Be Careful What Education You Wish For

Today's edition of "could he really be that ignorant" comes courtesy of United States Representative Andrew Gabarino.  (The correct answer typically is "no.") Gabarino, a Republican from New York, here states "a lot of kids have now gone through college that were born after 9/11 and they may never have heard what actually happened that day."

The genius chatting with him responds "well, that's my question, too, we always say 'never again' but are we forgetting?" "Never again" refers to the Holocaust, in which approximately 2,000 times as many innocent people were murdered. But to some people, there is no world outside of the USA, so Gabarino complains "I won't let people forget and a lot of my colleagues won't. It's a bipartisan resolution, um, and it's something that we're going to keep passing until states start putting this in their curriculum."

is there really a single college graduate in the US who isn't familiar with 9/11? pic.twitter.com/YutPmAR8Tv

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 11, 2023

Hint: if an event is replaced with a date, it has become a thing. The attack on Pearl Harbor never became big enough in the public consciousness to become "12/7" but "9/11" allows this more recent event to live on forever as a cliche. And as the comments upon Gabarino's comment indicate, "9/11" is taught virtually every year in virtually every school in virtually every state.

It should be taught thoroughly and honestly.  Good luck with that if we won't be sufficiently honest to refer to it as "the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001."  However, in the unlikely event Will Bunch has his way, the short, medium-term, and long-term impact of those attacks will be remembered and taught.   While condemning the "banal evil" displayed on that day two decades prior, the Philadelphia Inquirer columnist on September 5, 2021 applauded "the killing  of bin Laden and the minimizing of at least the old, original al-Qaeda" and "an airport-security regime that's successfully prevented any hijackings for these two decades."  Nonetheless, the bombings of that day are

a reminder that America could have spent the last 20 years only doing what was necessary — shoring up our anti-terrorism regime on U.S. soil, and right-sizing our role in the world. Instead, our hubris — which was actually masking our inner fears — that America must respond to any threat to our daydreams of exceptionalism with massive force caused us to double down on military imperialism with tragic consequences, in a tortured odyssey that led us full circle to last month’s chaotic scenes at the Kabul airport.

If you're old enough, you remember those fearful, yet self-congratulatory, days and months following the attack during the Bush 43 Administration, in which we Americans were praised for "coming together as one."  Bunch recalls

Any national unity dissolved rapidly into fear and paranoia, which a cynical new government in Washington preferred to exploit rather than tamp down — the better to plant our flag in oil-rich lands abroad and silence any dissent here at home. Those bad tidings — and the conspiratorial mindset we embraced in the wake of 9/11 — would be turned against nations that had nothing to do with the attacks, against immigrants in general, against legitimate protest, and finally, inevitably, against one another. The era that started with the Islamic radicals who hijacked Flight 93 failing to reach the U.S. Capitol dome ended with American fanatics breaching its rotunda.

That outcome may have well been Osama bin Laden's wet dream. Optimistically- though probably not realistically- Bunch believes

Textbooks on political propaganda will, for centuries, study how everyday citizens’ righteous anger and fears over 9/11 were manipulated to win support for invading an oil-rich nation, in Iraq, that had nothing to do with the 2001 attack, and for spending $2.2 trillion and 20 years in Afghanistan on a mission that should have been measured in months. But perhaps even worse, in the long run, was the Cheney doctrine that America needed to project strength in the world by establishing a gulag archipelago of black prison sites where the inhumane dark art of torture was (counter-productively) practiced — its immoral center a concentration camp at Gitmo. It was only natural that this polar opposite of a “kinder, gentler America” would bleed into other areas.

It was able to do so not only because of the development of a massive national security bureaucracy but because, with nary a word from our "liberal media," it was labeled "homeland security." The term "homeland" was almost unknown until its use by officials of the Third Reich and fell into disuse until (perhaps not coincidentally) it was popularized by the the Palestinian Muslim movement in the 1970s to validate its dubious claims upon the Jewish state of Israel. In mid-September 2001, it was disastrously invoked to urge a muscular response to the perceived threat to the nation. Thirteen years later, the great Washington Post journalist Philip Bump noted

It's clear that there was something evocative about the term, combining a bit of military jargon with the idea in need of protection. This wasn't just America that was attacked, it was our homeland. We didn't simply need more security at our airports, we needed homeland defense....  On September 20th, (President George W) Bush addressed Congress and announced the Department of Homeland Security.

Four months after the attacks, the American Dialect Society held its annual vote for Word of the Year, focused on 2001. The group included "homeland" among its candidates. It lost to "9-11."

It was fashionable to repeat "America will never be the same again." Far less superficially, Bunch argues "America was never the same again after 9/11 because the new 'homeland-security state' inevitably criminalized immigration."  Moreover

America was never the same again after 9/11 because homeland security also became a buzzword for stifling political dissent in our own streets, especially as all the surplus military equipment created by our costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan found its way to urban and even small-town police departments, who policed protests with riot gear and mass arrests. When the Department of Homeland Security sent a federal military force in 2020 to Portland to battle anti-racism protesters, there was an aura of inevitability that the monster of 9/11 had been turned against our own citizens.

America was never the same again after 9/11 because the blatant lies that were told to U.S. citizens to invent the case for invading Iraq, easily swallowed by the mainstream media in a shameful moment of jingoistic cheerleading, created the petri dish of cynicism and distrust that allowed conspiracy theories to nurture and grow, first about 9/11 itself but eventually about matters as diverse as “the Big Lie” of the 2020 election or COVID-19 vaccines. The cable-TV news regime that grew in the wake of 9/11 often fueled misinformation instead of quelling it.

I'm not as sanguine as is Bunch that "textbooks on political propaganda will for centuries" explain how politicians, their allies, and the media manipulated the emotions of we the people into support for the expanded military-industrial complex, vast surveillance apparatus, and torture regime that  has gone insufficiently challenged the past couple of decades. Nonetheless, Representative Gabarino ought to be careful about advocating for (presumably) an expansion of emphasis in schools on the events of September 11, 2001. The information taught might actually be comprehensive and truthful, which would be unpleasant for those who would prefer history be viewed as never-ending confirmation of American Exceptionalism.

 

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The Myth of "America's Mayor"

It's the stuff of urban legend.

Adam Kinzinger compares the Capitol riot to Sept. 11th: "You think of Rudy Giuliani...America’s mayor after 9/11 that’s not only not caring about this really craziest attack since 9/11 to happen in this country, he's actually fueling it." pic.twitter.com/ovLh0epXFE

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) August 2, 2023

Sixteen years ago, Rudolph Giuliani, the media-designated "America's Mayor" hero of 9/11, was leading the pack in the race to be the Republican nominee for President. It was at that time that Kevin Baker, journalist and author of a trilogy of novels about New York City, spoke to Jon Weiner of The Nation. Weiner wrote

"Most of 9-11 was actually a debacle for the city government," Baker told me in an interview, and "Giuliani bears a great deal of the responsibility." The World Trade Center had been attacked in 1993, but Giuliani had "learned none of the lessons that could have been learned. There was no serious attempt to coordinate the radios between the police and fire departments, or even to insure that the fire department had its own communications that would work inside buildings." The consequences? "Probably hundreds of unnecessary deaths that day."

The second failure: Giuliani insisted on locating his emergency control center in the World Trade Center complex, even though that had been the target of the 1993 attack. "He did that against the advice of virtually all the security experts he consulted," Baker explained. "He put it on the twenty-third floor of a forty-seven-story building, World Trade Center Tower 7. It included an unprotected, 7,000-gallon fuel source on the seventh floor, a sort of a fuse to set the building off. When the building was hit by debris on 9/11, that did indeed bring the whole building down."

What if Giuliani he had been in his new command center on 9/11?

"He was within a few minutes of dying right there that day," Baker said. "Instead he ended up having to spend most of the 102 minutes between when the first plane hit and when the second tower came down simply walking around the area with staff members, looking for someplace to set up a new command center."

What should he have been doing?

"Other things badly needed to be done," Baker said. "Realizing there was no communicating with the firemen who were in these towers, maybe they could have set up a trail of runners or something to tell them they should get out of there, the towers are coming down. Nothing like that was done."

Giuliani told the 9/11 Commission that the firemen in the towers died because they refused orders to come out. He said they wanted to save lives of people trapped inside.

"That's a demonstrable lie," Baker told me. "The firemen in the buildings were simply waiting for orders. They never got the word. It's easy to second-guess people in such a traumatic event, and anybody could be forgiven for not making the right decisions in the middle of everything. But to go to Congress months later and lie about this — I find that despicable."

The workers at Ground Zero in the following months, we now know, were exposed to significant health hazards. How much of that is Giuliani's responsibility? "He made no real attempt to determine the safety of working there," Baker said. "That was also the responsibility of Christie Todd Whitman, was the EPA Administrator at the time."

So what did Giuliani do after 9/11?

"He very quickly took the disaster of 9/11 as a great opportunity," Baker told me. "He proposed that his term in office be extended to give him more time to deal with things, and he tried to put his mistress of the time, who later became his third wife, Judith Nathan, in charge of a fund set up to give money to survivors and victims' families. Right from the beginning he was trying to exploit this. The words he said on TV were wonderful, but they weren't backed up by any actions at all."

Unlike in his earlier days, Giuliani has in his old age become a crude, comical and criminal character, a worthy subject of alliteration.  But he was always- always- Rudy Giuliani.

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He Always Had It In Him

What happened to Rudy Giuliani is that (nearly) nothing happened to Rudy Giuliani.

Every time I see ads for CNN's "Giuliani: What Happened to America's Mayor," I think "He was never America's mayor and what happened is a whole lot of people only just realized it."

— Renée Graham 🏳️‍🌈 (@reneeygraham) January 2, 2023

In a 2006 review in The Los Angeles Times of "Grand Illusion: the untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11" by Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins, Kit R. Roane writes of a New York mayor whose "political statute was in a tailspin and whose private life was being rocked by illness and scandal."  Then on a beautiful Tuesday morning in early (meteorological) autumn, two planes were flown into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan by Islamic fundamentalists of Al Qaeda and, as understood by Barrett/Collins,  the myth of "America's Mayor" was born. 

Roane explains

Police officers and firefighters hardly communicated. With radios that didn’t operate between departments or work at all in steel high-rises, many firefighters didn’t get the final mayday call to evacuate the North Tower before it fell. Cut off from relevant information, emergency operators continued to tell victims in the tower to stay put even though top fire chiefs had called for a complete evacuation almost immediately after arriving on the scene.

Although terrorists eight years earlier had exploded a bomb beneath one of the towers

Barrett and Collins’ detailed research shows a mayor who utterly failed to grasp the importance of readying the city for another terrorist attack. Lou Anemone, the police department’s chief operating officer during much of Giuliani’s tenure, recalls trying to brief the mayor on a citywide terrorism security plan in 1998. “Rudy glazed over,” he said, adding: “We never had any discussion about security at the World Trade Center. We never even had a drill or exercise there.... There was just a lack of recognition of the problem at City Hall.”

The city's Director of Emergency Management promoted placing the city's command center in the World Trade Center complex, a recommendation implemented by Mayor Giuliani.

That decision ill-served the people of the City of New York, but was a political boon for Giuliani.  The command center collapsed in the attack and viewers nationwide (probably, worldwide) were treated to repeated video of the Mayor walking around the city and- owing to the impressive visuals- seemingly calm, confident, and  in charge.

Giuliani's lack of concern for security in his city contributed to the disastrous impact of the attack. However, the impression television, whose coverage of news understandably was consumed by  "9/11" for months, was of a mayor responding decisively, forcefully, and effectively to an unprecedented crisis which hit an American city and terrified the nation at-large.

The myth gradually gathered strength, as of a snowball rolling slowly down a mountain, for many years as the legend of "America's Mayor" was born, reinforced by the media, and rarely challenged.  If "Giuliani: What Happened to America's Mayor" is true to the title, Rudy Giuliani again will be portrayed as what he never was. A better show would be "CNN: What Happened to 'The Most Trusted Name in News'?"

 

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Disappeared History

All you need to know are two things. The first is that The Washington Post's Robin Givhan realizes

To be clear, Rudy Giuliani was never America’s mayor. That nickname was a bit of media gloss that was spread so thickly and indiscriminately that Giuliani had no trouble dining out on it for years. Many Americans lapped it up, too.

The second is that, despite condemning Giuliani's antics of the past four years, criticizing his overall performance as mayor, and recognizing the "America's Mayor" thing was "more marketing than fact," she believes

....for months after 9/11, he kept firm, reassuring and empathetic control of a city that was in an unimaginable crisis — and his sure hand helped to contain the rippling circles of fear and uncertainty that were spreading across the country. Giuliani was tested in ways that few mayors have ever been. He rose to the challenge, and for that he was rightfully admired.

Unless "rose" is synonym for "plummeted," that would be grievously inaccurate. The late, great investigative reporter Wayne Barrett in 2007 laid out "Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11."  Though Rudolph claimed New York City was better prepared for a terrorist attack than was the federal government or any other jurisdiction in the country

New York’s lack of unified command, as well as the breakdown of communications between the police and fire departments, fell far short of the efforts at the Pentagon that day, as later established by the 9/11 Commission and NIST reports. When the 280,000-member International Association of Fire Fighters recently released a powerful video assailing Giuliani for sticking firefighters with the same radios that “we knew didn’t work” in the 1993 attack, the presidential campaign attacked the union.....

The IAFF video reports that 121 firefighters in the north tower didn’t get out because they didn’t hear evacuation orders, rejecting Giuliani’s claim before the 9/11 Commission that the firefighters heard the orders and heroically decided to “stand their ground” and rescue civilians.

Even the 9/11 commission

concluded that the “technical failure of FDNY radios” was “a contributing factor,” though “not the primary cause,” of the “many firefighter fatalities in the North Tower.” The commission compared “the strength” of the NYPD and FDNY radios and said that the weaknesses of the FDNY radios “worked against successful communication”...

In addition, the commission concluded that fire chiefs failed to turn on the repeater correctly that morning—another indication of the lack of training and drills at the WTC between the attacks. In the end, firefighters had to rely exclusively on their radios, and the inability of the Giuliani administration to find a replacement for the radios that malfunctioned in 1993 left them unable to talk to each other, even about getting out of a tower on the verge of collapse.

The mayor had also done nothing to make the radios interoperable—which would have enabled the police and firefighters to communicate across departmental lines—despite having received a 1995 federal waiver granting the city the additional radio frequencies to make that possible. That meant the fire chiefs had no idea that police helicopters had anticipated the partial collapse of both towers long before they fell.

It’s not just the radios and the OEM: Giuliani never forced the police and fire departments to abide by clear command-and-control protocols that squarely put one service in charge of the other during specified emergencies. Though he collected $250 million in tax surcharges on phone use to improve the 911 system, he diverted this emergency funding for other uses, and the 911 dispatchers were an utter disaster that day, telling victims to stay where they were long after the fire chiefs had ordered an evacuation, which potentially sealed the fates of hundreds. And, despite the transparent lessons of 1993, Giuliani never established any protocols for rooftop or elevator rescues in high-rises, or even a strategy for bringing the impaired and injured out—all costly failings on 9/11.

Moreover, against expert advice Mayor Giuliani decided

to put his prized, $61 million emergency-command center in the World Trade Center, an obvious terrorist target. The 1997 decision had dire consequences on 9/11, when the city had to mobilize a response without any operational center.

No fooling- he decided to put the command center at ground zero for a likely terrorist attack because he could walk there. Ironically, that self-interested, tragic and deadly choice elevated Giuliani to the myth of "America's Mayor" because he was viewed across the country boldly walking through Manhattan and appearing to be in charge of a situation made dramatically worse because of his disastrous policy choices.

Rudy Giuliani is the Republican Party. His mayoralty was marked by racial insensitivity and an image elevated preposterously by smoke and mirrors. Now he is a buffoonish character, evidently a pathetic, lying thug.  The media response, predictably, is... how Rudy has changed! How sad that America's mayor has now become Donald Trump's henchman!

Similarly, we have to get ready for a resurrected image of the Republican Party. The mainstream media will promote the Joe Biden view of the GOP- fine men and women who, almost mesmerized, momentarily lost their head over Donald Trump.  It may forget that the Republican Party long ago adopted the values of Dixiecrats, plutocrats, and (more recently) theocrats.  We must remember that the GOP was fertile ground for Donald Trump, just as today's Rudy Giuliani is yesterday's Rudy Giuliani.

Noel has the most mellow rants I've ever heard 😊 https://t.co/w6cDUGGo65

— cosmic clau (@CosmicClau) November 25, 2020

 

                                              HAPPY THANKSGIVING 

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Pure Evil

If Dayid Dayen can put off talking about "Trumpian con artistry in tax planning" for a day, I can do no less. Forbes reported on September 12 that the (New York) Daily News (behind a paywall for me) had

revealed that the Trump administration has siphoned around $4 million from the New York City Fire Department’s fund for its September 11 first responders, drawing outrage on the 19th anniversary of the attacks, but the U.S. Treasury says the money was diverted because of “delinquent debt” owed by New York City to the federal government.

The funds are part of the FDNY World Trade Center Health Program, which was established by the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, a bill passed by Congress that provides healthcare to first responders who have suffered a range of illnesses from exposure to dust and smoke at Ground Zero.

And so it is striking that on September 25, CBS This Morning host Gayle King  remarked to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Tuesday is a big debate. The first debate between the two of them. Between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. You had earlier suggested that you didn’t think Biden should debate. Do you still feel that way?”

“I do,” replied Pelosi. “Not that I don’t think he’ll be excellent. The president has no fidelity to fact or truth, and actually in his comments the last few days, no fidelity to the Constitution of the United States. He and his henchmen are a danger with their comments, are a danger to our democracy. Why bother? He doesn’t tell the truth. He isn’t committed to the Constitution.”

“But Speaker Pelosi, that’s what people say is the problem,” said King. “Your language to some is just as egregious as what they’re saying by calling the president’s people ‘henchmen.’ Some could say that’s just as insulting as what he’s saying about you.”

 

Henchmen? Nancy Pelosi should be applaud for her discretion and diplomacy.  An applicable definition of "henchman" is "a political follower whose support is chiefly for personal advantage."

Of 248 Republicans in either the US House or US Senate, exactly one (1) voted for the impeachment and/or conviction of President Trump. Given our understanding that many of Trump's supporters recognize his threat to democracy but need his support to get through a GOP primary, to keep their cushy jobs, or for financial advantage, "henchmen" fits like a high-end glove.

A medical expert in infectious diseases calls the threat of funds from a fund to treat the living victims of a terrorist attack "pure evil,"  an apt description also of the President behind it all.  That is clear, whatever the bothsiderism from mainstream news anchors.

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Vulnerability

Co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee:

Can someone name something better than @IlhanMN dancing to @lizzo? Because I can’t think of anything. #CBC2019 #CBCWeek #cbcweekend pic.twitter.com/KvsCRvgKQX

— Adam Green (@AdamGreen) September 14, 2019

I can think of a few, perhaps beginning with campaign finance reform and re-regulation of the financial services industry, two of the things Green's organization advocates when its co-founder isn't falling in love with the idea of a congresswoman dancing.   I'd figuratively kill to be a salesman selling this guy a beautiful new car, at double the invoice price.

This gave comedian and conservative commentator Terrence K.Williams the opportunity to tweet out a video- showing footage of Omar dancing- with the comment "Girl, what in the world were you celebrating on the anniversary on 9/11?"

As vigilantfact-checker Daniel Dale pointed out, Omar and colleague Ayanna Presley (D-Ma) were enjoying themselves at an event, connected with the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Annual Legislative Conference, which actually occurred on September 13.

Williams took down the tweet but not before the nation's Liar-in-Chief re-tweeted him with the comment "IIhan Omar, a member of AOC Plus 3, will win us the Great State of Minnesota. The new face of the Democrat Party!" As of 3:20 p.m. eastern on Wednesday, Trump's tweet remained on his feed.

Defending Omar, even when she is gracelessly smeared, is not a road congenial to Democrats. However, there is no reason this incident can't be legitimately and justifiably turned back on Donald Trump, whose 9/11 career is vulnerable.

Campaigning in Alabama in November of 2015, candidate Trump boasted "I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering." Politifact rated that claim "pants on fire."

On the morning of September 11, 2001 itself, Trump bragged “40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan. Before the World Trade Center it was the tallest. Then when the built the World Trade Center it become known as the second-tallest, and now it’s the tallest.” The building did not sustain any damage in the attack but Trump still applied for, and received, federalrecovery money intended for small businesses.

It is not a joke, and not mere hyperbole or dishonesty. It takes someone thoroughly hostile not only to American Muslims, but to Americans of all backgrounds, and a kind of evil only Donald Trump and that giant in Dante's Inferno is capable of. This is an issue just begging for a campaign. When President Trump gives Democrats an opportunity, they should take advantage by turning lemons into lemonade, garbage into gold, and exposing him for what he is.

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Trump Knew What He Had In Barr

On Wednesday, two days before Robert Mueller gave Attorney General William Barr the report on collusion by Russia in the 2016 election cycle

President Donald Trump said he believes special counsel Robert Mueller’s report should be released to the public, even as he disparaged its very existence as “ridiculous.”

“Let it come out, let people see it,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “Let’s see whether or not it’s legit"...

Trump said he was personally looking forward to reading the findings, even as he scorned the fact that Mueller was empowered to write the report in the first place.

“I just won one of the greatest elections of all time in the history of this country. ... And now I have somebody writing a report that never got a vote?” Trump said. “It’s called the Mueller report. So explain that because my voters don’t get it. And I don’t get it.”

Now that Barr has given his spin on the Special Counsel's report, Trump has stated of its release "It's up to the Attorney General. It wouldn't bother me at all."

But don't be fooled (and if you're reading this blog, you rarely are).  Mary Ann MacLeod Trump may have raised a crook, sexual predator, and coward, but she didn't raise a fool.  In 2017, as a private attorney and former Bush 43 Attorney General, Mueller staunchly defended President Trump's decision to fire FBI director William Comey. The following year, he wrote that the Special Counsel's inquiry into obstruction of justice was "fatally flawed" and

Mueller should not be able to demand that the President submit to an interrogation about alleged obstruction. If embraced by the Department, this theory would have potentially disastrous implications, not just for the Presidency, but for the Executive branch as a whole and the Department in particular.

Cagey Trump knew what he was getting in William Barr. Thus, when Trump says he would not be bothered by release of the Mueller report, he does so with a nod and a wink.

The President knows there can be so many redactions that the report is blacked out to near irrelevance.  So it was with the eventual release of the "28 pages," previously classified, of the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into alleged Saudi involvement in the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks. The "pages" came out, but with more than 140 redactions and tens of thousands of documents still classified.

There is a reason 193 of the Republicans in the House of Representatives joined last week with their Democratic colleagues to call for release of the Special Counsel's report.  There is release, and there is release, and the likelihood that Trump's man at the Justice Department is going to allow the public to see all the evidence accumulated by Robert Mueller's team against Donald Trump's inner circle is minimal.

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If Not Now, When?

Two months ago, Representative Ro Khanna of California, who had introduced a resolution to end this country's involvement in the war Saudi Arabia is conducting against the Houthis in Yemen, explained

President Obama never obtained congressional authorization for active US involvement in this war. His administration made a unilateral decision in 2015 to engage in these hostilities to reassure the Gulf monarchies of the US strategic alliance in light of the Iran nuclear deal, which was signed that year, though administration officials did not anticipate the scale of the Saudi atrocities. Now, under President Trump—whose shadowy campaign ties with the Saudis and Emiratis are only now emerging—these countries have felt emboldened to intensify the conflict. American military participation has even expanded to include secretive on-the-ground operations by Army Green Berets.

The war began in 2014, but The New York Times now has reported

An airstrike from the Saudi-led coalition struck a school bus in northern Yemen on Thursday and killed dozens of people, many of them children, local medical officials and international aid groups said.

The attack sent a flood of victims to overwhelmed hospitals struggling to cope in what the United Nations considers one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

The coalition said it had hit missile launchers and called the attack a “legitimate military operation,” but the attack and the justification for it were condemned and drew new attention to the tremendous human toll of the war in Yemen, especially on children.

The Times adds "much of Yemen, which was already the Arab world’s poorest country, has been plunged into crisis, with poverty, malnutrition and diseases like cholera spreading."

In the year since he took over as Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman has both taken steps to modify the Kingdom and to increase repression of dissidents.  Additionally, according to CNN, he "has also taken a hard line abroad, instigating a bruising blockade of its tiny neighbor Qatar, picking fights with regional rival Iran, and prosecuting a costly war to oust rebels from Yemen."

This week, after mild criticism by Canada of Riyahd's human rights record

the Saudi government has responded with a steady string of retaliatory measures, expelling the Canadian ambassador from Riyadh and recalling the Saudi envoy to Ottawa, suspending Saudi state airline flights to Toronto, and ending thousands of Saudi scholarship programs in Canada.

Then on Tuesday, Saudi authorities announced they would halt all medical treatment programs in Canada and transfer Saudi patients to hospitals outside the country.

The Saudi foreign minister said "Canada has made a mistake and needs to fix it."

The kingdom also said it plans to freeze future trade relations between the two countries.

This "mistake" could be easily fixed.  The United States should immediately withdraw support from the coalition murdering civilians in Yemen.

It could, but it won't. The Saudis believe the Houthis are fighting a proxy war for Iran, and the Trump Administration has an obsession with Iran rivaling that of the federal government with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

Noting that some Middle Eastern countries have supported Saudi Arabia while Europe has said little on behalf of Canada, a fellow at a London-based think tank lamented "it's a little bit disappointing that no one feels they're in a position to come out and support the Canadians on issues that just a few years ago they probably would have a lot more vocal on."

This dispute calls for leadership from the West. That leadership once was supplied by the USA, but the era of this nation as the leader of the free world has been erased by President Trump. 

For a long time, even after Riyadh-financed charities probably were involved in the attacks of 9/11/01 (in which 18 of the hijackers, plus Osama bin Laden, were Saudi nationals; video below from 4/16), there was an understanding that we should not mess with Saudi Arabia because of the need for Mideast oil. But the economics of energy have changed drastically since that time, and it's time for the USA, on behalf of Houthis, Canadians, and others, finally to say "no" to Riyadh.

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Retreat!

In the days since I last posted, the country has moved on: a presidential speech in the heart of Wahabbist Saudi Arabia, presumed terrorist attack in England, a lover's spat between the House Speaker and the President, and the President reportedly urging the DNI and the director of the NSA to deny collusion with Russia in the 2016 election. Additionally, Politico reports

Bloomberg’s Margaret Talev asked the prime minister whether he had any concerns about intelligence cooperation with the U.S., according to the White House press pool.

“The intelligence cooperation is terrific,” Netanyahu told reporters. Trump paused for a moment and halted the press from leaving the room. “Hey, folks,” he said. “Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name ‘Israel.’ Never mentioned it during that conversation.

He looked toward Netanyahu as he gestured toward the pack of reporters. “They were all saying I did,” the president said. “So you had another story wrong. Never mentioned the word ‘Israel.’”

It wasn't much of a secret at that point and was largely an unnecessary whine from a guy who has almost raised whining to an art form. But it was yet another example of Donald Trump doing what the cowardly specialize in: playing to his audience.

The National Review's Andrew McCartthy laments that in Riyadh

As prepared, the text had the president calling for “honestly confronting the crisis of Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires” (emphasis added). But when he actually delivered his remarks, Trump departed from the script, speaking instead of “honestly confronting the crisis of Islamic extremism and the Islamists and Islamic terror of all kinds.”

Trump's aides later insisted that the President had confused the terms "Islamist"- favored by doves- and the more confrontational "Islamic" even though, as The Hill explains

The expression “radical Islamic terrorism" became a centerpiece for Trump’s presidential campaign, with the business magnate claiming the term was a pivotal point in addressing modern threats.

Trump repeatedly criticized the Obama administration and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent for president, for not using the phrase when talking about the fight against terrorist threats.

“I am going to keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country,” Trump said at a rally in Ocala, Fla., in October, adding that Clinton “won’t even use the term."

During the campaign, Trump gave his supportive, even rapturous, crowds the red meat they had come for.

But now his tune- at least in front of the Saudis- has changed.  "In addition to ancient wonders," the President commented, "the magnificent kingdom of Saudi Arabia "is also home to modern ones—including soaring achievements in architecture." He saluted the new Terrorist Financing Targeting Center "co-chaired by the United States and Saudi Arabia," and argued "Saudi Arabia’s Vision for 2030 is an important and encouraging statement of tolerance, respect, empowering women, and economic development."





The speech marked approval by the Administration of the sale of $110 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia, promulgated as Riyadh continues to slaughter civilians in Yemen.  An advocate of  "religious freedom" domestically, the President chose not to acknowledge that Islam is the official religion of Saudi Arabia and no other religion may be practiced publicly.  Those scimitars wielded by Saudis and Donald Trump demonstrating the traditional sword dance are the Kingdom's weapons of choice for execution for crimes ranging from blasphemy to murder.  Public  display of  crosses, Bibles, and other non-Islamic religious articles is banned and participants in religious worship outside of Islam may find themselves imprisoned. Freedom!

The speech in Riyadh displayed Donald J. Trump at his pandering best, the most inauthentic President ever revered for his authenticity.  Trump yearns for approval of his audience and bearing the strength of no convictions, backs down routinely.  It's why he choked before President Nieto of Mexico, why James Comey found out only from television that he had been fired, and why he touted the "shared interests and values" with the nation deeply involved in the greatest terrorist attack in American history.





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Jebberish

Think Progress' Judd Legum swears George W. Bush was sworn in as President of the United States on January 20, 2001.  "Contemporaneous reports," he argues, "suggest that America’s arcane election rules and a favorable Supreme Court ruling handed the election to Bush, even though he lacked popular support."

Legum even displays a 2001 calendar (below) which indicates that early September of 2001 came about some 7-8 months after Bush allegedly took the oath of office (photo below) in Washington, D.C. that January.  Additionally, he contends, there is evidence that Mr. Bush during that period routinely received the Presidential Daily Brief, which in one case was titled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S."  "Taking into account all the evidence," he contends,"it seems more likely than not that George W. Bush was president on September 11, 2001."

It shouldn't be necessary to explain all that. But it is if you're the guy Florida voters were daft enough to have elected their chief executive in November, 1999 and re-elected four years later.  At the second presidential debate, following criticism of President George W. Bush by Donald Trump, John Ellis Bush responded "You know what? As it relates to my brother, there is one thing I know for sure, he kept us safe."

There is, as was pointed out afterward, that slight complication of "9/11."  The younger Bush, attempting to follow the footsteps of the President who thought that PDB was no big deal ("All right. You've covered your ass, now"), may not fully comprehend the enormity of the terrorist attack which killed north of 2900 Americans. However, he should remember "9/11," which has become part of the American lexicon. (Perhaps he thinks it is a competitor of 7-11, but two hours later.)

Last Friday, Donald Trump- without even having read Legum's piece- made the outrageous claim "When you talk about George Bush — I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time.  Blame him or don’t blame him, but he was president. The World Trade Center came down during his reign.” He added "I’m not blaming George Bush. But I don’t want Jeb Bush to say, ‘My brother kept us safe,’ because September 11th was one of the worst days in the history of this country."

On Monday, Trump went a little further, maintaining 

They knew an attack was coming.  George Tenet, the CIA director, knew there would be an attack, and he said so to the president and said so to everybody else that would listen....

The FBI, the NSA and the CIA weren’t talking to each other.  They weren’t talking because they didn’t like each other. They had a lot of problems getting along — and that’s leadership. You know, you have to get your three main agencies to talk to each other.

Nero-like, George W. Bush fiddled while Rome burned- or, rather, cut down brush at his ranch while he knew a major terrorist attack was likely to be launched against the nation he had been almost elected to lead.   Nonetheless,  brother John wrote "In the latest episode of the reality show that is Donald Trump’s campaign, he has blamed my brother for the 9/11 terrorist attacks on our nation. That Trump echoes the attacks of Michael Moore and the fringe Left against my brother is yet another example of his dangerous views on national-security issues."

Oh, he is so losing this fight, as well as the nomination he thought he was entitled to. It is, though, too easy merely to criticize Mr. Bush because he ignores the most deadly terrorist attack ever upon the country. Unfortunately, if John had limited support of his brother to the notion of having kept the USA safe following the attack of September, 2001, he might have gotten a pass, unjustifiably, from the media and even the leading GOP presidential contender.  On All In with Chris Hayes Friday, Josh Barro explained

And I think what Jeb means when he says he kept us safe, I think it`s related to the sort of deranged approach that a lot of Americans on all parts of the political spectrum have had to terrorism in the wake of September 11th, which is there came this idea that terrorism is common and is a leading source of mortal threat to Americans. 

And the fact that we have not had another major terrorist attack since September 11th is therefore a demonstration of extraordinary effort by the government to prevent such attacks. 

In fact, attacks like this are extremely rare. It was not a normal thing there would be an attack like this and the fact that there was not another attack like that during his presidency or during President Obama`s presidency is not a demonstration that something materially changed in how good we were preventing these things. 

But a lot of people do think that. They think it was extraordinary that there were no further similar terrorist attacks on American soil.

So maybe we should be grateful that John Ellis Bush, ignorant of recent American history, overprotective of big brother, or flat-out lying, went overboard in defending Bush 43. Ultimately, he has a right to read history. He has a right to interpret history or even to erase it from memory. But he has no right to re-write history, even if he is from the House of Bush.






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Saudi Straglehold

This is the first time ever that I agree with National Review editor Rich Lowry and Reza Aslan (who seem to agree with three former or current members of Congress.) It will be the last time ever. And it might be the last time ever I agree with either one of them.

Aslan would not enjoy Lowry's "Of Course It Is Islam," appearing in Politico Magazine. But there is an odd convergence in one of Lowry's statements and one of the Aslan's major themes.

Lowry believes "the point is that there is a broad war of ideas within Islam between the forces of reaction and violence and the forces of moderation and modernity."  In response, he argues

Perhaps the administration’s highest-profile initiative in response to Paris is a Summit on (what else?) Countering Violent Extremists. It seeks “to prevent violent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting, or inspiring groups in the United States and abroad to commit acts of violence.”

Who are these violent extremists with such magnetic pull and global reach? They could be anybody, to believe the administration. It is certainly true that you will always have random haters and nuts, including Christian nuts like the evil Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik. And it is certainly true that there are a few non-Islamic groups on the State Department terrorism list.

But they aren’t top of mind, and for good reason. The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo isn’t launching many attacks on the West. Basque terrorists aren’t recruiting would-be operatives around the world to come back to Spain and learn how to make bombs for spectacular attacks overseas (in fact, the ETA has declared a cease-fire).

This, and Lowry's reminder "On the ground, Muslim popular sentiment often is, at the very least, inconsistent with modernity," lands him on the solid ground occupied by Bill Maher, and abhorred by Aslan. But Lowry adds "Saudi Arabia, the Sunni counterpart of Shia Iran that also imagines itself the keeper of the faith, promotes a harsh version of Islam that has proved a potent breeding ground for terrorism. Are the Saudis not Muslim, either?"

A critic of Christianity who usually doubles as a Muslim apologist, Aslan nonetheless also questions the Wahabbi state, noting Sunday on Meet the Press

There’s no question that there has been a virus that has spread throughout the Muslim world, a virus of ultra-orthodox puritanism.  But there’s also no question what the source of this virus is — whether we’re talking about Boko Haram, or ISIS, or al Qaeda, or the Taliban.

All of them have as their source Wahhabism, or the state religion of Saudi Arabia. And as we all know, Saudi Arabia has spent over $100 billion in the past 20 or 30 years spreading this ideology throughout the world.

And there are very real consequences of Saudi behavior.  At a news conference (video and excerpts below from 28pages.org) in Washington on January 7, Representatives Walter Jones (R-NC) and Steven Lynch (D-Mass) appeared at a news conference to announce introduction of their resolution (introduced also in the previous Congress) to declassify the 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry into the Terrorist Attacks of September, 2001. They were joined by Bob Graham, then a Senator from Florida and member of the committee.

Co-chairpersons Graham and Richard Shelby (R-Ga) in December 2002 released the report to the White House for final review. Six months later, Graham noted at the news conference, the declassified version was released and "we were shocked to see that an important chapter in the report had not been redacted, that is, as Congressman Lynch and Congressman Jones said, a word or a phrase here or there, but an entire chapter."

Danger to national security is the excuse given for redacting the 28 pages. But, Graham continued (emphasis his), "As the two Congressmen have just said, they both read the report — not 12 years ago, as I participated in writing the report — but they have read it recently, and have both come to the same conclusion that we did, a dozen years ago, that there is no threat to national security in disclosure."

The Florida Democrat explained

The Saudis know what they did. They are not persons who are unaware of the consequences of their government’s actions. Second, the Saudis know that weknow what they did! Somebody in the Federal government has read these 28 pages, someone in the Federal government has read all the other documents that have been covered up so far. And the Saudis know that.

What would you think the Saudis’ position would be, if they knew what they had done, they knew that the United States knew what they had done, and they also observed that the United States had taken a position of either passivity, or actual hostility to letting those facts be known? What would the Saudi government do in that circumstance, which is precisely where they have been, for more than a decade?

Well, one, they have continued, maybe accelerated their support for one of the most extreme forms of Islam, Wahhabism, throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East. And second, they have supported their religious fervor, with financial and other forms of support, of the institutions which were going to carry out those extreme forms of Islam. 

The Obama Administration  in September launched against the Islamic State in the Levant an offensive which, though righteous in motive and aim, was concerning given the possibility it was a diversion and hence unlikely to achieve its objectives.   The institutions of which Graham spoke on January 7,  he noted, "have included mosques, madrassas, and military. Al-Qaeda was a creature of Saudi Arabia; the regional groups such as al-Shabaab have been largely creatures of Saudi Arabia; and now, ISIS is the latest creature!"

The ex-Senator spoke for many people, but apparently few inside the Beltway, when he argued

Yes, I hope and I trust that the United States will crush ISIS, but if we think that is the definition of victory, we are being very naive! ISIS is a consequence, not a cause—it is a consequence of the spread of extremism, largely by Saudi Arabia, and if it is crushed, there will be another institution established, financed, supported, to carry on the cause.

The regime in Riyadh is not chastened. The Guardian reports

Raif Badawi, the Saudi liberal convicted of publishing a blog, has been told he will again be flogged 50 times on Friday – the second part of his 1,000-lash sentence which also includes a 10-year jail term.

The US, Britain and other western governments had all called for the punishment to be dropped but there has been no sign of any diplomatic action against Riyadh.Amnesty International on Wednesday urged the UK government to challenge Saudi Arabia, which has ignored all protests over the case.

Badawi will be given 50 more lashes outside a mosque in his home city of Jeddah unless a Saudi prison doctor determines he is not yet fit to face the punishmentowing to injuries sustained last Friday. If nothing changes, he will be flogged every Friday for the next 19 weeks.

Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haidar, who is now in Canada, has said she fears he may not be able to physically withstand a second round. “Raif told me he is in a lot of pain after his flogging, his health is poor,” she told Amnesty. “I told our children about the news last week so that they would not find out about it from friends at school. It is a huge shock for them. International pressure is crucial; I believe if we keep up the support it will eventually pay off.”

The first floggings attracted huge attention and anger because they followed the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris and intense discussion of the freedom of expression and Muslim sensitivities about portraying the prophet Muhammad. Saudi Arabia publicly condemned the killings.

British ministers “rightly celebrate free speech in Paris or in London but suddenly seem to lose their own power of utterance when it comes to forthrightly and publicly condemning the authorities in Riyadh,” said Kate Allen, Amnesty International’s UK director. “Why do ministers keep wearing the Saudi muzzle? It seriously weakens the UK’s credibility if it’s seen to tone everything down when it comes to oil-rich Saudi Arabia.”

A Saudi analyst, in light of the murders of the Charlie Hebdo journalists, told the Guardian, "it's not good PR for the kingdom." Yet, it may matter little, because it's not only the United Kingdom, but also the world's greatest- and arguably, sole- superpower, the United States, which are shielding the Saudis.

USA administrations come, and they go. But the last two have in common one major foreign policy objective, to protect the regime which Rich Lowry, Reza Aslan, Bob Graham, Walter Jones, Stephen Lynch and too few others recognize as an extremely powerful obstacle to stopping the spread of terrorism worldwide.










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Mr. President, Tear Down This Wall Of Classification!

"Mr. President, I call you a liar."

That was Matthew T. Sellito (below), father of one of the victims of the 9/11/01 terrorist bombings, at a news conference in September, 2014.  Mr. Sellito was referring not to the assurance allegedly given to Ronald Breitweiser, whose husband perished that day, nor to Bill Doyle, whose son also went down with the World Trade Center, by President Obama that he would release the document.

Sellito states the President "tells us," in the former's words, "there's a security risk" but that former Representative Lee Hamilton (D-Ind) and former Governor Tom Kean (R-NJ), chairpersons of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Against the United States, have told Sellito there is no reason not to release the 28 classified pages of the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (permanent, yet select; sounds a little like "compassionate conservatism").

There is no- and never will be- a way to determine whether there is something in those pages whose release would constitute  in some way or to some extent a security threat.  It would appear, however, that the President has at least signaled a willingness to release the pages, redacted by then-President George W. Bush.

Bob Graham, then a great Senator from Florida, and now described by 28pages.org as "the most prominent voice outside government fighting for declassification of the 28 pages," will be holding on January 7 in Washington a news conference advocating release. While revealing scant details, Graham long has confirmed (as have Lynch and Jones, who have read the report) that the 28 pages pertain to involvement of the Saudi government in the attacks.

The Floridian will be joined as host by U.S. Representative Walter Jones (R-NC) and Representative Stephen Lynch (D-MA), who will be introducing in the 114th Congress a non-binding resolution (originally introduced into the 113th Congress in 2013 and endorsed by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, below), with an equal number of Republican and Democratic co-sponsors, calling on the President to release the 28 pages.  Not joining them will be Secretary of State Kerry, former Secretary of State Clinton, and Vice-President Biden, who have remained silent, though they were among the 46 members of the upper chamber who wrote then-President Bush in 2003 urging declassification.







Of the 46 Senators, 44 were Democrats, one Independent Jim Jeffords of Vermont, and the other Republican Sam Brownback (then a senator from Kansas and now a disastrous governor).

One could write that off as mere partisanship on behalf of the Democratic Party. One could, but one would be wrong.  There never has been sufficient reason to keep this information from the American people. There was little reason, additionally, for the House Intelligence Committee- on a party-line vote of 8 to 4- to deny access of the controversial portion to Democratic Representative Alan Grayson of Florida.

Kudos to the Republicans who want to hold Barack Obama's feet to the fire. But the Repubs on the House Intelligence Committee- who otherwise would have effected release (from Grayson) of the pages- are covering also for Barack Obama's immediate predecessor.  But so is Barack Obama, member with both GW Bush and GHWB of  the extremely elite club of ex-Presidents of the United States of America.   At best, declassification will remind the public of the death of nearly 3,000 Americans while George W. Bush dithered. At worst, it will reveal the Bush family deeply involved with the Saudi royal family. Most likely, it would be something in between.

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark," declared Shakespeare's Marcellus.  Now, something is  rotten in the state of the United States of America and only public pressure will root it out at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.





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Terrorism Politics, GOP-Style

Talking Points Memo has a rundown on GOP opposition to Cordoba House, a mosque and community center which would be housed in an existing 13-story building two blocks from Ground Zero (and out of its sight) in New York City, NY.

* Newt Gingrich, from his website: "There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.... The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over."

* Sarah Palin, from one of her tweets on the subject: "Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing."

* Peter King, representing neighboring Queens and Long Island and the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee: "It's a house of worship, but we are at war with al-Qaeda," King said. "I think the 9/11 families have a right to know where the funding comes from; I think there are significant questions."

* Carl Paladino, Republican primary candidate for governor of New York: "....the Islamic fundamentalists are Fascists - women have limited rights, there is no free speech or freedom of expression, and citizens are subject to the often barbaric Sharia Law. I oppose a mosque near the site of Ground Zero, not because of race, but because of the ideology of the Islamic fundamentalists."

* Rick Lazio, Republican primary candidate for governor of New York, challenging presumptive Democratic nominee Cuomo to a debate on the sole topic of the center: "You have called those of us who oppose building this mosque racists and bigots. You should be ashamed of yourself. To get real answers I suggest that we debate this issue in an open forum to be covered by the news media. Your position on this issue is so wrong and I recognize you may not want to defend it but all the same I am asking you to do just that."

* Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor: "....it not only is exactly the wrong place, at Ground Zero, but it is a mosque supported by an imam who has a record of support for causes that were sympathetic with terrorism."

* Bernie Kerik, former New York City police commissioner, Giuliani friend, and current prison inmate, by tweet: "If we let them defile ground zero with a beachhead for sharia we will validate their sense of victory on 9/11 and encourage future attacks on America. No mosque at Ground Zero."

It's tempting to agree with these guys, or at least take them seriously. They are guided, no doubt, by the special connection Americans have ("NYPD" hats and shirts, "first responders," etc.) with the site of the worst terrorist attack in American history.

Or are they? TPM reports that an Islamic community center planned for Murfreesboro, Tennessee has been criticized by Tennessee's Republican Lieutenant Governor, who states "now, you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, cult whatever you want to call it;" and by the campaign manager of a GOP congressional primary candidate, who contends "Here's what we're seeing. We're seeing it as -- this isn't a mosque. They're building an Islamic center to teach Sharia law." (Murfreesboro is 754 miles from Manhattan, NY.)

On Fox News yesterday, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), engaging in a shouting match (video below) with Peter King, called the GOP out for its politics of convenience. It seems twelve- 12- Republican member (including King) of the United States House of Representatives saw fit to vote for HR 847, the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. This, DailyKos explains, "would have provided up to $7.4 billion in aid to the survivors of 9/11, including all the first responders who breathed in all manner of toxins in the aftermath of the attacks." Twelve Republicans. In the Fox News interview that gave rise to the video, Rep. King is seen as criticizing the process used to bring the measure to a vote and claiming that Democrats should have been able to pass a bill because they constitute the majority in the House. But allow Rep. Michael E. McMahon (D-NY) to explain why a bill which gained support of 94% of Democrats and 7% of Republicans did not pass (215-158):

It is customary practice in the US House of Representatives to bring non-controversial votes on the suspension calendar, as opposed to be regular order. On a suspension vote, 2/3 of those present are needed for a vote to pass; on regular order, a simple majority is needed.

However, with HR 847, the path to passage was far less certain. Under regular order, House Republicans planned to bring a Motion to Recommit that would serve to kill the bill. Because Republicans refused to agree that they would not bring such a Motion that would be a “poison pill” for the effort, House leadership decided to move the bill on the suspension calendar as a first step to pass this critical legislation.

Of course, Republicans wanted to kill a bill for health benefits for survivors of the 9/11/01 attacks. If "9/11" can be used as a mere prop by Rudy Giuliani (video way below), there is little reason Republicans would care about aiding families of those who gave their lives in the disaster the GOP continues to use for political gain.

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Incredibly, Not A Joke

Nina Easton of Fortune Magazine recently interviewed Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor, then Secretary of State, in the GW Bush administration, at the close of that magazine's Most Powerful Women Summit. Inferring that Rice, with her "eloquent and elegant figure," would be a formidable contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Easton gushed

As Bush's national security adviser at the launch of the Iraq War, she will never appeal to hardcore Democrats. But to those millions of independents and soft Republicans who pulled Obama over the top in last year's election -- a familiar brand of voter at this Fortune gathering -- Rice has allure.

At the end of our interview, as I stood to shake Rice's hand, I glanced over my shoulder at this audience of women-CEO's and senior business and government leaders, media opinion-makers and entertainment stars, ground-breaking academics and committed philanthropists. It was an audience I knew, first-hand, viewed the Bush administration with doubts and, in some cases, outright hostility. So what I saw was telling.

Every single woman in that San Diego hotel ballroom was on her feet-giving Condi Rice a standing ovation.

This couldn't be the same Condoleezza Rice who told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on September 8, 2002

We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon. And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought -- maybe six months from a crude nuclear device. The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

This couldn't be the same Condoleezza Rice who pretended, testifying before the 9/11 Commission, that she was unaware that the Iraqi regime had destroyed its cache of biological and chemical weapons.

This couldn't be the same Condoleezza Rice who skillfully ignored warnings about the threat of terrorism, according to the New York Time's Phillip Shenon, author of THE COMMISSION: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Commission, who observed

Whatever her job title, Rice seemed uninterested in actually advising the president. Instead, she wanted to be his closest confidante — specifically on foreign policy — and to simply translate his words into action.

No one ever alleged that Miss Rice's area of expertise is economic policy. Or trade policy. Or health care policy. Or anything but foreign policy (Russian studies, specifically). Nonetheless, nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in September of 2001 at the World Trade Center. Far more than that now have been killed in a war (Iraq) that shouldn't have been launced and in a war (Afghanistan) which was thoroughly bungled by the administration she served as Director of the National Security Council and as Secretary of State. She was, and remains, a complete failure, as well as someone with nary an acquaintance with the truth. And any suggestion that she would be a legitimate candidate for a major party's nomination for President of the United States is, really, fairly disgusting.