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 Friday, May 17, 2002
Anthony York has already taken apart the current Bush and Co. spin in response to "Terrorgate." According to York, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer didn't have a very good day.
 Fleischer's first troublesome assertion was his bizarre defense, repeated later by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, that neither law enforcement nor intelligence agencies could have possibly guessed that a "traditional hijacking" might lead to what ultimately happened on Sept. 11.
"The possibility of a traditional hijacking, in the pre-September 11th sense, has long been a concern of the government, dating back decades," Fleischer said. "The president did not -- not -- receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers. This was a new type of attack that had not been foreseen."
But while the president may not have been able to foresee such a scenario, intelligence experts surely could. The idea of using "airplanes as missiles" was not unprecedented. Before the attacks, in just one concurrent example, an FBI agent in Minneapolis warned that Zacarias Moussaoui -- the so-called 20th hijacker who was arrested after telling instructors at a Minnesota flight school that he wanted to learn how to fly, but not land, a 747 -- could decide to "fly something into the World Trade Center." 
For the record, Salon has been running some terrific coverage of all of these events. It's all in the "premium" section, but I'm linking to it for my own records as well as to encourage everyone to throw Salon a few dimes -- they provide an unmatched information service that's well worth the small annual fee. Recent Salon coverage includes:
- See no evil: The revelation that the White House was warned in August about a bin Laden hijacking plot -- and that Bush failed to disclose the warning -- shows an administration both incompetent and dishonest.
There are many vexing questions about this stunning news, but one of the biggest is why it took eight months for the White House to admit it had received early warnings about the day of infamy. Immediately after 9/11, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press that Bush officials had "no warnings" of the al-Qaida offensive. Now it turns out they were awash in clues, from the CIA briefing given to Bush, to the flare sent up by an FBI agent in Phoenix about the suspicious number of Middle Eastern men in flight training schools, to the silent scream from a Minneapolis FBI agent, who flat-out warned that suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui was the type who "could fly something into the World Trade Center." With Moussaoui now facing trial as the so-called 20th hijacker, it's clear the Minneapolis agent pretty much nailed the plot on the head. And yet no one "connected the dots," in the words of Sen. Bob Graham, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman.
- The 9/11 coverup: First the White House ignored warnings about al-Qaida. Then it tried to stop Congress from getting the truth. Now we know why.
Incompetence, rather than conspiracy, remains the most plausible explanation for the Bush administration's failure to prevent the terrorist atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001. But "conspiracy" is beginning to look like a plausible description of the administration's effort to conceal its tragic errors.
- The Bush 9/11 spin machine: What did they lie about, and when did they lie about it? Michelle Goldberg notes that Bush and Co. have used 9-11 as a reason for giving the intelligence community a wide range of expanded powers -- many of which have frightening implications for civil rights. All this new evidence about what the intelligence community knew, when, and when it was communicated to Bush (before the attacks), shows that the problem was perhaps not that there were too many restrictions on intelligence agencies. The problem, more likely, lies elsewhere; however:
As Fareed Zakaria wrote in Newsweek last January, "No one has much of an appetite for an investigation. The reason for this might well be that Sept. 11 happened not because of intelligence failures but, even worse, because of policy failures. The former can easily be blamed on others. The latter requires that everyone -- both parties, both branches of government -- take a long, hard look in the mirror."
Meanwhile, Ari Fleischer may have to look in the mirror and take back his nasty slur against Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney, who suggested the Bush administration had known of impending terrorist plans before Sept. 11. "All I can tell you is the congresswoman must be running for the hall of fame of the Grassy Knoll Society," Fleischer said April 13. The shoot-from-the-lip McKinney probably exaggerated what Bush had known -- there's no evidence he was warned about the specific plots against the World Trade Center and Pentagon and let them happen. But in light of what's come out in the past 24 hours, Fleischer might have been advised to use a little more restraint when denying that the president had any foreknowledge of 9/11.
5:05:50 PM 
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Questions about what Bush and Co. might have known prior to Sept. 11 continue to make the headlines. Both Dems and Repubs are asking what Bush knew and when. I think that's the wrong question. Bush's spokespeople are not lying when they say there was no definite information about dates, times, or methods of a terrorist attack, so barking up that tree is just a waste of time. Yet there was obviously enough info. to justify warnings to the FAA and investigations into foreign students in U.S. flight schools. So why weren't those things done? Still more important, in my book, is what Bush and Co. were doing behind the scenes between January and September w/regard to oil and gas pipelines through Afghanistan. At the risk of repeating myself: It seems increasingly likely that Bush and Co. felt nearly certain there was going to be a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, but withheld that information from the American public because they wanted a good reason to make "war" on the Taliban, bin Laden, and Afghanistan. And of course I'm not suggesting that Bush and Co. wanted to see thousands of U.S. citizens killed. However, I am suggesting that Bush and Co. probably thought bin Laden would do something like a "conventional hijacking" and that such an act of "terror" would be acceptable -- both in terms of the loss of American life it might cause (Bush and Co. assumed such loss would be minimal) and in terms of the justification it would present for making "war."
I hope I'm wrong.
According to the AP, Bush had no public comment on the developments for a second straight day. 4:58:15 PM
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Jeff Jarvis (apparently one of the infamous "warbloggers") has proposed a Weblog Foundation to compensate bloggers who want to blog full time and/or who contribute "good" to the world by providing valuable information to their readers. It's an interesting idea, but what's even more interesting is that Jarvis and other defenders of the Foundation idea are convinced that the idea is consistent with capitalism. In a post titled "Snark attack!" Jarvis writes:
More snarky words are being written about the Weblog Foundation. No surprise. It's the Internet. That's why we love it, eh?
But what does surprise me is that webloggers -- or at least some of them -- don't want money, don't like it, think it's a bad thing.
I thought we were past defending capitalism (except, perhaps, in Cuba).
But capitalism has able defense from Eric Olsen and Richard Bennett. They do it better than I could.
But if you go to Olsen's post (which quotes extensively from Bennet), what you find is not a defense of capitalism, but a defense of socialism. Olsen writes:
I see the purpose of the foundation pretty much as does Jeff: as 1) a declaration that this work deserves compensation, and that people who choose to provide this service to the public shouldn't be compensated for their efforts with starvation. In a capitalist system, compensation equates with prestige and bloggers do not deserve zero prestige for their efforts; and as a result, 2) a collective safety net of some kind is in order to facilitate the transition to the inevitable bloggy market economy that is coming.
In other words, the Foundation will make it possible for participating bloggers to survive outside of "free" markets and the dictates of supply and demand -- it will create a managed economy that frees these bloggers from the restrictions of the market economy. This is not capitalism. What's great is that Olsen (and Bennet) do a great job revealing the ways in which capitalism is antithetical to their goals as bloggers, and to the goals of those who care about free speech, good news coverage, and a well-informed global populace. What's baffling is who they can think they're defending capitalism, or why they'd even want to.
Along these lines, Olsen helpfully quotes Matt Welch, who likens the Weblog Foundation to a union of bloggers:
Within three months, there will be at least five companies dedicated to monetize and enhance the blogging phenomenon. Two or three will be owned by especially smart friends of mine; from what I[base ']ve heard we[base ']ll have all kinds of exponentially different new toys at our disposal very soon, plus some handy variations on the different tip-jar concepts. What Jeff[base ']s idea does, in theory, is to pre-emptively organize a big batch of bloggers (and only those who wish to join), so that they can negotiate/brainstorm/act as a sort of bloc, when the day comes that people want to implement these new schemes. It could be like a much looser and far more interesting National Writer[base ']s Union (which, incidentally, treats online writers like the plague when it comes to things like libel insurance). Yes, there[base ']s the usual cat-herding problem, and I[base ']m guessing many of the blog kids aren[base ']t exactly AFL-CIO types (nor am I), but I[base ']m continually surprised by the stimulating fun generated whenever three or more bloggers actually meet in person, and I think there[base ']s some tangible use in having a loose, opt-outable organization of a bunch of us for when the Idea People knock on our doors.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, unions of the type Welch here describes were (and are) organized expressly to defend their members against the excesses and dictates of capitalism. Again, what Olsen, et al. are proposing is exactly that -- a way to defend bloggers (and their ideals) against the demands of capital. I think anyone who's followed the Microsoft anti-trust epic would agree that capitalism is simply not_ the way to ensure creativity, innovation, or democracy. Larry Lessig's Creative Commons and everything surrounding the fight against big media and intellectual property rights is yet more evidence of the fact that capital is antithetical to the values many of its staunchest defenders espouse. 10:35:47 AM
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In an interview with the BBC, CBS news anchor Dan Rather admits that the U.S. media -- himself included -- have done a horrible job covering the "war" on terrorism and much of the rest of national and international news since 9-11-2001.
"There has never been an American war, small or large, in which access has been so limited as this one," Rather said, adding that he was sorry to say that the American people have accepted these limitations.
No kidding. The AP article linked to above only skims the surface. Check the BBC for the full interview. I looked, but I don't think they've got the interview online yet. 9:33:50 AM
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Bush and Co. are scrambling to defend itself following news that the CIA warned Bush in August that there might be attacks on the U.S. via airlines. A summary of current developments concludes with the following:
One Bush associate quoted the president as saying "no one knew" that bin Laden was plotting to make the leap from traditional hijackings to the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
That's almost certainly true. Also probably true is that "no one knew" terrorists would turn planes into missiles. But here's the problem: There seems to be a lot of evidence that Bush and Co. was playing games with bin Laden and/or the Taliban. What those "games" (my term here) were intended to do are unclear. However, all evidence indicates that in summer 2001, Bush and Co. were looking for reasons to attack the Taliban and/or bin Laden. Those reasons look similar, but a bit different, depending on which story you're listening to.
- Early in its administration, Bush and Co. appears to have ordered the U.S. intelligence community to back off on some terrorism investigations as it continued to negotiate with the Taliban about drugs and oil. Charges that the WTC was bombed soon after "Bush-Taliban oil pipeline talks soured" have never been convincingly refuted (as far as I know). This "game" plan indicates that Bush and Co. wanted to attack the Taliban in order to get a gas or oil pipeline through Afghanistan. (More on this connection here and here.)
- Then there's the argument that Bush and Co. wanted to kill bin Laden because of his ties to terrorism. According to a former Palestinian official, in July 2001 Bush and Co. officials threatened to attack Afghanistan if the Taliban didn't cooperate.
"The Americans indicated to us that in case the Taliban does not behave and in case Pakistan also doesn't help us to influence the Taliban, then the United States would be left with no option but to take an overt action against Afghanistan," said Niaz Naik, a former foreign minister of Pakistan, who was at the meeting.
Either way, the point is that all of the above allegations need to be thoroughly investigated to take them out of their marginalized positions and put them front and center. If all of these allegations are untrue, or if they pass Congressional and public scrutiny, Bush and Co. will only become more popular. In other words, if the administration has nothing to hide, it should welcome as much investigation into all of this as it can find support for.
(Here's how the N.Y. Times is covering this today; registration required.) 8:59:08 AM
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