Just your average "Evil" conservative
So Northwest Airlines is having themselves a little mechanics’ strike, but they’re going to keep all their regularly scheduled flights in the air? That will be something to see. Of course, do you really want to fly with an airline that has no mechanics to service the planes? I mean, it was nice for the flight attendants to step in and volunteer to work on the planes, but really, I think I’ll pass.
Glad I don’t have to fly anywhere this week.
What is Able Danger, you ask? It’s a military intelligence unit that had identified Mohamed Atta and other hijackers as a threat before the 9/11 attacks. However, due to procedures established by the Clinton administration, specifically Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, Able Danger was not allowed to share its information with other intelligence agencies. In fact, Able Danger specifically requested to share its information with the FBI, but was denied. This same policy prevented the CIA from informing the FBI that two other future 9/11 hijackers had entered the United States as well.
Oddly enough, Able Danger’s information was left out of the 9/11 Commission report, despite the commission having received two briefings on the matter. Oddly enough, if you recall, Jamie Gorelick was also a member of that commission.
If I knew that a policy that I implemented impeded investigation of at least six of the hijackers that could have possibly prevented 9/11, I guess wouldn’t really be in a hurry to let that cat out of the bag, either.
UPDATE: Now that the commission is on about their fifth version of whether or not they knew about Atta, Mark Steyn gets in on the analysis:
If you want to know everything wrong with the 9/11 Commission in a single soundbite, consider this from Al Felzenberg, their official spokesperson, speaking last Wednesday:
?There was no way that Atta could have been in the United States at that time, which is why the staff didn?t give this tremendous weight when they were writing the report. This information was not meshing with the other information that we had.?
In fairness to Mr Felzenberg, he was having a bad week, and a hard time staying on top of the Commission?s ever shifting version of events. It had emerged a few days earlier that a group from Special Operations Command claimed to have fingered Mohammed Atta ? the guy who ploughed Flight 11 into the first World Trade Center tower ? well over a year before 9/11. Or as the Associated Press puts it:
?A classified military intelligence unit called ?Able Danger? identified Atta and three other hijackers in 1999 as potential members of a terrorist cell in New York City.?
When the story broke, the Commissioners denied they knew anything about ?Able Danger?. Then they remembered they had known about it but had concluded it was no big deal and ?decided not to include that in its final report.?
Why?s that? Well, as Mr Felzenberg says so disarmingly, ?this information was not meshing with the other information?. As a glimpse into the mindset of the Commission, that?s very interesting. 9/11 happened, in part, because the various Federal bureaucracies involved were unable to process information that didn?t ?mesh? with conventional wisdom. Now we find that the official commission intended to identify those problems and ensure they don?t recur is, in fact, guilty of the very same fatal flaw. The new information didn?t ?mesh? with the old information, so they disregarded it.
Kind of makes you wonder what else the commission thought was “no big deal”.
Everyone’s got a website these days. It’s bad business if you don’t, just like they tell you on the register.com commercials. “We lost the client because we didn’t have a website.” And as words are generally easier to remember than phone numbers, ads on radio usually throw in a website address at the end of the ad. But if you’re going to throw out a website, for the Pete of sake, get the terminology straight.
Lots of these commercials end with something like “Call us at 555-1234 or click on whateverourwebsiteis.com.” How the hell can I click on it, unless I’m on some page that has a link for it? Man that pisses me off.
I got a new phone yesterday. It was kind of late in the day, and I didn’t have much time to play with the new toy, but I found something quite useful today. I can get a live stream of the Fox News Channel right on my phone. It’s about a minute or so behind actual live, but all things considered, that’s pretty damned cool.
I think I’m going to need the upgraded battery…
President Bush has made a recess appointment, and appointed John Bolton as ambassador to the UN. Much to the chagrin of certain senators, though.
Funny, that. A bunch of guys sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution apparently haven’t read it. Here’s a little tidbit from Article II, Section 2:
Clause 3: The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
Abuse of power? How is that possible when the power is spelled out in rather plain English right there in the Constitution? If Bolton were to get a vote on the floor, he clearly has the votes to be confirmed. If anyone is abusing power, it’s the liberal Senators who are filibustering. They are the ones impeding progress and not allowing Bush’s nominees to get an up or down vote. A Republican occupies the White House. Republicans hold a majority in both houses of Congress. If the liberals want to decide who should fill these jobs, then they should try winning some elections. Of course, that’s not something they’ve been very good at in recent years.
So far, that’s 106 recess appointments for Bush. Still quite short of the 140 that Clinton made, by the way.
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