The President Ought to be Ashamed

"The President Ought to be Ashamed"
  By Eric Boehlert
  Salon
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/21/cleland/index_np.html

  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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