I know that we’ve intermittently talked about this before, but now seems to be a perfect time to discuss our wars with Iraq (our troops are coming home, finally) and Afghanistan. Make no mistake, we were definitely attacked on September 11, 2001. A group of 19 terrorists with the aid of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban took down the World Trade Center, tore a huge hole in the Pentagon and crashed an airliner into a rural portion of Pennsylvania. We now know that these acts of terrorism set in motion a cascade of events which have cost the American people well over $1.5 trillion. 6200 American soldiers have died. Tens of thousands of American soldiers have been wounded. What did we get in return?
When you invest blood and sweat into a project, you should at least hope to get something out of it. Stability in the Middle East? A thriving economy in Afghanistan? At the time of the Iraq invasion, many Americans believed that we were invading Iraq in order to secure their oil. Do we have secure oil agreements in place? Did we, at least, improve our relationships with other governments in the Middle East?
Some of these questions don’t really have answers. Others of these questions do have answers and the answers, unfortunately, are depressing. We spent a lot of time and effort and nearly destroyed our military in the process. We have simply the death of Osama bin Laden and several of his lieutenants to show for our efforts. Questions like whether we madr terrorism worse still linger. Now is the time for us to figure out what we did wrong. We should also assess what we did right. We need to make sure that we do not repeat the same mistakes which led to the disastrous decisions to invade both of those countries. I would submit that we could have infiltrated Afghanistan with a couple hundred to a couple of thousand troops with appropriate air support and eliminated Osama bin Laden and most of Al Qaeda within a matter of weeks or months. I don’t know. What I do know is that spending $1.5 trillion and losing over 6000 troops, breaking our military and getting almost nothing in return is unacceptable.
No other document, in my opinion, reveals how clueless the Bush administration truly was prior to 9/11. This document is little over a page long, yet it holds some alarming information. First, read the memo. Now, re-read the memo and imagine that you are the President of the United States in August 2001. You are responsible for the well being of over 275 million people. Secondly, focus on the title – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US. Now, in August of 2001, this was not common knowledge. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed, but it is not clear to me that the Bush White House (well, I’m really talking about Bush, Cheney and Rice) clearly understood the connection between Ramzi Yousef, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Osama bin Laden. US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya are bombed in 1998. Hundreds of Africans were killed. A third Embassy was targeted but the attack was thwarted by the Ugandan police. October 12, 2000, the USS Cole was bombed. 17 sailors were killed. We cannot forget the Millennium Day Bomber who intended to bomb the LA airport. Just because he was caught does not mean that he isn’t part of the picture. As a matter fact, the Millennium Day Bomber is probably the most vivid example of Al Qaeda (he trained with Al Qaeda) trying to come into the United States. It was due to nothing but a lot of luck and some skill that this plot was thwarted. The US Customs agent said that the Millennium Day Bomber was acting hinky.
This should be the most superficial knowledge that the president should have as he was reading the August sixth daily brief.
The seventh paragraph of the PDB should have sent chills up and down the spine of any American who read it.
Al Qaeda members – including some who are US citizens – have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two Al Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-’90s.
Never before have I seen any evidence that the FBI or the CIA thought that Al Qaeda had members here in United States. If I were president, I would want the FBI director to explain how come we haven’t located these Al Qaeda members. Where are they? What are they doing? Who are they with? Can we arrest them? I would pepper the FBI director with questions until he had answers.
The first paragraph of the second page reads:
Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
This paragraph should elicit one of two responses. First, if you’re not taking Al Qaeda seriously, there’s nothing specific in this paragraph, so you can just ignore it. Let the FBI and CIA and other agencies do their jobs at their usual pace. On the other hand, you can remember that you’re responsible for the safety of millions of Americans. You can ask the FBI what kind of suspicious activities they have been seeing. You can ask your national security advisor to alert the FAA. You can also call the governor/mayor of New York and inform them of suspicious activities. You can ask them to have their state and local authorities look for suspicious activities.
Now, if President Bush was truly on the ball and had really studied all the information he been given, he would’ve known about not one but several different plans to hijack planes and use them as missiles. What if President Bush had called the head of the FAA and his national security advisor and the heads of the FBI and CIA down to Crawford after his August sixth daily brief? What if he told the head of the FAA that the FBI has information that suggested that Al Qaeda was preparing for hijacking of one or more planes here in the United States. Could that warning have saved lives? Could the FAA have done enough to have prevented the hijackings?
I know that it is far-fetched to think that President Bush would have been this in charge and on the ball that early in his presidency. I fault him for being so complacent, so nonchalant. On August sixth, we needed a president that was engaged, cerebral, who studied information that he’d been given and who took his job as president as seriously as he did after the September 11 attacks. (If you are interested in reading the spin that the Bush White House put on the PDB check this out.)
What your thoughts? Is the August sixth presidential daily brief as big a deal as I’m making it?
I’ve spent most of today reading and reflecting on my education over the last decade. I don’t remember the first time I heard the word Al Qaeda. I don’t remember the first time I ever heard the name Osama bin Laden. I do remember where I was on September 11, 2001. I had been up most of the night taking care of trauma patients and I was sleeping in the morning. The phone rang and it was my mother-in-law. She is and was the Sentinel. She was always scanning the news. She called to tell us to turn on the TV. She said something terrible happened in New York. I thought she was crazy and misunderstood what she had seen. I handed the phone to my wife as I grabbed the remote control and turned on the television.
I’m sure over the next several days that there’s going to be lots of blogs and television shows which are going to reflect on what has happened in the last 10 years. The New York Times is already started the series on 9/11. I just want to revisit some of the information and data that we’ve learned over the last 10 years. I’m not going to spend much time talking about the Patriot Act and how it has been abused over the last decade. I’m not going to talk about civil liberties and how Republicans have taken advantage of 9/11. I’m sure that these topics will be adequately covered by many others in the blogosphere.
In my opinion, the key to understanding the failure of 9/11 lies in the arrest and interrogation of Ramzi Yousef. Ramzi Yousef was the mastermind behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Once he was captured, authorities began to see into the mind of a Muslim extremist. Ramzi Yousef was associated with Osama bin Laden. The uncle of Ramzi Yousef was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. After escaping the country in 1993, Ramzi Yousef attempted an assassination of Benazir Bhutto in the summer of 1993. He then attempted to bomb an Israeli embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. These attempts failed. Yousef, a Sunni Muslim, bombed a Shiite holy site in Iran in June of 1994. He then made his way to Malaysia, where he began to plot the Bojinka plan (also known as the Manila plot). He and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed planned to blow up 12 US airliners as they flew over the Pacific Ocean. As they were preparing their 12 bombs, a fire broke out in Yousef’s apartment. One thing led to another and authorities got a treasure’s trove of information from his apartment.
At the very least, authorities have an opportunity to see what one man was capable of doing around the world. The mistake that was made was that everyone assumed that this was just one man and not a movement. Only a few in the intelligence community understood that he was one of many. It wasn’t until 1998, the embassy bombings, that many in the United States began to take notice that this was a serious threat. For some, it took until 2000, the USS Cole bombing before they believed that Al Qaeda would stop at nothing.
Ramzi Yoursef is currently in a maximum-security prison in Colorado.
How did you first become aware of Al Qaeda or Bin Laden or the fact that we were a serious target? Where were you 10 years ago?
As I mentioned almost two weeks ago, we needed to wait until more of the facts were available before coming to a definitive conclusion concerning the role of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the eventual killing of Osama bin Laden. On one hand, you have Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey stating that the trail to bin Laden started with the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. On the other hand, you have a recent Washington Post op-ed by former POW Senator John McCain, in which states, “I asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and he told me the following: The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda.”
Both sides of this torture debate are probably wrong. Intelligence and torture are not parts of an all-or-nothing proposal. There are multiple shades of gray. Was everything that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed spewed out under torture wrong? I doubt it. I think that he probably did give us some valuable information. On the other hand, could we have possibly gathered information from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed through other methods? Probably. Our interrogators seem to be very skilled at garnering information over a period of time.
Our moral compass seems to have been broken for some time. We’ve adopted a “win at any cost” type of mentality. It is as if we were prominently playing some sort of reality game. Whether it is reelecting Senator David Vitter or Representative William “cash in my freezer” Jefferson because he is a senior politician and will bring more money to the state, it is simply wrong. Why the good people of Arizona are putting up with the craziness of Senator John Ensign who has proven himself to be unfit to represent anyone is beyond me. In the name of laissez-faire capitalism and open markets, we allowed the American people to get ripped off for over $13 trillion in which Wall Street banks got rich and the rest of us got to see our housing nest eggs depreciate in value.
Torture is wrong. Wherever you want to draw that line in the sand (on one side there’s torture and the other side there is no torture), I want to be far away from that dividing line. Now, conservatives always come up with the 24-hour scenario (based on the Kiefer Sutherland series 24 hours). What if you detain a terrorist who you “know” has information about an impending terrorist attack? Getting that information will save hundreds, if not thousands, of American lives. What you do? In my opinion, you get special permission from Congress to use your enhanced interrogation techniques on this specific terrorist at this specific point in time. I’m hoping that we can find our moral compass before it is too late.
President Obama honored those who died at Ground Zero. “When we say we will never forget, we mean what we say.”
Corporations continue to pay some of the lowest taxes they’ve seen in over 50 years.
As a government, our lack of revenue is the problem. The middle class is ponying up their share. It is corporations and the top 1% who are taking home more and paying less.
Pakistan plays the Sergeant Schultz card. (See the video below.) They knew nothing about Bin Laden chillin’ in their country.
The world is an extremely complex place, filled with lots of nuance. Neither the right nor the left really has the correct narrative. One side wants to give President Barack Obama all the credit for tracking down Osama bin Laden. The other side wants to give President Bush all the credit. Neither narrative is true. One side wants to tell us that torture was completely vindicated by the death of Osama bin Laden. The other side wants us to know that torture had nothing whatsoever to do with the intelligence that led to the death of Osama bin Laden. In reality, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. There is probably some shred of truth that some information came from torture or “enhanced interrogation techniques.” On the other hand, it is not clear if we’ve could’ve gotten that information in other ways. The same thing holds true for President Bush and President Obama. It is probably true that the changes that took place in the intelligence community laid the groundwork for the cooperation that we saw between special forces, the military, the FBI and the CIA. It is also true that President Barack Obama chose a team that can work together and get the job done. He was the one that authorized the team to go and get Osama bin Laden. He decided not to use predator drone strikes or a B-52 bombing raid. (I do not understand a spontaneous party outside of the former president’s house at one in the morning.)
While I believe in the rule of law, I also understand that Osama bin Laden is/was a killer. I understand that he murdered thousands of Americans and Muslims. I understand that, like Bonnie and Clyde or Pablo Escobar, he was not going to be taken quietly. He was not going to recite his own Miranda rights. I am completely comfortable with the president’s decision to kill Osama bin Laden. I also endorse the scrutiny and the questions about the legality of the president’s actions. I think this is a healthy debate. In the end, it doesn’t matter what other people decide. I know that if I were president, I would’ve authorized a strike on Osama bin Laden. Any president who wants to protect the American people would’ve made that decision. I understand. I think the American people understand. Now, let the lawyers figure it out.
Marcy Wheeler has a wonderful post on the trail of evidence that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden:
The AP has confirmed that intelligence leading to the courier that in turn led to Osama bin Laden came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and–as I surmised earlier–Abu Faraj al-Libi while in CIA custody. But partly because of the language AP uses to describe this–and partly because the wingnuts love torture–many are drawing the wrong conclusion about it. Here’s what the AP says:
Current and former U.S. officials say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, provided the nom de guerre of one of bin Laden’s most trusted aides. The CIA got similar information from Mohammed’s successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi. Both were subjected to harsh interrogation tactics inside CIA prisons in Poland and Romania.
Note what AP says: KSM provided the courier’s nom de guerre. The CIA got similar information from al-Libi. And they were tortured. The AP does not say torture led to this information.
Here’s what a senior administration official said last night about when they got the intelligence on the courier.
Detainees gave us his nom de guerre or his nickname and identified him as both a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of September 11th, and a trusted assistant of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the former number three of al Qaeda who was captured in 2005.
Detainees also identified this man as one of the few al Qaeda couriers trusted by bin Laden. They indicated he might be living with and protecting bin Laden. But for years, we were unable to identify his true name or his location.
Four years ago, we uncovered his identity, and for operational reasons, I can’t go into details about his name or how we identified him, but about two years ago, after months of persistent effort, we identified areas in Pakistan where the courier and his brother operated. [my emphasis]
In other words, while the CIA may have learned the courier’s nickname earlier, they didn’t learn his true name until “four years ago”–so late 2006 at the earliest. And they didn’t learn where the courier operated until around 2009. (more…)
As one conservative put it, “How did we find the Couriers? That info was gotten at Guantanamo Bay. Info that never would have been obtained had the detainees been treated as US criminals. This, in my view, vindicates the decision to sequester the detainees at Gitmo and ALL of their interrogation methods. It worked.” While there are many accounts of exactly what happened, some conservatives are focusing on the online magazine Slate. White House reporter John Dickerson wrote, “detainees being held at Guantánamo provided some of the strongest information about those who were trusted by bin Laden. They identified a courier and his brother who lived in Abbottabad, Pakistan, an affluent suburb where a lot of retired Pakistani military officers live.”
This single report goes much further than any other report with regards to the role of Guantánamo detainees in the assassination of Osama bin Laden. In a separate report by the Associated Press, they specifically point the finger at Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. I have a problem with this. It just doesn’t seem to make sense.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured in 2003. According to reports, it was 2005 before the CIA began to get information about a courier that was working for Osama bin Laden. The dates don’t seem to match. Did the CIA sit on information for two years? Separate reports state that the CIA was given a pseudonym for the courier. The CIA needed to do more leg work in order to find out the courier’s real name and where the courier was located. Again, this doesn’t quite add up. If, for example, I tell you that Popeye the Sailor is a close confidant of Osama bin Laden I’m not sure that’s going to help you much. On the other hand, if I can give you a courier’s real name and where he actually lives in Pakistan, that would probably be helpful.
On the Last Word last night, Michael Isikoff, veteran reporter from Newsweek, mentions there are clearly some questions about whether these enhanced interrogations (torture) really gleaned valuable information. Watch the video:
In other words, while the CIA may have learned the courier’s nickname earlier, they didn’t learn his true name until “four years ago”–so late 2006 at the earliest. And they didn’t learn where the courier operated until around 2009.
From these dates we can conclude that either KSM shielded the courier’s identity entirely until close to 2007, or he told his interrogators that there was a courier who might be protecting bin Laden early in his detention but they were never able to force him to give the courier’s true name or his location, at least not until three or four years after the waterboarding of KSM ended. That’s either a sign of the rank incompetence of KSM’s interrogators (that is, that they missed the significance of a courier protecting OBL), or a sign he was able to withstand whatever treatment they used with him.
With al-Libi, the connection between whatever torture he experienced and this intelligence is less clear (since he was first detained in 2005), but even with al-Libi, it appears clear he either never revealed the courier’s real name or only did so after he had been in custody for a year, and almost certainly until after he arrived in Gitmo.
Update: Putting the AP’s reporting here together with the DAB, it seems like al-Libi did give up the name, perhaps earlier than reported. Still no waterboarding.
Either these men didn’t know the true name of their protégé and assistant (which is highly unlikely), or they managed to withhold that information even under torture.
In fact, two people who normally would be crowing about the success of torture are not now doing it. Donald Rumsfeld suggests the discovery of OBL came from intelligence gained at Gitmo (therefore, not in Poland or Romania). And while Cheney assumes enhanced interrogation, aka torture, led to OBL, he admits he doesn’t know where the intelligence came from. That he was ordering up propaganda reports along the way to justify his torture program, yet can’t claim definitively that the intelligence came from it, is a pretty good tell that he can’t say it did.
If KSM and al-Libi revealed details about the courier (and al-Libi’s Gitmo file suggests he did; KSM’s, which is dated two years earlier, does not), they shielded the most important information about him for years.
Donald Rumsfeld, who I think is trying to stay out of jail, said,“The United States Department of Defense did not do waterboarding for interrogation purposes to anyone. It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantanamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding.”
One thing is clear. We need more information before declaring that Guantánamo Bay, enhanced interrogations, torture, forced renditions, black sites or any of that other Bush administration quasilegal stuff was effective, needed or proven. We need more data.
THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.
It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history. The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory — hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.
And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.
On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.
We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda — an organization headed by Osama bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocents in our country and around the globe. And so we went to war against al Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies.
Over the last 10 years, thanks to the tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals, we’ve made great strides in that effort. We’ve disrupted terrorist attacks and strengthened our homeland defense. In Afghanistan, we removed the Taliban government, which had given bin Laden and al Qaeda safe haven and support. And around the globe, we worked with our friends and allies to capture or kill scores of al Qaeda terrorists, including several who were a part of the 9/11 plot. [Read more →]
Awaiting President Obama’s announcement. This is what we know…or think we know. It has been nine years since 9/11. It has been eight years since George W. Bush declared Mission Accomplished.
I have called for the death of Osama Bin Laden for years. We took the fight to Bin Laden. We focused. We got the resources necessary and accomplished the task. This is how America works. I can’t let this topic go without mentioning how Bush failed. There are going to be many bloggers who are going to rub Bush’s face in his failure. I will say that we had the tools to get Bin Laden when Bush was in the White House. I will not say any more on this at this time.
Information on the city that Bin Laden was found in – Abbottabad.
Earlier this evening, President Obama called to inform me that American forces killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al Qaeda network that attacked America on September 11, 2001. I congratulated him and the men and women of our military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to this mission. They have our everlasting gratitude. This momentous achievement marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001. The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.
A CIA-led operation has killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and recovered his body after a tortuous decadelong hunt for the elusive militant leader who commanded the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. government officials said Sunday night.
CIA Director Leon Panetta called key members of Congress late Sunday to describe the killing of the Al Qaeda leader, and President Obama is expected to make the announcement on national TV.
Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is dead and the U.S. has his body, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.
U.S. President Barack Obama was to make the announcement shortly that after searching in vain for bin Laden since he disappeared in Afghanistan in late 2001, the Saudi-born extremist is dead, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Details of the death were sparse. A senior U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said bin Laden was killed in a ground operation in Pakistan, not by a Predator drone. The official said it happened last week.
CNN and Reuters reported that the al-Qaida leader was killed in a mansion outside Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.
It is a major accomplishment for Obama and his national security team, having fulfilled the goal once voiced by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, to bring to justice the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
I’ve seen this Mark Twain line dug up by a number of people: “I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”
Seems about right.
Finally, I must wonder how we did this. How did we kill Osama bin Laden? Yes we’ve all heard about the intelligence tip. We’ve heard about the compound. We’ve heard about the helicopter and how one of them crashed. We’ve heard about the firefight. But what was different? What did we do different this time that we didn’t do last year or five years ago or even 10 years ago? I really can’t count President Clinton’s effort to kill Osama bin Laden. Yes, President Clinton understood the risk that Osama bin Laden posed but he did not go after Osama bin Laden with the full force of our military. He couldn’t. He was politically hamstrung. You can make other excuses for President Clinton but this is the reality. Monica Lewinsky and Newt Gingrich made it impossible for him to fully go after Osama bin Laden. President Bush, on the other hand, told us that he wanted Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.” President Bush told us that he was throwing the full resources of the American government behind getting this terrorist. Yet, we came up empty. Why? Was the difference truly the president’s resolve and focus? Did the CIA make the difference? Was Leon Panetta a better manager of the CIA than George tenet? Did he make the difference? In the coming weeks and months we will hear more details about how this was actually accomplished. We hear a lot about the military personnel that were involved. We will hear more about the presidential decisions and Barack Obama’s role in directing the CIA and the military. In my mind, the bottom line is that in spite of all of the criticism that President Barack Obama has had to endure, he has risen to the task and gotten the job done. Whether it was turning the economy around or passing health-care legislation or winding down the Iraq war, Barack Obama has figured out a way to get the task accomplished.
It was only a couple weeks ago when Bill O’Reilly was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Bill was promoting his new book. He and Stewart sparred but there was no meaningful exchanges. It was only a week earlier when Jon Stewart was on the O’Reilly Factor. Stewart mentioned that O’Reilly had become “the reasonable one.” This was true. Over the last two or three years, Glenn Beck is become the wild and crazy face of right-wing politics. Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly have become reasonable. O’Reilly doesn’t want reasonable. Reasonable does not sell books. So, O’Reilly goes on The View.
Now this was vintage Bill O’Reilly. Edgy, combative, condescending, demeaning were all traits that Bill O’Reilly exhibited over his career and brought to the forefront for this interview. He did not want to Jon Stewart detente type of interview. He wanted more. He wanted something that America could talk about. He wanted something that would fire up those right wing extremists to run out and buy his book. That’s exactly what he got.
In some ways, I agree with Barbara Walters. We should be able to discuss issues without leaving the room. In other ways, this is a throwback to Leave It to Beaver type mentality. We should be able to discuss issues. We should not let conversations deteriorate into shouting matches. These women, on The View, had to know that Bill O’Reilly wanted to start something. They had to know that their show was the perfect venue for him to “misspeak” then apologize. If they didn’t know it, why didn’t they?
Bill O’Reilly, never to let an opportunity go to waste, spent all of his talking points commentary on defending himself. He’s right and they (liberals) are wrong. He basically stated that he said what he said because he was right. The problem, as he sees it, is that America’s fighting Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. He doesn’t see that were fighting Muslim extremists. He then expands his argument by noting many in the Muslim world hate the United States. He states the polls clearly show this. Therefore, he concludes that we’re actually fighting all Muslims since they support the extremists. The most interesting thing of O’Reilly’s diatribe is that he doesn’t note that most Muslims do not support extremists. This is key. This is the flaw in the O’Reilly logic. (There are actually many flaws but this is the most glaring.)
Bill O’Reilly ends his rant with one of the most unsubstantiated statements in his whole commentary. But this is an O’Reilly classic. This is one of those statements that most Americans would agree with on the surface. At first glance it sounds great. “If most moderate Muslims would ally themselves with the United States, the jihad would not exist.” What? What kind of blather is that? If most moderate Muslims would align themselves with the United States… Most moderate Muslims do not support violence. There’s a reason that Osama bin Laden is not sipping tea in Kabul, Islamabad or Istanbul. It is because he is not accepted there. There’s a reason that he’s hiding in the mountains in Western Pakistan. There’s a reason that he will not show his face in any major city. Moderate Muslims will not protect him. There’s a reason that we were able to find Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. We got information from moderate Muslims.
Finally, and most glaringly, Bill O’Reilly is distorting the facts, as usual. He puts forth the facts that support his point of view but won’t paint the whole picture. Sure, in multiple polls, Muslims are not in love with the United States. But these polls go further. The majority of Muslims want better relations with the West. They also show that majority of Muslims, the same 70% that Bill O’Reilly quotes, do not support violence against civilians. Let me say that again, the vast majority of Muslims polled in countries like Morocco, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia do not support violence against civilians. Bill O’Reilly remains a controversial figure that will not go away. For reasons that are unclear, thoughtful, intelligent conservative Americans continue to embrace this guy. He distorts the facts. He promotes himself relentlessly. He simply wants to sell more books which by the way, will also distort facts.
As a trauma surgeon, I find Monday to be a relief. By Monday afternoon, you have an opportunity to look around and see how bad the weekend truly was. So, unlike most Americans, I like Mondays.
15 years ago, I was working at LSU Medical Center in Shreveport. The bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, in which 168 people lost their lives, continues to be shocking. I remember wanting to help, but not knowing exactly what to do.
I’ve been working on a small research project. One of my readers challenged my assumption that Senator Charles Schumer did not cause the failure of IndyMac. I contend that there was a run on the bank but that the bank was failing long before that run started. I should have a post ready by tomorrow at this time.
One of the reasons that I did not believe that IndyMac was solvent had to do with the fact that they were handing out these loans like free candy. Something just smelled rotten. And it’s not just with this particular institution. The more you read about the financial industry in the mid-2000s, the more you get this foul stench. Look at Countrywide. Look at AIG. Look at Bear Stearns. Now look at what we’re learning about Goldman Sachs. Several people have pointed out that there was a extremely cozy relationship between the rating agencies (Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s) and some of the big financial institutions like Goldman Sachs. The Senate is investigating. The California Attorney General has been looking into this for a year or so. He held a press conference today announcing that he was going to court to force Moody’s to comply with a subpoena. The SEC, which seems to have been dormant for over a decade, has now been awakened. They charged Goldman with fraud. This is starting to get good.
A top Al Qaeda leader in Iraq has been killed. Yet again, top American official in Iraq stated this could’ve been a potentially “significant blow” to the insurgents. Where we heard that before? Where’s Bin Laden?
There appears to be a huge scandal brewing in India that involves cricket and politics.
As a NFL Fan, I must start out with LaDainian Tomlinson’s release from the Chargers. I’m not surprised. He isn’t the same back that he was just three years ago, but damn.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney is back in the hospital with chest pain. Former Presidential contender and Senate minority leader Bob Dole is also in the hospital. I wish both a speed recovery.
Afghanistan: “An airstrike launched Sunday by United States Special Forces helicopters against what international troops believed to be a group of insurgents ended up killing as many as 27 civilians in the worst such case since at least September, Afghan officials said Monday.”
Senate vote on jobs bill still set for later today, though whether Republicans will allow senators to vote on the stripped-down bill remains unclear.
For those keeping score, there are now 21 Democratic senators who support using reconciliation to vote on a public option.
I can only hope that Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) does not support terrorist acts against the government of the United States.
Oklahoma’s outrageous anti-abortion law has been deemed unconstitutional. Good.
The “Volcker rule” picks up endorsements from five former Treasury secretaries.
Powerful piece from Adam Serwer: “Whereas al-Zawahiri and bin Laden turned to al-Sharif for a method to circumvent the plain language of the Koran, Bush and Cheney went to Yoo and Jay Bybee to circumvent the plain language of the law.”
Leonard Pitts Jr.: “To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper’s online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth…. [O]bjective reality does not change because you refuse to accept it. The fact that you refuse to acknowledge a wall does not change the fact that it’s a wall. And you shouldn’t have to hit it to find that out.”
On March 28th, I outlined what I called a “comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.” It was ambitious. It was also an attempt to fulfill a campaign promise that was heartfelt. I believed — and still believe — that, in invading Iraq, a war this administration is now ending, we took our eye off Afghanistan. Our well-being and safety, as well as that of the Afghan people, suffered for it.
I suggested then that the situation in Afghanistan was already “perilous.” I announced that we would be sending 17,000 more American soldiers into that war zone, as well as 4,000 trainers and advisors whose job would be to increase the size of the Afghan security forces so that they could someday take the lead in securing their own country. There could be no more serious decision for an American president.
Eight months have passed since that day. This evening, after a comprehensive policy review of our options in that region that has involved commanders in the field, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Advisor James Jones, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, top intelligence and State Department officials and key ambassadors, special representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, and experts from inside and outside this administration, I have a very different kind of announcement to make.
I plan to speak to you tonight with the frankness Americans deserve from their president. I’ve recently noted a number of pundits who suggest that my task here should be to reassure you about Afghanistan. I don’t agree. What you need is the unvarnished truth just as it’s been given to me. We all need to face a tough situation, as Americans have done so many times in the past, with our eyes wide open. It doesn’t pay for a president or a people to fake it or, for that matter, to kick the can of a difficult decision down the road, especially when the lives of American troops are at stake.
During the presidential campaign I called Afghanistan “the right war.” Let me say this: with the full information resources of the American presidency at my fingertips, I no longer believe that to be the case. I know a president isn’t supposed to say such things, but he, too, should have the flexibility to change his mind. In fact, more than most people, it’s important that he do so based on the best information available. No false pride or political calculation should keep him from that.
And the best information available to me on the situation in Afghanistan is sobering. It doesn’t matter whether you are listening to our war commander, General Stanley McChrystal, who, as press reports have indicated, believes that with approximately 80,000 more troops — which we essentially don’t have available — there would be a reasonable chance of conducting a successful counterinsurgency war against the Taliban, or our ambassador to that country, Karl Eikenberry, a former general with significant experience there, who believes we shouldn’t send another soldier at present. All agree on the following seven points:
We have no partner in Afghanistan. The control of the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai hardly extends beyond the embattled capital of Kabul. He himself has just been returned to office in a presidential election in which voting fraud on an almost unimaginably large scale was the order of the day. His administration is believed to have lost all credibility with the Afghan people. [Read more →]
If you had your eyes glued to the TV and you were taking notes, you probably still missed it. The mainstream media seemed not to want to cover any substantive discussions about President Obama, Russia and loose nuclear weapons. I must admit, I did not even think about loose nuclear weapons. Currently, I’m reading Ron Suskind’s book, The Way of the World, which discusses an incident in 2006, in which Georgian officials capture a two-bit criminal who is smuggling uranium!
Smuggling uranium? One of the things that the Bush administration talked about (all the time) was weapons of mass destruction. We had to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. In 2002, ”I don’t have any doubt that al Qaeda was pursuing nuclear, biological and chemical warfare capabilities. It’s not our judgment at the moment that they were that far along, but I have no doubt that they were seeking to do so.” This is what U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton told CNN. What did the Bush administration do to secure loose nuclear weapons, especially in the former Soviet republic? I know, search your databanks. I couldn’t think of anything either.
In January 2008, Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz and William Perry wrote an Op-Ed in the WSJ which stated, “In October 2007, we convened veterans of the past six administrations, along with a number of other experts on nuclear issues, for a conference at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. There was general agreement about the importance of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons as a guide to our thinking about nuclear policies, and about the importance of a series of steps that will pull us back from the nuclear precipice. The U.S. and Russia, which possess close to 95% of the world’s nuclear warheads, have a special responsibility, obligation and experience to demonstrate leadership, but other nations must join.” This is especially nice since Kissinger et al., were the ones that promoted the arms race three or four decades ago. But, the reasoning behind their recommendation is now becoming very clear. We can’t control every kilo of nuclear material. There is a bipartisan agreement in Congress to get rid of nuclear weapons.
Now for some more bone chilling realism. Where in Georgia did this uranium come from? South Ossetia. If that doesn’t sound familiar, it should. This was the region wanting to break away from Georgia during the 2008 presidential campaign. Remember John McCain declaring, “We are all Georgians now.”
South Ossetia is no bigger than Long Island. Yet in 2003, Georgian border guards caught another smuggler with 200 grams of weapons grade uranium. Now this is what bothers me. These are the two-bit criminals. We know that Russia has huge crime syndicates that are run by Al Capone types. If these nobodies can get their hands on weapons grade uranium then you know the big bosses sure can get their hands on whatever they want. Al Qaeda just needs to name the price and dirty bombs are going to be set off in a city near you. By the way, are the Georgia border guards better or worse than our American border guards? Because we know we only catch a fraction of the drugs that come into this country. Does Georgia just catch a fraction of the uranium is leaving their country?
In my opinion, President Obama set down and spoke with the Russian President Medvedev about these, loose nukes. This had to have been their number one priority. We cannot be serious about trying to stop the next terrorist attack without securing nuclear weapons. Forget the photo ops, the smiles and handshakes. If we can not secure nuclear weapons, none of that matters.
Taking out Osama Bin Laden would be a huge feather in Barack Obama’s cap. He would be able to tell former vice president Dick Cheney to stick a sock in it whenever Cheney begins to flap his lips on national security. That would be something. Cenk Uyger of the Young Turks believes that Bin Laden will not be sending many more video messages:
Almost exactly three years ago I predicted the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. And a month later he was dead. Sometimes you can see the handwriting on the wall. Zarqawi had gotten careless and had also turned the local population against him, which I figured would eventually catch up with him. And it did. Now, I see similar handwriting on the wall for Osama bin Laden.
Here are the clues that Osama’s days are numbered:
In one of his latest tapes, he was asking for donations to his cause. This is not something that was part of the regular fare before. If they’re desperate enough to attach that to a threat that was otherwise bragging about how they’re going to rip us apart, then they might be running low on cash. It doesn’t sound very menacing to beg for a handout. If they’re running low on funds, then they could be in a world of trouble.
The Taliban who have traditionally protected Al Qaeda leadership have alienated the local population in Pakistan by carrying out a series of terrorist attacks against respected tribal leaders and innocent civilians. When you lose the local population, you’re living on borrowed time.
We have a smart president. In the seven years after 9/11, the Bush administration could not for the life of them get the Pakistani government to move against the Taliban or Al Qaeda, who had taken shelter in northern Pakistan. They got almost no results in rooting out those forces from the Swat and Waziristan areas. I don’t know if it’s because they didn’t know what they were doing or it was because they didn’t really care to try.
I find Guantánamo Bay extremely disturbing. Yesterday, we found out another prisoner has killed himself. This gentleman, Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih, also known as Al Hanashi, had been detained since 2002 without charges, of course.
The fact that Osama bin Laden is still alive to issue press statements or edicts is a crime against the American people. Yet, he is alive enough to spew more of his vile rhetoric: “…new seeds of hatred and revenge against America.” What atrocity have we committed now? We’ve asked Pakistan to stand firm against the Taliban and we have provided assistance. When do we quit playing around with Osama bin Laden? Why are we going to send 100 elite troops with whatever backup and support they need into the Pakistani mountains to hunt down and kill or capture Osama bin Laden?
President Barack Obama has traveled to the Middle East. His first stop is in Saudi Arabia. Tomorrow he will address an audience in Cairo, Egypt, where he is widely expected to ask for an improved dialogue between Muslims and Americans. It will be interesting to see Obama’s relationship with the Saudi royal family.
It is my personal opinion that torture did not produce any valuable information. It appears that VP Cheney may be parsing his words a little bit. Cheney said in a recent interview with Fox News, “Yes, but the way I would describe them is that they have to do with the detainee program, the interrogation program. It’s not just waterboarding. It’s the interrogation program that we used for high-value detainees. There were two reports done that summarize what we learned from that program, and I think they provide a balanced view.” Notice that VP Cheney is trying to wrap the issue of torture inside the larger program of detaining high-value targets. I think this is typical for Cheney and several of the others. They will argue and argue a point until they’re blue in the face. Once they’re called on that argument, they’ll segue into what they really meant.
US has signed a contract with MedImmune to produce the H1N1 swine flu vaccine. We’ll see how far $90 million goes. I’m figuring that it ain’t going to go that far.
Buzzflash is having a contest to name Dick Cheney memoirs. There are some great entries. Check it out.
I’ve mentioned high-value terrorists. I wrote about Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Mohammed Al-Qahtani (most of this story comes from Jane Mayer’s book, The Dark Side). In August 2001, prior to September 11, Al-Qahtani arrived at the Orlando airport in Florida. He had $2800 in cash and no luggage. He came here on a one-way ticket from Saudi Arabia and was refused entry into the country. Further detective work, after 9/11, showed that Mohammed Atta was waiting for him in the parking lot. Al Qahtani was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in December of 2001. He was in United States custody for almost 7 months before he was fingerprinted and identified as an Al Qaeda operative. He was the 20th hijacker. He was at the famed Malaysia meeting in 2000. (Why we didn’t get better intelligence at the Malaysia meeting is still a mystery to me. Why we allow the Malaysian intelligence agency to take the lead is mind-boggling.)
FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, who interrogated Abu Zubaydah before he was taken away by the CIA, was called into question Al-Qahtani. He got a lot of information in a short period time. He even identified a sleeper cell located in Chicago. This wasn’t enough information for US officials, who “knew” that Al Qahtani was holding out. Tougher measures were needed. My question is why would officials assume that a low-level screw-up who’d been captured twice in less than six months would have a treasure trove of information? I’m just asking. It is clear that there was a lot of outside pressure being placed on US officials. In April of 2002 there was a terrorist attack on a synagogue in Tunisia. The US Consulate in Karachi was attacked in June.
It is clear that towards the end of 2002, the FBI backed out of the picture. There’s a steady stream of information from Washington to Guantánamo and back to Washington. Donald Rumsfeld and the commander of Guantánamo Major General Dunlevy had what was described as “close and constant contact.” By November of 2002, the gloves indeed came off. For 48 of the next 54 days, Al-Qahtani was only allowed to sleep for four hours a day. Besides being stripped naked, he was strip-searched and forced to undergo enemas in front of females. He was intentionally touched by females, making it impossible for him to pray (you can’t pray if you’re unclean and you’re unclean if you’re touched by female). He was forced to stand so long his feet and hands swelled. He needed to have his hands and feet bandaged and elevated to treat the painful swelling. At one point, he was treated like a dog, which included being placed in a leash and forced to jump around. There was more degrading treatment. He became so dehydrated at one point the physician had to start a special IV.
What did we learn from these harsh interrogations of Al-Qahtani? Nothing. The process was slow and time-consuming. I’m forced to scratch my head and ask the question, “Why?” We learned nothing. We should’ve known he knew nothing. Now my question is, how do we try this guy? How do we put him in jail, where he belongs, for the rest of his life?
So on the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we need to reflect. What did we really do and why? This has been America’s worst mistake during my lifetime.
More later.
Watch Rachel Maddow review the lies that were/are being told:
A long-time reader, Jeff, wanted me to post this. Jeff seems to be a reasonable guy, so -
George Bush dragged America’s name through the mud long enough. Let’s close Bush’s “terrorist prison” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, immediately. Send those people home.
“The War On Terror,” (T.W.O.T.) like “The War On Drugs,” has been a fraud. A wealth-transfer scam. From taxpayers to Cheney’s Halliburton and Erik Prince’s Blackwater International. And Dyncorp and umpteen other creepy enterprises more suited to Pinochet’s Chile than America.
I say that because the FBI doesn’t buy the TWOT tale either. Remember when FBI Director Robert Mueller told us, “FBI has no hard evidence connecting [Osama] bin Laden to 9/11?” I remember. Go see FBI’s website right now. Not a word will you find there saying FBI wants bin Laden for 9/11.
Ask yourself why, then, did George Bush tell us 100% for certain that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11?
9/11 was Bush’s original excuse for shoving this whole fear-based way of life down our throats, wasn’t it? Did bin Laden do 9/11 or didn’t he? What the hell’s going on?
With due respect to people who disagree with me, do you really believe “al Qaeda,” those guys in rags toting small arms, threaten America’s existence? That those raggedy guys can do to the U.S. what the Soviet Union with thousands of missiles and H-bombs and planes couldn’t do?
Have you wondered how it is that since 2001 “the terrorists” haven’t managed to bust a window or slash a tire here? Isn’t that odd? After 9/11 George Bush told us there were “hundreds if not thousands of al-Qaeda sleeper cells” in the U.S.
I guess like Rip Van Winkle, all those “terrorists” just kept snoring.
Either they did that, or we got lied to daily for 8 long, very expensive years. Meanwhile, our fellow Americans stole trillions of dollars from us. We got ripped off like nobody has in all of history.
Politicians yell “Terrorists!” and the American people shake in their shoes. Works every time. According to this goofy formula, being afraid makes you a good American.
Fear is patriotic!
Aren’t you sick of it? I am. We’ve lived 8 years in a Bruce Willis movie. Now the country is broke. Enough, already.
George Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch is being taken apart. Literally, like a movie set. Because the show is over. Close Guantanamo too. Send those people home.
Note to MSNBC: upgrade your servers!!! From 7 p.m. to midnight Eastern Standard Time, it is nearly impossible to watch any of the videos (Countdown with Keith Olbermann , The Rachel Maddow Show). You need more bandwidth!
Peter Bergen, counterterrorism expert, has a few comments on why Osama bin Laden has raised his ugly head. I’m not sure that Mr. Bergen adds anything new to the discussion. He does believe that recent air strikes by US predator drones in western Pakistan may be having some effect on the Al Qaeda leadership. It should be clear to all Americans that Al Qaeda and Bin Laden are linked to the Palestinian cause.
One of the things puzzling me over the last several years is why Motorola has been struggling. Three years ago, everybody had a Motorola Razr phone. The latest Motorola phones pale to the iPhone or a new Blackberry. Motorola has announced today that they’re cutting 4000 jobs. Why don’t they keep most of those folks and put them into R & D? (Fire the folks currently in R & D, because they aren’t getting the job done!)
There’s an interesting story that has been circulating over the last several days which truly points out how ineffective Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been. Remember that UN resolution that called for both sides to cease aggression in Gaza? Well it appears that Condoleezza Rice had a big part in drafting that resolution. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went around Condoleezza Rice and spoke with President Bush directly asking for the US to abstain from the vote. So the Secretary of State had been working on a resolution that basically asked Israel to stop. Then the Israeli prime minister called Bush and we completely changed course. Does that make any sense to you?
Dick Cheney believes the deaths of 4500 Americans and over 100,000 Iraqis was clearly worth it.
For the most part, I usually agree with Thomas Friedman. Yes, I know that he continually tried to justify the Iraq war which really has no practical justification. Of course, the premise of his wildly successful book, The World Is Flat, that globalization is good, was overly simplistic and really overlooked the terrible suffering that globalization has brought to some developing countries. Well, now that I think about it, I guess I don’t agree with him all that often. In today’s column, he pretty much glosses over the negative consequences of war again. He tries to justify Israel’s incursion into southern Lebanon and appears to be as delusional as President Bush in stating that this incursion was successful. Collateral damage (aka civilian deaths) was not a bad thing as everyone else in the world thinks, but instead is a good thing. I’m not sure that killing civilians in Lebanon or Gaza (or anywhere) can ever be thought of as a good thing. It is obvious to me that the politics in the region are extremely complex. With Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north, it is hard for Israel ever to get a good night’s sleep. Some solution needs to be found. Thomas Friedman does not have the answers. Glenn Greenwald has an excellent post on Friedman’s column.
Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, full-time sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
I know that we’ve intermittently talked about this before, but now seems to be a perfect time to discuss our wars with Iraq (our troops are coming home, finally) and Afghanistan. Make no mistake, we were definitely attacked on September 11, 2001. A group of 19 terrorists with the aid of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban took down the World Trade Center, tore a huge hole in the Pentagon and crashed an airliner into a rural portion of Pennsylvania. We now know that these acts of terrorism set in motion a cascade of events which have cost the American people well over $1.5 trillion. 6200 American soldiers have died. Tens of thousands of American soldiers have been wounded. What did we get in return?
When you invest blood and sweat into a project, you should at least hope to get something out of it. Stability in the Middle East? A thriving economy in Afghanistan? At the time of the Iraq invasion, many Americans believed that we were invading Iraq in order to secure their oil. Do we have secure oil agreements in place? Did we, at least, improve our relationships with other governments in the Middle East?
