Posted on 05/17/2002 7:44:42 AM PDT by Miss Marple
I am posting this information from a reply posted by Dixie Mom on the "America the Right Way" thread. This information deserves a separate post, and is, I believe, very important. What follows is her independent and original research:
1) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence press release regarding the 2002 budget. (note the date)
http://intelligence.senate.gov/010906.htm
SEPTEMBER 6, 2001 PHONE: (202) 224-1700
SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZES INTELLIGENCE SPENDING FOR FISCAL YEAR 2002
Washington, D.C. – The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) today unanimously approved the Intelligence Authorization Bill for Fiscal Year 2002. The bill authorizes funding for intelligence activities and programs and contains legislative provisions related to intelligence.
The bill reflects the Committee's attention to four priority areas to enhance the role of intelligence in our national security strategy: (1) revitalization of the National Security Agency (NSA); (2) correcting deficiencies in human intelligence; (3) addressing the imbalance between intelligence collection and analysis; and (4) rebuilding a robust research and development program for the Intelligence Community. The budget approved by the Committee today reflects an emphasis on these priority areas.
Chairman Graham said, "The funding increase for intelligence contained in this bill represents what must be the first installment of a multi-year effort to correct serious deficiencies that have developed over the past decade in the Intelligence Community. While the end of the Cold War warranted a reordering of national priorities, the continued decline in funding has left us with a diminished ability to address the emerging threats and technological challenges of the 21st Century. The Intelligence Community is our nation's vital early warning system and we must support its mission to the fullest extent possible."Vice Chairman Shelby stated, "I am pleased that the Committee unanimously supported the President's request for intelligence spending. There is no question we must place our ability to collect intelligence around the world at the very top of our national security priorities. I believe that this legislation continues this Committee's commitment to improving our ability to detect and defeat threats to our people and interests at home and abroad. [snip]
2) Senator Rockefeller (a freshman member of the Intelligence Committee, I believe) made the following comment on the Senate floor post-9/11:
http://rockefeller.senate.gov/2001/flrstmt092101.html
Our dread might even turn to despondency if we consider the agonizing possibility that our law enforcement and intelligence establishments might have been able to prevent the horror of last Tuesday if they had adequate mechanisms with which to collaborate on strategy, share information, and assist in investigation and apprehension of men capable of these heinous crimes.
Dixie Mom then comments:
"Perhaps some alert FReeper has already pointed these things out, but, if so, I haven't seen them.
Hope this helps, and keep up the good work, everyone! "
I forgot to say that
The proliferation of oxymorons in recent posts has become comical as of late. : )
So what did those flaming FOOLS on the Intell Committee know and when did you know it??? Inquiring minds want to know...
Click here for the link.
From the report:
The Commission highlighted the Members' concern that ``in addition to traditional weapons such as hijacking and car bombs, terrorists' attacks are ever more likely to include chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons.'' [emphasis added]
Hmmm...it seems that the oh-so-smart demoSTUPIUD-run intelligence committee wasn't all that concerned with hijacking planes in the new and improved sense either! It appears that there real concern was for "chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons"...but, isn't that the "conventional wisdom" these days too?
I would think about this at a different level: we have enemies, we know who they are, we should destroy them, period.
One of the real problems is the whole "CYA" mentality that accompanies the behemouth that is our government. The Senate neutered the intelligence community from utlizing assets (especially unsavory ones) to take measures against people who want to attack us.
If our focus is on supporting the action (overt or covert) with gads of paperwork only to satisfying petty political bickering (or to cessiate the left-wing media's [and, G_d only knows how many human rights nutbag group's] questions about abuses of military power and might), we have already lost.
In the same token, we are WAY TOO concerned about diplomatic posturing; another effect of the burueacratic mentality. I dont' want to feed a superiority complex, but the U.S. is the savior (little "s") of the world. When people (no matter who they are) are hungry, it is the U.S. that feeds them. When people are oppressed, it is the U.S. that frees them. When people want to establish free societies, they look to the U.S. Those same countries join the UN, we get attacked, our innocent citizens are slaughtered and they want to talk about a coalition? F' THAT!
I agree that there is a lot of valuable work, much of which is considered a thankless job, that must be done. I appreciate the hard-working, loyal Americans that are engaged in the day-to-day fight against terror and our enemies. But, a lot of the mass of paperwork to which you allude stems from the aforementioned bureaucratic mentality of supporting, to the most minute detail, our actions.
Therefore, the solution is fairly easy: "take the gloves off" and letting our enemies have it. If a country doesn't like, too bad! If a country wants to cut off oil supplies, fine; we will buy it elsewhere. If said country wants to join up with our enemies, that's fine too; after all said and done, their oil fields will be our oil fields.
Now, I am not saying that we should start a world war, rather we should follow the philosophy that was outlined on 9/20: "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists".
Note: This is not a Israeli-PLO discussion and I agree that the philosophy has been muddy, but I still think that is what we should demand of ALL our government officials, not just the President.
What you've commented on is exactly what Steven Emerson was saying yesterday. He's the terrorism expert who has written extensively about Middle Eastern terrorists at the risk of his own life.
He said this was a major failure of the FBI even more than the CIA and that no dots were connected by the FBI, whose job this was. The FBI fell down on the job here.
And why, I would like to know, did Louis Freeh resign from his position just weeks before 9-11? Why is that man not being held accountable for what happened? How did he slip off the radar?
Why are fingers pointing at the President, when he was not informed by the intelligence community?
I wrote this yesterday on another thread:
Listening to Steven Emerson now on MSNBC, very reasonable, trying to explain to the anchor how W is now taking the rap for the FBI not being able to put this all together before 9-11. It would have required someone at the FBI putting all the pieces together and no one did that! This information did not even make it past the mid-level analyst level. The FBI failed to inform the President.
I also posted this yesterday: As Boyden Gray (former counsel to x41) was just saying on MSNBC, this war between the CIA and the FBI is one of the great turf wars ever, and the press needs to help the President with this struggle between those 2 agencies, both of which fell down on the job over 9-11.
Instead all the press does is carp and blame the President. Also Gray says the media need to jump on this bandwagon and help the President investigate this, instead of doing what they're doing.
The FBI and the CIA both must be reformed. They have failed this country miserably.
AND remember x42 put deutsch in charge of the CIA and before any one could be recruited to work for us, they had to be approved by deutsch's office their background had to be as pure as a preachers. What we needed were people who were less than pure and really didn't like their government.
AND as pure as deutsch wanted our spies to be, he downloaded our cia secrets into his own unsecured computers. So much for the democrats and their "purity" and love of America.
And at least per public statements, it has never been identified who accessed those records while he was elsewhere - though we know they were accessed.
If he hadn't defected the Republicans would still have been in charge of the Senate's Intelligence Committee through all of 2001.
Continuity of leadership might have helped the committee's investigations into terrorism.
Time to get back to the good fight though.
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