With characters like Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Chaney around, it is easy to forget there are others in the Bush administration contributing to American failed and failing policies in the Middle East and the conflict with terrorists from around the world. Condoleezza Rice, as national security adviser, was the wall between President Bush and Secretary of State Powell. When Powell resigned, Bush made her the new Secretary of State.Sidney Blumenthal, in today’s Guardian, examines her contributions:
… Like his other female enablers - Karen Hughes, his political image-maker and undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, and Harriet Miers, his legal counsel - Rice is ferociously protective. She shields him from
worst-case scenarios, telling him to ignore criticism, and showers him with flattery that he is a world-historical colossus.
As national security adviser, before 9/11, Rice protected Bush from
warnings by the counter-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, about al-Qaida attacks
- and demoted Clarke. Before the invasion of Iraq, she lent her imprimatur to
the disinformation about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and
peddled it to the media. She did not demand an Iraq postwar stabilisation plan.
Nor did she object to the Pentagon's seizure of Iraq's civil governance
responsibilities from the state department. Before Israel's attack on Lebanon,
she did not caution against the possibility of Israeli failure against
Hizbullah. She was party to the decision to lend full war materiel and
intelligence support to the effort if Israel would undertake it.
…
This May, as the situation in Iraq drastically worsened, Rice told
senior staff that she wants no more reporting from the embassies. She announced
in a meeting that people write memos only for each other, and that no one else
reads them. She said she wouldn't read them. Instead of writing reports, the
diplomats should "sell America", she insisted. "We are salesmen for America!"
On Tuesday, kicking off the mid-term elections campaign, Bush
delivered a speech that cited Bin Laden's screeds, Lenin's What Is To Be Done?
and Hitler's Mein Kampf, and promised "complete victory". Rice contributed her
own comparison of the "war on terror" to the American civil war. "I'm sure there
are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the civil war to its end and to
insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold," she said.
But the more delirious the rhetoric, the more hollow the policy.
"There is no plan for Iraq," a senior national security official with the
highest intelligence clearance and access to the relevant memos told me. "There
is no plan."
1 comment:
As I watch all of the events of 9-11-01 replayed on the news today, it is obvious to me that we are not finished yet. We have only begun to scratch the surface of the scab on the festering, oozing, global wound that holds the infection that is Islamic Fundamentalism. For all of the naysayers, for those who want to bury America’s head in the sand, I recommend you look at the successes of our military and Intelligence communities. You don’t see successes? Have you seen or heard of an attack on the Homeland in the past 5 years? Bravo to our warriors and our silent warriors! Shame on you!! Shame on you who are the embarrassment of our nation!! Haven’t you learned that warrants and criminal prosecution is a joke for these barbarians? Islamic Fundamentalism does not respond to our judicial system. Islamic Fundamentalism responds to force, to the might of our GREAT military.
For those who feel we are following the wrong path, that reaching out to these barbarians is a better choice, that arrest warrants and criminal prosecution would have a more desirable effect, please remember the following events planned and executed by by Al ‘Qaeda:
1993 World Trade Center Bombing,
1993 Attacks against UN Peacekeeping forces in Somalia (for which Bin Laden was later indicted)
1994 Air France Aircraft hijacked by Algerian Al’ Qaeda operatives,
1994 Marrakech hotel attack,
1994 Bojinka plot test run – Philippine Airline bombing,
1996 Khobar Towers bombing, Saudi Arabia,
FORTUNATELY, THOUGH, BIN LADEN WAS INDICTED IN 1998!! Phew, finally it will all be over. BUT NOOOOO…. It only got worse.
1998 The Embassy in Kenya,
1998 The Embassy in Tanzania,
2000 Failed attempt to bomb USS The Sullivns in Yemen,
2000 The Cole,
2001 Attempted attack on U.S. embassy in Yemen thwarted,
2001 World Trade Center attacks and collapse,
2001 The attack of the Pentagon; and,
2001 The plane that crashed in a field in Shanksville, PA.
Some little known events were taken from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/etc/cron.html (”timeline Al ‘Qaeda’s Global Context)
Yes, the events of 9/11/2001 happened five (5) months into the Bush administration, but keep in mind that it took years to plan these attacks... YEARS! There were opportunities along the way, opportunities to thwart the events of 9/11/2001, but the moment was let go by those in power from 1993 - Jan 2001. NOW, We are now on an equal playing field with these bastards! We are at WAR. The kid gloves are off, and to those who think they should be put back on, YOU ARE INSANE!! They have been at war with us since 1993, yet we buried our collective head in the sand until October 2001. The Clinton presidency covered the period Jan 1993 – Jan 2001, any questions?
BRAVO to our WARRIORS and our SILENT HEROS who protect us and keep us safe.
I sign this as "anonymous" because it isn't about me, it isn't about a name. This is about the safety of our citizens, our children, our neighbors, our friends. The only way to focus on YOUR safety and MY safety is to keep this about the facts and the horrors of the events.
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