Saturday, June 17, 2006
Falling off a Log
[Ed. note: the following dialogue is from the transcript of the March 24, 2004 9/11 Commission hearing. Richard Armitage was the then U.S. Deputy Secretary of State.]
THOMPSON: The establishment of a policy dealing with Al Qaida that was finally ready for presentation to the president in September of 2001, obviously involved more than simply a military response to Al Qaida. Pakistan was involved, is that correct?
ARMITAGE: Yes, sir.
THOMPSON: And so those charged with the responsibility of dealing with Pakistan and trying to balance between keeping the Pakistanis flexible had to be a part of the policy, is that right?
ARMITAGE: Governor, yes. Thank you. This is an important point, and it gets at something Senator Kerrey was talking about, I think, twice yesterday, he was quite frustrated with. You know the giving of an order by the president improved the relationships with Pakistan so that we can have a better chance of uprooting Taliban, et cetera. That's a pretty simple statement and it doesn't look like much, but if you peel back the onion, what you see in Pakistan's case is we'd had over ten years of divorce from their military. We had no inroads there. We had very limited intelligence work. We had no political relationship worth a damn with them. We had stopped all the World Bank or international financial institutions. We didn't have many places of purchase. So the order given to improve a relationship with Pakistan, then as you go down the food chain
there are more and more and more activities that are associated with doing just what the president wanted, and that's true with all these issues. You could add in the Al Qaida case; Iran was part of it. We actually had to work with Iran if we had military action. So it is complicated.
THOMPSON: Uzbekistan?
ARMITAGE: Uzbekistan was a special complication for two reasons. The affection for human rights there was not what we wanted and desired, and we had some questions about whether we'd be able to base there and what would be the reaction of the Russian federation. So we had to work those things out.
THOMPSON: You needed more funding?
ARMITAGE: Funding, I think Dick Clarke and others have spoken to it. Making a decision to fund is one thing, and then going through the appropriations process is quite another.
THOMPSON: How to get arms to the Northern Alliance, if that was to be the policy...
ARMITAGE: Getting arms to them was not so difficult.
ARMITAGE: It was making sure that we wouldn't be, one, embarrassed by what they were. And no matter the charismatic nature of Ahmed Shah Massoud -- and he was quite charismatic -- that doesn't make up for raping, drug dealing, et cetera, which many of the Northern Alliance had been involved with. So it's not easy. And that's why, I think, you don't see -- we're not sitting up here saying, well, why didn't people do it in the '98 time frame? They had two years. The fact is, they're hard. It's difficult. It's not like falling off a log.
Read the full transcript of Armitage's testimony (last witness):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20349-2004Mar24.html
Listen to other testimony:
http://www.npr.org/911hearings/testimony.html
Learn more about Richard Armitage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage
THOMPSON: The establishment of a policy dealing with Al Qaida that was finally ready for presentation to the president in September of 2001, obviously involved more than simply a military response to Al Qaida. Pakistan was involved, is that correct?
ARMITAGE: Yes, sir.
THOMPSON: And so those charged with the responsibility of dealing with Pakistan and trying to balance between keeping the Pakistanis flexible had to be a part of the policy, is that right?
ARMITAGE: Governor, yes. Thank you. This is an important point, and it gets at something Senator Kerrey was talking about, I think, twice yesterday, he was quite frustrated with. You know the giving of an order by the president improved the relationships with Pakistan so that we can have a better chance of uprooting Taliban, et cetera. That's a pretty simple statement and it doesn't look like much, but if you peel back the onion, what you see in Pakistan's case is we'd had over ten years of divorce from their military. We had no inroads there. We had very limited intelligence work. We had no political relationship worth a damn with them. We had stopped all the World Bank or international financial institutions. We didn't have many places of purchase. So the order given to improve a relationship with Pakistan, then as you go down the food chain
there are more and more and more activities that are associated with doing just what the president wanted, and that's true with all these issues. You could add in the Al Qaida case; Iran was part of it. We actually had to work with Iran if we had military action. So it is complicated.
THOMPSON: Uzbekistan?
ARMITAGE: Uzbekistan was a special complication for two reasons. The affection for human rights there was not what we wanted and desired, and we had some questions about whether we'd be able to base there and what would be the reaction of the Russian federation. So we had to work those things out.
THOMPSON: You needed more funding?
ARMITAGE: Funding, I think Dick Clarke and others have spoken to it. Making a decision to fund is one thing, and then going through the appropriations process is quite another.
THOMPSON: How to get arms to the Northern Alliance, if that was to be the policy...
ARMITAGE: Getting arms to them was not so difficult.
ARMITAGE: It was making sure that we wouldn't be, one, embarrassed by what they were. And no matter the charismatic nature of Ahmed Shah Massoud -- and he was quite charismatic -- that doesn't make up for raping, drug dealing, et cetera, which many of the Northern Alliance had been involved with. So it's not easy. And that's why, I think, you don't see -- we're not sitting up here saying, well, why didn't people do it in the '98 time frame? They had two years. The fact is, they're hard. It's difficult. It's not like falling off a log.
Read the full transcript of Armitage's testimony (last witness):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20349-2004Mar24.html
Listen to other testimony:
http://www.npr.org/911hearings/testimony.html
Learn more about Richard Armitage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage
