One of Ours

A senior national security official who worked alongside Richard A. Clarke on Sept. 11, 2001, is disputing central elements of Mr. Clarke's account of events in the White House Situation Room that day, declaring that it "is a much better screenplay than reality was."

The official, Franklin C. Miller...said in an interview on Monday that almost none of the conversations that Mr. Clarke, who was the counterterrorism chief, recounts in the first chapter of his book, "Against All Enemies," match Mr. Miller's recollection of events...

...he disputed many of the most dramatic moments recalled by Mr. Clarke, from conversations with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to the question of whether another aide in the room was yelling out warnings that a plane could hit the White House in minutes...

...Mr. Miller and other White House officials said they were not accusing Mr. Clarke of fabricating events. Events were moving so quickly, they said, and memories have since blurred, that it is little surprise that accounts differ. But Mr. Miller, a senior aide to Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, suggested that Mr. Clarke's version, while it would "make a great movie," was more melodramatic than the events he recalled...

...describes how Mr. Miller came into the room, squeezed Mr. Clarke's bicep, and said, "Guess I'm working for you today. What can I do?"

"I wouldn't say that," Mr. Miller said Monday. "I might say, `How can I help.' "

Mr. Miller disputes Mr. Clarke's recollection that the Secret Service asked for fighter escorts to protect Air Force One after it lifted off from Sarasota, Fla., where President Bush was visiting an elementary school. A young aide in the Situation Room made that suggestion to Mr. Miller, he said, who recalls telling the aide he had seen too many movies. A moment later, reconsidering, Mr. Miller asked Ms. Rice whether to call up fighter support, and she told him to go ahead, he recalled.

Mr. Clarke's book says Mr. Miller urged Mr. Rumsfeld to take a helicopter out of the Pentagon, part of which was still burning, and that Mr. Rumsfeld responded, "I am too goddamn old to go to an alternate site."

But Mr. Miller said he never talked to Mr. Rumsfeld that day.

Similarly, Mr. Clarke recounts how a career official in the Situation Room called out, "Secret Service reports a hostile aircraft 10 minutes out," left the room, then returned minutes later to report, "Hostile aircraft eight minutes out." Presumably that was the same aircraft that led to the panicked evacuation of the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building that day. The evacuation turned out to be based on a false alarm.

Neither Mr. Miller nor Sean McCormack, the spokesman of the National Security Council, who was in the Situation Room that morning, say they recall hearing the aide warn that a plane could be only minutes away. They say the aide himself reports that he made no such announcement...

...In Mr. Clarke's telling, he gathered the staff around and told them to leave for their own safety, particularly those with young children. They declined, and according to Mr. Clarke, Mr. Miller then "grabbed a legal pad and said, `All right. If you're staying, sign your name here,' " so that a list could be e-mailed out of the building. The purpose, he recalled Mr. Miller saying, was "so the rescue teams will know how many bodies to look for."

Mr. Miller said he made no such statement. According to Mr. Miller's account, there was no question that the staff members were staying — they were told to keep the Situation Room running by the deputy national security adviser, Stephen Hadley. "That paragraph was a complete fiction," Mr. Miller said...

...While the book describes the Situation Room as sparsely populated, Mr. Miller and Mr. McCormack ticked off the names of at least a dozen people who came in to work the phones and help figure out the location of suspect aircraft.

...people are best understood by where they shop and what they buy...In fact, it's practically gospel among anyone who markets products of any kind to consumers of any kind. "You Are Where You Live" is the slogan of Claritas' widely-used PRIZM market segmentation system, and it's no joke. People spend billions of dollars based on the results of market segmentation like this, and they do it because it works. Your intuition (and Brooks' thesis) are correct: people in different parts of the country really are different.

In Pakistan, some 62 percent of the 162 people arrested in the recent campaign along the Afghan border, were foreigners. These people are thought to be al Qaeda members, as there are rarely many foreigners in the tribal areas. The tribes have historically been quite hostile to foreigners.

The Pakistani government has convinced thousands of tribesmen to help them track up to 500 armed foreigners (al Qaeda) hiding in the hills along hundreds of kilometers of the Afghan border. Some Americans have been seen with the Pakistani troops, and tribesmen. These are apparently CIA or Special Forces personnel, and there to supply intelligence information (from satellites and UAVs overhead) and cash to encourage the cooperation of the tribes. Efforts to persuade the tribes to turn against the Taliban and al Qaeda have generally worked, with six of the seven tribal confederations in the region agreeing to work with the government...

... The homes of 83 pro-al Qaeda families were destroyed as punishment.

Current Tally - 03/27/04

2000 Adjustment: Bush +1.90%

Electoral Votes: Bush 290, Kerry 248

Pct: Bush 49.77%, Kerry 49.23%

Bush Gains Since 2000:
Iowa +1.3%
New Mexico +0.2%

Bush Losses Since 2000:
NONE

Next to turn Red [Republican]
Wisconsin -0.04%
Oregon -1.7%
Pennsylvania -2.5%
Michigan -3.3%
Maine (district 2) -3.6%
Minnesota -3.8%

Next to turn Blue [Democrat]
New Mexico +0.2%
New Hampshire +1.2%
Iowa +1.3%
Florida +2.2%
Ohio +4.8%
Nevada +4.9%

...When she had finished speaking, she opened it up for questions. The first guy she called on asked, "Is there any way we can get Bush impeached?"

As the Congresswoman was busy dodging around that one, I made my way over to Todd.

"Todd?"

"Yes?"

I introduced myself. "Can I bend your ear for a minute about a veterans’ issue?"

He immediately brightened. "Sure! Let’s walk over this way. How can we help you?"

"It’s not me, specifically, it’s more of a general issue." I very briefly summarized the Securitas case, and the subsequent online discussion regarding contractors abusing their returning reservists. "So the question is, if we currently withhold funds from universities that refuse ROTC and military recruiters, why can’t we do the same to corporations that don’t fulfill their obligations to returning reservists?"

I could see the lightbulb go on over his head. "Hey, you’ve got a good point there."

I continued along that line, explaining that I had searched through the acquisition regulations, as well as some Department of Labor information, and couldn’t find anything like what we had envisioned. "I don’t think it exists, to be honest," I concluded, "But it should..."

"And you know," he responded, "It wouldn’t be difficult to get something like that passed right now."

* * *
FINALLY the forum broke up, as Davis announced that she had another function she had to attend. At this point, I had already maneuvered myself to her right flank, immediately between her and the parking lot.

She turned to Todd, who directed her attention towards me. "This man has something to discuss with you," he told her.

I smiled, shook her hand, and gave her my name. "I’m a reservist, and I just got back from the Middle East last August," I began.

"Oh, thank you for your service!"

"Your welcome, Ma’am. I’d like to talk to you briefly about a veterans’ issue – it will only take one minute."

"Sure."

I quickly summed up the proposal. When I mentioned the parallel between our proposal and the current policy towards educational institutions and ROTC, her eyes lit up. I sensed that she had fully grasped what I was proposing, and she was already mentally writing a floor speech in support of such a bill.

"I know you’ve got to get going,” I told her, “but I want to thank you for taking a minute to listen to my idea. I’ll fax the details to Todd on Monday."

"No, I should thank you," she replied. "I think we’ve got a sure-fire winner here..."

And that, my dear readers, is how representative democracy is supposed to work...

...US soldiers were aiming at a different car, a white Volvo that had driven through the checkpoint at high speed, the investigation said. Al-Arabiya's grey Kia car was 50 to 150 metres down the road, trying to turn when it was accidentally hit, the military said. "The investigation concluded that no soldiers fired intentionally at the Kia," the US military said in a statement...

..."The soldiers were acting within the rules of engagement," he said. "At this point this is seen as an accident. At this point the soldiers were working within the rules of engagement." He said the investigation was finished...

...Last week, an Iraqi cameraman working for US network ABC was shot and killed while covering clashes west of Baghdad. Witnesses said he was shot by US troops...

...The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said "Iraq is the most dangerous place in the world to work as a journalist." In 2003 alone, according to the CPJ's estimates, 13 journalists died in "hostile acts"...

...But where do the Westerners get their feel for the Arab world? Where is the promised Arab English-language satellite network? Why aren’t there any movies about Arab concerns, lifestyle, culture, traditions etc. in English? All Westerners see on their screens are scenes like the WTC imploding on Sept. 11, teenage Palestinian boys wearing suicide belts or would-be hooded martyrs...

...Sharon hopes to guarantee from a troubled and violent disengagement two big prizes: the first, a territorial windfall in the West Bank underwritten by generous US compensation for "losses" in Gaza; and the second, a power vacuum in the Strip that should ensure civil war among Palestinian factions for generations...

...If Sharon is to persuade the US, and later the world, to buy his annexation of large swaths of the West Bank under cover of a "security fence", he has to use the seemingly benign withdrawal from Gaza to reinforce the message that the Palestinians know no other path than terror. As Ha'aretz 's veteran Palestinian affairs correspondent Danny Rubinstein observed, the killing of Yassin was less a blow to Hamas than "the final nail in the coffin of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza"...

...no PA policeman will dare lift a finger against Hamas. The Islamic militants will have free rein.

This is a recipe for anarchy and civil war, and there can be little reason to suspect that Sharon does not understand this.

The prime minister's disengagement -- should it ever come about -- would be the end of the occupation and its transformation into a military siege by land and water of a beleaguered, destitute and angry nation trapped behind a fence. Palestinian resistance, either as Qassam rockets fired at Israeli cities or the occasional suicide bomber slipping out, would doubtless be greeted by Israeli air strikes or land invasions.

By Sharon's reckoning, if Gaza can be promoted as the image of Palestinian statehood, a state in the West Bank will be stillborn.