Show 'em my motto!
Posted on 04/09/2004 6:04:44 AM PDT by kattracks
Is there anything clearer than hindsight?And is there anyone - inside the Washington Beltway or beyond it - who wouldn't want to rewrite our pre-Sept. 11 history?
But as national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told the 9/11 commission, ``There was no silver bullet that could have prevented'' the attack on American soil.''
Shouldn't the FBI and the CIA have been forced to talk to each other? Shouldn't the CIA's information about al-Qaeda have been shared with the FBI, which knew of Middle Eastern men attending U.S. flight schools? Yes, of course, that's what should have happened. But it didn't - not prior to Sept. 11, and not for decades before.
Absent a catastrophe, could Rice or anyone else have changed any of that? Not a chance!
In one telling exchange with former Sen. Bob Kerrey, Rice was asked about her response to specific warnings about possible hijackings during the summer of 2001. One obvious response would be to ``harden cockpits,'' she said. ``That would have made a difference,'' but, she added, ``We weren't going to harden cockpits in the three months that we had a threat spike.''
She didn't even mention the $1 billion cost and the inevitable protests by the airlines - in the absence of a crisis.
It is easy to come up with a to-do list of things that might have prevented the attacks now. But how many of them would have won approval in Congress before Sept. 11? Changes in this nation's virtual open-door immigration policy? Changes in the Immigration and Naturalization Service's much abused ``transit without visa'' policy? Changes in the so-called ``sanctuary policies'' of some of the nation's major cities that make it impossible for local policy to coordinate with the INS? Some of the reforms made in the post-Sept. 11 Patriot Act that even today are contentious? Or how about just putting a bullet in the head of Osama bin Laden?
As Rice told the commission, ``The terrorists were at war with us, but we were not yet at war with them. For more than 20 years, the terrorist threat gathered, and America's response across several administrations of both parties was insufficient. Historically, democratic societies have been slow to react to gathering threats, tending instead to wait to confront threats until they are too dangerous to ignore or until it is too late.''
It wasn't an apology. It was a simple statement of fact.
The facts are getting increasingly difficult to ignore. But then so is the partisanship of some members of the commission. For them yesterday's session wasn't about fact-finding, it was about scoring points in some future political battle. In Kerrey's case perhaps a precursor to a Kerry-Kerrey ticket.
How revealing was it when Kerrey told Rice, ``You obviously don't want to use the M-word in here.'' Ah, but had she. As Kerrey told her, had she come in and said, ``We screwed up. We made a lot of mistakes. . .I would say fine, it's game, set, match. I understand that.''
Game, set and match.
That pretty much says it all. Three thousand people are dead. Their families are looking for answers. But to partisans like Kerrey it's just ``game, set and match.''
Show 'em my motto!
Since very few things can be implemented even now with the dems blocking action, it's no wonder nothing was done before.
I like how the media always puts Bush's time in office in terms of days. The number is bigger, of course, and makes it look like Bush is more culpable.
Man oh man, they are hyping this to the hilt! Lisa Myers is the only one not on board, and she went so far off the reservation this morning on TODAY, to call Condi "unflappable".
Even ABC and CBS aren't trying to spin Condi's testimony into a damning indictment of President Bush, but that's exactly what NBC is doing. Against all reason, against what we witnessed with our own eyes and ears. Their relentless innuendo and blatant allegations can't just be ratings driven...it's agenda baby!
Yes, while I see the Bush strategery in keeping the FBI and CIA directors from Clinton, the strongest complaint the committee could hurl at Bush is that he should have put strong people in those spots immediately. New blood, perhaps loyal to Bush and America would have given us the best chance to put the bits and pieces together.
But in hindsight, it was the failure of computers to share databases and people affraid of "spying" on citizens inside this country that protected the terrorists. One even got around an expired visa by telling the officer that he would renew it at school the next semester, "America is such a great country", he said. The officer bought it and the terrorist later died in a plane without bothering to renew the visa.
Right now Bush is still appeasing the anti gunners with roadblocks to arming the pilots and still allows illegal immigrants to sneak over the border with great ease.
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