maybe this was really about tagging Hillary Clinton with the soft-on-terrorism label — after all, she was married to the guy who appointed the woman who hired the woman who wrote the memo that is now being mischaracterized as the reason that the Pentagon didn’t give the information about Mohamed Atta that it now says it didn’t have to the FBI.
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August 23, 2005
WB: Disable Danger
Comments
Curt Weldon is your congressman for reasons known only to Dieblod Elections Systems.
But in all reality, this is political maneuvering to say that, see the Patriot Act would have resolved this. The whole point of the Patriot Act was to facilitate inter-agency intelligence sharing.
The whole point of publicizing the failures of Able Danger is show that the reason Atta got to the cockpit of AA11 before a govt agent did was because the information was stuck in bureacracy.
Posted by: Desert Island Boy | Aug 23 2005 5:51 utc | 1
I’ve been saying ad hominem that the biggest domestic problem the US faces is its high percentage of organized, mediatized lunatics and even a success of the ballot booth won’t resolve the issue.
Unlike Limbaugh and Stalin I’m not in favor of deporting political opponents, but I don’t see how the US can ever rejoin the human race when it has 25% of vocal, active and organized neo-fascists in its midst.
I suppose the Great Shitstorm That Is Coming might bring things back to tolerable normality, but otherwise, I just don’t know.
That’s how we got in the Civil War in the first place; maybe we need another Civil War.
Posted by: Lupin | Aug 23 2005 5:57 utc | 2
If there were some way that it could be done without all the bloodshed, I would welcome a second civil war. There are issues that have been allowed to continue to simmer under the surface of bullshit and cliche that we need to have open discussions about.
Equality for women and minorities, the lousy education system financed by property taxes, the environment, globalization and employment, and on and on.
We need to have a knock-down drag-out over what kind of country we want to be.
Posted by: James E. Powell | Aug 23 2005 6:15 utc | 3
We’ve had a couple of knock-downs already and Bush won twice. Now some guy Hackett running to be a representative in Ohio had a knock-down and lost. Even a Vet against a Stepford wife, we lose. The wing-nuts would welcome a second Civil War as it’ll be their chance to start locking people up.
I have a couple of pals who I’m losing my taste for that have tuned in Radio Moscow, “we’re in a fight to the death against all Arabs, illegal Mexican immigrants are buying up entire neighborhoods by collecting welfare checks.” Where does this stuff come from? How can people believe this stuff so easily?
Somedays the only thing that feels appropriate is to lay in bed with the pillow over the head. More of those days are coming.
Posted by: christofay | Aug 23 2005 7:37 utc | 4
My waning wing-nut pals hate Hillary. I don’t know why. I don’t even bother asking; I ‘m guessing but mostly they’re afraid of a powerful successful woman. I’m afraid Hillary Clinton will be a target if she runs for president. And our hero law enforcement officials will be as successful at protecting her as they are in persuing the antrax terrorist murderer.
Posted by: christofay | Aug 23 2005 7:46 utc | 5
Who knows the motivation for this story? Whatever that might be let us not forget that the Justice Department rejected I think every foreign intellegence survelience request prior to 911 (I think looking back on the Agent Rowley story will provide details on this but I dont have the time right now)
When that became public they had the gall to say it was because of their devotion to the principals set out by Garlock. Right, and I’m the king of Sweden.
This whole thing was a real stinker and one would think they would be thrilled it has been forgotten. Instead they risk bringing it all back up.
Posted by: rapier | Aug 23 2005 9:55 utc | 6
The motivation for the story is the fact that Cynthia McKinnon or anyone else is threatening to open up a real investigation of 9/11.
What we know out in the open supports an explanation of incompetence and, equally well, an explanation that assumes that the PNAC’s wish for a
“catastrophic and catalysing event — like a new Pearl Harbor”
was met by “benign neglect”, to recycle a term the neocons used when they were “neo” and Pat Moynihan was “conned”.
I posted a sequence of events encompassing three overt, enforced dead ends to investigations ordered by FBI in Washington during the summer of 2001 that are readily available on the internet. Pursuit of any one of the three might have resulted in the mass murders of 9/11 being prevented.
Some folks seem to want to drag the proverbial red herring over that particular trail. With the stakes so high I can imagine they are desperate to do so.
The events to which I refer don’t prove anything, but they point out the need for a real investigation of 9/11. Like the investigation into the Challenger disaster that ended with Richard Feynman holding the O-ring and the glass of ice water.
I can’t think of anything that cuts more quickly to the quick than the undispelled possibility that 9/11 was purposely allowed to unfold.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 23 2005 11:46 utc | 7
As someone to the left(!) of Billmon on many issues, I really hate to defend Curt Weldon, but my experience with his office brings up some issues relevant to this discussion. Namely, why he gets reelected. My parents live in his district and needed help in getting some assistance from federal agency (VA). We’d gone through the normal channels with that agency and there was months of delay and I wanted to clarify matters. Over a period of weeks I worked with his office (phone, letters, personal meeting with his liaison) to get the status of the matter clarified through phone calls from his staff and a congressional inquiry letter to the agency. We had no previous contacts or connection with Weldon.
Having worked as a staff person for a very liberal, competent congressperson in a different state a decade ago, I knew that everything I requested was normal. Anyone can request such help, and theoretically receive it. But it impressed me nevertheless because the quality of the response varies from district to district. And the response we received was probably as good or better than others I’ve seen. Very professional. So….this brings up why one of the prime ways that constituents evaluate congresspeople–through the quality of casework (requests by constituents for various services). This is purely self-interest, of course, but when its a matter that impacts your family and you find your congressman going to bat for you….why wouldn’t you vote for him? And with Weldon viewing himself as a foreign policy wonk, how else is the average voter in Clifton Heights, Swarthmore or Media supposed to evaluate him? Not through reading the Inquirer, thats for sure!
Thankfully, since I don’t live in his district, I don’t have to make the decision about voting for him. I almost certaintly wouldn’t, but I’d think about it for a minute.
Since I live outside of PA, I don’t follow his quixotic crusades, but for a while back in 2001-2003 I did read a bit about his involvement in the North Korean nuclear issue. As I remember it,while the Bush foreign policy crazies were refusing to meet with the North Koreans in bilateral talks, Weldon was advocating them, and a more engaged diplomatic effort.
Posted by: lokahi | Aug 23 2005 13:16 utc | 8
I originally heard this joke years ago, when it was based on the Soviet leadership, so I’ll tell it that way. So, on the day Brezhnev takes the chairmanship, Khrushchev takes him aside. Khrushchev gives Breshnev two envelopes, marked #1 and #2, and tells him that these envelopes contain the secret of political power, handed down from leader to leader. When things are working out, when everything is falling apart, open the envelopes, in order. Breshnev nods, and puts the envelopes in his safe and forgets about them.
Then, a couple of years later, things aren’t going well for Breshnev. Forcasts aren’t being met, things are falling apart, and everyone is blaming poor Breshnev. Then he remembers those two envelopes. Going to his safe, he takes out envelope #1 and opens it. Inside is a peice of paper, that contains only the sentence “blame everything on your predecessor.” Quietly thanking the wisdom of Krushchev, he goes out and announces that all of the problems are the fault of the previous administration. Everyone is satisified, and stop picking on him.
A couple of years later, again things aren’t going well for Breshnev. Again he thinks of the envelopes, and remembers how well the advice worked out last time. So again, he goes to his safe, and opens up the second envelope. In it is a peice of paper, which reads “prepare two envelopes…”
I think it’s time for the Bush administration to open the second envelope.
Posted by: Brian Hurt | Aug 23 2005 13:49 utc | 9
If the rightwingers weren’t going apeshit with glee over the Able Danger hoax, I might have to look at it more closely before labeling it a hoax. It sure smelled like a pile of do-do in Jehl’s NYT article, no documentation and the story lacked logical integrity. Weldon pitching it, put it into bizarro land for me. Oh, and Schaeffer, according to Larry Johnson, in the intell world Schaeffer is considered a “flake” and someone who’s never met a molehill he couldn’t turn into a mountain. Then again, I have no evidence to support the notion that US intelligence in any department is good enough that they could have sussed out Atta in 1999 or 2000 — probably not even in 2001 (although they might have been able to have gotten a sense of what was up for 9/11 and thrown some monkey wrenches in the plot).
Posted by: Marie | Aug 23 2005 19:10 utc | 10