{"id":406,"date":"2004-04-05T06:03:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-05T06:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:33","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:33","slug":"meanwhile_back_in_dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=406","title":{"rendered":"Meanwhile, Back In D.C."},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s going to be a helluva week<\/a> in Washington.<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON, April 4<\/b> The leaders of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks agreed Sunday that evidence gathered by their panel showed the attacks could probably have been prevented.<\/p>\n

Their remarks drew sharp disagreement from one of President Bush’s closest political advisers, who insisted that the Bush and Clinton administrations had no opportunity to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot. They also offered a preview of the difficult questions likely to confront Condoleezza Rice when she testifies before the panel at a long-awaited public hearing this week.<\/p>\n

…<\/b><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Also appearing on “Meet the Press,” Karen P. Hughes, one of Mr. Bush’s closest political advisers and an important strategist for his re-election campaign, rejected the suggestion that the attacks could have been prevented.<\/p>\n

“I just don’t think, based on everything I know, and I was there, that there was anything that anyone in government could have done to have put together the pieces before the horror of that day,” Ms. Hughes said. “If we could have in either administration, either in the eight years of the Clinton administration or the seven and a half months of the Bush administration, I’m convinced we would have done so.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While reading that, don’t under any circumstances forget to go check out Phil Carter’s take on Clarke<\/a>: <\/p>\n

As for Mr. Clarke’s argument regarding Iraq, I closed his book without having been persuaded by his argument. He did not marshal enough evidence to persuade me that the Bush Administration had deceived the American public to march towards war, or that it had considered (and disregarded) all of the strategic costs of the war. That’s not to say that these things aren’t true — only that Mr. Clarke’s book didn’t do a good job of making these arguments. Similarly, I was unimpressed by Mr. Clarke’s argument that the war in Iraq has been a distraction from the war on terrorism. With his knowledge of this issue, I expected a detailed breakdown of all the ways that the war in Iraq took away resources, political capital, and focus from the domestic and foreign war on terrorism. I found that argument to be lacking as well. He did not, for example, discuss how intelligence assets devoted to finding Iraqi WMD might have been devoted to finding Al Qaeda personnel and equipment. Nor did look at the resource-allocation problem with his NSC-trained eye, in order to make the argument the billions spent on Iraq might have been otherwise programmed for homeland security.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Damn. Now I have<\/b> to go read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s going to be a helluva week in Washington. WASHINGTON, April 4 The leaders of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks agreed Sunday that evidence gathered by their panel showed the attacks could probably have been prevented. Their remarks drew sharp disagreement from one of President Bush’s closest political advisers, who insisted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}