9/11: Where Barack Obama and Condi Rice Sound Alarmingly Alike

9/11: Where Barack Obama and Condi Rice Sound Alarmingly Alike
Guest post by Kristen Breitweiser

Barack Obama appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball last night and was asked about the
way he would handle the 3 a.m. phone call.

The transcript:

MATTHEWS: Let me give you a scene that may face you in the next year or two, where the national security adviser calls you at 3:00 in the morning and tells that you a couple of jet-commercial jets have been hijacked. And they believe it is al Qaeda. And, as we know, al Qaeda always tries a second time. They tried for the World Trade Center after ’93. They came back in ’01. They’re heading for the Capitol. What do you do? OBAMA: Well, look, I am hesitant to engage in hypotheticals like that, because… MATTHEWS: But it has been predictable. OBAMA: Oh, well, the-I don’t think anybody predicted 9/11. And, so, we don’t know what kinds of circumstances are going to come up.

Yup. That’s right, Barack Obama glibly stated that he didn’t “think anybody
predicted 9/11.”

Some thoughts:

1. Maybe Obama needs a tutorial from former Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission,
Lee Hamilton, who just endorsed him yesterday. Heck, even Hamilton knows and
has to acknowledge that 9/11 was predictable.

Not that Obama conferring with Hamilton should give any of us warm, fuzzy feelings
since Lee Hamilton is largely responsible for the 9/11 Commission’s Final Report
being a total whitewash.

To put it mildly, as Vice Chair for the 9/11 Commission, Hamilton was not interested
in transparency, he was not interested in accountability, and he was certainly
not interested in telling the truth to the American public. So why is a guy
like Hamilton so interested in Obama being President?

Take further Hamilton’s words of endorsement for Obama where Hamilton said,
“Obama will strengthen our ability to use all the tools of American power,
and relentlessly promote the American values of freedom and justice for all
people. (Remember those words, folks, “power” and “relentlessly
promote” and recognize that they have nothing to do with the sort of foreign
policy Obama is currently trying to sell to the American public.)

2. Perhaps Obama might better strengthen his image of having a handle on national
security issues by not sounding so much like the disgraceful, incompetent former
Bush Administration National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

Recall that Ms. Rice stated that “I don’t think anybody could have predicted
that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center,
take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an
airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.”

In other words, that before 9/11 nobody in our (entire) intelligence community
could have predicted that something like 9/11 could happen. (i.e. the Bush Administration’s
9/11 talking point)

I am not even going to bother listing the hundreds of cites/articles/studies/reports/military
exercises, drills/testimonials/PDB’s/SEIB’s or even television shows that disprove
Rice’s statement. I will just mention my personal favorite—the August 6, 2001
Presidential Daily Briefing titled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in
the US.”

The point is that when it comes to the “predictability” of the
9/11 attacks, it is fairly well known and accepted that the attacks were entirely
predictable–indeed, their very predictability is why our government (wrongfully
or rightfully) spent millions of dollars overhauling, upgrading, and re-shuffling
our entire intelligence apparatus post-9/11—because the attacks should have
been prevented.

How could Obama have such a poor understanding of the 9/11 attacks and their
subsequent impact on the US intelligence community? Has Obama even read the
9/11 Commission’s Final Report that (even in its whitewash form) calls Rice
to task for her “misleading” statement about the predictability
of 9/11-style attacks? Or sets forth recommendations for intelligence community
reforms?

When Obama says we need to end the war in Iraq and re-allocate some of the
money spent on the war to hardening our homeland security apparatus, does Obama
just say that glibly or does he really understand what he is saying and how
desperately we need to pay attention to the vulnerabilities in our national
security? His statement on Hardball makes me wonder.

3. One of the reasons I support Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama is because
of the enormous help Senator Clinton gave to the 9/11 families who were fighting
to create a 9/11 Commission.

My experience in Washington showed me that there were very few people who understood
what needed to be done and even fewer people who had the courage, stamina, and
ability to get those things done.

Hillary Clinton was one of those people. And without fail, anytime we needed
help–whether that was achieving bi-partisan consensus, strong-arming the White
House and/or House Republicans, or cajoling reluctant and recalcitrant Democrats
like Lieberman, Senator Clinton always took the call and helped solve the problem.

I might add that for someone whose husband, former President Bill Clinton,
was a point of investigation for the 9/11 Commission, it certainly did not play
in Senator Clinton’s favor to have something like the 9/11 Commission impaneled.
Yet, Senator Clinton was one of our biggest, fiercest, and most vocal advocates
for the creation of a 9/11 Commission.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about Barack Obama since he was still in
the Illinois State Senate for the years that I was fighting for a 9/11 Commission
in Washington.

But as a 9/11 widow who, along with other 9/11 families, fought very hard to
learn lessons from 9/11 to not only make our nation safer but also to hold people
like Condoleezza Rice accountable, it is wholly unacceptable for any Presidential
candidate to get such a simple, historical fact about national security–that
the 9/11 attacks were predictable– so totally wrong. Because to do so, means
that you don’t fully understand and appreciate all that has happened and everything
else that needs to happen since 9/11 with regard to our national security.

So why did Obama say it? Because he uses words well and he was just being glib?
Or does Obama actually mean it and genuinely not know what he needs to know
to be the next President?