# It Begins: Clarke goes public with allegations of terror mishandling **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 22, 2004, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681 "2004-03-22T04:26:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/61 "2004-03-24T03:34:00Z")
**John-Boy** > [@](#): > > But it didn’t exist independtly of state sponsorship. Al Qaeda has years to build itself into what it is today under the umbrella of the Taliban in Afghanstan… Your phrasing suggest that you believe that Afghan support of Al Queda was crucial, that without the Taliban providing cover for Al Queda, it would not have existed. Is this your contention, and if it is, can you support it? A whole lot of emphasis has been placed on the “training camps”, we even have videos of very scruffy men excercising on playground equipment and hopping through old tires like high school football try-outs. I hasten to point out to you that the essential training the 9/11 hijackers obtained was obtained in America. Of the 19 hijackers, did even _one_ so much as set foot in Afghanistan? Why don’t we have effective intelligence sources in the ME? Could it be that the vast majority of these people hate our guts? We followed ObL’s script, almost slavishly. He said we would invade an oil-rich ME country to take over. We did. How dumb is that? > [@](#): > > …Can you describe how the law enforcement approach would have dealt with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan?.. Not very well, since there isn’t much of anything even resembling law and order in Afghanistan, except for that supplied by the warlords. So, yes: so long as Al Queda stayed within Afghanistan, they were outside of our reach, if that is your point. But the threat isn’t thier being in Afghanistan, the threat is when they _leave_ Afghanistan. My approach is sneaky and underhanded, it relys on informants and snitches, it lacks the clean bravado of military action. More’s the pity. But fight fire with fire, fight armies with armies. Find sneaky villains with sneaky villainy. If ratting out an Al Queda operative guaranteed someone an instant “green card”. a pile of money, and a lap dance from J Lo… well, you see what I mean, I’m sure. > [@](#): > > …even if we had asked Mullah Omar if he would “pretty please” arrest Mr. bin Laden (after reading him his Miranda rights, of course)… Yes, of course, all us fuzzy thinking liberal types lack the hard headed realism you so sardonicly typify. But the tough guys fucked this up, and royally. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/62 "2004-03-24T04:14:01Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Your phrasing suggest that you believe that Afghan support of Al Queda was crucial, that without the Taliban providing cover for Al Queda, it would not have existed. Is this your contention, and if it is, can you support it? That is not my contention. One must assume that ObL took his operation to Afghanistan for good reason-- that it was out of reach of Western (and most Arab) governments. My contention is that al Qaeda grew much stronger in Afghanistan and that we hit them hard when we went in there. > [@](#): > > A whole lot of emphasis has been placed on the “training camps”, we even have videos of very scruffy men excercising on playground equipment and hopping through old tires like high school football try-outs. I hasten to point out to you that the essential training the 9/11 hijackers obtained was obtained in America. Of the 19 hijackers, did even _one_ so much as set foot in Afghanistan? I have no idea. But I think there is great value in eliminating training camps and leadership of al Qaeda. > [@](#): > > Why don’t we have effective intelligence sources in the ME? Could it be that the vast majority of these people hate our guts? We followed ObL’s script, almost slavishly. He said we would invade an oil-rich ME country to take over. We did. How dumb is that? We’re talking about Afghanistan, not Iraq. I’ve never thought invading Iraq was the right thing to do for the US. It’s probably a great thing for most Iraqis (especially the Shi’a and the Kurds), but that’s beside the point of this discussion. > [@](#): > > My approach is sneaky and underhanded, it relys on informants and snitches, it lacks the clean bravado of military action. More’s the pity. But fight fire with fire, fight armies with armies. Find sneaky villains with sneaky villainy. > > If ratting out an Al Queda operative guaranteed someone an instant “green card”. a pile of money, and a lap dance from J Lo… well, you see what I mean, I’m sure. Is it your contention that military action in Afghanistan precludes police/intelligence actions? I see no reason that both can’t be used. Military action against Afghansitan is appropriate to weaken the leadership, and intelligence activities to intercept terror cells throughout the world. > [@](#): > > Yes, of course, all us fuzzy thinking liberal types lack the hard headed realism you so sardonicly typify. But the tough guys fucked this up, and royally. We hit al Qaeda hard in Afghanistan. Is it your contention that we would be \*\*better off \*\* if we had left that infrastructure alone? I don’t buy into equating Iraq with the war on terror, so throwing that into the discussion is a dodge from question I raised in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/63 "2004-03-24T04:25:26Z")
> [@Tuckerfan](#): > > Well, sure, ranting about something with no hard evidence to back it up _does_ get you labelled a crank, but if you’ve got evidence, well, now, that’s a different story, isn’t it? Of course, were one to present classified documents to the press which _proved_ your contention that the current administration could care less about terrorism or some other life and death issue and this was certain to cost the lives of innocent folks etc… I don’t think that Bush is a good president, but I don’t think he and his team are absolute bumbling idiots. You think they would ever had brought such documents into existence? Ain’t no way. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/64 "2004-03-24T04:40:58Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > I don’t think that Bush is a good president, but I don’t think he and his team are absolute bumbling idiots. You think they would ever had brought such documents into existence? Ain’t no way. So you’re saying that they would have prevented CIA Agent from writing an assement report on how proposed changes by the Bush Adminstration would affect their operations? Or prevented a CIA agent from emailing his buddy about how close he was to nabbing old Binny until George cut the budget? Governments generate _huge_ amounts of paperwork (generally in triplicate), to state categorically that the Bush Admins could have prevented a document which put them in a really bad light from coming into existance is as absurd as calling Reagan the greatest President of the 20th Century (he wasn’t, not by a long shot, and if Harry Truman were still around, he’d kick RR and Bush’s asses quite handily). ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/65 "2004-03-24T05:09:12Z")
Clarke responds on [Salon.com](http://Salon.com) [http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/24/clarke/index.html](http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/24/clarke/index.html) Clarke says blame the White House for when the book came out Clarke says that he handed in the book for security review at the end of last year and wanted it out much earlier. He also complains that there was nothing in it that wasn’t obviously unclassified, and it shouldn’t have taken so long. So the White House has had over a year to prepare its response. He points out that McClellan was crying crocodile tears when he claimed to be deeply offended by Clarke’s claim that 9/11 could have been prevented: because Clarke has never said that. And that deep offense is itself pretty scripted, considering the administration had a year to prepare how exactly to be offended by Clarke’s book. He says he asked to be transferred to the cyberterrorism division out of frustration with the administration’s stonewalling on Al Qaeda, and that this transfer was set to happen in October before 9/11, but was delayed (all of which is easily verifiable fact, so I doubt he’s lying), which contradicts the administrations claim that he’s just bitter that he got demoted. There is a passage that’s too large to quote, but in which he basically says that Bush is being misleading about claiming to have daily meetings on terrorism, as if he was really on the ball about it. In fact, these daily meetings were simply the standard Tenet briefings, not meetings in which any decisions were made to DO anything about terrorism. As to the whole Bush “I don’t want to just be swatting flies” thing: Clarke says, basically yeah, he said that, and then months passed with nothing happening because Rice never held a meeting on forming a strategy. He then notes that: > [@](#): > > In fact, he told Bob Woodward in “Bush at War” that he kind of knew there was a strategy being developed out there, but he didn’t know at what stage it was in the process. Well, if he was so focused on it, he would have kept asking where the strategy was. He would have known where it was in the process. He would have demanded that it be brought forward. He had a fleeting interest. He also says that Cheny is full of it: > [@](#): > > I was in the same meetings that Dick Cheney was in, during the days after 9/11. Condi Rice and Dick Cheney appointed me as co-chairman of the interagency committee called the “Campaign Committee” – the “campaign” being the war on terrorism. So I was co-chairing the interagency process to fight the war on terrorism after 9/11. I don’t think I was “out of the loop.” He says that the Clinton era had a long list of little known victories that the new administration didn’t seem to even know about. He says that they told him the reason he was kept on was because there wasn’t anyone in the Bush camp that had experience in or wanted the a position in counter-terrorism, and that they regarded the position as a little odd, since it hadn’t been there when they were last in power. They were all experts in Cold War issues, especially Rice. In response to the Bush claim that Clarke’s plans were scoffed at because they weren’t aggressive ENOUGH, clarke points out that > [@](#): > > I just think it’s funny that they can engage in this sort of “big lie” approach to things. The plan that they adopted after Sept. 11 was the plan that I had proposed in January [2001}. If my plan wasn’t aggressive enough, I suppose theirs wasn’t either. (this has been corraborated by another Bush staffer who said that Clarke’s pre-9/11 was “basically everything we did after 9/11.” He says that Homeland Security is supported by the President because the administration needed to (and is headed by a man who opposed its creation) steal the issue away from Lieberman and McCain (the latter of whom Clarke voted for): > [@](#): > > As I said in the book, the White House legislative affairs people counted votes. Senator [Joseph] Lieberman had proposed the bill to create the Department of Homeland Security – and the legislative affairs people said Lieberman has the votes; it’s going to pass. They said, “You’ve got the possible situation here, Mr. President, where you’re going to have to veto the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. And if you don’t support it now, if you don’t make it your proposal, not only will it pass but it will be called the Lieberman bill.” He also, I should ad, refutes the idea that the “Saudi airlift” has anything directly suspect about it, since no one who was lifted out is wanted by the FBI for questioning (although some, including friends of the Bush family are known funders of charities that turned out to be terrorist fronts, though they say they were unaware, and so far no one has questioned this claim). He regrets not looking more carefully at it, but basically claims it as his and the FBI’s call, not Bush’s. Finally, as to his connection with Beers, I thought this was telling: > [@](#): > > This is the most interesting charge against me – that I am a friend of Rand Beers, as if that’s some terrible thing. Who is Rand Beers? Until a year ago, he was someone who was working for George Bush in the White House. He worked for George Bush’s father in the White House. He worked for Ronald Reagan in the White House. But now it’s a terrible thing to be a friend of Rand Beers? He and I have been friends for 25 years. I’m not going to disown him because he’s working for John Kerry. He’s my friend, he’s going to stay my friend, we teach a course together [at Harvard]. He works for John Kerry. I don’t. I’ve learned a lot from this interview even I was misled about by the Bush counterattack. I didn’t know, for instance, that Clarke had a major role in the response to 9/11. You wouldn’t know that this was indeed someone pretty darn big in the war on terror even after 9/11, not just a Cassandra with sour grapes from before it. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/66 "2004-03-24T05:22:41Z")
There’s also this (free!) interview: [http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/23/clarke/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/23/clarke/index.html) Money quotes: > [@](#): > > If you look at the eight years of the Clinton administration, al Qaeda was responsible for the deaths of fewer than 50 Americans over those eight years. Contrast that with Ronald Reagan, where 300 Americans were killed in Lebanon and there was no retaliation. Contrast that with the first Bush administration where 260 Americans were killed on Pan-Am 103 and there was no retaliation. > [@](#): > > President Bush himself said in a book when he gave an interview to Bob Woodward, he said “I didn’t feel a sense of urgency about al Qaeda. It was not my focus, it was the focus of my team.” He is saying that. President Bush said that to Bob Woodward. I’m not the first one to say this. > [@](#): > > There are four eyewitnesses to the conversation that the president had with me. It’s very convenient that Dr. Rice and the president are now having a memory lapse, a senior moment. The four eyewitnesses recall vividly what happened and agree with my interpretation. > > This is not the president saying do everything, look at everybody, look at Iran, look at Hezbollah. This is the president in a very intimidating way, finger in my face saying, I want a paper on Iraq and this attack. Everyone in the room got the same impression and everyone in the room recalls it vividly. So I’m not making it up. I don’t have to make it up. It’s part of a pattern that this administration – even before they came into office – was out to get Iraq even though Iraq was not threatening the United States. He concludes by saying that both administrations (clinton/bush) failed, along with their agencies. Not much is being made of his criticism of the Clinton administration, or of his own acceptance of blame. But then, we already have plenty of books which _exclusively_ blame the Clinton administration for 9/11, and make a claim that Clarke doesn’t: that the Clinton people were in deriliction of duty and knowingly could have prevented 9/11. Didn’t hear McClellan “deeply offended” about that claim, did we? ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/67 "2004-03-24T05:54:24Z")
> [@Tuckerfan](#): > > So you’re saying that they would have prevented CIA Agent from writing an assement report on how proposed changes by the Bush Adminstration would affect their operations? Or prevented a CIA agent from emailing his buddy about how close he was to nabbing old Binny until George cut the budget? Governments generate _huge_ amounts of paperwork (generally in triplicate), to state categorically that the Bush Admins could have prevented a document which put them in a really bad light from coming into existance is as absurd as calling Reagan the greatest President of the 20th Century (he wasn’t, not by a long shot, and if Harry Truman were still around, he’d kick RR and Bush’s asses quite handily). Any number of memos from underlings willl be dismissed as sour grapes etc. They are not smoking guns. Unless it were something directly from the top it is not going to be exciting enough to turn on the media to an issue that they have already heard and got bored with. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/68 "2004-03-24T05:58:35Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > Any number of memos from underlings willl be dismissed as sour grapes etc. They are not smoking guns. Unless it were something directly from the top it is not going to be exciting enough to turn on the media to an issue that they have already heard and got bored with. I dunno. Wasn’t it an email from an underling that got Martha Stewart in trouble? ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/69 "2004-03-24T06:38:45Z")
> [@Tuckerfan](#): > > I dunno. Wasn’t it an email from an underling that got Martha Stewart in trouble? Could be. But what investigating authorities will use to put together a case is something quite different to what is sufficient of an obvious smoking gun to pique the interest of the media and public. ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/70 "2004-03-24T06:54:32Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > Can you describe how the law enforcement approach would have dealt with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan? I don’t see it, even if we had asked Mullah Omar if he would “pretty please” arrest Mr. bin Laden (after reading him his Miranda rights, of course). It’s pretty obvious that Bush wasn’t interested in “the law enforcement approach”, even if it could have prevented 9/11: > [@](#): > > [Dick Clarke Is Telling the Truth > Why he’s right about Bush’s negligence on terrorism.](http://slate.msn.com/id/2097685/) > > _President Bush, reading the intelligence every day and noticing that there was a lot about al Qaeda, asked Condi Rice why it was that we couldn’t stop “swatting flies” and eliminate al Qaeda. Rice told me about the conversation and asked how the plan to get al Qaeda was coming in the Deputies’ Committee. “It can be presented to the Principals in two days, whenever we can get a meeting,” I pressed. Rice promised to get to it soon. Time passed._ > > The Principals meeting, which Clarke urgently requested during Bush’s first week in office, did not take place until one week before 9/11. In his 60 Minutes interview, Clarke spelled out the significance of this delay. He contrasted July 2001 with December 1999, when the Clinton White House got word of an impending al-Qaida attack on Los Angeles International Airport and Principals meetings were called instantly and repeatedly: > > \*In December '99, every day or every other day, the head of the FBI, the head of the CIA, the Attorney General had to go to the White House and sit in a meeting and report on all the things that they personally had done to stop the al Qaeda attack, so they were going back every night to their departments and shaking the trees personally and finding out all the information. If that had happened in July of 2001, we might have found out in the White House, the Attorney General might have found out that there were al Qaeda operatives in the United States. FBI, at lower levels, knew [but] never told me, never told the highest levels in the FBI. … We could have caught those guys and then we might have been able to pull that thread and get more of the conspiracy. I’m not saying we could have stopped 9/11, but we could have at least had a chance. \* > > That’s what Clarke says is the tragedy of Bush’s inaction, and nobody in the White House has dealt with the charge at all. And the “pretty please” approach is exactly the one that Bush in fact used: > [@](#): > > [Rocca Meets Taliban Representative in Islamabad > 02 August 2001](http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/01080202.htm) > > I met today, with Mr. Zaeef, the representative of the Taliban movement in Islamabad. This meeting was part of our continuing dialogue with the Taliban, other Afghan factions, and Afghan moderate leaders not aligned with the fighting factions involved in the conflict. > > \ > > Mr. Zaeef and I also discussed security-related issues, including the newly adopted UN Security Council Resolution 1363 on monitoring the existing UN sanctions against the Taliban. I reiterated that the monitoring mechanism and the sanctions themselves would not be necessary if the Taliban simply compiled with the resolutions by closing terrorist training camps and sending Usama Bin Laden to a country where he can be brought to justice. Keep 'em coming, **John**. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/71 "2004-03-24T07:03:26Z")
Gosh, the Bush Administrationis _lying_ in their responses to Clarke’s allegations? I’d **never** imagine they’d do _that!_ :eek: 😉 (I said it before, and I’ll say it again – “We already know George W. Bush is a shameless liar; why should we believe anything he says now?”) ---
**Author:** ![edwino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@edwino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edwino)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/72 "2004-03-24T07:06:22Z")
I am deeply saddened by this whole matter. There are serious questions here, about data emerging from the time of Bush I through Clinton and into Bush II. We are free to criticize past eras, but this administration seems hell-bent on preventing any criticism of its actions before or after 9/11. This is an independent commission; apparently the Bush White House wants us to take all of their actions on faith. Rice went on something like 8 talk shows this morning but refuses to appear in front of this (non-legislative branch) council because of a perceived conflict of powers. It all seems like a thinly veiled excuse. What is even worse is that those who dare speak out are immediately smeared. Ad hominems and downright lies were heaped upon Clarke yesterday, much like the reaction given to the O’Neill book of a few months ago. Rice was only too happy to point out Clarke’s service in the Clinton administration (neglecting the service in the Reagan and Bush I White Houses). Cheney basically lied on Limbaugh, saying that Clarke was out of the loop and was working in cybersecurity instead of antiterrorism. Clarke was actually the primary antiterrorism guy before and through 9/11, and was only moved (on his own impetus) later. Bush backers, please, just take a step back. This isn’t about lying under oath, this isn’t influence peddling or corruption. This isn’t even about shady arms deals or even a politically motivated break-in. **This is about a fucking attack on our country!** The American public deserves to hear from everyone who was involved, everyone who may have played a part in the actions before and after 9/11. We deserve to get the best data to plot out the best ways to prevent another attack. I don’t want to point fingers; I to identify and correct past mistakes. I want to know if we really are better off than we were before 9/11. We deserve to know if this administration is really blindered by ideology and is not addressing the foremost terrorism concerns. And it seems like this whole thing has now been sidetracked into who worked for which Democrat, who is friends with which Democrat, and what influence this has on the election. Their politicization of this process, their stonewalling and shitsmearing only is tearing this country into pieces and leaving past mistakes unrecognized and uncorrected. Please, please, read [this article](http://slate.msn.com/id/2097681/) by Will Saletan in Slate, especially the last four paragraphs. I really am beginning to fear that this presidency is both ripping the country up (through marginalization of dissenters) and leaving us open to attack (through ideologically based, unexamined policy) for short term political gain. I know I feel marginalized as having extremist views (at least according to what the adminstration says about people who think like me…) and I always considered myself a moderate before this administration. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/73 "2004-03-24T07:07:21Z")
Yet another administration bigwig agrees with Clarke’s account: Thomas R. Maertens, the (former?) National Security Council director for the Nuclear Nonproliferation > [@](#): > > “He (Clarke) was the guy pushing hardest, saying again and again that something big was going to happen, including possibly here in the U.S.,” Mr. Maertens said Monday from his home in Minnesota. But Mr. Maertens said that the Bush White House was reluctant to believe a holdover from the previous administration. > > “They really believed their campaign rhetoric about the Clinton administration,” Mr. Maertens said. “So anything they did was bad, and the Bushies were not going to repeat it. And it’s disgusting to see the administration now putting a full-court smear on Clarke — for being right.” Seems like some real momentum is building here. While the Bushes have been able to dismiss claims made here and there, they are starting to add up, and confirm each other, and their shrill rebuttals are starting to be seen as changing the subject, responding to straw men, and just generally off-point and deceptive. It’s high time the Bush administration took a different tack on defending itself. Rather than ridiculously trying to portrary itself as MORE focused on terror than anyone else prior to 9/11, they should admit that Clarkes obsession was just one of many many possibilities: just because he was passionate and turned out to be right doesn’t mean that it was possible to know that he was right. And they also have to be honest about Iraq: yes they did think that taking out Saddam was a priority right from the start (a blinding priority? well, maybe they can’t go there), but that there really is a good case for it (the neo-con case), and they apologize for not being frank with the American people, but maybe otherwise it would have never gotten done. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/74 "2004-03-24T07:07:37Z")
> [@Desmostylus](#): > > It’s pretty obvious that Bush wasn’t interested in “the law enforcement approach”, even if it could have prevented 9/11. Nice try, **Des** , but I’m debating with **'luci** and what his proposal is, not Bush and what he did or didn’t do. If you want to bash Bush, knock yourself out. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/75 "2004-03-24T07:24:12Z")
> [@edwino](#): > > We are free to criticize past eras, but this administration seems hell-bent on preventing any criticism of its actions before or after 9/11. No doubt about it now. GW really meant it when he said that if you’re not with us, you’re against us. And opposition of any kind seems to be intolerable. I heard Rice on one TV show complaining over and over that Clarke’s proposals weren’t for military action. This would indicate to me that if the proposal wasn’t for use of the military it wasn’t accepted. ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/76 "2004-03-24T07:46:29Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > Nice try, **Des** , but I’m debating with **'luci** and what his proposal is, not Bush and what he did or didn’t do. > > If you want to bash Bush, knock yourself out. This ain’t your own private thread, **John**. In fact this thread _is_ about what Bush did or didn’t do. And what, are you hoping that **elicidator** won’t notice the huge gaping holes that I pointed out in your silly little “debate”? ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/77 "2004-03-24T08:08:32Z")
I can’t answer all your questions, Dirk, but some of them were covered in the Time Magazine article and some have been discussed in previous threads. > [@DirkGntly](#): > > As antiterrorism adviser to the previous administration, what was your advice when Sudan offered to capture and extradite bin Laden? That’s a myth. There was never a serious offer to extradite bin Laden. Clinton did order his assasination, however. > [@](#): > > What was your advice after the _USS Cole_ attack in 2000? As per the Time Magazine article, his advice was to aggressively go after al Qaeda. And in fact, Clinton directed him to come up with a plan to do so. The Clinton Administration ultimately decided not to hand a war to Bush right when he took office, so the plan wasn’t enacted. However, Clarke stayed on with the Bush Admin. and as we now know, desperately tried to convince them to act. I don’t know about the other incidents off-hand. > [@](#): > > I’m not attacking Clarke, specifically, but I _really_ want to know what his responses were at the time. Looking back, if he was making advice to actually do something about terrorism, then it appears that he was ignored for the last 15 years or so, too…if that was the case, why would he have not been ignored in the current administration, as well? My understanding is that Clarke was pretty consistent in his advice regarding al Qaeda. You might make a case for Clinton waiting too long to do something (although I think awareness of al Qaeda was a gradual process; I don’t think it was well known in '93), but if you look at what the Clinton Admin. did in the late 90s, you can’t really say “ignored”. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/78 "2004-03-24T15:10:04Z")
> [@Desmostylus](#): > > This ain’t your own private thread, **John**. In fact this thread _is_ about what Bush did or didn’t do. And what, are you hoping that **elicidator** won’t notice the huge gaping holes that I pointed out in your silly little “debate”? Nope. In point of fact, **Apos** did not even designate a debate in his OP. You may want to turn the thread into a Bush bashing fest, and you are of course free to try to do that. And I’m free to point at that your reply to my post had absolutely nothing to do with the point I was making. ---
**Author:** ![OneYogini](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/b9e5f3/32.png) [@OneYogini](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneYogini)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/79 "2004-03-24T15:17:44Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] Nope. In point of fact, **Apos** did not even designate a debate in his OP. [QUOTE] Thank you John. ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681/80 "2004-03-25T01:02:24Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > You bet I did, and I stand by it. Persons who _still_ don’t think this is a shooting war have no business whatsoever making any kind of comment at all about how things were regarded prior to 9-11 and can safely be ignored. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-begins-clarke-goes-public-with-allegations-of-terror-mishandling/235681.md?page=5)