Posted on 07/27/2004 4:49:40 AM PDT by Liz
We've all had experience with the office Oscar Madison. Yet notwithstanding Bill Clinton's transparently insincere effort last week to laugh off the docs-in-socks scandal as a testament to Sandy Berger's sloppy ways--that Sandy!--the precision with which the former National Security Adviser zeroed in on one specific document in the National Archives suggests focus, not absentmindedness.
Which raises the obvious question: What was in that document that Mr. Berger so badly wanted to keep under his hat, er, trousers? The only way to answer that question is for the Justice Department to release it.
The 9/11 Commission report offers a tease. It records Mr. Berger's objections to at least four proposed attacks on al Qaeda between 1998 and 2000. A footnote on page 500 puts it this way: "In the margin next to Clarke's suggestion to attack al Qaeda facilities in the week before January 1, 2000, Berger wrote 'no.' "
The Clarke in that footnote, of course, is Richard Clarke.
--SNIP--
On Sunday, Commission Chairman Tom Kean said that Mr. Berger's padded hosiery did not affect the Commission's final report. Mr. Kean says he believes Commissioners had all the documents. The problem is this: He has no way of knowing for certain what he might not have seen. Remember, it was Mr. Berger who was assigned the task of selecting which documents--and which drafts of which documents with which marginal notations--to send up on behalf of the Clinton Administration.
Experience tells us that tiny differences in drafts can be critical. After all, the Iran-Contra case exploded when then-Assistant Attorney General Brad Reynolds discovered a paragraph in one draft of an Ollie North memo on diverting funds to the Contras.
--SNIP--
While this might mean nothing to Mr. Kean, surely it has some implications for voters in this election. The Bush Administration has been taking knocks for not having made al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden the priority Mr. Berger said it was during the Clinton years. Yet neither Attorney General Ashcroft nor National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice even saw this Clarke report until after the 9/11 terrorists had struck.
Perhaps if they had, America would have been on a more aggressive footing earlier on. At the least, releasing the Clarke after-action report now would provide better context for weighing such ongoing political accusations as the charge that the Bush Administration's concern about Iraq was simply a fantasy of a "neoconservative" cabal.
--SNIP--
The entire justification for the highly contentious exercise known as the 9/11 Commission has been to provide Americans with a full accounting of that terrible day, let the chips fall where they may. Now we learn that Mr. Berger wanted to keep some of those chips hidden. Whatever Mr. Berger's legal liabilities, the largest interest here is less what he did than why a sophisticated ex-National Security Adviser would do it. And for that we need to see what he was hiding.
RESPOND TO THIS ARTICLE (link at web site)
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
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The media is doing a news blackout about Sandy Berger.
All the President's Memos; Let's all see what Sandy Berger was NOT trying to hide.
The whole thing is an election......." Wag-The-Dog!"
:-(
I have thought for a while that the 9/11 Report needed to be re-done (at least in part) because of what ever is found out about Berger's document theft. How can the Report writers say that the Report is complete knowing that Berger kept documents from them?
Tom Dean is the penultimate RINO charlatan. Is is the living embodiment that "liberal = dishonest."
Tom Dean = Tom Kean
I don't think anyone knows what Berger might have take, destroyed, and/or doctored and returned. And what if Berger wasn't the only one doing this? The Toon papers in the Archive are now worthless.
The penultimate paragraph also provides a window on the Clinton administration mindset:
"Toward that end we can't help but note page 134 of the Commission report, which documents a proposal early in 1999 to send a U-2 mission over Afghanistan to gather intelligence on where bin Laden was hiding out. Mr. Clarke objected on the grounds that Pakistani intelligence would tip bin Laden off that the U.S. was planning a bombing mission. "Armed with this knowledge," the Commission quotes Mr. Clarke as saying, "old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad." Is that the same secular Baghdad that we are told would never cooperate with Islamist al Qaeda?"
The rat party lies endlessly and poses an extreme danger to our national security.
I agree with the sentiment. However, might I suggest that the word "penultimate" doesn't mean "the ultimate ultimate"? I believe it's more like "that which comes before the ultimate."
I think penultimate means the very last thing.
I took a theology class in college titled "Ultimate Questions," and the end of the semester dealt with penultimate questions. The very ultimate of the ultimate, if you will. I may be wrong. That was a long time ago.
Dictionary, anyone?
An article I read yesterday said the WH might declassify the final revision of the Millenium Report (which the 9/11 Commission referenced)..
Unfortunately, it is probably not possible to release draft versions of that document because among those were ones that were "inadvertently" stuffed, eaten, discarded, etc.
The media needed a "missing woman." They found one, and are focusing all their cameras on her, rather than the real news.
The media must enjoy shilling for the Clintons and their minions....remember the infamous 60 Minutes Clinton lie-a-thon which launched their unfortunate presidency?
Media silence on the Sandy Berger sox-stuffing incident is deafening.
Actually the word has been misused so frequently that I'm sure it will eventually evolve to mean "the ultimate ultimate," although I was always told you can't qualify a superlative. I mean, the ultimate is the ultimate! You can't get any more ultimate than the ultimate!
Yeah, Sandy neeeded a snack.......probably washed the secrets down with Mountain Dew. LOL.
Yes, penultimate does mean the next to the last - in other words, there's a WORSE one?
There's a few RINOS out there we could do without.....like Mayor (gag) Bloomberg.
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