Posted on 08/11/2005 5:57:46 PM PDT by TonyInOhio
It behaved disgracefully and in a nakedly partisan fashion, with former officials of the Clinton administration attempting to use the platform to damage the president's reelection chances. Then, after months of ludicrous conduct, out of nowhere came the brilliantly conceived and written report that set a new standard of eloquence and coherence for government documents, became a major bestseller and redeemed the commission's reputation.
Well, that didn't last long.
In a story filed at 7:10 PM, the Associated Press is now confirming all the particulars of what will now forever be called the Able Danger disaster. The 9/11 Commission staff did hear about intelligence-gathering efforts that hit pay dirt on the whereabouts of Mohammed Atta -- in 1999 -- and deliberately chose to omit word of those efforts.
And why? Because to do so might upset the timeline the Commission had established on Atta.
And why is that significant? Because the Mohammed Atta timeline established by the Commission pointedly insisted Atta did not meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague.
And why is that significant? Because debunking the Atta-Iraq connection was of vital importance to Democrats, who had become focused almost obsessively on the preposterous notion that there was no relation whatever between Al Qaeda and Iraq -- that Al Qaeda and Iraq might even have been enemies.
I was very skeptical of this Able Danger stuff about Atta, thought it was just sme way Rep. Curt Weldon was trying to sell a book. No longer. This is clearly becoming the biggest story of the summer -- the fact that, as Andy McCarthy alluded to, the "intelligence wall" set up by 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick when she was in the Justice Department did, in fact, cause the linchpin of the 9/11 attacks to evade capture by American law enforcement.
So was the staff a) protecting the Atta timeline or b) Jamie Gorelick or c) the Clinton administration or d) itself, because it got hold of the information relatively late and the staff was lazy?
More important, what will co-chairmen Tom (pound his fist on the table) Kean and Lee (look sorrowful) Hamilton do and say in the next 36 hours about this calamity?
Need I really add: /sarc?
PLEASE let the Clintons go to prison!!!
I'm not asking for that much.
Who can post that pic of Clinton, Reno and Berger doing the "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" thing?
That would be so appropriate.
.... no, the main thing is that Congress needs to pass another Transportation Bill with billions more dollars of pork.....
I am with you -- it is such a tiny request too!
don't listen then
I did not.......... I stole it!
Right, if the decision was made not to touch Atta and the others at the highest levels of government, that means it's possible Shrillery could be implicated as an accomplice in this outrage. After all, it was the "2-for-1 presidency" ...and she DEFINITELY WAS the co-president.
Yes, I agree. So it must be something else! There's more to come!
I'd love to see Fox get up a special investigative team to dig deep into this whole mess and these are the people I'd put on that team:
Rush Limbaugh
Mark Furhman
Sean Hannity
Rep. Curt Weldon
Rep. Chris Cox
Mark Levin
Ann Coulter
Then have a daily or special Sunday show headlining this whole episode called The FOX Commission!
HANNITY COVERING THIS NOW
The same was thought about Dan Rathergate
Well, that makes my point even more, because Lehman was long OUT of the "political class." He's been back in investment banking for 15 years.
I was listening to Rush today...and he mentioned that it has been found out that the information that they found regarding Atta and friends COULD have been shared, because it was found on "open sources"..or somesuch...
BUT, the Clinton lawyers put the kibosh on it...
Does that square with anything you have heard?
This goes beyond the 'Gate' label.
Future scandals of this magnitude should be called "Clintonian" in scale or referred to as x+Able Danger. (Where's the marketing dept. for the VRWC?)
Watergate gave the 'gate' label significance because a sitting president was essentially forced to resign, but that aside, this has taken on a much larger scale on a quantum order of magnitude.
Mark my words, especially if former administration officials linked to Clinton like Gorelik, Berger, Clarke, and even the ex-President himself fall under indictments, the 'gate' label will look not only tired, but wholely unsuited and inadequate for capturing the gravitas and significance of the moment.
We need a new 'brand' for this scandal. I hope conservative journalists are paying attention. A new brand can be a powerful new tool for the Right.
That's an excellent guess and probably accurate.
Remember it was Tenet and Clarke who called off Schoen's team taking Bin Laden at the Tarnak Farm in Afghanistan way way back in '98 IIRC, and what was the reason given? Not enough information to indict...Was this an effect of Gorelick's wall that prevented the CIA/FBI/et al. from sharing and kept them from getting the green light? Not to say that the Clintoons were protecting UBL, but to demonstrate the Law of Unintended Consequences goes further than 9/11 and into our current day. This may go back to Chinagate, but we are still paying for this today.
ahmen.
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