DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Thanks to C-SPAN, I heard and watched part of Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the 9/11 committee on Friday. It was an intellectual battle. People on both sides of the issue feigned cordiality, but once the questions and answers got rolling it became apparent where the hostilities lay.

BEN-VENISTE: Good morning, Dr. Rice.
RICE: Good morning.
BEN-VENISTE: Nice to see you again.
RICE: Nice to see you.

I think it’s safe to say both Ben-Veniste and Rice were lying. Within a few minutes, the questioning became tense.

BEN-VENISTE: Did you tell the president, at any time prior to August 6th, of the existence of Al Qaeda cells in the United States?
RICE: First, let me just make certain…
BEN-VENISTE: If you could just answer that question, because I only have a very limited…
RICE: I understand, Commissioner, but it’s important…
BEN-VENISTE: Did you tell the president…
RICE: … that I also address…
(APPLAUSE)
It’s also important that, Commissioner, that I address the other issues that you have raised. So I will do it quickly, but if you’ll just give me a moment.
BEN-VENISTE: Well, my only question to you is whether you…
RICE: I understand, Commissioner, but I will…
BEN-VENISTE: … told the president.

And within two minutes, Ben-Veniste forced Rice to reveal the classified name of a classified document that Rice and Bush would prefer had never been made public. Rice wanted to elaborate, to diminish the impact of the damning title, but Ben-Veniste wanted to stop her.

BEN-VENISTE: Isn’t it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?
RICE: I believe the title was, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.” Now, the…
BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.
RICE: No, Mr. Ben-Veniste…
BEN-VENISTE: I will get into the…
RICE: I would like to finish my point here.
BEN-VENISTE: I didn’t know there was a point.
RICE: Given that — you asked me whether or not it warned of attacks.
BEN-VENISTE: I asked you what the title was.

The spin on this document is remarkable. The title of the document is a smoking gun, but the contents are a lot less interesting.

If you want to accuse the Bush Administration of not being prepared for a terrorist attack, this document serves as clear evidence: four weeks prior to 9/11 Bush received a briefing document titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.” What more evidence would you need? The Guardian took this approach in a piece unambiguously called, Bush given hijack alert before 9/11

Fox News took (to no one’s surprise) a different approach. They focused on the Bush Administration’s official stance, in a story called Bush: Terror Memo Lacked Specifics. This story contains the damning PDB title, but it’s stuffed down in the 4th-last paragraph.

The news media is not impartial. Simply compare the headlines above.

To some degree, news consumers gravitate toward media sources that are compatible with their own views. Others consume whatever is convenient.

I’m not immune, of course. I read the SF Chronicle because it’s local, and because its coverage of political issues seems balanced — a sure sign that it’s not.

I don’t read Fox because I usually read the news at breakfast, and reading Foxnews.com often makes me ill.

Fortunately, in the case of this specific Presidential Daily Brief, the entire text has been made public, so everyone can make up their own minds about whether its warnings were “actionable.”

Jon Carroll’s column about the Bush administration’s apparent fantasy of infallibility — that is, Bush & Company’s inability to admit having ever made a mistake — is so right, so lucid, I’d like to quote the whole thing. You can read it in its entirety here: George Bush is never wrong.

(That’s my title, not Mr. Carroll’s; I’m hoping Google will index the link text so that feverish Bush supporters looking for justification will search for “George Bush is never wrong” and find, instead, a strong suggestion that he is.)

Carroll writes:

I have a theory. It dates back to Watergate, the first great 24/7 media scandal. Nixon tried to stonewall, and he could not. Why? Because there were too many staffers whispering to too many reporters.

You could take two lessons from Watergate. You could learn that the cover-up is always worse than the misdeed and that cutting your losses is always a good idea. Or you could learn that you must exert much tighter control over your staffers and your documents.

Which of those two lessons Bush learned is an exercise left to the reader. Just remember, kids: George Bush is never wrong!

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will testify in public under oath before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as long as the panel seeks no further public testimony from White House officials, the administration said Tuesday.

Why is the Bush Administration making deals with the 9/11 commission? Didn’t Bush set up the 9/11 commission?

No, he didn’t. (The memory is the first to go — or is it eyesight that’s the first to go? Hmm, I can’t remember that either. But then, my eyesight is already gone.) I was all set to write about the Bush Administration’s flip-flop on this investigation, but I’m happy to report that Bush & Co. have been completely consistent in their efforts to block it.

“President Bush initially opposed the creation of such a panel.” (April 1, 2003) Then, after the 9/11 families insisted on its creation, “Leaders of [the] commission … complained .. that the Bush administration had been too slow to provide access to key documents and was intimidating witnesses by insisting that CIA and FBI ‘minders’ attend sensitive interviews.” (July 9, 2003) Bush & Co. continued the delays; “the chairman of the federal commission … said the White House was continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel.” (Oct. 26, 2003) The commission made some headway but was again derailed by the Bush/Cheney obfuscation machine; “President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the [commission], saying they will meet only with the panel’s top two officials and that Bush will submit to only a single hour of questioning.” (Feb. 26, 2004)

And finally, Condoleezza Rice refused to testify before the commission. You have to appreciate her game face. She would make a formidable poker opponent. I think she could outstare a person with no eyelids.

So, anyway, it’s not as inscrutable as I thought when I wrote the title of this piece. It all makes perfect sense: if you don’t want the answers to be found, delay the investigation.

In a poorly-considered move that is sure to follow him like a cloud of BO to the end of his career, Georgia Republican Bill Heath sponsored an amendment that would ban genital piercing for consenting adult women. Consenting. Adult. Women. Heath is neither consenting nor female, so why the hell does he care?

An apparently unsympathetic reporter from Associated Press sent out the following, which — to my great surprise — even appeared on the Christian Right’s news site:

Amendment sponsor Rep. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, was slack-jawed when told after the vote that some adults seek the piercings.

“What? I’ve never seen such a thing,” Heath said. “I, uh, I wouldn’t approve of anyone doing it. I don’t think that’s an appropriate thing to be doing.”

From way out here on the progressive edge of the left coast, it’s easy to laugh at Biblical, repressed, Kentucky-fried perceptions of morality. The attitude in California seems to be “live and let live.” As far as I can tell, significant parts of the Midwest and South feel it necessary to legislate behaviors in order to “protect” society. I don’t understand it.

Well worth reading is Shannon Larratt’s editorial, Bill Heath: American Traitor. Larratt is the editor and publisher of a “full-spectrum body modification publication,” a website that Bill Heath will also try to ban, assuming the Internet isn’t already illegal in Bremen, GA.

A Time Magazine article on the presidential election contains a revealing inside look at the dynamics of the campaign.

[T]he war rooms of the two campaigns are organizing to quickly seize any opportunity for attack. On the first floor of the brick-and-glass office building where Bush forces are housed in Arlington, Va., a bank of TiVos captures Kerry’s every word. A team arrives at 4:30 a.m. to sift through the papers and prepare responses before the sun rises. When Kerry unleashes even the mildest broadside, the young staff members go almost giddy, and a call issues: “Attack!” Comments from Kerry in the morning papers are incorporated into Bush’s noon speeches.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just debate? Oh, that’s right; Kerry suggested the same thing already.

The Time article also contains this stunning revelation:

[E]mployees at the Department of Homeland Security have been asked to keep their eyes open for opportunities to pose the President in settings that might highlight the Administration’s efforts to make the nation safer. The goal, they are being told, is to provide Bush with one homeland-security photo-op a month.

As Ezra Klein writes,

It’s one thing to use 9/11 in an ad or talk about your role in keeping the country safe; it’s a wholly different beast to direct a busy agency that isn’t yet fulfilling its mandate to divert resources to helping you campaign. It’s disgusting.

(Seen at AntiPixel: Dept. of Homeland Photo Ops)