Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Speaking of RC - there was a gem on waldman's site a few days back, which some may have missed:
(http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2004_03_28_rjwaldmann_archive.html)

"Clarke Part XXXII
Act III scene 2
(immediately following the character assasination)

Antony.
Friends, Americans, countrymen, lend me your eyes;
I come to praise Clarke, not to bury him.
The evil things that men do live on after them;
The good things are often buried with their resignation.
Let it be this way with Clarke. The noble Rice
Has told you that Clarke was ambitious.
If that were true, it was a terrible fault,
And Clarke has paid for it mildly.
Here, with the permission of Bush and the rest
(For Bush is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men),
I come to speak in Clarke’s defence.
He has sent the CIA to bring many captives home to Langley,
Who fill the federal prisons.
Did this seem ambitious in Clarke?
When O’Neill was buried, Clarke has wept;
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
But Rice says he was ambitious;
And Rice is an honorable woman.
You all saw that on C-Span
Gorton offered him a chance to claim he would have prevented 9/11,
Which he refused by saying “no”. Was this ambition?
But Rice says he was ambitious;
And surely she is an honorable woman.
I am speaking not to disprove what Rice said,
But I am here to say what I do know.
You all loved him once, for good reasons.
What reason keeps you from arguing for him, then?
O judgment, you have run away to dumb animals,
And men have lost their intelligence! Bear with me,
My brain is in the book there by Clarke,
And I must pause until it comes back to me.
…

Only today the word of Clarke might
Stand against the world. He fights lies here,
And not all will stoop so low as to pay him respect.
O gentlemen! If I wanted to stir up
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I would be doing Bush wrong, and Cheney wrong,
Who, you all know, are honorable men.
I will not do them wrong. Instead, I choose
To wrong the dead to wrong myself and you,
Rather than wronging such honorable men.
But here's testimony with Clarke's oath.
I found it in the Senate cloak room; it's his testimony.
Just let the public hear this testimony,
Which (pardon me) I do not mean to read,
And they would go and kiss live Clarke's hands
And dip their handkerchiefs in his sacred ink;
Yes, beg a hair from him to remember him by
(in short supply in both cases by the way)
And when they are dying, mention it in their wills,
Bequeathing it as a valuable inheritance
To their children.
…

Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it.
It is not proper that you know how much Clarke loves you.
You are not wood, you are not stones, but men;
And since you are men, if you hear Clarke's testimony,
It will excite you, it will make you mad.

…

Now let it work. Mischief, you are loose,
Take whatever path you want."

"Samuelson is a better reporter and analyst than this."

Since when?

My tolerance for Samuelson has turned into antipathy. He doesn't care about the truth or the American people.

I'm with Tim. Samuelson has been part of the crowd mentality for years.

No. He's not.

What's wrong with this picture? (From CNN report on CNN/Time Thursday overnight poll regarding Rice's appearance.):

"Rice herself snagged a 41 percent favorable rating in the poll, but another 43 percent said they weren't familiar enough with her to have an opinion -- and a rather sizable 32 percent had heard nothing at all about her testimony to the commission."

If you want to get even more depressed, read the vote and the comments at today's Wall Street Journal site (subscription only). The Journal's question of the day for its readers: Who is more credible, Clarke or Rice, on how terrorism threats were handled before Sept. 11?
The vote so far: Out of 15,233 participants, it's 57-37% in favor of Condi's version, 3% they're equally believable, and 3% I don't believe either of them. But even more devastating are the voters' comments, which suggest that even readers of the WSJ (supposedly a tad more worldly and intelligent than those of the National Inquirer) see the whole issue as a shrill political ploy to defeat Bush, who's done every possible thing to keep this country safe. Is there any hope whatsoever? And I can't blame the press for this result, either.

I am perplexed at your comment that "Samuelson is a better reporter than this". In my reading this is not one of his worst. Both the Times and the Post are disappointingly poor. The Times to its credit has Krugman and Herbert (along with a lot of schlock).

Samuelson is a better reporter and analyst than this.

Apparently not.

Online polls are not scientific and the question is bogus. There is no difference in the accounts of Rice and Clarke concerning Bush administration anti-terror policy pre 911.

I agree with you, Bakho, but what about all those supposedly discerning WSJ readers who can't see that?

Bakho is spot on -- both Clarke and Rice agree that due to lack of communication and agency culture clash, there were major problems in getting complete intelligence regarding Al-Qaeda (or as complete as our services could manage). Where they differ is that Clarke wanted something done about it ('shake the trees') and Rice apparently was incapable of doing anything about it. What is particularly galling is on the rare occasions where she acknowledges receiving information, she still did not act upon it, because she was not told by the messenger to act upon it. Mindboggling.

I've noticed that "Clarke said that 9/11 could not have been prevented" is one of the new GOP talking points. (Making me long for the day when "talking point" and "bald-faced lie" were not synonymous...)

There's a corporate prospectus for BushCo listed under the word "prevarication" in the OED. Sadly, no one in the American Press remember why the OED exists; nor do they remember the duties of the fourth estate: the guardians of democracy, defenders of the public interest.

sylny, don't forget that the wsj is a paid subscription online publication, which certainly skews the polling even more than normal in online settings. That said, there are two types of wsj readers: there are those of us who read the rest of the paper and ignore the editorial page (we feel pretty well-informed); and there are those who read the editorial page and ignore the rest of the paper (they feel full of rage and anger on a constant basis, assume that it's always clinton's or liberalism's or the democrat's fault, and have no interest in actual facts).

Presumably, the poll voters on this one are of the red-faced-with-anger variety.

As for Samuelson, i agree with those who have already said that maybe he was once better than this, but he certainly isn't any more. The sheer laziness of our pundit and journalist class is quite remarkable. I often ask myself: given that all a columnist has to do is produce 700 words 2 or 3 times a week, what accounts for the apalling misinformation that marks so many pundit columns?

Sheer laziness, and a greater willingness to sup at elite tables in georgetown than to actually do real journalistic digging, are the only answers i can come up with.

Hey Brad, maybe there is some hope for the world!

Apparently Krauthammer's column today was so odious that even the Post spiked it.

(Not that their Condi editorial today wasn't absurdly prissy, but that's still a step up from their usual standards on these issues.)

" (1) It meant that he couldn't try to get his Delenda plan against Al-Qaeda rolling in February of 2001 "

There was zero chance of a new Admin. adopting a rejected plan from the previous one that quickly. Even if Clarke had been named Sec'y of Defense.

"(2) it meant that he couldn't "shake the tree" and find out what pieces of the government knew about terrorism but didn't know that they know."

Working with the Deputies would have been a better place to find that out.

There is a principle called variously command responsibility/ministerial responsibility where the person at the top of an organization resigns when things go disasterously wrong. In Roman times, they committed suicide. Captains of ships go down with them, and if it is bad enough the admiral gets hung to encourage the others.

In the last half century this has disappeared in the US to our great detriment. The worst previous example was Reagan "assuming" responsiblity for the Lebanon barracks disaster. A lot of Marines got blown up because the commanders had not properly protected the barracks. That was the wrong way (The Marines were smarter tho, careers got squashed)

At roughly the same time the Peter Carrington, the British Foreign Secretary resigned because his department had failed to foresee the the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands. That was the right way.

If you believe that 9-11 was an intelligence disaster, why are Rice, Tenent and Muller still in office. The fact that they are still with us is a strong indication that the US government is not a serious organization.

As for Iraq, I draw the same conclusion about Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Feith should merely be fired.

Jeezuz, Patrick, there comes a point where your arguments truly don't make any sense at all. The Deputies were a better place to "shake the trees?" Good grief, man, don't you know anything about organizational dynamics? If you believe Rice, there were nothing but "structural" problems. Structural problems, in Washington, don't get solved at the level of "deputies."

Eli, i'm sure you meant to say "The fact that they are still with us is an indication that the bush administration isn't a serious organization."

Samuelson has been on the WashPostCompanies editorial board side for quite a while. At one time he might have been a reporter but he has moved to active disinformation for a few years now.

BTW, The script moves to the WaPo front page analysis by David von Drehle, (and you've gotta love the passive voice from the article 'has receded' is really precious -- I guess it must be 'old news' by now and safe to ignore).

"In his blockbuster testimony two weeks ago, former counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke leveled two basic charges. The first has receded: that the Bush administration ignored his plans for disrupting the al Qaeda terror network in early 2001, plans that included possible military action against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Rice and the commissioners spent little time on that indictment because Clarke himself undercut it when he said it would not have prevented the attacks."

Unfortunately, this is par for the course for Samuelson. He differs from Krauthammer mainly in once-upon-a-time having been an honest reporter. He unfortunately is simply an agitprop guy now. Test: when was the last time that data seemed to change his mind about anything? Curiously and conveniently, the data he finds all seem to support his pre-existing line.

If Samuelson stooped this low, then he is not a good journalist. He is a stooge and a hack and deserves no respect.

A followup on Howard, from William Saletan's very useful lexicon of Ricean Doublespeak ( http://slate.msn.com/id/2098500/ ):

STRUCTURAL: Factors that the administration couldn't influence because they were systematic. Example: "The absence of light, so to speak, on what was going on inside the country, the inability to connect the dots, was really structural."

CHANCE: Factors that the administration couldn't influence because they were non-systematic. Example (answering charges that the administration might have disrupted the 9/11 plot by holding regular Cabinet "principals" meetings on terrorism): "You cannot depend on the chance that some principal might find out something in order to prevent an attack. That's why the structural changes that are being talked about here are so important."

(Synonym: LUCKY. Example: "I do not believe that it is a good analysis to go back and assume that somehow maybe we would have gotten lucky by 'shaking the trees.' We had a structural problem."

BUREAUCRATIC IMPEDIMENTS: Factors that the administration couldn't influence because they involved the administration. Example: "We did have a systemic problem, a structural problem. … It was there because there were legal impediments, as well as bureaucratic impediments."

Samuelson is a hired gun who has become a partisan hack. I no longer bother to read him.

Sam Taylor

"Samuelson is a better reporter and analyst than this."

Since the WaPo is my hometown newspaper, I've gotta agree with the general assessment here. Samuelson hasn't done any actual thinking in many years, AFAICT. Kinda like George Will, but with less of a reputation.

"Samuelson is a better reporter and analyst than this."

So, he is doing "this" why, please?

"This" is what he wrote.

" Jeezuz, Patrick, there comes a point where your arguments truly don't make any sense at all. The Deputies were a better place to 'shake the trees?' Good grief, man, don't you know anything about organizational dynamics? If you believe Rice, there were nothing but 'structural' problems. Structural problems, in Washington, don't get solved at the level of 'deputies.'"

Which argument is intellectually confused. Structural problems aren't solved by "shaking the trees". They're solved by the legislature being prodded by the executive to rescind the laws (aka, the "structure") that put roadblocks in the way of our intelligence services. Like passing the Patriot Act, which revised FISA.

"Shaking the trees", presumably means redoubling your efforts to get useful information from the people in the field. And Clarke had been telling Condi that he WAS doing so. From a press briefing in May, 2002, Condi Rice responding to questions:

-------------quote-----------
On July 5, the threat reporting had become sufficiently robust, though not, again, very specific, but sufficiently robust, there was a lot of chatter in the system, that in his morning meeting the president asked me to go back and to see what was being done about all of the chatter that was there. Andy Card and I met that afternoon with Dick Clarke, and Dick Clarke informed us that he had already had a meeting of the CSG core group and that he was holding another meeting that afternoon that would be focused on threats, and that would bring the domestic agencies into the CSG.

On July 6, the CSG core players met again because there was concern about -- very high concern -- about potential attacks in Paris, Turkey, Rome, and they acted to go so far as to suspend nonessential travel of U.S. counterterrorism staff. So this is a period in which, again, attacks -- potential attacks -- overseas were heightened enough that there was almost daily meeting now, sometimes twice a day, of either the CSG or its subgroups. Contingency planning was done on how to deal with multiple, simultaneous attacks around the world.
---------endquote--------

The reasons why Clarke's tree shaking didn't produce enough fruit, are STRUCTURAL. Just as Condi says. It goes back to 1947 when the CIA and NSA were first set up. And it really got seriously screwed up in the 70s, thanks to Frank Church, Otis Pike and assorted other lefties--and I'd sure be interested to hear what John Kerry was doing at this time--putting even more roadblocks in the way.

Not to mention various contributions from the Clinton years that reduced our human intelligence capability.

> The reasons why Clarke's tree shaking didn't produce enough fruit, are STRUCTURAL. Just as Condi says.

And Clarke, as a career bureacrat, knew that a way to deal with STRUCTURAL problems was by getting the primaries to shake the trees. For while Condi insinuated that Clarke's actions towards the end of 1999 contributed nothing towards the unraveling of the Millennium plot -- the 'one smart customs agent' argument -- the record shows that it created the conditions to turn a single arrest into a 'snowball effect'.

By contrast, the one smart agent who arrested Moussaoui in Minnesota did not lead to a snowball effect, in spite of the fact that Tenet was aware of Moussaoui's arrest on the morning of Sept. 11th, 2001.

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004_04_04_dneiwert_archive.html#108149087550821362

So it's rather duplicitous to overlook the fact that it wasn't simply STRUCTURAL, given that everything the Bush White House seems to have done was at best a concession to STRUCTURE. I can only presume that you're in the habit of refusing to call your plumber when the toilet backs up.

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