Posted on 06/16/2003 5:02:31 PM PDT by Solson
Five days before the war began in Iraq, as President Bush prepared to raise the terrorism threat level to orange, a top White House counterterrorism adviser unlocked the steel door to his office, an intelligence vault secured by an electronic keypad, a combination lock and an alarm. He sat down and turned to his inbox.
"Things were dicey," said Rand Beers, recalling the stack of classified reports about plots to shoot, bomb, burn and poison Americans. He stared at the color-coded threats for five minutes. Then he called his wife: I'm quitting.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Just a slight 'slip.' He testified FALSELY before a Congressional hearing last year and had to RETRACT his statement when he got caught.
More on Rand Beers in the FReeppost *here*. And here's another interesting article about him:
Former security advisor says Bush failing to counter terror threat
Mon Jun 16, 2:36 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A top White House anti-terrorism advisor who quit five days before the start of the Iraq (news - web sites) war has accused President George W. Bush (news - web sites) of not doing enough in the fight against terrorism.
"The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism," Rand Beers, a former special assistant to the president, told the Washington Post in an interview published Monday.
After working at the National Security Council for 35 years, under presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Bill Clinton, Beers, 60, had been the main counter-terrorism advisor from August until his resignation in March.
He has since joined the presidential campaign of Democratic Senator John Kerry.
Beers said the Bush administration was "making us less secure, not more secure."
The government had concentrated on being offensive against terrorists without properly laying out the means to be defensive and prevent a repeat of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, he told the Post.
US-led forces have yet to locate conclusive evidence backing Bush's central case for war: that Saddam possessed chemical and biological weapons, pursued nuclear arms, and might one day have armed terrorists.
Congress is also looking into US intelligence claims leading up to the war.
But Bush on Monday rebuffed mounting criticism of his case for war with Iraq and his efforts to prevent future terrorists attacks.
"Saddam Hussein was a threat to America and the free world in '91, in '98, in 2003. He continually ignored the demands of the free world, so the United States and friends and allies acted," Bush said in a speech in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
"This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. Now there are some who would like to rewrite history; revisionist historians is what I like to call them," the president said.
Beers also said that the war in Afghanistan (news - web sites) was a job abandoned at the halfway point and not enough military resources have been put into the country.
"Terrorists move around the country with ease. We don't even know what is going on. Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) could be anywhere in Afghanistan," Beers was quoted as saying.
He added that not enough pressure had been put on Saudi Arabia to deal with its terrorism problems.
The Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) (CIA (news - web sites)) is doing a good job hunting al-Qaeda chiefs abroad but the new Department of Homeland Security, responsible for defending the United States, was underfunded, Beers said.
Explaining his job at the White House, Beers said that each day he had to sift through and evaluate between 500 and 1,000 indications of terrorist threats.
And thank the good Lord for giving us a man in the White House with the good sense and proper level of testosterone to do just that.
I suppose his job was so much easier, the stack of stuff smaller, because the Clinton Admin didn't give a sh!t about preventing terrorism.
This whole article SMELLS of nothing but politics. Read his RAT comments about "root causes" of terrorism, his RAT mantra about how 'nothing is being done here at home.
RAT talking points throughout this puff piece of such a dedicated public servant that he QUIT, rather than stay and try to make a difference. Of course there is that untidy little detail about joining the Ketchup Boy campaign.
From the date of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 07 December 1941 to the first major payback by US forces, the Doolittle B25 raid on Tokyo on 18 April 1942, about 4 months was required to mount the operation while our stunned military began to regear for the coming fight. That situation is similar to that of the shrunken military establishment Bush was left with when he took office.
From that WWII start date to the conclusion of most of the hostilities from that war following the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August '45 to that cessation of hostilities required about 42 months. I'll give Bush that long, at least, before trying to pass any judgement as to whether his methods have proven effective or not- and it is indeed troubling that we do not have either Saddam Hussein or Osama bin-Laden either in a cage or with their head atop a pike.
But he has at least done something, even if not immediately or reflexively, which may well have been the smarter course. And for sure, Afghanistan and Iraq are no longer the terrorist safe havens and strongholds they once were.
More work remains, and the Jihadists are not our only sworn enemies.
-archy-/-
Major security breach right there. He ought to have all his clearances yanked and never get them back.
-ccm
He may be a RAT, may have false intentions and may now work for the Kerry campaign but there were failings here.
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