TOPDOG08.COM

« Honest Abe would be proud | Main | Sign this petition »

November 30, 2005

Quotes of note regarding 9/11

Please disregard the mess. Just saving these for posterity.

As Jeb Bush once told retired Naval Intelligence Officer Al Martin (cited in Bushwhacked, Sept. 2002, by Uri Dowbenko)...

The truth is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can't deposit the truth in a bank. You can't buy groceries with the truth. You can't pay rent with the truth. The truth is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross -- all the way to the homeless shelter. And if you think that the million or so people in this country that are really interested in the truth about their government can support people who would tell them the truth, you got another think coming. Because the million or so people in this country that are truly interested in the truth don't have any money.

As Condoleeza Rice once told the 9/11 Commission...

We also moved to develop a new and comprehensive strategy to try and eliminate the al Qaeda network. President Bush understood the threat, and he understood its importance. He made clear to us that he did not want to respond to al Qaeda one attack at a time. He told me he was "tired of swatting flies."

This new strategy was developed over the spring and summer of 2001, and was approved by the President's senior national security officials on September 4th....

MR. KERREY: Did -- you've used the phrase a number of times, and I'm hoping with my question to disabuse you of using it in the future. You said the President was tired of swatting flies. Can you tell me one example where the President swatted a fly when it came to al Qaeda prior to 9/11?

MS. RICE: I think what the President was speaking to was --

MR. KERREY: No, no, what fly had he swatted?

MS. RICE: Well, the disruptions abroad was what he was really focusing on.

MR. KERREY: No, no --

MS. RICE: When the CIA would go after Abu Sayyaf, go after this guy, and -- that was what was meant.

MR. KERREY: Dr. Rice, we didn't -- we only swatted a fly once, on the 20th of August, 1998. We didn't swat any flies afterwards. How the hell could he be tired?

MS. RICE: We swatted at -- I think he felt that what the agency was doing was going after individual terrorists here and there, and that's what he meant by swatting flies. It was simply a figure of speech.

MR. KERREY: Well, I think it's an unfortunate figure of speech because I think -- especially after the attack on the Cole on the 12th of August -- October 2000. It would have been a swatting a fly. It would not have been -- we did not need to wait to get a strategic plan. Dick Clarke had in his memo on the 20th of January overt military operations as a -- he turned that memo around in 24 hours, Dr. Clarke. There were a lot of plans in place in the Clinton administration, military plans in the Clinton administration. In fact, just since we're in the mood to declassify stuff, he included in his January 25th memo two appendixes: Appendix A, “Strategy for the Elimination of the Jihadist Threat of al Qaeda;” Appendix B, “Political- Military Plan for al Qaeda.”

So I just -- why didn't we respond to the Cole? Why didn't we swat that fly?

MS. RICE: I believe that there is a question of whether or not you respond in a tactical sense or whether you respond in a strategic sense, whether or not you decide that you are going to respond to every attack with minimal use of military force and go after every -- on a kind of tit-for-tat basis. By the way, in that memo, Dick Clarke talks about not doing this tit for tat, doing this on a time of our choosing.

I'm aware, Mr. Kerrey, of a speech that you gave at that time that said that perhaps the best thing that we could do to respond to the Cole and to the memories was to do something about the threat of Saddam Hussein. That's a strategic view. (Applause.) And we took a strategic view. We didn't take a tactical view. I mean, it was really -- quite frankly I was blown away when I read the speech because it's a brilliant speech. (Laughter.) It talks about, really, an asymmetric approach.

As an ancient Arabic proverb warns us...

One tiny insect may be enough to destroy a country.

As an ancient Chinese proverb tells us...

Don't use an ax to remove a fly from a friend's forehead.

Posted by Mike at November 30, 2005 11:29 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.topdog08.com/cgi-bin/mt-trackback.cgi/880

Comments

Post a comment