Posted on 03/16/2003 1:59:13 AM PST by kattracks
He left a bunch of bombers spun up while he chatted? And he wouldn't even take Bergers phone call personally?
Amazing.
I mean I would trust "Bob" from the local gas station to have more respect and concern about our affairs than this.
(Of course, anyone who would discuss troop deployments while getting a hummer would probably think nothing of such a minor thing as getting missions scrubbed and wasting peoples time..)
Rather..
I remember an interview shortly after 9/11 where George Snuffalupagus was ticking off a list of terror incidents on one hand.. He calmly (and unthinkingly, I am sure) listed TWA 800 as a terror attack.
It was real subtle.. sounded like such a natural conversation that I almost missed it. But that's clearly what he said.
From Clinton's interview with the New York Times, January 21, 1999:
Q: Does one of these threats worry you more than another, and does any one in particular keep you awake at night?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I have spent some late nights thinking a lot about this and reading a lot about it. I think in terms of offense versus defense, if you go back to where we started, the thing that I'm most interested in -- and you will see we've allocated several hundred million dollars basically to research and to applied research -- the thing that I'm most interested in is developing the ability to quickly contain biological agents.
A chemical attack would be horrible, but it would be finite. You know, it's just like -- for the people who went through Oklahoma City, nothing could be more horrible. But it didn't spread. And the thing that bothers people about biological agents is that, unless they're properly diagnosed, contained and treated, that it could spread.
For example, we know that if all of us went to a rally on the Mall tomorrow with 10,000 people, and somebody flew a low-flying crop duster and sprayed us all with biological agents from, let's say, 200 feet, that, no matter how toxic it were, half of us would walk away for reasons no one quite understands. You know, either we wouldn't breathe it, or we'd have some miraculous resistance to it. And the other half of us, somebody would have to diagnose in a hurry and then contain and treat. Otherwise it would be kind of like the gift that keeps on giving, you know. (Laughter.)
And I don't mean that -- I'm not trying to be macabre, but you asked me what keeps me awake at night, and that bothers me. And that's why the thing that I thought was most important about what we did last year, and what we learned a little bit from our defense scare -- even though it was on a computer issue, we had this defense issue, plus we were dealing with all this -- we'd studied for a year all this -- especially this biological issue -- is we had this work going on in 12 different places in the government. So we had to organize our efforts, so that we could be accessible to local governments, so we could work with them, to set up their own preventive mechanisms.
And I have to tell you, it may be -- we may have to await -- it's a note I made to myself that we may have to have a perfect defense. I mean, instantaneous. We may have to depend upon the Genome Project, interestingly enough, because once the human genes' secrets are unlocked, then -- if you and I think we've been infected, they could take a blood sample, and there would be a computer program which would show us if we had -- let's say we had a variant of anthrax. Let's suppose some terrorist hired a genius scientist and a laboratory to take basic anthrax and put some variant in it that would be resistant to all known anthrax antidotes.
Q: Okay. Or a Russian scientist.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. So let's just suppose that happened. And what you would want is to be able to take a blood sample, do an analysis, put it through a software program that had already been developed, and say, okay, here is -- this is how the genes are different, this is the difference. And then, presumably, not too long after we've developed this, they will already know, well, therefore, this is how you should -- how you should change the vaccine.
And we know now -- I know this is kind of bewildering, but keep in mind this is actually good news because, if there were no Genome Project, if there were no rapid way to do quick analysis that would go right to the tiniest variant, we would be in trouble.
...
Q: What do you do if the nightmare comes to pass, and some country hits us, hits us hard, with a biological weapon? What kind of response would you do?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, if some country were thinking about doing that, I would certainly hope that they wouldn't have the capacity to do it before we could stop them, or interrupt them, if it was a -- that is, if you're talking about somebody lobbing a missile over here, or something like that.
I think if it happened, it would be an act of war and there would be a very strong response. But I think we've demonstrated that. But I think the far more likely thing is somebody representing some interest -- maybe it could be a rogue state, maybe it could be a terrorist network -- walking around a city with a briefcase full of vials, or in spray cans, you know.
So what we have to do -- any country with any sense, if they wanted to attack us, would try to do it through a terrorist network, because if they did it with a missile we'd know who did it and then they'd be sunk. It would be -- that's a deal where they're bound to lose. Big time.
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