Why didn't we strike preemptively before 9/11?

FRI 08 APR 04. 1400 ZULU. 1000 EDT. 629 NET. Neal Boortz.

Neal Boortz (libertarian talk show host) makes a couple of great observations regarding Dr. Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission yesterday (things we all should have noticed).

Did you notice how a member of the 9/11 Commission chided Condi Rice for not taking preemptive action after receiving vague "chatter" that something big was about to happen. Notice how he demanded to know the name of the 06 AUG 01 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB), and asked that it be unclassified so it can be made public?

BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th 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.

BEN-VENISTE: I asked you what the title was. [as he gestured by holding up two fingers and smirked]

Scroll back and read what he ACTUALLY asked. He wouldn't even make a two-bit lawyer.

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.

The title of the PDB made it sound like it laid out the 9/11 plan and schedule. But Dr. Rice said it did no such thing (as Kerrey did his best to keep her from elaborating). We'll know soon, as it apparently will be declassified, at the request of the Commission, even though PDBs are considered at the very heart of Presidential privileged information. My money is on Dr. Rice's description of the contrents. B-V just wanted the headlines to show the White House was warned, but he'll be proven to be particularly partisan.

So, we only vaguely knew something was being planned for somewhere, sometime; and we were supposed to attack al Qaida pre-emptively even though we didn't know for sure it would do anything anywhere? Imagine what people like John Kerry would think about that?

Why didn't the Bush Administration attack after the attack on the Cole?

Bob Kerrey wanted to know why nothing was done after the attack on the Cole. Why didn't he address that question to Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and Dick Clarke? That attack occured on 12 OCT 2000, under their watch. (BC testified later in the afternoon, but without a glaring spotlight.) Instead, Kerrey attacks Dr. Rice, who was not even in the loop at the time.

KERREY: Well, I think it's an unfortunate figure of speech because I think, especially after the attack on the Cole on the 12th of October, 2000, it would not have been swatting a fly. It would not have been _ we did not need to wait to get a strategic plan.

Dick Clarke had in his memo on the 20th of January overt military operations. He turned that memo around in 24 hours, Dr. Clarke. There were a lot of plans in place in the Clinton administration _ military plans in the Clinton administration.

In fact, since we're in the mood to declassify stuff, there was _ he included in his January 25th memo two appendices _ Appendix A:

Strategy for the elimination of the jihadist threat of Al Qaida, Appendix B: Political military plan for Al Qaida.

So I just _ why didn't we respond to the Cole?

RICE: Well, we...

KERREY: Why didn't we swat that fly?

Maybe he's getting a little senile. How many times did he address Dr. Rice as "Dr. Clarke?"

If his point was the Bush Administration should have done something after the Clinton Administration did not (with Dick Clarke working in both), I'm not sure what to make of that, other than partisanship.

The fact of the matter is that the fly swatting (lobbing missiles at an empty training camp in 1998 {conveniently distracting the country from an investigation into some Oval Office extra-curricular activity} and doing nothing but slinging words regarding the Cole attack in 2000) was done on Bill Clinton's watch.

Byron York summarized Bill Clinton's responses (or lack thereof) to terrorism during his eight years in office in this 17 DEC 01 NRO article, entitled "Clinton has no clothes." (At first I thought it was about something else.)

Right after the attack on the Cole, the President Clinton said: "Let me say again: We will pursue this. America takes care of our own. Those who did it must not go unpunished." That lead-in sounds familiar. Remember when he said "Let me say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman?" Would you buy a used car from a guy like that?

Unless I'm forgetting something, there was no attack on the US to respond to in the first 233 days of the Bush Administration before 9/11/01. Any action taken would have to be preemptive, something for which the anti-Bush people have criticized him strongly.

You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Here's the full transcript of Dr. Rice's roasting ... I mean Q&A.

My thoughts on the Commission are in the continuation, if you're interested.

B>If you ask me:

It was a media circus, with partisan jabs and partisan clapping and booing from the peanut gallery. And all this for what? To inform us our intelligence community didn't see this coming and no president dealt adequatley with the threat prior to 9/11. Well, Duh! We already knew that.