"This Time The Crime Is Worse Than The Cover-Up" (Frank Rich-NYT)

[kpete]

Op-Ed Columnist
The Real-Life ‘24’ of Summer 2008


By FRANK RICH
Published: July 13, 2008

.......

Top Bush hands are starting to get sweaty about where they left their fingerprints. Scapegoating the rotten apples at the bottom of the military’s barrel may not be a slam-dunk escape route from accountability anymore.

So hot is the speculation that war-crimes trials will eventually follow in foreign or international courts that Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, has publicly advised Mr. Feith, Mr. Addington and Alberto Gonzales, among others, to “never travel outside the U.S., except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel.” But while we wait for the wheels of justice to grind slowly, there are immediate fears to tend. Ms. Mayer’s book helps cement the case that America’s use of torture has betrayed not just American values but our national security, right to the present day.

In her telling, a major incentive for Mr. Cheney’s descent into the dark side was to cover up for the Bush White House’s failure to heed the Qaeda threat in 2001. Jack Cloonan, a special agent for the F.B.I.’s Osama bin Laden unit until 2002, told Ms. Mayer that Sept. 11 was “all preventable.” By March 2000, according to the C.I.A.’s inspector general, “50 or 60 individuals” in the agency knew that two Al Qaeda suspects — soon to be hijackers — were in America. But there was no urgency at the top. Thomas Pickard, the acting F.B.I. director that summer, told Ms. Mayer that when he expressed his fears about the Qaeda threat to Mr. Ashcroft, the attorney general snapped, “I don’t want to hear about that anymore!”

After 9/11, our government emphasized “interrogation over due process,” Ms. Mayer writes, “to pre-empt future attacks before they materialized.” But in reality torture may well be enabling future attacks. This is not just because Abu Ghraib snapshots have been used as recruitment tools by jihadists. No less destructive are the false confessions inevitably elicited from tortured detainees. The avalanche of misinformation since 9/11 has compromised prosecutions, allowed other culprits to escape and sent the American military on wild-goose chases. The coerced “confession” to the murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to take one horrific example, may have been invented to protect the real murderer.

.......................

That’s why the Bush White House’s corruption in the end surpasses Nixon’s. We can no longer take cold comfort in the Watergate maxim that the cover-up was worse than the crime. This time the crime is worse than the cover-up, and the punishment could rain down on us all.

more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/opinion/13rich.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Mike Nelson]

1. Great Article

should be discussed in Congressional settings!

[HCE SuiGeneris]

2. The fate that awaits them will not be benevolent...

whether it be here on earth, or on a different plain.

[femrap]

3. K and R nt

[snot]

4. k&r'd

[bonito]

5. K&R n/t

[AntiFascist]

6. K&RRRR !

they need to start war crime proceedings as soon as possible, before the Administration gets us into another war!!

[Faygo Kid]

7. Posted a couple times already, but one of the most powerful columns ever.

I will recommend it every time it's posted. This could be a turning point. Keith better have Frank on about this one (if Keith ever returns).

[madamesilverspurs]

8. I hate it

that the present maladministration is a greater threat to the nation than Al Qaeda. Bush ignored the pre 9-11 warnings, Congress has ignored virtually every warning bleated by Bush & Co.

Damnit, I'm tired of mourning our demise at the hands of these thieves!

[gulliver]

9. Bush/Cheney needed torture and wiretapping

"a major incentive for Mr. Cheney’s descent into the dark side was to cover up for the Bush White House’s failure to heed the Qaeda threat in 2001"

The Bushies had to act as if existing tools were insufficient to avoid blame for 9/11. And no matter what they ask for since, if it is not given to them and something happens, they will blame it on the tool they weren't given. If you have an administration that avoids all accountability and is willing to lie, no one is safe, and nothing can be done competently. All Bush failure is hidden or blamed on opponents. The buck never stops.

[Number23]

10. "punishment could rain down on us all"

And that doesn't mean just the U.S. That means the U.S. and every single one of its allies, both political and economic.

The madness brought on by these fools is going to change the whole world. The only even slightly positive thing that could come out of this is that countries that have long been victimized by colonialism will become the greatest beneficiaries of the demise of U.S. and western hegemony.

50 years from now, will "Made in USA" carry the same stigma that "Made in China" does now???

[Juan_de_la_Dem]

11. We should be ashamed

[me b zola]

12. K&R

[TahitiNut]

13. May their greatest fears come true.

The Cheney/Bush war criminals should be rotting in prison. :grr:

We're a nation of cowards and criminals until that happens ... and beyond if it takes another nation to do it for us.
:puke:

[skyounkin]

14. Goddamn

I hope some country has the courage to do what our congress lacks.

[Oldtimeralso]

15. The Public Needs to DEMAND IMPEACHMENT before

we send them to The Hague

[truedelphi]

16. So Ms Mayer's book explains that

"In her telling, a major incentive for Mr. Cheney’s descent into the dark side was to cover up for the Bush White House’s failure to heed the Qaeda threat in 2001. Jack Cloonan, a special agent for the F.B.I.’s Osama bin Laden unit until 2002, told Ms. Mayer that Sept. 11 was “all preventable.” By March 2000, according to the C.I.A.’s inspector general, “50 or 60 individuals” in the agency knew that two Al Qaeda suspects — soon to be hijackers — were in America. But there was no urgency at the top. Thomas Pickard, the acting F.B.I. director that summer, told Ms. Mayer that when he expressed his fears about the Qaeda threat to Mr. Ashcroft, the attorney general snapped, “I don’t want to hear about that anymore"

Oh please Cheney DID NOT cover up the Bush's WH failure to heed the Al Queda threat.

Cheney has been the acting President ever since George-Gee-it-would-be fun-to-have-a-beer-with you was elected. And we know simply from reading the official CIA website over the last eight years that George Tenet told Congress how necessary it was to have a pipeline run through Afghanistan. So for Mayer to say that Cheney was covering up for George's inactions is rather a strange spin.

Here is something that I wrote and had published in the notoriously indie publication "The CoastalPost" (www.coastalpost.com)

http://www.coastalpost.com/02/01/03.htm

Timeline of events:

February 3rd, 2000. George Tenet, Director of the CIA, addresses the Senate Committee on Armed Services. He discusses openly the importance of the following: "Western companies are trying to construct a gas pipeline under the Caspian Sea from Turkmenistan through Azerbijan and Georgia en route to Turkey." Scenarios elaborated upon over the next few months recognize the importance of a Central Asian pipeline requiring permission to extend such pipeline into Afghanistan. The goal: to have one continuous pipeline running from the waters of the Caspian Sea to the Arabian Sea.
February to April 2001. Government officials from both the United States and Afghanistan meet to discuss the possibility of building this pipeline. Corporations most interested in this development are Unocal * and Amoco. Participating officials include Laila Helms, a relative of Richard Helms, former director of the CIA, and Sayed Ramatulla, aide to Taliban Mullah Mohammed Omar. Also around this point in time, over 40 million dollars were released to Taliban government of Afghanistan in the name of the American War on Drugs. In accepting these monies, the Taliban agreed to see that the opium in local drug lords' warehouses would stay there. This policy of course, did very little to influence the local drug lords, who simply raised the price of their product to cover for the curtailment of supply.

May 2001. During this time period, at least one significant meeting between CIA Director George Tenet and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraff takes place. Mushareff possibly repeats his earlier-in-the-year statement that Pakistan would be willing to hand Bin Laden over to a Muslim tribunal for his part in the Embassy bombings that took four lives. Then, July 2001, Thomas Simons, former US Ambassador to Pakistan; Karl Inderfurth, former assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs; and Lee Coldren, former State Department expert on South Asia, meet in Berlin with negotiators from the Taliban, Russia and six oil-rich nations that neighbor Afghanistan (BBC news, Sept. 18; the Guardian, Sept. 22, 2001).**

According to Jean-Charles Brisard, co-author of "Bin Laden: The Hidden Truth": "At one point during the negotiations, the US reps told the Taliban, 'Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs." Naif Naik, former Pakistani minister for foreign affairs, was also present. He recalled that the discussions turned on "the formation of a government of national unity. If the Taliban had accepted this coalition, they would have immediately received international economic aid ... And the pipe lines from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan would have come.'' Naik also recalled that Tom Simons, the US representative at these meetings, openly threatened the Taliban and Pakistan. "Simons said, 'Either the Taliban behave as they ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option.' The words Simons used were 'a military operation','' Naik claimed (Inter Press Service, Nov. 15, 2001).

July 2001: Pakistan's ISI (Pakistan Intelligence Agency) Chief Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmad has an aide wire-transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the pilot who later achieved infamy as the presumed leader of the Sept. 11 hijackings and atrocities. In October 2001, Mahmud Ahmad resigned from the ISI after the FBI confirmed this crucial wire-transfer (The Times of India, Oct. 11, 2001.)**