March 21, 2004
A Presidential Obsession
The revelations Richard Clarke has made in his book and on 60 Minutes should scare all Americans about their current president and his administration. Even as the wreckage of the Twin Towers lay heaped in a smoldering pile, Bush’s administration was seeking out Saddam Hussein and Iraq as targets, not Afghanistan and Al Quaeda.
Already, the Bush administration has played it’s bias and character assassination cards, seeking to impugn the hair-raising scandal of it all amongst it’s constituency by claiming that the whole thing is just Liberal Lies by a guy hoping to get a job with John Kerry. The unfortunate fact is, though, there are too many sources corroborating Clarke’s charges.
In 2000, when asked the question of what posed the greatest threat to the US and it's interests abroad, Bush's answer was Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Bill Clinton's answer, shockingly enough, was Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaeda. Even if Clinton wasn't perfect about seeking out the enemy, he at least knew who his real enemy truly was.
He acted on that, though how sufficiently is an open question. He did something, though and Bush can't say the same. Clinton had his people meeting with him on terrorism every other day. He had people shaking the trees in their department, looking for information on terrorist operations here and abroad.
By contrast, As Clarke alleges, Bush never had a cabinet level meeting on terrorism until a week before 9/11. Under Clinton, Clarke's position was cabinet level. Bush made the office of counterterrorism a staff level position. When the events of 9/11 occurred, Bush forcefully demanded that Clarke find out whether Iraq was involved.
Trouble is, Iraqi terrorism wasn't exactly a high growth sector. The last Iraqi terrorist act on record was eight years before 9/11. The assassination attempt on Dubya's father, that is. After that came out, The Clinton administration bombed Iraqi intelligence HQ and sent them a strongly worded diplomatic message saying that the next time they pulled something like that, Saddam's regime would be next. Eight years passed, and nothing from them since that day. In fact, we wouldn't have Iraqi terrorism again until the American occupation post Gulf-War II.
Paul O'Neill recalls that one of the first things on the agenda was Iraq. It was not there so the facts on the ground could be discussed. Instead, the purpose of the discussion was options for invading it. The Administration's mind was made up.
Trick is, one can make up one's mind about what's going on in the world any way one likes, but when it all comes down to it, there's only one way it has gone down, and only one stream of events coming to fruition, and that is the one we will be left with, when everything is said and done. Right now, the Bush administration is trying to convince the rest of us that it isn't humanly possible to have perfect intelligence. While it's difficult to disagree with that statement in principle, It's really a big vague loophole of an argument. It could be made of a modest error in an otherwise sound intelligence report, or it could be extended to gross negligence. It can also be applied when a Commander in Chief refuses to believe what the best qualified people in the world are telling him. Or if that Commander in Chief decides that he's going to restructure the defense and intelligence establishments to get what he wants in terms of conclusions and evidence.
Bush and his advisors, as Clarke puts it, are stuck in the Cold War, dealing with Cold War issues like Iraq and Missile Defense, but not threats like Al Quaeda and Cyberterrorism. He also says that the administration walked right into Bin Laden's rhetoric, invading an oil-rich arab country and occupying it.
Was Bush fully responsible? No. Clinton perhaps should have backed stronger action against Al Quaeda. But at least he was taking action, and not trying at all costs to finish what his father started.
I know that the Republicans out there will want to remain loyal to their leader. If so, here's the best thing you can do- encourage him to be open and frank with the investigation into 9/11. Right now, your president is making himself look like a man who has things to hide. He has made his relationship with any and all organizations that question him (including the free press) more antagonistic than necessary, and over the two and half years since 9/11, he has done things that are by his own admission based on questionable support.
If there were terrorists in Iraq, why didn't we find the camps, find the documents linking Iraq and the terrorists? If there were WMDs, why has a year of searching in the files of a bureacratically top heavy government failed to find anything? At the very least, your candidate owes you some explanations for these lapses, and ones that don't involve blaming the much more actively anti-terrorist President Clinton.
At the very least, he owes the rest of us an apology. We have confronted him with solid evidence, and in return we get accusations of bias, character assassination, and the kind of doubletalk that would turn a thesaurus's ears blue, if it had them. It is time for Bush to admit the truth.
Who knows? It might be something even we liberals didn't expect.
Posted by Stephen Daugherty at March 21, 2004 10:16 PMRichard Clarke is selling a book, creating publicity so people can be told how obvious it was that al Qaeda would strike us at 9-11. Especially when you write the book in 2004.
Posted by: Tom at March 21, 2004 10:39 PM“What should scare all Americans” is the co-option of the national media by John Kerry’s presidential campaign because that’s exactly what the 60 Minutes piece represents.
Their lead in voice-over, “What did George Bush know about 9-11 and when he did he know it?” (invoking the thread-bare inflammatory thrift-store language of Watergate) and the failure to mention until fairly late in the piece (and bury the fact in subordinate clauses when they did) that Clarke was a leftover from the Clinton administration, was naked partisanship of the lowest order.
And what did Clarke reveal? That he was told (in a tone he found “intimidating,” as if on 9-11 a determined, forceful and pro-active President was more of a shock than the events in NY and DC) to investigate whether Iraq was involved?
Is this news?
Nobody knew during those first hours who was responsible, and it was not only appropriate but necessary to investigate every angle.
All of this aside, Clarke explicitly says that he WAS NEVER TOLD to fabricate this link—only to investigate it. Others were undoubtedly investigating other angles.
Here’s the real scandal: Clarke portrays himself as having superior knowledge to the administration on that day about who exactly was to blame—Al Qaida—although there was still no definitive evidence on the record at that point one way or another.
So why did he have this inside information? Could it be because he was part of the Clinton administration, who knew exactly who Al Qaida was, what they were capable of and what they were likely to do? A part of the same Clinton administration that knew all of this for years and did nothing to protect the American people?
Posted by: Martin at March 21, 2004 11:41 PMDoes Bush have any credibility left after Clarke’s statements?
At this point, I’m feeling “scandal fatigue.” Not because of the sheer volume of wrongness I perceive, but because I don’t feel like I have the power to fight these injustices. I see the Republican controlled government shrugging off these scandals, and I can only shake my head in disbelief. After all, upright Republicans should be as angry at this litany of charges as anyone, since it besmirches all of their reputations needlessly.
Even a subset of the scandals are shocking: the audacious lies told by the White House to Republicans about Medicare costs; the Republican electronic theft of thousands of Democrat documents; the leak of an undercover CIA agent’s identity to fulfill a political vendetta; the Cheney energy taskforce; the forged Niger Uranium documents; and now, the revelation that the Bush Administration dropped the ball again and again in the War on Terror. Perhaps this gives us an indication as to why the Administration opposed the creation of, and subsequently tried to kill, the 9/11 investigative commission.
I am an open-minded, relatively nonpartisan man. For some time after September 11th, I held hope that Bush would continue to do the right thing, and thereby win back my respect that he squandered by his anti-environment environmental appointments. But the War in Iraq finally made up my mind. It always seemed like a very poor tactical move in the War on Terror, in part since Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the War on Terror. More importantly, by attacking a Muslim country that was absolutely no threat to us, and killing 10,000 civilians in the process, we have played right into the hands of Muslim extremists across the globe. Can you imagine a better recruitment tool? And all the while, President Bush labors under the insane delusion that you can simply kill all known Al Qaeda and the problem will go away.
Clarke has served admirably under three republican administrations. He is not a partisan man. I hope that all open-minded Americans hear his message, and demand answers to the natural questions that follow.
-Gaelen Burns
Posted by: Gaelen Burns at March 22, 2004 12:24 AMGaelen, as an open-minded relatively unpartisan man, take comfort in knowing that a good many of these “scandals” are smoke and mirror propaganda campaigns concocted to make you (1) vote for John Kerry or (2) shell out your hard-earned dough for the books by these scandal’s purveyors. The same thing happened with Clinton—perhaps to even a larger degree. And they’ll continue to happen to every president. Such is the nature of politics in our repubic.
Posted by: Martin at March 22, 2004 12:36 AMMartin… you amaze me. This man served under 3 REPUBLICAN administrations! He was a registered Republican in 2000! Characterizing him as partisan is disingenuous at best.
As for the old “Blame the Previous President” jag, here’s a couple of articles people may find interesting, so long as you aren’t Martin:
http://www.buzzflash.com/perspectives/Clinton_and_Terrorism.html
http://www.cnn.com/US/9607/30/clinton.terrorism/
Posted by: Gaelen Burns at March 22, 2004 12:51 AMMartin, why is it the media’s fault Bush gets bad press, and not his own?
Bush could answer those questions and answer them easily, and all the grist for the mill that seems to keep on coming would run out. He could tell America exactly what he was doing to prevent terrorism, and be honest as to whether he thought the threat a high priority.
He could explain further why he changed “wanted dead or alive” to “he’s not important anymore”, and why we spent a years time on a wild goose chase for WMDs and Terrorists while Osama and his friends (including the good doctor) regrouped in Afghanistan.
Yes, 60 Minutes sensationalized it. That’s Marketing. And it’s tame compared with some of the crap I see on Fox News and CNN. You should blame Adam Smith before you blame some liberal bias.
Nobody knew during those first hours who was responsible, and it was not only appropriate but necessary to investigate every angle.
In an abstract sense, yes. In a practical sense, only after you have eliminated the obvious suspects. Iraq is not your obvious suspect. If any of their people got caught, and one of them confessed, do you know what that would be? A bona fide act of war. You would have gotten Gulf War II right then and there.
Besides, even a rank amateur like myself was thinking Al Quaeda. Who else would have the guts? Who else would do things with synchronized attacks like that? Who else would strike at such symbols of American economic power abroad? It fit the pattern- Embassy buildings, an American warship, and then, the Two Towers.
Iraq was left-field, for heaven’s sake. With the bare exception of that Bush Bomb Fiasco in 1993, exactly how many times have you heard of Iraqi terrorist doing something like this? Strike that, how many Iraqi terrorists (before 9/11) have you ever heard of?
With that in mind, and with a president who had all the foreign policy experience of a shaved hamster, how precisely would Iraq rationally come up as a suspect? Why is Bush asking “find out if Iraq did this”, instead of asking “who was it who did this”. One question asks for confirmation. The other asks for an investigation. Added with O’Neills’ revelation of an uncritically pro-Iraq-invasion foreign policy, and it’s obvious: Bush was looking to pick a fight with Iraq.
What really puzzles me, Martin, is that you seem intent on turning the scandal on Clarke. Are you trying to claim he’s a terrorist mole? I don’t have any idea where that came from, given that he was a counter-terrorism policy wonk who would have likely had the highest of security clearances, and who had them through one of the worst period of terrorist attacks agaisnt American’s interests. Why wouldn’t he know or suspect who did it.
One last thing: Clarke didn’t just serve under Clinton, but also Reagan and Bush Senior.
> Here’s the real scandal: Clarke portrays
> himself as having superior knowledge to
> the administration on that day about who
> exactly was to blame—Al Qaida—although
> there was still no definitive evidence
> on the record at that point one way or
> another.
>
> So why did he have this inside
> information?
There you go again, with your sinister suggestions that anyone who opposes the President is a friend of Al Qaeda.
I thought you were being funny at first, but now it’s starting to get scary. Is this some kind of preview of the Bush’04 ad campaign?
-Cf
Martin is right. With all of this foreknowledge what did Clarke and the Clinton Administration advise Bush to do? Let’s evaluate what Clarke is alleging, shall we?
Supposedly, Clarke repeatedly and forcefully, in no uncertain terms, made it clear to the incoming Bush administration that Al Qeada was the number one threat to US national security AND was going to launch an imminent attack on US soil!
What was his recommendation for action on this threat? Invasion of Afghanistan? Assasination of Osama? No, because he also says that invading arab countries makes Osama mad. Clinton et al also missed numerous chances to assasinate Osama. (After all, there is a presidential directive forbiding it.)
Clinton cannot have said to have done anything extraordinary in fighting a ‘war on terror’ besides having the FBI fly to US embassy craters to comb through rubble. This whole charade is a Clinton legacy revision. Now we are to believe that Clinton’s highest priority was Osama and Al Qaeda. “If only Bush had heeded our warnings.”
In fact after being ‘warned,’ the Bush administration apperently did precisely what Kerry et al say we should have been doing all along. Let the CIA and FBI do their job, investigating and hunting individual terrorists and arrest them for trial.
“Bush should have known 9/11 was going to happen, because I warned him!”
He said he wrote to U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on Jan. 24, 2001, asking “urgently” for a cabinet-level meeting “to deal with the impending al-Qaeda attack.” -Toronto Star
You don’t say? What did Richard Clarke know? And when did he know it?
Former White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke said Sunday that President Clinton would have been more likely to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks than President Bush, because he took the threat posed by al Qaeda more seriously. -NewsMax.com
Damn constitution! Third term would have prevented 9/11!
He was even critical when reacting to the news of the capture of Saddam Hussein, telling ABC News, “I don’t think it’s going to have a near-term positive effect on security. … In the short term, we may have actually a worse problem.” -NewsMax.com
Sounds impartial to me.
“One of [Clarke’s] very close friends and colleagues for years - a man whom he taught a class with at Harvard, Rand Beers - is one of the top foreign policy advisers to Sen. Kerry,” reported ABC White House correspondent Terry Moran.Moran told ABC’s “This Week” that Clarke’s close relationship with the Kerry aide “discredited” him in the eyes of critics, with the White House maintaining that “this is essentially a Democrat making these arguments” that Bush dropped the ball in the war on terrorism. -NewsMax.com
In short this is a sham. Shallow and partisan to be sure, but revisionist in it’s nature and partisan in it’s target.
I’d like to know what Clarke advised Clinton to do after the Kenya embassy bombing? After the Tanzania Embassy bombing? After the first World Trade Tower Bombing? After the USS Cole bombing? If 9/11 had happened while Clinton was still in office, would Clarke be critizising Clinton for waiting so long to do something? And what is that something which should have been done?
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Chris Ronay, based on experience so far with other investigations, including ones you’ve been involved in, what are the odds that we’ll ever know who did this?J. CHRISTOPHER RONAY: It would be impossible to guess at odds.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I mean, some we know, some we don’t, right?
J. CHRISTOPHER RONAY: Yes. And some we know and we have investigative success, but we can’t bring to fruition because this—indicted suspects are unavailable to us. And some it takes, as you follow the events, many, many years to bring to trial either in the U.S. or somewhere else. But our purpose in the U.S. law enforcement business and Justice Department now is to bring people to account for these crimes, wherever it’s possible to do that in the United States, if that’s what’s feasible. -pbs.org
Indicted suspects? Problems sharing intelligence in ‘criminal’ terror cases involving grand juries etc? Hmm.
Posted by: Eric Simonson at March 22, 2004 02:11 AMNo, Christopher—nobody said Clarke is a friend of Al Qaida (how in the world did you read that into my remarks?). What I’m starting to be flabbergasted by is all these guys named Clark(e) who claim to have once been Republicans and then wake up one morning to find themselves Democrats.
Clarke’s party affiliation four years isn’t relevant now. As Eric points out, his connections now are with Kerry’s campaign (so how much did they pay him and when did they pay it?).
Bush’s biggest mistake (I’m seeing it now) was in trying so hard to have a bi-partisan administration that he kept all these Clinton holdovers around that could later be marched out to sell their oh-so-shocking revelations to a panting media.
Posted by: Martin at March 22, 2004 02:30 AM> What did Richard Clarke know? And when did
> he know it?
Et tu, Eric?
And pulling quotes from NewsMax.com as well? I am shocked!
-Cf
Posted by: Christopher Fahey at March 22, 2004 02:46 AMClarke’s statements regarding his pre-9/11 contacts with Rice about al Qaeda, corroborate the accusations Sidney Blumenthal made in his book, “The Clinton Wars”. The Bush administration kept him on, but largely ignored him while they secured their ‘base’ with tax cuts, deregulation, and backing out of international treaties.
The 9/12 Iraq obsession dovetails with accounts by Paul O’Neil and Bob Woodward in Suskind’s, “The Price of Loyalty” and “Bush at War”.
Accounts of the Bush administration dismissing the terrorist threat before 9/11, and the administration’s obsession with invading Iraq pre-date John Kerry’s entry into the 2004 presidential race, so any attempt to make that connection can be dismissed as partisan politics on the part of the Republicans.
Was Bush fully responsible? No. Clinton perhaps should have backed stronger action against Al Quaeda.
Stephen, I don’t believe that for a second. After the Oklahoma City bombings, every Clinton speech warned of the dangers of terrorism, but every time he would try to act, the Republican controlled Congress refused to support him. Lott called Clintons concern about terrorism “a phony issue”. Clinton’s anti-terrorist legislation, which included more airport security and better law enforcement tools was eviscerated by the Republicans. When Clinton tried to take out al Qaeda WMD sites in the Sudan and al Qaeda training sites in Afghanistan, the Republicans fell all over themselves to denounce it and started yapping, “Wag the dog!”
The most appalling excuse possible for this country’s unpreparedness for 9/11, is for the Bush administration, or anyone, to blame it on the previous administration. George W. Bush was the President of the United States. The terrorist attacks didn’t happen in the first few days after he took office, nor was it in the first few weeks, or even the first few months. It was almost a year into Bush’s presidency that the attack took place.
In that time, President Bush was able to push tax-cuts-for-the-rich through a reluctant Congress, he was able to put together an education bill, he was able to pull us out of international nuclear weapon ban treaties, biological warfare treaties, ABM treaties, the Kyoto treaty, the International Criminal Court negotiations, etc.
If President Bush had taken a quick break from pissing off the rest of the world, he could have taken Clinton’s, Clarke’s, and Sandy Berger’s, warnings seriously and enacted tighter visa checks and better airport screening that would have disrupted al Qaeda’s plans for the WTC, the Pentagon, and (probably) the White House.
George W. Bush was President of the United States. He was responsible.
basically what I got from tonight’s interview was that both Clinton and Bush screwed up big time- are you really surprized?. Its a big complicated, world guys, i do not know if anyone of us could have done better. But you know who could have? the best leaders our country could have to offer.
That is the problem, we continue to vote for the president who gives the best “i feel your pain” speaches or the one who is the most attractive. Kerry will not do much better if he becomes president. We need to decide to turn the corner and start electing those who will make great presidents: those with vision, intelligence, resolve. not the ones who “look” presidential (kerry) or whose have family connections (bush) or who can sympathise and tell us what we want to hear (clinton) or have gotten away with taking a strong stand on anything contraversial so as to disqualify them from being nominated by a major party.
and Gaelen- i urge you to read my article about today’s politics before you start getting scandal fatigue (a long time ago). Clinton had the exact same number and severity of charges level against him (no, not just monica, but charges of selling nuclear secrets to china for campaign contributions ect ect- i could listen a dozen). I have a feeling that no matter who was president in today’s political and media environment, there would be on so many scandals to talk about- cause we gotta fill up 24 hour news shows, sell our little books after we get demoted in the adminstration or fired, ect ect. No wonder the best people in our country no longer wants to be president…
Posted by: Misha Tseytlin at March 22, 2004 03:15 AM> Clarke’s party affiliation four years isn’t
> relevant now. As Eric points out, his
> connections now are with Kerry’s campaign
> (so how much did they pay him and when did
> they pay it?).
First, what connections are you talking about? That he has a close friend working for Kerry? I’m sure he has dozens of friends working very closely with the Bush campaign.
Secondly, his historical party affiliation is important, insofar as it tells us that even loyal Republicans are able to separate their loyalty to Bush from their loyalty to America’s security, and speak out against an administration they believe is spinning out of control. John McCain seems to be speaking freely more these days, too - even saying nice things about his longtime friend John Kerry. Is he not to be trusted now, too?
Thirdly, I’m glad you are denying that you think Clarke is a friend of Al Qaeda. But how else am I supposed to interpret inflamatory rhetoric like “why did he have this inside information?”
If you have a theory about why (not how, but why) the Clinton administration failed to adequately fight terrorism, then say it. I don’t think it’s helpful to take an ominously insinuating tone (“the same Clinton administration that knew all of this for years and did nothing”) without suggesting a reason.
For example, watch me avoid sinister insinuations and get right to the meat: I know the reason Bush didn’t adequately fight terrorism before 9/11: stupidity. His team didn’t believe the threat was important enough, and they were irrationally focused on invading Iraq.
I think that Clinton, too, underestimated the threat of Al Qaeda. But where Clinton underestimated by a factor of ten, Bush underestimated by a factor of a hundred. Not having a terrorism advisor in the Cabinet? Wow.
For what it’s worth, I think that all rhetoric like “Bush could have prevented 9/11” or “Clinton could have killed Osama bin Laden” is ridiculously overblown. My guess is that both accusations are totally wrong, and that 9/11 would have happened even if bin Laden was killed a full year earlier. The point is that we can use our knowledge of Bush’s record and we can use insight like Clarke’s to tell us whether or not the Bush team is smart enough to fight terrorism. Their actions before 9/11 were apparently nearly non-existent. Their retaliatory actions right after 9/11 weren’t any different that what any other administration would have done. And their actions over the last two years have only emboldened radical Islam and increased global terrorism dramatically.
-Cf
Posted by: Christopher Fahey at March 22, 2004 03:16 AMThere’s not much evidence to support the claim that Clinton underestimated the threat of al Qaeda.
Robert Oakley, ambassador for counterterrorism in the Reagan State Department, said about Clinton’s anti-terrorism efforts, “Overall, I give them very high marks. The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama,”
Oakley’s successor, Paul Bremer disagreed. He said he believed the Clinton administration had “correctly focused on bin Laden.”
The Clinton administration thwarted a number of terrorist plots, including plans to kill the Pope, blow up twelve US jetliners simultaneously, and attacks against UN Headquarters, the FBI building, the Israeli embassy in DC, LAX and Logan airports, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, and the George Washington Bridge.
Barton Gellman of the Washington Post wrote, “By any measure available, Clinton left office having given greater priority to terrorism than any president before him. Clinton’s was the first administration to undertake a systematic anti-terrorist effort”.
George W Bush, like all Presidents of the United States before him, is responsible for ‘providing for the common defence’. When terrorists attacked the WTC in 1993, just 38 days after Clinton took office, President Bill Clinton didn’t try to blame George HW Bush. He shouldered the responsibility that comes with the job, and captured, tried, convicted, and imprisoned those responsible. Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, and Wali Khan Amin Shah are all currently behind bars.
On October 12, 2000, After al Qaeda terrorists attacked the USS Cole, Clinton put Richard Clarke in charge of coming up with a comprehensive plan to systematically destroy al Qaeda. According to a senior Bush administration official in 2002, Clarke’s plan amounted to “everything we’ve done since 9/11”.
The plan was completed only a few weeks before the inauguration of George W Bush. Clinton trusted Bush to protect America. Ironically, the plan was still sitting on Bush’s desk on September 12, 2001.
As another comparison of how seriously Clinton and Bush took terrorism, Clarke’s position as national anti-terrorism coordinator was a cabinet-level position under Clinton with face-to-face meetings several times weekly. Under Bush, Clarke’s position was a staff-level position and he rarely met with President Bush.
Martin—
You cannot honestly believe what you write here. My God man wake up, what does bush have to do before you’ll see the light shinning brightly in your eyes, hand the keys to the White House to Osama? Think for yourself man!
Once and for all, leave Clinton out of this debate, he was not the sitting President when the twin towers were hit Bush was; it was his responsibility and his alone. He choose to ignore the intelligence warning, he decided to sit on his hands, the buck stops with him! Blaming Clinton show a marked lack of leadership ability and a childish attempt to duck responsibility. Face it Bush is a smug, arrogant semi-intelligent wanna-be cowboy, playing at President. How anyone in his right mind could still support the man is beyond my comprehension. How much more mud and bile does the man have to pile into the Oval Office before his supports feel sullied? Enough is enough, someone draw up the articles of impeachment.
Posted by: V Edward Martin at March 22, 2004 08:40 AMEric, I look at your response, and I don’t see facts being countered with facts.
You talk about media biases as if that automatically disqualifies anything he says. Whether or not CBS leans to the left, what Clarke says remains, and can be verified or debunked. Fact is, though, if your top Counter-terrorism man says there were no cabinet-level discussions on terrorism until the Week before 9/11, you can easily trot out records of such meetings and disprove those allegations.
All they did was trot out the line that because Bush met with Tenet about the subject, he had made cabinet level discussions about terrorism. Of course, It’s Tenet’s job to inform the president of such things, and inevitably terrorism would be one of those things. What Clarke says didn’t happen until very late in the game was an in-depth, hardcore discussion of terrorism.
This seems amazing to me given the Embassy bombings, the Khobar Towers Bombing, the Attack on the USS Cole, and the capture of an Al Quaeda operative heading for LAX with thousands of pounds of explosives. It was clear by January 2001 that terrorism was a grave and growing threat. If he was tough on terror before 9/11, where’s Bush’s proof? At least he can give us the number of meetings he had on the subject, and all the things he did to deal with terrorism.
The reason all the little nitpicks, as your people like to call them, aren’t going away, is pretty simple. Because those nitpicks are of a factual nature. Even though Kerry mispoke himself by talking about foreign leaders and the idea that he voted for then voted against the 87 billion dollars, one could go back, and see that, yes indeed, many European and world leaders would be thrilled to see Bush go, and that Kerry did indeed vote for one version of the bill in committee, and voted nay on another version in the senate at large.
Bush however has no such facts to qualify his statements, no WMDs or documentary/physical evidence to link the pre-war Iraq to present-day terrorism. The economy seems to be slumping despite his tax cuts, and we are indeed running a deficit based on them. Over 2.7 million jobs have been lost, and are not being replaced, especially in the manufacturing sector.
These are facts, subject to proof or disproof. Bush has not been able to disprove most of what his critics throw at him. In the meantime, Bush’s attack dogs are being sicced on people all over the place. It’s the standard reaction to any unfavorable portrayal of the president. It’s either the fault of media bias, or it’s disgruntled employees coming back and taking potshots. Never mind that lately, it’s been a pair of top level administrators.
It’s time for your president to start taking responsibility for what he’s done, instead of Blaming Clinton, or attacking his critics.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at March 22, 2004 09:05 AMI think it’s a bit harsh finding Bush culpable for 9/11 as it probably would have happened even if Gore had won.
It is, however, almost certain that Bush used 9/11 to push through an agenda with regard to Iraq that many in his administration had lobbied for prior to 9/11. They wanted to invade Iraq and 9/11 and the war on terror were the perfect cover for their actions.
The logic of it is inescapable and it all fits together so neatly. Invading Iraq meant violating the UN charter on initiating a justified war, alienating a bunch of allies, further radicalising the Muslim world and focusing an enormous amount of resources away from fighting Al Qaeda. And despite Cheney’s dishonest bluster Iraq didn’t even seem to have a connection with 9/11 or Al Qaeda. None of this makes sense in fighting an international war on terror. Yet it was invaded anyway.
Iraq wasn’t invaded because it would help win the war on terror, it didn’t and has not, but for reasons personal to the Bush administration and their mishaped world view. Their desire to invade Iraq was documented before 9/11 by the PNAC and has now been corroborated by P. O’Niell and R. Clarke, neither of which are particualrly partisan invdividuals. This won’t be rememebered merely as an ugly misuse of power by a great nation but, as a shortsighted and ignorant blunder in the war on terror that has made the world a more unstable place. Nice one boys.
Posted by: Bob Hope at March 22, 2004 09:09 AMI think it’s a bit harsh finding Bush culpable for 9/11 as it probably would have happened even if Gore had won.
Mr. Hope (I love your “road” movies, BTW), the whole point of Clarke’s criticism is that he had a plan to systematically destroy al Qaeda that was ready to go a few weeks before GW Bush took office. If Bush had taken the threat of terrorism seriously, the plan could have been implemented immediately on his taking the oath of office and 9/11 would never have happened.
Clarke’s plan was conceived at the request of President Clinton and VP Gore. If Gore had been elected, you can be sure his first act would have been to give Clarke the go-ahead to act.
Clarke’s story has all the intellectual honesty of a mugging—and that’s what it is.
Buried in media reports about the story this morning (as exonerating evidence when it comes to these paint-by-number Dem/major media spear-jobs always is) are accounts of respectable Democrats distancing themselves from Clarke as fast as possible.
A main reason for this, one suspects, is that Democrats are far from eager to start finger-pointing over who is responsible for letting Al Qaida off the hook for eight years before 9-11.
As I said earlier, it is very troubling if Clarke knew immediatly that Al Qaida was responsible on 9-11 (and I’m not accusing him of complicity—where do you guys keep coming up with this?). If members of previous administrations (and I ‘ll include Bush I in this) knew so well what Al Qaida was capable of, then why they were sitting on their hands year after year and waiting for a major attack?
Bush 2 at least struck back against Taliban and Al Qaida when it became clear they were responsible.
Of Clarke’s claims that Bush’s Iraq policies are a diversion from the fight against terror:
“I see no basis for it,” Lieberman said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think we’ve got to be careful to speak facts and not rhetoric.”
And Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., told ABC’s “This Week” that while he has been critical of Bush policies on Iraq, “I think it’s unfair to blame the president for the spread of terror and the diffuseness of it. Even if he had followed the advice of me and many other people, I still think the same thing would have happened.”
Clarke, we now know, was demoted by Condoleeza Rice, and the degree to which his allegations are based in personal wounded vanity needs to be asked. His caricatures of Rice, ridiculing her “blank expression” and supposed ignorance about international affairs show a small-minded self-important man with a chip on his shoulder.
But none of this even matters.
Even if true, Clarke’s specific allegations don’t amount to a hill of beans.
So what if the president told him, in the first hours after 9-11, to investigate whether or not Iraq was involved? Even though Clarke’s own initial (and at that point also unproved theory) was Al Qaida, if the president told him to fetch a cup of coffee and a jelly donut, his job as part of the administration was to do what he was told. Apparently Clarke thought that he, Clarke, was the only person being consulted about this issue and that he Clarke was going to make the final decision—that in fact he Clarke should have been the acting president.
And the most important point: Yes, Bush asked at one point if Iraq, a known enemy of the United States, might have been responsible. We also know from several accounts of thet day that he asked if it could be domestic terrorists like McVeigh and Nicholls (a very far-fetched theory, but one at least worth asking). There were lots of theories that needed to be gone through, but once he knew the truth HE ATTACKED AL QAIDA AND THE TALIBAN IN AFGHANISTAN. Have you all forgotten this? How can you ignore this fact—the only one that matters because it shows how the story actually developed? Oh yeah, because Bush is the devil and all facts have to be trimmed and twisted to prove it.
Lee: “Clarke’s plan was conceived at the request of President Clinton and VP Gore. If Gore had been elected, you can be sure his first act would have been to give Clarke the go-ahead to act.”
Clinton and Gore had EIGHT YEARS to act and did nothing but launch a few long range missles! So you can be sure he would NOT have acted. The WTC was bombed, our African embassies were bombed, the USS Cole was bombed and the best Clinton and Gore could do is hand authority over to a relatively low-level functionary like Clarke TO DRAW UP A PLAN???? And take his time doing it?
Bush had bombs raining on Afghanistan within weeks of being attacked—that’s leadership. You don’t have time when war is declared on you to let underlings diddle around for year after year on a “plan.”
But I’m glad to finally see what’s really going on here—I’ve long suspected it. “We can be sure that Gore would have acted.” Right. So this is really just more Democratic resentment that the Florida Supreme Court was not allowed to pick Al Gore as president of the United States. Does anyone actually believe that if only Gore had been elected, 9-11 would never have happened, the whole world would love us, it would be sunny all the time everywhere and we could eat ice cream all day? Let’s come back down to earth please.
Posted by: Martin at March 22, 2004 11:08 AMThe WTC was bombed, our African embassies were bombed, the USS Cole was bombed and the best Clinton and Gore could do is hand authority over to a relatively low-level functionary like Clarke TO DRAW UP A PLAN????
The perpetrators of the WTC’93 bombing, the embassy bombings, and the USS Cole bombing were all caught. How, exactly, is that inaction?
You don’t have time when war is declared on you to let underlings diddle around for year after year on a “plan.”
So we should be jumping into conflicts without plans? Good lord…
Posted by: ceejayoz at March 22, 2004 11:48 AMWhat I don’t hear is… exactly what was the Clinton plan for dealing with terrorism?
The accusation is that Clinton had everything handled and Bush REFUSED to heed warnings of an impending attack.
If Clarke knew there was an imminent attack coming on US soil, why didn’t he speak out?
The answer is that this is all made up after the fact. I have no doubt that somewhere in Clarke’s briefings is Al Qaeda info, but I do not believe for a minute that Clarke himself KNEW something was going to happen, nor that Al Qaeda was his numero uno concern to the exclusion of all else.
Wake up guys. I realize Clarke’s slander fits neatly into your ideological box about Bush. But this smells like a kernel of truth wrapped in alot of embellishment.
Still, my question remains unanswered. What was the Clinton plan for the war on terror? If Clarke is correct, Clinton was fighting it before we even knew there was a war on terror.
Posted by: Eric Simonson at March 22, 2004 11:56 AMIt’s great that so many people come in here and post their opinions. I always read intellegent and honest opinions in here.
BUT: fact is we the people have no say anymore as to what happens or what comes down the pike from Washington DC. Democrat or Republican, Washington always finds a way to make up the rules as they go along.
We can speculate and comment till we’re all red white and blue in the face, with no avail.
Like George Carlin said on Bill Mahr. “Pretend todays world is a freak show… americans have front row seats!. Im taking the advice of a smart man, and choosing NOT to vote anymore for anyone in public office.
I as an american am tired of the mudslinging, negative, rhetoric coming out of everyones mouths. I don’t even pay attention to it anymore. Cause the more you pay attention to all this, the more nausiating and stressed out it makes me.
Thats it.
Posted by: Suse at March 22, 2004 12:05 PMLee,
I like what you have to say, however you should take care to attribute your quotes. The post begining with
“There’s not much evidence to support the claim that Clinton underestimated the threat of Al Qaeda”
is taken directly from the masterpiece, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right,” by Al Franken.
I strongly recommend this book both for its comedic value and its thorough research on the issues at hand. I think it is important for people to understand the dishonest tactics used by political talking heads (on both sides of the political spectrum…although this book certainly focuses on the right-wingers). We need to be able to evaluate the things that we are told instead of just blindly believing them. The book makes that point abundantly clear, and it provides readers with specific examples of tools used to deceive them. And it’s super funny.
So now that credit has been given where due…
Martin-
What is your deal? Why does Clarke’s characterization of Rice show a small-minded self-important man with a chip on his shoulder and not a National Security Adviser with a blank expression and an ignorance of international affairs? Is it not possible that Clarke’s assessment of Rice (someone who he has actually met) is more accurate than your assessment of either of them (assuming you have never met them. apologies if you have)?
Additionally, the fact that Bush attacked Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan is not the only fact that actually matters, it’s just the only fact that doesn’t get him in trouble. All of the other facts about what he has done in this war on terror seem to cast Bush in a rather poor light, so I can see why you would be quick to dismiss them. Unfortuantely, though, ALL of the facts matter.
After attacking Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, Bush decided to attack Iraq thereby reducing resources in Afghanistan and allowing terrorists to run rampant in Iraq (where they were certainly not running rampant before we invaded). That’s a key fact. That one matters.
See, by ignoring things like that fact, YOU have, in fact, “trimmed and twisted” the facts.
And now the story gets better.
It’s been revealed that CBS failed to state, in a huge breach of established journalistic ethics, that they have the same parent company as Clarke’s publisher and stand to profit from pushing his book. This is outrageous journalistic corruption at its lowest. What’s worse, is that Lesley Stahl was apperantly aware of this connection and buried it.
So what we witnessed yesterday was a 60 minute infomercial hyping a Viacom product (whose actual substance, for the reasons illustrated in previos posts was pretty thin to begin with); all to make a buck peddling conspiracy theories to the Democrats. At the very least, Stahl needs to be fired. And CBS needs to apologize.
Posted by: Martin at March 22, 2004 12:35 PMAmong Clarke’s allegations was that Rumsfeld wanted to attack Iraq immediately after 9/11, even as the case was made clear for Al Quaeda involvement. The Secretary of Defense, for heaven’s sake! Like Clarke said, that would have been like the U.S. invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor. That does amount to a hill of beans.
So do the charges against Bush. Eight months of of inattention at the cabinet level to the problem of terrorism, after two or three years of the worst terrorist attacks on American interests in history is no laughing matter. And if the context of Bush forcefully asking for a connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein is continual rejection of any report that contradicts the existence of such a connection, then that too becomes significant.
You are right in principle in saying that all suspects should be considered, and I would hope that past prejudices not overwhelm careful examination of the evidence. The trouble is not merely the insistence on investigating an Iraqi connection. It’s the pattern of continued attempts to justify the invasion, even in the face of contradictory evidence and counsel. It’s the circumvention of an intelligence and military community whose analysis and estimates have seen far better vindication than the Administrations.
People are put in positions like Clarke’s not to protect the president, though some loyalty is in good form, but instead to protect the American people. His job, as head of counterterrorism for the country was to prevent terrorist attacks. We had no idea whether another attack was going to hit our nation from some other angle. Of course, they did the smart thing and grounded all planes immediately. But what if the next attack was on a chemical plant?’
I acknowledge Bush’s attack on Al Quaeda and the Taliban. But I don’t think he went far enough. He didn’t put our troops on the ground to fight our war. He took a side in an internal power struggle instead, and gave air support alone. That decision, due to the muddied politics of the region, might have enable our nations greatest enemies to escape with their lives.
Then, without having found Osama Bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri, or even the former leader of Afghanistan, Mullah Omar, he decides to devote America’s attention and resources to fighting an elective war in Iraq, over terrorists and WMDs we haven’t found a shred of reliable evidence for. I mean, why should I be impressed with Bush’s War on Terror when he leaves the job half done and gets distracted waging another war and occupying a whole other country?
At the end of the day, the only thing one can do to remedy twisted and truncated facts is to go out there, find out what the facts really are, and give them out to the public. Instead, the case made is one that resembles a persecution complex instead. At some point, the Bush administration is going to have to face that it’s own worst enemy is itself.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at March 22, 2004 12:35 PMIt should have been mentioned, at the very least, and I think they should come clean as to that. However, I doubt one could really bury something as public as the Publishing company of the book.
As for the substance, I think that should speak for itself. I currently have a request out for the book in question from my local library. Have you done the same? Or are you going to sit on the sidelines decrying the liberal bias, trying to knock Clarke and 60 Minute’s reputations, and rationalizing all the embarrassing facts, or are you going to critically examine the material itself? Will you not give yourself the ability to criticize it based on the facts, instead of handicapping yourself by offering criticism that may or may not be on the mark?
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at March 22, 2004 12:52 PMI’m just going to note that we invaded Afghanistan first. The fact that some administration memebers argued for Iraq first, and lost, doesn’t concern me one bit.
And I believe that is the whole of the interesting Clarke charges.
The 9-11 hindsight games are just silly. Everyone knew Al Qaeda was ‘a threat’, no one realized how much of a threat, and absolutely no one had a good way of dealing with the threat.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw at March 22, 2004 01:21 PMWell, then I would just note that we invaded Iraq second.
The fact that we invaded Afghanistan first when we had every right to do so doesn’t concern me one bit.
I’m concerned about the invasion of Iraq for no good reason.
Posted by: Kathryn Knowlson at March 22, 2004 01:51 PMThank you Mr. Lee, allow me to return the compliment by saying that I have been a long time admirer of your Enter and Way of the Dragon movies.
In relation to what Sebastian and Kathryn have just posted, I think it’s very difficult to prove, that unlike Bush, Gore/Clinton would have been able to prevent 9/11. On the other hand the fact that (according to P. O’Neill )the Bush administration was discussing the invasion and occupation of Iraq as soon as Jan 2001 says it all really. These people should not be in power.
Posted by: Bob Hope at March 22, 2004 02:05 PM
When the president pushes for something, and the top two men at the DoD as well, It makes me think it is of some consequence. In part, I don’t think they want to believe they missed the target. The really want to believe Iraq was involved, or maybe want the rest of us to believe that. In part, perhaps they think it would be the more impressive show, the greater frightener of rogue states and terrorist supporters. Perhaps they also thought this would be the easiest way to eliminate terrorism as a problem, by reforming the Middle East in our image.
But all that academic hypothetical thinking, I believe, distracted them from the true threat to our interests. The jury is out as to whether 9/11 was preventable, but Clarke was right when he said we could have caught these fellows if only we had plastered their picture on the evening news. And if we had caught them, it would have been much more likely an event that we could have rolled up the other sleeper cells, and perhaps all of them.
I also think, if they weren’t half looking over their shoulder at Iraq, that they would have committed more of our ground forces to Afghanistan, and stuck with it longer. It may not have been the example Bush was looking for, but it was the right example and only the most extreme of pacifists voiced their disapproval.
Lastly, I think there’s hindsight, and then there’s thinking critically about one’s mistakes, one’s actions. We can say, I should have followed up on that, and be justified in calling it hindsight, but if we justify institutional and intellectual bad habits in this fashion, we may be doomed to suffer the consequences again.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at March 22, 2004 02:07 PMThe problem isn’t that CBS lied or even avoided mentioning who the publisher was. In fact I think I remember them naming it.
The problem—and this is a HUGE breech of journalistic ethics—is that they deliberatly avoided making a full and explicit disclosure of their own financial interest in pushing the book. Average viewers are not aware of the connections between companies in these huge media conglomerates. CBS’s conduct is especially loathsome here when you consider that the story involves accusations and smears against a third party.
The fact that CBS is now using an ostensible news show to hawk their own wares is a FAR bigger scandal than anything in Clarke’s litany of unsubstantiated or unsubstantial charges.
This needs to blow up in CBS’s faces. Heads need to roll, and it’s important that it happens soon.
This kind of thing exemplifes the most serious kind of journalistic corruption, and if left unchallenged, represents a grave threat to the integrity and credibility of one of the most important insitutions of our democracy.
CBS, we have now learned, presents as “news” commercials for its own products.
Posted by: Martin at March 22, 2004 02:34 PMOk Martin,
I’m sorry that you feel that CBS was so unethical in not disclosing their own financial connections to the publisher of Clarke’s book. However, with these large media conglomerates, these situations are extremely common.
Rupert Murdoch owns the Fox News Channel as well as Harper Collins publishing, so are you saying that it would be a “HUGE breech of journalistic ethics if Michael Crichton (a Harper Collins author) were to be interviewed about a book on Fox News without a disclaimer stating their underlynig financial connection? Somehow I doubt you would be all up in arms about that.
Getting all excited about this connection (which is a matter of public record and is easily discerned by anyone willing to check) is really just an attemp to cloud the serious, troubling points that Clarke was making.
Let’s not lose sight of the real issue.
Posted by: Kathryn Knowlson at March 22, 2004 03:33 PMFor one thing, if Fox interviewed Crichton, everybody would understand that Crichton’s novel was a work of fiction. It would look pretty bad to give him a half-hour during the news (as opposed to some entertainment show), but if they did, then yes—they should disclose their financial stake (though it would be pretty much obvious to everybody anyway).
Even then, however, it would not be anywhere near as sinister as what CBS is up to. CBS is leveraging the prestige of an ostensible news show in order to ring up sales of its own products. What’s so scandalous is that they deliberately buried the fact that they’re on the take and tried to pass their hucksterism off as news.
It’s not as obvious to the casual observer that Clarke’s work, like Crichton’s, largely consists of fiction. And even if it’s not fiction, it’s a terrible precedent for national news media to deliberately disguise—or even have the appearance of disguising—their deep financial connections to a news story they are hyping as “big”, especially a news story which involves serious charges. CBS has crossed over into Orwellian 1984 territory here—creating news for the bottom line.
If CBS gets away this, we’re all in major trouble—this is bigger, I believe, than the Jayson Blair scandal at the New York Times because the lies and corruption go much higher up in the organization.
Posted by: Martin at March 22, 2004 04:04 PMRegardless of whether a book is fiction or non-fiction, a news organization that tries to promote the sales of that book underhandedly is just as guilty of unethical journalism.
The content of Clarke’s book is certainly of a much more serious and condemning nature than a fictional story, but that does not make this a sinister situation. An example of a true sinister unethical connection would be Justice Scalia refusing to recuse himself from the Halliburton case after hunting with Cheney.
However, how do you claim that the connection between CBS and Clarke’s publisher is less obvious than the connection between Fox News and Crichton’s publisher? One is just as readily known as the other.
The news media in general is financially tied to all sorts of things that they must report on, and CBS did a nice job of balancing Clarke’s points with those of National Security Counsil Deputy, Stephen Hadley. So they were not simply creating news for the bottom line. They presented two sides to a serious story.
Jayson Blair intentionally lied. CBS is not lying. They are not denying their connection to this publisher. They just didn’t happen to mention it in their story.
Another example of shady journalism is the FAKE news report that the white house released about their medicare plan. They presented this story by reporter “Karen Ryan” to news organizations, some of which ran the story. Karen Ryan is not a real person. The White House completely fabricated that report, which included an interview with the Director of Health and Human Services. That’s much more sinister than anything CBS did in their ACTUAL report.
Posted by: Kathryn Knowlson at March 22, 2004 04:27 PMYou can spin this any way you want, but this is the second high-ranking man out of the Bush govt. making these claims about whitehouse obsession with Iraq - and other reports have surfaced about their relative disinterest in terrorism before 9/11 - from what I see, he wasn’t busy protecting Americans before 9/11 (remember that long vacation -n Aug. of 2001?) and afterwards he used it to shove his agenda down the throats of Americans and the world - they cut FBI funding after 9/11 - in Aug of 2003 he tried to rescind imminent danger pay and family hardship allowance from the troops until it became an embarrassment - there’s a definite shortage of pragmatic conservative thinkers out there - instead we have to listen to mouth breathers like Rush and you all here at this post - all this effort to defend a man who doesn’t give a hoot about any of you working stiffs doing the postings - just like he didn’t care about the truth and the American kids doing the soldiering when he rushed into war - show me the WMD’s - the imminent danger? Guess what? State-sponsored terrorism is still thriving and bush is still in bed with the Sauds -
CBS - isn’t that the network that wouldn’t run the Reagan biopic? Please. The comment that concerns me most here is the one from Suse - I agree George Carlin is a brilliant man. And I agree that the schoolyard bullying has reachable almost unbearable levels. But refusing to vote is the worse thing anyone can do. If everyone who refused to vote — or didn’t think their vote mattered — went to the polls, something might really change. To me, not voting is worse than all the mudslinging, negative, rhetoric in the world.
Posted by: 9thwave at March 22, 2004 07:23 PMYes, Karl, Clarke is the second guy now to come out of the White House who has figured out how to make a fast buck.
All you have to do is feed unsubstantiated innuendo and an ambiguous reading of events to Democratic voters and they’ll make you rich overnight—their appetite is utterly bottomless for anti-Bush fodder. And if what you have to say is not actually that anti-Bush, if the evidence can be read in more than one way, well, you can count on this particular audience to do the creative parts for you. With a wink and a nod you can get them to fill in any gaps in your testimony with particularly insidious conclusions that you don’t draw yourself for fear of being laughed out of town.
Let a thousand Clarkes and O’Neals come out of the White House—it doesn’t matter because they’ve got nothin’. Neither LIKES Bush and can be depended on to criticize his policies, but opinions are cheap. Not one piece of actual evidence of any kind of wrong-doing, mismanagement or other untoward behavior has been produced by either of them. O Neal saw some plans for oil exploration in Iraq. Wow! He saw the same stuff drawn up for many countries, but for the Democrats, those plans can be interpreted as even more work of the devil. And Clarke was asked to look into the question of whether Iraq might have been involved in 9-11. Earthshaking! Shocking!
If this is the best Democrats have got, then baby, bring it on.
The alternative to invading Iraq was to leave Saddam in power; still believing that he had weapons of mass destruction. (No matter how it is spun now, don’t try to tell me you knew that Saddam had no WMD. If you do, you have a short and malleable memory.) Thus we would have had to leave sanctions on Iraq so that more Iraqi’s die.
What exactly about this scenario makes you think that the Arab world would not continue to look at us as oppressors? At least now we have actually got up, went over there, and did something useful. Why is it that freeing 25 million oppressed people pisses off liberals so much?
“Because he lied to us.” -Before it was WMD it was simply regime change. Remember? Regime change. You can’t take the sanctions off Iraq if Saddam is still in power. The Bush administration finished unfinished business, which had to be done one way or another. Freeing Iraq will have long term consequences. Let’s debate that for awhile.
The liberal policy of death and oppression by omission is not a strategy for defeating terrorism. It is a strategy for maintaining the status quo.
Posted by: Eric Simonson at March 22, 2004 08:10 PMWhile it’s true that the Democrats are definitely in the Market for stuff to toss into Bush’s face, I would think they have enough self-interest not to accept every little innuendo and story. What we Democrats have are a wide range of sources corroborating each other independently of one another. I’ve been hearing about things like this for some time now actually.
Martin, we are in a mess now, a mess that may get better, but which also stands a good chance of becoming worse. The Bush Administration failed to anticipate not just one or two developments, but a whole range of them, including the lack of any presence of the very things whose threat supposedly justified this war. The Bush administration has gotten too much wrong for it merely to be an accident of fate. Something went fundamentally wrong in our Defense Department to allow the blowbacks that marked this war to happen.
The 400+ dead soldiers in the insurgence that followed our invasion are not merely a product of the Democratic propaganda machine. Iraq was supposed to be, promised to be a pacified country when we occupied it. Instead, we had chaos on the streets, and not long after, soldier dying from guerilla attacks.
And now it turns out that not only did Bush’s administration bypass the more reliable conclusions of the defense and intelligence establishments, but they also failed to head the warnings of the counterterrorism groups in their own government. Comparisons can be made, Clarke’s charges can be corroborated by independent witnesses.
What the evidence amounts to is a picture of a dangerously misguided president, a president more concerned about ending his father’s war and deploying a missile sheild that will allow us to take vague potshots at passing ICBMs if they ever come, rather than discern what the real and growing threats in this world were.
I know that’s a stiff charge to make. I’ve come to it after some time, really. I forgave Bush’s surprise on 9/11. I agreed with his call to war, and his “dead or alive” sentiment on Bin Laden. Then I was puzzled as to why Bush didn’t just commit the troops and time to finish the whole thing off. Then I found the WMD evidence persuasive, and thought it might really be a good idea. But then, of course, the war came, the invasion went, and it became obvious that something was missing, something on which I had based my support of his war in Iraq on.
The more I learned, the less I liked. The more Bush and his people began to shift into denial, the greater my disdain became. A similar trend has developed in my sentiments towards politics. As the sentiments of Republicans on the Hill and in the White House towards their political counterparts became worse, so my opposition to Bush and his people did too.
Fact is, conservatives created their enemies. They took a party that had been made kind of vanilla by the centrification of the Clinton years, and they gave them good, urgent reasons, both factual and political, to strike back.
There’s only so much abuse and so much incompetence Democrats can suffer from their opposition before they feel it necessary to fight back. Congratulations: your party pushed us past this point. And now, Bush, with all his question policies and decisions is bearing the brunt of it.
And you what makes it worse? Even if Bush wins this election, he will still face strong opposition from the Democratic Party because of all the political goodwill he has wasted.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at March 22, 2004 08:55 PMMartin-
You appear literate enough to know that Clarke and ONeill both said a lot more serious and relevant things than what you have attributed to them. Ignoring the issue doesn’t make it go away.
Eric-
Whether or not we all knew for sure that Saddam DIDN’T have WMD, don’t try to tell me you knew that Saddam HAD WMD. If you do, you have access to a higher level of intelligence than the President of the United States, and perhaps you should have shared your Uber-Secret briefings with him.
What we should have done was allow the inspectors to complete their jobs, build a legitimate international coalition, and go to war as a last resort….sort of like what the President promised he would do if Congress passed the war resolution. Oh no, wait, it’s not sort of like what he promised. It IS what he promised.
The more we oppress the Arab world, the more they will hate us. Invading them is more oppressive than sactioning them. Let’s not pretend that we made our relations better by going to war.
We did not go to war to free 25 million people. Well, at least that was not the original reason for the war. That was one they drummed up later when their original reasons started to disintegrate.
Whether or not a conflict with Irag was inevitable, the war did not have to be conducted in the manner in which we conducted it. We have reduced our credibility in the global community, and we have allowed Iraq to become a haven for terrorists. This is not a strategy for defeating terrorism either. Well, actually, sure it is. It’s just a really terrible one.
Posted by: Kathryn Knowlson at March 22, 2004 08:57 PMMartin - “Let a thousand Clarkes and O’Neals come out of the White House—it doesn’t matter because they’ve got nothin’.”
Actually, what they say is significant. The picture they paint of the goings on at the White House is disturbing, if not terrifying, and widely corraborated. The cavalier attitude the Administration takes towards facts is only one of the claims that these men have increased the believability of. As we saw with the report from the nonpartisan scientist’s group, this Administration takes the facts they like, and ignores the ones they don’t. Tenet backs this up as well, since he told Cheney et al that intelligence was being misused to justify the Iraq War. If either of these men’s stories had been the only account of this type, the public would be much less inclined to believe them.
The Medicare cost projections; the “imminent threat” and the subsequent denial that they ever said “imminent threat”; the “covert propoganda” news reports; the cherry-picking of scientific “facts” that fit their agenda… over and over again we see that the impartial truth is quashed in favor of the Administration’s ambitions. And now we have yet another eye-witness to these dishonesties.
As an aside in response to the constant blaming of Clinton for our terrorism problems, I’d direct you to to the following damning timeline. Take a look. It’s quite interesting.
Also, I’d like to see some responses to Kathryn’s recent comments.
Posted by: Gaelen Burns at March 22, 2004 10:24 PMI couldn’t disagree more, Kathryn.
The more we oppress the Arab world, the more they will hate us. Invading them is more oppressive than sactioning them. Let’s not pretend that we made our relations better by going to war.
Only in the mind of the left. I just listened to Robert Fisk on KPFA, Pacifica Radio out of Berkeley, actually say that given a choice (hypothetically) Iraqi’s would have preferred dictatorship and security rather than democracy and insecurity. I admit that I have no respect for Robert Fisk, but this kind of ideology is baffling.
Under Saddam with sanctions Iraq was a public relations nightmare. If you believe the claims, we were committing genocide. (Especially against the children.)
When you read about what life was like in Iraq under Saddam Hussein do you not think, my god, why can’t we do something about this? That’s what baffles me about the left. Every dictatorship gets a pass, while the US is blamed for there being any poor upon the earth.
We did not go to war to free 25 million people. Well, at least that was not the original reason for the war. That was one they drummed up later when their original reasons started to disintegrate.To me it is the policy of containment which was the failure. The problem with containment is that it puts us in an even more complicated position. With a brutal dictator in power any sanctions actually fall on the people. What do we expect to happen? In effect it is a siege. We are starving them out. But who dies first? The regime or the people? North Korea is another good example.
Isn’t it more humane to remove the dictator? Especially in light of our previous involvements and failures in dealing with Iraq. We owe the Iraqi people more than just saying, “it’s your oppression, live with it.”
In light of 9/11, after we invaded Afghanistan, it makes good long term strategic sense to remove Saddam and help the Iraqi people setup a moderate government that will hopefully be an example and a new political force in the middle east.
Whether or not a conflict with Irag was inevitable, the war did not have to be conducted in the manner in which we conducted it. We have reduced our credibility in the global community, and we have allowed Iraq to become a haven for terrorists. This is not a strategy for defeating terrorism either. Well, actually, sure it is. It’s just a really terrible one.
It is unfortunate that the global community refused, for various reasons, to help us remove Saddam. But it is demonstratable that the ideological outlook of those who opposed the liberation were all left-leaning. The credibility of the Bush administration was low in their eyes already. They called him a ‘cowboy president’ and disliked him for his conservative policies on issues like Kyoto long before Iraq. Those who supported Bush were more conservative.
The war on terrorism is not just a war on Al Qaeda associates who were on the membership rolls on Sept. 11. It is not just a criminal investigation. It is a global, ideological, semi-religious, socio-political war against a movement that seeks to establish a muslim superstate.
The war against the Taliban was preceded by a years long propaganda campaign by the Western Media, which campaign sought to not only discredit the Taliban through lies and dis-information about the conditions in Afghanistan, but which also sought to portray the Taliban as “extremists” (or “fundamentalists”) who were unrepresentative of Islam. By doing this, the propagandists and those behind them hoped to further dominate the Islamic world.For this propaganda campaign was itself part of the longer-term campaign by those behind the New World Order: a campaign whose aim was to weaken the Muslim Ummah and to undermine Islam itself through a process of “modernization”. That is, through secularizing Islam: through trying to make it into some sort of Western-style “religion” where there is a division into “Mosque” and “State” and where this “State” itself is based upon Western-derived ideas such as “democracy” and the division of the world into “nations” governed according to Western laws.
-AlHaqq.jeeran.com
How does the previous policy of containment and intermediate meddling help these people to see us as friends?
Understanding why they hate us is fine, if we are actually examining what they say and not just looking to blame America first.
There is a time for peace and a time for war. In times of war I prefer a Roosevelt strategy, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”
Posted by: Eric Simonson at March 22, 2004 11:10 PMHere’s something interesting… the White House delayed the release of Clarke’s book by three months. If they had not, no one could have made the claim that the book was merely election year politicking - a dishonest arguement anyway, since the man served under three Republican administrations and is a registered Republican.
Even more important, however, is the fact that the White House knew for months exactly what the book was going to say. There is no doubt, then, that every rebuttal, every statement, every expression has been thoroughly choreographed. These rebuttals are the best they came up with? That this registered Republican is partisan? That he’s yet another high level disgruntled Bush Administration member? I’m shocked they couldn’t find smear lines that were more convincing.
Posted by: Gaelen Burns at March 22, 2004 11:12 PMNo military intervention was every going to be painless. It’s like resetting a bone that’s healed badly. Any way you approach it, you will be breaking a person’s arm or leg again. It’s not going to be a love at first sight when you walk into the room.
That said, I think the Arabs would have preferred that we broke Saddam Hussein in a cleaner fashion. To do that, we should have had the troops to govern the area, not merely invade and defeat it’s army. But I guess we had to show off the efficiency of the United State Army.
We are paying for the loss of law and order that accompanied the Iraqi regime collapses. Lets just hope we don’t have to rebreak this bone again to get it to heal right.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at March 23, 2004 12:21 AM“Clarke and O Neill both said a lot more serious and relevant things than what you have attributed to them. Ignoring the issue doesn’t make it go away.”
Actually, no they didn’t, and paying attention to the issue is what’s going to make it go away—it can’t stand up to scrutiny.
Clarke and O Neill continue to share their opinions about many subjects (and are handed fat paychecks to do so), many of which they were as outside of the loop on in the Bush adminstration as you and me. But O’Neill or Clarke pretending to know a damn thing about the actual war-planning that took place is like a hot-dog vender at Yankee Stadium pretending to be best buddies and confidantes of Joe Torre and Derek Jeter.
Had any of you ever even heard of Clarke before last night—doubtful. And I stand by what I said earlier—there’s no actual evidence for any of their charges, just hearsay and vague innuendo.
If General Frank or somebody of real stature came out with this stuff, well, then it might matter. But none has, and all we have is this day in and day out speculation and vague rumor-mongering by a couple of malcontent bit-players.
It should be obvious to everybody that nobody was ever going to let either of these two men near any actual councels of war—especially not O’Neal, who had no friends whatsoever in the White House by that time. And Clarke was nothing but a low-ranking Clinton holdover with a grudge against Condy Rice over being demoted.
Both men do go to great lengths to paint this “disturbing,” “terrifying” and oh so-marketable picture of the Bush White House which Gaelen refers to (although I would have chosen the words “reassuring” and “admirable,” but that’s a matter of taste). But none of their charges have a scrap of solid evidence to back them up. Not any. Not the tiniest, itty-bittyest morsel. Nothing. Less than nothing. Poof.
Posted by: Martin at March 23, 2004 12:43 AM“The 400+ dead soldiers in the insurgence that followed our invasion are not merely a product of the Democratic propaganda machine. Iraq was supposed to be, promised to be a pacified country when we occupied it. Instead, we had chaos on the streets….etc.”
All of us grieve with every ounce of our beings for those who’ve died in Iraq—our soliders as well as innocent Iraqis. Even one death is too many and properly an occasion for our deepest sadness, but are we really, as Osama loves to state, a people with no fortitude, will or stomach for sacrifice?
Here’s a little perspective: in terms of military history, our casualites have been shockingly, amazingly, stupifyingly low. Their totals equal those of Civil War battles so small and obscure than only Civil War buffs even know their names. They equal the totals of—say—an average thirty seconds of the Battle of the Somme during WW1. The sinking of single ships in WWII resulted, on many occasions, in far greater loss of life. And here’s one you should really think about: they total, approximately, the number of firemen, policemen and paramedics
killed on 9-11.
But our casualites in Iraq were not for nothing. They brought down a dictator—and decisively so. They swung open the doors of dungeons filled with children, and may (if we could get a little cooperation from your side of the aisle, please) result in a freer, more democratic and stable middle east.
If you doubt that this is how the majority of our soldiers feel, ask one of them (I certainly have, as one is a relative and several are friends). So don’t keep telling them and yourselves that they’re fighting and dying for nothing, because they don’t believe you. They don’t believe you because they’re there—they saw with their own eyes what it was like when they went in. They see with growing hope what may be happening now.
Of course, if they’re right, this will be very inconvenient for the election campaign of John Kerry. But just stop, please, suggesting that what they are striving and bleeding to achieve is a fraud.
Posted by: Martin at March 23, 2004 01:18 AM“And here’s one you should really think about: they total, approximately, the number of firemen, policemen and paramedics killed on 9-11.”
Once again, you link 9/11 and Iraq. Why? Why do you persist, when that link has been thoroughly disproven?
Posted by: Gaelen Burns at March 23, 2004 01:48 AMOh, please. Was I also linking the American Civil War and World War I to 9-11 then? I think you need to re-read my post.
Posted by: Martin at March 23, 2004 02:05 AMBut okay, Gaelen, I’ll rise to the bait.
“Thoroughly disproven?” A link between 9-11 and Iraq? Hardly. I’d say that the common denominator is pretty obvious—Iraq and Al Qaida’s common fanatical notion of achieving Islamic/Arab regional and world influence by the use of intimidation—the threat of potential wide-scale violence on behalf of a genocidal anti-modern agenda. Sometimes you kill and idealogy by killing its most dangerous proponents.
Denying this link is like saying we shouldn’t have fought Germany because it was Japan who attacked us at Pearl Harbor (sound familar?).
From the perspective of ideology, the link between 9-11 and Iraq is totally proven. It’s etched in stone. It’s a palpable fact unless you’re one of the many Americans and majority of Europeans currently projecting all of your Oedipal anxieties on George Bush—whose complete epochal and historic success, should it now fully materialize in a democratic Iraq (as it might, as it’s starting to…) would plunge into extinction and eternal mockery the last vestiges of the coddled sixties-generation’s delusions of moral and intellectual supremacy.
We Republicans understand, actually, and sympathize. The fact that Bush, whose apparent lack of sophistication, Texas drawl, way of walking, etcetera, represents everything you’ve been trained all your lives to ridicule and feel superior to, is turning out to be a world leader whose name will go down (win or lose in November) with Washington, Lincoln and Churchill and perhaps surpass them all… well, how can this be anything BUT maddening?
Hell, if I were a Democrat, I’d buy Clarke and O’Neill’s books too. Maybe I’d even convince myself that they contained something of importance.
Posted by: Martin at March 23, 2004 02:44 AMMartin said, “Denying this link is like saying we shouldn’t have fought Germany because it was Japan who attacked us at Pearl Harbor (sound familar?).”
Martin, Germany and Japan were linked by an alliance in war, formal, written up and everything. No evidence of any such link between Hussein and Al-Queda exists. There is evidence that Hussein warned his troops and people against working with any outside insurgents if the U.S. invaded. Hussein appears from the evidence to have distrusted Al-Queda as much as he did the U.S.
So, the analogy above completely fails to make your point.
Posted by: David R. Remer at March 23, 2004 03:45 AMYou know such damaging developments are effectively showing the Bush Administration’s actual credibility and inability to lead when the whole Cabinet and supporters come out to deny them. :)
Posted by: Anthony at March 23, 2004 04:01 AMThe 9-11 hindsight games are just silly. Everyone knew Al Qaeda was ‘a threat’, no one realized how much of a threat, and absolutely no one had a good way of dealing with the threat.
Clarke isn’t claiming any special knowledge of a specific threat. He, like me, is just appalled that Bush did not take any actions in response to warnings.
Oh, wait. He now says he was “working on a PLAN”, Martin. And he took his time doing it. Apparently Clinton’s plan, delivered through Clarke, who’s job was a cabinet-level position under Clinton (as opposed to the “relatively low-level” staff position it was relegated to under Bush), wasn’t acceptable to Bush.
And the fact that Clarke, the national anti-terrorism coordinator, who had been tracking and fighting terrorists for years, was “out of the loop” is just idiotic and another example of how the Bush administration didn’t “give bin Laden too much credit.”
Kathryn - sorry about the unintended Franken quote.
BTW, I’ve heard people talk about how Clarke is not credible (just like O’Neil, DiIulio, Whitman, and other Bush administration members who quit in disgust), but I haven’t heard one word about the precautions Bush took to secure the country before 9/11.
People are citing terrorist attacks in Yemen and Tanzania, as well as in the USA. It wasn’t a surprise that terrorists would try to hit the US, they’d done it before, only the scope of the 9/11 attack was different. Knowing that, as all Americans did, what exactly did Bush do to secure the United States? You can allege that Clinton didn’t do enough all you want, but so far I haven’t heard anyone mention that Bush actually did anything.
Here is an interesting writeup on the attacks against Clarke from the Administration. It’s a little long, but it is conclusive:
CLAIM #1: “Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to.” - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: Clarke sent a memo to Rice principals on 1/24/01 marked “urgent” asking for a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with an impending Al Qaeda attack. The White House acknowledges this, but says “principals did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat.” No meeting occurred until one week before 9/11. - White House Press Release, 3/21/04
CLAIM #2: “The president returned to the White House and called me in and said, I’ve learned from George Tenet that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.” - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: If this is true, then why did the President and Vice President repeatedly claim Saddam Hussein was directly connected to 9/11? President Bush sent a letter to Congress on 3/19/03 saying that the Iraq war was permitted specifically under legislation that authorized force against “nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11.” Similarly, Vice President Cheney said on 9/14/03 that “It is not surprising that people make that connection” between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, and said “we don’t know” if there is a connection.
CLAIM #3: “[Clarke] was moved out of the counterterrorism business over to the cybersecurity side of things.” - Vice President Dick Cheney on Rush Limbaugh, 3/22/04
FACT: “Dick Clarke continued, in the Bush Administration, to be the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and the President’s principle counterterrorism expert. He was expected to organize and attend all meetings of Principals and Deputies on terrorism. And he did.” - White House Press Release, 3/21/04
CLAIM #4: “In June and July when the threat spikes were so high…we were at battle stations…The fact of the matter is [that] the administration focused on this before 9/11.” – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: “Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft’s ‘Strategic Plan’ from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department’s seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft’s predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism ‘the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area.’” - Washington Post, 3/22/04
CLAIM #5: “The president launched an aggressive response after 9/11.” – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: “In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows. The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the attacks.” – Washington Post, 3/22/04
CLAIM #6: “Well, [Clarke] wasn’t in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff…” - Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/22/04
FACT: “The Government’s interagency counterterrorism crisis management forum (the Counterterrorism Security Group, or “CSG”) chaired by Dick Clarke met regularly, often daily, during the high threat period.” - White House Press Release, 3/21/04
CLAIM #7: “[Bush] wanted a far more effective policy for trying to deal with [terrorism], and that process was in motion throughout the spring.” - Vice President Dick Cheney on Rush Limbaugh, 3/22/04
FACT: “Bush said [in May of 2001] that Cheney would direct a government-wide review on managing the consequences of a domestic attack, and ‘I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts.’ Neither Cheney’s review nor Bush’s took place.” - Washington Post, 1/20/02
(originally at Salon)
Posted by: Gaelen Burns at March 23, 2004 09:33 AMIf a leading official in any government writes a book, especially one that touches on controversial subject matter, they will likely be well-compensated for it, to put it Euphemistically. You would allege that out of their greed they would exaggerate or lie. Then you say he’s disgruntled. Then you say he’s got a liberal axe to grind. Then you say he’s going for a Job with Kerry.
It’s seems you have your bases covered Martin- Or maybe I should say, the people whose arguments you are offering have their bases covered. If it’s not greed, it’s pride. If it’s not pride, it’s wrath. Your defense seems more like a examination of the seven deadly sins than a consistent explanation of motives.
I can give you one: He doesn’t want Bush re-elected. however coincident his timing is, it’s plain that Clarke want to deflate Bush’s image as an effective fighter of terrorism. Clarke is even better than O’Neill for this, because counterterrorism is the guy’s stock in trade. He’s got some authority on the subject.
I don’t know how you came up with the idea that the Secretary of the Treasury, only the lead man of the executive branch office dedicated to paying for everything else, and a member of the National Security Council as part of his Job would rank as a small fry. Neither do I see how you could say so about the head of counterterrorism for the entire country, cabinet level or not. Besides, you do realize it was Bush’s choice to demote the Counterterrorism czar to a staff level position. I not only see your assertion of their non-presence as innaccurate, I see them as counterfactual, especially when Bush’s people won’t deny his presence in those meetings.
“Thoroughly disproven?” A link between 9-11 and Iraq? Hardly. I’d say that the common denominator is pretty obvious—Iraq and Al Qaida’s common fanatical notion of achieving Islamic/Arab regional and world influence by the use of intimidation—the threat of potential wide-scale violence on behalf of a genocidal anti-modern agenda. Sometimes you kill and idealogy by killing its most dangerous proponents.
It’s a weak connection at best. To say that these two were politically or religiously similar would be quite problematic at best. I mean, you have a secular fascist at one end, and an authoritarian theological aristocrat at the other end. These are men from very different ends of the political spectrum in the Arab world.
From the perspective of ideology, the link between 9-11 and Iraq is totally proven.
From the perspective of Ideology? It should be proven from the perspective of the facts, Martin. Ideology is just ideas, and ideas prove nothing. That is why I try and read, or watch my sources before I comment, because it is very easy, if I don’t, for somebody to come along and hamstring me by revealing my ignorance. I do not see how it is a coddled delusion of intellectual supremacy to demand solid proof for controversial assertions, especially those which are in apparent contradiction of our actual experience.
Such as the theory that Democrats are naturally Elitists. I wonder, if you were to meet me, whether you’d be struck by my accent, by my way of walking and talking. I mean, you may assume that I’m a preppy egghead, but the reality of who I am, I think, would surprise you.
It might surprise you that I have quite a bit of tolerance for casualties in the field. I am very aware that we are fortunate to only have hundreds of soldiers dead, when in the past, thousands might die in a single battle. I found the modern queasiness with body counts to be quite silly, considering how bad it’s been in the past.
That said, our losses after the fall of the Baathist regime should be quite disturbing. As good as our armor is, as good as our technological advantage is, we are fast approaching the point where we will have lost four times the number of people occupying this country as we did invading it.
The whole point of an occupation is pacification, to sit on your enemy until they either become province or politically aligned to you. This requires, ultimately, a system of law and order which gets people used to your order of things, and less nostalgic about the past ways. Terrorism, in essence, is the antithesis of this. It is the main weapon of those who see their lands or their people to be occupied. The occupation isn’t always political. Sometimes it’s merely cultural. Sometimes, it’s even imaginary, as is the case with some militia groups here in the US.
Bush should have invaded with enough troops so that law and order could quickly be established, and so our presence could quickly fill the gaps that terrorists would otherwise occupy.
The Iraqi people have all my sympathy. But if this fails, they will be doubly hurt, and may fall under a darker, more chaotic regime. They could see themselves occupied or coopted by forces they like even less than ours. It is imperative that if we stick our necks out like we have in Iraq that we don’t do things halfway. The fact that terrorism continues to plague us there is a sign of our lack of control.
If you find being out of control to be a noble thing, fine by me. But don’t tell me our troops should have to suffer the consequences of that.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at March 23, 2004 10:20 AMWow, you miss a lot when you sleep….ok…..
Eric-
I’m not suggesting that conditions in Iraq were really bad before the war nor am I suggesting that we did not contribute (even in a large way) to the bad conditions there. However, we were told that Iraq posed an “imminent threat” to our national security (and then later we were told that we were never told that in the first place). That is “why” we went to war the way we did. If all we were trying to do was help the poor people of Iraq, we could have set up a legitimate international coalition and made the whole process much more respectable. The WAY we did it was really arrogant and awful. The ends don’t justify the means in this case.
Also, by going to war with Iraq when we did, we distracted ourselves from the war in Afghanistan, which was the one that was actually fighthing terrorism.
Martin-
Ah, Martin…where to begin?…..
So you say that all Oneill did was say that he saw some plans for oil exploration, eh? Acutally, the significance of his comments is that he is reporting that the administration was focused on invading Iraq well before even 9-11. In fact, he says it started as early as when they entered office. That’s a much more serious allegation than seeing some plans. He says that the President said “Go find me a way to do this [invade Iraq]” at a National Security Counsil meeting.
You also claim that Clarke said nothing more than that he was instructed to investigate a link between Iraq and Al-Qaida post 9-11. In fact, Clarke made the MUCH more serious charge that the President IGNORED the threat of Al-Qaida and terrorism before 9-11. You can find a thorough recounting of the intricacies of “Operation Ignore” in Al Franken’s latest book, which I have mentioned before. Or you could read Clarke’s book. I’m sure it’s all in there too.
Or you could continue to deny that these men said these things, because that seems to help your case more.
You claim that these claims can’t stand up to scrutiny? I would refute that myself, but it seems that Gaelen has done a wonderful job of that in his latest post, so I’ll refer you to that.
However, I will also specifically point you to the following section of Gaelen’s post in response to your defense of a link between 9-11 and Iraq:
“CLAIM #2: “The president returned to the White House and called me in and said, I’ve learned from George Tenet that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.” - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04”
Posted by: Kathryn Knowlson at March 23, 2004 10:30 AM
“So you say that all Oneill did was say that he saw some plans for oil exploration, eh? Acutally, the significance of his comments is that he is reporting that the administration was focused on invading Iraq well before even 9-11.
The significance of his comments is not lost me—we all know how O’ Neill is trying to spin a few maps and scraps of paper which can be interpreted in a number of ways into some giant conspiracy. (If he didn’t do this, of course, about five people in the world—including his own mother—would buy a book by a former treasury secretaty).
The fact remains, though, that all he has to offer is a lot of opinions about areas he was not directly involved with in the White House. He has NO proof of any of his more important charges—nothing. I know he says some darkly-worded things that you already want to believe— already do believe about big mean daddy Bush—but that’s it. No proof.
But what if he did have proof? The most serious charge anyway is that the administration plans far in advance for possible contingenies (one of which was war with Iraq, which Clinton had plans for himself!).
O Neill had no access to these war plans, so we don’t know if they existed in any detail, but I sure hope they did—anything else would have been irresponsible. We’d better have plans for wars with North Korea, China and a number of other countries right now as well (now don’t call me a war-monger!—I hope we never have to use those plans).
O’Neill’s take ultimately carry more weight than Clarke’s because Clarke wasn’t a cabinet official but a pretty low level expert advisor. Some of you want to portray this guy—who you first heard of on Sunday night—as some sort of high mucky-muck terrorism czar, but he was just one of many White House pencil pushers with an broom-closet sized office in the White House basement. You make it sound like Laura Bush herself has stormed out of the White House with a suitcase in each hand.
Posted by: Martin at March 23, 2004 12:14 PMIf the President’s top anti-terrorism adviser is “just one of many White House pencil pushers with an broom-closet sized office in the White House basement,” then it seems to me that the President was not doing much to combat terrorism prior to 9-11.
So surely, you do not really believe that Clarke was such a lowly pee-on.
His claims have credibility, and the more you refute that, the worse you make the Bush administration look. Nicely done.
Posted by: Kathryn Knowlson at March 23, 2004 12:19 PMThe President’s top terrorism advisor? Please, why not just say he is the Oracle of Dephi or the President’s half-brother? Clarke was one of many national security advisors but not even close to the top one (her name is Condi Rice— may she someboday be president—and she, not the president, had demoted Clarke even further.)
His claims do have a certain credibility—especially the general point that accross administrations and branches of govermnent America didn’t do enough to fight terrorists before 9-11. The problem is that this isn’t news—we all agree on this—and it’s not even what this is about.
Clarke, it turns out, has been banging this same drum for years—he’s on the record criticizing Clinton for doing nothing about the USS Cole bombing. According to several sources, each time one these attacks like the Cole happened, Clarke would start demanding massive bombing raids—he made Clinton’s people profoundly uncomfortabele. Let’s look at a couple Clark quotes, and I’ll let you decide if this stuff squares with Democratic dogma about how we should respond to threats.
April 2 Washington Post:
“We should have a very low barrier in terms of acting when there is a threat of weapons of mass destruction being used against American citizens,” says Clarke. “We should not have a barrier of evidence that can be used in a court of law.”
Yep, sounds like an excellent explanation for why we invaded Iraq—we couldn’t just wait around to see what and why Hussein was hiding, for definitive proof that there WMDs.
AP in 2000:
“We are no longer going to wait for the attack. We are going to pre-empt, we are going to disrupt..”
A policy of pre-emption. Thank you, Mr. Clarke, though I know you’ve reversed yourself now on this to sell books to Democrats. I hope you get lots of their money!
Posted by: Martin at March 23, 2004 12:57 PMIt gets even better. Look at what he said in a Frontline interview in 02. It completely condemns Clinton’s anti-terror response, and makes an interesting point about what a cheap shot it is to blame anyone specifically for 9-11 (although that’s exactly what he’s decided to do now in order to sell books).
From Frontline:
But didn’t you push for military action after the Cole?
Yes, that’s one of the exceptions.
How important is that exception?
I believe that, had we destroyed the terrorist camps in Afghanistan earlier, that the conveyor belt that was producing terrorists sending them out around the world would have been destroyed. So many, many trained and indoctrinated Al Qaeda terrorists, which now we have to hunt down country by country, many of them would not be trained and would not be indoctrinated, because there wouldn’t have been a safe place to do it if we had destroyed the camps earlier. …
Without intelligence operatives on the ground in these organizations, how in the end does one stop something like this? If you look back on it now and you had one wish, you could have had one thing done, what would it have been?
Blow up the camps and take out their sanctuary. Eliminate their safe haven, eliminate their infrastructure. They would have been a hell of a lot less capable of recruiting people. Their whole “Come to Afghanistan where you’ll be safe and you’ll be trained,” well, that wouldn’t have worked if every time they got a camp together, it was blown up by the United States. That’s the one thing that we recommended that didn’t happen — the one thing in retrospect I wish had happened. …
A lot of people looked at Sept. 11, and said “Massive intelligence failure. Haven’t seen an intelligence failure like this since Pearl Harbor.” What’s your opinion on that allegation?
I think it’s a cheap shot. I think when people say, no matter what event it is, they say, “Oh, it was an intelligence failure,” they frequently don’t know what the intelligence community said prior to the event. In June 2001, the intelligence community issued a warning that a major Al Qaeda terrorist attack would take place in the next many weeks. They said they were unable to find out exactly where it might take place. They said they thought it might take place in Saudi Arabia.
We asked, “Could it take place in the United States?” They said, “We can’t rule that out.” So in my office in the White House complex, the CIA sat and briefed the domestic U.S. federal law enforcement agencies, Immigration, Federal Aviation, Coast Guard, and Customs. The FBI was there as well, agreeing with the CIA, and told them that we were entering a period when there was a very high probability of a major terrorist attack. Now I don’t think that’s an intelligence failure. It may be a failure of other parts of the government, but I don’t think that was an intelligence failure.
The President’s top terrorism advisor? Please, why not just say he is the Oracle of Dephi or the President’s half-brother? Clarke was one of many national security advisors but not even close to the top one (her name is Condi Rice— may she someboday be president—and she, not the president, had demoted Clarke even further.)
“Condi” Rice is the National Security Adviser. Clarke was the top anti-terrorism adviser for the Bush administration. So, no, I am not confusing Clarke’s position with Rice’s position. She’s his boss. He has also served under every President since Reagan, and he was Clinton’s terrorism czar (during which time he helped to thwart many a terrorist attack). The fact that the Bush administration DEMOTED the Anti-Terrorism Czar to a non-cabinet position shows their indifference towards fighting terror. It is good of you to emphasize that point, because it really does demand recognition.
Posted by: Kathryn Knowlson at March 23, 2004 01:10 PMIt was never a cabinet position, Kathryn, and you know it. When was Clarke confirmed by the Senate as a member of the cabinet? Never happened, amounts to noth