car - Chapter 19

Transcription

car - Chapter 19

What Really Happened: The Story of Clinton Inc.’s Efforts
to Rewrite Bill Clinton’s Record on Iraq and Terrorism
Written by Kevin L. Groenhagen
Copyright 2008
For my daughters:
Anna Renisa – born 33 days before the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
Alicia Isabel – born on the day of the Luxor Massacre in Egypt
Katrina Loren – born 15 days before the 9/11 attacks
May the American people have the wisdom and courage to elect leaders who
will take their oath to defend the United States against all enemies, foreign
and domestic, seriously.
CONTENTS
Preface ................................................................................... i
Introduction ......................................................................... v
1. The Mythmaking Begins................................................. 1
2. Against All Facts............................................................ 10
3. The “Obsession” with bin Laden ................................. 21
4. Ignored Warnings.......................................................... 28
5. Al Qaeda-Iraq Links ..................................................... 35
6. Hyping the Iraqi Threat ............................................... 46
7. Threatening Storm in a Teapot.................................... 64
8. In Bed with Ahmed ....................................................... 70
9. The Doctrine of Preemption ......................................... 76
10. Our Addiction to Foreign Oil..................................... 82
11. The Unfriendly Skies................................................... 89
12. The World Hates Us .................................................... 94
13. Media Matters for Hillary ........................................ 109
14. Like Sloths to a Plame............................................... 125
15. Miscellaneous Moonbat Myths ................................ 131
Conclusion ........................................................................ 152
Appendix .......................................................................... 156
PREFACE
N
early half a century ago, the late William F. Buckley, Jr., after noting
that the “heroes of Liberalism are shielded from criticism,” asked,
“Are we not entitled to conclude that the day is close at hand when
we will have to agree that Mr. Truman is a great man.”1
President Harry S Truman, of course, had an approval rating of just 22
percent in February 1952, which was actually lower than Richard Nixon’s
approval rating when he resigned in 1974. Today, Americans see Truman
quite differently. Here’s how Investor’s Business Daily characterized the rehabilitation of Truman’s legacy in a November 2007 editorial:
At the time he left office in 1952, no one was measuring Harry Truman’s
head for a spot on Mt. Rushmore. He was widely viewed as an ineffective
president who fought an inclusive war at great expense in blood and treasure.
He supposedly didn’t quite measure up to the wartime giant who preceded
him, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Polls showed his popularity in the low 20s.Yet
more than five decades later, he is recognized as one of our greatest presidents.2
Buckley was correct when he concluded that Truman would one day be
considered a great man. However, it should be noted that Buckley made his
comment concerning Truman just seven years after the February 1952 poll.
The public didn’t really come around to viewing Truman as a great president
until after his death in 1972. According to the Washington Post, David
McCullough’s 1992 biography of Truman also “did much to restore the luster
of his presidency among the public.”3
It became apparent after Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001 that he
would wait for neither his death nor a historian to “restore the luster of his
presidency among the public.” After all, unlike Truman, Clinton had plans to
return to the White House as soon as possible, this time as the spouse of a
president.
1
Up From Liberalism, p. 17.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=281319777781669
3
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/14/AR2006121401683.html
2
i
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
However, there was a major snag with Clinton’s future plans. Although
he concluded his presidency with a high approval rating, a Pew Research
Center for the People & the Press survey conducted in January 2001 found
that 74 percent of Americans said he would be remembered more for his involvement in scandals rather than his accomplishments. Just 6 percent
thought he would be most remembered for his foreign policy.4 After eight
years of scandal, most Americans were glad to see Clinton become a private
citizen.
Throughout this book I refer to “Clinton Inc.” numerous times. The term
is hardly original on my part, but I believe it best characterizes the team associated with the Clintons and their quest for power. As is the case with major corporations, the name “Clinton” has tremendous name recognition.
However, name recognition is not always a good thing, as Joe Calloway
notes in Becoming a Category of One: How Extraordinary Companies Transcend Commodity and Defy Comparison:
Never confuse name recognition with brand strength. Exxon had incredible
name recognition after the Valdez oil spill. In 2002, Enron had greater name
recognition than ever before in its history but it was notoriety because of
scandal, not because of brand strength. People may stay away from your
products in droves because of your brand. What you want is brand strength,
not just brand recognition.5
Clinton Inc. worked diligently during the past seven years to increase the
brand strength of the Clinton name in order to complement its brand recognition. The goals of Clinton Inc.’s efforts are to rewrite the history of the Bill
Clinton administration while simultaneously denigrating George W. Bush’s
record.
As was the case 50 years ago, heroes of Liberalism, including the Clintons, are largely shielded from criticism. An extreme example involved
Hillary Clinton’s appearance during the Concert for New York. The October
20, 2001 benefit concert was organized by Paul McCartney and featured
many British and American artists. Most of those in the audience were members of the New York Fire Department and New York Police Department and
their families. When Hillary Clinton appeared on the stage to address the
crowd, she was roundly booed and heckled. However, as John Stossel reported on ABC’s 20/20 in July 2002, when VH1 offered the concert on
DVD, the booing had been removed. “Now and forever on the DVD the
crowd applauds Senator Clinton,” Stossel said. Fortunately, the Media Research Center has posted a clip from Stossel’s report.6
4
5
6
http://www.pollingreport.com/wh-hstry.htm
p. 98.
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020830.asp#3
ii
PREFACE
It should be noted that VH1 is part of CBS Corporation (formerly Viacom). Perhaps this is all coincidence, but the same corporation ran all those
anti-Bush segments on 60 Minutes, including the Rathergate segment that
ended Dan Rather’s career with CBS News. CBS Corporation also owns
Simon & Schuster, which published Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies,
Ron Suskind’s The Price of Loyalty, Valerie Plame’s Fair Game, Craig
Unger’s House of Bush, House of Saud, and other anti-Bush books. In addition, Simon & Schuster published Living History, Hillary Clinton’s autobiography
It may also be a coincidence that Sumner M. Redstone, chairman of the
board of both Viacom and CBS Corporation, gave a maximum contribution
of $2,300 to Hillary Clinton on August 10, 2007. Since 1995, Redstone has
also contributed to Democrats Joe Biden, Tom Daschle, Patrick Kennedy,
Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Al Franken, Patrick Leahy, Robert Torricelli, Al
Gore, Chuck Schumer, Fritz Hollings, Edward Markey, John Dingell, Richard Gephardt, Carl Levin, Gerry Studds, and Howard Berman. He also contributed to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, DNC Services
Corp., and Handgun Control Inc. To be fair, Redstone has also contributed to
Republican Senators Larry Pressler, Alfonse D’Amato, John McCain, Ted
Stevens, and Orrin Hatch, and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Redstone’s daughter, Shari, serves as CBS Corporation’s vice chairman of the board. She has contributed to Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Jim
Langevin, Chellie Pingree, Richard Licht, Ted Kennedy, and DNC Services
Corp. It appears that she has contributed to just one Republican during the
past decade: William Weld.
Another coincidence is the presence of William S. Cohen on CBS Corporation’s board of directors. Cohen, of course, was Bill Clinton’s third and
final secretary of defense.
We saw another example of a Clinton being shielded from criticism in
2006 when Fox News’ Chris Wallace attempted to question Bill Clinton
about his failure to get Osama bin Laden. Liberal commentators applauded
Clinton for defending his record, ignored the fact that Clinton told several
blatant lies during the interview, and attacked Wallace for having the temerity to ask such a question.
As I was writing this book, L. Brent Bozell and Tim Graham published
Whitewash: What the Media Won’t Tell You About Hillary Clinton, but Conservatives Will. I applaud these gentlemen for making the effort to tell us
more about Hillary. However, I also believe that the media have not told
Americans enough about Bill Clinton’s actual record on Iraq and terrorism. I
share that record in the pages that follow.
iii
A FEW NOTES ABOUT THIS BOOK
When writing this book, I conducted much of my research on the Internet.
Therefore, the references cited in footnotes are overwhelmingly URLs. I decided to list the references this way since it was much faster for me to copy
and paste a URL than it would have been to type out the author’s name, the
name of the article, the name of the publication, the date of the publication,
and page number(s) that the article appeared on. In addition, most readers of
this book, especially readers of the eBook version, will find it much easier to
read the references for themselves online rather than trying to hunt down
hard copies.
I realize that some of the URLs will “die” during the next few years. In
fact, several of the URLs I have referenced are already dead. I retrieved those
URLs by using the Wayback Machine at www.archive.org. Using the same
method, you should be able to retrieve most of the URLs that die in the future.
Finally, attention to detail is very important to me. If you spot a mistake
in this book, I would appreciate hearing from you so I can correct it as soon
as possible. I can be reached at info@sinsofthehusband.com.
Kevin L. Groenhagen
Lawrence, Kansas
July 2008
iv
INTRODUCTION
Oswald Garrison Villard, a political journalist of the old school,
who spent half a century crusading for standards of probity in public administration, once declared that he had never ceased to marvel at the shortness of the public’s memory, at the rapidity with
which it forgets episodes of scandal and incompetence. It sometimes appeared to him of little use to attack a party for its unethical conduct, for the voters would have no recollection of it. The
glee with which the epithet ‘ancient history’ is applied to what is
out of sight is of course a part of this barbarous attitude. The man
of culture finds the whole past relevant; the bourgeois and the
barbarian find relevant only what has some pressing connection
with their appetite. - Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences
I know some people sort of say, ‘well, you know, look at them,
they’re old. They’re sorta yesterday’s news you know. Well, yesterday’s news was pretty good. - Bill Clinton while campaigning
for his wife in Iowa, July 3, 2007
T
his book is about yesterday’s news. Or, more accurately, it’s about the
attempt to rewrite yesterday’s news in order to enhance the legacy of
Bill Clinton and, at least until Barack Obama began the media’s darling, to promote the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
If Hillary had ultimately prevailed over the young and inexperienced Illinois senator, Clinton Inc. would have had to become successful mythmakers
to beat John McCain in the general election. They would have had to convince enough voters that the past, i.e., the Bill Clinton administration, was a
time of peace and prosperity, competence and comity, and vigilance and vision. In fact, as the myth would have been told, Bill Clinton’s only mistake
during his eight years as president was, in the crude words of the Kansas City
Star’s Rhonda Chriss Lokeman, “to lie about wetting his whistle while married.”7
Of course, Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was more than just a
mistake. In Clinton’s professed faith, adultery is a sin. In addition, although
this was seldom mentioned in the media, Clinton’s affair could also have
7
http://www.creators.com/opinion/rhonda-lokeman/a-clear-and-present-danger.html
v
been considered a crime. At the time of the affair, adultery committed in the
District of Columbia was a misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of $500 or
180 days in jail.8
Anyone who now broaches the subject of Monica Lewinsky will be
sternly lectured about getting into the Clintons’ personal business. Fine. I
won’t go there in this book. Instead, I’ll limit my discussion to Bill Clinton’s
mistakes, sins, and scandals regarding Iraq and al Qaeda.
According to the mythmakers, there were few, if any, foreign policy mistakes during the Clinton administration. Clinton Inc. contained Iraq, deterred
al Qaeda, and adequately funded our military. In addition, the entire world
loved and respected the United States during the Clinton years.
Most who served in the White House during those years have spent the
last eight years propagating those myths. However, one Clinton White House
alumnus, Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson, USAF (Ret.), stepped forth in
2003 with a book, Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill
Clinton Compromised America’s National Security, that explained how Clinton’s “arrant irresponsibility toward our national security and foreign policy”
led to the horrific and inevitable reckoning that we witnessed on September
11, 2001.
“[P]resident Clinton left his successor with an American foreign policy
that was not adequately responding to the world’s hornets’ nests and with a
military that was a shadow of the force that had won the Gulf War,” Patterson wrote. “And as with so many scandals of the Clinton administration, it
wasn’t Clinton, but our nation, that paid the price.”
In addition to serving as an Air Force pilot during combat operations in
Grenada, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, and Bosnia, Patterson was a senior military aide to President Bill Clinton. During that time he was responsible for
the president’s emergency satchel, also known as the “nuclear football.” The
nuclear football is a specially outfitted black briefcase used by the president
to authorize the use of nuclear weapons. Like all military aides to the president, Patterson underwent the nation’s most rigorous security background
check, the Yankee White. The criteria for the Yankee White include U.S.
citizenship, unquestionable loyalty, and an absolute absence of any foreign
influence over the individual, his family, or “persons to whom the individual
is closely linked.”9
Two sentences from Dereliction of Duty motivated me to write this book:
“I hope [this book] is also a warning to the American people that we must
never allow the purveyors of such dangerous military policy and irresponsible foreign policy claim the presidency again. I would not come forward now
if I didn’t think the message was so vitally important to our future as a nation.”
8
9
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/mundy022298.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/nuclear-football.htm
vi
INTRODUCTION
Those “purveyors,” Clinton Inc., were just months away from being in the
position of claiming the presidency again. Of course, if Hillary Clinton had
been elected president, Bill Clinton, the CEO and president of Clinton Inc.,
would have been back in the White House. He surely would have been joined
by others who were part of his team. In October 2007, Sandy Berger, Bill
Clinton’s national security adviser, became an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s
presidential campaign. Just four years ago, the John Kerry presidential campaign fired Berger after it was learned that he stole documents from the National Archives in advance of the 9/11 Commission hearings in 2003. In September 2005, Berger was fined $50,000, placed on probation for two years,
and stripped of his security clearance for three years.10 Two days after being
placed on probation, police accused Berger of driving 88 miles per hour in a
55-mile-per-hour zone in Fairfax County, Va.11 Would Berger behave better
if he were working in the White House again? If past is prologue, it’s doubtful. In November 1997, Berger paid a $23,000 civil penalty to settle conflict
of interest allegations stemming from his failure to sell oil stock. In 1994,
White House and other government lawyers advised Berger to sell his ownership of stock in Amoco Corporation because it might create a conflict of
interest. Berger said he intended to sell his stock, but forgot.12
Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the UN and, later, secretary of state, also seemed prepared to rejoin Clinton Inc. During CNN’s
Democratic YouTube debate, after a questioner asked whether in their first
year in office the candidates would meet with the leaders of North Korea,
Iran, and Syria “without preconditions,” Barack Obama said yes and Hillary
Clinton said no. The following day, Albright held a conference call with reporters to discuss Clinton’s “understanding of national security issues.”13
During Hillary’s post-Iowa Caucuses speech, Albright stood to Hillary’s
right and Bill Clinton stood to her left. The message on the podium stated,
“Ready for Change.”14
Newsweek characterized Richard Holbrooke, Bill Clinton’s ambassador to
the UN from 1999 to 2001, as “an aspiring secretary of State” and Hillary’s
main “enforcer.” According to a senior adviser to Obama, “I have had at least
two people directly tell me they had been told by Holbrooke if they went
with Obama, the Hillary people would not forget and forgive.”15
The same Newsweek article reported that Barack Obama supporters “are
also wary of what one describes as Hillary’s ‘closed circle,’ including her
husband and a triumvirate of senior officials from his presidency—
Holbrooke, Albright and former national security adviser Sandy Berger.”
10
http://www.examiner.com/a-977346~He_s_back__Sandy_Berger_now_advising_Hillary_Clinton.html
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/10/06/ex_security_aide_accused_of_speeding/
12
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/11/10/email/berger/
13
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/07/clinton_ropeadopes_obama.html
14
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QX6CyIwGYoM
15
http://www.newsweek.com/id/40772
11
vii
“There is a sense, consciously or subconsciously, that we don’t want to just
go back to the same team: Holbrooke, Sandy, Madeleine … the same people
having the same arguments about who’s going to be in the room,” said the
midlevel Obama adviser.16 Given that that “closed circle” gave us policies
that led to the destruction of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we all
should have been wary.*
Other members of Bill Clinton’s administration joined Hillary’s
presidential campaign as national security and foreign policy advisers,
including the following, as noted by the Washington Post’s William Arkin17:

Gen. Wesley K. Clark, President Clinton’s Kosovo commander and
now a Democratic fundraiser, endorsed Sen. Clinton September 15,
2007.
John H. Dalton, President Clinton’s Navy secretary and now
president of the Financial Services Roundtable’s Housing Policy
Council, veterans and military retirees for Hillary.
Lee Feinstein, a deputy in President Clinton’s State Department,
national security coordinator.
Martin S. Indyk, President Clinton’s ambassador to Israel and now
director of Brookings’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, foreign
policy adviser.
Lt. Gen. Claudia J. Kennedy, former deputy chief of staff for
intelligence, veterans and military retirees for Hillary. Kennedy
endorsed Senator John Kerry for the 2004 Democratic presidential
nomination in September 2003, and has served as an advisor to the
Kerry campaign. She was sometimes mentioned as a possible
nominee for Secretary of Defense in a Kerry administration.
Lt. Gen. Donald L. Kerrick, President Clinton’s deputy national
security adviser, organizes meetings of retired officers.
Togo D. West, President Clinton’s secretary for veterans affairs and
former secretary of the Army, veterans and military retirees for
Hillary.
Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Special Assistant to
President Clinton and senior director for African Affairs, National
Security Council, endorsed Sen. Clinton July 16, 2007.
Curiously, Arkin listed Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar
who played a prominent role in the mythmaking concerning Bill Clinton’s
16
Ibid.
Many of these retreads not only served in Bill Clinton’s administration, they served in the disastrous
Carter administration as well. For example, Sandy Berger was Deputy Director of Policy Planning for the
U.S. State Department from 1977 to 1980, while from 1978 to 1981, Madeleine Albright served as both a
staff member of the White House and the National Security Council.
17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/documents/the-war-over-the-wonks.html
*
viii
INTRODUCTION
antiterrorism record, as an Obama adviser. Clarke also contributed $2,300—
the maximum amount an individual may contribute per election—to
Obama’s campaign on March 23, 2007. He had given $2,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign on September 22, 2005. It is not clear why Clarke’s apparently shifted his loyalty from Clinton to Obama.
Interestingly, Clarke also gave $2,100 to Democrat Joe Sestak in March
2006. It was the only federal contribution he made that year. It would soon
become clear that Clinton Inc. was behind the effort to get Sestak elected, or,
more accurately, to get Sestak’s opponent removed from office. According to
Jack Cashill, in early 2006 Sandy Berger, using resources from his global
strategy firm, Stonebridge International, “was about to execute a brazen, political drive-by on the one legislator who most seriously threatened the Clinton legacy and his own reputation, namely Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania.”18
In March 2006, Berger held a fundraiser for Sestak, a retired admiral, and
contributed $1,000 to Sestak’s campaign. The fundraiser was held at the law
offices of Harold Ickes, Bill Clinton’s deputy chief of staff and a senior
advisor to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign in 2000, and Janice Enright, the
treasurer of Hillary Clinton’s 2006 Senate campaign. In addition, Stonebridge’s director of communications, Allison Price, later served as Sestak’s
campaign spokesperson.
During Bill Clinton’s infamous appearance on Fox News on September
24, 2006, the former president advised Chris Wallace several times to read
Richard Clarke’s book. In addition, Clinton mentioned a “three-star admiral,
who was on my National Security Council staff, who also fought terror, by
the way, is running for the seat of Curt Weldon in Pennsylvania.”19 He was
referring, of course, to Sestak. Clinton later campaigned for Sestak, telling a
crowd at Valley Forge Military Academy, “I will not make a single stop in
this campaign season that means more to me than this one—not one.”20 This
is a remarkable statement when you consider that Hillary Clinton was also up
for reelection that November.
According to the Delco Times in October 2006, “A Sestak victory would
not only help the Democrats rebuild their House majority, but muzzle a Republican congressman who blames Clinton for doing irreparable harm to
America’s national security during the 1990s”21
Why did Clinton Inc. want to muzzle Weldon, the vice chairman of the
House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees? Cashill explains:
18
http://www.cashill.com/twa800/how_sandy_berger_paid.htm
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,215397,00.html
20
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17291711&BRD=1675&PAG=461&dept_id=18171&rfi=6
21
Ibid.
19
ix
The Clarke book did the Democrats a double favor. It whitewashed the Clinton failures—and his—in the war on terror. And it discredited the war in Iraq
by denying any connection between Al-Qaeda and Iraq. This Clarke could get
away with only because his side has historically controlled the narrative.
Consider, for instance, the White House response to the 1998 embassy bombings. The Clinton people bomb a sovereign country like the Sudan without
Congressional or UN approval, publicly say that the bombing was necessary
because of the link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda—Clarke prominent among
those making this claim—and then simply ignore or deny everything they
once said when the narrative needs tweaking.
Why Curt Weldon presents such a challenge to the [Clinton shadow government] is that he is one of the few people in Congress willing and able to rewrite this narrative. His exposure of Able Danger and his book on the CIA,
Countdown to Terror, have already deflated much of the Clarke story. His
further interests have the potential to unravel the Clarke/Clinton narrative altogether. High among these is his search for the truth behind Sandy Berger’s
shredding of stolen files, the Rosetta Stone of the Clinton saga.22
Less than a month before the Weldon-Sestak election, federal agents
raided the homes of Weldon’s daughter and one of his closest political supporters “as part of an investigation into whether the veteran Republican congressman used his influence to benefit himself and his daughter’s lobbying
firm, according to sources familiar with the investigation.”23 In 2004, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) had called on the
House Ethics Committee and Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate
any possible improprieties on Weldon’s part. McClatchy Newspapers at the
time described CREW as a “Democratic-leaning watchdog group.”24 In fact,
Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director, used to work for Rep. John
Conyers (D-Mich.), as well as for liberal Democrat senators Chuck Schumer
and Joe Biden.25 CREW’s deputy director and communications director,
Naomi Seligman Steiner, formerly served as communications director for
Media Matters for America, a left-wing media “watchdog.” According to a
July 2006 article in the Washington Post, “a Democracy Alliance blessing
effectively jump-started Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.” The same article noted, “Democracy Alliance was formed last year with
major backing from billionaires such as financier George Soros and Colorado
software entrepreneur Tim Gill.” In addition, Democracy Alliance “lavished
millions on groups that have been willing to submit to its extensive screening
process and its demands for secrecy,” including Media Matters for America
and the Center for American Progress.26
22
http://www.cashill.com/natl_general/clinton_targets_weldon.htm
24
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/staff/greg_gordon/story/14835.html
25
http://www.citizensforethics.org/about/staff
26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/16/AR2006071600882_pf.html
23
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INTRODUCTION
As this book will show, Media Matters for America and the Center for
American Progress are part of Clinton Inc. And, despite its claims of being
nonpartisan, CREW appears to be as well. In fact, Mark Penn, a CREW
board member, served as Bill Clinton’s pollster and served as Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist.27 Penn’s wife, Nancy Jacobson, a Democratic Party
fundraiser and former DNC finance director, also joined Hillary’s campaign
as a senior adviser.28
Having had the full force of Clinton Inc. brought down on him, Rep.
Weldon, a ten-term representative, was defeated by Sestak in November
2006. The FBI, which says it is still investigating Weldon, has yet to charge
Weldon with any wrongdoing. Nevertheless, his defeat served as an abject
lesson to anyone who would dare contradict the narrative Clinton Inc. wanted
to share concerning Bill Clinton’s national security record. That narrative, of
course, is made up of many myths, including the following:

Bill Clinton did all he could to fight terrorism.
Clinton had contained Saddam Hussein to the point that he was no
longer a threat.
The world loved the U.S. when Clinton was president.
George W. Bush failed to heed warnings concerning an imminent al
Qaeda attack during the summer of 2001.
Bush, who wanted to get Saddam Hussein for trying to “kill his
daddy,” used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq. He lied about weapons
of mass destruction to justify that invasion.
Bush has squandered the respect and goodwill the world used to have
for the U.S.
The only way to restore that respect and goodwill would be to elect a
Democrat president in 2008, particularly Hillary Clinton.
These are wonderful myths and many have bought into them. However,
as this book will show, the truth about the Clinton administration is far different from Clinton Inc.’s narrative. In fact, most of what Clinton Inc. accuses Bush of doing (or not doing) was earlier done (or not done) by Bill
Clinton.
Of course, liberals do not want to be confused by the facts and, thus, do
their best to avoid them. I experienced this phenomenon when, on June 15,
2005, Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com, posted an item concerning
Rep. John Conyers’ hearing on the so-called Downing Street memo. The
hearing included testimony from Joseph Wilson, Cindy Sheehan, Ray
McGovern, and John Bonifaz. “As you know, Democrats.com does not shy
away from hard work,” Fertik wrote in his post. “We believe George Bush
27
28
http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2006/12/nancy_jacobson.html
xi
committed numerous impeachable crimes, and we are determined to build a
grassroots movement that is powerful enough to force Congress to impeach
him.”29
What were these impeachable crimes? Democrats.com had posted a list of
the “Top Reasons for Impeaching Bush.”30 Interestingly, almost every reason
given for impeaching Bush could also apply to Bill Clinton and/or earlier
presidents. Consider the nine reasons grouped under the “Iraq” heading:

Invading Iraq without any threat to the U.S.
The Clinton administration also said Iraq was a threat to the U.S. They
cited that threat when they launched the preemptive attack known as
Operation Desert Fox in December 1998.

Lying about Iraqi WMD's to Congress and the American people
For eight years, the Clinton administration told Congress and the
American people that Iraq had WMD. They left office in January 2001
still claiming that Iraq had WMD.

Causing the deaths of over 2,000 U.S. troops and the maiming of
over 10,000 more
If the deaths and maiming of U.S. troops is an impeachable offense,
then nearly every president, including Clinton, has committed that offense.

Failing to provide adequate equipment and armor to U.S. troops
After the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, many liberals claimed that Bill
Clinton deserved credit for the speedy victory. Reportedly, Al Franken
approached Paul Wolfowitz and said, “Clinton's military did pretty well
in Iraq, huh?”31 Fred Kaplan of Slate.com made a similar argument.
“Weapons systems and war strategies often take years, even decades, to
evolve,” Kaplan wrote. Further, “[T]he wonder weapons of Gulf War
II—the weapons that allowed for ‘a combination of precision, speed,
and boldness the enemy did not expect and the world had not seen before,’ as the second President Bush put it in his victory speech last
night onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln—were developed and built
during the presidency of Bill Clinton.”32 Of course, after our troops
started being killed by improvised explosive devices, no liberal would
acknowledge that the Clinton administration failed to develop and build
defense systems to protect our troops from those weapons. And they
29
http://www.democrats.com/node/5037
http://www.democrats.com/impeachment-reasons
31
http://www.slate.com/id/2082499
32
Ibid.
30
xii
INTRODUCTION
certainly didn’t want to be reminded that the Clinton administration
failed to provide our troops in Somalia with the equipment and armor
they requested prior to the Black Hawk Down incident.

Allowing illegal torture and murder of prisoners
Democrats.com is referring specifically to Abu Ghraib. There is no
evidence that the Bush administration allowed the torture and murder
of prisoners there. As far as torture, the policy of rendition was enacted
by the Clinton administration in 1995. As we will see later in this book,
the CIA agent who devised the rendition program believes prisoners
were tortured during the Clinton years.

Causing the deaths of 100,000 Iraqi civilians
In 1995, researchers with the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO) wrote to The Lancet, the journal of the British
Medical Society, and reported that sanctions against Iraq were responsible for the deaths of 567,000 Iraqi children under five.33 When Madeleine Albright, who was then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,
was confronted with that number while appearing on 60 Minutes in
1996, she responded, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—
we think the price is worth it.”34 Osama bin Laden would later cite
those deaths as a rationale for sending Bill Clinton “messages with no
words.”

Spending $300 billion in just two years for an occupation that
could last for decades
This ignores the billions of dollars that was spent during the Clinton
administration to enforce two no-fly zones in Iraq, the Maritime Interception Force, and the stationing of thousands of U.S. troops in Saudi
Arabia and other Arab states to contain Saddam. It also ignores that
sanctions on Iraq and our troop presence on Saudi soil to enforce those
sanctions inflamed anti-American sentiment among radical Islamists
such as Osama bin Laden. Former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey
cited these and other expenses in the September 12, 2002 edition of the
Wall Street Journal. “We civilians cannot expect to liberate 25 million
Iraqis on the cheap,” Kerrey wrote. “Just as it has been a terrible and
tragic mistake for the U.S. to be in favor of freedom every place on
earth except in Arab nations, it would also be a tragic mistake if we do
not give our military the resources necessary to succeed.” Further, “At
the end of all of the academic arguments is whether we are willing to
pay the price to bring freedom to the people of Iraq. If we are, we will
33
Zaidi, Sarah and Mary C Smith Fawzi (1995). “Health of Baghdad’s children”, The Lancet, 346, 2 Dec.,
1995.
34
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084
xiii
not regret it. If we aren't, we should tell the truth and go no further. As
we are fond of saying: Freedom is not free.” 35

Letting Halliburton steal billions through no-bid contracts
Democrats.com’s “billions” appears to be an extreme exaggeration.
According to the Project On Government Oversight’s (POGO) Contractor Misconduct Database, Halliburton’s government contract for FY
2005 was worth $5.9 billion. The company had 14 instances of misconduct since 1995 and POGO estimated that those instances of misconduct amounted to $248.3 million. That’s far less than the “billions”
that Democrats.com claimed. Of the Top 50 federal contractors POGO
listed, Lockheed Martin, Boeing Company, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Company, United Technologies Corporation, McKesson, Honeywell International Inc., Health Net Inc., Electronic Data Systems, BP
Amoco P.L.C., Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, and IBM Corporation all had total misconduct dollar amounts of more than $250 million since 1995.36 Clearly, misconduct amongst federal contractors is a
very serious problem that existed before the event of the Bush administration.

Using vast quantities of depleted uranium weapons that will poison
Iraq now and for generations to come
Vast quantities of depleted uranium weapons were used by the U.S. in
Kosovo. During a January 9, 2001 press briefing on the USS Cole, Secretary of Defense William Cohen was asked about the British launching
an investigation into the health effects of the depleted uranium used in
the Balkans. “[W]e have found no scientific leak—link, rather, between
the depleted uranium and leukemia, as some have alleged,” Cohen said.
“We have not been able to find any substantiation of that scientifically.”37
After reading Fertik’s item and Democrats.com’s reasons for impeaching
Bush, I posted the following on Democrats.com’s public forum:
I have to wonder if Bob Fertik and the other founders of this web site favor
the retroactive impeachment of Bill Clinton. After all, Bill Clinton claimed
Iraq had WMD, was a threat to the US, and had operational ties to al Qaeda.
In 1995, Madeleine Albright told the viewers of 60 Minutes that “the price
was worth it” when Lesley Stahl cited that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as
a result of sanctions placed on Iraq. Of course, sanctions were placed on Iraq
35
36
37
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002252
http://www.contractormisconduct.org/
http://www.usembassy.it/file2001_01/alia/a1010901.htm
xiv
INTRODUCTION
because Saddam allegedly had WMD. Sanctions were not lifted on Iraq until
after that country was liberated in 2003.
In 1998* Osama bin Laden cited those deaths and the U.S. presence in Saudi
Arabia (which Clinton expanded to enforce sanctions placed on Iraq due to
Saddam’s alleged WMD) as rationales for sending Clinton “messages with no
words.” Those messages were sent during the summer of 1998 when al Qaeda
bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa (i.e., American soil), the USS Cole in
2000, and 9/11.
Instead of attacking al Qaeda after the embassy bombings, Clinton bombed
Iraq’s “nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs” for four days
and then launched a war of choice in Kosovo (without Congressional approval).
If Fertik is serious about impeaching Bush over Iraq, let’s first conduct a retroactive impeachment of Clinton so that we can get all the facts out on the table before we proceed with impeachment hearings against Bush.
According to the “After Downing Street Co-Founders” bio page at AfterDowningStreet.org, “Fertik debated Al Gore’s victory in Election 2000 and
popular opposition to the Iraq War with Bill O’Reilly on The O’Reilly Factor
on 9/25/02 and left O’Reilly fuming for days. Fertik publicly challenged
O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, and the rest of the Fox News cast to a debate on
4/16/02 but no one at Fox has the guts to take him on.”38 I figured this selfdescribed “aggressive progressive” would have no problem addressing my
retroactive impeachment points.
So, what was the response from Fertik and Democrats.com? My post was
promptly deleted and my user name banned. Bill Harding, a poster who apparently also serves as a moderator for the site, said he deleted my post “because (among other things) it cited quotes without attribution, or a link. The
same rules that apply to our own members, also apply to Republican trolls.”
That was not true. My post included a link to a now defunct Web site I put
together. That Web site included links to articles that backed up every point I
made in my post.
Unfortunately, most Democrats no longer want to know the truth. Worse
yet, they no longer feel obligated to tell the truth. For example, in November
2007, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden addressed a group of New
Hampshire forth-graders. After being asked, “How did the war in Iraq
start?”, Biden offered this answer.
Osama bin Laden set up camps there, and he was getting a lot of help from
folks running that country called Afghanistan. And that’s where he planned
an attack on America to bring the World Trade Towers down and kill all
*
Bin Laden actually said this in 1997, not 1998.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/cofounders
38
xv
those innocent Americans. We had a right to, and we should’ve gone, to Afghanistan to try to get bin Laden and those people who’ve done very bad
things to America.
But the president, I think, he got a little confused. I think he thought the folks
in another country, way, way far away, far from here, it’s also far from Afghanistan, called Iraq. He said, “The guy in Iraq he helped bin Laden do bad
things to us,” and he didn’t. He wasn’t a good guy, but he didn’t help. So we
used that kind of as an excuse to attack Iraq.39
I guess we should give Biden a little credit for saying “we” in his last sentence. After all, on October 11, 2002, Biden was one of 77 U.S. senators who
voted for the resolution that authorized force against Iraq.40 However, if Biden believes we removed Saddam from power because Bush said the Iraqi
dictator played a role in 9/11, then it appears Biden himself is confused.
Sadly, Biden’s speech to fourth-graders varies very little from the way he
addresses “grown-up” Democrats.
Of course, Biden is a dishonest politician who is merely touting Clinton
Inc.’s narrative. Unfortunately, other liberals have adopted this narrative out
of ignorance. For example, the Kansas City Star’s political cartoonist, Lee
Judge, has a blog in which he shares unpublished and yet-to-be-published
cartoons. On December 11, 2007, Judge posted a cartoon in which a map of
the United States became smaller in each subsequent frame. Under the map
in each frame, he included the words “Kidnapping people…,” “Holding them
without trial…,” “Torturing them…,” “And destroying the evidence….” He
concludes the cartoon by asking, “Is this still America?”
Judge then decided to add a little commentary to his cartoon:
If someone described what’s happened since Bush took office you’d think
you were hearing about a 3rd World dictatorship. We’re really going to have
a discussion about how much torture is ok? It’s not surprising that a shallow
yahoo like W. would go along with this, but the number of citizens who can’t
seem to picture themselves being any kind of suspect and subjected to this
kind of treatment is stunning.
There’s a slight problem with Judge’s analysis of what has happened
“since Bush took office.” Judge’s cartoon referred to the policy of “extraordinary rendition.” If Judge had taken a break from doodling for a few minutes and read the October 19, 2007 edition of the Washington Post, he would
have learned that that policy was enacted in 1995 and that about 70 renditions were carried out before 9/11, most of them during the Clinton years. 41
39
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8SLJHA80&show_article=1
40
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=2&v
ote=00237
41
xvi
INTRODUCTION
In addition, Michael Scheuer, the CIA agent who devised the rendition system, said in 2005 that targets were tortured before and after 9/11. “I have no
doubt about it,” Scheuer said. “You’d think I’m an ass if I said nobody was
tortured. There was more of a willingness in the White House to turn a blind
eye to the legal niceties than within the CIA. The Agency always knew it
would be left holding the baby for this one.”42
After a Kansas City Star reader informed Judge of these facts, the cartoonist offered this response:
I’ve never read that rendition started under Clinton, I don’t recall seeing it in
our paper, the editorial writer who covers this said he’s never heard it either
and I went to Tom McClanahan, who’s so conservative he’d like to invade
Poland, and he said he’d never heard that either.
NONE of which means it isn’t true. There’s a great deal that isn’t in our paper. It’s my main source for news since it’s my readers’ main source for news
and we need to be operating out of the same information pool for the cartoons
to work, but it’s not the only source for news.
Having acknowledged that he may have been incorrect concerning when
the policy of rendition was enacted, Judge told his readers, “The cartoon I
posted was fine and I’ll probably use it in the paper.”43 Sure. He couldn’t
allow the facts to get in the way of a good cartoon.
While the Kansas City Star editorial staff didn’t know that the policy of
extraordinary rendition began during the Clinton administration, others seem
to have developed memory loss concerning that fact. In a December 13, 2007
Los Angeles Times column criticizing the Bush administration, Rosa Brooks
asked, “Who decided to let the U.S. adopt the interrogation methods of a
hundred tin-pot dictators?”44 As noted above, Bill Clinton made that decision
in 1995. Brooks, incidentally, served as a senior advisor at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor during the
Clinton years. She currently serves as special counsel to the president at
George Soros’ Open Society Institute.
The most blatant example of the narrative being based on faulty assumptions concerns 9/11. The common wisdom concerning that day is Bush
should be held solely responsible for failing to prevent the attacks since the
attacks happened on his watch. Liberals want to absolve Bill Clinton of any
responsibility because he left office more than seven months before 9/11.
Of course, liberals don’t really believe blame or credit should be assigned
to a president simply because an event occurred on his watch. Just try telling
a liberal that Ronald Reagan was responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union.
42
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2005/10/two_experts_on_1.html
http://judgesopinion.kcstar.com/?q=node/2867#comment-1686
44
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oebrooks13dec13,1,330306.column?ctrack=1&cset=true
43
xvii
You’ll soon be met with a lecture concerning how Democrats from Harry S
Truman to Jimmy Carter also deserve credit for ending the Cold War.
There is a scene from the movie Tommy Boy* that can also help us counter
the nonsensical nature of the “on his watch” argument. At one point in the
1995 comedy starring Chris Farley and David Spade, Spade’s character,
Richard, tells Farley’s character, Tommy, to pump gas in his car while he
goes into a gas station to ask for directions. Tommy gets into the driver’s
seat, but forgets to shut his door. When he backs up, the door hits the gas
pump and is severely damaged. After Tommy gets back into the passenger’s
seat, Richard returns to the car and opens the driver’s side door, which falls
to the ground. Tommy looks at Richard with mocked surprise and exclaims,
“What’d you do?!”
Bill Clinton, America’s “Tommy Boy,” along with Clinton Inc., essentially did the same thing with Bush after 9/11 occurred. The time to tell the
truth about who really damaged our “car door” is long past due.
*
Okay, I admit it. I enjoy silly comedies starring Saturday Night Live alumni. Few of us are serious at all
times, and that includes U.S. senators. I read in the November 2007 issue of Newsmax magazine that
Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is a huge Batman fan. Leahy
reportedly will appear onscreen as a “distinguished gentleman” in the next Batman movie. This writer
believes he should be cast as a villain called “The Leaker.”
xviii
CHAPTER 1
THE MYTHMAKING BEGINS
Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at
his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort. - Jean Cocteau
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate,
contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive and
unrealistic. - John F. Kennedy
O
n May 16, 2002, Sen. Hillary Clinton stood on the Senate floor and
waved a copy of that day’s New York Post. The front-page headline
blared, “Bush Knew.” The accompanying story was about the August
6 presidential daily briefing (PDB). For Hillary, this was an opportunity to
bash Bush, whose job approval rating was firmly in the mid-70s45:
The president knew what? My constituents would like to know the answer to
that and many other questions, not to blame the president or any other American but just to know, to learn from experience, to do all we can today to ensure that a 9/11 never happens again. . . .
The pain of 9/11 is revisited in thousands of homes in New York and around
our country every time that terrible scene of those planes going into those
towers and then their collapse appears on television. It is revisited in our
minds every time we see a picture of the cleanup at ground zero. It is revisited
every time the remains of a fallen hero are recovered, as they were yesterday
for Deputy Chief Downey. And it is revisited today with the questions about
what might have been had the pieces of the puzzle been put together in a different way before that sad and tragic day in September. . . .
As for the president, he may not be in a position at this time to respond to all
of those concerns, but he is in a position to answer some of them, including
the question of why we know today, May 16, about the warning he received.
Why did we not know this on April 16 or March 16 or February or Jan. 16 or
45
http://www.cookpolitical.com/column/2002/042302.php
1
Aug. 16 of last year? I do hope and trust that the president will assume the
duty that we know he is capable of fulfilling, exercise the leadership that we
know he has and come before the American people, at the earliest possible
time, to answer the questions so many New Yorkers and Americans are asking. That will be a very great help to all of us.46
Like all PDBs, the August 6 PDB was a classified document and was not
available to the general public. Former CIA Director George Tenet considered PDBs so important that in July 2000 he took the position with the National Archives that not even one could be released for publication “no matter how old or historically significant it may be.” Nevertheless, the media
knew about many of the general details shortly after they learned about the
existence of the August 6 PDB. For example, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus noted the following on May 24, 2002:
What emerged was a primarily historical analysis that talked about bin
Laden's methods of operation and mentioned events in 1997, 1998 and 2001.
One mention of hijacking was in reference to a proposed plot to take over an
airliner and demand the release of an al Qaeda operative or Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life sentence for plotting to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels in New York in 1993.
It also discussed bombings such as those in 1998 at the U.S. embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania. As Rice put it Sunday, it said, “Here’s what we know
historically about al Qaeda’s determination to attack the United States.”47
The actual contents of the August 6 PDB continued to remain classified
until Condoleezza Rice appeared before the 9/11 panel commissioners on
April 8, 2004. Rice had the following exchange with Commissioner Richard
Ben-Veniste:
BEN-VENISTE: I want to ask you some questions about the August 6, 2001,
PDB. We had been advised in writing by CIA on March 19, 2004, that the
August 6 PDB was prepared and self-generated by a CIA employee. Following Director Tenet’s testimony on March 26 before us, the CIA clarified its
version of events, saying that questions by the president prompted them to
prepare the August 6 PDB.
Now, you have said to us in our meeting together earlier in February, that
the president directed the CIA to prepare the August 6 PDB.
The extraordinary high terrorist attack threat level in the summer of 2001
is well-documented. And Richard Clarke’s testimony about the possibility of
an attack against the United States homeland was repeatedly discussed from
46
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E5DD1738F93BA25756C0A9649C8B63
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A21302002May23&notFound=true
47
2
May to August within the intelligence community, and that is welldocumented.
You acknowledged to us in your interview of February 7, 2004, that Richard Clarke told you that al Qaeda cells were in the United States.
BEN-VENISTE: Did you tell the president, at any time prior to August 6, of
the existence of al Qaeda cells in the United States?
RICE: First, let me just make certain...
BEN-VENISTE: If you could just answer that question, because I only have
a very limited...
RICE: I understand, Commissioner, but it’s important...
BEN-VENISTE: Did you tell the president...
RICE: ... that I also address... It’s also important that, Commissioner, that I
address the other issues that you have raised. So I will do it quickly, but if
you’ll just give me a moment.
BEN-VENISTE: Well, my only question to you is whether you...
RICE: I understand, Commissioner, but I will...
BEN-VENISTE: ... told the president.
RICE: If you’ll just give me a moment, I will address fully the questions that
you’ve asked.
First of all, yes, the August 6 PDB was in response to questions of the
president—and that since he asked that this be done. It was not a particular
threat report. And there was historical information in there about various aspects of al Qaeda’s operations.
Dick Clarke had told me, I think in a memorandum—I remember it as being only a line or two—that there were al Qaeda cells in the United States.
Now, the question is, what did we need to do about that?
And I also understood that that was what the FBI was doing, that the FBI
was pursuing these al Qaeda cells. I believe in the August 6 memorandum it
says that there were 70 full field investigations under way of these cells. And
so there was no recommendation that we do something about this; the FBI
was pursuing it. I really don’t remember, Commissioner, whether I discussed
this with the president.
BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.
RICE: I remember very well that the president was aware that there were issues inside the United States. He talked to people about this. But I don’t remember the al Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to
do something about.
BEN-VENISTE: Isn’t it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned
against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the
title of that PDB?
RICE: I believe the title was, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the
United States.” Now, the...
BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.
RICE: No, Mr. Ben-Veniste...
BEN-VENISTE: I will get into the...
RICE: I would like to finish my point here.
BEN-VENISTE: I didn’t know there was a point.
RICE: Given that—you asked me whether or not it warned of attacks.
3
BEN-VENISTE: I asked you what the title was.
RICE: You said, did it not warn of attacks. It did not warn of attacks inside
the United States. It was historical information based on old reporting. There
was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States.
BEN-VENISTE: Now, you knew by August 2001 of al Qaeda involvement
in the first World Trade Center bombing, is that correct? You knew that in
1999, late ‘99, in the millennium threat period, that we had thwarted an al
Qaeda attempt to blow up Los Angeles International Airport and thwarted
cells operating in Brooklyn, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts.
As of the August 6 briefing, you learned that al Qaeda members have resided or traveled to the United States for years and maintained a support system in the United States.
And you learned that FBI information since the 1998 blind sheikh warning of hijackings to free the blind sheikh indicated a pattern of suspicious activity in the country up until August 6 consistent with preparation for hijackings. Isn’t that so?
RICE: Do you have other questions that you want me to answer as a part of
the sequence?
BEN-VENISTE: Well, did you not—you have indicated here that this was
some historical document. And I am asking you whether it is not the case that
you learned in the PDB memo of August 6 that the FBI was saying that it had
information suggesting that preparations—not historically, but ongoing, along
with these numerous full field investigations against al Qaeda cells, that
preparations were being made consistent with hijackings within the United
States?
RICE: What the August 6 PDB said, and perhaps I should read it to you...
BEN-VENISTE: We would be happy to have it declassified in full at this
time, including its title.
RICE: I believe, Mr. Ben-Veniste, that you’ve had access to this PDB. But
let me just...
BEN-VENISTE: But we have not had it declassified so that it can be shown
publicly, as you know.
RICE: I believe you’ve had access to this PDB—exceptional access. But let
me address your question.
BEN-VENISTE: Nor could we, prior to today, reveal the title of that PDB.
RICE: May I address the question, sir? The fact is that this August 6 PDB
was in response to the president’s questions about whether or not something
might happen or something might be planned by al Qaeda inside the United
States. He asked because all of the threat reporting or the threat reporting that
was actionable was about the threats abroad, not about the United States.
This particular PDB had a long section on what bin Laden had wanted to
do—speculative, much of it—in ‘97, ‘98; that he had, in fact, liked the results
of the 1993 bombing.
RICE: It had a number of discussions of—it had a discussion of whether or
not they might use hijacking to try and free a prisoner who was being held in
the United States—Ressam. It reported that the FBI had full field investigations under way.
4
And we checked on the issue of whether or not there was something going
on with surveillance of buildings, and we were told, I believe, that the issue
was the courthouse in which this might take place.
Commissioner, this was not a warning. This was a historic memo—
historical memo prepared by the agency because the president was asking
questions about what we knew about the inside.
BEN-VENISTE: Well, if you are willing...
RICE: Now, we had already taken...
BEN-VENISTE: If you are willing to declassify that document, then others
can make up their minds about it.
Let me ask you a general matter, beyond the fact that this memorandum
provided information, not speculative, but based on intelligence information,
that bin Laden had threatened to attack the United States and specifically
Washington, D.C. There was nothing reassuring, was there, in that PDB?
RICE: Certainly not. There was nothing reassuring. But I can also tell you
that there was nothing in this memo that suggested that an attack was coming
on New York or Washington, D.C. There was nothing in this memo as to
time, place, how or where. This was not a threat report to the president or a
threat report to me.
BEN-VENISTE: We agree that there were no specifics. Let me move on, if I
may.
Of course, Ben-Veniste’s comment concerning no specifics in the August
6 PDB was not the sound-bite aired on the news that evening. In addition,
there was little, if any, commentary concerning Ben-Veniste’s role as an attack dog for Clinton Inc.
In a 1997 Weekly Standard article, Tod Linberg showed just how far BenVeniste, then minority special counsel to the Senate Whitewater committee,
would go to protect Bill Clinton:
Ben-Veniste’s most outspoken critic is Mark R. Levin, the president of the
Landmark Legal Foundation; Levin charges that Ben-Veniste’s conduct toward one of Levin’s clients, Jean Lewis, was outrageous. And Levin is right.
Lewis was the federal banking investigator who first started looking into the
connection between the Clintons and a failed savings and loan whose owner
was their partner in the Whitewater real-estate development. She filed criminal referrals mentioning the Clintons as witnesses and “possibly more than”
witnesses. Democrats maintained that her investigation was driven by her political bias against Clinton. As one piece of evidence, they produced a February 1992 letter that predated her investigation in which she referred to candidate Clinton as a “lying bastard.”
Levin says the way Ben-Veniste’s minority staff developed this particular
evidence of bias was tainted. The committee had issued a subpoena for “all
records, regardless of format” related to Lewis’s investigation. But the subpoena did not encompass everything Lewis may ever have said or written
about Clinton, and so she deleted some material she deemed irrelevant from a
5
computer disk before she turned it over to the Whitewater committee. Among
the deleted material was the “lying bastard” letter, which was not a lengthy
dissertation on Clinton, but a letter to a friend.48
Minority staff had restored Lewis’s deleted personal letter to her friend.
This was done by a political party that now protests the warrantless wiretapping of conversations between suspected terrorists. After Ben-Veniste sprung
the “lying bastard” comment on Lewis at a hearing, her blood pressure skyrocketed, forcing her to be rushed to the hospital.
Despite (or, perhaps, because of) a history of “obnoxious and unprofessional” conduct, the Democrats chose Ben-Veniste to serve on the 9/11
Commission. His appointment, as well as Jamie Gorelick’s, apparently had
much more to do with protecting the Clinton legacy than with getting to the
truth concerning 9/11.
Two days after Rice’s appearance before the 9/11 Commission, President
Bush became the first sitting president to declassify even a portion of his
Daily Brief from the CIA. What follows is the text from the August 6 PDB:
The following is the text of an item from the Presidential Daily Brief received
by President George W. Bush on August 6, 2001.37 Redacted material is indicated by brackets.
Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US
Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since
1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in
US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow
the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the
fighting to America.”
After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told
followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a [-] service.
An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [-] service at the same time
that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the US to
mount a terrorist strike.
The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin
Ladin's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to
attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Ladin lieuten48
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/967rwskg.asp?pg=2
6
ant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own US attack.
Ressam says Bin Ladin was aware of the Los Angeles operation.
Although Bin Ladin has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years
in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Ladin associates surveilled
our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some
members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.
Al-Qa’ida members-including some who are US citizens-have resided in or
traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support
structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qua’da members found guilty in the
conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a
senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.
A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.
We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat
reporting, such as that from a [-] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin
wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Shaykh” ‘Umar
‘Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.
Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious
activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other
types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New
York.
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout
the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating
a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin
supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.
The contents of August 6 PDB turned out to be essentially as Pincus had
described them nearly two years earlier. There was, as Ben-Veniste acknowledged as he questioned Rice, no specifics concerning an imminent al Qaeda
attack.
Unfortunately, even after the Bush administration declassified the August
6 PDB and made it available to the general public to read, liberal commentators decided to mischaracterize its contents. For example, on April 11, 2004,
7
*
Pincus and Washington Post colleague Dana Milbank opened their article
about the PDB with this misleading sentence: “President Bush was warned a
month before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the FBI had information that
terrorists might be preparing for a hijacking in the United States and might be
targeting a building in Lower Manhattan.” Four paragraphs later, the reporters acknowledged that the “targeting of a building in lower Manhattan” had
nothing to do with what actually occurred on September 11. Instead, “officials said the photographing of the federal buildings was later judged to be
‘tourist activity’” by some Yemenis.49
Bush-haters on the op-ed pages were even more dishonest. Garrison Keillor, the radio host of “A Prairie Home Companion,” used his new syndicated
column with Tribune Media Services to make this claim:
I ran into a gray eminence from the Bush I era the other day in an airport, and
he said that what most offended him about Bush II is the naked incompetence. “You may disagree with Republicans, but you always had to recognize
that they knew what they were doing,” he said. “I keep going back to that intelligence memo of August 2001, that said that terrorists had plans to hijack
planes and crash them into buildings. The president read it, and he didn’t even
call a staff meeting to discuss it. That is lack of attention of a high order.”50
I think it’s fair to question the competence of someone who read the August 6 PDB and concluded that it said, “Terrorists had plans to hijack planes
and crash them into buildings.” We can also question the competence of a
columnist who did not check to see if the “gray eminence” had read the PDB
correctly.
The John Kerry presidential campaign also mischaracterized the August 6
PDB. “I certainly think that the president could have done more,” Rand
Beers, a Kerry adviser and close friend of Richard Clarke, said on CNN’s
*
Pincus is married to Ann Pincus, an Arkansas native who was appointed by Bill Clinton to the U.S.
Information Agency. She later transferred to the State Department. As of December 2007, she was listed
as the director of communications and outreach for the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), which has received funding from George Soros’ Open Society Institute. Charles Lewis, founder and executive director
of CPI, wrote an opinion piece in 2005 in which he claimed, “[W]ith some notable exceptions such as
Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post and the Knight Ridder’s
duo of Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, investigative news coverage before March 2003 of the
Bush administration’s ramp-up to the war in Iraq was underwhelming, to say the least.” See
http://baltimorechronicle.com/022105CharlesLewis.shtml. In January 2008, CPI released a “study” in
which they claimed the Bush administration “made at least 935 false statements in the two years following
September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.” CPI claims to be
“non-partisan and non-advocacy,” yet they have not done a similar study regarding the false statements
the Clinton administration made “about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.” Bill
Clinton has been out of office for more than seven years. However, if Hillary Clinton had been elected
president, her administration almost certainly would have included Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Sandy Berger, and others. As this book demonstrates, these officials made numerous false statements regarding Iraq.
49
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2677-2004Apr10?language=printer
50
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/58/18404
8
Inside Politics Sunday. According to Beers, the memo “suggested that someone should have been out shaking the trees to find out what more we knew
and what we could do about it.”51 This comment ignores the final paragraph
in the PDB.
As we shall see in Chapter 4, Hillary Clinton has also continued to misrepresent the contents of the August 6 PDB, especially when trying to deflect
criticism of her husband’s record on fighting terrorism. In fact, on November
25, 2007, Think Progress, the Center for American Progress’ blog, posted the
front cover of the May 16, 2002 issue of the New York Post and repeated the
lie that the August 6 PDB contained specific information concerning an imminent a Qaeda attack on U.S. soil.52 It appears that Clinton Inc. intends to
perpetuate this lie during the 2008 presidential campaign and beyond.
51
52
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/executive/2004-04-11-pdb_x.htm
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/11/25/ny-post-911-conspiracy/
9
CHAPTER 2
AGAINST ALL FACTS
I served with Richard Clarke in the White House. His specialty was
pomposity, not effective counter-terrorism policy. Contrary to what
Clarke was schlepping in his congressional 9-11 Commission testimony of 2004; in his book, Against All Enemies; and in his many
media interviews that followed, his policies were soft, impotent,
and resulted in nothing more than emboldening Osama bin Laden
and al-Qaeda for future attack…Clarke is a fraud. – Lt. Col.
Robert “Buzz” Patterson, USAF, Ret.
O
n January 30, 2003, former counter-terrorism coordinator Richard
Clarke submitted his resignation letter to President Bush. “I will always remember the courage, determination, calm and leadership you
demonstrated on September 11th,” Clarke wrote. “I will also have fond
memories of our briefings for you on cyber security and the intuitive understanding of its importance that you showed.”53
A year later, Clarke had changed his tune. On March 24, 2004, he testified before the 9/11 Commission. He charged that the Republican administrations of Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43 failed to respond sufficiently to the
threat of terrorism, while “at the senior policy levels in the Clinton Administration, there was an acute understanding of the terrorist threat, particularly
al Qida.”54
During the same month, Clarke appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes and made
the same charges. The same allegations appeared in his book Against All
Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.55
On page xii of his book, Clarke makes the incredible claim that his book
“is meant to be factual, not polemical.” Of course, the book perfectly fits the
definition of “polemic,” i.e., “A controversy or argument, esp. one that is a
refutation of or an attack upon a specified opinion or doctrine.” After noting
several of Clarke’s attacks on members of the Bush administration, Time’s
53
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0323042clarke1.html
http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing8/clarke_statement.pdf
This was a nice corporate tie-in, as Viacom (now CBS Corporation) owns both CBS and the publisher
of Clarke’s book.
54
55
10
AGAINST ALL FACTS
Romesh Ratnesar even went as far as to say those “passages reveal the polemical, partisan mean-spiritedness that lies at the heart of Clarke’s book, and
to an even greater degree, his television appearances flacking it.”56
The specified opinion prior to March 2004 was that the Clinton administration dropped the ball concerning the threat of terrorism. Americans believed Clinton was far more interested in pursuing bad girls than he was in
pursuing bad guys.* Not only had he allowed Osama bin Laden to leave Sudan to relocate to a safe haven in Afghanistan**, he failed to kill or capture
bin Laden after it was clear he had declared war on the U.S. Not only was
Clinton ineffective in the war against Islamic terrorism, he appeared impotent
in the face of domestic terrorism. For example, Eric Rudolph, who had killed
three people and injured at least 150 in a series of bombings, including the
1996 Olympic Park bombing, was still a fugitive when Clinton left office in
January 2001. It should be noted that Rudolph was in our own country and
not some remote, mountainous region on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Whether Clarke was working alone or had conspired with others in an effort to revise the Clinton legacy while simultaneously smearing Bush is not
clear. He denied he was working with the John Kerry campaign in 2004.
However, it often appeared as if he were campaigning for the Massachusetts
senator. For example, when he appeared on 60 Minutes, Clarke declared,
“Frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is running for reelection on
the grounds that he’s done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it.
He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe he could have done something
to stop 9/11.” That quote was used later in a MoveOn.org ad.
Clarke had also admitted that he had voted for Al Gore in 200057, his
close friend, Rand Beers58, was a national security adviser to Kerry’s campaign, and, although Clarke claimed to be a registered Republican, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that “his only listed political contributions during
the two most recent election cycles have gone to former colleagues running
as Democrats for Congress.”59
While Clarke argued that he did not have a political agenda, the American
people saw things differently. A Rasmussen Reports survey conducted on
56
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,604598,00.html
Some may consider that an unfair attack on Bill Clinton. However, consider Clinton’s response to the
November 13, 1995 truck bombing outside of a US-operated Saudi Arabian National Guard training center in Riyadh. In that attack, the worse one on Americans in the Middle East since 1983, five Americans
and two Indians were killed. Instead of spending his time working to find out who was responsible for the
attack, on November 15 Clinton began his affair with an intern named Monica Lewinsky.
**
Reportedly, “State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin
Laden's move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven as he sought to expand
radical Islam ‘well beyond the Middle East,’ but the government chose not to deter the move.” See
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/international/asia/17osama.html?_r=1&ei=5065&en=8abb945bc6ba
b23d&ex=1124942400&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
57
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4608698
58
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rand_Beers
59
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1525696.html
*
11
March 29-30, 2004 found that 50 percent of the respondents believed Clarke
was making his accusations about President Bush “either to sell his book or
to help John Kerry’s campaign.” Just 39 percent believed Clarke was
“merely a concerned citizen telling the truth about what he saw.” A Newsweek poll found similar results: “Half of those polled said they thought
Clarke was motivated by personal and political reasons, while 25 percent
said he was a dedicated public servant.”60
Whatever Clarke’s motivation, it was clear he wanted to take down Bush.
At the same time, he would employ what I call SDI (sloppy, dishonest, and
illogical) measures in his book to defend Bill Clinton.
There are far too many examples of these SDI measures to list in this
book. However, I will share examples of each type of measure.
SLOPPY
On page 281, Clarke alleges that former FBI Director Louis Freeh was a
member of Opus Dei. “Had [Clarke] called me,” Freeh wrote in his autobiography, “I could have told him that was my brother, but he didn’t bother. To
me, that about says it all: bad facts and no access.”61
By no access, Freeh meant that Clarke greatly overstated his role in the
Clinton administration. “Janet Reno, myself, and others who were charged
with monitoring and reacting to terrorist threats convened regularly with
Sandy Berger to discuss national security issues,” Freeh wrote. “The deputy
national security adviser would be on hand. So would other deputies at times,
it wasn’t just top dogs. But Dick Clarke was almost never included in those
so-called principals meetings. Given the grandeur of his title, I found his absence conspicuous.”62
On page 77, Clarke writes he expressed outrage when he learned that
Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 World Trade Center bomber, entered the U.S. without any documents. “So, let me get this straight,” Clarke writes, “we let a guy
go who was with a bomb builder, we let him get into a cab at JFK even
though he shows up here without a passport.” In fact, Yousef entered the
U.S. with an Iraqi passport. The passport was Government Exhibit 614 in
United States v. Muhammad Salameh, et al.63
On page 136, Clarke writes, “Jihad was available to a limited extent in the
Philippines, where Muslims in the south had been fighting the Christian government for centuries.” While Roman Catholics make up more than 80 percent of the Philippines’ population, the Republic of the Philippines has a
60
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4614818
My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror, p. 300.
62
Ibid, pp. 297-298.
63
http://www.uniset.ca/islamicland/152F3d88.html
61
12
AGAINST ALL FACTS
secular government. Article II, Section 6 of the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines declares, “The separation of Church and State shall be inviolable.”
DISHONEST
On page 40, Clarke’s writes that the number of Americans killed in the 1983
attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut was 278 (the actual number was
241). On page 225, Clarke writes that “hundreds of Americans” on Pan Am
103 were killed by Libya. (Clarke incorrectly places the Pan Am 103 bombing “during the first Bush’s administration” instead of the Reagan administration.)
According to Clarke, “Nothing occurring during Clinton’s tenure approached either attack in terms of the numbers of Americans killed by foreign terrorism.”
Clarke fudged the numbers a bit. He strongly suggested that all 259 passengers and crew members on Pan Am 103 were Americans. In fact, 189
(and not “hundreds”) of the victims were Americans.64 Clarke also failed to
note that eleven victims were killed on the ground, bringing the death toll to
270.
Clarke’s tally of deaths at the hands of foreign terrorism during the Clinton administration is also dishonest. Clarke writes that just six Americans
were killed in the February 26, 1993* bombing of the World Trade Center.
(The actual number was seven. One victim, Monica Smith, was pregnant.65
An additional 1,042 people were injured, generating the largest number of
hospital casualties of any event in American history since the Civil War.66)
While the number of Americans killed during this attack was relatively
small, the number of deaths had absolutely nothing to do with anything the
Clinton administration did. Reportedly, Ramzi Yousef added sodium cyanide
to his bomb so the vapors could go through the ventilation shafts and elevators of the towers. However, the cyanide burned in the explosion and did not
vaporize. According to U.S. District Judge Kevin Duffy during the lifesentencing of several of Yousef’s conspirators in 1994, “If the sodium cyanide had vaporized it is clear that what would have happened is that cyanide
gas would have been sucked into the North Tower and everyone in the North
Tower would have been killed.”67
Yousef also “intended to topple one tower onto the other, bringing the entire complex down and killing what he hoped would be 250,000 people—a
64
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/panam103/stories/reward032495.htm
The bombing took place on the second anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s announcement that he would
withdraw Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
65
http://judiciary.house.gov/legacy/ib072099.htm
66
Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, p. 178.
67
http://www.gcn.com/research_results/homeland-gap4.html
*
13
toll he thought equaled the pain the Palestinians had experienced because of
America’s support for Israel.”68
Clearly, if Yousef’s bomb had worked as planned, far more people would
have been killed in February 1993 than in September 2001.
Clarke also attempts to minimize the carnage of al Qaeda attacks on two
U.S. embassies in Africa in August 1998. When he claimed that nothing occurring during Clinton’s tenure approached the attacks on the Marine barracks in Beirut and Pan Am 103, he added the qualifier “in terms of the numbers of Americas killed by foreign terrorism.” It is true that just a dozen
Americans were killed in the embassy bombings. However, that number
conveniently excludes 245 Kenyans and Tanzanians who were also killed. In
addition, the blasts injured more than 5,000 people.69
Clarke may want to discount the deaths of Kenyans and Tanzanians who
were employed by our embassies, but it was Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright’s responsibility to ensure their safety while they were at work.
If Clarke were an honest man, he would have to acknowledge that the
embassy bombings that occurred on Clinton’s watch rivaled any attacks that
occurred during Ronald Reagan’s tenure in terms of the total number of people killed and injured.
Clarke was also dishonest by excluding certain facts from his book. For
example, Clarke claims that Reagan and George H.W. Bush did not retaliate
after foreign terrorists killed Americans. Again, he pointed to the Marine barracks bombing and the downing of Pan Am 103.
In the case of the Marine barracks bombing, Clarke failed to note that
Reagan did indeed consider retaliating against those responsible for the attack. “Our intelligence experts found it difficult to establish conclusively
who was responsible for the attack on the barracks,” Reagan wrote in his
autobiography. “Although several air strikes were planned against possible
culprits, I canceled them because our experts said they were not absolutely
sure they were the right targets. I didn’t want to kill innocent people. While
our intelligence people resumed their efforts to confirm that we had the right
targets, Israeli and French forces, convinced they had sufficient information,
raided the same Shiite Muslim redoubts in the mountains that we had considered attacking.”70
Of course, it would have made little sense to bomb a target after it had
been raided. Clarke might criticize Reagan for not taking action before the
Israeli and French forces. However, Clinton’s bombing of a pharmaceutical
plant in Sudan shows what can happen when a president retaliates without
taking the time to get reliable intelligence.
68
69
70
Wright, p. 178.
http://usinfo.state.gov/is/international_security/terrorism/embassy_bombings.html
Ronald Reagan: An American Life, pp. 463-464.
14
AGAINST ALL FACTS
In addition, is it possible that Reagan did in fact retaliate indirectly after
the bombing of the Marine barracks in October 1983? As a critic of Republican presidents, Clarke makes the obligatory reference to Donald Rumsfeld
visiting Saddam Hussein during the Reagan administration. According to
Clarke, the Reagan administration sent Rumsfeld to “Baghdad not to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but to save him from probable defeat by the Iranian
onslaught.”71
It is interesting to note that Rumsfeld’s visit to Iraq occurred fewer than
two months after our Marines were killed in Beirut. According to Agence
France Presse, “Washington had plenty of motives to help Saddam stave off
an Iranian victory. Not only was the United States still smarting from the
1980 hostage-taking at the US embassy in Tehran, but its embassy and a marine barracks in Beirut had been struck with truck bombings earlier in
1983.”72
Is it not possible that Reagan retaliated against those responsible for the
deaths of our Marine by proxy? After all, hundreds of thousands of Iranian
soldiers were killed or wounded in Iran’s war with Iraq. In addition, “the
war’s total cost, including military supplies and civilian damages, probably
exceeded $500 billion for each side.”73 That’s much more damage than an
airstrike on the Sheik Abdullah barracks could have inflicted.
Clarke also ignored the fact that Reagan did indeed retaliate against terrorist acts. For example, other than a brief reference to “the Reagan administration and its bombings of Lebanon and Libya,”74 Clarke does not deal with
the retaliatory strike Reagan took against Libya after a bomb killed two U.S.
servicemen in a West Berlin disco. Nine days after the bombing, Reagan told
the American people that he had “launched a series of strikes against the
headquarters, terrorist facilities, and military assets that support Mu’ammar
Qadhafi’s subversive activities.”75
On page 41, Clarke writes that, in response to Reagan’s refusal to retaliate
after the Marine barracks bombing, “Usama bin Laden would refer to the
success of terrorism in driving the United States out of Beirut.”
Clarke fails to note that bin Laden was much more impressed by Clinton’s
failure to stand up to al Qaeda in Somalia. In October 1993, al Qaeda-trained
Somalis ambushed U.S. peacekeeping forces in Somali. The attacks downed
two helicopters and killed 18 Army Rangers. In a 1998 interview with ABC,
bin Laden discussed the U.S. withdrawal from Somalia. “As I said, our boys
were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized
that the American soldier was just a paper tiger,” bin Laden said. “He was
unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and Amer71
p. 42.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0609-01.htm
73
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761580640_2/Iran-Iraq_War.html#s7
74
p. 73.
75
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/41486g.htm
72
15
ica had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press
after the Gulf War in which it destroyed the infrastructure and the milk and
dairy industry that was vital for the infants and the children and the civilians
and blew up dams which were necessary for the crops people grew to feed
their families.”76
Clarke lies in his book about Clinton inheriting the mission in Somalia
from George H.W. Bush. According to Clarke, “Somalia was not [Clinton’s]
idea of how to spend his first year in office.”77 The fact is Somalia was not
George H.W. Bush’s idea of how to spend his last year in office.
In While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the
Threat to Peace Today, Donald Kagan and Frederick W. Kagan addressed
the elder Bush’s reluctance to get involved in Somalia:
The Bush administration adamantly refused to be drawn into Somalia in any
way. It resisted the UN’s desire to send in five hundred armed troops to protect the food shipments. The UN sent only fifty unarmed observers instead
and then asked for a larger armed force, and the administration objected
again, asserting that Congress would refuse to pay for any additional
forces…. The election campaign was on, and the administration wanted to
protect the President from any potentially embarrassing entanglement in foreign affairs. On August 14, however, came a sharp reversal in policy. The
United States undertook ‘Operation Provide Relief,’ flying food and medical
supplies in U.S. Air Force planes, using a small number of military personnel,
to places in the Somali interior cut off by bandit clans. The action won the
endorsement of Democratic candidate Bill Clinton.78
Despite the efforts undertaken during Operation Provide Relief, on November 25 UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali wrote that “the
situation is not improving” and that conditions were so bad that it would be
‘exceedingly difficult’ for the United Nations’ existing operation in Somalia
to achieve its objectives.”79
At the request of the UN, George H.W. Bush decided to send U.S. Marines into Somalia in December for relief operations. According to Bush,
“Our mission has a limited objective—to open the supply routes, to get the
food moving, and to prepare the way for a UN peace-keeping force to keep it
moving. This operation is not open-ended. We will not stay longer than is
absolutely necessary.”80
President-elect Clinton welcomed the action. “I have felt for a long time
that we should do more in Somalia,” he said. “The thing I think is so heartening is that the United States is now taking the initiative…. I think it is high
76
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/interview.html
p. 86.
78
p. 327.
79
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19940101faessay8550/john-r-bolton/wrong-turn-in-somalia.html
80
Text of speech in Washington Post, December 5, 1992, p. A16.
77
16
AGAINST ALL FACTS
time. I’m encouraged, and I applaud the initiative of President Bush and his
administration.”81
The mission as originally envisioned by George H.W. Bush was accomplished. However, on March 24, 1993, UN Resolution 814 broadened the
mission to political reconciliation, disarmament, and nation building. As Gerald Posner noted in Why America Slept, “The U.S., meanwhile, had decided
to go beyond the goals of the original humanitarian mission and try to capture [Muhammad Farrah] Aidid, the most meddlesome warlord. Radical
Muslims saw this as an opportunity to embarrass the U.S. On October 3,
1993, eighteen Americans were killed and seventy-five wounded in fierce
firefights in Mogadishu.”82
Incredibly, Clarke writes that “the military had let [Clinton] down” in
Somalia. American officers had asked for “reinforcements in the form of
Bradley armored vehicles, M-1 tanks, artillery pieces, and assault helicopters.” Unfortunately, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin turned down the request. When U.S. Rangers and troops from the Delta Force went after Aidid
on October 3, 1993, they did so without this equipment.83
The Clinton administration changed the mission in Somalia, failed to provide our troops with the equipment necessary to carry out that new mission,
and then pulled the troops out before they had an opportunity to accomplish
their mission. Yet Clarke says our troops let Clinton down. In truth, the Clinton administration let down our military in Somalia.
Clarke also failed to note the lesson bin Laden took from Clinton’s failure
to retaliate after the USS Cole was bombed by al Qaeda in October 2000.
“The failure to respond publicly again emboldened bin Laden and his top
aides,” Posner said. “America was capable of being struck, and the country
seemed unwilling to retaliate. By the time of the Cole attack, bin Laden and
al Qaeda were already working on the biggest terror attack ever devised.
Nothing in the U.S. response made them rethink their decision to try and
bring down the World Trade Center towers in New York.”84
ILLOGICAL
In logic, the law of noncontradiction states, in the words of Aristotle, “one
cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at
the same time.” Clarke violates this law several times in his book.
On page 225, Clarke writes that Bill Clinton “had put an end to Iraqi and
Iranian terrorism against the United States by quickly acting against the intel-
81
UPI, “Washington News,” November 26, 1992.
p. 51.
83
Donald Kagan and Frederick W. Kagan. While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and
the Threat to Peace Today, p. 331.
84
Why America Slept, p. 142.
82
17
ligence services of each nation.” However, on page 283, he writes, “When
the Bush administration talked about Iraq as a nation that supported terrorism, including al Qaeda, and was developing weapons of mass destruction,
those comments perfectly suited Iran, not Iraq.” If Iran was supporting al
Qaeda, how can Clarke claim that Clinton put an end to Iranian terrorism
against the United States?
On page 246, Clarke writes that, by occupying Iraq, Bush handed al
Qaeda “precisely what it wanted and needed, proof that America was at war
with Islam, that we were the new Crusaders come to occupy Muslim land.”
However, on the previous page, Clarke writes, “It was also plainly obvious
after September 11 that al Qaeda’s sanctuary in Taliban-run Afghanistan had
to be occupied by U.S. forces and the al Qaeda leaders killed.” On pages 277
and 278, Clarke writes, “After the U.S. finally introduced ground force units
into Afghanistan and began sweep operations looking for al Qaeda and the
Taliban, American and its coalition partners (including France and Germany)
should have established a security presence throughout the country.” He does
not explain how this occupation of Afghanistan, a Muslim country, would
not have handed al Qaeda “precisely what it wanted and needed.” Unlike
Iraq, which Bush critics remind us was a secular nation under Saddam, Afghanistan was an Islamic Emirate with a higher percentage of Muslim citizens than Iraq.85
On page 142, Clarke writes, “In recent years Sudanese intelligence officials and Americans friendly to the Sudan regime have invented a fable about
bin Laden’s final days in Khartoum. In the fable the Sudanese government
offers to arrest bin Laden and hand him over in chains to FBI agents, but
Washington rejects the offer because the Clinton administration does not see
bin Laden as important or does and cannot find anywhere to put him on
trial.”
Clinton himself confirmed that this “fable” actually occurred. Speaking to
a New York business group on February 15, 2002, Clinton said the following: “Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, and then he went to Sudan. And we’d been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again. They released him.
At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not
bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we
knew he wanted to commit crimes against America. So I pleaded with the
Saudis to take him, ‘cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn’t and that’s how he wound up in Afghanistan.”86
Clinton clearly stated that he could have gotten his hands on bin Laden
(as the French did when they got Carlos the Jackal from Sudan just two years
earlier), but “we had no basis on which to hold him.” However, Clarke con85
86
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015357.php
18
AGAINST ALL FACTS
tradicts Clinton. According to Clarke, we could have found a basis to bring
bin Laden to the U.S., but Clinton couldn’t get his hands on him: “[H]ad we
been able to put our hands on him then we would have gladly done so. U.S.
Attorney Mary Jo White in Manhattan could, as the saying goes, ‘indict a
ham sandwich.’ She certainly could have obtained an indictment for bin
Laden in 1996 had we needed it.”
On page 135, Clarke writes, “Despite the lack of evidence of a bin Laden
hand in the series of terrorist events, Lake, Berger, Soderberg, and I had persisted in 1993 and 1994 in asking CIA to learn more about the man whose
name kept appearing in buried CIA’s raw reporting as ‘terrorist financier
Usama bin Laden.’” If the Clinton administration had suspicions in 1993 and
1994, it seems the “ham sandwich” could have been indicted in 1996.
There are many more examples of sloppiness, dishonesty, and a lack of logic
in Clarke’s book. I wanted to share a few to demonstrate why I believe we
have to approach anything Clarke says or writes with a great deal of skepticism. Of course, Clarke’s track record on counterterrorism was made clear
long before he ever thought of writing a book. Bill Clinton appointed Clarke
as his National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure and CounterTerrorism in May 1998. Just three months later, al Qaeda bombed two U.S.
embassies in Africa. In October 2000, al Qaeda struck the USS Cole. And, of
course, 9/11 occurred while Clarke was in that position. It does not appear
that Clarke did much to counter terrorism during his tenure. He suggested in
his book that a message to “U.S. embassies, military bases, and to the 18,000
police agencies in the United States” played a role in the capture of Ahmed
Ressam, the so-called Millennium Bomber. According to Clarke, the message said, “Be on heightened alert for suspicious activity.”87
However, according to Michael Chapman, one of the customs agents who
arrested Ressam, “We were on no more alert than we’re always on. That is a
matter of public record.”88
Clarke’s seems to have invented additional stories when writing about the
threats associated with the Millennium:
In the fifteen months since the embassy bombings, National Security Advisor
Sandy Berger had held dozens of Principals meetings on al Qaeda. He knew
their names, their modus operandi, and he feared they would strike again before we could cripple their organization. He convened the Principals in crisis
mode. “We have stopped two sets of attacks planned for the Millennium. You
can bet your measly federal paycheck that there are more out there and we
have to stop them too. I spoke with the President and he wants you all to
know…” Berger looked at Janet Reno, Louis Freeh, George Tenet, “… this is
it, nothing more important, all assets. We stop this f**ker.” (It was the sort of
87
88
p. 211.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001901197_ressam12m.html
19
attention we needed in the summer of 2001, but we got only in the [Counterterrorism Security Group], not in the Principals Committee.)89
“Nice tale,” Louis Freeh writes, “but I was never at such a meeting, and
Sandy Berger never would have spoken like that in front of the attorney general.”90
Freeh also believes Clarke mischaracterized what happened as the year
1999 ended and the year 2000 began:
Clarke tells another nice tale that seems to have him at the epicenter of activity the night of the millennium, nervously monitoring activity around the
globe from the Y2K Coordination Center at the White House, then darting up
to the White House roof to watch the fireworks on the Mall, then back downstairs to keep an eye on midnight as it crept westward toward Los Angeles,
and finally back to the roof to pop a bottle in celebration at 3 A.M. East Coast
time. Maybe it all happened exactly as he writes. But I know for a fact that
everyone who really mattered, the serious people, were all in [the Strategic
Information Operations Center] on December 31 from 1:00 in the afternoon
until past 3:00 the following morning, and Dick Clarke wasn’t among them.
As for me, I was too tired to have champagne when the night was over. I just
wanted to get home.91
In addition to failing to prevent terrorist attacks on Americans in the past,
Clarke has probably made it more difficult to fight terrorism in the future. As
J. Michael Waller noted in Insight magazine, “Clarke’s book, ‘Against All
Enemies,’ is generating headlines around the world that diminish U.S. standing in the middle of the global war on terrorism. The Arabic-language satellite station Al-Jazeera reports that the book ‘paints a picture of a Bush White
House almost impervious to security concerns prior to 11 September and
overeager to pin the blame on Iraq after.’”92
89
pp. 211-212.
My FBI, p. 298.
Ibid.
92
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37790
90
91
20
CHAPTER 3
THE “OBSESSION” WITH BIN LADEN
S
ince 9/11, Bill Clinton has told many interviewers that he was obsessed
with Osama bin Laden. In fact, he has also claimed that Republicans
thought he was too obsessed with bin Laden. For example, in his meltdown appearance on Fox News in September 2006, he went as far as to
claim, “I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who
now say that I didn’t do enough claimed (then) that I was obsessed with bin
Laden. All of President Bush’s neocons claimed that I was too obsessed with
finding bin Laden when they didn’t have a single meeting about Bin Laden
for the nine months after I left office.”
As is usually the case with Clinton, the facts are quite different.
When Clinton retaliated against al Qaeda after they bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa in August 1998, the Republican leadership offered nothing
but support for Clinton. According to an August 21, 1998 Washington Post
article, “President Clinton won warm support for ordering anti-terrorist
bombing attacks in Afghanistan and Sudan yesterday from many of the same
lawmakers who have criticized him harshly as a leader critically weakened
by poor judgment and reckless behavior in the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.”93
According to the article, House Speaker Newt Gingrich said, “I think the
president did exactly the right thing. By doing this we’re sending the signal
there are no sanctuaries for terrorists.”
Gingrich also worked to make sure other conservatives did not question
the timing of Clinton’s retaliation.* The Boston Globe reported the following
on August 23, 1998:
Indeed, Gingrich even saw to it that one of his political associates, Rich
Galen, sent a blast-Fax to conservative talk radio hosts urging them to lay off
93
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/react082198.htm
Of course, there were those who did criticize the timing of Clinton’s retaliation. One such critic was
Scott Ritter, a chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998 and hero amongst the
anti-Bush left. Christopher Hitchens in No One Left To Lie To quotes Ritter as telling him the following:
“Of course, though [Operation Desert Fox] is Wag the Dog, it isn’t quite like Sudan and Afghanistan in
August, which were Wag the Dog pure and simple.”
*
21
the president on the missile strikes, and making sure they knew of Gingrich’s
strong support.
That’s the same Rich Galen, by the way, who is openly urging Republican
congressional candidates to try to take political advantage of the president’s
sex scandal in their television advertising this fall.94
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott called the attacks “appropriate and
just,” and House Majority Leader Richard Armey said “the American people
stand united in the face of terrorism.”
And, contrary to the Clinton’s claim that Republicans thought he was doing too much to counter al Qaeda, Sen. Orrin Hatch said, “In the past I was
worried that this administration didn’t take this threat seriously enough, and
didn’t take Osama bin Laden seriously enough; I’m going to support him,
wish him well and back him up.”
Porter J. Goss, who was then chairman of the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, echoed Hatch. “If anything, this was somewhat
overdue, and I’m not talking days, but months and years. This needs to be the
first punch we land. We need to land more.”
Unfortunately, this so-called first punch against al Qaeda would also be
the last punch that Clinton threw at al Qaeda. Even with Republican support
and support from two-thirds of all Americans95, Clinton decided to throw no
additional punches at al Qaeda. Instead, he opted to throw a few punches at
Saddam Hussein in December 1998 during the preemptive attack known as
Operation Desert Fox. After throwing those punches, he then decided, without congressional or UN approval, to throw punches at Slobodan Milosevic
in Kosovo during the spring of 1999.
According to historian Niall Ferguson, Clinton’s involvement in Kosovo
“violated not only Article 2 of the UN Charter but also the Helsinki Accords
Final Act and indeed NATO’s own defensive rationale.”96 Even General
Wesley Clark, who had been the Supreme Commander of NATO during the
war in Kosovo, noted in 2003 that that war was “technically illegal.”97
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, bin Laden gave “the green
light for the 9/11 operation sometime in late 1998 or early 1999.”98 This was
at the very same time Clinton was launching a preemptive strike on Iraq and
an illegal war of choice on Kosovo.
Imagine if Clinton had gone after Osama bin Laden instead of Saddam
Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. Max Boot, an Olin Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, has suggested that 9/11
could have been prevented if Clinton had not failed to use ground troops
94
http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/09/bill_clinton_bin_laden_and_hys.html
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/08/21/strike.poll/
96
Ferguson, Niall. Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire, p. 146.
97
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/11/17/031117fa_fact
98
9/11 Commission Report, p. 149.
95
22
against al Qaeda in 1998: “America’s no-casualties mindset was finally jettisoned in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and
Washington. America’s leaders decided that the country was ready to support
military action that risked sending body bags home. It is sobering to speculate what might have been achieved if this conclusion had been reached earlier. Might Osama bin Laden have been prevented from launching these
bloody attacks if the U.S. had done more than lob a few cruise missiles at
him in 1998?”99
But as al Qaeda was growing as a threat to U.S. interests, the Clinton administration refused to list Afghanistan, the nation harboring Osama bin
Laden, as a state sponsor of terrorism. According to the Washington Post,
“The omission reflects more than a decade of vexing relations between the
United States and Afghanistan, a period that found the State Department
more focused on U.S. oil interests and women’s rights than on the growing
terrorist threat, according to experts and current and former officials.”100
With the exception of concerns about possible al Qaeda attacks during the
Millennium celebration, the Clinton administration placed very little focus on
bin Laden during the remainder of 1999 and most of 2000. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright met with Ahmed Chalabi and other members of the Iraqi
National Congress (INC) in May 1999 and pledged support for regime
change in Iraq.101 Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Under Secretary of State
for Political Affairs, delivered a similar message to Chalabi and the INC on
November 1, 1999.
On June 26, 2000, Vice President Al Gore met with Chalabi and the INC.
Gore and the INC issued a joint statement to reaffirm “their joint desire to
see a united Iraq served by a representative and democratic government responsive to the needs of its people and willing to live in peace with its
neighbors.”102
In July 2000, Secretary of Defense William Cohen appeared before the
Senate Armed Services Committee to discuss national missile defense.
Cohen made it clear what he considered the greatest threat to the people of
the United States. “Chairman Warner, Senator Levin, members of the Committee, I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss with you the U.S. National Missile Defense program,” Cohen said. “I cannot think of a more important issue to address than protecting the American people from the threat
posed by states such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq who are seeking to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the long-range missiles
to deliver them.”103
99
The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, p. 330 (paperback edition).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A396812001Nov4
101
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/1999/990524-iraq-usia2.htm
102
http://www.usembassy.it/file2000_06/alia/a006260b.htm
103
http://armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2000/000725wc.pdf
100
23
If Clinton had been truly obsessed with bin Laden and considered al
Qaeda the greatest threat to the U.S., he obviously did not share this concern
with Cohen, who saw what President George W. Bush would later label the
“axis of evil” as the most important issue to address.
Of course, few Americans have ever read Cohen’s words concerning national missile defense and the threat posed by the “axis of evil.” And, of
course, the Democrats and their allies in the media have thrown his words
into the memory hole. For example, Wolf Blitzer asked for Sen. Barbara
Boxer’s reaction after he played this clip of President Bush on the October
28, 2007 edition of CNN’s Late Edition:
The need for missile defense in Europe is real, and I believe it’s urgent. Iran
is pursuing the technology that could be used to produce nuclear weapons and
ballistic missiles of increasing range that could deliver them.
There is little difference between Bush’s statement and Cohen’s from
seven years earlier. Nevertheless, Boxer was incredulous. “Well, just to step
back from this particular comment, this is the first administration I’ve served
with—and I’ve served with four—where it seems that the first thing this
president does is hype the rhetoric,” she said.104
Fewer than three months after Cohen addressed national missile defense,
al Qaeda attacked the USS Cole while it was harbored in the Yemeni port of
Aden during a routine refueling stop. The attack killed 17 sailors and nearly
sank the destroyer.
According to Richard Clarke, “When the USS Cole was attacked, we
were shocked to learn that the Navy was even making port calls in
Yemen.”105 The decision to refuel at Aden was made by General Anthony
Zinni, who would later become a Bush critic.
Remarkably, the Clinton administration never retaliated against al Qaeda
after the USS Cole was attacked. In his 2006 interview with Chris Wallace of
Fox News, Clinton responded to a question about not doing enough about al
Qaeda by redirecting the question towards the Bush administration. “I want
to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked why didn’t
you do anything about the Cole,” Clinton said.
This was classic Clinton dissembling. First, there were still more than
three months of the Clinton administration left when the attack on the USS
Cole occurred. Second, the best time to retaliate against al Qaeda would have
been immediately after the USS Cole was attacked. Finally, Clinton claims
that he could not have retaliated until al Qaeda’s involvement was confirmed.
However, why was such confirmation required? The Clinton administration
had already confirmed that al Qaeda was involved in the embassy bombings
104
105
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0710/28/le.01.html
Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, p. 223.
24
in August 1998. Clinton failed to get bin Laden after those bombings, but
that failure did not preclude Clinton from going after bin Laden again. In
other words, even without the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000,
Clinton had more than enough justification to go after al Qaeda during the
last three months of his presidency. Of course, any effective retaliation might
have stepped on the toes of Al Gore, who was running for president with a
“peace and prosperity” message. That message seemed to be a greater priority than getting bin Laden.
Even Richard Clarke has suggested that fighting terrorism was not a top
priority of the Clinton administration. In an interview with PBS’s Frontline
in March 2002, Clarke, who was still President Bush’s special adviser for
cyberspace security, said the following about Clinton’s failure to go to Afghanistan:
I believe that, had we destroyed the terrorist camps in Afghanistan earlier,
that the conveyor belt that was producing terrorists sending them out around
the world would have been destroyed. So many, many trained and indoctrinated Al Qaeda terrorists, which now we have to hunt down country by country, many of them would not be trained and would not be indoctrinated, because there wouldn’t have been a safe place to do it if we had destroyed the
camps earlier.
Why didn’t Clinton destroy al Qaeda’s “conveyor belt”? “It was a judgment made by people who had to take into account a lot of other issues,”
Clarke said. “None of these decisions took place in isolation. There was the
Middle East peace process going on. There was the war in Yugoslavia going
on. People above my rank had to judge what could be done in the counterterrorism world at a time when they were also pursuing other national goals.”106
Clarke made it clear he believed the Clinton administration placed a
higher priority on a lot of other issues. Taking action against al Qaeda was
not Clinton’s priority, let alone an obsession. Unfortunately, America—and
not Clinton—paid a price for his inaction.
One week after al Qaeda attacked the Cole, Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.)
stood on the U.S. Senate floor and connected Saddam Hussein and Iraq to the
bombing of the Cole, the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa, and the
attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. “I believe all three of these
incidents should be considered as connected to our containment policy
against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,” Kerrey said. Kerrey concluded his remarks
by saying, “I can think of no more fitting tribute to the 17 sailors lost onboard the Cole than completing our mission and helping the Iraqi people
achieve freedom and democracy.”107 Of course, the mission of removing
Saddam from power has been accomplished and we are now helping the Iraqi
106
107
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=3541
25
people achieve freedom and democracy. To his credit, Kerrey, who is now
the president of The New School in New York, did not change his opinion
concerning Iraq after the invasion. In May 2007, Kerrey restated the case for
the Iraq war:
The U.S. led an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein because Iraq was
rightly seen as a threat following Sept. 11, 2001. For two decades we had suffered attacks by radical Islamic groups but were lulled into a false sense of
complacency because all previous attacks were “over there.” It was our nation
and our people who had been identified by Osama bin Laden as the “head of
the snake.” But suddenly Middle Eastern radicals had demonstrated extraordinary capacity to reach our shores.
As for Saddam, he had refused to comply with numerous U.N. Security
Council resolutions outlining specific requirements related to disclosure of his
weapons programs. He could have complied with the Security Council resolutions with the greatest of ease. He chose not to because he was stealing and
extorting billions of dollars from the U.N. Oil for Food program.
No matter how incompetent the Bush administration and no matter how
poorly they chose their words to describe themselves and their political opponents, Iraq was a larger national security risk after Sept. 11 than it was before.108
In December 2000, the Clinton administration released “A National Security Strategy for a Global Age” to Congress. The 45,000-word document
made no mention of al Qaeda and mentioned Osama bin Laden by name just
four times. “Iraq” and “Iraqi” were mentioned dozens of times.109
During the transition period, the State Department on January 8 issued a
press release that began with these words: “The United States will continue
to press Iraq to destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition of
lifting economic sanctions, even after the end of the Clinton administration
January 20, current U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said.”110
A January 11 press release with the headline “Holbrooke: Iraq Will Be a
Major UN Issue for Bush Administration” covered U.S. Ambassador to the
United Nations Richard Holbrooke’s farewell address. According to Holbrooke, “Saddam Hussein’s activities continue to be unacceptable and, in my
view, dangerous to the region and, indeed, to the world, not only because he
possesses the potential for weapons of mass destruction but because of the
very nature of his regime. His willingness to be cruel internally is not unique
in the world, but the combination of that and his willingness to export his
problems makes him a clear and present danger at all times.”111
108
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010107
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/national/nss-0012.pdf
110
111
109
26
Despite Bill Clinton’s later claims that he considered al Qaeda a greater
threat than Iraq, this writer tried in vain to find press releases during the same
period that addressed the threat posed by bin Laden and al Qaeda. I can only
conclude that his fairy tale about being obsessed with bin Laden was concocted after 9/11.
27
CHAPTER 4
IGNORED WARNINGS
O
n September 24, 2006, Bill Clinton appeared on Fox News and reacted angrily when Chris Wallace questioned him about his failure to
capture Osama bin Laden:
CLINTON: But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for
trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried.
So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted.
So you did Fox’s bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me. What I want to know is ...
WALLACE: Well, wait a minute, sir.
CLINTON: No, wait. No, no ...
WALLACE: I want to ask a question. You don’t think that’s a legitimate
question?
CLINTON: It was a perfectly legitimate question, but I want to know how
many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of. I want to
know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, “Why didn’t
you do anything about the Cole?” I want to know how many you asked,
“Why did you fire Dick Clarke?”*
*
Clinton clearly lied about Clarke being fired. On page 234 of Against All Enemies, Clarke writes: “I had
completed the review of the organizational options for homeland defense and critical infrastructure protection that Rice had asked me to conduct. There was agreement to create a separate, senior White House
position for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Cyber Security, outside of the NSC Staff. Condi Rice
and Steve Hadley assumed that I would continue on the NSC focusing on terrorism and asked whom I had
in mind for the new job that would be created outside the NSC. I requested that I be given that assignment,
to the apparent surprise of Condi Rice and Steve Hadley.” If Clarke was demoted, he requested the demotion.
Clinton also seems to imply that Clarke was “demoted” prior to 9/11. However, on page 239 of Against
All Enemies, Clarke writes the following: “Roger Cressey, my deputy at the NSC Staff, came to me in
early October, after the time that I had intended to switch from the terrorism job to Critical Infrastructure
Protection and Cyber Security. The switch had been delayed by September 11.” In other words, the Bush
administration kept Clarke at NSC beyond the period Clarke had planned on being there.
In a footnote on page 240, Clarke makes it clear that he left the administration under his own volition:
“Cressey and I did spend over a year working on the cyber security problem, producing Bush’s National
Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, and then quit the Administration altogether.”
28
IGNORED WARNINGS
The interview continued with additional Clinton lies and half-truths, and
reached its low point with Clinton jabbing his finger at Wallace.
After Clinton’s meltdown on Fox News, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice defended her administration’s handling of terrorism prior to 9/11.
“What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years,” Rice told the New York Post.
Sen. Hillary Clinton immediately struck back at Rice. “I’m certain that if
my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled ‘Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States’ he
would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our
current president and his national security team,” she said.
Clinton, of course, was referring to the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily
Briefing (PDB).
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, Bill Clinton actually did receive a classified report in the December 4, 1998 PDB that was entitled “Bin
Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks.” I have included
the text of this PDB below:
The following is the text of an item from the President’s Daily Briefing received by President William J. Clinton on December 4, 1998. It was declassified for the Report of the 9/11 Commission. Redacted material is indicated in
brackets.
Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US
Aircraft and Other Attacks
1. Reporting [—] suggests Bin Ladin and his allies are preparing for attacks
in the US, including an aircraft hijacking to obtain the release of Shaykh
‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman, Ramzi Yousef, and Muhammad Sadiq ‘Awda. One
source quoted a senior member of the Gama’at al-Islamiyya (IG) saying that,
as of late October, the IG had completed planning for an operation in the US
on behalf of Bin Ladin, but that the operation was on hold. A senior Bin
Ladin operative from Saudi Arabia was to visit IG counterparts in the US
soon thereafter to discuss options—perhaps including an aircraft hijacking.
IG leader Islambuli in late September was planning to hijack a US airliner
during the “next couple of weeks” to free ‘Abd al-Rahman and the other
prisoners, according to what may be a different source.
The same source late last month said that Bin Ladin might implement plans
to hijack US aircraft before the beginning of Ramadan on 20 December and
29
that two members of the operational team had evaded security checks during
a recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport.[—]
2. Some members of the Bin Ladin network have received hijack training,
according to various sources, but no group directly tied to Bin Ladin’s’s alQa’ida organization has ever carried out an aircraft hijacking. Bin Ladin
could be weighing other types of operations against US aircraft. According to
[—] the IG in October obtained SA-7 missiles and intended to move them
from Yemen into Saudi Arabia to shoot down an Egyptian plane or, if unsuccessful, a US military or civilian aircraft.
A [—] in October told us that unspecified “extremist elements” in Yemen
had acquired SA-7s.[—]
3. [—] indicate the Bin Ladin organization or its allies are moving closer to
implementing anti-US attacks at unspecified locations, but we do not know
whether they are related to attacks on aircraft. A Bin Ladin associate in Sudan late last month told a colleague in Kandahar that he had shipped a group
of containers to Afghanistan. Bin Ladin associates also talked about the
movement of containers to Afghanistan before the East Africa bombings.
In other [—] Bin Ladin associates last month discussed picking up a package
in Malaysia. One told his colleague in Malaysia that “they” were in the
“ninth month [of pregnancy].”
An alleged Bin Ladin supporter in Yemen late last month remarked to his
mother that he planned to work in “commerce” from abroad and said his impending “marriage,” which would take place soon, would be a “surprise.”
“Commerce” and “marriage” often are codewords for terrorist attacks. [—]
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, on the same day, Richard
Clarke “convened a meeting of his CSG to discuss both the hijacking concern and the antiaircraft missile threat. To address the hijacking warning, the
group agreed that New York airports should go on maximum security starting that weekend. They agreed to boost security at other East coast airports.
The CIA agreed to distribute versions of the report to the FBI and FAA to
pass to the New York Police Department and the airlines. The FAA issued a
security directive on December 8, with specific requirements for more intensive air carrier screening of passengers and more oversight of the screening
process, at all three New York area airports.”
After investigation, the FBI could find no information to support the hijack threat, and the FAA alert at the New York area airports ended on January 31, 1999.
Clinton Inc. spin machines such as Media Matters for America and Think
Progress pointed to the action taken after the December 4, 1998 PDB and
claimed that Hillary was right about her husband’s administration taking that
30
IGNORED WARNINGS
PDB more seriously than the Bush administration took the August 6 PDB.*
What they dishonestly fail to tell readers is that the portion of the August 6
PDB that concerned possible hijackings was merely a reiteration of the information in the December 4, 1998 PDB:
We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ---- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted
to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel
Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.
It would have been a bit odd for Bush to take action based on an uncorroborated report that was 32 months old when the Clinton administration itself ended the FAA alert on January 31, 1999. Nevertheless, Richard Clarke
in Against All Enemies noted that antiterrorism actions were taken during the
summer of 2001: “During the first week of July I convened the CSG and
asked each agency to consider itself on full alert. I asked the CSG agencies to
cancel summer vacations and official travel for the counterterrorism response
staffs. Each agency should report anything unusual, even if a sparrow should
fall from a tree. I asked the FBI to send another warning to the 18,000 police
departments, State to alert the embassies, and the Defense Department to go
to Threat Condition Delta. The Navy moved ships out of Bahrain.”
“I asked FAA to send another security warning to the airlines and airports
and requested special scrutiny at the ports of entry,” Clarke continued. “We
considered a broad public warning, but we had no proof or specificity. What
would it say? ‘A terrorist group you have never heard of may be planning to
do something somewhere?”112
In a March 24, 2004 interview with Salon.com’s Joe Conason, Clarke had
the following to say about the August 6 PDB:
I really can’t recall it. I think its importance has been overblown. What happens in the presidential daily briefing is that the president asks questions of
the briefer, which is usually Tenet on Monday through Friday. And the
briefer then takes notes of the questions and goes back to CIA to get papers
written to respond to the questions.
In response to the drumbeat day after day of intelligence that there was going
to be an al-Qaida attack, the president apparently said, “Tell me what alQaida could do.” And in response to that the CIA went off and wrote a paper
that listed everything possible that al-Qaida could do. It didn’t say we have
intelligence that tells us the attack will be here or there, the attack method will
be this or that. It was rather a laundry list of possible things they could do.113
*
The December 4, 1998 PDB and actions taken in response to it apparently were of such little consequence that Richard Clarke made no mention of them in Against All Enemies.
112
p. 236.
113
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/03/24/clarke/index2.html
31
Conason apparently believed Clarke was not credible concerning the importance of the August 6 PDB. Fewer than three weeks after interviewing
Clarke, Conason wrote, “The most concrete evidence of administration fecklessness is the now-notorious Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing, or
PDB, delivered to George W. Bush while he vacationed at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.”114
As Clarke confirmed in his polemic against Bush’s counterterrorism policies, during the summer of 2001 there was no specific information regarding
an impending al Qaeda attack on American targets. He later said the importance of the August 6 PDB was “overblown.” Nevertheless, many liberals
and their allies in the media, like Conason, would ignore both the contents of
the August 6 PDB and Clarke’s characterization of that PDB.
SPECIFIC THREATS THAT WERE IGNORED
In November 1997, Mustafa Mahmoud Said Ahmed, an Egyptian member of
al Qaeda, walked into the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and told the CIA
about a bombing plot involving the embassy. Unfortunately, the CIA dismissed this intelligence as unreliable. According to Lawrence Wright in The
Looming Tower, “This was not an isolated incident. All through the spring
[of 1998] there had been a drumroll of threats and fatwas from bin Laden, but
few had taken them seriously. Now the consequence of that neglect was
starkly evident.”115
One person who did take the threat seriously was Prudence Bushnell, the
U.S. ambassador to Kenya.
Bushnell “cabled Washington on December 24, 1997, reviewing the
threats and the response to them by the embassy and the Kenyan government.
She pointed to certain reports about terrorist threats aimed at the mission, as
well as threats of crime and political violence, and emphasized the embassy’s
extreme vulnerability due to lack of standoff. She asked for Washington’s
support for a new chancery.”116
In the spring of 1998, Bushnell sent Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
an emotional letter in which she pleaded for help. “Ms. Bushnell, a career
diplomat, had been fighting for months for a more secure embassy in the face
of mounting terrorist threats and a warning that she was the target of an assassination plot,” the New York Times reported on January 9, 1999. “The department had repeatedly refused to grant her request, citing a lack of money.
114
115
116
http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/conason/2004/04/09/condi_911/index.html
p. 275.
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/010999africa-bomb.html
32
IGNORED WARNINGS
But that kind of response, she wrote Albright, was ‘endangering the lives of
embassy personnel.’”117
Unfortunately, Albright ignored Bushnell’s plea.
On August 7, 1998*, al Qaeda simultaneously bombed the U.S. embassies
in Nairobi (killing 213 and wounding 4,500) and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania,
(killing eleven). Al Qaeda murdered 12 Americans in the attacks.
After the attacks, Admiral William J. Crowe, US Navy (Ret.), was appointed to chair the Accountability Review Boards on the Embassy Bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam on August 7, 1998. The review, which
was released on January 8, 1999, showed, among other things, that the CIA
repeatedly told State Department officials in Washington and in the Kenya
Embassy that there was an active terrorist cell in Kenya connected to Osama
bin Laden, State Department officials brushed aside General Anthony Zinni,
commander of the U.S. Central Command, who had visited Nairobi on his
own and warned that the Nairobi embassy was an easy and tempting target
for terrorists, and the State Department had all but abandoned the commitment it made after the 1983 bombing of the Beirut embassy to improve embassy security.
In Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke writes about an exchange he had
with Secretary of State Albright in December 1999. Expressing his concern
about security at U.S. embassies, Clarke asked, “What do you think will happen if you lose another embassy? The Republicans in the Congress will go
after you.”
According to Clarke, Albright shot back, “First of all, I didn’t lose these
two embassies. I inherited them in the shape they were.”118
Of course, anything Richard Clarke says or writes must be taken with a
grain of salt. However, if the exchange actually took place, it is interesting to
note Albright’s refusal to accept any responsibility for the bombings that occurred on what she has called her “worst day as secretary of state.” Albright
was sworn in as secretary of state on January 23, 1997, or more than 18
months prior to the embassy bombings. What would have liberals said if
President Bush refused to accept any responsibility for 9/11 by saying he had
inherited the terrorist threat just eight months earlier?
During December 1998, protracted negotiations between the United
States and Yemen to allow U.S. warships to refuel in Aden were concluded.
By this time, Mohamed al-’Owhali, one of the bombers of the U.S. embassy
in Nairobi, had already told U.S. investigators that al Qaeda planned next to
attack an American ship in Yemen.119
117
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/010999africa-bomb.html
August 7, 1998 was the eighth anniversary of the beginning of Operation Desert Shield and Saudi Arabia’s request for U.S. troops to defend it against a possible Iraqi attack.
118
p. 206
119
Reuters Newswire, “FBI Had ‘98 Report of Plot to Bomb Warship in Yemen, U.S. Says,” reprinted in
The Washington Post, January 31, 2001.
*
33
When the Pentagon’s Cole Commission released its report on January 9,
2001, Admiral Harold Gehman, one of the retired officers who headed the
commission, said, “We found no credible intelligence that could have predicted the attack on board the USS Cole.” Through a Pentagon spokesman,
Gehman later told CNN that the 1998 warning was “not brought to our attention.”120
General Anthony Zinni, who made the Aden refueling decision, told CNN
that “he may have received the threat warning, but that at the time, August of
1998, the United States was not sending ships to Yemen, so it may have received little attention, especially because the warning was vague, and of uncertain accuracy.”121
While the warnings the U.S. received concerning the bombings of our
embassies and the USS Cole may have been vague and of uncertain accuracy, it should be noted that those warnings were far more specific and accurate than anything found in the August 6 PDB.
120 http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/01/31/cole.intelligence/
121 Ibid.
34
CHAPTER 5
AL QAEDA-IRAQ LINKS
There’s absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda,
ever. - Richard Clarke, March 21, 2004
O
n June 30, 2004, Media Matters for America (MMFA) attacked
Stephen F. Hayes, author of The Connection: How al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America. According to MMFA, “Despite vigorous critiques that have undermined the credibility of Hayes’s contention, conservative pundits have embraced Hayes and his
book in order to, in the words of Center for Strategic and International Studies fellow Daniel A. Benjamin, ‘shore up the rickety argument that Baathist
Iraq had posed a real national security threat to the United States.’”*
In their attempt to discredit Hayes and his argument that there was an al
Qaeda-Iraq connection, MMFA quoted from a Newsweek article in which
reporters Michael Isikoff** and Mark Hosenball attacked the source of some
of Hayes’ information.122
While Isikoff and Hosenball were working to make the case against an al
Qaeda-Iraq connection, they apparently forgot that their magazine made the
opposite case just a few years earlier.
The January 11, 1999 issue of Newsweek included an article with the
headline “Saddam + Bin Laden?” and the subhead “It would be a marriage
made in hell. And America’s two enemies are courting.”
According to the article, “Bin Laden has been calling for all-out war on
Americans, using as his main pretext Washington’s role in bombing and
boycotting Iraq.” Further, “An Arab intelligence officer who knows Saddam
personally and stays in touch with his clandestine services predicts that ‘very
*
Benjamin stated this in a December 9, 2003 Slate.com article. He failed to note that while he was a
member of the Clinton administration, that administration made the same “rickety argument” numerous
times. Benjamin is either dishonest or he has a serious case of amnesia.
**
Isikoff would later write an article for Newsweek in which he accused U.S. guards at Guantanamo of
flushing a Koran down the toilet. Newsweek was forced to retract the story, but not before riots in Pakistan
killed at least 15 people. Despite the deaths that resulted from his false report, Isikoff continues to write
for Newsweek.
122
Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, “Case Decidedly Not Closed,” Newsweek, November 19, 2003.
35
soon you will be witnessing large-scale terrorist activity run by the Iraqis.’
The attacks, he says, would be aimed at American and British targets in the
Islamic world. Washington is somewhat skeptical, but this source says plans
have already been put into action under three ‘false flags’: one Palestinian,
one Iranian and one ‘the al Qaeda apparatus,’ the loose collection of terrorists
who receive bin Laden’s patronage. ‘All these organizations have representatives in Baghdad,’ says the Arab intelligence officer.”
The article even went on to ask a question that was posed by the Bush
administration in 2002 and 2003: “The idea of an alliance between Iraq and
bin Laden is alarming to the West (what if Baghdad gave the terrorists highly
portable biological weapons?).”
Newsweek was not alone during the late 1990s in its contention that there
was a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq. An AP story in the February
14, 1999 edition of the Washington Post noted, “Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against
the Western powers.” On the same day, the San Jose Mercury News reported,
“U.S. intelligence officials are worried that a burgeoning alliance between
terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could
make the fugitive Saudi’s loose-knit organization much more dangerous ... In
addition, the officials said, Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal is now in Iraq, as
is a renowned Palestinian bomb designer, and both could make their expertise available to bin Laden.”
National Public Radio reporter Mike Shuster discussed the connection on
February 18, 1999:
Iraq’s contacts with bin Laden go back some years, to at least 1994, when,
according to one U.S. government source, [former Iraq Ambassador to Turkey Farouk] Hijazi met him when bin Laden lived in Sudan. According to
[former CIA counter-terrorism official Vincent] Cannistraro, Iraq invited bin
Laden to live in Baghdad to be nearer to potential targets of terrorist attack in
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. There is a wide gap between bin Laden’s fundamentalism and Saddam Hussein’s secular dictatorship. But some experts believe bin Laden might be tempted to live in Iraq because of his reported desire
to obtain chemical or biological weapons. CIA Director George Tenet referred to that in recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee when he said bin Laden was planning attacks on American targets.
As the invasion of Iraq approached, Shuster began singing a different
tune: “Philip Wilcox is former ambassador on counterterrorism at the State
Department, now head of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. Many experts, including Wilcox, see little in common between Iraq’s form of secular
dictatorship and al-Qaeda’s goals of establishing Islamist governments
throughout the Arab world, including in Baghdad.”123
123
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/transcripts/2003/feb/030221.shuster.html
36
AL-QAEDA-IRAQ LINKS
Of course, talk of an al Qaeda-Iraq connection was not limited to the media. In fact, it was the official position of the U.S. government. A June 1998
Department of Justice sealed indictment against Osama bin Laden was adamant about the connection:
Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan
and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah
for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies
in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an
understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work
against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including
weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.124
When Stephen Hayes and Rush Limbaugh in December 2005 cited this
indictment as proof that the Clinton administration believed al Qaeda and
Iraq were working together, MMFA turned on its spin machine and noted
that a “subsequent investigation by [Patrick] Fitzgerald into these attacks led
to a new indictment” that superseded the original indictment. The new indictment, issued on November 4, 1998, removed the reference concerning al
Qaeda’s cooperation with Iraq. According to the Washington Post, Fitzgerald
told the 9/11 Commission the “reference was dropped in a superseding indictment because investigators could not confirm al Qaeda’s relationship
with Iraq as they had done with its ties to Iran, Sudan and Hezbollah. The
original material came from an al Qaeda defector who told prosecutors that
what he had heard was secondhand.”125
Of course, Fitzgerald’s failure to confirm al Qaeda’s relationship with
Iraq does not mean a relationship did not exist. Absence of evidence is not
evidence of absence. MMFA certainly would not argue that Fitzgerald’s failure to find evidence that Dick Cheney conspired to leak Valerie Plame’s
identity is proof that Cheney was not involved in the alleged leak.
In any case, the Clinton administration continued to cite an al Qaeda-Iraq
connection during the fall of 1998 and beyond. For example, in January
1999, the Washington Post reported the following:
[Richard] Clarke did provide new information in defense of Clinton’s decision to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles at the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in
Khartoum, Sudan, in retaliation for bin Laden’s role in the Aug. 7 embassy
bombings. While U.S. intelligence officials disclosed shortly after the missile
attack that they had obtained a soil sample from the El Shifa site that contained a precursor of VX nerve gas, Clarke said that the U.S. government is
“sure” that Iraqi nerve gas experts actually produced a powdered VX-like
124
125
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1998/11/98110602_nlt.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html
37
substance at the plant that, when mixed with bleach and water, would have
become fully active VX nerve gas.
Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was
produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa’s current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve
gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.
Given the evidence presented to the White House before the airstrike, Clarke
said, the president “would have been derelict in his duties if he didn’t blow up
the facility.”
Clarke said the U.S. does not believe that bin Laden has been able to acquire
chemical agents, biological toxins or nuclear weapons. If evidence of such an
acquisition existed, he said, “we would be in the process of doing something.”126
Clarke clearly made a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq, and that is
why the Clinton administration bombed the al Shifa* pharmaceutical plant in
Sudan in August 1998.
Clarke reiterated this connection in his book, Against All Enemies: Inside
America’s War on Terror:
EMPTA is a compound that had been used as a prime ingredient in Iraqi
nerve gas. It had no other known use, nor had any other nation employed
EMPTA to our knowledge for any purpose. What was an Iraqi chemical
weapons agent doing in Sudan? UNSCOM and other U.S. government
sources had claimed that the Iraqis were working on something at the facility
near Shifa. Could Sudan, using bin Laden’s money, have hired some Iraqis to
make chemical weapons? It seemed chillingly possible.127
Despite this, Clarke would later tell CBS News, “There’s absolutely no
evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever.”128
Nevertheless, no one from the Clinton administration has rescinded his or
her earlier comments concerning al Shifa, Iraq, and al Qaeda. In addition, no
one in the media seemed interested in investigating the fact that there was
much dissension within the Clinton administration before the attack on al
Shifa. According to the New York Times on October 27, 1999, Assistant Secretary of State Phyllis Oakley called a meeting of key aides prior to the attack
and a consensus emerged: “Contrary to what the Administration was saying,
the case tying Al Shifa to bin Laden or to chemical weapons was weak.”
Oakley told her aides to draft a report reflecting their skepticism, but Secre126
Loeb, Vernon. “Embassy Attacks Thwarted, U.S. Says; Official Cites Gains Against Bin Laden; Clinton Seeks $10 Billion to Fight Terrorism,” Washington Post, A02, January 23, 1999.
*
Arabic for “the healing.”
127
pp. 146-147.
128
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml
38
AL-QAEDA-IRAQ LINKS
tary of State Madeleine Albright and a top aide, Under Secretary of State
Thomas R. Pickering, killed that report.129
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, “The Sudanese denied that al
Shifa produced nerve gas, and they allowed journalists to visit what was left
of a seemingly harmless facility. President Clinton, Vice President Gore,
Berger, Tenet, and Clarke insisted to us that their judgment was right, pointing to the soil sample evidence. No independent evidence has emerged to
corroborate the CIA’s assessment.”130
As Stephen Hayes noted in The Connection, these “senior Clinton administration national security officials are on the record defending the al
Shifa strikes, citing an Iraqi connection. Those strikes, of course, came in
response to attacks conducted by al Qaeda. Whether Iraq and al Qaeda were
knowingly working together is an interesting but secondary concern for Bush
administration policy makers. That Iraq was providing technology and knowhow to bin Laden—even if indirectly and unwittingly—demonstrated the
danger of leaving Saddam in place.”131
In July 2000, Salah Idris, the Saudi businessman who bought al Shifa for
$18 million in March 1998, filed a $50 million lawsuit against the U.S. government. His lawyers argued in papers filed with the U.S. Claims Court that
the plant made antibiotics, veterinary and other drugs, and was bombed due
to a terrible “intelligence blunder” by Washington. The papers also said that
“Idris had ordered a study by experts of the ground soil and drainage sludge
at El-Shifa. The study found evidence of common pesticides with a chemical
similar to EMPTA but no trace of EMPTA.” 132
Unfortunately, Clinton’s destruction of the pharmaceutical plant had several negative consequences:

According to Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower, after the
strike, “Sudan let the two accomplices to the East Africa bombings
escape, and they’ve never been seen again. [John] O’Neill and his
[FBI] team lost an invaluable opportunity to capture al-Qaeda insiders.133
Wright also notes, “The result of this hasty strike was that the impoverished country of Sudan lost one of its most important manufacturers, which employed three hundred people and produced more than
half of the country’s medicines, and a night watchman was killed.”134
According to Peter Bergen in Holy War, Inc., “As a result of the U.S.
cruise missile attack directed against bin Laden in August 1998, he
129
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/102799us-sudan.html
The 9/11 Commission Report, p.118
131
Hayes, Stephen, The Connection, p. 110.
132
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=83052&page=1
133
p. 282.
134
Ibid.
130
39
has also gained literally millions of admirers who view him as a symbol of resistance to the West.”135
THE AL QAEDA AFFILIATES
In Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke asked, “Was there an al Qaeda affiliate group, complete with terrorist training camp, in Iraq?’ He answered his
own question with “Yes, in the area outside the control of Saddam Hussein.”136 In a sympathetic biography on George W. Bush, Ronald Kessler
made a similar point. “While the section of Iraq where [Abu Musab alZarqawi] operated was outside Hussein’s control,” Kessler wrote, “it was
under the control of one of his agents, who had allowed al-Zarqawi to train
terrorists in the use of poisons and explosives at this camp. This bin Laden
associate allegedly masterminded the assassination of American diplomat
Lawrence Foley in Amman in October 2002.”137
The al Qaeda affiliate Clarke and Kessler referred to was Ansar al-Islam,
a Kurdish Sunni Islamist group. The Hussein agent Kessler referred to was
Abu Wael, Ansar al-Islam’s third-ranking official. Kessler failed to explain
how Abu Wael could control a section of Iraq, while his boss, Saddam Hussein, had no control whatsoever in that same section.
ABC News’ Brian Ross attempted to discredit the Ansar al-Islam-Saddam
Hussein link prior to the invasion. In a World News Tonight segment, Ross
presented an interview with Mullah Krekar, Ansar’s longtime leader and religious authority, who was living in Norway at the time. “[The Iraqi leaders]
are our enemy,” Krekar said. “Really, they are also our enemy.” However,
according to Stephen Hayes, the most interesting information from the ABC
interview was never aired:
Krekar had explained to an ABC producer that the goal of Ansar al Islam was
“to overthrow the Iraqi regime and replace it with an Islamic state.” Krekar
was then asked about Abu Wael, the man Bush administration officials believe was a senior Iraqi Intelligence official. “I know Abu Wael for 25 years,”
Krekar said. “And he is in Baghdad. And he is an Arabic member of our
shura, our leadership council also.”
That Krekar placed Abu Wael in Baghdad was almost certainly unintentional.
If the goal of Ansar was to overthrow the regime, and if Abu Wael was on its
leadership council, it is highly unlikely that he would be in Baghdad at a time
when the Iraqi regime was on highest alert. The more plausible explanation is
that Mullah Krekar slipped by admitting Abu Wael was in Baghdad and that
135
136
137
p. 33.
p. 270.
A Matter of Character: Inside the White House of George W. Bush, pp. 198-199 (paperback)
40
AL-QAEDA-IRAQ LINKS
Abu Wael was in Baghdad precisely because his employer—the Iraqi regime—wanted him there.138
In a March 1, 2004 Weekly Standard article, Jonathan Schanzer characterized Abu Wael as Saddam’s ambassador to al Qaeda. In January of that year,
Schanzer had interviewed Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, who served in Saddam’s secret police, the Mukhabarat, from 1997 to 2002. At the time, alShamari was sitting in a Kurdish prison. He said that a division of the Mukhabarat provided weapons to Ansar. In addition, al-Shamari said, the Mukhabarat helped finance Ansar. “On one occasion we gave them ten million
Swiss dinars [$700,000],” al-Shamari said, referring to the pre-1990 Iraqi
currency. On other occasions, the Mukhabarat provided more than that. The
assistance, he added, was furnished “every month or two months.” Schanzer
then showed al-Shamari a photo of Abu Wael:
“Do you know this man?” I asked al-Shamari. His eyes widened and he
smiled. He told me that he knew the man in the picture, but that his graying
beard was now completely white. He said that the man was Abu Wael, whose
full name is Colonel Saadan Mahmoud Abdul Latif al-Aani. The prisoner told
me that he had worked for Abu Wael, who was the leader of a special intelligence directorate in the Mukhabarat. That directorate provided assistance to
Ansar al Islam at the behest of Saddam Hussein, whom Abu Wael had met
“four or five times.” Al-Shamari added that “Abu Wael’s wife is Izzat alDouri’s cousin,” making him a part of Saddam’s inner circle. Al-Douri, of
course, was the deputy chairman of Saddam’s Revolutionary Command
Council, a high-ranking official in Iraq’s armed forces, and Saddam’s
righthand man.139
If all of this is true, then it is clear that Abu Wael was indeed Saddam’s
ambassador to an al Qaeda affiliate within the borders of Iraq. But what of
the claim that this affiliate was located in an area of Iraq outside of Saddam’s
control? This claim is based on the fact that Ansar al-Islam operated in Iraqi
Kurdistan and the assumption that the area was a “safe haven.”
But was Kurdistan actually a safe haven, or an area of Iraq that Saddam
and his forces could never touch, let alone control? The Battle of Irbil suggests that it was not.
On August 31, 1996, Saddam Hussein sent about 30,000 men and over
100 tanks into Kurdistan—which was ostensibly protected by the UN—and
seized its capital, Irbil. According to Donald Kagan and Frederick W. Kagan,
“Clinton took advantage of the incursion to launch forty-four cruise missiles
against air defense targets in southern Iraq and to extend the southern no-fly
zone. No action whatsoever was taken against the Iraqi forces engaged in
138
139
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/860ydczr.asp?pg=2
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/768rwsbj.asp?pg=2
41
reconquering Kurdistan, although the incursion into that region was the only
justification publicly given for the U.S. attacks.” Further, “Nothing, of
course, prevented Saddam from installing the Kurdish faction loyal to him in
Irbil, destroying his enemies, and reasserting his control over the entire region—which he did.”140
If Saddam Hussein could seize the capital of Kurdistan and reassert control over the entire region in 1996, we can only conclude that he either tolerated the presence of Ansar al-Islam in that region or he, as claimed by alShamari, actively supported the al Qaeda affiliate.
If the media tried to discredit the Ansar al-Islam-Saddam Hussein connections, they largely ignored evidence* of Iraqi-sponsored terrorism against
Americans several months prior to the invasion. That terrorism was allegedly
carried out by Abu Sayyaf, an al Qaeda affiliate in the Philippines.
According to the February 26, 2003 edition of the Christian Science
Monitor, “Starting in October of last year, Iraq began preparing for war with
the US by instructing agents in its embassies worldwide to organize terroristtype attacks on American and allied targets, Filipino and US intelligence officials say.” Further:
[T]here is evidence that Iraq may be outsourcing. Intelligence officials are
concerned that Iraq is seeking out Islamic militant groups that have little ideologically in common with Iraq’s secular Baath regime, but find common
cause against the US….
The clearest evidence is the case of the Iraqi diplomat Hisham Z Hussein,
who also went under the alias of Hisham Al Hidith and Abu Geith, according
to Philippines intelligence officials.
He was expelled from Manila on Feb. 13, after he was linked by Filipino police to two bombings, including one that killed a US soldier and two Filipinos. The potential threat has security officials in the US and abroad increasing
their surveillance of potential Iraqi agents, particularly the country’s diplomatic missions.141
The U.S. Army soldier, Sergeant First Class Mark Wayne Jackson, was
killed on October 2, 2002 by a bomb that exploded outside the Zamboanga
City café he was visiting. Eyewitnesses identified the bomber as a member of
Abu Sayyaf, an al Qaeda-linked group founded with the help of Osama bin
Laden’s brother-in-law.
140
While America Sleeps, pp. 391-392.
Laurie Mylroie noted in The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks that American officials say they have no “evidence” when they actually mean they do not have
“proof.” “There is a difference between evidence and proof,” Mylroie writes. “Webster’s dictionary defines evidence as ‘something that indicates,’ using the example, ‘your reaction was evidence of innocence.’ Proof is something different: ‘evidence establishing the validity of a given assertion’ or ‘conclusive demonstration.’ Evidence often has to be developed and aggressively pursued until it becomes proof.”
141
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0226/p01s03-woap.html
*
42
AL-QAEDA-IRAQ LINKS
In The Connection, Stephen Hayes explained how Philippine officials tied
the bombing to Hisham Hussein:
Exactly one week after the café attack, Filipino authorities found an unexploded bomb on the playground of the San Roque Elementary School, also in
Zamboanga City. The bomb was to have been detonated by a cell phone. Filipino investigators analyzed the calls to and from two Abu Sayyaf leaders. But
one call that stood out had been placed seventeen hours after the bombing that
killed Sergeant Jackson, to an Iraqi intelligence agent named Hisham Hussein, who was working as the second secretary at the Iraqi embassy in Manila.142
In Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke wrote that, after 9/11, he told Paul
Wolfowitz that he was “unaware of any Iraq-sponsored terrorism directed at
the United States” since 1993.143 While Sergeant Jackson was killed a year
after 9/11, his death occurred more than a year before Clarke’s book was
published. Nevertheless, Clarke did not mention the bombing.
Clarke did, however, ridicule Dick Cheney for suggesting that Saddam
Hussein might have played a role in 9/11. On September 14, 2003, Cheney
appeared on Meet the Press. After citing a Washington Post poll that found
that 69 percent of Americans believe Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks, Tim Russert asked Cheney if that surprised him. “No,” Cheney replied.
“I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection.” Russert shot
back, “But is there a connection?” Cheney answered, “We don’t know.”144
“Only in September 2003, only after occupying Iraq, only after Vice
President Cheney had stretched credulity on Meet the Press, did the President
clearly state that there was no ‘evidence that Iraq was involved in the September 11 attacks,’” Clarke wrote. “That new clarity might have come as a
disappointing shock to American troops being targeted by snipers and blown
up by landmines in Iraq.” Clarke then asserted that Bush “was force to admit
publicly that there was no connection between the al Qaeda attack of September 11 and Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq.”145
Of course, Bush made no such admission. He said that there was no “evidence that Iraq was involved in the September 11 attacks.” It is possible to
say there is no evidence and still believe there is a connection. In fact, Clarke
did this himself in his book when he referred to an aircraft crash that killed
General Zia, the military ruler of Pakistan, and arms for the Afghans that
blew up in an explosion at a base used by the CIA and Pakistani intelligence:
142
p. 154.
p. 231.
144
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3080244/
145
p. 268-269.
143
43
“I could never find the evidence to prove that Soviet KGB had ordered these
two acts for their bitter defeat, but in my bones I knew they had.”146
The truth is we do not know for certain if Saddam Hussein played a role
in 9/11. Chances are that he did not. However, Hussein was clearly sponsoring terrorism and he shared bin Laden’s hatred for the U.S. In December
2002, Evan Bayh, the Senate Democrat from Indiana who sat on the intelligence committee when the Senate authorized force against Iraq, summed up
the threat of an Iraq-al Qaeda alliance:
Even if there’s only a 10 percent chance that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin
Laden would cooperate, the question is whether that’s an acceptable level of
risk. My answer to that would be an unequivocal no. We need to be much
more pro-active on eliminating threats before they’re imminent.
The relationship seemed to have its roots in mutual exploitation. Saddam
Hussein used terrorism for his own ends, and Osama bin Laden used a nationstate for the things that only a nation-state can provide. Some of the intelligence is strong, and some of it is murky. But that’s the nature of intelligence
on a relationship like this—lots of it is going to be speculation and conjecture.
Following 9/11, we await certainty at our peril. 147
Bayh and the other Senate Democrats (except Joe Lieberman, who
is now classified as an independent) now say they regret their vote to
remove Saddam Hussein from power. However, because of that vote,
we are now certain of many things, including:

146
147
Terrorists no longer have a safe haven in Iraq.
Iraq is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism.
We do not have to worry about Saddam Hussein resuming his
WMD programs after sanctions have been lifted on Iraq.
Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations will never get
WMD from Iraq.
Hussein will never threaten his neighbors again.
Numerous Clinton administration officials are on record saying there would never be peace in the Middle East as long as
Saddam Hussein was in power. That obstacle to peace has
been removed.
Uday and Qusay Hussein are no longer able to murder, torture,
and rape their fellow Iraqis with impunity.
Libya’s Muammar Qadaffi decided to disclose that he had a
stockpile of WMD, and voluntarily surrendered them. “I will
do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what hap-
p. 50.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/463ueeaa.asp
44
AL-QAEDA-IRAQ LINKS
pened in Iraq and was afraid,” said Qadaffi to Italian Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi.148
It is clear that both the Clinton administration and the media believed that
Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were working together during the
1990s. It was only after George W. Bush decided to remove Saddam Hussein
from power that Clinton administration officials and the media began changing their tunes.
148
45
CHAPTER 6
HYPING THE IRAQI THREAT
The intelligence from Bush 1 to Clinton to Bush 2 was consistent.
- Hillary Clinton, September 24, 2003149
The consensus was the same, from the Clinton administration to
the Bush administration. It was the same intelligence belief that
our allies and friends around the world shared. - Hillary Clinton,
April 21, 2004150
Because what happened was the information that we got on the intelligence committee was, was relatively consistent with what I was
getting from former Clinton administration officials. - John Edwards, February 4, 2007151
I
feel I must apologize to the reader in advance for offering page after
page of quotes in this chapter. However, I can think of no better way to
address the argument that the Bush administration hyped the threat from
Iraq and attacked that country under false pretenses. Please take a few minutes to read these quotes, and then I’ll make a few observations:
“Think how many can be killed by just a tiny bit of anthrax, and think about
how it’s not just that Saddam Hussein might put it on a Scud missile, an anthrax head, and send it on to some city he wants to destroy. Think about all
the other terrorists and other bad actors who could just parade through Baghdad and pick up their stores if we don't take action.” - President Bill Clinton
(1/21/98) 152
“Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade, and much of his nation’s wealth, not on providing for the Iraqi people, but on developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons—and the missiles to deliver them.
The United Nations weapons inspectors have done a truly remarkable job,
finding and destroying more of Iraq’s arsenal than was destroyed during the
149
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/157wjmhn.asp
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/21/iraq.hillary/
152
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/jan-june98/clinton_1-21a.html
150
151
46
entire Gulf War. Now Saddam Hussein wants to stop them from completing
their mission. I know I speak for everyone in this chamber, Republicans and
Democrats, when I say to Saddam Hussein: You cannot defy the will of the
world. And when I say to him: You have used weapons of mass destruction
before; we are determined to deny you the capacity to use them again.” President Bill Clinton, State of the Union address (1/27/98)153
“Iraq, Sudan, and Libya also bear continued watching, both for their own activities and for their support of terrorist organizations.” - Director of Central
Intelligence George J. Tenet (1/28/98)154
“We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and security
of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction.” - Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright (2/1/98)155
“This record of intransigence is only the latest chapter in the long history of
efforts by the Iraqi regime to flout its obligations under relevant UNSC resolutions. Without full disclosure and free access to all sites UNSCOM and the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) wish to inspect, the ongoing
monitoring and verification mandated by relevant UNSC resolutions, including Resolutions 687, 707 and 715, cannot effectively be conducted.
UNSCOM must be allowed to continue to investigate all of Iraq’s programs
until it can verify with absolute certainty that all the equipment has been destroyed and that all the capabilities have been eliminated. Otherwise, Iraq
eventually will be free to develop the capacity to strike at any city in the Middle East, delivering biological, chemical and possibly even nuclear weapons.”
- President Bill Clinton (2/4/98)156
“Since the end of the Gulf War, the United Nations inspectors in Iraq have
done a remarkable job. They have found and destroyed 38,000 chemical
weapons, more than 100,000 gallons of the agents used in those weapons, 48
missiles, 30 warheads specially fitted for chemical and biological weapons
and a large plant for producing deadly biological agents on a massive scale.
“But their job is not yet done. Iraq continues to conceal chemical and biological weapons, and missiles that can deliver them. And Iraq has the capacity
to quickly restart production of these weapons.” - President Bill Clinton
(2/9/98)157
“The United States has actively and consistently opposed Saddam because he
has demonstrated the intent to threaten the stability of a region vital to our interests. A stable Middle East means we can better protect the free flow of oil,
fight terrorism and build support for a comprehensive Middle East peace.
There is no greater challenge to the region’s stability—and to America’s security in that region—than Saddam’s reckless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. As President Clinton has said, the spread of these weapons to out153
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/states/docs/sou98.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1998_hr/s980128t.htm
155
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9802/01/iraq/
156
http://usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/press/whouse/archive/1998/february/wh326.htm
157
http://www.usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/press/whouse/archive/1998/february/wh4210.htm
154
47
law states, and from them to terrorists and international criminals, is one of
the most dangerous security threats our people will face over the next generation. Other countries have weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.
With Saddam Hussein, there is one big difference: he has used them. Not
once, but repeatedly. Not only against combatants, but against civilians. Not
only against a foreign adversary, but against his own people. And I have no
doubt he will use them again if his capacity to rebuild his arsenal is left unchecked.” - National Security Advisor Sandy Berger (2/13/98)158
“Saddam Hussein’s Iraq reminds us of what we learned in the 20th century
and warns us of what we must know about the 21st. In this century, we
learned through harsh experience that the only answer to aggression and illegal behavior is firmness, determination, and when necessary action.
“In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more
the very kind of threat Iraq poses now a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or
organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.
“If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in
his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can
act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction
program.” - President Bill Clinton (2/17/98)159
“Iraq is a long way from Ohio, 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.” - Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (2/18/98)160
“Now, the United Nations believes that [Saddam] still has very large quantities of VX. VX is a substance, a nerve agent, which is so deadly that a single
drop can kill you within a couple of minutes. Anthrax is a biological agent
that kills people within five to seven hours seven days, rather, after they
breathe an amount the size of a single dust particle. If you were to take a fivepound bag of anthrax, properly dispersed, it would kill half the population of
Columbus, Ohio.” - Secretary of Defense William Cohen (2/18/98)161
“Now, the alternatives some have suggested that we should basically turn
away; we should close our eyes to this effort to create a safe haven for weapons of mass destruction. But imagine the consequences if Saddam fails to
comply and we fail to act. Saddam will be emboldened, believing the international community has lost its will. He will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of
mass destruction. And some day, some way, I am certain, he will use that arsenal again, as he has ten times since 1983.” - National Security Advisor
Sandy Berger (2/18/98)162
158
http://usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/press/whouse/archive/1998/february/wh2217.htm
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/02/17/transcripts/clinton.iraq/
160
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/02/20/98022006_tpo.html
161
Ibid.
162
Ibid.
159
48
“There is no question that the Iraqi people and the world would be better off
without Saddam. And we would gladly work with a successor regime that is
ready to live in peace with its neighbors and resume its place in the family of
nations. We have worked with Iraqi opposition groups in the past and we will
continue to do so in the future.” - National Security Advisor Sandy Berger
(2/18/98)163
“I think that the record will show that Saddam Hussein has produced weapons
of mass destruction, which he’s clearly not collecting for his own personal
pleasure, but in order to use. And therefore, he is qualitatively and quantitatively different from every brutal dictator that has appeared recently, and we
are very concerned about him specifically and what his plans might be.” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (2/18/98)164
“If there is not unfettered, unrestricted, unlimited access per the U.N. resolution for inspections, and UNSCOM cannot in our judgment appropriately perform its functions, then we obviously reserve the rights to press that case internationally and to do what we need to do as a nation in order to be able to
enforce those rights. Hussein has already used these weapons and has made it
clear that he has the intent to continue to try, by virtue of his duplicity and secrecy, to continue to do so. That is a threat to the stability of the Middle East.
It is a threat with respect to the potential of terrorist activities on a global basis. It is a threat even to regions near but not exactly in the Middle East.” Sen. John Kerry (1/23/98)165
“The U.S. had been suspicious for months, partly because of Osama bin
Laden’s financial ties, but also because of strong connections to Iraq. Sources
say the U.S. had intercepted phone calls from the plant to a man in Iraq who
runs that country’s chemical weapons program.” - John McWethy, ABC
News correspondent, after the al Shifa plant in Sudan was largely destroyed
by six Tomahawk missiles (8/25/98)166
“The United States believed that senior Iraqi scientists were helping to produce elements of the nerve agent VX at a factory in Khartoum that American
cruise missiles destroyed last week…. While the administration maintains the
evidence of VX production is clear, the links between the factory and Osama
bin Laden, the Saudi exile whose network of terrorists was the target of last
week’s strike, is circuitous.” - New York Times (8/25/98)167
“We know for a fact, physical evidence, soil samples of VX precursorchemical precursor at the site. Secondly, Wolf, direct evidence of ties between Osama bin Laden and the Military Industrial Corporation—the al Shifa
factory was part of that. This is an operation—a collection of buildings that
does a lot of this dirty munitions stuff. And, thirdly, there is no evidence that
this precursor has a commercial application. So, you combine that with Sudan
163
Ibid.
Ibid.
165
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/607rkunu.asp?pg=2
166
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/527uwabl.asp
167
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082598attack-rdp.html
164
49
support for terrorism, their connections with Iraq on VX, and you combine
that, also, with the chemical precursor issue, and Sudan’s leadership support
for Osama bin Laden, and you’ve got a pretty clear cut case.” - Ambassador
Bill Richardson, CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer” (8/30/98)168
“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S.
Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air
and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat
posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.” Letter to President Clinton, Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry
and others (10/9/98)169
“The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 provides additional, discretionary authorities under which my Administration can act to further the objectives I outlined above. There are, of course, other important elements of U.S. policy.
These include the maintenance of U.N. Security Council support efforts to
eliminate Iraq’s prohibited weapons and missile programs and economic
sanctions that continue to deny the regime the means to reconstitute those
threats to international peace and security. United States support for the Iraqi
opposition will be carried out consistent with those policy objectives as well.”
- President Bill Clinton (11/2/98)170
“In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq
that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular
projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work
cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.” - U.S. Grand Jury Indictment
against Osama bin Laden (11/5/98)171
“The peace process has moved forward in part because, ever since the Gulf
War, the immediate military threat Saddam poses has been contained—albeit
at a substantial price. But even a contained Saddam is harmful to stability and
to positive change in the region. Conversely, a constructive Iraq would help
change the equation in the region.
“That is not because Saddam is a true believer in any radical, extremist vision. The only cause Saddam believes in is his own survival and ambition.
And more Arabs see through him today than ever before. But by manipulating
the suffering he himself has inflicted on Iraqis, and invoking the rhetoric of
Arab solidarity, he has remained a convenient symbol for those who seek to
exploit the sense of aggrievement, frustration and defeat that is still so powerful in much of the Arab world. Fundamentalists like Osama Bin Laden may
be utterly different from Saddam, yet they can still take advantage of his conflict with the world to win recruits for their cause.” - National Security Advisor Sandy Berger (12/8/98)172
168
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=3527
http://snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp
170
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/11/01/981101-in.htm
171
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1998/11/98110602_nlt.html
172
http://www.usembassy.it/file9801/alia/98120912.htm
169
50
“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass
destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has
made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.” - Rep. Nancy Pelosi
(12/16/98)173
“Earlier today, I ordered America’s armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.” - President Bill Clinton (12/16/98)174
“Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of
inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far
greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors. He will
make war on his own people.
“And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He
will deploy them, and he will use them.” - President Bill Clinton (12/16/98)175
“We are now dealing with a threat, I think, that is probably harder for some to
understand because it is a threat of the future rather than a present threat or a
present act, such as a border crossing, a border aggression. Here, as the President described in his statement yesterday, we are concerned about the threat
posed by Saddam Hussein’s ability to have, develop, deploy weapons of mass
destruction and the threat that that poses to the neighbors, to the stability of
the Middle East and, therefore, ultimately to ourselves.” - Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright (12/17/98)176
“So long as Saddam remains in power he will remain a threat to his people,
his region and the world. With our allies, we must pursue a strategy to contain
him and to constrain his weapons of mass destruction program, while working toward the day Iraq has a government willing to live at peace with its
people and with its neighbors.” - President Bill Clinton (12/19/98)177
(Author’s note: The rest of the quotes I am sharing in this chapter are postOperation Desert Fox. There are many on the liberal side who claim the preceding quotes were made when Saddam actually had WMD. According to
this argument, Saddam’s WMD were destroyed during Operation Desert
Storm. Alan Colmes made this argument on the December 1, 2005 edition of
Hannity and Colmes. According to Colmes, “And Bill Clinton and his
pinpoint bombing in the Iraqi facilities in 1998 destroyed many of those
weapons that President Bush and Cheney said were there.” Of course, it
would be quite a stretch to claim that Operation Desert Storm entailed
“pinpoint bombing.” According to Kenneth Pollack, the principal workinglevel official responsible for implementation of U.S. policy towards Iraq,
“This is the problem with the inspections: we knew the Iraqis were cheating
but did not know where. If we had known, we would have bombed those fa173
http://www.house.gov/pelosi/priraq1.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/iraq/iraq463.htm
175
Ibid.
176
177
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/12/19/98121913_tlt.html
174
51
cilities in 1998 during Operation Desert Fox. The fact that out of ninety-seven
targets struck only eleven were WMD production facilities should give a
good sense of the problem.”178 In any case, if the Clinton administration believed Operation Desert Fox destroyed all of Saddam’s WMD, you would not
know it from their statements during the next two years.)
“Here’s what is known so far: Saddam Hussein, who has a long record of
supporting terrorism, is trying to rebuild his intelligence network overseas—
assets that would allow him to establish a terrorism network. U.S. sources say
he is reaching out to Islamic terrorists, including some who may be linked to
Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi exile accused of masterminding the
bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa last summer. U.S. intelligence has
had reports of contacts between low-level agents. Saddam and bin Laden
have interests—and enemies—in common. Both men want U.S. military
forces out of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden has been calling for all-out war on
Americans, using as his main pretext Washington’s role in bombing and boycotting Iraq.” - “Saddam + Bin Laden,” Newsweek (1/11/99)179
“For nearly a decade, Iraq has defied its obligations to destroy its weapons of
terror and the missiles to deliver them. America will continue to contain Saddam—and we will work for the day when Iraq has a government worthy of its
people.” - President Bill Clinton, State of the Union address (1/19/99)180
“Clarke did provide new information in defense of Clinton’s decision to fire
Tomahawk cruise missiles at the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum,
Sudan, in retaliation for bin Laden’s role in the Aug. 7 embassy bombings.
While U.S. intelligence officials disclosed shortly after the missile attack that
they had obtained a soil sample from the El Shifa site that contained a precursor of VX nerve gas, Clarke said that the U.S. government is ‘sure’ that Iraqi
nerve gas experts actually produced a powdered VX-like substance at the
plant that, when mixed with bleach and water, would have become fully active VX nerve gas.
“Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance
was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence
exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa’s current and past operators, the Iraqi
nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.
“Given the evidence presented to the White House before the airstrike,
Clarke said, the president ‘would have been derelict in his duties if he didn’t
blow up the facility.’” - Washington Post (1/23/99)181
“There is no need in this forum to expound on the threat that Saddam Hussein’s regime poses to the security of the Gulf, to the international order, and
to efforts to curtail the spread of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons,
and the means for their delivery. The United States remains determined, with
178
Kenneth Pollack, The Threatening Storm, p. 241
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1158277/posts
180
http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/01/19/sotu.transcript/
181
Loeb, Vernon. “Embassy Attacks Thwarted, U.S. Says; Official Cites Gains Against Bin Laden; Clinton Seeks $10 Billion to Fight Terrorism,” Washington Post, A02, January 23, 1999
179
52
our coalition partners, to counter the threat he poses to our interests, and those
of our allies and friends in the region and around the world.” - Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Walter B. Slocombe (1/28/99)182
“Over the years, I have talked about the capabilities of his military and his
hidden weapons of mass destruction, as well as Saddam’s ability to launch
terrorism. Many of these capabilities remain available to him as he grows
more frustrated and desperate to break out of containment. They remind us
how dangerous Saddam is and why only his fall from power will free the region from this abiding threat.” - Director of Central Intelligence George J.
Tenet (2/2/99)183
“Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who
openly supports Iraq against the Western powers.” - CNN (2/13/99)184
“Iraq’s contacts with bin Laden go back some years, to at least 1994, when,
according to one U.S. government source, Hijazi met him when bin Laden
lived in Sudan. According to Cannistraro, Iraq invited bin Laden to live in
Baghdad to be nearer to potential targets of terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia
and Kuwait. There is a wide gap between bin Laden’s fundamentalism and
Saddam Hussein’s secular dictatorship. But some experts believe bin Laden
might be tempted to live in Iraq because of his reported desire to obtain
chemical or biological weapons. CIA Director George Tenet referred to that
in recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee when he
said bin Laden was planning attacks on American targets.” - NPR reporter
Mike Shuster (2/18/99)185
“Iraq has failed to provide a credible explanation for UNSCOM tests that
found anthrax in fragments of seven SCUD missile warheads. Iraq has been
claiming since 1995 that it put anthrax in only five such warheads, and had
previously denied weaponizing anthrax at all. Iraq’s explanations to date are
far from satisfactory, although it now acknowledges putting both anthrax and
botulinum toxin into some number of warheads.” - President Bill Clinton
(3/3/99)186
“However, Iraq is almost surely developing more weapons of mass destruction, probably nuclear, biological, and chemical, as well as the rockets to
carry them.” - Sen. Bob Kerrey (9/29/99)187
“The liberation of Iraq is inevitable. When that day comes, and the whole
truth about Saddam Hussein’s regime spills out, we will be proud of the stand
we took. And if our post-overthrow support of Iraq aids a transition to democracy, our pride should double. For democracies do not wage war against one
182
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1999_h/99012802_nlt.htm
http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/1999/ps020299.html
184
http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9902/13/afghan.binladen/
185
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/152lndzv.asp?pg=2
186
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1999/03/990303-wh2.htm
187
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1999/09/990929-in.htm
183
53
another. Democracies do not allow their people to starve.” - Sen. Bob Kerrey
(9/29/99)188
“A major worry is that Iraqi reconstruction of WMD-capable facilities damaged during Operation Desert Fox and continued work on delivery systems
shows the priority Saddam continues to attach to preserving a WMD infrastructure.” - Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet (2/2/00)189
“Iraq under Saddam Hussein remains dangerous, unreconstructed and defiant.
Saddam’s record makes clear that he will remain a threat to regional peace
and security as long as he remains in power. He will not relinquish what remains of his WMD arsenal. He will not live in peace with his neighbors. He
will not cease the repression of the Iraqi people. The regime of Saddam Hussein cannot be rehabilitated or reintegrated as a responsible member of the
community of nations. Experience makes this conclusion manifest. That is
why the United States is committed to containing Saddam Hussein as long as
he remains in power. But at the same time, we are also committed to working
to alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people who are forced to live under a regime they did not choose and do not want, and to supporting Iraqis who seek
a new government and a better future for Iraq.” - Edward S. Walker, Jr., assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (3/22/00)190
“To accomplish our first goal—assessing Iraqi sanctions—it would be useful
to recall how we got here in the first place. In 1990 and 1991, Iraq attempted
to annihilate its neighbor, strip it of its property and resources, and seize its
oil. The Security Council and a strong international response prevented Iraq
from succeeding. Following the conflict, the international community decided
it had to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and ensure that it would
not again become a threat to international peace and security.
“I trust that no one here today will suggest that that goal has been
achieved. Iraq remains a threat. Unanswered questions remain in the areas of
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and of the missiles to deliver them.
“And, given the long pattern of unacceptable Iraqi behavior, including
public rejection of resolution 1284 (1999), there will be a need to monitor
Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capability for some time to come. In the
meantime, sanctions are the leverage the international community has to get
the Government of Iraq to comply with Security Council resolutions. That is
the goal. And, as the Secretary-General just told us, that is the solution. But
so long as Iraq is not meeting its obligations under Security Council resolutions, sanctions remain essential.” - U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham
(3/24/00)191
“The Vice President reaffirmed the Administration’s strong commitment to
the objective of removing Saddam Hussein from power, and to bringing him
and his inner circle to justice for their war crimes and crimes against human-
188
Ibid.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2000_hr/dci_speech_020200.htm
190
191
189
54
ity. Saddam’s removal is the key to the positive transformation of Iraq’s relationship with the international community and with the United States, in particular.” - Joint statement from Vice President Al Gore and the Iraqi National
Congress (6/26/00)192
“I cannot think of a more important issue to address than protecting the
American people from the threat posed by states such as North Korea, Iran
and Iraq who are seeking to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
and the long-range missiles to deliver them.” - Secretary of Defense William
S. Cohen (7/25/00)193
“From my perspective, the utility of considering active defenses against missiles from states like North Korea, Iran and Iraq does not depend on a judgment that their leaders are utterly indifferent to the prospect of retaliation.
Rather it is based on a recognition that leaders of these isolated states might
be prepared to use WMD attacks—and risk retaliation—in circumstances
where more traditional, or at least more cautious, leaders would not.” - Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen (7/25/00)194
“Iraq has had an aggressive program to develop the full range of weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) and has used such weapons against Iran and also
against its very own people.” - Ambassador George Moose, U.S. Permanent
Representative to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in
Geneva (8/17/00)195
“Saddam’s actions over the past decade lead us to conclude that his regime
will never comply with the obligations contained in the relevant UN Security
Council resolutions. For this reason, we actively support those who seek to
bring a new democratic government to power in Baghdad. We recognize that
this may be a slow and difficult process, but we believe it is the only solution
to the problem of Saddam’s regime.” - The White House, “A National Security Strategy for a Global Age“ (12/00)196
“Iraqi issues are even more complex, and more dependent on Gulf support.
We do not believe there can be peace or stability in the Gulf while Saddam
Hussein remains in power. We are determined to restrain his quest for nuclear
weapons and dangerous technologies. The next Administration will have to
grapple with the issue and decide on the right mix of policies.” - Ambassador
Ronald E. Neumann (12/19/00)197
“The United States will continue to press Iraq to destroy all its weapons of
mass destruction as a condition of lifting economic sanctions, even after the
end of the Clinton administration January 20, current U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright said.” - State Department press release (1/8/01)198
192
http://www.usembassy.it/file2000_06/alia/a006260b.htm
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/2000_h/test00-07-25Cohen.htm
194
Ibid.
195
http://www.us-mission.ch/press2000/0817moose.htm
196
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/national/nss-0012.pdf
197
198
193
55
“First of all, I am really sorry that we had the issue of Saddam Hussein on our
plate when we arrived, and I am equally sorry to say that we are passing it
on.” - Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (1/9/01)199
“Saddam Hussein’s activities continue to be unacceptable and, in my view,
dangerous to the region and, indeed, to the world, not only because he possesses the potential for weapons of mass destruction but because of the very
nature of his regime. His willingness to be cruel internally is not unique in the
world, but the combination of that and his willingness to export his problems
makes him a clear and present danger at all times.” - UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke (1/11/01)200
“We were convinced money from Iraq was going to bin Laden, who was then
sending it places Iraq wanted it to go. There certainly is no doubt that Saddam
Hussein had pretty strong ties to bin Laden while he was in Sudan, whether it
was directly or through intermediaries.” - Dr. Stanley Bedlington, former CIA
senior counterterrorism analyst, USA Today (12/3/01)201
“President Bush is right to be concerned about Saddam Hussein’s relentless
pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. It’s true that other regimes hostile to
the United States and our allies have, or seek to acquire, chemical, biological
and nuclear weapons. What makes Mr. Hussein unique is that he has actually
used them—against his own people and against his Iranian neighbors.” - Sen.
Joseph Biden, New York Times (7/31/02)202
“We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a
threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of
the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the
means of delivering them.” - Sen. Carl Levin (9/19/02)203
“We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical
weapons throughout his country.” - Former Vice President Al Gore (9/23/02)
204
“Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter
and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in
power.” - Former Vice President Al Gore (9/23/02)205
“Certainly there’s a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.” - Gen. Wesley
Clark (10/02)206
“The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological
weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his
199
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2006/01/algerian_terrorists_bin_laden.html
202
http://biden.senate.gov/newsroom/details.cfm?id=188293&&
203
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp
204
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/transcripts/gore_text092302.html
205
Ibid.
206
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/13/elec04.prez.clark.iraq.ap/
200
201
56
chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that
he is seeking nuclear weapons.” - Sen. Robert Byrd (10/3/02)207
“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.” - Sen. Ted Kennedy (10/4/2002)208
“There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons
within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of
mass destruction.” - Sen. Jay Rockefeller (10/10/02)209
“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons
stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also
given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ...
It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to
increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep
trying to develop nuclear weapons.” - Sen. Hillary Clinton (10/10/02)210
“We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam
Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the
production and storage of weapons of mass destruction.” - Sen. Bob Graham
(12/8/02)211
“But Saddam Hussein, for 12 years, has defied the will of the United Nations
and we contained him effectively, but I think it’s fair to say that after what
happened on September the 11th the will of the international community has
stiffened, as represented by this last U.N. resolution which said, clearly, that
the penalty for noncompliance is no longer sanctions. It can be your removal
from office.” - Bill Clinton, Larry King Live (2/9/03)212
“It still would be much better if this could be done without violence. But the
man needs to get rid of his chemical and biological weapon stocks and...” Bill Clinton, Larry King Live (2/9/03)213
“So, I—my position all along has been one Senator Dole and I took here together on your show that we ought to let the U.N. do its work and I still believe that. But I think the fact that Colin Powell demonstrated persuasively
that they’re moving the weapons, or the weapon stocks in this case, which—
and it would be easier to move the much smaller quantities of anthrax or
aphrotoxin or they may have a little smallpox. But we’re pretty sure they’ve
got a botulism and the chemical agents, VX and ricin.” - Bill Clinton, Larry
King Live (2/9/03)214
207
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp
http://kennedy.senate.gov/~kennedy/statements/02/10/2002A07621.html
http://www.senate.gov/~rockefeller/news/2002/flrstmt0102002.html
210
http://clinton.senate.gov/speeches/iraq_101002.html
211
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DL12Ak02.html
212
http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0306/14/lkl.01.html
213
Ibid.
214
Ibid.
208
209
57
“In 1998, when we and the British bombed for four days when we kicked the
inspectors out, we degraded their capacity further, but there’s no question
they’ve had some time to rebuild.
“Now based on the declarations they made in ‘99 and the estimates that
were there in ‘91 at the end of the Gulf War, it’s clear that the inspections destroyed more stuff than was destroyed in the Gulf War. But it’s pretty clear
there are still some things, substantial amounts of chemical and biological
stocks unaccounted for.” - Bill Clinton, Larry King Live (2/9/03)215
“Second, without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany
of his offenses.
“He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently
prone to miscalculation. He miscalculated an eight-year war with Iran. He
miscalculated the invasion of Kuwait. He miscalculated America’s response
to that act of naked aggression. He miscalculated the result of setting oil rigs
on fire. He miscalculated the impact of sending scuds into Israel and trying to
assassinate an American President. He miscalculated his own military
strength. He miscalculated the Arab world’s response to his misconduct. And
now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his
consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction.” - Sen. John Kerry
(2/23/03)216
After reading the preceding quotes, it is obvious that, as Hillary Clinton
and John Edwards stated, the intelligence on the Iraq threat was consistent
from the Clinton to Bush administrations. The Clinton administration left
office saying Iraq had WMD and was a threat to the U.S., and the Bush administration came in saying the same thing. However, many liberals continue
to claim the Bush administration lied about Iraq having WMD. For some reason, they can’t seem to explain why the Bush administration didn’t take the
next logical step and plant WMD in Iraq after the invasion.
In any case, after reading the quotes in this chapter, there are just a few
possibilities concerning the claims both Clinton and Bush administration officials made regarding Iraq:
1. Both administrations lied about the threat Iraq posed.
2. The Clinton administration told the truth about Iraq having WMD,
while the Bush administration lied. If this is the case, those claiming
the Bush administration lied have to show us at what point after
January 2001 Saddam destroyed his WMD. They also have to show
us when the Bush administration learned that the WMD had been destroyed.
215
216
Ibid.
http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2003_0123.html
58
3. The Clinton administration left office in January 2001 still believing
Iraq had WMD even though they had been destroyed by a combination of Operation Desert Storm, inspections, and Operation Desert
Fox. However, the Bush administration knew Iraq had destroyed its
WMD but continued to claim that it had not. Liberals who make this
argument are essentially making the case that Saddam fooled the
Clinton administration, which many liberals consider eminently
competent, for eight full years. At the same time, this argument suggests that the Bush administration, which liberals consider eminently
incompetent, figured out Saddam was bluffing after just a few
months in office.
4. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations told the American people
what they sincerely believed about Iraq’s WMD. However, both administrations were incorrect.
5. Both administrations’ statements about Iraq were correct at the time
they were made.
Concerning possibility #5, Iraqi General Georges Sada has claimed that
Iraq’s WMD were flown to Syria prior to the invasion.
According to Sada, “On June 4, 2002, a three-mile-long irrigation dam,
which had been drawing water from the Orontes River in the northwestern
district of Zeyzoun, Syria, collapsed, inundating three small villages and destroying scores of homes…. As soon as word of the disaster was broadcast
on television, help began arriving from all over the Middle East.”
Iraq was one of the countries to send aid to Syria. However, Sada claims
that the Iraqi planes and trucks that traveled to Syria did not carry supplies
for those in need. “Weapons and equipment were transferred both by land
and by air,” Sada wrote. “The only aircraft available at the time were one
Boeing 747 jumbo jet and a group of Boeing 727s. But this turned out to be
the perfect solution to Saddam’s problem. Who would suspect commercial
airliners of carrying deadly toxins and contraband technology out of the
country? So the planes were quickly reconfigured.”217
Indeed, according to Agence France Presse (AFP) on June 9, 2002, “Iraq
said Sunday it has sent 20 planeloads of humanitarian assistance to Syria to
help victims of Tuesday’s Zeyzoun dam collapse in the north of the
neighbouring country.” AFP noted that Iraq would send foodstuffs, pharmaceutical products, and “teams of specialised doctors, surgeons and chemists
to Syria.”218
Satellite imagery also picked up unusual activity on the Iraq-Syria border
before and during the invasion. James R. Clapper, who headed the National
217
218
Georges Sada, Saddam’s Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein, p. 259.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/ACOS-64BRQW?OpenDocument&rc=3&cc=syr
59
Imagery and Mapping Agency in 2003, has said U.S. intelligence tracked a
large number of vehicles, mostly civilian trucks, moving from Iraq into
Syria. Clapper suggested the trucks may have contained materiel related to
Iraq’s WMD programs.219
In a January 5, 2004 letter to Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf Nizar Nayuf, a Syrian journalist who had defected from Syria to Western Europe, said
he knew of three sites in Syria where Iraq’s WMD were kept. One of those
sites was a series on tunnels under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama
in northern Syria. Reportedly, the tunnels were part of an underground factory built by North Korea for producing a Syrian version of the Scud missile.220 Interestingly, al-Baida is located near the Zeyzoun dam.
That same month, David Kay, who had recently resigned as the head of
the Iraqi Survey Group, said, “[W]e know from some of the interrogations of
former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam’s WMD program. Precisely what went
to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved.”221
For those who believe Iraq would never consider sending its weapons to a
neighboring country, there is precedence for this. During Operation Desert
Storm in 1991, more than 120 Iraqi Air Force aircraft fled to Iran to escape
destruction.222
INTENT AND CAPABILITY
If both Clinton and Bush were mistaken about Iraq having WMD, was it a
mistake to remove Saddam from power?
In Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire, historian Niall Ferguson
outlined the Bush administration’s justifications for invading Iraq:
1. Iraq had consistently failed to comply with UNSC resolutions and
might—no one could of course be sure, precisely because of Iraqi
noncooperation—have retained or recovered the capability to use or
to export chemical or biological weapons.
2. Saddam was a bloody tyrant who had committed crimes against humanity, if not outright genocide.
3. The overthrow of Saddam might help to break the gridlock of the
Middle East peace process by sending an unequivocal signal of hos-
219
220
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/30/iraq/main580883.shtml
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39182
221
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/25/wirq25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/
25/ixnewstop.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/air-force-equipment-intro.htm
222
60
tility to any regime that defied the United States—pour encourager
les autres, as much as to get rid of Saddam himself.
4. Creating a democratic Iraq might also begin a wholesale “transformation of the Middle East” (in the words of Condoleezza Rice), with
Iraq once again setting an example for the other Arab states.
5. Controlling Iraq might create alternative bases for U.S. troops in the
Middle East, allowing them to leave Saudi Arabia (and thereby meeting at least one of the radical Islamists’ demands.)223
While many have focused on the failure to find WMD in Iraq, very little
attention has been given to the fact that Saddam retained the capability to
restart his WMD programs.
When I was in the Marine Corps over 20 years ago, I was part of a team
that presented a briefing on the “North Korean Threat” to pilots and other
officers. We stressed that a threat was defined as a capability coupled with
intent.
According to Jed Babbin, a deputy undersecretary of defense in the first
Bush administration, “Saddam’s intent has been demonstrated for more than
two decades. Before the Israelis destroyed the nuclear reactor at Osirak in
1981, Saddam’s intent to develop nuclear weapons was open and obvious….
His intent to develop nuclear weapons is aimed at deterring us from interfering in his plans to dominate the region, including its oil and our ally, Israel.”224
As far as capability, Iraq claimed that it had no WMD in early 1998. That
led Glenn E. Schweitzer and Carole Dorsch Schweitzer to make the following observation:
Even if the Iraqis were honest in their contentions that they have destroyed all
biological weapons, the country’s capabilities to restart, at any given moment,
their dormant programs within a matter of months or to assist other countries
or terrorist groups to launch bioattacks are substantial. The most important resource, Iraqi scientists and engineers, is still in Iraq.225
Kenneth Pollack made the same point regarding Saddam’s chemical
weapons:
Since most chemical warfare agents deteriorate over time but can be produced
reasonably quickly, Saddam has no particular need to have huge stockpiles of
[chemical weapons] rounds but can start up production several months before
223
224
225
p. 156.
http://www.nationalreview.com/debates/debates012903.asp
A Faceless Enemy: The Origins of Modern Terrorism, p. 118.
61
an expected conflict and make all that he needs. Until then, the facilities function as legitimate civilian industries.226
The Schweitzers also noted that an American weapons design expert who
participated in UN inspections of Iraq’s nuclear capabilities following Operation Desert Storm noted that Saddam would have had a nuclear weapon if he
had delayed his invasion of Kuwait by six months.
Commenting on Iraq’s future capabilities, the expert recalled his encounter with Iraqi weapons designers:
When the UN team expressed doubt that the Iraqi engineers had really destroyed their metallic molds for shaping a critical component of a nuclear
warhead as required by the UN resolution, the Iraqi replied that they certainly
had destroyed the molds. However, the Iraqis added that if the foreign inspectors would feel better, Iraqi engineers would quickly produce more molds and
let the inspectors witness their destruction as well.227
When David Kay, who originally headed the Iraq Survey Group (ISG),
delivered his Interim Progress Report to Congress in October 2003, he indicated that Saddam had never given up his desire to have nuclear weapons:
With regard to Iraq’s nuclear program, the testimony we have obtained from
Iraqi scientists and senior government officials should clear up any doubts
about whether Saddam still wanted to obtain nuclear weapons.
They have told ISG that Saddam Husayn remained firmly committed to acquiring nuclear weapons. These officials assert that Saddam would have resumed nuclear weapons development at some future point. Some indicated a
resumption after Iraq was free of sanctions.228
Charles Duelfer, who replaced Kay, came to a similar conclusion a year
later. According to the Washington Post, Duelfer’s report concluded that
Saddam “‘aspired to develop a nuclear capability’ and intended to work on
rebuilding chemical and biological weapons after persuading the United Nations to lift sanctions.”229
Saddam Hussein himself confirmed his desire to resume his WMD programs some day. In a 60 Minutes interview that aired on January 27, 2008,
George Piro, an FBI agent who spent months interrogating Hussein, had this
exchange with Scott Pelley:
226
The Threatening Storm, p. 171.
Ibid, p. 67.
228
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/02/kay.report/
229
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12115-2004Oct6.html
227
62
“The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there,” Piro
says.
“And that was his intention?” Pelley asks.
“Yes,” Piro says.
“What weapons of mass destruction did he intend to pursue again once he had
the opportunity?” Pelley asks.
“He wanted to pursue all of WMD. So he wanted to reconstitute his entire
WMD program,” says Piro.
“Chemical, biological, even nuclear,” Pelley asks.
“Yes,” Piro says.230
While many Bush critics claim that sanctions continued to work in 2003,
it was clear by 2000 that the sanctions regime was beginning to fail. Russia
and China, both of whom strongly protested Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, for many years believed sanctions on Iraq should have been
lifted unconditionally. The Clinton administration in September 2000 protested a French airflight into Baghdad, calling it a “blatant violation” on the
UN sanctions regime.231 A few months later, Britain proposed lifting UN
sanctions on all civilian goods entering Iraq.232 Of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, that left just the United States that supported tough sanctions on Iraq. The U.S. has veto power in the UN Security
Council and could have killed any resolution to lift sanctions on Iraq. However, such a veto could not have been exercised indefinitely. Eventually,
sanctions would have been lifted and Saddam would have resumed his nuclear weapons program.
The U.S. has paid a heavy price in removing Saddam from power. However, it is very likely that we would have paid a much heavier price in the
future if we had left Saddam and his sons in power to pursue their goal of
having nuclear weapons.
230
231
232
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/24/60minutes/main3749494_page6.shtml
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/05/17/iraq.sanction/
63
CHAPTER 7
THREATENING STORM IN A TEAPOT
Iraq is at the top of America's foreign policy agenda and this book
should be at the top of your reading list. Kenneth Pollack
approaches the problem of Saddam Hussein without ideological
blinkers or prejudices. He provides a clear-eyed account of the
breakdown of American policy toward Saddam Hussein and makes
a powerful case for a shift in that policy. Whether or not you agree
with Pollack's solution—and I do—you will admire The
Threatening Storm. It is intelligent, balanced, and measured; a
model of fair-minded analysis on a topic that rarely gets any.
Before you make up your mind on Iraq, read this book. - Fareed
Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International
O
n September 28, 2004, George Soros delivered a speech entitled
“Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush” before the National
Press Club in Washington, D.C. According to Soros, “If we re-elect
him now, we endorse the Bush doctrine of preemptive action and the invasion of Iraq, and we will have to live with the consequences.”233 In the same
speech, Soros also claimed, “We went to war on false pretenses. The real
reasons for going into Iraq have not been revealed to this day. The weapons
of mass destruction could not be found, and the connection with al Qaeda
could not be established. President Bush then claimed that we went to war to
liberate the people of Iraq.”
In addition to forgetting that the operation to remove Saddam from power
was called Operation Iraqi Freedom, Soros has apparently forgotten that an
arguably stronger case for removing Saddam from power was offered by
Kenneth Pollack in The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq*.
Published in September 2002, Pollack’s book included the following statements:
233
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0928-16.htm
Pollack had earlier published an article entitled “Next Stop Baghdad?” in the March/April 2002 issue of
Foreign Affairs, the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, in which he argued that the United
States had “no choice left but to invade Iraq itself and eliminate the current regime.”
*
64
THE THREATENING STORM IN A TEAPOT
“Perhaps the single most important reason why the United States must act
soon to adopt a new policy toward Iraq is that our old policy, the policy of
containment, is eroding. Containment served the United States well after
1991, much better than most ever thought it could. But it is failing.” (p. xxiv)
“Iraq knows how to build a nuclear weapon and did so in 1990; the only thing
it was missing was the fissile material, the uranium....Today, we have information from key defectors and a consensus among knowledgeable experts
that the Iraqis are hard at work on such a program and that they have all the
know-how and the technology to do it.” (xxviii)
“So the best estimate we have is roughly 135,000 to 150,000 Iraqi children
died in the first seven years after the war....Given that the Gulf War itself
probably caused no more than 10,000 to 30,000 Iraqi military casualties and
another 1,000 to 5,000 civilian casualties, it raises the question of whether
full-scale combat is a more humane policy than draconian sanctions.” (p. 139)
“There is little doubt that the Iraqis are continuing to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, but on the nuclear front, they are still believed
to be several years away from having the fissile material needed to make a
nuclear weapon.” (p. 148)
“Since most chemical warfare agents deteriorate over time but can be produced reasonably quickly, Saddam has no particular need to have huge stockpiles of CW rounds but can start up production several months before an expected conflict and make all that he needs.” (p. 171)
“The German intelligence service, using methods it won’t divulge, estimated
in 2001 that Iraq was three to six years from having a nuclear weapon.” (p.
175)
“As noted above, there is a consensus among American, British, Swedish,
Dutch, and even French former inspectors that it would require twelve to
eighteen months just to establish a baseline, let alone actually conduct inspections. And after that, we should never forget that once the inspections were
completed we would need to transition to long-term monitoring to try to prevent Saddam from reconstituting the WMD programs.” (p. 238)
“This is the problem with the inspections: we knew the Iraqis were cheating
but did not know where. If we had known, we would have bombed those facilities in 1998 during Operation Desert Fox. The fact that out of ninety-seven
targets struck only eleven were WMD production facilities should give a
good sense of the problem.” (p. 241)
“...Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons has the potential to push the world
into a second Great Depression while killing millions of people.” (p. 280)
Those are some serious claims—and Pollack is considered a serious individual. In fact, as Pollack noted on page 426, his book carries the imprimatur
of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). From 1995 to 1996 and from
65
1999 to 2001, Pollack served as director for Gulf affairs at the National Security Council, where he was the principal working-level official responsible
for implementation of the Clinton administration’s policies vis-à-vis Iraq. At
the time he wrote his book, Pollack was the director of national security studies for CFR. In addition, he was and continues to be the director of research
at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
In the acknowledgements section of his book, Pollack demonstrated his
appreciation for his CFR colleagues. “Leslie Gelb, Larry Korb, Patricia
Dorff, and the Council on Foreign Relations have my deepest thanks for their
support, encouragement, and assistance throughout the writing of this book,”
Pollack wrote. “Les and Larry quite simply made the book possible by giving
me the time to write with minimal distractions and the resources to get it
done.”
Gelb was president of CFR at the time Pollack’s book was published,
while Korb served as a vice president.
The CFR also demonstrated its appreciation for Pollack’s work. The book
was featured on the organization’s home page immediately after it was published. In addition, CFR continues to promote The Threatening Storm on its
Web site, calling it a “highly influential book” that outlined “a powerful case
for a U.S. invasion of Iraq.”234
Now, what does Pollack’s case for the invasion of Iraq have to do with
Soros’ 2004 speech condemning the invasion of Iraq? George Soros just
happened to be on CFR’s board of directors when The Threatening Storm
was published. That’s the same CFR that gave Pollack’s work its imprimatur.
Of course, it is unlikely that each and every CFR board member agreed with
Pollack’s conclusion that Iraq must be invaded. However, where was Soros’
dissent in 2002? There’s no record of Soros arguing that Pollack’s conclusion
was based on false pretenses.
Leslie Gelb, who made Pollack’s book possible, on June 3, 2004, addressed Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet’s resignation. When
asked if other administration officials should resign, Gelb responded, “Absolutely. There has to be accountability and responsibility. And if the president
doesn’t want to resign, then somebody else should.”235
Korb, who also made Pollack’s book possible, continues to be with the
CFR. In addition, he serves as a senior fellow at the Center for American
Progress (CAP). CAP’s president and CEO is John Podesta, who served as
chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. On January 12, 2004, CAP issued a
“daily talking point” that claimed the Bush administration “overstated and
misrepresented pre-war claims about the ‘imminent threat’ of Iraqi
biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.”236
234
235
236
http://www.cfr.org/publication/4876/threatening_storm.html
http://www.cfr.org/publication.html?id=7080
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2004/01/b19351.html
66
Think Progress, a project of the Center for American Progress Action
Fund, harshly criticized Pollack after he and Michael O’Hanlon returned
from Iraq in August 2007 and reported that the surge was working. In a piece
entitled “Ken Pollack And Michael O’Hanlon: Often Wrong, But Never In
Doubt,” Think Progress wrote, “Pollack, who authored a pre-war book he
described as ‘the case for invading Iraq,’ appeared on the Oprah Winfrey
show in Oct. 2002 uncritically touting the false intelligence about Iraq.”237
A bit odd, is it not? Korb made Pollack’s book possible, and then Korb
becomes a senior fellow at an organization that claims Pollack uncritically
touted the false intelligence about Iraq. If that were not odd enough, the
Washington Post reported in October 2003 that George Soros pledged
millions of dollars in seed money to start CAP.238 The following month,
Soros hosted a screening of Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq
War, a documentary that purported to “reveal the distortion of intelligence by
the Bush Administration which led to the first pre-emptive war in the history
of the United States.” The documentary was sponsored by MoveOn.org and
the Center for American Progress.239
Of course, the George Soros who pledged seed money to launch the
Center for American Progress, which criticizes what it calls the first preemptive war in our history, is the same George Soros who was on CFR’s
board of directors when it gave its imprimatur for The Threatening Storm, a
book that made the case for that pre-emptive war.
On the back cover of The Threatening Storm, we find advanced praise
from, among others, Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, USMC (Ret.). Between August
1997 and September 2000, Zinni served as the Commander in Chief, United
States Central Command (CENTCOM). CENTCOM’s area of responsibility
is in the Middle East, East Africa and Central Asia.
“Kenneth Pollack has brilliantly written a comprehensive and insightful
analysis of the problem Iraq poses for the United States,” Zinni wrote. “This
is a must read for those desiring an in-depth understanding of the issues
surrounding this complex problem and for those who are responsible for
developing policy.”
Zinni offered praise for a book that was unambiguous about Saddam
having WMD. Yet after no WMD were found after the invasion, Zinni told
the media that he never saw any proof that Saddam had WMD.
“As chief of the Central Command, Zinni had been immersed in U.S.
intelligence about Iraq,” the Washington Post reported on December 22,
2003. “He was all too familiar with the intelligence analysts’ doubts about
Iraq’s programs to acquire weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. ‘In my
237
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/07/30/ohanlon-pollack/
Von Drehle, David. “Liberals Get A Think Tank Of Their Own,” The Washington Post, October 23,
2003, p. A29.
239
http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2003/11/b593305ct48276.html
238
67
time at Centcom, I watched the intelligence, and never—not once—did it
say, ‘He has WMD.’”240
When Zinni appeared on Meet the Press on April 2, 2006, the late Tim
Russert read Zinni’s statement from December 2003. Zinni reiterated that
statement: “There was no solid proof, that I ever saw, that Saddam had
WMD.”241
Zinni made another appearance on Meet the Press on April 15, 2007.
Again, Russert read Zinni’s statement from December 2003. “I think the
WMD problem, we’d always had a suspicion of WMD programs, but never
any hard evidence,” Zinni told Russert. “And, as time went on, it seemed less
and less likely there was an existing program. I mean the vice president’s
term was he was ‘amassing’ weapons of mass destruction. Clearly, there was
no evidence of even an existing program, let, let alone amassing of weapons
of mass destruction.”242
Of course, it would not be unreasonable to ask why Zinni praised a book
whose author was just as adamant as Cheney concerning Saddam’s
possession of WMD. Zinni had even said Pollack’s book was a must read for
“those who are responsible for developing policy.” If Zinni truly saw no
evidence that Saddam had WMD and thought it was a mistake to invade Iraq,
wouldn’t one expect him to advise “those who are responsible for developing
policy” to avoid the book because it makes claims for which there was no
evidence? After all, Pollack wrote that German intelligence in 2001
estimated that Saddam was just three to six years from having a nuclear
weapon. Someone responsible for developing policy could have read that and
decided that Saddam had to be removed from power before having that
nuclear weapon as early as 2004.
As it turns out, Zinni, like Gelb and Korb (and, perhaps, Soros), had
slightly different opinions concerning Saddam’s WMD before and after the
invasion.
On February 20, 2000, Zinni appeared before the Senate Armed Services
Committee to discuss “national interests outlined in the National Security
Strategy and the objectives articulated in our National Military Strategy form
the basis for United States Central Command’s (USCENTCOM’s) objectives
and strategy for our region.”243 The same man who in 2003, 2006, and 2007
claimed he never saw any evidence that Saddam had WMD programs made
the following statements before that committee:
“Finally, despite damage inflicted by Operation DESERT FOX strikes, Iraq
has not forgone its missile and WMD programs and continues to resist the
reintroduction of United Nations arms inspectors.”
240
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22922-2003Dec22_2.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12067487/page/7/
242
243
http://armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2000/000229az.pdf
241
68
“Despite claims that WMD efforts have ceased, Iraq probably is continuing
clandestine nuclear research, retains stocks of chemical and biological
munitions, and is concealing extended-range SCUD missiles, possibly
equipped with CBW payloads. Even if Baghdad reversed its course and
surrendered all WMD capabilities, it retains the scientific, technical, and
industrial infrastructure to replace agents and munitions within weeks or
months.”
“The Iraqi regime’s high regard for WMD and long-range missiles is our best
indicator that a peaceful regime under Saddam Hussein is unlikely.”
“Iraq remains the most significant near-term threat to U.S. interests in the
Arabian Gulf region. This is primarily due to its large conventional military
force, pursuit of WMD, oppressive treatment of Iraqi citizens, refusal to
comply with United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR),
persistent threats to enforcement of the No Fly Zones (NFZ), and continued
efforts to violate UN Security Council sanctions through oil smuggling.”
Zinni also warned the committee about the dangers of al Qaeda acquiring
WMD: “Extremists like Osama bin Laden and his World Islamic Front
network benefit from the global nature of communications that permits
recruitment, fund raising, and direct connections to sub-elements
worldwide… Terrorists are seeking more lethal weaponry to include:
chemical, biological, radiological, and even nuclear components with which
to perpetrate more sensational attacks… Three [Iraq, Iran and Sudan] of the
seven recognized state-sponsors of terrorism are within this potentially
volatile area, and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan has been sanctioned by
the U.N. Security Council for its harboring of Osama bin Laden.”
Russert asked Zinni about his December 2003 statement about never
seeing any evidence that Saddam had WMD during both his 2006 and 2007
appearances on Meet the Press. However, he failed, on both occasions, to ask
Zinni about his February 2000 testimony before the Senate Armed Services
Committee. Did Zinni lie prior to the invasion, or did he start lying after the
invasion? I think Russert could have found a tactful way to ask that question.
While the Center for American Progress, which is a major part of Clinton
Inc., has criticized Pollack, Pollack has not been completely ostracized by
Clinton Inc. He currently serves as a senior consultant with Sandy Berger’s
international advisory firm, Stonebridge International. However, while the
“about” page for Pollack on Stonebridge’s Web site mentions that Pollack
wrote The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America in 2004,
it makes no mention of The Threatening Storm.244
244
http://www.stonebridge-international.com/bios/bio24.html
69
CHAPTER 8
IN BED WITH AHMED
O
n May 24, 2004, former Vice President Al Gore delivered a speech at
New York University in which he called on Secretary of State
Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and
CIA Director George Tenet, his former Clinton administration colleague, to
resign. Tenet, in fact, did resign just a week later.
Sponsored by the MoveOn.org Political Action Committee, Gore’s speech
also criticized the Bush administration’s association with Iraqi National
Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi. “Now the White House has informed the
American people that they were also ‘all wrong’ about their decision to place
their faith in Ahmed Chalabi, even though they have paid him 340,000
dollars per month,” Gore said. “Chalabi had been convicted of fraud and
embezzling 70 million dollars in public funds from a Jordanian bank, and
escaped prison by fleeing the country. But in spite of that record, he had
become one of key advisors to the Bush Administration on planning and
promoting the war against Iraq.”245
Gore was not alone in criticism of Chalabi and the Bush administration. A
month after Gore spoke at New York University, then presidential candidate
Sen. John Kerry said he met Chalabi in 1998 and “deemed him unworthy of
American support.” “That was a judgment I made and I regret that this
administration, for whatever reasons, bought into Mr. Chalabi hook, line and
sinker,” Kerry told reporters.246
In a Salon.com article entitled “Washington’s Chalabi Nightmare,”
Sidney Blumenthal* wrote, “The CIA and other U.S. agencies had long ago
decided that Chalabi was a charlatan, so their dismissive and correct analysis
of his lies prompted their suppression by the Bush White House.”247
245
http://www.moveon.org/pac/gore-rumsfeld-transcript.html
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-95202982.html
*
For more about Sidney Blumenthal, Howard Kurtz wrote an informative biography on this hitman for
Clinton Inc. in 1997. The Kurtz piece was published prior to Blumenthal’s attacks on Monica Lewinsky’s
character. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/politics/special/clinton/stories/blumenthal061697.htm. Blumenthal was arrested in in Nashua on the
eve of the New Hampshire primary in January 2008 and charged with aggravated DWI. He was reportedly
driving 70 mph in a 30 mph zone.
247
http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/blumenthal/2004/05/27/chalabi
246
70
IN BED WITH AHMED
According to Blumenthal, Chalabi “sent various exiles to nine nations’
intelligence agencies to spread falsehoods about weapons of mass
destruction. If the administration had wanted other material to provide a
rationale for invasion, no doubt that would have been fabricated. Either
Chalabi perpetrated the greatest con since the Trojan horse or he was the
agent of influence for the most successful intelligence operation conducted
by Iran, or both.”
Hillary Clinton also criticized Chalabi and “pro-Chalabi supporters” in
the Bush administration in the wake of George Tenet’s resignation. “I was
struck by the timing, since the whole controversy around Chalabi is heating
up and Chalabi blames the CIA for his problems and there are a lot of proChalabi supporters still at the highest levels of the administration.”248
In November 2005, John Podesta’s Think Progress political blog included
an item entitled, “Sleeping With the Enemy: Chalabi’s Sordid History.” In
the item, Think Progress offered a “short rap sheet on the man who the
administration used to provide justification for the Iraq war.” Like Gore,
Think Progress noted that Chalabi had been convicted of embezzlement by a
Jordanian court in 1992. However, there is a gap in Think Progress’ “sordid
history” and “rap sheet” on Chalabi. They went from 1992 to the Bush
administration years and completely left out Chalabi’s activities between
1992 and 2001.
So, what was Chalabi doing during the 1990s? During much of that
decade Chalabi led the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an umbrella Iraqi
opposition group formed with the aid and direction of the United States
government following the Gulf War. INC’s goal was the overthrow of Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein.
On a November 1, 1999, the State Department released a letter
Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Under Secretary of State for Political
Affairs, sent to Chalabi and the INC. Here is the full letter:
Gentlemen:
I am writing to you as recognized leaders of significant bodies of free Iraqis
and of Iraqi opinion within the democratic opposition to the current Baghdad
regime. I know that each of you has worked for the national recovery of Iraq
from its current nightmare. Several of you are wholeheartedly committed to
reunifying the Iraqi people behind an effective movement to recover your
country from within. Several of you have pledged to demonstrate this
commitment by stepping forward to lead the Iraqi opposition as both a
national and an international movement, beginning with the joint conference
of all Iraqi opposition parties in a new Iraqi National Assembly in New York
in a few days.
248
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/americas/3774659.stm
71
The United States Government wants to hear from a unified Iraqi popular
leadership just how it can proceed to support the people of Iraq in promoting
the change of regime, as it is the right of you, the Iraqi people, to do. The
United States also wants to hear from you how, thereafter, it might support
Iraq in a great program of national recovery. The United States stands ready
to cooperate with friendly governments as equal partners in common
interests. However, the Iraqi people still have no effective or legitimate
government to represent and to serve them, and to cooperate with neighbors
and friends around the world. That is precisely why we Americans who wish
to support Iraqi aspirations are so eager to support the rebirth of a strong,
unified liberation movement and organization. We, and most of all the Iraqi
people, need such a partner with which to cooperate—both to help liberate
Iraq from its current nightmare, and to help rebuild it when Iraqis reclaim
their freedom and national dignity. Until such a partner comes into being and
action, there is little the United States or United Nations can do to help free
Iraqis from Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. We see no alternative to the renewed
and reunified Iraqi National Congress. It must succeed, and we are confident
that it will succeed, beginning with the upcoming conference in New York, in
supporting the forces of change within Iraq.
It is neither the right nor the responsibility, nor is it within the power of the
United States, to select or promote Iraqi leaders, now in the Opposition or for
a future liberated Iraq. No doubt other brave Iraqis will step forward to join in
the task of liberation and recovery, and many more will continue to pay with
their lives. I know you face complicated calculations as you consider whether
to join forces openly and unconditionally. I hope each of you will choose to
stand unconditionally. I hope each of you will choose to stand together on the
world stage in New York in a few days, in the full glare of the world media
and the ongoing United Nations General Assembly, to inspire your
countrymen with a powerful vision of national unity. I hope likewise to
congratulate you as you stand together in Baghdad soon afterwards.
Sincerely,
Thomas R. Pickering249
Pickering addressed the Iraqi National Assembly on November 1, 1999,
and reiterated the Clinton administration’s support for Chalabi and the INC.
“My message to the Iraqi people today is that the United States hears you,
and will actively support you not only until you are free, but also thereafter in
rebuilding a new, democratic Iraq,” Pickering told the INC.
“But we should be under no illusions that this will be a quick, easy, or a
simple task—either for you or for us,” Pickering continued. “We know and
you know that skepticism abounds about your ability to maintain a unified
front, and to act effectively as a political grouping. It will demand great effort
and energy from you and from us to prove those skeptics wrong, and to
249
72
IN BED WITH AHMED
mobilize strong worldwide support. I want to assure you that we will be there
with you in that effort.”
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met with the INC on
September 14, and also reiterated the Clinton administration’s support for
Chalabi and the Iraqi opposition. “The United States salutes the courage of
Iraqis everywhere in the Opposition,” Albright said. “I wish them success in
presenting to the world the true hopes and needs of the Iraqi people, and
ultimately in bringing democracy and the rule of law to their country.”250
Albright’s meeting with the INC was not the first time a Clinton
administration official met with the opposition group in 2000. According to
the BBC, a Clinton administration official met with a nine-man INC
delegation led by Chalabi in June 2000 and “reiterated the administration’s
view that the Iraqi leader should be tried for war crimes and crimes against
humanity.”
The article also noted, “The Clinton administration is trying to beef up the
INC after nearly 10 years of sanctions on Iraq have brought the world no
closer to bringing down the Iraqi leader.” Part of beefing up the INC
included a pledge from the Clinton administration to provide the INC with $8
million.251
Who was the member of the Clinton administration who met with Chalabi
and the INC? Why, it was none other than Vice President Al Gore, the same
man who in 2004 criticized the Bush administration for putting its trust in
Chalabi, a man who “had been convicted of fraud and embezzling 70 million
dollars in public funds from a Jordanian bank” eight years before Gore met
with him.*
Apparently, Gore and others associated with the Clinton administration
have developed a case of amnesia concerning their earlier association with
Chalabi. For example, John Podesta became Bill Clinton’s chief of staff in
October 1998, the same month Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act.
According to Clinton, the Iraq Liberation Act “makes clear that it is the sense
of the Congress that the United States should support those elements of the
Iraqi opposition that advocate a very different future for Iraq than the bitter
reality.”
While the act made it clear that the United States would support Chalabi
and the INC, there is no record of Podesta expressing concerns that his boss
was “sleeping with the enemy,” which his Think Progress accused the Bush
administration of doing vis-à-vis Chalabi.
250
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/809168.stm
*
Of course, when Gore made his charges concerning Chalabi, he was no doubt well aware of the dubious
nature of the charges leveled against the INC leader by Jordan. The New York Sun in April 2003 posed
several questions about the charges that the mainstream media had failed to ask. See
http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=
NYS/2003/04/28&ID=Ar00600
251
73
Sidney Blumenthal served as assistant and senior adviser to Bill Clinton
from August 1997 until January 2001. There is no evidence that he advised
Clinton during those years that the United States was dealing with a man the
CIA and other U.S. agencies decided was a “charlatan.”
And Sen. John Kerry, who claimed in 2004 that he met with Chalabi in
1998 and “deemed him unworthy of American support,” doesn’t appear to
have shared his concerns with the Clinton administration. In fact, Kerry, who
voted against authorizing Operation Desert Storm in 1990, appeared much
more hawkish concerning Iraq in 1998. Just a few weeks prior to Clinton
signing the Iraq Liberation Act, Kerry and several other Democratic senators,
including Carl Levin, Joe Lieberman, Frank R. Lautenberg, Chris Dodd, Bob
Kerrey, Dianne Feinstein, and Barbara A. Mikulski, sent a letter to Clinton
concerning Iraq. “[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and
consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions
(including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to
respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of
mass destruction programs,” the senators wrote.252
Clinton did launch air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites two
months later, but without consulting with Congress.
Kenneth Pollack served as director for Gulf affairs at the National
Security Council, where he was the principal working-level official
responsible for implementation of U.S. policy towards Iraq. According to
Pollack, “One of the last memos I wrote for the Clinton team described the
policy options on Iraq that would be available to the next administration….
In this last memo, I argued that because of the erosion of containment, the
next administration would be left with two choices: to adopt an aggressive
policy of regime change to try to get rid of Saddam quickly or undertake a
major revamping of the sanctions to try to choke off the smuggling and
prevent Saddam from reconstituting his military, particularly his hidden
WMD programs. I noted that the steps that would be necessary for the latter
option would be far more onerous than they first appeared because of the
unwillingness of any country other than the United States to confront Iraq or
impose penalties on states violating the sanctions.”253
In other words, revamped sanctions were likely to fail and the only other
viable option for the next administration was an aggressive policy of regime
change.
Of course, Pollack’s view was not a new one for him, and it was not a
view held only by him in the Clinton administration. According to Pollack,
he was brought back into the administration in 1997 precisely because of his
view that regime change was needed in Iraq. According to Pollack, when
national security adviser Sandy Berger interviewed him for the job, Berger
252
253
http://snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp
Kenneth Pollack, The Threatening Storm, pp. 102-103
74
IN BED WITH AHMED
“explained to me that he and the other Principals had concluded that they
could not keep playing cat-and-mouse games with Saddam and they had
decided that the only solution was to topple his regime.”254
As the Democrats campaign for the presidency this year, they will
continue to revise the history Bill Clinton’s policy of regime change for Iraq.
This revised history claims that containment and sanctions were working to
keep Saddam Hussein in check. Bill Clinton’s association with, and support
for, Chalabi and the INC has been thrown down the memory hole. If we
leave it to the media, that’s where the true history will remain.
254
Ibid, p. 95.
75
CHAPTER 9
THE DOCTRINE OF PREEMPTION
O
n September 23, 2002, former Vice President Al Gore delivered a
speech on Iraq and the war on terrorism. Gore, the future Nobel
Peace Prize recipient, was on the warpath concerning the Bush
administration’s “new doctrine” of preemption. “The problem with
preemption is that in the first instance it is not needed in order to give the
United States the means to act in its own defense against terrorism in general
or Iraq in particular,” Gore said. “But that is a relatively minor issue compared to the longer-term consequences that can be foreseen for this doctrine.
To begin with, the doctrine is presented in open-ended terms, which means
that if Iraq is the first point of application, it is not necessarily the last. In
fact, the very logic of the concept suggests a string of military engagements
against a succession of sovereign states: Syria, Libya, North Korea, Iran, etc.,
wherever the combination exists of an interest in weapons of mass destruction together with an ongoing role as host to or participant in terrorist operations. It means also that if the Congress approves the Iraq resolution just proposed by the Administration it is simultaneously creating the precedent for
preemptive action anywhere, anytime this or any future president so decides.”255
During the 2004 presidential campaign, Democratic candidates also spoke
out against the doctrine of preemption256:
“I opposed the President’s war on Iraq, I continue to stand against his policy
of preemption, and on my first day in office I will tear up the Bush doctrine
and rebuild a foreign policy consistent with American values.” - Howard
Dean
“The Bush Administration’s preemption doctrine is unnecessary and unwise.” - John Edwards
“The U.S. should not have a pre-emptive war doctrine.” - Richard Gephardt
255
256
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-09-23-gore-text_x.htm
http://www.moveon.org/pac/cands/all_interviews.html
76
“I spoke out against it during the Senate’s Iraq debate, stating that we should
not be ‘giving [Bush] carte blanche to run roughshod over every country that
poses—or may pose—a potential threat to the United States.’ Bush’s position
is a blanket doctrine that can easily be misinterpreted and misapplied. The last
thing we need is for India to justify an attack on Pakistan or China on Taiwan
on the basis that it’s acceptable because it’s ‘preemptive.’” - John Kerry
“The only preventive ‘wars’ I want to wage are against world hunger, disease, dirty water and air, homelessness, and the shortage of schools. It’s time
for America to tell the world we wish to be their partner in peace, not their
leader in war.” - Dennis Kucinich
“It’s a dangerous and traditionally un-American doctrine. If we can preemptively attack Iraq using shaky intelligence – ‘facts’ and ‘an imminent
threat theory’ that was not convincing to most of the rest of the world - what’s
to stop Russia from attacking Chechnya, China from attacking Taiwan, North
Korea from attacking South Korea, Israel from attacking Iran or Syria, or
Pakistan and India from attacking one another.” - Al Sharpton
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, now a Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR) director and adviser to Hillary’s failed presidential
campaign, took Bush’s doctrine of preemption to task in the
September/October 2003 issue of Foreign Affairs, CFR’s house organ:
“September 11, the administration’s eureka moment, caused it to lump
together terrorists and rogue regimes and to come up with a prescription for
fighting them—namely, preemption—that frightens and divides the world at
precisely the moment U.S. security depends on bringing people together.”257
Albright had apparently forgotten that the Clinton administration lumped
together terrorists and rogue regimes while she was still secretary of state. A
prescription for fighting them at that time was also preemption.
In an October 8, 1998 speech, Richard Clarke, the Clinton
administration’s National Coordinator for Security, Critical Infrastructure
Protection and Counter-Terrorism, previewed new steps to counter terrorism.
Here is part of what Clarke had to say:
The United States can defeat in a conventional war any other military in the
world. They know that. So we are unlikely in the next war to be engaged
purely in a conventional war. Our enemies instead will use unconventional
techniques, either exclusively or as a supplement to their attack. They will use
terrorism. They will use cyber attack and information warfare. And they will
use chem-bio attack. And they will go after our Achilles’ heel, and where is
that Achilles’ heel? You’re sitting in it. It is in Washington. It is in New
York. It is throughout the country. For no longer can we count as a nation on
the two great oceans defending us from foreign attack here at home.
257
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20030901faessay82501-p60/madeleine-k-albright/bridges-bombs-orbluster.html
77
It has become almost trite to say that after the orgy of chemical weapons use
in the Iran-Iraq war and after the Aum Shinrikyo use of sarin nerve gas in the
Tokyo subway. The threshold, the barrier, to chem-bio use has been lowered
in the minds of some terrorists and some rogue states. Is it really likely that
anyone will use chemical or biological weapons here in the United States?
I frequently get accused of wasting the taxpayers’ money on an extravagant
program of chem-bio defense that is unnecessary, that is a pork barrel, that is
an overreaction to one incident by a religious cult in Japan. Let me try to tell
those who say that, why they are wrong. There are two lists that I want to talk
about. One is the list of state sponsors of terrorism that the Secretary of State
issues every year, by law. You know who is on that list. It is a public document.
There is another list that the Director of Central Intelligence issues on a classified basis every year, and that is the list of states that have chemical or biological weapons. There is almost a one-for-one copy of the terrorist state
sponsors list resident within the list of states that have chemical and biological weapons. What does it mean to be a state sponsor of terrorism? It means
that you have trained, equipped, financed, provided sanctuary to, provided
leadership for, provided intelligence to, and armed terrorist groups.
Now if these state sponsors of terrorism have done all of that, do we want to
bet the security of our people here at home that those state sponsors will not
go the additional step of providing terrorist groups with the chemical and biological weapons that are already in the inventory of the state sponsors of terrorism? I don’t want to. The president doesn’t want to. And I’m glad to see
that the majority of the U.S. Congress does not want to because they have
been voting consistently since the president made his proposal in May for the
funds that the president has asked for.258
Clarke did not list the nations on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. However, that list was remarkably consistent during the
Clinton administration. In 1993, the list included Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya,
North Korea, Sudan, and Syria.259 In 1998, when Clarke delivered his speech,
the very same seven states were designated state sponsors of terrorism.260
Albright’s State Department again designated the same seven states as state
sponsors of terrorism in 2000.261
Democrats frequently claim today that Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism, yet Iraq was on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism
during the entire Clinton administration. In fact, the Clinton administration’s
very first action against terrorism was a retaliatory strike against Iraq after
Saddam Hussein attempted to assassinate George H.W. Bush in 1993.262
258
http://usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/press/whouse/archive/1998/october/wh191013.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/terror_93/statespon.html
260
http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/terror_98/sponsor.htm
261
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2000/2441.htm
262
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/iraq/timeline/062793.htm
259
78
In addition to Iraq’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, the Clinton administration believed Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. So, if
Clarke believed Iraq, a state sponsor of terrorism, “trained, equipped, financed, provided sanctuary to, provided leadership for, provided intelligence
to, and armed terrorist groups,” he also must not have wanted to “bet the security of our people here at home that” that Iraq would not “go the additional
step of providing terrorist groups with the chemical and biological weapons
that are already in the inventory” of that state sponsor of terrorism.
So how would the U.S. prevent such a scenario? “Terrorists cannot be assured that they can hide behind secrecy, that we will not find out who they
were or who their sponsors were,” Clarke said. “We found out within two
weeks of the embassy bombings in Africa. We have the capability, and we
are using it and we will continue to use it. Nor can terrorists believe that they
will always take the first step. The United States reserves for itself the right
of self-defense, and if that means our taking the first step, we will do so. We
will not tolerate terrorist organizations acquiring or maintaining stockpiles of
weapons of mass destruction.”
In that speech, Clarke made the case for a preemptive attack against a
rogue state and the terrorists it sponsors more than four years before the invasion of Iraq. He would not be the last to make that case during the Clinton
years. In fact, Clinton launched a preemptive strike against Iraq just two
months after Clarke’s speech.
On December 16, 1998, President Clinton addressed the American people
to tell them that he had “ordered America’s armed forces to strike military
and security targets in Iraq.”263
According to Clinton, “Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten
his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons.”
Clinton also offered this justification for the attack on Iraq, which was
known as Operation Desert Fox:
Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far
greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors. He will
make war on his own people.
And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will
deploy them, and he will use them.
Because we’re acting today, it is less likely that we will face these dangers in
the future. (My emphasis)
An action to lessen or eliminate a “threat in the future” is, by definition, a
preemptive action.
263
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/16/transcripts/clinton.html
79
Madeleine Albright, who would later criticize the Bush administration’s
preemptive attack on Iraq, apparently had no qualms about defending her
administration’s preemptive attack on Iraq. On December 17, 1998, Albright
briefed reporters at the State Department. After a question that compared the
large coalition of nations opposed to Iraq in 1991 with the Anglo-American
mission of Operation Desert Fox, Albright responded, “We are now dealing
with a threat, I think, that is probably harder for some to understand because
it is a threat of the future rather than a present threat or a present act, such
as a border crossing, a border aggression. Here, as the President described in
his statement yesterday, we are concerned about the threat posed by Saddam
Hussein’s ability to have, develop, deploy weapons of mass destruction and
the threat that that poses to the neighbors, to the stability of the Middle East
and, therefore, ultimately to ourselves. So it’s the same country, but a different situation.”264 (My emphasis)
Again, if an attack has the goal of lessening or eliminating a “threat of the
future,” it is, by definition, a preemptive attack.
In a March 2005 interview with CNN’s John King, Albright stated, “I
think that the U.N. and international law has made very clear that if there has
been a crossing of a border or a real attack, in time, that everybody has a
right to use force. The thing that has made this so much more complicated is
the Bush doctrine of preemption, which is really based on having accurate
intelligence.”265
As Albright noted in 1998, Operation Desert Fox entailed no border
crossing or real attack. Instead, it was a preemptive attack to deal with “a
threat of the future.” And was that preemptive attack based on having accurate intelligence? Apparently not.
According to Kenneth Pollack, the principal working-level official
responsible for implementation of U.S. policy towards Iraq, “This is the
problem with the inspections: we knew the Iraqis were cheating but did not
know where. If we had known, we would have bombed those facilities in
1998 during Operation Desert Fox. The fact that out of ninety-seven targets
struck only eleven were WMD production facilities should give a good sense
of the problem.”266
It is clear that the Clinton administration officials believed preemption
was a legitimate means of defending the United States from future threats
posed by rogue states such as Iraq. It was only after the invasion of Iraq that
they (save Gore, who by 2002 opposed Bush administration initiatives more
out of spite than principle) began to shift their views.
Richard Clarke, who in 1998 had warned about the dangers of a rogue
state such as Iraq providing terrorist groups with WMD, was perhaps the
264
265
266
http://www.undispatch.com/archives/2005/03/cnn_transcript.php
Kenneth Pollack, The Threatening Storm, p. 241
80
most dishonest. In Against All Enemies, Clarke wrote, “And so Bush invaded
Iraq in 2003 because Saddam had used weapons of mass destruction in the
1980s and invaded Kuwait in 1990.” Of course, this is a gross mischaracterization concerning the rationales for removing Saddam from power. It also
ignores that the Clinton administration launched a preemptive attack on Iraq
in December 1998. In fact, Clarke does not mention Operation Desert Storm
at all in his 304-page book.
In his book, Clarke also claimed that Iraq posed no threat to us and that,
even if Iraq still had WMD stockpiles, “possession of weapons of mass destruction is not in and of itself a threat to the United States. Over two dozen
nations possess WMD, according to unclassified CIA testimony to Congress.”
However, as Clarke noted in 1998, only a handful of nations, including
Iraq, were believed to possess WMD and were on the State Department’s list
of state sponsors of terrorism and, thus, constituted a “threat of the future.”
81
CHAPTER 10
OUR ADDICTION TO FOREIGN OIL
We’ve been in a stalemate on CAFE standards for quite some time.
I’ve worked with Senator Obama on legislation to offer auto companies assistance with retiree health care costs in exchange for
them investing more in fuel-efficient cars.
That’s a start. But we need the carmakers, the unions and the
Bush administration to hammer this out. This is one of those moments that cries out for presidential leadership. – Sen. Hillary
Clinton, National Press Club, May 23, 2006
The President has kept all the promises he intended to keep.
- George Stephanopoulos, Larry King Live, February 16, 1996
I
n May 2006, Hillary Clinton delivered a speech on energy policy before
the National Press Club. This was just a few months after President Bush
declared that America’s addiction to foreign oil was a serious problem.
During her speech, she suggested that the Bush administration was part of
that problem. “Right now, instead of national security dictating our energy
policy, our failed energy policy dictates our national security,” she said.
Not surprisingly, Hillary failed to acknowledge her husband’s contribution to America’s addiction to foreign oil. Of course, the liberal media also
failed to share with Americans how we became far more addicted to foreign
oil during the 1990s.
During the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton and his vicepresidential running mate, Al Gore, published Putting People First: How We
Can All Change America. In the “Energy” chapter, Clinton and Gore wrote,
“Instead of coddling special interests whose fortunes depend on America’s
addiction to oil, our national energy policy will promote national security,
energy diversity, economic prosperity, and environmental protection.”267
They pledged to “Increase corporate average fuel economy standards from
267
p. 89.
82
the current 27.5 miles per gallon to 40 miles per gallon by the year 2000, and
45 miles per gallon by 2015.”268
First enacted by Congress in 1976, corporate average fuel economy
(CAFE) standards were designed to improve the average fuel economy of
cars and light trucks. The new standards mandated 18 miles per gallon for
cars in 1978 models, rising to 27.5 miles per gallon by 1985. CAFE standards dropped to 26 miles per gallon for 1986 models, but were restored to
27.5 miles per gallon in 1990.
So, did Clinton and Gore meet their goal of 40 miles per gallon by 2000?
Not quite. In fact, when they left office in January 2001, the CAFE standard
for cars remained unchanged at 27.5 miles per gallon.
Why didn’t Clinton keep his promise? According to liberal columnist
Froma Harrop, “President Clinton pushed for higher fuel efficiency standards
but was stopped by the Republican Congress.”269 This claim ignores the fact
that Clinton had Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress during his
first two years as president. Democrats controlled the Senate with 56 seats to
the Republicans’ 44 seats. In the House, Democrats held 258 seats to the Republicans’ 176 seats. In his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, Gore claimed
that the automotive industry’s reliance on the internal combustion engine
“poses a mortal threat to the security of every nation that is more deadly than
that of any military enemy we’re ever again likely to confront.” The 103rd
Congress found time to increase taxes, debate “don’t ask, don’t tell,” restrict
gun ownership, and pass the North American Free Trade Agreement. However, the Democrats never got around to addressing this “mortal threat.”
Of course, at that time Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) chaired the House
Energy and Commerce Committee. Dingell’s opposition to stricter gas mileage standards for automobiles earned him the nickname “Tailpipe
Johnny.”270 This could just be a coincidence, but Dingell’s wife, Debbie, was
a lobbyist for General Motors until she married Dingell in 1981. She is currently the vice chair of the General Motors Foundation and executive director
of public affairs and community relations for GM. The top three contributors
to Dingell’s campaign during the 2006 election cycle were General Motors,
Ford Motor Co., and DaimlerChrysler.271 After the Democrats won control of
the House after the 2006 election, Dingell returned as chair of the Energy and
Commerce Committee. He also hired Dennis Fitzgibbons, then the chief lobbyist for Daimler-Chrysler, to be the committee’s chief of staff.
Democrats also display a bit of hypocrisy when they blame the Republican Congress for Clinton’s failure to keep his promise to raise CAFE stan268
269
p. 90.
http://www.creators.com/opinion/froma-harrop/where-personal-virtue-market-meet.html
270
http://www.coxwashington.com/news/content/reporters/stories/2007/03/19/BC_CLIMATE_DEMS_ADV
18_COX.html
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.asp?CID=N00001783&cycle=2006
271
83
dards. For example, when President Bush in 2006 called on Congress to give
him the authority to increase CAFE standards on cars, Rep. Ed Markey (DMass.) issued a press release with this snarky response:
Yesterday, the President “encouraged” Congress to give him authority that he
already has to address fuel economy standards. I find it hard to believe that a
President who has claimed the authority to eternally detain prisoners, resort to
torture in certain cases, and wiretap American citizens without consulting
Congress feels that he needs permission from Congress to mandate that cars
be made more fuel efficient!
The President has given a lot of lip service to doing what it takes to get the
job done. He declares earnestly his intention to break America’s addiction to
oil, but he won’t walk the walk. Stop stalling, Mr. President. Use the authority you have to mandate better fuel efficiency for cars.272
Markey, by the way, has served in the U.S. House of Representatives
since 1976. There is no record of him calling on Bill Clinton during 1993 and
1994 to use the authority he had to keep his promise to raise CAFE standards. The biography section of his official Web site only notes, “Rep.
Markey has also led the effort over the last four Congresses to raise the
minimum fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks sold in America….” Interestingly, the last four Congresses do not go back as far as the
Clinton administration.
While Markey is apparently a latecomer to the CAFE standards issue,
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and 30 other senators in May 1999 urged
Clinton to support higher CAFE standards and cleaner SUVs. “Cars and light
trucks, including sport utility vehicles, are responsible for 20 percent of all
carbon dioxide emissions, which are the leading cause of global warming,”
Sen. Feinstein said. “U.S. vehicles emit more carbon dioxide than all sources
in Great Britain combined. I believe strongly that global warming is not a
problem we can afford to ignore or dismiss. Strengthening the CAFE standards is one of the easiest, most important steps we can take to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions and fight global warming.”273
As was the case during his first two years as president, Clinton made no
effort during his final two years in office to raise CAFE standards.
To make matters worse, Clinton also threatened to veto any bill that
would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling. Drilling in ANWR would not be the ultimate solution to our dependence on foreign oil. However, it would be a move in the right direction. As Michael
Scheuer noted in Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Ter-
272
273
http://markey.house.gov/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1489&Itemid=125
http://www.senate.gov/~feinstein/releases99/cafestandards.html
84
ror, “[T]he time for an energy policy that values tundra, reindeer, and lichens
over U.S. soldiers and civilians has past.”274
CLINTON GETS A FUEL-EFFICIENT SUV
On September 7, 2006, USA Today reported that Ford had delivered a specially outfitted, gas-electric hybrid Mercury Mariner SUV to Bill Clinton.
“I’m happy to have a fuel-efficient vehicle to do my part,” Clinton said in a
statement. 275
Of course, if Clinton had done “his part” during one of those moments
during the 1990s that cried out for presidential leadership, more Americans
would be driving fuel-efficient vehicles today. In fact, government played a
crucial role in making those gas-guzzling SUVs popular during the Clinton
years.
Since the government subjected the once ubiquitous station wagon to the
CAFE standard of 27.5 miles per gallon, automakers began focusing on
manufacturing SUVs, which were subjected to the lower CAFE standard of
20.7 miles per gallon for light trucks. During the 1990s, sales of SUVs exploded. This “SUV loophole” reversed the trend of improving fuel efficiency
in our vehicles during the 1980s. The Environmental Protection Agency
noted in 1999 that the popularity of gas-guzzling SUVs pushed down the
average overall automobile fuel economy to its lowest level in nearly 20
years. As a consequence, our addiction to foreign oil became much more severe during the Clinton administration. In fact, in 1993 net imports of oil to
the U.S. (7.6 million barrels per day) amounted to 44.2 percent of domestic
consumption.276 By 1998, net imports of oil reached 52 percent of domestic
consumption (9.8 million barrels per day).277
Consider if Clinton had led the nation on this issue and, when he left office in 2001, every noncommercial driver in the United States owned a vehicle that got at least 27 miles to the gallon. If he had done that, we would no
longer need to import oil from the Middle East.278
AL GORE’S CARBON FOOTPRINT
After Al Gore won an Academy Award for An Inconvenient Truth in February 2007, a think tank in Gore’s home state shared some inconvenient facts
concerning the filmmaker’s carbon footprint. According to ABC News,
“Armed with Gore’s utility bills for the last two years, the Tennessee Center
274
p. 259.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2006-09-06-clinton-car_x.htm
276
tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/features/skinner1.pdf
277
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/presentations/hrtest524/TestimonyMay242000Final.html
278
http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/moralitySUV.html
275
85
for Policy Research charged Monday that the gas and electric bills for the
former vice president’s 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly
221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of
10,656 kilowatt-hours.”
Kalee Kreider, a spokesperson for the Gores, refused to dispute the think
tank’s figures, “taken as they were from public records.” According to Kreider, “[T]he bottom line is that every family has a different carbon footprint.
And what Vice President Gore has asked is for families to calculate that
footprint and take steps to reduce and offset it.”279
Yes, every family has a different carbon footprint. However, not every
family has a carbon footprint 20 times larger than the average family’s.
Unfortunately, as Peter Schweizer, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, noted in December 2006, the Gores’ carbon footprint is not limited to
their home in Nashville:
Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in
Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone
rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.
Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the Washington, D.C.,
area, utility companies offer wind energy as an alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs exist. Utility customers must simply pay
a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of
businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush administration is
using green energy for some federal office buildings, as are thousands of area
residents.
But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up
to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted
Wednesday, Gore’s office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.280
Al Gore has criticized his own country for failing to do more to reduce
carbon emissions. Yet the Gores are unwilling to trade their three large
homes for a smaller one that, with current technology and the Gores’ financial resources, could be designed and built to be far more energy efficient.
The effort to end our dependence on foreign oil has often been likened to
the Apollo program, in which a manned moon landing took place just eight
279
280
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/GlobalWarming/story?id=2906888
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08-09-gore-green_x.htm
86
years after President John F. Kennedy announced that goal. Given that, Gore
should follow the example of a former “astronaut” and “oilman.”
Larry Hagman’s* annual electric bill at his California home and 46-acre
farm plummeted from $37,000 to $13 after he and his wife installed a 102.7
kW solar-power system that generates 150,000 kilowatt-hours per day.
That’s enough to power a dozen or more average households.
The Hagmans’ system not only produces enough energy for their own
needs, it produces a surplus of 10,000 kilowatt hours per year, which is fed
back into the grid.281
While Hagman walks the walk, Gore mostly talks (and talks and talks).
And, unfortunately, a lot of what Gore says is not the truth. In fact, in November 2007 a High Court judge in England ruled that An Inconvenient
Truth contained nine key scientific errors. While the judge declined to ban
the so-called documentary from British schools, he ruled that it could only be
shown with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination.282
Gore has also attacked the Bush administration’s policies on global warming on numerous occasions. However, he and Bill Clinton did very little to
fight global warming when they actually had the power to make changes.
According to the Washington Post in April 1999, “Major environmental
groups sharply criticized Vice President Gore yesterday, accusing him and
President Clinton of reneging on promises to reduce pollutants that cause
global warming.” Further:
In a four-page letter addressed to Gore, nine prominent environmental organizations expressed “deep disappointment with the lack of an administration
proposal to require significant reductions in global warming pollution. We are
particularly frustrated that the administration has not sought meaningful emission reductions from either power plants or passenger vehicles.”
The letter was signed by the heads of the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Izaak Walton League, National Environmental Trust, Natural
Resources Defense Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Union of
Concerned Scientists, U.S. Public Interest Research Group and World Wild-
*
Hagman played astronaut Major Anthony Nelson in the 1960s sitcom I Dream of Jeannie and oilman
J.R. Ewing in Dallas. He missed the chance of being extremely “green” 30 years ago when he turned
down the role of Dr. David Banner in The Incredible Hulk.
281
http://www.larryhagman.com
282
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/10/11/scigore111.xml
87
life Fund. Officials from these groups said they decided to go public because
earlier complaints to Gore had been ignored.283
283
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/gore041499.htm
88
CHAPTER 11
THE UNFRIENDLY SKIES
I
f you find a Bush-hater who has actually read the August 6 PDB, ask him
this question: If you were president on August 6, 2001 and you read that
PDB, what steps would you have taken to prevent 9/11? Nine times out
of ten, he’ll respond, “I wouldn’t have attacked Iraq” or “I wouldn’t have
gone on vacation.” (I’m not kidding. Try it some time.)
Of course, we did not invade Iraq until 18 months after 9/11, so this
change in policy would not have prevented 9/11. In addition, being on vacation does not prevent a president from taking action. For example, Bill Clinton in August 1998 launched strikes against Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan while he was on vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.284
Once in awhile, a liberal might respond to the question by saying he
would have had the airlines reinforce the cockpits on all their planes. This is
a much better answer. However, how feasible would this step have been?
After all, there were just 36 days between August 6 and September 11.
According to Gregg Easterbrook, “[I]n the aftermath of the September 11
attacks, the Department of Transportation mandated that all cockpit doors be
reinforced. Boeing, the largest airplane manufacturer, said its engineers had
been working around the clock since September 11 to resolve technical details (namely, pressure differentials between the cockpit and the cabin) so
that installation of the new doors could be expedited.”285
Boeing and its supplier ultimately designed 31 different door configurations for 18 aircraft models. The airplane manufacturer delivered 4,300 kits
that included the new doors. Airbus Industrie delivered another 557 kits to
U.S. operators. The airline industry was given until April 2003 to install the
new doors in every passenger aircraft with 20 or more seats.286
284
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/decision082198.htm
How Did This Happen? Terrorism and the New War, p. 173.
286
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/04/attack/main547827.shtml
285
89
That deadline was about 570 days after 9/11, and this was after 3,000
people had died as a result of hijackings. It simply would have been impossible to design and manufacture nearly 5,000 new, reinforced doors in just 36
days, especially in the absence of a specific threat to airlines.
But what if the mandate for reinforced doors had been issued at least 570
days before 9/11? As noted in Chapter 4, the December 4, 1998 PDB was
entitled “Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks.”
There were slightly over 1,000 days between December 4, 1998 and September 11, 2001. Certainly, that would have been more than enough time to install reinforced doors on all U.S. airliners. Why was nothing done?
Let’s take a look at airline security during the past 20 years. In December
1988, Pan Am 103 was bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. “Legislation and regulations were written [after the attack] requiring
mass deployment of automated explosive detection technology at our airports
to replace antiquated X-ray and metal detectors,” said Victoria Cummock,
who lost her husband in the bombing. “Additionally, standards were set for
minimum training and certification of airport and airline personnel, including
national criminal background checks. This is just to list a few mandates
spanning over a decade.”287
Fewer than eight years later, TWA 800 exploded just off the coast of
Long Island after departing John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all
230 people on board. Initial speculation centered on a terrorist attack. However, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the disaster
was caused by “an explosion of the center wing fuel tank (CWT), resulting
from ignition of the flammable fuel/air mixture in the tank.”288
A month after the TWA 800 incident, President Clinton established the
White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, which was
chaired by Vice President Al Gore. The charter of the commission was “to
study matters involving aviation safety and security, including air traffic control and to develop a strategy to improve aviation safety and security, both
domestically and internationally.”
According to Glenn E. Schweitzer and Carole Dorsch Schweitzer, Gore’s
commission “strongly endorsed a system of computerized passenger profiling to help single out those individuals whom certain indicators suggested
should have their possessions more carefully scrutinized.”289
Unfortunately, as the Schweitzers noted, this profiling system soon found
critics:
Arab-American and civil liberty groups immediately lodged protests, arguing
that passengers should be required to check their luggage, not their constitu-
287
288
289
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/americatransformed/essays/010925.cummockcommentary.html
http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/2000/aar0003.htm
A Faceless Enemy: The Origins of Modern Terrorism, p. 230.
90
tional rights. They contended that even with safeguards, the proposed profiling policy violates the right to privacy and would cause humiliating travel delays for people with dark skins, national dress, and unfamiliar names. They
pointed out that airline computer systems obtain data from law enforcement
databases that may record a person’s arrest but not his acquittal. Also, they
were concerned that the policy discriminates against poor people who do not
qualify for credit cards.290
In addition to opposition from Arab-American and civil liberty groups,
the airlines also balked at the commission’s recommendations. Louis Freeh,
then the director of FBI and a member of Gore’s commission, described the
situation in his autobiography:
Our report, issued in February 1997, warned that the airline industry and operations were vulnerable at multiple points to hijackings and terrorist attacks,
but basically nothing was done about it. Politicians worried that the public
wouldn’t tolerate long lines at security checkpoints. The airlines didn’t want
to spend the money to beef up their own defenses. Appalled by the prospect
of greatly increased user fees to help offset the proposed multibillion-dollar
changes, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association questioned the commission’s independence and objectivity. What should have been a big step forward in the fight against terrorism devolved into the usual inside-the-Beltway
brawl.291
Another Gore Commission member, Victoria Cummock, was even more
disappointed than Freeh. Cummock actually sued Gore and Secretary of
Transportation Rodney Slater in May 1997, “claiming her dissenting opinions were deliberately left out of the panel’s final report and that the vice
president glossed over her opposition to the group’s findings.” Cummock
also alleged that the commission itself was illegal because the agenda was set
before the commission was even empowered by executive charter. “I don’t
know how we could really get a fair commission based on the degree of collusion that I see between the industry, the FAA, the DOT and Al Gore,”
Cummock said.292
This collusion was made apparent by the Boston Globe on September 20,
2001:
At the outset, the commission issued an ambitious set of proposals, announcing on Sept. 5, 1996, that it favored measures that included baggage matching. Long used on international flights and on originating domestic flights,
that provision would have required that no checked bag, even on a connecting
flight, could be loaded unless the ticketholder boarded the flight.
290
291
292
Ibid, p. 231.
My FBI, p. 291.
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/05/08/email/gore/
91
To the airlines, with domestic hub-and-spoke systems that rely on quick connections of both bags and passengers, the proposal meant costly delays and
enraged passengers.
According to [Billie H.] Vincent, the former FAA security chief, the airlines
began a vigorous lobbying campaign aimed at the White House. Two weeks
later, Gore retreated from the proposal in a letter to Carol B. Hallett, president
of the industry’s trade group, the Air Transport Association.
“I want to make it very clear that it is not the intent of this administration or
of the commission to create a hardship for the air transportation industry or to
cause inconvenience to the traveling public,” Gore wrote.
To reassure Hallett, Gore added that the FAA would develop ‘‘a draft test
concept ... in full partnership with representatives of the airline industry.’’
The day after Gore’s letter, Trans World Airlines donated $40,000 to the Democratic National Committee. By the time of the presidential election, other
airlines had poured large donations into Democratic Party committees:
$265,000 from American Airlines, $120,000 from Delta Air Lines, $115,000
from United Air Lines, $87,000 from Northwest Airlines, according to an
analysis done for the Globe by the Center for Responsive Politics, which
tracks donations. 293
In October 2001, Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen issued a report that reiterated Cummock’s complaints. Entitled “Delay, Dilute and Discard: How the
Airline Industry and the FAA Have Stymied Aviation Security Recommendations,” the report noted, “The top nine U.S. airlines and their trade association, the ATA, alone spent $62.9 million in the last four years lobbying Congress, the DOT, the FAA, and the White House, including $16.6 million in
2000.”294
Public Citizen also detailed the “revolving door” connections between the
airlines and the federal government. According to Public Citizen, “Linda
Hall Daschle, wife of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.),
worked for the ATA, the airline lobbying group, before she served as the
FAA’s deputy administrator from 1993 to 1996 and the acting administrator
for a brief period in 1996 and 1997…. The revolving door keeps spinning.
Daschle, for instance, went from the ATA to the FAA and now is back lobbying for Northwest and American airlines.”295
Washington Monthly in 2002 noted that, if Tom Daschle had decided to
run for president in 2004, “The landmines in Linda Daschle’s professional
293
294
295
http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Security_Issues/airlinesfoughtsecuritychanges.html
http://www.citizen.org/congress/regulations/issue_areas/faa/articles.cfm?ID=6215
Ibid.
92
portfolio will make Hillary Clinton’s pork futures* and law-firm billings look
like mousetraps”:
For instance, among Linda Daschle’s clients is American Airlines, which has
had six fatal crashes since 1994 (not even including the World Trade Center
flights). The airline has incurred thousands of dollars in federal fines for a
host of safety violations, and its employees have been caught in embarrassing
drug smuggling stings. Even as its planes have crashed, American has lobbied
for years to water down safety and security regulations that might have
helped foil the World Trade Center attacks. Yet thanks in part to lobbying efforts by Daschle—and support from her husband—American Airlines got a
free pass in the recent airline bailout bill, escaping most legal liability for the
hijackings and getting $583 million in cash grants—taxpayer money it will
never have to repay.296
Daschle also lobbied for L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., a company that manufactured the eXaminer 3DX 6000 machine. The purpose of
the scanner was to detect even scattered components of a bomb in luggage. Unfortunately, the scanner did not appear to work that well. According to the Washington Post, L-3 detectors tested by the FAA often
failed because of software problems. In addition, one machine at DallasFort Worth International Airport “had problems from the day it was installed” nearly 18 months ago, breaking down about every 84 hours of
operation. Further, “The L-3 scanner problems are part of the reason behind the slow deployment and ‘under-utilization’ of technology that could
prevent future terrorist bombings of commercial aircraft, the inspector
general said.”297
Airline security clearly was not as good as it should have been on
9/11. It is also clear that there was not enough time between the inauguration of President George W. Bush and 9/11 to make the needed improvements to security. Those improvements should have been put in place during the Clinton-Gore administration, but the record shows that that administration placed a higher value on political correctness and campaign
contributions.
*
They were actually “cattle” futures.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0201.mencimer.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/articles/world/Security1118.html
296
297
93
CHAPTER 12
THE WORLD HATES US
In just 8 months, Bush gets the whole world back to hating us
again. He withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out of
the Durban conference on racism, insists on restarting the arms
race — you name it, and Baby Bush has blown it all. - Michael
Moore, September 12, 2001298
Don’t count on the Democratic faithful to mention it, but the international community was none too enamored of U.S. foreign policy
under Bill Clinton, who today enjoys a surprising reputation as a
model multilateralist. Let us begin by recalling that Jacques
Chirac’s bitter verdict – ‘If you want to find idiotic behavior you
can always count on the Americans’— was issued in 1995, long
before any Texan ‘cowboy’ had occasion to offend the Fifth Republic’s delicate sensibilities. - Jacob Laksin299
I believe in using former presidents, particularly what my husband
has done, to really get people around the world feeling better
about our country. We’re going to need that. Right now, they’re
rooting against us, and they need to root for us. - Hillary Clinton,
April 22, 2007300
A
ccording to the narrative offered by Clinton Inc. and other liberals,
the whole world loved the United States prior to the event of the
Bush presidency. As Michael Moore suggested on the day after 9/11,
George W. Bush was responsible for causing the world to hate us again—and
he took just eight months.
Of course, as is the case with much of what Clinton, Moore and others on
the left say, this narrative is a revision of the true history of the Clinton administration.
298
http://www.michaelmoore.com/2001_0912.html
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7311
300
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=3063997&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
299
94
THE WORLD HATES US
As the 9/11 Commission report would later point out, “During the summer and early autumn of 2000, Bin Laden and senior al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan started selecting the muscle hijackers—the operatives who would
storm the cockpits and control the passengers.”301
If the whole world loved us prior to the Bush presidency, why were bin
Laden and senior al Qaeda leaders already planning the 9/11 hijackings in
2000? Were they merely making sure they had a plan in place, just in case
Bush became president and caused the world to hate the U.S.?
The American media is loathe to report this, but America was hated by a
large portion of the world—especially the Muslim world—prior to January
21, 2001. They hated us despite (or because) of the fact that Bill Clinton was
our president.
Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, is an example of a member of the media who parrots Clinton Inc.’s narrative concerning how the world now views the U.S. “with distrust and mistrust.”
Amanpour had the following exchange with CNN’s Larry King on August
20, 2007, while discussing her series on “God’s Warriors”:
KING: But how much does the Israeli-Palestinian situation affect the Muslim
situation, affect the Christian opinion, when they all intermingle here?
AMANPOUR: Well, they do intermingle a lot. So, you know, I’m sort of
keeping the two separate at the moment as I discuss this.
But for sure, the constant open witnessed that is Israel-Palestine, the war that
exists in Israel and the occupied territories is a powerful recruiting tool for
those disaffected in the Islamic world. There is absolutely no doubt about
that.
But, also, right now, another powerful recruiting tool is the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. It is—it’s equaled or surpassed, at the moment, the
pool of recruits for those who would come into terrorism and who would do
America harm.
And I think, you know, there’s a new Pew poll, a recent Pew poll that has just
been published which has, I think, rather troubling results.
It talks about how these phenomenal values that the United States espouses
and has exported, you know, for decades, are now being viewed with suspicion and with distrust and mistrust.
So, really, the challenge for America and for American leadership is to get
that back, to reclaim its values, to reclaim its position in global society and to
be able to once again be considered the exporter of great and valuable morals
and values.302
301
302
p. 231
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0708/20/lkl.01.html
95
Amanpour’s claim echoed a statement offered by Jamie Rubin just a few
weeks earlier. “It will take years, decades to retrieve the respect that we once
had before [the Bush] people took office,” Rubin said.303 Rubin was the director of foreign policy for the Clinton/Gore campaign in 1996. He was also
the spokesman for Madeleine Albright’s State Department and, in 2004,
worked for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, serving as a senior
advisor for national security affairs. In addition, Rubin supported Hillary
Clinton’s failed presidential campaign.
Incidentally, Amanpour and Rubin have been married since 1998.
According to the New York Times, “The couple met in 1997 in Bosnia, where
Ms. Amanpour was on assignment and Mr. Rubin was traveling with
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.”304
Interestingly, the Amanpour-Rubin union is not the only Clinton Inc.CNN marriage. Kenneth Pollack, who was director for Gulf affairs at the
National Security Council from 1995 to 1996 and from 1999 to 1999, is
married to Andrea Koppel, CNN’s state department correspondent from 1998
until to 2006.*
CNN apparently saw no conflicts of interest concerning the marriages of
its chief international correspondent and its state department correspondent to
men with prominent positions in the Clinton administration. But, then again,
Rick Kaplan was CNN’s president at that time. In 1992, when Kaplan was an
executive with ABC News, he urged Clinton to do the toughest interview he
could to diffuse the Gennifer Flowers story. “There is no way to avoid
relationships with politicians,” Kaplan was quoted as saying in Tom
Rosentiel's Strange Bedfellows. “I knew that he was not ‘Slick Willie’ and
not a scourge and really a terrific, terrific person.” It’s not like Kaplan
actually tried to avoid Clinton. After Clinton was elected president, Kaplan
played golf with him and spent a night in the Lincoln Bedroom.305
Reportedly, Clinton even gave Kaplan’s daughter a personal two-and-a-halfhour tour of the White House.306
303
http://www.observer.com/2007/james-rubin-hillary-barack-and-anything-bush
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E3D8103BF93AA3575BC0A96E958260
*
Liberals might counter that CNN is currently in a similar situation with Campbell Brown and Dan Senor,
who were married in 2006. Brown joined CNN in 2007 after leaving NBC News. Senor served as a senior
advisor to then-Presidential Envoy L. Paul Bremer III, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. However, Senor is no longer part of the Bush administration. In addition, Brown, unlike
Amanpour, does not appear to carrying water for her husband’s former employers. The daughter of a
former Louisiana Democratic state senator, secretary of state, and insurance commissioner, Brown reportedly played host to Joe Wilson at her home in October 2003. In addition, in her November 28, 2007 CNN
program called Broken Government – Campaign Killers, Brown characterized conservative David Bossie
and his group, the 500,000-member Citizens United, as being part of a “fringe militia.” She also called
Bossie a “dirty trickster.” Citizens United announced on December 4 that it would “bring legal action to
hold CNN accountable for these and other misrepresented facts” if no apology and public retraction were
forthcoming.
305
http://www.forbes.com/1997/08/20/feat_side1.html
306
http://ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=258250369428152
304
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THE WORLD HATES US
An Investor’s Business Daily editorial entitled “Hillary’s Shill At CBS”
detailed Kaplan’s long relationship with the Clintons after Kaplan became
executive producer of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric in 2007:
Vanity Fair reported in 1998 that Kaplan in October 1994 killed an ABC
“World News Tonight” segment on the Clintons’ Whitewater scandal featuring an exclusive interview with an Arkansas state trooper who claimed a
Clinton aide had tried to silence him, and that Kaplan discouraged other
Whitewater coverage.
It also revealed Kaplan advised Bill on how to bounce back from his disastrously tedious speech to the 1988 Democratic National Convention, in which
he was practically booed off the stage.
The magazine also reported that Kaplan even once hired Hillary “to work on
coverage of the 1980 Democratic convention.”
According to a CNN producer quoted in the Washington Monthly in 1993,
Kaplan arranged for Bill to appear on New York’s Don Imus radio program
during the 1992 campaign.307
There is a reason why CNN was called the Clinton News Network during
Kaplan’s reign at the cable network. Unfortunately, CNN still appears to be
carrying water for the Clintons. In fact, the transcript for one of the most important interviews CNN has ever done is no longer available on its Web site.
Perhaps its absence is due to an oversight. However, it’s more likely that
CNN removed the interview because the interviewee, Osama bin Laden, expressed a great deal of animus towards Bill Clinton.
MESSAGES WITH NO WORDS
In 1995, researchers with the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) wrote to The Lancet, the journal of the British Medical Society,
and reported that sanctions against Iraq were responsible for the deaths of
567,000 Iraqi children under five.308
That number was debated at the time and has been since then. However,
Madeleine Albright, who was then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,
made no effort to dispute it when she appeared on 60 Minutes on May 12,
1996:
LESLEY STAHL: We have heard that a half million children have died. I
mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the
price worth it?
307
Ibid.
Zaidi, Sarah and Mary C Smith Fawzi (1995). “Health of Baghdad’s children”, The Lancet, 346, 2
Dec., 1995.
308
97
ALBRIGHT: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the
price is worth it.309
“It,” of course, was the containment of Saddam Hussein. Liberals who
now say Saddam was not a threat cannot seem to explain why keeping him
contained was worth the deaths of half a million Iraqi children.
Osama bin Laden would later discuss the Iraqi children who died as a result of sanctions when he was interviewed by CNN on March 20, 1997.
Oddly, the link to this interview—perhaps the most important interview he
ever granted to a Western media outlet—is no longer active on CNN’s Web
site.310 Fortunately, Peter L. Bergen, a CNN reporter who was present at the
interview, included a portion of the interview in his 2001 book on al Qaeda:
Asked what message he would send President Clinton, bin Laden answered:
“Mentioning the name of Clinton or that of the American government provokes disgust and revulsion. This is because the name of the American government and the name of Clinton and Bush directly reflect in our minds ... the
picture of the children who died in Iraq.” He was referring to the fact that, by
May 1996, an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of U.N.
sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990, for its continued violations of U.N. resolutions.
He continued: “The hearts of Muslims are filled with hatred towards the
United States of America and the American president. The president has a
heart that knows no words. A heart that kills hundreds of children definitely
knows no words. Our people on the Arabian Peninsula will send him messages with no words because he does not know any words. If there is a message that I may send through you, then it is a message I address to the mothers of American troops who came here with their military uniforms walking
proudly up and down our land.... I say that this represents a blatant provocation to over one billion Muslims.”311
This was not the first time that bin Laden had evoked the deaths of Iraqi
children when expressing his grievances towards the United States. In August 1996, bin Laden issued a fatwa, or declaration of war, against the United
States. In that fatwa he said, “More than 600,000 Iraqi children have died due
to lack of food and medicine and as a result of the unjustifiable aggression
(sanction) imposed on Iraq and its nation. The children of Iraq are our children.”312
309
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084
The original URL for the CNN interview is
www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/impact/9705/09/feature/transcript.ladin.html. The complete transcript is
available at http://fl1.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/binladen/binladenintvw-cnn.pdf
311
Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, pp. 22-23.
312
www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html
310
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THE WORLD HATES US
Bin Laden also mentioned the presence of the U.S. military in Saudi Arabia: “It is out of date and no longer acceptable to claim that the presence of
the crusaders is necessity and only a temporary measure to protect the land of
the two Holy Places.” Bin Laden characterized the U.S. troop presence as an
occupation of Muslim sanctities that “can not be kicked and removed except
by explosions and Jihad.”313
Of course, there is another way that presence could have been removed.
Clinton could have withdrawn our troops from Saudi Arabia instead of dramatically increasing their numbers.
“Many Saudis shared [bin Laden’s] hostility to the continuing American
presence in the Kingdom, especially after Dick Cheney’s well-known pledge
that they would leave,” Lawrence Wright wrote in The Looming Tower. “Ostensibly, the troops remained in order to enforce the UN-mandated no-fly
zone over Iraq. By 1992, however, and certainly by 1993, there were enough
new basing agreements in the region that the Americans could have withdrawn without jeopardizing their mission. But the Saudi bases were convenient and well appointed, and there didn’t seem to be a sufficiently pressing
need to leave.”314
AMERICAN MILITARY PERSONNEL ON ACTIVE
DUTY IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 1993, 1996 AND 2000
1993315 1996316 2000317
Total personnel in foreign countries
308,020 240,421 257,817
Bahrain
379
598
949
Egypt
605
1,066
499
Israel
42
44
36
Jordan
21
24
29
Kuwait
233
5,531
4,602
Oman
26
30
251
Qatar
-43
52
Saudi Arabia
950
1,587
7,053
Syria
10
11
-Turkey
4,049
2,922
2,006
United Arab Emirates
25
23
402
Total
6,340
11,879 15,879
Percentage of all troops in foreign countries
2.1%
4.9%
6.2%
313
Ibid.
p. 210.
315
http://www.census.gov/prod/1/gen/95statab/defense.pdf
316
http://www.census.gov/prod/3/98pubs/98statab/sasec11.pdf
317
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/07s0501.xls
314
99
Shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, BBC reported that the U.S. had
pulled out “virtually all its troops, except some training personnel” from
Saudi Arabia, fulfilling Cheney’s pledge. BBC also noted that the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia was “one of the main reasons given by the Saudi-born
dissident—blamed by Washington for the 11 September attacks—to justify
violence against the United States and its allies.”318
In case the reader is tempted to believe that by “messages with no words”
bin Laden meant he would blow kisses to Clinton, the 1996 fatwa made it
clear that those messages would be violent ones.
On August 7, 1998 (the eighth anniversary of President George H.W.
Bush’s launching of Operation Desert Shield against Iraq), al Qaeda almost
simultaneously bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In Nairobi, 213 people were killed, including 12 Americans, and an estimated 4,000
injured. In Dar es Salaam, the attack killed 11 and wounded 85.
On October 12, 2000, al Qaeda struck again, this time killing 17 U.S.
sailors when the USS Cole, harbored in the Yemeni port of Aden, was
rammed by suicide bombers in a boat laden with explosives. The attack was
the deadliest against a U.S. Naval vessel since the Iraqi attack on the USS
Stark on May 17, 1987.
And, of course, we had the attacks of 9/11.
Just a few months before the 9/11 attacks, the 1998 embassy bombings
were in the news again. In June 2001, attorneys were working to prevent
their client, Mohamed al-’Owhali, from receiving the death penalty. Al’Owhali had been convicted a week earlier in the 1998 bombing of the U.S.
Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.
According to CNN, “Al-’Owhali’s attorneys have argued U.S. policy toward Iraq was a motivating factor for militant Muslims such as al-’Owhali, a
24-year-old Saudi, and his leader, Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, whom the
United States accuses of leading a decade-long terrorist conspiracy to kill
Americans and destroy U.S. property.” 319
During the hearing, defense attorney David Baugh “played a CBS-TV ‘60
Minutes’ segment from May 1996 that reported an estimated 500,000 Iraqi
children had died from the economic sanctions imposed on August 6, 1990,
days after Saddam Hussein’s troops invaded Kuwait.”
As the jurors watched the television, they heard Madeleine Albright say,
“I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth
it.”
Interestingly, CNN in February 2001 reported that the prosecution in the
case against the accused embassy bombers also played a tape of an interview.
According to CNN, “Osama bin Laden’s historic hour-long interview with
CNN was played Wednesday for the jury deciding whether four men are part
318
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2984547.stm
319 http://edition.cnn.com/2001/LAW/06/04/embassy.bombings.02/
100
THE WORLD HATES US
of an alleged decade-long conspiracy led by the Saudi expatriate and aimed
at killing Americans and destroying U.S. property abroad.”320
Of course, this is the historic interview in which bin Laden said he
planned to send Clinton “messages with no words” in response to the Iraqi
children who died as a result of sanctions.
Many claim that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. While there is no evidence that Iraq played a role in the 9/11 attacks, there can be no doubt that
Bill Clinton’s policies vis-à-vis Iraq played a significant role in al Qaeda’s
attacks on the U.S. and Americans. It would not be an exaggeration to say
that those attacks were carried out in Iraq’s name.
ANTI-AMERICANISM IN EUROPE
“In Europe’s Eyes, Americans Become Uglier And Uglier” blared the headline in the Seattle Times.
According to the article, “Read the title of his new book and you’ll get an
idea of Noel Mamere’s perspective: ‘No Thanks, Uncle Sam.’”
At this moment, Mamere says in his closing chapter, “it is appropriate to
be downright anti-American.”
“In France, indeed in Europe, Mamere by no means is alone in his criticism,” the article continued. “Wander into a French bookstore these days,
and you will find any number of catchy titles (‘The World Is Not Merchandise,’ ‘Who Is Killing France? The American Strategy,’ ‘American Totalitarianism’ to name a few) deploring the American way—from its creation of
a society ruled by profit motive to how the United States is now an unchecked force on its way to ruling the world.”
Were these books describing the United States under President George W.
Bush. No. In fact, the article was published on April 9, 2000, seven months
before Bush was elected president.
While Clinton Inc. touts the war in Kosovo as a successful use of U.S.
military force, the article notes that Europeans saw it differently: “Far from
seeing U.S. involvement in Kosovo as a hand of support, for example, many
Europeans saw it as U.S. manipulation of NATO. And the humiliating fact
that the intervention would not have been possible without U.S. air power
rammed home the perception of U.S. military superiority, and European deficiency.”
And, while Clinton Inc. is sure to point to opinion polls that show the
United States has lost admirers in Europe during the Bush years, the Seattle
Times article suggests there were not many admirers there when Bush became president: “Polls conducted by CSA in the past few years suggest that
Europeans have extremely negative views of the United States. In April last
320 http://archives.cnn.com/2001/LAW/02/21/embassy.bombing/index.html
101
year, 68 percent of the French said they worried about America’s status as a
superpower. Only 30 percent said there was anything to admire across the
Atlantic. Sixty-three percent said they did not feel close to the American
people.”321
According to the same article, “The Clinton administration’s cheerleading—for example, its repeated description of the United States as being the
‘indispensable’ nation—strikes a threatening chord [in Europe].” Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright used this very language in 1998 vis-à-vis Iraq: “[I]f
we have to use force, it is because we are America, we are the indispensable
nation, we stand tall—we see further into the future.” The late Charles
Maechling Jr., who served as a State Department official in the Kennedy and
Johnson administrations, took exception to Albright’s words: “Madeleine
Albright is the first secretary of state in American history whose diplomatic
specialty, if one can call it that, is lecturing other governments, using threatening language and tastelessly bragging of the power and virtue of her country.”322
(Ironically, while delivering a speech concerning the need to regain
worldwide respect for America, former Democratic presidential candidate
Joe Biden on November 27, 2007, told an Iowa audience that the U.S. is an
“indispensable nation.”)
As we can see, any claim that the world loved the United States when Bill
Clinton was president is simply an attempt to rewrite history. Hillary’s portrayal of the world holding hands with the United States and singing “Kumbaya” between 1993 and 2001 is no less than an exercise in mythmaking.
THE WHOLE WORLD WAS WITH US AFTER 9/11
During the Democratic National Convention in July 2004, viewers were
treated to speaker after speaker who claimed that George W. Bush had
squandered the sympathy the world had for the U.S. after 9/11. “After 9/11,
America stood proud, wounded but determined and united,” Jimmy Carter
said after sharing his box at the convention with Michael Moore. “A cowardly attack on innocent civilians brought us an unprecedented level of cooperation and understanding around the world. But in just 34 months, we have
watched with deep concern as all this goodwill has been squandered by a
virtually unbroken series of mistakes and miscalculations.”323
“The eyes of the world were on us and the hearts of the world were with
us after September 11—until this administration broke that trust,” Sen. Ted
Kennedy said. “We should have honored, not ignored, the pledges we made.
321
322
323
http://www.commondreams.org/views/040900-106.htm
http://www.iht.com/articles/1998/03/26/edchas.t.php
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/26/dems.carter.transcript/index.html
102
THE WORLD HATES US
We should have strengthened, not scorned, the alliances that won two World
Wars and the Cold War.”324
Kennedy seems to think that, since Germany, France, and Russia were not
with us on Iraq, the Bush administration broke its trust with the whole world.
He also seems to be a bit confused about world history. The alliances that
won two World Wars did not include Germany. In addition, the alliance that
won the Cold War did not include Russia. Both Germany and Russia were
with alliances that opposed us.
Of course, an examination of recent history shows that Bill Clinton did
not always meet what John Kerry would later call the “global test,” i.e., proving to the world that you have used military force for legitimate reasons.
When Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair launched Operation
Desert Fox in December 1998, they did so without UN approval. According
to CNN, world reaction to Operation Desert Fox was mixed. “Nobody has
the right to act on their own in the name of the United Nations and even less
to pretend to be the judge of the entire world,” Russian Foreign Minister Igor
Ivanov said. “There is absolutely no excuse or pretext to use force against
Iraq,” Chinese UN Ambassador Qin Huasen said.325 In the wake of the attack, Russia recalled its ambassadors to the U.S. and Britain. “The Russians
have a different view about the use of force,” said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. “They wanted diplomacy, but the truth is, they had no
ideas.”326
In the Middle East, hundreds of Egyptians burned U.S. flags and shouted
anti-U.S. slogans near Cairo’s al-Azhar mosque. “Each Muslim must support
the Iraqis, who have been subject to injustices, including their rulers’ practices,” said Sheikh Mohamed Sayyed Tantawi, grand sheikh of al-Azhar, during the Friday prayer sermon. “When we see Iraqis subject to injustices and
shelling, and the killing of innocents, we have to stand by them.”327
Others in the Middle East saw a link between Clinton’s carnage and his
carnality. “For Monica Lewinsky, they hit Afghanistan and Sudan. And now,
for Monica’s eyes, they hit Baghdad,” said a commentator on Al-Jazeerah,
the satellite channel based in Qatar.328
Of course, the French opposed Operation Desert Fox. France suspended
its participation in Operation Southern Watch, whose stated purpose was to
ensure Iraqi compliance with United Nations Security Council Resolution
688.329 Fewer than two years later, the United States and Britain objected to a
French flight to Baghdad, saying the flight violated the sanctions regime.330
324
http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Ted_Kennedy_War_+_Peace.htm
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9812/17/world.reax.iraq.02/index.html
326
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9812/18/iraq.world.reax.04/index.html
327
Ibid.
328
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9812/17/world.reax.iraq.02/index.html
329
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/southern_watch.htm
330
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/09/22/iraq.france.02.reut/index.html
325
103
Just three months after Operation Desert Fox, Clinton flunked the global
test again with Operation Allied Force in Kosovo, which also lacked the approval of the UN. Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council,
opposed NATO’s airstrikes in Kosovo, as did China, another permanent
member. China’s opposition intensified after an errant attack on its embassy
in Belgrade killed 20 embassy staff members and three journalists.331 Chinese
Vice-President Hu Jintao characterized the bombing as a “criminal act.”332
That unfortunate incident undoubtedly influenced the way China treated 24
U.S. airmen after a Chinese pilot rammed their reconnaissance plane and
forced them to make an emergency landing on China’s Hainan island two
years later.333
Obviously, the rest of the world was not with the U.S. prior to 9/11. And,
of course, the rest of the world was not with us after 9/11. According to the
October 1, 2002 issue of Newsweek, four nations—Cuba, Iraq, North Korea,
and Libya—refused to support military action against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.334
In addition to refusing to support military action against al Qaeda and the
Taliban, Saddam Hussein actually celebrated al Qaeda’s attack on America.
According to CNN, “Leaders of Middle Eastern nations, including U.S. foes
Libya and Iran, have condemned the terror attacks on the U.S.—with one
notable exception.” Under the headline “America burns,” the official newspaper Al-Iraq said, “[W]hat happened in the United States yesterday is a lesson for all tyrants, oppressors and criminals.” In addition, an official Iraqi
statement said, “The American cowboys are reaping the fruit of their crimes
against humanity.”335
This was not the first time that Iraq officially praised an al Qaeda’s attack
on Americans. On August 27, 1998, 20 days after al Qaeda attacked the U.S.
embassies in Africa, Babel, Uday Hussein’s newspaper, published an editorial proclaiming Osama bin Laden “an Arab and Islamic hero.”336 Iraqi Vice
President Taha Yasin Ramadan visited Khartoum, Sudan, four days later to
survey the damage at the al Shifa pharmaceutical plant. The plant had been
bombed by the U.S. in retaliation for the attacks on the embassies. “The important thing is that we . . . know, and our people know, the intention of the
American administration, which is spurred on by Zionists and serves Zionist
aims, and what it is seeking by hitting specified areas and specific regions,”
Ramadan said. “It is up to us to make our people understand, and make them
aware, and prepare for other similar situations so that we can choose the best
331
http://cgi.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9905/12/kosovo.china.02/
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/jan-june99/china_statement_5-9.html
333
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-20-china-talks.htm
334
Fineman, Howard, and Martha Brant, “Bush’s Battle Cry,” Newsweek, Oct. 1, 2001, p. 29.
335
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/09/12/mideast.reaction/
336
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005814
332
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THE WORLD HATES US
means to confront this great injustice being directed by the United States at
the world today.”337
If this praise of bin Laden is not enough to convince readers that Saddam
Hussein saw himself as aligned with the al Qaeda leader, consider a July 21,
2001 article that appeared in Al-Nasriya, a government-controlled newspaper
published in the city on the Lower Euphrates of that name. “In this man's
heart you'll find an insistence, a strange determination that he will reach one
day the tunnels of the White House and will bomb it with everything that is
in it,” the article said of bin Laden. The article also discussed bin Laden’s
past attacks on U.S. targets and U.S. efforts “to pressure the Taliban movement so that it would hand them bin Laden, while he continues to smile and
still thinks seriously, with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about
the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House.”
Eerily, the article stated that bin Laden “will strike America on the arm that
is already hurting. That the man . . . will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra
every time he hears his song.”338 (My emphasis).
According to former CIA director James Woolsey, the article may have
been referring to the World Trade Center still “hurting” from the 1993 bombing. And, while Sinatra certainly sang many songs during his long career,
Woolsey suggested that the article was a reference to Sinatra’s recording of
“New, York, New York.”339
Prior to the invasion of Iraq, Iraq had apparently “predicted” 9/11, celebrated the 9/11 attacks, and proclaimed bin Laden a hero. It was also on the
Clinton State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism during the entire eight years of the Clinton administration. Clinton national security principals had stated time and again that there would never be peace in the Middle East as long as Saddam Hussein remained in power. And, finally, there
was a bipartisan, multi-administration consensus that Iraq had WMD or
could at least rapidly restart its WMD programs once the world’s attention
was directed elsewhere.
The world should thank the U.S. military and George W. Bush for removing Saddam from power. If certain people in other countries are not thankful,
they certainly are not entitled to an act of contrition from this country. Shame
on Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and other Democrats who say the world
is due an apology.
LOATHING AMERICA AT HOME
According to Eric Hoffer, “Nowhere at present is there such a measureless
loathing of their country by educated people as in America, and the savage
337
338
339
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/09/980902-in.htm
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/?id=110003069
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/graphics/pdf/iraqop.pdf
105
denigration is undoubtedly undermining the faith of the country’s potential
defenders. But since there is no organized revolutionary force to do the
wrecking, there has been no apocalyptic denouement. What we have instead
is a society that has lost its nerve and is becoming feckless and confused. We
have a society that cannot meet, let alone anticipate, challenges and has no
goal to strive for and hardly anything worth fighting for.” Further, “The adversary intellectual savors power not by building or wrecking but by discomfiting and denigrating, and by rubbing the noses of the majority in dirt.”340
Hoffer wrote those words more than three decades ago. However, are they
not just as true today? We can certainly point to Americans who have gained
influence and power abroad by denigrating President Bush and America.
This does not appear to be a modern phenomenon. As William F. Buckley, Jr. noted in 1959, “It is difficult to discourage young demagogues when
the record is there that a mere four years went by between the time that
President Truman accused Candidate Eisenhower of being anti-Semitic and
anti-Catholic, the Republican Party of being influenced largely by fascists,
and the time when Mr. Truman received a doctorate of human letters, honoris causa, from Oxford University.”341
Of course, it was General Eisenhower who, as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, commanded troops who defeated
fascists and freed Jews from concentration camps.
Jimmy Carter is one demagogue who followed Truman’s example, parlaying his criticism of George W. Bush and the United States into a Nobel
Peace Prize. Al Gore is another who was honored abroad after attacking
Bush and the United States. In addition to receiving an honorary doctorate
from Quebec’s Concordia University during the Youth Action Montreal’s
Youth Summit on Climate Change, Gore, like Carter, received a Nobel Peace
Prize. After complaining yet again about losing the 2000 presidential election, Gore made the following statement in his Nobel lecture in Oslo: “While
India is also growing fast in importance, it should be absolutely clear that it is
the two largest CO2 emitters—most of all, my own country—that will need
to make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their
failure to act.”342
After accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Gore flew to Bali, Indonesia,
where he said, “My own country, the United States, is principally responsible
for obstructing progress here in Bali.” Gore also called for implementing a
successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol two years early, in 2010.343
Gore conveniently ignores the fact that the Clinton-Gore administration
never submitted the Kyoto Protocol to the U.S. Senate for ratification. Of
340
In Our Time (paperback edition), p. 63.
Up From Liberalism, p. 19.
342
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/gore-lecture_en.html
343
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gBTCrOwOrOXV9BkLBDRmtO3XWbHQD8TGMTQG2
341
106
THE WORLD HATES US
course, if it had, it would not have been ratified. In 1997 the Senate passed
the Byrd-Hagel Resolution by a 95-0 vote. That resolution stated the
following:
Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that—
(1) the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other
agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997, or thereafter,
which would-(A) mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions
for the Annex I Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates
new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period, or
(B) would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States; and
(2) any such protocol or other agreement which would require the advice and
consent of the Senate to ratification should be accompanied by a detailed explanation of any legislation or regulatory actions that may be required to implement the protocol or other agreement and should also be accompanied by
an analysis of the detailed financial costs and other impacts on the economy
of the United States which would be incurred by the implementation of the
protocol or other agreement.344
Gore also fails to note that signatories to the Kyoto Protocol have, in
general, done a much poorer job of curtailing CO2 omissions than the U.S.
has. Randall Hoven at the American Thinker described the rest of the world’s
failure to do more in a December 11, 2007 post:
One would think that countries that committed to the Kyoto treaty are doing a
better job of curtailing carbon emissions. One would also think that the
United States, the only country that does not even intend to ratify, keeps on
emitting carbon dioxide at growth levels much higher than those who signed.
And one would be wrong.
The Kyoto treaty was agreed upon in late 1997 and countries started signing
and ratifying it in 1998. A list of countries and their carbon dioxide emissions
due to consumption of fossil fuels is available from the U.S. government. If
we look at that data and compare 2004 (latest year for which data is available)
to 1997 (last year before the Kyoto treaty was signed), we find the following.
Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
344
http://www.nationalcenter.org/KyotoSenate.html
107
Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.345
Emissions from countries that signed Kyoto increased at a rate that was
more than three times greater than the increase in the U.S. Nevertheless,
Gore reserved his criticism for his own country. Of course, criticizing Luxembourg’s increase of 43 percent, Iceland’s increase of 29 percent, or Norway’s increase of 24 percent might be considered rude. After all, Gore accepted his Nobel Peace Prize in Norway.
345
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/12/kyoto_schmyoto.html
108
CHAPTER 13
MEDIA MATTERS FOR HILLARY
Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil. - Jeremiah
13:23
I have displayed myself as I was, as vile and despicable when my
behavior was such, as good, generous and noble when I was so. I
have bared my secret soul as Thou thyself hast seen it, Eternal Being! - Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions
T
he article that appeared in the January 1994 issue of the American
Spectator was entitled “Living With the Clintons: Bill’s Arkansas
bodyguards tell the story the press missed.” The following claim in
the article would soon create a firestorm:
One of the troopers told the story of how Clinton had eyed a woman at a reception at the Excelsior Hotel in downtown Little Rock. According to the
trooper, who told the story to both Patterson and Perry as well, Clinton asked
him to approach the woman, whom the trooper remembered only as Paula,
tell her how attractive the governor thought she was, and take her to a room in
the hotel where Clinton would be waiting. As the troopers explained it, the
standard procedure in a case like this was for one of them to inform the hotel
that the governor needed a room for a short time because he was expecting an
important call from the White House.346
After the article was published, Paula Corbin Jones, the “Paula” mentioned in the article, filed a sexual harassment and eschewal suit against Clinton on May 6, 1994, two days prior to the three-year statute of limitations.
After several years of legal wrangling, Jones’ attorneys, hoping to demonstrate a pattern of behavior by Clinton, subpoenaed women they suspected
had had affairs with Clinton. Their list of women included Monica Lewinsky.
In his deposition for the Jones lawsuit, Clinton denied having “sexual relations” with Lewinsky. That falsehood ultimately led to the impeachment of
Bill Clinton in December 1998.
346
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=6736
109
According to L. Brent Bozell III, the president and founder of the Media
Research Center, the media virtually ignored the Troopergate story and its
author. “While talk radio was on fire with the story, the mainstream press
was practically silent,” Bozell wrote. “If any coverage was given, as it was
on CNN, the story was—again—the Clinton White House’s ‘outrage,’ not
the scandal itself.”347
In 1996, David Brock, the author of the Troopergate story, took a sharp
turn to the left when he praised Hillary Clinton in The Seduction of Hillary
Clinton. In July 1997, he turned on conservatives in an Esquire article entitled “Confessions of a Right-Wing Hit Man.” Brock in March 1998 penned a
public apology to Bill Clinton. “I do know that I didn’t learn a damn thing
worth knowing about your character,” Brock wrote.
With his shift to the left, Bozell said Brock stopped being a pariah and
became a media darling. He appeared on all three network morning shows, as
well as on Meet the Press and Face the Nation. According to Bozell, “No
conservative was allowed on the set to rebut his nonsense.”
In 2002, Brock expanded on his lengthy Esquire article and published his
next book, Blinded by the Right: Confessions of an Ex-Conservative. “Brock
appeared on the Today show and CNN News Night on back-to-back days,”
Bozell wrote. “He was on CNN’s Crossfire and Reliable Sources and on Tim
Russert's CNBC show. The New York Times ran a special feature on him, as
did USA Today. The Los Angeles Times ran a massive book review. On and
on it went, with hundreds upon hundreds of mentions given to the man who
wrote a book in which he proclaimed himself a liar.”348
Brock would take on conservatives again in The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. “Brock devoted
six pages documenting my evil career seeking—gasp!—‘balance’ in the media,” Bozell wrote, “and it’s a good microcosm of his book: a journalistic
high dive into the shallow end of the pool. Among other things, I am not, and
have never been, as Brock attempted to report, an ‘adviser’ to the National
Right to Life Committee. The Media Research Center no longer publishes a
newsletter called MediaWatch, which was discontinued in 1999. My salary is
not what he states. And my father married my mother, Patricia, not my aunt
Priscilla, a clarification that will surely comfort both.”349
At about the same time his new book was published, Brock announced he
was starting a new Web site called Media Matters for America (MMFA).
According to the New York Times, “Mr. Brock’s project was developed with
help from the newly formed Center for American Progress, the policy group
headed by John D. Podesta, the former Clinton chief of staff.”
347
348
349
Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming Meltdown of the Liberal Media, p. 45.
Ibid, pp. 45-46.
Ibid, p. 275.
110
The article also noted that Podesta “has loaned office space in the past to
Mr. Brock and introduced him to potential donors.” In addition, “Among Mr.
Brock’s donors is Leo Hindery Jr., the former cable magnate; Susie Tompkins Buell, who is co-founder of the fashion company Esprit and is close to
Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, and Ms. Buell’s husband Mark; and
James C. Hormel, a San Francisco philanthropist whose appointment as ambassador to Luxembourg was delayed for a year and a half in the late 1990’s
by conservative lawmakers protesting what they called his promotion of a
‘gay lifestyle.’”350
MMFA is often accused of being supported by George Soros, the billionaire financial speculator who spent millions of dollars towards the defeat of
George W. Bush in 2004. MMFA has adamantly denied that accusation in
numerous postings on its Web site. While there does not seem to be any evidence that Soros has directly supported MMFA, Soros-funded groups were
instrumental in getting Brock’s group started. As mentioned in the New York
Times article, John Podesta’s Center for American Progress helped Brock
develop MMFA, loaned office space to the new group, and introduced Brock
to potential donors. According to the Washington Post in 2003, Soros and
mortgage billionaires Herbert and Marion Sandler pledged at least $10 million in seed money to get the Center for American Progress started.351 Podesta also commissioned Morton H. Halperin to recruit the center’s fellows.
Today, Halperin concurrently serves senior vice president of the Center for
American Progress and director of Soros’ Open Society InstituteWashington, D.C. and the Open Society Policy Center.352
Another tie between the Center for American Progress and MMFA is Eric
Alterman. Alterman, a columnist for The Nation, concurrently serves as a
senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a senior fellow with
MMFA.353 Like Brock, Alterman has written a book, What Liberal Media?:
The Truth About Bias and the News, that made the unconvincing argument
that there is a conservative bias in the news media. Alterman is so extreme
that MSNBC, the network that continues to air Countdown with Keith Olbermann, fired him in September 2006. MMFA began hosting his “Altercation” weblog a few days later.354
MMFA has also benefited from contributions from the Democracy Alliance. Founded by Rob Stein, a former official in the Clinton Administration,
and various donors, Democracy Alliance partners in October 2005 agreed to
give $28 million to nine groups. According to The Nation, “[T]he bulk of the
350
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/03/business/media/03BROC.html?ex=1398916800&en=e6f532263784f
1bf&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
351
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A26232003Oct22&notFound=true
352
http://www.soros.org/newsroom/experts/halperin?skin=printable
353
http://www.mediamatters.org/about_us/staff_advisors
354
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14784419/#ImFired
111
money went to familiar names on the DC circuit, like the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank run by Podesta, and Media Matters for
America, which monitors right-wing media and media bias, headed by former conservative journalist David Brock.” The same article noted that
MMFA received “an $11 million commitment over three years” from Democracy Alliance donors.
According to The Nation, Soros is a Democracy Alliance donor. However, the magazine also noted the following: “The Alliance would not dole
out money itself, but collectively the partners would meet twice a year
through its auspices to decide which organizations to fund, forming working
groups based on four priority areas: ideas, media, leadership and civic engagement.”355
While MMFA may be technically correct in saying that Soros has not directly funded its efforts, it is clear that they have benefited indirectly from
Soros’ millions.
MMFA is also sensitive about being linked to Hillary Clinton. In a July 3,
2007 item entitled “Limbaugh again falsely described Media Matters as part
of ‘Clinton Inc.,’” MMFA criticized Rush Limbaugh for saying that “people
reporting on fundraising don’t tally the financial value of these front groups.
Media Matters, the Center for American Progress, they’re all her groups.
And they’re all supposedly independent and supposedly non-ideological and
supposedly charitable, non-profits and this sort of thing. But they’re Hillary
fundraising groups, or front groups that go out and promote her and attack
her enemies, and how do you put a dollar value on that? That’s part of Clinton Inc.”356
However, MMFA remained silent the following month after another person noted the potential value of MMFA and the Center for American Progress’ non-monetary contributions to Hillary Clinton’s campaign:
We are certainly better prepared and more focused on, you know, taking our
arguments, and making them effective, and disseminating them widely, and
really putting together a network, uh, in the blogosphere, in a lot of the new
progressive infrastructure, institutions that I helped to start and support like
Media Matters and Center for American Progress.357
Who made this statement? None other than Hillary Clinton herself at the
Yearly Kos convention. MMFA claims that it is not part of Clinton, Inc., yet
Hillary says she helped start and support MMFA. Who are we to believe? It’s
like choosing between the veracity of pathological liars Tommy Flanagan
and Joe Isuzu.
355
356
357
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061016/berman
http://mediamatters.org/items/200707030004?src=other
http://video1.washingtontimes.com/fishwrap/2007/10/hillary_i_helped_start_media_m_1.html
112
Further evidence of MMFA’s ties to Clinton Inc. can be found in the annual report of Colorado Media Matters, MMFA’s first state chapter. The
Colorado secretary of state lists Ridder-Braden, Inc. of Denver as the registered agent of Colorado Media Matters. The president and co-founder of
Ridder-Braden, Rick Ridder, served as the national campaign manager for
Dean for America in early 2003. In addition, he served as a senior consultant
for both Clinton-Gore campaigns. Ridder-Braden’s research director, Craig
Hughes, also worked for both Clinton-Gore campaigns. In November 2007,
Ridder-Braden noted that Tyler Chafee, a senior associate, was on leave from
the firm “to work full-time as the Colorado State Director for the Hillary
Clinton for President Campaign.”358
Despite MMFA’s numerous ties to the Clintons and Brock’s status as an
admitted liar, many in the mainstream media accept what MMFA puts on its
Web site as the gospel truth.
However, there are a few liberals who have not completely bought into
Brock’s latest charade. For example, on the June 30, 2001 edition of CNN’s
Reliable Sources, Jill Abramson of the New York Times said, “I think the
problem is that once David Brock admits he knowingly wrote lies, it’s hard
to figure out when to believe him, essentially….”359
Abramson and Jane Mayer, who in 1994 wrote Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, had taken issue with Brock’s portrayal of Anita Hill
in his 1993 best-seller The Real Anita Hill.
“I do not offer Brock absolution,” wrote liberal Boston Globe columnist
Ellen Goodman in 2001. “The man who made a best seller out of a defamatory rant now wants to make a best seller out of repentance. What’s his next
gig, ‘My Life as an Opportunist’? If his old allies accuse him of lying about
lying, he deserves that. He did too much damage.”360
Christopher Hitchens of The Nation took on Brock in a May 2002 column
entitled “The Real David Brock”:
When incurable liberals like Todd Gitlin and Eric Alterman begin using the
name Whittaker Chambers as a term of approbation, we are entitled to say
that there has been what the Germans call a Tendenzwende, or shift in the
zeitgeist. The odd thing is that they have both chosen to compare Chambers’s
Witness, a serious and dramatic memoir by any standards, to a flimsy and
self-worshiping book titled Blinded by the Right, by David Brock. Meyer
Schapiro, one of the moral heroes of the democratic left, once said that
Whittaker Chambers was incapable of telling a lie. That might well be phrasing it too strongly, but I have now been provoked by curiosity into reading
358
359
360
http://ridder-braden.com/content/18/our-people
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0106/30/rs.00.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/07/01/ED146619.DTL
113
Brock, and I would say without any hesitation that he is incapable of recognizing the truth, let alone of telling it.361
Unfortunately, most in the liberal media are not as discerning. On September 25, 2007, Rush Limbaugh did a “Morning Update” on Jesse MacBeth, who had made claims that he and his unit had committed war crimes in
Iraq. MacBeth had become a hero to the anti-war left for speaking out against
the war in Iraq. It turns out that, contrary to his claims, MacBeth had never
served in Iraq, he was never an Army Ranger, and he had never even made it
through Army basic training.
The following day, after Limbaugh referred to “phony soldiers” such as
MacBeth, MMFA went to work. An item entitled “Limbaugh: Service members who support U.S. withdrawal are ‘phony soldiers.’”362 Of course, those
whom Limbaugh called “phony soldiers” were not actual “service members.”
Nevertheless, MMFA stuck with its lie, which was then repeated by the media and liberal politicians.
MSNBC led the media attacks on Limbaugh. As the Media Research Center’s Brent Baker, noted, show after show on MSNBC smeared Limbaugh.
“Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh says veterans who support withdrawing the troops are ‘phony soldiers.’ Those are his words,” said Chris Matthews of Hardball, who obviously had not heard Limbaugh’s actual words.
Paul Rieckhoff, a liberal veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom who apparently
aspires to be his generation’s John Kerry, appeared as a Hardball guest and
said Limbaugh “didn’t go to Vietnam because he had a bump on his butt. So,
I mean, this guy’s a draft-dodger.”
After Matthews’ attacks on Limbaugh, it was Keith Olbermann’s turn.
“Limbaugh now trying to claim that his tirade referred to just one phony soldier, Jesse MacBeth who falsely claimed to be an Army Ranger and veteran
of the Iraq war,” said the Edward R. Murrow wannabe. “That re-write might
have a better chance of passing the smell test had Mr. Limbaugh’s original
‘phony soldiers’ comment—still plural at that point—not come nearly two
minutes before he ever mentioned MacBeth on yesterday’s radio show.”363
In addition to ignoring Limbaugh’s “Morning Update” on MacBeth the
day before his “phony soldier” comment, Olbermann appears to have engaged in a bit of projection. Consider Olbermann’s reaction to this exchange
between Rosie O’Donnell and Elizabeth Hasselbeck on the May 17, 2007
edition of The View:
361
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020527/hitchens
http://mediamatters.org/items/200709270010
363
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2007/09/28/show-after-show-msnbc-smears-limbaughphony-soldiers-distortion
362
114
O’DONNELL: I haven’t—I just want to say something. 655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead.* Who are the terrorists?
HASSELBECK: Who are the terrorists?
O’DONNELL: 655,000 Iraqis—I’m saying you have to look, we invaded—
HASSELBECK: Wait, who are you calling terrorists now? Americans?
O’DONNELL: I’m saying if you were in Iraq, and the other country, the
United States, the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed
655,000 of your citizens, what would you call us?
HASSELBECK: Are we killing their citizens or are their people also killing
their citizens?
O’DONNELL: We’re invading a sovereign nation, occupying a country
against the U.N.364
O’Donnell clearly asked, “Who are the terrorists?” and not “Who is the
terrorist?” However, Olbermann characterized O’Donnell’s statement as
such: “Last week Miss O’Donnell said, quote, 650,000 (sic) people have died
in Iraq. Who’s the terrorist? It seems like an obvious reference to President
Bush, but not on Fox noise, which decided she meant American troops.”365
Of course, an obvious reference to one person (i.e., President Bush) would
not use the word “are.” Olbermann’s statement was an obvious lie.
In Washington, Sen. John Kerry, who actually did smear those in uniform
after he returned from an abbreviated tour in Vietnam, issued this public
statement:
This disgusting attack from Rush Limbaugh, cheerleader for the Chicken
Hawk wing of the far right, is an insult to American troops. In a single moment on his show, Limbaugh managed to question the patriotism of men and
women in uniform who have put their lives on the line and many who died for
his right to sit safely in his air conditioned studio peddling hate. On August
19th, The New York Times published an op-ed by seven members of the U.S.
Army’s 82nd Airborne Division critical of George Bush’s Iraq policy. Two of
those soldiers were killed earlier this month in Baghdad. Does Mr. Limbaugh
dare assert that these heroes were ‘phony soldiers’? Mr. Limbaugh owes an
apology to everyone who has ever worn the uniform of our country, and an
apology to the families of every soldier buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He is an embarrassment to his Party, and I expect the Republicans who
flock to his microphone will now condemn this indefensible statement.366
*
O’Donnell was referring to a 2006 study by The Lancet that claimed 650,000 Iraqis died as a result of the
invasion of Iraq. It was later discovered that George Soros provided almost half the cost of the research
conducted by The Lancet. More recent research published by The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that 151,000 people—less than a quarter of The Lancet estimate—had died since the invasion in
2003. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3177653.ece
364
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxPkq8TCOJ8
365
Ibid.
366
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTdhNzdlNmVlMjQ0ZDY1ZTAxOWU0NmM4YWQzMTQyNzQ=
115
Tom Harkin took to the floor of the U.S. Senate and used these words to
condemn Limbaugh: “Maybe he was just high on his drugs again. I don’t
know whether he was or not. If so, he ought to let us know. But that
shouldn’t be an excuse.”367
Harkin’s condemnation in this case was a bit odd. According to the Wall
Street Journal, “In 1979, Mr. Harkin, then a congressman, participated in a
round-table discussion arranged by the Congressional Vietnam Veterans’
Caucus. ‘I spent five years as a Navy pilot, starting in November of 1962,’
Mr. Harkin said at that meeting, in words that were later quoted in a book,
Changing of the Guard, by Washington Post political writer David Broder.
“One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols
and photo-reconnaissance support missions. I did no bombing.”
On another occasion, Harkin claimed he “flew many missions to Vietnam
and the Philippines.” And in a short April 1, 1980 statement in the Congressional Record attacking the Veterans Administration for the way it was handling claims related to the herbicide Agent Orange, Harkin said that “as a
Vietnam veteran in Congress, I feel particularly responsible for seeing that
this issue continues to command our attention.”368
Challenged by Sen. Barry Goldwater, an Air Force General, to explain
why he was awarded neither the Vietnam Service Medal nor the Vietnam
Campaign Medal (decorations given to everyone who served in the Southeast
Asian theater), Harkin changed his story. He claimed that he instead had
flown combat sorties over Cuba during the 1960s. Harkin, who attacked
Limbaugh’s “phony soldier” statement, stretched the truth a bit concerning
his own military record. It turns out that he is a phony Vietnam veteran.
After Harkin’s statement, things continued to slide downhill for the Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the Senate floor to say
that he had prepared a letter to Mark P. Mays, CEO of Clear Channel Communications, “to publicly repudiate Rush Limbaugh’s characterization of
troops who speak out against the Iraq war as ‘phony soldiers.’” The following letter was signed by Reid, Hillary Clinton, and 39 other Senate Democrats:
Dear Mr. Mays,
At the time we sign this letter, 3,801 American soldiers have been killed in
Iraq, and another 27,936 have been wounded. 160,000 others awoke this
morning on foreign sand, far from home, to face the danger and uncertainty of
another day at war.
Although Americans of goodwill debate the merits of this war, we can all
agree that those who serve with such great courage deserve our deepest re-
367
368
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/01/harkin-maybe-limbaugh-was-high-on-drugs-again/
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005497
116
spect and gratitude. That is why Rush Limbaugh’s recent characterization of
troops who oppose the war as “phony soldiers” is such an outrage.
Our troops are fighting and dying to bring to others the freedoms that many
take for granted. It is unconscionable that Mr. Limbaugh would criticize them
for exercising the fundamentally American right to free speech. Mr. Limbaugh has made outrageous remarks before, but this affront to our soldiers is
beyond the pale.
The military, like any community within the United States, includes members
both for and against the war. Senior generals, such as General John Batiste
and Paul Eaton, have come out against the war while others have publicly
supported it. A December 2006 poll conducted by the Military Times found
just 35 percent of service members approved of President Bush’s handling of
the war in Iraq, compared to 42 percent who disapproved. From this figure
alone, it is clear that Mr. Limbaugh’s insult is directed at thousands of American service members.
Active and retired members of our armed forces have a unique perspective on
the war and offer a valuable contribution to our national debate. In August,
seven soldiers wrote an op-ed expressing their concern with the current strategy in Iraq. Tragically, since then, two of those seven soldiers have made the
ultimate sacrifice in Iraq.
Thousands of active troops and veterans were subjected to Mr. Limbaugh’s
unpatriotic and indefensible comments on your broadcast. We trust you will
agree that not a single one of our sons, daughters, neighbors and friends serving overseas is a “phony soldier.” We call on you to publicly repudiate these
comments that call into question their service and sacrifice and to ask Mr.
Limbaugh to apologize for his comments.369
The letter backfired. Limbaugh placed the smear letter on eBay, which received 231 bids and ultimately sold for $2,100,100. Limbaugh matched the
final bid with his own funds and contributed everything to the Marine CorpsLaw Enforcement Foundation, which offers scholarship assistance to children of Marines and federal law enforcement personnel whose parent dies on
duty.370 Limbaugh, who sits on the board of the foundation and has supported
it for several years, offered this challenge to Reid and his fellow Democrats
who signed the smear letter: “You say you support the military. You say
you’re big, and you think it’s patriotic, and that I was unpatriotic. Well, I
would like for each of you, Senator Reid, and the 40 senators who signed, to
match whatever the winning bid is. Show us your support for the U.S. military by all 41 of you pro-military people, Democrats in the Senate, match
whatever the winning bid is and send that amount to the Marine Corps-Law
369
370
http://democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=284592
http://mc-lef.org/
117
Enforcement Foundation.”371 To date, the Democrats, most of whom are millionaires many times over, have not met the challenge.
MMFA misrepresented Limbaugh’s “phony soldier” comment and, instead of damaging Limbaugh’s career and accomplishing its goal of getting
his program removed from Armed Forces Radio and Television Service*,
ended up embarrassing Hillary Clinton and her fellow Democrats.
The “phony soldier” episode should have discredited MMFA for good.
However, journalists who got MMFA’s misleading version of the “phony
soldiers” story also could have visited MMFA’s Web site during the same
period and discovered other false claims on unrelated topics. For example, in
an October 10, 2007 piece, Eric Boehlert wrote the following:
The media’s comical obsession earlier this month with the tone and frequency
of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s laugh didn’t just represent another head-smacking
moment in the annals of awful campaign journalism. It also served as a preview of what’s likely to come in 2008.
Anybody who thinks that if [Hillary] Clinton wins the Democratic nomination that the Cackle narrative won’t be revived has not been paying attention
in recent years. That’s why it’s so important to take a moment to understand
the press dynamics that allow a story like The Cackle to flourish, and why
pointless stories like that—and John Edwards‘ Haircut or Al Gore’s Sighs
during a 2000 presidential debate—only affect Democrats.
You simply cannot find examples in recent years of Republican presidential
candidates’ physical tics or trivial personal foibles that the press has pounced
on and announced to be wildly important and deeply revealing. That’s just not
a distraction Republican candidates have to deal with. The media phenomenon only applies to Democrats and the phenomenon only exists because journalists manufacture it.372
Of course, you only have to do an Internet search for the words “Bush
smirk” to know that Boehlert’s contention is false. For example, Slate.com’s
Timothy Noah addressed the “Bush smirk” in December 1999. “The smirk is
causing much justifiable worry in Republican circles,” Noah wrote. “‘I hear
some saying that his friendly outgoing personality on TV is mistaken for a
smirk and smugness,’ a ‘senior Republican official’ was quoted as saying in
the Dec. 8 Boston Globe.”373 The same piece even quoted The New Yorker’s
Joe Klein characterizing Bush’s smirk as “the tic.” Yet Boehlert claimed
there are no “examples in recent years of Republican presidential candidates’
371
No one in the liberal media, incidentally, asked why—if Limbaugh actually said what MMFA claims he
said—the troops themselves did not demand that Limbaugh’s program be removed.
372
http://www.mediamatters.org/columns/200710100002
373
http://www.slate.com/id/1004144/
*
118
physical tics or trivial personal foibles that the press has pounced on and announced to be wildly important and deeply revealing.”
While Brock and MMFA are very adept at misleading, they are quick to
accuse others of engaging in the same practice. In fact, MMFA names a
“Misinformer of the Year” every year. Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly “won” the
honor in 2004374, while the liberal Chris Matthews was MMFA’s pick for
2005.375 On January 17, 2008, Matthews apologized to his viewers for comments he made regarding Hillary Clinton.376 His apology was offered just one
day after MMFA’s David Brock wrote an open letter to NBC News President
Steve Capus. “As you know, the event precipitating the current firestorm surrounding Matthews’ conduct occurred on MSNBC last week in the wake of
Senator Hillary Clinton’s victory in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire,” Brock wrote. “During MSNBC’s coverage that night, Matthews said
he would ‘never underestimate Hillary Clinton again’—an apparent reference
to his long-standing pattern of on-air denigration of Senator Clinton’s candidacy and persona—documented in a Media Matters survey of Hardball with
Chris Matthews published December 18, 2007.”377
MMFA’s choice for 2006’s “misleader,” ABC, demonstrates the group’s
determination to rewrite the history of the Bill Clinton administration. “This
year saw ABC air The Path to 9/11, a two-part miniseries that placed the
blame for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Clinton administration and whitewashed some of the Bush administration’s failures leading up
to the attacks,” MMFA claimed.378
Unfortunately, MMFA failed to offer much evidence to support its claim
that The Path to 9/11, which was aired on September 10 and 11, 2006,
blamed Clinton and whitewashed Bush’s failures.
“When ABC broadcast the miniseries, it did so with numerous inaccuracies still in it,” MMFA claimed. “The first night of the two-part miniseries
included a fabricated scene that depicted Clinton administration officials declining to authorize the CIA to capture bin Laden. ABC retained the controversial scene despite the fact that it is contradicted by the 9-11 Commission
report and had even been disputed by conservative media figures.”
However, 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman told ABC News that the
movie “very well portrayed the events in a way that people can understand
them without doing violence to the facts.”379 “I think the U.S. Government
failed and failed very badly in two administrations not just one,” said Governor Thomas H. Kean, who chaired the 9/11 Commission and was the senior
(and unpaid) consultant for the movie. “And any depiction, miniseries or oth374
376
http://mediamatters.org/items/200801170019?f=h_top
377
378
379
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2419683&page=1
375
119
erwise, is going to show that and the people involved don’t like it.”380 Of
course, anyone who suggests that the Clinton administration failed very
badly opens himself up for attack. In an article entitled “Jersey Hustler,” Joe
Conason on Salon.com inaccurately claimed that Kean had been a “paid advisor” for The Path to 9/11. “For money and a moment of Hollywood glitz,
he sold out what should have been the crowning achievement of a career in
public service,” Conason wrote.381 Of course, MMFA also attacked Kean:
Might his son, Thomas H. Kean Jr., who is challenging Democrat Bob Menendez for his New Jersey Senate seat, not benefit from Kean’s high-profile
promotion of a film that falsely presents the actions of President Clinton, who
is campaigning for Menendez; by promoting a film that smears a Democratic
administration through fabricated scenes, is Kean not tarnishing his own image and that of the 9-11 Commission, which has to date acted in a largely bipartisan manner and produced a report that has garnered wide respect?382
Apparently, Conason and MMFA did not have as much concern about
Lee Hamilton, the former Democratic representative from Indiana and vice
chairman of the 9/11 Commission, selling out or tarnishing his own image.
After his work with the 9/11 Commission was completed, Hamilton joined
the advisory board of Stonebridge International, “a leading international advisory firm helping global business navigate the most promising and challenging markets, including Brazil, China, Russia and India.”383 Stonebridge
was co-founded in 2001 by Sandy Berger. That’s the same Sandy Berger
who, while preparing to testify before the 9/11 Commission, was caught
stealing and destroying highly sensitive classified material concerning the
Clinton administration’s handling of terrorism.
It’s difficult to imagine why MMFA and other Clinton defenders believe
a movie about 9/11 would not include the Clinton administration’s failures
regarding al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. After all, those failures were made
over eight years while the Bush administration’s failures took place between
January and September of just one year. MMFA also complained that ABC
(along with Scholastic Inc.) “omitted critical information regarding the Bush
administration’s pre-Iraq war weapons of mass destruction claims.” The fact
that those claims took place on the path after 9/11 was apparently lost on
MMFA.
If anything, perhaps MMFA and the rest of Clinton Inc. should be thankful for the treatment Bill Clinton and his administration received in The Path
to 9/11. Michael Scheuer, who created and served as the chief of the CIA’s
Osama bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center, was much more harsh
380
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=nation_world&id=4544008
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2006/09/15/kean/index_np.html
382
383
http://www.stonebridge-international.com/pages/page01b.html#alt
381
120
in his assessment of Clinton, Sandy Berger, and Richard Clarke. In an opinion piece before the movie aired, Scheuer wrote, “That trio, in my view, abetted al Qaeda, and if the September 11 families were smart they would focus
on the dereliction of Dick, Bill and Sandy and not the antics of convicted
September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui…. So, I look forward to
ABC’s mini-series, as well as to seeing the quality of the network’s factcheckers. If they do their job well, some of the September 11 Commission’s
whitewash may start to be peeled away. If they fail, however, the reality that
Bill, Dick and Sandy helped to push Americans out of the windows of the
World Trade Center on that September morning will be buried in miles of
fantasy-filled celluloid.”384
On September 9, 2006, Scheuer contacted ABC News via e-mail and offered this challenge:
This whole business over ABC’s movie is amazing. Now Arthur Schlesinger,
Jr. and a pack of political whores who pass themselves off as “historians”
have come out four-square for pre-publication censorship.
As I have told you, the core of the movie is irrefutably true: the Clinton administration had 10 chances to capture or kill bin Laden. Had the 9/11 Commission not whitewashed events, personal culpability would have been assigned and we as a nation could have moved on to fight al-Qaeda. The Commission turned out to be hack-dominated, however, and ignored the documents that were presented to them, as well as the testimony it received under
oath. Instead of telling the American people that the intelligence regarding
bin Laden, al-Qaeda and their intentions was abundant, precise, and not acted
on, the Commissioners blamed ‘the structure of the intelligence community’
for the failure and then proceeded to wreck the community with a horrendous
reform package.
The solution is really quite simple, I think. Declassify the documents and testimony of the men and women who risked their lives to collect the intelligence that Clinton and his lieutenants failed to act on. Present this information to the American people—and perhaps put some of those officers on TV
to answer questions—and then let the chips fall where they may. If the critics
of the ABC movie are so confident they are right, they would surely welcome
this process.385
In naming ABC as its Misinformer of the Year for 2006, MMFA also singled out former ABC News political director Mark Halperin. Halperin’s sin
was being a guest on Sean Hannity’s radio program and Bill O’Reilly’s Fox
News program after he and ABC News explained “how the (liberal) Old Media plans to cover the last two weeks of the election.” The October 23, 2006,
online piece was anything but misleading. For example, the first item in the
384
385
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20060704-110004-4280r.htm
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2006/09/index.html
121
piece noted that the liberal media would “Glowingly profile SpeakerInevitable Nancy Pelosi, with loving mentions of her grandmotherly steel
(see last night’s 60 Minutes), and fail to describe her as ‘ultra liberal’ or ‘an
extreme liberal,’ which would mirror the way Gingrich was painted twelve
years ago.”386
On October 30, just a week after Halperin’s piece appeared online, the
New York Times included a profile on Pelosi in which it was noted that, when
she noticed young women whispering while Bill Clinton was speaking to
Democratic donors, Pelosi, “mindful that some guests had paid $10,000 for a
plate of chicken and bread pudding, shot a frown — the sort a grandmother
gives when someone arrives at Christmas dinner in a wrinkled shirt — and in
a split second, the whispers ceased.” The article went on to quote Pelosi as
saying, “I think I am firm and strong.” The word “liberal” did appear in the
article: “Ms. Pelosi’s victory in that election came in part by coloring her
competitor in the primary, Harry Britt, as too liberal. In every election since,
she has been derided by her district’s most liberal activists as not liberal
enough.”387 Halperin nailed how the media planned to cover the 2006 election, yet the misleaders at MMFA labeled him a “misleader.”
Of course, if we are to accept MMFA’s contention that Mark Halperin
spins the news in favor of conservatives, we also have to ignore a few things
about him, including:

386
During the 1992 presidential campaign, Halperin, who was supposed
to be covering the Clinton campaign for ABC, instead assisted the
Clinton campaign. After The Wall Street Journal charged that Clinton had received a Vietnam draft deferment for an ROTC program
he never joined, Halperin was waiting for Clinton’s advisors to arrive in New Hampshire. “And as we got off the plane, Mark
Halperin of ABC hands Georgie [Stephanopoulos] and I this letter,”
said Paul Begala, “and I’m looking over George’s shoulder as he
reads it, and I see that line, ‘Thank you for saving me from the
draft,’ and my knees kind of buckled. And George said, ‘That’s it.
We’re through. We’re out. It’s over.’”388 With this heads up provided by Halperin, Clinton was given several days of advance warning to prepare his response before facing reporters’ questions about a
letter he had no reason to believe still existed.
While Halperin was a White House reporter with ABC, his father,
Morton (now with Podesta’s Center for American Progress), served
as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department under President Clinton.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=2599592&page=1
387
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/us/politics/30pelosi.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5088&en=1b0f4799a5
0dedca&ex=1319864400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/clinton/chapters/1.html
388
122

In 1997, the same year Mark Halperin was promoted to Political Director of ABC News, his brother, David (now Senior Vice President
at the Center for American Progress and the Director of Campus
Progress), began a four-year stint as speechwriter to President Clinton.389
In 1997, George Stephanopoulus, who had served as a senior political adviser for the Clinton campaign in 1992 and then President
Clinton’s communications director, joined ABC’s This Week as a
panelist. Remarkably, Stephanopolous was made the anchor of This
Week in 2002. As head of ABC News’ political division, Halperin
certainly had a say concerning whether or not Stephanopolous, a
self-described “true true believer” in Bill Clinton, would get the coveted position with This Week.
In October 2004, Halperin issued a memo in which he told ABC
News staff not to “reflexively and artificially hold both sides
‘equally’ accountable” during coverage of Democrat Kerry and Republican Bush. “I’m sure many of you have this week felt the
stepped up Bush efforts to complain about our coverage,” Halperin
wrote. “This is all part of their efforts to get away with as much as
possible with the stepped up, renewed efforts to win the election by
destroying Senator Kerry at least partly through distortions. It’s up to
Kerry to defend himself, of course. But as one of the few news organizations with the skill and strength to help voters evaluate what
the candidates are saying to serve the public interest. Now is the time
for all of us to step up and do that right.”390
Speaking at the University of Kansas’ Dole Institute for Politics in
December 2006, Halperin seemed to echo MMFA’s dubious contention that the so-called conservative media influence the rest of the
media. According to the Lawrence Journal-World, “Halperin
challenged the public to help end what he called ‘the freak show’
that has come to control national politics. In the ‘freak show,’ he
said, someone wanting to damage a political opponent leaks a bit of
information to The Drudge Report. It’s picked up by Rush Limbaugh
and Fox News, and it eventually finds its way to other outlets.”391
In addition to MMFA criticizing Halperin, Clinton Inc.’s think tank,
which has Halperin’s father and brother on its staff, took Halperin to task for
his comments about the “old” media. “It’s one thing to believe in an
imaginary liberal bias,” noted Think Progress, the Center for American
Progress’ blog. “It’s another to deceive yourself into thinking that everyone
else agrees with you.”392
In 2006 Halperin committed the sin of telling the truth about the liberal
media. A year later, he committed an even more serious sin in the eyes of the
389
http://www.americanprogress.org/experts/HalperinDavid.html
http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2004/10/09/20041009_195805_mh.htm
391
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/dec/07/journalist_gives_insight_08_presidential_race/
392
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/27/halperin-liberal-bias/
390
123
Media Matters myrmidons: Halperin wrote something less than flattering
about Hillary Clinton. Commenting on the Democrats’ October 30 primary
debate in Philadelphia, Eric Boehlert complained that the media echoed
talking points virtually word for word and steadfastly ignoring poll after poll
that showed the debate hadn’t changed the campaign dynamics one bit,
pundits tripped over themselves describing just how badly Clinton had been
bloodied and ‘cut’ in the debate fight.”393 Boehlert also mocked Halperin,
now with Time. Halperin had given Clinton a grade of C- for her debate
performance. “If she loses the nomination,” Halperin wrote, “tonight will go
down in history as the first step to her defeat — no fatal ‘Dean Scream’
catastrophe, but far from her finest moment, to say the least.”394
Of course, Halperin was far from the only observer to note that Clinton’s
performance was not her finest moment. In fact, when Clinton spoke to CNN
a week after the debate, she told Candy Crowley, “I wasn’t at my best the
other night. We’ve had a bunch of debates and I wouldn’t rank that up in my
very top list.”395
As far as “poll after poll that showed the debate hadn’t changed the
campaign dynamics one bit,” a Rasmussen Reports poll, “the first poll of the
race conducted since Senator Hillary Clinton’s debate gaffe concerning drivers licenses for illegal immigrants,” found that “Senator Hillary Clinton’s
lead in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire Primary has fallen to its lowest
level of the season.”396 A CNN Opinion Research Corporation poll released
on November 5 found that Clinton was “the top choice of 44 percent of the
likely Democratic voters interviewed for the poll. Her closest rival, Sen.
Barack Obama of Illinois, was the top choice of 25 percent….” In an October
CNN/Opinion Research poll, Clinton was supported by 51 percent of
Democratic voters and had a 30 point lead over Obama.397
Obviously, contrary to Boehlert’s claim, the debate changed the campaign
dynamics more than a bit. After all, it was Hillary Clinton who announced
she was suspending her presidential campaign on June 7.
393
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200711060002
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1678242_1678241_1678236,00.html
395
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/06/clinton.iowa/index.html
394
396
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_2008__1/2008_presidential_election/n
ew_hampshire/election_2008_new_hampshire_democratic_primary
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/05/poll.presidential.08/index.html
397
124
CHAPTER 14
LIKE SLOTHS TO A PLAME
They say opposites attract, but former diplomat Joseph Wilson and
his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, are the exception to that
rule. These two phonies make the perfect couple. – Boston Herald
editorial
D
uring the summer of 2004, the John Kerry presidential campaign
began operating a Web site at www.RestoreHonesty.com. The site
was launched after Ambassador Joe Wilson joined the Kerry team,
and its purpose was to highlight Wilson’s claims that the Bush administration
had gone to war in Iraq under false pretenses.
In mid-July 2004, however, something odd happened. When visitors attempted to visit www.RestoreHonesty.com, they received the message ‘‘Not
Found.’’ The entire site had disappeared.*
Actually, there was a good reason the Kerry campaign quickly dumped
the Wilson information down the memory hole: Joe Wilson had been shown
to be less than honest.
On July 10, 2004, the Washington Post reported, “Wilson’s assertions—
both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with
the information—were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.”398
Contrary to Wilson’s claim that his wife, Valerie Plame, had nothing to
do with him being sent to Niger, the Washington Post reported, “The report
states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame ‘offered up’
Wilson’s name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a
deputy chief in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations saying her husband ‘has
good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of
Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly
shed light on this sort of activity.’”
In addition, the bipartisan Senate panel “found that Wilson’s report, rather
than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has
said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts.”
*
Today the URL goes to a site completely unrelated to Wilson and Kerry. However, if you use the Wayback Machine at www.archive.org, the original Web site can be retrieved.
398
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html
125
Even the Kerry campaign had enough common sense not to highlight a
liar at a Web site named www.RestoreHonesty.com.
That should have been the end of the story for the former ambassador.
However, Joe “Lies-R-Us” Wilson rose from the dead and began peddling
the same lies in 2005—this time he had help from, among others, Larry
Johnson, a former CIA intelligence analyst who had served with Plame.
In a July 17, 2005 column in the Star Tribune, Johnson attacked the Bush
administration for allegedly blowing Plame’s cover. The column concluded
with these words: “At the end of the day, Wilson was right. There were no
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was the Bush administration that
pushed that lie, and because of that lie Americans are dying. Shame on those
who continue to slander Joe Wilson while giving Bush and his pack of liars a
pass. That’s the true outrage.”399
Of course, if the Bush administration lied about Iraq having weapons of
mass destruction (WMD), then every major intelligence agency in the world
lied, Arab leaders lied, and the Clinton administration lied for eight years.
Clinton’s top expert on Iraq, Kenneth Pollack, had to be a liar since in The
Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (2002) Pollack claimed,
among other things, that “The German intelligence service, using methods it
won’t divulge, estimated in 2001 that Iraq was three to six years from having
a nuclear weapon.” Pollack’s book was written with the imprimatur of the
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). CFR’s board of directors includes at
least six Clinton administration officials, including Madeleine Albright and
Richard Holbrooke.
If the Bush administration lied about Iraq having WMD, then there is yet
another person who lied. Visitors to Wilson’s own Web site* can find several
columns that he has written over the past few years. On October 13, 2002,
Wilson wrote a column entitled “How Saddam Thinks” for the San Jose
Mercury News. In this column, Wilson asks, “Can we disarm Saddam this
time without risking a chemical attack or a broader regional war that threatens our allies?”400
Risk a chemical attack from a country that posed no threat because it had
no WMD?
Wilson also referred to Iraq’s WMD in a February 6, 2003 column in the
Los Angeles Times: “There is now no incentive for Hussein to comply with
399
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5509192.html
Wilson’s Web site is found at www.politicsoftruth.com. Of course, his book is also called The Politics of
Truth: A Diplomat's Memoir: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity. This
writer has noticed that when a liberal uses the word “truth” in the title of a book, movie, or organization,
that entity almost invariably has little to do with truth. Examples include Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth,
Al Franken’s The Truth, Keith Olbermann’s Truth and Consequences, and Paul Rieckhoff’s Operation
Truth. Also, recall that Pravda, an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991, meant “truth” in Russian. Unless someone else has made the same observation, I’ll
call this phenomenon “Groenhagen’s Law.”
400
http://www.politicsoftruth.com/editorials/saddam.html
*
126
the inspectors or to refrain from using weapons of mass destruction to defend
himself if the United States comes after him. And he will use them; we
should be under no illusion about that.”401 This column was published just
nine days after President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address, the address
in which Bush said, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” However, Wilson made no mention of Niger, uranium, or the president’s address.
(Note: The Butler report, “Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction,” which was released in the United Kingdom in July 2004, concluded that “the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of
28 January 2003...was well founded.”)
Given that it was clear Johnson lied about Wilson being “right” about
Iraq’s WMD, one would have expected the Democrats to drop him as quickly
as the Kerry campaign dropped Wilson in 2004. Incredibly, that was not the
case. Just six days after Johnson lied in the Star Tribune*, the Democrats allowed him to deliver their weekly radio address. In the address, Johnson
talked about the alleged leak of Valerie Plame’s name and offered listeners
yet another falsehood: “The President has flip-flopped on his promise to fire
anyone at the White House implicated in a leak.”
Here’s what Bush said on July 18, 2005: “I would like this to end as
quickly as possible so we know the facts, and if someone committed a crime
they will no longer work in my administration.”
And here’s what Bush said on Sept. 30, 2003: “If there is a leak out of my
administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the
law, the person will be taken care of...”
Where’s the flip-flop? Bush’s pledge was predicated on a member of the
Bush administration committing a crime in the Plame case. To date, no one
has been charged with a crime specifically related to the so-called leaking of
Valerie Plame’s identity. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of
staff, was indicted on federal obstruction and perjury charges and resigned
immediately after being indicted. He was later convicted, but not for
revealing the name of an undercover CIA agent.
Johnson also stated the following in his address:
401
http://www.politicsoftruth.com/editorials/big_cat.html
Johnson also included this lie in his Star Tribune column: “The lies by people like Victoria Toensing,
Rep. Peter King and P.J. O'Rourke insist that Plame was nothing, just a desk jockey. Yet, until Novak
betrayed her, she was still undercover and the company that was her front was still a secret to the world.”
In fact, the name of Plame’s front company was exposed by the Wilsons four years before Novak’s column was published. According to records at www.opensecrets.org, Joe Wilson contributed $2,000 to Al
Gore’s presidential campaign on March 26, 1999. At that time, the contribution limit was $1,000, so the
Gore campaign returned $1,000 to Wilson on April 22, 1999. On the same day, Valerie Wilson is listed as
contributing $1,000 to Gore’s campaign. Under “occupation,” Wilson listed “Brewster-Jennings &
Assoc.,” the front company Johnson claimed was “a secret to the world” until 2003.
*
127
We must put to bed the lie that she was not undercover. For starters, if she
had not been undercover then the CIA would not have referred the matter to
the Justice Department.
Val only told those with a need to know about her status in order to safeguard
her cover, not compromise it. She was content with being known as an energy
consultant married to Ambassador Joe Wilson and the mother of twins.402
This raises a question. Johnson left the CIA in 1989. As a civilian in
2003, he didn’t have “a need to know about her status.” Therefore, how can
he confidently make the claim that Plame was indeed undercover in July
2003?
When it comes to Plame’s status, this is where Johnson is most dishonest.
He claims Plame was a non-official cover (NOC) officer, whose blown cover
“compromised her company and every individual overseas who had been in
contact with that company and with her.” However, Time magazine reported
in October 2003 that Fred Rustmann, a former CIA official who put in 24
years as a spymaster and was Plame’s boss for a few years, said “Plame was
never a so-called deep-cover NOC.” This means the “agency did not create a
complex cover story about her education, background, job, personal life and
even hobbies and habits that would stand up to intense scrutiny by foreign
governments.” Time also reported that Plame’s cover “probably began to unravel years ago when Wilson first asked her out. Rustmann describes Plame
as an ‘exceptional officer’ but says her ability to remain under cover was
jeopardized by her marriage in 1998 to the higher-profile American diplomat.”403 (Note: Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., suggested that unless Wilson was a
polygamist, it didn’t matter that Karl Rove did not use Plame’s name when
he mentioned “Wilson’s wife.”404 While Wilson is not a polygamist, Plame is
his third wife.)
As far as putting individuals overseas at risk, the Los Angeles Times on
July 16 reported, “Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said it was
unlikely Plame was in danger as a result of being identified. An internal CIA
review concluded that her exposure caused minimal damage, mainly because
she had been working at headquarters for years, former officials familiar with
the review said.”405
Common sense should tell us that someone who goes to work day after
day at CIA headquarters for several years is not a “deep-cover NOC.” If that
is not enough to indicate Plame’s true status, the fact that the CIA willingly
confirmed her employment with the CIA should.
Robert Novak on September 29, 2003 stated the following on CNN:
402
http://www.dnc.org/a/2005/07/former_cia_offi.php
http://foi.missouri.edu/iipa/nocnoc.html
404
http://www.house.gov/inslee/issues/security/covert_identity.html
405
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news3/latimes120.html
403
128
Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July, I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson’s report when
he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on
weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing.
When I called the CIA in July, they confirmed Mrs. Wilson’s involvement in
a mission for her husband. They asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential
source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives.406
If Plame were an undercover agent, why did the CIA confirm her “involvement in a mission for her husband”? It seems a more appropriate response to Novak’s inquiry would have been, “I’m sorry, Mr. Novak, but
there is no Valerie Plame employed with the CIA.” According to the 1982
Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the intelligence community has to take
steps to affirmatively protect someone’s cover. Obviously, the CIA failed to
do this when it confirmed Plame’s employment with the agency.
Joe Wilson endorsed Hillary Clinton and William Arkin of the
Washington Post reported that he was one of her national security and
foreign policy advisers.407 Clinton Inc. and their allies in the media have
manufactured a myth concerning Wilson and Plame. Here is how Rebecca
Traister of Salon.com dishonestly portrayed the myth: “Wilson went to Niger; he found no evidence that Iraq could have obtained uranium there; he
reported his findings; the White House disregarded them; Wilson wrote
about that; and the White House retaliated against his family, compromising
national security in the process.”408
There’s a slight problem with this myth: the chronology is off. According
to Newsweek, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Washington
Post reporter Bob Woodward about Plame’s identity three weeks before talking to Robert Novak. Armitage met with Novak on July 8, 2003—“just days
before Novak published his first piece identifying Plame.”409
Armitage spoke with Woodward in mid-June 2003. However, the New
York Times did not publish Wilson’s column until July 6. Therefore, how
could revealing Plame’s identity to the media be retaliation for Wilson’s column? How could have Armitage known in mid-June that the New York Times
would publish Wilson’s column three weeks later, let alone know the content
of that column? Since the mainstream media (i.e., the “sloths”) lack the de-
406
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/29/novak.cia/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/documents/the-war-over-the-wonks.html
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2007/10/24/valerie_plame/
409
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14533384/site/newsweek
407
408
129
sire, integrity, and motivation to ask these and other questions concerning the
Wilsons, others will have to do that job.
130
CHAPTER 15
MISCELLANOUS MOONBAT MYTHS
Moonbat (also “barking moonbat” and “moonbat crazy”) is a
term often used currently in U.S. politics as a political epithet referring to anyone that is liberal or on the left. – Wikipedia
George Bush is on the ballot in 2008. - Rahm Emanuel410
I
n addition to rewriting the history of the Clinton administration, the
“moonbats” have been busy propagating myths concerning the Bush administration. I have included several of those myths below, in no particular order, along with the facts. We will certainly hear many of these myths
repeated as the Democrats run against George W. Bush during 2008.
MYTH: The Bush administration gave the Taliban $43 million before
9/11.
On May 22, 2001, Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer claimed that
the Bush administration had made a Faustian deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan:
Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the
only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.
That’s the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban
rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human
rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of
State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main
sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that “rogue regime” for declaring that
opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban’s estimation, are most human activities, but it’s the ban on drugs that catches this administration’s attention.
410
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/24/america/NA-GEN-US-Iraq-Politics.php
131
Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American
terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other
crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in
1998.
Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a
time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden.411
Scheer’s column received little notice when it was published. However,
after 9/11 it appeared on numerous left-wing Web sites. Michael Moore repeated Scheer’s claim on several occasions, including on the March 8, 2002
edition of ABC’s Politically Incorrect.412 Slightly more credible commentators, such as The New Yorker’s Hendrick Hertzberg and The Independent’s
Robert Fisk, also claimed that Bush gave the Taliban $43 million.
If these liberals would have done a little research, they would have discovered that the Bush administration did not give $43 million to the Taliban.
The U.S. State Department actually issued a press release on May 17, 2001
that explicitly noted that the $43 million was for humanitarian assistance.
According to Secretary of State Colin Powell, “[The aid] bypasses the Taliban, who have done little to alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people and
much to exacerbate it.”
The liberal commentators also missed this fact in the May 17 press release: “Last year the U.S. contributed about $114 million in aid, making it
the largest provider of humanitarian assistance to Afghans.”413
Of course, “last year” would have been 2000, the final year of the Clinton
administration. Scheer apparently failed to notice that each and every one of
those 114 million dollars in assistance was delivered to Afghanistan after the
UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1267. This resolution established
the “Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee.”414
The Los Angeles Times in November 2005 fired Scheer. According to
Scheer, “The publisher Jeff Johnson, who has offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I
assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by President Bush to
justify the invasion of Iraq.”415 Another possibility is Scheer’s own lies, such
as claiming the Bush administration gave $43 million to the Taliban, led to
his dismissal.
411
http://www.robertscheer.com/1_natcolumn/01_columns/052201.htm
http://abc.go.com/primetime/politicallyincorrect/episodes/2001-02/308.html
The press release’s original URL, http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/global/refugees/01051702.htm, is
inactive and cannot be retrieved. Given how widespread this myth is on the Internet, the State Department
would be wise to make it available online. The full contents of the press release can be viewed at
http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/5-17-03/discussion.cgi.17.html. In addition, a State Department fact
sheet regarding the $43 million can be found at
http://usinfo.state.gov/is/Archive_Index/U.S._Increases_Aid_to_Relieve_Afghan_Crisis.html
414
http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1267/index.shtml
415
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/on-leaving-the-la-tim_b_10509.html
412
413
132
MISCELLANEOUS MOONBAT MYTHS
MYTH: “Veterans of the Clinton administration say the Bush team
didn’t take their al-Qaeda warnings and plans seriously enough.” – Dan
Rather, CBS News, August 5, 2002
Liberal commentators often claim the Clinton administration gave the incoming Bush administration a war plan to go after al Qaeda. For example, Al
Franken in Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them lied when he claimed
that the Clinton administration had a “far-reaching plan” to eliminate al
Qaeda and that the Clinton team “decided to turn over the plan to the Bush
administration to carry out.”416 Most of these claims are based on a discredited August 4, 2002 article in Time.417 However, Sandy Berger stated the following before the 9/11 Commission: “But there was no war plan that we
turned over to the Bush administration during the transition. And the reports
of that are just incorrect.”418
MYTH: Vice President Dick Cheney said Iraq had reconstituted nuclear
weapons.
In the June 27, 2003 issue of the New York Times, columnist Nicholas D.
Kristof wrote the following:
Hawks need to wrestle with the reckless exaggerations of intelligence that
were used to mislead the American public. Instead, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld declared Tuesday, “I don’t know anybody in any government or
any intelligence agency who suggested that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons.”
Let me help. Mr. Rumsfeld, meet George Tenet, director of central intelligence, who immediately before the Congressional vote on Iraq last October
issued a report asserting: “Most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.” Meet Vice President Dick Cheney, who said about
Saddam on March 16: “We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear
weapons.”419
Let me help, Mr. Kristof. If Tenet said Iraq is “reconstituting its nuclear
weapons program,” that is far different from him saying Iraq already had nuclear weapons.
Cheney’s statement is a slightly different case. However, common sense
should have told Kristof that if Saddam never had nuclear weapons, then he
had no nuclear weapons to reconstitute. If you read the entire Meet the Press
transcript from which Kristof got the Cheney quote, it is clear that Cheney
416
p. 115.
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020812/story.html
418
http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/hearings/911hearing-trans-sept19b.htm
419
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/27/opinion/27KRIS.html?ex=1193889600&en=2ec0da366b252830&ei=5070
417
133
was referring to a reconstituted nuclear weapons program. Here is part of
what Cheney said during his March 16 appearance:
And I think that would be the fear here, that even if he were tomorrow to give
everything up, if he stays in power, we have to assume that as soon as the
world is looking the other way and preoccupied with other issues, he will be
back again rebuilding his BW and CW capabilities, and once again reconstituting his nuclear program. He has pursued nuclear weapons for over 20
years. Done absolutely everything he could to try to acquire that capability
and if he were to cough up whatever he has in that regard now, even if it was
complete and total, we have to assume tomorrow he would be right back in
business again.
We know he’s out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we
know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups,
including the al-Qaeda organization.
We know that based on intelligence that he has been very, very good at hiding
these kinds of efforts. He’s had years to get good at it and we know he has
been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe
he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly
is wrong. And I think if you look at the track record of the International
Atomic Energy Agency and this kind of issue, especially where Iraq’s concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam
Hussein was doing. I don’t have any reason to believe they’re any more valid
this time than they’ve been in the past.420
These statements leave no doubt that Cheney was referring to a reconstituted nuclear weapons program, and not actual nuclear weapons. Even the
sentence that Kristof quoted was immediately preceded with “we know he
has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons.” (My emphasis)
Unfortunately, Kristof was not the only commentator to take Cheney’s
words out of context. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, perhaps
the most dishonest member of the U.S. Senate*, took Cheney’s comment out
of context several times during interviews, including on Meet the Press.
“And on your show, you had that one Sunday the vice president of the United
States saying [Saddam’s] reconstituted his nuclear weapons,” Biden said. “I
was on a simultaneous program, they asked me the question. I said either the
president—either the vice president’s not telling the truth or he did not get
the same briefing I have or he fully misunderstands what he was told.”421
420
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/cheneymeetthepress.htm
Biden dropped out of the 1988 presidential campaign after campaign operatives with Massachusetts Gov.
Michael S. Dukakis secretly distributed to news media outlets an “attack video” juxtaposing Biden’s
speeches with those of British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock. Dukakis insisted that he had no prior
knowledge concerning the exposure of Biden’s plagiarism.
421
*
134
Russert made no effort to correct Biden. And he certainly did not remind
Biden that he also claimed Saddam was pursuing nuclear weapons before the
invasion.422
MYTH: “For opponents, Bush’s notorious 16 words in his State of the
Union address erroneously talking up the Iraqi nuclear threat make up a
far more important prevarication than Clinton’s 11 (‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.)” - Nicholas Thompson,
Salon.com
I had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Robert Novak at the Robert
J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas on October 30, 2007.
Of course, the Plame affair was a topic of discussion. During that discussion,
Interim Director Jonathan Earle, an associate professor of history, characterized Bush’s 16 words as a lie. Of course, Earle was not the first to do so. For
example, the New York Times’ Frank Rich in a November 27, 2005 column
referred to Bush’s “bogus 16 words about Saddam’s fictitious African uranium.”423 “Cherry-picking convenient lies about something as important as
nuclear war is bad enough but the administration’s attempts to spin the aftershocks have been even worse,” wrote Arianna Huffington in July 2003.
“They just don’t seem to grasp the concept that when you’re sending American soldiers to die for something the reasons you give—all of the reasons—
should be true.”424 “[A]s late as the president’s State of the Union address in
January 2003, our policymakers were still using information which the intelligence community knew was almost certainly false,” claimed Sen. Carl
Levin, then the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.425
It turns out the 16 words were not a lie.
On July 26, 2004, FactCheck.org, “a nonpartisan, nonprofit, ‘consumer
advocate’ for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion
in U.S. politics,” posted an item entitled, “Bush’s ‘16 Words’ on Iraq & Uranium: He May Have Been Wrong But He Wasn’t Lying.” FactCheck.org
included this summary of their report:
A British intelligence review released July 14 calls Bush’s 16 words “well
founded.”
A separate report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee said July 7 that
the US also had similar information from “a number of intelligence reports,”
a fact that was classified at the time Bush spoke.
422
http://www.joebiden.com/getinformed/opeds?id=0056
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112705Y.shtml
424
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/16427/
425
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/08/sprj.irq.bush.sotu/index.html
423
135
Ironically, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who later called Bush’s 16
words a “lie”, supplied information that the Central Intelligence Agency took
as confirmation that Iraq may indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger.
Both the US and British investigations make clear that some forged Italian
documents, exposed as fakes soon after Bush spoke, were not the basis for the
British intelligence Bush cited, or the CIA’s conclusion that Iraq was trying to
get uranium.
None of the new information suggests Iraq ever nailed down a deal to buy
uranium, and the Senate report makes clear that US intelligence analysts have
come to doubt whether Iraq was even trying to buy the stuff. In fact, both the
White House and the CIA long ago conceded that the 16 words shouldn’t
have been part of Bush’s speech.
But what he said – that Iraq sought uranium – is just what both British and
US intelligence were telling him at the time. So Bush may indeed have been
misinformed, but that’s not the same as lying.426
MYTH: In his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush characterized Iraq as an “imminent threat.”
The day after Bush delivered his address, the Los Angeles Times published an
article with the front-page headline “Bush Calls Iraq Imminent Threat.” According to Times staff writer Maura Reynolds, “A somber and steely President Bush, speaking to a skeptical world Tuesday in his State of the Union
address, provided a forceful and detailed denunciation of Iraq, promising
new evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime poses an imminent danger to
the world and demanding the United Nations convene in just one week to
consider the threat.”427
Reynolds must have been listening to a different speech. Here is what
Bush actually said:
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have
terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice
before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all
actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the
sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.428
Bush’s position was that Saddam’s Iraq was not yet an imminent threat,
but a “serious and mounting threat to our country, and our friends and our
allies.” This point was earlier made by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz in December 2002:
426
427
428
http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/iraqimminent.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html
136
Some people said [during the Cuban Missile Crisis] that Kennedy should
have waited until the threat was imminent. We hear that again today. But we
cannot wait to act until the threat is imminent. The notion that we can do
so assumes that we will know when the threat is imminent. That wasn’t true
even when the United States was presented with the very obvious threat of
Soviet missiles in Cuba. As President Kennedy said 40 years ago, “We no
longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a
sufficient challenge to a nation’s security to constitute maximum peril.” If
that was true in 1962, facing a threat that was comparatively easy to see, how
much more true is it today against threats developed by terrorists who use the
freedom of democratic societies to plot and plan in our midst in secret.
Stop and think for a moment. Just when did the attacks of September 11
become imminent? Certainly they were imminent on September 10, although
we didn’t know it. In fact, the September 11 terrorists established themselves
in the United States long before that date—many months or even a couple of
years earlier. Anyone who believes that we can wait until we have certain
knowledge that attacks are imminent has failed to connect the dots that
took us to September 11.429
Even Bush critic Al Gore acknowledged that the Bush administration was
not arguing that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Speaking before the Commonwealth Club on September 23, 2002, Gore said, “President Bush now
asserts that we will take preemptive action even if the threat we perceive is
not imminent.”430 Gore had apparently forgotten that he was part of an administration that also took preemptive action against Iraq in December 1998.
That action was not characterized as a response to an imminent threat, but as
a response to a “threat of the future.”431
There is little, if any, difference between how the Clinton administration
characterized the threat posed by Iraq and how the Bush administration characterized that same threat. For example, in a January 11, 2001 press release,
Richard Holbrooke, Bill Clinton’s U.S. ambassador to the UN, was quoted as
saying Iraq would be a major issue for the incoming Bush administration.
“Saddam Hussein’s activities continue to be unacceptable and, in my view,
dangerous to the region and, indeed, to the world,” Holbrooke said, “not only
because he possesses the potential for weapons of mass destruction but because of the very nature of his regime. His willingness to be cruel internally
is not unique in the world, but the combination of that and his willingness to
export his problems makes him a clear and present danger at all times.”432
The Clinton administration had used the “clear and present danger”
phrase before. Secretary of Defense William Perry in 1996 said the following
429
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/02/02-12wolfowitz-speech.html
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/02/02-09gore-speech.html
431
432
430
137
after Saddam Hussein attacked the northern Kurdish city of Irbil: “The issue
is not simply the Iraqi attack on Irbil, it is the clear and present danger that
Saddam Hussein poses to his neighbors, the security and stability of the region and the flow of oil to the world.”433
The response to this “clear and present danger” was a U.S. missile strike
against Iraqi military targets in southern Iraq.
When Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox against Iraq in December
1998, he said that he and his national security advisers “agreed that Saddam
Hussein presented a clear and present danger to the stability of the Persian
Gulf and the safety of people everywhere.”434
In two cases, when the Clinton administration characterized Saddam as a
“clear and present danger,” that characterization was accompanied by the use
of military force against Iraq. As late as the transition period in January 2001,
Holbrooke expressed his view that Saddam posed a “clear and present danger
at all times.”
Presumably, “at all times” would include the years 2001-2003. Indeed,
the term “clear and present danger” continued to be used vis-à-vis Saddam
during the lead up to the invasion. The Weekly Standard’s Terry Eastland in
October 2002 addressed the use of the phrase “clear and present danger” in
relation to a preemptive strike against Iraq: “In fact, if you do a Nexis search
for the past six months for ‘clear and present danger’ and ‘Iraq,’ you’ll find
more than 600 mentions. Do the same search on Google and you’ll get more
than 4,600.”435
Those mentions included comments from those who believed Saddam
was a clear and present danger. For example, U.S. Ambassador J. Richard
Blankenship on October 8, 2002 delivered an address entitled “Iraq: A Clear
and Present Danger” before American Men’s & Women’s Club.436
The mentions also included comments from those who argued that Saddam was a clear and present danger, but not yet an imminent threat. For example, speaking before the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International
Studies on September 27, 2002, Sen. Ted Kennedy said, “There is clearly a
threat from Iraq, and there is clearly a danger, but the Administration has not
made a convincing case that we face such an imminent threat to our national
security that a unilateral, pre-emptive American strike and an immediate war
are necessary.”437
Kennedy offered no explanation for why he required an imminent threat
threshold for a preemptive strike on Iraq in 2003 when a clear-and-presentdanger threshold was sufficient for a preemptive strike on Iraq in 1998.
433
http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/9609/03/iraq.pentagon/index.html
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=41731
435
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/746piwrd.asp?pg=1
436
http://usembassy.state.gov/nassau/wwwhiraq.html
437
http://www.alternet.org/story/14195
434
138
Kenneth Pollack in The Threatening Storm showed why Kennedy’s imminent threat threshold was a foolish one: “Some have argued that the weakness of Iraq’s current arsenal means that it is unnecessary to invade at this
point—because Saddam does not constitute an immediate threat. This claim
effectively suggests that we should wait until Saddam acquires the capacity
to inflict massive damage before we take action against him. This is the problem that we face: by the time Saddam truly is threatening, it will be too late
to do anything about it. We act either before he has acquired these capabilities or not at all.”438
MYTH: The United States created Osama bin Laden.
In June 2004, Slate.com’s Fred Kaplan claimed that, while Ronald Reagan
played a role in ending the Cold War, he “also played a major role in bringing on the terrorist war that followed—specifically, in abetting the rise of
Osama Bin Laden.”439
Robin Cook, former leader of the British House of Commons and Foreign
Secretary from 1997-2001, made the same “blowback” argument in 2005:
Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western
security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded
by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the
thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the
CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it
never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the
way, Bin Laden’s organisation would turn its attention to the west.440
CNN terrorist analyst Peter Bergen, who interviewed bin Laden in 1997,
in 2006 called the “blowback” argument “hogwash”:
The story about bin Laden and the CIA—that the CIA funded bin Laden or
trained bin Laden—is simply a folk myth. There’s no evidence of this. In fact,
there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S.
government agree on. They all agree that they didn’t have a relationship in
the 1980s. And they wouldn’t have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money,
he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently.
The real story here is the CIA didn’t really have a clue about who this guy
was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.441
438
p. 418.
http://www.slate.com/id/2102243/
440
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1523838,00.html
441
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/08/15/bergen.answers/index.html
439
139
The folk myth concerning the CIA and bin Laden apparently became so
widespread that the State Department was compelled to respond to the misinformation. A 2005 article asked the question “Did the U.S. ‘Create’ Osama
bin Laden?”442 That question was answered in the negative by, among others,
Bergen, al Qaeda’s number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Milt
Bearden, who served as the CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989.
Oddly, many of those who subscribe to the “blowback” theory also argue that
Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden would never cooperate with one another because the former was a secularist and the latter is an Islamic extremist. If bin Laden would not cooperate with a secularist such as Saddam, why
would he cooperate with the so-called “Great Satan”?
MYTH: Rendition is something the Bush administration cooked up.
Daniel Benjamin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and NSC staff
member from 1994 to 1999, addressed this and several other myths concerning rendition in October 2007:
Beginning in 1995, the Clinton administration turned up the speed with a fullfledged program to use rendition to disrupt terrorist plotting abroad. According to former director of central intelligence George J. Tenet, about 70 renditions were carried out before Sept. 11, 2001, most of them during the Clinton
years.443
Benjamin suggests the Clinton administration worked to ensure that targets were not tortured. “The guidelines for Clinton-era renditions required
that subjects could be sent only to countries where they were not likely to be
tortured—countries that gave assurances to that effect and whose compliance
was monitored by the State Department and the intelligence community,”
Benjamin wrote. “It’s impossible to be certain that those standards were upheld every time, but serious efforts were made to see that they were.”
However, Michael Scheuer, who devised the rendition system, said in
2005 that targets were tortured before and after 9/11. “I have no doubt about
it,” Scheuer said. “You’d think I’m an ass if I said nobody was tortured.
There was more of a willingness in the White House to turn a blind eye to the
legal niceties than within the CIA. The Agency always knew it would be left
holding the baby for this one.”444
A July 28, 2007 article in the Guardian appears to confirm Scheuer’s contention:
442
443
444
http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jan/24-318760.html
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2005/10/two_experts_on_1.html
140
MI6 believed it was close to finding the al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan in
1998, and again the next year. The plan was for MI6 to hand the CIA vital information about Bin Laden. Ministers including Robin Cook, the then foreign
secretary, gave their approval on condition that the CIA gave assurances he
would be treated humanely. The plot is revealed in a 75-page report by parliament’s intelligence and security committee on rendition, the practice of flying detainees to places where they may be tortured.445
According to the article, the CIA never gave the assurances.
MYTH: Sens. Gary Hart and Warren Rudman warned the Bush administration about an imminent terrorist attack eight months prior to
9/11.
According to David Talbot in an April 2, 2004 Salon.com article, “Hart was
co-chair (with former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H.) of the U.S. Commission on National Security, a bipartisan panel that conducted the most thorough investigation of U.S. security challenges since World War II. After
completing the report, which warned that a devastating terrorist attack on
America was imminent and called for the immediate creation of a Cabinetlevel national security agency, and delivering it to President Bush on January
31, 2001, Hart and Rudman personally briefed Rice, Rumsfeld and Secretary
of State Colin Powell. But, according to Hart, the Bush administration never
followed up on the commission’s urgent recommendations, even after he repeated them in a private White House meeting with Rice just days before
9/11.”446
Hart himself in a Salon.com article entitled “A Paul Revere no one wants
to hear from” claimed he “warned the Bush administration the terrorists were
coming.” According to Hart, the report his panel submitted to Bush said,
“America will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland [and] Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large
numbers.”447
Hart’s Salon.com piece did not include this sentence prior to “Americans
will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers”: “States, terrorists, and other disaffected groups will acquire weapons of mass destruction
and mass disruption, and some will use them.”448 Of course, al Qaeda did not
use WMD on 9/11.
Hart also failed to mention that his report stated, “A direct attack against
American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century.”
445
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2136651,00.html
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/04/02/hart/index.html
447
http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2004/04/06/commission/
448
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/nssg/Reports/NWC.pdf
446
141
Over the next quarter century? I’m not a history major, but I’m fairly certain that Paul Revere did not begin shouting “The British are coming” in
1750.
When Secretary of Defense William Cohen held a press briefing on the
USS Cole on January 9, 2001 (see Appendix), he noted that Hart and Rudman did not say a terrorist attack on U.S. soil was imminent: “So we can anticipate, if you look at the Hart-Rudman committee or commission recommendations, that—they have indicated that they anticipate that a terrorist act
will in fact occur on American soil within not the immediate future, but
within a fairly foreseeable time frame.” (My emphasis)
MYTH: Bush acted inappropriately after White House Chief of Staff
Andrew Card told him that America was under attack.
In the movie Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore includes a clip of President
Bush sitting in a Florida classroom for five to seven minutes after Card told
him that America was under attack. “When the second plane hit the tower,
his chief of staff entered the classroom and told Mr. Bush the nation is under
attack,” Moore said in the movie. “Not knowing what to do, with no one telling him what to do, and no Secret Service rushing in to take him to safety,
Mr. Bush just sat there and continued to read My Pet Goat with the children.
Nearly seven minutes passed with nobody doing anything.”449
Moore did not mention that Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was in the classroom holding up a legal pad. Big block letters were scrawled on the cardboard backing: DON’T SAY ANYTHING YET.450
Presidential candidate John Kerry used Moore’s clip to attack Bush. “I
would have told those kids very nicely and politely that the president of the
United States has something that he needs to attend to,” Kerry told a convention of minority journalists.451 However, the candidate’s wife had a different
opinion. “I think the president behaved correctly in terms of being quiet
amidst stunning news like that in a classroom of kids,” Teresa Heinz told the
host of MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews a month before Kerry offered his criticism. “You know, what can you do? It takes you a couple of
minutes to digest what you have just heard. And then he was . . . not in his
White House and in his office with all of his people. He was in the school in
Florida.”452
Kerry also undermined his argument in an earlier interview with Larry
King. According to Kerry, he was in a meeting in the office of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle when he watched the second plane hit the World
Trade Center on television, while standing next to fellow Democrats Barbara
449
http://michaelmoore.com/warroom/
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021007-85016651.htm
451
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46913-2004Aug6.html
452
Ibid.
450
142
Boxer and Harry Reid. “And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table, and
then we just realized nobody could think, and then, boom, we saw the cloud
of the explosion at the Pentagon,” Kerry told King.453
“By Kerry’s own words, he and his fellow senators sat there for 40 minutes, realizing ‘nobody could think,’” said a Bush-Cheney campaign statement. “He is hardly in a position to criticize President Bush for ‘inaction.’”454
Of course, Kerry supporters responded that Bush, and not Kerry, was
president on 9/11 and that Kerry was not in a position to take any action. Fair
enough. Let’s compare Bush’s response to another president who was in office when a sneak attack occurred. According to historian William Manchester, a self-described “knee-jerk FDR liberal,” after President Franklin D.
Roosevelt learned about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, “the President
of the United States did nothing for 18 minutes.” In addition, in 1994 PBS
offered this glimpse into FDR’s demeanor after learning about the attack:
Alonzo Fields: Now, when I went upstairs, they had set up in the bedroom
and they were taking communications from what was going on. And Paul
Watson came out and he had this message and he says, “Mr. President, the
whole damn Navy is gone. What in the hell are we going to do?” And the
President and Mr. Hopkins—he said to Mr. Hopkins, he says, “My God, my
God, how did it happen?” He had his head in hands and at his desk like this.
He says, “How did it happen?” He says, “Now I’ll go down in history disgraced.”
David McCullough: [voice-over] At a Cabinet meeting that night, Labor
Secretary Frances Perkins found Roosevelt deeply shaken. “He was having
actual physical difficulty in getting out the words that put him on record as
knowing the Navy was caught unawares.”
Alonzo Fields: He looked drawn. His face was kind of pale-ish-like and
tired-like, and it seemed to be a maze around him, just a blind sort of fog
around him. When I looked at him, I got that impression from him, that he
was in a fog, and he was so despondent over the fact—he said, “We don’t
know what’s out there.”455
While liberal presidential wannabes such as Kerry and liberal presidential
historians such Robert Dallek and Douglas Brinkley (who wrote Tour of
Duty, a fawning biography of John Kerry in Vietnam for the 2004 campaign)
criticized Bush’s initial response on the morning of 9/11, Gwendolyn ToséRigell, the principal at Emma E. Booker Elementary School, says Bush handled himself properly. “I don’t think anyone could have handled it better,”
Tosé-Rigell told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. “What would it have served if
he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?”456 In addition, Lee
453
Ibid.
Ibid.
455
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/32_f_roosevelt/filmmore/filmscript.html
456
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1158677/posts
454
143
Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission and a former Democratic
congressman from Indiana, said, “Bush made the right decision in remaining
calm, in not rushing out of the classroom.”457
MYTH: George W. Bush instituted the policy prohibiting media coverage of human remains, including the release of photographs of flagdraped military coffins.
According to the Associated Press in 2004, “Banning press and public access
to the arrival of casualties in Dover was started in the 1991 Persian Gulf War,
during the term of President George W. Bush’s father. The policy continued
through President Clinton’s eight years in office, although it was not strictly
enforced and there was no conflict on the scale of the either the Gulf War or
the war in Iraq during Clinton’s tenure.”458
But Clinton did have the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia in 1993,
during which 18 Army Rangers were killed. According to the late Col. David
Hackworth, Clinton ordered that images of the battle in Mogadishu be kept
from the television networks. Eight videotapes of the battle made by an
American reconnaissance plane circling overhead were marked “classified.”459 Clinton did not want those tapes to be broadcast on CNN.
The obvious goal of those who argue that such photos should be released
is to turn Americans against the war. Even in World War II, a war far less
controversial than the Global War on Terror, photos of dead Americans resulted in a negative reaction. Historian William Manchester in Goodbye,
Darkness described what happened after the Pentagon decided to release
photos of dead Marines on Tarawa:
The published photographs touched off an uproar. [Fleet Admiral Chester
William] Nimitz received sacks of mail from grieving relatives—a mother
wrote, “You killed my son”—and editorials demanded a congressional investigation. The men on Tarawa were puzzled. The photographers had been discreet. No dismembered corpses were shown, no faces with chunks missing,
no flies crawling on eyeballs; virtually all the pictures were of bodies in Marine uniforms face down on the beach. Except for those who had known the
dead, the pictures were quite ordinary to men who had scraped the remains of
buddies off bunker walls or who, while digging foxholes, found their entrenching tools caught in the mouths of dead friends who had been buried in
sand by exploding shells.
457
http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595071129,00.html
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=13549
459
Hazardous Duty: America’s Most Decorated Soldier Reports From the Front and Tells it Like it is, p.
168.
458
144
MYTH: The Bush administration offered shifting rationales for removing Saddam from power after no WMD were found in Iraq.
In a September 29, 2004 “news analysis,” Marc Sandalow of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “A war that was waged principally to overthrow a
dictator who possessed ‘some of the most lethal weapons ever devised’ has
evolved into a mission to rid Iraq of its ‘weapons-making capabilities’ and to
offer democracy and freedom to its 25 million residents.”
As we saw in Chapter 6, historian Niall Ferguson noted that the Bush administration offered five main rationales for removing Saddam from power
before the invasion. Those rationales included ridding Iraq of its weaponsmaking capabilities and promoting democracy and freedom in Iraq. Apparently, Sandalow had forgotten that the operation to remove Saddam from
power was called Operation Iraqi Freedom.
It is fair to say that the emphasis placed on the five main rationales shifted
over time. However, the rationales themselves have been consistent since the
beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
MYTH: The U.S. invaded Iraq unilaterally.
According to the Heritage Foundation on March 19, 2003, “To date, there are
54 countries that have joined the Coalition of the Willing—not including
Canada, Germany, and France, which have recently offered conditional support. This does not include all of the 15 nations that have offered quiet support. The number of nations to date already eclipses the 1991 Gulf War coalition, which had 38 countries.”460
MYTH: Hans Blix gave Iraq a clean bill of heath prior to the invasion.
On March 18, 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair addressed the House
of Commons and offered these words:
On 7 March, the inspectors published a remarkable document. It is 173 pages
long, and details all the unanswered questions about Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction. It lists 29 different areas in which the inspectors have been unable to obtain information. On VX, for example, it says: “Documentation
available to UNMOVIC suggests that Iraq at least had had far reaching plans
to weaponise VX”. On mustard gas, it says: “Mustard constituted an important part . . . of Iraq’s CW arsenal . . . 550 mustard filled shells and up to 450
mustard filled aerial bombs unaccounted for . . . additional uncertainty” with
respect to over 6,500 aerial bombs, “corresponding to approximately 1,000
tonnes of agent, predominantly mustard.” On biological weapons, the inspec460
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Iraq/wm225.cfm
145
tors’ report states: “Based on unaccounted for growth media, Iraq’s potential
production of anthrax could have been in the range of about 15,000 to 25,000
litres . . . Based on all the available evidence, the strong presumption is that
about 10,000 litres of anthrax was not destroyed and may still exist.”
On that basis, I simply say to the House that, had we meant what we said in
resolution 1441, the Security Council should have convened and condemned
Iraq as in material breach. What is perfectly clear is that Saddam is playing
the same old games in the same old way. Yes, there are minor concessions,
but there has been no fundamental change of heart or mind.461
It’s important to note that Saddam played “the same old games” between
1991 and 1998. After seven years of inspections, UNSCOM personnel left
Iraq after the Iraqis stopped cooperating with UNSCOM. Prior to leaving
Iraq, however, Richard Butler, head of the U.N. weapons inspection commission, said Iraq had enough biological weapons to “blow away Tel Aviv.”462
Now, if inspectors were uncertain about Saddam’s WMD programs after
being in Iraq for seven years, does anyone seriously believe Hans Blix and
his team could have found out the truth after just a couple of months? After
reviewing Hans Blix’s book, Disarming Iraq, Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek
International described the lack of cooperation Saddam provided prior to the
invasion:
More revealing are Blix’s difficulties with the Iraqis. Time and again he and
his colleague Mohamed ElBaradei tried to explain to the Iraqis that they
needed to cooperate for the inspections to confirm what they claimed—that
they had no weapons of mass destruction. After repeated requests to talk to
Saddam Hussein, which were turned down, Blix and ElBaradei met with the
Iraqi vice president (a powerless Hussein stooge). At that meeting, ElBaradei
sternly explained that it was ‘‘incomprehensible’’ that Iraq had not taken the
steps the United Nations had demanded. There was no response….It was behavior like this that led Blix and many others to assume that the Iraqis were
not coming clean because they had something to hide. 463
Zakaria’s review also mentioned one aspect of Blix’s past with Iraq that
most of the media have ignored:
From the mid-1970’s through the early 90’s, Iraq continuously, persistently
and ambitiously sought nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. All Western intelligence services underestimated the extent of these efforts. International agencies, chiefly the International Atomic Energy Agency, headed by
Hans Blix, actually gave Iraq a clean bill of health during these decades. As a
461
462
463
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmhansrd/vo030318/debtext/30318-06.htm
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9801/27/iraq.latest/index.html#enough
http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/nyt/nytreview041104.html
146
result, everyone, including Blix, was wary of Iraq’s declarations that it had
destroyed its old stockpiles and wasn’t building new ones.464
If Iraq had been able to fool intelligence services and intelligence agencies during those decades, why would anyone have any confidence in Blix
and his inspectors in 2003? As Kenneth Pollack noted in The Threatening
Storm, “[I]f faced with the threat of imminent invasion, Iraq would probably
go along with a new inspection regime for some period of time, just to forestall the invasion and buy time in the expectation that the United States
would eventually become distracted by other events, allowing Iraq to start
cheating again. Pursuing the inspections route is a dead-end street.”465
MYTH: “Halliburton’s involvement in the Iraq reconstruction effort has
been controversial since it won a multi-billion no-bid contract in 2003.”
– CNN, June 1, 2004466
Halliburton did not win a no-bid contract in 2003. The work that Kellogg
Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, did in Iraq “was done under a
competitively awarded contract system known as the U.S. Army Logistics
Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP.” According to Byron York,
“LOGCAP is, in effect, a multi-year supercontract. In it, the Army makes a
deal with a single contractor, in this case Halliburton, to perform a wide
range of unspecified services during emergency situations in the future. The
last competition for LOGCAP came in 2001, when Halliburton won the contract over several other bidders.”467
MYTH: “And the Iraqis are certainly right in that nobody can prove a
negative; you can’t produce for inspection what you don’t have.” –
Charley Reese, syndicated columnist468
Prior to the invasion of Iraq, several commentators stated that it would not be
possible for Iraq to prove a negative, i.e., demonstrate that Iraq had no
WMD. Such a contention ignores the history of South Africa’s WMD program. South Africa developed at least six nuclear weapons. In March 1993,
South African President Frederik Willem de Klerk declared that South Africa
had dismantled and destroyed its limited nuclear capability. The IAEA declared it had completed its inspection in late 1994 and that South Africa’s
464
Ibid.
pp. 364-365.
466
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/01/cheney.halliburton/
467
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york070903.asp
468
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1657.htm
465
147
nuclear weapons facilities had been dismantled.469 South Africa proved a
negative, i.e., they had no nuclear weapons.
In February 2003, South African President Thabo Mbeki announced that
his country was sending experts in dismantling WMD to Iraq. “We trust that
this intervention will help to ensure the necessary proper cooperation between the United Nations’ inspectors and Iraq, so that the issue of weapons
of mass destruction is addressed satisfactorily, without resort to war,” Mbeki
said.470 Obviously, Iraq failed to take advantage of South Africa’s assistance.
MYTH: Saddam had no intention to restart his WMD programs.
Joseph Cirincione, the nuclear policy director at the Center for American
Progress, appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on November 20,
2007, and made this claim: “We were told [the Iraqis] had a nuclear weapons
program, and if we didn’t take action, they might give a bomb to Osama bin
Laden. We now know that it wasn’t true. No program. Nowhere close to a
program. No intention of having a program.”471
Cirincione’s contention is contradicted by both David Kay and Charles
Duelfer. When Kay, who originally headed the Iraq Survey Group (ISG),
delivered his Interim Progress Report to Congress in October 2003, he indicated that Saddam had never given up his desire to have nuclear weapons:
With regard to Iraq’s nuclear program, the testimony we have obtained from
Iraqi scientists and senior government officials should clear up any doubts
about whether Saddam still wanted to obtain nuclear weapons.
They have told ISG that Saddam Husayn remained firmly committed to acquiring nuclear weapons. These officials assert that Saddam would have resumed nuclear weapons development at some future point. Some indicated a
resumption after Iraq was free of sanctions.472
Charles Duelfer, who replaced Kay, came to a similar conclusion a year
later. According to the Washington Post, Duelfer’s report concluded that
Saddam “‘aspired to develop a nuclear capability’ and intended to work on
rebuilding chemical and biological weapons after persuading the United Nations to lift sanctions.”473
MYTH: George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001 with
plans to invade Iraq.
469
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/rsa/nuke.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/02/14/sprj.irq.safrica.ap/index.html
471
http://www.c-span.org/VideoArchives.asp?CatCodePairs=,&ArchiveDays=100&Page=2
472
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/02/kay.report/
473
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12115-2004Oct6.html
470
148
In Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke wrote, “Former Treasury Secretary
Paul O’Neill has written that the [Bush] Administration planned early on to
eliminate Saddam Hussein. From everything I saw and heard, he is right. The
Bush administration reply to O’Neill was something like: Of course we were.
Clinton signed a law making regime change in Iraq the American policy.
That’s true too, but neither the Congress nor Clinton had in mind regime
change at the point of an American gun, a U.S. invasion of Iraq.” Clarke then
dropped this bombshell: “The administration of the second George Bush did
begin with Iraq on its agenda.”474
Of course, there’s a good reason why Iraq was on the second George
Bush’s agenda from the beginning: It was on the Clinton administration’s
agenda when they left office in January 2001. In a January 11, 2001 farewell
press conference (see Appendix, “Iraq Will Be a Major UN Issue for Bush
Administration”), Richard Holbrooke, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said, “Iraq will be one of the major issues facing the incoming Bush
administration at the United Nations.” Further, the Bush administration “will
have to deal with this problem, which we inherited from our predecessors
and they now inherit from us.” Nevertheless, Clarke expresses surprise that
the Bush administration believed it had to deal with the problem of Iraq.
Clarke would counter that dealing with the problem should not have entailed an invasion. However, O’Neill himself made clear that, contrary to
Clarke’s claim, the Bush administration did not plan an invasion of Iraq from
the beginning. “You know, people are trying to make the case that I said the
president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration,” O’Neill told
Katie Couric. “Actually, there was a continuation of work that had been going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that we needed regime
change in Iraq.”475 Couric’s Today Show interview with O’Neill took place
on January 13, 2004, weeks before Clarke’s book was released.
Clarke also makes the claim in his book that the Bush White House was
exacting revenge against O’Neill for his lack of loyalty. This is an odd claim
when you consider that, in the same interview, O’Neill responded as such
when Couric asked if he would vote for Bush in November 2004: “Probably.
I don’t see anybody that strikes me as better prepared and more capable.”
The day after O’Neill’s appearance on the Today Show, Dana Milbank
and Vernon Loeb of the Washington Post repeated the charge that O’Neill
said the Bush administration had planned as early as January 2001 to use
force to remove Saddam from power. The reporters failed to note O’Neill’s
comments to the contrary. Did they miss the previous day’s Today Show?
Apparently not. Their article quoted from other parts of O’Neill’s interview
with Couric.476
474
475
476
p. 264.
http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_01_11_corner-archive.asp#022684
http://nucnews.net/nucnews/2004nn/0401nn/040114nn.htm
149
MYTH: The military services are not meeting their recruiting and retention goals.
The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines all met or exceeded their retention
and recruiting goals for fiscal years 2006477 and 2007.478 All four services
also met or exceeded their goals during each of the first four months of fiscal
year 2008.
MYTH: Operation Iraqi Freedom was illegal.
It is beyond the scope of this book to include a full discussion on the legality
of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Instead, I will refer the reader to Professor
Robert F. Turner, cofounder of the Center for National Security Law at the
University of Virginia. Laurie Mylroie included Turner’s essay, “Was Operation Iraqi Freedom Legal?,” in her book, Bush vs. The Beltway: How the CIA
and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror. According to
Mylroie, Turner makes it clear that “there are three distinct principles that
can be invoked to argue the legality of the action”:
Principle number one, factually supported by the broad line argument of this
book, is the right of states to self-defense. Principle number two is the narrower (and less conclusive) legal argument that Iraq’s repeated violations of
the terms of the cease-fire resolution (which were the subject of repeated
warnings by the Security Council) in effect vitiated the resolution. Principle
number three, equally strong as the case for self-defense, is the argument that
gross violations of human rights (themselves the subject of United Nations
condemnation) by their very nature give other states the right to intervene.479
MYTH: The United States cannot afford the war in Iraq.
Lawrence Lindsey, Director of the National Economic Council and the Assistant to the President on Economic Policy ((2001-2002), addressed this issue in the February 4, 2008 issue of Fortune:
[T]his raises the question whether a number like “1% of GDP” is large or
small. For this, imagine that we are not contemporaries trying to evaluate an
ongoing conflict but economic historians a couple of centuries from now deciding whether going into Iraq was worth it for America. The future historian
would note that for the past century America has been one of largest military
powers on the planet. This naturally involved a budgetary commitment. For
some of the past century, the American military was quite small. But on aver477
478
479
http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=10057
http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=11398
p. 13.
150
age American military spending was about twice the share of GDP that it now
is, about 5%. Moreover, with Iraq consuming between 15% and 20% of that
figure, the future historian would likely view the entire affair as relatively minor in purely budgetary terms.
Lindsey also addressed the costs associated with not removing Saddam
from power. He estimated that this alternative scenario probably would have
required “eternal vigilance and a large troop commitment.” “But what if the
administration had decided to leave Saddam alone and, in turn, he had had
WMDs?” Lindsey asked. “The costs to the world would have been much
higher.”480
MYTH: President George W. Bush called the U.S. Constitution a “goddamned piece of paper.”
According to Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue, while Bush was meeting
with Republican congressmen in 2005, he became angry and screamed, "Stop
throwing the Constitution in my face. It's just a goddamned piece of paper!”481
After the quote appeared on the Capitol Hill Blue Web site, hundreds of
other Web sites began to repeat the quote. The quote also appeared in numerous newspapers throughout the country. For example, the March 31,
2008 edition of the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World included a letter to the
editor with the quote and the claim that it had been “neither verified nor discredited.”482
In fact, as the newspaper’s editorial page editor could have learned with a
quick search on the Internet, Thompson is the sole source for the alleged
quote. According to FactCheck.org, “We judge that the odds that the report is
accurate hover near zero. It comes from Capitol Hill Blue, a Web site that
has a history of relying on phony sources, retracting stories and apologizing
to its readers.”483
480
http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/10/news/economy/costofwar.fortune/index.htm
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2008/mar/31/media_impact/?letters_to_editor
483
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/print_did_president_bush_call_the_constitution_a.html
481
482
151
CONCLUSION
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. –
George Santayana
Those who would vote to prolong the presence of this partnership
in public life are not doing so with the excuse of innocence or gullibility that might have obtained in 1992. – Christopher Hitchens,
No One Left To Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family (1999)
D
uring the fall of 1983, I was a young, enlisted Marine participating in
a pre-Team Spirit ‘84 exercise called Bear Hunt ‘84 in the Republic
of Korea (ROK). Our unit, Marine Aircraft Group 36 (MAG-36),
based on Okinawa, spent nearly three months living in tents just a few miles
south of the demilitarized zone.
My family had traveled to Washington, D.C. several times to visit an aunt
and uncle who worked for the federal government, and we had driven
through most of the western states while on vacation. However, except for a
couple of quick trips to border cities in Mexico, Japan and Korea were the
first foreign countries I had ever visited. Until then, I had spent my entire life
in the small town of Oregon, Ill., which is located just 15 miles upstream
from Ronald Reagan’s hometown of Dixon. Growing up on the Rock River,
life was relatively carefree and peaceful.
However, the world seemed to have become much more dangerous during
the latter half of 1983. Reagan canceled his trip to the Philippines after Benigno Aquino was assassinated in Manila on August 21. On September 1,
Soviet jet interceptors shot down KAL 007 over Sakhalin Island, killing 269
passengers and crew members. Relations with the Soviet Union were already
tense, especially given the uncertainty concerning the leadership in the
Kremlin. Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev had died on November 10, 1982 (the Marine Corps’ birthday), and there were rumors that his successor, Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, was in poor health.
On October 9, while South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan was on an
official visit to Burma, a bomb killed 21 people, including foreign minister
Lee Bum Suk, the economic planning minister and deputy prime minister,
Suh Suk Joo, and the minister for commerce and industry, Kim Dong Whie.
North Korea was blamed for the bombing.
152
CONCLUSION
Then, on October 23, simultaneous suicide truck-bombings destroyed
both the French and the United States Marine Corps barracks in Beirut,
killing 241 U.S. servicemen, 58 French paratroopers and six Lebanese
civilians. Three days later, U.S. troops invaded Grenada, where 18 U.S.
servicemen died.
Closer to “home,” our unit lost a helicopter and several Marines after they
struck a power line between two mountains. Unfortunately, the 1:50,000
topographic map the crew was using did not show the power line. A newer
version of the map—with the power line added—had been published by the
Defense Mapping Agency, but had not yet been shipped from Hickam Air
Force Base.*
It seemed as if the American flag outside our mess tent was at half-staff
during most of our stay in Korea that fall.
As a member of the S-2 (Intelligence) staff with MAG-36, part of my
responsibilities while in Korea was to research and write a briefing
concerning the North Korean Air Order of Battle, and then present that
briefing to pilots and other officers. During the briefing, I told the officers
that the greatest threat posed by North Korea was 245 or so AN-2 Colts.
Initially developed in the Soviet Union as an agricultural aircraft during the
1940s, North Korea used—and still uses—the AN-2 for troop transport. The
concern was that the AN-2s could evade radar systems by flying “low and
slow.” If they could cross the DMZ undetected with hundreds of North
Korean commandos, those commandos could wreak a great deal of havoc in
South Korea.
I separated from the Marine Corps on December 13, 1985. For me, it was
a lucky Friday the 13th. I had survived four years of the Marines without a
scratch and was ready to start college. Ironically, the first and only time I saw
combat was four years later when I was a graduate student at the University
of the Philippines. On the morning of December 1, 1989, David Callender, a
reporter with the Capital Times of Madison, Wis., knocked on the door of my
$10-a-month dorm room (you get what you pay for) and yelled, “Gringo is
on the move.” By “Gringo,” Callender, who was at the University of the
Philippines on a Rotary scholarship, was referring to Gregorio Honasan,
leader of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM). Honason and his
followers had launched a coup attempt against President Corazon Aquino.
Against my advice, Callender and several other American students left
campus that morning to get a better look at what was going on. I eventually
joined them later that day at the corner of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue
(EDSA) and Quezon Avenue, and again the following day as a government
*
We lost another CH-53 helicopter during Team Spirit ‘84 when it crashed into a mountain. About 30
U.S. and ROK Marines were killed. Such accidents were not uncommon during the 1980s. According to
the Department of Defense, there were 11,216 accidental deaths during the five-year period prior to 1988.
In other words, we lost nearly three times as many troops due to accidents during that five-year period
than we have lost in Iraq during the past five years.
153
helicopter fired rockets at RAM forces holed up at Camp Aguinaldo, the
national headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
While we were on EDSA, two F-4s flew above our heads. After I told the
other Americans that the F-4s had to be ours since the Philippine Air Force
had none, we all decided it would be a good idea to return to the campus.
Eventually, Honason and RAM were defeated. Classes at the University
of the Philippines were canceled for several weeks. Given that the U.S. had
displayed a show of force during the coup attempt, I was unsure how my
classmates, who were mostly civil servants in the Philippine government,
would react towards me. Only one had anything negative to say. However, he
also happened to be the Libyan ambassador to the Philippines and,
apparently, was still smarting from Reagan’s retaliatory strike on Libya in
1986.
Three weeks before the coup attempt in the Philippines, the Berlin Wall
fell, leading to the reunification of East and West Germany the next year. On
December 26, 1991, the Supreme Soviet recognized the collapse of the
Soviet Union and dissolved itself. With the end of the Cold War, world
leaders began talking about the “peace dividend” that would result from
decreased defense spending. However, as noted in a 2002 article in Finance
& Development, the peace dividend was elusive. “The end of the Cold War
was supposed to bring with it a ‘peace dividend” that would release resources
for more productive purposes,” the authors wrote. “Instead, we are
witnessing an era of scattered conflicts, while terrorist groups have become
more sophisticated and destructive.”484
As new threats emerged during the 1990s, Bill Clinton and his team in the
White House adopted policies that made us much more vulnerable to those
threats. In a book published during the final year of the Clinton
administration, Donald Kagan and Frederick W. Kagan offered this warning:
America is in danger. Unless its leaders change their national security policy,
the peace and safety its power and influence have ensured since the end of the
Cold War will disappear. Already, increasing military weakness and
confusion about foreign and defense policy have encouraged the development
of powerful hostile states and coalitions that challenge the interests and
security of the United States, its allies and friends, and all those with an
interest in preserving the general peace…. In the past, the collapse of an
international system that suited the United States deprived Americans of
access to markets or caused American casualties on faraway battlefields. In
the future, it will bring attacks on the American homeland, not merely by
terrorists, but as part of deliberately planned and carefully executed military
strikes against critical targets in the United States of America. The happy
international situation that emerged in 1991, characterized by the spread of
democracy, free trade, and peace, so congenial to America, has begun to
484
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2002/12/gupta.htm
154
CONCLUSION
decay at an alarming rate and will vanish unless there is a change of course.
The costs of failure now are far higher than ever before.485
“America’s course now is much harder than it would have been had it
followed a prudent path after the Gulf War,” the Kagans noted in the
conclusion of their book. “Its Iraq policy is in ruins; it will not be resurrected.
The threat from North Korea has only been delayed. In the wings, Russia,
which was friendly in 1991, is increasingly restive. China grows ever
stronger and more technologically capable—sources of conflict with her are
obvious. If ever there was a ‘strategic pause’ it is gone. Now the United
States must begin to gird itself for the next round of conflict.”486
As I look back to my presentation about the North Korean Air Order of
Battle 25 years ago, it’s seems almost comical that I portrayed the AN-2 as
Kim Il Sung’s greatest threat to security on the Korean peninsula when that
dictator’s son would later essentially blackmail the Clinton administration
with the threat of nuclear weapons.
It is clear that the United States was caught off guard on 9/11. Many
books published after 9/11 have made that point. For example, Peter
Bergen’s Holy War, Inc. included a chapter entitled “While America Slept.”
Gerald Posner authored Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11.
The chapter title and book title were both allusions to While England Slept, a
collection of Winston Churchill’s speeches from 1932 to 1938, and John F.
Kennedy’s Why England Slept of 1940. Both Churchill and Kennedy
outlined England’s failure to prepare for war against Nazi Germany.
Churchill, Kennedy, Bergen, and Posner all had titles with the word
“slept,” meaning the failures to prepare for threats had been in the past. The
Kagans’ book had a title that was also an allusion to Churchill and
Kennedy’s book. However, note the tense of the verb: While America Sleeps:
Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today. Of course,
when the Kagans wrote their book, “today” was before George W. Bush had
even been elected president.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign team looked very much like the team her
husband had during his eight years in the White House. I believe that team’s
policies ultimately led to 9/11. Given that legacy, the American people were
wise not to allow them and their worldview back in the White House. But
will they be wise enough to reject the naïve and inexperienced Barack
Obama?
485
486
While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today, p. 1-2.
Ibid, p. 435.
155
APPENDIX
O
n December 25, 2005, veteran journalists Ted Koppel and Tom
Brokaw appeared as guests on Meet the Press and discussed a variety
of issues with Tim Russert. Of course, the conversation eventually
touched on the invasion of Iraq:
MR. BROKAW: There was not—you know, the French intelligence were
sharing the same conclusions with the administration. I thought—I agree
with you that I don’t think that we pushed hard enough for vigorous debate. I
think that on Capitol Hill that the debate was anemic, at best. You had—Ted
Kennedy and Senator Byrd, really, were the only ones speaking out with any
kind of passion in the Senate, the people who...
MR. RUSSERT: And they were not questioning whether Saddam Hussein
had weapons of mass destruction.
MR. BROKAW: No. No. No.
MR. RUSSERT: That seemed to be a uniformly held belief.
MR. BROKAW: Right. Yeah.
MR. KOPPEL: Nor did the Clinton administration beforehand.
MR. BROKAW: No.
MR. KOPPEL: I mean, the only difference between the Clinton
administration and the Bush administration was 9/11.
MR. BROKAW: Right.
MR. KOPPEL: If 9/11 had happened on Bill Clinton’s watch, he would
have gone into Iraq.*
MR. BROKAW: Yeah. Yeah.487
On November 27, 2007, Bill Clinton said the following while
campaigning for Hillary in Iowa. “Even though I approved of Afghanistan
and opposed Iraq from the beginning, I still resent that I was not asked or
given the opportunity to support those soldiers.” Even a liberal such as Ron
Fournier of the Associated Press realized that Clinton’s claim did not pass
*
It is quite possible that Koppel reached this conclusion after having discussions with his son-in-law,
Kenneth Pollack. Pollack was director for Gulf affairs at the National Security Council from 1995 to 1996
and from 1999 to 1999
487
156
APPENDIX
the smell test. “If the former president secretly opposed the war but did not
want to speak against a sitting president (as some of his aides now claim),
what moral authority does he have now? And did he share his objections with
his wife? She started out as a hawkish Democrat but is now appealing to antiwar voters.”488
In fact, Clinton apparently had no objections to removing Saddam from
power. According to The Nation, when the Democracy Alliance met in
Austin, Texas, in May 2006, a surprise guest, Bill Clinton, showed up.
“When Guy Saperstein, a retired lawyer from Oakland, asked Clinton if
Democrats who supported the war should apologize,” The Nation noted, “the
former President ‘went f**king ballistic,’ according to Saperstein. Forget
Hillary, Clinton said angrily during a ten-minute rant; if I was in Congress I
would’ve voted for the war. ‘It was an extraordinary display of anger and
imperiousness,’ Saperstein says.”489
Of course, Saperstein’s comment could be dismissed as hearsay.
However, we cannot dismiss Clinton’s own words. Here is what he told Time
magazine in June 2004:
After 9/11, let’s be fair here, if you had been President, you’d think, Well,
this fellow bin Laden just turned these three airplanes full of fuel into
weapons of mass destruction, right? Arguably they were super-powerful
chemical weapons. Think about it that way. So, you’re sitting there as
President, you’re reeling in the aftermath of this, so, yeah, you want to go get
bin Laden and do Afghanistan and all that. But you also have to say, Well,
my first responsibility now is to try everything possible to make sure that this
terrorist network and other terrorist networks cannot reach chemical and
biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material. I’ve got to do that.
That’s why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted
for. So I thought the President had an absolute responsibility to go to the U.N.
and say, “Look, guys, after 9/11, you have got to demand that Saddam
Hussein lets us finish the inspection process.” You couldn’t responsibly
ignore [the possibility that] a tyrant had these stocks. I never really thought
he’d [use them].* What I was far more worried about was that he’d sell this
stuff or give it away.490
According to the New York Times, Clinton’s November 27 remark in
Iowa “came in the context of opposition to Republican-backed tax cuts for
wealthy Americans like himself, and how that loss of revenue affected
488
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071128/ap_po/on_deadline_bill_clinton_1
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061016/berman/3
*
Of course, Clinton had a different opinion when he was president. After launching Operation Desert Fox
in 1998, Clinton told the American people, “And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them.”
490
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,994507-7,00.html
489
157
financing for the military.”491 Of course, as president, Clinton had the
opportunity to support “those soldiers.” Instead, he dramatically cut the
defense budget. Former Clinton officials Alan Binder and Janet Yellen wrote
of the 1997 balanced negotiations, “discretionary spending had already
declined roughly 11 percent in real terms between 1992 and 1997. Further
progress would be difficult because the entire cut had, to that point, come
from the defense budget.”492 According to Rich Lowry, “This, not the 1993
budget deal, was Clinton’s big contribution to deficit reduction—taken
directly out of the hide of America’s military.”493
Hillary also changed her tune after the invasion of Iraq. She wrote the
following to her constituents in November 2005:
Based on the information that we have today, Congress never would have
been asked to give the President authority to use force against Iraq. And if
Congress had been asked, based on what we know now, we never would
have agreed, given the lack of a long-term plan, paltry international support,
the proven absence of weapons of mass destruction, and the reallocation of
troops and resources that might have been used in Afghanistan to eliminate
Bin Laden and al Qaeda, and fully uproot the Taliban.
Before I voted in 2002, the Administration publicly and privately assured me
that they intended to use their authority to build international support in order to get the U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq, as articulated by the
President in his Cincinnati speech on October 7th, 2002. As I said in my October 2002 floor statement, I took “the President at his word that he will try
hard to pass a U.N. resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible.”
Instead, the Bush Administration short-circuited the U.N. inspectors—the
last line of defense against the possibility that our intelligence was false. The
Administration also abandoned securing a larger international coalition,
alienating many of those who had joined us in Afghanistan.*
From the start of the war, I have been clear that I believed that the Administration did not have an adequate plan for what lay ahead.
491
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/us/politics/28clinton.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slo
gin
Alan S. Binder and Janet L. Yellen, The Fabulous Decade, p. 74.
493
Legacy, p. 249.
*
Even Clinton sycophant James Carville has acknowledged that Clinton’s revised explanation for her vote
does not pass the smell test. When Carville appeared on Meet the Press on February 3, 2008, Tim Russert
read this passage from Take It Back, a book Carville co-wrote with fellow Clinton sycophant Paul Begala:
“Some of the Democrats who supported the war in Iraq began to claim their vote was to put pressure on
Iraq—that they voted merely to give the president the option to go to war. Bunk. The war resolution was a
blank check. The language of the resolution could not be clearer. ‘The President is authorized to use the
Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate’ against Iraq.”
492
158
APPENDIX
I take responsibility for my vote, and I, along with a majority of Americans,
expect the President and his Administration to take responsibility for the
false assurances, faulty evidence and mismanagement of the war.494
A little over a year later, Hillary went beyond saying the Bush
administration had “faulty evidence” about Iraq and claimed that she, like the
rest of the country, had been misled: “I have said, and I will repeat it, that
knowing what I know now, I would never have voted for it ... I have taken responsibility for my vote. The mistakes were made by this president who misled
this country and this Congress into a war that should not have been waged.”495
Of course, if she were truly taking responsibility for her vote, she would
not blame the Bush administration for misleading her. In addition, she is attempting to hide the fact that in 2003 she said, “The intelligence from Bush 1
to Clinton to Bush 2 was consistent.”496
Hillary also wants the voters to forget that she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer
the following in April 2004: “No, I don’t regret giving the president authority
because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction,
grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a
real problem for the international community for more than a decade.” Further, “The consensus was the same, from the Clinton administration to the
Bush administration. It was the same intelligence belief that our allies and
friends around the world shared.”497
Would Bill Clinton have invaded Iraq if he had been president when 9/11
occurred? If the 2000 election had turned out differently, would a President
Gore have gone to Iraq after 9/11? Of course, we can only speculate. However, it would be wise to base our speculation on what members of the Clinton administration said and did vis-à-vis Iraq during their last few years in
office. I have quoted from many Clinton administration documents in this
book. I have posted additional documents online for the reader to view at
www.sinsofthehusband.com. After reading these press releases and other
documents from the Clinton administration, I have to agree with Ted Koppel
and Tom Brokaw when they said Bill Clinton would have gone to Iraq if
9/11 had happened on his watch. I believe any honest person would have to
come to the same conclusion.
494
http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=264263
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/02/14/hillary/index_np.html
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/157wjmhn.asp
497
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/21/iraq.hillary/
495
496
159
INDEX
20/20, ii
60 Minutes, iii, xiii, xv, 10,
11, 62, 97, 100, 122
9/11 Commission, 10,
22, 29, 30, 37, 39, 95,
119, 120
ABC News, 40, 49, 85,
96, 119, 121, 123
Able Danger, x
Abramson, Jill, 113
Abu Ghraib, xiii
Abu Nidal, 36
Abu Sayyaf, 42–44
Abu Wael, 40–41
Academy Award, 85
Accountability Review
Boards, 33
Afghanistan, xvi, 6, 11,
18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 30,
69, 89, 95, 103, 104,
131, 132, 139, 141,
156, 157, 158
AfterDowningStreet.org,
xv
Against All Enemies, iii,
10, 20, 24, 28, 31, 33,
38, 40, 43, 81, 149
Agence France Presse,
15, 59
Aidid, Muhammad
Farrah, 17
Ailes, Roger, xv
Air Transport
Association, 92
Airbus Industrie, 89
Aircraft Owners and
Pilots Association, 91
al Qaeda, vi, xv, 2, 3, 4, 7,
14, 15, 17–20, 22–27,
28–34, 35–45, 50, 56,
57, 64, 69, 95, 98, 100,
101, 104, 120, 121,
133, 140, 141, 158
al Shifa, 37, 38, 39, 49, 52
al-‘Owhali, Mohamed, 33
al-Azhar mosque, 103
al-Baida, Syria, 60
Albright, Madeleine, vii,
xiii, xv, 8, 14, 23, 26,
32, 33, 39, 47, 48, 49,
51, 55, 56, 73, 77, 80,
96, 97, 98, 100, 102,
103, 126
al-Douri, Izzat, 41
Al-Iraq, 104
Al-Jazeerah, 103
al-'Owhali, Mohamed,
100
Al-Qaida and Taliban
Sanctions Committee,
132
al-Shamari, Abdul
Rahman, 41, 42
Alterman, Eric, 111, 113
al-Zarqawi, Abu Musab,
40
al-Zawahiri, Ayman, 139,
140
Amanpour, Christiane,
95
American Airlines, 92, 93
American Men's &
Women's Club, 138
American Spectator, 109
American Thinker, 107
AN-2 Colts, 153
Andropov, Yuri
Vladimirovich, 152
Ansar al-Islam, 40–42
Apollo program, 86
Aquino, Benigno, 152
Aquino, Corazon, 153
Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge, 84
Aristotle, 18
Arkin, William, viii
Armed Forces Radio and
Television Service,
118
Armey, Richard, 22
Armitage, Richard, 129
Army Rangers, 15
Ashcroft, John, x
Aspin, Les, 17
August 6 Presidential
Daily Briefing, 1–9,
31, 32, 34, 89
Aum Shinrikyo, 78
Babbin, Jed, 61
Babel, 104
Bahrain, 31, 99
Baker, Brent, 114
160
Bali, Indonesia, 106
Batiste, John, 117
Battle of Irbil, 41
Baugh, David, 100
Bayh, Evan, 44
BBC, 73, 100
Bear Hunt ’84, 152
Bearden, Milt, 140
Becoming a Category of One,
ii
Beers, Rand, 9, 11
Begala, Paul, 122, 158
Beirut, 13, 14, 15, 33, 153
Benjamin, Daniel, 35, 140
Ben-Veniste, Richard, 2
Bergen, Peter, 39, 98,
139, 155
Berger, Samuel "Sandy",
vii, viii, ix, x, 12, 19,
20, 39, 48, 49, 50, 69,
74, 120, 121, 133
Berger, Sandy, 8
Berlin Wall, 154
Berlusconi, Silvio, 45
Berman, Howard, iii
Bias, 111
Biden, Joseph, iii, x, xv,
xvi, 56, 102, 134, 135
bin Laden, Osama, iii,
xiii, xv, xvi, 2, 4, 5, 6,
7, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18,
19, 21–27, 28, 29, 30,
32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39,
42, 44, 45, 49, 50, 52,
53, 56, 69, 90, 95, 98,
99, 100, 101, 104, 105,
119, 120, 121, 132,
139, 140, 148, 157
Binder, Alan, 158
Black Hawk Down, xiii,
144
Blair, Tony, 103, 145
Blankenship, J. Richard,
138
Blinded by the Right, 110,
113
Blitzer, Wolf, 24, 50, 159
Blix, Hans, 145–47
Blumenthal, Sidney, 70,
74
Boehlert, Eric, 118, 124
INDEX
Boeing, 59, 89
Boeing Company, xiv
Bonifaz, John, xii
Boot, Max, 22
Bosnia, vi, 96
Bossie, David, 96
Boston Globe, 21, 91, 113,
118
Boutros-Ghali, Boutros,
16
Boxer, Barbara, 24, 143
Bozell III, L. Brent, iii,
110
BP Amoco P.L.C., xiv
Brazil, 120
Bremer III, L. Paul, 96
Brewster-Jennings &
Assoc., 127
Brezhnev, Leonid Ilyich,
152
Brinkley, Douglas, 143
British Medical Society,
xiii, 97
Britt, Harry, 122
Brock, David, 110, 112,
113, 119
Broder, David, 116
Brokaw, Tom, 156, 159
Broken Government, 96
Brookings Institution, 66,
140
Brooks, Rosa, xvii
Brown, Campbell, 96
Buckley, Jr., William F., i,
106
Buell, Mark, 111
Buell, Susie Tompkins,
111
Burma, 152
Bush vs. The Beltway, 150
Bush, George H.W., 10,
14, 16, 17, 78, 100
Bush, George W., 24, 32,
94, 101; "the smirk",
118
Bushnell, Prudence, 32
Butler, Richard, 146
Byrd, Robert, 57, 156
Byrd-Hagel Resolution,
107
CAFE standards, 82–84
Callender, David, 153
Calloway, Joe, ii
Camp Aguinaldo, 154
Canada, 6, 145
Cannistraro, Vincent, 36,
53
Capital Times, 153
Capitol Hill Blue, 151
Card, Andrew, 142
Carlos the Jackal, 19
Carter, Jimmy, xviii, 102,
106
Carville, James, 158
Cashill, Jack, ix
CBS Corporation, iii
CBS Evening News with
Katie Couric, 97
CBS News, 38, 133
CENTCOM, 67
Center for American
Progress, xi, 9, 66, 67,
69, 110, 111, 112, 122,
123, 148
Center for National
Security Law, 150
Center for Public
Integrity, 8
Center for Responsive
Politics, 92
Center for Strategic and
International Studies,
35
Chafee, Tyler, 113
Chalabi, Ahmed, 23, 70
Chambers, Whittaker,
113
Changing of the Guard, 116
Chapman, Michael, 19
Chechnya, 77
Cheney, Richard, 37, 43,
51, 68, 99, 127, 133
Chicago Sun-Times, 11
China, 63, 77, 104, 120,
155
Chirac, Jacques, 94
Christian Science Monitor,
42
Chun Doo Hwan, 152
Churchill, Winston, 155
Cirincione, Joseph, 148
Citizens for
Responsibility and
Ethics in Washington,
x
Citizens United, 96
Civil War, 13
Clapper, James R., 59
Clark, Wesley, viii, 22, 56
161
Clarke, Richard, iii, ix, 2,
3, 9, 10–20, 24, 25, 28,
30, 31, 33, 35, 40, 43,
77, 80, 121, 149
Clear Channel
Communications, 116
Clinton, Hillary: on
consistency of
intelligence, 46; the
"Cackle", 118
CNN, vii, 9, 24, 34, 50,
53, 80, 95–98, 98, 100,
103, 104, 110, 113,
124, 128, 139, 144,
147, 159
CNN Opinion Research
Corporation, 124
Coalition of the Willing,
145
Cocteau, Jean, 1
Cohen, William, iii, 23, 48
Cold War, xviii, 103, 139,
154
Cole Commission, 34
Colmes, Alan, 51
Colorado Media Matters,
113
Colossus, 22, 60
Commonwealth Club,
137
Conason, Joe, 31, 32, 120
Concert for New York, ii
Concordia University,
106
Confessions, The, 109
Congressional Vietnam
Veterans' Caucus, 116
Connection, The, 35, 39, 43
Constitution of the
Philippines, 13
Contractor Misconduct
Database, xiv
Conyers, John, x, xii
Cook, Robin, 139, 141
Council on Foreign
Relations, 22, 64, 65,
66, 77, 126
Countdown to Terror, x
Countdown with Keith
Olbermann, 111
Counterterrorist Center,
120
Couric, Katie, 149
Crawford, Texas, 32
Crossfire, 110
Crowe, Admiral William
J., US Navy (Ret.), 33
Crowley, Candy, 124
C-SPAN, 148
Cuba, 78, 104, 116, 137
Cuban Missile Crisis, 137
Cummock, Victoria, 90,
91
D’Amato, Alfonse, iii
DaimlerChrysler, 83
Dallas-Fort Worth
International Airport,
93
Dallek, Robert, 143
Dalton, John, viii
Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania,
33
Daschle, Linda Hall, 92
Daschle, Tom, iii, 50, 92,
142
de Klerk, Frederik
Willem, 147
De Telegraaf, 60
Dean for America, 113
Dean, Howard, 76
Defense Mapping
Agency, 153
Delco Times, ix
Delta Air Lines, 92
Delta Force, 17
Democracy Alliance, x,
111, 112, 157
Democratic National
Committee, 92
Democratic National
Convention, 97, 102
Democratic Senatorial
Campaign Committee,
iii
Democrats.com, xi–xv
depleted uranium, xiv
Dereliction of Duty, vi
Dingell, Debbie, 83
Dingell, John, iii, 83
Disarming Iraq, 146
DNC Services Corp., iii
Dodd, Christopher, 74
Dole Institute for
Politics, 123
Dorff, Patricia, 66
Drudge Report, The, 123
Duelfer, Charles, 62, 148
Duffy, U.S. District
Judge Kevin, 13
Dukakis, Michael, 134
Earle, Jonathan, 135
Earth in the Balance, 83
Easterbrook, Gregg, 89
Eastland, Terry, 138
Eaton, Paul, 117
eBay, 117
Edwards, John, 46, 58,
76, 118
Egypt, 99
Egyptian Islamic Jihad, 6
Eisenhower, Dwight D.,
106
ElBaradei, Mohamed,
134, 146
Electronic Data Systems,
xiv
Emanuel, Rahm, 131
Emma E. Booker
Elementary School,
143
EMPTA, 38
Enright, Janice, ix
Enron, ii
Environmental Defense
Fund, 87
Environmental
Protection Agency, 85
Esprit, 111
Esquire, 110
Exxon, ii
Exxon Mobil, xiv
Face the Nation, 110
FactCheck.org, 135, 151
Fahrenheit 9/11, 142
Fair Game, iii
Farley, Chris, xviii
Federal Aviation Agency,
30–31
Federal Bureau of
Investigation, xi, 3–5,
6, 7, 8, 12, 18, 20, 30,
31, 33, 39, 91
Feinstein, Dianne, 74, 84
Feinstein, Lee, viii
Ferguson, Niall, 22, 60,
145
Fertik, Bob, xii, xv
Fields, Alonzo, 143
Finance & Development,
154
Fisk, Robert, 132
Fitzgerald, Patrick, 37
Fitzgibbons, Dennis, 83
Flanagan, Tommy, 112
Fleischer, Ari, 142
162
Flowers, Gennifer, 96
Foley, Lawrence, 40
Ford Motor Co., 83, 85
Foreign Affairs, 64, 77
Fortune, 150
Foundation for Middle
East Peace, 36
Fox News, iii, ix, xv, 21,
24, 28, 29, 119, 121,
123
France, 15, 18, 59, 101,
103, 145
Franken, Al, iii, xii, 126,
133
Freeh, Louis, 12, 20, 91
Frontline, 25
Galen, Rich, 21, 22
Gama’at al-Islamiyya, 29
Garrison, Oswald Villard, v
Gehman, Harold, 34
Gelb, Leslie, 66
General Motors, 83
General Motors
Foundation, 83
Gephardt, Richard, iii, 76
Germany, 18, 103, 145,
154, 155
Gill, Tim, xi
Gingrich, Newt, 21–22,
122
Gitlin, Todd, 113
Goldwater, Barry, 116
Goodbye, Darkness, 144
Goodman, Ellen, 113
Gore, Al, iii, xv, 11, 23,
25, 39, 55, 56, 70, 73,
76, 82, 90, 91, 106,
118, 126, 137
Gorelick, Jamie, 6
Goss, Porter, 22
Graham, Tim, iii
Great Britain, 63, 84, 103
Groenhagen’s Law, 126
Guardian, The, 140
Gulf War, 16, 47, 50, 58,
65, 71
Hackworth, David, 144
Hagman, Larry, 87
Hainan island, 104
Haiti, vi
Hallett, Carol, 92
Halliburton, xiv, 147
Halperin, David, 123
Halperin, Mark, 121–24
Halperin, Morton, 111
INDEX
Hama, Syria, 60
Hamilton, Lee, 120, 144
Handgun Control Inc., iii
Hannity and Colmes, 51
Hannity, Sean, 121
Hardball with Chris
Matthews, 114, 119,
142
Harding, Bill, xv
Harkin, Tom, 116
Harrop, Froma, 83
Hart, Gary, 141
Hart-Rudman
Commission, 142
Hasselbeck, Elizabeth,
114
Hatch, Orrin, iii, 22
Hayes, Stephen, 35, 37,
39, 43
Hazardous Duty, 144
Health Net Inc., xiv
Heinz, Teresa, 142
Helsinki Accords Final
Act, 22
Heritage Foundation, 145
Hersh, Seymour, 8
Hertzberg, Hendrick, 132
Hezbollah, 37
Hickam Air Force Base,
153
Hijazi, Farouk, 36, 53
Hill, Anita, 113
Hindery Jr., Leo, 111
Hitchens, Christopher,
21, 152
Hoffer, Eric, 105
Holbrooke, Richard, vii,
8, 26, 56, 126, 137,
149
Hollings, Ernest "Fritz",
iii
Holy War, Inc., 39, 98, 155
Honasan, Gregorio
"Gringo", 153
Honeywell International
Inc., xiv
Hoover Institution, 86
Hormel, James C., 111
Hosenball, Mark, 35
House of Bush, House of
Saud, iii
Hoven, Randall, 107
How Did This Happen?, 89
Huasen, Qin, 103
Huffington, Arianna, 135
Hughes, Craig, 113
Hussein, Hisham, 42, 43
Hussein, Qusay, 44
Hussein, Saddam, 15, 22,
25, 26, 35–45, 46–63,
65, 69, 71, 72, 75, 78,
79, 80, 100, 104, 105,
127, 134, 136, 137,
138, 140, 146, 156,
157, 159
Hussein, Uday, 44, 104
IBM Corporation, xiv
Iceland, 108
Ickes, Harold, ix
Idris, Salah, 39
Imperial Hubris, 84
Imus, Don, 97
In Our Time, 106
Inconvenient Truth, An, 85,
87, 126
Independent, The, 132
India, 77, 106, 120
Indyk, Martin, viii
Insight, 20
Inslee, Jay, 128
Intelligence Identities
Protection Act, 129
Interim Progress Report,
62, 148
International Atomic
Energy Agency, 47,
134, 146
Internet Archives, iv, 125
Investor’s Business Daily, i,
97
Iran, 15, 18, 23, 37, 55,
58, 60, 69, 71, 76, 77,
78
Iran-Iraq War, 78
Iraq, xiii, 15, 18, 22, 23,
25, 26, 27, 35–45, 46–
63, 64–69, 76–81, 97,
98, 100, 101, 125, 126,
127, 148, 156
Iraq Liberation Act, 50,
73, 74
Iraq Survey Group, 62
Iraqi National Assembly,
71, 72
Iraqi National Congress,
23, 55, 70, 71, 72
Iraqi Survey Group, 60
Irbil, 138
Isikoff, Michael, 35
163
Israel, viii, 14, 58, 61, 77,
95, 99
Isuzu, Joe, 112
Ivanov, Igor, 103
Izaak Walton League, 87
Jackson, Mark Wayne, 42
Jacobson, Nancy, xi
Japan, 78, 152
Jintao, Hu, 104
John F. Kennedy
90
Johns Hopkins School of
Advanced
International Studies,
138
Johnson, Jeff, 132
Johnson, Larry, 126
Jones, Paula Corbin, 109
Jordan, 99
Judge, Lee, xvi
Kagan, Donald, 16, 17,
41, 154
Kagan, Frederick W., 16,
17, 41, 154
KAL 007, 152
Kansas City Star, v, xvi,
xvii
Kaplan, Fred, xii, 139
Kaplan, Rick, 96
Kay, David, 60, 62, 148
Kean Jr., Thomas H.,
119, 120
Keillor, Garrison, 8
Kellogg Brown & Root,
147
Kennedy, Claudia, viii
Kennedy, John F., 1, 87,
137, 155
Kennedy, Patrick, iii
Kennedy, Ted, iii, 102,
138, 156
Kenya, 2, 7, 32, 33, 100
Kerrey, Bob, xiii, 25, 53,
54, 74
Kerrick, Donald, viii
Kerry, John, iii, vii, viii, 9,
11, 12, 49, 50, 58, 70,
74, 77, 96, 103, 115,
123, 125, 126, 127,
142, 143
Kessler, Ronald, 40
KGB, 44
Khartoum, 18, 37, 49, 52,
104
Khobar Towers, 25
Kim Dong Whie, 152
Kim Il Sung, 155
King, John, 80
King, Larry, 57, 58, 95,
142
King, Peter, 127
Kinnock, Neil, 134
Klein, Joe, 118
Koppel, Andrea, 96
Koppel, Ted, 156, 159
Korb, Lawrence, 66
Kosovo, viii, xiv, xv, 22,
101, 104
Kreider, Kalee, 86
Kristof, Nicholas D., 133
Kucinich, Dennis, 77
Kurdistan, 41, 42
Kurtz, Howard, 70
Kuwait, 36, 53, 58, 62,
81, 99, 100
Kyoto Protocol, 94, 106, 107
L-3 Communications
Holdings Inc., 93
Lake, Anthony, 19
Laksin, Jacob, 94
Lancet, The, xiii, 97, 115
Landay, Jonathan S., 8
Langevin, Jim, iii
Larry King Live, 82
Late Edition, 24, 50
Lautenberg, Frank, 74
Lawrence Journal-World,
123, 151
Leahy, Patrick, iii
Lee Bum Suk, 152
Lehman, John, 119
Levin, Carl, iii, 23, 50, 56,
74, 135
Levin, Mark R., 5
Lewinsky, Monica, v, vi,
11, 21, 70, 103, 109
Lewis, Jean, 5
Libby, Lewis Scooter,
127
Libya, 13, 15, 47, 76, 78,
104, 154
Licht, Richard, iii
Lieberman, Joseph, 44,
74
Lies and the Lying Liars
Who Tell Them, 133
Limbaugh, Rush, 37, 114,
115, 116, 117, 123
Linberg, Tod, 5
Lindsey, Lawrence, 150
Lockerbie, Scotland, 90
Lockheed Martin, xiv
Loeb, Vernon, 149
Lokeman, Rhonda
Chriss, v
Looming Tower, The, 13,
32, 39, 99
Los Angeles
4, 7
Los Angeles Times, xvii,
110, 126, 128, 131,
132, 136
Lott, Trent, 22
Lowry, Rich, 158
Luxembourg, 108, 111
MacBeth, Jesse, 114
Maechling Jr., Charles,
102
Malaysia, 30
Manchester, William,
143, 144
Marine Aircraft Group
36, 153
Marine Corps, 61, 117,
152, 153
Marine Corps-Law
Enforcement
Foundation, 117
Marines Corps, 16
Maritime Interception
Force, xiii
Markey, Edward, iii, 84
Martha’s Vineyard, 89
Matthews, Chris, 114,
119
Mayer, Jane, 113
Mays, Mark P., 116
Mbeki, Thabo, 148
McCain, John, iii, v
McCartney, Paul, ii
McClanahan, Tom, xvii
McClatchy Newspapers,
x
McCullough, David, i,
143
McGovern, Ray, xii
McKesson, xiv
McWethy, John, 49
Media Matters for
America, x, xi, 30, 35
Media Research Center,
ii, 110, 114
MediaWatch, 110
164
Meet the Press, 43, 68, 69,
110, 133, 134, 156,
158
Menendez, Bob, 120
Mikulski, Barbara, 74
Milbank, Dana, 8, 149
Military Times, 117
Milosevic, Slobodan, 22
Mogadishu, 17
Moore, Michael, 94, 102,
132, 142
Moussaoui, Zacarias, 121
MoveOn.org, 11, 67, 70
MSNBC, 111, 114, 119,
142
Mukhabarat, 41
Mullah Krekar, 40
Murrow, Edward R., 114
Mustafa Mahmoud Said
Ahmed, 32
Mylroie, Laurie, 42, 150
Nader, Ralph, 92
Nairobi, Kenya, 32, 33,
100
Nation, The, 111, 112,
113, 157
National Archives, vii, 2
National Environmental
Trust, 87
National Imagery and
Mapping Agency, 60
National Islamic Front,
37, 38, 52
National Military
Strategy, 68
National Missile Defense,
23
National Press Club, 64,
82
National Public Radio, 36
National Republican
Congressional
Committee, iii
National Right to Life
Committee, 110
National Security
Council, viii, ix, 66,
74, 96, 156
National Security
Strategy, 26, 55, 68
National Security
Strategy for a Global
Age, A, 26, 55
National Transportation
Safety Board, 90
INDEX
NATO, 22, 101, 104
Natural Resources
Defense Council, 87
Nayuf, Nizar, 60
Neumann, Ronald E., 55
New England Journal of
Medicine, The, 115
New York Fire
Department, ii
New York Police
Department, ii, 30
New York Post, 1, 9, 29
New York Sun, The, 73
New York Times, 32, 38,
49, 56, 96, 110, 111,
113, 115, 122, 129,
133, 135, 157
New York University, 70
New Yorker, The, 8, 118,
132
Newsweek, vii, 12, 35, 36,
52, 104, 129
Newsweek International,
64, 146
Niger, 125, 127, 129, 136
Nimitz, Chester William,
144
Nixon, Richard, i
No One Left To Lie To, 21,
152
Noah, Timothy, 118
Nobel Peace Prize, 76,
106, 108
North American Free
Trade Agreement, 83
North Korea, vii, 23, 55,
60, 76, 77, 78, 104,
152, 153, 155
Northrop Grumman, xiv
Northwest Airlines, 92
Norway, 40, 108
Novak, Robert, 128, 129,
135
O’Donnell, Rosie, 114
O’Hanlon, Michael, 67
O’Neill, John P., 39
O’Neill, Paul, 149
Oakley, Phyllis, 38
Obama, Barack, v, vii,
105, 124
Oil-for-Food Program,
26
Okinawa, 152
Olbermann, Keith, 114,
126
Olympic Park bombing,
11
Oman, 99
Open Society Institute,
xvii, 8, 111
Open Society Policy
Center, 111
Operation Allied Force,
104
Operation Desert Fox,
xii, 22, 51, 52, 54, 59,
63, 65, 68, 79, 80, 103,
104, 138
Operation Desert Shield,
33, 100
Operation Desert Storm,
51, 59, 60, 62, 74, 81
Operation Iraqi
Freedom, 64, 114,
145, 150
Operation Provide Relief,
16
Operation Southern
Watch, 103
Operation Truth, 126
Opus Dei, 12
O'Reilly Factor, The, xv
O'Reilly, Bill, xv, 119,
121
Orontes River, 59
O'Rourke, P.J., 127
Osirak, Iraq, 61
Oxford University, 106
Pakistan, 11, 43, 77, 140
Pan Am 103, 13–14, 90
Path to 9/11, The, 119,
120
Patterson, Robert Buzz,
vi, 10
Peace dividend, 154
Pearl Harbor, 143
Pelley, Scott, 62
Pelosi, Nancy, 51, 122
Penn, Mark, xi
Perkins, Frances, 143
Perry, William, 137
Persian Gulf, 138, 144
Persian Puzzle, The, 69
Pew Research Center for
the People & the
Press, ii
Philippines, 12, 42, 116,
152, 154
Physicians for Social
Responsibility, 87
165
Pickering, Thomas, 23,
39, 71
Pincus, Ann, 8
Pincus, Walter, 2, 8
Pingree, Chellie, iii
Piro, George, 62
Plame, Valerie, iii, 37,
125–30
Podesta, John, 66, 71, 73,
110, 111
Politically Incorrect, 132
Pollack, Kenneth, 51, 52,
64, 67, 74, 80, 96, 126,
139, 147, 156
Posner, Gerald, 17, 155
Powell, Colin, 57, 131,
132, 141
Pravda, 126
Presidential Daily
Briefing, 29
Pressler, Larry, iii
Price of Loyalty, iii
Price, Allison, ix
Project On Government
Oversight, xiv
Public Broadcasting
System, 25, 143
Public Citizen, 92
Putting People First, 82
Qadaffi, Muammar, 15,
44
Qatar, 99, 103
Rahman, Sheik Omar
Abdel, 2
Ramadan, 29, 104
Ramadan, Taha Yasin,
104
Rasmussen Reports, 12,
124
Rather, Dan, iii, 133
Rathergate, iii
Ratnesar, Romesh, 11
Raytheon Company, xiv
Reagan, Ronald, xviii, 10,
13–15, 139, 152
Real Anita Hill, The, 113
Redstone, Shari, iii
Redstone, Sumner M., iii
Reese, Charley, 147
Reform the Armed
Forces Movement,
153
Reid, Harry, 116, 143
Reliable Sources, 110, 113
Rendition, 140
Reno, Janet, 12, 20
Republican Noise Machine,
The, 110
Ressam, Ahmed, 6, 19
RestoreHonesty.com,
125–26
Revere, Paul, 141, 142
Review of Intelligence on
Weapons of Mass
Destruction, 127
Reynolds, Maura, 136
Rice, Condoleezza, 2, 29,
61, 70, 141
Rich, Frank, 135
Richardson, Bill, 50
Ridder, Rick, 113
Ridder-Braden, Inc., 113
Rieckhoff, Paul, 114, 126
Ritter, Scott, 21
Robert J. Dole Institute
of Politics, 135
Roosevelt, Franklin
Delano, i, 143
Rosentiel, Tom, 96
Ross, Brian, 40
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques,
109
Rove, Karl, 128
Royal Dutch Shell PLC,
xiv
Rubin, Jamie, 96
Rudman, Warren, 141
Rudolph, Eric, 11
Rumsfeld, Donald, 15,
70, 133
Russert, Tim, 43, 68, 110,
156, 158
Russia, 63, 77, 103, 104,
120, 139, 155
Rustmann, Fred, 128
Saban Center for Middle
East Policy, viii, 66
Sada, Georges, 59
Sakhalin Island, 152
Salon.com, 31, 70, 120,
129, 135, 141
San Francisco Chronicle, 145
San Jose Mercury News, 36,
126
Sandalow, Marc, 145
Sandler, Herbert, 111
Sandler, Marion, 111
Santayana, George, 152
Saperstein, Guy, 157
Sarasota Herald-Tribune,
143
Saudi Arabia, xiii, xv, 18,
25, 29, 30, 33, 36, 52,
53, 61, 99, 100
Schanzer, Jonathan, 41
Schapiro, Meyer, 113
Scheer, Robert, 131
Scheuer, Michael, xvii,
84, 120, 140
Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur,
121
Scholastic Inc., 120
Schumer, Chuck, iii, x
Schweitzer, Carole
Dorsch, 61, 90
Schweitzer, Glenn E., 61,
90
Schweizer, Peter, 86
Seattle Times, 101
Seduction of Hillary Clinton,
The, 110
Seligman Steiner, Naomi,
x
Senate Armed Services
Committee, 23, 36, 53,
68, 69
Senor, Dan, 96
Sestak, Joe, ix–xi
Sharpton, Al, 77
Shaykh ‘Umar ‘Abd alRahman, 29
Sheehan, Cindy, xii
Sheik Abdullah barracks,
15
Shuster, Mike, 36, 53
Sierra Club, 87
Simon & Schuster, iii
Slate.com, xii, 118, 139
Slater, Rodney, 91
Sloan, Melanie, x
Slocombe, Walter, 53
Soderberg, Nancy, 19
Somalia, vi, 15, 16, 17,
144
Soros, George, x, xvii, 8,
64–67, 111, 115
South Africa, 147, 148
South Korea, 77, 152,
153
Soviet Union, 152, 154
Spade, David, xviii
Stahl, Lesley, xv, 97
Star Tribune, 126, 127
Stein, Rob, 111
166
Stephanopoulos, George,
82, 122
Stevens, Ted, iii
Stonebridge
International, ix, 69,
120
Stossel, John, ii
Strange Bedfellows, 96
Strange Justice, 113
Strategic Information
Operations Center, 20
Strobel, Warren P., 8
Studds, Gerry, iii
Sudan, x, 11, 15, 18, 19,
21, 30, 36, 37, 38, 39,
47, 49, 52, 53, 56, 69,
78, 89, 103, 104
Suh Suk Joo, 152
Suskind, Ron, iii
Syria, vii, 59, 60, 76, 77,
78, 99
Taiwan, 77
Take It Back, 158
Talbot, David, 141
Taliban, 18, 69, 104, 131,
132, 158
Tantawi, Sheikh
Mohamed Sayyed, 103
Tanzania, 2, 7, 100
Tarawa, 144
Team Spirit ’84, 152, 153
Technologies
Corporation, xiv
Tenet, George, 2, 20, 31,
36, 39, 47, 53, 54, 66,
70, 71, 133, 140
Tennessee Center for
Policy Research, 86
Think Progress, 9, 30, 67,
71, 73, 123
This Week, 123
Thomas, Clarence, 113
Thompson, Doug, 151
Thompson, Nicholas,
135
Threat Condition Delta,
31
Threatening Storm, The, 52,
64–69, 74, 80, 126,
139, 147
Time, 10, 124, 128, 133,
146, 157
Today Show, 149
Toensing, Victoria, 127
Tommy Boy, xviii
INDEX
Torricelli, Robert, iii
Tosé-Rigell, Gwendolyn,
143
Tour of Duty, 143
Traister, Rebecca, 129
Trans World Airlines, 92
Tribune Media Services,
8
Troopergate, 110
Truman, Harry S, i, xviii,
106
Truth and Consequences,
126
Truth, The, 111, 126
Turkey, 36, 99
Turner, Robert F., 150
TWA 800, 90
U.N. Charter, 22
U.N. Security Council,
26, 50, 63, 69
U.N. Security Council
Resolution 1267, 132
Resolution 1284, 54
Resolution 1441, 146
Resolution 688, 103
Resolution 814, 17
U.S. Army Logistics Civil
Augmentation
Program, 147
U.S. Central Command,
33
U.S. Claims Court, 39
U.S. Commission on
National Security, 141
U.S. Public Interest
Research Group, 87
Unger, Craig, iii
Union of Concerned
Scientists, 87
United Air Lines, 92
United Arab Emirates, 99
United Kingdom, 127
United Nations’ Food
and Agricultural
Organization, xiii, 97
United States v. Muhammad
Salameh, et al, 12
University of Kansas,
123, 135
University of the
Philippines, 153
University of Virginia,
150
UNMOVIC, 145
UNSCOM, 38, 47, 49,
53, 146
Up From Liberalism, i, 106
USA Today, 56, 85, 110
USS Abraham Lincoln, xiii
USS Cole, xiv, xv, 17, 19,
24, 28, 34, 100
USS Stark, 100
Valdez oil spill, ii
Valley Forge Military
Academy, ix
Vanity Fair, 97
VH1, ii, iii
Viacom, iii
Vietnam, 114, 115, 116,
122, 143
Vietnam Campaign
Medal, 116
Vietnam Service Medal,
116
View, The, 114
Vincent, Billie H., 92
Wag the Dog, 21
Wall Street Journal, xiii,
116, 122
Wallace, Chris, iii, ix, 24,
28
Waller, J. Michael, 20
Warner, John, 23
Washington Journal, 148
Washington Monthly, 92, 97
Washington Post, i, viii, x,
xvii, 2, 8, 16, 21, 23,
33, 36, 37, 38, 43, 52,
62, 67, 87, 93, 111,
116, 125, 129, 148,
149
Wayback Machine, iv,
125
Weaver, Richard, v
Weekly Standard, 5, 41,
138
Weld, William, iii
Weldon, Curt, ix, x
West, Togo, viii
167
What Liberal Media?, 111
While America Sleeps, 16,
17, 42, 155
While England Slept, 155
White House
Commission on
Aviation Safety and
Security, 90
White, Mary Jo, 19
Whitewash, iii
Whitewater, 5, 6, 97
Why America Slept, 17, 155
Why England Slept, 155
Wikipedia, 131
Wilcox, Philip, 36
William Cohen, xiv
Wilson, Joe, viii, xii, 96,
125, 126, 128, 136
Winfrey, Oprah, 67
Wolfowitz, Paul, xii, 43,
136
Woodward, Bob, 129
World Islamic Front, 69
World News Tonight, 40, 97
World Trade Center, 12,
13, 17
World War II, 141, 144
World Wildlife Fund, 88
Wright, Lawrence, 32, 39,
99
Y2K Coordination
Center, 20
Yankee White, vi
Yellen, Janet, 158
Yemen, 24, 30, 33, 34
York, Byron, 147
Yousef, Ramzi, 6, 12, 13,
29
Youth Action Montreal's
Youth Summit on
Climate Change, 106
YouTube, vii
Yugoslavia, 25
Zakaria, Fareed, 64, 146
Zamboanga City,
Philippines, 42
Zeyzoun, Syria, 59
Zia-ul-Haq, Muhammad,
43
Zinni, Anthony, 24, 33,
34, 67
Zubaydah, Abu, 7