Be it recorded that as all hell broke loose in
Iraq last week, costing
the lives of 60 brave U.S. soldiers, their commander-in-chief
went
fishing. For readers naive enough to imagine
that ole Dubya just slipped
on down to the fishin’ hole to ease his mind,
it should be stipulated that
he was hard at work filming an episode of Roland
Martin’s program for
the Outdoor Life cable TV channel—in effect,
a free campaign commercial
to be shown next August.
According to The Associated Press, Martin brought
his crew to Crawford,
Texas, at White House invitation. It’s even been
reported that the president
landed a 4-pound largemouth, although if press
accounts were as truthful as
Condoleezza Rice’s testimony to the 9/11 Commission,
somebody probably
had to thaw the lunker out before hooking it
to George W. Bush’s line. But
never mind, fellow rednecks. All you’re supposed
to notice is that ole Dubya
phoned Condi from his official Texas good-ole-boy
pick-em-up truck to say
she done good. Well, she done bad. So bad that
in an administration more
concerned with reality than symbolism, Rice would
be headed back to Stanford
University to compose her memoirs and preside
over faculty senate meetings.
Academia is clearly where she belongs. I once
taught courses at a college that
allowed itself three years to make the transition
from a quarterly to a semester
system. Judging by last week’s testimony, that’d
be about Rice’s speed.
With the CIA director running around Washington
with his hair on fire, as they
say, and counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke
demanding to know if it would
take hundreds of Americans lying dead in the
street to wake up the White House,
Rice testified that she couldn’t remember if
she’d told Bush about active al-Qa’ida
cells in the U.S. She’d also forgotten whether
the president met with the FBI director.
Translation: Of course not. Bush was too keen
to head for his Texas bass pond.
Luckily, Rice was talking about the Bush administration’s
pre-9/11 failure to
comprehend the terrorist threat and not something
truly important like sex.
Otherwise, people might have noticed that her
testimony made Bill Clinton’s
accounts of his Oval Office exploits look comparatively
straightforward.
After all, when Clinton told the nation that
he "did not have sexual relations
with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," it was technically
true. Sexual intercourse
hadn’t occurred.
But when Rice, smiling inappropriately like a
poorly rehearsed Miss Alabama
contestant, repeatedly testified under oath that
an Aug. 6 presidential daily briefing,
or PDB, "was historical information based on
old reporting, there was no new
threat information, and it did not, in fact,
warn of any coming attacks inside the
United States," well, that wasn’t even technically
true. Secure in the knowledge
that the document was classified, she even condescendingly
offered to read it
aloud to Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste, currently
under attack by GOP
shills for being rude to darling Condi. Rice
even brazenly insisted that "there was
nothing in this memo that suggested that an attack
was coming on New York or
Washington, D. C." Now that the White House has
yielded to pressure and
declassified the Aug. 6 PDB, however, everybody
can see why Ben-Veniste
was so impatient.
In fact, New York and Washington were the only
geographical locations
specifically mentioned. In only 17 sentences—short
enough for even Bush
to read—the CIA warned exactly who planned to
attack the U.S. and came
tantalizingly close to stipulating the how and
the where. The document said the
FBI had detected "patterns of suspicious activity
in this country consistent with
preparations for hijackings or other types of
attacks, including recent surveillance
of federal buildings in New York." It added that
the FBI and CIA had intelligence
that "a group of [Osama] bin Ladin supporters
was in the U.S. planning attacks
with explosives." This in the wake of 40 previous
briefings warning the White
House, as Commissioner Fred F. Fielding put it,
that "the upcoming attack would
be spectacular, something quantitatively different
from anything that had been done."
Alas, we have a president who, even after the
Aug. 6 document, titled "Bin Laden
Determined to Strike in U.S.," became public,
blithely told reporters that it "said
nothing about an attack on America." That president
has a national security adviser
who, when she wasn’t obfuscating in the commission’s
face, filibustered about her
scholarly interest in "structural" and "cultural"
barriers preventing White House
action. We’ve got a structural problem, all right:
a president who doesn’t know
apple butter from Shinola, and a pathologically
evasive national security adviser
who would evidently have to be "tasked" to call
the Fire Department if her own
hair were ablaze. This White House began dissembling
on Sept. 11, 2001,
proclaiming it had "no warning" of terrorist
attacks. No wonder it wanted no
investigation.
• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient
of the National Magazine Award.
p.s.
From watching Rice, et al tripping over this
famous memo, I happened to stumble across
the following article from 2002, written in part
by Woodward. All this whohaw over
declassifying is mysterious since this item was
outted two years ago.....
Norma
Aug. Memo
Focused On Attacks in U.S.
Lack of Fresh Information Frustrated Bush
bBy Bob Woodward and Dan Eggen
Sunday, May 19, 2002; Page A01
The top-secret briefing memo presented to President
Bush on Aug. 6 carried the headline,
"Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," and
was primarily focused on recounting al Qaeda's
past efforts to attack and infiltrate the United
States, senior administration officials said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35744-2002May17?language=printer
Note from Bart: That 'top secret classified' memo was also discussed in Al Franken's latest book.