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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (40666)	3/28/2004 6:31:38 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

White House Whitewash _______________________ A conflict of interest at the heart of the US 9/11 Commission hearings has been exposed by the families of the Twin Towers victims by Neil Mackay Published on Sunday, March 28, 2004 by The Sunday Herald (Scotland) ANDREW Rice is angry with George Bush. His brother David was 31 years old when he died as United Airlines Flight 175 ploughed into the south tower of the World Trade Center where David worked as a financier with the investment firm Sandler O'Neill. Andrew doesn't buy the rhetoric from the White House that Bush is a great war president who can make America stronger and safer. To Andrew, Bush is a charlatan making a mockery out of the deaths of his brother and the some 3000 other men, women and children who died on September 11, 2001. You'd be forgiven for thinking that Andrew Rice might then be glad to see the bloody battering that the Bush administration took this week during the ongoing commission hearings in Washington into whether or not the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented. Bush and his team were painted as a feckless, lazy and ill-informed bunch who had little clue about al-Qaeda, and were fixated on Iraq. Security seemed far from the top of their agenda while an ideological obsession with taking out Saddam appeared to obscure the real dangers posed by Osama bin Laden's network of fundamentalist killers. But the hammering that Bush took during the hearings did little to appease Rice and other family members like him. To Rice, who chairs the 9/11 Commission Committee of the September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows organization, the whole inquiry is one big fix that will do everything it can to hide the truth of what the US president and his closest advisors knew about the attacks. Last week saw Dick Clarke, the former White House anti-terrorism chief under Bush and Bill Clinton, give evidence before the inquiry. Most of America already knew what he was going to say as they'd read it in his bestseller Against all Enemies where he claimed that the Bush administration ignored mounting warnings of a coming terror attack. Clarke said that when 9/11 did happen the Bush inner circle was desperate to link it to Saddam . Clarke also said that Bush's national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, who has refused to testify before the 9/11 Commission under oath, didn't seem to know what al-Qaeda was. Rice gave Clarke the brush-off when he warned Bush officials in a January 2001 memo about the growing al-Qaeda threat. Dilatory plans by the Bush administration to deal with al-Qaeda, which weren't finalized until a week before the 9/11 attacks, were scorned by commission member Bob Kerry, who said he'd seen the document and it contained "nothing new whatsoever". While Democrats might be whooping it up at the expense of Bush, Andrew Rice and many other families of 9/11 victims see these events as nothing more than political point-scoring. They don't care which politician comes off best, what they care about is the truth and they are sure that they are not going to get it. You can hardly blame Rice for his pessimism. Many family members believe the "fix was in" from the very beginning and cite the appointment of Philip Zelikow as the commission's executive director as proof positive. Zelikow was a Bush-appointee who served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; he worked under Jim Baker, the former US secretary of state under George Bush Sr; spent three years on the first President Bush's National Security Council and, as well as working with Condoleezza Rice, wrote two books with her as well. Zelikow supported the White House when the administration said it would only release the president's daily briefings (PDB), prepared by the CIA, to the commission once they had been edited. Zelikow said: " The notion that the commission should want to read PDB articles that have nothing to do with al-Qaeda would be a novel suggestion." One Democrat on the commission, Timothy Roemer, said agreeing to the White House demands would remove the context in which intelligence was presented and allow any "smoking guns" to be hidden from public scrutiny. The White House acknowledged back in 2002 that a copy of the PDB in August 2001 noted that al-Qaeda might use hijacked planes in an attack on the USA. The commission has designated four members to read the reports. They will be allowed to take notes, but the White House can edit their notes to remove anything deemed sensitive. Family members believe Zelikow's key conflict of interest stems from his role in the transition period between the Clinton and Bush presidencies. It was then that Zelikow worked on Bush's team to smooth the handover in terms of intelligence and to help formulate national security policy. The Clinton administration has claimed that al-Qaeda was a top security priority. Zelikow would know, therefore, just how much importance both the Clinton and Bush governments placed on al-Qaeda. He would also have had a role in fine-tuning the Bush policy on al-Qaeda. Clarke says he clearly and bluntly warned Bush officials about the risk of al-Qaeda when they took office. "It was very explicit," he said. "Rice was briefed ... and Zelikow sat in." Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the 9/11 Commission, said there was no question of any conflict of interests regarding Zelikow. Andrew Rice seethes over information like this. "I've contacted the commission to say that it's laughable that Zelikow was appointed to such a position. I have big problems with the White House editing the PDBs, but Zelikow defended the decision. He worked with these people and now he is defending them. "This commission was created by the establishment and the friends of the establishment are now part of the commission. Is it really an investigation? Zelikow is a symbol of the way this inquiry has been constructed. As far as the Clinton and Bush administrations being held to account - we won't hear about it. It is not about transparency, it is just there to appease the public. "But it won't appease me or many other family members. We need a truly independent commission that is outside the realm of government. Zelikow should never have been in this in the first place. Aren't there other and better people out there who didn't work with Condoleezza Rice? "The worst case scenario is that I fear this could be a whitewash and a cover-up. We know these people were obsessed with Iraq and not al-Qaeda - and that could ruin the administration. We also know the administration had strong ties to the Saudis. "Bush only wants to be re-elected. It is so disingenuous of him to portray himself as the 9/11 president. He doesn't want people to look at all the dirty relationships." The commission findings won't be published until April 2005 - after the presidential election in November. "We know the commission's findings can't affect the election, so why don't we push back the deadline further and get a new guy in?" asks Rice. " No-one at any level of government - from a security guard at an airport to the President - has been held accountable for the biggest security failure in the history of this country." Rice suspects that at the end of the inquiry a "figure like Ollie North will take the spear in the chest, while the rest will all be protected". "In a situation like this, there is so little I can do," he adds. "I'm as powerless as when I watched my brother murdered on TV. We have so little recourse to find out who is responsible, who, by their mistakes and incompetency, helped this happen. " My brother's death will not be in vain. I have to work hard to illuminate the hypocrisy of politicians who want to benefit from these tragedies while not caring about transparency. "There is such a lack of humility. Bush runs ads draping himself in this tragedy. My brother wouldn't have wanted that. If we want to be secure then we need to know the full truth." When Clarke told the September 11 families crowded into the commission chamber that he was sorry, that "the government failed you and I failed you", they got to their feet, with tears in their eyes, and cheered and clapped him. Why the outpouring of thanks and sadness? Simple, says Kirsten Breitweiser, a 9/11 families spokeswoman: "It was the first time we received an apology, or any acknowledgement of mistakes." © newsquest (sunday herald) limited commondreams.org ###

To: geode00 who wrote (40666)	3/28/2004 6:46:31 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

"The war in Iraq has widened the rift between the United States and the rest of the world, with a steep plunge in Americans' views of their traditional allies and a further surge of anti-Americanism in Muslim countries, a global opinion survey shows." commondreams.org

To: geode00 who wrote (40666)	3/28/2004 7:16:09 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

A Moment of Moral Clarity _________________________________ After unconscionable foot-dragging by the White House, we're beginning to get to the bottom of the most searing event of our time By Jonathan Alter Newsweek April 5 issue On Sept. 14, 2001, I was in the press pool at ground zero and stood five feet from President Bush, who had mounted a crushed fire truck, slung his arm around an exquisitely wizened firefighter and told the world through a bullhorn that the terrorists would soon be hearing from the United States. It was more than a defining political moment for this president; it kicked off a period of bracing moral clarity. Whatever his stumbles on September 11 or before, Bush understood that a wounded nation needed clear lines drawn in the dust of the Twin Towers. He went on to deliver one of the finest speeches to Congress in modern memory. Sadly, Bush has never understood that moral clarity is rooted in what might be called constitutional clarity. That's another way of saying accountability, which is itself a bureaucratic way of saying that for more than 200 years we've thrived on airing our messy, dirty and often tangled linen in public. It's an important part of who we are. Last week was a great one for constitutional clarity, not just at the 9/11 hearings on Capitol Hill but at the Supreme Court, where Michael Newdow, a nonlawyer dad atheist, got a chance to hold the government accountable for what he sees as its legal contradictions over the Pledge of Allegiance. Whether one thinks Dick Clarke is an American grandstander, a Frank Capra hero or some mixture of the two, his appearance was, as Martha Stewart used to say, a good thing. He took responsibility for the failures of antiterrorism policy ("your government failed you"), which did more than provide some relief for the families of the 9/11 victims. It set the tone for an important national debate. Don't hold your breath waiting for Bill Clinton or Bush to admit they failed; beyond "mistakes were made"—Ronald Reagan's response to the Iran-contra scandal—presidents can't fall on their swords without weakening themselves. But after unconscionable foot-dragging by the White House, we're beginning to get to the bottom of the most searing event of our time. After years of arguing about sex and a million other passing dustups, it's the right argument at the right moment. Elections are supposed to be about big things like this. Before the cameras, the commissioners and witnesses, Democrats and Republicans acted with a seriousness of purpose befitting the occasion. The many failures of Clinton administration policy—including the distractions of the Lewinsky scandal—should be fully documented in the final report. As former senator Bob Kerrey (and potential veep candidate on an all-Vietnam Kerry-Kerrey ticket) put it in questioning the Clintonites: "If we're attacked and attacked and attacked and attacked, why [did] we continue to send the FBI over?" The Bush leaguers were the Bush political operatives, who sent everyone out except Barney the dog to trash Clarke, even speculating that he might be a perjurer for simply having been a good soldier when he appeared before Congress back in 2002. He said nice things about Bush antiterrorism policy when he was in government. Big deal. The fact that he was not a whistle-blower then hardly destroys his credibility now. Especially when others in the administration are siding with Clarke. His basic claim is that fighting terrorism was "important" but not "urgent" to Bush before 9/11. Condoleezza Rice insists: "We acted on these ideas very quickly." Unfortunately for Rice, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage conceded at the hearings: "We weren't going fast enough." This should hardly be a surprise, considering that the Bush administration's first big meeting on a new antiterrorism plan wasn't held until Sept. 4, 2001. But conceding as much would undermine Bush's rationale for re-election—that he is the only one who can be trusted on terrorism. So the smearing continues. Robert Novak even played the racism card, asking Rep. Rahm Emanuel, "Do you believe that Dick Clarke had a problem with this African-American woman, Condoleezza Rice?" But that was a small blot on an uplifting week in Washington. As both a pragmatist and a believer, I don't have a lot of patience with trying to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. It doesn't seem a lot different than "In God We Trust" on the back of currency. But Michael Newdow, the atheist plaintiff who wowed the Supreme Court audience last week with his little-guy legal talents, was acting in the same spirit as the 9/11 commission, forcing the highest government officials to explain themselves. Making justices justify and presidents preside in a spirit of openness and accountability—that's what gives us moral clarity when we need it. msnbc.msn.com