Iraq a distraction from war on terror before, after 9/11
April 11Condoleezza Rice's testimony about the now-declassified Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) of Aug. 8 highlights the Bush administration's penchant to tell the truth, but never the whole truth. The true picture of the months leading up to Sept. 11 is slowly coming out -- a revelation the government should fear. Former officials, media reports, and the government's own investigations are indicating that terrorism did not get the attention it deserved, in favor of our misguided war with Iraq. The PDB demonstrates this half-truth strategy perfectly. Rice testified that the PDB was nothing more than a historical document, and the administration was moving swiftly in its anti-terrorism efforts. Yet this flies in the face of reality. While the briefing did not list enough specifics of when and where an attack would be carried out, it clearly stated the imminent threat of a terrorist attack within the United States. Rice used that vagueness as evidence that there was little the government could act upon. Yet Rice and the cabinet could have made the clear and present danger of terrorism a priority and moved ahead prudently to try and stem the threat. Instead, the administration chose to manufacture imminent threats coming from Iraq and pursue Saddam Hussein. In 'The Price of Loyalty,' former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill wrote that ten days into the administration, the Bush team had decided to wash its hands of the Middle East conflict and focus on Iraq. Former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke similarly accused Bush of downplaying the terrorist threat. The administration has responded by using every tool in its arsenal to discredit the people making the accusations because it cannot refute them. Clarke, considered to be the government's top counterterrorism expert, saw only character assignations and implications that he was "not in the loop." So the administration continually tells the truth (we didn't have specific threats), but not the whole truth (it would not have mattered because all we cared about was Iraq). In their quest to refute any possible criticism, top administrators have come dangerously close to blatantly lying to the public. Rice was forced to admit to the Sept. 11 committee that she misspoke when she claimed nobody could have predicted that terrorists would use hijacked airplanes as missiles. It turned out that there were no less than 12 separate warnings of such a plan, including one in 1999 that listed the Pentagon, the CIA headquarters, and the White House as possible targets of al-Qaida. When she accompanied the President to the June 2001 G-8 Summit in Genoa, she was explicitly warned that Islamic terrorists might attempt to crash an airliner into the summit. It is bizarre that administrators will not acknowledge the shortcomings when Bush himself admitted they underestimated the threat. Bob Woodward quoted the president in "Bush at War" as saying he "didn't feel that sense of urgency" about al-Qaida before Sept. 11. The failure to focus on terrorism and the government's explanations of its actions seriously calls into question the administration's ability to keep America safe. Bush could have simply squared with the American people about what happened. Few would have blamed him for failing to anticipate and prevent such an unfathomable attack. But instead, the public has gotten half-truths and misrepresentations of our government's actions before, during, and after Sept. 11. In the wake of Clinton's "misstatements" and deceptions, Bush said he would bring integrity back to the White House. But the lies and falsifications made so far by this administration go farther than anything Clinton ever did. And the global consequences of the United States' actions are far more grave than anything that may or may not have occurred in the oval office just a few years ago.
