1 Boring Old Man

Manning memo proves Bush is guilty of murder
DailyKOS
by Christian Dem in NC
Jun 01, 2008

… a meeting Bush held on January 31, 2003 with Tony Blair and six of Bush and Blair’s top aides to discuss the Iraq issue.  According to a memo summarizing the meeting that was written by David Manning [then Blair’s foreign policy adviser and later British ambassador to Washington], Bush actually indicated that he was willing to provoke a confrontation with Saddam… Among the ways Bush proposed to provoke a confrontation was to paint U2s to look like UN airplanes. The theory was that if Saddam tried to fire on them, it would justify military action… This Manning memo got limited play in the press – it was mentioned only in passing in an NYT front-page story in March 2006.  However, even without the plans to use U2 aircraft disguised in UN colors, the memo is absolutely damning…

But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair’s top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair’s chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."

It’s one thing for a president to mislead his own people about a threat to the nation.  But if Bugliosi and this NYT story are to be believed, then the invasion of Iraq is an American war of aggression, and all of the deaths of the American soldiers up to this point amount at the very least to second-degree murder…

Bush "made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons." I suppose we knew [or suspected] that Bush was going to invade Iraq no matter what even back then. But having it written down on paper gives it a sharper edge. I don’t know if that Memo is in the public domain, though there are enough reports about it to be pretty clear about what happened at that meeting. It was the week before Powell was set to go to the U.N. and make an absolute fool of himself [and us], and only three days after Bush’s State of the Union message with the famous sixteen words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

According to documents provided by former US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, George W. Bush, ten days after taking office in January 2001, instructed his aides to look for a way to overthrow the Iraqi regime. A secret memo entitled "Plan for post-Saddam Iraq" was discussed in January and February 2001, and a Pentagon document dated March 5, 2001, and entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield contracts", included a map of potential areas for petroleum exploration.

Mercifully, we had a window rattling windstorm last night, waking to a cold, dark, non-electric house and were media-free until the afternoon. So I had no temptation to watch/read the aftermath of Obama’s plans in Afghanistan. What I thought about in the dark, lit by a fire crackling in the fireplace, was the road that lead to this absolutely impossible situation. More and more, I’m suspicious that all the things that seemed so stupid along the way were actually preconceived way-points on the path to Iraq – ignoring warnings of an impending al Qaeda attack, Cheney’s secret Energy Conference, letting bin Laden escape at Tora Bora, the C.I.A. "torture program." Each of these may well have been elements in crafting the fictional rationale for the invasion of Iraq.

And the Manning Memo documents Bush’s finally coming clean about his intent. There’s no "why" mentioned in that meeting with Blair that I can find in any of the reports by people who have read it up close. Why go ahead without the U.N.’s approval? Why proceed even if there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction found by the inspectors? We suspect it was for oil, from paranoia, for power ["superpower"], for dominion in the Middle East, for revenge, for all kinds of things the neoconservatives liked to think about.

[I sort of said this last night after the speech, but I want to say it again after thinking about it for a while]

Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, and the service and sacrifice of our grandparents and great-grandparents, our country has borne a special burden in global affairs. We have spilled American blood in many countries on multiple continents. We have spent our revenue to help others rebuild from rubble and develop their own economies. We have joined with others to develop an architecture of institutions – from the United Nations to NATO to the World Bank – that provide for the common security and prosperity of human beings. We have not always been thanked for these efforts, and we have at times made mistakes. But more than any other nation, the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades – a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, and markets open, and billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress and advancing frontiers of human liberty.

For unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation’s resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours. What we have fought for – what we continue to fight for – is a better future for our children and grandchildren. And we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and access opportunity…

This vast and diverse citizenry will not always agree on every issue – nor should we. But I also know that we, as a country, cannot sustain our leadership, nor navigate the momentous challenges of our time, if we allow ourselves to be split asunder by the same rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse.

Barack Obama sets out final push in Afghanistan
The Guardian
by Ewen MacAskill
2 December 2009

Barack Obama last night set out a new strategy for Afghanistan that coupled a short-term escalation of the war with a promise that he will begin US troop withdrawals in July 2011, the first time that America has offered a timetable for a military pullout. Crucially, he offered no date for its completion, though White House officials optimistically expressed hope that the bulk of the troops could be out before the end of 2012 when the president faces re-election.

Obama, in a long-awaited speech at the West Point military academy at the end of 92-day review of Afghanistan policy, announced the biggest escalation since the US entered the war in 2001. He is to send 30,000 more troops to be deployed over the next seven to eight months, bringing the US total to 100,000, close to the number of Soviet troops in the country during its occupation in the 1980s. It is the biggest decision Obama has taken since becoming president.

He presented the troop surge as a necessary part of creating the conditions for eventual withdrawal. "As commander-in-chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan," Obama said.

He added the caveat that withdrawal of all combat troops would depend on how the war is going at the time. "Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground," Obama said. The inclusion of a date for the start of withdrawal is aimed at winning over a US public increasingly skeptical about the war and fearful that the country is being sucked into a Vietnam-style morass.

Obama said the parallels with Vietnam were a false reading of history: Afghanistan has wide international support, the Taliban is not a broad-based popular insurgency and, unlike Vietnam, the US was attacked from Afghanistan and "remains a target for those same extremists plotting along its border"…

For unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation’s resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours. What we have fought for – what we continue to fight for – is a better future for our children and grandchildren. And we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and access opportunity…

This vast and diverse citizenry will not always agree on every issue – nor should we. But I also know that we, as a country, cannot sustain our leadership, nor navigate the momentous challenges of our time, if we allow ourselves to be split asunder by the same rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse. It’s easy to forget that when this war began, we were united – bound together by the fresh memory of a horrific attack, and by the determination to defend our homeland and the values we hold dear. I refuse to accept the notion that we cannot summon that unity again…

When I scanned the post speech comments, I saw they were all about his plan for Afghanistan. I didn’t see anything about these last comments, so I’m not sure they will get heard. I suppose tomorrow we will continue to "be split asunder by the same rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse." But at least he said it. He won’t be able to go after these things until he has some modicum of success dealing with our horrible messes – the economy, the wars, Health Care. No matter what, the Limbaugh’s, Becks, and Palins will rave on. The Republicans will remain a bloc of obstructionism. But maybe the mood of the country will finally lift some – and that will be enough to carry the day.

Right before Thanksgiving, I posted a hastily reconstructed graph with Presidential Approval on top and Unemployment fitted [sort of] to the same timeline below it. I’m reposting here:

We’re Going to Lose Our Prey

In his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, former CIA Director Tenet said it was evident from the start that aerial bombing would not be enough to get bin Laden at Tora Bora. Troops needed to be in the caves themselves, he wrote, but the Afghan militiamen were ‘‘distinctly reluctant’’ to put themselves in harm’s way and there were not enough Americans on the scene. He said that senior CIA officials lobbied hard for inserting U.S. troops. Henry Crumpton, the head of special operations for the CIA’s counterterrorism operation and chief of its Afghan strategy, made direct requests to Franks. Crumpton had told him that the back door to Pakistan was open and urged Franks to move more than 1,000 Marines who had set up a base near Kandahar to Tora Bora to block escape routes.

But the CentCom commander rejected the idea, saying it would take weeks to get a large enough U.S. contingent on the scene and bin Laden might disappear in the meantime. At the end of November, Crumpton went to the White House to brief President Bush and Vice President Cheney and repeated the message that he had delivered to Franks. Crumpton warned the President that the Afghan campaign’s primary goal of capturing bin Laden was in jeopardy because of the military’s reliance on Afghan militias at Tora Bora. Crumpton showed the President where Tora Bora was located in the White Mountains and described the caves and tunnels that riddled the region. Crumpton questioned whether the Pakistani forces would be able to seal off the escape routes and pointed out that the promised Pakistani troops had not arrived yet. In addition, the CIA officer told the President that the Afghan forces at Tora Bora were ‘‘tired and cold’’ and ‘‘they’re just not invested in getting bin Laden.’’

According to author Ron Suskind in The One Percent Solution, Crumpton sensed that his earlier warnings to Franks and others at the Pentagon had not been relayed the President. So Crumpton went further, telling Bush that ‘‘we’re going to lose our prey if we’re not careful.’’ He recommended that the Marines or other U.S. troops be rushed to Tora Bora.

‘‘How bad off are these Afghani forces, really?’’ asked Bush. ‘‘Are they up to the job?
‘‘Definitely not, Mr. President,’’ Crumpton replied. ‘‘Definitely not.’’

Flight from Tora Bora

On December 14, the day bin Laden finished his will, Dalton Fury finally convinced Ali and his men to stay overnight in one of the canyons that they had captured during daylight. Over the next three days, the Afghan militia and their American advisers moved steadily through the canyons, calling in airstrikes and taking out lingering pockets of fighters. The resistance seemed to have vanished, prompting Ali to declare victory on December 17. Most of the Tora Bora complex was abandoned and many of the caves and tunnels were buried in debris. Only about 20 stragglers were taken prisoner. The consensus was that Al Qaeda fighters who had survived the fierce bombing had escaped into Pakistan or melted into the local population. Bin Laden was nowhere to be found. Two days later, Fury and his Delta Force colleagues left Tora Bora, hoping that someone would eventually find bin Laden buried in one of the caves.

There was no body because bin Laden did not die at Tora Bora. Later U.S. intelligence reports and accounts by journalists and others said that he and a contingent of bodyguards departed Tora Bora on December 16. With help from Afghans and Pakistanis who had been paid in advance, the group made its way on foot and horseback across the mountain passes and into Pakistan without encountering any resistance. The Special Operations Command history noted that there were not enough U.S. troops to prevent the escape, acknowledging that the failure to capture or kill bin Laden made Tora Bora a controversial battle. But Franks argued that Tora was a success and he praised both the Afghan militias and the Pakistanis who were supposed to have protected the border. ‘‘I think it was a good operation,’’ he said in an interview for the PBS show Frontline on the first anniversary of the Afghan war. ‘‘Many people have said, ‘Well, gosh, you know bin Laden got away.’ I have yet to see anything that proves bin Laden or whomever was there. That’s not to say they weren’t, but I’ve not seen proof that they were there.’’

Bin Laden himself later acknowledged that he was at Tora Bora, boasting about how he and Zawahiri survived the heavy bombing along with 300 fighters before escaping. ‘‘The bombardment was round-the-clock and the warplanes continued to fly over us day and night,’’ he said in an audio tape released on February 11, 2003. ‘‘Planes poured their lava on us, particularly after accomplishing their main missions in Afghanistan.’’

Yet when we read Senator Kerry’s Report about Tora Bora, we can’t decide if President Bush or Vice President Cheney were simply indifferent to the briefing by Henry Crumpton about Tora Bora, or whether they just ignored it for some reasons of their own. It’s like their earlier responses to Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke. He could talk of nothing except an imminent attack by al Qaeda, joined by C.I.A. Director George Tenet. Why didn’t they listen?

Removing the Al Qaeda leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat. But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics worldwide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism, leaving the American people more vulnerable to terrorism, laying the foundation for today’s protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan…

Dick Cheney slams President Obama for projecting ‘weakness’
Politico
By MIKE ALLEN & JIM VANDEHEI
12/1/09

“Every time he delays, defers, debates, changes his position, it begins to raise questions: Is the commander in chief really behind what they’ve been asked to do?”

During the interview, Cheney laced his concerns with a broader critique of Obama’s foreign and national security policy, saying Obama’s nuanced and at times cerebral approach projects “weakness” and that the president is looking “far more radical than I expected.”

“Here’s a guy without much experience, who campaigned against much of what we put in place … and who now travels around the world apologizing,” Cheney said. “I think our adversaries — especially when that’s preceded by a deep bow … — see that as a sign of weakness.”

Specifically, Cheney said the Justice Department decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, in New York City is “great” for Al Qaeda. “One of their top people will be given the opportunity — courtesy of the United States government and the Obama administration — to have a platform from which they can espouse this hateful ideology that they adhere to,” he said. “I think it’s likely to give encouragement — aid and comfort — to the enemy.”

During the campaign, Cheney recalled, he saw Obama as “sort of a mainline, traditional Democrat — liberal, from the liberal wing of the party.” But Cheney said he is increasingly persuaded by the notion that Obama “doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism — the idea that the United States is a special nation, that we are the greatest, freest nation mankind has ever known. When I see the way he operates, I am increasingly convinced that he’s not as committed to or as wedded to that concept as most of the presidents I’ve known, Republican or Democrat,” he said. “I am worried. And I find as I get out around the country, a lot of other people are worried, too.”

One "blah, blah, blah" for today is about lying. “And I find as I get out around the country, a lot of other people are worried, too.” Dick Cheney hasn’t been getting around the country. And the  “other people” he refers to aren’t, as implied, people on the streets. The “other people” he talks to have his same last name or are members of his neocon entourage. "blah, blah, blah." It’s a frequent  Cheney ploy, some kind of pseudo-authoritative aside to back up his own thoughts.

Cheney bashes top Democrats
Politico
By: Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris
Dec 5, 2007

Most striking were his virtually taunting remarks of two men he described as friends from his own days in the House: Democratic Reps. John Dingell [MI] and John P. Murtha [PA]. In a 40-minute interview with Politico, he scoffed at the idea of two men who spent years accruing power showing so much deference to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [CA] … Murtha “and the other senior leaders … march to the tune of Nancy Pelosi to an extent I had not seen, frankly, with any previous speaker,” Cheney said. “I’m trying to think how to say all of this in a gentlemanly fashion, but [in] the Congress I served in, that wouldn’t have happened.” But his implication was clear: When asked if these men had lost their spines, he responded, “They are not carrying the big sticks I would have expected”…

At the end of November, Crumpton went to the White House to brief President Bush and Vice President Cheney and repeated the message that he had delivered to Franks. Crumpton warned the President that the Afghan campaign’s primary goal of capturing bin Laden was in jeopardy because of the military’s reliance on Afghan militias at Tora Bora. Crumpton showed the President where Tora Bora was located in the White Mountains and described the caves and tunnels that riddled the region. Crumpton questioned whether the Pakistani forces would be able to seal off the escape routes and pointed out that the promised Pakistani troops had not arrived yet. In addition, the CIA officer told the President that the Afghan forces at Tora Bora were ‘‘tired and cold’’ and ‘‘they’re just not invested in getting bin Laden.’’ According to author Ron Suskind in The One Percent Solution, Crumpton sensed that his earlier warnings to Franks and others at the Pentagon had not been relayed the President. So Crumpton went further, telling Bush that ‘‘we’re going to lose our prey if we’re not careful.’’ He recommended that the Marines or other U.S. troops be rushed to Tora Bora. ‘‘How bad off are these Afghani forces, really?’’ asked Bush. ‘‘Are they up to the job? ‘‘Definitely not, Mr. President,’’ Crumpton replied. ‘‘Definitely not.’’

I guess this "bah, blah, blah" isn’t really so different from lying. He attacks others for "showing weakness" and practices what he preaches by avoiding any discussion of his own foibles. It would show weakness, or worse – his conscious scheming and deceit.

Just one person in Washington Post poll says

Cheney best reflects conservative principles.
Think Progress
by Amanda Terkel
November 30, 2009

Two new polls report that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh are the most powerful conservatives in the country. According to a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair survey, 26 percent of Americans rate Limbaugh as the most influential conservative voice, followed by Fox News host Glenn Beck at 11 percent. In a Washington Post poll, a plurality of Republicans say Palin best reflects their “party’s core values,” and they would vote for her “if the presidential nomination battle were held today.” Two people who don’t fare as well in the Post poll are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney:

Just 1 percent pick George W. Bush as the best reflection of the party’s principles, and only a single person in the poll cites former vice president Richard B. Cheney. About seven in 10 say Bush bears at least “some” of the blame for the party’s problems.

The Post surveyed 804 “Republicans and Republican-leaning nonpartisans” for its sample. Palin is particularly popular amongst the “loyal followers of Limbaugh and Beck.” “Overall, 18 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents cited her as the person most representative of the party’s core values. … Among those who regularly listen to Limbaugh, however, Palin was cited by 48 percent, and among Beck’s viewers, it was 35 percent, far surpassing others.”

Iraq inquiry: Tony Blair asked for war plans to be prepared in June 2002
Daily Telegraph, UK
By Gordon Rayner
30 Nov 2009

Sir David said the former prime minister asked defence chiefs to prepare a list of options for military support of a US-led invasion after being told President Bush had set up a “cell” dedicated to planning for a war. Sir David also disclosed that President Bush and Mr Blair first discussed a possible link between Saddam and the 2001 terrorist attacks on the US just three days after 9/11. Asked when Britain first decided to take part in military action, Sir David said: “The first time the Prime Minister asked for military options was in June 2002…

He said in September 2002 the Ministry of Defence was asked to attend a planning conference with their US counterparts in Florida, when Mr Blair said Britain would be willing to provide the second military “package”, but by October, following further discussions between Mr Blair and defence chiefs, “there was an acceptance that if it came to military action we would be willing to move to package three”…

As the Iraq Inquiry entered its second week, Sir David was asked when President Bush first linked Iraq to 9/11. He said: “As far as I’m aware the first time the president mentioned Iraq to the Prime Minister was on September 14 in a telephone call and he said he thought there might be evidence that there was some connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

“The Prime Minister’s response was that the evidence would have to be very compelling indeed to justify taking any action against Iraq.” By April 2002, however, following a meeting between the President and the Prime Minister, Mr Blair had begun talking about “regime change” in Iraq. Last week Sir Christopher Meyer, former ambassador to Washington, suggested Mr Blair and Mr Bush might have “signed in blood” an agreement to topple Saddam during that meeting at the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, but Sir David insisted there was “no war plan” at that stage.

He said: “The president did set up a small cell in Central Command in Florida and he had asked Central Command to do some planning and think through the various options.” By August 2002 “the message was that either the regime must change through the UN or it would be changed through military action. “The President said that if Saddam Hussein implemented the UN resolutions [on weapons of mass destruction] we would have succeeded in changing the regime. He said, in a rather colourful phrase, we would have crated the guy”…

The way I would read this today is that it’s all about whether they could justify attacking Iraq immediately:
• "info fast" "judge whether good enough" "judge whether hit S.H. same time" "not only UBL."
  We need to judge whether we have enough information to justify attacking Iraq immediately.
• "tasks Jim Haynes to talk with PW for additional support vis a vis ___ & connection with UBL."
  Get Jim Haynes to talk to Paul Wolfowitz to find additional support for the connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
• "hard to get a good case" "need to move swiftly" "near term target needs" "go massive" "sweep it all up" "things related and not" "need to do so to get anything useful."
  It’s hard to make the case that bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are connected, so we need to move quickly and massively to find evidence of their connections before the evidence is lost.

^{The decision not to deploy American forces to go after bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, the architects of the unconventional Afghan battle plan known as Operation Enduring Freedom. Rumsfeld said at the time that he was concerned that too many U.S. troops in Afghanistan would create an anti-American backlash and fuel a widespread insurgency. Reversing the recent American military orthodoxy known as the Powell doctrine, the Afghan model emphasized minimizing the U.S. presence by relying on small, highly mobile teams of special operations troops and CIA paramilitary operatives working with the Afghan opposition. Even when his own commanders and senior intelligence officials in Afghanistan and Washington argued for dispatching more U.S. troops, Franks refused to deviate from the plan. There were enough U.S. troops in or near Afghanistan to execute the classic sweep-and-block maneuver required to attack bin Laden and try to prevent his escape.}

^{After bin Laden’s escape, some military and intelligence analysts and the press criticized the Pentagon’s failure to mount a full-scale attack despite the tough rhetoric by President Bush. Franks, Vice President Dick Cheney and others defended the decision, arguing that the intelligence was inconclusive about the Al Qaeda leader’s location. But the review of existing literature, unclassified government records and interviews with central participants underlying this report removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora}

^{Reversing the recent American military orthodoxy known as the Powell doctrine, the Afghan model emphasized minimizing the U.S. presence by relying on small, highly mobile teams of special operations troops and CIA paramilitary operatives working with the Afghan opposition. Even when his own commanders and senior intelligence officials in Afghanistan and Washington argued for dispatching more U.S. troops, Franks refused to deviate from the plan. There were enough U.S. troops in or near Afghanistan to execute the classic sweep-and-block maneuver required to attack bin Laden and try to prevent his escape.}

^{On November 21, 2001, President Bush put his arm on Defense Secretary Rumsfeld as they were leaving a National Security Council meeting at the White House. ‘‘I need to see you,’’ the president said. It was 72 days after the 9/11 attacks and just a week after the fall of Kabul. But Bush already had new plans. According to Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, the president said to Rumsfeld: ‘‘What kind of a war plan do you have for Iraq? How do you feel about the war plan for Iraq?’’ Then the president told Woodward he recalled saying: ‘‘Let’s get started on this. And get Tommy Franks looking at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to.’’ Back at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld convened a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draft a message for Franks asking for a new assessment of a war with Iraq.}

^{In his memoir, American General, Franks later described getting the November 21 telephone call from Rumsfeld relaying the president’s orders while he was sitting in his office at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. Franks and one of his aides were working on air support for the Afghan units being assembled to push into the mountains surrounding Tora Bora. Rumsfeld said the president wanted options for war with Iraq. Franks said the existing plan was out of date and that a new one should include lessons about precision weapons and the use of special operations forces learned in Afghanistan. ‘‘Okay, Tom,’’ Rumsfeld said, according to Franks. ‘‘Please dust it off and get back to me next week.’’ Franks described his reaction to Rumsfeld’s orders this way: ‘‘Son of a bitch. No rest for the weary.’’}

So what was my nagging thought? To paraphrase Joseph Wilson, "Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that" they thought that killing or capturing bin Laden at Tora Bora might put and end to things and undermine their excuse to invade Iraq. And while I am almost embarrassed to suggest such a paranoid thought, it’s consistent with how they operated. In fact, it’s so consistent that I believe it is the likely possibility.

"Franks and one of his aides were working on air support for the Afghan units being assembled to push into the mountains surrounding Tora Bora" when he got the call from Rumsfeld. And while that’s consistent with the notion of "small, highly mobile teams of special operations troops and CIA paramilitary operatives working with the Afghan opposition," it’s also suspect. Why else would President Bush approach his Defense Secretary in the hall after a NSC meeting [where they surely discussed Tora Bora] instead of putting his thoughts about Iraq on the agenda for the meeting? "Uh Oh. If we get bin Laden, there goes our excuse to get Hussein."

• Ignoring the loud warnings of an al Qaeda attack: I suspect a small al Qaeda attack would’ve been fine with them as an excuse to invade Iraq. While what they got [9/11] was unanticipated, they were looking for something – something more like the U.S.S. Cole.
• Allowing bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora: With bin Laden still in play, the War on Terror was living and well. Had we snagged bin Laden, I doubt they could’ve ever sold their Iraq invasion.
• Misinterpreting the Iraq prewar intelligence: That one is easy. They were combing the world for a reason to hit Iraq. What they found was super-flimsy, but you go with what you’ve got.
• Not paying attention to the war in Afghanistan: Afghanistan was never the point in the first place. There’s no oil in Afghanistan to speak of. And there weren’t many "superpower points" awarded for Afghanistan.

TORA BORA REVISITED:
HOW WE FAILED TO GET BIN LADEN AND WHY IT MATTERS TODAY
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE
By John F. Kerry
NOVEMBER 30, 2009

^{Removing the Al Qaeda leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat. But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics worldwide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism, leaving the American people more vulnerable to terrorism, laying the foundation for today’s protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan…}

^{This failure and its enormous consequences were not inevitable. By early December 2001, Bin Laden’s world had shrunk to a complex of caves and tunnels carved into a mountainous section of eastern Afghanistan known as Tora Bora. Cornered in some of the most forbidding terrain on earth, he and several hundred of his men, the largest concentration of Al Qaeda fighters of the war, endured relentless pounding by American aircraft, as many as 100 air strikes a day. One 15,000-pound bomb, so huge it had to be rolled out the back of a C-130 cargo plane, shook the mountains for miles. It seemed only a matter of time before U.S. troops and their Afghan allies overran the remnants of Al Qaeda hunkered down in the thin, cold air at 14,000 feet.}

^{Bin Laden expected to die. His last will and testament, written on December 14, reflected his fatalism. ‘‘Allah commended to us that when death approaches any of us that we make a bequest to parents and next of kin and to Muslims as a whole,’’ he wrote, according to a copy of the will that surfaced later and is regarded as authentic. ‘‘Allah bears witness that the love of jihad and death in the cause of Allah has dominated my life and the verses of the sword permeated every cell in my heart, ‘and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together.’ How many times did I wake up to find myself reciting this holy verse!’’ He instructed his wives not to remarry and apologized to his children for devoting himself to jihad.}

^{But the Al Qaeda leader would live to fight another day. Fewer than 100 American commandos were on the scene with their Afghan allies and calls for reinforcements to launch an assault were rejected. Requests were also turned down for U.S. troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Pakistan. The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and the Army, was kept on the sidelines. Instead, the U.S. command chose to rely on airstrikes and untrained Afghan militias to attack bin Laden and on Pakistan’s loosely organized Frontier Corps to seal his escape routes. On or around December 16, two days after writing his will, bin Laden and an entourage of bodyguards walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan’s unregulated tribal area. Most analysts say he is still there today.}

^{The decision not to deploy American forces to go after bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, the architects of the unconventional Afghan battle plan known as Operation Enduring Freedom. Rumsfeld said at the time that he was concerned that too many U.S. troops in Afghanistan would create an anti-American backlash and fuel a widespread insurgency. Reversing the recent American military orthodoxy known as the Powell doctrine, the Afghan model emphasized minimizing the U.S. presence by relying on small, highly mobile teams of special operations troops and CIA paramilitary operatives working with the Afghan opposition. Even when his own commanders and senior intelligence officials in Afghanistan and Washington argued for dispatching more U.S. troops, Franks refused to deviate from the plan. There were enough U.S. troops in or near Afghanistan to execute the classic sweep-and-block maneuver required to attack bin Laden and try to prevent his escape. It would have been a dangerous fight across treacherous terrain, and the injection of more U.S. troops and the resulting casualties would have contradicted the risk-averse, ‘‘light footprint’’ model formulated by Rumsfeld and Franks. But commanders on the scene and elsewhere in Afghanistan argued that the risks were worth the reward.}

^{After bin Laden’s escape, some military and intelligence analysts and the press criticized the Pentagon’s failure to mount a full-scale attack despite the tough rhetoric by President Bush. Franks, Vice President Dick Cheney and others defended the decision, arguing that the intelligence was inconclusive about the Al Qaeda leader’s location. But the review of existing literature, unclassified government records and interviews with central participants underlying this report removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora…}

It’s certainly consistent with what we already know. Our leaders were tentative at the outset, not wanting to commit adequate troops to do the job. They approached this heavy task with a "light footprint." I find their stated logic for why unconvincing, just as unconvincing as trying to invade Iraq with a minimal force. While the folly of their decisions is obvious now, I think it was obvious then too.

^{On November 21, 2001, President Bush put his arm on Defense Secretary Rumsfeld as they were leaving a National Security Council meeting at the White House. ‘‘I need to see you,’’ the president said. It was 72 days after the 9/11 attacks and just a week after the fall of Kabul. But Bush already had new plans.}

^{According to Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, the president said to Rumsfeld: ‘‘What kind of a war plan do you have for Iraq? How do you feel about the war plan for Iraq?’’ Then the president told Woodward he recalled saying: ‘‘Let’s get started on this. And get Tommy Franks looking at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to.’’ Back at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld convened a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draft a message for Franks asking for a new assessment of a war with Iraq. The existing operations plan had been created in 1998 and it hinged on assembling the kind of massive international coalition used in Desert Storm in 1991.}

^{In his memoir, American General, Franks later described getting the November 21 telephone call from Rumsfeld relaying the president’s orders while he was sitting in his office at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. Franks and one of his aides were working on air support for the Afghan units being assembled to push into the mountains surrounding Tora Bora. Rumsfeld said the president wanted options for war with Iraq. Franks said the existing plan was out of date and that a new one should include lessons about precision weapons and the use of special operations forces learned in Afghanistan.}

^{‘‘Okay, Tom,’’ Rumsfeld said, according to Franks. ‘‘Please dust it off and get back to me next week.’’ Franks described his reaction to Rumsfeld’s orders this way: ‘‘Son of a bitch. No rest for the weary.’’}

Looking back on Iraq and our invasion allows us to see what a non-danger Saddam Hussein really was. We knew that already after the Gulf War when we routed him in a short time in the 1990-1991 Desert Storm operation. Why they were so insistent on invading Iraq again remains obscure: oil exploration? to assert the U.S. as the sole superpower? paranoia? so little Bush could be like big Bush? Whatever the thinking, they radicalized a force in Iraq unlike anything Hussein could’ve ever mustered. History screams that invading Iraq was a mistake in its own right. Now Kerry’s Report makes it clear that the focus on Iraq probably colored Rumsfeld’s decision at Tora Bora, multiplying the damage. And we already know that the focus on invading Iraq [that antedated Bush and Cheney’s inauguration] was the nidus for an even earlier mistake – ignoring al Qaeda in the days before 9/11 in spite of insistent warnings from the C.I.A. and Richard Clarke. And we further realize now that the problem of the isurgency in Iraq has preoccupied us for years, leading us to make yet another bad call – allowing the War in Afghanistan to smolder on the back burner [underfunded and undermanned] while the Taliban regrouped in Pakistan and returned with a vengeance. It’s hard to imagine a bigger tangle. The preconceived Project for the New American Century plan to invade Iraq and effect the beloved "Regime Change" has distorted rational thought from the start – resulting in a cascade of misadventures stretching back over more than a decade.

The Lawmaker and the Bishop Need to Stop Feuding
FOXNews.com
By Judith Miller
November 24, 2009

The longer the battle between Rep. Patrick Kennedy and Bishop Tobin lingers, the more attention will inevitably be paid to the Church’s very aggressive lobbying in our political process and the extent of its alleged influence over Catholic politicians in government.

The very public spat between Representative Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island and Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin shows no sign of abating. But it should, for the sake of both men and their institutions. At the moment, the feud is focused on competing claims. Kennedy, no stranger to political woes and personal struggles with addiction, says that Tobin has effectively barred him from taking communion in his home state because he supports abortion rights; Tobin replies that he merely asked Kennedy in a private letter three years ago not to take communion and that he never spoke to the priests in his diocese about it.

OK. We get it. Kennedy and Tobin clearly detest each other. But the longer their battle lingers, the more attention will inevitably be paid to the Church’s very aggressive lobbying in our political process and the extent of its alleged influence over Catholic politicians in government…

But denying, or appearing to deny a politician a holy sacrament because he disagrees with the church’s teachings can only raise questions about whether Catholics in good standing can act independently of church dogma, an issue that initially dogged Kennedy’s uncle, JFK, early in his bid for the presidency…

 

So how does a Fox news article connect with an Iraq Humvee photo? Judith Miller is how. On our trip, we were in stores where racks of television sets were turned on, and I recognized a voice – and when I looked, there was Judith Miller on Fox News waxing eloquent. We all remember her as the New York Times writer who broke all the prewar stories about Iraq that turned out to have come from either Amhad Chalabi’s INC or Scooter Libby [and were all incorrect]. Then she was a recipient of one of the Anthrax letters. Then she was embedded in Iraq racing around looking for WMD’s [reporting a maybe find that turned out to be wrong]. Then she went to jail for a few months as a 1st Amendment Martyr in the CIA Leak Inquiry. Then she got fired from the NYT. Now Judith Miller is back, writing and paneling on Fox News.

 

The American Tobacco Campus – Durham, NC