Bush Hangs Tough

[mr mahs]

Lets open the flood gates on the press conference already...

BUSH HANGS TOUGH

By JOHN PODHORETZ

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April 14, 2004 -- THE purpose of last night's presidential press conference was to show purpose, and rarely has a president seemed quite so purposeful as George W. Bush did last night.

The purpose of the White House press corps was to make the president confess to weakness - to corner him into creating the soundbite of all soundbites, in which Bush would acknowledge his errors as president and thereby give John Kerry all the material he would need for a killer TV ad or two.

The president achieved his purpose. The press corps did not achieve its purpose. He would not fall into their astonishingly blatant trap. He simply refused to offer a satisfactory answer to four - four! - different questions demanding that he either enumerate or apologize for his failures.

No one should be fooled by the way he stumbled through some of his answers about his mistakes as president. Bush knew exactly what he was doing, as he always does.

Rather than apologize to the 9/11 families for the terror strike that day, the president said the responsibility for the attacks rested squarely on the shoulders of Osama bin Laden. And it's a mark of how demented the debate has gotten in the past few weeks that this simple statement of truth seemed bracing and even daring.

The purposeful Bush sought to reassure the American people that the cost and the burden of the mission in Iraq are worth it - and that the sacrifices being borne by our military and their families are noble and valuable.

"One of the things that's very important," he said, "is to never allow our youngsters to die in vain. And I made that pledge to their parents. Withdrawing from the battlefield of Iraq would be just that, and it's not going to happen under my watch."

The sacrifices are being made for freedom - and for American security. He said it plainly and simply: "By helping secure a free Iraq, Americans serving in that country are protecting their fellow citizens. Our nation is grateful to them all and to their families that face hardship and long separation."

The fighting in Iraq is self-evidently part of the War on Terror, he said, because those who are trying to kill soldiers and contractors in Iraq use the same tactics as the terrorists who kill everywhere - and for the same reasons.

"The terrorists who take hostages or plants a roadside bomb near Baghdad," he said, are "serving the same ideology of murder that kills innocent people on trains in Madrid, and murders children on buses in Jerusalem, and blows up a nightclub in Bali and cuts the throat of a young reporter for being a Jew."

In the president's formulation, the mission in Iraq is not only noble and valuable, but now inescapable. There are only two possible outcomes, he said: "Iraq will either be a peaceful, democratic country or it will again be a source of violence, a haven for terror and a threat to America and to the world."

As a result, the United States cannot fail in Iraq "because the consequences of failure would be unthinkable." Failure will embolden terrorists and purveyors of violence, who "would celebrate, proclaiming our weakness and decadence, and using that victory to recruit a new generation of killers."

Bush's purposefulness was also on display in answering those who demand a delay in the sovereignty schedule. There will, he said, be a handover of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi authority on June 30.

"Were the Coalition to step back from the June 30th pledge, many Iraqis would question our intentions and feel their hopes betrayed," he said. "And those in Iraq who trade in hatred and conspiracy theories would find a larger audience and gain a stronger hand. We will not step back from our pledge."

This is a presidency with a purpose. It will be up to the American people whether this purpose is worth giving George W. Bush a second term. "I look forward to making my case," he said. "I'm looking forward to the campaign."

Judging from his stout rhetoric and surpassingly clever gamesmanship with a scalp-hungry press corps last night, Bush has every reason to

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[normalnoises]

Ahem, I AM BUSH, ALL HEIL BU-

Err.. I mean in the spirit of American freedoms and Democracy I'd like to thank you all for watching me here so I can try to fill your head with mindless propoganda that anyone could see through.

I hope you all dont listen to that silly boy richard clarke, he's just happy he got a book deal so he can have a job being anti-american and ultimately Anti-freedom

I hope you all are watching Iraq cause those damn Arabs are screwing it up for the iraqis. Most iraqis love us and give us gifts when we walk by their doorsteps but that damn sadr he's a menace! I have undeniable proof that him and his shiite army were and still are saddam loyalists to the bitter end! They are not mad at our bloodshed or occupation, they are mad because they are the enemies of democracy and freedom and we will crush them!

To sum things up, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, Damn Arab Enemy-of freedom terroirsts.

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After al Qaeda bombed the U.S.S Cole on October 12, 2000 Richard Clarke was appointed as the first national antiterrorism coordinator to make a plan to take out al Qaeda. On December 20, 2000 Clarke produced a strategy paper to Sandy Berger. IT entailed breaking up al Qaeda cells and arrest the personnel; attack their financial support, freeze its assets, stop its funding through fake charities, and give aid to governments having trouble with al Qaeda, and also to increase covert action in Afganistan to eliminate training camps and reach bin Laden.

Then Bush took the oath.

Clinton handed the plan over to Bush, trusting the administration to carry it out and protect America.

Sandy Berger arranged for ten briefings for her successor Condi Rice, where she was warned of the seriousness of the al Qaeda threat. Then Clarke outlined the whole anti-terrorism plan for Rice and then later Cheney. Rice then appointed him head of counter terrorism.

On February 15, 2001, the Hart-Rudman Foundation issues its third and final report on National Security warning against mass attacks on U.S. homeland while urging the the creation of a new federal agency.

On May 8, 2001, Bush said he would periodically chair meetings of the NAtional Security Council to review these efforts, but those meetings never happened.

Meanwhile Clarke was pushing to have troops in Afganistan to take out bin Laden, thanks to his efforts this k=ides worked its way up to Bush and they decided to have 4 meetings (one on al Qaeda, one on Pakistan, one on the Indo-Pakistani relationship, and one to integrate all those meetings. These would take months.

On July 10, 2001, (5 months after the Hart-Rudman Foundation called for better info sharing) Kenneth Williams sent a memo to head quarters regarding MIddle EAstern students at an Arizona Flight school. He suggested that al Qaeda was trying to infiltrate the aviation system using planes as missiles. He urged the FBI to contact to other intelligence agencies to see if they had an info. But the memo was dismissed. No one heeded the memo.

On July 16th, 2001, the deputies finally held the integration meeting where it would then go to Rice, Rumsfeld Cheney, Powell, and Tenet. THis was the last hurdle before it reached the president. They tried to schedule the meeting for August but too many of them were out of town. They had copied Bush, August was vacation time. The meeting would have to wait for September 4. On August 3 Bush took the longest presidential vacation in 32 years. On Auguest 6, 2001 Tenet (the CIA director) delivered a report to the president entitle "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." which said that al Qaeda might be planning to hijack airplanes. Bush did nothing. Actually, he did do something, he went golfing.

After Moussaoui was arrested a Minneapolis FBI agent wrote that a 747 plane loeaded with fuel could be used as a weapon.

On September 4, 2001 finally lurched forward, 8 months after he had briefed Rice and 11 months since he had been told to create it. But it was several more days while it made its way to Bush's desk and sat there.

Then the day before September 11, September 10, Ashcroft presented Bush with the budget request, the "anti-terror" budget request. But the thing was not one of the 68 different programs presented dealt with terrorism.

The next day 3,000 people died.

Nothing Bush could do? I don't think so.

[jamiroguy1]

The press was too easy on him. He had most of the questions and bush is a bungling bafoon with no humility. He'll be judged in hell.

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by normalnoises

Clinton handed the plan over to Bush, trusting the administration to carry it out and protect America.

The final Clinton report didn't make one reference to Alqeada

[normalnoises]

Originally posted by mr mahs

The final Clinton report didn't make one reference to Alqeada

Ok, you're right about that but it did mention Osama Bin Laden 4 times. Close enough.

The final policy paper on national security that President Clinton submitted to Congress — 45,000 words long — makes no mention of al Qaeda and refers to Osama bin Laden by name just four times.

From:

Al Qaeda absent from final Clinton report

By James G. Lakely

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040406-121654-1495r.htm

A NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY FOR A GLOBAL AGE

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/nss/nss_dec2000_contents.htm

[normalnoises]

THE DAILY MIS-LEAD

< http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1254394&l=28723 > ===============================

BUSH CONTRADICTS SELF AT HIS OWN PRESS CONFERENCE

During last night's prime time press conference, President Bush once again claimed that "there was nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government that could envision flying airplanes into buildings" (1). But just minutes later at the same press conference the president proved he was not telling the truth.

Specifically, Bush said the reason he supposedly requested intelligence briefings before 9/11 "had to do with the Genoa G-8 conference I was going to attend" in 2001. Bush was referring to the fact that, prior to that conference, he was warned that "Islamic terrorists might attempt to kill him and other leaders by crashing an airliner into the summit" meetings (2).

His statement that "the prior government" had not taken precautions against terrorists using planes as weapons is also contradicted by the facts. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that under President Clinton, "the federal government had on several earlier occasions taken elaborate, secret measures to protect special events from just such an attack" (3) after receiving intelligence warnings (4).

At the press conference, Bush also claimed to have no "inkling whatsoever"

(5) about an attack before 9/11. But the Washington Post today reports that newly-declassified information shows that the president did not just receive one intelligence briefing about an imminent Al Qaeda attack, but "a stream" of repeated warnings (6). In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community titled some of those reports "Bin Laden planning multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden threats are real." The CIA explicitly told the Administration that upcoming attacks would "occur on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil."

Sources:

1. President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference,

04/13/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1254394&l=28724.

2. "Italy Tells of Threat at Genoa Summit", Los Angeles Times, 09/27/2001,

http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1254394&l=28725.

3. Wall Street Journal, 04/01/2004.

4. "Report Warned Of Suicide Hijackings", CBS News, 05/10/2002,

http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1254394&l=28726.

5. President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference,

04/13/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1254394&l=28724.

6. "Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings", Washington Post, 04/14/2004,

http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1254394&l=28727.

MrMahs, read the posting above this one too.