Wishful Thinking
With all the now daily warnings coming from the FBI, it makes me think that perhaps we should have a group to look into all this stuff. I guess it would have to be formed by the government. And it would have to be really big so as to be able to investigate stuff everywhere, and all the time. A kind of Federal Bureau of Investigation. That would be a great thing to have to ward off terrorism.
- posted by levinson @ 5/24/2002 11:09:00 AM

 
Daffy Duck
No Dick, your transparent, blatant and deplorable actions of the past week to try to head off both congressional and independent investigations into the state of US Intelligence prior to 9/11 are despicable. Your arrogance is growing beyond measure and your tactics are harming this democracy and are baldly unpatriotic in a time of war.
- posted by levinson @ 5/23/2002 09:03:00 AM

 
Not a Fact to Drink
Polls are nice. Polls are helpful. Polls are good only if you know what questions were asked. Polls, polls everywhere. If you have some time and are really, really interested in the current landscape of the political debate as it concerns the 2002 Congressional elections, see Democracy Corps's most recent survey. They have yet to post their analysis, but I have my own questions for the Democratic leadership based on this poll. The two greatest concerns the people polled have are "Terrorism and security" and "The economy and jobs." These are then followed by Democratic bread and butter issues Education, Health Care, Social Security. News reports suggest that Democrats would like to focus back on domestic issues. Interestingly, the most vital domestic issue, the economy, does not poll well for the Democrats. They are also not trusted on taxes. This is the result of the greatest p.r. botch-job in recent memory. That the Democratic leadership has failed to convince the electorate that their party is far superior in terms of economic stewardship given the prosperity of the Clinton years bookended by two Bush family recessions is pathetic at best. Of course, there was a time when the Dems were trusted with the economy. They've lost that trust. They can get it back again. Now if they can get this back again, why can they not make in-roads on the other big issue that concerns the electorate, Terrorism? Can they win the issue outright by November? No, but they can certainly take a mighty chunk out given that our current FBI director seems to be conceding our lives to the terrorists and the proposed bloated defense budget does not seem to target the true (read: systemic) reasons why the 9/11 attacks succeeded. Our vulnerability was not a lack of money, it was a lack of management and focus. We know the W administration put terrorism as a low priority when they entered office, but they seem to want to solve the problems by increasing the size of the bureaucracy.

The country is behind W because he has shown them that, in their eyes, he can lead. The Republican revolution of 1994 was led by Gingrich. He put a face on the entire party's campaign. He didn't run for president in 1996. The lesson here is this, the democrats must annoint a leader to mount a comprehensive challenge to the republicans on all fronts including taxes and defense. They must be unrelenting and respond in kind to all attacks levied against them. If he were up to the challenge Gore would be a nice person for this. He went to Vietnam and he voted for the Gulf war. Moreover, he is a direct link to a former administration that was far more focussed on terrorism.

Making slim majorities in both houses of congress your election year goal is a good way to set yourself up to lose. You have to set your goals high and address the most pressing concerns of the nation if you want to lead. Does anyone want to lead?
- posted by levinson @ 5/23/2002 08:38:00 AM

 
Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody
There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

Anybody would have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody, when Nobody did what Anybody could have.


- posted by levinson @ 5/21/2002 07:02:00 AM

 
This is a story about...
STRATFOR with a more cogent analysis than mine of yesterday. While I tend to fault our agencies for pre-9/11 failures, they rightly focus on the fact that 8 months after the attack, little has changed inside the government's security structure. That means we are no more prepared today than we were on 9/10 to stop terrorism. I think Mueller et al. should stop giving speeches and start working around the clock to fix these problems. At the very least they should be preparing to brief the president and congress on what structural and systemic changes they will implement immediately.
- posted by levinson @ 5/21/2002 07:01:00 AM

 
Home Again
As with my last unannounced break, a bout of supreme idiocy has brought me out of my slumber. The root cause may ultimately be proved to be George Lucas's latest horror-show Episode II, but for the moment I have been set off by our esteemed FBI director Robert Mueller. "There will be another terrorist attack. We will not be able to stop it[.]" Perhaps this is a true statement. Certainly post-9/11 we are all willing to believe that terrorism is now a fact of life on American soil. Given that's there only been one attack on us, and that one was (and I'm not kidding at all here) preventable, I find it more than a little pathetic that our FBI director has thrown in the towel. This week seems to be the one where we're all warned that suicide bombers will soon be attacking our pizza parlors, malls and busses. This is inexusable and if Mueller has his job by the end of the week, congress should investigate who he is blackmailing to keep his job. All of our investigative and tracking agencies need to be chopped off at the head and ripped out by the roots. If one, as seems to be the trend now, wants to blame the system, then one must necessarily hold the heads of the system principally accountable. The bemoaning of an unfixable system strikes me as the pathetic scene in "Nixon" where the madman is accosted by a girl who divines that he, the President, couldn't stop the war in Vietnam even if he so desired. Total nonsense. Toss Mueller and Tenet tonight (since they should have been ousted on 9/12) and throw in Condi Rice for good measure. Why Condi? Well her comments that warning the general public about hijackings on US soil may have disrupted the entire US air travel system was one of the most ridiculous comments uttered by a non-Fleicher member of the administration. Two follow up questions should have been lobbed Ms. Rice's way: (1) Was the post-9/11 airline fallout tantamount to what you were concerned with instigating? (2) While potentially disrupting the system, do you think warnings proir to 9/11 might have caused the passengers on the three flights that hit their targets to take action like those on flight 93?

A final thought on this comes to mind. The protestations that there was no way to know, or even anticipate, that 9/11 attacks is clearly disingenuous and the politicos must be called to account for the ability of the past administration to discerne and rout out the "Millenium Plot" to blow up LAX and their inability to discerne or even have a clue about plots against this country's soil a scant 18 months later. How did the intelligence agencies know about one plot involving foreign elements attacking US soil and, having stopped that plot, then fall asleep at the wheel when the stakes had clearly been raised. As I noted before, the plotting of the 9/11 attacks took place in this country and took a serious amount of flying both around and out of the US. For some reason, the government had stopped looking closely. Yes we now benefit from hindsight, but second-guessing, investigating and holding authorities accountable (something that is so en vouge with teachers but seemingly not for this administration) is necessary and appropriate. The people watching over our safety botched it big-time. It's now the time to determine their errors, send them on their way and get it right next time. Terrorism can be prevented and a chief of the FBI that can't see that should no longer be the chief.
- posted by levinson @ 5/20/2002 02:56:00 PM