Ugly:

On Sunday's Meet the Press, we note the following:

MR. RUSSERT (to ALBRIGHT): There’s a debate which is waged in political and diplomatic circles about September 11. Could more have been done by the Clinton administration prior to September 11—and you write about some of that in your book. Another book called “Losing Bin Laden” is out and it talks about, the Clinton administration, you specifically. Let me go through that and give you a chance to respond. In October 12, 2002, the USS Cole was blown up. “An American warship had been attacked without warning in a ‘friendly’ harbor—and, at the time, no one knew if the ship’s pumps could keep it afloat for the night. Now, they had to decide what to do about it.
     “[Clinton administration counter-terrorism czar Richard] Clarke had no doubts whom to punish. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had compiled thick binders of bin Laden and Taliban targets in Afghanistan, complete with satellite photographs and GPS bomb coordinates...The detailed plan was ‘to level’ every bin Laden training camp and compound in Afghanistan as well as key Taliban buildings in Kabul and Kandahar. ‘Let’s blow them up,’ Clarke said. ...
     “Around the table, Clarke head only objections—not a mandate for action...
“Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was also against a counterstrike—but for diplomatic reasons.
     ‘We’re desperately trying to halt the fighting that has broken out between Israel and the Palestinians,’ Albright said. Clarke recalls her saying, ‘bombing Muslims wouldn’t be helpful at this time.’...
     “Albright urged continued diplomatic efforts to persuade the Taliban to turn over bin Laden. Those efforts had been going on for more than two years and had gone nowhere. It was unlikely that the Taliban would every voluntarily turn over its strongest internal ally.”
And nine months later, after that discussion, September 11.

In case you were wondering, Russert took the time (one minute 20 seconds) to read 208 words of Albright-trashing from the book “Losing Bin Laden”, a product of Regenry Publishing.

Also, what's this about "nine months later ... September 11"? We don't have the book in question, but if the meeting took place nine months before September 11, it would have been in the very last days of the Clinton administration, and in such circumstances it's usually a good idea not to saddle the incoming president (of the opposite party!) with an operation he didn't approve.

MR. RUSSERT: That uncertainty has certainly spilled over into the American political debate, Bill Safire. I showed Secretary Albright Ted Kennedy’s comments about the war being a fraud. Senator Kennedy also offered this. ”[Sen. Ted] Kennedy said the administration has failed to account for nearly half of the $4 billion the war is costing each month. He said he believed that much of the unaccounted money is being used to bribe foreign leaders to send in troops,” which prompted this response from Tom DeLay, Republican leader in the House, “It’s disturbing that Democrats have spewed more hateful rhetoric at President Bush than they ever did at Saddam Hussein.” How big of a political issue has the Iraq war become?

MR. WILLIAM SAFIRE: Do you suppose we could bribe Jacques Chirac? I don’t think so. That’s not the right approach.

Maybe not Chirac, but how about Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan?

MR. RUSSERT: I’m going to get to Wes Clark in just a second. But, first, there was an interesting development within the administration this last week. Vice President Cheney was on this program last week and let me show you the question I asked him and his answer.

“The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that?”
Cheney answered.

“VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection.
QUESTION: But is there a connection?
VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: We don’t know.”

George Bush, the president, this week, came out, a few days later, and said this: “We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th.”
What happened?

MR. SAFIRE: I thought Cheney was terrific on this show last week. Better than us, even.

Cheney was a terrific liar.

MR. SAFIRE: I’ve always believed the Czech intelligence that said Mohamed Atta met in Prague four months before the September 11 attack with Saddam Hussein’s top intelligence agent in Europe. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m right. Nobody has definitively answered that. So that when Cheney was asked, he said, I think quite properly, “We don’t know.”

This is the refuge of "absolute proof", a common technique used by Holocaust Deniers.

MR. RUSSERT: Then why did the president say something different [from Cheney]?MR. SAFIRE: The president abandoned that position and said, “We have no evidence on it.”
MR. RUSSERT: Why?
MR. SAFIRE: I don’t know.

Worst ... lie ... ever.     Of course he knows. Cheney lied his ass off. (By the way, there are currently 1000 stories on Google news for "Bush Saddam connection".)

ABOUT WESLEY CLARK AND HILLARY'S PRESIDENTIAL AMBITIONS

MR. SAFIRE: I see a delicious Machiavellian dynamic underneath this.
[...]
MR. SAFIRE: There was a party, a dinner party, in the Clintons’ home. The conversation was leaked by a close Clinton friend, probably with Bill Clinton’s enthusiastic endorsement. That former President Clinton said there are two stars in the Democratic Party: Hillary and Wes Clark. Now, of course, he meant there were eight stars.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
MR. SAFIRE: Now, why is Bill Clinton pushing Wes Clark? The Clinton people are climbing on the Clark bandwagon. This is the way to stop Howard Dean. Now, why does Clinton want to stop Howard Dean? Could it be that he wants to wait and see and perhaps Hillary will get into this with General Clark as her vice president? Will he prefer to let someone else run and lose and, thereby, have a clear field for Hillary Clinton to run in 2008? What’s going on underneath the coverage? It’s just terrific.
MR. RUSSERT: Well, let us add a few logs to this Safire conspiracy fire...
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
MR. RUSSERT: ...because Bill Clinton went to California this past week, to the Panetta Institute, the home of his former chief of staff, and this is the news account from The New York Sun. “President Clinton stoked speculation that his wife, Senator Clinton, will run for president in 2004. Asked by his former chief of staff, Leon Panetta, where there was ‘a chance’ that Mrs. Clinton would run for president next year, Mr. Clinton left the door open. ‘That’s really a decision for her to make,’ he said at a public forum [in California]. The former president also said he believed many New Yorkers would have no objection to her breaking her pledge to serve a full six years in the Senate. ‘I was impressed at the state fair in New York, which is in Republican country in upstate New York, at how many New Yorkers came up and said they would release her from her commitment if she wanted to do it,’ Mr. Clinton said. ‘But she said...she doesn’t understand how to walk away from that. So I just have to take her for where she is right now.’”

Apparently, Meet the Press is now the appropriate forum for Safire to speculate wildly in order to score points. (We expect the Howler to address thiis aspect of professional journalism.) When will Noam Chomsky get the same opportunity?

Very nice of Russert to cite the conservative New York Sun for a portrait of leading Democratic figures.

Even though today's Meet the Press didn't have any truly outstanding outrageous moments, it was a good example of how slanted it is: Two strongly conservative commentators out of four. A couple of citations by Russert from partisan sources. And speculation and conspiracy theories.

What really bothered us was Safire not knowing for sure that Mohammed Atta didn't meet with Iraqi agents, or why Bush disavowed a connection between Saddam and 9/11 - Safire insists on a high standard before rendering a judgement - yet when it comes to sundry Democrats, any hunch will do.

It was ugly.

posted by Quiddity at 9/21/2003 11:38:00 AM