March 23, 2004

9/11 Panel Preliminary Report: Red Hot.

The Panel’s preliminary report vindicates the Bush approach of using military action to combat terrorism.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Lacking the intelligence information they needed to strike directly at Osama bin Laden, Clinton and Bush administration officials fruitlessly sought a diplomatic solution to get the al-Qaida leader out of Afghanistan, a federal panel said Tuesday.

Not until the day before the Sept. 11 attacks did U.S. officials settle on a strategy to overthrow the Taliban Afghan government if a final diplomatic push failed. That strategy was expected to take three years, the independent commission investigating the attacks said in one of two preliminary reports. U.S. officials feared that a failed attempt on bin Laden could kill innocents and would only boost bin Laden’s prestige. And the American public and Congress would have opposed any large-scale military operations before the September 2001 attacks, the report said. In the end, it said, pursuing diplomacy over military action allowed bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders to elude capture.

So the Kerry approach, of using diplomacy and police action to oppose terrorism, led to 9-11:

The Clinton administration had early indications of terrorist links to bin Laden and future Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as early as 1995, but let years pass as it pursued criminal indictments and diplomatic solutions to subduing them abroad, the commission’s report said.

And this appears to throw out Richard Clarke’s claim that he was all over Al-Qaeda prior to the Bush administration taking office.

Pentagon counterterrorism officials prepared a strategy urging the Defense Department in September 1998 “to take up the gauntlet that international terrorists have thrown at our feet.” But the paper was rejected by a deputy undersecretary as “too aggressive.”

March 22, 2004

LIB-WATCH—WHAT’S THE LEFT SAYING TODAY?

There’s a big article about blogging in the current VANITY FAIR. VF being a very liberal publication, the article praises leading liberal weblogs. So I thought I’d check them out. See if they’re saying things that those on the right may be missing.

First up is the Daily Kos. While the name is very well-known to me, I’d never read it. Today he’s all about boosting this Richard Clarke charge that the Bush administration has done little on terrorism before or after 9-11:

The folks over at the Center for American Progress have put together a damning timeline, built upon official government memos, that paints the utter failure of this administration to take effective action against al Qaeda—even AFTER 9-11.

The “utter failure,” says Kos. So far there’ve been no more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9-11. Yet Kos considers that an utter failure. Isn’t that interesting? Kos doesn’t consider the defense of our people to be a success at all. It’s not even worth mentioning. What exactly would Kos consider a success?

It’s interesting that the Left never defines what it would consider a success, or what it would do to achieve it.

Then there’s the little item that Clinton had 8 years of terrorist attacks on the U.S., and did nothing—yet Kos blames Bush for not dismantling Al Qaeda in the 9 months he was in office prior to 9-11. Rush nails this one:

I mean, for eight years the Clinton administration did nothing…1994 Al-Qaeda plotted to assassinate Pope John Paul II during his visit to Manila; 1995 they plotted to kill President Clinton during a visit to the Philippines; 1995, had a plot to bomb simultaneously in midair a dozen U.S. transpacific flights and it was discovered and thwarted at the last moment.

1998 conducted the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania killed at least 301 individuals and injured more than 5,000 others. I forget 1993 that World Trade Center bombing; 1999, another millennium plot, bomber caught en route to LAX, and in 2000, they bombed the USS Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen, killing 17 U.S. Navy members and injuring another 39. So all of those events and more taking place during the eight years of Bill Clinton, and the media today not interested in asking any Clinton administration, that’s appearing on TV about any of that. All they want to know is why didn’t the Bush administration in nine months do anything to stop 9/11? Why weren’t they focused on it? It is to the point here, ladies and gentlemen, of being absurd to the point that everybody can see this!

This has been a fun post. I’ll do some more lib-watching later this week.