Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
The White House -- aided by its pundit allies -- bullies its way out of trouble.
May 21, 2002 | Since the story broke Thursday that President Bush received a general warning before Sept. 11 of possible hijackings, Democrats have been asking tough but fair questions about information the government had prior to the attack. Many Republicans and conservative pundits, however, have claimed such questions amount to suggesting that Bush had knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks and failed to prevent them.
This is only the latest example of GOP officials and their supporters in the media using bombastic, anti-democratic rhetoric to shut down debate on any issue related to the war. Whenever serious questions have been raised, this Republican-pundit alliance has launched a massive and aggressive counteroffensive to silence critics -- with grave implications for open debate about the war on terrorism.
Thursday's disclosure set off a firestorm of spin, which we documented earlier. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., had particularly tough questions for the president, as did Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and others. Their statements were generally more aggressive in tone than previous criticism of the administration since 9/11, and Gephardt and others used phrasing that carries inflammatory echoes of a famous Howard Baker statement during Watergate -- "What did the president know and when did he know it?" At worst, they suggest a coverup or possible incompetence. But no leading Democrats accused the president of failing to act on a specific warning of an attack or even suggested as much.
Conservative pundits and GOP officials, however, trotted out that straw man and beat it savagely in a counterattack that the ABC News political unit called "brutal and demagogic" Monday. Most prominently, Vice President Dick Cheney launched a broadside on Thursday with Bush's approval (according to Time magazine), saying Democrats "need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions, as were made by some today, that the White House had advance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9/11." When he was finally asked three days later on "Fox News Sunday" who actually suggested this, Cheney only offered Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., who made the irresponsible claim in April that Bush ignored a specific warning of an attack, but was much more restrained in her statement last week.
On Fox, the vice president added that he doesn't "have any problem with a legitimate debate over the performance of our intelligence agencies," but he has "a real problem with the suggestion that somehow my president had information and failed to act upon it to prevent the attack of Sept. 11," calling it "beyond the pale." No evidence of these "suggestions" was provided, however, for the simple reason that there is none.
Appearing next on NBC's "Meet the Press," Cheney was asked again whom he was singling out for taking "political advantage by making incendiary suggestions." This time he implicitly named Gephardt and Clinton (who referenced the deceptive New York Post headline "Bush Knew" in a statement Thursday), saying he was speaking of "the rush to the floor of the House and the Senate in front of the cameras saying, 'What did he know and when did he know it?'; people waving newspapers -- the one you showed at the outset; the New York Post saying, 'Bush Knew.'" Again, Cheney provided no argument as to how these examples justify his characterization of the Democrats.
The Washington Times, along with many other conservative pundits, pushed the same claim. In an editorial, the paper suggested that "the hacks of the Democratic Party" are claiming Bush knew of the attack and failed to stop it. The only evidence the editorial writers could muster, however, was political strategist and "Crossfire" co-host James Carville asking, "What did the president know, when did he know it and what did he do about it?"
There were even attempts to link administration critics to terrorists. Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said on Thursday, "For us to be talking like our enemy is George W. Bush and not Osama bin Laden, that's not right." Going even further, White House communications director Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post Friday that Thursday's statements by Democrats "are exactly what our opponents, our enemies, want us to do." This is the most direct statement by an administration official to date suggesting that dissent aids the enemy.
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