Maddy Albright on Today Show Stamps her Dainty Feet: "Not Fair to Parse all Kerry's Words"

The folks at The Today Show obviously felt they had a pretty good one-two punch with which to bash the Bush campaign today - the 1,000th US military death in Iraq and Dick Cheney's statement yesterday that "if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating."

Even so, an obviously unhappy Katie Couric, the Kerry campaign coming down around her ears, couldn't resist taking a few shots at Kerry campaign advisor Madeleine Albright. And Mint Lady responded with some classic pique, essentially saying that it wasn't fair to analyze too closely . . . what John Kerry has said!

The half-hour started with a Matt Lauer interview of Colin Powell, and Lauer immediately suggested that the Bush administration failed to anticipate the difficulties in Iraq:

"Did you ever think we'd be sitting here with 1,000 dead, 7,000 wounded and no end in sight of the insurgency?"

Powell: "I couldn't have known that but we knew we would lose lives. We mourn the loss of life. These young men and women died in the cause of freedom. But we are seeing progress in Iraq and Afghanistan toward freedom and democracy."

Lauer: "But what of the families saying that two of the main justifications for the war turned up empty? No WMD and no concrete ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda?"

Powell: "We have no doubt Saddam had the intention of developing and using WMD. Everyone had every reason to believe stockpiles were there. President rightly felt it was a real danger that had to be dealt with."

Lauer: "During the early stages, the administration said the capture or killing of Saddam and sons would be aturning point, but there have been more troop deaths since that happened. Did we miscalculate what is behind the insurgency?"

Powell: "I fully expected insurgency would continue by those who were in power under Saddam and don't want to lose their privileges."

Then it was on to a Katie Couric interview of former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Powell. *Warning -following paragraph contains unkind observations about Albright's superficial characteristics. Do not read if you are above that kind of petty thing.*

Still there, eh? Well, it seemed that what is left of Maddy's ever-thinning hair had turned yet a lighter shade of bottle-blonde. And it looked as if her eyes had come in for some more 'work' since her last appearance.

By the way, she was apparently located at a Kerry campaign HQ, and a blow-up copy of Kerry's seminal tome, "Our Plan for America" was strategically located over her left shoulder.

Albright began, falsely pious, by claiming that "I would like to believe Sec. Powell, but the facts are not there on the ground."

Katie: "If elected Sen. Kerry has said he would begin troop pullouts within 6 months. Is there a danger of cutting and running, leaving Iraq in shambles?"

Albright: "Kerry has never said we would cut and run. He has always been a critic of the administration's policy."

Katie came back with a zinger: "You say that now, but Kerry did authorize the Presidint to invade Iraq."

In a real side-splitter, Albright responded: "Kerry authorized the President to win 'a great victory at UN.'" [Gosh knows, that's where it's important to win victories in the war against terror.] The problem is that Pres. Bush didn't take the time to really build a coalition."

Here is where Maddy really started to lose it: "He has said many times that he wanted to make sure there was resolve, but not in the way it was carried out. IT IS A VERY COMPLEX SITUATION. WE SHOULDN'T PARSE ALL HIS WORDS"!

So there it is, the latest Kerry position. Things are complex. Very complex. So complex, in fact, that you shouldn't go back and look at what I said over the course of the campaign. What I say today is what matters. Until tomorrow.

Katie continued to peck at the open wound: "some people are confused by Kerry's position. He says if he knew then what he knows now he would still have voted to authorize the war."

Maddy was breaking down by now. She babbled something about "It's one thing to authorize, another to disagree with way in which it was being carried out. It's wrong to say he's changed his position, he has not! It just ain't so, Katie."

You know that when Albright loses her high-brow shtick and starts slingin' the "aint's" that she's really feeling the heat.

Perhaps feeling some remorse for the obvious damage she'd done, Katie ended by throwing Albright a super puff ball, asking her to comment on Cheney's statement. Naturally Albright felt that "of his many outrageous statements, it's the most outrageous. Completely irresponsible. Using scare tactics."

Thanks for stopping by Maddy. See you. And don't forget to plump the pillows in the Green Room on your way out.

Lauer then interviewed Tim Russert, and also fed him the Cheney line. When Russert's response wasn't sufficiently harsh for Lauer's liking, Matt decided to editorialize. "But isn't it over the line?"

Hey Matt, I think Mother Jones has an opening for an opinion columnist. Look into it.

Fox 'n' Friends had an interview with the author of a book that is critical of the 9/11 Commission.

More on the author, Peter Lance, and the book "Cover Up."

Most inflammatory, in his book Lance claims that in 1996, high-ranking FBI and Justice Department officials turned a deliberate blind eye on documentary evidence provided by a high-ranking mob snitch that a key Al Qaeda terrorist, Ramzi Yousef, behind bars for the original bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, was actively plotting to blow up what turned out to be TWA Flight 800, which exploded 13,000 feet in the air above Long Island in the summer of 1996, killing all 230 passengers and crewmembers on board. After a 16-month investigation, the FBI blamed that tragedy on mechanical failure. Given that Yousef's uncle, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was one of the masterminds behind the September 11 plot, Lance contends the FBI blew yet another golden opportunity to prevent 9/11 from ever occurring.

http://www.independent.com/news/news928.htm <-- Lots of interesting stuff here (TWA 800, Al Queda, WTC)

"Cover Up" Author Peter Lance

From Amazon.com

About the Author
Peter Lance is a five-time Emmy-winning investigative reporter and author of the bestselling 1000 Years for Revenge: International Terrorism and the FBI -- The Untold Story. A former correspondent for ABC News, he has covered hundreds of stories worldwide for 20/20, Nightline, and World News Tonight. Also a recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Prize, Lance lives on the West Coast.

Book Description
Ever since 9/11, investigative reporter Peter Lance has been leading the fight to expose the intelligence gaps that led to 9/11. Now, in the follow-up to his bestselling 1000 Years for Revenge, he returns with devastating new evidence that the government has been covering up its own counterterror failures since the mid-1990s -- and continues today.
In Cover Up, Lance shows how the government chose again and again to sacrifice America's national security for personal motives and political convenience. In its first half, he unveils shattering new evidence that terror mastermind Ramzi Yousef ordered the bombing of TWA 800 from his prison cell in order to effect a mistrial in his own terror bombing case. Astonishingly, the FBI was alerted to Yousef's plans in advance by a prison informant who even passed along his detailed sketch of a bomb-trigger device -- a document seen here for the first time. And Lance reveals the shocking reason the Justice Department suddenly ruled the crash an accident despite overwhelming evidence of the bombing -- throwing away its best chance to penetrate the cell that was already planning 9/11.

And the outrage doesn't stop there. In Part II, Lance offers an unofficial "minority report" on the 9/11 Commission, critiquing it as the incomplete, highly politicized "Warren Commission of our time." He explores potential conflicts of interest among its members, from the staff director who wrote a book with Condoleezza Rice, to the former Clinton deputy attorney general who participated in a critical meeting that upended the TWA probe. He exposes the report's false contention that the 9/11 plan was conceived in 1996, when the FBI had knowledge that the plot was in motion as early as 1994. And, in a heart-stopping, minute-by-minute chronicle of the attacks, he asks dozens of unanswered questions about the defense failures of that day -- from why fighter jets weren't scrambled for almost an hour after the hijackings, to why the president and several of his top military advisers remained virtually incommunicado for more than half an hour after it was clear that America was under attack.

At a time when America feels no safer than ever, Cover Up will lend new eyes to readers who want the full story behind the 9/11 attacks -- and inspire us all to keep demanding the truth.

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