Answers Ready on Rumsfeld’s Terror Questions a Marie Cocco must read

[jbfam4]

Marie Cocco is brilliant the way she takes Rumsfeld's memo and answers it with the speech Bob Graham gave to the Senate before voting to go to war.


Marie Cocco
Answers Ready on Rumsfeld’s Terror Questions
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-vpcoc283513295oct28,0,6524914.column?coll=ny-news-columnists
October 28, 2003


Donald Rumsfeld, meet Bob Graham.



Graham said, on Oct. 10, 2002: "This resolution fails to recognize the new reality of the era of terrorism." He talked about how we must go after five international terrorist organizations - none of them a nation-state - that already have murdered thousands of Americans over a period of two decades. He said that invading Iraq would help, not hurt, these shadowy groups. "They have recruited, trained and placed operatives in our hometowns," Graham said. You can't march troops into Toledo.



Our government, you wrote, has captured or killed 55 former Iraqi leaders. But you said we've made "somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban - Omar, Hekmatyar, both, etc." Your memo didn't mention the unmentionable one.
snip

Graham did. The senator said on Oct. 10, 2002: ". . . Action in Afghanistan has ground to a halt, Osama bin Laden remains at large and we have not moved aggressively beyond Afghanistan to gain knowledge of al-Qaida operatives in other parts of the world. We also know of sanctuaries - training camps - where the next generation of terrorists are being trained and they are going unattacked."

snip
Graham said, on Oct. 10, 2002: "With sadness, I predict we will live to regret this day" - that is, the day of the Senate vote for the Iraq war. He called it "the day we stood by and we allowed these terrorist organizations to continue growing in the shadows. It may be days, weeks, months or years before they strike Americans again, and we will have allowed them to grow that capability."