Two billions down the tube ?

Now that Google has purchased YouTube for a cool billion and a half, the old copyright questions have emerged once more. Will the presence of that much cash attract the copyright vultures? Will YouTube filter out all infringing material, only to lose its audience? Some analysts are worried.

That's because YouTube has already committed publicly to developing and deploying technology that can sniff out copyrighted video clips and bits of music; this technology has figured prominently in its recent deals with content owners. But despite talking up the technology, it has yet to be publicly released. How YouTube eventually deploys it could affect their business operations significantly.

"There's very little that holds YouTube's audience to YouTube except the belief that whatever they want to see, there is a very good chance YouTube will have it," Joe Laszlo, an analyst with JupiterKagan, told the Associated Press. "If the video migrates to other places, I fear the audience will too, so YouTube needs to be really careful about how it does this."

This isn't a new concern. BusinessWeek pointed out the dilemma that the site faced months ago. "If they cater too much to their users, they risk getting sued for copyright violations and losing the support of content companies. If they're seen as favoring content companies, however, they could lose their millions of fans."

YouTube's compliance system apparently scans the entire database of clips for infringing material, which includes everything from user-posted music videos to clips from the Daily Show to dispatches from Iraq that feature unlicensed music as a soundtrack. The burden of using these tools and discovering infringing content falls to the content owners, who then can make a decision about what they want YouTube to do. They can ignore the clip, ask them to pull it, or, in the case of "official" content like music videos, have it replaced with the approved version.

YouTube has also inked several deals that allow users to incorporate major-label music into their own creations. Such videos would not be pulled from the site, but advertising revenue from the display of those clips would be shared with the content owner.
[Nate Anderson - Ars Technica - October 13, 2006]


Google, no stranger to lawsuits, may find a whole new class of complainers lining up for a check after the Web search leader buys video entertainment site YouTube for US$1.65 billion.

The acquisition will give Google a major foothold in the emerging market for video advertising, but it also stands to inherit court challenges from independent film makers, garage bands, television studios and others who may chafe at YouTube users uploading copyrighted material to the site without permission.

Legal experts and industry veterans said these artists and companies could look to YouTube's new deep-pocket backer for payment, either in business deals or courtroom battles.
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"For some of the bigger players in the industry, and given the amount of publicity that this deal has brought, it may be a perfect staging area for them to bring an infringement suit," said Kristin Achterhof, partner at Katten Muchin Rosenman, a law firm with Hollywood and music industry clientele.

Google has faced a battery of lawsuits, from trademark infringement suits from auto insurer GEICO and news agency Agence France Presse, to legal spats with the US government over privacy issues, to copyright suits from book publishers.

Although Google and YouTube seem to be on good terms with the media industry by announcing on Monday a spate of deals with music labels, analysts say the legal travails of the Web's most popular video service are just beginning.

YouTube, which serves some 100 million videos per day, has become the target of scorn among some rights owners as the site says it has no idea how many of the 70,000 videos uploaded each day by users are pirated.

Internet veteran and HDNet founder Mark Cuban last month famously called anyone willing to buy YouTube a "moron".

"I don't think you can sue Google into oblivion, but as others have mentioned, if Google gets nailed one single time for copyright violation, there are going to be more shareholder lawsuits than Doans has pills to go with the pile on copyright suits that follow," he wrote, referring to the backache medication, on his blog on Monday.
[Kenneth Li and Yinka Adegoke - ITNews Australia - October 11, 2006]

North Korea nuclear threat

THE UN Security Council vote to impose sanctions against North Korea in response to its boasted nuclear test last week merits applause. But it should be neither long nor loud. The UN has imposed weapons and financial sanctions against North Korea's nuclear program. They include a call for countries to enforce the sanctions by inspecting cargo being shipped to and from North Korea. But there is no talk of military action to enforce the new rule and China has said it will not examine North Korean cargo. That this pusillanimous policy is seen as a sign that the UN is determined to get tough with North Korea demonstrates how little the world has come to expect from the Security Council. For, in facing the affront to the world community that is North Korea, the UN has been anything but. Of the countries in the six-nation talks over North Korean arms, three have taken the line of least resistance in dealing with Pyongyang. China does not want the North Korean regime to collapse lest it send millions of refugees fleeing across its frontier. The South Koreans, working on the understandable assumption that the North may be mad enough to unleash armageddon and attack them, are never keen on confrontation. And Russia is happy to leave it to the Americans to take the heat, while sniping from the sidelines to ensure no easy achievements for the US. In terms of trying to stop North Korea building a bomb, and a missile to carry it, the job has been mainly left to the US.

How to deal with a nuclear-armed North Korean rogue state, mad and bad both, is not easily addressed. The US understandably does not want to go it alone with a military option, given the way members of the Security Council played politics over the need to remove Saddam Hussein and are ducking and diving on how to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions. But diplomacy does not work with the North Koreans. Certainly, the long- established strategy of bribing Pyongyang with food and fuel has worked to the extent that the rogue state has not unleashed the doomsday option and attacked South Korea. To do so would mean military defeat for the North, but not before its forces flattened those large parts of the South's capital, Seoul, that are in easy artillery range from its front line. However, the North Koreans have continued to up the ante, taking all the aid on offer while continuing to try to build a bomb, and a missile to deliver it.

There is no doubting that the diplomacy of containment has failed. But rather than blame the Americans - imagine the outcry if the US went it alone in blockading North Korea's coasts or bombed its nuclear facilities - it is time to hold the Security Council to account. The very existence of the North Korean regime is an affront to everything the UN is supposed to stand for. Millions are thought to have died in the last famine and malnutrition is a way of life. The country is ruled by hereditary dictator Kim Jong-il, one part buffoon to many parts Big Brother. And its export income depends on running drugs and counterfeit currency and selling weapons. It is time for the permanent members of the Security Council to stop pussyfooting. Warships serving under UN auspices should now stop and search North Korean ships, and seize contraband. The whole world is watching for a sign that the UN can do more than talk. Especially Tehran, where another rogue regime with ambitions to build a bomb wants to learn what it can get away with.
[The Australian - October 16, 2006]


(...) a good option does exist that would terminate the Pyongyang regime without Washington laying a finger on it. The starting point should be not the problem of North Korea's nukes, but the challenge of Korea's reunification. Restoring the unity of a split country raises transforming possibilities; it can be regime change of an attractive kind.

Pyongyang, lost without nukes, has no reason to bargain away its one morsel of strength. Nor could any agreement be verified. (Unlike Libya, North Korea has 8,000 underground tunnels and caves). In the remote chance that a Pyongyang abandonment of nuclear stockpiles could be verified, North Korea would still have missiles that can deliver chemical and biological weapons to Los Angeles. Do we trust it not to do so?

There is no way to address North Korea's security concerns when Pyongyang simply wants the United States out of the way so it can grab South Korea. If all Pyongyang desires is to be secure in its Stalinist bed it would not have attacked South Korea in 1950.

Talks must switch from Pyongyang's intentions and weapons to the shape of a reunified Korea. The basis would be Pyongyang's longstanding suggestion of a Democratic Confederal Republic of Koryo and Seoul's similar idea of a Korean National Community.
[Ross Terrill - The Boston Globe - October 13, 2006]


For the time being, the United States has ruled out the military option, probably due in part to the American military's engagement in other trouble spots like Iraq and Afghanistan.
But unfortunately, the other, more acceptable option — economic sanctions — appears to have lost its efficacy. Sometimes sanctions actually strengthen the regime against which they are imposed, as their impact is felt directly by the people and leaves rulers untouched. The adversity faced by the people forces them to rally around the regime which the sanctions are supposed to weaken. Even where the sanctions are successful they take a long time to work. If the international community is seriously interested in restraining North Korea, sooner or later it will have to think of some tough measures, or else the DPRK regime could go out of control.
[Anand Kumar - The Washington Times - October 13, 2006]



The UN cannot and will not deal effectively with North Korea just like it could not and did not deal with Saddam and cannot and will not deal with Iran. China, Russia and France make that certain. If the president remains stuck in the UN, he will fail in disarming the North Korean nuclear arsenal.
By going to the UN Mr. Bush shelves his ability to use the diplomatic and military tools that are independent of it. The most effective combination of such tools is the Proliferation Security Initiative. The PSI now has nineteen member nations agreed to interdict shipments of missiles and weapons of mass destruction between and among rogues and terrorists. By Italy's cooperation, the PSI was directly responsible for Libya's surrender of its nuclear weapons program to us. Mr. Bush could call upon the Proliferation Security Initiative nations to act directly, and have the solution to the problem well begun before November 7th. Were he to do so, North Korean ships and aircraft would be searched anywhere they are found and Kim Jong-il's principal goal - to produce and sell missiles and nuclear weapons - could be thwarted.

The second tool Mr. Bush should use quickly is his most senior representative, Vice President Cheney. Mr. Cheney should be dispatched to Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul (in that order). Sending Cheney instead of Condoleeza Rice sends a much-needed message of firmness. Japan is one of the PSI members and should be embraced for taking the initiative against North Korea. The new Shinzo Abe government has announced it will ban entry of all North Korean citizens and goods into Japan as well as bar North Korean ships from its ports as sanctions for the nuclear test. (Failing to invoke the PSI and relying on the UN to specify sanctions undercuts Japan's action dramatically). Mr. Cheney should openly praise the Abe government's policies and call upon others to follow them. In Beijing, Mr. Cheney could warn China that world opinion will hold it responsible for failing to control North Korea. As one of our top China hands told me in an interview last year, China is highly sensitive to such criticism, and American representatives can have very frank - even blunt - talks with them without offending. Speaking firmly behind closed doors, Mr. Cheney can move the Chinese. And, in Seoul, Mr. Cheney should warn the South Korean government to follow Japan's example or risk losing the protection of American troops based there.
[Jed Babbin - Real Clear Politics - October 12, 2006]



Two years ago, Washington accused Pyongyang of running a secret nuclear weapons program. But how much evidence was there to back up the charge? A review of the facts shows that the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the data--while ignoring the one real threat North Korea actually poses.
Selig S. Harrison is Director of the Asia Program and Chairman of the Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy at the Center for International Policy. He is also a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the author of Korean Endgame.
On October 4, 2002, the United States suddenly confronted North Korea with a damning accusation: that it was secretly developing a program to enrich uranium to weapons grade, in violation of the 1994 agreement that Pyongyang had signed with Washington to freeze its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Since North Korea had cheated, the Bush administration declared, the United States was no longer bound by its side of the deal. Accordingly, on November 14, 2002, the United States and its allies suspended the oil shipments they had been providing North Korea under the 1994 agreement. Pyongyang retaliated by expelling international inspectors and resuming the reprocessing of plutonium, which it had stopped under the 1994 accord (known as the Agreed Framework). The confrontation between North Korea and the United States once more reached a crisis level
Much has been written about the North Korean nuclear danger, but one crucial issue has been ignored: just how much credible evidence is there to back up Washington's uranium accusation? Although it is now widely recognized that the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence data it used to justify the invasion of Iraq, most observers have accepted at face value the assessments the administration has used to reverse the previously established U.S. policy toward North Korea.
But what if those assessments were exaggerated and blurred the important distinction between weapons-grade uranium enrichment (which would clearly violate the 1994 Agreed Framework) and lower levels of enrichment (which were technically forbidden by the 1994 accord but are permitted by the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty [NPT] and do not produce uranium suitable for nuclear weapons)?
A review of the available evidence suggests that this is just what happened. Relying on sketchy data, the Bush administration presented a worst-case scenario as an incontrovertible truth and distorted its intelligence on North Korea (much as it did on Iraq), seriously exaggerating the danger that Pyongyang is secretly making uranium-based nuclear weapons. This failure to distinguish between civilian and military uranium-enrichment capabilities has greatly complicated what would, in any case, have been difficult negotiations to end all existing North Korean nuclear weapons programs and to prevent any future efforts through rigorous inspection. On June 24, 2004, the United States proposed a new, detailed denuclearization agreement with North Korea at six-party negotiations (including the United States, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and North Korea) in Beijing. Before discussions could even start, however, the Bush administration insisted that North Korea first admit to the existence of the alleged uranium-enrichment facilities and specify where they are located. Pyongyang has so far refused to confirm or deny whether it has such facilities; predictably, the U.S. precondition has precluded any new talks.
[Foreign Affairs - January/February, 2005]



One unpleasant truth:

“We are present at the unraveling.” David Broder nicely summarizes Graham Allison’s argument that the non-proliferation system that kept the number of nuclear weapons states down and kept us safe for more than 40 years is mortally wounded. Progressives have –understandably – wanted to talk about saving the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for the past few years. But now I’m afraid it’s time for bigger thinking about how the regime could be re-invented for a new century, and new balance of power, and a new set of threats.

Discussion question:

Jon Wolfsthal, an accomplished non-proliferation expert and a good buddy of mine, puts together the above factors and concludes that “The time for negotiations is over. Now it’s about containment and deterrence.” He proposes that we worry less about proliferation to terrorists and more about making sure Pyongyang understands how declared nuclear powers must behave to avoid miscalculation, etc. He makes the interesting suggestion that Washington send an envoy to Pyongyang, not to negotiate anything, but to say ok, you’re in the club now, here are the rules.

I’m not sure this is entirely right – especially if the test was a failure, it seems to me that it’s still worth seeing what it would take to freeze or roll back the program. But I give Jon credit for coming up with a first step that would communicate to Pyongyang the respect they so desperately seem to want from us and to the rest of the world the toughness that the threat of nuclear proliferation deserves.
[Heather Hurlburt- democracyarsenal.org - October 11, 2006]




Dropping sanctions, of course, is the last thing anyone has in mind right now. Japan has already implemented some new ones of its own, cutting all imports from North Korea (mushrooms, coal and shellfish) and prohibiting North Korean vessels from docking at its ports. Although the U.S. has no trade or similar ties with North Korea, it could also use its dominant role in the international banking system to tighten the squeeze on North Korean funds imposed by the financial sanctions adopted a year ago. But the appetite of others to follow suit appears to be limited.
The U.S. may also be struggling to get its way at the Security Council because of doubts over the wisdom with which the Bush Administration has handled North Korea until now. Its refusal to talk directly with the North Korean regime over the past six years is seen in Beijing and Seoul as partly responsible for the failure of the existing diplomatic process to prevent North Korea testing a nuclear weapon, and pressure for the U.S. to reverse its refusal to talk directly to Pyongyang continues. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on Wednesday reiterated the call for direct talks. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's rejection of such talks on the grounds that the U.S. alone lacks leverage with North Korea is unlikely to impress those who see offering Pyongyang security guarantees as the key to achieving its disarmament. The U.S., after all, and not China or South Korea, is the country that North Korea most views as a mortal threat.
So, while the Security Council this week will certainly punish North Korea for its nuclear provocation, the likelihood is that such punishment will be measured with a view to restarting the six-party process. The end game, as ever, remains persuading North Korea to disarm in exchange for a package of political, economic and security incentives.
[Tony Karon - TIME - October 11, 2006]



The odds that we will wake up one morning to discover that Chicago, or New York, or London have disappeared overnight have shortened considerably. We would do well to concentrate our minds on how it came to this.
Monday's apparently successful nuclear test by the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-Il does not, as claimed, mark the dawn of a new age of nuclear proliferation. The North Koreans had already boasted of having developed a nuclear weapon, and no one has ever doubted, whatever the truth of these claims, that they would in time. North Korean scientists have already been sharing their technological secrets with their Iranian counterparts, as earlier Pakistan had helped them. Nuclear proliferation is already here, and will accelerate. The current crisis is only a signpost along the road to inevitability.
Its worst effect, rather, will be to confirm what might until now not have been apparent: that we -- the world, the West, the United States -- are simply unable to come to terms with the threat that now confronts us.
The world's worst dictators, it is now clear, may acquire the world's most destructive weapons with impunity -- even as a new breed of macro-terrorists advertise themselves as potential after-market customers. Either we do not recognize this for the existential threat that it is, or we cannot summon the nerve, collectively or individually, to take the steps required to save ourselves.
[Andrew Coyne - National Post, Canada - October 11, 2006]


While newspapers around the world remain fiercely critical of North Korea over its claims that it has conducted a nuclear test, commentators are now starting to examine the options open to the international community.
One Japanese paper hints that Tokyo may have to consider developing its own nuclear deterrent in response to Pyongyang's "reckless gamble".
Overall, there is little sign of consensus, with some dailies calling for sanctions and others urging renewed diplomatic efforts.

JAPAN'S YOMIURI SHIMBUN

We must let North Korea know clearly that the nuclear test is a reckless gamble and there is no way that the international community will let it pass... Japan should not endanger its existence by failing to take a realistic response because of its emotional nuclear allergy.

JAPAN'S MAINICHI SHIMBUN

The unity of the international community is necessary to make North Korea realise that the only way left is to return to the six-party talks... What should be done swiftly is to communicate the international community's strong intention not to allow North Korea to possess nuclear weapons... We urge China and Russia to take action commensurate with their positions as permanent UN Security Council members.

JAPAN'S ASAHI SHIMBUN

What protects the safety of Japan and South Korea is their respective relationships and alliance with the United States, and based on this, they will cope with the situation diplomatically. They should cement this principle. In easing tensions, they should tread carefully so that North Korea does not make any rash moves on the strength of its nuclear weapons.

SOUTH KOREA'S DONG A-ILBO

To minimise the repercussions of the North's nuclear test on South Korea, the US must first faithfully carry out the commitments it has made for the security of Korea. South Korea also has no choice but to rely on the nuclear umbrella of the US, as it can stand up to the North armed only with conventional weapons... The time has come for the Korea-US alliance, deemed the most successful one in the past half-century, to now prove its worth.

SINGAPORE'S BERITA HARIAN

Apart from asking North Korea to return to the negotiating table, the UN needs to do something to soften the country's stance. But military action must be avoided completely. This would be seen by the regime as provocation and would probably lead to an incredibly tragic response. China and Russia need to continue to urge Kim's regime to change and open up the country.

INDONESIA'S SUARA MERDEKA

The determination of Pyongyang over the nuclear issue has stemmed from the unresolved conflict in the Korean peninsula... Now North Korea has challenged the United States to go on to have bilateral negotiations... If the US cares about Asia's security and realises that North Korea's bargaining position is now stronger, the superpower ought to be more serious in seeking a solution to the Korea conflict.

INDONESIA'S SINAR HARAPAN

It looks as though North Korea wants to make an unpleasant "gift" to many parties, particularly its neighbouring countries in East Asia... We urge the UN Security Council and the international community to take resolute measures against the regime in Pyongyang to discontinue its nuclear ambition.

GERMANY'S FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG

The huge empire [China], which has been humiliated by its small neighbour, has little choice but to take part in disciplining the North Korean dictator.

FRANCE'S LE MONDE

In a very classic way, the countries in charge of the issue have practised the policy of the "stick and the carrot". Each time the great powers issue threats, without moving into action, and North Korea pursues its quest for the bomb... The path of negotiation is blocked: the use of force impracticable. The Non-Proliferation Treaty is in its death throes.

ISRAEL'S JERUSALEM POST

UN Security Council members are considering imposing sanctions on North Korea. Though such a course should have been taken long ago to dissuade Pyongyang from developing a bomb in the first place, it is critical to take this step now to deter further belligerent actions by both remaining "axis of evil" regimes.

SAHAR BA'ASIRI IN LEBANON'S AL-NAHAR

North Korea's ally and neighbour, China, is the key to the solution. Suffice it so say that China can threaten to cut food and fuel to North Korea so that Kim Jong-il's regime stops its nuclear programme.

PAKISTAN'S ISLAM

North Korea's nuclear test is a slap in the face of the dual policies adopted by the international powers. Now the world should do away with the supremacy of a few nations in order to ensure global peace and stability.
[BBC Monitoring - 11 October 2006]


In the face of U.S. failures to stop North Korea from developing and testing a nuclear weapon, a number of Asia experts say the United States has little choice but to accept the North as a nuclear state, while continuing to pursue both negotiations and pressure on the government through U.N. sanctions.
In other words, the experts said, U.S. policymakers have to focus on containment of the North Korean threat, and they have to be prepared to sit down at the negotiating table with an enemy that has proved unreliable and mercurial, no matter how uncomfortable that might be.
For its part, the Bush administration stood its ground Tuesday, suggesting that it would not change course. President Bush had insisted that the United States would not tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a CNN interview that U.S. policy remains the same: dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear program.
But several experts said that goal now seems obsolete. They said a new approach is called for, including containment of North Korea rather than a halt to the weapons effort, or regime change.

(...)

"The idea that we won't talk to them is a truly bizarre idea," said Michael Armacost, the former U.S. ambassador to Japan in the first Bush administration and now a fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Armacost added that, while some conservatives have harshly criticized past talks with North Korea for producing no major changes in the North's behavior, the reality is that talks have at the least bought time previously, a valuable commodity in dealing with Pyongyang.
"There was no evidence that engagement failed even if it didn't get us everything we wanted," said Armacost.
Armacost stressed, like the others, the need to work closely with China, applying some economic pressure to contain the North. While Republicans and Democrats are now pointing fingers at each other for the failure of U.S. policy -- Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Tuesday blasted the Clinton administration for its more open policy toward the North -- many experts agree that the North quite likely never had any intention of giving up its nuclear program, no matter how flexible or deft U.S. policy was.
"It now seems quite possible that this test by the North was the culmination of a long-term effort that wasn't going to be deterred by outsiders at all," said Armacost.
[James Sterngold - SFGate.com - October 11, 2006]

State of Denial

The Washington Post has published the first excerpts of Bob Woodward's new book -- and they put the lie into Condi Rice's statement of four days ago: "What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years."
On July 10, 2001, CIA Director George Tenet got in his car and called Rice to say he was coming over with his chief of counterterrorism, Cofer Black, on urgent business. Woodward writes:
"Tenet hoped his abrupt request for an immediate meeting would shake Rice. He and Black, a veteran covert operator, had two main points when they met with her. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself. Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the problem was so serious that it required an overall plan and strategy. Second, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately. They needed to take action that moment -- covert, military, whatever -- to thwart bin Laden."
Of course, nothing happened. "Rice," Woodward notes, "seemed focused on other administration priorities, especially the ballistic missile defense system that Bush had campaigned on. She was in a different place." And so, apparently, was the president who a month later reacted to the CIA memo warning that "Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S.," by dismissing the briefer, "OK, you've covered your ass now."
If that's an "aggressive" response to the CIA Director's direct warning of an impending terrorist strike against the United States, I'd like to know what a tepid response would have looked like.
[Ivo Daalder - America Abroad - Sep 30, 2006]

"Tenet ... decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately. Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, from the car and said he needed to see her right away," Woodward reports. "He and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action." A mountain of evidence proves that the Bush administration did nothing of the sort.

Now, if Rice truly does not remember that now-confirmed meeting -- which was apparently first reported in the Aug. 4, 2002, Time magazine in an article titled "Could 9/11 Have Been Prevented?" -- wouldn't that indicate she didn't take it that seriously? Not remembering confirms her inattention to terror reports at a time the Bush administration was already fixated on "regime change" in Iraq.

Rice is famously sharp and has an awesome memory. Considering the trauma of 9/11 and its effects, it is inconceivable that Rice would not recall such an ominous and prescient briefing by Tenet and Black, especially after the 9/11 Commission forced her to document and review her actions in those crucial months.

It is however, as she stated Monday, "incomprehensible," that she, then the national security adviser to the president and the person most clearly charged with sounding the alarm, to have ignored the threat. But ignore it the administration did, and then later tried to lay the blame on the Clinton administration which, Rice claimed at the 9/11 Commission hearings, lied when it said it had given the incoming White House team an action plan for fighting al Qaeda.

"We were not presented with a plan," Rice infamously argued under questioning from former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, but instead were given a memo with "a series of actionable items" describing how to tackle al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Such weaseling would be funny if the topic were not so serious. But there is no way Rice can squirm out of this one, despite her impressive track record of calculated distortion on everything from Iraq's nonexistent WMDs to the trumped-up ties between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Can there be any better case for turning over control of at least one branch of Congress to the opposition party so that we might finally have hearings to learn the truth of this matter that is far more important, and sordid, than the Foley affair?
[Robert Scheer - SF Chronicle - October 4, 2006]

Officials now agree that on July 10, 2001, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism deputy, J. Cofer Black, were so alarmed about an impending Al Qaeda attack that they demanded an emergency meeting at the White House with Ms. Rice and her National Security Council staff.

According to two former intelligence officials, Mr. Tenet told those assembled at the White House about the growing body of intelligence the Central Intelligence Agency had collected pointing to an impending Al Qaeda attack. But both current and former officials took issue with Mr. Woodward's account that Mr. Tenet and his aides left the meeting in frustration, feeling as if Ms. Rice had ignored them.

Tenet's no hero in this; it seems he failed to mention some of this to the 9/11 commission. The picture that emerges is that of an administration so dysfunctional that it was unable to respond to the intelligence before it.

This brings us into familiar Condi Rice territory, though: getting indignant and losing her grip on facts when people criticize or question her. There was her recent complaint that the Clinton people left her no plan for fighting terror. Here's what the 9/11 Commission Report has to say on that:

As the Clinton administration drew to a close, Clarke and his staff developed a policy paper of their own [which] incorporated the CIA's new ideas from the Blue Sky memo, and posed several near-term policy options. Clarke and his staff proposed a goal to "roll back" al Qaeda over a period of three to five years ...[including] covert aid to the Northern Alliance, covert aid to Uzbekistan, and renewed Predator flights in March 2001. A sentence called for military action to destroy al Qaeda command-and control targets and infrastructure and Taliban military and command assets. The paper also expressed concern about the presence of al Qaeda operatives in the United States." [p. 197]

Okay, so it wasn't a plan... it was just ideas about how to fight terrorism and specific options that could be implemented. In other words, the kind of thing one administration would normally leave for its successor, assuming that they should know what was being considered, but would make their own plans. (Or, in this case, not.)

And then there were the Senate confirmation hearings when she was selected as Secretary as State, where her reaction to inconsistencies in her statements was to go off on Sen. Boxer and complain that they were questioning her integrity. When faced with inconsistencies, from an appointee, it's the Senate's job to ask questions; Rice could have clarified things, but instead she threw a tantrum.

This is a woman who in 2002 was telling us in press briefings that there was "no way" anyone could have predicted that terrorists would use airplanes as weapons... but who in August, 2001 read a briefing that said that al Qaeda was planning a major strike against the US that could involve hijacking of airplanes.

There's a convenient list of Rice's incorrect statements to the 9/11 Commission here, if you're curious. It certainly sheds some light on why she was so resistant to testifying to the commission under oath (which she did, in the end, do).

After watching her for years, it's easy to see the pattern: when something goes wrong on her watch, she looks for someone to blame, and makes things up to support it... complete with an indignant complaint that people are impugning her integrity.

This isn't what we should expect from a secretary of state. This is behavior better suited to a petulant sixth-grader who's been caught not doing her homework and is looking for a convenient dog to accuse of eating it.
[John Whiteside - Blue Bayou Blog - October 03, 2006]


What is illuminating about this developing story is that it reveals the essential context in which 9/11 occurred, and how it contradicts the "it-came-out-of-the-sheer-blue-sky" explanation that frames the official narrative. The Tenet briefing, of course, never made it into the report of the 9/11 Commission. Both Richard Ben-Veniste, a top Democratic member of the bipartisan Commission, and Philip Zelikow, the author of the Commission's report, met with Tenet and saw the same PowerPoint presentation viewed by Rice, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld. According to the McClatchy report,
"Tenet outlined to commission members Ben-Veniste and Zelikow in secret testimony at CIA headquarters. The State Department confirmed that the briefing materials were 'made available to the 9/11 Commission, and Director Tenet was asked about this meeting when interviewed by the 9/11 Commission.'"
Tenet, however, tells a different story. Citing multiple sources within the intelligence community, the McClatchy piece avers that
"Tenet raised the matter with the panel himself, displayed slides from the PowerPoint presentation, and offered to testify on the matter in public.
"Ben-Veniste confirmed to McClatchy Newspapers that Tenet outlined for the 9/11 commission the July 10 briefing to Rice in secret testimony in January 2004. He referred questions about why the commission omitted any mention of the briefing in its report to Zelikow, the report's main author. Zelikow didn't respond to e-mail and telephone queries from McClatchy Newspapers."
Surely Zelikow has some explaining to do, but this yawning gap in the official narrative isn't so inexplicable given his ideological background. A strong supporter of the neoconservative foreign policy agenda, Zelikow is very close to Rice, having co-authored a book with her. She had him rewrite the original National Security Strategy authored by Richard Haas, which emphasized the neocon commitment to the principle of brazen aggression, otherwise known as "preemption."
Zelikow's closeness to the administration was immediately seized on by the families of 9/11 victims as a gigantic conflict of interest. A serious academic, he is also a bit of an odd duck who has been unusually candid about what he calls the real "unspoken" agenda behind the Bush's administration's rush to war with Iraq: the "defense" of Israel. Unlike others who have made this same observation, however, he has not been accused of hatching "conspiracy theories" or smeared as "anti-Semitic." In a piece he co-authored for Foreign Affairs in the winter of 1998, Zelikow wrote of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center that, if it had succeeded on a larger scale,
"The resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America's fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either future terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently."
Having anticipated well in advance the judgment of negligence, incompetence, and worse pronounced on this administration, Zelikow did his best to cover up the evidence. It wasn't good enough, however, and the official story is rapidly unraveling. The question now is, what did they know, who knew, and when did they know it?
The level of "chatter" picked up by our intelligence agencies prior to 9/11 kept Tenet up at night and energized him enough to go charging into Condi Rice's office, without notice, with a warning so urgent it couldn't wait a moment longer. Yet he and his fellow CIA officers ran up against a brick wall of, at best, indifference on the part of Condi, as well as Rumsfeld's outright obstructionism. Rumsfeld is said to have disdained the idea that a serious plot was afoot. Woodward writes:
"Tenet has been having difficulty getting traction on an immediate bin Laden action plan, in part because Rumsfeld has questioned all the NSA intercepts and other intelligence. Could all this be a grand deception? Rumsfeld had asked. Perhaps it was a plan to measure U.S. reactions and defenses. Tenet had the NSA review all the intercepts. They concluded they were genuine al-Qaeda communications. On June 30 a TOP SECRET senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined, 'Bin Laden Threats Are Real.'"
Incompetence on this scale is hard to imagine. Aside from the pigheadedness we have come to know and loathe in Rumsfeld and our commander in chief, and the tendency of government officials – and any sort of bureaucracy – to move slowly and uncertainly, preoccupied by questions of turf and intramural politics, there is perhaps another and more troubling explanation for why we didn't catch on to what was happening.
Yes, the administration was indeed distracted from real threats, focused as they were on the nonexistent "threat" from Iraq. However, these factors alone do not fully explain how, with all the "noise" emanating from intelligence sources – relayed directly and urgently to the White House by Tenet and others – they managed to miss the rising flood tide of indications that something wicked this way comes. The long trail of "errors" and "intelligence failures" smacks just as much of willful blindness as it does of monumental incompetence. An element of deliberate obstruction, on some level, of Tenet's lonely crusade to get the administration to do something, makes a certain amount of sense: after all, the sheer mass of evidence that something was afoot suggests a considerable effort to downplay or suppress it. There were forces working against Tenet, Black, and the CIA – but who were they, and what were their motives?
What all this suggests is that the U.S. government had been successfully infiltrated on some level. And it wasn't some obscure "conspiracy theorist" but New York Times columnist William Safire, who, two days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, first reported al-Qaeda's success in penetrating the most closely-guarded secrets of the U.S. government:
"A threatening message received by the Secret Service was relayed to the agents with the president that 'Air Force One is next.' According to the high official, American code words were used showing a knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible.
"(I have a second, on-the-record source about that: Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser, tells me: 'When the president said "I don't want some tinhorn terrorists keeping me out of Washington," the Secret Service informed him that the threat contained language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and whereabouts. In light of the specific and credible threat, it was decided to get airborne with a fighter escort.')"
[Justin Raimondo - Ether Zone, The Intelligent Alternative - October 09, 2006]

Mr Woodward also knocks a few more nails into Mr Rumsfeld's coffin. He produces yet more examples of his bullying and boorishness—such as Mr Bush having to instruct him to return Condoleezza Rice's phone calls. But he adds new charges. Mr Rumsfeld lost interest in Iraq once the invasion was over (though he continued to stymie the State Department's attempts to revise interrogation policies). He kept his fingerprints off tricky decisions—an internal memo accused him of “rubber-glove syndrome”. He also borrowed a tactic from the left, blaming “the system” for his own failures. No wonder several of Mr Bush's closest advisers—including Laura Bush, Ms Rice, Andy Card, his then chief of staff, and Michael Gerson, his speech-writer—have tried to get him pensioned off.

Mr Rumsfeld is at least nearing the end of his career, if not as fast as one might like. Mr Woodward's other big target, Condoleezza Rice, is still in the middle of hers. Not long ago she was being touted as a potential president. But her star has been dimming since her lamentable performance during the Israel-Lebanon war, and “State of Denial” will dim it further. Mr Woodward quotes George Bush senior saying that she is not “up to the job” and Mr Kay describing her as “probably the worst national security adviser in modern times since the office was created” (sic).

(...)

“State of Denial” also contains an explosive charge about September 11th. Mr Woodward claims that George Tenet, the then head of the CIA, and Cofer Black, his deputy for counter-terrorism, went to see Ms Rice, then head of the National Security Council on July 10th 2001, and warned her that “chatter” about an impending attack was too loud to ignore. Ms Rice gave them the brush off. This charge has produced a convoluted debate. Ms Rice first claimed that the meeting never took place. Then administration officials confirmed that it did indeed take place. Ms Rice then disputed the characterisation of the meeting: she was having regular meetings with Mr Tenet at that point. Whether Ms Rice is guilty of neglect is not clear. But at the very least Mr Woodward's revelations make it more difficult for the Bushies to point an accusing finger at the Clinton administration.

“State of Denial” could hardly come at a worse time for the Republican Party. Republican poll numbers recently ticked upwards as attention focused on war and terrorism. But the book threatens to turn that strength into a weakness. What is the point of being a resolute warrior if you are marching in the wrong direction? No wonder the Democrats held a press conference on the book before it was even published.

But the party's problems could last for more than the current election cycle. The striking thing about Mr Woodward's revelations is that they are so predictable. A mounting pile of books about the administration, such as Thomas Ricks' excellent “Fiasco”, reach the same conclusion. They make it more difficult for the administration to justify staying in Iraq for the rest of the Bush presidency
[The Economist, print edition - Oct 5th 2006]