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Fault for 9/11 Lies with the Democrats.

InstaGlenn [1] links a Spectator article [2] called “Jamie’s Gotta Go”, today. It says in part:

IF THERE ARE APOLOGIES TO BE made, they should be emanating from one member of the increasingly partisan and decreasingly credible 9/11 Commission. No, it’s not Richard Ben-Venomous, who at least has the good grace to be openly and sneeringly partisan. The bigger problem is former Clintonoid Deputy Attorney General and — before that — Defense Department General Counsel Jamie Gorelick. The Commission lost a lot of credibility on Tuesday when the Bush cabinet member the left most loves to hate, Attorney General John Ashcroft, went on the attack and hit Gorelick right between the eyes.

This column has for years — and long before 9/11 — bemoaned the utter fecklessness of the over-lawyered Clinton administration’s approach to everything having to do with national security. I’m sure, Dear Reader, you remember the incident when Sandy Berger — Clinton’s national security advisor — shunned the Sudanese offer of bin Laden on a silver platter because we didn’t have enough evidence to indict UBL. And Loose Canons has often complained that the Clintons’ approach went farther than the law required in the interest of political correctness. After 9/11, it’s been obvious that the intel community was emasculated by laws dating back to the 1970s that made cooperation between the FBI, CIA, NSA and DIA impossible. And the Clintons made it worse.

Ms. Gorelick, as Deputy AG, wrote a memo in 1995 that added several layers of bricks to the top of the wall separating the FBI’s criminal investigators and intelligence gatherers. It says, in part, “We believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued, criminal investigations. These procedures, which do beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation.” Appearances mattered more than allowing the investigators to put the pieces together before 9/11.

And Glenn, for his part, comes up with the astonishingly STUPID line:

“I don’t think that Gorelick has done anything wrong. “

At least he mitigates this with:

“But it does appear that she should be a witness, not a Commissioner, on a number of important issues.”

Stilll…..Um, Glenn? Nothing wrong? The context of THAT statement can be found on any stable floor in lesser amounts.

The bottom line here is that the 9/11 commission is supposedly looking for policy holes, which led to the 9/11 attacks being successful. It’s clear based on the testimony before the 9/11 commission so far, that the biggest policy problem we faced was the way the Clinton mis-administration treated the Intel community, vis-à-vis the law enforcement community. And Gorelick was the person behind strengthening that misbegotten policy.

Do you think for a minute, my well-spoken friend, that were any Republicans so connected to these events that the Democrats wouldn’t be screaming for Republican blood? The press and the Democrats (A redundancy, granted) since day one of this commission have been looking for a way to pin this on President George W. Bush. But what has come out of these hearings is that it was not Mr. Bush and HIS policy, but holdover Democrat policy, issued by Ms. Gorelick.

Critics will claim, of course that Mr. Bush was in the hot seat at the time of the attacks. But as I pointed out in last week’s BIT, the security holeswhichh allowed the attacks were not due to a lack in the Bush administration, but rather are directly connected to the Democrats, who held up confirmations of key members of the new administration until less than two months before the 9/11 attacks… To the point where most of the security positions at the highest levels, were still staffed by Clinton Mis-administration appointees…. such as Richard Clarke. As a result of this Democrat stonewalling, for example, Mr. Bush’s appointee for the top NSC special assistant for intelligence programs, Mary Sturtevant, had only been on the job for several weeks on 9/11. Do you suppose this would have any effect on how responsive the White House was to various threats? Can Mr. Bush be blamed for faulty policy making, when he is unable to replace the people who put that faulty policy into place?

If there is any fault to be found in our government over the 9/11 attacks, it lies with the Democrats, and their policies. Specifically, in my view, Gorelick is guilty of at least criminal negligence. In her zeal to keep things super legal, and getting all tied up with the legalities of the situation, she neglected the primary charge of her posiiton: National Security. Watching the hole, and not the doughnut, if you will. The Democrats ought to be ashamed of themselves both for their own faults, and trying to blame President Bush for them. Further, they ought to be reminded of this sin of theirs come 200 days from now.

That the commission has not asked Gorelick to step aside lends itself to the commission having lost any credibility it may have had. They were supposed to be fact finding. The facts are clear, and now the commission is trying to sweep them under the rug.

Why?

Occam-like thinking would suggest that it’s because they are unable to pin the blame on their intended target.
Perhaps the public should be asking the question now: Just whose interests is this commission serving, anyway?

Update:

This story keeps getting hotter. Jack Cashill over at World Net Daily [3] makes the case that:

“Evidence strongly suggests it was Gorelick – not the ineffectual Freeh – who not only misdirected the FBI’s investigation into Oklahoma City, but also the FBI investigation into TWA Flight 800. The parallels between the two cases are shocking. And in each case, the Clinton administration constrained the FBI for the same reason: to advance the re-election chances of its standard bearer. “

But wait.. it gets even better.

Let’s go back to 1994; In Cashill’s words,

“After days of anger and self-pity, Bill Clinton began to focus again on the one organizing principle that had directed his life to date. “All that mattered was his survival,” Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos would write of his former boss. “

Clearly, here’s someone who needs a target for his political survival. And along comes the OKC bombing.
Cashill continues:

“On April 19, 1995, I was co-hosting a point-counter point radio show on Kansas City’s leading AM station, KMBZ. The show aired just before Rush Limbaugh, who once worked at the station. The Oklahoma bomb detonated just as we were going on the air.

My partner and I followed developments closely. Early police reports and intelligence briefings led us all to believe that the bomb was the work of Islamic terrorists. When, however, the police identified McVeigh as a suspect a day later, my partner was absolutely gleeful. A wily and well-connected Democrat strategist, he went on the air and issued an All Points Bulletin for McVeigh’s “co-conspirators – Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich.” He claimed their hate speech and talk of revolution had inflamed the allegedly right-wing McVeigh.

My partner was simply following the Democratic National Committee’s talking points. Democrats, the president included, were spreading this same message all across America. Clinton, more subtle than his supporters, assigned responsibility for the bombing to the “purveyors of hate and division.” His supporters filled in the blanks. A master of strategic grief counseling, Clinton descended on Oklahoma City with an approval rating in the low 40s and left town with a rating well above 50. Late in the 1996 campaign, he would confide to reporters that his road back to the White House began in Oklahoma City.

The president, however, was more interested in the points he could score off Oklahoma City than in the truth. In her stunning book, Jayna Davis documents beyond all doubt what that truth was: McVeigh and Nichols had help from Islamic terrorists – not only in the Philippines, but also in Oklahoma City. In her role as a reporter for KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, Davis interviewed more than 20 reliable eyewitnesses who identified the crew of Iraqi nationals who had helped McVeigh assemble and deliver the bomb, among them, John Doe #2, Hussain Al-Hussaini.”

Democrat rank and file have been seeking some reason why President Bush would go after Iraq… the answer would seem to be in this report. He knew what was up wiht Iraq, regarding terrorism here in the US. Says Cashill:

“Much as with TWA 800, however, the FBI lost all interest in the eyewitnesses as soon as the White House had established its talking points.”

I strongly advise you read the Cashill article [3].

The Democrats are into covering up terrorism for their own gains, up to their eyeballs, people… Are these questions ever going to be looked at by the 9/11 commission? We’re not just talking policy changes, or apologies now… we’re talking serious jailtime, for Gorelick and company! People, let’s get on this one.