I LOVE Rumsfeld!

[buycitgo]

don't you?

the 911 widows have a slightly different opinion

from a recent article by Gail Sheehy (this will INFURIATE anyone who reads it, for more than a few reasons):

In Mr. Rumsfeld’s opening statement, he said he knew of no intelligence in the months leading up to Sept. 11 indicating that terrorists intended to hijack commercial airplanes and fly them into the Pentagon or the World Trade Center.

It was his worst moment at the mike. Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste ran through a list of at least a dozen cases of foiled plots using commercial airliners to attack key targets in the U.S. and elsewhere. Mr. Ben-Veniste cited the "Bojinka" plot in 1995, which envisioned blowing up Western commercial planes in Asia; that plot was foiled by the government and must have been on the mind of C.I.A. director George Tenet, who was having weekly lunches with Mr. Rumsfeld through 2001. In 1998, an Al Qaeda–connected group talked about flying a commercial plane into the World Trade Center.

"So when we had this threatened strike that something huge was going to happen, why didn’t D.O.D. alert people on the ground of a potential jihadist hijacking? Why didn’t it ever get to an actionable level?" the commissioner asked. Mr. Rumsfeld said he only remembered hearing threats of a private aircraft being used. "The decision to fly a commercial aircraft was not known to me."

Mr. Ben-Veniste came back at him: "We knew from the Millennium plot that Al Qaeda was trying to bomb an American airport," he said. The Clinton administration foiled that plot and thought every day about foiling terrorism, he said. "But as we get into 2001, it was like everyone was looking at the white truck from the sniper attacks and not looking in the right direction. Nobody did a thing about it."

but wait, it gets worse, as many here already know, especially since the fricking media are giving them their usual pass......

To the Moms, the problems with the 9/11 commission were always apparent. But the disappointing testimony from Mr. Rumsfeld was especially difficult to bear. The Moms had tried to get their most pressing questions to the commission to be asked of Mr. Rumsfeld, but their efforts had foundered at the hands of Philip Zelikow, the commission’s staff director.

Indeed, it was only with the recent publication of Richard Clarke’s memoir of his counterterrorism days in the White House, Against All Enemies, that the Moms found out that Mr. Zelikow—who was supposed to present their questions to Mr. Rumsfeld—was actually one of the select few in the new Bush administration who had been warned, nine months before 9/11, that Osama bin Laden was the No. 1 security threat to the country. They are now calling for Mr. Zelikow’s resignation.
http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage2.asp

Gorelick, who's also been asked to resign by the families, as well (her law firm represents some Saudi sheik against 911 families), said it's too late to replace this chicken in the henhouse, frustrating the widows that much more

this article is an interesting snapshot of the way things are going so far; a concise summation to pass on to those who might be interested in how the commission got started, where it's headed, and why it was probably doomed from the start.

It ends with an idea I've had for awhile. a message for the Kerry campaign: if this continues to heat up, he should make the establishment of a new, functional 911 committee, a campaign plank, and promise that the very FIRST thing he does is to FIND OUT what REALLY happened, so that our nation can be PROTECTED against future terrorist attacks

forget for the moment the two-fold xenophobic aspect of this, but it's a campaign, remember.

fold one: what about protection of the rest of the world
fold two: what about the SYMPTOMS, the reasons terrorism; ways to ameliorate the causes.

[buycitgo]

1. Zelikow is the gatekeeper, in three different ways

one: he decides which topics will be discussed

two: he decides which classified documents will be surveyed

three: he decides WHO gets to be interview, much to the dismay of the widows, who know that many administration and intelligence-agency whistleblowers are being IGNORED because of him!

again, where is the Fricking MEDIA on this

not to mention the other commission members

why on earth aren't they going public with this creep's huge conflict of interest?

Kean and Hamilton chose the two who will review the PDBs: staff director Philip Zelikow, a Republican, and commissioner Jamie Gorelick, a Democrat. Both are safe choices from the standpoint of protecting the US military/intelligence apparatus.

Zelikow is a University of Virginia professor with close ties to the Bush administration. He co-authored a book with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and worked on the National Security Council’s transition from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration. Gorelick served eight years in the Clinton administration, first as general counsel to the Pentagon, then as deputy attorney general.

Representatives of the families of September 11 victims denounced the agreement limiting access to White House documents, calling it a violation of the commission’s mandate to investigate what US intelligence agencies and government officials knew in advance of the terrorist attacks.

The Family Steering Committee issued a statement saying the agreement would “prevent a full uncovering of the truth and is unacceptable... The commission should issue a statement to the American public fully explaining why this agreement was chosen in lieu of issuing subpoenas to the CIA and executive branch.”

A spokeswoman for the group, Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband Ronald was killed at the World Trade Center, told the press, “I think this entire deal needs to be explained to the public. This is an independent commission that is supposed to be transparent, that is supposed to be open.”

Breitweiser singled out the role of staff director Zelikow, saying, “Phil Zelikow has a very large conflict of interest. He is very close friends with Condi Rice, he was on the transition team, and some of these documents are going to pertain to that. It’s very disturbing. This was supposed to be an independent commission, not a presidential commission.”
http://nastyletterstocrookedpoliticians.blogspot.com/2003_11_01_nastyletterstocrookedpoliticians_archive.html

scroll down to this:

Chimp_junta terrorists Refuse to Release Information On 911 to Commission--Traitors, Criminals; a Dictatorship of Wing-Nut Killers Run Awry

I found this by googling Zelikow+crooked

[kera]

2. hi just a question

for some reason I never understand what the bellicose rumsfield is saying, it is like Byzantine discussions, puzzle of words
do you have to same feeling or I am loosing my mind

[buycitgo]

3. I CANNOT watch that F*head

I tried to watch the commission testimony.....couldn't take it

I taped his press conference yesterday...couldn't watch

I flipped onto Lehrer interviewing him tonight...couldn't watch, though a thread here says Lehrer, amazingly, asked him several tough questions, describing his answers much the way you did

I also watched a few moments of the ABC show tonight, and couln't stand it

he rarely makes much sense to me, especially when he gets carried away in some sort of handwaving epiphany, dipping in and out of his stream of 'consciousness' like a flyfisherman on crank, or something

add to the fact that you KNOW this is part of his act, designed to embroider his constant lying with enough tangential BS to make it difficult to follow his train of thought at all

he SO reminds me of the stereotypical smiling Nazi from WWII-era black and whites.

bleeeaaaahhhhh stomach churning at having spent so much time on that dick

[kera]

5. Thanks you for your moral support

you have put some light dime but nonetheless light in my distress. I have passed the last 20 years turning off TV and radio for the same reason in another continent.. I thought there was something wrong with me

[w4rma]

4. Rumsfeld does that on purpose, imho. It's doublespeak and it's meant to be

confusing.

[kera]

6. I won't credited him with such shrewdness

he is the perfect bureaucrat a la soviet who has reached his threshold of incompetency. how you translate Wooden tongue used by Brejtchnev and Co

[buycitgo]

7. that's good! wooden tongue.....and our "pResident" is......

wooden head

wooden brain

wooden soul

I know that's why he does it, as he's not an incompetent, though he certainly HAS reached his own level of monstrous inadequacy

that's the thing with these creatures: they all have a certain sort of innate intelligence (with one obvious exception), but this intelligence is so fundamentally vitiated by a combination of venality, hubris, dogmatism, powerlust (place your other noxious character traits here), that, when combined with the heights of power they've unjustifiably reached an unacceptably, indeed, cataclysmic mixture has formed, putting the entire planet in jeapordy, on a number of levels

scares the holy crap out of me, and can lead to near-episodes of helpless catatonia.

now, for another great Sheehy article that's two months old, that involves the same four widows and, I hope, someone who SHOULD already be as famous as Richard Clarke.

this story is sickening beyond words, more, I think, for the fact that it's been completely IGNORED by the mainstream handmaidens:

"As far as our investigations are concerned, we can say the hijackers had no contacts in the United States."

But the scathing 800-page report on intelligence failures produced by a joint congressional investigation had already revealed that the F.B.I. had open investigations on four of the 14 individuals who allegedly had some kind of contact with the hijackers while they were in the U.S.

The Four Moms from New Jersey, or "the girls" as they refer to themselves, waste little time on niceties these days. They were the firecrackers behind the creation of the 9/11 commission, which after a year of meager progress, is finally ready to call key administration officials to testify in public hearings on some of the most important questions we have before us as a nation.

But White House delays and circumventions have hampered the effort, and the four moms see the commission flagging in its use of subpoena power to call in key Clinton and Bush administration officials for their testimony. Personal connections between commission members--like executive director Philip Zelikow and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice--undermine the commission's purported independence. As the commission's work draws close to its May dissolution, it appears the main question they were tasked to answer will remain unanswered: Did our guardians of national security have enough information to prevent 9/11? Why did all of our officials who swore an oath of office to lead, protect, and serve, fail to do so on the morning of 9/11?

.......

While fighting a mostly losing battle for a transparent investigation, the Moms are winning on another score: Whistleblowers from agencies culpable in the failures of 9/11--long silent--are being attracted to their mission.

Sibel Edmonds read an article published in these pages last August about the 9/11 widows' bold confrontation with Director Mr. Mueller in a private meeting last summer, and recognized kindred spirits.

"This was the first time I'd heard anybody ask such direct questions to Mr. Mueller," said Ms. Edmonds, a Turkish-American woman who answered the desperate call of the F.B.I. in September, 2001 for translators of Middle Eastern languages. Hired as contract employee a week after 9/11, without a personal interview, Ms. Edmonds was given top-secret security clearance to translate wiretaps ordered by field offices in New York, Los Angeles, and other cities by agents who were working around the clock to pick up the trail of Al Qaeda terrorists and their supporters in the U.S. and abroad. Working in the F.B.I.'s Washington field office, she listened to hundreds of hours of intercepts and translated reams of e-mails and documents that flooded into the bureau. In a series of intimate interviews, she told her story to this writer.

please read on
http://www.gailsheehy.com/9_11/9_11_art1_21.html

thx to somebody at LBN for this link

here's another.....you need the day passhttp://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/26/translator/index.html

[BurtWorm]

15. It's that bizarre use of the passive voice

"The decision to fly a commercial aircraft was not known to me."

"I went outside to determine what had happened," he testified. "I was not there long, apparently, because I was told I was back in the Pentagon, with the crisis action team, by shortly before or after 10 a.m."



It's a funny way for a "tough man of action" to speak. Let alone a narcissitic egomaniac.

[althecat]

8. Condi is scared of lying.... Rumsfeld likes lying

[buycitgo]

9. he sure seemed to yesterday, both on Lehrer and at his briefing

I don't know how much he enjoyed that appearance on Wednesday, though

he had a very rough time keeping his "facts" straight, particularly when talking about the above highjack plans, as well as what he "was told" he did on 911 itself

WTF was up with that crap? was he in a trance?

[kera]

10. my sens is that she looks frightened despite and because of her

forceful protests , but scared of lying seems a bit off the mark, i can see lies steaming from her nostrils and eyes

[buycitgo]

12. everybody here knows she's the weakest link, the MOST clearly

obvious liar.....don't think I've ever seen a worse one

lots of people think that's why they don't want her to testify either under oath, or ESPECIALLY in public, as it will become painfully obvious how completely they've shielded her

tip o'the saint patrick's day-passed green iceberg:

Because Rice is a press corps icon, there is no attempt—repeat that, none—to hold her work to normal standards. Rice doesn’t read 90-page reports? The press corps completely ignored that matter (for a fuller chronology, see below). But it’s hardly the first time the slumbering press corps looked away from Rice’s odd performance. To help flesh out the amazing way the corps behaves toward Icon Condi, let’s review a previous howler which the press almost wholly ignored.

On May 15, 2002, CBS News reported that President Bush had been warned about possible al Qaeda hijackings on August 6, 2001. The Washington Post reported the story on May 16. “President Bush and his top advisers were informed by the CIA early last August that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden had discussed the possibility of hijacking airplanes,” the paper reported. “White House spokesman Ari Fleischer confirmed that Bush had been told about the possibility of hijackings but he declined to say what had been revealed during his intelligence briefings.” On May 16, Rice held a press briefing; she insisted that no one could have envisioned the events of September 11. “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people…would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,” Rice said.

Rice’s remark was surpassingly odd. No one could have predicted use of a hijacked plane as a missile? In fact, ever since September 11, news reports had mentioned earlier warnings about that very sort of activity. On May 18, 2002, the Post’s Bob Woodward and Dan Eggen challenged Rice’s statement. After quoting Rice’s remark, they outlined some previous warnings:

WOODWARD AND EGGEN: But a 1999 report prepared for the National Intelligence Council, an affiliate of the CIA, warned that terrorists associated with bin Laden might hijack an airplane and crash it into the Pentagon, White House or CIA headquarters.
The report recounts well-known case studies of similar plots, including a 1995 plan by al Qaeda operatives to hijack and crash a dozen U.S. airliners in the South Pacific and pilot a light aircraft into Langley.

“Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida’s Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House,” the September 1999 report said.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh080403.shtml

[buycitgo]

11. posted this at LBN, too: WTF is State Secrets Privilege??????

I'll tell you what it is......the WIDE OPEN door to fascism in the first degree

I've been ignoring this Edmonds story for awhile.....can't believe it's been out for such a long time

not even half way through the Sheehy article, and I'm about ready to have an aneurism!!!

this is MUCH WORSE than anything I've EVER read about this NAZI FUCKING regime of Stalinist terror!!!!!!!!!!

how's that for mixing metaphors?

the neutron BOMB of government coverup tactics??????

When Ms. Edmonds wouldn't go away or keep still, F.B.I. Director Mueller asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to assert the State Secrets Privilege in the case of Ms. Edmonds versus Department of Justice. Mr. Ashcroft obliged.

The State Secrets Privilege is the neutron bomb of legal tactics. In the rare cases where the government invokes it to withhold evidence or to block discovery in the name of national security, it can effectively terminate the case. According to a 1982 Appeals Court ruling. "Once the court is satisfied that the information poses a reasonable danger to secrets of state, even the most compelling necessity cannot overcome the claim of privilege ."

WTFF is THAT?

new one on me, and I wonder how many times this has been applied, unbeknownst to our simpering little fellow citizens.

The State Secrets Privilege ?????????????????????

[buycitgo]

13. don't forget zelikow

for the daytime

[Cocoa]

14. Rummy's a sex symbol

according to the ABC special on him, all his friends says he's "tough" and that he's a "fighter."

D'ja know he was a wrestler? :wow:

And he never sits down? There's not even a chair at his desk! This shows how dynamic he is! :wow:

And he collects and organizes nuts from his ranch in Taos! Not sure what this shows! :wow:

[buycitgo]

16. nuts?

he's as nuts as this

[President Jesus]

17. Donald Rumsfeld campaign contributions 1993-2000

This is one helluva long list, but interesting. My favorite entries are the ones where he lists his occupation as "Businessman." I think I'm going to do that for myself from now on.

http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=IL&last=Rumsfeld&first=Donald&city=CHICAGO