Comments on: Obama Politicized National Security

By: norman

norman — Sun, 24 May 2009 16:52:24 +0000

I will do my best to not be too wordy.
You seem to deal with the Plame situation as a minor event. I don’t know how many insiders in Washington were aware of her CIA role but the leak from the White House, as planned by Cheney/ Rove, received immediate and worldwide attention. Her outing was in retaliation for her husband’s stating that there was no unenriched uranium from Niger to Saddam Hussein and thereby poking a major hole in the WMD falsehood. Scooter Libby was the fall guy and as we know the separation of powers argument eliminated the true facts from surfacing. I will just quote from only one of numerous counts of indictment that the Grand Jury presented in the US District Court For The District of Columbia. This is from Indictment Count One (Obstruction of Justice).
“The responsibilities of certain CIA employees required that their association with the CIA be kept secret; as a result the fact that these individuals were employed by the CIA was classified. Disclosure of the fact that such individuals were employed by the CIA had the potential to damage the national security in ways that ranged from preventing the future use of those individuals in a covert capacity, to compromising intelligence-gathering methods and operations, and endangering the safety of CIA employees and those who dealt with them”.
The bottom line was that Libby was guilty and convicted. The usual response by a politician or political appointee is that their conviction was politically motivated not that they weren’t guilty as charged. As a conservative I would expect you to be more in favor of upholding the rule of law and that our laws apply to all citizens equally not selectively.
You bring up President Clinton and more that could have been done during his administration to deal with bin Laden. In retrospect I agree. Why weren’t we more aggressive in dealing with terrorists prior to 9/11? We can go even further back when the Marine barracks were blown up in Lebanon resulting in the deaths of 241 of our military. This happened on October 23, 1983 during President Reagan’s tenure.
Reagan’s response to this slaughter was to pull our remaining troops out three months later. Not exactly aggressive pursuit.
Maybe it’s because we can easier understand the dangers our military cope with on foreign missions but when it comes to our civilian population and an attack on our homeland we react with greater outrage and fear. I really don’t know.
The Guantanamo thing and Obama. Even brilliant people can goof. This is goof number two. Bowing to the Saudi king was number one. Since our president is really only mortal we can be sure there will be a number three somewhere down the line.

By: Don Storch

Don Storch — Sat, 23 May 2009 19:16:44 +0000

We will never know what attacks were thwarted by the CIA with enhanced interrogation techniques, Obama redacted that portion of the memos that he revealed that dealt with 3 cases of waterboarding. If he is going to be so transparent, why not give the people all of the truth when revealing top secret memos? Valerie Plame was outed long before Scooter Libby was charged, as a DC socialite, who was known to have had a desk job with the CIA. Why she was classified as an operative is anyone’s guess. Libby was convicted of perjury for comments that had nothing to do with the outing. It was a political scam. As for 9/11 — it occurred on Clinton’s watch during an administration of errors by omission. He failed to get bin Laden when he had the opportunity; he failed to respond appropriately to the bombings of the US Embassy in Nairobi and to the USS Cole — it has been well established that he had his mind on something other than National Security. These were but three incidents among many others that led up to 9/11 during the Clinton administration. Bush wasn’t in office long enough to nail this one on him. However, how about the 7 1/2 years of his administration when no attacks on the US occurred on his watch since 9/11?

By: norman

norman — Sat, 23 May 2009 13:43:43 +0000

I believe that FBI Director Mueller also said that “enhanced interrogation” techniques have not resulted in aborting any terrorist activities in this country. The terrorist initiatives have been thwarted through outstanding and sophisticated police work. The most recent being the FBI effort in stopping the bombing of synagogues in NY and the attack against military aircraft by the same individuals.
Actually, one of the most serious threats to our security was the leaking of the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plume’s name through Mr. Cheney’s involvement and which resulted in the conviction of Scooter Libby. The Bush administration used the separation of powers argument in refusing to provide any information. Transparency?? We’ll never know the extent to which CIA operatives were compromised.
Cheney’s recent appearances on TV talk shows and public speeches is puzzling. During a good part of his 8 years in office his whereabouts were unknown and now we’re being inundated by him. He was secretive to an extreme. It seems as if he still the president.
Remember 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch and after they ignored a CIA report of an impending attack by terrorists.