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MWO On Bush Sleaze PT 1
Dear MWO:
So how, exactly, did the Democrats react to the revelations about Bush's
August intelligence briefing? A quick perusal of the press would leave you
with the impression that the Demos attacked Bush like a rogue bag of pretzels.
The Democratic response has been described as "gleeful braying,"
"mealy-mouthed accusation," "Bush bashing," "truly outrageous,"
"ridiculous" and so on.
Of course, you could read the comments of the Democratic leadership yourself
but why bother when you have the "liberal" media giving you their version?
The press wouldn't mischaracterize the statements of Democrats would they?
Let's check and see. Here's House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt "pouncing"
on 5/16/02:
"I think it's early in the process to reach conclusions."
"I don't know what information was there in front of the White House, the
president, the intelligence committees or anybody else. That's why we need
to know this. Again, this is the pursuit of knowledge for the purpose of
preventing further attacks. That's what this is."
"QUESTION: Congressman, you keep saying that, you know, we successfully
prevented terrorism during the millennium, and it seems to me that you're
implying that we also could have prevented 9/11.
GEPHARDT: No, I don't know that at all. I don't know what the facts are."
Hmm, doesn't sound like an attack to me. In fact, I'd say the whole thing
sounds awfully non-committal. Maybe Gephardt has some crazy idea that he'd
better get more facts before he forms an opinion.
Well, let's turn instead to Hillary Clinton, "implying" something nefarious
about Bush on the Senate floor:
"Those are all important issues, worthy of exploration by the relevant
committees of Congress. The goal of such an examination should not be to
assign blame, but to find out all the facts."
"Mr. President, I know some things about the unique challenges faced by the
person who assumes the mantle of Commander in Chief. No one but those
individuals who have that responsibility can truly know the full scope of
the burdens of that office. But I've had the privilege of witnessing such
history up close. And I know there is never any shortage of second-guessers
and Monday morning quarterbacks, ready to dismantle any comment, or critique
any action taken, or not taken.
Having experienced that from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, I will
not play that game, especially in this circumstance."
Now that she mentions it, Hillary would know better than anyone how horrible
it would be to point fingers at the President without having all of the
facts. Sounds like she's being awfully restrained.
But, hey, how about Tom Daschle? That "obstructionist" must have let the fur
fly:
"We shouldn't jump to any conclusions. Clearly, there is a lot more to be
learned before we can come to any final conclusion about all of the facts,
but it clearly raises some very important questions that have to be asked
and have to be answered."
"Well, I'm concerned about whether or not the public was adequately
protected, and whether or not there was adequate information provided to the
public regarding these circumstances. But again, I think it's important for
us to get all of the facts and all of the information prior to the time we
come to any conclusion."
"QUESTION: Were you mislead or were you lied to?
DASCHLE: I'm not going to make any definitive judgment on that. I think it
is important for us to get all the information. There may be an explanation.
If there is, we need to have it. I'm ready to listen to any plausible
explanation as to how we can reconcile what was our understanding with what
now is being reported. "
Am I crazy, or does all of this sound reasonable, restrained, direct and
free of innuendo? Am I the only one who doesn¹t hear a baseless partisan
attack?
According to the press, apparently I am. Here's a quick round-up notice
the stunning lack of actual, in-context quotes from the Democratic leadership:
"Despite the gleeful braying of Democrats who, after their long period of
solemn foreign-policy caution, are now acting like ecstatic children just
freed by the school bell, it's not clear that the Bush administration
deserves real blame for failing to see September 11 coming."|
Michael Crowley, The New Republic
"Now come the Democrats. In their conspiracy, George W. Bush was told the
attack was coming and didn't prevent it. They mealy-mouth around this
accusation, but that's just political foreplay to warm up the public for an
assault on Bush. This goes beyond pathetic to dangerous."
Mike Thomas, Orlando Sentinel
"As Congressional Democrats and other Bush opponents rev up the
recriminations following this week's disclosures, they should remember that
the House and Senate Intelligence Committees received some of the same
intelligence reports as the White House."
Editorial Page, New York Times
"Revelations that shook the nation's capital last week provided dispirited
Democratic partisans with ammunition for bashing George W.
Bush."
Robert Novak, Syndicated Columnist
"This all went on Friday - against a backdrop of Democrats attacking the
president for "what he knew and when he knew it." If you listen to the
Democrats carefully, what they were actually saying when they used that
Watergate phrase is truly outrageous. They were saying that Bush knew an
attack was coming that was going to take the lives of thousands and did
nothing about it"
Rush Limbaugh
"Well, Hillary Clinton said I believe it was The New York Post had a
headline saying he knew. And she, on the Senate floor, said a lot of my
constituents are wondering about that, especially this being New York. And
the implication being that somehow he knew and did nothing. I mean, which
has got to be that he knew that there was going to be a suicide bombing and
that he did nothing, which is ridiculous."
Mort Kondracke, Fox News
"And I'm afraid what Democrats have tried to do is encourage these
conspiracy theories that the president knew."
Fred Barnes, Fox News
"Democrats and the press corps immediately pounced, with Presidential
wannabe Dick Gephardt invoking the Watergate language of "what the White
House knew," yada yada."
Wall Street Journal Editorial Page
It must be great to be in the American press: you don't have to actually
report on what people say, because you are blessed with the innate ability
to divine their true feelings, especially when it serves your political
theories.
Well, here's my theory:
For a year and a half, we have been subjected to the most imperial,
secretive, unaccountable, spin-obsessed, partisan, politically motivated
administration to occupy the White House since Nixon.
For these Republicans, every Democratic statement is either an opening for
attack or a blow that must be countered.
There's not a shred of doubt in the press's mind that, had this same
scenario played out under a Gore administration, the Republicans, sensing an
opening, would have lashed out viscously. And in the twisted logic of our
media, that means the Democrats must have lashed out as well.
Trouble is, it just isn't so.
Best,
Mark Weber
*****
PHOENIX MEMO WENT TO FRUSTRATED NYC PATRIOT-MARTYR
John O'Neill, FBI Hero, Got Word in July, Was Rebuffed, "Retired" In Anger
NY Times, Incredibly, Reports And Then Blows Huge Story
A Crucial Piece Of The Bush Scandal Puzzle?
In a stunning revelation, the New York Times has reported that among the two
FBI office counterterrorism chiefs who received the now famously neglected
Phoenix memorandum last July was none other than John O'Neill -- then the
top counterterrorist officer in the FBI's New York City's office, and the
FBI's leading expert on Osama bin Laden.
O'Neill knew perfectly well what Al Qaeda was up to, and had been knocking
on doors (and, at times, heads) for years to get his colleagues and
superiors to understand what he did.
The last straw came in July 2001, when (as he told the French authors
Guillaume Dasquié and Jean-Charles Brisard in an interview), O'Neill became
fully aware that the Bush administration, anxious over negotiations for a
Caspian Sea oil pipe line, had decided to back off of tracking bin Laden and
opposing the Taliban, lest it risk alienating powerful Saudi families.
Instead of going after the Taliban and bin Laden, the Bush Administration
decided to negotiate and try to buy off the Taliban and bin Laden.
Unfortunately for the Administration, the pipe-line negotiations broke down
in August.
And on September 11, bin Laden struck.
What no one has known until now is that at the very moment that O'Neill was
finally giving up, in July, he was being apprised of the Phoenix memorandum
-- a memo, it seems, that practically nobody inside the Bush Administration
was willing to treat seriously other than himself.
At the end of August, in disgust, O'Neill left the FBI to take what he
somewhat ruefully regarded as his "retirement" job --as head of security at
the World Trade Center. There, on September 11, John O'Neill died at the
hands of his arch-enemy bin Laden's fiendish followers.
Connect the dots? Well, duh! O'Neill got the Phoenix message. No one
would listen. No one. The Bushies had backed off bin Laden. So O'Neill
changed jobs -- and went on to die a martyr's death. While all the people
who ignored him, on up the chain to the Oval Office, live on -- ghoulishly
making political hay out of his sacrifice and their own incompetence -- and,
in a sense, their own perfidy.
But here's the really amazing thing -- having unearthed this blockbuster,
the New York Times reporters David Johnston and Don Van Natta, Jr., simply
bury it in their story.
They report, incredibly, that O'Neill simply "retired" back in August --
ignoring the well-known background, leaving the dots unconnected!!
What did O'Neill know back in July? Whom did he try to warn? What happened
when he did so? What did his "retirement" -- and its tragic consequences --
have to do with his frustrated efforts to get Bush's people to listen to him
about the Phoenix memo, and/or about everything else he knew about Osama bin
Laden's clear and present danger to American lives?
Here are some questions that the Bush people don't want asked, by the New
York Times, by a National Board of Investigation, or by anyone else.
Who among ye Whores will have the guts to ask them -- and then have the
additional guts to find the answers?
If you can't be stirred by common decency or by human justice or by
old-fashioned professionalism, listen to this -- there's a Pulitzer Prize
here for someone with enough guts.
Just connect the dots -- and do some intelligent reporting.
In death, the hero John O'Neill may just turn out to be the central clue to
solving the Bush 9/11 scandal.
Which will still be cruel -- but at least might lead to justice.
*****
ANTI-BUSH BACKLASH BUILDS
Whores, For Once, Outraged At Dubya's Bullying, Scare Tactics Bush Likened
to Wizard of Oz
Even Paula Zahn Objects!
Open Ridicule for Bush, Cheney, Condi, Rummy "Authentic" "Credible"
"Trustworthy"?
"Nixonian" "Unaccountable" "Venal" Emerging As True Bush/Cheney Character
The Tipping Point?
With unpredicted ferocity, the public backlash against the crude
diversionary scare tactics currently being deployed by the Bush
Administration has built into a fresh media firestorm.
Yes, even the Bush-fawning mainstream media, or some of them, finally seem
to have gotten sick to their stomachs.
Check out MoDo's latest:
"There is a red alert going on now, but it's only in Karl Rove's office.
(There is severe risk of political damage to the Bush administration.)"
Tim Noah, Howard "Mister" Kurtz, Michael Kramer -- all have blasted the
Bushies transparent effort to change the subject away from the White House's
incompetence with a Chicken Little blitz. What Noah calls the whipping up of
"dire news for maximum political benefit."
Chris "Tweety" Matthews has been especially pungent:
"We have a real problem with [Phoenix memo not reaching Bush, Mohammad Atta
acquiring student visa].. these are real screw-ups, real foul-ups.. Are
they being covered up by these generalized warnings?"
Wow! Guess Dubya's been "un-anointed" as infallible king.
And, omigod, even Paula Zahn!:
"[T]here are people out there, even the president's supporters, who are
saying that they think this latest series of warnings are nothing more than
the administration collectively trying to cover its derriere."
Some of these creeps got rich by lying about Bill Clinton, calling him a low
politician who would do anything to save his political skin, in contrast to
the "authentic," "credible," "trustworthy" George W. Bush.
Slowly but surely, even some of those previously believed to be the most
hopeless cases may be awakening to the fact that they've been had, that
Bush, his family, and their coterie are vicious pols, capable of undertaking
what may well turn out to be the most heinous coverups in American history
-- and that's just with 9/11 and Enron.
What does it say about the "trust" factor when everyone now believes that as
a result of the eight-month coverup, the Bush administration would react to
the criticism that threatens its tenuous terror-based power, by stoking more
terror?
We won't ask these Rove-bots to eat crow -- yet. Just to keep reading MWO,
as so many of them have started to do, for reliable updates on the Bush
regime's out-of-control "administration."
And don't just read MWO. Keep reading the likes of the honorable Paul
Vitello, writing in Newsday:
It also doesn't help that the government has sounded like the Wizard of Oz
in the last few days - "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"
they seem to be saying with all their warnings of imminent attacks; their
scolding of the Democrats for "playing on the emotions" of the victims'
families by daring to ask real questions; their implication that a real
review of the record might divert FBI manpower from the job of
counter-terrorism. These are scare tactics.
When the mainstream press doesn't just blast the powers that be but begins
to ridicule them, you know that a tipping point is about to be reached.
So far, the Bushies have failed to cover up with their signature techniques
of stonewalling, blaming Clinton, and calling their adversaries traitors.
Now they have decided to try and scare the hell out of the American people.
But it's not working!
Nothing will work.
The Bushies and their media brownnoses are, for the time being, screwed and
tattooed -- and they have no one to blame but themselves.
Response to Cheney's Threats, New Warnings: Near-Universal Revulsion And
Skepticism Media, American People Simply Don't Trust Bush
The only debate seems to be whether the new threats represent cynical
efforts to distract from current criticism or cynical efforts to provide
cover against future criticism:
"That's why the Bushies are trying to terrify us. They desperately want to
change the subject from the stunning lapses of their ostensibly expert
foreign policy team — and they cynically want to make it sound as if nothing
they do or don't do really matters in the end."
MoDo
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"But Chatterbox doesn't put it past the Bush White House to time its release
of this dire news for maximum political benefit. With the start of a new
week, Topic A is shifting away from the Bush administration's possible
incompetence in handling the 9/11 threat (mounting evidence suggests that
the worst of this occurred within the FBI) and toward the prospect of a new,
devastating al-Qaida attack on U.S. soil."
Tim Noah
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"What started as a story about how the Bush team handled unspecific warnings
about possible terrorist attacks in the U.S. before 9/11 has now prompted
the Bushies not only to defend themselves from charges of irresponsibility —
which they are entitled to do — but to go on a Chicken Little warnings binge
that another attack is imminent, inevitable and around the corner, but we
can't tell you when, where or how."
Thomas L. Friedman
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
"Put in terms a family newspaper can publish, all this unspecific sputtering
amounts to little more than some classic and familiar butt- covering.
But this time it's butt-covering with a purpose, and that purpose is
misdirection. The more we learn about what various government agencies knew
before Sept. 11, the more certain we are that we aren't prepared for what
may come next — and the government definitely doesn't want us to know that."
Michael Kramer
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"American intelligence agencies have intercepted a vague yet troubling
series of communications among al Qaeda operatives over the last few months
indicating that the terrorist organization is trying to carry out an
operation as big as the Sept. 11 attacks or bigger, according to
intelligence and law enforcement officials."
Which raises a number of questions:
Is such a dastardly attack really brewing?
Is the administration, having been stung by disclosure of the pre- 9/11
warnings, now putting out every bit of scary intelligence – just in case?"
Howard Kurtz
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"We have a real problem with [Phoenix memo not reaching Bush, Mohammad Atta
acquiring student visa].. these are real screw-ups, real foul-ups.. Are
they being covered up by these generalized warnings?"
Tweety:
Hardball, May 21, 2002
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"All right, Cliff, because I know Bob is so fired up to talk about this from
Boise, Idaho today. And we dragged him out of bed early.
I'm actually going to start with you first, Cliff.
There is a lot of second-guessing going on, and there are people out there,
even the president's supporters, who are saying that they think this latest
series of warnings are nothing more than the administration collectively
trying to cover its derriere. What about that?"
Paula Zahn
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Of course, maybe it's true. It could well be true. I'm certain it's at least
partly true. But the problem is that it's so deeply convenient and the
administration's response to calls for inquiries has been so strident and
aggressive that it's difficult to see this as mere coincidence.
"Another clue adds to my suspicion. One of the two outlets to break this
story, The New York Times, says that the increased activity has been for
'the last few months.' NBC says it's for the 'past several weeks.' So why do
we hear about it right now? And what about Tom Ridge's color-coded terror
system? Come to think of it, where's Tom Ridge?"
Josh Marshall
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"On one level it's impossible to hear these dire assessments and, with
charred images of Sept. 11 still fresh in our minds, not recoil. And only a
fool would dismiss them out of hand. Still, skeptics must be allowed to ask
the obvious out loud: Don't these hair-raising warnings come at a convenient
time for the White House, as it tries both to fend off criticism for its
mishandling of terrorist intelligence and to squash an expansive inquiry on
Capitol Hill?"
Eric Boehlert
http://www.mediawhoresonline.com
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