According to CNN, Bob Graham, the Democrat most prominently placed on the various “intelligence” committees, said he’s comfortable with releasing the testimony before his committee because, so far as he can recall, there is no glaring discrepency between Mr. Clarke’s testimony then and now.
Mr. Clarke has already mea fuckup in public, he admits that he was sent forth to deliver spin, and did as he was told.
You know what would send Karl Rove into instant cardiac arrest? If the Pubbies threatened Clarke with a perjury indictment for lying to the Congress (presenting the preferred WH spin, that is) and he said “Yes, you’re right, I did, I committed perjury in the service of the Bush Administration. I’m guilty, and I’m sorry, clap on the handcuffs, its a fair cop, but society is to blame…”
Right now the Bush Administration is fighting for its life. This is not a Marques of Queensbury contest. There will be hitting below the belt and eye gouging and biting. The ship of state is taking on water rapidly with the sudden public interest in things that have been openly discussed on these boards for some two and one half years now. Maybe the hints that Dr. Rice is leaving is the first of throwing cargo overboard to lighten the ship. The Administration knows that unless it stops the erosion of what public confidence there is in its competence the whole damn ship will sink.
Because desperate people do desperate things you can expect desperate things to be done, wild accusations made, bloody shirts waived and all sorts of balderdash to be wrapped in the flag. Right now there is a segment of the body politic that would slit their grandmother’s throat and sell their children into white slavery to keep the present outfit in power.
The ironic thing about this is that the present crisis does not have Senator Kerry’s finger prints on it any where. The best the Administration can do is bitch that President Clinton didn’t fix it before they got in office and that Mr. Clarke might maybe have a possible motive to misrepresent the facts. So far as I can see there has been a abrupt discovery that a man who was trusted by the Reagan White House, the GHW Bush White House, the Clinton White House and for two years in the GW Bush White House is now a Fifth Columnist because he has publicly said things that the Administration does not like but has been unwilling or unable to refute in detail or in general.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is going to get really ugly.
What was the infamous line used during the last Bush Administration (or was it Reagan’s)? “Mistakes were made.” First thing I thought of when I read your post, **cap/b].
My previous post regarding Bob Graham’s incarnation as a Democrat Who Kicks Butt is woefully inadequate, I find out. As frequent, this from Talking Points Memo without which…etc.
There is a poker term called going “over the top” on someone. It means to answer a raise in bet (and a possible bluff) with “shock and awe”. The other guy bets $20, you raise all your money, your house, your momma. and the horse upon in which you rode. The other guy is expected to sheepishly fold and call for a new deck. Its a gutsy play and not for the faint-hearted. Its for certified (or certifiable) Ballsy Mo-Fo’s only.
And Mr. Graham, you qualify. Democrats who fight back. Who knew?
Left Hand, as I pointed out, you are wrong when you say:
The instance must be of her mentioning Al Qaeda. To assume that a mention of Bin Laden is tantamount to knowing all about the organization Al Qaeda is what’s known as the masked man fallacy: to assume that just because someone knows one aspect of something, they know all aspects of it.
Clarke’s quote regards her knowing about Al Qaeda, not Bin Laden.
When Rice gave her speech, I had heard about Bin Laden, and knew he was a threat to the US, but I had never heard of Al Qaeda either. There have been litterally hundreds of murky terrorist groups out there, and knowing who’s involved with who is a serious undertaking.
I think Kerry set the tone when he refused to apologize for the crooked liars remark. It turned me from being for him because he was not Smirk to being really for him. And how true it turned out to be (no surprise there.)
I think I jumped the Republican ship just in time. If more Republicans were like Clarke, though, I might still be one.
Don’t be so quick to pound the nail in Shrub’s coffin just yet. I know many a conservative thought that they had Clinton clobbered in the public mind, and yet he managed to get re-elected, Shrub may yet pull off a second term by the narrowest of margins. A lot can happen between now and November.
Well, I thought the remark was intemperate, even if it was directed only at local Republicans. But the Republican party basically gave him a boatload of examples right after he made the statement, so it’s kind of a moot point. (voted 350 times to increase taxes? Sure, if you count every single provision of a single bill as a separate vote for a tax increase, and count voting against a tax cut as a tax increase, etc. Voted to “gut” intelligence spending… by 1%, when the Republicans at the time bypassed his bill because they wanted to “gut” it even more? Bribed a Senator to change his vote on Medicaid? Bullied a Republican not to run in Texas? Told an analyst he’d be fired if he revealed the true cost of the Medicare bill?)
There is actually a good argument to be made that Bush’s loss in this election will be good for the Party in the long run. It will:
smash the hold the ultra-social conservatives have on the party by handing them a huge defeat
allow moderates like McCain, Guliani, Powell, Pataki, Specter, and other such moderates to gain power over the party
All while the Republicans hold onto Congress. Kerry’s term will be essentially gridlocked on everything but national defense: all his promised spending programs will be mostly gutted, but everyone will line up on putting effort into fighting the war on terror. This leaves Kerry weak for an attack from a Republican moderate, who would have very broad appeal. If the Republicans throw up a moderate in 2008 who isn’t way out there on social issues, they’ll have my vote easily.
I take it upon myself to speak for the entire conservative wing of the extreme left, Apos, to heartily endorse your fond wishes. For my money, nothing could more advance the welfare of the Republic than an honest conservative party with which we might negotiate, consult and, if necessary, threaten.
From you lips to the ears of Goldwater.
I have some stuff to growl about, but for this post, please accept my cordial applause. Pip, pip!
I agree with you. I actually think a win for Bush in 2004 will be damaging to the Republicans in the long run. Bush’s preference for clinging to ideological positions regardless of real world evidence (his philosophy on tax cuts for example, or his insistence on linking Iraq to 9-11) is not a recipe for good governance. Four more years of scandal, mismanagement, war, job loss and raging deficits and we could wind up with a sizeable portion of the country that decides that the problem isn’t just George Bush, but the Republican Party as a whole. Coattails work both ways, and the officerholders that get swept in by a popular president can get swept out again by an unpopular one.
Now as a Democrat, this would suit me just fine, but I’m really surprised that no one in the Republican party is worried about Bush dragging them all down. Why has no one in the Republican party challenged Bush for the nomination? I mean, he’s drifting pretty far from large parts of his base by running such huge deficits and raising government spending, as well as getting the U.S. involved in foreign entanglements and nation-building. Why isn’t a more mainstream Republican like McCain running?
At this Link, two people who worked for Clarke during the Clinton years stand up for him.
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
The assumption driving Mr. Bush’s war on terrorism is that the United States can win by targeting rogue states and the tyrants who rule them. The war in Afghanistan was about ousting the Taliban and denying al-Qaeda a sanctuary; the Iraq war was about ousting Saddam.
That view of the terrorist threat is deeply flawed, quite apart from the dubious claims about ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Al-Qaeda is a transnational network of terrorists, less like a state than like a non-governmental organization or multinational corporation with multiple independent franchises. It thrives on an Islamist ideology, and extends its presence to the far reaches of the globe – not just in rogue and failed states, but within the West as well. Its terrorists can strike – whether in Bali, Casablanca, Riyadh, Istanbul, Madrid or New York and Washington – without the direct support of states. That is what makes it so frightening.
Mr. Clarke’s charges have stung the Bush administration not just because of the stature of the accuser, but because at their core, they say that more than two years after the worst terrorist attack in history, the President and his advisers still don’t get what happened.
That is the true, and alarming, message of this week’s debate.
Interesting question! I wonder, over the last 60 years or so, how often has an in-power President who wants to run for a 2nd term been challenged for the nomination by a candidate in the same party?
Just off the top of my head, Carter by Kennedy, Ford by Reagan, Johnson by McCarthy.
Sen. Graham just shot up the charts in the Veepstakes with that display of honesty, and politicianship that underscores the lack of substance to the Republicans’ countercharges. David Ignatius comments
The election may now have been decided, and not based on the facts of 9/11 as such.
Clarke says that Rice seemed perplexed when he told her that Al Qaeda was a major issue.
Republican news circulates a speech in which Rice talks about Bin Laden that took place before Clarke met with Rice
And 2 is not the same thing as refuting 1, even though people are falling all over themselves to treat it like it was. (the desperation here is really really telling).
It should be noted that only a week or two before, the White House said that 9/11 would and should be a political football. Seems like another aspect of how big a miscalculation that was. In addition to leaving a sour taste in a majority of Americans, it made them unable to argue very hard that 9/11 shouldn’t be politicized like this.
I disagree. I heard Dr. Rice’s remarks (prior to the election) and they were clear that she took OBL seriously enough to acknowledge a potential attack against the US. She even nailed the problem of separation between internal and external intelegence organizations. It would be interesting to consider the popularity of such cooperation prior to 9/11 given the current objections to the Homeland Security Act of 2002.
Quote:
RICE: Osama bin Laden, do two things, the first is you really have to get the intelligence agencies better organized to deal with the terrorist threat to the United States itself. One of the problems that we have is a kind of split responsibility, of course, between the CIA in foreign intelligence and the FBI in domestic intelligence. There needs to be better cooperation because we don’t want to wake up one day and find out that Osama bin Laden has been successful on our own territory.
Clark’s credibility aside, his apology is reminiscent of Robert McNamara’s mia copa over Vietnam. He is entitled to apologize for his own failures and I respect that. It would have meant more if his book had not just hit the stands. Seems a little crass to apologize and then collect a check for the explanation.