What's a Lefty to think?

What is one on the Left to think when he sees Daniel Benjamin, former Bill Clinton NSC staffer, arguing with Michael Scheuer, the Left's anointed expert on everything OBL and outspoken Bush critic on a panel convened at FNS this morning to discuss pre-9/11 failures? I make no guesses but I imagine should they spend too much time considering today's discussion, their heads may begin to hurt.

It starts out friendly enough and while it never got too unfriendly, there was a definite and obvious difference of opinion between the two men. Here is the first 'exchange':

WALLACE: Mr. Scheuer, as the man in charge of what was called "Alec Station," the CIA unit in charge of hunting down Osama bin Laden, you say the Clinton administration missed at least 10 chances to get him. I don't want to go into all 10, but what was the problem?

MICHAEL SCHEUER, FORMER CIA AGENT: Well, the president is correct, in that he got - President Clinton is correct that he got closer than anyone, but, of course, he always refused to pull the trigger. And in addition, we were never authorized, while I was the chief of operations, to kill Osama bin Laden. In fact, Mr. Richard Clarke definitely told us we had no authorization to kill bin Laden.

Why they didn't shoot, of course, is, at least from Mr. Tenet's viewpoint it was because one time they were afraid to have shrapnel hit a mosque when they killed bin Laden. And two other times I think they were afraid they actually would have to do something, so they warned the emirates on one occasion, the princes from the United Arab Emirates, to move so we couldn't attack bin Laden.

WALLACE: They were on a hunting trip with bin Laden.

SCHEUER: Yes, sir. And Richard Clarke called the emirates and warned them that they should get out of that area, which cost us the chance to kill him.

WALLACE: Mr. Benjamin, you were working in the National Security Council at that time. Weren't there a number of cases where the Clinton administration had bin Laden in their sights and refused or failed to pull the trigger?

DAVID BENJAMIN, FORMER MEMBER OF CLINTON'S NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: Well, as the 9/11 Commission report has shown, the answer to that is no. On three different occasions we had some intelligence that bin Laden might be in a particular place at a particular time, and we had warships off the coast of Pakistan ready to shoot cruise missiles. However, we never got the confirming intelligence.

I have the greatest respect for Mike Scheuer, but on this case I think he's wrong, because, quite simply, we never had enough information to do this with confidence, knowing that we would get the target. And it doesn't help your deterrence and it doesn't help your case if you fire and you don't hit the right person.

Fast forward to this nearer the end of the panel's discussion:

WALLACE: Let me ask you about that, Mr. Benjamin, because that was one of the points that President Clinton made in our interview, that it wasn't certified by the FBI and the CIA. Two points about that: One, he's the commander in chief. The CIA and the FBI don't work for - I mean, they work for him, he doesn't work for them. And two, doesn't this get to the whole issue as to whether or not this was viewed as law enforcement or a war?

BENJAMIN: No, I don't think it has anything to do with that. I think it has to do with having a standard of proof that you know that there was outside leadership of Al Qaida directing an attack in Yemen, and could you attack that outside leadership in Afghanistan on that basis? I think it's a very clear issue.

The whole discussion of a law enforcement paradigm versus a war paradigm is, in many ways, just a myth, because the war on terror, if you want to call it that, was conducted in a way before 9/11 that involved an awful lot of intelligence operations that had nothing to do with law enforcement.

This was about being able to say we got the right guys. And it was a very difficult time. It was right before the election. He needed to have proof to justify this kind of attack.

WALLACE: But, Mr. Scheuer, I can see you beginning to shake your head. I mean, whether or not they had certifiable proof about the Cole, they certainly knew that Al Qaida had been involved in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Africa. In your opinion, as somebody who was up close and personal, why didn't the Clinton administration go after Al Qaida after the USS Cole?

SCHEUER: Mr. Wallace, my opinion is not all that important. I went to a little Jesuit school in Buffalo called Canicius, and the priests taught us never to lie, but if you had to lie, never lie about facts. Mr. Richard Clarke, Mr. Sandy Berger, President Clinton are lying about the opportunities they had to kill Osama bin Laden. That's the plain truth, the exact truth.

Men and women at the CIA risked their lives to provide occasions to kill a man we knew had declared war and had attacked America four or five times before 1998. We had plans that had been approved by the Joint Operations Command at Fort Bragg. We had opportunities, many opportunities to kill him.

But that's the president's decision. That's absolutely the case. It's not a simple, dumb bureaucrat like me; that's not my decision. It's his. But for him to get on the television and say to the American people he did all he could is a flat lie, sir.

WALLACE: Mr. Benjamin?

BENJAMIN: Well, I simply disagree. The plans that Mike is referring to about being approved were actually disapproved by his own chain of command. The CIA did not have confidence in the operation that was drawn up, and we couldn't go forward with it.

After the attack on the East Africa embassies, the covert operations were restarted, and again the same assets that were being involved earlier proved to be feckless and didn't deliver the goods.

(CROSSTALK)

SCHEUER: ... saying this, that what Mr. Benjamin, who I have a great deal of respect for, but what I say doesn't matter. What matters is the documents that back up what I have to say or what Mr. Benjamin has to say.

The 9/11 Commission ignored those documents, didn't publish them to the American people, let no one involved with the effort to get bin Laden testify to the American people.
This is not a question of interpretation or judgment. This is a question of fact. And the documents will show the president had the opportunity.

The time concludes with this bit where Scheuer reverts more to form as he criticizes Bush but makes one last important point; George W. Bush didn't have the same opportunities that Bill Clinton did:

WALLACE: Mr. Scheuer, you're very critical of President Clinton, as we've seen today, but you also are on the record as saying that President Bush was, quote, "absolutely negligent in his failure to do more in the first eight months."

SCHEUER: Oh, I think that's absolutely the case. And I think that this administration has led us into a tremendously difficult long-term problem, which will be very bloody and costly for Americans.

I think fair is fair, though. Mr. Clarke, Mr. Berger, Mr. Clinton did have opportunities that were delivered by the men and women of the CIA to kill Osama bin Laden. In the first eight months of the Bush administration, there were no such opportunities. Could Bush have done more?

BENJAMIN: He didn't create any either.

SCHEUER: There were no such opportunities.

So who will you believe if you're on the Left and have a vested interest in making sure that, regardless of what else happens, George Bush bears blame? Do you believe the staffer who argues most of the same defenses we heard last weekend and have heard for far too long, or the gentleman whom you cheer every time he criticizes the President but still reserves pointed criticism for his predecessor?