FRANK RICH: Don’t Laugh at Michael Chertoff

[kevinmc]

MICHAEL CHERTOFF, President Bush’s fallback choice for secretary of Homeland Security after Bernard Kerik, is best remembered for his tragicomic performance during Hurricane Katrina. He gave his underling, the woeful Brownie, a run for the gold.

It was Mr. Chertoff who announced that the Superdome in New Orleans was “secure” even as the other half of the split screen offered graphic evidence otherwise. It was Mr. Chertoff who told NPR that he had “not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who do not have food and water,” even after his fellow citizens had been inundated with such reports all day long.

With Brownie as the designated fall guy, Mr. Chertoff kept his job. Since then he has attracted notice only when lavishing pork on terrorist targets like an Alabama petting zoo while reducing grants to New York City. Though Mr. Chertoff may be the man standing between us and Armageddon, he is seen as a leader of stature only when standing next to his cabinet mate Gonzo.

But even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Last week, as the Bush administration frantically tried to counter Republican defections from the war in Iraq, Mr. Chertoff alone departed from the administration’s script to talk about the enemy that actually did attack America on 9/11, Al Qaeda, rather than Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the jihad-come-lately gang Mr. Bush is fond of talking about instead. In this White House, the occasional official who strays off script is in all likelihood inadvertently coughing up the truth.

Mr. Chertoff was promptly hammered for it. His admission of “a gut feeling” that America might be vulnerable to a terrorist attack this summer was universally ridiculed as a gaffe. He then tried to retreat, but as he did so, his dire prognosis was confirmed by an intelligence leak. The draft of a new classified threat assessment found that Al Qaeda has regrouped and is stronger than at any time since 2001. Its operational base is the same ungoverned Pakistan wilderness where we’ve repeatedly failed to capture Osama bin Laden dead or alive for six years....

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/07/frank-rich-dont-laugh-at-michael.html

[aquart]

1. Yeah. That criminal is hardly funny.

[RC]

2. Is there anyone that is not beginning to suspect that the real terrorists

are residing in our very own White House - other than the clueless 28% that is?

[bobthedrummer]

3. I don't laugh at Mr. Elizabeth Cheney-Philip Perry either-all of them are traitors and fascists n/t

[JohnyCanuck]

4. Still missing the bigger picture.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1336137

[MasonJar]

5. I heard the interview live on NPR. It was actually "the Twilight Zone"

revisited. There was a three way commection; the reporter on the scene was leterally frantic with worry and chagrin. He was begging for help and there was Chertoff saying there were no people at the Convention Center. (Where do all these lame brains come from?) In fact many 100s, who had been denied any way to leave the city, were starving and some were dying there as the 3 spoke.