On Monday night, President Bush made the dramatic announcement that the United States would demolish Abu Ghraib prison and build a modern maximum-security center in Baghdad to replace it. But on Wednesday, Pentagon officials said the president’s words had taken them by surprise, and they scrambled without success to come up with details of the plan.
“This office was not aware of any plans to raze Abu Ghraib or build another prison,” said a Pentagon spokesman who insisted that he not be identified because he did not want to be seen as contradicting the president.
And:
When Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the latest terror warning, the rest of the government — including the Department of Homeland Security — heard the details on television.
. . .
Sources tell CBS News Correspondent Bob Orr the Justice Department did nothing to put other agencies in the loop before broadcasting “be-on-the-lookout” pictures of seven suspected terrorists.
The information was not shared with state and local police forces, or even with the FBI’s field offices. It wasn’t supposed to be this way after 9/11, said one administration official, who noted “the whole warning process was usurped by the Attorney General.”
Beyond that, senior counterterrorism officials question the legitimacy of the bulletin, saying there is no new, specific, credible evidence pointing to an imminent attack in the U.S.
Should we surprised that Ashcroft unilaterally makes a politically-tinged announcement without consulting the government agency primarily responsible for that area? Isn’t he simply following the example of his boss?
Another example of how government incompetence flows down from the top.
This story has continued to grow, and it just gets more bizarre by the day. If it is viewed in the larger context of the Bush Administration, a number of things are happening. For example, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz are fighting for their man in Iraq, Chalabi. This as a result of the surprise that Chalabi had fallen ut of favor in the WH.
What we are witnessing in this administration is a total breakdown of that “loyaly” and trust. No department or group trusts any other any more. They are all working in secret not telling other relevant groups what is going on.
Now we have the Pentagon versus the DIA and CIA, to say nothing about the State Dept. Next there is the DOJ versus Homeland Security. Of course the Military is one giant house divided now, with so many generals and career military men coming out against the Iraqi occupation and speaking out about the utter lack of competence with the civilian oversight (read Rumsfeld and his cronies; Feith, Wolfowitz and Perle).
One area where there is no crack in the wall of solidarity is with Cheney and Rice and their boss, Bush. That trifecta seems to be as strong as ever. But that is (I think) only due to the shield of extreme secrecy in the White House. As nothing gets out from there, there is no way of knowing how Rice-Cheney is doing over this whole Chalabi affair, as Cheney was a huge supporter of Chalabi.
But I digress…
Returning to the terrorist threat, where was the change in our color coded death status? We have yet to be notified of a change of threat status, i.e. yellow to orange. But Ashcroft came out and told us that death and destruction here on our homeland was imminent. The rest of the intelligence community denies that anything new has been uncovered, so why this charade?
People have talked about it being a political move to boost Bush’s polling numbers. I think that is silly, since it is a lose-lose situation when it comes to terrorism. If the terrorists successfully strike then they all look like fools, if nothing happens they all look like fools. If they happen to thwart a plot, then it looks like they did their jobs for a change. No gain there.
No the only reason this came about had nothing to do with terror… (thus why it wasn’t a Homeland Security matter but a DOJ announcement). It was just a reminder to re-frighten the American public so they may be too scared to vote out Bush, in case that voting for Kerry causes a total collapse of the government and thus a complete loss of homeland security.
So, the Big Picture??
What is important to learn is that the Republican political machine within the federal governemt is suffering a total breakdown, and the loss of interdepartmental trust is the sign. The whole Ashcroft announcing terror attacks are imminent is a non sequitur. Much like the imminent threat of Iraqi nuclear weapons.
–jeff-perado