Posted
10:58pm, Sunday, April 11, 2004
Way
back in February, documentarian Errol Morris, said while accepting
his Oscar that he feared the administration was leading
us down a "rabbit hole" similar to Vietnam. More and more
people are making that comparison.
Perhaps
Morris's foresight comes from the fact that he is a documentarian
and documentarians deal
in the truth. Unlike the administration who
has been engaging in a war built on fiction, or at least fictitious
expectations.
Robert
Novak's column from Thursday's Chicago Sun-Times
reports
on the administration's, specifically Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz,
folly at believing that the war would be a cakewalk.
Pentagon
briefing papers from May 2003 predicted troop strength would
be down to
30,000 by the end of that summer. Instead
there are over 135,000 troops still there. And by the account of
the generals, more are
needed. Much more. Before the
war, the
army's chief of staff predicted we'd need "several hundred
thousand."
Wolfowitz's
response? "Way off the mark." Bush
victoriously proclaimed, "mission accomplished" almost
a year ago. Rumsfeld predicted that the Iraqis would be welcoming
us with open arms. Instead
we have just concluded one of the bloodiest weeks of the
war so far.
It
appears Bush and Rumsfeld may have been the ones who were "way
off the mark."
Earlier
today,
Bush said, "What we're
doing in Iraq is right." This
week when 51 American troops lost their lives and countless
civilians were killed, burned, wounded or kidnapped,
I have to wonder what
Bush’s idea is of doing it wrong
So
Condi Rice is claiming there was no way of knowing that terrorists
were planning to attack us prior to 9/11.
Well,
there is that matter of the daily threat assessment dated August
6, 2001, titled "Bin
Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Particularly interesting
is this passage:
FBI information since that time [presumably since 1998]
indicates 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.
Hmmmm.
A mention of hijacking and federal
buildings, both in the same sentence. It doesn't take a partisan
hack to put two and two together, especially since the C.I.A. was
already concerned about planes being used as missiles during Bush's
visit in Genoa earlier that summer.
You
have to question the Bush administration for sticking to their
story, even in the face of previously reported memos, like this
one from
July 2001, two months before the attacks. This article is from
the Washington
Post, May 19, 2002:
Intelligence
sources said last night that at least two names listed in a July
2001 FBI memo about an Arizona flight school have been identified by the
CIA as having links to al Qaeda. The FBI memo was never acted upon
or distributed
to outside agencies prior to Sept. 11 and was not provided to the CIA until
last week, sources said.
The
memo, sent to FBI headquarters by a Phoenix FBI agent, warned that
bin Laden could have been using U.S. flight
schools to train terrorists and suggested a
nationwide canvass for Middle Eastern aviation students. The CIA's discovery
of an al Qaeda link was first reported by ABC News.
Here's
another pretty damning link from CBS.com. Note the DATE
of the story... a full six weeks BEFORE 9/11.
Ashcroft Flying High
WASHINGTON,
July 26, 2001
Fishing
rod in hand, Attorney General John Ashcroft left on a weekend
trip
to Missouri Thursday afternoon aboard
a chartered government jet, reports CBS News Correspondent
Jim Stewart.
In
response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling
exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial
airlines,
the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat
assessment" by
the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only
by private jet for the remainder of his term.
"There
was a threat assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting
under the guidelines," an FBI spokesman said. Neither
the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify
what the threat
was, when it was detected or who made it.
A
senior official at the CIA said he was unaware of specific threats
against
any Cabinet member, and Ashcroft himself,
in a speech in
California, seemed unsure of the nature of the threat.
"I
don't do threat assessments myself and I rely on those whose
responsibility it is in the law enforcement community, particularly
the FBI. And I try to stay within the guidelines that they've suggested I should
stay within for those purposes," Ashcroft said.
Asked
if he knew anything about the threat or who might
have made it, the attorney general replied, "Frankly,
I don't. That's the answer."
Earlier
this week, the Justice Department leased a NASA-owned G-3 Gulfstream
for a 6-day trip to Western
states. Such
aircraft cost
the government more than $1,600 an hour to fly.
When
asked whether Ashcroft was paying for any portion
of
the trips
devoted to personal
business, a Justice Department spokeswoman declined
to respond.
All
other Bush Cabinet appointees, with the exception of Interior
and Energy with remote sites to oversee,
fly commercial
airliners.
Janet Reno, Ashcroft's predecessor as attorney
general, also routinely flew commercial. The
secretaries of
State and Defense
traditionally
travel with extra security on military planes.
The
Justice Department insists that it wasn't Ashcroft who wanted to
fly leased aircraft. That idea, they
said, came
strictly from
Ashcroft's FBI security detail. The FBI had no
further comment.
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©2004 Ron
Lim unless noted |
