9/11: For The Record

The Washington Post ^ | Monday, March 22, 2004 | By Condoleezza Rice

[Jewels1091]

The al Qaeda terrorist network posed a threat to the United States for almost a decade before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Throughout that period -- during the eight years of the Clinton administration and the first eight months of the Bush administration prior to Sept. 11 -- the U.S. government worked hard to counter the al Qaeda threat.

During the transition, President-elect Bush's national security team was briefed on the Clinton administration's efforts to deal with al Qaeda. The seriousness of the threat was well understood by the president and his national security principals. In response to my request for a presidential initiative, the counterterrorism team, which we had held over from the Clinton administration, suggested several ideas, some of which had been around since 1998 but had not been adopted. No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration

We adopted several of these ideas. We committed more funding to counterterrorism and intelligence efforts. We increased efforts to go after al Qaeda's finances. We increased American support for anti-terror activities in Uzbekistan.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The WP and John Kerry's father have similar opinions. I'm sure John F. Kerry is in the same camp.

Kerry's World: Father Knows Best***......."Americans," he writes, "are inclined to see the world and foreign affairs in black and white." They celebrate their own form of government and denigrate all others, making them guilty of what he calls "ethnocentric accommodation -- everyone ought to be like us." As a result, America has committed the "fatal error" of "propagating democracy" and fallen prey to "the siren's song of promoting human rights," falsely assuming that our values and institutions are a good fit in the Third World. And, just as Americans exaggerate their own goodness, they exaggerate their enemies' badness. The Soviet Union wasn't nearly as imperialistic as American politicians warned, Kerry argues. "Seeing the Soviet Union as the aggressor in every instance, and the U.S. as only reacting defensively, relieves an American observer from the need to see any parallel between our use of military power in distant parts of the world, and the Soviet use of military power outside the Soviet Union," he writes. He further claims that "Third world Marxist movements were autonomous national movements" -- outside Moscow's orbit. The book culminates in a plea for a hardheaded, realist foreign policy that removes any pretense of U.S. moral superiority. .....***

[risk]

"Americans," [Kerry's father] writes, "are inclined to see the world and foreign affairs in black and white." They celebrate their own form of government and denigrate all others, making them guilty of what he calls "ethnocentric accommodation -- everyone ought to be like us."

The Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, and The Constitution prove otherwise.

In some distant future, human beings will be studying these documents and their justifications for political truth and guidance. Human beings of all races and cultures.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Cultural relativists are content to say that some human beings prefer chains over freedom. Usually these sentiments are expressed from the safety and comfort of university classrooms and coffee houses.

[KC_for_Freedom]

Your point is well made, the terrorists see us as all the same. So they attack the cities where maximum damage may be expected. Thus far they have not targeted the conservative freedom loving parts of the USA, but they might easily do that.

It is ironic that the anti war left, the gay lobby, the multicultural elites, and the welfare givers and takers all wound up being the major target at the same time they try to defend Sadam Hussian and his regime for not being bad enough.

[swarthyguy]

You can try and crawdaddy out of your original statement.

Your sentiments are putrid and your type of thinking virtually ensures the wot will not be won.

A house divided and all.

I called you on your point; you are not apparently able to figure that out. That's my point; your point is asinine and carries no weight. It's a tunnlevision view of the world.

Stop showcasing your patriotism; last refuge of the scoundrel and all.....

Keep having your wet dreams of NYC and SF melting into the ground.

[Fledermaus]

I'm not the one marching in SF holding signs saying "NY is better off without the WTC".

[ladyinred]

As I stated on this thread, I printed this out for my coworker. He did believe Clarke, and refused, REFUSED to read the rebuttal from Condi! This tells you alot. It isn't really about the war, it is politics. He also admitted that communism is good thing, and is angry at Israel for "killing a man in a wheelchair!"

[swarthyguy]

Yeah, well those people need to spend a weekend at some Camp Jihad and see what the jihadis think about lefties.

I still cannot believe they actually had a sign like that, well I guess I can, the same types had a sign saying We support our soldiers especially when they kill their officers, referring to Sgt Hasan Akbar killing his CO before the war started.

THe LEft Allies of convenience for jihadis in the west.

Anyway, I overreacted to your comments.

Peace to You and Death to Jihadis.

[Fledermaus]

I go over the top on occasion. Your comments are well noted. I should quit throwing the baby out the with bathwater just because some idiots frustrate me beyond belief.

[swarthyguy]

HA! Think of people like me who are in Boston.

Lord knows I criticise Bush's policies, particularly the softshoeing of the Saudi pukes, but the animus here is personal and visceral against Dubya.

It's beyond any rationality and logic.