#1: If the echo-chamber effect from that wacky new Liberal Media of the radio airwaves is correct, this speech was being reaired on C-SPAN 2 as airplanes were flown into the World Trade Center.
It is worth mentioning, that Biden does not actually mention Al Qaeda or Islamic Terrorists, which is the “revelation” that Condi Rice is facing in regards to her scheduled speech.
Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware … September 10, 2001
Defining Our Interests in a Changing World:
Yesterday, Dr. Rice, on Meet the Press — she and I were on Meet the Press — she talked about how ubiquitous these long-range missile systems were. I don’t know what she’s talking about. We’re getting briefed by two different groups of CIA people, I guess, because none of these rogue nations have that capacity yet. They may get it. It is maybe within their reach, but it does not exist now.
[…]
Last week, the Foreign Relations Committee began hearings on how to build a so-called “homeland” defense and to protect our military from bioterrorism pathogens and chemical attacks; on how we can deploy a missile defense system that doesn’t trade off conventional modernization of our military for a fantasy of some system that remains more flawed than feasible; on how we can jump-start the destruction of Russia’s massive chemical weapons stockpile and secure all our nuclear materials.
The very day they send up a budget that tells they are going to increase by 8-point-some billion our missile defense initiative, they cut the program that exists between us and Russia to help them destroy their chemical weapons, keep their scientists from being for sale and destroy their nuclear weapons.
[…]
And I ask you, you want to do us damage, are you more likely to send a missile you’re not sure can reach us with a biological or chemical weapon because you don’t have the throw weight to put a nuclear weapon on it and no one’s anticipating that in the near term, with a return address saying, “It came from us, here’s where we are?” Or are you more likely to put somebody with a backpack crossing the border from Vancouver down to Seattle, or coming up the New York Harbor with a rusty old ship with an atom bomb sitting in the hull? Which are you more likely to do? And what defense do we have against those other things?
Watch these hearings we’re about to have. We don’t have, as the testimony showed, a public health infrastructure to deal with the existing pathogens that are around now. We don’t have the nvestment, the capability to identify or deal with an anthrax attack. We do not have, as Ambassador to Japan now, Howard Baker, and his committee said, the ability to curtail the availability of chemical weapons lying around the Soviet Union, the former Soviet Union and Russia, because they don’t know what to do with it.
#2: On Condelleza Rice’s speech, scheduled to be delivered on 9/11:
The text also implicitly challenged the Clinton administration’s policy, saying it did not do enough about the real threat — long-range missiles.
“We need to worry about the suitcase bomb, the car bomb and the vial of sarin released in the subway,” according to excerpts of the speech provided to The Washington Post. “[But] why put deadbolt locks on your doors and stock up on cans of mace and then decide to leave your windows open?”
………………………………
AND
The White House has con firmed the existence of the draft of Ms Rice’s speech from September 11, first reported by the Washington Post, but refused to release the full text.
A spokesman said that one speech focusing on missile defense did not mean the White House was ignoring the terrorist threat.
[…]
The Rice speech argued for the need to confront “the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday”, and then went on implicitly to criticize the Clinton administration’s preoccupation with terrorist groups at the expense of building defenses against ballistic missiles.
“We need to worry about the suitcase bomb, the car bomb and the vial of sarin released in the subway,” the text of the speech argues, according to the Washington Post.
“[But] why put deadbolt locks on your doors and stock up on cans of Mace and then decide to leave your windows open?”
Scott McClellan, chief White House spokesman, shrugged off calls for the text of the Rice speech to be published, arguing that it was not delivered and therefore not in the public domain.
He added that missile defense and counter-terrorism were not “either-or choices”.
……….
Actually, there are a lot of very fascinating tidbits that appeared in the papers on 9/9 9/10 and the morning of 9/11 that instantly vanished into the netherworld when the terror strikes happened.
For example: a headline I distinctly remember: The Department of Defense was unable to account for $1 Trillion.
All in all, it’s always a good idea to chunk some things back from the memory hole…
UPDATE 4-6-04: Off in Right-wing Land, much has been made of the Washington Times story that “al qaeda” wasn’t mentioned much, nor Bin Laden. To wit, I say, as per various bloggers: take a deeper look at the damned document and read some context into what’s being addressed.
