Oliver Willis tells it like it is regarding the Bush administration's handling of affairs surrounding 9/11 and its handling of dissenters.
I was struck by how transparent some of the partisan tactics were in yesterday's 9/11 commission hearings. George Tenet (Director of the CIA) in the morning and Sandy Berger (Clinton's national security advisor) and Richard Clarke (Director of the Counter-terrorism Security Group under Bush I, II, Reagan, and Clinton) testified in the afternoon.
One could see that Tenet wanted to shift the focus to his agency's priorities: better funding for human intelligence (humint) and better coordination between agencies. He urged a fixing of systemic issues still plaguing the intelligence community. He really seemed to dance a bit about the administration's lack of response to his warnings about terrorism in the summer of 2001. I can only presume that is because he wants to keep his current job.
What I found interesting about Clarke's testimony was that he didn't do this for partisan reasons. He is a registered Republican who has served Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and now Bush II. His chief reason for leaving doesn't appear to be the lack of attention the Bush administration placed on terrorism before 9/11 but rather that they persisted in prosecuting the war on Iraq at the cost of fighting terrorism. I've felt since before the war that conquering Iraq was a huge sideshow and I feel like events have proven that to be the case. We can only conjecture as to whether this has had any negative effect on Al Qaeda but it certainly hasn't appeared to help America.
What I don't understand is why the public hearings only lasted TWO days. Surely we could have learned more. Personally, I think there were many more questions to be asked and I'm really aggravated that Condoleeza Rice hasn't testified in public and under oath.
But she has the time to run around and do every talk show under the sun.
Posted by artandscience at March 25, 2004 07:52 PMGreat observation - it does appear that priorities tend to shift during election year.
The president cannot testify either, but if you have a pair of tickets to Nascar or a rodeo, he's your best friends.
Strong on national security... that's almost laughable. It bothers me that I haven't heard too much chatter about this conduct on the streets.
Posted by: michael at March 26, 2004 12:42 AMOne would hope that citizens could see beyond party lines and realize that this is about defending America but I don't hold out a lot of hope. Once again, this is likely to be a partisan debate rather than a debate on the issues.
Boy, how I wish McCain would join Kerry as running mate.
Posted by: stefan at March 26, 2004 08:15 AM