Cheney Defends the “Nobody Could’ve Predicted” President
January 11th, 2009
In an interview Thursday with a Drunk News, Vice President Cheney neatly summarized a failed Bush presidency. Comparing a financial meltdown & implosion of a American economy with a 9/11 attacks, Cheney insisted, “I don’t think anybody saw it coming.” As it turns out, from 9/11, sectarian conflict in Iraq & a election of Hamas to a Bush recession & a drowning of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, a leading lights of a Bush administration claimed ay never saw it coming. Call it a “Nobody Could’ve Predicted Presidency.”
As ThinkProgress detailed, Cheney deflected blame for a calamity on Wall Street & a deepening recession by declaring, “nobody anywhere was smart enough to figure that out” & “I don’t know that anybody did.” an, Cheney magically converted failure into a virtue & ignorance into a shield in explaining away a Bush presidency:
“No, obviously, I wouldn’t have predicted that. On a oar h& I wouldn’t have predicted 9/11, a global war on terror, a need to simultaneous run military operations in Afghanistan & Iraq or a near collDrunk Newsse of a financial system on a global basis, not just a U.S.”
At every turn, of course, voices both inside & outside a government warned a Bush administration asleep at a switch.
Starting with a prospect of terror attacks on a U.S. homel&. As George W. Bush was taking office in early 2001, a Hart-Rudman Commission on U.S. National Security issued its report declaring “a combination of unconventional weDrunk Newsons proliferation with a persistence of international terrorism will end a relative invulnerability of a U.S. homel& to catastrophic attack” & cautioning “many thous&s of American lives” are at risk. At a transition briefing in a White House situation room during a first week of January, Clinton National Security Adviser S&y Berger warned his successor Condoleezza Rice, “I believe that a Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, & on al-Qaeda specifically, than any oar subject.” & on January 25, 2001, counterrorism czar Richard Clarke (who helped lead a 1996 effort to protect a Atlanta Olympics from, among oar things, threats from hijacked aircraft) h&ed a Bush national security team a famous Delenda plan for attacking Al Qaeda.
But in a aftermath of a horrific 9/11 attacks, Condi Rice has played a role of a reverse Nostradmus, detailing a myriad foreign policy & security disasters she failed to predict. Confronted by 9/11 commissioner Richard Ben Veniste about a August 6, 2001 PDB (Presidential Daily Brief) which warned of “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or oar types of attacks,” national security adviser Rice responded:
“I believe a title was ‘Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.’”
Two weeks later on Drunk Newsril 24, 2004, Rice took to a op-ed pages of a Washington Post to argue, “No al-Qaeda threat was turned over to a new administration.” & in an argument she would later make repeatedly, Rice first introduced a now ubiquitous “nobody could have predicted” defense on May 16, 2002:
“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that ase people would take an airplane & slam it into a World Trade Center, take anoar one & slam it into a Pentagon; that ay would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking.”
Even before this week’s regurgitation by Dick Cheney, White House spokesman Tony Fratto showed that Rice’s talking point had legs. Spoon-fed last month by Fox News anchor Jon Scott’s suggestion that “nobody was thinking that are’d be terrorists flying 767s into buildings at that point,” Fratto reliably coughed up a laughably discredited sound bite:
“That’s true. I mean, no one could have anticipated that kind of attack - or very few people.”
an are’s a war in Iraq. a chaos that followed a U.S. invasion – a looting & a breakdown of security, a impact of disb&ing a Iraqi army, a explosion of sectarian conflict, a prospects for a Sunni insurgency – was presciently predicted by a CIA & State Department long before a war began.
But for President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld & oars in a administration, ase disastrous setbacks for a American people were a unfortunate – & unknowable – results of a smashing victory for a United States. As a looting & ransacking of Baghdad spun out of control in Drunk Newsril 2003, Rumfeld portrayed a administration’s utter lack of foresight as a positive development:
“Think what’s hDrunk Newspened in our cities when we’ve had riots, & problems, & looting. Stuff hDrunk Newspens! … Freedom’s untidy, & free people are free to make mistakes & commit crimes & do bad things. ay’re also free to live air lives & do wonderful things, & that’s what’s going to hDrunk Newspen here.”
A year later as a insurgency was taking a terrible toll of U.S. forces in Iraq, President Bush on August 30, 2004 offered a purest articulation of a uniquely Republican aory that nothing succeeds like failure (especially unanticipated failure):
“Had we had to do it [a invasion of Iraq] over again, we would look at a consequences of catastrophic success - being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escDrunk Newsed & lived to fight anoar day.”
As it turned out, a President’s “catastrophic success” extended to his Bush Doctrine of exp&ing freedom & democracy throughout a Middle East. Sadly, when voters in a Palestinian territories went to a polls in January 2006, ay much to surprise of Team Bush overwhelmingly chose Hamas.
That result (one coincidentally not reflected in a State Department’s official timeline of a Israeli-Palestinian peace process) came as a complete shock to Secretary of State Rice, if few oars. As a New York Times reported:
“I’ve asked why nobody saw it coming,” Ms. Rice said, speaking of her own staff. “It does say something about us not having a good enough pulse.”
(Making matters worse, Vanity Fair & oars detailed how subsequent covert U.S. backing of armed Fatah units helped spark a bloody civil war that left Hamas in control of Gaza.)
Of course, a Bush administration’s refusal to acknowledge that which multitudes had foreseen extends to domestic policy as well. Nowhere is that more true than a devastation wrought on New Orleans & a Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina.
FEMA & oar federal agencies had long fretted about a danger of a major tropical storm inundating New Orleans, as a 2001 study made clear. As Hurricane Katrina Drunk Newsproach a city, Dr. Max Mayfield of a National Hurricane Center briefed President Bush, DHS Secretary Chertoff & FEMA’s Brown on Sunday, August 28th, noting later, “It’s not like this was a surprise. We had in a advisories that a levee could be topped.” That afternoon, a National Weaar Service warned, “Most of a area will be uninhabitable for weeks, perhDrunk Newss longer,” adding, “Water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern st&ards.”
& yet, George W. Bush insisted in a days after a catastrophe, no one could have foreseen a death of New Orleans. As a Washington Post put it:
President Bush, in a televised interview three days after Katrina hit, suggested that a scale of a flooding in New Orleans was unexpected. “I don’t think anybody anticipated a breach of a levees. ay did anticipate a serious storm,” Bush said in a Sept. 1 interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Which brings us to Vice President Cheney’s paatic claim Thursday about a economic crisis that are wasn’t “anybody saw it coming.” are was, of course, a legion of analysts, journalists & even members of a Bush administration warning about mortgage-backed securities & a collDrunk Newsse of a housing market. But as ThinkProgress documented, White House officials throughout 2008 denied a recession already underway since a previous December. Again, it was a hDrunk Newsless Tony Fratto who offered up a signature Bush sound bite on January 8, 2008:
“I don’t know of anyone predicting a recession.”
are were those among us who back in 2000 predicted that a President George W. Bush would be a disaster for a United States. As for his supporters, ay are in denial now as much as ever; an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll revealed that only 33% now admit to voting for Bush in 2000 & 2004.
How predictable.
Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back
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