Senator Bob Graham is a really unhappy camper:
Posted by DeLong at April 5, 2004 02:33 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postCFR Publications: Senator Bob Graham Remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations: BOB GRAHAM: Good morning and good afternoon and, Gerry, thank you very much for your kind introduction. I was saying I appreciate both your remembrance and your remarks.
I'm going to start at the outset this afternoon by saying that I will make some comments today that will not be well-received in the White House. I have observed the White House's reaction to comments that it does not well receive, and so in a matter of pre-emptive defense, I have a confession to make. When I was four years old, I was enrolled in the Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod Nursery School in Tallahassee, Florida. On a day in the spring of my enrollment in 1941, I kicked in a house made of blocks by some of the other students at Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod Nursery School. The director of the school told me, "Robert, we cannot have that behavior by the children at Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod. I am calling your mother and asking that she come and take you home, and that she not ever bring you back." Now, that's on the record, you can make whatever you wish of that confession.
Friends, this has been a painful week for our nation. The horrible tragedy of September 11 has been revisited, first in hearings by the [9/11] Commission and, second, by the revelations in the book ["Against All Enemies: Inside the White House's War on Terror--What Really Happened"] of the former White House counterterrorism director, Richard Clarke.
More painful than the memories which these events have resurrected, I believe is the growing realization that our leaders did not do everything that they could have done and should have done to protect Americans from a terrorist attack. The 9/11 Commission, for example, has reported that they endorse the recommendations of the Joint Congressional Inquiry [into the 9/11 terrorist attacks], which I co-chaired with my friend and colleague and fellow Floridian, Porter Goss. We found that failures of intelligence collection and analysis, compounded by a lack of information-sharing within the intelligence community and between the intelligence community and the law enforcement community, cost us the chance to detect and disrupt the plot of the 19 hijackers. In short, September 11 could have--indeed, should have--been prevented. I share Richard Clarke's view that since September 11, President Bush and his key members of his administration have failed to keep their eye on the ball on the war on terrorism. Frankly, we had al Qaeda on the ropes in the spring of 2002. But rather than finishing the job and crushing the operational command structure of al Qaeda, we shifted our focus.
Let me share a personal story. [U.S.] Central Command, which has responsibility for our military actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq, is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, at MacDill Air Force Base. It has been my practice to periodically visit the Central Command, to receive a briefing as to what they are doing. I did that in February of 2002. After the formal briefing with PowerPoint [presentations] and all that goes with a military briefing, I was asked by one of the senior commanders of Central Command to go into his office. We did, the door was closed, and he turned to me, and he said, "Senator, we have stopped fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan. We are moving military and intelligence personnel and resources out of Afghanistan to get ready for a future war in Iraq." This is February of 2002. "Senator, what we are engaged in now is a manhunt not a war, and we are not trained to conduct a manhunt."
To draw a historical analogy, I think that what the Bush administration did, beginning as early as February of 2002, was to make a decision that we would fight a pre-emptive war against Mussolini and let Hitler run free. I agree with Richard Clarke, who concludes in his book that Iraq was a complete and unnecessary tangent. I have described [it] as a distraction. Now, I don't mean to suggest, and I do not believe Richard Clarke means to suggest, that Saddam Hussein is anything other than a bad, evil person who did bad and evil things to his own people and his neighbors and would hoped to have done it more broadly. But the question was not a singular question about Saddam Hussein. It was, rather, a comparative question. Of all the evils in that neighborhood of the Middle East and Central Asia, which evil deserved to have our primary military attention?...
It is more and more clear that this administration does not get it. Rice did not have the background and breadth to be NSCD and still lacks an understanding of Asian politics. Bush needed someone to hold his hand and that is what he got. Rice was so busy holding his hand, she did not have time to do the job she was unqualified to do. Rice was qualified for a State Department job in the area of Russia/Europe.
Posted by: bakho on April 5, 2004 03:27 PM" On a day in the spring of my enrollment in 1941, I kicked in a house made of blocks by some of the other students at Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod Nursery School."
Keeping his diary way back then, huh.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan on April 5, 2004 03:45 PMHow can you trust this guy? Senior administration officials told me just this afternoon that he was kicked out of nursery school.
What, you already knew that?
Posted by: Dave on April 5, 2004 03:56 PM"How can you trust this guy? Senior administration officials told me just this afternoon that he was kicked out of nursery school."
It gets worse. At the time, he said he didn't kick over the other kid's blocks. Now he says he did. Which is it, Mr. Graham? Which of these is a lie?
(btw, I caught some of the speech on C-Span. Great stuff.)
Posted by: Tom Hilton on April 5, 2004 04:18 PMI think the really stunning section of Senator's Graham's remarks is this exchange during the question and answer session. If it weren't a senator saying them, I would have written off the accusation as virtually tinfoil hat stuff.
-----------------------------
(NB: the emphasis astrixes " **** " are my own)
QUESTIONER: Joe Onek, Constitution Project. In the days immediately after September 11th, virtually the only plane that flew was the plane carrying high-level Saudis back to Saudi Arabia. Was that a lost intelligence-gathering opportunity, and what was the justification for it?
GRAHAM: The answer is yes. The justification was that the Saudi Embassy had asked United States officials for permission to fly some of its citizens out of the country, and we looked on it as more of a ministerial matter and granted them permission. Apparently we did not--the agencies that were, to whom this request was made, did not question other agencies in the federal government that might have wanted to interrogate these people before they left.
**** But let me say, this is a pattern which may have started a few days after 9/11, but which has [also] persisted. There are some of the key operatives of the foreign governments whose involvement is censored in this report, who have also been allowed to leave the country without ever submitting to interrogation, or where they were stopped by another government, and we essentially asked them to turn them loose. I think that it is shocking, the degree with which this government, this administration, has tolerated a role for foreign governments that contributed to the deaths of September 11. ****
QUESTIONER: Let me follow that up by asking very quickly--the--there is a distinct feeling within the executive branch now that Saudi behavior, on this front in particular, has turned around in, say, the last six months or so. Do you believe that to be the case? Do [you] have reason to believe that's not the case, that the cooperation level has gone up?
GRAHAM: Well, first, I am not going to--to ratify or affirm your statement. The nation involved--I am retiring from the Senate--I do not want my next job to be at [Fort] Leavenworth [prison]. But, let's say--what--whatever the government might be, I do not believe that we can just dismiss a pattern of behavior that was so flagrantly and violently adverse to our interest--[inaudible].
------------------------
Little Bobby kicked those blocks over on purpose, darn it, so he wouldn't have to take his pre pre-school physical. But he's got dental records to prove he was there, I'll bet.
But seriously,
Afghanistan was just a detour on the way to Iraq which was always Bush's agenda, as Paul O'Neill made quite clear (war on terror, what war on terror?). Bush's biggest failure is letting a personal agenda influence his decision making and dictate his actions as the President.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml
“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.
“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”
"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’" says O’Neill.
Posted by: Dubblblind on April 5, 2004 05:01 PMIt just gets worse and worse. Do we really want to know the truth?
Posted by: Knut Wicksell on April 5, 2004 06:59 PMThe arrogance of power. Bush and his advisors believed the US to be the number one superior power in the world. In their view, our power made the US untouchable. They planned to take the reigns and use that power to promote their own pet projects.
Imagine their surprise when they arrived in DC and found Clarke and Tenet with their hair on fire. "I'm tired of swatting flies. " Bush whines. They believed that Ussama was some dumb camel jockey roaming the desert wastes. This was the all powerful US. The US was untouchable. Certainly the US was not touchable by the some tiny terrorist organization that didn't even have their own state or their own army.
In their arrogance, the Bush administration dismissed them and continues to dismiss them at our peril.
Then there is Iraq. A small country weakened by years of sanctions. Why, the US army could rush in and take over the place in a cake walk, put our boy on the throne and finance the entire show with their oil revenue. There wasn't even any reason to plan. Just march in, protect the oil fields and the Iraqis would gladly go to work for Carlyle. If the Bush family could make millions on deals with the House of Saud, they could double their take by cutting in on the action in Iraq.
With the US as the ultimate power in the world, who would trifle with the US? Who would stand in the way of the US designs for Iraq? We could level their cities. Reduce them to sand. Besides, the Iraqis are just as corrupt as the Saudi rulers and will be more than willing to do our bidding.
Arrogance continues to be the weakness of the Bush administration and they lack expertise at the top with enough education to know better.
Posted by: bakho on April 5, 2004 07:37 PMThere's another element besides arrogance, and that is a total lack of leadership. I don't just mean this as another chance to say that GWB is useless. I mean that there are groups within the administration which act with greater autonomy (and get more respect) than they should. Certainly the neocons had their agenda. The slip-up (if that's what it was and I don't think so)which allowed particular "foreign agents" to scoot unquestioned after 9/11 could well have been the result of pressure from oil interests. The evangelicals in the administration had their own vision of endtimes, their own pro-Israel script, and are not without considerable influence.
And all of that is quite apart from inter-agency battles for power and for control of information. The only member of the administration who seemed eager to keep an eye on all these elements was Rove, and he was doing so for one purpose -- a second term. Cheney would be another overseer but hardly a disinterested administrator or strategist. His forays into CIA territory will prove to have been interesting, I'm sure.
Boy... I hope I live long enough to see at least one good, comprehensive study of this administration published... Even now perhaps a highly detailed new timeline with the latest materials from Clarke and Kay and others would be very helpful.
Posted by: Bean on April 5, 2004 07:56 PMSo what do you all think of Graham for Vice President ?
Posted by: Robert Waldmann on April 5, 2004 07:56 PMGraham could work. He might help win FL. He is not shy about attacking BushInc, a big minus with Liebermann in 2000. He has inside info from his senate seat. If Kerry takes FL and OH Bush will lose big.
Still, I look for Kerry to pick someone younger, Richardson or Edwards. There might be an emergent dark horse like the Az governor.
Posted by: bakho on April 5, 2004 08:15 PMIf nothing else, Kerry should use Graham and his FL organization to keep Jeb for stealing one for his brother.
Bean- I don't think lack of leadership is the problem. Read the O'Neill book. There are people in the loop and people out of the loop. The problem with Bush Inc is that people making the decisions are the politicos, not the policy wonks.
Read the O'Neill book. The steel leaders come to O'Neill (metals guy) and tell him their operations are efficient and envirnmentally sound. ONeill tells them "If you want to deal in this kind of bullshit, you can all go to hell". The stunned executives went to Karl Rove instead. At the exec meeting on steel tariffs, the foes outnumbered the supporters. Cheney folded his cards and went with the tariffs anyway. It is not leadership that is lacking. What is lacking is process (as ONeill complains). Process is lacking because of the arrogance at the top. One good Bush gut instinct or Rove political manipulation is worth reams of Treasury data or Scientific reports. Complete arrogance.
Posted by: bakho on April 5, 2004 08:24 PMKrugman says it very well in tomorrow's column,
"Mercury is just a particularly vivid example of what's going on in environmental protection, and public policy in general. ..
And the corruption of the policy process — in which political appointees come in with a predetermined agenda, and technical experts who might present information their superiors don't want to hear are muzzled — has infected every area I know anything about, from tax cuts to matters of war and peace."
Hubris and arrogance rule the day.
Posted by: bakho on April 5, 2004 08:35 PMIf you didn't see Lehrer's Newshour interview tonight with Senators Lugar and Biden on the topic of Iraq, read the transcript on the PBS website tomorrow (they take about 24 hours to get things transcribed). It's frightening. They can't get any information out of the Administration, which would appear to have NO REAL PLAN, and isn't conferring with anyone they know of...
Posted by: Lee A. on April 5, 2004 08:46 PMMissed the PBS but saw Lugar on FTN. Lugar is one of my Senators and IMHO, the smartest statesman in the GOP. I had an opportunity to hear Senator Lugar speak in Feb 03. His complaint then? The lack of planning by the Bush administration for the aftermath of the the Iraq war. Lugar complained then that the administration was not giving figures of how much it would cost or how much would be needed for reconstruction, how long troops would be needed, etc. Lugar is generally on the side of the president and wants to be helpful to the administration, but for some reason, they don't deal with him. Truly amazing. Truly arrogant that Bush would not seek advice from Lugar who has studied these issues for several decades.
Lugar has been harping that the new Iraq Embassy will be the largest with 3000 employees, that it will need a high profile embassador, etc. None of this has been forthcoming.
Lugar ran for president a few years back but had no support. I don't understand why the GOP turns to inarticulate hacks instead of offering the best statesmen available.
Posted by: bakho on April 5, 2004 09:28 PMI agree--Lugar brings honor to the Senate. And he and Biden have been on the same page since before the invasion. They are on Lehrer at long intervals. One time last year, they appeared to have traded each other's talking points--it was entertaining. It feels good to know that somewhere in this goddamn government, a Republican and a Democrat are getting along, and working to serious purpose.
Posted by: Lee A. on April 5, 2004 10:11 PM"It just gets worse and worse. Do we really want to know the truth?"
Yes we do. And, what's appalling to me is that the Bush administration still doesn't get that they're causing long term destruction to their party and our country by attempting to bury the truth. I can't believe that by this time Dr. Rice doesn't understand how badly they screwed up both before and after 911. There are worse things for the GOP than losing the next election like forever alienating half the nation and most the world with the legacy of lies they're still in the process of creating.
Posted by: dennisS on April 6, 2004 05:52 AMTHE latest daily tracking polls by Scott Rasmussen show that President Bush has moved up six points in the past week to take a three-point lead over Sen. John Kerry. The Bush surge is catalyzed by his negative ads, which castigate the Democrat's record on taxes and terrorism, and by the Kerry camp's abysmal failure to answer the charges effectively in paid advertising.
For a while, the Kerry collapse was disguised by the national focus on Richard Clarke's accusations about Bush's policies before and after 9/11. The short-term impact of the Clarke hearings was to besmirch the Bush image, but once the headlines faded, the remorseless Bush attacks on Kerry began to take their toll in earnest.
The conventional wisdom has been that the contest between Bush and Kerry will be very close. But the evidence is mounting that it may not be. Consider what Bush has going for him:
* With gas prices at record heights, Kerry is on the spot because of his advocacy of a higher gas tax. Voters know that the president can't control oil prices, but they sure know he can raise or lower taxes.
* The recent economic-growth and job-creation data is pulling the rug out from under Kerry inch by inch. A few more months like March, and his entire campaign theme will be made moot.
* More and more voters are becoming convinced that Kerry would raise their taxes. His promises to confine tax hikes to the rich are about as credible as an alcoholic's pledge only to drink at night. Once they start raising taxes, voters figure, they can't stop themselves.
* It is evident that Kerry has no effective answer for Bush's charge that he would undermine homeland security. With the national focus shifting more and more to terrorism and away from the fading recession, Bush's lead becomes ever more daunting.
Kerry's own work habits are subject to question. His ski vacation and elective shoulder surgery put him on the sidelines when he most needed to defend himself against Bush's attacks.
On the other side of the ledger are the continuing casualties in Iraq. Bush can't sustain these losses week after week. He dare not go into the election with a daily body count topping each night's news.
While the news media will cover U.S. and Iraqi deaths with the same sensationalism, American voters care vastly more about the safety of our own troops than the restoration of peace and order in Iraq. Bush needs to get over his nation-building fixation and cut our losses after the transfer of sovereignty.
He should keep our troops on bases and end the patrols into the towns and villages. That task is best handled by the Iraqi police and troops themselves. The U.S. soldiers should be standing by to stop the bad guys from coming back into power. Even if Iraq remains a powder keg with constant bombings and attacks, they will make no political difference in our election unless Americans are killed.
Without the economy to use as a hot button issue to attract voters, the Democratic Party is likely to begin to focus instead in Medicare and Social Security, raising alarms and fears about Bush's privatization alternatives and attacking the prescription-drug benefit. A nice countermove would be to focus on Kerry's support for higher taxes on Social Security recipients and the fact that he missed the vote on Bush's prescription-drug legislation.
The Democrats really have no issues and their candidate is way too far to the left. The hiring of John Sasso, competent as he may be, is indicative. Kerry seems destined to run the worst Democratic campaign since Mike Dukakis, Sasso's previous employer.
Posted by: Adrian Spidle on April 6, 2004 07:05 AM"I can't believe that by this time Dr. Rice doesn't understand how badly they screwed up."
Believe it. The principals don't understand insurgencies, occupations or the politics of Asia and they are not listening to the available experts that do. I expect the Rice testimony to confirm how clueless they truly are. Not that it will be clear. Rice testimony will be muddled as people with a vastly different world view struggle to make sense of her testimony. If you have not read at least one Tim Lahaye "Left Behind" book, you won't understand what anyone in this administration believes or why the believe it. From the world view of the fundamentalist Christian, Armmageddon or other struggles of good against evil are not altogether bad.
If one looks at Iraq through the lens of international law and establishing a modern pluralistic secular state, the chaos visited upon the country is maddening. The chaos can be attributed to a flawed process. The events can be understood in terms of nationalism, political factions, control of resources and local politics. However, if the events in Iraq are viewed as a struggle of good versus evil, they are justified and expected. The evil doers must be killed and the evil doers will cause a lot of innocent people to be hurt. God will use the evil doers to call some of his faithful to heaven. True believers in the US must support this holy war against evil in Iraq.
Bushies don't know enough to know how to define the problem. Those that can define the problem have conflicting world views. This is what we elected and this is why the Bush administration is so secretive about their policy. Like the creationist running for local school board, if the voters knew the true beliefs, the creationist would never be elected. Through stealth and carefully concealing the true beliefs, people with really whacko ideas can and do get elected. Four years in, this administration still manages to keep its most bizarre thinking out of the spotlight.
Posted by: bakho on April 6, 2004 07:18 AMYeah, Adrian, the Democrats have no issues. We've only lost two million jobs under Bush, and Iraq is moving along swimmingly.
Who are you trying to convince with that bullshit? How stupid do you think we are? Jesus.
Yes, I do agree, Bush might win. The idea makes me wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
Bakho: "I don't understand why the GOP turns to inarticulate hacks instead of offering the best statesmen available."
I'm pretty sure it's fundraising. Fundraising is usually done for pretty specific quid pro quos. (IE, exactly the opposite of what every donor and every recifpient will tell you".) I doubt that LKugar went around promising tax breaks, deregulation, and subsidies to every potential donor with a hand full of bills.
You need the money for big media buys, and the media have their own interests too. Some say that Dean's campaign imploded the minute that he said he might break up the media conglomerates. from then on the coverage was savagely negative.
I don't understand why the GOP turns to inarticulate hacks instead of offering the best statesmen available.
"Yes, I do agree, Bush might win. The idea makes me wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat...
Posted by Zizka "
Better you than me.
Adrian Spidle:
> THE latest daily tracking polls by Scott Rasmussen show that President Bush has moved up six points in the past week to take a three-point lead over Sen. John Kerry.
Source? Here's the Rasmussen Reports web page that I found:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Presidential_Tracking_Poll.htm
"Tuesday April 06, 2004--Senator John F. Kerry leads President George W. Bush 47% to 44% in the latest Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll."
That seems to say the opposite, but maybe I'm confused.
Not that this gives me any great confidence. Kerry does not strike me as an inspiring candidate, the Bush money machine is like nothing ever seen before, and I personally have given up all hope of even comprehending the average Bush supporter (the kind who makes less than six figures, and believes that Bush is an honest, affable, down to earth guy like them). Bush doesn't intend to lose; that much is clear. I'm not sure Kerry has the same instincts. It will take the political equivalent of a phase transition to turn this into a decisive victory for Kerry (as opposed to a wobby victory within the margin of error while the GOP keeps or extends its lead in congress--still better than Bush, but too much Clinton roasting, the sequel).
To get back on topic a little, I like the idea of Bob Graham as VP. I hesitate to say he'd be a good candidate, which is an entirely different question. But he has more credibility on the Iraq issue than just about any other Democratic Senator (possibly any other if you specify "living" to exclude Paul Wellstone). I was excited about him as a presidential candidate (which is probably enough reason not to ever, ever listen to me for political handicapping).
Posted by: Paul Callahan on April 6, 2004 09:52 AMAdrian, your Iraq solution was really amusing.
Posted by: Zizka on April 6, 2004 11:32 AMFrom Adrian:
"While the news media will cover U.S. and Iraqi deaths with the same sensationalism,"
Yup, the killing of those four workers and desecration of their corpses are clearly a creation of media sensationalism and nothing more.
"American voters care vastly more about the safety of our own troops than the restoration of peace and order in Iraq."
Aren't those two things intimately related?
Posted by: Batavicus on April 6, 2004 12:01 PMAmazing how out of touch even the most erudite among us are. If you dont understand the Graham, Unocal (Karzai and pro-Taliban strategy), Faisal connections, you cannot hope to have intelligent (or better said, intelligence) discourse.
Two words for those that care "Reichstag Fire", nothing new under the sun.
Posted by: J2 on April 6, 2004 01:58 PM"[Bush] should keep our troops on bases and end the patrols into the towns and villages. That task is best handled by the Iraqi police and troops themselves. The U.S. soldiers should be standing by to stop the bad guys from coming back into power. Even if Iraq remains a powder keg with constant bombings and attacks, they will make no political difference in our election unless Americans are killed."
Oh, puh-leese, Adrian. One report that's been absolutely consistent in every single one of the news reports on the double uprising is that, the moment any attack against the Americans has begun, the local "Iraqi police and troops" have either stood by passively -- as one Fallujah policeman told a reporter immediately after the Mercenaries' Massacre, "Why should we interfere? it was none of our business" -- or actively JOINED the anti-Ameican side (something which has been happening with monotonous regularity during the fights against al-Sadr, and which in large measure explains his success so far).
Even the Bushites are smarter in this matter than you. I'm really starting to wonder exactly how old you are.
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