Congratulations on good comments, everyone.
I'm listening to the former CIA agent, Bernsten, who wrote the book Jawbreaker. Russert is questioning him for an hour.
He doesn't seem like he's slamming the administration in any way in the 10 minutes I've listened to. He defended Rumsfeld about something and when Russert asks him if Kerry was right that the operation to find OBL was outsourced in 2001 and 2002, the author says it was not outsourced and Kerry is wrong about that.
He also made a complimentary remark about Pete Goss and says he trusts him.
He just said he thinks the president is a good man and wants to win the war and he's strong and that's good because we have to face the Iranians. He wrote the WH to give them the heads up that we could have caught OBL but someone (he doesn't know who) turned down the operation.
He also says a lot of what the president has done has worked.
He's convinced that Mushareff wants to capture OBL, even if it's in Pakistan.
Bernsten: The war in Iraq did not distract us from capturing OBL. Mentions another book written by someone in the military and you could come to that decision, but he doesn't believe that we were distracted from Tora Bora in any way.
Bernsten went back to Afghanistan on behalf of Cofer Black in 2000. Bernsten had been learning Persian. This was pre 9/11 in order to gain intel on AQ. The plan was to identify the location of key AQ leaders.
Russert: AQ blew up stuff in the 90's and so they were on the radar of the CIA pre 9/11?
Bernsten: There was a report in 2000 or 2001 (I couldn't capture it) that OBL was aware that CIA was in the region and the operation was aborted. None of the agents were concerned about the reports and begged Washington to let them stay in the region and DC didn't permit it.
Russert: Ports question about UAE. There's a report that princes from UAE were hunting with OBL and attempt to kill OBL was called off.
Bernsten: Wasn't in charge of that operation but he's heard of it. Lack of recognition of how dangerous OBL was. Names the terrorist attacks in the 90's and how we didn't respond. We were given lots of signals of impending catastrophe and we didn't respond. The Iranians interpret that as weakness now. Iran believes we aren't strong enough to deal with them. We have to demonstrate we mean business.
Russert: Cole. Neither Clinton nor Bush dealt with it.
Bernstein: Stunned me.
Bernstein: Republicans and Democrats have to stand together against Iran. People in the world believe that this president says what he means and means what he says.
Iran needs to see leaders of the Democrat party standing with the president on this.
We have the ability to deal with Iran. 2000 pound bunker busters.
Bernsten: We need national unity and we're in the fight for our lives. We have to recognize that a small group of people can cause catastrophic results.