April 8, 2004

QUOTABLES:

If we fail, if we cut and run the results can be disastrous," said Sen. John McCain. "Those results would be the fragmentation of Iraq on ethnic and religious lines. the second result would be an unchecked hotbed ... of individuals who are committed to the destruction of the United States of America."

"Increasing the US troop presence in Iraq will only suck us deeper and deeper and deeper into the maelstrom -- into the quicksand of violence that has become the hallmark of that unfortunate, miserable country," Sen. Robert Byrd said.

JUST POLITICS

Rice testifies before 9/11 Commission

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice testified before the 9/11 Commission after the White House had worked out the difficulties of preserving the issue of "separation of powers." Her testimony was controlled, in charge and solid as a rock. She also placed doubts on Richard Clarke’s testimony.

One large area of conflict between Rice and Clarke came towards the end of her testimony, when Rice was asked as to why Clarke did not brief the President as Clarke says he requested:

RICE: ... Dick Clarke never asked me to brief the president on counterterrorism. He did brief the president later on cybersecurity, in July, but he, to my recollection, never asked. And my senior directors have an open door to come and say, I think the president needs to do this. I think the president needs to do that. He needs to make this phone call. He needs to hear this briefing. It's not hard to get done. But I just think that...

She also responded to whether there was any responsibility back to the advisor to the president. She responded that the responsibility lay with Clarke.

RICE: I believe that the responsibility -- again, the crisis management here was done by the CSG. They tasked these things. If there was any reason to believe that I needed to do something or that Andy Card needed to do something, I would have been expected to be asked to do it. We were not asked to do it...  

She was also asked about whether the briefing by Richard Clarke was a plan, as he had testified before the 9-11 commission.

RICE: What I understood it to be was a series of decisions, near-term decisions that were pending from the Clinton administration, things like whether to arm the Uzbeks -- I'm sorry -- whether to give further counterterrorism support to the Uzbeks, whether to arm the Northern Alliance -- a whole set of specific issues that needed decision. And we made those decisions prior to the strategy being developed. He also had attached the Delenda plan, which is my understanding was developed in 1998, never adopted and, in fact, had some ideas. I said, Dick, take the ideas that you've put in this think piece, take the ideas that were there in the Delenda plan, put it together into a strategy, not to roll back Al Qaida -- which had been the goal of the Clinton -- of what Dick Clarke wrote to us -- but rather to eliminate this threat. And he was to put that strategy together. But by no means did he ask me to act on a plan. He gave us a series of ideas. We acted on those. And then he gave me some papers that had a number of ideas, more questions than answers about how we might get better cooperation, for instance, from Pakistan. We took those ideas. We gave him the opportunity to write a comprehensive strategy.

Sen. Bob Kerry, a member of the Commission, disagreed with Rice over a need by the Bush Administration to respond to the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Rice expressed that the Administration did not view a ‘tit for tat’ response would benefit the U.S. She testified that intelligence reports suggested bin Laden was going to use a strike done by the U.S to express that he survived again and that the U.S was weak.

Rice found herself under attack by the Democrat appointees regarding an August 6, 2001 President’s Daily Briefing. Rice informed the Commission that the briefing was the result of the President’s question about the possibility of an attack inside the U.S. -- reports of threats were all focused on attacks outside the U.S., and the President asked for a report on the possibility of an attack inside the U.S.

She also insisted that the briefing was not a threat statement. She testified that the report was a historical perspective and no one needed a report to know that bin Laden wanted to attack the U.S.

The Commission is pressing to make the August 6 President’s Daily Briefing made public.

Rice’s testimony is sure to be debated for several days and the question of whether or not 9/11 was preventable with the major structural flaws of our legal limitations and bureaucratic culture will continue.

The Commission will review the Justice Department and the F.B.I. next week as the Commission continues its public hearings.

Kerry’s voices

Sen. John Kerry once again showed his inclination to place America in a weaker position. He has constantly inferred that his foreign policy would sublimate America’s interest to the French and Germans who have publicly stated as one of their goals the weakening of America’s influence. Now, in an interview with NPR, he said that the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- who is leading a band of thugs against Americans and other Shiites -- has a legitimate point of view and his newspaper shouldn’t have been shut down. Kerry quickly back-tracked on his statements. You couldn’t say that it was a real flipflop.

This misstatement is indicative of Kerry’s post-Vietnam tendencies. There is a reason Kerry chose to become a Vietnam protester and key member of Veterans Against the War, an organization that plotted to kill U.S. Senators.

The misstatement is one that chooses the side of our enemies over America’s core values. It is a tendency of appeasement versus recognizing the evil that exists in the world and is against America’s interests.

Kerry continued to make political points on the new conflicts in Iraq.

"Where are the people with the flowers, throwing them in the streets, welcoming the American liberators the way Dick Cheney said they would be?" Kerry said in an interview with American Urban Radio Networks.

Later in the day Kerry questioned the provisional council that the Americans have been working with.

"Is he transferring it over to these people in the streets?" Kerry asked. "Is he transferring it over to Moqtada al-Sadr? Is he transferring it over to Ayatollah Sistani? Is he transferring it over to this group of people who make up the so-called provisional council who have no authority?"

On CNN Kerry said, "I'm not the president and I didn't create this mess, so I don't want to acknowledge a mistake that I haven't made… But let me tell you something, the president needs to step up and acknowledge that there are difficulties and that the world needs to be involved, and they need to reverse their policy."

Analysts propose that al-Sadr has tapped into a minority of Shiites who feel that it is their turn to rule Iraq and that they do not want to share or respect the minority rights of the Sunnis or the Kurdish.

 

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