John,
Here's the article I mentioned, along with another that sheds some light on the mendacity of this administration:
Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed this week that Rice had asked, in her private meetings with the commission, to revise a statement she made publicly that "I don't think anybody could have predicted that those people could have taken an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center . . . that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." Rice told the commission that she misspoke; the commission has received information that prior to Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence agencies and Clarke had talked about terrorists using airplanes as missileshttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25177-2004Mar25.html here's another, highlighting their hypocrisy, in this instance:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/04/30/terrorism.state.dept For the second year in a row, the State Department warned that South Asia "remained a focal point for terrorism directed against the United States" and said trends in terrorism continue to shift from the Middle East to South Asia.
........
Unlike last year's report, bin Laden's al Qaeda organization is mentioned, but the 2000 report does not contain a photograph of bin Laden or a lengthy description of him and the group. A senior State Department official told CNN that the U.S. government made a mistake last year by focusing too tightly on bin Laden and "personalizing terrorism ... describing parts of the elephant and not the whole beast."Do you find it just the slightest bit odd that we don't hear anything about articles like these?
I'm the person who called in to your show today about Condoleeza Rice's "testimony."
I think you're usually pretty reasonable, but today's uncritical reading of that Wall Street Journal editorial was pretty disingenuous, as well as your criticism of Clarke for "apologizing." I pay very close attention to what's been said about Clarke, and you seem to have bought into the Right Wing spin on his presumptuousness
You might want to try to get some of the 911 widows on your show, and see what THEY think of Clarke, versus what they think of Condi Rice, or our "President," and how they've dragged their feet at EVERY stage of
the commission's lifespan. They surrounded him after his testimony, and are convinced that he's the ONLY one, either commissioner, or testifier, who WANTS to get to the bottom of what happened, in order that we can STOP it from happening again.
You made fun of the process of investigating what happened, by the way, insinuating that it's devolved into a political game, which is another right wing canard. Someone IS to blame, and it's important to find out WHO it is, whether it be Clinton, Bush, or some combination thereof. I can only hope that you were as uninterested in delving into Clinton's sex life six years ago.
Now.....why do you suppose that the above articles have gotten NO exposure, no discussion over the last five days, when all we hear is how venal Clarke is, how unreliable his testimony is. He DID testify under oath, and, subsequently, has asked for his previous testimony to be released.....ALL of it. He has nothing to hide, unlike this administration.
I admit my "bias," if you will, but I care DEEPLY that we are doing very little to prevent a repetition of 911....doomed to replay Santayana's famous warning. And I could not care LESS who is forced to bear the brunt of culpability, especially if it turns out that they LIED to the American people about what they knew, what they did, and, more importantly, what they did NOT do.
You wondered, sarcastically, where you could've found something else to read, in contrast to the WSJ......well, how about this?
sorry for the length of this, but I fee passionately that we're being LIED to, and lied to all the time,. about almost everything by this government:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/30/opinion/30KRUG.html?thLast week an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin said, "This isn't America; the government did not invent intelligence material nor exaggerate the description of the threat to justify their attack."
So even in Israel, George Bush's America has become a byword for deception and abuse of power. And the administration's reaction to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies" provides more evidence of something rotten in the state of our government.
The truth is that among experts, what Mr. Clarke says about Mr. Bush's terrorism policy isn't controversial. The facts that terrorism was placed on the back burner before 9/11 and that Mr. Bush blamed Iraq despite the lack of evidence are confirmed by many sources — including "Bush at War," by Bob Woodward.
And new evidence keeps emerging for Mr. Clarke's main charge, that the Iraq obsession undermined the pursuit of Al Qaeda. From yesterday's USA Today: "In 2002, troops from the Fifth Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures."
That's why the administration responded to Mr. Clarke the way it responds to anyone who reveals inconvenient facts: with a campaign of character assassination.
Some journalists seem, finally, to have caught on. Last week an Associated Press news analysis noted that such personal attacks were "standard operating procedure" for this administration and cited "a behind-the-scenes campaign to discredit Richard Foster," the Medicare actuary who revealed how the administration had deceived Congress about the cost of its prescription drug bill.
But other journalists apparently remain ready to be used. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer told his viewers that unnamed officials were saying that Mr. Clarke "wants to make a few bucks, and that his own personal life, they're also suggesting that there are some weird aspects in his life, as well." One last thing to mull over: Do you know about the famous Presidential Daily Brief of August 6, 2001, in which he was specifically warned about highjacked airliners, at the very least (they won't release any specific information)?
What was the president's response? He WENT FISHING, and stayed on vacation for another FOUR WEEKS!
Quite a priority, that, yes? Four weeks, John, four weeks on vacation in the face of explicit warnings about highjackings.
Please, John, you have a large audience, to whom you owe the truth.
I did a PS, predicting the three main physical manifestations of her lying, the ones that make her so transparent: the quavery voice, the fluttery eyes, and the headshake
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