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June 25, 2007
"No one saw it coming."
I don't quite understand the relevance of Condi's "no one saw it coming" excuse for 9/11. Putting aside the question of whether anyone actually did predict that terrorists would hijack plans and pilot them into buildings (they did), in what way is the method of attack more important than its existence? Put differently, we certainly saw a terrorist attack coming. Bill Clinton had been saying there was an 80 percent chance of a major strike in the next decade. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time. So if it had come by dirty bomb rather than 747, would Condi be wandering around the country saying, "Well, we certainly saw that coming?" Hell, if it had merely come by terrorists downing aircraft, we would've seen that coming too -- and stopping it would have been no different than stopping the hijacking of planes.
Of course, this is actually just a dodge, a way to avoid responsibility for preparations that should have been taken in years prior, and intelligence that should've been heeded in months preceding. And it should be called such. Rice saw a terrorist attack coming. As National Security Advisor, she failed to prevent it. If she failed because she didn't see this type of attack coming, well then, that's all the worse. With a dirty bomb, she could at least blame insufficient congressional appropriations for radiological detectors. Claiming that the terrorists outthought you, however, is not an exculpatory assertion.
June 25, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
The "no one could foresee" excuse only works if the record shows that the administration did as well as it could in some sort of reaction to the desperate warnings it was receiving.
If it had had some evidence, any at all, that it had listened to the outgoing administration, and had listened to their own officials who were screaming of an imminent threat, and did something, anything, any measurable response, then they would be clear.
But Al Franken had it exactly right. They quickly launched "Operation Ignore" and blew off anyone who seemed concerned.
It's not like they had some reaction, some plausibly sensible reaction and the terrorist attack slipped through their fingers.
They did nothing. They reacted in the exact opposite way suggested by imminent warnings and panicked officials. They sneered and dismisses all of it.
Their task is not to defend a spirited response to warnings of imminent danger to our nation and its citizens which somehow failed to capture every risk, not to defend the lack of a response at all, but the lack of any apparent sign that any of them gave the slightest care at all for the safety of the country or its people.
Posted by: El Cid | Jun 25, 2007 1:57:49 PM
Putting aside the question of whether anyone actually did predict that terrorists would hijack plans and pilot them into buildings
To quote South Park, "Simpsons did it": I do seem to remember an episode involving Side Show Bob hijacking a plane and piloting it into a building on a kamikazi mession to kill Krusty ...
Posted by: DAS | Jun 25, 2007 1:58:07 PM
Claiming that the terrorists outthought you, however, is not an exculpatory assertion.
What scares me is that it seems that almost any hostile parties can outthink this administration nowadays, the moronic Fort Dix & Brooklyn Bridge wannabes aside (and that applies to your post above re: Castro, too). Seriously, these people are so completely un-self-aware, so ignorant of even elementary psychology, that outwitting them is practically child's play.
Posted by: latts | Jun 25, 2007 2:00:53 PM
>> Putting aside the question of whether anyone
>> actually did predict that terrorists would
>> hijack plans and pilot them into buildings
> To quote South Park, "Simpsons did it"
Besides Tom Clancy's 1994 mega-bestseller in which terrorists fly a 747 into the Capitol Building during a joint session of Congress, the DoD had actually wargamed a terrorist attack on the Pentagon via airliner earlier in 2001.
Cranky
Posted by: Cranky Observer | Jun 25, 2007 2:25:44 PM
What scares me is that it seems that almost any hostile parties can outthink this administration nowadays, the moronic Fort Dix & Brooklyn Bridge wannabes aside (and that applies to your post above re: Castro, too). Seriously, these people are so completely un-self-aware, so ignorant of even elementary psychology, that outwitting them is practically child's play.
It has struck me at times as strange (and at other times to aim to think through possibly hidden motives which often don't convince me) the dramatic contrast between the absolute incompetence -- even to the degree that they fail their own evil goals and frustrate their own presumed best interest calculations -- manifested by the administration in nearly every task except manipulating elections and pushing through tax breaks for the wealthiest.
In controlling and when necessary stealing elections, they leave no stone unturned and no t uncrossed.
Posted by: El Cid | Jun 25, 2007 2:33:50 PM
> the dramatic contrast between the absolute
> incompetence -- even to the degree that they
> fail their own evil goals and frustrate their own
> presumed best interest calculations -- manifested by
> the administration in nearly every task except
> manipulating elections and pushing through tax breaks
> for the wealthiest.
Sorry, I have to fundamentally disagree with that. Cheney & Co. had several agendas when they came into office, and not all of them have worked out (or have been switched to Plan B as in Iraq). But one of their agendas was clearly to implement Grover Norquist's "drown government in the bathtub" theory and in this they have been spectacularly successful. Most of the work has gone on at the day-to-day operational levels of the cabinet and regulatory agencies far from the eye of the traditional media or even the blogs; here Cheney's acolytes have turned back the clock to at least 1950 and are getting close to 1910.
The effect is similar to when a 1920s Craftsman house is torn down in your neighborhood: a new house can be built if there is money and willpower, but the ability to build such works of art has been lost forever and the 1920s house cannot really be replaced. Same thing here: they have very successfully destroyed Federal Government functions that can never be rebuilt. Mission Accomplished.
Cranky
Posted by: Cranky Observer | Jun 25, 2007 2:43:00 PM
Cranky Observer:
Yes, I know, I'm trying to keep all those goals in mind, but I still think there are many occasions on which they could have their cake and eat it too. I didn't suggest that none of their internally desired goals were met.
I'm not naively overlooking the possibility that various apparent incompetences could simply be the actual desired agenda, but many of the incompetence eruptions did in fact harm other goals the administration (including Mr. 4th Branch Cheney) had. Not like "real" harm, in which they lost their payoff, more like "proportional" harm, in which they got a vast payoff but seemingly could have gotten a lot more.
Of course, partly it could be a structural necessity given the types of personalities required for their agendas (i.e., chosen for political immediate advantage and loyalty above all) that the same people often get in the way of their bosses' goals.
In fact, there's a bright side here, one which I'm grateful for: I sincerely believe that a smarter and more competent Reagan II administration could have screwed us all even worse for years.
I.e., if someone were to have asked me to role play as the evil fascist thinker behind the regime aiming to implement my populist fascist agenda, I think it wouldn't have been so difficult to have done a better job than these guys.
Posted by: El Cid | Jun 25, 2007 2:53:40 PM
Before the Neo-cons came to power, they openly expressed a desire for some catastrophic, transforming event, like Pearl Harbour, that would allow them to fast-forward their plans for a permanent military hegemony over the entire planet.
Within less than a year of taking power, just such an event occured for them. Wow. What luck!
How likely is it, that such a ruthless group, with such grand ambitions, would get their once-in-a-lifetime shot at power, see the very thing they had been praying for on the horizon, and take serious action to prevent it?
Posted by: RLaing | Jun 25, 2007 3:28:45 PM
I think we tend to see all of this refracted through the lens of 9/11 - we should have known, we should have seen it coming... I don't necessarily buy it, not from conservatives who want to blame Bill Clinton for 9/11, and not even, really, from those looking to blame Rice, Cheney, Tenet etc. I am always reminded of the article the New Yorker published the week after 9/11 which included a quote from a senior law enforcement official - "what we had here was a failure of imagination." There were a lot of disparate strands of data, but no one, I think, really had tried to put them together in a way that said terrorists are planning to fly planes into buildings, specifically the WTC and major sites in the Capitol. Try to say someone let this happen is a level of inhumanity I simply can't buy, even in those, like Rice, I don't necessarily think are good at their jobs. 9/11 happened at least in part because we - all of us - were very cavalier about the possibility of a terrorist event was on our shores. We are not there anymore. It's not entirely fair to analyze the past as if where we are now is where we were then.
Posted by: weboy | Jun 25, 2007 3:37:55 PM
I seem to recall that Clinton certainly saw OBL as a threat, as he bombed his camps (of course the GOP claimed that was just a distraction from Lewinsky). I also remember that the Clinton transition team tried very hard to get the Bushies to take OBL seriously, and ran into the brick wall of "only nation states (e.g., Iraq) are real threats." I also remember Richard Clarke running around with his "hair on fire" for several months prior to 9/11, and the hapless CIA briefer who went to Crawford to warn Bush, only to be told, "Ok, you've covered your ass, now get out." Am I the only one who remembers all this?
Posted by: beckya57 | Jun 25, 2007 3:38:46 PM
Richard Clarke (and George Tenet, if you believe him) had 'hair on fire' and they were ignored. Madeleine Albright went before Congress to:
detail how they repeatedly warned their Bush administration counterparts in late 2000 that Al Qaeda posed the worst security threat facing the nation — and how the new administration was slow to act.
They said the warnings were delivered in urgent post-election intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 for Condoleezza Rice, who became Mr. Bush's national security adviser; Stephen Hadley, now Ms. Rice's deputy; and Philip D. Zelikow, a member of the Bush transition team, among others.
Condi Rice is an outright liar. They were warned, twice: Albright & Co, and the CIA PDB.
All the work that culmanated with Rice's 'who could have foreseen' was directed to ignoring and discrediting the warnings - why was Rice working so hard to lie is the interesting question.
Could ignoring the PDB on hijackings be connected to the neo-con desire for a new Pearl Harbor? Conspiratists want to know.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Jun 25, 2007 3:44:02 PM
I think the argument is fairly clear: "If NO ONE saw it coming, then no one could have done a better job protecting the country. Surely WE were not negligent, and all that could reasonably be done was done." They would have said the same thing in the event of a dirty bomb attack, *regardless of the truth of the matter*. In case of a more conventional attack, downing airliners-- well, they would never have received that level of scrutiny, they wouldn't have had to make excuses at all.
Posted by: Anthony Damiani | Jun 25, 2007 3:54:45 PM
Old news. Her line on this hasn't changed, and neither have the criticisms of it.
Posted by: Sanpete | Jun 25, 2007 4:43:18 PM
Try to say someone let this happen is a level of inhumanity I simply can't buy, even in those, like Rice, I don't necessarily think are good at their jobs.Closing blockquotesHow does it compare to the level of inhumanity required for a Dresden, Hiroshima or Nagasaki?
Or that required for launching a war killing tens of thousands based on faulty or ginned up intelligence and prevarication?
I can think of more than a few counter arguments to the idea that the powers that be "let" 9/11 happen. Lacking the requisite inhumanity is not among them.
Posted by: W.B. Reeves | Jun 25, 2007 4:47:45 PM
Posted by: W.B. Reeves | Jun 25, 2007 4:52:02 PM
Or that required for launching a war killing tens of thousands based on faulty or ginned up intelligence and prevarication?
That was due to arrogance and lack of intellectual honesty, not inhumanity, I think. They believed their cause was actually humane.
Posted by: Sanpete | Jun 25, 2007 5:07:08 PM
If Clinton thought OBL was such a threat, why did he turn down Sudan's government when it offered him Osama in 1996?
Also, how come Clinton didn't follow the trail from the first attack on the WTC in 1993 to KSM? What are the odds that the uncle of one of the terrorists in the first attack ends up being the mastermind of the second attack?
Posted by: Fred | Jun 25, 2007 5:16:07 PM
Still, they cannot use the excuse that no one foresaw the specific plans of 9/11/2001 even granting them the widest leeway.
The reason they cannot excuse themselves is because given many warnings of imminent terrorist attacks, they did nothing. Absolutely nothing.
It's not that they didn't do the perfect and right things.
They did nothing. They didn't react at all. They reacted like the cold-blooded arrogant thugs they are. They had "other priorities."
I happen to be one of those people who can respect the various scenarios of the Bush Jr'ites letting 9/11 happen or worse, but I am not convinced by them.
But I don't need any secret insider's perspective or to read the mind and soul of Bush Jr, Cheney, Condi et al, to know that they had no reaction to imminent terrorist warnings whatsoever, that is, other than dismissing them and insulting those bringing the concerns to their attention.
Secondly, just run this thought experiment.
Imagine that somehow -- and please just allow it momentarily -- somehow President Gore was in office and 9/11 went down the exact same way.
Do we somehow imagine the Republican Party thugs "uniting" around Gore? Do we imagine that Rush Limbaugh et al would avoid ever questioning Gore's security failure for the biggest ever attack of foreign terrorism on US soil?
Or is it more logical to envision mobs of right wing nuts outside the White House on September 12th with torches and pitchforks demanding Gore's resignation and immediate trial, if not a mob lynching?
And by the next election cycle, would someone attempt to persuade me that Republicans would have avoided campaigning on the failure of Democrats to protect the nation?
After all, Republicans campaigned on the failure of Democrats to protect the nation even when Republicans were the ones in charge who failed.
Posted by: El Cid | Jun 25, 2007 5:17:19 PM
If Clinton thought OBL was such a threat, why did he turn down Sudan's government when it offered him Osama in 1996?
Pathetic. You don't even know this is an urban myth. The Republican-led 9/11 Commission had this clear, readable judgment rendered in English using a 26 letter alphabet, so it should be comprehensible.
from the 9/11 Commission ReportThese contacts with Sudan, which went on for years, have become a source of controversy. Former Sudanese officials claim that Sudan offered to expel Bin Ladin to the United States. Clinton administration officials deny ever receiving such an offer. We have not found any reliable evidence to support the Sudanese claim.
Sudan did offer to expel Bin Ladin to Saudi Arabia and asked the Saudis to pardon him. U.S. officials became aware of these secret discussions, certainly by March 1996. The evidence suggests that the Saudi government wanted Bin Ladin expelled from Sudan, but would not agree to pardon him. The Saudis did not want Bin Ladin back in their country at all.
http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/staff_statement_5.pdf
Of course, perhaps the best argument that Clinton's anti-terror policies were better than the Bush Jr. administration's was the fact that when Bill Clinton left office, there were 2 World Trade Centers, a 5 sided Pentagon, and 0 planes hijacked into targets.
Under Bush Jr., we got 0 World Trade Centers, a rebuilt Pentagon, and 4 planes hijacked into targets.
All things considered, I think most people would give the edge to Clinton.
Although I guess you could fault Clinton for not anticipating the true threat, i.e., that the administration which followed his would never, ever do anything right that didn't involve plundering for their friends and funders, and would do zilch to protect American security, and instead would spend all their time on a crazy invasion and occupation and on destroying the Constitution.
Posted by: El Cid | Jun 25, 2007 5:33:41 PM
Yeah, who would have expected terrorists to hijack planes?
Posted by: Jason G. | Jun 25, 2007 5:39:38 PM
There is plenty of blame for both the Democrats and Republicans on not taking the threat of global terror organizations seriously enough. Clearly because 9/11 happened on Bush's watch- the buck however stops with him. It's like Katrina and NOLA- the fact is both Dems and Republicans ignored it. That however is no excuse for the Bush Admin- it simply smells of whining rather than leading. I am however amazed by how much they could screw up in the leadership department, and people seem to want to follow them anyway. That is until I realize that the Democrats have all to willingly bent over and givne one for the Gipper.
Posted by: akaison | Jun 25, 2007 5:47:49 PM
Also, in June 2001, at the G8 summitt in Italy, there was a credible threat of an airplane being used by al Qaeda to kill Bush and the other G8 heads of state. they were expecting a small civilian aircraft filled with explosives but an air attack nonetheless.
"Many people joked about the Italian intelligence force. But actually, they had information that in Genoa there was the hypothesis of an attack on the American president with the use of an aeroplane. That is why we closed the airspace above Genoa and installed anti-aircraft missiles. Those who joked should now reflect," Mr Fini said.
Posted by: BillCross | Jun 25, 2007 6:13:51 PM
Rice has often stated that she left the Democratic party over Jimmy Carter's "surprise" that the USSR invaded Afghanistan (The USSR had never directly invaded a non-Warsaw pact nation). Rice's legacy will be her continual surprise as the people lost their lives as a result of the incompetence of the Bush administration.
Posted by: rk | Jun 25, 2007 6:50:42 PM
That was due to arrogance and lack of intellectual honesty, not inhumanity, I think. They believed their cause was actually humane.
Who could have foreseen that Sanpete would pop up to paste a smiley face on things?
For the record, arrogance and intellectual dishonesty hardly preclude inhumanity, they compliment it.
Moreover, some of the worst atrocities in human history have been committed by those claiming humane motives. If inhumanity were a matter of conscious choice rather than self delusion there would be far fewer graves to weep over.
Posted by: W.B. Reeves | Jun 25, 2007 6:56:54 PM
ditto what WB said.
Posted by: akaison | Jun 25, 2007 7:06:16 PM
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