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"The President Ought to be Ashamed"
By Eric
Boehlert
Salon
Friday 21 November 2003
Former Sen. Max Cleland blasts Bush's "Nixonian" stonewalling of the
9/11 commission, his "lies" about Iraq, and his flight-suit photo op on the USS
Lincoln after "hiding out" during Vietnam.
During his six years as a United States senator from the
conservative state of Georgia, Max Cleland was known as a moderate Democrat. He
drew the wrath of liberals in 2001 when he broke ranks with Democrats and voted
for President Bush's tax cuts, and last year he backed the resolution
authorizing Bush to wage war with Iraq (though on that vote, at least, he was
joined by some liberals).
Today, though, Cleland has emerged as one of the president's
harshest critics, especially about the war he voted to authorize. Today, he
says, it's a move he deeply regrets, as he scans the headlines from Baghdad. "I
feel like I have been duped, I don't mind telling you," Cleland admits.
"Everybody in the administration was selling this used car. The problem is all
the wheels have fallen off the car and we've got a lemon."
Cleland, perhaps known for being a triple amputee Vietnam vet,
lost his Senate seat last November in a race that has gone down in history as
typifying the GOP's take-no-prisoners approach to politics. The disabled veteran
was smeared as soft on terror because he didn't back Bush's version of homeland
security legislation.
Now, outspoken and blunt, he's furious about the White House's
handling of the war with Iraq, which he calls a disastrous "war of choice." And
he mocks the administration's claims that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden
were allies. "They had a plan to go to war [with Iraq], and when 9/11 happened
that's what they did; they went to war."
Meanwhile, as one of 10 commissioners serving on the independent
panel created by Congress to investigate the 9/11 attacks, Cleland bemoans the
administration's "Nixonian" love of secrecy and its attempt to "slow walk" the
commission into irrelevancy.
At the center of the secrecy debate are sensitive presidential
daily briefings, or PDBs, that the commission wants to examine as part of its
inquiry. Particularly important is the crucial Aug. 6, 2001 PDB, which warned of
Osama bin Laden's desire to hijack commercial planes in the United States. For
months the White House resisted, and the commission hinted it might subpoena the
document. A deal was finally cut last week, which Cleland opposed, allowing a
handpicked subset of commissioners to be briefed on the PDBs.
"We shouldn't be making deals," Cleland complains. "If somebody
wants to deal, we issue subpoenas. That's the deal."
Republicans say the partisan flavor of Cleland's anti-Bush
broadsides are easy to explain; he's still stinging from his surprise reelection
loss last November. Cleland denies it, but if he were still bitter, it would be
easy to see why, considering he was the victim of a now-infamous attack ad,
which even some Republicans objected to.
Cleland's opponent, Saxby Chambliss, who sat out Vietnam with a
bad knee, aired a spot featuring unflattering pictures of Osama bin Laden,
Saddam Hussein ... and Max Cleland. Chambliss charged Cleland, the Vietnam vet
amputee, was soft on national security because he'd voted against creating the
Homeland Security Act. In truth, Cleland co-wrote the legislation to create the
Homeland Security Department, but objected to repeated attempts by the White
House to deprive future Homeland Security employees of traditional civil service
protection.
It's hard to imagine any recent Democratic senator less soft on
national security than Max Cleland, a reflection on the unlikely path he took to
the U.S. Senate. In 1967 he volunteered for combat duty. The next year, during
the siege of Khe Sahn, Cleland lost both his legs and his right hand to a Viet
Cong grenade. Two years later, at the age of 28, he became the youngest person
ever elected to the Georgia state Senate. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter
appointed him to head the Veterans Administration. He later became Georgia's
secretary of state. And in 1996, Georgia voters sent Cleland and his wheelchair
to the Senate.
In a lengthy phone interview on Tuesday, Cleland wondered why Bob
Woodward gets better access to White House documents than the 9/11 commission
("Just think about that"), blasted Bush on Iraq ("We've got an absolute disaster
on our hands"), while constructing a viable exit strategy ("They're trying to
make Iraq the 51st state.") He also talked about the trouble Democratic
politicians are having getting elected in the South.
Let's start with the 9/11 commission. What are your concerns
about how it's dealing with the White House?
First of all, as someone who co-sponsored legislation creating
the 9/11 commission, against great opposition from the White House, this
independent commission should be independent and should not be making deals with
anybody. I start from there. It's been painfully obvious the administration not
only fought the creation of the commission but that their objective was the war
in Iraq, and one of the notions that was built on was there was a direct
connection between al Qaida and 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. There was not.
So therefore they didn't want the 9/11 commission to get going.
What you have is the fear from the White House that the commission would uncover
pretty quickly the fact that one of four legs that the war stood on was
nonexistent. So they slow-walked it, and they continue to slow-walk it. They
want to kick this can down past the elections. We should not be making any
deals; we should stick to our original timetable of [completing the final report
by] May. However, we're coming up on Thanksgiving here and we're still
struggling over access issues. It should be a national scandal.
What have some of the access problems been?
In May, the commission asked the FAA to give us the documents
we're looking for. We've had to subpoena the FAA. We've now had to subpoena
documents from Norad, which they have not given us. I for one think we ought to
subpoena the White House for the presidential daily briefings, to know what the
president knew, what the administration knew, and when they knew it so we can
determine what changes ought to be made in our intelligence infrastructure, our
warning system, so that we don't go through this kind of surprise attack again.
Now, it's not partisan; Bill Clinton has already agreed to come
personally before the 9/11 commission. But a majority of the commission has
agreed to a bad deal.
And what is the deal?
A minority of the commissioners will be able to see a minority of
the [PDB] documents that the White House has already said is pertinent. And then
a minority of the commissioners themselves will have to brief the rest of the
commissioners on what the White House thinks is appropriate.
So the minority of commissioners will get a briefing on the
documents?
Yes, but first they have to report to the White House what
they're going to tell the other commissioners.
9/11 commission chairman Tom Kean has suggested if you issue
subpoenas on the White House and they fight it, it's going to go to the courts
and take months and months of legal wrangling.
Well, that's up to the president, he's made this decision. I say
that decision compromised the mission of the 9/11 commission, pure and simple.
Far from the commissioners being able to fulfill their obligation to the
Congress and the American people, and far from getting access to all the
documents we need, the president of the United States is cherry-picking what
information is shown to what minority of commissioners. Now this is ridiculous.
That's not full and open access.
If you trust one commissioner you should trust them all. I don't
understand it. You can say, 'I'm not going to show anything to anybody, and take
me to court.' At least that's consistent. But it's not consistent at all to say
we're going to parse out this information and we determine how many members of
the commission get to see it.
Let me read you something from AP regarding Philip Zelikow,
who's executive director of the 9/11 commission. Quote, "He said the bipartisan
panel asked specifically for pieces of the daily briefings that dealt with
subjects such as terrorism, Al Qaeda and Usama bin Laden, the Saudi-born
fugitive leader of the terror network. Other sections, such as those dealing
with intelligence on topics and countries not related to terror threats,
intentionally were left out of the request, Zelikow said."
That's correct, and that's fair.
"'We asked for everything we wanted, and the White House has
discovered hundreds of responsive PDB articles, and we are seeing all of them,'
Zelikow said. 'None of those articles are being edited. We're seeing everything
we asked to see. And our request was never the subject of negotiation.'"
Well, the request was put forward, but the president's decision
and response to the request was negotiated time and time again by Tom Kean and
[vice chairman] Lee Hamilton, going over to the White House with hat in hand
several times, meeting with the lawyers first, and then with [chief of staff]
Andy Card.
Secondly, you determine up front there are 22 PDB's in one stack
and over 300 in a second stack. And then the White House says if you come in,
and play nice and say nice things to us, then you'll be able to report back to
the commission. And then maybe we'll take under consideration with our lawyer
whether some elements of the PDB's in the second stack can go into the first
stack. I mean come on!
It's Nixonian in the approach. The approach ought to be, "Yes,
the 9/11 commission gets access to the documents, all the commissioners get
access. Whatever items you request we'll be forthcoming in giving you."
Why, in the end, do you think a majority of the commissioners
agreed to the deal with the White House?
You'll have to ask each member of the commission. A couple of
weeks ago I voted to subpoena the White House and I'll continue to vote to
subpoena the documents.
Doesn't the White House have a point though, in terms of these
PDB's, which I don't think have ever been released before? And that if analysts
writing them are concerned they could be made public one day, than they won't be
as forthright with the president?
Let me walk you through this thing here. First of all, we're not
talking about a prescription drug plan under Medicare here. We're talking about
the most serious assault on the homeland of the United States since the British
invaded during the war of 1812. This is the deal. The joint inquiry made up of
Democrats and Republican members of Congress, they issued a report [this
summer], but they couldn't get at the PDB's. They kicked the can down the street
so that the 9/11 commission could get at the full story. That's the reason for
this independent commission, with the time and energy and staff to get at all of
this. Had the Joint Intelligence Committee been able to do its job, there
wouldn't have even been a 9/11 commission.
We're coming down to the final [months] of the commission and
we're still messing around with access issues. This is a key item. I don't think
any independent commission can let an agency or the White House dictate to it
how many commissioners see what. So this "deal," we shouldn't be dealing. If
somebody wants to deal, we issue subpoenas. That's the deal. That was the deal
with the FAA, that was the deal with Norad.
And the reason is principle. Clinton has agreed to cooperate with
the commission and is eager to come before it. So why doesn't this White House,
which was on the bridge when the ship got attacked, why doesn't this White House
want to know everything that happened on their watch so that it can't happen
again? Why they want to play games with this commission, to make deals, I don't
know. It's information control. It's not transparency.
I don't know if they're hiding something. But the public will
never know and the 9/11 commission will never know because under the current
deal, a minority of commissioners will see a small number of documents and then
brief the White House on what they're going to tell the other commissioners.
Wait a minute! That doesn't make any sense at all.
Can the commission finish its work by May?
I think it's going to be increasingly difficult. I think the
White House has made it darn near impossible to get full access to the documents
by May, much less get a full report out analyzing those docs by May. This is a
three- or four-year project, it really is. And to delay and deny at this point
is to compromise the work of the commission from here on out. I can't say, as a
commissioner, to the Congress and the American people, that I had full access to
all the documents pertaining to 9/11 and here's the conclusion. I can't say
that.
You've heard the claim, the Wall Street Journal editorial page
and others have made it, that you are still upset about your 2002 reelection
loss and that's why you are so critical of the White House.
This doesn't have anything to do with the 2002 election. It has
everything to do with 9/11.
So it's not some sort of payback?
No. It's all about 9/11. This is not a political witch hunt. This
is the most serious independent investigation since the Warren Commission. And
after watching History Channel shows on the Warren Commission last night, the
Warren Commission blew it. I'm not going to be part of that. I'm not going to be
part of looking at information only partially. I'm not going to be part of just
coming to quick conclusions. I'm not going to be part of political pressure to
do this or not do that. I'm not going to be part of that. This is serious.
You say you think it should be a national scandal ...
It is a national scandal. Here's the deal. The administration
made a connection on Sept. 11, and you can read Bob Woodward's book ["Bush at
War"]. He's a private citizen. He got access to documents we don't have yet!
Just think about that. He's a great reporter and a good guy. Bless his heart.
But he got documents over two years ago, handwritten notes from Rumsfeld tying
the terrorism attack into Iraq. This administration had a point of view the day
that happened. If you look at 9/11 separately you realize it had nothing to do
with Saddam Hussein. Except [vice president Dick] Cheney and [Deputy Secretary
of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz put a plan together in '92 to try to convince
[president] Bush One to invade Iraq, but here's what Bush One said about it, in
his book "A World Transformed," which I think is devastating:
"I firmly believed that we should not march into Baghdad. To
occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world
against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter day Arab hero. Assigning young
soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a secretly entrenched dictator and condemning
them to fight what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war."
Now, this administration bought the Cheney-Wolfowitz plan from
'92 hook line and sinker. It was all about using 9/11 as an excuse to go into
Baghdad, not as a reason.
What's the significance?
Let's chase this rabbit into the ground here. They had a plan to
go to war and when 9/11 happened that's what they did; they went to war. They
pulled off their task force in Afghanistan, their Predator assets, and shifted
them over to the war in Iraq. They took their eye off the 9/11 ball and
transferred it to the Iraq ball. And that's a very strategic question that
ultimately has got to be answered. I'm focused on 9/11 and the administration is
not focused on it. They don't want to share information, and they didn't agree
with the commission in the first place.
For the commission's final report, will the White House have
final say over what gets released publicly?
For national security reasons, yes, it will be vetted by the CIA
and the national security apparatus. Please don't misunderstand here. We're not
talking about releasing or even seeing full presidential daily briefings. I
don't care about what the president was briefed on about China. Nobody on the
commission is going to spill national secrets, nobody's going to give away
methods of recruiting agents. As a matter of fact, it was administration
officials who ratted out one of their own CIA agents in order to keep guys like
Joseph Wilson quiet.
What's your take on the situation in Iraq?
One word: Disaster. And when the secretary of defense puts out a
memo to his top staff and says we don't have the metrics to determine whether
we're winning or losing the war on terrorism? If the secretary of defense does
not understand that we're losing our rear end in Iraq in order to save our face,
he ought quit being secretary of defense. Because all you have to do is ask any
Pfc. out there. They're sitting ducks with targets on their backs; they're
getting blown up. The question more and more is, for what? And, when are we
coming home?
The president is trying to find a reason, now that there's no
weapons of mass destruction, no yellow cake coming from Niger, no connection
with al-Qaida and no immediate threat to the United States, we now have a war of
choice. I'm telling you we're in a mess. It's a disaster.
If the pattern holds for the rest of the month, we'll have 100
U.S. soldiers killed during November.
We've lost more youngsters killed in Iraq in less than a year
than we lost during the first three years of the Vietnam War. And people say
there's no Vietnam analogy?
Do you regret your vote last fall in favor of the resolution
authorizing war?
I do. Because I sensed it was a political ploy rather than a ploy
to genuinely protect the United States. It was just an attempt to get any
resolution passed so the administration could say, just like Lyndon Johnson
[with Vietnam], 'We got the approval of Congress.' And then, just like Lyndon
Johnson, they went ahead and did whatever they wanted to do; massive buildup,
putting the military on thin political ice, getting a bunch of kids killed.
You were up for reelection at the time and you felt a pressure
to vote yes?
Yes. They did this purposefully. I will say to you that I did
think that it was worth a shot to give the president of the United States the
authority to go to the United Nations and try to put together a coalition to try
to find out if there were weapons of mass destruction. And if there were weapons
of mass destruction, to destroy them.
Of course what I did not know was that the White House had the
1992 Cheney-Wolfowitz war plan on the front burner. I knew they wanted regime
change. But I did not know that the Cheney-Wolfowitz war plan was what they were
going to do with and that they hadn't figured out a plan B.
I know you're a supporter of Sen. John Kerry.
I am yes, a big supporter.
Do you think his vote last fall in favor of war has hurt
him?
Yes, it's cost him. But he and I were trying to do the right
thing and give the president of the United State the benefit of the doubt. After
all, the vice president stood up at the VFW convention and said Iraq is building
nuclear weapons. It was all part of cherry-picking the intelligence and boosting
the case for war in Iraq, which they'd already decided to do. They were just
looking for reasons. They kept saying there was a connection between Saddam
Hussein and al-Qaida. And the president said it's all about terrorism and the
war on terrorism. Everybody in the administration was selling this used car. The
problem is all the wheels have fallen off the car and we've got a lemon. Looking
back, yeah, I regret that vote. I gave the president of the United States the
benefit of the doubt. He took it as a blank check. I feel like I have been
duped, I don't mind telling you. But the deal with Iraq was obvious. [White
House political strategist] Karl Rove and those guys knew that all of a sudden
the president's numbers shot up, so the Cheney-Wolfowitz plan fit with Karl
Rove's plan; perpetual war keeps the president's numbers up and we'll cover over
any attack on the president and any other issue. So they put that front and
center and used it as a hammer. They even put me up there with Osama bin Laden
and all that kind of stuff, and said I voted against Homeland Security when I
was really one of the authors of the Homeland Security bills. So you can see how
they used it as a hammer over members of Congress who were running.
And now we've got an absolute disaster on our hands. And now the
president's numbers are falling and they don't know what to do about it. So the
ground truth has overtaken the political B.S. and now the real truth of the war,
the cost of the war, is coming out. The American people, one thing I know is,
they do not fight wars of attrition well. And as Thomas Paine once said, "Time
makes more converts than reason." As time goes on, this war will not be
resolved.
Now, how does this relate to the 9/11 commission? If you
slow-walk the 9/11 commission and keep kicking this can down the road, and keep
making deals and denying access, within a year they'll have the election out of
the way. So it's election-driven.
What should the U.S. now do to improve the situation in Iraq?
You've got to go back and do what you didn't do in the first
place. You didn't put together a U.N. coalition, you didn't get the vote of the
National Security Council. You didn't bring along your NATO allies. As a matter
of fact, all of Europe is laughing at us and the president is going into the
teeth of 100,000 demonstrators against our transatlantic ally, the only one
we've got left, Britain. This is a disaster.
Do we need more troops in Iraq?
No, no, no. You've got a have an exit strategy. You've got to
make this a U.N protectorate with our NATO allies taking up the political and
economic restoration of Iraq and we have to command our troops and withdraw our
forces. We've got to give up our oil fields.
You've got to pull out. Don't try to make it the 51st state.
That's what the White House was trying to do; they're trying to make Iraq the
51st state. The dream of Cheney and Wolfowitz was you create a base of
operations in Iraq and then you attack Syria and Iran. I'm serious. You think
this is nuts. It is nuts in the case of this particular cost of blood and
treasure that the American people are finding out and they're going south on
this big time.
When you were in the Senate you were known as a moderate
Democrat; you voted in favor of the Bush tax cuts. It's clear your perception of
the White House has changed dramatically.
Yeah, they lied to me. I know they lied flat-out about any
connection to al-Qaida. Now al-Qaida is teaming up with Saddam loyalists and are
doing what? Targeting Americans. They do have a target in common now and that's
the 130,000 U.S. soldiers out there. And we lost two more yesterday.
What was your reaction when you saw President Bush landing on the
deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in May to give a victory speech of sorts?
I'll tell you the truth. I thought, "Oh my God." A man who
deliberately got out of going to Vietnam by hiding out in the National Guard and
who did not even complete his National Guard tour of duty, now walks onto an
aircraft carrier in a flight suit with helmet under his arm, as if he's Tom
Cruise in "Top Gun," and "Mission Accomplished."
What do you think now?
The president ought to be ashamed because real soldiers are out
there fighting and dying for a disastrous policy that he created. I'm telling
you this is serious business. And that has now all been acknowledged as a sham.
We're in a helluva mess. And the worst part is the kids are getting killed every
damn day, that's what gets me.
I want to ask you about Democrats in the South. They just won
the Louisiana governor's race, but the weeks earlier had not been good for
Democrats in Mississippi and Kentucky. There's lot of concerns in Democratic
circles that the South is essentially gone, which could relegate Democrats
almost to a permanent minority party. As someone who won lots of elections in
the South, what do you think Democrats have to do to win statewide
elections?
I think these states have their own peculiarities of local
issues. In Georgia, with the president being 70 percent popular and coming in
targeting me as hostile to national security, putting me up there with Osama bin
Laden, and raising millions of dollars, and Karl Rove pumping in millions of
dollars to [former Georgia GOP chief] Ralph Reed down there, and using Georgia
as a test case for voter turnout and capturing the white male anger, the
backlash at the governor for taking the Confederate banner off the state flag,
that was powerful and it took out me and the governor.
When you mobilize the entire Republican apparatus and you
energize it with race and the good ole boys in the South, that's tough to beat.
That's the Nixon 1968 "Southern strategy." And the Republicans have adopted the
Southern strategy.
Meanwhile, the Florida seat is open now. Bob Graham said to heck
with it and I understand that. And we'll see how Florida pans out. With Jeb Bush
as governor it'd be tough to get a Democrat there. Georgia has an open seat and
you're probably looking at a Republican taking that.
Democrats in the South have to do a better job organizing
themselves and not take things for granted. I think we in Georgia took for
granted that our base would be organized. It's now obvious the Republicans have
set a new standard with Ralph Reed and Karl Rove in charge, they nationalize
local elections.
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