Richard Clarke's Book

[LTC8K6]

Wow, can you imgaine the hue and cry had Bush gone after Iraq before the Taliban?

The present hue and cry is pretty bad. An attack on Iraq, if W was so set on it, would have gone over better earlier, imo.

Since he was going to "manufacture" a case against Iraq regarding WMD anyway, he could have done so shortly after 9/11, and relieved his "hard on" for Iraq quicker.

This would have gotten Cheney his Halliburton cut quicker, we get the oil quicker, etc., etc.

 

[Lurker]

So... Clarke is saying that immediately after 9/11, Bush was so fixated on Saddam that he went ahead and invaded... Afghanistan. Is that about right?
More crap from a disgruntled ex-employee.

Well, clearly Bush wanted to go after Saddam in the worst way. But his handlers knew better than to do that right after 9/11. Why? Simple. The evidence was quick to come in that Al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11. Osama and the Al Qaeda camps were primarily in Afghanistan.

Can you imagine the political fallout had Bush invaded Iraq instead? Imagine every liberal, moderate and even many conservatives questioning why Bush is going after Iraq when Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan.

I am surprised that this escapes some people.

Lurker

 

[michaellee]

CBS, Sixty Minutes and Leslie Stahl gave Richard Clarke a pass during his
interview. There were many issues or questions that Stahl never asked Clarke.
She let him state all of his views and opinions without once ever asking questions
any simpleton would have.

Stahl didn't think her viewers might just be a little bit curious about Clarke's
actions or lack of them during his tenure with the Clinton administration. After
all, Clarke's only theme and purpose was to assail the Bush administration on their
response and actions toward Al-Qaeda.

Well, I would have liked to hear Clarke's response to a few basic questions.
Being that he was the top dog and counsel to Clinton, he must have been the one
to offer advice and his opinion on what to do in response to Al-Qaeda terrorist
attacks. So what was Clarke's advice when:
Al-Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center in 1993;
Sudan, three times, offered Ossama Bin Laden to the U.S.;
Al-Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in 2000;
Al-Qaeda attacked two North African U.S. embassies

What responses were made to these Al-Qaeda attacks, all made during Clarke's tenure
as the one responsible for advising Clinton? Would you say that Clarke's advice resulted
in anything happening in any way that had any negative effect on Al-Qaeda whatsoever?

It takes two types of characters to come out and bash the current president over his
response to terrorism at the hands of Al-Qaeda. First, a man with no character, one
whose own response to numerous attacks was at best pathetic; second, a man, a
television station, and a reporter, all with questionable character for allowing the first
a venue perfectly fitting for "The pot calling the kettle black".

 

[headscratcher4]

Yet, the president has made his leadership an issue...it would be wrong, possibly immoral, anti-democratic and unethical for the sake of "loyalty" to be silent if one thought/knew that the "leadership" was lacking and were to remain silent. Truth will set us all free, and should Bush be re-defeated in November, than he will be the stronger/better for having to face the criticism. Such is the burden that an open society, rightfully, places on its leaders.

 

[crackmonkey]

Certainly, although if would be equally immoral, undemocratic and unethical to level false charges against the President in the hopes of damaging him politically.

Lurker - you're saying that Bush was chomping at the bit to bomb Saddam into oblivion, but couldn't do so for fear of offending most of those on the other side of the political tracks? Bush would never do that... that's all unilateralist and stuff. Nope. Not Bush.

 

[headscratcher4]

An additional thought, while many came out of the Clinton Administration angry at Bill for letting them down and lying about sex, and covering-up to maintain the Lewinsky/sex scandal, I don't recall quite this many books from insiders blasting his "leadership."

It is a memory problem, not an assertion that there weren't such books. Could someone remind me of books from Clinton insiders (other than those by the guy who carried the football or the pilot of AirForce I) from real insiders that went after Clinton as a policy leader in quite the same way?

I wonder also, if such books existed if michaellee was dismissing them for being disloyal, politically motivated, etc. at the time, or whether he/she was nodding in agreement and saying "I always suspected that about Clinton..."

In short, isn't what's good for the goose good for the gander?

 

[headscratcher4]

Certainly, although if would be equally immoral, undemocratic and unethical to level false charges against the President in the hopes of damaging him politically.

And, don't you think that if they are false...as opposed to going after Clark with spin such as "he was out of the loop"...that it will become apparent? That the press, not just Fox and the partisian press, will come to dismiss him as a hack and a fake? I believe the truth will out...and while I believe Clark, because I have found from listening that I can not believe Bush...that if he is wrong or a liar, it will come out, and do so well before the election.

Crazy, starry-eyed optimist about America, democracy and freedom of the press that I am....

 

[Lurker]

Certainly, although if would be equally immoral, undemocratic and unethical to level false charges against the President in the hopes of damaging him politically.

Lurker - you're saying that Bush was chomping at the bit to bomb Saddam into oblivion, but couldn't do so for fear of offending most of those on the other side of the political tracks? Bush would never do that... that's all unilateralist and stuff. Nope. Not Bush.

I'm sorry, Crack. I guess I need to make myself clearer. Here, allow me to repost what I had written which you responded to:

"Imagine every liberal, moderate and even many conservatives questioning why Bush is going after Iraq when Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan." - Lurker about ten minutes ago

Note the boldface. So what I said above included the very real possibility that Bush would have pissed off a bunch of his base constituents by going after Iraq instead of Al Qaeda right off the bat.

Comprende?

Lurker

 

[headscratcher4]

Let me make myself clear here as well...I think there is more than enough blame for bad policy positions to go around. I think that the Clinton people made many mistakes....mistakes that we are now paying for. This, however, seems to me to be about Bush's watch (as he has made his leadership during this period the core of his re-election...i.e. he has made it political fodder). Nothing the Administration says here, regardless of how bad Clark may be distorting, has much credibility with me, given that I think they blatently and politcially distorted the WMD issue as a pretext for a policy in Iraq that they wanted all along. Believe it or not, I believed the Administration than, I thought it was impossible for them to take the steps against Iraq that they did if they couldn't deliver the goods, boy I was wrong. Boy, they were wrong.

Being that wrong, in a Democracy, deserves some sort of payback ... i.e. a vote of no confidence. You had better show that Kerry is just so much more a liar, distorter, wrong on all the issues, etc. to get me to cut the BUsh administration any slack here, 'cause Bush doesn't deserve any slack given the distortion in Foriegn policy and budgeting that has rolled so easilly from their mouths of late....

 

[Grammatron]

Here's a question that perhaps someone over here can answer. Why is it not possible to be effectively in both Iraq and Afghanistan especially since we have full NATO support in the latter?

 

[LTC8K6]

We could certainly have done both.

Imagine every liberal, moderate and even many conservatives questioning why Bush is going after Iraq when Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan.

Why would they be questioning it when Bush would have already presented them with the WMD/Al-qaeda stories to justify it? The links would have been under less scrutiny nearer to the WTC attack. The case easier to make. The situation more confused. The people more frightened and more open to blaming someone....anyone.

A lot of folks on this board have said that they initially supported the attack on Iraq. It was only later that they changed their mind.
Politicians have made the same comments.

There would have been less resistance to an attack on Iraq carried out earlier, imo. The WTC attack was fresher in everyone's mind and that would have caused them to more easily support whatever the Bush admin decided it needed to do in response.

I can see no sense in delaying an attack on Iraq, if Bush was determined to do that. Delaying only made justifying the attack more difficult in my opinion.

Of course, lots of people think Bush is an idiot, so.........

 

[RichardR]

The largest problem I see is that people are now saying that Clarke's account is worthless since he was perpetualy kept out of the loop by both administrations.

Why would they keep this guy around if you don't let him do anything of substance? Is this common practice for bureacrats and staffers to be kept on like dingleberries?

For instance, the people claiming that Sandy Bergner and Warren Christopher dropped the ball with dealing with the Sudanese for Bin Laden are saying Clarke wasn't even informed or involved. How do you not tell the terror czar that you have a deal to cap the leader of the group that nearly brought down the WTC in 93? Did they not trust Clarke? Was Clarke just a functionary they ignored? What's the deal? Clarke called the sudanese deal a fable and now the people who have documented where the buck stopped are biting back.

Absolutely.

I thought Wesley Clark had a good point last night on CNN.

He said the administration can't have it both ways. Either Dick Clark (no relation?) was the anti-terrorist czar and so he was in the loop, or the Bush administration cut him (the anti-terrorist czar), out of the loop which shows they weren't serious about anti-terrorism.

Clark (Dick) sounds credible to me. And in answer to Condi Rice's rebuttal – "well she would say that wouldn't she?"

 

[RichardR]

So... Clarke is saying that immediately after 9/11, Bush was so fixated on Saddam that he went ahead and invaded... Afghanistan. Is that about right?
More crap from a disgruntled ex-employee.

No, that's not what he said. Thanks for playing though.

 

[Grammatron]

Interesting new article on the subject.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/ap/ap_story.html/National/AP.V9227.AP-Sept-11-Commiss.html

I won't quote any points because they are all good so just read it for yourself, there doesn't seem to be any one person to point a finger at just yet.

 

[headscratcher4]

This exrpt is, admittedly, from Salon (which can be a biased source) but I thought it interesting. This is not the whole page, but it is a sizable chunk. I am including it, because you have to pay/register with Salon to have access to the whole thing...again, this is an exerpt, so I hope I'm not violating the rules too much by putting this here. If there's a problem let me know and I'll take it down, or go ahead and ask a moderator to take ti down...

From Salon, "War Room" feature, March 22, 2004:

There's a lot of misinformation about Clarke in circulation today. Tapped gathered good blog postings on the White House attack on Clarke. And, to set the record straight, the Center for American Progress put together a fact-check sheet this afternoon (below) so you can read up for your next appearance on the O'Reilly Factor.

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

-- Geraldine Sealey

 

[Lurker]

Why would they be questioning it when Bush would have already presented them with the WMD/Al-qaeda stories to justify it? The links would have been under less scrutiny nearer to the WTC attack. The case easier to make. The situation more confused. The people more frightened and more open to blaming someone....anyone.

There would have been less resistance to an attack on Iraq carried out earlier, imo. The WTC attack was fresher in everyone's mind and that would have caused them to more easily support whatever the Bush admin decided it needed to do in response.

You are entitled to your opinion, of course. I see your point although I disagree with it. I do agree that evidence would be less scrutinized closer to 9/11 though.

I think just after 9/11 Americans were looking for vengeance. It came out pretty quick that Al Qaeda was behind it and that Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan. This became common knowledge within days.

Now, imagine Bush showing up on TV saying Iraq was the threat and that we would get to Al Qaeda later.

I think Americans would have said, "What the...?" Everyone would be screaming "You are ignoring the perpetrators of 9/11 to go after Saddam!".

Once it was out that OBL and Al Qaeda were behind 9/11 and they were in Afghanistan Bush's hands were tied. He could not credibly divert to go after Iraq. He did the right thing (politically speaking here).

Just my opinion,

Lurker

 

[davefoc]

I find the guy credible also.

I might be going a little bit into wacko conspiracy land with some of my reasoning though.

One of the things that I couldn't figure out after 9-11 was the drumbeat of criticism for the baggage inspectors. In fact, of just about every party that might share some blame for the 9-11 disaster the baggage inspectors were the least culpable.

And even if one decided that they were the problem, wouldn't the FAA, as the oversight agency, share most of the blame?

So when I learned about the idea that the Bush administration at the highest levels had made some missteps that contributed to 9-11, I found it at least a plausible idea that the Bush administration initiated a damage control plan that would deflect blame from the most responsible parties to the parties least politically connected and least able to defend themselves politically to limit as much as possible exposure of real missteps on their part.

 

[Bottle or the Gun]

The plans and goals an administration makes have nothing to do with what happens in the real world. I think ALL administrations had a "We have a plan and hope nothing bad happens in the meantime" approach that blew up in their faces, like a kid lying about his report card.

The US can't afford to act like that anymore.

 

[subgenius]

A long ignored story (note the date):


Bush Gives Taliban $10 Million To Fight Opium
Run Date: 05/26/01



(WOMENSENEWS)—The Bush administration has given Afghanistan $43 million including $10 million for “other livelihood and food security programs,” a reference to the ruling Taliban's ban on poppy cultivation that dramatically changed the economy of the war-torn nation. The poppy is the source of opium and the crop had provided significant revenues to Afghan farmers. The aid was described as humanitarian.

In addition to being an ally in the U.S. war against drugs, the Taliban also has banned the education of girls and women. It has banned women from professions and from most outside-the-home employment, even with international relief agencies. It has banned women from seeing male doctors and it prevents women from practicing medicine.

Colin Powell, in announcing the gift, said the administration hoped that the Taliban "will act on a number of fundamental issues that separate us: their support of terrorism, their violation of internationally recognized human rights--especially their treatment of women and girls--and their refusal to resolve Afghanistan's civil war through a negotiated settlement." He also called on other nation's to join the U.S. with “dispatch and energy.”
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/561/context/outrage

There is reason to believe that we paid for the 9/11 operation.

 

[subgenius]

We trained them:

The thesis of John Cooley's Unholy Wars is that the tragic attack on the World Trade Center and the Pengaton was "engineered, planned and in some cases carried out by CIA-trained veterans of the 1979-1989 Afghanistan war, or those schooled or influenced by them." No small charge. Of course, Mr. Cooley is not claiming that the CIA intended the result; and he acknowledges that hindsight is an untimely gift. Still, he takes great pains to show that, after the smoke cleared in Afghanistan, the Afghan rebels became a terrorist diaspora -- one that remained highly networked and adequately funded. Mr. Cooley at points admits that other causal factors were involved as well, not least the continued flow of funds needed to finance jihad, but his recurring accusation is that "blowback" was at the heart of September 11th.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...e_mmn-20/102-3181223-3512142?v=glance&s=books

We trained OBL (note date of article):

Bin Laden comes home to roost

His CIA ties are only the beginning of a woeful story

By Michael Moran
MSNBC

NEW YORK, Aug. 24, 1998 — At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term that describes an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow.

...

By no means was Osama bin Laden the leader of Afghanistan’s mujahedeen. His money gave him undue prominence in the Afghan struggle, but the vast majority of those who fought and died for Afghanistan’s freedom - like the Taliban regime that now holds sway over most of that tortured nation - were Afghan nationals.
Yet the CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan made famous by Rudyard Kipling, found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to “read” than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the “reliable” partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.
WHAT’S ‘INTELLIGENT’ ABOUT THIS?
Though he has come to represent all that went wrong with the CIA’s reckless strategy there, by the end of the Afghan war in 1989, bin Laden was still viewed by the agency as something of a dilettante - a rich Saudi boy gone to war and welcomed home by the Saudi monarchy he so hated as something of a hero.
In fact, while he returned to his family’s construction business, bin Laden had split from the relatively conventional MAK in 1988 and established a new group, al-Qaida, that included many of the more extreme MAK members he had met in Afghanistan.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp