quote:Clarke retired early in 2003 after 30 years in government service. He was among the longest-serving White House staffers, transferred in from the State Department in 1992 to deal with threats from terrorism and narcotics.
Clarke previously led the government's secretive Counterterrorism and Security Group, made up of senior officials from the FBI (news - web sites), CIA (news - web sites), Justice Department (news - web sites) and armed services, who met several times each week to discuss foreign threats.
Here's what he had to say about the Bush administration:
quote:"I'm sure I'll be criticized for lots of things, and I'm sure they'll launch their dogs on me," Clarke said. "But frankly I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something."
quote:Almost immediately after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Clarke said the president asked him directly to find whether Iraq was involved in the suicide hijackings.
"Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said, 'Iraq did this,'" said Clarke, who told the president that U.S. intelligence agencies had never found a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida.
quote:Bin Laden had been saying for years, 'America wants to invade an Arab country and occupy it, an oil-rich Arab country.' This is part of his propaganda," Clarke said. "So what did we do after 9/11? We invade ... and occupy an oil-rich Arab country, which was doing nothing to threaten us."
When reports like this are coming from insiders - people who worked for the Bush administration itself - how long can this idea that Bush is in doing well in the war on terror last?
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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So the "former White House counterterrorism coordinator," whose job was to prevent terrorist attacks, is trying to blame other people for the administration's failure to stop the terrorist attacks? Definitely an unbiased source, there.
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He's the expert who failed miserably at his job and therefore has incentive to spread the blame around as much as possible.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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The most important thing about his story is that he's written a book about it which says to me, more than anything else, that he's looking for $$$.
Posts: 995 | Registered: May 2003
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If your job is contingent on the man in the White House, you tell him what he wants to hear. Did you guys read about the chief Medicare actuary who came forward saying his numbers were deliberately withheld from Congress? The *correct* numbers that were relased about two weeks after the bill passed Congress, and were ~$200 billion higher than the ones Congress used?
Washington is a much, much different animal than the rest of the world. Every four years the power structure changes. If you want to hang on to your job, you make sure you're on the good side of those in power.
This guy, obviously, feels that Bush is losing his grip on Washington and the nation, and therefore came forward with the book. Paul O'Neill was in a similar position, except that he'd already been cast out by the Bush Administration -- by coming out against him, he can hope maybe the Dems will give him a phone call come next November/December if they win the presidency.
[ March 20, 2004, 11:27 PM: Message edited by: Kasie H ]
Posts: 1784 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote: “Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq,” Clarke said. “We all said, 'But no, no, al-Qaida is in Afghanistan.”
Clarke, who is expected to testify Tuesday before a federal panel reviewing the attacks, said Rumsfeld complained in the meeting that “there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.”
A spokesman for Rumsfeld said he couldn’t comment immediately.
It looks like he's not just going after Bush, but also other people high up in the government.
Dagonee, have you considered that Clarke couldn't have said anything about what was happening behind the scenes (either for professional or legal reasons)? I've got a feeling that this guy probably didn't want to have his named drug through the mud before he could speak his side of the story.
Posts: 851 | Registered: Oct 2001
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Clarke's story is confirmed by two other sources, according to 60 minutes, one of whom was a direct witness to the conversation between Bush and Clarke.
This looks to be real, and if true, it won't go away because the guy who's story it is happens to be a "former" staffer, or wrote a book, or that 9/11 happened while he was employed... and part of the reason why is that Clarke is the same guy who presented the Bush administration with the Clinton administrations terrorist assessment that accurately reflected the true situation concerning Bin Ladin. This is the guy who said "We need to do something about Bin Ladin before he does something about us," to president Bush, and was then duly ignored.
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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So the administration is being condemned for discussions that took place in the course of deciding a policy? Even if Rumsfield or Cheney pushed for attacks in Iraq, where did we go first?
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What would your point be as to where we went first? Doesn't it bother you in the slightest that SENIOR administration officials wanted to attack Iraq, and were looking for any reason to attack them (and wouldn't it cast any doubt in your mind to the validity of the claims of WMD's in Iraq?)?
Posts: 851 | Registered: Oct 2001
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They are being condemned for mishandling information. In this case, for telling intelligence to show that 9/11 was linked with iraq (it wasn't) in order to persuade the american public that war in iraq was necessary. Since PNAC (an organization who's membership is a who's who of the bush administration) was writing as early as 1998 that war in iraq, even under false pretenses, was essential for american hegemony in the middle east, and now we are finding out that, indeed, the pretenses for war ARE false, we should be holding the administration accountable for knowlingly misleading the american public into a war that the merits of which were hotly debated.
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quote:Doesn't it bother you in the slightest that SENIOR administration officials wanted to attack Iraq, and were looking for any reason to attack them (and wouldn't it cast any doubt in your mind to the validity of the claims of WMD's in Iraq?)?
Or that Senior admininstration officials were suspicious of Iraq and wanted that link looked into.
Should I spend time posting the numerous personal, corporate, and political connections between France and Iraq and Russia and Iraq to demonstrate why they opposed the war? The man was asked to look into a link between Iraq and 9/11. He was not told to lie.
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Dag, I guess I'll just have to admit that you read this differently than I do. When I read comments lik “there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.", I find that very disturbing.
Honestly, what Iraq, Russia and France did was between them. Those administrations should answer to their own people.The Bush adminisration represents me, and that makes them accountable for their actions.
If a company was acting in bad faith to the public, then yes, I do think that the company should be held publicly accountable as well. If I found a company that conspired to put American troops in harm's way, I can guarantee you that I wouldn't be purchasing anything from that company ever again.
Posts: 851 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:Honestly, what Iraq, Russia and France did was between them. Those administrations should answer to their own people.The Bush adminisration represents me, and that makes them accountable for their actions.
I was pointing out how easy it is to construct conspiracy theories out of bits and pieces and how it's not always responsible to do so.
quote:If a company was acting in bad faith to the public, then yes, I do think that the company should be held publicly accountable as well. If I found a company that conspired to put American troops in harm's way, I can guarantee you that I wouldn't be purchasing anything from that company ever again.
This one makes no sense. On what are you basing this accusation?
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You're right, Dagonee. It is easy to create conspiracy theories out of little bits and pieces of information. But this administration has proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is untrustworthy. If it is accused of lying, and or asking others to lie, about this war, then the accusation is most likely correct. And, it seems Clarke has an eyewitness to back his story. Of course, Bush does too. Hmm...Maybe Clarkes daddy bought his eyewitness, and if thats the case, I wont trust his story.
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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There's enough money seeking to discredit Bush that neither side can use availability of bribery funds very safely.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Ahh, but the difference is that the money coming in from the Bush camp is coming from an affiliation of people looking to make sure they stay on top and lose none of their current cushy capitalistic comforts and to keep the unbalanced laws that help them stay on top. Whereas the other side is looking to stop America from sliding into a incredibly deep financial pit of despair. The money coming in to discredit Bush may be dirty, but it smells like lavendar in a pig sty compared to the other side.
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:I was pointing out how easy it is to construct conspiracy theories out of bits and pieces and how it's not always responsible to do so.
This isn't just bits and pieces of evidence though. It's insiders who knew, spoke to, and worked with Bush on this very issue - and should know what his motivations were. And it explains a whole mountain of publicly observable problems that this administration has had, not the least of which is the fact that they based a whole war on the existence of WMDs that did not exist.
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