Think Progress

Rep. Foxx: Health care reform is a bigger threat than ‘any terrorist right now in any country.’

Few Republican congressional members have served as a greater fount for hyperbolic and uninformed ranting about health care reform as has Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC). As ThinkProgress previously documented, Foxx has claimed Democratic reforms would mean seniors are “put to death by their government,” that health reform is a “distraction,” and that “there are no Americans who don’t have health care.” She was at it again today on the House floor, arguing that health reform is a greater threat to our country than “any terrorist right now in any country”:

Everywhere I go in my district, people tell me they are frightened. … I share that fear, and I believe they should be fearful. And I believe the greatest fear that we all should have to our freedom comes from this room — this very room — and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health care bill. I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.

Watch it:

Bush on bin Laden: ‘I guess he is not dead.’

Eight years ago, President Bush asserted with great bravado that al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden would be taken “dead or alive.” “I don’t care, dead or alive — either way,” Bush said at the time. This weekend, while attending a conference of business leaders in New Delhi, India, Bush struck a different tone:

Asked whether al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden could be alive, Bush said “I guess he is not dead.”

He, however, noted that Laden is hiding and “not leading victory parades” or “espousing his cause” on TV.

He expressed confidence that Laden will be brought to justice which “he deserves to be” and it was a matter of time.

Bush, who failed to properly resource the Afghanistan war over the term of his presidency, had some advice for Obama as he considers whether or not to send more U.S. troops into that conflict. “I hope we don’t abandon the people of Afghanistan,” Bush said, adding that U.S. withdrawal would cause the return of “brutal tyranny” in the nation.

McCain laughs at Imus joke comparing President Obama to 9/11. »

On Monday, during his Fox Business Network debut, Don Imus hosted Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who tweeted that it was “great to be back on with Don Imus again.” Contemplating the prospects for Imus’ return to boost the Fox network, the Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove writes today about an exchange between Imus and McCain, in which McCain laughed at an Imus joke comparing President Obama to the 9/11 attacks:

“Ha ha,” she added dryly, when I told her that Imus, in a discussion with another first-day guest, Sen. John McCain, repeated a “joke” that after 9/11 “President Obama was the second attack on America.” (McCain, on the phone, laughed more heartily.)

After McCain laughed at the joke, Imus attempted to distance himself from the comparison, calling it “an idiotic thing to say.” Watch it:

Transcript: More »« Less

Dick Cheney ‘nearly destroyed’ efforts to convict British bomb plotters.

Yesterday, following “one of the most complex and costliest criminal investigations since the Second World War,” British police were finally able to convict three men of plotting to blow up a series of transatlantic airplanes in a planned terrorist attack that would have potentially been “three times more deadly than the 9/11 attacks.” Today, British intelligence officials are saying that former Vice President Dick Cheney “nearly destroyed” efforts to bring the bomb plotters to justice by ordering the arrest of a suspect before all the evidence was gathered:

Dick Cheney, the former US Vice President, nearly destroyed Britain’s efforts to bring the airline bomb plotters to justice, police and intelligence experts said today.

By ordering the early arrest of Rashid Rauf, the bombers’ link man in Pakistan, Washington forced British police to detain the suspects in the UK before all the evidence had been gathered, it was claimed.

Andy Hayman, who served as the Metropolitan Police’s Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations while the terror attacks were being planned, writes today of the Cheney-ordered arrest of Rauf, “[It] hampered our evidence-gathering and placed us in Britain under intolerable pressure.”

Loyal Bushie Nicolle Wallace calls Tom Ridge a ‘wussy.’

This morning on Fox News, the pundit roundtable discussed new charges leveled by former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge that politics played a role in the issuance of terror alerts in the Bush administration. Nicolle Wallace, who served as the Communications Director for the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign and later served as the White House communications director, complained that Ridge was making a “wussy” allegation:

We were having a very political discussion [in the 2004 campaign] about terrorism. … But that is quite different from what he very, I think in a kind wussy way, alleges. I mean, this is not a very precise attack. This is — he pondered and wondered if perhaps politics went into it. You know, it’s very fishy to me.

Tad Devine, a senior strategist on the 2004 John Kerry presidential campaign, responded, “I don’t think he’s wussy to expose this. I think he’s shown a lot of courage, and I’m glad he did it.” Watch it:

Wallace’s criticism echoes that of former Bush speechwriter David Frum. “That is the most tentative possible way of advancing an accusation,” Frum said of Ridge’s accusation. Last week, a spokesman for John Ashcroft said, “Now would be a good time for Mr. Ridge to use his emergency duct tape.”

Flashback: Ridge offered to take lie detector test to prove ‘politics played no part’ in threat levels.

In his forthcoming book, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge reveals being pressured by Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to raise the terror alert right before the 2004 presidential election. Ridge wrote:

I wondered, “Is this about security or politics?” Post-election analysis demonstrated a significant increase in the president’s approval rating in the days after the raising of the threat level. … I consider the episode to be not only a dramatic moment in Washington’s recent history, but another illustration of the intersection of politics, fear, credibility and security.

The New York Times’ Peter Baker notes that Ridge’s new claim is a reversal from his previous statements:

Until now, he has denied politics played a role in threat levels. Asked by Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times if politics ever influenced decisions on threat warnings, he volunteered to take a lie-detector test. “Wire me up,” Mr. Ridge said, according to Mr. Lichtblau’s book, “Bush’s Law.” “Not a chance. Politics played no part.”

Ridge: Rumsfeld and Ashcroft wanted to raise terror threat level because it helped Bush’s approval rating.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette pours through Tom Ridge’s new book and offers the relevant passages where the former Homeland Security chief discusses the Bush administration’s desire to increase the terror threat level for political reasons. Ridge reveals that Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld argued in favor of raising the threat level by noting the correlation it had with Bush’s approval rating:

Osama bin Laden had released a videotape with one more ominous sounding but unspecific threat against the United States. Neither Mr. Ridge nor any of the department’s security experts thought the message warranted any change in the nation’s alert status.

“…at this point there was nothing to indicate a specific threat and no reason to cause undue public alarm,” he writes.

But that view met resistance in a tense conference call with members of the intelligence community and several other Cabinet officers including Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

“A vigorous, some might say dramatic, discussion ensured. Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level and was supported by Rumsfeld.”

Noting the correlation found between increases in the threat level and the president’s approval rating, Mr. Ridge writes, “I wondered, ‘Is this about security or politics?’”

(HT: Marc Ambinder)

Ridge admits Bush administration pushed to raise security alert for political reasons on eve of re-election.

Former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is releasing a book on September 1 titled, “The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…and How We Can Be Safe Again.” U.S. News’ Paul Bedard reports that, in the book, Ridge reveals that he considered resigning because he was urged to issue a politically-motivated security alert on the eve of Bush’s re-election:

Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

Playing politics with terror was a relatively frequent occurrence in the Bush administration. In August 2004, the AP reported that even “some senior Republicans” privately questioned Ridge’s timing of a terror alert that came just three days after the Democratic National Convention. According to the AP report, “One top GOP operative, who works closely with Bush’s political team, said the White House appeared to overplay its hand, and voters may smell politics behind the warning.”

Bush insinuates that he disagrees with Obama’s plan to close Gitmo.

In a speech to the Manufacturing and Business Association in Erie, PA last night, President Bush insinuated that he disagreed with President Obama’s plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and try some of the detainees in U.S. courts. “I’ll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don’t believe that — persuasion isn’t going to work. Therapy isn’t going to cause terrorists to change their mind,” Bush said. But in June 2006, Bush endorsed a course of action quite similar to Obama’s current plan:

BUSH: I’d like to end Guantanamo. I’d like it to be over with. One of the things we will do is we’ll send people back to their home countries. [...] There are some who need to be tried in U.S. courts. They’re cold-blooded killers. They will murder somebody if they’re let out on the street. And yet, we believe there’s a — there ought to be a way forward in a court of law.

Further, as Jake Tapper notes, Bush’s remark that “therapy” won’t help rehabilitate some of the detainees is surprising given the fact that Bush himself sent approximately 120 former Guantanamo detainees to a Saudi-based counseling center for rehabilitation. 60 Minutes recently reported on the success of the Saudi program.

Intel officials ‘scrutinizing threats from the far right just as carefully as those from Islamic extremists.’

After the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leaked a report warning of the threat of right-wing extremists, mainstream conservatives went into a frenzy, demanding that Secretary Janet Napolitano be fired. According to Newsweek, some local intelligence “fusion” centers ceased their operations monitoring right-wing extremists because of the conservative outcry. Now, after a series of murders by far-right extremists, intelligence officials admit they are taking the threat seriously:

They may talk about it less in public now, but law-enforcment and intel officials tell NEWSWEEK they’re quietly scrutinizing threats from the far right just as carefully as those from Islamic extremists.

Even after last week’s shooting by a white supremacist at the Holocaust Museum, conservatives stood by their criticism of the DHS report — despite the fact that the report specifically warned about white supremacist and anti-Semitic extremists.

CIA Director says Cheney sounds like he is ‘wishing that this country would be attacked again.’

In her profile of CIA Director Leon Panetta in this week’s New Yorker, Jane Mayer reports that Panetta believes former Vice President Dick Cheney’s criticism of the Obama administration’s approach to terrorism almost suggests “he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again”:

Panetta, pouring a cup of coffee, responded to Cheney’s speech with surprising candor. “I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue,” he told me. “It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that’s dangerous politics.”

The language Cheney has chosen to use has suggested he is anticipating another attack. In a CNN interview earlier this year, he explicitly fear-mongered that Obama is “making some choices” that “raise the risk..of another attack.” And in an interview with Politico, Cheney “warned that there is a ‘high probability‘ that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.”

Ingraham and O’Reilly joke that MSNBC and liberal blogs are responsible for attack on Army recruiting center.

Yesterday, “[a] 23-year-old man upset about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan opened fire from his truck at two soldiers standing outside a military recruiting station here on Monday morning, killing one private and wounding another.” In response, conservative talker Laura Ingraham suggested that websites and news outlets that have been critical of the war in Iraq were responsible for the obviously horrible attack. Her guest Bill O’Reilly seemed to agree with her tongue-in-cheek reasoning:

INGRAHAM: Are we now going to look at the websites that he frequented to see if he was on some of the crazy left-wing anti-war websites, Win Without War, George Soros-funded websites, DailyKos, all the crazies. … The way they are reporting on the George Tiller murder, all of talk radio was responsible for that. … Did he frequent MSNBC, did he like to watch it? [...]

O’REILLY: Since they have been unrelenting in describing their country as a torture nation, I’m sure that set this muslim guy off to kill one and wound another of our military and I’m sure that’s NBC’s fault. Look, the absurdity of this is beyond the pale.

Listen to a compilation here:

These commentators weren’t criticizing O’Reilly and groups like Operation Rescue simply because they are opposed to abortion. Many right-wing activists used words like “murderer” and “killer” when they criticized Tiller’s abortion practices. O’Reilly, in particular, sent his producers to ambush Tiller and said that anyone who didn’t “stop” Tiller would have “blood on their hands.”

When will the right wing insist the NYC synagogue bombers are ‘too dangerous’ for U.S. prisons?

Last night, “an elaborate sting operation” resulted in the arrest of four men accused of plotting to bomb a synagogue and shoot down airplanes. The New York City Police Commissioner said the four men “stated that they wanted to commit jihad,” and said the men were part of a “homegrown terrorism” movement. Given conservatives’ recent hysterical declarations that U.S. prisons are unfit to handle terrorist suspects, Hilzoy challenges the right wing’s talking points in regards to the imprisonment of these “homegrown” terrorists:

This raises the difficult question: what should we do with these would-be terrorists while they await trial? And if they are convicted, what then? I assume that if it’s too dangerous to move people at Guantanamo to the United States, it must be much too dangerous to allow these jihadists to run loose in our prisons. After all, they might provide financing for other jihadists from their supermax cells, or radicalize other prisoners, or use special Terrorist Mind Control Techniques to create a whole army of brainwashed convicts under their complete control.