."Regarding the July 10, 2001 meeting between Rice, Black and Tenet, there is one little nugget about that from the book I want to highlight. The reason for doing so is to indicate, once again, just how much of a priority terrorism was not in the first nine months of this administration. As we all recall, Sandy Berger told Condi Rice that she would be spending a lot of time on bin Laden and this was before she had even started the job. On page 52 of State of Denial Woodward writes:
Rice had a National Security Presidential Directive to launch a new covert war against bin Laden set to go to Bush on September 10, 2001. It was NSPD-9, meaning eight other foreign policy matters had been formally debated, agreed on and signed by the president as administration policy before the plan to go after bin Laden.
Get that? Osama bin Laden was number eight on the list of Administration priorities, even after Berger warned Condi she would be spending a lot of time on him, Clarke had hounded her about him several times, Tenet and Black formally warned her and Bush was given the August 6 PDB.
I wonder what the other eight before Osama were? Wouldn't you like to know?
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Comments: 35
Just answer one Question. How many Airplanes had been deliberately flown into buildings before 9/11? There were few people who even considered it a possibility. It was not within our frame of reference.
What form will the next attack take? I pronounce you the top dog in the prevention of terror attacks. You get to imagine all the possible ways we could be attacked and figure out how to prevent them.
When you get that all worked out you have the indesputable right to second guess every one.
Where have you been lately and what have you learned about our enemies as opposed to what you have only read in your local paper or the Weekly Standard, David?
To humor you I will answer your question this once: no airplanes had been deliberately flown into buildings, but had you ever heard of a very popular fiction writer, very popular among conservative cirlces you would know that in Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor you would realize it was very conceivable. It was a hardback and paperback bestseller so I would imagine there were a couple of million people, David, who might be able to consider the possibility, much less the fact that a guy tried to fly his plane into the White House while Clinton was president. Remember that?
And the last time I checked, yes, I can wear my shoes onto an airplane. I don't usually go barefoot.
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In perhaps her lengthiest extemporaneous remarks ever about the pre-9/11 period, Rice said the summer of 2001 was marked by a "steady stream of [intelligence] chatter about a potential attack" presumed to be targeting a foreign country: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, possibly Israel or Jordan, but "nothing about the United States."
Still, Rice said, because no one could rule out an attack on American soil, Bush administration officials were "constantly acting on the threat reporting" in that time frame. She said all concerned parties seemed to agree that an attack was imminent, but the target and date of execution remained frustratingly elusive.
She cited extensive "disruption operations" abroad, including stepped-up efforts to capture Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydeh; the redeployment of the Fifth Fleet "out of harm's way"; consultations by Tenet with security officials from 20 foreign countries; daily gatherings of the Counter-Terrorism Strategy Group, chaired by Richard A. Clarke; and a discreet phone call to Saudi leaders by Vice President Dick Cheney, seeking Riyadh's help in determining the time and place of an attack.
On July 5, 2001, Rice recalled, she asked then-White House Chief of Staff Andy Card to join her at a meeting with Clarke, then the White House's counter-terrorism chief, and the security officials of various domestic agencies and departments.
"I didn't have authority over the domestic agencies," Rice said, explaining her request to have Card present. "If I had the chief of staff there, it might give us some, some potency — if we needed that — with the domestic agencies.
"And [I] asked Dick [Clarke] to convene a meeting, which he did, with agencies like the FAA and other domestic agencies. I understand, too, that a CIA briefing was then given to security officials from domestic agencies. I also asked that [Attorney General] John Ashcroft be shown the threat reporting.
"The FBI held several briefings, including with their special agents in charge, [at] one of which they told the special agents in charge that even though there was no credible threat reporting about the United States, that could not be ruled out."
Rice remembered "sitting in the Oval Office" and talking with the president and Tenet "every day" during that tense period, poring over the President's Daily Briefing and other highly classified documents that assessed the terrorist threat.
"The idea that I would somehow have ignored that, I find incomprehensible," Rice said. "It just — it kind of doesn't ring true that you'd have to shock me into something that I was very involved in." Yes, Tenet was "very worried" at the time, Rice said, but "we were all very worried."
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Sean Paul Kelley. It is very nice that you have had the privilege of being able to travel the world. It is very nice that you were able to attend esteemed colleges. It is nice that you had the resources to follow your dreams. I invite you to spend two weeks in the real USA. You can come to my house if you don't mind sleeping on my couch. There are motels in town but that wouldn't be the real USA. You can interview the entire town in about 4 weeks if you work at it. Our concerns aren't focused on the world trade center or the war in Iraq. Our concerns are the price of Wheat and the cattle market. We send as many of our kids to college as we can and the rest just leave. They come back and visit but not for too long at once. I guess it is for these reasons that the continued smears and mud slinging toward the bush administration is somewhat annoying. If there were something real and tangible like Watergate it would be different. But there just isn't anything there. That is the problem in the nutshell.
Your knowledge of foreign relations and your knowledge of history may be extensive. But you seem to be missing a big part of the picture. Even if Rice had good information on the date of the attack she would not have been able to predict how serious it would be. She would have had to shut down the entire nation and inverse a dawn to dusk curfew. Even if she knew that Osama Bin Laddin planned the attack she would have been looking for the wrong person. Even if she had managed to catch one of the guys. She would probably no have caught all of them.
Let us pretend for one minute that she had been given the information. Ossama Bin Laddin is going to have his people attack by hijacking 4 airplanes and using them as guided missiles. She could have shut down all the airports and grounded every plane. A massive manhunt would have turned up a few of the terrorists maybe. Of course there was no precedence for grounding every plane or shutting down every airport. These terrorists would simply have carried out their plan on a different day or used anfo or something else.
After the attacks there was a careful reflection on the events and a clear effort to secure the airports. These measures were successful in very significant ways. Is there still some danger? Yes. Does it serve any purpose to continually try to say who was to blame? NO we know that Osama Bin Laddin and his freak troupe are to blame.
((((NEWS FLASH)))) The number one cause of death among all humans through out the world is LIFE.
Sounds like a scramble to obfuscate things, to me. Woodward's first two books were anything but defaming, and now we're supposed to believe he made this stuff up? Why would he? I don't buy that. I think Condi would say anything, and Fox would print and show anything, to sweep this under the rug. Of course, part of my judgement on Condi goes back to watching her testify, or try not to, in front of the 9/11 Commission. The very idea that she wouldn't remember the title of the famous PDB, knowing she was going before this commission, and having prepared for it, is ludicrous. It was, of everything covered there, the proverbial smoking gun, and her disingenuous attempt to feign memory lapse, revealed her intent there, which was to deny, deny, deny. Same story, different day.
David, you assume too much. You assume that I've never worked a hard day's labor in my life. You assume that I went to some East Coast elite university and have traveled on someone else's dime. You assume I don't know what it means to saddle up a horse and ride all day long, working the cows on someone else's ranch. You assume I don't know what it is like to get in a tractor after breakfast and cut hay all day. Then get up and bail it the next. You assume I've never raised my own chickens for both the eggs and the meat, that I don't know how to feather them or how I've never seen them wiggle around after their heads are cut off. You assume I've never had to gut a deer's carcass or even a goats, when times were rough. You assume I don't know what it is like to live without healthcare, to care for a sick relative, to struggle to pay the rent. To wonder how in God's name am I going to make it.
You assume I didn't earn my university degree or that someone else paid for it. You assume that I don't appreciate the sacrifice the young men and women of this country are making for all of us, meanwhile my grandfather almost died in Korea and my uncle did die in Vietnam. Me, I was ineligible for the service, otherwise I would have gladly carried on a family tradition.
Everything I am and everything I have done, right and wrong I have earned, all of it. The only thing I have ever been given was a $500 car on my 17th birthday from my father.
David, you assume far, far too much, and the constant assumptions you continue to make betray the great lack of knowledge and wisdom you have. I don't know why that is. I don't make assumptions: I rely on fact.
You asked for an answer and I gave it to you. It's funny what happens when people get answers they weren't expecting or didn't want to hear.
To answer you John, well, I am going to have to examine this article you have posted very closely and when I do I will come back and tell you what I think and be objective. The question is are you, yourself capable of objectivity or do you wish to perpetuate the fantasy?
The comments i made were not intended to denegrate your past but to bring you back down to us. Jetting around the world would be awesome and it would make a person feel free and powerful. But that does not give you or Woodward or anyone else the power to take very small slices of another persons life and JUDGE THEM as i did you in the first paragraph of my last reply. Or does it.
Well said, but the point of conservative politics, ala Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Orielly, etc. is the polarization and the total rejection of liberal thought. That is the way to keep the faithful mobilized, to always reinforce the hate, the scorn for a percieved enemy-progressive ideals. As for me, I decided a long time ago, nothing else worked, I shoot back.
But all the traveling around the globe will tell you that we USA are dispised (not hated) simply for the fact that no one has the right to speak the drivvel that our beloved media spews on a daily basis.! I challenge any of you to give me a country that allows YOU to do on a daily basis!! Yet let us Blame our president elect for the short fallings that have become ritual stemming from the partisan shenanigans for 40+ years. so sean paul I implore you to tell me first of all if it werent for entitlements how did you get to and through college ? Next is why should any of us believe what you have to say has any sustanance? In My State you could not be more wrong!
I'll be glad to listen to you. I will also need to take a close look at the information you give me and I will look at it with a critical eye. If it is factually based and not drawing a conclusion that is to far from the implications. I will believe it.
Priority 1 through 8 could be anything.
I must say I'm impressed. Judging from all your postings I assumed you would believe anything negative said about this admin and republicans in general and automatically dismiss anything from or supporting them. I glad to see you're being fair.
As for me, I try to remain objective, I haven't decided what or how much of the book I will believe and likely won't even read it myself. I was just pointing out the other version of the event since you published Woodward's statement as if it were fact without mentioning people disputed him. I'm sure many people will be looking into Condi's version and I'm sure it'll be easy to know if they put the all US embassies throughout the world on the highest alert that month.
Ron,
Why is it we now need to show motive for Woodward. He's selling a book, that alone makes me want to verify.
Well, fair point, I suppose, but he's been more than fair to Bush and his crew before. My comments about Condi remain true, though. Her statements about Clinton's assertions on his Fox interview were compared to the 9/11 commission report, and found to be seriously flawed, as well, so her integrity is highly questionable, at the very least.
Remember when she was sent to run around Europe and say there were no secret prisons and no "renditions".
Clarke is one example. Then there are the Generals who came out against Rumsfeld. All were demonized as having a political agenda. When will your camp stop doing that and actually listen and trust in reality even if it sucks to hear it? In short: when are you going to stop shooting the messenger and instead listening to them?
This also backs up Rice's comments about Clinton.
Out of the thousands of retired generals only a handful come out against. We need to look at motives and credibility rather then just accepting their view because it suits our agenda. Some complain that they weren't listened to. How often do you here people say that? Some are trying to get elected. We need to evaluate these and not just blindly agree.
I don't doubt Clarke because he speaks out against the admin, I doubt him because he changes his story to fit his needs. The 2001 background briefing supports this admin, but I'm not showing it to prove this admin is right, I'm showing it to prove he has no credibility.
Back to Woodward, he's selling a book. Wilson sold a book and for years the left thought it was all true. Finally they know it's all lies. Clarke was selling a book and he constantly contradicts what he wrote. Now Woodward. Seems a lot of people are disputing what he claims they said or the context it was used in.
And a note on sources: no blogs. Only mainstream non-partisan media, i.e. Fox, New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, Washington Post. No partisan rag-mags, deal?
Do you consider NRO and Weekly Standard rags? How about NY post, NY Sun and Washington Times?
It's just that I see your list leaning mostly to the left with the exception of Fox News.
Let's just keep it simple: Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC, NYTimes and Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters and UPI and McClatchy. Ok? All mainstream. All keep their editorial positions and news operations separate. That's got to be the criteria.
Can you explain the mission here? Are we trying to discredit someone? Maybe Rice or Woodward? I need to know the mission because I may need to use specific sources like the Whitehouse or the Butler report or the 9/11 Report. Editorials by the people in question.
You must be joking.
Look at the Drudge version of the Foley issue vs. the ABC version. Can you really claim they're in cahoots instead of knocking heads?
Drudge rules in the 'breaking news world' which forces the MSM to scramble to catch up.