We are given to understand that GeeDubya and crew were very, very concerned with terrorism, Al Queda and ObL previous to 9/11. One of their very tippy-tip-top priorities. Mr. Clarke’s allegations are therefore horseshit.
Now, we can take it as a given that the Bushiviks regarded their tax policy, energy policy, education policy, all of these as important, because they talked about it all the time. Bringing thier issues before the people, keeping us informed.
And yet, oddly enough, the folks there at the Center, googling as best they can, cannot find a single instance of either GeeDubya, Dick Cheney, or Condoleeza Rice so much as mentioning Al Queda or ObL prior to 9/11.
Now isn’t that odd? Is this an example of partisan blindness, a refusal to recognize? Is it a lie, which can be so easily disproved?
So…they have a contest going, for anybody who can find so much as one such reference.
What an opportunity for our Tighty Righty brethren to sing a loud “neener neener” and discredit those scurillous Bush-bashers!
So how about it, guys? Or, shall I say, “bring it on”?
All I have to say is if the Bush Admisnistration is putting the same effort to assassinate bin Laden and the rest of al-Qaeda, that they put to assassinate Clarke’s character, then the Bush Administration would have finished al-Qaeda off a long time ago.
Personally, I don’t place any significant blame on Bush or Clinton for actions (or lack thereof) against Al Qaeda prior to 9/11.
And I struggle to place blame on Bush for his obsession with Saddam Hussein. Why? Because he pretty much clued us in during the second presidential debate that Saddam was public enemy number one, at least in his mind. Shame on us, I say, even though I didn’t vote for him.
But I do specifically blame Bush for focusing effort and resources on Iraq after 9/11 - and have done so since the beginning of the Iraq fiasco. Posts on this message board bear that out…
I’d say that he has had more than 10 minutes of fame. I mean, he was the chief architect of the administration’s anti-terror policy after 9/11 that people fallen over each other in praise of. This isn’t just some random fella who hung around the White House: this is one of the key players in post 9/11. He shaped it. He kept us focused on Afghanistan for as long as he was there. 10 minutes of fame? The guy had a career in a major position for years and years.
The other thing is that Clarke is far from alone in expressing this view. There are a very large number of people who agree with him. We’ve already mentioned many of them. Here’s one more:
"Gen. Donald Kerrick served as deputy national security advisor under Clinton and remained on the NSC for several months into the new Bush administration. Kerrick wrote his replacement, Stephen Hadley, a two-page memo. “It was classified,” Kerrick told me. “I said they needed to pay attention to al-Qaida and counterterrorism. I said we were going to be struck again. We didn’t know where or when. They never once asked me a question nor did I see them having a serious discussion about it. They didn’t feel it was an imminent threat the way the Clinton administration did. Hadley did not respond to my memo. I know he had it. I agree with Dick that they saw those problems through an Iraqi prism. But the evidence wasn’t there.”
But that’s another thing: he ran on a platform against nation building. If he was planning all along to take down down Saddam, occupy the country, and basically fulfill the neocon view of transforming the Middle East (which, as I’ve said many times, is a view and set of arguments that you should respect, even if you don’t agree), then attacking Iraq wasn’t a flip-flip dictated by the needs of 9/11: he was misleading everyone during his campaign about his true foriegn policy ambitions.
Maybe you were hearing different sound bites than I, but I don’t remember Rice every mentioning Al Qaeda in the interview. She mentions Bin Laden. I guess the idea is that we are supposed to fall for the masked man fallacy here, right?
I think it more likely that he was simply campaigning, knowing that “nation-building” was politically unpopular. His Saddam comment appeared to be a slip from the talking points - an inside glimpse to what came to mind whenever the mideast came up.
William Saletan makes the case that a big strategy that was long time in coming shouldn’t have precluded immediate actions, and that doing so was an oversight.
Which reminds me of another dimension of the hindsight issue.
We have the luxury of hindsight in knowing that certain actions might or might not have helped prevent 9/11. However, that hindsight also narrows our focus too far on what conduct might have been irresponsible and negligent.
For instance, just because it turns out that the terrorists did NOT target a plane to crash into the President’s known location does not mean that, at the time, it was responsible for the President to stay in his publically known and scheduled location for also thirty minutes after it became clear that terrorists were hijacking planes and using them to hit key targets. Heck, someone could have detonated a truck bomb outside the school. Just because no one did does not mean it was a good idea to leave the President in a known location for so long after attacks began, let alone have a live press conference in a known location.
Likewise, just because certain actions may not have prevented 9/11 doesn’t mean that a lack of urgency in response to threats is acceptable. For all we knew then, taking certain minor actions: like killing Osama, COULD have helped prevent a major terrorist attack. Just because we now know that it probably would not have stopped what DID happen does not mean that Clinton and Clarke and Bush are off the hook for failing to do so when it was clear that he was a dangerous threat to national security. Who knows what he could have decided to work on that we could have thwarted if history had been only slightly different?
Doesn’t sqaure: we’ve now had several sources for the fact that his administration was planning to take Iraq right from the very start. Nation building may have been unpopular: yet that was apparently exactly what he was planning on using the military to do, all the while telling us the opposite.
Clarke is really “shaking the tree” himself, bringing out all sorts of former adminstration and agency employees who confirm and even go beyond his key stories:
Edmonds has already testified before the commission, but she is under a gag order not to reveal the specifics of things she’s translated and documents she’s seen. She was fired in 2002 from the FBI for alleging that the FBI deliberately had translators move slowly in order to get more funding, but the case against her was dismissed by Ashcroft, the gag order placed.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, says that she’s credible, and her story is corroborated by others in the FBI. I guess we’d better find those documents to see is what she’s saying is true. She also says that:
I just can’t imagine WTF the idiots in the administration were thinking. On July 23, 2001 Bush attended a G8 meeting in Genoa:
So then a couple of weeks later, on August 6, Bush gets a warning that Al Qaeda are going to attack the US using aircraft. What does Bush do? Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.
Actually, upon a second reading, I understand where you might have gotten your impression. I had to ask myself why I missed so obvious an implication; and after a few minutes of reflection it occurred to me that, from my perspective, a potential inability to continue pursuing foreign policy initiatives on Bush’s part is, by definition, a GOOD thing. So the possibility that one might interpret the passage as a kind of underhanded support for Bush slipped right past me, if you see what I mean.
As far as it goes, I doubt the hearings will have quite so powerful an impact as the author of that little snippet believes, myself. They certainly aren’t getting much airplay on this side of the pond, at least not up here in the Great White North. I think the problem for the Bush posse is more of a domestic issue, and tied to the election. Fundamentally, it’s a problem of public perception. If Clarke’s “version” of the Bush administration gains “traction” – if his narrative of lax incompetence, obsession with Iraq, and so forth, manages to become the dominant media version of the presidency – then Bush will never have a chance in November. Rather, he will be held accountable, possibly for the first time since he assumed office. And I suspect they are afraid of Clarke, that Clarke might just pull it off. Already in his first responses to the administration’s attacks he’s shown shrewd aplomb and fighter spirit. Regarding the accusations circulating around his friendship with Beers, for example, he’s simply explained that they have a 25-year-long friendship that he fully intends to maintain. What self-respecting right-winger can impugn that kind of loyalty? And on Larry King the other night he was even more direct than in his Congressional testimony, flatly stating the Rice wasn’t doing her job prior to 9/11 and practically laying the blame at her doorstep. For once we’re seeing someone who, when punched, punches back. And man, the counter-punch is a doozy.
In addition, Clarke has impeccable Republican credentials. He’s a staunchly right-wing, nationalist hawk. (I suspect that, other than our shared view that the current administration is incompetent, he and I would have no political opinions in common whatsoever. By contrast, he and Sam are on literally the same sheet of music, if only Sam would realize it.) Accusations that he’s somehow working for Kerry are in this context simply ludicrous – only the nutballs buy into that blather. So I judge that Clarke is positioned in the field of the right in such a manner that his defection can be potentially disastrous. His criticism is much harsher and more difficult to rebuff than, say, that of a democratic critic (like Howard Dean, for example), whose arguments can be rhetorically dismissed as “liberal drivel.”
A lot of posters in this thread have noticed that most of Clarke’s views are not particularly new, and the facts he reports on are known to anyone who’s picked up a copy of Al Franken’s Liars, for example. What’s new is who is saying these things. The administration is going to try to treat Clarke the way it has treated so many of its other critics, but the strategy might boomerang on them. If Rice responds in kind to Clarke’s accusations, what might he say next? I look forward to seeing that match – Rice would have a better chance at KO’ing Mohammed Ali in his prime. It could only be worse for the Bushitas if they were to lose someone like Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich, or Rush Limbaugh.
Now, guys, fair’s fair, and all. We’ve been hogging the bandwidth with all these cites and proof and documentation and stuff. Time to let the other guys get in with all of thiers. I’m sure they are eager to display the firm foundations of thier opinions, but we’ve been crowding them out.
OK, pals and gals. We’re all ears. At either end of our grins.
While we wait, lets mull this rather odd revelation
“…As she prepares to leave her job at the end of the year, Ms. Rice, the president’s national security adviser, now finds herself at the center of a political storm, furiously defending both the White House and her own reputation…”
Anybody else remember anything about this floating about? Or is this the first we’ve heard about it? A sudden urge to spend more time with her family? A short walk off the boat deck to see whats at the end of the plank?
If Rice actually said that, I wonder what’s going on in the background. Is she going to be the sacrificial lamb? Or does she simply recognize that she’s finished?
