Monday Morning Spooks - [Hugh Hewitt on second guessing what "Bush Knew"]

The Weekly Standard ^ | 6/26/2003 | Hugh Hewitt

[Utah Girl]

THIRTEEN MONTHS AGO, Senator Hillary Clinton rose on the Senate floor to demand answers to questions about what President Bush knew about the September 11 attacks before those attacks occurred. Dick Gephardt (then minority leader in the House) echoed the demand, asking "what the president and what the White House knew about events leading up to 9/11, when they knew it, and most importantly, what was done about it at the time." The Notebook editors at the New Republic couldn't resist a little second guessing of their own--directed at Attorney General John Ashcroft's post-attack request for a higher budget for counterterrorism: "[S]omeone should ask why he didn't mobilize some of those resources beforehand," scolded the magazine in its June 17, 2002 issue.

It's a year later and leading Democrats are again throwing bricks at the president's handling of intelligence. So is the New Republic. But this time the charge is that the president overestimated the threat to American security posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. A year ago he was too cold. Now he's too hot. The Democrats and their allies want the president to be just right.

The trouble with both sets of attacks is not their inconsistency--though that is amusing--it is that they lack a standard to instruct a commander in chief's action. This is the freedom that lack of authority brings: Every action can be second guessed, even if the second guessing makes no internal sense.

Stephen F. Hayes has made short work of the John Judis and Spencer Ackerman manifesto on Bush's handling of pre-war intelligence out of Iraq. Joshua Micah Marshall's attempts to have it every way has become so transparent that folks aren't even bothering to answer his charges of "the various misrepresentations, distortions, and outright lies the Bush administration put out in the lead-up to the war with Iraq," although it is great fun to revisit his postings from May of last year, especially his caution from May 16, 2002, that "we should keep in mind the distinction between signals and noise in intelligence collection, and how hard they can be to distinguish from each other," and his pronouncement on May 23 that "I for one remain quite skeptical of this sort of retrospective analysis of scattered intelligence data," even as he endorsed the idea of a hard look into the what "the White House should have known about the attacks or perhaps could have if all the tidbits and shreds of evidence had been properly assembled and analyzed."

It appears as though the public has already concluded that the attacks on Bush of this spring are like the attacks on Bush of last spring--partisan cheap-shots of the worst sort since they concern national security. I think a good majority of the electorate has also come to an intuitive understanding of the key concept: It is okay to overestimate a threat, but, since September 11, it is never okay to underestimate one. If Bush overestimated the threat from Iraq, he certainly gave Saddam every opportunity to open the doors, and even at the end, to quit the country. Bush was unwilling, however, to run any serious risk of WMDs reaching terrorists. His 2003 critics have apparently reversed their 2002 positions, and would have preferred him not to highlight the threats in his intelligence briefings.

I will leave it to the foreign policy mavens like Marshall to come up with a more precise standard, but I think the layman's rule is this: If the commander in chief perceives a significant risk of severe casualties to Americans, he uses whatever force is necessary to remove that risk. The forgery of documents related to purchases of uranium from Niger, or the lack of a detailed Baghdad hotel bill from Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, in no way detracts from the correctness of the president's assessment of all the evidence of risk. The attempt to impeach the president's conclusion by impeaching parts of his data set establishes a standard under which many future September 11s could never be prevented because of the distinction between "signals and noise in intelligence collection."

One final note about the New Republic's analysis: As with Joshua Micah Marshall, I host Peter Beinart each week on my radio program. Peter has a particular attachment to the idea that Bush radically overstated the threat Iraq's unmanned aerial vehicles posed. This refrain is picked up by Judis and Ackerman, and they, like Beinart, chastise the October 7 warning from the president that "We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States."

Judis and Ackerman conclude that this "claim represented the height of absurdity. Iraq's UAVs had ranges of, at most, 300 miles. They could not make the flight from Baghdad to Tel Aviv, let alone to New York."

It would be useful to know if the authors considered the attack on the USS Cole or the attacks on our embassies in Africa to have been missions targeting the United States. It felt that way to most Americans, but apparently not to these writers. The refusal of the public to be conned by such ploys reflects a reassuring attachment to common sense, and to a fundamental truth: It is best to be right in the assessment of danger, but it is also better to be wrong than dead.

Hugh Hewitt is the host of The Hugh Hewitt Show, a nationally syndicated radio talkshow, and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard. His new book, In, But Not Of, has just been published by Thomas Nelson.

[lainde]

Breath of fresh air bump!!

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

Hewitt skewers mental eunuch Marshall again, bump.

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

Could you ping your Hewitt lists.

[RonDog]

Monday Morning Spooks
Why are some people second-guessing President Bush's intelligence work and reasons for going to war?

by Hugh Hewitt
06/26/2003 12:00:00 AM

Hugh Hewitt, contributing writer

THIRTEEN MONTHS AGO, Senator Hillary Clinton rose on the Senate floor to demand answers to questions about what President Bush knew about the September 11 attacks before those attacks occurred.
Dick Gephardt (then minority leader in the House) echoed the demand, asking "what the president and what the White House knew about events leading up to 9/11, when they knew it, and most importantly, what was done about it at the time." The Notebook editors at the New Republic couldn't resist a little second guessing of their own--directed at Attorney General John Ashcroft's post-attack request for a higher budget for counterterrorism: "[S]omeone should ask why he didn't mobilize some of those resources beforehand," scolded the magazine in its June 17, 2002 issue.

It's a year later and leading Democrats are again throwing bricks at the president's handling of intelligence. So is the New Republic. But this time the charge is that the president overestimated the threat to American security posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
A year ago he was too cold. Now he's too hot.
The Democrats and their allies want the president to be just right.

The trouble with both sets of attacks is not their inconsistency--though that is amusing--it is that they lack a standard to instruct a commander in chief's action. This is the freedom that lack of authority brings: Every action can be second guessed, even if the second guessing makes no internal sense..." - Hugh Hewitt

.

If you listen to Hugh Hewitt, or read his WND commentaries,
this PING list is for YOU!
Please post your comments, and BUMP!

(If you want OFF - or ON - my "Hugh Hewitt PING list" - please let me know)

[RonDog]

See also this CLASSIC old thread:

The Ultimate Response to the "Bush Knew" Smear (RNC please take note)
Source: Me | 05/17/2001 | By Laz
Posted on 05/17/2002 6:36 AM PDT by Lazamataz

Okay people, I don't usually write one-line vanities, but I have what I consider the Ultimate Rebuttal to the smear that Bush knew about September 11 in advance.

Osama bin Ladin bragged that not even all the hijackers
knew where they were really headed.

If the actual perpetrators didn't know what was going to happen,

HOW WAS GEORGE W. BUSH SUPPOSED TO KNOW?

There you are, kids. In two sentences, this horrible smear by the DNC is destroyed. Take it it, run with it, hit the airwaves, write letters to the editor, go on the radio, get this message out...

CLICK HERE for the rest of that thread

[Valin]

Tag! you're it.

[ALOHA RONNIE]

NEVER FORGET


REPUBLICANS = The FREEDOM Party

DEMOCRATS = The Anti-FREEDOM Party


NEVER FORGET

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

JANUARY 6, 2003:

The talking points outline a strategy to raise public doubts of the President’s real intentions, including:

--Saying the war is about oil...

--Claiming the Bush administration has “manufactured” evidence against Saddam Hussein and used that evidence to encourage Britain and other allies to join the American fight against Iraq;

--Doubt must be raised as to America’s true position within the world community and the true intent of the Bush administration in waging war.”

--The war on terrorism is a failure because Osama bin Laden is still at large.

--America is unprepared for another terrorist attack because of White House preoccupation with Iraq

***Democratic sources say the talking points were developed by Democratic Chairman Terry McAuliffe, former Clinton campaign strategist James Carville, Senate Majority Leader Daschle and former House Democratic Leader Gephardt.***

   “..a classic, Jim Carville, scorched earth campaign.”

[RonDog]

"Hugh Hewitt" PING, please! :o)

[RonDog]

Remember THIS?

[JohnHuang2]

Hugh Hewitt MEGA PING!!!

[annyokie]

Thanks for da ping!

[JohnHuang2]

Welcome ;)

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[JohnHuang2]

Welcome, friend :)

[MJY1288]

Thanks for the ping John

[JohnHuang2]

Welcome, friend

[blackie]

Very Good Stuff ... Bump!

Be Well - Be Armed - Be Safe - Molon Labe!