From the start, the Bush Administration did everything possible to hamper the 9/11 Commission, opposing its creation altogether and then, after authorizing it under pressure, appointing housebroken Henry Kissinger to head it until public outcry made them back off.
Today the chairman, former Republican Governor Tom Kean, and vice chairman Lee Hamilton in a New York Times OpEd review the CIA's and the White House's efforts to deny the Commission access to or even knowledge of the tapes that recorded Al Qaeda interrogations and, stopping just short of calling their actions illegal, characterize the process as "obstruction."
This only confirms what veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas in 2003 described as a "stonewall" of "public pledges of cordial cooperation with investigators, followed by private resistance, delay, excuses, partial compliance or self-righteous assertion of constitutional prerogatives."
The Commission, as Kean and Hamilton make clear, was not authorized to judge whether or not torture was involved in the questioning but had a critical need to learn what the senior Al Qaeda operatives knew. Apparently while trying to hide their methods, the CIA and White House denied them that information.
The more we learn, the worse it gets.
Showing posts with label 9/11 Commission. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 9/11 Commission. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
If Bill Had Been Faithful to Hillary...
How different would the American political landscape look today?
The question is raised anew by the sight of the former President taking over the spotlight to try to save his wife's candidacy with trademark meaning-of-is-is talk about Obama's inexperience and his own opposition to the war in Iraq from the get-go.
"Maybe," Maureen Dowd suggests, "the Boy Who Can’t Help Himself is simply engaging in his usual patterns of humiliating Hillary and lighting an exploding cigar when things are going well."
The conjugal question comes up, too, in the new issue of Newsweek. Sally Bedell Smith, author of a book about the Clinton marriage, writes about the health-car debacle in 1993: "When Bill tried to make the plan more flexible, he had to defer to her, in part because of their implicit marital bargain, in which Bill ceded her power as a trade-off for his history of infidelity."
It's impossible to talk about Bill Clinton's character without running into a polarizing political buzz saw--vast right-wing conspiracy vs. moral depravity in the Oval Office--but the connection between the impeachment, the failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in the late 1990s and Al Gore's narrow defeat in 2000 are too important to be swept into the dust bin of history, particularly with the prospect of both Clintons returning to the White House.
Today's New York Times notes that "during one of President Bill Clinton’s major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled."
A year ago, the former President reacted with fury to a TV mini-series portraying him as so distracted then that he failed to focus on the emerging threat of Osama bin Laden. Yet, the program's advisor was 9/11 Commission chairman Tom Kean, and there is evidence that Clinton might have done more about bin Laden if not for fear of public reaction that attacking him might be seen as a "wag the dog" diversion from the impeachment.
Replaying Bill Clinton's record as a serially straying husband would be mean-spirited and pointless now if his wife were not now claiming spousal experience as justification and preparation for her own presidency.
But, in that light, it's not only proper but necessary to ask, how different might our lives be today if Bill Clinton had managed to be a faithful husband during those White House years? And what kind of distraction could he be if voters sent the Clintons back there for another four years?
The question is raised anew by the sight of the former President taking over the spotlight to try to save his wife's candidacy with trademark meaning-of-is-is talk about Obama's inexperience and his own opposition to the war in Iraq from the get-go.
"Maybe," Maureen Dowd suggests, "the Boy Who Can’t Help Himself is simply engaging in his usual patterns of humiliating Hillary and lighting an exploding cigar when things are going well."
The conjugal question comes up, too, in the new issue of Newsweek. Sally Bedell Smith, author of a book about the Clinton marriage, writes about the health-car debacle in 1993: "When Bill tried to make the plan more flexible, he had to defer to her, in part because of their implicit marital bargain, in which Bill ceded her power as a trade-off for his history of infidelity."
It's impossible to talk about Bill Clinton's character without running into a polarizing political buzz saw--vast right-wing conspiracy vs. moral depravity in the Oval Office--but the connection between the impeachment, the failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in the late 1990s and Al Gore's narrow defeat in 2000 are too important to be swept into the dust bin of history, particularly with the prospect of both Clintons returning to the White House.
Today's New York Times notes that "during one of President Bill Clinton’s major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled."
A year ago, the former President reacted with fury to a TV mini-series portraying him as so distracted then that he failed to focus on the emerging threat of Osama bin Laden. Yet, the program's advisor was 9/11 Commission chairman Tom Kean, and there is evidence that Clinton might have done more about bin Laden if not for fear of public reaction that attacking him might be seen as a "wag the dog" diversion from the impeachment.
Replaying Bill Clinton's record as a serially straying husband would be mean-spirited and pointless now if his wife were not now claiming spousal experience as justification and preparation for her own presidency.
But, in that light, it's not only proper but necessary to ask, how different might our lives be today if Bill Clinton had managed to be a faithful husband during those White House years? And what kind of distraction could he be if voters sent the Clintons back there for another four years?
Monday, July 09, 2007
Slight Glitch in Homeland Security
If we are going to be safe from terrorist attacks, Pat Robertson’s law school will have to expand.
According to a Congressional report released today, the Bush Administration “has failed to fill roughly a quarter of the top leadership posts at the Department of Homeland Security, creating a ‘gaping hole’ in the nation's preparedness for a terrorist attack or other threat.”
"One of the continuing problems appears to be the over politicization of the top rank of Department management," the report concludes.
In the Justice Department, as we learned from the case of Monica Goodling, the Administration’s preference has been for graduates of Regent University where professors “integrate biblical principles into areas of the law.”
This year’s student body at Regent was inspired by a lecture on leadership by America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who told them that terrorists “planned to kill us, and they want to do it again.”
But there won't be enough of such highly trained and motivated recruits to fill the Homeland Security void, which may be partly due to the fact that the Department’s employees reported the lowest job satisfaction among 36 federal agencies earlier this year.
But not to worry. The Senate’s Homeland Security Committee passed a bill in March based on the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations that Chairman Joe Lieberman called “a critical step toward building a safer and more secure America for the generations to come."
That nobody is around to implement them is just a minor housekeeping detail.
According to a Congressional report released today, the Bush Administration “has failed to fill roughly a quarter of the top leadership posts at the Department of Homeland Security, creating a ‘gaping hole’ in the nation's preparedness for a terrorist attack or other threat.”
"One of the continuing problems appears to be the over politicization of the top rank of Department management," the report concludes.
In the Justice Department, as we learned from the case of Monica Goodling, the Administration’s preference has been for graduates of Regent University where professors “integrate biblical principles into areas of the law.”
This year’s student body at Regent was inspired by a lecture on leadership by America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who told them that terrorists “planned to kill us, and they want to do it again.”
But there won't be enough of such highly trained and motivated recruits to fill the Homeland Security void, which may be partly due to the fact that the Department’s employees reported the lowest job satisfaction among 36 federal agencies earlier this year.
But not to worry. The Senate’s Homeland Security Committee passed a bill in March based on the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations that Chairman Joe Lieberman called “a critical step toward building a safer and more secure America for the generations to come."
That nobody is around to implement them is just a minor housekeeping detail.
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