Yes He Is, No He Isn't

As Josh Marshall reports at Talking Points Memo, Bush's all-of-a-sudden politically expedient "embrace" of the 9/11 Commission Report (PDF) isn't really what he says it is.

"White House and Bush campaign officials have long said that the details [of White House counterterrorism proposals] matter far less than the pictures and sounds of Mr. Bush talking in any way about his campaign against terrorism, which polls shows still his strongest card against Mr. Kerry," writes Elizabeth Bumiller in the [New York] Times today.

Ain't it the truth!

But wouldn't it be nice if we had a press which would make some effort to point out instances where the 'details' utterly belie what the president says he's doing?

The issue here is the president's supposed embrace of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, particularly on the creation of a new National Intelligence Director under whom the heads of the various intelligence agencies would operate.

I was working on another project pretty much constantly through most of the day and heard discussion of this on the cable networks, particularly CNN. What I heard there was that the president had embraced the commission's recommendation on this point while only disagreeing on whether this new head of national intelligence would be housed within the White House or have cabinet rank status outside the White House structure.

Yet it turns out that this is but one, and not at all the most significant way in which the policy the president has embraced differs from that of the commission. In fact, when you look closely at it, it's nothing like what the commission recommended at all. The president went out into the Rose Garden, said he was adopting the commission's proposals. But in fact he was doing close to the opposite, doing more or less what they said shouldn't be done.

The key point made by the commission, you'll remember, is that the new NDI would have to have budgetary authority across the various intelligence agencies and the ability to hire and fire senior managers. As the Times makes clear, the president's proposal does none of those. Indeed, the dailies do a pretty good job making this clear. The [Washington] Post says that...

"Bush's statement embraced the two most significant of the 37 recommendations by the commission that investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but with significant limitations. Under his plan, the new intelligence chief would lack the authority over budgets, hiring and firing that the commission had envisioned."

If anything, though, even that doesn't quite do it justice.

You'll remember that we already have a national director of intelligence, someone in charge of overseeing the work of all the various American intelligence agencies. That person is the DCI, the Director of Central Intelligence

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Now, I saw a portion of Bush's Rose Garden announcement about this, and Bush had another of those "Oh-shit-I-wasn't-given-an-answer-to-that-question" moments. From the official White House transcript:

Q: Mr. President, the 9/11 Commission originally recommended that the National Intelligence Director be part of the executive office, part of the executive branch. Why the change? Why make it part of -- with congressional oversight?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't think that person ought to be a member of my Cabinet. I will hire the person, and I can fire the person, which is...

[long pause]

...any President would like. That's how you have accountability in government. I don't think that the office ought to be in the White House, however. I think it ought to be a stand-alone group, to better coordinate, particularly between foreign intelligence and domestic intelligence matters. I think it's going to be one of the most useful aspects of the National Intelligence Director.

What?!?

He then did his usual dance around another question...

Q:You saw that Doctors Without Borders pulled out of Afghanistan because it was too dangerous. You've seen reports about the re-formed Taliban. Why is the situation, security situation there so poor? What do you see as the trajectory of it?

THE PRESIDENT: I did see that the Doctors Without Borders left, and I'm sorry they did, because they were providing an important function for the people who want to live in a free society. I also saw, at the same time, that there's over, I think it's 9 million Afghan citizens have registered to vote. That's an unbelievable statement, isn't it? Do you remember when we were here -- I can't remember, at one of my press conferences, we had a discussion about this, but there was some concern that, well, maybe they're not going to get even the 3 million people registered to vote in Afghanistan. Or maybe it was -- some minimal threshold. I think we're over 9 million now?

SECRETARY RIDGE: Yes, just about 9 million.

THE PRESIDENT: Nine million people have said to the world, we love freedom and we're going to vote. Now, the Taliban still roams in parts of the country, and we're working with the Afghan government to bring them to justice. These are similar to the killers in Iraq; they'll lurk in shadows and come out and kill indiscriminately.

Do you remember they pulled the women off the bus? They got the bus, they stopped and said everybody -- the women with voter registration cards step off, and they killed them. Nevertheless, the Afghan people refuse to be intimidated. They're showing up in droves to vote. A free society is emerging in that part of the world.

Okay... but "Why is the situation, security situation there so poor?"