DETROIT -- "The Corpse Had a Familiar Face," part of the title of celebrated crime-reporter-turned-novelist Edna Buchanan's book chronicling her years covering murders for the Miami Herald, came to my mind when I heard Sen. John McCain's minions present the well-known and thoroughly corrupted cadaver of the terrorism "issue."
McCain's senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann told reporters, "Sen. Obama is the perfect manifestation of a Sept. 10 mind set." McCain's man claimed the Democratic presidential candidate "brings the attitude, the failures in judgment, the weakness and misunderstanding of the nature of our adversary and the dangers posed by them to a series of policy positions."
The Republicans saw the opportunity to disinter their old body of lies when Obama made an entirely true and sensible statement about the criminal prosecution of terrorists and how the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be handled in a manner "consistent with our laws."
Obama observed, "What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks -- for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center -- we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated. And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to he rule of law all around he world, and give a boost to terrorists' recruitment in countries that say 'Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims.'"
Obama never suggested that criminal prosecutions alone would thwart terrorists, but that didn't stop the crooked talking Scheunemann from calling Obama's point a "model of his administration," claiming it represents "this failed approach of treating terrorism simply as a matter of law enforcement rather than a clear and present danger to the United States."
As a preview of the lofty level of debate we'll hear more and more from McCain as his campaign slumps along, his Web site scoffed, "It's hardly surprising that a lawyer would think that the war on terror would be fought more effectively by lawyers than by the United States Marine Corps." How clever -- a barb as original as a Cindy McCain recipe.
In fact, it was not the Marines but FBI and ATF agents who tracked down the people responsible for the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center and brought them to justice. Then skilled lawyers from the Justice Department effectively prosecuted them and a jury convicted them. Ramzi Yousef, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and others are now serving life sentences in federal prisons. They are experiencing the most ignominious punishment for terrorists, denied martyrdom and relegated to rotting in obscurity.
The "Sept. 10 mind set" slur is laughable on so many levels. First consider the source. Scheunemann has been so wrong for so long on so many issues, he's a sure first ballot inductee into the Dick Cheney Hall of Infamous Error.
Before becoming McCain's national security snowball packer, Scheunemann was, among other things, a Republican staffer on Capitol Hill, a board member of the Project for a New American Century -- the group that demanded war with Iraq as far back as 1998 -- the president of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq that promoted war and helped funnel tens of millions of dollars to con man Ahmed Chalabi, the professional liar former New York Times reporter Judy Miller did stenography for, and an adviser on Iraq to former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, service that speaks for itself.
In the realm of "failures in judgment" and "misunderstanding the nature of our adversary" Scheunemann's record is sparkling. Only President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith rival him for being so consistently and catastrophically wrong. What was their "Sept. 10 mind set"? Bush went to bed earlier than usual, because the next day he was going to head to Florida to plug his No Child Left Behind gimmick to fix education. He certainly wasn't thinking or worrying about the dire warning he got the month before in a CIA briefing paper titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."
We know from Bob Woodward, Bush's loyal Boswell, that the president glibly told his CIA briefer who described what al-Qaeda was plotting on Aug. 6, 2001, "OK, you've covered your ass." Bush then went fishing.
There is not a shred of evidence the president did anything more about bin Laden's determination. Bush slept well on Sept. 10.
Cheney was supposed to be the administration's point person on the terrorist threat. In nine months, he presided at one meeting. Cheney spent considerably more time on energy issues.
His private taskforce included Enron executives, people from the big oil and coal companies, and not a soul even pretending to represent broad public interests. Cheney's mind set was to protect the powerful and exploit the powerless. On Sept. 10, he was still collecting residual payments from Halliburton, where he had been CEO. Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, was working on a speech she was going to give on Sept. 11 and thinking about the shoes she would wear. Although never delivered, for obvious reasons, the speech did not contain a single reference to the threat of a terrorist attack or bin Laden.
Rice had already demoted and isolated Richard Clarke, the national Security Council's expert on terrorism. He repeatedly warned Rice an attack was brewing, but she ignored his pleas to get the top decision-makers in the administration to address the threat.
Later Rice would claim, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane, a hijacked airplane, as a missile." In fact, there were specific warnings of that possibility. Rice was either unaware of the threat or lied.
At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his brain trust Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, were busy trying to streamline the military and promoting a experimental missile-defense shield as the most important way to protect U.S. security.
McCain wants national security to dominate the campaign, because polls show that's the only area where he has an edge over Obama. McCain, like Bush, insists that remaining in Iraq indefinitely is vital for national security. McCain is also following the Bush template that conflates the invasion and occupation of Iraq with the 9/11 attacks.
As the Republican pallbearers again roll out the coffin of the terrorism issue, the "Sept. 10 mind set," Obama should welcome the familiar corpse, say "Bring 'em on," and proceed to dance on their graves.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | June 24 2008 |