The Time article about the plan being turned over to the WH by Berger

[madfloridian]

From August 2002

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020812/story.html

They Had A Plan

Long before 9/11, the White House debated taking the fight to al-Qaeda. By the time they decided, it was too late. The saga of a lost chance.

"Posted Sunday, Aug. 4, 2002; 2:31 a.m. EST
Sometimes history is made by the force of arms on battlefields, sometimes by the fall of an exhausted empire. But often when historians set about figuring why a nation took one course rather than another, they are most interested in who said what to whom at a meeting far from the public eye whose true significance may have been missed even by those who took part in it.

One such meeting took place in the White House situation room during the first week of January 2001. The session was part of a program designed by Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, who wanted the transition between the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations to run as smoothly as possible. With some bitterness, Berger remembered how little he and his colleagues had been helped by the first Bush Administration in 1992-93. Eager to avoid a repeat of that experience, he had set up a series of 10 briefings by his team for his successor, Condoleezza Rice, and her deputy, Stephen Hadley."

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

1. K & R, keep surfacing the facts, keep the TRUTH out there!

:kick: MKJ

[Junkdrawer]

2. This is why they went after Berger so aggressively in Path to 9/11...

As a political issue, the Berger meeting is the Smoking Gun...

[glitch]

18. Ah ha. That was just weird without this as the motivation.

Of course it was weird and creepy on all levels, but going for Berger was a more blatant alert that they needed his character for something. I think you've pegged it.

[leftchick]

3. condi does not recall

that particular meeting. So I guess in the media view it never happened.

[Frustratedlady]

4. K&R Isn't the InternetS wonderful?

All this information at your fingertips? I have a feeling a lot more is going to come out.

You can't run...you can't hide.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

5. Isn't that "best governor ever" Harriet, taking good care of baffled boy?

So telling. MKJ

[madfloridian]

6. And from May 2002 in Time...

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1002495,00.html

"How The U.S. Missed The Clues
Last summer the White House suspected that a terrorist attack was coming. But four key mistakes kept the U.S. from knowing what to do. An inside look at what went wrong and what must be fixed
By MICHAEL ELLIOTT

None of this is pretty. In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, members of the American political establishment stood together, determined to fight the war against terrorism, supporting those in military uniform and the buttoned-down bureaucrats whose job it was to make sure that something so awful would not happen again. Everyone--inside the Bush Administration as well as outside it--knew there had been massive failures of intelligence in the period before the attacks. But after Sept. 11, the Administration earned a reputation for steely-eyed competence, and its political opponents couched their legitimate criticism in language politer than that to which Washington is accustomed.

That was then. In the past month, a series of disclosures have cast doubt on the most basic abilities of the national-security establishment. The Administration has looked alternately shifty and defensive; Democrats--some of them presidential candidates-in-waiting--have postured on motormouth TV. And the nation has been forced into a period of painful second-guessing, asking whether Sept. 11 could have been prevented."

[EVDebs]

7. Nixon's old plans were simply pulled off the shelf and "Iraq" subbed in

where it used to say "Saudi Arabia":

Document reveals Nixon plan to seize Arab oil fields
'70s embargo sparked 'last resort' measure, says British memo

Lizette Alvarez, New York Times

Friday, January 2, 2004

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/02/MNG8G427D61.DTL

If I remember correctly, Rummy and Cheney were keen on this from that time on...just a couple of ticking timebombs from days of yore.

[Marie26]

8. So much for that claim

They are really running scared now, aren't they? They're in full panic mode over this interview & I'm not sure why. Maybe it's not Clinton's reaction so much, but that it focused attention on what the Bush Ad. did during the lead-up to 9/11.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

10. I disagree. It has not reached the fear level yet.

Remember, these folks have no sense of reality or honesty. For 5 yrs, they repeated a bunch of lies, and managed to convince, at one time or another, more than 60% of the people, the vast majority of that incompetent wasteland known as Congress and a large portion of the senate. Either with bribes, promises or arm-twisting, they even convinced most of the MSM.

It worked. It worked in 2002, 2004, and until recently it might have worked in 2006. But, Americans are waking up, rather quickly, actually.

They don't fear anything yet, not really. Rove and Cheney still think that if they continue to repeat the BIG LIE again and again, that everyone mentioned above will roll over again. They don't realize that their perspective is too close to the forest fire to notice the raging flames among the treetops. They are also blinded by the political successes for the past 6 yrs and even more so, they are blinded by their own reflections in the mirror. They think that they were, are and will be invincible and cannot fathom anything else. That is why Stay The Course comes to naturally to them.

They will be proved wrong.

That said, they are approaching Clinton's wonderful and long overdue reaction in their normal mode. Anti-clinton, fear, lies and lots of misdirection. Remember, Condi has never - not once - been called to task for all of her policy, administrative and analysis failures. SHE was in charge of NSC before 9/11. SHE was in charge of dealing with anti-terrorism. SHE demoted and ignored Clarke. SHE was in charge of IraqNam's reconstruction. SHE fouled up the muddle east something awful. and not once has anyone called her on all of her failures.

[ThomWV]

9. Fuck Condi! What else can you say? Fuck Condi!

Another disgrace.

[Supersedeas]

12. The notion that those 'sessions' were anything more than a 'historical'

event is flatly false...right Dr. of self-proclaimed Russian expertise.

[mod mom]

13. How about: TO THE HAGUE!

[malaise]

19. 10 fugging briefings?

Yeh fuck Condi.

[librechik]

11. kicked and bookmarked

great work, madfloridian!

[myrna minx]

14. This is a very important article.

So, would Condi say "No one could have ever predicted that Sandy Berger would have given us a comprehensive anti-terrorism plan." :crazy: This article directly contradicts her New York Post interview. BUSTED!

[INdemo]

17. Can one assume that the public can see through this smoke screen

the Repukes are using..Condi doesn't remember?....Come on
They're desperate and they are struggling for a new game plan but it looks as if they are running out of options.....
We hear repeatably that the Repukes dont want this election to be on national issues..Well ..too late
What the Democrats need to do now is crush this torture bill and I think they are home free...I hope they are listening...

[glitch]

20. Me too. Especially about crushing the torture bill. And not just for the

election. For our nation's very soul...

[myrna minx]

22. "I don't remember." "I forgot." "I didn't read that report"

excuses don't work for the rest of us in the real world, so why on earth should they be valid excuses for the administration? I too believe that these smokescreens are dissipating and the American People are seeing the ugly truth. Who knew that the Path to 911 hack piece and Fox's attempted hatchet job interview with President Clinton would turn out to be the tipping point.

I agree, we need to stand up against this torture bill. Our nation's soul is on the line.

[Synnical]

15. Thanks - great find

K&R

:kick:

[skypilot]

16. kick

*

[in_cog_ni_to]

21. I remember that and CondiLIAR put the briefing on the shelf and IGNORED it

because it came from those silly Democrats from the Clinton administration....who were they and what did they know about anything?:sarcasm: Besides that, the psycho had too many vacation plans to worry his pretty little head about al-Qaeda.

[DinahMoeHum]

23. Like I've said for the longest time, Bush and Rice didn't merely

drop the baton given to them by Clinton and Berger; they grabbed it and promptly threw it into a garbage can. They couldn't be bothered.

:grr:

[civildisoBDence]

25. Well, they did something with the baton

like in that Zappa quote...

Newsprism

[catmandu57]

26. No, they used the baton

to whack the Hornets nest in Iraq.

[SammyWinstonJack]

24. K & R

[me b zola]

27. k&r

condiLiar

[Straight Shooter]

28. Time mag makes it clear they don't believe 9/11 could have been prevented.

Simply by going after AQ in Afghanistan.

Well, excuse me, but if they had been focused on AQ as they should have been, then we would not have had the scenario of the CIA agent briefing bush on the presence of suspected terrorists, with bush responding, "All right, you've covered your ass," and then proceeding to totally ignore the warning, as he did all other warnings.

I still maintain that at the August 6 PDB, "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.," even if bush bothered to read it or listen to someone read it to him, no doubt he said, "Osama thinks he can hit us? Well, bring it on."

I can just see him doing that.

[krkaufman]

29. The subheading is misleading. Bush didn't "decide" anything ...

... on al Qaeda until after 9/11. And even then, it was only that he had to first invade Afghanistan before he could go after Saddam.

[Thoreau-Ly]

30. You Might be Misunderestimating

The powers of the Puppet Masters. Bush doesn't "decide" anything. He doesn't even read, for Christ's sake.

[BadgerKid]

31. "Systematic collapse"

"Clarke's proposals called for the "breakup" of al-Qaeda cells and the arrest of their personnel."

"The proposals Clarke developed in the winter of 2000-01 were not given another hearing by top decision makers until late April, and then spent another four months making their laborious way through the bureaucracy before they were readied for approval by President Bush."

"It wasn't averted because 2001 saw a systematic collapse in the ability of Washington's national-security apparatus to handle the terrorist threat."


Excellent find, madfloridian.

[spanone]

32. This Sandy Berger qoute is priceless and frightenening...

"I'm coming to this briefing to underscore how important I think this subject is. I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject."

— Clinton National Security Adviser SANDY BERGER, to Condi Rice, January 2001

[msgadget]

33. Partisan b.s.

They didn't do anything for the same reason Guiliani didn't replace the first responders' radios - it would've meant admitting democrats had a clue. Democrats fall all over themselves trying to find common ground but not these guys and that's what makes them bug-eyed crazy dangerous. They obviously WILL cut off their noses to spite their faces. Clinton has halted his bipartisan cuddle-fest to reveal a one-sided love affair but I doubt he'd have tossed out a proposal just because it had come from the party of Tom DeLay.

Some counterterrorism officials think there is another reason for the Bush Administration's dilatory response. Clarke's paper, says an official, "was a Clinton proposal." Keeping Clarke around was one thing; buying into the analysis of an Administration that the Bush team considered feckless and naive was quite another.

When Clinton was president they berated him for even thinking about using the military because he hadn't served. Yet it is entirely possible we're in a perpetual war that was launched to define a presidency and guarantee re-election for a guy whose biggest claim to fame pre-9/11 was putting in more vacation time than Reagan. We've been over and over all this territory before, the only difference being we loony lefties were pouring over the minutiae all by our lonesomes. The Movie, however, finally forced conciliatory, cautious, line-straddling democrats to respond with bitter frankness...like an opposition party. Finally.

[Bitwit1234]

34. FOX BOYS

Bet you one thing you won't see this on the Fox boys network.

Someone was also talking about rove. Where is he rolling in the slime somewhere. But do you all remember a couple of weeks about when bush called all the right wing radio hosts to the white house. I will bet anything they have it made up to try to slam the public with this thing about President Clinton not doing enough to catch bin laden. The common so and so's had it all set up for wallace to try to trip President Clinton up on bin laden. Since they are so damn stupid they did not realize that Clinton is intelligent enough to think fast on his feet.

Can you imagine someone asking bush a one on one question that he had been given the answers to previously. If they taped that they could sell it for a fortune.I would not truth these republicans to do anything to win in November. And I swear, no one can dissuade me from this,,,an assassination would not be pass them.

[Canuckistanian]

35. Excellent!

Keep driving home that point. Berger, Hart-Rudman, Richard Clarke, Clinton himself...

Thay had PLENTY of warnings. And pleas and exortations and goadings.

Still, we had 9/11.