California Conservative

It seems like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid take turns issuing a weekly memo saying that “America isn’t as safe as it could be”, citing need to pass the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations into law. Today must’ve been Pelosi’s turn. Let me fisk Ms. Pelosi’s statement to point out the flaws in it.

I was pleased to be part of nominating him to be a member on the Commission. It was appropriate because he was the author of the legislation to form the 9/11 bipartisan independent commission. It was resisted by the White House and now the recommendations of the commission are resisted by the White House.

Serious people who actually followed the hearings don’t worship at the altar of the 9/11 Commission. Quite the opposite, actually. Let’s start with their composition.

Naming Jamie Gorelick as a commissioner instead of calling her as a witness was Nancy Pelosi’s way of preventing her from testifying on the ‘Gorelick Wall’, which is the main cause of 9/11. It was the Gorelick Wall that prevented the Able Danger crew from telling the FBI about Mohammed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi, Khalid Almihdhar, and Nawaf Alhazmi.

Let’s next look at Richard ben Veniste. His role was essentially to discredit anything negative that was said about the Clinton Administration. It isn’t anything more complicated than that. For instance, he badgered Dr. Rice every opportunity he got. His method of questioning Dr. Rice was to make a long statement, then asking Dr. Rice a very narrowly focused question designed to get the response he wanted. If you’re conducting an investigation, the proper method is to alternate between open-ended questions, followed by narrowly focused question designed to clarify prior information. Ben Veniste acted like a prosecutor, looking constantly to get Dr. Rice to admit ‘guilt’ of not doing enough to prevent 9/11. In short, ben Veniste was a political hack.

Next let’s look at the first recommendations of the Commission:

Certainly the strategy should include offensive operations to counter terrorism. Terrorists should no longer find safe haven where their organizations can grow and flourish. America’s strategy should be a coalition strategy, that includes Muslim nations as partners in its development and implementation.

If Ms. Pelosi wants to obey the recommendations, then it’s important that she openly support the military’s mission to eliminate Iraq as a terrorist safe haven. I don’t see how Ms. Pelosi can look at Iraq and not see a safe haven for terrorists. It housed Achille Lauro hijacker Abu Abbas as well as AQ in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Certainly Ms. Pelosi knows about Salman Pak, described by GlobalSecurity.org as “a highly secret terrorist training facility…where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations.”

Is Ms. Pelosi willing to accept all of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations or just the ones she likes? If she isn’t willing to accept all of the Commission’s recommendations, why isn’t she? She shouldn’t be able to pick and choose without answering why she’s for some recommendations and opposed to other recommendations.

“Democrats are calling for a New Direction. We take very seriously our responsibility to protect the American people.”

Ms. Pelosi, if you take your responsibility so seriously, why did you even consider letting the Patriot Act lapse? If you’re so serious about protecting us from future terrorist attacks, then the overwhelming majority of House Democrats should’ve voted to pass the Patriot Act the first chance they got.

If Democrats were so serious about preventing future terrorist attacks, why did Harry Reid brag about killing the Patriot Act? Why did Russ Feingold say that filibustering the Patriot Act renewal “was a great moment for our Constitution and our democracy and a great moment in the fight against terrorism”?

Forgive me if I don’t agree that you “take very seriously” your “responsibility to protect the American people.”

Five years after 9/11, we still do not have 100 percent screening at our ports…

And we never will because it’s a poor use of our homeland security budget. When was the last time terrorists tried smuggling something into the US via the ports? When was the last time terrorists tried getting the things they needed right here in the U.S.?

“Democrats believe that a new direction for America is needed to protect the American people.”

That line should scare the daylights out of everyone in America. Five years after 9/11 and we’ve tharted numerous terrorist plots using the tools that the Bush Administration put in place. We’ve put terrorists on the run. We’ve intercepted their communications. We’ve frozen terrorists’ assets. We’ve prosecuted would be terrorists. We’ve gathered intelligence from captured AQ masterminds, intelligence that led to capturing other AQ operatives.

In short, the Bush Administration has done a ton of things right. They just haven’t accepted the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations in their entirety. The bottom line is that we haven’t had another terrorist attack since 9/11, even though they’ve tried.

You can’t do better than that.

Technorati: 9/11 Commission, Able Danger, Patriot Act, Gorelick Wall

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 6th, 2006 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Elections, Homeland Security, Pelosi, Terrorism, W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.