Politics: J'accuse!

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
If the commissioners all agree, let them both stay. They seem to have found some consensus, which leads me to believe that they are doing something useful.

Between ignoring conflicts and the political posturing and all the talk-show appearances, I think the commission has lost credibility. We will see what their final report shows.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

An editorial in today's Washington Post calls Ashcroft's attack on Gorelick an absurd smear that should have been beneath the attorney general.

Originally posted by Not Me
Between ignoring conflicts and the political posturing and all the talk-show appearances, I think the commission has lost credibility. We will see what their final report shows.

As discussed in a NYT article I linked to last week, they made a conscious decision to take a high profile after considering other commissions that played it close to the vest, and suffered public suspicion (e.g., the Warren Commission). It's an interesting decision, and I'm not sure I would have done the same thing. Rest assured that the initial headlines about the commission's final report may not do it justice.

[Not Me]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nati...e077f4&ei=5062

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[bilmore]

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[Tyrone Slothrop]

For all the crap out there about competing with his father and helping Halliburton, this column by Richard Cohen does a pretty good job of capturing in my book why Bush wanted to invade Iraq.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
in my book

You are writing a book?

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
An editorial in today's Washington Post calls Ashcroft's attack on Gorelick an absurd smear that should have been beneath the attorney general.

Thanks for posting this. I hadn't heard the bit about Ashcroft's report putting the creation of the wall at "sometime in the 1980s."

The thing I don't get about this discussion is how many conservatives (not just on the board) decried the fact that the 9/11 Commission was going to be a blame game rather than maintaining the proper focus on strengthening our nation's defense against terrorism. As noted in the editorial and elsewhere, the intelligence wall was removed post-9/11, so it is no longer an obstacle to our defense. It seems to me the only reason people would want to foster an "uninhibited" discussion of the contents of the Gorelick memo among the commissioners would be to attach a comprehensive and uninhibited amount of blame for a past act, now rectified, on a member of the other party.

In other words, I can see why Ashcroft would be agitated about this in light of his own affirmation of the wall, but I'm not sure I see much of a reasoned justification why others would. The wall is certainly within the public consciousness now, so I agree with Kean's support of keeping Gorelick on the commission. Frankly I wish she had recused herself if people are really going to argue that something as tangential as this is tainting the commission's work. The issues people had with the televising of the hearings made much more sense to me.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
Frankly I wish she had recused herself if people are really going to argue that something as tangential as this is tainting the commission's work.

As Emily LaTella said, If it's not one thing, it's another.



The attacks are political, not principled. If they weren't attacking Gorelick, they'd be attacking someone else for something else.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
The thing I don't get about this discussion is how many conservatives (not just on the board) decried the fact that the 9/11 Commission was going to be a blame game rather than maintaining the proper focus on strengthening our nation's defense against terrorism. As noted in the editorial and elsewhere, the intelligence wall was removed post-9/11, so it is no longer an obstacle to our defense. It seems to me the only reason people would want to foster an "uninhibited" discussion of the contents of the Gorelick memo among the commissioners would be to attach a comprehensive and uninhibited amount of blame for a past act, now rectified, on a member of the other party.

You do realize that there are sunset provisions in the Patriot Act, don't you?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
Why hasn't Tenet been fired, that is the real question.

This is from Slate's review of what's in other magazines:

• While Newsweek predicts that George Tenet, who reportedly told Bush that WMD were a "slam dunk," may get the most flack from the Woodward book, U.S. News makes a strange case for the CIA director's job security. Tenet is clearly a Bush favorite because he's the only official ever allowed to break protocol and appear in an official Oval Office photo without a jacket.

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by Not Me
You do realize that there are sunset provisions in the Patriot Act, don't you?

Yes. Again, I don't think anyone, including Gorelick, is saying that we need the wall back. Do you see this as a danger when the Patriot Act expires?

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
Thanks for posting this. I hadn't heard the bit about Ashcroft's report putting the creation of the wall at "sometime in the 1980s."

Nor had I.

This morning, in a burst of Blue Dog Democrat fervor, I was planning to post that I was among the Dems who thought that Gorelick should step down to avoid a conflict of interest.

Frankly, I still don't particularly care for Gorelick to be on the commission simply because it distracts us from its ostensible goals -- and it sounds from the other posts as though others should probably go, too -- but it's sounding more and more like Ashcroft simply wanted to throw a wrench in the gears. If this calculated toss is any indication, it looks like he's gonna be taking it in the shorts from the commission.

edited to replace sentence fragment

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
Yes. Again, I don't think anyone, including Gorelick, is saying that we need the wall back. Do you see this as a danger when the Patriot Act expires?

As I understand it, the FISA court of appeals said there was no reason for the wall even before the Patriot Act. That ruling won't really be challengeable until the first time evidence gathered through a FISA warrant/tap is used against someone in a criminal prosecution, and they challenge it under the 4th amendment. And that assumes they'll ever know, since it's like to be hard to show the fruit came from a poisoned tree.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Gattigap
but it's sounding more and more like Ashcroft simply wanted to throw a wrench in the gears. If this calculated toss is any indication, it looks like he's gonna be taking it in the shorts from the commission.

My prediction - Ashcroft is barely touched in the findings. The prelims already released end up way toned down. Someone remembers that Ashcroft brought up the wall only because Ben-Veniste was yelling about the CIA not telling the FBI about two terrorists in the country, and Ashcroft was pointing out that they couldn't tell that, because of the wall. (This crap about Ashcroft bringing this up sua sponte as a cheap shot is crap, just like the "Rice was only asked about the title of that memo, not the memo itself" line was crap.)

The hearings, aside from Ben-V and a few others' contributions, have actually impressed me. The writings of people about those same hearings haven't.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
Yes. Again, I don't think anyone, including Gorelick, is saying that we need the wall back. Do you see this as a danger when the Patriot Act expires?

This article explains it:

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/ar...aid=11704013_1

• Other commonsense steps to promote competent intelligence-collection were incorporated in the Patriot Act, enacted six weeks after the September 11 attacks. This act, however, has come under blistering assault; so vicious has the campaign been that sensible Democrats like Senator Feinstein and Senator Joseph Biden have been moved to join their voices to those of President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft in the act’s defense. But it may be too little, too late: there are now more than a half-dozen proposals making their way through Congress seeking rollbacks or repeal.
  
  The Patriot Act’s intelligence improvements were vital, and nowhere more so than in the area of information-sharing. It dismantled the pernicious FISA firewall that prevented agents from pooling information. It authorized intelligence agents who were conducting FISA surveillance to "consult with federal law-enforcement officers to coordinate efforts to investigate or protect against" terrorism and other hostile acts. In addition, the act made it easier to obtain surveillance authorization, scotching the requirement that agents show that foreign counterintelligence was the "primary purpose" for their application in favor of the less burdensome certification that it was a "significant purpose."
  
  But it is these crucial improvements that have come under greatest fire. First, in 2002, the FISA court itself took umbrage at Congress’s demolition of the firewall and the (judicially invented) "primary purpose" test. Fortunately, the court’s attempt to reestablish the suicidal status quo ante was blocked. Next, however, an amalgam of libertarian Republicans and anti-Bush Democrats has promised to limit the term of the bill’s crucial provisions to December 31, 2005, when they are currently scheduled to "sunset" unless extended or made permanent by new legislation.
  
  This bipartisan Senate cabal (led by Democrats Patrick Leahy, Richard Durbin, and Harry Reid and Republicans Larry Craig and John Sununu) wants not only to terminate the FISA sharing provisions but to end the sharing of grand-jury information; to restrict the information that intelligence agencies may obtain from communications-service providers (the same kind of information long available to criminal investigators probing health-care fraud and gambling); and effectively to destroy the valuable "sneak-and-peak" search warrant (another longstanding tool in ordinary criminal investigations) that allows agents, with court approval, to search a location for intelligence purposes but not to seize anything, thus keeping the targets unaware. No doubt, the next time something goes boom, these Senators and their myriad sympathizers will be among the first to wail about unconnected dots.
  
  A political class that appreciated the stakes involved would not indulge in this sort of recklessness. It would not hasten to dub every episodic setback an intelligence failure without asking searchingly whether we have set our agencies up to fail. It would have the necessary perseverance, through the inevitable torrent of catcalling, to retrace a quarter-century of missteps. And it would construct its remedies on the basis of a correct diagnosis of the disease. Right now, when we need it most, this is not the political class we have.

Read the whole article and the articles/court opinions I link to here if you want to know more.