I watched Condoleezza Rice's appearance before the 9/11 Commission in growing amazement at her pathetic attempt to justify the inaction of the White House in the face of the President's Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001 titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US". Kirk Eichenwald, the author of an opinion column in yesterday's New York Times titled "The Deafness Before the Storm", allows that Rice's contention that the PDB was "a historical document" may have contained a kernal of truth, simply because for months the White House had been receiving warnings even more dire than the August 6 PDB. Remember the the words of National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism, Richard Clark?
Clarke wrote in Against All Enemies that in the summer of 2001, the intelligence community was convinced of an imminent attack by al Qaeda, but could not get the attention of the highest levels of the Bush administration, most famously writing that Director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet was running around with his "hair on fire".So yes. In the sense that intelligence and security officials in the government had warned of an '"imminent attack" for months, and the Bush administration paid little heed, the August 6 PDB, the sole PDB declassified for the commission, could be labeled "a historical document".
Neocons in the White House advised that Bin Laden was only pretending that he was planning an attack on the US, and Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al. chose to believe them rather than the intelligence and security experts.That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.
By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda...what is point of the reminder on the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and another intended target in Washington DC, which was prevented when passengers attacked the hijackers on the plane that went down in Pennsylvania, that the intelligence agencies warned the Bush administration for months prior to September 11, 2001, that Bin Laden was determined to strike in the US? I'm not sure, except to point out once again the incompetence of the Bush administration in its response to intelligence information. Could it be because the Neocons had an agenda before they reached the White House, and the intelligence had to be twisted to fit the agenda, the agenda being to launch an attack against Iraq?
Now the Neocons, along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have another agenda. They are beating the war drums for an attack on Iran, and, once again, the intelligence about Iran's nuclear capabilities is in dispute. Obama will be more than cautious about an attack on Iran for a number of reasons, including the possibility of destabilizing further the already unstable situation in the Middle East.
But what about Romney? From his own website: "U.S. policy toward Iran must begin with an understanding on Iran’s part that a military option to deal with their nuclear program remains on the table. This message should not only be delivered through words, but through actions."
And what would be the effect of an attack on the price of oil? Do the warmongers, with their macho chest-pounding, who clamor for or threaten a pre-emptive attack on Iran think through to the consequences of a rise in oil prices on the world economy or to any of the negative consequences at all of launching an attack?
I watched with dismay and disbelief as the administration began its inexorable procession to the invasion of Iraq to protect the US and the rest of the world against Saddam's fast-moving development of nuclear weapons and his vast store of chemical weapons, which he could loose on the world at any moment, both of which turned out to be non-existent. The reason I write is that I don't want our government to undertake this sort of deadly experiment again on the basis of junk intelligence. I realize that it's quite likely that what I write here will make no difference at all, except, at best, to perhaps remind a voter or two in a swing state about what a vote for Romney might mean with regard to future military actions by the US.
