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Gold9472
11-17-2005, 09:14 PM
They Left Him No Choice

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/17/opinion/main1054825.shtml

(Weekly Standard) This column was written by Joel Engel.
Nov. 17, 2005

The man who positioned himself as the anti-Chamberlain has nonetheless allowed his presidency to be hijacked by appeasement. For two years, he appeased those who shouted ever louder that he lied about why we went to war in Iraq. At first, no doubt, the president saw those claims as too ridiculous to merit any kind of response; doing so would've seemed beneath the office.

But in not reacting, as President Clinton used to do almost daily to his political adversaries, President Bush has allowed the Big Lie chorus to drown out the rest of the country. It's gotten so loud that polls now show nearly half the populace believing our president can't be trusted. Which is of course why he and his advisers have at last gone on the offensive, pointing out that his critics in Congress saw the same data he saw and yet voted to grant him their blessings to send out the troops.

The facts are on the president's side, as numerous commentators have elucidated with supreme skill. Prominent among them: Norman Podhoretz eviscerates each of the critics' ludicrous claims, and Christopher Hitchens details the cynicism and credulousness one would have to suffer from in order to believe the Big Lies. As Stephen F. Hayes has pointed out, the case can be made that opposition politicians are cynically playing with our security.

So there's no need here to gild any lilies.

There is, though, a need to remember what transpired before the war — in fact, soon after the towers fell. And what happened was this declaration, from the mouth of Rep. Cynthia McKinney while the ashes were still smoldering: "We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11. What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11?"

Farfetched as the claim may have seemed — the utterance of a leftist conspiracy wacko — the Georgia congresswoman was the first but would not be the last to accuse President Bush of having purposefully ignored intelligence that predicted the imminent use of hijacked planes as missiles.
Echoed Senator Hillary Clinton soon thereafter — from the Senate floor, no less: "What did Bush know and when did he know it."

Ditto Howard Dean. The then-presidential candidate passed along the "theory" — as he called it — on WAMU radio that Bush "was warned ahead of time by the Saudis." (Later came the pronouncements of former Nixon aide John Dean. Promoting a book about the Bush administration titled "Worse Than Watergate," the convicted felon wrote that the president "likely" ignored "the potential of terrorists [to fly] airplanes into skyscrapers.")

A headline in the New York Times declared, "Bush Was Warned Bin Laden Wanted to Hijack Planes," which was what the Washington Post confirmed with its "Bush Was Told of Hijacking Dangers." These stories, among many, referred to comments by co-chair of the 9-11 commission Thomas Kean, synopsizing the first findings which suggested that the attacks could have been prevented.

The clamor inevitably reached the morning TV chat fests (Katie Couric: "What did Bush know and when did he know it?") and the rest of the zeitgeist, growing so pervasive that it sounded like hillside coyotes celebrating a kill. Its apotheosis appeared in the person of Richard Clarke, former National Security Council chief of counter-terrorism. His bestselling book, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror" received much media attention for his claims that the president and his team had remained willfully ignorant of the threat posed by al Qaeda.

Remember all this? Sure you do.

What you may not remember was that the source of all this hysteria was a single Presidential Daily Briefing, given to the president on August 6, 2001. The report said nothing about hijacked planes being flown into buildings and indeed admitted that "some of the more sensational threat reporting" could not be corroborated. It did, however, refer to bin Laden's stated goals of bringing the fighting to America — claims made by bin Laden himself on national television three years before — as well as the luckily foiled millennium bomber of 1999 and the African embassy bombings a year earlier.

It seems churlish but necessary to mention that these events happened under the previous president's watch, and that the millennium bombing plot in particular was played down immediately afterward by then-National Security adviser Sandy Berger, who assured the country that it was not part of a more concerted effort to attack America. Yet an after-action report — possibly the one he later pilfered while "preparing" — suggested that this had likely been confirmation of al Qaeda's presence in the United States.

For their part, the mainstream media credulously reported Berger's and Clinton's assurances. Likewise, in early 2001, when the all-too-prescient Hart-Rudman commission issued its "Roadmap for National Security: Imperative for Change," a 150-page report stating that terrorists were already preparing to strike American soil, the media either ignored or gave short shrift to its findings: "States, terrorists, and other disaffected groups will acquire weapons of mass destruction, and some will use them. Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers." Yet the New York Times reported not a word of the report, and even turned down an op-ed written by the commission chairs, formers senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman.

Now comes early 2003. Saddam Hussein has failed to comply with his 17th United Nations resolution by, as even Hans Blix agreed, not providing a complete and detailed list of all WMD and ballistic missile capabilities (remember: it was up to him to come clean, not up to us to seek and find the weapons). The resolution (1441) has threatened "serious consequences" for failure to comply, but the French and Russians, their Security Council palms greased by oil-for-food bribes, are whispering in Saddam's ear that they won't go along with any military action and that, in fact, there's a good chance they can get the 12-year-old sanctions against him lifted. Indeed, this reflects a growing consensus of world opinion.

Back in Washington, the president and Congress have access to bales full of intelligence from around the world stating that Hussein has an active WMD program, including biological, chemical, and probably nuclear capabilities. Even the Egyptians are warning the president that Iraq is well-armed and dangerous. The Senate, having viewed that intelligence and consulted with international leaders, is on the record, both verbally and with a vote, as supporting the notion that Saddam Hussein needs to go before he attacks America.

Now what?

Well, even if you buy the Democrats' new claim that, as Senator John Kerry said, "This administration misled a nation into war by cherry-picking intelligence," you're inconveniently stuck with the fact that a vast preponderance of that intelligence, rightly or wrongly, pointed unambiguously toward Iraq's status as a rogue state.

Think about this from the president's point of view: Much of the country is calling for your head regarding your alleged failure to prevent 9/11 when no firm intelligence predicted such a thing. Do you really have any choice but to act on the overwhelming amount of clear evidence that says bad things are happening beneath hidden bunkers in Iraq? No. You have no other way out than to fight preemptively. If you don't, well, heaven forbid another attack is made on American soil — with grotesque weapons that came out of Iraq after sanctions were lifted and Saddam's WMD program was reconstituted (as the Duelfur Report later extrapolated).

At his impeachment trial, shortly before conviction, the president would have been made to endure a verbatim recitation of the many dire warnings about Iraq and Saddam Hussein uttered by Democrats Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger, and Madeline Albright. "Iraq is a long way from [here]," Secretary of State Albright said on February 18, 1998, "but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."

Joel Engel is an author and journalist in Southern California.

Gold9472
11-17-2005, 09:34 PM
For those who don't know, the "Weekly Standard" is a right-wing newspaper. Its' editor goes by the name Bill Kristol, or William Kristol. Who is William Kristol you ask? In 1997, a group of radically right thinking individuals got together to form what is now known as the "Project For The New American Century". This group comprised of the following people:


Elliot Abrams
Gary Bauer
William J. Bennett
Jeb Bush
Dick Cheney
Eliot A. Cohen
Midge Decter
Paula Dobriansky
Steve Forbes
Aaron Friedberg
Francis Fukuyama
Frank Gaffney
Fred C. Ikle
Donald Kagan
Zaimay Khalilzad
I. Lewis Libby
Norman Podhoretz
Dan Quayle
Peter W. Rodman
Stephen P. Rosen
Henry S. Rowen
Donald Rumsfeld
Vin Weber
George Weigel
Paul Wolfowitz


And who is the current Chairman and founder of the PNAC? You guessed it, William Kristol.

Now, the interesting thing about the PNAC is that in September of 2000, a full year before 9/11, they released a document called, "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resouces For a New Century (http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf)".

This document talked about all kinds of things...

"Although the no-fly zone air operations over northern and southern Iraq have continued without pause for almost a decade, they remain an essential element in U.S. strategy and force posture in the Persian Gulf Region. Ending these operations would hand Saddam Hussein an important victory, something any American leader would be loath to do."

And...

"While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

And...

"After eight years of no-fly zone operations, there is little reason to anticipate that the U.S. air presence in the region should diminish significantly as long as Saddam Hussein remains in power. Although Saudi domestic sensibilities demand that the forces based in the Kingdom nominally remain rotational forces, it has become apparent that this is now a semi-permanent mission. From an American perspective, the value of such bases would endure even should Saddam pass from the scene."

The most interesting quote of all appears on page 63. It says the following...

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."

Now, isn't it interesting that a paper that is run by the Chairman of the "Project For The New American Century" is coming out with an article that further ridicules 9/11 Truth? Specifically after Professor Steven E. Jones came into the spotlight?

Oh I think it's VERY interesting.

Gold9472
11-17-2005, 09:40 PM
I always say, "Project For A New American Century"... it's "the"

Gold9472
11-17-2005, 09:42 PM
And guess what folks, this isn't the first (http://www.yourbbsucks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5066) time.

PhilosophyGenius
11-18-2005, 12:50 AM
Correction: PNAC was founded by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (and others). It's run by Krystal.

Gold9472
11-19-2005, 05:38 PM
Another instance of the Weekly Standard helping the Bush Administration.

http://www.yourbbsucks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6373

Gold9472
11-19-2005, 05:43 PM
Correction: PNAC was founded by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (and others). It's run by Krystal.

"Back then, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz and other pro-war hawks lobbied Clinton, Gingrich and Lott to remove former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power using military force and indict him as a "war criminal." Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, both of whom were working in the private sector at the time, were affiliated with the right-wing think tank Project For A New American Century, which was co-founded by Weekly Standard editor William Kristol in 1997 to promote America's foreign and defense policies."

Online Journal - January 16th, 2004

Gold9472
11-19-2005, 05:47 PM
"Established in 1997 by William Kristol and Robert Kagan."

Christian Science Monitor.

PhilosophyGenius
11-19-2005, 06:58 PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cheney

"In 1997 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997), he (Cheney), along with Donald Rumsfeld (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld) and others, founded the "Project for the New American Century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century)," a think tank whose self-stated goal is to "promote American global leadership".

I guess we're both right.