Check out this astonishing memo from 1997, unearthed by the Washington Monthly. It’s from the Justice Department’s self-study of emergency responses to terrorism. The illustration almost gets the actual floor of the WTC right. No-one can say we weren’t warned. Except, maybe, Sandy Berger.
THE HATE MAIL POURS IN: I’ve printed just one of the many, many hate emails I’ve received after my piece yesterday in the Sunday Times of London about the legacy of the Clinton administration in security and intelligence. Most make no points, and most seem not to have read the piece, but there is a general, loopy claim that is baldly untrue. I do not blame Bill Clinton for the September 11 massacre. Far from it. I say quite clearly early on: “We put the blame – rightly – on the terrorists who bear sole responsibility for the massacre.” Emphatic enough? I do not even blame our former president solely for the security failure. Among others directly or indirectly responsible, I cite former President George H.W. Bush, General Colin Powell, CIA director George Tenet, the FBI, “senators and congressmen and lobbyists and civil liberties advocates and journalists – all of whom failed to see the danger staring us in the face. Very few of us are free from blame.” I include myself in that list. Like many others, I didn’t see what was coming, and I’ve been asking myself why. Part of the reason is that we couldn’t actually visualize an attack of that gravity. For that oversight, I write, our leaders “deserve some sympathy. They were imperfect human beings in a world where September 11 was still an abstraction.” I also write: “Hindsight is easy of course. In the halcyon and feckless climate of the 1990s, it would have required real political leadership to dragoon various, stubborn government agencies into a difficult reorganization to counter terrorism. It would have been extremely hard to persuade a skeptical public and a prickly civil liberties lobby that vast new government powers were necessary to prevent catastrophe.” All of this is true, and is an important context. But it’s also true that the president of the United States is ultimately responsible for the security of the United States and its citizens. The buck stops there. It is not partisan or unfair to question the record of our last president, who presided over the weakening of our intelligence and security apparatus for eight years, while the threat of Islamo-fascism clearly grew and grew. This is not written out of “hatred.” It is written because accountability is an essential part of democracy. And our last president is accountable for the decay of our intelligence and security that preceded this nightmare. Clearly the Clinton alums see this, which is why they’re engaging in a furious spin operation (see “ASS-COVERING WATCH” below). Read the piece to see if you disagree. It’s called “The Fruits of Negligence,” and should be posted opposite by 9.30 am Monday.
LETTERS: A gay marine for the war; how peaceful is Islam really?; why Colin Powell is right; etc.
POSTCARD FROM ACADEMIA: A beleaguered student from the University of Wisconsin writes to share a letter written by a fellow student to the student newspaper, the Badger Herald. Yes, it’s just a student letter. No it’s not earth-shattering. But it seems to me it’s newsworthy that a student at a major university could even think these things. Here’s an excerpt: “Make no mistake about it, the attacks of a couple weeks ago were a great national and international tragedy. But tearing up the Middle East, murdering every brown-skinned person in sight, is not going solve anything. The U.S. government is, without a doubt, one of the most genocidal and murderous political entities of the 20th century. In the name of ruthless capitalism and neo-colonialism, our government has murdered over 500,000 Iraqi children, thousands of Palestinians, and many more throughout the world in places like Latin America and East Timor. Brian Marquardt wrote in his letter that, “Those [protesters] are using the rights defended by our military during wars.” What could be further from the truth? Not since World War II has the United States ever been involved in military activity defending our freedoms and liberties. Rather, they have defended a racist, imperialistic American hegemony which, believe it or not, is greatly resented by nearly every other country and their peoples around the world. So before you preach at us about the evil terrorists, why don’t you try getting your facts straight and face up to the reality that our leaders are war criminals just as much as people like Hitler, Stalin and other monsters of the 20th century.”
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “In war there is much to be said for magnanimity in victory. But not before victory.” – Margaret Thatcher, “The Downing Street Years” (1993).
THE TALIBAN’S METHODS: A former Taliban secret policeman debriefs London’s Sunday Telegraph. What he describes is beyond belief. “As we drove around at night with our guns, local people would come to us and say there’s someone watching a video in this house or some men playing cards in that house,” he said. “Basically any form of pleasure was outlawed,” Mr. Hassani said, “and if we found people doing any of these things we would beat them with staves soaked in water – like a knife cutting through meat – until the room ran with their blood or their spines snapped. Then we would leave them with no food or water in rooms filled with insects until they died. We always tried to do different things: we would put some of them standing on their heads to sleep, hang others upside down with their legs tied together. We would stretch the arms out of others and nail them to posts like crucifixions. Sometimes we would throw bread to them to make them crawl. Then I would write the report to our commanding officer so he could see how innovative we had been.” Ah, but compared to the sins of America’s genocidal leaders, these are piddling offenses.
The Dish 