Satin Scorpion :: Shusu's Blog

Wednesday, August 07, 2002

1:49 AM
The Unabridged Version

I am not going to cry. I won't.

I tend not to blame people. I don't believe in excuses anymore, as much as I point them out; if you did it, get over it, and do something NOW. Because of that, I believe individual stupidity is a chance to learn. Collective stupidity is what history is made of. (Replace stupidity with brilliance and it's the same thing.)

History. That happens to other people, doesn't it? Usually dead people? And even if you listen to the TV news, you might forget that it's happening all the time. You might forget that you are a part of it. That you can do something about it. It is not a fucking movie. It is here, and now. History is really very simple. If you know what happened before, you can make decisions about now.

What follows are excerpts from this week's Time Magazine, August 12, 2002. I urge you to pick it up and keep it safe for your grandkids, or your grandnieces and -nephews, or your godchildren. Time is not the most unbiased reporting body out there, but this is a catalog of the facts, a narrative laced with very little commentary. It is written as history books should be written. All the background you need is in the article and a world atlas. There will be a test. But it won't be multiple choice, or true/false, or essay. This is a test for all of us. This is a part of democracy at work.

Before you read this, click here for a related blog reprint. Consider it a sidebar. It reflects my own bias and was written for a different context, but with the lack of continuity and narrative in American media, it may be helpful.

Special Report: The Secret History. They Had a Plan. (selected excerpts)

Reported by the following, for Time Magazine: Massimo Calabresi, John F. Dickerson, Elaine Shannon, Mark Thompson, Douglas Waller, Michael Weisskopf, Hannah Bloch, Tim McGirk, Cathy Booth Thomas, Wendy Cole, Marguerite Michaels, Bruce Crumley, James Graff, David Schwartz, Michael Ware. Any typos are my own. Bold emphasis mine. Skip to article

Personae (in order of appearance):

Former President Bill Clinton.
Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Adviser.
President George W. Bush.
Condoleeza Rice, Bush's National Security Adviser.
Stephen Hadley, Rice's deputy.
Richard Clarke, chair of the interagency Counter-Terrorism Security Group.
al-Qaeda.
Osama bin Laden.
(former) Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which wrested power in 1996; originally backed by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, an offshot from U.S.-funded rebels vs. USSR.
Northern Alliance, last remaining Taliban resistance in 2001. Mostly Tajiks (minority ethnic group).
Predator drone, unmanned aerial vehicle, used in intelligence gathering.
"Washington", quote "that organic compound of officials and politicians, in uniform and out, with faces both familiar and unfamiliar" unquote
Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, Arabs who were leaders of a terrorist cell in Germany; Florida residents in 2001.
Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, California residents in 2001.
Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian based in Montreal, caught crossing the border with explosives intended for Los Angeles International Airport (2000?).
George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence (CIA).
Congressman Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga), Chairman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency.
William Cohen, former Secretary of Defense.
General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C.
Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader in the Northern Alliance.
Mullah Mohammed Omar, "self-styled emir of Afghanistan" 2001.
General Pervez Musharraf, leader of Pakistan.
(Francesc Vendrell, then-special representative in Afghanistan to the U.N. Secretary General.)
Mullah Mohammed Rabbani, second in power in 2000, who secretly reached out to Massoud. Died of liver cancer in April 2001.
Bamiyan Valley Buddhas.
Moinuddin Haider, Pakistani Interior Minister, who pleaded with the Taliban to save the Buddhas.
(Brigadier Javid Iqbal Cheema, director of Pakistan's National Crisis Management Cell.)
(Abdullah Abdullah, close aide to Massoud, currently Afghan Foreign Minister.)
European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
Abdul Haq, a leading Pashtun (majority ethnic group) who opposed the Taliban. Met with Massoud in June 2001. Executed by the regime in October 2001.
Peter Tomsen, retired ambassador, '89-'92 State Department's special envoy to Afghan resistance.
James Ritchie, Chicago options trader helping bankroll Taliban resistance groups.
(Sayeed Hussain Anwari, Afghan Minister of Agriculture.)
Vice President Dick Cheney.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Abu Zubaydah, al-Qaeda's head of international operations.
Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.
Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State.
Paul Wolfowitz, "hawk" from the Pentagon.
John McLaughlin, CIA.
Ben Bonk, deputy director of the CIA's counterterrorism center.
Tom Pickard, Acting FBI Director in June 2001.
G-8 Summit in Genoa, Italy.
John O'Neill, FBI's National Security Division head, in New York City. Under pressure from coordinating European intelligence on terrorism and getting nowhere, he resigned from the FBI and in the beginning of September, "began new life as head of security at the World Trade Center." D. 9/11/01.
Barry Mawn, Assistant FBI Director, who pleaded with Washington for more resources to no avail.
Ramzi Yousef, responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Barbara Bodine, then-U.S. ambassador to Yemen, who barred O'Neill from returning to Yemen to investigate the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, in November 2000.
Algerian Armed Islamic Group, which launched a Paris bombing campaign in 1995.
Strasbourg plot, planned by a terrorist cell in Frankfurt, Germany.
Mohammed Bensakhria, Algerian who had Afghani links to top al-Qaeda officials. Arrested in Spain.
Djamel Beghal, Algerian French-national. Arrested in Dubai.
Kenneth Williams, FBI agent in Phoenix who spotted Islamic radicals in flight schools. His three memos famously died in the FBI bureaucratic paperwork.
Zacarias Moussaoui, Moroccan French-national who attended flight school in Oklahoma; apprehended doing the same in Minnesota.
(John Rosengren, then-director of operations at Pan Am Internation Flight Academy in Minnesota.)
Ramzi Binalshibh, Hamburg friend of Atta and al-Shehhi.
The Minnesota FBI field office.
Zahir Akbar, one of Massoud's generals.
Two men posing as journalists who had a letter of introduction from Yasser al-Siri, head of the Islamic Observation Center in London. Mortally wounded Massoud on September 9, 2001. A massive Taliban offensive followed.
(Faheem Dashty, who made films with the Northern Alliance and editor-in-chief of the Kabul Weekly.)
(Masood Kahlili, friend of Massoud, now Afghanistan's ambassador to India.)

[...] in the White House situation room during the first week of January 2001. The session was part of a program designed by Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, who wanted the transition between the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations to run as smoothly as possible. With some bitterness, Berger remembered how little he and his colleagues had been helped by the first Bush Administration in 1992-1993. [...] Berger attended only one of the briefings--the session which dealt with the threat posed to the U.S. by international terrorism, and especially by al-Qaeda. "I'm coming to this briefing, he told Rice, "to underscore how important I think this subject is." [...] "I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject."

Since the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen on October 12, 2000--an attack which left 17 Americans dead--[Counter-Terrorism Security Group head Richard Clarke] had been working on an aggressive plan to take the fight to al-Qaeda. The result was a strategy paper that he presented to Berger and the other national security "principals" on Dec. 20. But Berger and the principals decided to shelve the plan and let the next Administration take it up. With less than a month left in office, they did not think it appropriate to launch a major initiative against Osama bin Laden. [...] Berger had left the room by the time Clarke, using a Powerpoint presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. A senior Bush Administration official denies being handed a formal plan to take the offensive against al-Qaeda, and says Clarke's materials merely dealt with whether the new Administration should take "a more active approach" [...] (Rice declined to comment, but through a spokeswoman said she recalled no briefing at which Berger was present.) Other senior officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, however, say that Clarke had a set of proposals to "roll back" al-Qaeda. In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, "Response to al-Qaeda: Roll back." Clarke's proposals called for the "breakup" of al-Qaeda cells and the arrest of their personnel. The financial support for its terrorist activities would be systematically attacked, its assets frozen, its funding from fake charities stopped. Nations where al-Qaeda was causing trouble--Uzebekistan, the Philippines, Yemen--would be given aid to fight the terrorists. Most important, Clarke wanted to see a dramatic increase in covert action in Afghanistan to "eliminate the sanctuary" where al-Qaeda had its terrorist training camps and bin Laden was being protected by the Islamic Taliban regime.
[...]
The proposals Clarke developed in the winter of 2000-2001 were not given another hearing by top decision makers until late April, and then spent another four months making their laborious way through the bureaucracy before they were readied for approval by President Bush. It is quite true that no one predicted Sept. 11--that nobody guessed in advance how and when the attacks would come. But other things are true too. By last summer, many of those in the know [...] were almost frantic with worry that a major terrorist attack against American interests was imminent. It wasn't averted because 2001 saw a systematic collapse in the ability of Washington's national security apparatus to handle the terrorist threat.

The winter proposals became a victim of the transition process, turf wars, and time spent on the pet policies of the new top officials. The Bush Administration chose to institute its own "policy review process" on the terrorist threat. Clarke told TIME that the review moved "as fast as could be expected." And Administration officials insist that by the time the review was endorsed by Bush principals on Sept. 4, it was more aggressive than anything contemplated the previous winter. The final plan, they say, was designed not to "roll back" al-Qaeda but to "eliminate" it. But that delay came at a cost. The Northern Alliance was desperate for help but got little of it. And [...] nobody in Washington could decide whether a Predator drone--an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and the best possible source of real intelligence on what was happening in the terror camps--should be sent to fly over Afghanistan. So the Predator sat idle from October 2000 until after Sept. 11. No single person was responsible for all this. But "Washington"--that organic compound of officials and politicians, in uniform and out, with faces both familiar and unknown--failed horribly.
[...]
No other great power handles the transition from one government to another in so shambolic a way as the U.S.--new appointments take months to be confirmed by the Senate; incoming Administrations tinker with even the most sensible of existing policies. The fight against terrorism was one of the casualties of the transition, as Washington spent eight months going over and over a document whose outline had long been clear.
[...]
There are differing opinions on how seriously the Bush team took Clarke's warnings. Some members of the outgoing Administration got the sense that the Bush team thought the Clintonites had become obsessed with terrorism. [...] For other observers, however, the real point was not that the Administration dismissed the terrorist threat. On the contrary, Rice, Hadley, and Cheney, says an official, "all got that it was important." The question is, How high a priority did terrorism get? Clarke says dealing with al-Qaeda "was in the top tier of issues reviewed by the Bush Administration." But other topics got far more attention.
[...]
The rollback plan became the victim of a classic Washington power play between those with "functional" responsibilities--like terrorism--and those with "regional" ones--like relations with India and Pakistan.
[...]
Intelligence services were picking up enough chatter about a terrorist attack to scare the pants off top officials. On June 22, the Defense Department put its troops on full alert and ordered six ships from the Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, to steam out to sea for fear they would be attacked in port. U.S. officials thought an attack might be mounted on American forces [...] anywhere, it seems, but in the U.S. [....] As if to crystalize how much and how little anyone in the know actually knew, the counterterrorism center released a report titled "Threat of Impending al-Qaeda Attack to Continue Indefinitely."

Predictably, nerves frayed. [...] "He turned into a Chicken Little. The sky was always falling for Dick Clarke. We had our strings jerked by him so many times, he was simply not taken seriously." [...] After Genoa there was a collective sigh of relief: "A lot of folks started letting their guard down." After the final deputies' meeting on Clarke's draft of a presidential directive, on July 16, it wasn't easy to find a date for the Principals' Committee to look at the plan--the last stage before the paper went to Bush. [...] Eventually a date was picked: the principals would look at the draft on Sept 4. That was about nine months after Clarke first put his plan on paper.
[... plus snip for NYC-based FBI's National Security Division head John O'Neill's fruitless attempts to coordinate an investigation in Yemen, as well as his office's work on other terrorist prosecutions]
Yet the FBI as a whole was ill equipped to deal with the terrorist threat. It had neither the language skills nor the analytical savvy to understand al-Qaeda. The bureau's information-technology capability dated to pre-Internet days. Chambliss [Chairman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security] says the counter-terrorism investigations were decentralized at the bureau's 56 field offices, which were actually discouraged from sharing information with one another or with headquarters.
[...]
By 2000, counterterrorism experts in Europe knew the Islamic diaspora communities in Europe were seeded with cells of terrorists. And after the arrest of Ressam [who was caught crossing the Canadian border with explosives meant for Los Angeles International Airport], European officials were convinced that terrorists would soon attack targets in the U.S. Jean-Louis Bruguiere, a French magistrate who has led many of the most prominent terrorist cases, says Ressam's arrest signaled that the U.S. "had to join the rest of the world in considering itself at acute risk of attack."
[...]
The extraordinary thing about Moussaoui's case--like the Phoenix memo--is that it was never brought to the attention of top officials in Washington who were, almost literally, sleepless with worry about an imminent terrorist attack. Nobody in the FBI or CIA ever informed anybody in the White House of Moussaoui's detention. That was unforgivable. "Do you think," says a White House antiterrorism official, "that if Dick Clarke had known the FBI had in custody a foreigner who was learning to fly a plane in midair, he wouldn't have done something?"
[...] Acting FBI director Pickard asked the Justice Department for some $50 million for the bureau's counterterrorism program. He was turned down. In August, a bureau source says, he appealed to Attorney General Ashcroft. The reply was a flat no.

Pickard got Ashcroft's letter on Sept. 10. A few days later, O'Neill had started a new job. He was burned out, and he knew it. Over the summer, he had come to realize that he had made too many enemies ever to succeed [Assistant FBI Director] Mawn. O'Neill handed in his papers, left the FBI and began a new life as head of security at the World Trade Center.

[snip for the assassination of Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, who tried in vain to elicit U.S. aid; he was mortally wounded on Sept. 9, and shortly after the Taliban began a massive offensive on the last remaining forces resisting them]

As the battle raged, Clarke's plan awaited Bush's signature. Soon enough, the Northern Alliance would get all the aid it had been seeking [...] The decision which had been put off for so long suddenly became easy because a little more than 50 hours after Massoud's death, Atta, sitting on American Airlines Flight 11 on the runway at Boston's Logan Airport, had used his mobile phone to speak to his friend Al-Shehhi, on United Flight 175. Their plot was a go.

That morning, O'Neill, Clarke's former partner in the fight against international terrorism, arrived at his new place of work. He had been on the job just two weeks. After Atta and Al-Shehhi crashed their planes into the World Trade Center, O'Neill called his son and a girlfriend from outside the Towers to say he was safe. Then he rushed back in. His body was identified 10 days later.

...
My take on all this? That complex tangle is the problem. The problem is not whether or not your neighbors or your credit card company or America's Most Wanted can report your so-called terrorist activities. It's the isolation of the Beltway from the rest of the population of the United States. And that isolation goes both ways. America is the greatest experiment of democratic rule and the world center of capitalism yet in my lifetime only around HALF of voting age Americans have cast their votes in Presidential elections?
Elected officials may not be able to do anything about ingrained cultures in bureaucracy, but they hire and fire and allocate money, and that is how it is supposed to work. They are supposed to work for the voters. We are extremely lucky as a nation. There is no systematic corruption in our government (if you don't count the financial powerhouses of the special interest groups). Theoretically, the system should work. And yet...

Remember 2000? Remember when we all laughed when SNL parodied Bush's lack of foreign policy knowledge? Remember the neverending election? I'm not saying Gore would've been any better. Maybe he wouldn't have. But if the mediocore men rose to the top, it's because the two party system picked the most popular guys with the most campaign dollars.

You'd better write a letter to your Congressman to balance power from special interest groups and large campaign contributors with local communities and local parties.

You'd better write to your newspaper and TV journalists and tell them you want unbiased coverage.

You'd better ask your credit card company, your travel agent, your bank if they've signed up for TIPS.

You'd better find out what your school district's social studies program is like.

You'd better read up.

You'd better fucking vote.

Because I cannot fucking believe that just under 4400 civilians died for their country, their democracy, in vain.

Tuesday, August 06, 2002

2:02 AM
please remember the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

In other news... what I have so far. The title means "private touch" -- touch here is more of the tactile sense itself. Two goals... a smut-essay on what it means to be blond and in love in the ShuSpace ^^ and a try for the Merry Month of Fisting ovah in LJ land.

To comfort myself after tummy rumbles and sleeping way too much and dreaming of my snake's cage falling apart and trying and trying to put it back together without touching her (ridiculous, I can touch her, even if she bites) and knowing exactly where the anxiety is coming from.

This is Harem House ficverse, but it's fairly straightforward, no back-canon needed.


Hisoka na Shokkan
by Sameshima Shuzumi

The tap of the cigarette on Yohji's palm was the only thing keeping him awake. It wasn't lit, of course, and he hadn't been hung over, of course, but even then he hadn't gotten much sleep.

Blinking back fatigue, he left a fat tip on the metal counter and got up to brave the night air. Maybe the bugs wouldn't eat him alive in the cool. He strode down the avenue, through the crowds, alone as ever. He'd lived most of his life a miser for attention, but assasins learn to blend. Certainly no one was noticing the lanky blond in a forest green tanktop and dark blue jeans. Even in this northern university town, no one commented on his expensive shades, pierced ears, or the matching tattoos on his shoulders. Not even the new one, a version of which he'd passed on the way downtown, carved into the living rock hundreds of years ago.

When the grade began to steepen, Yohji chucked the cigarette. In a trash can, not on the street. There was a word for it that Ken was fond of: whipped. To be sure, a year ago he couldn't have imagined this. Kudou Yohji swearing off cigarettes, cutting down the booze, walking when he had a choice of dream machines that'd make Aya drool. Seiji allowed him to go out -- women only, not that he had a taste for the kankoba boys -- yet he hadn't had a date in a couple of months. Besides that, most people didn't know about all the little things he did for Seiji. On his hands and knees, on his back, against the wall. In leather and metal and most often in nothing at all. In the early afternoon, in the middle of the night, in the wee hours of the morning when he'd rather be sleeping.

Absently he rubbed the circular kamon on his right shoulder. He'd done a lot of little things for Seiji the night before.

Yohji made it to a bend in the road and stopped to enjoy the view. He felt a bit more awake, shaking out the sweat from his hair. It was still strange to feel his lungs fill with fresh air. A walk like this used to leave him short of breath and uncommonly tired. A side benefit to quitting he hadn't expected to like. Not smoking was the hardest thing he'd ever done. Killing as he did it was over in a moment. He didn't count living with ghosts; that was just being alive, and not something he had to fight every day. At times he desperately missed his smokes. But he threw away his lighters and burned his matchbooks just the same.

It was one thing he did for Seiji that he hadn't asked him to do.

There was no doubt they loved each other. Sure, they fought tooth and nail, and he deliberately annoyed Seiji as much as the swordsman humiliated him, and come to think of it, they said 'I love you' more to their close friends than they did to each other. Yet when it came down to it, that was the secret of their relationship. Yohji turned back to the path, smirking. Perfectly fucked up. The story of his life; why stop now? He wasn't about to explain to anyone how it worked.

From one step to another, Yohji felt the air vibrate and snap into place like a railroad switch track. He knew without looking that the panorama of Sendai behind him had shifted minutely. It ceased to bother him when the Japan he knew rolled under his feet, to be replaced by one which belonged to Seiji, his armor, his legend. It made the tat itch like hell though.

~~~

He found himself walking through the woods, the zelkova and pine surrounding him on all sides. He was going to get himself lost very soon. City man as he was, still he trudged on. Seiji had taught him that too: how to go into places where he did not belong. After all, the named heir of one of the most venerable clans of Japan did not belong in a sex club or a love hotel. Nor in a European dress, nor in domination gear. A grandson disgraced and nearly ostracized by one of the most powerful clan leaders in recent memory did not show his face in a kendo tournament, much less open his own dojo.

Not that any of these things impressed Yohji.

What took his breath away was the vision standing before him.

When he'd started walking, he'd expected another encounter such as they'd had in the past month. Rough, kinky sex, usually with Yohji on the receiving end. Standing there in the small glade, beside a mountain stream burbling into a shallow pool, the curve of Seiji's back and the line of the silk kimono across his shoulders spoke of other possibilities. He was struck by the way the bright blond hair shone in the leafy green shadow.

Seiji turned his head to look at him. As always his hair fell across his right eye, an affectation which Yohji found amusing. Yet his gaze held him in thrall; what Yohji read there he would never repeat to another living soul, a most private and sacred trust. He dared not voice it. The woods and the water might hear.

Yohji stripped off his top, knowing Seiji would want to feel bare skin on his. As he stepped forward, a cloud of fireflies sprang up from the soft grass. He waved off their fae lights since they were in the way.

tbc

Monday, August 05, 2002

10:51 AM
yay! and help wanted

I was excited at 6:30 this morning and I'm still excited. the biggest baddest Tamers fic I've yet seen! It's surprisingly not about sex but it IS about epic. If you're a Tamers fan gogogogogo right now. Ajora-tachi [= and company] are just the best when it comes to canon and this is the kind of grand scope and fabulous characterization that I've always not-so-secretly yearned for. And it's all about Ryo! ^____^

I am through with the skeleton of my What RfP pairing are you quiz, but I need five/six more random questions. Funnier and weirder the better, I need the answers to be completely unique so there aren't weird scoring problems. I won't post the quiz until there's a site to drive people to, though, so if you beta-test it, I ask that you not post results to journals yet. I'll withhold the graphics to safeguard against it.

In the meantime, what do you think? You'all have taken dozens of these quizzes, what do you want to see?

Sunday, August 04, 2002

5:14 PM
*toes*

I fell asleep. Sorry! *sweatdrop*

Tomorrow... *sigh*. Going to try to track down my teacher for a recommendation. Fucking overlooked that one on the application. Hopefully she's around and hasn't gone to the North Shore or something.

((I am swearing a lot))

The other impending thing is the driver's license. I need to get it fast before they decide they need an extensive background check or something. Not that I've done anything, but the old one expires soon. If it's as far away as I think it is, I'll go to the Zoo and make a day out of it.

Today beef. Tomorrow evening, tapioca.

Where the hell does that leave website building?! Ack.

Quizzies.


I'm Lumiale! Which Angelique Guardian are YOU?
Take the quiz at Angelique Corner.

Are you a Seme or Uke?

Yes, I am Seine. >.<
But not really surprising and I get a Kaoru on my blog ^^.

You are a muse.
The muses of greek mythology were goddesses who ruled over the arts and sciences and inspired people who were best at them. Their numbers vary from legend to legend, but most agree that there were nine of them who each presided over their own realm.
What legend are you?. Take the Legendary Being Quiz by Paradox



Which Fruits Basket Character are you?

One for the road: armsup! ^_^

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