View 302 March 22 - 28, 2004 (original) (raw)
Monday March 22, 2004
Packing up to go back to Studio City. Virus warnings, take heed. Commentaries on the news when I get back home.
Safely home. Bit tired. The Middle East situation needs a lot of thought. So does the Clark book.
If Hamas had tried to take out Sharon and killed several people including members of Sharon's family as they came out of the Temple, there would be no questioning that as an act of terrorism; or would there?
In the case of the former Terrorism Advisor, it's pretty clear he resented being demoted from Cabinet status which he held under Clinton. It's also not at all clear what his role was in the bombardment of, say, the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory, or what advice he gave Clinton when Sudan offered to turn Bin Laden over to the US. None of that makes him wrong about everything he says.
Subject: Things Seem to be Hottening Up in DC
< http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/22/politics/22CND-PREX.html?hp >
The DNC is deploying its troops on this in a way that reminds me of some UK tabloid newspaper campaigns. On the other hand, I sincerely believe 9/11 was preventable.
-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Senior Lecturer of Computing, University of Sunderland. Security engineer and analyst. http://www.theworld.com/\~herwin/
Well, 9-11 was certainly preventable: different rules of engagement for airline pilots and passengers, stronger cockpit doors, but mostly telling passengers they will not be prosecuted for attempting to take down a hijacker, and they are under no obligation to obey the highjacker's orders would have done a good bit toward saving the Pentagon and the Twin Towers.
But the fact is that for 8 years the Clinton Administration didn't do a lot, and for 200+ days neither did Bush, because we didn't really believe it could happen here. And our response to this day is more concerned with being politically correct than with actually making airplanes safer. Searching retired generals and threatening to confiscate his Medal of Honor is par for the course when the goal is political correctness.
Invading Afghanistan was certainly a good move. Whether the Iraq invasion was also a good move is not clear, at least to me; and not getting the oil flowing no matter the cost has very much been a blunder. (They tell me it's tough patrolling those long pipelines, to which I can only say, didn't you think of that before going in? And if so, what did you plan to do about it? Getting the Iraqi army involved in protecting the oil flow == no oil flowing no pay to the soldiers == would seem like an obvious move, but disbanding the Army may not have been helpful.)
I am waiting to read the book to see what Clarke said we should do that was not done; what he advised Clinton to do that Bush didn't do. From the CBS interviews he seems to have great hindsight. So do I. And whatever Dr. Rice's mental abilities, I suspect it's impossible to have been any time at Hoover without learning something about Al Qaeda and bin Laden; his suggestion that she knew nothing of the subject is suspect. Possony certainly left enough material on terrorism during his stay there.