Posted on 04/10/2004 5:22:56 AM PDT by Gothmog
Ben-Veniste's rudeness was clear for all to see, but to understand just how dishonest was his line of questioning, look at this article from the May 27, 2002, issue of Human Events, a conservative Washington weekly:
Sen. Bob Graham (D.-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told HUMAN EVENTS May 21 that his committee had received all the same terrorism intelligence prior to September 11 as the Bush administration.
"Yes, we had seen all the information," said Graham. "But we didn't see it on a single piece of paper, the way the President did."
Graham added that threats of hijacking in an August 6 memo to President Bush were based on very old intelligence that the committee had seen earlier. "The particular report that was in the President's Daily Briefing that day was about three years old," Graham said. "It was not a contemporary piece of information."
Graham is far from a supporter of the Bush administration, as he made clear last year in his brief but loopy presidential campaign. The 9/11 commission is supposed to be an impartial search for the truth. Is there any doubt that Ben-Veniste is guilty of trying to turn it into a partisan witch hunt?
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
That's because the POS Kerrey was trying to save his manhood which is continuously being emasculated by his own ignorance.
If we really want the truth, put this POS under oath and let him tell us what he did with this information.
I agree. Viniste was predictable; Kerrey was awful.
All info about 8/6 PDB was discussed in Washington Post article in May 2002
That includes the title of the memo that Ari Fleischer discussed in a White House Press Briefing, totally contradicting Ben Veniste's comment that even the title was top secret until this week.
The key info from the article is that it was a backward looking PDB and Bush was frustrated that it didn't have any forward looking or actionable info in it.
The liberals are stuck by their own logic:
IF the leftists' "logic" about the value of such historical information in the PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) about terrorists' plans, had such weight that "The President was warned; and he should have done something more about it!",
THEN that same leftists' "logic" also applies to the historical warnings about Iraq having WMD's, and "The President was warned; and he should have done something more about it!."
He did.
(November 8, 2001)
...One ex-CIA official told Franklin Foer of The New Republic that under Clinton appointee John Deutsch, the agency had "become very politically correct."
And just last year (2000), the National Commission on Terrorism — chaired by former Reagan counterterrorism head Paul Bremer — issued a report with the eerily foreboding image of the Twin Towers on its cover. A bipartisan effort — led by Jon Kyl and Dianne Feinstein — was made to attach the recommendations of the panel to an intelligence authorization bill. But Sen. Patrick Leahy feared a threat to "civil liberties" and torpedoed the effort. After the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, Kyl and Feinstein tried yet again. This time, Leahy was content with emaciating the proposals instead of defeating them outright. The weakened proposals died as the House realized "it wasn't worth taking up." President Clinton certainly could have encouraged Sen. Leahy to drop his opposition, but he didn't.
In 1996, President Clinton charged Al Gore with improving airline security. But the commission he led "focused on civil liberties" and "not effectiveness," according to the Boston Globe. The commission concluded that "no profile [of passengers] should contain or be based on... race, religion, or national origin." The FAA also decided, in 1999, to seal its passenger screening system from law-enforcement databases — thus preventing the FBI from notifying airlines that suspected terrorists were on board.
When bin Laden fled from the Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996, "some officials," according to the Washington Post, "raised the possibility of shooting down his aircraft." But the plan was never pursued, in part because "it was inconceivable" that President Clinton would approve of it.
What President Clinton did do, of course, is launch a series of cruise-missile attacks on Afghanistan and the Sudan around the time of his grand-jury testimony in August of 1998. Put aside any talk of "wagging the dog." This low-risk, low-damage effort helped bin Laden in the Muslim world. He looked strong, and we looked weak. We looked (and, of course, were) averse to casualties. It fit a pattern of tepid American responses to serious attacks on our interests — the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (which the Clinton administration treated as a criminal matter and not an act of war), Khobar Towers, embassy bombings. The Muslim world senses weakness and feeds on it; they tremble only before resolution and strength. As one senior Defense Department official put it, "I wish we'd recognized [that we were at war] then and started the campaign then that we've started now."
Dec. 18, 2000: the Electoral College elected George W. Bush America's 43rd President-elect.
Dec. 19, 2000: Clinton went to Kofi Annan and asked that the UN place tougher sanctions on Afghanistan if the Taliban didn't hand over Bin Laden in 30 days.
"Today, the United Nations removed all its remaining relief workers from the country, fearing a backlash from the Taliban, who will be almost completely isolated diplomatically when the resolution takes effect in 30 days, a grace period during which the Taliban could avoid sanctions by meeting the Council's demands." - Tough Sanctions Imposed on Taliban Government Split UN, by Barbara Crossette, New York Times, Dec. 20, 2000.
Dec. 20, 2000: UN announced* tougher sanctions on the Taliban - to go into effect in 30 days (*after a speedy UN vote)...
...just in time for Inaugeration Day, Jan. 21, 2001.
One morning at the nub end of Bill Clinton's presidency, Clinton chief of staff John Podesta walked into a senior staff meeting in the Roosevelt Room waving a copy of USA Today. Holding the paper aloft, Podesta read the headline out loud, "Clinton actions annoy Bush." The article detailed the new rules and Executive Orders the outgoing President was issuing in his final days, actions aimed in equal measure at locking in Clinton's legacy...and bedeviling his successor. "What's Bush so annoyed about?" Podesta asked with a devilish smile. "He's got four years to try to undo all the stuff we've done." link.
"We laid a few traps," chirps a happy Clinton aide.....
The noise we are hearing, and we are being led to believe, about the use of civilian aircraft as weapons platforms, so to speak, is some kind of "surprise" and "new paradigm," is willfully disingenious. There is a good reason why civilian aircraft are restricted from "Restricted Area[s]" around military bases and various public institutions --- yes, because they might be in the use of our enemies.
"Gee, if we'd only known the exact building and date and time..." is just more of that same disingenious behavior.
That said, our mighty "Republican" Senatorial "leadership" and such "Republican" members of the House, should be using, item by item, the facts that you have gathered together, and so many other FRPR's have gathered together, that argue for, in my view, the completed Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton in Absentia.
Bill Clinton should be removed from all honors and protection of the Office of the President, and his name stricken from all public artifacts.
The "land mines" left by his crew, John Podesta, et al, should be investigated and such Clinton crew members arrested and imprisoned.
Why?
Because you know, and I know, that this thing can get much worse, and it could get much worse because people are really not yet taking it all that serious.
With every assault within the U.S. --- such as the oil refineries that are being attacked by use of mortars in the back end of pickup trucks --- when these things get closer to home, there will more noise about "what Bush knew and when he knew it."
President Bush had better get honest with himself, such that he can not afford to appease the Senate Democrats by continuing the facade that somehow, basically, they must be on the side of fighting against terrorism.
They are not.
They are on the side of fighting against democratic-republicanism, in favor of socialism. What they say, should never be confused with being genuine opinion. They never tell anybody in public, what they really think. It is ENTIRELY meant for the public's consumption such that the public response will be to be a little more fearful and seek more government power to "do something about it."
That is, as re-interpreted by the Democrats, make government even larger.
George Bush has got to get off of that train wreck.
Condoleezza Rice had better go over everything that is her responsibility, and everything that is the Joint Chiefs' responsibility, and everything that is the D.C.I.'s responsibility, and everything that is the Ch. of the Federal Reserve's responsibility, etc., and find the booby-traps left by "Mr. Podesta."
Because somewhere in that pile of stuff, is the warning signs of how the terrorists will next drive fuel tanker trucks into some building somewhere, and the Bush Administration had better have been prepared to PREVENT IT, not just discussed to the most precise degree, how the "structure" PREVENTED THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION FROM DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
After all, the purpose of the federal government, is NOT the importance of its members, in our's, a free republic.
Truth and honor are paramount, if the people are to send their children to fight for all our freedom.
That includes, accepting responsibility for preparedness in all its areas, not just "intel."
Are we preparing? Are we seeing stories in the news about how armored car production has quadrupled, because we are in a war?
No.
Same problem for our aircraft industry, where if anything, it has been left to wither, when to the contrary, to produce the kind of machine tools and production equipment with which to produce greater numbers of aircraft, requires lead time that we should NOW be involved in that.
We are not.
The many glowing assumptions are not reality; "it ain't happenin'."
We should be planning for an emergency that requires 4 times the number of people we now have in uniform.
We need material for them, but it is not being produced.
We need material that we can expect to be lost.
Assessments for loss are not what they once were. We must not only account for enemy destruction of our transports by enemy fire, but also that squadrons and bases will be removed from service by "dirty nuclear" weapons and biological assaults.
We may, in order to proceed, have to very unhappily invade some country that we would otherwise not wish to at all, but we may need their facilities, such that we can set up a base from which to operate and then continue on to the rescue of some battalions that are suddenly stuck somewhere, but we have not been able to get to them, because 20 C-17 aircraft are out of the pattern, having been doused at Dover AFB.
Our vulnerability on the oceans is quite large, because our Navy is still somewhat asleep at the wheel, because nobody has actually yet given it its marching orders: Sink and Attack.
Instead, we are stopping and inspecting.
Makes an inviting target for a "trawler" hauling enough explosives to send a U.S. destroyer to the bottom.
Our Navy is expecting a missile attack, but the old methods still work (U.S.S. Cole).
The irony, there, is that in a certain area of defense, the Navy's expectation of a missile attack, is quite appropriate, but because it is so secretive, the numbers of tests of the system, have been reduced.
You know what they are worried about?
That a "coastal steamer" will launch cruise missiles up the river and hit Washington, D.C. There's a lot of work involved in preventing that.
The reasons for it being such a secret, are because of long-standing political disputes over the "construction of the anti-ballistic missile system."
On the surface, the Democrats have wanted the public to believe that such a system will "only provoke our enemies." While privately they pat on the back, the developers (thanks for protecting us, and BTW, it's good 'pork').
There's a tactical weakness in the system: the kind of RADAR that it requires, itself becomes a target.
So, we don't tell anybody about it.
I have walked all around that, here on this forum, hoping that some minds would figure it out but keep quiet.
That pretty much covers some areas, other than of course, the weaknesses around our airports, where you'd think that somebody would have put down in a PDB, the very fat opportunity for terrorists: just leap the fence around the airport perimeter.
Still, almost nobody is minding that store.
I dread hearing Condoleezza Rice explain that that anvil was also never dropped on the President's toes ... until the day, the time, and the place that it happens.
Gives new meaning to the words, "new paradigm."
The administration knows this, and is trying to get away with the same economic sleight-of-hand that devoured the savings of an entire generation back in the 70s with years of inflation. The Viet Nam war was paid for out of the savings accounts of little old widow ladies on fixed incomes.
This time it will be worse, since we won't be able to produce our way out of the fix we're in, having sold all our tools and having no Americans left who actually know how to design and build anything.
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