Crap & More Crap
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
WHAT IF
Clyde passed this email along to me.
In a parallel universe called 'What if . . . '
Published April 11, 2004
NEW YORK -- President-elect John F. Kerry's rise to
the nation's highest office came as little surprise
following almost four years of remonstrations against
President George W. Bush for his bizarre attack on the
defenseless people of Afghanistan.
Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, was the right man
for a nation outraged by the Bush administration's
pre-emptive war, which, it now seems clear, was based
on highly speculative intelligence that Saudi
Arabian-born terrorist Osama bin Laden was planning an
attack on the United States.
Absent absolute proof of such an imminent attack,
Bush's Sept. 10 bombing of Afghanistan earned him
international condemnation and, in all likelihood, an
indictment in coming weeks. U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, appearing last night on Larry King Live,
said the United Nations' International Criminal
Tribunal likely would bring charges of genocide
against Bush.
Bush also faces federal charges at home for his
baseless arrest of 19 foreign nationals, many of them
native Saudis, whose "crime" was attending American
flight schools. The Council on American-Islamic
Relations has joined the American Civil Liberties
Union in a joint suit against both Bush and former
Attorney General John Ashcroft, charging racial
profiling, unlawful arrest and illegal search and
seizure.
Kerry's campaign mantra -- "You go to war because you
have to, not because you want to" -- clearly resonated
with Americans as they tried to make sense of Bush's
Sept. 10 attack on Afghanistan. Neither the president,
nor national security adviser Condoleezza Rice
convincingly defended their actions during the recent
"9-10 Commission" hearings, which Congress ordered in
response to public outcry.
The commission's purpose was to try to determine what
compelled the president to launch a war against
Afghanistan. What kind of intelligence suggested that
such an act was justified?
The main target of the attack was bin Laden, friend to
Afghanistan's brutal Taliban regime, as well as
al-Qaeda training camps in that war-ravaged nation.
Al-Qaeda, an international terrorist network, has been
blamed for numerous attacks on U.S. interests,
including the USS Cole bombing, which killed 17
sailors.
Even though Bush's military campaign was successful in
ending the oppressive Taliban regime, bin Laden
apparently escaped and al-Qaeda continues to flourish.
Some intelligence sources speculate that bin Laden's
operatives may be trying to secure weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) from Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Even
though Saddam continues to send money to the families
of Palestinian terrorists and is believed to have
programs for developing WMD, Kerry says he is
committed to containing Saddam through continued
sanctions and the U.N. oil-for-food program.
In any case, experts say that intelligence about
Saddam's WMD program is just as speculative as was the
intelligence that prompted Bush to attack Afghanistan.
The man credited with sounding the alarm on bin Laden
and al-Qaeda was Richard Clarke, a counterterrorism
expert who has served four presidents, including
Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush and William Jefferson
Clinton.
In a Jan. 25 memo to Rice, for instance, Clarke urged
immediate attention to several items of national
security interest: the Northern Alliance, covert aid,
a significant new '02 budget authority to help fight
al-Qaeda, and a response to the USS Cole.
At Rice's and Clarke's urging, Bush called a meeting
of principals and, after "connecting the dots,"
decided to wage war against Afghanistan. What did the
dots say? Not much, in retrospect. Apparently, the
president decided to bomb a benign country on the
basis of "chatter" that hinted at "something big."
With no other details on the "big," and weaving
together random bits of information from a variety of
questionable sources, Bush and company decided that 19
fundamentalist Muslim fanatics would fly airplanes
into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon on
9-11.
Under questioning by the "9-10 Commission," Clarke
denied that his memo was anything more than a
historical overview with a "set of ideas and a paper,
mostly." The bipartisan commission concluded,
therefore, that Bush's "dot-connecting" had destroyed
American credibility and subjected the United States
to increasing hostility in the Arab-Muslim world.
Last week, Saddam Hussein and Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat joined French and German leaders in
condemning Bush and urging the American voters to cast
their ballots for regime change in America. Kerry was
the clear response to that call.
In a flourish of irony and the spirit of bon vivant
for which the new president is widely known, Kerry
gave his acceptance speech from Windows on the World,
the elegant restaurant atop the World Trade Center's
Tower One.
Kathleen Parker can be reached at
kparker@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5202.
|
Clyde passed this email along to me.
In a parallel universe called 'What if . . . '
Published April 11, 2004
NEW YORK -- President-elect John F. Kerry's rise to
the nation's highest office came as little surprise
following almost four years of remonstrations against
President George W. Bush for his bizarre attack on the
defenseless people of Afghanistan.
Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, was the right man
for a nation outraged by the Bush administration's
pre-emptive war, which, it now seems clear, was based
on highly speculative intelligence that Saudi
Arabian-born terrorist Osama bin Laden was planning an
attack on the United States.
Absent absolute proof of such an imminent attack,
Bush's Sept. 10 bombing of Afghanistan earned him
international condemnation and, in all likelihood, an
indictment in coming weeks. U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, appearing last night on Larry King Live,
said the United Nations' International Criminal
Tribunal likely would bring charges of genocide
against Bush.
Bush also faces federal charges at home for his
baseless arrest of 19 foreign nationals, many of them
native Saudis, whose "crime" was attending American
flight schools. The Council on American-Islamic
Relations has joined the American Civil Liberties
Union in a joint suit against both Bush and former
Attorney General John Ashcroft, charging racial
profiling, unlawful arrest and illegal search and
seizure.
Kerry's campaign mantra -- "You go to war because you
have to, not because you want to" -- clearly resonated
with Americans as they tried to make sense of Bush's
Sept. 10 attack on Afghanistan. Neither the president,
nor national security adviser Condoleezza Rice
convincingly defended their actions during the recent
"9-10 Commission" hearings, which Congress ordered in
response to public outcry.
The commission's purpose was to try to determine what
compelled the president to launch a war against
Afghanistan. What kind of intelligence suggested that
such an act was justified?
The main target of the attack was bin Laden, friend to
Afghanistan's brutal Taliban regime, as well as
al-Qaeda training camps in that war-ravaged nation.
Al-Qaeda, an international terrorist network, has been
blamed for numerous attacks on U.S. interests,
including the USS Cole bombing, which killed 17
sailors.
Even though Bush's military campaign was successful in
ending the oppressive Taliban regime, bin Laden
apparently escaped and al-Qaeda continues to flourish.
Some intelligence sources speculate that bin Laden's
operatives may be trying to secure weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) from Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Even
though Saddam continues to send money to the families
of Palestinian terrorists and is believed to have
programs for developing WMD, Kerry says he is
committed to containing Saddam through continued
sanctions and the U.N. oil-for-food program.
In any case, experts say that intelligence about
Saddam's WMD program is just as speculative as was the
intelligence that prompted Bush to attack Afghanistan.
The man credited with sounding the alarm on bin Laden
and al-Qaeda was Richard Clarke, a counterterrorism
expert who has served four presidents, including
Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush and William Jefferson
Clinton.
In a Jan. 25 memo to Rice, for instance, Clarke urged
immediate attention to several items of national
security interest: the Northern Alliance, covert aid,
a significant new '02 budget authority to help fight
al-Qaeda, and a response to the USS Cole.
At Rice's and Clarke's urging, Bush called a meeting
of principals and, after "connecting the dots,"
decided to wage war against Afghanistan. What did the
dots say? Not much, in retrospect. Apparently, the
president decided to bomb a benign country on the
basis of "chatter" that hinted at "something big."
With no other details on the "big," and weaving
together random bits of information from a variety of
questionable sources, Bush and company decided that 19
fundamentalist Muslim fanatics would fly airplanes
into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon on
9-11.
Under questioning by the "9-10 Commission," Clarke
denied that his memo was anything more than a
historical overview with a "set of ideas and a paper,
mostly." The bipartisan commission concluded,
therefore, that Bush's "dot-connecting" had destroyed
American credibility and subjected the United States
to increasing hostility in the Arab-Muslim world.
Last week, Saddam Hussein and Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat joined French and German leaders in
condemning Bush and urging the American voters to cast
their ballots for regime change in America. Kerry was
the clear response to that call.
In a flourish of irony and the spirit of bon vivant
for which the new president is widely known, Kerry
gave his acceptance speech from Windows on the World,
the elegant restaurant atop the World Trade Center's
Tower One.
Kathleen Parker can be reached at
kparker@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5202.
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