Kevblog Archives

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In Early '01, Bremer
Bashed Bush on Terror

Posted 12:19 p.m., April 29, 2004

by Kevin Featherly

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It turns out Paul Bremer--the American ambassador to Iraq and its current de facto president--had his eye on the terrorism ball well before 9/11, and bashed the young Bush administration for failing to see the reality of the threat.

This came to my attention today listening to Al Franken interviewing David Sirota of the Center for American Progress. Sirota's site points to an April 23 article in the Chicago Reader that details Bremer's stance.

Bremer, a career diplomat who had been Ronald Reagan's ambassador at large for counterterrorism, was a member of the Gilmore Commission--an advisory group assigned by Congress in 1998 to examine the risk to Americans of terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction.

The Gilmore panel issued a series of annual reports, and the second of those, released in December 2000, said: "The United States has no coherent, functional national strategy for combating terrorism. . . . The organization of the Federal government's programs for combating terrorism is fragmented, uncoordinated, and politically unaccountable."

The 2000 report contained a stern warning that the next presidential administration should develop and present Congress with "a national strategy for combating terrorism within one year of assuming office."

A speech delivered by Bremer on Feb. 26, 2001, was highly critical of what already clearly was the Bush administration's lack of any response to the commission's pitched warnings.

"The new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism. What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?' That's too bad. They've been given a window of opportunity with very little terrorism now, and they're not taking advantage of it."

-- Paul Bremer, Dec. 26, 2001

Bremer's statements were delivered during a three-day conference sponsored by the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation on the theme "Terrorism: Informing the Public."

His comments, in edited form, later appeared in Terrorism: Informing the Public, the McCormick Tribune Foundation's book-length report of the anti-terror conference. It was published in 2002, too late to have any impact.

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Kevin Featherly, a former managing editor at Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, is a Minnesota journalist who covers politics and technology. He has authored or contributed to five previous books, Guide to Building a Newsroom Web Site (1998), The Wired Journalist (1999), Elements of Language (2001), Pop Music and the Press (2002) and Encyclopedia of New Media (2003). His byline has appeared in Editor & Publisher, the San Francisco Chronicle, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Online Journalism Review and Minnesota Law & Politics, among other publications. In 2000, he was a media coordinator for Web, White & Blue, the first online presidential debates. Currently is news editor for the McGraw-Hill tech publication, Healthcare Informatics.

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Copyright 2004, by Kevin Featherly

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