[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Spinning Our Safety

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Spinning Our Safety

July 25, 2004
 By MAUREEN DOWD 



 

Maybe it's because I've been instructed to pack a
respirator escape hood along with party dresses for the
Boston convention. Maybe it's because our newspaper has
assigned a terrorism reporter to cover a political
convention. Maybe it's because George Bush is relaxing at
his ranch down there (again) while Osama is planning a big
attack up here (again). Maybe it's because there are just
as many American soldiers dying in Iraq post-transfer, more
Muslims more mad at us over fake W.M.D. intelligence and
depravity at Abu Ghraib, and more terrorists in more
diffuse networks hating us more. 

Maybe it's because the F.B.I. is still learning how to
Google and the C.I.A. has an acting head who spends most of
his time acting defensive over his agency's failure to get
anything right. Maybe it's because so many of those federal
twits who missed the 10 chances to stop the 9/11 hijackers,
who blew off our Paul Reveres - Richard Clarke, Coleen
Rowley and the Phoenix memo author - still run things. Call
me crazy, Mr. President, but I don't feel any safer. 

The nation's mesmerizing new best seller, the 9/11
commission report, lays bare how naked we still are against
an attack, and how vulnerable we are because of the time
and money the fuzzy-headed Bush belligerents wasted going
after the wrong target. 

Even scarier, the commissioners expect Congress, which they
denounced as "dysfunctional" on intelligence oversight, to
get busy fixing things just as lawmakers are flying home
for vacation. 

The report offers vivid details on our worst fears. Instead
of focusing on immediately hitting back at Osama, Bush
officials indulged their idiotic idée fixe on Saddam and
ignored the memo from their counter-terrorism experts
dismissing any connection between the religious fanatic bin
Laden and the secular Hussein. 

"On the afternoon of 9/11, according to contemporaneous
notes, Secretary Rumsfeld instructed General Myers to
obtain quickly as much information as possible," the report
says. " The notes indicate that he also told Myers that he
was not simply interested in striking empty training sites.
The secretary said his instinct was to hit Saddam Hussein
at the same time - not only bin Laden." 

At the first Camp David meeting after 9/11, the report
states, "Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz made the case for
striking Iraq during 'this round' of the war on terrorism."


Six days after the World Trade Center towers were
pulverized, when we should have been striking Osama with
everything we had, the Bush team was absorbed with old
grudges and stale assumptions. 

"At the September 17 N.S.C. meeting, there was some further
discussion of 'phase two' of the war on terrorism," the
report says. "President Bush ordered the Defense Department
to be ready to deal with Iraq if Baghdad acted against U.S.
interests, with plans to include possibly occupying Iraqi
oil fields." 

President Bush was unsure of himself, relying too much on a
vice president whose deep, calm voice belied a deeply
cracked world view. 

He explained to the commissioners that he had stayed in his
seat making little fish faces at second graders for seven
minutes after learning about the second plane hitting the
towers because, as the report says, "The president felt he
should project strength and calm until he could better
understand what was happening." 

What better way to track the terror in the Northeast skies
than by reading "My Pet Goat" in Sarasota? 

The commissioners warn that the price for the Bush bullies'
attention deficit disorder could be high: "If, for example,
Iraq becomes a failed state, it will go to the top of the
list of places that are breeding grounds for attacks
against Americans at home. Similarly, if we are paying
insufficient attention to Afghanistan, the rule of the
Taliban or warlords and narcotraffickers may re-emerge and
its countryside could once again offer refuge to Al Qaeda,
or its successor." 

And, if that's not ominous enough, consider this: "The
problem is that Al Qaeda represents an ideological
movement, not a finite group of people. It initiates and
inspires, even if it no longer directs." 

"Yet killing or capturing" Osama, the report says, "while
extremely important, would not end terror. His message of
inspiration to a new generation of terrorists would
continue." 

If the Bush crowd hadn't been besotted with the idea of
smoking Saddam, they could have stomped Osama in Tora Bora.
Now it's too late. Al Qaeda has become a state of mind. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/opinion/25dowd.html?ex=1091777466&ei=1&en=c430a5c01746d29b


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