CONDI'S CREDENTIALS

Jackie - 1) I don't think anyone has claimed that Condi is "above" telling a lie. I believe the question was whether anyone has evidence that she lied. So far, I've seen evidence that she may have made at least one statement that was factually incorrect. Whether she lied seems open to interpretation. Many folks are allowing their bias to lead them to make statements they can't prove. I try to withhold judgement when the facts aren't there.

2) You may be happy to link yourself with Al Jazeera, but it might be unfair to Titus for you to so link him.

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I am not linking Titus to anything.

But your reply, while it seems stuffily polite, sounds very snobbish.

Brandon states:
"I, personally, attribute this to the fact that she is not a liar."

Then you, Scrat says:
"Jackie - 1) I don't think anyone has claimed that Condi is "above" telling a lie."

Think Brandon9000 might care about your answering for him?

Don't bother to answer... I am DONE!

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Jackie - 1) Given a choice, I guess I'll take "stuffily polite" and "snobbish" over combative and shrill. Shocked

2) You'll note that I wrote that I didn't think anyone had written that she was above lying. I hope you'll indulge me my right to be wrong now and again. :wink:

3) Um, bye now! Cool

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I'd still appreciate a citation to evidence that "a month earlier, the Bush Administration was informed that terrorists had concocted plans to use airplanes as missiles?"

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Brandon9000 wrote:

I'd still appreciate a citation to evidence that "a month earlier, the Bush Administration was informed that terrorists had concocted plans to use airplanes as missiles?"

As would I.

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Quote:

She reiterated that claim in a Washington Post article on 22 March 2004, saying "we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles".
But a former translator for the FBI with high security clearance says Rice's assertion is "an outrageous lie".

Is this FBI agent named someplace? Is s/he still employed? Having family members with very high security clearances, it does not ring quite true that somebody would be saying stuff like this publically without clearance from the head cheeses.

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"Is this FBI agent named someplace?" foxfyre

Published on Friday, April 2, 2004 by the lndependent/UK

'I Saw Papers That Show US Knew al-Qa'ida Would Attack Cities With Airplanes'

Whistleblower the White House wants to silence speaks to The Independent

by Andrew Buncombe in Washington

A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.

She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".

Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege".

She told The Independent yesterday: "I gave [the 9/11commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily."

She added: "There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used but not specifically about how they would be used and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities with skyscrapers."

The accusations from Mrs Edmonds, 33, a Turkish-American who speaks Azerbaijani, Farsi, Turkish and English, will reignite the controversy over whether the administration ignored warnings about al-Qa'ida. That controversy was sparked most recently by Richard Clarke, a former counter-terrorism official, who has accused the administration of ignoring his warnings.

The issue what the administration knew and when is central to the investigation by the 9/11 Commission, which has been hearing testimony in public and private from government officials, intelligence officials and secret sources. Earlier this week, the White House made a U-turn when it said that Ms Rice would appear in public before the commission to answer questions. Mr Bush and his deputy, Dick Cheney, will also be questioned in a closed-door session.

Mrs Edmonds, 33, says she gave her evidence to the commission in a specially constructed "secure" room at its offices in Washington on 11 February. She was hired as a translator for the FBI's Washington field office on 13 September 2001, just two days after the al-Qa'ida attacks. Her job was to translate documents and recordings from FBI wire-taps.

She said said it was clear there was sufficient information during the spring and summer of 2001 to indicate terrorists were planning an attack. "Most of what I told the commission 90 per cent of it related to the investigations that I was involved in or just from working in the department. Two hundred translators side by side, you get to see and hear a lot of other things as well."

"President Bush said they had no specific information about 11 September and that is accurate but only because he said 11 September," she said. There was, however, general information about the use of airplanes and that an attack was just months away.

To try to refute Mr Clarke's accusations, Ms Rice said the administration did take steps to counter al-Qa'ida. But in an opinion piece in The Washington Post on 22 March, Ms Rice wrote: "Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack planes to try and free US-held terrorists."

Mrs Edmonds said that by using the word "we", Ms Rice told an "outrageous lie". She said: "Rice says 'we' not 'I'. That would include all people from the FBI, the CIA and DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency]. I am saying that is impossible."

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Quote:

Mrs Edmonds, 33, says she gave her evidence to the commission in a specially constructed "secure" room at its offices in Washington on 11 February. She was hired as a translator for the FBI's Washington field office on 13 September 2001, just two days after the al-Qa'ida attacks. Her job was to translate documents and recordings from FBI wire-taps.

I'm genuinely confused. If she was hired two days AFTER the 9/11 attacks, how can she speak to what was "circulating within the FBI" before then, and further claim knowledge of who knew what at a time when she was not there?

I also note that not a single word she is quoted as saying actually states that planes would be used as missiles. (Does anyone see something I don't see?)

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From the piece:

"She told The Independent yesterday: "I gave [the 9/11commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily." She added: "There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used but not specifically about how they would be used and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities with skyscrapers."

I conclude from this the Bush administration had documents identifying targets, methods, dates, etc., before 9/11 and failed to translate them until she came along.

After all, the Bush cabal was absorbed in Star Wars as an homage to Saint Reagan -- they turned a blind eye to al-Qaida and UBL.[/color]

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The New York Times returns to Dr. Rice's claim that 'no one could have imagined' airplanes as weapons. Rice discussed this statement during her private testimony given previously to the 9/11 commission. This part is amazing:

Quote:

She told the commission that she regretted those comments, because at the time she was not aware of intelligence, developed in the late 1990's, that some terrorists were thinking of using airplanes as guided missiles. She told the commission in the private session that she should have said, "I could not have imagined," according to one official familiar with the testimony, making it clear that some in the intelligence community knew about those threats but that she did not.

"Information about possible use of airplanes as missiles to destroy buildings was not briefed to her prior to that statement in May 2002," [Rice spokesman Sean] McCormack said.

Let's be clear about why that's amazing.

By May 2002, the history of airplanes-as-weapons threats had been widely discussed in American newspapers. Everyone who read newspapers knew the long history of these types of threats.

For example, here's the beginning of an article by the Washington Post's Doug Struck. It was published on September 23, 2001, on page one of the newspaper:

Quote:

Abdul Hakim Murad washed his hands, and broke a basic rule of bombmaking.

When the water mixed with chemical residue in the kitchen sink of unit 603 in the Dona Josefa Apartments here in 1995, it set off an eruption that would reveal the inner workings of a clandestine terrorist cell allied with Osama bin Laden.

It also revealed a plan that gave a chilling preview of the attack in New York and Washington on Sept. 11.

Arrested and tortured by Philippine intelligence agents, Murad told the story of "Bojinka" -- "loud bang" -- the code name al Qaeda operatives had given to an audacious plan to bomb 11 U.S. airliners simultaneously and fly an airplane into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.

Now, this is just one example. The history of airplanes-as-weapons had been widely discussed in the mainstream press by May 2002, when Rice made her amazing statement. By May 2002, the average American newspaper reader knew about the history of such threats. But by her own account, Dr. Rice -- the president's National Security Advisor --remained utterly clueless about the subject.

Since she has so many times insisted she could never have imagined this consequence, despite it being public knowledge in general, the question I hope some Commissioner has the stones to ask tomorrow is:

Has there ever been a less competent National Security Advisor in the history of the Republic?

Nine months after 9/11, Rice still didn't know about this potentiality, she says!

That is nothing short of astounding. Evil or Very Mad

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"Has there ever been a less competent National Security Advisor in the history of the Republic?" PDiddie

LOL!!!

You rhetorical rascal, you. :wink: [/color]

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Titus wrote:

From the piece:

"She told The Independent yesterday: "I gave [the 9/11commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily." She added: "There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used but not specifically about how they would be used and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities with skyscrapers."

I conclude from this the Bush administration had documents identifying targets, methods, dates, etc., before 9/11 and failed to translate them until she came along.

After all, the Bush cabal was absorbed in Star Wars as an homage to Saint Reagan -- they turned a blind eye to al-Qaida and UBL.[/color]

She's a translator, right? What language were these documents in? Assume they were in English; who had seen them prior to 9/11? Those are just two important questions that the news reports fail to answer, though they've certainly worked hard to make this sound bad. I find it completely plausible that some intelligence agency had information that planes might be used as missiles, but that the information had not come to light, had not been given the weight that we can only now give it in hindsight.

Consider the fact that we've wondered for years whether terrorists might attack a major water supply. If they did it tomorrow, would that be proof that we didn't take that specific threat seriously enough? Or would it simply indicate the obvious; that we can neither be everywhere at once nor see into the future.

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Condi testified under oath as did Clarke. Condi has been 100% consistent in public (and apparently private) statements she has made. These 'insiders' are not under oath and, as Condi's testimony and the interrogation by Dems on the commission proved, you can prove just about anything by taking stuff out of context. Put it into context, however, and the truth can be seen.

Clarke's record is one of being all over the map in what he has said publicly, what he has written, what the documented evidence shows, and what he testified to under oath. The only truthful thing I am sure that Clarke said was that if all the recommendations he says he recommended had been implemented, it would not have stopped 9/11.

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Yeah, Clarke is completely rendered irrelevant at this point, and Bob Woodward, the next Witch Hunt book of the month club participant. Rolling Eyes

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If anything, this administration is well scripted. Well scripted as in fiction.

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Well Lightwizard, do you have evidence that Dr. Rice's testimony is fiction? Or are you one of those who refuses to be swayed from the position you have chosen to take?

The one thing I've noted in this forum, when there are no facts to dispute something, the defense is always "he/she/it/they lied."

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I'm not refusing to be swayed from any particular postion. I just didn't find Rice's or any of the administration's spin as convincing.

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Foxfyre wrote:

The one thing I've noted in this forum, when there are no facts to dispute something, the defense is always "he/she/it/they lied."

This is rich coming from someone who posts apocyphal urban ledgends and calls it "fact".

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Gives credence to the idea that "facts" often don't add up to the truth.

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Lightwizard wrote:

Gives credence to the idea that "facts" often don't add up to the truth.

While a complete lack of facts often adds up to nothing but unsubstantiated assertions.

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