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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (4616)	8/17/2006 1:00:14 PM
From: Ann Corrigan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 224704

U'r spin?:Transcript of interview with THOMAS KEAN, FORMER CHAIRMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION: Good to see you. HANNITY: The president said today he sees no end to the war on terrorism. The world is safer but not yet safe, and the enemy only has to get it one time. We have to be right 100 percent of the time. KEAN: That safe not safer is a quote from our report. HANNITY: That's right. And I believe that's accurate. And we're going to be in this war for a long time. We've got to be prepared. We, members of the 9/11 Commission think we have to do more than we are doing now. We're safer, but we've still got a lot more to do to make it as safe as it should be. And I think we ought to get about it. HANNITY: What do you think about the plot last week? KEAN: Well, we were very lucky. We were very lucky. We had a skillful British intelligence agency that had a mole inside a terrorist organization. And the whole part unraveled because of their good work. HANNITY: Yes. KEAN: So we can't always depend on that. HANNITY: I always quote your commission report on these two things. Not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And they were at war with us. We weren't at war with them. KEAN: That's true. HANNITY: That really captures it all, doesn't it? KEAN: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I still wonder if we're at war with them. HANNITY: I only have one criticism of the Commission. One of the things you're most proud of is you didn't politicize it. You felt that, you know, Democrats or Republicans. I always felt Bill Clinton gave the speech in Woodbury, Long Island, in 2002. In his speech he talked about Osama, how he went to Sudan. The Sudanese wanted to start dealing with him. And Clinton said at the time he had committed no crimes against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America. He said, "So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him," but they thought he was a hot potato and they didn't — that's how he wound up in Afghanistan. If we knew that he was a threat and they offered him to us, and former President Clinton is admitting that, why wasn't that pursued? KEAN: It should have been. We made several mistakes. That was one of them. Another time we had a chance to take him out when he was actually in Afghanistan using tribes. We didn't do it. We missed opportunities. Actually, Clinton did try to drop a missile on him at one point. He missed. We had a number of opportunities to take him out. And shame on us, we didn't do it. HANNITY: What do you think the top three things we need to do now to make this country and the American people safer? KEAN: One, I think we have to start distributing moneys according to need, not necessarily for political purposes. There's no reason to do that. We thought that was stupid to begin with. It was one of our easiest recommendations. Secondly, the thing that terrifies me and that wakes me up at night is the idea of a terrorist with a nuclear weapon.