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George W. Bush on Homeland SecurityPresident of the United States, Former Republican Governor (TX) |
Where does it say that, if you call something "terrorism," the Constitution and the Bill of Rights can be made null and void? All they've got to do is say the word and they can put you under surveillance without a warrant. To me, this smacks of an attack on the foundations of democracy that plays right into the HANDS of terrorists. It also sets a precedent for the kinds of tactics we went to see at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere.
One provision created a little discomfort at home. The PATRIOT Act allowed the government to seek warrants to examine the business records of suspected terrorists, such as credit card receipts, apartment leases, and library records. As a former librarian, Laura didn't like the idea of federal agents snooping around libraries. I didn't, either. But the intelligence community had serious concerns about terrorists using library computers to communicate. Library records had played a role in several high-profile cases, such as the Zodiac gunman murders in California. The last thing I wanted was to allow the freedom and access to information provided by American libraries to be utilized against us by al Qaeda.
I asked the White House counsel's office and the Justice Department to study whether I could authorize the NSA to monitor al Qaeda communications into and out of the country without FISA warrants.
Both told me I could. They concluded that conducting surveillance against our enemies in war fell within the authorities granted by the congressional war resolution and the constitutional authority of the commander in chief.
Before I approved the Terrorist Surveillance Program, I wanted to ensure there were safeguards to prevent abuses. I had no desire to turn the NSA into an Orwellian Big Brother. The Terrorist Surveillance Program had been carefully designed to protect the civil liberties of innocent people.
The Clinton doctrine, presented to Congress, was that the United States is entitled to resort to "unilateral use of military power" to ensure "uninhabited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources."
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld et al, did introduce some important innovations. Ordinarily, torture is farmed out to subsidiaries under US supervision, not carried out by Americans directly in the government-established torture chambers. What the Obama [ban on torture] ostensibly knocks off is that small percentage of torture now done by Americans while retaining the overwhelming bulk of the system's torture, which is done by foreigners under US patronage.
Obama adopted the Bush position. In March, a Bush-appointed federal judge "rejected the Bush /Obama position and held that the rationale of Boumediene applies every bit as much to Bagram as it does to Guantanamo."
Israel sent two senior agents of the Mossad to Washington in August 2001 to "alert the CIA and FBI to the existence of a cell of as many as 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation." Eight months before the attacks, French intelligence warned the U.S. in nine different reports about "Airplane Hijacking Plans by Radical Islamists" connected to bin Laden and the Taliban. FBI agents working out of the Minneapolis and Phoenix offices tried to alert their superiors.
The new Department of Homeland Security would be composed of nearly 180,000 federal employees, drawn from parts or all of 22 units of government, including the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, element of the INS, security guards at airports, and Customs. The department would have an initial budget of $37.5 billion. Even so, it was less than the budget of the Department of Education and less than 1/10 of what the Department of Defense spends in a year.
During the Depression, the WPA provided jobs to lift Americans out of poverty. Today we need national-service jobs so that more Americans can give back out of their abundance' others still need to be lifted out of poverty. A year of civilian service can be a path for those who have dropped out of school or who are trapped in dead-end jobs to gain some marketable skills and make a fresh start.
The administration also took action at home. In the immediate aftermath, there was no higher priority than the response and recovery efforts, and helping NYC rebuild. Perhaps most significant was the effort to clamp down on those permitted to come into the country.
The London plot, however, was actually broken up in August 2006 by British law enforcement, according to news accounts at the time and also according to Bush himself. If wiretaps by US officials played any role, no administration official has yet said so publicly, despite plenty of opportunity.
To be sure, at other times Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff has said there was some involvement by the US, though he has yet to say what that role was. We find no public claim that the special wiretap program secretly authorized by Pres. Bush after the 2001 terrorist attacks had anything to do with foiling the plot.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court said that the president needed the approval of Congress to pursue these measures. The president's quick response was to propose legislation that would have Congress rubber-stamp his initial practices--reinstating the commissions as originally structured and redefining the Geneva conventions by weakening its protections. He demanded a free hand in interrogations--a circumstance, we know from the examples of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret prisons around the globe, that was deeply troubling.
This war is more than a clash of arms--it is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our nation is in the balance. To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred, and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and come to kill us. What every terrorist fears most is human freedom. Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies--and most will choose a better way when they are given a chance. So we advance our own security interests by helping moderates, reformers, and brave voices for democracy. The great question of our day is whether America will help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies and share in the rights of all humanity. And I say, for the sake of our own security--we must.
One of the first steps we can take together is to add to the ranks of our military--so that the American Armed Forces are ready for all the challenges ahead. Tonight I ask the Congress to authorize an increase in the size of our active Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 in the next five years. A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them. And it would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time.
My AWOL attack generated such intense buzz [that the press] asked the President directly if he could defend himself. "I served in the National Guard," Bush said. "I flew F-102 aircraft. I got an honorable discharge. I've heard this ever since I started running for office. I put in my time, proudly so."
Q: "There's no evidence that you reported to duty in Alabama during the summer and fall of 1972."
A: "Yea, they're just wrong. There may be no evidence, but I did report; otherwise, I wouldn't have been honorably discharged."
Bush could not defend himself against my daily AWOL attacks for the simple reason that his past was indefensible. His approval rating fell [that month] from 58% to 50%.
India conducted nuclear test explosions in 1998. The key inducement for NPT membership is that those in compliance will have exclusive access to highly sensitive nuclear technology. As a further move that weakened the non-proliferation effort, President Bush has announced plans to lift these restrictions and grant this privilege to India, which has rejected the NPT. This is a clear incitement for other nations to violate the treaty's restraints.
To legalize such abuses of civil liberties, the Patriot Act was hurriedly enacted, with a number of temporary provisions scheduled to expire in 2005. The president has called for the law to be expanded and made permanent, but even the conservative "patriots" have deplored such provisions as authorization for federal agents to search people's homes and businesses secretly, to confiscate property without any deadline or without giving notice that the intrusion has taken place, and to collect without notice personal information on American citizens, including their medical histories, books checked out of libraries, and goods they purchase. The government can now seize an entire database--all the medical records of a hospital or all the files of an immigration group--when it is investigating a single person.
Aug. 5, 2004: The military cannot add to its files any illegally gathered intelligence, including information obtained about Americans in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches.
Bush’s signing statement: Only the president, as commander in chief, can tell the military whether or not it can use any specific piece of intelligence.
The President’s numbers come from Freedom House, a nonprofit group that tracks levels of democracy and freedom around the globe. In 1945, there were about two dozen lonely democracies in the world. Today, there are 122. And we’re writing a new chapter in the story of self-government -- with women lining up to vote in Afghanistan, and millions of Iraqis marking their liberty with purple ink, and men and women from Lebanon to Egypt debating the rights of individuals and the necessity of freedom.
"A president must not shift in the wind; a president has to make tough decisions and stand by them. Especially in a time of war, mixed signals only confuse our friends and embolden our enemies. All progress on every other issue depends on the safety of our citizens. Americans will go to the polls Tuesday in a time of war and ongoing threats. The terrorists who killed thousands of innocent people are still dangerous, and they're determined to strike. The most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty or weakness in these troubling times, the world will drift toward tragedy. This is not going to happen on my watch."
The better course of action would be to disempower terrorists by denying them funding. In the near term, the Bush administration has shown a willingness to adopt measures to close down charities that pass their donations to terrorists; these have been effective. In the long term, however, the only way to avoid living under a cloud of Islamic fundamentalist terrorist is to stop buying foreign oil.
A: We’re not going to have a draft, period. The all-volunteer Army works. It works particularly when we pay our troops well, it works when we make sure they’ve got housing, like we have done in the last military budgets. An all-volunteer Army is best-suited to fight the new wars of the 21st century, which is to be specialized and to find these people as they hide around the world. We don’t need mass armies anymore. We’re beginning to transform our military, and by that I mean we’re moving troops out of Korea and replacing them with more effective weapons. So, the answer to your question is, we’re withdrawing, not from the world, we’re withdrawing manpower so they can be stationed here in America so there’s less rotation so life is easier on their families and, therefore, more likely to be - we’ll be more likely to be able to keep people in the all-volunteer Army.
BUSH: We’ve tripled the homeland security budget from $10 to $30 billion. We’ll do everything we can to protect the homeland. We need good intelligence. Right after 1993 he voted to cut the intelligence budget by $7.5 billion.
KERRY: Pres. Bush just said to you that we’ve added money. The test is not if you’ve added money. The test is have you done everything possible to make America secure. He chose a tax cut for wealthy Americans over the things that I listed to you.
BUSH: We’ve decreased funding for dealing with nuclear proliferation about 35% since I’ve been the president. The biggest threat facing this country is weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist network. And that’s why proliferation is one of the centerpieces of a multi-prong strategy to make the country safer. Over 60 nations involved with disrupting the trans-shipment of information and/or weapons of mass destruction materials.
Bush's aides believe a right of preemptive attack and preventive war is inherent in the national right to self-defense. In the Cuban missile crisis, they argue, Kennedy was prepared to attack the missile sites in Cuba rather than let them become operational. True, but the Soviet missile threat in Cuba appeared both grave and imminent. Those were nuclear missiles that could strike Washington from their Cuban bases in 20 minutes.
Preemptive strikes have been the war options exercised by aggressor nations like Japan at Port Arthur in 1904 and at Pearl Harbor, and Hitler's Germany against Poland. Or they have been the first resort of nations that cannot afford to lose a battle, like Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967. But preemptive strikes have never been America's way.
"Deterrence is less likely to work against leaders of rogue states more willing to take risks, gambling with the lives of their people, and the wealth of their nations. Our enemies see Weapons of Mass Destruction as weapons of choice. These weapons may allow these states to attempt to blackmail the US, to prevent us from deterring or repelling the aggressive behavior of rogue states. Deterrence has worked. With the exception of Korea, 1950, where Stalin and Kim Il Sung, believing we would not fight, miscalculated, deterrence has never failed us. No rogue state has ever attacked the US--for fear of the massive retaliation that would surely follow."
From the passage above, the Bush administration appears to fear that if nations like Iran acquire nuclear weapons, they will use them not to attack us but to curtail our freedom of action and end our dominance of their region.
Conservatives credit Reagan and the Reagan Doctrine with playing a decisive role in America's Cold War victory. Yet Reagan never asserted a US right to launch preemptive strikes or preventive wars on nations that had not attacked the US.
Bush's aides believe a right of preemptive attack and preventive war is inherent in the national right of self-defense. Preemptive strikes have been the war options exercised by aggressor nations like Japan at Port Arthur in 1904 and at Pearl Harbor, and Hitler's Germany against Poland. Or they have been the first resort of nations that cannot afford to lose a battle, like Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967. But preemptive strikes have never been America's way.
He listened to what I had to say without much comment, then changed the subject to how I did the job.
In fact, Bush only flew from June 1970 until April 1972. That month he ceased flying altogether, two years before his military commitment ended, an unusual step that has left some veteran fighter pilots puzzled.
A group of Vietnam veterans recently offered a $3,500 reward for anyone who can verify Bush’s claim that he performed service at a Montgomery air guard unit in 1972, when Bush was temporarily in Alabama working on a political campaign. So far, no one has come forward.
A Bush campaign spokesman acknowledged last week that he knows of no witnesses who can attest to Bush’s attendance at drills after he returned to Houston in late 1972 and before his early release from the Guard in September 1973.
The Bush campaign’s initial explanation for the lapse “incomplete records,” it now admits, was wrong. An Air Reserve official said last week that they now believe that Bush met minimum drill requirements before his discharge.
The result is that Bush’s discharge was “honorable.” Other current and retired Air Force officers said Bush’s military records are much like those of countless other Guardsmen at the time: guardsmen who lost interest in their units, and commanders who found it easier to muster them out than hold them to a commitment many made to avoid Vietnam.
I will work to reduce nuclear weapons and nuclear tension in the world -- to turn these years of influence into decades of peace. And my administration will deploy missile defenses to guard against attack and blackmail. Now is the time, not to defend outdated treaties, but to defend the American people.
Before enlisting, Bush took the Air Force Officers Qualification test. While scoring 25% for pilot aptitude on the screening test--"about as low as you could get and be accepted"--Bush scored 95% in the "officer quality" section.
His Guard application form asked for "background qualifications of value to the Air Force." Bush wrote "None." On whether he was interested in an overseas assignment, Bush checked the box that said: "do not volunteer."
I also felt blindsided. Don had told me the military was investigating reports of abuse at the prison, but I had no idea how graphic or grotesque the photos would be. When Don got word of the stories, he [offered to resign] as secretary of defense.
Don was serious about leaving. It was a testament to his character, his loyalty to the office, and his understanding of the damage Abu Ghraib was causing. I seriously considered accepting his advice. But a big factor held me back: There was no obvious replacement for Don, and I couldn't afford to create a vacuum at the top of Defense.
At the 1st Vulcan meeting in February 1999, Bush asked, "Is defense to be an issue in the 2000 campaign?" The advisers said they didn't think it would. Bush said he wanted to make defense an issue. He said he wanted to transform the military, to put it in a position to deal with new & emerging threats.
To do that, the advisers said, the military would need new equipment. Bush indicated he was willing to make that investment. Bush gave a speech at The Citadel in Sept: 1999: "I will defend the American people against missiles and terror," Bush said, "And I will begin creating the military of the next century. Homeland defense has become an urgent duty." He cited the potential "threat of biological, chemical and nuclear terrorism. Every group or nation must know, if they sponsor such attacks, our response will be devastating."
The best way to keep the peace is to redefine war on our terms. We have begun a comprehensive review of the US military, the state of our strategy, the structure of our forces, the priorities of our budget. I have given a broad mandate to challenge the status quo as we design a new architecture for the defense of America. We will modernize some existing weapons and equipment, a task we have neglected for too long, but we will do this judiciously and selectively. Our goal is to move beyond marginal improvements to harness new technologies that will support a new strategy.
GORE: The US has to be strong in order to promote peace and stability. We need to make sure that our personnel are adequately paid and that their pay is comparable to the competition from the private sector. I have supported the largest pay raise in many a year. I support another one now. I also support modernization of our tactical weaponry. I think one of the ways we’ve been able to be so successful in Kosovo and other places is by having the technological edge. Now, readiness. I propose $100 billion for this purpose.
BUSH: We have an opportunity to use the great technology of the United States to make our military lighter, harder to find, more lethal. We have an opportunity to keep the peace. I’m going to ask the secretary of defense to develop a plan so we’re making sure we’re not spending our money on political projects, but on projects to make sure our soldiers are well-paid, well-housed and have the best equipment in the world.
A: I support the current ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy crafted by General Colin Powell regarding homosexuals in the military. We are blessed and fortunate to have had so many men and women fight so valiantly for our liberties in America. I respect and admire anyone who has served in any branch of our military and put his or her life on the line for our freedom.
I also informed him that America would unilaterally cut our arsenal of strategic nuclear warheads by 2/3. Putin agreed to match our reductions. We signed the Moscow Treaty, which pledged our nations to shrink our number of deployed warheads from 6,600 weapons to 2,200 by 2012. The treaty amounted to one of the largest nuclear weapons cuts in history, and it happened without the endless negotiations that usually come with arms-control agreements.
Although this new super-bomb, to be delivered by Minuteman missiles, will not carry nuclear warheads, their destructive capability will be similar, as confirmed by the fact that the Moscow authorities demanded, and managed to include in the START 2 agreement, that the US remove one of its nuclear warheads for each one of these missiles.
These new bombs, known as Prompt Global Strike (PGS), would be able to kill Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in a cave in Afghanistan, destroy a North Korean missile being prepared for launch or attack an Iranian nuclear site, "all without crossing the nuclear threshold." The project had been initially undertaken by President George W. Bush, but it was blocked by protests from Moscow.
But at the same time, Bush seemed to be serving notice that he planned to do what he wanted to do, and that his intention in talking to European allies was largely to bring them around to his point of view, not to alter his own. “I’m intent upon doing what I think is the right thing in order to make the world more peaceful,” he said.
Bush was less subtle than Cheney in his response, said he appreciated the commitment to NATO and said the US was sick of having to do so much peacekeeping in the world. Bush said he was pleased with some of the things Putin had been saying. He said that 'we owe it to humanity' to get a system that works and the ABM Treaty stops us doing it.
With advanced technology, we must confront the threats that come on a missile. With shared intelligence and enforcement, we must confront the threats that come in a shipping container or in a suitcase. We have no higher priority than the defense of our people against terrorist attack. To succeed, America knows we must work with our allies. We did not prevail together in the cold war only to go our separate ways, pursuing separate plans with separate technologies. The dangers ahead confront us all. The defenses we build must protect us all.
A: Yes, we need to move ahead. I hope I can convince Mr. Putin and the Europeans. I talked to [Russian Foreign Minister Igor] Ivanov about it, and I talked to him point-blank. I said here we are still trying to get out of a cold war mind-set. Please tell Mr. Putin I am willing to think differently. [Ivanov] talked about the new threats of outlaw nations, those are his words.
Bush accused Clinton and Gore of being “locked in a Cold War mentality.” Bush said, “The premises of Cold War nuclear targeting should no longer dictate the size of our arsenal.” He also said the US should “remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status.”
Bush was hesitant to use the politically-charged word “unilateral” when calling for reductions, saying instead that the US should “lead by example,” and that he would “work closely with the Russians to convince them to do the same.”
Notably, Bush shied away from another of his father’s 1991 proposals: that Russia join the US and its allies in building missile defenses, a move intended to overcome Moscow’s fierce objections to the program. Bush said yesterday that his willingness to share technology would “depend on how Russia behaves.”
Bush’s proposal is still a significant break with many in his own party’s leadership, who argue that the US can have missile defenses and maintain large numbers of nuclear weapons. It was a clear attempt to rebut recent charges by Clinton & Gore that Bush is trapped in Cold War thinking.
Tenet answered with two words: al Qaeda. Before 9/11, most Americans had never heard of al Qaeda. I had received my first briefing on the terrorist network as a presidential candidate.
The CIA had been worried about al Qaeda before 9/11, but their intelligence pointed to an attack overseas. During the summer, I had asked the CIA to reexamine al Qaeda's capabilities to attack inside the US. In August, the Agency delivered a Presidential Daily Briefing that reiterated bin Laden's long-standing intent to strike America, but could not confirm any concrete plans. "We have not been able to corroborate some of the sensational threat reporting, such as that bin Laden wanted to hijack a US aircraft" the PDB read.
At Guantanamo, detainees were given clean & safe shelter, three meals a day, a personal copy of the Koran, the opportunity to pray five times daily, and the same medical care their guards received.
Over the years, we invited members of Congress, journalists, and international observers to visit Guantanamo and see the conditions for themselves. Many came away surprised by what they found. A Belgian official inspected Guantanamo five times and called it a "model prison" that offered detainees better treatment than Belgian prisons. "I have never witnessed acts of violence of things which shocked me in Guantanamo," he said. "One should not confuse this center with Abu Ghraib."
There were two techniques that I felt went too far, even if they were legal. I directed the CIA not to use them. Another technique was waterboarding, a process of simulated drowning. No doubt the procedure was tough, but medical experts assured the CIA that it did no lasting harm.
I knew that an interrogation program this sensitive and controversial would one day become public, [with] criticism that America had compromised our moral values. I would have preferred that we get the information another way. But the choice between security and values was real. Had I not authorized waterboarding on senior al Qaeda leaders, I would have had to accept a greater risk that the country would be attacked. In the wake of 9/11, that was a risk I was unwilling to take.
"We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make," he said. "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the US as a hostile regime."
The president's point was it didn't matter why terrorists were able to operate within your borders. If terrorists were active in your country, you either had to help crush them or we would do so, even if it required treating you as a hostile regime.
It was not Bush but Frank Pellegrini, a "Time" writer, who said it as he praised Bush's Sept. 20 speech. When Bush said, "I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy," Pellegrini wrote that what the president meant was: "And for God's sake, keep shopping."
But Bush never actually said to "go shopping." The closest he ever came was in a Nov. 8 speech in which he said, "This great nation will never be intimidated. People are going about their daily lives, working and shopping and playing, worshipping at churches and synagogues and mosques, going to movies and baseball games." To take this one brief reference and then pretend Bush's words can be reduced to simply urging people to shop is intellectually dishonest.
So, are EITs torture? It's a ferocious debate that can be broken into two parts. The first is political. Democrats opposed EITs retroactively to score points.
The second part is the more central one: Do these techniques cross the line into torture? Some critics assume many of these techniques, waterboarding in particular, are violations of the Geneva Conventions. But there is a problem with that assumption: They weren't.
The president never authorized torture. He did just the opposite by making sure the EITs did not cross the legal line into torture. What's more, EITs did help our intelligence agents gather critical information to thwart future attacks.
"If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. Our security will require transforming the military you will lead--a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in every dark corner of the world. And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives."
The "humble" foreign policy Bush had promised us to pursue before he took office ended up buried beneath the ashes of the Twin Towers. The President's words at West Point announced the coming of a preemption doctrine that would be employed to justify the invasion of Iraq the following year.
"To be considered torture, techniques must produce lasting psychological damage or suffering 'equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.' "
--
Justice Dept. memo, 1/9/02
"Geneva does not apply to our conflict with al-Qaeda; al-Qaeda detainees also do not qualify as prisoners of war."
--George W. Bush, memo, 2/7/02
"I stand 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"
--Donal
Rumsfeld, on an interrogation technique memo, 2002
"Congress doesn't have the power to tie the president's hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique. They can't prevent the president from ordering torture."
--Justice Dept. memo, 2005
If Roosevelt's credo was "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," Bush's might have been. "The only thing we have to use is fear itself." The continually changing color-coded alerts that frightened Americans on the eve of the 2004 election faded to static orange when they were no longer politically useful.
The uproar caused by the disclosure of this legal analysis forced the administration to claim it was throwing out the memo and to dismiss it as irrelevant and over-broad, but the administration still refuses to acknowledge that the memo's original audacious claims that the president can ignore the law are just wrong.
Congress enacted the McCain Amendment by overwhelming, veto-proof majorities. Rather than see his veto overridden, the president signed the law but simultaneously issued a signing statement indicating that he would not be bound by the new law. The statement declared that the McCain Amendment would be "construed" to make it "consistent with" the president's power as head of the unitary executive and as commander-in-chief and also in light of the "constitutional limitations on the judicial power."
At this writing, President Bush often points to the words of Osama bin Laden as proof that we need to wage endless war in Iraq, but in September 2001 those of us who wanted to know what drove bin Laden's rage against us were looked upon with suspicion.
Bin Laden had talked extensively about 3 grievances: American military bases the holy sites of Mecca and Medina, in his native Saudi Arabia; the plight of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank; and the misery of the Iraqi people living under UN sanctions.
People forget that the only reason we had an investigation into September 11, as flawed and incomplete as it was, is that the families of the victims demanded it. They demanded it for more than a year before they managed to overcome the president's resistance to opening u his government to scrutiny.
The September 11 families wanted an official account of what happened, how it happened and why. Most Americans did.
Congress mandated an investigation. In a July 2003 interim report the commission complained that President Bush was resisting its investigation while publicly pledging good faith and cooperation. By October of that year, the commission resorted to issuing subpoenas for documents.
Dec. 30, 2005: US interrogators cannot torture prisoners or otherwise subject them to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
Bush’s signing statement: The president, as commander in chief, can waive the torture ban if he decides that harsh interrogation techniques will assist in preventing terrorist attacks.
Oct. 29, 2004: Defense Dept. personnel are prohibited from interfering with the ability of military lawyers to give independent legal advice to their commanders.
Bush’s signing statement: All military attorneys are bound to follow legal conclusions reached by the administration’s lawyers in the Justice Department and the Pentagon when giving advice to their commanders.
In fact, Condi Rice was scheduled to give a speech on this very topic on September 11, 2001: Rice's speech was intended to address "the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday." But the text of the speech, which was never delivered, contained not one word about the actual threat of "today," which, as became clear that day, was al Qaeda.
The Bush administration has never allowed the full text of that speech to become public, even though it would have been public if she had been able to deliver it. My guess is that it's being withheld on "national security grounds."
Our enemies know this, and that is why the terrorist Zarqawi recently declared war on what he called the “evil principle” of democracy. And we’ve declared our own intention: America will stand with the allies of freedom to support democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. Because democracies respect their own people and their neighbors, the advance of freedom will lead to peace.
FACT CHECK: Bush overstated matters. In fact, Bush opposed creation of the separate department for nearly nine months before turning around and supporting it.
KERRY: We just read on the front pages of America’s papers that there are over 100,000 hours of tapes from the FBI unlistened to. On one of those tapes may be the enemy being right the next time. And the test is not whether you’re spending more money. The test is, are you doing everything possible to make America safe? We didn’t need that tax cut. America needed to be safe.
BUSH: Of course we’re doing everything we can to protect America. I wake up every day thinking about how best to protect America. That’s my job.
KERRY: I wasn’t misleading when I said Saddam Hussein was a threat. Nor was I misleading on the day that Bush decided to go to war when I said that he had made a mistake in not building strong alliances and that I would have preferred that he did more diplomacy. I’ve had one position, one consistent position, that Saddam Hussein was a threat. There was a right way to disarm him and a wrong way. And Bush chose the wrong way.
BUSH: You cannot change positions in this war on terror if you expect to win. And we have a duty to our country and to future generations of America to achieve a free Iraq, a free Afghanistan, and to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction.
KERRY: I am determined for those soldiers and for those families, for those kids who put their lives on the line. That’s the most noble thing that anybody can do. And I want to make sure the outcome honors that nobility. We have a choice here. I’ve laid out a plan by which we can be successful in Iraq: with a summit, by doing better training, faster, by cutting - by doing what we need to do with respect to the UN and the elections. There’s only 25 percent of the people in there. They can’t have an election right now. Bush’s not getting the job done.
In the summer of 2002, the Counsel to the President [requested a definition of torture]: In order to constitute torture, an act must be specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain and suffering that is difficult to endure.
"The United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. This strategy requires the same persistence and energy idealism we have shown before. And it will yield the same results."
"Yield the same results"? Is Bush aware that when Jimmy Carter pressured the shah to democratize, the shah was overthrown and Iran fell to the Ayatollah? Can the president believe that by hectoring and destabilizing autocracies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, we are made more secure? Previous popular revolts in the Arab world gave us and the world Nasser, Khadafi, Assad, Saddam, and the Ba'ath Party.
In the1970s and 1980s, those who oppose American power consoled themselves with the thought that American culture and power were declining, that the US was just another great power fated to rise & fall. With the “axis of evil” speech, Bush served notice to the world: He felt no guilt and no self-doubt. In Afghanistan, the US had discovered its true strength. Now, Bush was announcing that this strength would be used without remorse
In early 2002, after months of relentless pro-Muslim messaging, [polls showed that Muslims still overwhelmingly opposed the war on terror]. Bush had swept 88% of the Muslim vote, but did not do so because of his socially conservative policies. Bush seldom won even as much as 35% of the votes of other socially conservative immigrant groups. What made this one constituency an exception to the usual rules of American politics? Only this: Al Gore’s decision to put a Jew on the Democratic ticket.
It costs a lot to fight this war. We have spent more than a billion dollars a month-over $30 million a day-and we must be prepared for future operations. Afghanistan proved that expensive precision weapons defeat the enemy and spare innocent lives, and we need more of them. We need to replace aging aircraft and make our military more agile to put our troops anywhere in the world quickly and safely.
Our men and women in uniform deserve the best weapons, the best equipment and the best training and they also deserve another pay raise. My budget includes the largest increase in defense spending in two decades, because while the price of freedom and security is high, it is never too high. Whatever it costs to defend our country, we will pay.
Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking, "Who attacked our country?" The evidence we have gathered all pointed to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is to terror what the Mafia is to crime. But its goal is not making money; its goal is remaking the world and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere.