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Posted on 04/03/2004 8:07:10 PM PST by Ooh-Ah
Critics of the Bush administration are all atwitter over the front page Washington Post story on Thursday by Robin Wright pointing out that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to give a speech on September 11, the focus of which "was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals."
The piling on has begun. New York Senator Charles Schumer weighed in saying "Dr. Rice's speech suggests that at the very least there was a disconnect between the public security message and the policy prescriptions top White House officials were pushing and the private warnings federal agencies were issuing about imminent threats to our homeland." The liberal writer and Bush critic Josh Marshall described the revelation of the Rice speech as a "poetic truth." No doubt the aborted Rice speech will consume the Washington chattering class through the Sunday talk shows.
The Post article points out that Rice's speech "contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups," and that, while it mentioned terrorism, it "did so in the context used in other Bush administration speeches in early 2001: as one of the dangers from rogue nations, such as Iraq, that might use weapons of terror, rather than from the cells of extremists now considered the main security threat to the United States."
All in all, that would seem to be pretty damning stuff, if there weren't more to the story. There is, of course, more to the story.
What was the context of Rice's proposed speech? The day before Rice was to give her speech, Sen. Joe Biden, one of the Democratic Party's leading lights on foreign policy issues, gave a major address critical of the Bush administration. The focus of the speech? Missile defense. (You can read the speech here.)
Now, criticizing missile defense is legitimate enough. Indeed, political liberals have loathed it since Ronald Reagan proposed it in the early 1980s. But why should we be surprised if the President's chief national security advisor planned to defend missile defense the day after the chief Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee attacked it?
But there's more. What's most interesting about Biden's September 10 talk is that he mentioned terrorism but made no mention of "al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups" - just like Rice.
So despite the historical whitewash now painted by Bush critics like Richard Clarke, it's far from obvious that stateless Islamic terror was the focal point of Democratic defense policy mavens before September 2001.
Moreover, to the extent that Biden mentioned terrorism, he, too, mentioned it in the context of dangers from rogue states, such as Iraq, that might resort to terror against Americans. Biden even spoke of "Saddam Hussein, the certifiable maniac."
In other words, despite the further whitewash from the critics, Iraq
and Saddam were not only on the minds of Bush and his advisors before September 11. They were squarely -- and understandably -- on the minds of members of the senior Democratic leadership.
So where do these further revelations leave us? Over two years after thousands of Americans were murdered by Islamic fanatics, and while Islamic terrorists continue crafting deadly plots around the globe, the Washington political and chattering class is consumed with a now irrelevant fight over who was paying less attention to the gathering threat before 9/11. The important question today - and the debate we should be having but are not - is over the best way to address the terror threat going forward.
Has there ever been a lower point for the Washington political culture?
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I would like to suggest that at the very least there was a disconnect between Schumer's ____________ and his __________.
Yes, briefly, when the Senate acquitted Clinton of the impeachment charges despite indisputable and conclusive evidence that he was in fact guilty.
...And this is a bad thing, somehow?
Reality check time for Mr. Biden, Mr. Kerry, Mr. Franken, et al--does China still exist? Do they have lots of missiles? Is it not possible that some of those missiles are aimed at us? Even post-9/11? Perhaps part of what a National SECURITY Advisor should take into consideration is how an unstable China with all its nukes may pose a potential THREAT to our national SECURITY!!!!
I loved her in Princess Bride.
If it had been about "terrorism from Islamic radicals" then they would be accusing her of planning 9/11 out.
Why is this administration being criticized for A SPEECH IT NEVER GAVE??? For WORDS IT NEVER SPOKE?
Oh, because it's a REPUBLICAN administration, that's why. Nevermind...
The Dems have no issues. Because they, years ago, abandoned truth telling as part of their game plan, none would believe them if they had an issue.
But - in this current WOT, where the end is nowhere near as easily definable, and more importantly, where only a portion of our resources are dedicated to fighting it - the question of "when" to hold the 9-11 commission is a valid one.
I don't profess to have a good answer to the above; I believe it prudent to say, however, that to hold said commission so early in a war that clearly has not ended, and so soon after the four salient events that till now have marked the conduct of the war (9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq, and holding the commission during an ELECTION YEAR), has so far proven to be too tempting a proverbial carrot on a stick for the morally bankrupt opposition party (who demonstrably prefer to return to power even at the cost of sapping the Nation's will to fight terror) to use as a thrashing stick against the current administration. We may not know when is the best time to hold the 9-11 review... but we can certainly say that to hold it now in the current circumstances is the worst possible time.
CGVet58
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