This is not the party of FDR, and hasn’t been since the 1960s-and we have the harvest-bloodletting of American lives that nobody gave damn about until Bush engaged. Bush is courage, and it pisses them off that their cowardice was trumped. They need to go home and study the people who in selfless example gave everything they had when they signed the Declaration of Independence.

I think malfeasance hearings are in order. Accountability is being slaughtered in this go along, get along, leave this all behind decpetion.

Berger must perform 100 hours of community service and pay the fine as well as $6,905 for the administrative costs of his two-year probation, a district court judge ruled.

“I deeply regret the actions that I took at the National Archives two years ago, and I accept the judgment of the court,” Berger said outside the courthouse after his sentencing.

“I’m glad that the 9/11 commission has made clear that it received all the documents that it sought, all the documents that it needed, and I’m pleased to finally have this matter resolved,” he added.

Berger reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors in April to avoid a jail sentence.

At that time, he said the reason he took the documents was so he could prepare himself and others to assist the 9/11 commission, which investigated the circumstances surrounding the 2001 terrorist attacks and published a report of its findings last year.

The documents taken by Berger dealt with the terror threats during the 2000 millennium celebration, according to parties in the case.

According to the charges, Berger — between September 2 and October 2, 2003 — “knowingly removed classified documents from the National Archives and Records Administration and stored and retained such documents at places,” such as his private Washington office.

Berger’s associates admit he took five copies of an after-action report detailing the 2000 millennium terror plot from the Archives. The aides say Berger returned to his office, discovered that three of the copies appeared to be duplicates and cut them up with scissors.

The revelations were a dramatic change from Berger’s claim last year that he had made an “honest mistake” and either misplaced or unintentionally threw the documents away.

When Archives officials contacted him after they realized documents were missing, Berger told them about the two copies he had, and returned them, along with his handwritten notes, officials said.

I had a close-up view of the mistakes and wrong turns of national security policy makers whose negligence led America to turn her back on the very worst of our worst enemies.

Was it the Democrats or Republicans who let our guard down allowing us to be attacked by a ruthless cult of Jihadists? The fur has been flying ever since 9/11 and the answer of course, is both. The catastrophic failure of intelligence leading to 9/11 is evidence our national security has been so thoroughly and completely compromised that both the Democrats and Republicans are scrambling for cover from a rightfully suspicious and offended public.

To understand why, I would suggest you read Four Things About September 11th.

In short, under the guise of hiding our vulnerabilities, the Catastrophic Terrorism Study Group led by Philip Zelikow, Ashton Carter, and John M Deutch proposed that policy discussions surrounding the most credible terror scenarios should be centralized, tightly controlled by “small groups of knowledgeable officials and expert consultants” and NEVER BE PUBLISHED AT ALL.

Instead of improving our security, over time it likely had the effect of creating a list of scenarios that security analysts traded details about with as much passion as young baseball fans trade in prized baseball cards – the scenarios themselves became a prized commodity for those in power – a commodity they could not dare speak about publicly. The end result was an intelligence nightmare and LESS security for the public not MORE.

Why? As long as secrecy within a tiny power click reigned supreme, there was no oversight to insure that those workers on the frontlines who stood the best chance of stopping those credible threats were receiving the necessary warnings and training to intercept the attackers. The best evidence of our compromised national security is our government’s non-reaction to Sullivan and Elson’s desperate pleas. They were tired of sitting on their hands waiting for their superiors to act on their recommendations to end the catastrophic Islamist threat to our airports – and so – against protocol – they took their battle to the public and to congress. If I heard Sullivan’s Boston-based plea broadcasted in Los Angeles in the summer of 2001, certainly some Catastrophic Terrorism Study Group Members must have heard about it in Washington DC or New York. And yet, as far as I’ve heard, not one of these members or members of our National Security Agency called the DOT or the FAA and said, “If the public knows – the terrorists will know – We’d better intervene and make certain this security gap is closed.”

92% of the 9-11 casualties were caused by two hijacked airliners which departed from Boston’s Logan Airport – the same airport whose poor passenger screening performances the Boston TV station exposed in their report in the late Spring of 2001.

note that I have note solution to this dilemna…

Stepping way way back…It seems to me that the core tenets behind democracy is that individuals cannot be trusted. If you let someone have too much power, eventually that person, or the person who succeeds him/her, etc…will go to far with that power. So…take the power away…let the masses decide thru voting…have checks and balances to keep power from being abused. Ok, sounds good to me.

The dilemna seems to be that you really still cannot trust the individuals, and the problems has really just shifted. And lately that shifting problem has seamed to really rear its head. The problem is that now the people we elect are basically driven to lie, distort the truth, flame mistakes, and all sorts of other things. There a bazillion examples from both sides. Balancing the budget will never happen, it requires spending less, which is not popular, which means you will not be elected, which means you won’t do it. Prime example was during that 30-90 second period when it looked like we had a surplus. Man, people lined up to spend it so fast, why, it’s popular. Thats when I realized reducing the debt is never going to happen, when extra $$ was there to make a tiny dent, we did’nt want to do it.

Hmm…did not mean to digress into budget land, but my point is still there…our system encourages polarization, name calling, and promising the moon. It is so so so rare for both parties to agree on anything. Why, because we are truly so far apart ? or more likely, because the system punishes you for agreeing with the opposition.

This is also my first time participating in a blog discussion, and to be honest, I have a hard time believing that I am doing this! I found this site looking for information about Richard Clarke, and in reading through the comments, I couldn’t remain silent.

As far as what makes someone liberal or conservative, I think that environment and human nature have a lot to do with it. The question isn’t really that different from what makes a person a terrorist. The answer is that once someone is leading one way or the other, it is very easy to lead them to the extremes, and get into an “us against them” mentality. Which leads to the name calling, and the breaking down of civil debate.

As for me, I refuse to be categorized. I attend an evangelical church on a weekly basis, which could lable me as an extreme right wing religious fanatic. I have also opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning, which would put me into the wimpy liberal camp. While registered as a republican, that does not guide the way I vote, and i have never contributed to a political campaign. That would label me as apolitical, even though I am intensely interested in politics and the direction this country is taking.

I guess my bottom line is that i agree that we should be in this for the long fight, we just shouldn’t be fighting each other.

This is the first time I’ve engaged in a blog debate and am surprised how quickly i was drawn into using name calling to make sure my point was heard. i am usually very reasonable in tone and often get brushed aside as a wimpy liberal.

I wish someone (other than John Stossel!) would do a thorough study on what makes someone inherently liberal or conservative or in-between. My position seems so correct and logical to me that when i run into someone who thinks exactly the opposite it disturbs me on many levels. I agreed with 100% of Andrew’s last post. If we sat down and talked we would agreed on 95%, probably. What is it that divides us to the point where we can’t have a civil debate?

Cheers to you all for participating. We are in for the long fight!

Another way to look at this, to focus energies and perhaps find common ground…

Now that it is almost 24 hours after the movie finished, there are a couple of things I think about, and notable some I don’t.

- I think the movie did a good job of showing us what life is like in these parts of the world, yemen, parts of Africa, afghanistan, etc. It’s so different from my life and routing, Wendy’s, Starbucks, waiting at a stoplight in a nice car, coming home to a house with green grass, browsing the internet in the evening, watching some sci-fi show etc. Whlie I am sure the protrayal is not 100%, it was a pretty good view IMHO. Also, the grainy filming just reinforeced the wildness.

- The movie was pretty emotional, made me mad. But at who or what. 2 things mainly…first the bad guys, and the god be willing brainwashing that came thru, and willingness to just be bad. Second was us (the good guys), more specifically our beuacracy (sp?). This is not democrat/republican problem. Every organization bigger than a dozen people has there share of fiefdoms and beuacracy, and it just gets worse with size, this applies to private/public companies, teams, and yes government. I do not know if the Massoui seen and the laptop were real, but if they were not, I am sure something as rediculous happens all the time. That makes me mad also.

Berger’s home and office were searched earlier this year by FBI (news – web sites) agents armed with warrants. Some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration’s handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration are still missing.

Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed handwritten notes he had taken from classified anti-terror documents he reviewed at the National Archives by sticking them in his jacket and pants. He also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio, they said.

“I deeply regret the sloppiness involved, but I had no intention of withholding documents from the commission, and to the contrary, to my knowledge, every document requested by the commission from the Clinton administration was produced,” Berger said in a statement to the AP.

Berger served as Clinton’s national security adviser for all of the president’s second term and most recently has been informally advising Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news – web sites). Clinton asked Berger last year to review and select the administration documents that would be turned over to the commission.

The FBI searched Berger’s home and office with warrants earlier this year after employees of the National Archives told agents they believed they witnessed Berger put documents into his clothing while reviewing sensitive Clinton administration papers, officials said.

When asked, Berger said he returned some of the classified documents, which he found in his office, and all of the handwritten notes he had taken from the secure room, but said he could not locate two or three copies of the highly classified millennium terror report

The name of this website is Think Progress. If there is really to be any progress, name calling and finger pointing is not the way to get there. In fact, the “us against them” mentality is a lot of what has gotten us into this position.

If you look objectively at the message of Path to 9/11, you can see that there is a lot of blame to go around, on both sides of the aisle. The question we should be asking, for the sake of progress, should be “what can we learn form this?”

The one thing that jumps out at me is the timing of the two attacks on the WTC. Both of them came less than a year after a regime change. The terrorist organizations are not stupid, and they have figured out that there is a time of transition, where the new people in town don’t trust the former administration, and have not yet gotten their own feet wet in the awesome responsibilities of their new jobs. This is a time of vulnerability that the terrorists have learned to exploit.

If there is to truly be “Progress”, we need to look at the fact that there very well may be another regime change in two years. What can we do to make the transition phase smoother, and safer for the American public? The mudslinging that has become a staple of politics as we know it contributes more to the problem than the solution. As we move forward on the course we are on, I fear that we will see another attack on the United States, of horrific proportions, in the summer of 2009.