Monday, March 10, 2003
THE VERY STRANGE BUSH PRESS CONFERENCE
MARCH 10. Looking pale, nervous, and withdrawn, President Bush stepped to the podium Thursday night.
In the first few seconds, he tipped his hand as to the paucity of substance in his remarks. He announced that the recent capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was a major event, because Khalid was, in fact, “the mastermind” behind 9/11.
And yet, this supposed intelligence coup dropped like a lead balloon. Why?
Why didn’t Bush give the full aggressive trumpets-in-the-air treatment to the arrest?
And why hadn’t Ashcroft and Rumsfeld and others in the Bush circle already played up the FINAL AND LONG-AWAITED CAPTURE OF THE 9/11 MASTERMIND?
Was it because, as I wrote several days ago, Khalid was reported killed last year? The Asia Times thought so.
Was this nothing more than another lie, like the “fine piece of work” the Brits had put together on Iraq---the study that turned out to be largely plagiarized from a graduate student’s old paper?
You would think that the administration would have pumped up Khalid’s arrest as the most important moment thus far in the war against terrorism. THEY FINALLY GOT THE MAN WHO PLANNED 9/11.
But no such thing happened.
My impression was that Bush knew he was skating on very thin ice when he announced the Khalid capture. The sub-text was, “I don’t even want to be saying this in public, so I’m going to get it over with as quickly as possible and move on to more familiar territory---Iraq.”
Quite possibly Bush was also frightened because, well, if the highest operative in the planning of 9/11 had just been arrested, then what significance does the upcoming war against Iraq really have?
Something very weird was going on just under the surface of Bush’s remarks on Thursday---the pundits who came on afterwards to put their two cents in called his tone “somber”---as if this explained Bush’s withdrawn demeanor.
Of course, going a bit deeper, anyone who cares to think about 9/11 knows that this event was never treated as a straightforward crime investigation, as it should have been. The investigation was politicized from the first second, and thence all the PR flowed forward from there.
I have yet to hear, for example, how the supposed 19 hijackers were IDed so quickly by the FBI. This is still a complete mystery.
Former counsel to the House Committee on Assassinations, Robert K Tanenbaum---a famous lawyer who has never lost a felony case---once remarked that the JFK murder was full of holes and had never been treated as a crime investigation. The charges against Oswald were a mess---a real prosecutor would have had a hell of a time proving his case in a courtroom.
But when crime investigations are handled by announcements from the White House, when references are made to shadowy intelligence reports from the CIA, the true state of affairs is buried.
Which is one reason why the war on terror wants secret tribunals and arrests of suspects without charges, without defense lawyers, without bail, without judicial scrutiny, without limits on detainment.
On Thursday night, Bush was supposed to be the mouthpiece for this secret process, and he was as weak as a churchmouse when he glossed over the Khalid arrest.
I believe Bush was briefed before he went to the podium: “This arrest isn’t rock solid, Mr. President. Just announce it and get it out of the way and move on. The press won’t catch on.”
And they didn’t. Even though the obvious question was, “Mr. President, if we have finally nabbed the number one planner of 9/11, why aren’t we seeing fireworks and streamers and balloons? Why aren’t we getting repetitive announcements of great praise for the FBI and the CIA?”
JON RAPPOPORT
www.stratiawire.com
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