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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (38834)	4/10/2004 11:31:12 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793800

Ranting Profs - THE TIMES WAY OF THINKING By Cori Dauber Oh, here's a brilliant piece. From the OpEd pages of the New York Times, comes a call to negotiate with Sadr, lest we "humiliate." Please. This guy is a fascististic thug who needs to be killed, arrested, whatever, put out of commission somehow. The author suggests that the Iraqis should be left to handle the outstanding issue of the murder of the moderate cleric last April (he was hacked to death inside a mosque, recall) but it is an Iraqi judge whose warrant the Coalition is trying to serve. The kicker, of course, is that the author wants Sadr's merry band to be able to participate in politics -- you know, like Lebanese Hizbollah, because that's worked out so well -- but their actions this week are profoundly apolitical, a rejection of politics, an effort to trump the political process. I don't agree with everything in the new piece by Victor Davis Hanson, but I agree with this much: every time we attempt to compromise, negotiate, back off, it isn't read as magnaminity, it's read as weakness. And the enemy responds in kind. TITLE OF PDB WAS FIRST REVEALED TWO YEARS AGO By Cori Dauber At this point, the White House has no choice: the August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing has to be declassified to the extent possible. Now it isn't even a matter of the political maneuverings in the public hearings, now there are alleged leaks, and it's become a question of Chinese water torture. This is frankly outrageous. If the White House is dissembling about the contents of that memo, then the Commission could have dealt with that in their final report and (as they did) in their questions. By putting the declassification on the table in the hearings, certain Commissioners began the rush to leak bits and pieces, made the declassification ultimately inevitable, whether or not it makes sense, whether or not the precedent is wise, whether or not this will come back to haunt the country -- or the next president, be he Republican or Democrat. Lets look to the Times: Here's the New York Times. The headline screams about new information leaked, information that says that the memo actually provided new information that there was a threat inside the United States. The article actually is composed of three parts. The first regards the memo itself. That part is based on an AP story, which is itself based on interviews with people who claim to have seen the PDB. The second speaks to more information coming out regarding the level of FBI response in the months prior to 9/11. And all that can really be said there is that next week will be interesting. Although there is one question: if Dick Clarke was tasked with managing all this, and the word never reached the FBI that they were supposed to be on "battle staions" to use his term, maybe we need to ask Mr. Clarke another question or two? The third issue comes up in the last paragraph. It reinforces my impression of where Kerrey's coming from. Former President Bill Clinton appeared before the panel in closed session on Thursday, but a Democratic commission member took issue Friday with Mr. Clinton's assertion that that there was not enough intelligence linking Al Qaeda to the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole to justify a military attack on the terrorist organization. "I think he did have enough proof to take action," Bob Kerrey, the former senator from Nebraska, said on ABC's `Good Morning America.' No doubt. That's another place I think the Clinton people are dissembling, and the only place we've heard anything about Clinton's testimony. And it's brought up in the last graf. Now, lets talk about this stunning revelation that it was known that al Queda may have wanted to hijack a plane to trade for the "Blind Sheikh." As is often the case, the press is now going to play this as if it were stunning, staggering, new, unheard of, blinding . . . you know the drill. Then how do you explain this story from 2002. In fact, this story from May 2002 not only mentions the plot to trade a hijacked plane for the Blind Sheikh, it includes the name of the memo. You heard, me, I said almost two years ago that block buster moment when the title of the memo was revealed . . . had already happened, and in a British newspaper.