It Begins: Clarke goes public with allegations of terror mishandling

Great Debates
1

If you aren’t familiar with who Clarke is, he’s the “terror czar” for the Bush and Clinton administration who spent most of his career pushing administrations to confront Al Queda in a more serious way than either did.

We’ve talked about him before: Al Franken based a lot his anti-Bush case on 9/11 around the fact that Bush sidelined and ignored Clarke’s plans and warnings. Clarke has now written a new book, and has gone public with his account.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,114783,00.html

His account, however, is supremely more anti-Bush than anti-Clinton, and some of his allegations are pretty damning. Among them:

-Col. Rice did seem to even know who Al Queda was, and was skeptical of his warnings that they would soon mount a major attack on the US, and eventually sidelined him when he wouldn’t leave her alone about it

-The day after 9/11, the administration was not simply asking whether Iraq was involved or not, but pushing to attack it even after being told that it was probably not involved. (insert that quote about Rumsfeld saying that hey, their are leeter targets in Iraq than in Afghanistan)
(Remarkably like the whole ETA thing in Spain, no?)

The administration claims that Clarke’s rejected plans, while important, would not have prevented 9/11, since they focused overseas. I can think of two powerful responses to that statement. First of all, Clarke’s plans would have garnered lots of new evidence and captured or killed many Al Queda leaders. It certainly would have been much more likely that we’d have discovered the plot, especially considering how very very close we DID come to discovering it. Secondly, this argument goes directly against the administration’s own claims that actions overseas to confront terrorists make America safer.

It’s also interesting that the response to Clarke has not been to deny his claims, but basically brush them off with generalized claims about the adminstrations’ committment to fighting terrorism.

However, Clarke may have undercut his own influence by also saying that the war in Iraq made us less safe by increasing anti-american sentiment, and the fact that he is friends with a Kerry campaign figure.

In other news: Al Queda may have nuclear weapons somewhere
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,114760,00.html

If so, this would only bolster Clarke’s case that the Iraq war has been a major distraction from a much bigger threat, though not his claim that it, in itself has directly made us less safe (since the people who would have gotten the nukes were after us anyway, not new recruits).

2

You don’t think that’s true?

3

[nitpick]
Could you use al Qaeda or al Qaida instead? There is no such “u” sound in their name.
[/nitpick]

Also, your link appears to be broken.

4

I think this will be more damning to the war in Iraq than to pre-9/11 handling of al Qaeda. IMO, there wouldn’t have been much support for the action necessary to prevent 9/11 without the precedent of 9/11.

5

Looks like Congress truly got bamboozled! They aren’t going to be happy campers this week.

6

No, I don’t think it’s necessarily true that Iraq itself made us less safe by inciting more anti-American sentiment. Plenty of Arabs understand that Saddam was awful, and those that nevertheless think American influence is horrible and must be fought wouldn’t need Iraq to prove that too them: they already had Afghanistan as an example. But then, unlike Clarke, I don’t know much about the subject or how it could/has played in the Middle East among key groups.

I’ve always said that I don’t think a serious case can be made that the neo-con argument for taking down Iraq here and now is a silly or irrational one. It may be wrong, but if so, it will be wrong on the technical and strategic merits, not because its outrageous or dumb or even imperialist.

Both links work fine for me.

Perhaps, but it appears that the action neccessary need not have been that much more involved than we already had been. Certianly it would have been more unpopular then than Iraq is now to even do a full scale invasion of Afghanistan, and that was far from what Clarke proposed. He proposed shutting down Al Qaeda funding, being much more aggresive in destroying their camps and caputuring/killing their leadership, and so on. He also supported the idea of majro reforms to our intelligence systems which could easily have tipped the scale on finding out about the 9/11 plot: we came so ridiculously close to finding out as it is.

7

As they have in many past situations*, when conservatives or people working in the present administration have voiced legitimate criticism regarding the corruption of the far right and the ineptitude of the Bush administration, I’m sure the neo-cons will find a way to try and discredit Clarke with voluminous slander and innuendo.

*Scott Ritter, David Brock, Karen Kwiatkowski, Paul O’Neill, to name a few.

8

Preposterous!

9

Wanting Saddam removed is not the same thing as wanting foreign intervention, esp. one that is wrapped by a poor excuse, one that has been exposed as a blatant lie. Even for the Iraqis who don’t mind foreign troops removing Saddam, they don’t necessarily welcome continued occupation by US forces.

As for Afghanistan - the US hardly did any fighting at all, and they got some lucky breaks.

10

In my OP, it should read: “Col. Rice DIDN’T seem to even know who Al Queda was”

And was that the best you can find, Brutus? I guess we’ll have to wait till fulll marching orders come down tommorow on what the approved line of attack is, but geez: something that doesn’t even address the specific issues he raises in the least?

And the position he was demoted to after his Al Qaeda warnings were brushed off was cyberterrorism, so it’s not exactly shocking that he’d have then focused on that problem. He’s also not the only former anti-terror ex-employee to be highly disgruntled by both Bush and Clinton’s failures in confronting Al Qaeda, but he died in 9/11 itself.

11

Hindsight is 20/20. If Clarke was so concerned that Bush & Co. weren’t taking the whole terrorism business seriously (and I am so not making the claim that they were), then why is Clarke just now speaking out? Okay, so he wrote a book and it can take books 2 years to see the light of day from when they hit the publishers desk to going into print, this is the 21st Century, and there’s no reason to wait on your publisher if you’ve got concrete information that the folks in charge are really boobs and that if you don’t bitch slap the 'Merkin public thousands, if not tens of thousands, of innocent folks will die. There’s this thing called the internet now, and it let’s folks communicate rapidly with one another.

One would think that if a person knew something which could potentially save the lives of large numbers of people (be they 'Merkin or not) that a person would be inclined to use it to the fullest of it’s capabilities.

12

Eh, let me know when you have actually read the column. In the meanwhile, you may want to consider that Mssr.Clarke is trying to peddle his wares, and will, how to put it politely, ‘enhance’ the story, to sell more books.

This little bit should began to tip you off to the veracity of his claims: (From the OP cite)

WOW! A zinger! He got her there, huh? :rolleyes:

13

Way to ignore the OP. Clarke just published a book about it and appeared on 60 Minutes. The information itself is not new and he’s talked about it for a while. Just because you’ve ignored him until he becomes impossible to ignore doesn’t mean everybody else has, and he certainly isn’t to blame for the fact that so many people continue to live in complete denial about what kind of guy Bush really is.

14

Condi Rice responded that the current Administration had continued to follow the previous Administration’s policy on bin Laden (or was it Afghanistan? al Queda?) until they were able to formulate their own policy. At what point did this change in policy take place?

Anyone know?

15

I read it. It’s a list of things the guy doesn’t like that Clarke did. None of it is particuarly relevant to the issues raised here. If you’d like to make an actual case for, please do so in your own words, though that’s not exactly your MO.

Sure, but the exact same motives of self-promotion can be leveled at ANYONE, including the administration, in saying anything. This is clearly something Clarke has felt strongly about even before planning on writing a book.

He’s entitled to relate his impressions. Maybe they are not true, but frankly, given that Rice also went on record denying that she had been briefed by a certian Clinton official (when in fact she demonstrably had) and that no one ever expected the terrorists to use planes as bombs when exactly such a plot in Europe had been discovered, thwarted, and widely discussed as a new threat prior to 9/11, I wouldn’t put it past her memory and competance.

16

Here
Had the process continued in this stately fashion, we might have had predator drones back in the skies over Afghanistan by the summer of 2002: Bush Slow on Predator Drones before 9/11

17

The only thing “new” here is the high-profile nature of the information – most SDMB politicio regulars, and folks who read either Franken’s book or the Time magazine article, knew most/all of this stuff already. The only difference now is that there’s a 60 Minutes interview and a new book, which ought to give the matter more overdue attention.

Of course, expect the Administration to drag out every smear in the book; doubtlessly Clark is only doing this because he’s a Clinton stooge who’s trying to goose sales of his book, just another member of the vast left-wing conspiracy against Fearless Leader George W. Bush. :rolleyes:

18

As for Clark’s credibility, I don’t have any evidence to dispute his claims. However, the timing certainly makes one suspect. He could have easily come forward 2 years ago and would have been taken much more seriously.

This is just going to turn into another case of the Kerry supporters making the case that Clark is the 2nd coming while the Bush supporters will be making the case that Clark is simply a Kerry supporter trying to make a buck.

19

Oops sorry that’s Clarke, not Clark.

20

I was very impressed with Clarke’s 60 Minutes interview Sunday evening. He seemed to not be holding anything back and truly believed what he was saying. Regardless of what his handlers do or say, I can’t see how this can be spun to be a positive for GWB. It’s another nail in his coffin.