Rice: Panel Is Right, Nation Is Safer

[maddezmom]

WASHINGTON - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said Friday she agrees with the Sept. 11 commission's findings that the nation is safer nearly three years after the terrorist attacks, but it is not yet safe.


Rice told the morning news shows that Americans remain vulnerable to a new terrorist attack, despite "many changes" made by the Bush administration. "Terrorists only have to be right once," she said.


The bipartisan commission, in a unanimous book-length report released Thursday, called for a major overhaul of the nation's intelligence agencies to stop the next terror attack. Panelists vowed to make their reforms an election-year issue.


The panel of five Republicans and five Democrats outlined the findings of its 20-month investigation into the deadliest terror attack in U.S. history. Citing multiple government failures, the report called for a national counterterrorism center headed by a Cabinet-level director to centralize intelligence efforts.

~snip~
more:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20040723/ap_on_re_us/sept_11_commission

But Congress is too busy and needs a vacation, before they can address any of the concerns of the commission. :puke:

[trotsky]

1. It's worse than a whitewash.

If administration officials can point to the report on the worst terrorist attack in history - that happened on THEIR watch - and get support for their actions, well, that's obscene.

[qanda]

5. I agree with you...

It's obscene! Watching Philip Zelikow on C-SPAN this morning made me sick to my stomach. This whitewash of a report really upsets me.

[shockingelk]

24. You are believing the right-wing spin

These are the only four times the word "safer" appears in the report:

We hope that the terrible losses chronicled in this report can create something positive—an America that is safer, stronger, and wiser. (preface xvi) (does not say America is safer)

The Secret Service told us they were anxious to move the President to a safer location, but did not think it imperative for him to run out the door.2 (p 39) (does not apply)

Neither Israel nor the new Iraq will be safer if worldwide Islamist terrorism grows stronger. (p 377) (does not apply)

This is the part the spinmeisters seem to be latching on to and mischaracterizing:

In the nearly three years since 9/11, Americans have become better protected against terrorist attack. Some of the changes are due to government action, such as new precautions to protect aircraft. A portion can be attributed to the sheer scale of spending and effort. Publicity and the vigilance of ordinary Americans also make a difference.

But the President and other officials acknowledge that although Americans may be safer, they are not safe. Our report shows that the terrorists analyze defenses.They plan accordingly. (p. 383)

It doesn't mean "America is safer", it means America "may be safer" and is an introduction to many recommendations on preventing terrorist attacks which the government has failed to fully implement or implement at all. It is saying "Well, Bush claims we may be safer, but terrorists plan around our protections and here's tons of stuff Bush hasn't done."

[Rose Siding]

31. Condi used a similar tact in an interview last night

She's asked one thing and then spins the question slightly so that she evades any of its implied responsibility

MARGARET WARNER: The 9/11 Commission report today said, as I know you know, that the most important failure was one of imagination, and they said that though most of them officially said, oh, we understood the danger, here's what they said, they said, we do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat.

Do you think that's a fair assessment?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I think it's a completely fair assessment. As a matter of fact, I've used those very words myself, that, I think before Sept. 11, given that there had not been a major attack on the American mainland for 200 years really, we just didn't see that it could happen in quite that way.

Later, she's asked if she feels any responsibility and she take about half a sentence to spread it out to everyone involved in govt over the last 22 years.

It's depressing that the repubs somehow found so many people willing to live by rote. Not one answers 'in the human': Yes, I have to tell you, I lose sleep but the next day- every day, I get up recommitted to learning everything I can and to finding the most efficient and effective way to...blah blah.

Clarke did it but not til he'd fallen outside the cabal.


(oops, link to News Hour interview)
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/terrorism/july-dec04/rice_7-22.html

[shockingelk]

33. Yeah, the Imagination thing

It wasn't a failure of imagination in this way - Junkdrawer pointed this out in another thread:

Page 274 of the 9/11 report:

There was substantial disagreement between Minneapolis agents and FBI headquarters as to what Moussaoui was planning to do. In one conversation between a Minneapolis supervisor and a headquarters agent, the latter com=plained that Minneapolis’s FISA request was couched in a manner intended to get people “spun up.”The supervisor replied that was precisely his intent. He said he was “trying to keep someone from taking a plane and crashing into the World Trade Center.” The headquarters agent replied that this was not going to happen and that they did not know if Moussaoui was a terrorist.

[rustydog]

35. The panel concluded we FEEL safer but are NOT safer since 9/11

Don't you love how these murderers can twist whatever is said into their pre-planned message?

[Gman]

2. Stopping gays from getting married

is a higher priority for Congress than stopping terrorism.

[underpants]

4. Congress goes on vacation tomorrow-W to the ranch

Way to go f**kos!

Can't let anything like national security get in the way of your summer vacation now can we?

W is going to keep a "low profile" while the Dem convention is going on. Of course he could call a special session (Kerry would have to come back too) but naaaaaaw he has a campaign to run.

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. Heck, they haven't done anything

that would actually do any good, for the last three years. Why would they start now?

Maybe I need to start drinking the Kool Aide? I don't know if I can stand much more reality.

[shadu]

8. This BS is the headline on Yahoo right now

Americans will believe it.
(When it comes to articles concerning the future of their country, most Americans read headlines at most.)

[GreenArrow]

13. what they are being encouraged to do,

in effect, is pass Patriot Act II. The Commission report is a perfect rationale for doing so.

[Bowline]

18. Sad, but true.

Really f**king sad.

[leesa]

29. It's because they KNOW terrorism is not much of a risk.

The terrorists are in our own government.

[spanone]

3. I wouldn't expect her to say anything else. Lying liars....

cover your ass...

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. I don't blame her

she knows the press is going to give her free ride. They will never call her on her shit to her face. That's why W uses a black women to shield him.

[soupkitchen]

9. Conneo Rice

The first sign that this country might be safer will be when she is no longer National Security Director. When she came out claiming that nobody could have possibly imagined commericial planes flying into buildings, nor was there any Intelligence pointing towards that possibility, she was really saying she didn't have the imagination nor intelligence to hold her position.
This woman is a dangerous ass kisser.

[Bowline]

19. "This woman is a dangerous ass kisser. "

There's another way to get to the top in politics???

[Edgewater_Joe]

10. Now You Leave Condi Alone!

After all, she knows "her husband" better than ANYbody on this board!

[w4rma]

11. The "panel" concluded exactly the same thing that the Gore Commision

/Hart-Rudman (from 1999 or 2000) concluded, then:

the report called for a national counterterrorism center headed by a Cabinet-level director to centralize intelligence efforts.

[AirAmFan]

12. Any sign of Sandy Berger on TV or cable since yesterday?

Now we know the REAL purpose of forcing Berger to access his own papers under the strictest National Archives rules, and then leaking--on the eve of the Commission report--that he may have technically violated those rules. Nobody authoritative is rebutting Condi's spin on the report.

[Bowline]

20. These should be two separate issues.

What Berger did, remove classified documents and improperly dispose of them, was WRONG, and he knows it. However, that should have no bearing on the so-called report from the whitewash committee.

[Briar]

14. It's interesting

that the Bush and Bliar spin machines are using exactly the same tactics. The Butler report was broadly critical of the dossier and the process which produced it. It contains lots of ammo against Bliar and coterie of courtiers, about whom it was critical. But it also gave him a headline to spin in his defence - that his "good faith" was intact - and that became the only substantive conclusion of the report so far as the media were concerned. Simultaneously, Bliar launched a "culture clash" type offensive against the liberal social consensus and so could sit back and watch his attackers torn between two targets.

[liveoaktx]

15. Orwellian speak-how can the nation be safer, but NOT YET SAFE

and time be of the essence before some new mammoth attack? It would be like saying the eye of a hurricane is *safer*.

[kentuck]

16. "Less vulnerable" but still vulnerable, would be more accurate, if....

it were true. But the truth is, we are less safe, there are more terrorists, we have more enemies, and George W Bush is still president. How could we be "more safe"?

[warrior1]

17. Up is down, eh Condi?

http://www.lanset.com/portal/site.php?siteurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mywisecounty.com%2Flisting%2Fjump.cgi%253FID%253D1204

Well with your logic, your probably the must intellgent person I've ever heard? (not)

We are still not safe" Says 9-11 Terror Commission in Calling for National Action
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By My Wise County
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comment on this story

Washington, D.C. --- The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission) released its Final Report Thursday in the nation's capitol saying "we are not safe yet" from future terrorists attacks."

Almost three years after the horrific attacks using airliners to crash into New York City's World Trade Center, the Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, and Pennsylvania countryside killing over 3,000 people, the report cited several recommendations to the President and Congress.

[lovedems]

21. We are safer but we are going to be attacked again and might have to

postpone the election!

It is like John Stewart said, "Be afraid enough not to vote for Kerry but not so scared that you won't vote for Bush!"

So we are safer but are going to be attacked again falls right in line with that "logic". Be afraid but not to afraid.

[Demeter]

22. The Only Way I'll Be Safer Is When Dr. Rice and Her Husband

and all the other fuckwits in the GOP have been forcibly retired.

Honestly, BOTH Administrations are responsible?

The Clinton Administration, which, while undergoing unceasing attack on the political front for non-Constitutional and ultimately phony charges:

1) Uncovered, tracked down, tried and convicted the first bombers of the WTC

2) Tracked Osama Bin Ladin

3) Attempted several times with bombing and other means to kill or capture him

4) Maintained a killer embargo on Iraq (which I don't think was right, but they did)

5) Kept the economy on an upward and healthy growth

6) Kept the paranoid panic level in the country way too low for the PNAC

or the Bush Administration, which

1) Took off the whole month of August

2) Kept the Clinton terrorist force, and completely ignored everything they said

3) Kept John Ashcroft off commercial flights, but didn't bother to warn anyone else

4) Created the Panic Color Codes, the ridiculous airline searches of grandmothers in walkers, and the threat of terrorism in Iowa's cornfields

5) Devised the Patriot Act and its ilk, to ensure that democracy is destroyed in this country

6) Black box voting

7) Guantanamo, Abu Graib, and those yet unnamed

8) other charges, known and unknown, but I tire.


The truth is, if the commission had stated the truth that GWBushCo was responsible for 9/11, the election would be over,TODAY.

[Az_lefty]

25. Good response...

I saved your comments to use the next time I get to argue this with
a freeper.:toast:

[havocmom]

23. nation is safer, except liberal media types covering DEM convention...

riiiiight

[maddezmom]

26. AFP- Bush did all he could before September 11: Rice

"What the commission says is that this country was not prepared for war, and that that was a problem that had begun in the 1990s, maybe even in the 1980s. The president did everything that he could knowing what we did," Rice told ABC television.
~snip~

"Had we known that an attack of the magnitude that was coming on September 11 was coming," she added, "we would have moved heaven and earth to stop it."


Asked about passages in the report, released Thursday, which showed that several warnings were made on the risk of an attack on the United States, including in the months just before the 2001 attacks, Rice said the Bush administration, which took office in January 2001, did not have enough time to make the changes needed to thwart such an attack.


"You cannot do the kinds of major reforms that are talked about there, to border security, to airport security, in the eight months President Bush (news - web sites) was in office," Rice said.

~snip~


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1520&ncid=1520&e=6&u=/afp/20040723/pl_afp/us_attacks_commission_040723145102

The other question should be...did you Condi???

[gatlingforme]

28. Isn't that amazing she can get away with saying all the BS with a

straight face. I really think she believes her own bullshit. She is an intellient Coulter in my book. her nose is brown as can be because it's stuck up Bushes ass so far.

[truthisfreedom]

27. yawn. wake me up when the boring nightmare is over.

the rethug spin machine is permanently stuck in spin cycle. they ran it one too many times and the knob broke off.

[Wednesdays]

30. Kinda Sleeza Rice says

"Oh, the nation is safer. Now here's Mr. Ridge to tell you the terror threat code has been bumped up to orange again."

[Barrett808]

32. But this is the story of government investigations into Iraq

Almost every one, on both sides of the pond, has been a whitewash to some degree.

[SoCalDem]

34. Sure.. That's like saying

that you have successfully plugged 2 of the 10 holes in the life raft.. Eventually, the sharks will get a meal..just not now.