Listen to Al! Sell Some LEAPS? March 31, 2004January 21, 2017 THE O’FRANKEN FACTOR Live today in streaming audio on AirAmericaRadio from 12-3pm . . . or listen the old-fashioned way, in New York (WLIB, 1190AM), LA (KBLA, 1580AM), Chicago (WNTD, 950AM), Portland (KPOJ, 620AM), Inland Empire, CA (KCAA, 1050AM), or on XM Radio Channel 167. ENJOY! SLOWLY BUT SURELY THE PENDULUM SWINGS . . . Jim Skinnell: ‘I agree – I see a pattern starting here and it’s not heading in the direction that I want the country to head in. I’m not yet willing to call myself a Democrat, but I’m becoming increasing uncomfortable associating myself with the Republicans. Unless everyone else really falls on their faces, Bush will not have my vote in November. I realize I’m just one person, but I still can’t see how anyone in his right mind can look at all of the data and not see that there is a pretty good chance that the allegations are correct.’ AND IT’S NOT JUST RICHARD CLARKE Michael Irwin: ‘Click here.’ ☞ In part: ‘The most damaging remarks came from Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until Oct. 1, 2001.’ FREE HEARINGS Bruce Stephenson: ‘Thanks for pointing out that the 9/11 Commission Hearings are available for free at audible.com. I wanted to also point out that C-SPAN has the video of these hearings archived here.’ OUR STOCKS Not too much going on with the stocks that have been suggested here from time to time . . . ‘Patience, Jackass, patience!’ . . . but the Apple LEAPS suggested on November 25 have a little more than doubled, so this could be a good time to sell half, taking your own money off the table and playing with the ‘house’s money’ from here out. [If the ‘patience’ reference is not fresh in your mind, you could click here (and scroll down a ways) for an explanation . . . or just know it is the punch line to a silly joke that 49 years later amuses me still.]
Democrats Are Wimps March 30, 2004January 21, 2017 TRACKLE: A COOL NEW TOOL FOR INFO-SURFING I knew I was onto something. J.D. Lasica knows way more about technology than I ever will, and he likes Trackle, too. Marc Fest has done it again,’ he writes, ‘with a tool that I’m increasingly using instead of RSS feeds. It’s called Trackle, and it keeps track of up to 25 blogs or websites, sending you updates on a daily or hourly basis. You can set the frequency at, say, 8 am each day, or 8 am and 3 pm, or more often. In Trackle, all the graphics and typography is stripped away, leaving you with a plain-vanilla text feed of everything that has been updated since it last checked the page. I find Trackle more convenient than RSS feeds because it combines all the pages you want into one long html email, complete with live hyperlinks. . . . [I]n the past I’ve felt that the dozens of updates on dozens of blogs throughout the day was too overwhelming to keep tabs on. (Cue throbbing temples.) Trackle helps me manage my day, keeping on top of conversations in the blogosphere, and in various media, about topics of interest. In that way it’s more timely and provides more relevant results than Google Alerts. ☞ Marc, as you may know, is our webmaster. You pay top dollar (I’m speaking of you here, not me; I am congenitally incapable of paying top dollar), you get the best. DEMOCRATS ARE WIMPS Writes a prominent Republican who will be voting for Kerry in November: ‘Look, I’m not saying ALL Democrats are worthless. Paul Krugman is great. So is that blogger Atrios, and certainly lots of activists and such. But the ones holding office mostly seem pretty pitiful whiners. Given what Bush and his people have done to America over the last couple of years—and adding in Clarke’s recent revelations—the Democrats should be talking about sending the whole Administration to the gallows, and instead they’re saying things like ‘George Bush isn’t nearly as strong on National Security as he claims to be.’ Pathetic!’ AL FRANKEN STARTS WEDNESDAY Well, one guy who’s not going to take it anymore is Al Franken and the new Air America Radio network. Al’s daily 3-hour show, The O’Franken Factor (‘sue me again, please, Bill!’), begins airing Wednesday in four major markets – New York (WLIB 1190AM), Chicago (WNTD 950AM), Los Angeles (KBLA 1580AM) and San Francisco (to be announced). ‘I’m so happy that Air America Radio will be on in three battleground states, New York, Illinois and California….no wait…those aren’t battleground states. What the hell are we doing?” said Franken. Click here for the programming schedule.
A Possible Pattern March 29, 2004January 21, 2017 First no one in the Bush Administration, including Condi Rice, has any recollection that there even was the September 12 meeting with President Bush that former Counter-Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke describes. Now Condi tells ’60 Minutes’ – with great assurance – that Richard Clarke’s recollection of what the President said at that meeting is wrong. If neither she nor Bush remembers the meeting, how does she know what the President didn’t say to Clarke? (If you were in a meeting with the President of the United States, might you not recall what he said?) Is there not just the tiniest possibility that Clarke is telling it like it was . . . and that Condi is standing by her man? The tiniest possibility that President Bush really did divert attention and resources to Iraq that should have remained focused on Al-Qaeda? The remotest chance that Bush was lying when he promised a ‘humble foreign policy?’ (I ask this last question in light of the fact that as early as the very first National Security Council meeting, just 12 days after the Inauguration, virtually all attention was focused on Iraq. Take a look. Four of the five agenda items directly name Iraq, including: ‘Political-Military Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq Crisis.’ Meanwhile, not one of the five items concerns Osama, even though Bush had been told 24 days earlier that Osama represented a ‘tremendous’ and ‘immediate’ threat to the United States.) Is there any chance Bush was not truthful when he told America that ‘by far, the vast majority of the help’ from the tax cuts he was proposing would go ‘to the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder?’ (In fact, by far the vast majority went to people at the top.) Could he have been fibbing when he said that his S.E.C.-required insider-trading form had been ‘lost’ for eight months? (I ask because, as egregiously illegal as his insider trading would appear to have been – much worse than Martha Stewart’s – it is ‘obstruction of justice’ that seems to have Martha headed off to jail.) Is it conceivable that the President – relentless in trying to associate Saddam Hussein with Al-Qaeda and 9/11 – knew better, as Clarke and others allege? That he had been planning to get Saddam from the start? (A worthy plan, perhaps; but why not share it with the people who’d have to pay, and in some cases, die for it? Namely, average Americans. The only sacrifice wealthy Americans were asked to accept was a massive tax cut.) Is it possible that the President and his folks knew they were ruthlessly assassinating John McCain’s character in the South Carolina primary to win power at any cost? Ruthlessly assassinating Al Gore’s character in the general election to win power at any cost? If so, why is anyone surprised that they would attempt to ruthlessly assassinate Richard Clarke’s character, or former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s or Senator Max Cleland’s or Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s (outing his deep-undercover CIA operative wife in the process) – or, now, Senator John Kerry’s – to retain power at any cost? I don’t mean to be harsh, but it’s almost as if there’s a pattern here. FREE HEARINGS If you haven’t been able to listen live, the 9/11 Commission Hearings are available free at audible.com. THE COST OF THE WAR This is just one way to look at it. But it’s pretty powerful nonetheless, and perhaps worth that look. Tomorrow: Trackle! Democrats Are Wimps! The O’Franken Factor!
Transcripts March 25, 2004February 24, 2017 Brian Clark: ‘I, too, continue to trade with Ameritrade – not because they still have a great price, but because they do it right. No extra charges, no gimmicks, $11 bucks a trade, period.’ This concludes the financial portion of today’s reading. The rest is optional. But for those interested in the integrity and security of our nation – or who may have missed the ’60 Minutes’ interview Sunday, or a short but equally compelling, complementary CNN interview, there is a lot to read. Indeed, let’s take Friday off . . . read this over the weekend if that better fits your schedule. 1. Kay implores US to admit mistakes in Iraq By Missy Ryan, Reuters, 3/23/2004 CAMBRIDGE — The former chief US weapons inspector in Iraq warned yesterday that the United States is in “grave danger” of destroying its credibility at home and abroad if it does not own up to its mistakes in Iraq. “The cost of our mistakes . . . with regard to the explanation of why we went to war in Iraq are far greater than Iraq itself,” David Kay said in a speech at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “We are in grave danger of having destroyed our credibility internationally and domestically with regard to warning about future events,” he said. “The answer is to admit you were wrong, and what I find most disturbing around Washington . . . is the belief . . . you can never admit you’re wrong.” Kay’s comments came as the White House sought to fend off accusations from its former antiterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, who said President Bush ignored the Al Qaeda threat before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and focused on Iraq, rather than on the Islamic militant group, afterward. . . . # 2. Floor Statement of Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle on the Administration Attacking Good People for Telling the Truth, 3/23/2004 I want to talk this morning about a disturbing pattern of conduct by the people around President Bush. They seem to be willing to do anything for political purposes, regardless of the facts and regardless of what’s right. I don’t have the time this morning to talk in detail about all the incidents that come to mind. Larry Lindsay, for instance, seems to have been fired as the President’s Economic Advisor because he spoke honestly about the costs of the Iraq War. General Shinseki seems to have become a target when he spoke honestly about the number of troops that would be needed in Iraq. There are many others, who are less well known, who have also faced consequences for speaking out. U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers was suspended from her job when she disclosed budget problems that our nation’s parks are less safe, and Professor Elizabeth Blackburn was replaced on the Council on Bioethics because of her scientific views on stem-cell research. Each of these examples deserves examination, but they are not my focus today. Instead, I want to talk briefly about four other incidents that are deeply troubling. When former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill stepped forward to criticize the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy, he was immediately ridiculed by the people around the President and his credibility was attacked. Even worse, the Administration launched a government investigation to see if Secretary O’Neill improperly disclosed classified documents. He was, of course, exonerated, but the message was clear. If you speak freely, there will be consequences. Ambassador Joseph Wilson also learned that lesson. Ambassador Wilson, who by all accounts served bravely under President Bush in the early 1990s, felt a responsibility to speak out on President Bush’s false State of the Union statement on Niger and uranium. When he did, the people around the President quickly retaliated. Within weeks of debunking the President’s claim, Ambassador Wilson’s wife was the target of a despicable act. Her identity as a deep-cover CIA agent was revealed to Bob Novak, a syndicated columnist, and was printed in newspapers around the country. That was the first time in our history, I believe, that the identity and safety of a CIA agent was disclosed for purely political purposes. It was an unconscionable and intolerable act. Around the same time Bush Administration officials were endangering Ambassador Wilson’s wife, they appear to have been threatening another federal employee for trying to do his job. In recent weeks Richard Foster, an actuary for the Department of Health and Human Services, has revealed that he was told he would be fired if he told Congress and the American people the real costs of last year’s Medicare bill. Mr. Foster, in an e-mail he wrote on June 26 of last year, said the whole episode had been “pretty nightmarish.” He wrote: “I’m no longer in grave danger of being fired, but there remains a strong likelihood that I will have to resign in protest of the withholding of important technical information from key policymakers for political purposes.” Think about those words. He would lose his job if he did his job. If he provided the information the Congress and the American people deserved and were entitled to, he would lose his job. When did this become the standard for our government? When did we become a government of intimidation? And now, in today’s newspapers, we see the latest example of how the people around the President react when faced with facts they want to avoid. The White House’s former lead counter-terrorism advisor, Richard Clarke, is under fierce attack for questioning the White House’s record on combating terrorism. Mr. Clarke has served in four White Houses, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s Administration, and earned an impeccable record for his work. Now the White House seeks to destroy his reputation. The people around the President aren’t answering his allegations; instead, they are trying to use the same tactics they used with Paul O’Neill. They are trying to ridicule Mr. Clarke and destroy his credibility, and create any diversion possible to focus attention away from his serious allegations. The purpose of government isn’t to make the President look good. It isn’t to produce propaganda or misleading information. It is, instead, to do its best for the American people and to be accountable to the American people. The people around the President don’t seem to believe that. They have crossed a line-perhaps several lines-that no government ought to cross. We shouldn’t fire or demean people for telling the truth. We shouldn’t reveal the names of law enforcement officials for political gain. And we shouldn’t try to destroy people who are out to make country safer. I think the people around the President have crossed into dangerous territory. We are seeing abuses of power that cannot be tolerated. The President needs to put a stop to it, right now. We need to get to the truth, and the President needs to help us do that. # 3. CBS 60 Minutes – Lesley Stahl Interviews Richard Clarke 3/21/04 Lesley Stahl: Right now, a special presidential commission is investigating whether the attacks on the world trade center and the pentagon on September 11, 2001, were preventable. There are few people in a better position to answer that question than Richard Clarke, the administration’s former top advisor on counter-terrorism, who left the White House last year. Clarke has helped shape U.S. Policy on terrorism since the 1980s, when he got his first presidential appointment from Ronald Reagan. Clarke went on to serve the first President Bush, was held over by President Clinton to be his terrorism czar, then held over again by president George W. Bush. In testimony before the 9/11 commission later this week and in a new book to be published tomorrow, Against All Enemies, Clarke will tell the story of what happened behind the scenes at the White House before, during, and after September 11. He does so first, tonight, on “60 minutes.” Stahl: When the terrorists struck on the morning of 9/11, it was thought that the White House would be the next target, and the building was evacuated. Richard Clarke: It went from hundreds of people in the White House, a hubbub of activity, to only a few people. Stahl: Richard Clarke was one of only a handful of people who stayed behind. He ran the government’s response to the attacks from the situation room in the west wing. Clarke: Well, I kept thinking of the words from “apocalypse now,” the whispered words of Marlon Brando, when he thought about Vietnam– “the horror, the horror”– because we knew what was going on in New York. We knew about the bodies flying out of the windows, people falling through the air. We knew that Osama bin Laden had succeeded in bringing horror to the streets of America. Stahl: After the president returned to the White House on 9/11, he and his top advisors, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin laden and al Qaeda, but was surprised that the talk quickly turned to another target. You relate a conversation you had with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Clarke: Well, Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq. And… and… we all aid, but no, no, al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan.” And Rumsfeld said, there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq.” I said, “well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.” Stahl: You wrote, you thought he was joking. Clarke: Oh, initially, I thought when he said there aren’t enough targets in… in Afghanistan, I thought he was joking. Stahl: Now what was your reaction to all of this Iraq talk? What did you tell everybody? Clarke: Well, what I said was, you know, invading Iraq or bombing Iraq, after we’re attacked by somebody else, you know, it’s akin to what Franklin Roosevelt did after Pearl Harbor. Instead of going to war with Japan, he said, “Let’s invade Mexico.” You know, it’s very analogous. Stahl: Yeah, but didn’t they think that there was a connection? Clarke: No. I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the C.I.A. as sitting there, the F.B.I. Was sitting there, I was sitting there, saying we’ve looked at this issue for years. For years we’ve looked, and there’s just no connection. Stahl: And you told them that? Clarke: Absolutely. Stahl: You, personally? Clarke: I told them that. George Tenet told them that. Stahl: Who did you tell? Clarke: I told that to the group, to the secretary of state, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General. They all knew it. Stahl: In fact, you talk about a conversation you personally had with the president. Clarke: Yes, the president. We’re in the situation room complex. The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, “I want you to find whether Iraq did this.” Now he never said, “Make it up,” but the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this. Stahl: Didn’t you tell him that you’d looked and … and there’d been no connection? Clarke: I said… I said, “Mr. President,” we’ve done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There’s no connection.” He came back at me and said, “Iraq, Saddam, find out if there’s a connection,” and in a very intimidating way. I mean, that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report. Stahl: You… in other words, you did go back and look? Clarke: We went back again and we looked. Stahl: You did. And was it a serious look? Did you really… Clarke: It was a serious look. We got together all the F.B.I. Experts, all the C.I.A. Experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, “Will you sign this report?” They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president, and it got bounced by the national security advisor or deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, “wrong answer.” Stahl: Come on. Clarke: “Do it again.” Stahl: Wrong answer? Clarke: Do it again. Stahl: Did the president see it? Clarke: I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, Leslie, I don’t think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don’t think he sees memos that he doesn’t…wouldn’t like the answer. Stahl: Clarke was the president’s top advisor on terrorism, and yet it wasn’t until 9/11 that he ever got to brief Mr. Bush on the subject. Clarke says that prior to 9/11, this Administration didn’t take the threat seriously. Clarke: We had a terrorist organization that was going after us, al Qaeda. That should have been the first item on the agenda. And it was pushed back and back and back for months. Stahl: You’re about to testify publicly before a committee that wants to know if the Bush administration dropped the ball. What are you going to tell the committee when they ask you that? Clarke: Well, there’s a lot of blame to go around, and I probably deserve some blame, too. But on January 24, 2001, I wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice, asking for, urgently–underlined urgently-a cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack. And that urgent memo wasn’t acted on. Stahl: Do you blame her for not understanding the significance of terrorism? Clarke: I blame the entire Bush leadership for continuing to work on cold war issues when they were back in power in 2001. It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier. They came back, they wanted to work on the same issues right away– Iraq, star wars — not new issues that… the new threats that had developed over the preceding eight years. Stahl: Clarke finally got his meeting to brief about al Qaeda in April, three months after his urgent request. But it wasn’t with the president or the cabinet. It was with the number twos in each relevant department. For the pentagon, that was Paul Wolfowitz. Clarke: I began saying, “we have to deal with bin laden, we have to deal with al Qaeda.” Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, said, “no, no, no. We don’t have to deal with al Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.” And I said, “Paul, there hasn’t been any Iraqi terrorism against the united states in eight years.” And I turned to the deputy director of the C.I.A. And said, “Isn’t that right?” And he said, “Yeah, that’s right. There is no Iraqi terrorism against the United States.” Stahl: In eight years. Clarke: In eight years. Stahl: Now, explain that. He explained that there was no Iraqi terrorism against the United States after 1993, when Saddam Hussein attempted to assassinate the first president Bush while he was visiting Kuwait. Clarke: We responded to that by blowing up Iraqi intelligence headquarters, and by sending a very clear message through diplomatic channels to the Iraqis, saying, “if you do any terrorism against the United States again, it won’t just be Iraqi intelligence headquarters. It’ll be your whole government.” It was a very chilling message. And apparently it worked, because there’s absolutely no evidence, since that day, of Iraqi terrorism directed against the United States, until we invaded them. Now there’s Iraqi terrorism against the United States. Stahl: Was there any connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda? Clarke: Were they cooperating? No. Stahl: Was Iraq supporting al Qaeda? Clarke: No. There’s absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever. Stahl: But you know, you call certain people in the administration, and they’ll say that’s still open. That’s an open issue. Clarke: Well, they’ll say that until hell freezes over. Stahl: By June, 2001, there still hadn’t been a cabinet- level meeting on terrorism, even though the U.S. Intelligence community was picking up an unprecedented level of ominous chatter. The C.I.A. Director warned the White House. Clarke: George tenet was saying to the White House, saying to the president–because he briefed him every morning– a major al Qaeda attack is going to happen against the united states somewhere in the world in the weeks and months ahead. He said that in June, July, August. Stahl: The last time the C.I.A. Had picked up a similar level of intelligence chatter was back in December 1999, when Clarke was the terrorism czar in the Clinton White House. Clarke says President Clinton ordered his cabinet to go to battle stations, meaning, they went on high alert, holding meetings nearly every day. That, Clarke says, helped thwart a major attack on Los Angeles international airport, when this al Qaeda operative was stopped at the border with Canada, driving a car full of explosives. Clarke harshly criticizes President Bush for not going to battle stations when the C.I.A. warned him of a comparable threat in the months before 9/11. Clarke: He never thought it was important enough for him to hold a meeting on the subject, or for him to order his national security advisor to hold a cabinet-level meeting on the subject. Stahl: Why would having a meeting make a difference? Clarke: If you compare December ’99 to June and July of 2001, in December ’99, every day or every other day the head of the FBI, the head of the CIA, the attorney general, had to go to the White House and sit in a meeting and report on all the things they personally had done to stop the al Qaeda attack. So they were going back every night to their departments and shaking the trees, personally, finding out all the information. If that had happened in July 2001, we might have found out in the White House, the attorney general might have found out that there were al Qaeda operatives in the United States. FBI at lower levels knew. Never told me. Never told the highest levels in the F.B.I. Stahl: The FBI and the C.I.A. Knew that these two al Qaeda operatives, both among the 9/11 hijackers, had been living in the U.S. Since 2000, yet neither agency passed that information up the chain of command or told Dick Clarke, as the White House terrorism coordinator. Clarke: Here I am in the White House, saying, “something’s about to happen. Tell me, you know… if A… if a sparrow falls from the tree, I want to know, if anything unusual is going on, because we’re about to be hit.” Stahl: No one told you. No one told you? Clarke: The FBI knows they’re in the country. Lesley, if we had put their picture on the “CBS Evening News,” if we had put their picture on Dan Rather, on “U.S.A. Today,” we could have caught those guys. And then we might have been able to pull that thread, and… and get more of the conspiracy. I’m not saying we could have stopped 9/11, but we could have at least had a chance. Stahl: But as we all know, the al Qaeda sleeper cell was left free to plan the 9/11 attack, while Dick Clarke kept agitating for the high-level White House meeting he’d been seeking. Stahl: You finally did get your cabinet-level meeting, finally. When did that meeting take place? Clarke: The cabinet meeting I asked for right after the inauguration took place one week prior to 9/11. Stahl: When he got his meeting on September 4, he proposed a plan to bomb al Qaeda’s sanctuary in Afghanistan, and to kill Osama bin Laden. Same plan he tried to persuade the Clinton administration to adopt to no avail. When we come back, Clarke’s view of the when we come back, his view of the president’s actions after 9/11, and the White House view of Clarke. Stahl: Richard Clarke served in the Reagan, Bush one, and Clinton administrations, before he became George W. Bush’s top official on counter-terrorism. In a new book, he says that the Bush administration should have, and could have, taken out al Qaeda and its training camps in Afghanistan long before the attacks of September 11. He also says the fact that Osama bin Laden is still at large is another major failure, made possible by what he calls the administration’s sluggish response to 9/11. Clarke’s book, in effect an indictment of the president’s handling of the war on terrorism, arrives just as Mr. Bush is beginning to hit the campaign trail in earnest. Bush ad: “I’m George W. Bush and I approve this message.” Stahl: The president’s new campaign ads highlight his handling of 9/11. He’s making it the centerpiece of his bid for reelection. You are writing this book in the middle of this campaign. The timing, I’m sure, you will be questioned about and criticized for. Why are you doing it now? Clarke: Well, I’m sure I’ll be criticized for lots of things, and I’m sure they’ll launch their dogs on me. But frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is running for reelection on the grounds that he’s done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe we’ll never know. Stahl: Does a person who works in the White House owe the president his loyalty? Clarke: Yes. Stahl: Well, this is not a loyal book. I’m sorry. Clarke: No, no, I know. It… just up to a point, up to a point. When the president starts doing things that risk American lives, then loyalty to him has to be put aside. And the way… Stahl: You think he risked American lives? Clarke: I think the way he has responded to al Qaeda, both before 9/11 by doing nothing, and by what he’s done after 9/11, has made us less safe. Absolutely. Stahl: Don’t you think he handled himself… hit all the right notes after 9/11-showed strength, got us through it? You don’t give him credit for that? Clarke: He gave a really good speech the week after 9/11. Stahl: You don’t give him credit for anything. Nothing. Clarke: I think he’s done a terrible job on the war against terrorism. Stahl: That may be the most serious indictment yet of the administration’s handling of terrorism, since it comes from the president’s own former terrorism advisor. It’s not a surprise that the number two man on the president’s national security counsel, Stephen Hadley, vehemently disagrees with Clarke. He says the president has taken the fight to the terrorists and is hardening the homeland. Stahl: Dick Clarke, he was the administration’s top official on counter-terrorism. How would you describe the job he did? Hadley: Look, Dick is very dedicated, very knowledgeable about this issue. When the president came into office, one of the decisions we made was to keep Mr. Clarke and his counter-terrorism group intact, bring them into the new administration. Stahl: He says Clarke did a good job, but is just dead wrong when he says the president didn’t heed the warnings about al Qaeda before the attacks on 9/11. Hadley: The president heard those warnings. The president got… met daily with his chief of intelligence, the director of central intelligence, George Tenet and his staff. They kept him fully informed, and at one point the president became somewhat impatient with us and said, “I’m tired of swatting flies. Where’s my new strategy to eliminate al Qaeda?” Stahl: Hadley says that contrary to Clarke’s assertion, the president didn’t ignore the ominous intelligence chatter in the summer of 2001. Hadley: All the chatter was of an attack, a potential al Qaeda attack overseas. But interestingly enough, the president got concerned about whether there was the possibility of an attack on the homeland. He asked the intelligence community, “Look hard. See if we’re missing something about a threat to the homeland.” And at that point, various alerts went out from the federal aviation administration to the FBI, saying the intelligence suggests a threat overseas. We don’t want to be caught unprepared. We don’t want to rule out the possibility of a threat to the homeland. And therefore preparatory steps need to be made. So the president put us on battle stations. Stahl: Now, he’s the top terrorism official in this administration at that point. He says you didn’t go to battle stations. Hadley: Well, I think that’s just wrong. Stahl: He also says Clarke was wrong when he said the president pressured him to find a link between Iraq and 9/11. Hadley: We cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the president ever occurred. Stahl: Now, can I interrupt you for one second. We have done our own work on that ourselves, and we have two sources who tell us independently of Dick Clarke that there was this encounter. One of them was an actual witness. Hadley: Look, I stand on what I said. But the point I think we’re missing in this is, of course, the president wanted to know if there was any evidence linking Iraq to 9/11. Stahl: So he’s not denying the president asked for another review, nor is he denying that Clarke wrote a memo stating once again that Iraq was not involved in 9/11. In fact, the White House showed us the memo dated September 18. As Clarke said, it was bounced back. The notation reads: “Please update and resubmit.” And it was written by Stephen Hadley. Hadley: I asked him to go back- not “wrong answer.” I asked him to go back and check it again a week or two later to make sure there was no new emerging evidence that Iraq was involved. That’s what I was asking him to do. Stahl: Hadley says the whole issue about Iraq was moot by the time Clarke submitted his memo, since the president, at a meeting with his war cabinet at Camp David, had already decided to focus the U.S. Response to 9/11 on Afghanistan, which is what Clarke had been recommending. But Clarke says it was not moot, because the administration wanted to make Iraq phase two of the response, no mater what happened in Afghanistan. Bush video clip: You can’t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror. Stahl: Clarke contends that with statements like that, the president continually left an impression that Saddam had been involved in 9/11. Clarke: The White House carefully manipulated public opinion. Never quite lied, but gave the very strong impression that Iraq did it. Stahl: Yeah, but you’re suggesting here that they knew better, and it was deliberate. Clarke: They did know better. They did know better. We told them. The CIA told them. The FBI told them. They did know better. And the tragedy here is that Americans went to their deaths in Iraq thinking they were avenging September 11, when Iraq had nothing to do with September 11. I think for a commander in chief and a vice president to allow that to happen is unconscionable. Stahl: And he thinks the president, to this day, misinterprets the nature and the essence of the terrorist threat. Clarke: He asked us after 9/11 to give him cards with pictures of the major al Qaeda leaders and tell us when they were arrested or killed so he could draw x’s through their pictures. And you know, I write in the book, I have this image of George Bush sitting by a warm fireplace in the White House drawing x’s through al Qaeda leaders, and thinking that he’s got most of them, and therefore he’s taken care of the problem. And while George Bush thinks he’s crossing them out one by one, there are all these new al Qaeda people who are being recruited who hate the united states in large measure because of what Bush has done. Stahl: He says that the war in Iraq has not only inflamed anti-Americanism in the Arab world, it drained resources away from the fight in Afghanistan and the push to eliminate Osama bin Laden. Hadley: It’s not correct. Iraq, as the president has said, is at the center of the war on terror. We have narrowed the ground available to al Qaeda and to the terrorists. Their sanctuary in Afghanistan is gone. Their sanctuary in Iraq is gone. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are now allies on the war on terror. So Iraq has contributed in that way in narrowing the sanctuaries available to terrorists. Stahl: Don’t you think that Iraq, the Middle East, and the world is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power? Clarke: I think that… Stahl: It’s a widely held view that… Clarke: Lesley, I think the world would be better off if a number of leaders around the world were out of power. The question is, what price should the United States pay? The price we paid was very, very high, and we’re still paying that price for doing it. Stahl: What do you mean? Clarke: Osama bin Laden had been saying for years, America wants to invade an Arab country and occupy it, an oil-rich Arab country. He had been saying this. This is part of his propaganda. So what did we do after 9/11? We invade an oil-rich country and occupy and oil-rich Arab country which was doing nothing to threaten us. In other words, we stepped right into bin Laden’s propaganda. And the result of that is that al Qaeda and organizations like it, offshoots of it, second- generation al Qaeda, have been greatly strengthened. Stahl: Exhibit “A,” he now says, is the attack on the passenger trains in Madrid, the deadliest terrorist attack in Europe since World War II. Dick Clarke worked for Reagan, Bush one, Clinton, and now here. He has a track record. Why do you think a man with those credentials would be so completely critical of the way this administration has handled the war on terrorism? Hadley: Well, I don’t know. I’ve not read Dick’s book. I don’t know what he said about the prior administration, which, again, was in office and dealing with this problem for eight years. We were in office dealing with this problem for 230 days. At the time when he left us, the conversations I had with him was that he was pleased at the leadership provided by the president. Stahl: He did tell you he was pleased when he left? Hadley: My belief was that he appreciated the leadership the president had provided. Stahl: No hint of that in his book or in our interview. When Clarke worked for President Clinton, he was known as the terrorism czar. When George Bush came into office, though he kept Clarke on at the White House, he stripped him of his cabinet-level rank. They demoted you. Aren’t you open to charges that this is all sour grapes because they demoted you and reduced your leverage, your power in the White House? Clarke: Well, frankly if I had been so upset that the national coordinator for counter-terrorism had been downgraded from a cabinet-level position to a staff-level position… if that had bothered me enough, I would have quit. I didn’t quit. Stahl: Not for another two years. He finally resigned last year, after 30 years in government service. A senior White House official told us he thinks Clarke’s book is an audition for a job in the Kerry campaign. Are you working to defeat Bush, and are you working to help Kerry get elected? Clarke: No, I’m not working for Kerry. I’m an independent. I’m not working for the Kerry campaign. Stahl: We’re here at Harvard right now. You teach a course at the Kennedy school with Kerry’s national security advisor, Rand Beers. Clarke: Mm-hmm. I have worked for Ronald Reagan. I have worked for George Bush the first. I have worked for George Bush the second. I’m not participating in this campaign, but I am putting facts out that I think people ought to know. Stahl: Looking back on September 11, the day itself, besides the attacks and the horrible images of those planes hitting, what do you remember? Clarke: I remember trying very hard to keep my emotions in check. I knew people in the pentagon. I knew people in the world trade center. I assumed that friends of mine had died, and in fact it turned out they had. I felt an enormous rage and anger against al Qaeda, but also a rage and anger against the U.S. Government that we hadn’t been able to stop this. Stahl: Well, I’ll tell you something, some of that rage is in this book. Clarke: Well, it should be. Stahl: Over the weekend, we got a note from the pentagon saying, “any suggestion that the president did anything other than act aggressively, quickly, and effectively to address the al Qaeda and Taliban threat in Afghanistan is absurd.” # 4. Clarke on CNN’s American Morning with Bill Hemmer, 3/23/04 HEMMER: They say the best defense is a good offense and the White House was hitting back at its former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke from every angle yesterday. In his new book, Against All Enemies, slamming the White House for its actions, or lack of them, before and after 9/11, Clarke will testify tomorrow before a public hearing at the 9/11 Commission. That panel also hearing from senior members of the Bush and the Clinton administrations. Richard Clarke, our guest here live this morning on AMERICAN MORNING. Nice to see you. Good morning to you. RICHARD CLARKE, AUTHOR, “AGAINST ALL ENEMIES”: Thanks Bill. HEMMER: You paint a picture of a White House obsessed with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Why do you believe that was the case? CLARKE: Well because I was there and I saw it. You know, the White House is papering over facts such as in the weeks immediately after 9/11, the president signed a national security directive instructing the Pentagon to prepare for the invasion of Iraq. Even though they knew at the time from me, from the FBI, from the CIA, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. HEMMER: The White House says before they even arrived at the White House the previous administration was obsessed with nothing — and I want you to look at a picture here that we saw last week from NBC News. An al Qaeda terrorist training camp outside of Kandahar. They allege at the time why wasn’t anything done to take al Qaeda out? This was August of 2000. CLARKE: Well, a great deal was done. The administration stopped the al Qaeda attacks in the United States. And around the world at the millennium period and they stopped al Qaeda in Bosnia. They stopped al Qaeda from blowing up embassies around the world. They authorized covert lethal action by the CIA against al Qaeda. They retaliated with Cruise missile strikes into Afghanistan. They got sanctions on Afghanistan from the United Nations. There was a great deal that the administration did even though at the time, prior to 9/11, al Qaeda had arguably not done a great deal to the United States. If you look at the eight years of the Clinton administration, al Qaeda was responsible for the deaths of fewer than 50 Americans over those eight years. Contrast that with Ronald Reagan where 300 Americans were killed in Lebanon and there was no retaliation. Contrast that with the first Bush administration where 260 Americans were killed on Pan Am 103 and there was no retaliation. I would argue that for what had actually happened prior to 9/11, the Clinton administration was doing a great deal. In fact, so much that when the Bush people came into office they thought I was a little crazy, a little obsessed with this little terrorist bin Laden. Why wasn’t I focused on Iraqi-sponsored terrorism? HEMMER: It seems that this could go for pit for pat and almost a ping-pong match. Show you a couple more images. Two you mentioned a few back to the 1980s, show you the U.S.S. Cole bombing, October 2000 and a few short weeks before the election I saw — eventually George Bush take the White House helm. Prior to that, August 1998 Tanzania, Kenya, the U.S. Embassy bombings there. If you want to go back to Beirut, Lebanon, the early 1980s the White House now was saying go back to 1998, go back to the fall of 2000. CLARKE: Right, and what happened after 1998? There was a military retaliation against al Qaeda and the covert action program was launched, the U.N. sanctions were obtained. The administration did an all-out effort compared to what the Bush administration did. And the Bush administration did virtually nothing during the first months of the administration prior to 9/11. President Bush himself said in a book, when he gave an interview to Bob Woodward, he said I didn’t feel a sense of urgency about al Qaeda. It was not my focus; it was not the focus of my team. He’s saying that. President Bush said that to Bob Woodward. I’m not the first one to say it. HEMMER: In part, but the White House would come back and say but the reason why they suggest that statement is because of what was stated yesterday in “The Washington Post.” Condoleezza Rice wrote, in part, Dr. Rice’s words on the screen now — “No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration.” Is she wrong? CLARKE: Yes, she’s — that’s counter-factual. We presented the plan to her, call it a plan, call it a strategy. We presented it to her before she was even sworn in to office. There are lots of witnesses and it’s just — you know — they’re trying to divert attention from the truth here and they’re trying to get me involved in personal vendettas and all sorts of attacks on my personality, and they’ve got all sorts of people on the taxpayers rolls going around attacking me and attacking the book and writing talking points and distributing them to radio talk shows and whatnot around the country. Now, let’s just look at the facts. The administration had done nothing about al Qaeda prior to 9/11 despite the fact that the CIA director was telling them virtually every day that there was a major threat. HEMMER: I am hearing from some families of the victims from 9/11 — they’re saying if it was such an urgent matter, if you truly believed the White House botched the war on terror, beginning on September 12 why now? On such a critical national/international issue do you write the book in March of 2004? CLARKE: I wrote the book as soon as I retired from government. It was finished last fall, and it sat in the White House for months because as a former White House official my book has to be reviewed by the White House for security purposes. This book could have come out a long time ago, months and months ago, if the White House hadn’t sat on it. HEMMER: The White House is saying you only check the facts when it comes to the book itself on whether or not they are sacrificing national security. CLARKE: They took months and months and months to do it. They’re saying why is the book coming out in the beginning of the election? I didn’t want it to come out at the beginning of the election; I wanted it to come out last year. They’re the reason — because they took so long to clear it. HEMMER: Let me stop you one second here. I want to go back to the issue of Iraq. Condoleezza Rice with Soledad yesterday on AMERICAN MORNING. This is how she phrased this alleged conversation that happened on the 12 of September 2001. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: I can’t recollect such a conversation, but its not surprising that the president wanted to know if we were going to retaliate who — against whom were we going to retaliate. And of course Iraq, given our history, given the fact that they tried to kill a former president, was a likely suspect. (END VIDEO CLIP) HEMMER: There are now questions about this conversation, what happened, what did not happen. On “Sixty Minutes” Sunday night you said this: “Well, there’s a lot of blame to go around. I probably deserve some blame, too.” How do you blame yourself? CLARKE: Well I don’t blame myself for making up the conversation. I didn’t hallucinate. There are four eyewitnesses to the conversation which the president had with me, so it’s very convenient that Dr. Rice and the president are now having a memory lapse, a senior moment. But there are four eyewitnesses who recall vividly what happened, and agree with my interpretation. This is not the president saying do everything, look at everybody, look at Iran, look at Hezbollah. This is the president in a very intimidating way finger in my face saying I want a paper on Iraq and this attack. Now, everyone in the room got the same impression and everyone in the room recalls it vividly. So, I’m not making it up. I don’t have to make it up. It’s part of a pattern with this administration even before they came into office. He was out to get Iraq even though Iraq was not threatening the United States. HEMMER: One final question if I could. Tomorrow you’ll be publicly testifying on Capitol Hill before that 9/11 Commission. What is your message to them that we will hear tomorrow? CLARKE: I think the message is that the United States mechanisms, the FBI, the CIA, the DOD, the White House — failed during both the Clinton administration and during the Bush administration. HEMMER: Richard Clarke, “Against All Enemies,” thank you. Nice to talk to you. CLARKE: Thanks Bill. HEMMER: Soledad? Have a good weekend. See you Monday.
Two Thousand Bottles of Beer on the Wall March 24, 2004January 21, 2017 You don’t see it, but on my screen there’s a number for each of these columns, starting with the very first one I did in 1996 (#1 – ‘An Ode to ATM’s’), the first hundred or so of which, because of ‘technical difficulties’ – sloth – I have never gotten around to including in the archive. Numbers being what they are, I have had some private fun the last few months marching up through history. At #1865 (‘The Utility of Deregulation’), I thought of the end of the Civil War. At #1929 (one of my political rants), I naturally thought about what we all think about when we hear that number. At 1968? (‘What SHOULD The Top 1% Be Taxed?’) Well, it was such a momentous year that a friend of mine even wrote a book about it. Today’s is the two thousandth – although much of the heavy lifting, these past several years, has been done by you, my exceptional readers, whose comments are so frequently more interesting than my own . . . and by people like Paul Krugman and Matt Miller, whose insights I frequently excerpt for the same reason. (But the clickle – #90, June 14, 1996* – was my good idea, and I am clearly due for another one really soon.) *The archive does not go back that far, but it was reprised here. Two thousand columns later, I thought it might be worth taking a minute to recall the genesis of the enterprise. It began with a call from Joe Ricketts, head of a deep-discount brokerage firm called Accutrade that was about to launch an even deeper-discount brokerage then called Ceres, now Ameritrade. Would I write a daily comment for its web site? ‘A daily comment?’ I repeated. (Once a month is pushing it for me.) I was much too busy and important to do this, I explained. ‘We would pay you a lot of money,’ Joe explained. I arrived at his hotel room in New York with a long list of requirements I knew he could never satisfy. Complete editorial freedom; the ability to advise against the frequent trading that would be his firm’s bread and butter; a clear disclaimer that I did not endorse his firm (matched, of course, by a clear disclaimer that his firm did not endorse my comments) . . . and on and on. Oh, and, like, a billion dollars a column, even if it were a 7-word column (‘The market feels a little toppy here – buyer beware’). Joe balked at the billion but offered half a billion, and soon thereafter my first column appeared: Welcome to my ‘daily comment’ [it began]. The ground rules Ceres and I have agreed to are simple. I can write whatever I want, ranging from a sentence to an epic, and nothing is off limits. I can even say things like, ‘Don’t trade stocks yourself – for most people, it’s smarter to invest through no-load mutual funds.’ Which it is. (Not that this has ever stopped me from testing my hand against the pros.) Most days, I’ll presumably write something vaguely related to money, since money is much on my mind. But don’t be amazed by a political screed or two, or a recipe for low-fat lunch. (OK, here it is: take one low-fat Bilinksi chicken sausage, microwave 90 seconds, place across a slice of low-fat bread, drown in ketchup, envelope in your fist, and eat, being careful not to bite off a finger in your enthusiasm – it’s that good.) On the theory that we should start with something simple, like cash, today’s ‘comment’ is an ode to automated teller machines . . . I will spare you the ode but tell you, instead, that Joe and the folks at Ameritrade (where I still do most of my investing, at $11 a trade) were beyond upright and outstanding to deal with. I was pouty and spoiled (I am a writer) and for the first several months actually did begin each comment with the disclaimer that you probably shouldn’t trade stocks, you should just “buy and hold” index funds. What’s more, Joe and I hold very different political views, and I wasn’t shy about what I wrote. And yet the checks came like clockwork. They only stopped because, at the end of the three-year term of our agreement, it would have been insane for Joe to continue paying me. By then – indeed, by about the third week of our deal – what was really attracting customers to Ameritrade was the exceptionally low cost and high convenience it offered, and which I enjoy to this day. I would never have said that five years ago, when they were paying me. But sufficient time may have passed for me to do so now. (I have no doubt some of Ameritrade’s competitors do a good job as well.) Thanks, Ameritrade. As our three-year deal was winding down, in 1999, I realized that the billions of dollars I was being paid were only one reason I’d miss this gig. Against all reason, I had found myself wanting to say something almost every day. And – straining reason ever further – a small but loyal band of readers had chosen to come listen. I had come very much to enjoy, and learn from, their feedback. So I got my wonderfully talented and obliging friend Marc Fest to set me up with my own website, and Ameritrade very graciously encouraged me to ‘port’ my readers from their site to mine – and here, five years later, we are. Thanks, Ameritrade. Thanks, faithful reader. Coming up? ‘2001.’
Selling Some TIPS March 23, 2004February 24, 2017 At 132 or so, up from 99 when we first started discussing them in this space (plus interest and inflation), I’m selling a third of my 30-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (the 3.375’s maturing April 15, 2032). I have one smart friend who thinks they may hit 140. But Jim Grant, who is by no means always right, but who is by all means one of the very smartest guys around, argues that at this price they have lost much of their appeal. If they go straight to 140 and stay there, I’ll be glad I kept two-thirds of them (and maybe then sell more). If, as I believe is more likely, I get the chance to buy them back at 115 or 120 or even 125 in the not too distant future, I will have come out a few bucks ahead. Note that because of the way they are taxed, it makes best sense to own TIPS in a tax-sheltered retirement account, which is where I have mine – so my trading in and out, while it may prove foolish, will not prove taxable. Note also that TIPS prices are quoted without reflecting the inflation factor by which they may have appreciated. In other words, each of my TIPS, with its $1,000 face value at issue, may now have a $1,050 face value because of the past two years’ inflation. (I haven’t checked to see the exact value.) But that’s separate from the price at which they trade. Let’s say that, by 2032, they have grown to a face value of $4,500 each (as they would if, from here on out, inflation compounded at 5.3%). At that point – maturity – they will, by definition, be trading at exactly 100 cents on the dollar, when the Treasury redeems them for $4,500 each. So, in fact, they can’t literally stay at 140 forever, if they should climb that high. They will eventually wend their way back down to ‘par.’ Not a penny more or less than 100% of the by-then face value. Today, though, they trade at about 132% of face value. Not crazy. (At today’s price, held to maturity, you are guaranteed a return of nearly 1.9% above inflation.) But perhaps a little rich. THE BEARS Laurie: ‘Yes, it is Dutch. It says, ‘The bears keep getting smarter.” Bill Spencer: ‘You could go to nobodyhere.com/justme/tower.here to see the bears in English. Better yet, go to nobodyhere.com and click on English so all of the weirdness will be in English. Hours of fun!’ George: ‘The Bears by themselves are fun. The problem is if one clicks on one of the Commentary links, one gets to read some sick messages. You can’t be our big brother in this issue, but please, when possible, warn your readers about what may be lurking behind the basic link someone sends to you for viewing by the rest of us.’ ☞ Beware! (And don’t all click at once.)
Ignoring the Threat March 22, 2004January 21, 2017 Don’t take Paul O’Neill’s word for it. He was just the President’s Treasury Secretary. His experience of the Bush Administration is recounted in The Price of Loyalty. It includes reference to a January 31, 2001 National Security Counsel meeting with the President, only 11 days after the Inauguration. Already Iraq was high on the agenda. Take a look. Four of the five items directly name Iraq, including: ‘Political-Military Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq Crisis.’ (Missing from the agenda is any mention of Osama bin Laden, even though it was just 24 days earlier, on January 7, at Blair House, across the street from the White House, that the President- and Vice President-elect were told by CIA director Tenet that Osama and Al-Qaeda posed a ‘tremendous’ and ‘immediate’ threat to the United States of America. According to Bob Woodward’s generally pro-Bush book, Bush at War, that tremendous, immediate threat was ignored until September 11.) Could then-candidate Bush have been promising the electorate a ‘humble foreign policy’ even as he was planning to ‘do Iraq?’ But, as I say, don’t take Paul O’Neill’s word for it. Now comes Dick Clarke, a 30-year veteran of the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations. President George W. Bush’s chief counter-terrorism adviser, he was the guy left to run the Situation Room after almost everyone else had evacuated the White House on September 11. They more or less left the nation in his care. Not exactly a disgruntled junior staffer. Did you see ’60 Minutes’ last night? Frankly [Clarke tells Lesley Stahl], I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he’s done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We’ll never know. . . . I think he’s done a terrible job on the war against terrorism.” Where Clinton brought his Cabinet to “battle stations” during a period of heavy chatter in 1999 and averted an attack on Los Angeles International Airport, Bush did no such thing during the heavy chatter in the weeks leading up to September 11. (The President was on a month’s vacation after his first six months in office, if memory serves.) And once we did have September 11, the President all but insisted Clarke find way to link it to Iraq. You have to see this interview. Or, failing that, you have to read his book. Tomorrow: Selling Some TIPS
Give It Up for Krugman VHS to DVD March 19, 2004January 21, 2017 Sorry to be late with this. Was still playing with those bears. One last thought on gay marriage lingering from earlier this week – a thought I will admit it took me some time to own, so I blame no one for not finding it immediately congenial. But here it is: This is America, not Afghanistan. Why is it anyone’s business who I want to marry? If the government is handing out civil marriage licenses to people who choose to apply for them, as it hands out driver’s licenses and certificates of occupancy – why not to me? I pay my taxes. Women may have had the same feeling from 1776 through 1920, when they got the vote. This is America. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What’s wrong with that? And now to more important matters. Excerpted from Paul Krugman in the New York Times Tuesday, in case you missed it (emphasis, as always, mine, for busy readers): March 16, 2004 Weak on Terror By PAUL KRUGMAN . . . The Bush administration, which baffled the world when it used an attack by Islamic fundamentalists to justify the overthrow of a brutal but secular regime, and which has been utterly ruthless in its political exploitation of 9/11, must be very, very afraid. Polls suggest that a reputation for being tough on terror is just about the only remaining political strength George Bush has. Yet this reputation is based on image, not reality. The truth is that Mr. Bush, while eager to invoke 9/11 on behalf of an unrelated war, has shown consistent reluctance to focus on the terrorists who actually attacked America, or their backers in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. This reluctance dates back to Mr. Bush’s first months in office. Why, after all, has his inner circle tried so hard to prevent a serious investigation of what happened on 9/11? There has been much speculation about whether officials ignored specific intelligence warnings, but what we know for sure is that the administration disregarded urgent pleas by departing Clinton officials to focus on the threat from Al Qaeda. After 9/11, terrorism could no longer be ignored, and the military conducted a successful campaign against Al Qaeda’s Taliban hosts. But the failure to commit sufficient U.S. forces allowed Osama bin Laden to escape. After that, the administration appeared to lose interest in Al Qaeda; by the summer of 2002, bin Laden’s name had disappeared from Mr. Bush’s speeches. It was all Saddam, all the time. This wasn’t just a rhetorical switch; crucial resources were pulled off the hunt for Al Qaeda, which had attacked America, to prepare for the overthrow of Saddam, who hadn’t. If you want confirmation that this seriously impeded the fight against terror, just look at reports about the all-out effort to capture Osama that started, finally, just a few days ago. Why didn’t this happen last year, or the year before? According to The New York Times, last year many of the needed forces were tied up in Iraq. It’s now clear that by shifting his focus to Iraq, Mr. Bush did Al Qaeda a huge favor. The terrorists and their Taliban allies were given time to regroup; the resurgent Taliban once again control almost a third of Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda has regained the ability to carry out large-scale atrocities . . . Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company And from his column today: March 19, 2004 Taken for a Ride By PAUL KRUGMAN ‘Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” So George Bush declared on Sept. 20, 2001. But what was he saying? Surely he didn’t mean that everyone was obliged to support all of his policies, that if you opposed him on anything you were aiding terrorists. Now we know that he meant just that. A year ago, President Bush, who had a global mandate to pursue the terrorists responsible for 9/11, went after someone else instead. Most Americans, I suspect, still don’t realize how badly this apparent exploitation of the world’s good will – and the subsequent failure to find weapons of mass destruction – damaged our credibility. They imagine that only the dastardly French, and now maybe the cowardly Spaniards, doubt our word. But yesterday, according to Agence France-Presse, the president of Poland – which has roughly 2,500 soldiers in Iraq – had this to say: “That they deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that’s true. We were taken for a ride.” This is the context for last weekend’s election upset in Spain, where the Aznar government had taken the country into Iraq against the wishes of 90 percent of the public. Spanish voters weren’t intimidated by the terrorist bombings – they turned on a ruling party they didn’t trust. When the government rushed to blame the wrong people for the attack, tried to suppress growing evidence to the contrary and used its control over state television and radio both to push its false accusation and to play down antigovernment protests, it reminded people of the broader lies about the war. By voting for a new government, in other words, the Spaniards were enforcing the accountability that is the essence of democracy. But in the world according to Mr. Bush’s supporters, anyone who demands accountability is on the side of the evildoers. . . . This week the Bush campaign unveiled an ad accusing John Kerry of, among other things, opposing increases in combat pay because he voted against an $87 billion appropriation for Iraq. Those who have followed this issue were astonished at the ad’s sheer up-is-down-ism. In fact, the Bush administration has done the very thing it falsely accuses Mr. Kerry of doing: it has tried repeatedly to slash combat pay and military benefits, provoking angry articles in The Army Times with headlines like “An Act of `Betrayal.’ “ Oh, and Mr. Kerry wasn’t trying to block funds for Iraq – he was trying to force the administration, which had concealed the cost of the occupation until its tax cut was passed, to roll back part of the tax cut to cover the expense. But the bigger point is this: in the Bush vision, it was never legitimate to challenge any piece of the administration’s policy on Iraq. Before the war, it was your patriotic duty to trust the president’s assertions about the case for war. Once we went in and those assertions proved utterly false, it became your patriotic duty to support the troops – a phrase that, to the administration, always means supporting the president. At no point has it been legitimate to hold Mr. Bush accountable. And that’s the way he wants it. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Amen. VHS TO DVD Joe Cherner: ‘Just wanted to thank your wonderful readers for their wonderful suggestions awhile back on copying VHS tapes to DVD. The easiest solution is now available from GoVideo. A simple unit that has a VHS slot and a DVD slot. Pop your VHS into the VHS slot. Pop your DVD-R into the DVD slot. Press copy and presto! Done! Exactly what I asked for from the beginning.’
The Bears and the Bushes March 18, 2004January 21, 2017 BEARISH? Where does the estimable Alan Rogowsky find these? Click here. You don’t have to read Dutch (is it Dutch?) to enjoy knocking these guys over and watching them get right back up. It is a triumph to the human spirit. Or in this case, the infant ursine spirit. To innocence! To optimism! GRANNY Marty: ‘Turns out my sister, Rev Emily Preston, knows Granny D. well as she is a member of her church in Dublin, NH. What an inspiration. She’s got me going again.’ BUSH REMEMBERED Dave Dawson: ‘Unfair! How would you like to have your 30 year old opinions played back to you as the gospel. Back then I was to the right of Attila; now I simply somewhat right of you.’ ☞ Love to see you making progress, Dave (grin). I actually tried to write a book about Attila when I was 12. ‘Like demons out of hell they came,’ it began, describing the Huns on their swift ponies, and the way they ‘cooked’ slabs of beef between the horses’ backs and their saddles. But my parents made me stop because they feared the effort would interfere with my studies and drag down my grades and I wouldn’t get into the college of my choice. My argument was that, yes, my grades might suffer, but what college wouldn’t take note of an applicant who had, at twelve, published a book? Why I thought I could actually finish, let alone publish, such a book, I cannot now recall. But it’s just that kind of youthful incident – telling or not – that I would expect to see dredged up in a column like this if I were running for President. And in the case of President Bush, as he is remembered in his late twenties at Harvard Business School, it seems he hasn’t changed his political philosophy much at all. (And neither have I.) Yes, he was Born Again, not a small thing – blessed are the meek – but, his devotion notwithstanding, he does not seem particularly interested in providing the meek with health insurance or protecting them with workplace or environmental regulations or increasing their minimum wage or earned income tax credit or encouraging them to become somewhat less meek through collective bargaining. BUSH DEFENDED Bill Herflicker: ‘Just remember without the rich people( Who by the way pay most of the taxes thats why they get the tax rebate, imagine that.) your social programs for the poor and yes Andrew some of them are lazy, would not have any money to be fund them. Its ok for John kerry to be rich or Mr trial slip and fall rich man Edwards to be rich, because they are for the middle class. Thats a load of crap. How come in your column maybe just once it would be nice to see you say something bad about kerry. God help us all if he wins the election in November. Oh Im sorry am I allowed to mention God in your column. BTW you should go to newsmax.com and drudgereport.com and definitly listen to sean hannity more ,, you need to be hannitized. Money wise maybe your smart but politics? You need help.’ ☞ My thought on taxes is not to impoverish all the rich people, of whom by many measures I would have to count myself one (just not seriously rich, sad to say). The thought of most Democrats, and of John Kerry, is to restore taxes for people at the top, earning hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a year, more or less to where they were under Clinton/Gore. Not the 90% top tax bracket of Eisenhower or the 70% of every President from Kennedy through Reagan, or the 50% (and 28% capital gains rate) of Reagan’s first term . . . no, just to the 39.6% (and 20% cap gains rate) of the Clinton/Gore years. It was a pretty great eight years for rich and poor alike. Bush is the first war-time President in history, I think, to ask nothing more of the wealthy than that they accept a huge tax cut. BUSH DEFENDED SOME MORE Rob Zelms: ‘I found it interesting that you took Bush to task for his ‘people are poor because they’re lazy’ speech. The point of being in an academic setting is to speak freely, whether you actually believe what you’re saying. Isn’t that what happens on campuses across America. Students rant and make radical proclamations about social issues. So what if he did utter those words. You can’t indict someone for what they talked about in a classroom, especially when we don’t know the context. ‘Nonetheless, let’s analyze that statement. I have the advantage of having been poor or working class most of my life until the last several years. I was poor because I grew up primarily with a single mother and we were essentially immigrants. Although my mother started out poor, she worked her way up to working class through hard work and perseverance. I worked my way out of working class through hard work and perseverance. Let’s be honest Andy, most ‘working’ poor are poor because of lack of education and possibly bad choices/judgment. Most ‘non-working’ poor are just plain lazy. I’ve seen it firsthand, have you? Don’t try to explain me away as an exception to the rule. I’ve seen classmate after classmate stuck in the working class because of their own choices regarding education, friends, relationships, work ethic, etc. ‘I hope you’ll print this because it will resonate with everyone who reads it. The most important thing everyone needs to know is that The United States of America in 2004 provides individuals with the greatest opportunity for class advancement and success than ANY SOCIETY IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND! Does anyone out there dispute this notion? In lawyer terms, it’s called JUDICIAL NOTICE. Its taken as a fact. Life is not fair, never will be. There will always be rich, poor, and somewhere in between. Children can’t control their lot in life, but adults can. But the ‘overwhelming majority’ of us in ‘this country’ have control over our destiny. Also, in case anyone wants to write me off as some ideologue, I consider myself a moderate and I actually voted for Gore in 2000. And I have not decided what direction I’m doing this election.’ ☞ So basically, no matter how much we cut taxes on the best off, and how much we pinch education and health care and jeopardize Social Security, the only ones who would suffer from this are the lazy who don’t just pull themselves up by their bootstraps the way George W. Bush did. I know you’re not actually going that far . . . and I agree with you this is a wonderful country, and a great land of opportunity. But I think it was getting more wonderful from 1992-2000 and has gotten markedly less wonderful in the last three years, and I would like to see us do better. I think we can. I would also point out that there are a lot of jobs we do want to have done – garbage collection, strawberry picking, motel maid service, hedge-trimming, security guarding – and we have to decide how we want the people who fill those jobs for us to feel. If we think they should be the working poor, living difficult, demeaning lives, unable to provide very well for themselves or their children, then it’s fine to say they just made bad choices or should have been born brighter or studied harder or chosen parents who could afford to straighten their teeth. But if we take what I would consider a more progressive view, we might want anyone who works hard in America to have a reasonably decent life, even if that means that someone who received $3.6 million a year in dividends on stock he inherited couldn’t have the $800,000-a-year tax cut President Bush gave him. I am not talking about anything drastic. We were making pretty good progress from 1992-2000. Why did we need to veer so sharply off a successful course, heading almost entirely in the direction of the already rich and powerful? Don’t forget to play with the bears.
Shrimp and Shrub March 17, 2004February 24, 2017 SHORT RED LOBSTER! Listen. If we’re going to go by Leviticus, then we can’t very well order the shrimp cocktail. Click here. (On this gay marriage thing, Congressman Barney Frank ‘identified the crucial question years ago,’ writes Charles Kaiser in the Advocate, ‘when Congress passed the notorious Defense of Marriage Act. If gay marriage is finally legalized in America, he asked, are married men going to ‘smack themselves on the head and say, ‘Wow, I could have married a man!’?’) (And here’s a thought: what if we made gay marriage voluntary?) W., REMEMBERED ‘At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago,’ writes Professor Yoshi Tsurumi, ‘George Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that ‘people are poor because they are lazy.’ He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to ‘free market competition.’ To him, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was ‘socialism.’ Recently, President Bush’s Federal Appeals Court Nominee, California’s Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown, repeated the same broadside at her Senate hearing. She knew that her pronouncement would please President Bush and Karl Rove and their Senators. President Bush and his brain, Karl Rove, are leading a radical revolution of destroying all the democratic political, social, judiciary, and economic institutions that both Democrats and moderate Republicans had built together since Roosevelt’s New Deal.’ ☞ It’s odd that no one from the Alabama National Guard much remembers W., or the nicknames he must have given them. It’s hard to imagine him as the quiet, loner type no one would remember. But be that as it may, he clearly came out of his shell by the time he got to HBS. And thanks to W., it is now a positively grand time to be rich and powerful in America.