Former "Terrorism Czar" speaks out against Bush

[Jobber of the Week 0]

While we're talking about people who say one thing then say another:

 

At the same time, some of Rice's rebuttals of Clarke's broadside against Bush, which she delivered in a flurry of media interviews and statements rather than in testimony, contradicted other administration officials and her own previous statements.

 

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage contradicted Rice's claim that the White House had a strategy before Sept. 11 for military operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban. The CIA contradicted Rice's earlier assertion that Bush had requested a CIA briefing in the summer of 2001 because of elevated terrorist threats. And Rice's assertion this week that Bush had told her on Sept. 16, 2001, that "Iraq is to the side" appeared to be contradicted by an order signed by Bush on Sept. 17 directing the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.

 

Rice, in turn, has contradicted Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that Clarke was "out of the loop" and his intimation that Clarke had been demoted. Rice has also given various conflicting accounts. She criticized Clarke for being the architect of failed Clinton administration policies, but also said she had retained Clarke so the Bush administration could continue to pursue Clinton's terrorism policies.

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...MNGSR5RPMV1.DTL

[bobobrazil1984 0]

So basically the final conclusion of all this 9/11 commission clarke stuff...

 

Everybody from Clarke to Bush to Clinton to Rice and about a dozen more people have been either lax, ignored key evidence, been dishonest, and partisan.

 

Surprise surprise. Well then, I'll be sure not to vote for Bill Clinton, Condoleeza Rice, George Bush, or Richard Clarke or any of these names involved

[Guest MikeSC]

Bush's Admin has already built a rep of tearing people to shreds from his own cabinet that come out with criticism against any of his policies. Richard Clarke wasn't the first. It seems that anyone who leaves his little club of goons, is somehow branded "crazy" or "loony" or "a liar" which begs the question of why they were chosen in the first place to be in their position.

I guess Bush should get more toadies and lemmings, ala Clinton.

-=Mike

[Guest MikeSC]

Rice, in turn, has contradicted Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that Clarke was "out of the loop" and his intimation that Clarke had been demoted. Rice has also given various conflicting accounts. She criticized Clarke for being the architect of failed Clinton administration policies, but also said she had retained Clarke so the Bush administration could continue to pursue Clinton's terrorism policies.

And this is contradictory how? Clinton policies WERE bad as 9/11 showed --- but since it takes time to develop new ones (let's remember that 9/11 occured less than 8 months after Bush's inauguration), they went with what was left to them as they had nothing else at the time to use functionally.

 

Not exactly rocket science. When the attacks happened, they realized that they had to scrap the plans altogether and completely start anew.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage contradicted Rice's claim that the White House had a strategy before Sept. 11 for military operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Can they cite this contradiction? Call me crazy, but I don't just buy a newspaper from SF's "word" on things.

The CIA contradicted Rice's earlier assertion that Bush had requested a CIA briefing in the summer of 2001 because of elevated terrorist threats.

No chance of them covering their butts. No sir.

And Rice's assertion this week that Bush had told her on Sept. 16, 2001, that "Iraq is to the side" appeared to be contradicted by an order signed by Bush on Sept. 17 directing the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.

And did the directive say that the military planning for Iraq was for an immediate attack?

 

You know, plans DO have to be made in advance of things.

-=Mike

[Guest Cerebus]

I hate to interrupt with a OMGEDITORIALBIASFLAMEBAITINGSPINLOL2004 but I found this editorial by David Brooks in the Times pretty good.

 

See Dick Spin

By DAVID BROOKS

 

Warren Bass, Michael Hurley and Alexis Albion are not exactly household names. But they are a few of the authors of the outstanding interim reports released by the 9/11 commission this week. In clear, substantive and credible prose, these staff reports describe the errors successive administrations made leading up to the terror attacks. More than that, they describe the ambiguities and constraints policy makers wrestled with.

 

But, of course, these reports were eclipsed. This was the week the Richard Clarke circus came to town.

 

It should be said that Clarke used to be capable of the sort of balanced analysis contained in these reports. Indeed, he was a major source for them. But that was the old Richard Clarke. That was the Richard Clarke who could weigh the pros and cons of the Clinton and Bush terror strategies. That was the Clarke who expressed frustration at the glacial pace of the pre-9/11 antiterror policy process, but who also, in 2001, sent out e-mail praising the White House for alerting agencies to a possible attack, and who praised the Bush team for "vigorously" pursuing the Clinton strategy while deciding to quintuple the C.I.A.'s anti-Qaeda budget.

 

But that wonky Richard Clarke doesn't become a prime-time media sensation or sell hundreds of thousands of books. Because in this country, we speak only one language when it comes to public affairs, the language of partisan warfare. So out goes Mr. Wonk. Clarke turns himself into an anti-Bush attack machine, and we get a case study of how serious bipartisan concern gets turned into a week of civil war.

 

Compared with the commission reports, Clarke's book, "Against All Enemies," is as subtle as an episode of the Power Rangers. See Dick Clarke courageously take control of the government in the middle of the terror attacks! See him heroically lead a teleconference! Behold his White House conversations! Everything he says is farsighted and brave! Everything the Bushies say is incorrect. And he remembers it all perfectly!

 

Clarke manages to absolve Bill Clinton for many of his mistakes — or Clarke says the vast right-wing conspiracy is to blame. What about Clinton's decision not to bomb Al Qaeda's terrorist camps when we had a chance? Not a mistake, Clarke now says. We had higher priorities, like the former Yugoslavia.

 

All of Bush's errors, on the other hand, are magnified. Shrill passages about Bush's stupidity are inserted into Clarke's tendentious prose. In 2002, Clarke said there was "no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration." But now Clinton is portrayed as the Winston Churchill of the antiterror brigades, and Bush is Neville Chamberlain.

 

And this week Clarke goes on a book tour and hypes it up another notch. Time's Romesh Ratnesar recently compared Clarke's book with the representations he is making of it up and down the TV dial. Ratnesar found that Clarke is sexing up his own stories to score political points.

 

So here we are in a familiar spot. Instead of talking about the bipartisan failures and systematic shortcomings of our terror policy, we're seething at one another about one man. It's the Clinton scandals and Bork hearings all over again — except this time the pretext for our hatred just happens to be security policy. Conservatives, including myself, believe that Clarke has turned himself into a mendacious glory-hound whose claims are contradictory. Liberals see him as the Erin Brockovich of the Bush years.

 

There's plenty of blame to go around. Clarke deserves blame for his shrill partisanship. The media deserve blame for neglecting the commission reports (The Times is an honorable exception). Most important, the administration deserves blame. Instead of focusing on the substantive commission reports and treating Clarke with the back of its hand, the Bush administration got right in the mud with him.

 

Meanwhile, actual policy matters get tossed about in the roiling seas. Though we never really had a discussion about it, now everybody is embracing pre-emptive action against potential terrorist threats.

 

This has not been a good week for American politics. It's been another week (the 4,000th in a row, I believe) in which serious issues were treated as a soap opera. If you want to live the soap opera, buy Clarke's book. If you want something serious, read the commission reports. You'll find them at www.9-11commission.gov. 

[Guest MikeSC]

Come on, kids. Let's just face it:

 

Bush's JOKE caused 9/11.

 

Isn't it OBVIOUS?

-=Mike

[Vyce 0]

I thought it was the Bush tax cuts, Mike, but you may be on to something.

[Guest MikeSC]

I thought it was the Bush tax cuts, Mike, but you may be on to something.

Well, I have to wonder if a joke BY ITSELF can bring down TWO skyscrapers.

One scraper, maybe. But two?

 

It might be a combo of the two.

 

Man, if Bush's terror policies bring about the end of Al Qaeda, we might, in fact, experience armageddon!

-=Mike

[Jobber of the Week 0]

And the Pentagon explosion was caused by humor as well. I imagine that one happened when someone answered the phone with "This is the Armed Forces: we frag 'em, you bag 'em", causing an entire side of the building to explode

[Guest MikeSC]

And the Pentagon explosion was caused by humor as well.

It was one bad joke. And combined with the power of the evil tax cuts...

I imagine that one happened when someone answered the phone with "This is the Armed Forces: we frag 'em, you bag 'em", causing an entire side of the building to explode

And they used to say that laughter was the best medicine.

-=Mike

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Props for dragging this joke garbage into another thread.

[Guest MikeSC]

Props for dragging this joke garbage into another thread.

I do what I can.

-=Mike

[Vyce 0]

Sorry for bringing a moment of levity into the ceaseless Bush-bashing / defending debates (that never go anywhere but back in circles, like the proverbial serpent devouring its own tail), Jobber.

 

Allow some of us our little indulgences.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

I don't mind it, I just don't like it spreading to other threads. Otherwise, we risk all current threads turning into four or five discussing the headline issue of the day.

[Vern Gagne 0]

That hasn't happened already?

 

Back to the topic at hand. Seriously, the best advice for the White House is to let the Clarke matter blow over. In today's short attention span society, Clarke will be forgotten by the end of the week.

[Firestarter 0]

As family and friends of those killed on 9/11, we believe it inappropriate for Mr. Clarke to profit from and politicize 9/11, and further divide America, by his testimony before the 9/11 Commission.

- No thanks, Mr Clarke

[NoCalMike 0]

As family and friends of those killed on 9/11, we believe it inappropriate for Mr. Clarke to profit from and politicize 9/11, and further divide America, by his testimony before the 9/11 Commission.

- No thanks, Mr Clarke

yeah, I won't be buying the book either....

[bobobrazil1984 0]

http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/39405...06|reuters.html

 

Clarke Urges Terrorism Testimony to Be Made Public

Email this story

 

Mar 28, 12:51 PM (ET)

 

By Joanne Kenen

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke on Sunday called on the White House to make public his own testimony to Congress as well as other statements, e-mails and documents about how the Bush administration handled the threat of terror.

 

Clarke, center of a firestorm over the level of engagement of President Bush in the issue before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was responding to Republican allegations that his earlier testimony to Congress contradicted statements he made last week that criticized Bush.

 

"I would welcome it being declassified, but not just a little line here or there. Let's declassify all six hours of my testimony," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

 

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, slamming Clarke on Friday, called for declassifying Clarke's July 2002 testimony to a joint hearing by the Senate and House of Representatives Intelligence committees.

 

Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said Clarke's words then, when, as a member of Bush administration he defended its policies, conflicted with last week's sworn public testimony before the bipartisan commission investigating the attacks, known popularly as the 9/11 Commission.

 

Clarke said he supported having that testimony declassified and also wanted testimony given in private to the commission by Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice made public.

 

He said he wanted everything out in the open. "The White House is selectively now finding my e-mails, which I would have assumed were covered by some privacy regulations, and selectively leaking them to the press.

 

"Let's take all of my e-mails and all of the memos that I sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20th to September 11th, and let's declassify all of it," he said.

 

"The (9-11) victims' families have no idea what Dr. Rice has said," Clarke said. Rice has been criticized for appearing extensively on television but not in public before the panel.

 

Clarke rejected accusations by Republicans that he was speaking out for political reasons eight months before presidential elections.

 

A career government official, Clarke said he was not part of the campaign of Bush's rival, Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry, and had no ambition to work in any administration of either party.

 

Clarke says many of his recommendations were ignored or downplayed by the Bush administration, and that he was marginalized when he urged the White House not to retaliate against Iraq for attacks by the al Qaeda network.

 

Sounds like everybody's playing bluff with each other. Might as well declassify everything so we can bitch about Fresh Fresh (tm the WB) statements!

Argue... err i mean "discuss!"

 

---

 

In all the talk over Clarke's positive remarks in his resignation letter, I'm surprised nobody has argued about this point yet, from the meet the press transcript

 

This is the letter Bush sent to him when he resigned

 

This is his writing. This is the president of the United States' writing. And when they're engaged in character assassination of me, let's just remember that on January 31, 2003: "Dear Dick, you will be missed. You served our nation with distinction and honor. You have left a positive mark on our government." This is not the normal typewritten letter that everybody gets. This is the president's handwriting. He thinks I served with distinction and honor. The rest of his staff is out there trying to destroy my professional life, trying to destroy my reputation, because I had the temerity to suggest that a policy issue should be discussed. What is the role of the war on terror vis-a-vis the war in Iraq? Did the war in Iraq really hurt the war on terror? Because I suggest we should have a debate on that, I am now being the victim of a taxpayer-paid--because all these people work for the government-- character assassination campaign.

 

Full transcript: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4608698/

 

So basically, they both wrote letters at the time praising each other... and now they're both at each other's throats.