WOODWARD: Katrina Foreign Policy Laid Out in a Book
29 September 2006 9:48 am by Taylor Marsh
WOODWARD: Katrina Foreign Policy Laid Out in a Book
The man just doesn't care. Nothing can reach through his thick, stubborn skull.
Coming on four years in Iraq, Mr. Bush still doesn't understand that stay the
course isn't a plan and is just getting people killed. Hey, but as long as he
doesn't have to fight the fight he'll be happy. If only Laura and Barney support
him, he's in.
The title of the New York Times article is: Book
Says Bush Ignored Urgent Warning on Iraq.
Well, if Bush is going to ignore a PDB stating BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO ATTACK
INSIDE U.S., it's unlikely he's going to give two hoots in Texas hell about an
Iraq warning.
Yesterday is gone. The heat is on. Now we learn that 2007
will be worse in Iraq than this year.
First came FIASCO.
Now State of Denial, by Bob Woodward.
Evidently, Bush and Cheney knew it was
going to lay Iraq out so this time they wouldn't sit for their old friend Bob.
This book is long overdue, especially since Woodward has been kissing the king's
ring for years. The evisceration he took over the Plame event obviously went
deep and he decided he had to do something other the let the Administration
cherry pick the facts. If he didn't, his Watergate reputation would be gone forever. It's not something I'd give up easily, especially for this crowd.
From what's been written about in papers so far, Cheney comes off as part of
the tin foil crowd. Picture his aid in his pajamas calling the chief weapons
inspector very late at night.
Mr. Cheney was involved in the details of the hunt for illicit weapons, the
book says. One night, Mr. Woodward wrote, Mr. Kay was awakened at 3 a.m. by
an aide who told him Mr. Cheney’s office was on the phone. It says Mr.
Kay was told that Mr. Cheney wanted to make sure he had read a highly classified
communications intercept picked up from Syria indicating a possible location
for chemical weapons.
Desperation drips from the few tidbits leaking out about the book. The New
York Times bought an advance copy to get an early look (and evidently beat the Washington Post on their own story). The article travels
a different path from FIASCO and COBRA II, but with Woodward at the wheel the
outreach should be massive.
As for weapons, they knew in 2003 it was a bust.
The fruitless search for unconventional weapons caused tension between Vice
President Cheney’s office, the C.I.A. and officials in Iraq. Mr. Woodward
wrote that Mr. Kay, the chief weapons inspector in Iraq, e-mailed top C.I.A.
officials directly in the summer of 2003 with his most important early findings.At one point, when Mr. Kay warned that it was possible the Iraqis might have
had the capability to make such weapons but did not actually produce them,
waiting instead until they were needed, the book says he was told by John
McLaughlin, the C.I.A.’s deputy director: “Don’t tell anyone
this. This could be upsetting. Be very careful. We can’t let this out
until we’re sure.”
Finally, Condi the Incompetent just might get what she deserves. I say “finally,” because
like Bush, she has gotten a pass on her national security failings, which are
so monumental as to possibly convince people that women can't handle security issues. Let's face it, if she were a man she would
have gotten the Medal of Freedom and been shuffled off to a wingnut think tank
long ago.
The 537-page book describes tensions among senior officials from the very
beginning of the administration. Mr. Woodward writes that in the weeks before
the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Tenet believed that Mr. Rumsfeld was impeding the
effort to develop a coherent strategy to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.
Mr. Rumsfeld questioned the electronic signals from terrorism suspects that
the National Security Agency had been intercepting, wondering whether they
might be part of an elaborate deception plan by Al Qaeda.On July 10, 2001, the book says, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism chief,
J. Cofer Black, met with Ms. Rice at the White House to impress upon her the
seriousness of the intelligence the agency was collecting about an impending
attack. But both men came away from the meeting feeling that Ms. Rice had
not taken the warnings seriously.
It is certain that Republicans and Bush will try to slam Woodward. But considering
they've been kissing his ass with access for years, there isn't much to complain
about.
No wonder Andy Card quit.
