Sen. John Edwards setting world Television eye-blinking record. Blink-LIE-Blink-LIE-Blink-LIE.....
Posted on 05/17/2002 11:25:54 AM PDT by jriemer
Fri, May 17, 2002
FUZZY MEMORY: Edwards is obscure about his knowledge of pre-Sept. 11 alert
By Kevin Begos
JOURNAL WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON
Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., and Rep. Richard Burr, R-5th, hold seats on congressional intelligence committees that had pre-Sept. 11 information about the possibility that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might hijack American airliners.
But the two politicians have very different answers about what they knew, and when.
Asked specifically if he knew in August about the general warning that al-Qaida might be planning to hijack airplanes, Edwards was vague at first. "I don't know. Not that I'm aware of," Edwards, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the Winston-Salem Journal.
But Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said yesterday on NBC's Today show that "we were aware of that general warning the president got." Shelby is vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee.
Edwards' story seemed to change as the day progressed.
"We received generic information over a period of time about Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, the possibility of attacks," he said during one interview.
Later, Edwards said, "I don't specifically remember discussions about hijacking, but I suspect hijacking could have been part of that discussion."
Edwards' fuzzy memory was sharply at odds with Burr's. Burr is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, and both committees receive substantially the same briefings.
"The House Intelligence Committee was given the same information," Burr said of the basic outlines President Bush got in early August.
Yesterday evening, a Democratic source said that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee had been able to compare the briefing they were given on Aug. 7 with what Bush was given the previous day, and that the Senate version had significantly less detail.
The different stories from Edwards and Burr mark a shift in the political climate, said Larry Sabato, a professor of political science at the University of Virginia.
"What strikes me is that suddenly Sept. 11 has become very partisan," Sabato said. "That's something we had avoided for all these months. And so Edwards and other Democrats are going after Bush with a sledgehammer, whereas the Republican members of Intelligence are trying to support the White House line."
Edwards said that something had gone wrong in the system of handling intelligence, but he dodged a question about his own responsibility.
"There's all this information out there that sent out warning signs," Edwards said of pre-9/11 intelligence. "Some of it was apparently at the FBI, some of it was at the CIA. My point is that there were all these warning signs that somebody should have followed up and taken action on."
Edwards said on Good Morning America that "there should have been bells and whistles going off." Later, asked specifically whether the Senate Intelligence Committee had, in retrospect, failed to respond properly to threats that its members knew of, Edwards didn't answer.
Sabato said that Edwards' silence doesn't make much sense.
"If he's on the Senate Intelligence Committee, then he bears some responsibility, albeit less than Bush. He cannot totally escape the same questions," Sabato said.
Burr tackled the pre-9/11 intelligence issue head-on.
"We had the opportunity, and chose not to change the level of security at airports, or immigration, or anything," Burr said. "We're as much to blame for having not increased airport security - if that's what it took - given that there was a potential threat.
"The fact is, with the information the administration had in hand, our intelligence agencies had in hand, the intelligence committees within Congress had in hand - none of us could predict what happened," Burr said.
"But you know, the tremendous thing about hindsight is we're all perfect," he added.
Burr said that although the House committee had been briefed on a general threat, the situation had to be viewed in context.
"That was not the first warning and/or analytical report that suggested that hijacking, and/or plane-aircraft, was a potential terrorist tool. I think the first goes back to the mid-90s," Burr said.
Such general reports are not the same as a specific warning, he said. "To suggest that was a warning, I think might be a misstatement," Burr said of the hijacking information last August.
Sabato said the bottom line is simple. "The truth is, nobody saw this coming," he said.
Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that Edwards is on firm ground when he criticizes the way the administration is putting together its Homeland Security defense.
"It seems to me there's a lot of room for improvement," said Hess, who served in the White House during the Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford administrations.
But Hess also pointed out that after Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination, people sifted back through history and found stray bits of evidence, and tried to find blame.
"It is also a staple of all conspiracy theories," Hess said of such discoveries. "And it's the conspiracy theorists who are usually at fault. They always fail to factor in incompetence."
The question to that Jeopardy answer is: Who is the Senate Intelligence Committee?
Unfortunately the SIC was befuddled with folks like Edwards falsly filling the space of someone with reasonable intelligence....
Edwards' evasive response to this question will just remind people of a slimy lawyer tactic. Pretty boy did himself some damage here.
This is just like Daschle's "secret government" claim that he was unaware of secret government bunkers, when later in the day he was forced to admit that he had been at one of the bunkers.
-PJ
You can smell this like a steaming turd on a hot sidewalk!
Gore is a footnote under stupid in the dictionary. The DNC wants him to go away.
Lieberman is a bigger fool than Carter... Daschle, Gephardt and Biden?... ha, ha, ha!
2004 is a long ways off. If the dems make a killing in 2002, Bush is in a fight for his political life and our own sanity.
Sen. John Edwards setting world Television eye-blinking record. Blink-LIE-Blink-LIE-Blink-LIE.....
NORTH CAROLINA REPUBLICAN PARTY
1506 Hillsborough St.
Raleigh, North Carolina 27605
Tele. (919) 828-6423 Fax. (919) 899-3815
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 17th, 2002
N.C. Republican Party Calls on John Edwards to Retract False Accusations that President Bush Had Prior Knowledge of September 11th Attacks
(Raleigh, N.C.) - North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Bill Cobey today called on Senator John Edwards to retract his false and destructive rhetoric accusing President Bush of prior knowledge of the September 11th terrorist attacks on America. Cobey asked citizens to contact Senator Edwards and tell him North Carolina stands with our President. "John Edwards' presidential ambitions know no bounds. Little more than a week after he was roundly criticized for his inability to coherently address important national issues on NBC's "Meet the Press," Edwards once again proved his lack of judgment by falsely accusing the President of prior knowledge of the Sept. 11th attacks.
"John Edwards' opportunistic accusations fly in the face of even his Democrat colleagues Bob Graham and Joe Lieberman," said Cobey. "Responsibility for the dreadful attacks on America lies solely on the terrorists who committed those evil acts. I ask all North Carolinians to contact John Edwards and tell him this is no time for partisan finger-pointing at our President."
Armed with the apparent clarity of hindsight, Edwards claimed Thursday on national television that the President should have foreseen the unprecedented attacks:
"We have three huge warning signs. We've got terrorists connected to al-Qaeda out in Arizona, engaging in flight training, number one. Number two, we've got Moussaoui arrested and being interrogated in Minnesota. And number three, we've got the president being briefed while he's on vacation in Texas about the possibility of these airplanes being hijacked. I mean, did it - was anything done about any of those things?" (Sen. Edwards, ABC's "Good Morning America," May 16, 2002)
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham and Senate Government Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman both rebuked Edwards' position.
When asked if the 9/11 attacks were foreseeable, Lieberman flatly rejected the notion: "Oh I think we've got to be very careful about reaching that kind of conclusion. Remember, this is from media reports, not from anything I or as far as I anyone else has seen…I think it is very unfair to reach any conclusion about President Bush's behavior here." (Sen. Lieberman, Fox News Channel, May 16, 2002)
When asked if he thought the President should have seen the attacks coming given briefing information he was provided, Graham said: "Again, I don't think it is fair to ask the president of the United States, with all of the responsibilities that he has, to take on that operational role." (Senator Bob Graham, CNN, May 16, 2002)
Edwards, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, regularly received intelligence briefings that assessed the terrorist threats facing America prior to September 11th, making his claims that President Bush should have foreseen the horror of those attacks even more transparent and erroneous.
-NCGOP-
For more information, contact Communications Director Jonathan C. Jordan at (919) 828-6423.
Paid for by NC Republican Party, Steve Long, Treasurer.
I think the bigger question in this whole story is what exactly did FBI director Louis Freeh have in place as the protocol for dispensing info to the Pres. as well as the Intel. Commitee? I realize that he resigned in June 2001 but I doubt the overhaul of his policies was anywhere near completion by 9/11. And remember during most of his tenure he was dealing with a Senate Intel. controlled by Republicans, until the jeffords mutiny in May 2001.
But as usual the media is in denial that someone other than "W" was making all the calls!
So the Dims back off the charge a few days latter. Since this isn't as big as a story as Bush letting 1000+ people die, it is probably on the back page. If it is on a news channel it doesn't lead. There hoping you didn't see it, but if you did oh well. The Dims are hoping the next time there are elections that the voters will remember Bush was involved in this scandal and Bush was involved in that scandal. Scandal after scandal. Doesn't matter if he did anything wrong or not.
Personal it really disgust me that the democrats and people in the media are trying to imply that Bush would let a couple of thousand people die for any reason. And for them to go even lower and use Watergate terminology "What did he know and when did he know it" makes it even worse. Barbara Olson died on one of those planes. One of his daughters couldn't have been in one of those building. Other relatives of his could have been at the unknown target. Some Democrats have no shame.
But no one would expect the W-S Journal to print this article.
I think, however, indeed I trust, the people are getting it. For eight years Reagan said the Empire that ran the Gulag was evil, as indeed it was. Reagan said the Wall should be torn down, as it should have been and was. For eight years the Dims and their media allies said Reagan was crazy. The American people knew Reagan made sense and the Dims were wrong. The notion that the President who rejected all the conventional wisdom and sent the Fleet, the Air Force, the Marines, the Army and the Special Ops guys against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, who called out the bad guys as "evil," and who again against conventional wisdom called out the three worst terror sponsors as an "axis of evil," was inclined to do nothing in response to information about an Al Qaeda attack is just plain stupid; no, not just stupid, an outrage. And the American people know it.
The Dims are bankrupt power seekers that can't tell good from evil. The elections are five months away. Lets roll.
Hmmm, fuzzy memory and a range of contradictions or non-answers make him an excellent DEMOCRAP candidate. Me thinks this ambulance chaser with fork tongue will go very far within the party.
Tell it to Alan Keyes. He's even LESS qualified!
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