, making it a Roman lake. As we've seen in previous lectures and readings, this empire had been created largely by accident, as a part of Roman defense doctrin following the sacking of Rome by Celts (Gauls) in 380 BCE.
Rome's emperors after 138 CE, however, followed a specific policy of non-expansion. This was because Roman troops were spread too thin to defend all of the empire's borders. Rather than the mobile, flexible force that had been the fulcrum of Roman power in the period of conquest, the army by 138 CE had become mostly a passive guard force, stationed in fortresses and lookout posts along the length of the borders. There were not enough citizens of Rome, and particularly not enough of those who wanted to serve in the army, to cover every square mile of frontier even a single man deep. These thinly spread Roman forces thus had to be augmented by recruits from the provinces.
. . . and a recent USA Today article about troops in Iraq:
A decision by the Pentagon to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq is a reversal of its plan to steadily reduce the U.S. force level there.
Since the war began a year ago, senior military leaders have given frequent assurances to troops and their families that Iraq duty would be no longer than a year.
Now, those assurances have met the reality of Iraq, where military leaders are planning for the possibility that anti-U.S. violence will spread. U.S. troops are stretched thin around the world, and the Pentagon has few options to increase the force in Iraq if necessary.
On Monday, a senior official with U.S. Central Command said that the return home of about 24,000 U.S. troops who were scheduled to leave in the next few weeks would be delayed as their replacements arrive. Central Command's responsibility includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(emphasis mine)
posted by chris at 4:06 PM
Tax time, but not for the rich
The federal tax system that millions of Americans are forced to deal with before April 15 is not at all what you think it is. Congress has changed it in recent decades from a progressive system in which the more one earns the more one pays in income taxes. It has become a subsidy system for the super rich.
Through explicit policies, as well as tax laws never reported in the news, Congress now literally takes money from those making $30,000 to $500,000 per year and funnels it in subtle ways to the super rich -- the top 1/100th of 1 percent of Americans.
People making $60,000 paid a larger share of their 2001 income in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes than a family making $25 million, the latest Internal Revenue Service data show. And in income taxes alone, people making $400,000 paid a larger share of their incomes than the 7,000 households who made $10 million or more.
.....One 1985 law, promoted in the Senate as relieving middle class Americans, gave a huge tax break to corporate executives who make personal use of company jets. CEOs may now fly to vacations or Saturday golf outings in luxury for a penny a mile. Congress shifted the real cost of about $6 per mile to shareholders, who pay two-thirds, and to taxpayers who suffer the rest of the cost lost as a result of reduced corporate income taxes.
More examples here.
posted by chris at 2:00 PM
The memo: the aftermath
From the Center for American Progress:
The White House this weekend released a section of the classified August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB), which explicitly warned President Bush of an imminent al Qaeda attack inside the United States. The document contradicts President Bush's own denials, and raises the question of whether National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice lied under oath last week in describing the memo's contents before the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. The President "said yesterday that a memo did not contain enough specific threat information" with Bush claiming "the PDB was no indication of a terrorist threat" because it supposedly "said nothing about an attack on America...was not a time and place of an attack" specified. But as the NYT notes, the PDB "spells out the who, hints at the what and points toward the where of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington that followed 36 days later." CNN Political Analyst (and AEI scholar) Bill Schneider said the PDB revelations "could be seriously damaging. What this says is, the White House knew what bin Laden was capable of planning, where he intended to do it, which was New York or Washington, D.C., and how he was going to do it."
LYING UNDER OATH – PDB REFUTES RICE'S SWORN TESTIMONY: In her testimony under oath before the 9/11 Commission last week, Rice said the August 6th PDB "was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States." But the PDB contained very current and specific information about ongoing investigations and threats – a direct contradiction of Rice's testimony. The PDB said there were "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York...The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related" including one following leads about "Bin Ladin supporters in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives."
DISHONESTY – STILL SAYING HE REQUESTED THE BRIEFING: The President yesterday insisted that he personally requested the August 6 intelligence briefing because he was so concerned about terrorism, saying "I asked the intelligence agency to analyze the data to tell me whether or not we faced a threat internally...That's what the PDB request was." But according to the CIA, the briefing "was not requested by President Bush." As commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed, "the CIA informed the panel that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA."
NEGLIGENCE – LOAFING WHILE SUPPOSEDLY "AT BATTLE STATIONS": The WP explored the Bush Administration's claims that "The President of the United States had us at battle stations" during the summer of 2001. But "if top officials were at battle stations, there was no sign of it on the surface. Bush spent most of August 2001 on his ranch" – taking one of the longest Presidential vacations in White House history. One former Bush aide "who remains close to the White House said the use of the term 'battle stations' by Rice was an overstatement." And as an American Progress backgrounder shows, the President did not appear to change his schedule at all from the month-long regimen of golf, running, and cookouts. The Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial board said the President's pre-9/11 conduct displayed "a criminal lack of interest in trying to prevent an attack on the United States that the administration had strong reason to expect" adding that "almost nothing of a defensive nature was done to guard against -- to prevent -- the horrific spectacle that unfolded on Sept. 11."
Links and news reports for the above can be found here.
posted by chris at 1:42 PM
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Sunday, April 11, 2004
The memo
President Bush was warned a month before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the FBI had information that terrorists might be preparing for a hijacking in the United States and might be targeting a building in Lower Manhattan.
The information was included in a written Aug. 6, 2001, briefing to Bush that was declassified Saturday night by the White House in response to a request from the independent commission probing the Sept. 11 attacks.
The short article, titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," also included information that the FBI had "70 full field investigations" underway in the United States that were believed related to Osama bin Laden, and that a caller to the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May 2001 said a group of bin Laden supporters was in the United States planning attacks with explosives.
Story.
posted by chris at 8:12 PM
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