Regis T. Sabol
Rice Filibusters 9/11 Commission
Fri Apr 9, 2004 14:36
63.228.145.202

Rice Filibusters 9/11 Commission

http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=705

To the tune of “Don’t Blame Me,” Bush’s National Security Adviser claimed there was no silver bullet to stop 9/11.
By Regis T. Sabol

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice finally testified under oath before the 9/11 Commission Thursday. And what did we get? An attempt to filibuster commission members’ questions with variations on an old standard, “Don’t Blame Me.”

Rice also juggled a mélange of bureaucratic gobbledygook. She took great pains, for example, to parse the distinctions of historic briefings, warning briefings, and threat briefings. And she did so over and over and over and over. She used the same redundant technique in throwing around distinctions between tactical responses and strategic responses.

What Rice appeared incapable of giving was a yes or no answer to any question, even when a simple yes or no was called for. Here’s one good example of an exchange with Commissioner Richard Ben-Viniste:

BEN-VINISTE: Did you tell the president, at any time prior to August 6th, of the existence of al Qaida cells in the United States?

RICE: First, let me just make certain....

It went on like that for three hours. At one point Commissioner Bob Kerrey had enough of Rice’s roundabout responses. “Please don't filibuster me,” he admonished her. “It's not fair. It is not fair. I have been polite. I have been courteous. It is not fair to me.”

Speaking for an administration that touts the importance of individual responsibility, Rice’s testimony boiled down to this: Don’t blame us; blame the system.

Rice repeatedly attempted to excuse the greatest intelligence failure in the nation’s history by claiming that regulations prevented the FBI and the CIA from sharing information. She repeatedly referred to “systemic and structural” failures, another way of saying it was the system’s fault. “In hindsight, if anything might have helped stop 9/11, it would have been better information about threats inside the United States--something made very difficult by structural and legal impediments that prevented the collection and sharing of information by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”

And, yet again, we heard the same tired metaphor of not being able to connect the dots. “We weren’t able to connect the dots,” she said more times than I could count.

The Buck Stops Where?

Fortunately, Commissioner Timothy Roemer put Rice’s version of “Don’t Blame Me” into its proper perspective. “You're the national security advisor to the president of the United States,” Roemer pointed out. “The buck may stop with the president; the buck certainly goes directly through you as the principal advisor to the president on these issues. And it really seems to me that there were failures and mistakes, structural problems, all kinds of issues here leading up to September 11th that could have and should have been done better. Doesn't that beg that there should have been more accountability? That there should have been a resignation or two? That there should have been you or the president saying to the rest of the administration, somehow, somewhere, that this was not done well enough?”

Roemer followed up these rhetorical questions by asking about the now notorious August 6, 2001 briefing at the Crawford Ranch, during which Bush was told something “really, really big” was going to happen. Why didn’t Bush call his “principals” (bureaucratic jargon for responsible cabinet members) together? The title of this “background memorandum,” by the way, was “Osama bin Laden Plans Attacks Inside the United States.” Let me repeat that key phrase, “Inside the United States.”
Condi’s response: “Once again, on the August 6th memorandum to the president, this was not threat-reporting about what was about to happen. This was an analytic piece that stood back and answered questions from the president. But as to the principals meetings…”

Let’s put this response in plain English. When the president was told that something “really, really big” was going to happen and the CIA learned that Osama bin Laden planned to attack the United States, itself, soon, and even though we already knew that Islamic extremists had tried to use commercial airliners in attacks and an Al Qaeda plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on January 1, 2000 had been foiled, we weren’t telling him the nation faced an imminent threat of attack; we were just giving him some background.
Perhaps if CIA Director George Tenet and Bush’s other advisors had used that kind of language, he might have understood the immediacy of the danger and taken some kind of action other than whacking bushes on his Crawford, Texas, ranch. Maybe he would have called all his top honchos in, asked specific questions, and given direct orders to the Pentagon, the Department of Transportation, the FAA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and, most importantly, the FBI and CIA. But he didn’t.

Of course, Rice took great pains to praise her boss and our Fearless Leader for the bold steps he has taken to win the War on Terror. Here is what she had to say in her opening statement:

Occupying Iraq Made Us Safer--really?

“Because we acted in Iraq, Saddam Hussein will never again use weapons of mass destruction against his people or his neighbors, and we have convinced Libya to give up all its weapons-of-mass- destruction-related programs and materials. And as we attack the threat at its source, we are also addressing its roots. Thanks to the bravery and skill of our men and women in uniform, we have removed from power two of the world's most brutal regimes--sources of violence and fear and instability in the world's most dangerous region.

Today, along with many allies, we are helping the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to build free societies. And we are working with the people of the Middle East to spread the blessings of liberty and democracy as alternatives to instability and hatred and terror. This work is hard and it is dangerous, yet it is worthy of our effort and sacrifice. The defeat of terror and the success of freedom in those nations will serve the interests of our nation and inspire hope and encourage reform throughout the greater Middle East. In the aftermath of September 11th, those were the right choices for America to make--the only choices that can ensure the safety of our nation for decades to come.”

Excuse me, but has this woman been sleeping through her morning briefings, not watching television, or reading any newspapers? All hell has broken loose in Iraq. Marine and Army units are fighting Sunni and Shiite insurgents in at least eight cities. At last count, forty-one Americans have been killed in action in just the past five days. And no end to the uprising, now declared an intifada, appears in sight. Insurgents now control three Iraqi cities.

Fortunately, Bob Kerrey pointed out the obvious. Kerrey declared that “as somebody who supported the war in Iraq, I'm not going to get the national security adviser 30 feet away from me very often over the next 90 days, and I've got to tell you, I believe a number of things. I believe, first of all, that we underestimate that this war on terrorism is really a war against radical Islam. Terrorism is a tactic. It's not a war itself. Secondly, let me say that I don't think we understand how the Muslim world views us, and I'm terribly worried that the military tactics in Iraq are going to do a number of things, and they're all bad.

“I think we're going to end up with civil war if we continue down the military operation strategies that we have in place. I say that sincerely as someone that supported the war in the first place. Let me say, secondly, that I don't know how it could be otherwise, given the way that we're able to see these military operations, even the restrictions that are imposed upon the press, that this doesn't provide an opportunity for Al Qaida [sic] to have increasing success at recruiting people to attack the United States.

“It worries me. And I wanted to make that declaration. You needn't comment on it, but as I said, I'm not going to have an opportunity to talk to you this closely. And I wanted to tell you that I think the military operations are dangerously off track. And it's largely a U.S. Army--125,000 out of 145,000--largely a Christian army in a Muslim nation. So I take that on board for what it's worth.”

To put the matter succinctly, Rice’s long-winded testimony did not hide the fact that she and the Bush administration refuse to take responsibility for the catastrophe that happened on their watch and that our presence in Iraq has done nothing to win the “War on Terror.” If anything, it has exacerbated that war by creating new anti-American converts throughout the Middle East who have become our sworn enemies. That can’t possibly do us any good.


Regis T. Sabol is a contributing editor to Intervention Magazine. He is also editor of A New Deal: an online magazine of political, social, and cultural thought. You can email Regisat Regis@interventionmag.com


Posted Friday, April 8, 2004
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