26 July 2004 Blog Home : July 2004 : Permalink
(This fisk brought to you from the Instapundit via Virginia Postrel).
The latest piece of bile from Maureen Dowd is just so bad that I have to fisk it. I know fisking Dowd is a bit like stealing pennies from a blind beggar but sometimes these things just have to be done so here goes:
Maybe it's because I've been instructed to pack a respirator escape hood along with party dresses for the Boston convention. Maybe it's because our newspaper has assigned a terrorism reporter to cover a political convention. Maybe it's because George Bush is relaxing at his ranch down there (again) while Osama is planning a big attack up here (again). Maybe it's because there are just as many American soldiers dying in Iraq post-transfer, more Muslims more mad at us over fake W.M.D. intelligence and depravity at Abu Ghraib, and more terrorists in more diffuse networks hating us more.
Maybe it's because the F.B.I. is still learning how to Google and the C.I.A. has an acting head who spends most of his time acting defensive over his agency's failure to get anything right. Maybe it's because so many of those federal twits who missed the 10 chances to stop the 9/11 hijackers, who blew off our Paul Reveres - Richard Clarke, Coleen Rowley and the Phoenix memo author - still run things. Call me crazy, Mr. President, but I don't feel any safer.
Well maybe it is because you are crazy, maybe is because you are unclear on cause and effect, maybe its because the moon is in Venus or maybe its because I'm a Londoner. I'm sure we can go on like this with lists that lack any logical connection and contain gratuitous slurs but perhaps we'd better stop and get to the point. I'll just note that so far we have almost half a dozen claims of questionable veracity - such as the indication that Osama is planning anything, that casualties are at the same rate, that Muslims are more mad, that the WMD intelligence was fake, that Abu Ghraib abuse is still occuring.
The nation's mesmerizing new best seller, the 9/11 commission report, lays bare how naked we still are against an attack, and how vulnerable we are because of the time and money the fuzzy-headed Bush belligerents wasted going after the wrong target.
One could agree with that and yet mean different things. I suspect you mean its because the US invaded Iraq instead of just working on Afghanistan but a case could be made that it was the time and effort the wasted buttering up the UN and not insisting that the entire corrupt organization do without US support of any description.
Even scarier, the commissioners expect Congress, which they denounced as "dysfunctional" on intelligence oversight, to get busy fixing things just as lawmakers are flying home for vacation.
Again we see slight possibiltiy of agreement, Congressional oversight is indeed "dysfunctional" and does take long vacations, but it seems from this that the sainted MoDo believes that Congress can't and shouldn't fix anything. Is she suggesting that we need a dicatorial tyrant? A (whisper it) Stalin? or a H_____?
The report offers vivid details on our worst fears. Instead of focusing on immediately hitting back at Osama, Bush officials indulged their idiotic idée fixe on Saddam and ignored the memo from their counter-terrorism experts dismissing any connection between the religious fanatic bin Laden and the secular Hussein.
Of course they ignored that memo. That's because it didn't exist. Someone who actually read the report (and the related Senate one) would have realised that what the relvant memos said was that there was no direct connection between Saddam and Sept 11. There were memos discussing the actual, albeit somewhat informal, links between Saddam and Al Qaeda but it seems that Osama omitted Saddam from his CC list when planning 9/11
"On the afternoon of 9/11, according to contemporaneous notes, Secretary Rumsfeld instructed General Myers to obtain quickly as much information as possible," the report says. " The notes indicate that he also told Myers that he was not simply interested in striking empty training sites. The secretary said his instinct was to hit Saddam Hussein at the same time - not only bin Laden."
At the first Camp David meeting after 9/11, the report states, "Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz made the case for striking Iraq during 'this round' of the war on terrorism."
Six days after the World Trade Center towers were pulverized, when we should have been striking Osama with everything we had, the Bush team was absorbed with old grudges and stale assumptions.
"At the September 17 N.S.C. meeting, there was some further discussion of 'phase two' of the war on terrorism," the report says. "President Bush ordered the Defense Department to be ready to deal with Iraq if Baghdad acted against U.S. interests, with plans to include possibly occupying Iraqi oil fields."
So what I read from the above is that the government made some initial assumptions based on past events - such as Saddam's sheltering of the previous WTC bomber and his attempt to assasinate Bush père (look I know French too its dead good for impressing hoi polloi) and then when more details emerged modified its assumptions and plans. Of course MoDo is blessed with a hotline from God (Allah?) so she knew on Sept 17th that Osama was acting alone and that Iraq (and Iran for that matter) would not see an opportunity to try and take advantage of American concentration on Afghanistan. Moreover she has pope-like infallibility and never needs advisors to suggest alternative plans which are then not adopted. Not examining these alternatives and then making a decision would in fact be precisely the act of someone with an idée fixe whereas changing ones mind seems to demonstrate a willingness to look at the evidence and engage in mental flexibility.
President Bush was unsure of himself, relying too much on a vice president whose deep, calm voice belied a deeply cracked world view.
Ahh yes well the last bit was a little weak so I'll distract attention from my logical holes with a nice gratuitous insult.
He explained to the commissioners that he had stayed in his seat making little fish faces at second graders for seven minutes after learning about the second plane hitting the towers because, as the report says, "The president felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening."
What better way to track the terror in the Northeast skies than by reading "My Pet Goat" in Sarasota?
There is a well known saying
when in danger or in doubt,
run in circles scream and shout
This seems to be what MoDo's infallible wisdom recommends as sound presidential behaviour. Unless President Bush is actually a Clark Gable or Peter Parker he isn't in fact going to be able to add any meaningful assistence to stopping an attack or rescuing people in the first few minutes. On the contrary asking for a briefing in the middle of a disaster just diverts resources that might be able to be used in stopping it or assisting the survivors. During the time that the President was "making fish faces" no one knew whether the first plane crash was an accident or deliberate and no one had any idea whether, if it was an attack, it was a stand alone or not. However all this is imaterial to MoDo who apparently expects her president to have the same hotline to God that she seems to possess.
The commissioners warn that the price for the Bush bullies' attention deficit disorder could be high: "If, for example, Iraq becomes a failed state, it will go to the top of the list of places that are breeding grounds for attacks against Americans at home. Similarly, if we are paying insufficient attention to Afghanistan, the rule of the Taliban or warlords and narcotraffickers may re-emerge and its countryside could once again offer refuge to Al Qaeda, or its successor."
And Iraq under Saddam was not a failed state? and not already at or near "the top of the list of places that are breeding grounds for attacks against Americans"? Mind you this is interesting, it seems that MoDo believes we should keep troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and provide assistance and support to the governments there. Exactly how this differs from the policy of the Bush white house is unclear.
And, if that's not ominous enough, consider this: "The problem is that Al Qaeda represents an ideological movement, not a finite group of people. It initiates and inspires, even if it no longer directs."
"Yet killing or capturing" Osama, the report says, "while extremely important, would not end terror. His message of inspiration to a new generation of terrorists would continue."
So let me see if I have this clear. Not trying to kill or otherwise bother about Osama is the better policy because that way he won't be an inspiration. OK so how do you square that with the statement at the top that "Maybe it's because George Bush is relaxing at his ranch down there (again) while Osama is planning a big attack up here (again)" that makes you scared? To a logical male bereft of MoDo's feminine intuition and infallibility the killing the leader and as many of his followers as you can find while at the same time attempting to reform the culture that inspired them sends a message to "a new generation of terrorists" that all they get is death fighting for a losing cause but maybe I'm just missing something.
If the Bush crowd hadn't been besotted with the idea of smoking Saddam, they could have stomped Osama in Tora Bora. Now it's too late. Al Qaeda has become a state of mind.
And if "Pantsman" Berger had not been rude to Sudan he could have been stuck in Guantanamo bay in 1998 - oh hang on that would be illegal because we couldn't try him and we'd be infringing on his Geneva convention rights so lets try again.
Obviously if Bush had declared war on Afghanistan on Jan 20th 2001 this would have met with MoDo's uncritical approval because it would have been a completely justified war against a clear and present danger to the US?
Yeah right!