I guess you're right, rimrocker... it's more of a hyper-spin operation, where from moment to moment they're trotting stuff out to throw at Clarke to see if some of it will stick. I really like the quote you gave us from Ryan Lizza. It sums things up very well. I love it when I'm thinking things and figuring out how to express those thoughts and then read something good from someone who has done it for me. A good example: Former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke is proving to be a tougher opponent. He's served presidents from both parties. He says he won't work in a Kerry administration. His foreign policy views in the 1980s and 1990s placed him in the camp of Republican hardliners. He writes warmly of his relationship with Richard Perle. And most of his attacks on Bush are from the right, not the left. He is undoubtedly the toughest critic whose credibility the White House has ever had to undermine; he represents a potent cocktail of nonpartisanship, expertise, and withering criticism aimed at Bush's greatest electoral strength. For the last 48 hours, administration officials have done their best to chip away at Clarke and his case against the president. They've adopted several different tacks--none of which is particularly honest, and many of which are mutually contradictory. Another: The new method for overcoming the inconvenient fact that Bush put Clarke in charge of terrorism was to simply write Clarke out of the history of the Bush administration altogether. Instead of Bush's terrorism adviser, Clarke became a weak Clintonite who did little to halt Al Qaeda's rise during the 1990s. If there was one consistent theme to yesterday's attack, this was it. The most intellectually dishonest performance was Dick Cheney's emergency interview on Rush Limbaugh's radio show. Limbaugh wondered how in the world Bush could have made this guy Clarke head of counterterrorism. "Well, I wasn't directly involved in that decision," Cheney said. "He was moved out of the counterterrorism business over to the cybersecurity side of things. That is, he was given the new assignment at some point there. I don't recall the exact time frame." Who could be expected to keep track of such minor details as how long Clarke was kept as counterterrorism czar? Maybe some scenes from Clarke's book would jog the vice president's memory. Clarke was the guy standing in Cheney's office on the morning of 9/11 with Rice in the minutes after the first attack. He's the guy that Condi turned to and asked, "Okay, Dick, you're the crisis manager, what do you recommend?" Later in the day he was also the guy standing in between Rice and Cheney in the White House Situation Room. He was the one whose shoulder Cheney placed his hand on when he asked, "Are you getting everything you need, everybody doing what you want?" Cheney might also remember Clarke as the guy who asked Cheney to request authorization from Bush to shoot down any hijacked airplanes. He may also recall him as the man who briefed Bush when the president finally arrived back at the White House. In other words, Cheney neglected to inform Limbaugh's audience that Clarke didn't move to cyberterrorism until a month after 9/11. Good stuff indeed. Thought I'd try to help those out who don't like to read more than 4 or 5 paragraphs at a time.
Proof positive that Clarke has great credibility? The White House is refuting his character, not what he said.
MacBeth, heal thyself. I can't conceive of ANY eventuality where you would possibly ever admit you were wrong, so please spare us your condecending crappola. Please go find some of my old quotes and try and 'throw them back in (my) face.' Certainly I admit I thought Iraq was farther along in WMDs. I never came close to saying they were close to proliferating tomorrow. Please back up your irritating claim with some proof. As I recall I claimed the threat of Iraqi proliferation at any point was enough to remove Saddam, and I still stand by that. If you have a 'salient' point to make about that then please do. If you'd like to repost our conversations about that, please do. Your ignorance about proliferation in general was more than apparent then and maybe some of your praisers might rethink their hero worship with a review. I've seen a lot of generalizations in this thread that certainly give me pause. Maybe some of you should consider some of these things: -many in favor of removing Saddam are NOT Bush supporters. -the main objective of the intervention in Iraq has been achieved, namely removing Saddam from power. -Saddam purposely tried to convince the West that he DID in fact have advanced WMD programs. Something most MacBethites conveinently overlook. It really isn't hard see how someone could believe he had WMD programs in light of this FACT (in caps so you know it is a FACT rather than opinion. If you disagree then please provide an alternate expert opinion). -Its easy to believe BOTH that Saddam should have been removed AND that Bush has squandered potential international cooperation re: Al Queda. -Indicting the administration for Iraq because it took military resources away from Afghanistan fails to acknowledge what 'might have happened' in an alternate scenario: mainly US forces engaging Al Queda and the Taliban en masse in the outlying regions of Afghanistan's mountains. Such an eventuality may have in fact been more undesirable than engaging them in Iraq. No matter what MacBeth wants to pretend, it is infinitely more desirable to engage them in Iraq than in their mountain hideouts ala the Soviets in the 80s. -Certainly I can appreciate the time many of you spend on the board. That is cool and many of these discussions are fun to engage in, even if they get a little hot under the collar. But don't mistake my (in particular) absence with aquiesence to your oh so silly conclusions on policy choices. I simply have my hands full running my business and much less time than I did while in London to argue the same points time after time with an academic (namely MacBeth) who has plenty of time on his hands.
Its fun and interesting to pass the time here on a news forum that is part of a fan site for the Houston Rockets but lets keep our eyes on the prize here. What we post here is really next to meaningless and has probably less value than what's posted on GARM forum since apparently members of the Rox staff occasionaly read that. If you don't like some of the conservative posters here lets not get personal here but use that to motivate us to make real change. This election is going to be close and so if you're sick and upset by the posts of some of the posters use that to work to ending the GW Bush Administration in November. After that rant and rave all you want.
If I remember correctly, it was your commentary about the news story that got you those ill-wishes. Isn't that different?
I think there was little to none of MacBeth's own commentary in the post. I do remember people claiming that was the case. I don't know though, I'll let MacB answer for himself.
I don't have any problem with the war on terror, just the action in Iraq that has nothing to do with said war. Telling the truth IS a fascinating tactic, isn't it? If you actually read what Kerry has said about the war on terror, you wouldn't be able to keep this empty rhetoric up. Nobody is trying to assign OUR national defense to the UN, despite your "pathetic bleatings to the contrary." Actually, your inability to put together an intelligent post based on facts and evidence is the humorous part. You probably don't even see how pathetic your bleatings really are. The rising chorus of ex-Bush officials who are displeased with his policies is beginning to take hold in America. It is YOUR empty rhetoric that is worthy of guffaws. Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back. You have still not used a single fact or piece of evidence to support your position. All you have done is misrepresent the position of Democrats, specifically Kerry. I really hope Bush says the same things that his bobble heads do during this election cycle.
I disagree. I was the one who criticized his choice of language to introduce the "news article," although I wasn't the one who condemned him.
Again, Clarke is an idiot...This comes from the hearings... "Killing bin Laden would not have removed Al Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (search) said. "Moreover, the sleeper cells that flew the aircraft into the World Trade towers and the Pentagon were already in the United States months before the attack." So please, all the liberals out there, stop thinking Clarke is this savior and new all the info to stop 9/11...This unfortunate plan was already in motion...
It is not just the liberals who are criticizing Bush and nobody has claimed that Clarke could have stopped 9/11. The question is whether the administration was focused on Iraq immediately after 9/11 despite verified intelligence that showed that Iraq was not part of the plot.
w LOL, rrj_gamz, you do a good enough job making yourself look silly to bother responding to. Maybe you should stick to domestic issues that you know better, like social security......errr, wait, never mind.... Anyway, speaking to the general issue which is way over your head, I just read a great piece in Slate about Clarke: http://slate.msn.com/id/2097685/ It's funny, just read back over this thread and you see the same pathetic attacks; nobody directly challenges Clarke's version of events, just a bunch of pathetic (and disjunctive) sideshow attacks, ranging from Rice ("We did everything he said!") to Cheney ("well he wasn't that important so we didn't bother with what he said") to blame Clinton. Oh, rrj-gamz, read the last 2 sentences to see one of many reasons why your post misses the point, btw
Uh, this is interesting. Transcript from a 2002 press briefing by Clarke with Jim Angle of Fox News and other reporters. I realize the link is from Fox, but I would imagine this is or will be corroborated (I assume the "Andrea" referred to by Clarke is Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC); it released by the White House today: RICHARD CLARKE: Actually, I've got about seven points, let me just go through them quickly. Um, the first point, I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration. Second point is that the Clinton administration had a strategy in place, effectively dating from 1998. And there were a number of issues on the table since 1998. And they remained on the table when that administration went out of office — issues like aiding the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, changing our Pakistan policy -- uh, changing our policy toward Uzbekistan. And in January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years. And the third point is the Bush administration decided then, you know, mid-January, to do two things. One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings, which we've now made public to some extent. And the point is, while this big review was going on, there were still in effect, the lethal findings were still in effect. The second thing the administration decided to do is to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided. [Later in the transcript] JIM ANGLE: You're saying that the Bush administration did not stop anything that the Clinton administration was doing while it was making these decisions, and by the end of the summer had increased money for covert action five-fold. Is that correct? CLARKE: All of that's correct. [Later] QUESTION: Were all of those issues part of alleged plan that was late December and the Clinton team decided not to pursue because it was too close to ... CLARKE: There was never a plan, Andrea. What there was was these two things: One, a description of the existing strategy, which included a description of the threat. And two, those things which had been looked at over the course of two years, and which were still on the table. QUESTION: So there was nothing that developed, no documents or no new plan of any sort? CLARKE: There was no new plan. [Later] QUESTION: Had those issues evolved at all from October of '98 'til December of 2000? CLARKE: Had they evolved? Um, not appreciably. ANGLE: What was the problem? Why was it so difficult for the Clinton administration to make decisions on those issues? One of the big problems was that Pakistan at the time was aiding the other side, was aiding the Taliban. And so, this would put, if we started aiding the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, this would have put us directly in opposition to the Pakistani government. These are not easy decisions. ANGLE: And none of that really changed until we were attacked and then it was ... CLARKE: No, that's not true. In the spring, the Bush administration changed — began to change Pakistani policy, um, by a dialogue that said we would be willing to lift sanctions. So we began to offer carrots, which made it possible for the Pakistanis, I think, to begin to realize that they could go down another path, which was to join us and to break away from the Taliban. So that's really how it started. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115085,00.html
This is back when he was still with the Bush administration mouthing the company line correct? So he is saying what they wanted him to say (which I guess they are implying is a lie, though I am not so sure).....now the people who told him to say it, are saying that we should not believe him, and believe them, because he once lied at their behest? I'm not sure if I get it. Either way he goes before the commission soon so this will all be moot once his sworn testimony is on the record.
Thanks for the post. That is interesting and contradictory to what he's saying now, and in his book. I don't think it blows Clarke out of the water as far as the negativity against the Bush administration, because the stuff he's saying now is corroborated by other people. There's more than one source on it now. It is strange that he was saying stuff then which apparently isn't really true. This does show him to not always be honest, though, and is a viable piece of evidence to add to this puzzle. Another point is that Clarke is contradicting himself within that very same interview. At one point he's saying that Clinton's administration didnt' really have anything they passed along to the Bush folks, and later he's saying that the Clinton people had a plan in place since 1998 and that the Bush people have kept everything Clinton had going operational. So he contradicts himself in the same interview.
From Woodward's book, page 39. "Until September 11, however, Bush had not put that thinking [that Clinton's response to al Qaeda emboldened bin Laden] into practice, nor had he pressed the issue of bin Laden. Though Rice and others were developing a plan to eliminate al Qaeda, no formal recommendations had ever been presented to the president. "I know there was a plan in the works. . . . I don't know how mature the plan was," Bush recalled. . . .He acknowledged that bin Laden was not his focus or that of his national security team. There was a significant difference in my attitude after September 11. I was not on point [before that date], but I knew he was a menace, and I knew he was a problem."
Wapo, January 12, 2003... _______________ U.S. Decision On Iraq Has Puzzling Past Opponents of War Wonder When, How Policy Was Set By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 12, 2003; Page A01 On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2½-page document marked "TOP SECRET" that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism. Almost as a footnote, the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, senior administration officials said. The previously undisclosed Iraq directive is characteristic of an internal decision-making process that has been obscured from public view. Over the next nine months, the administration would make Iraq the central focus of its war on terrorism without producing a rich paper trail or record of key meetings and events leading to a formal decision to act against President Saddam Hussein, according to a review of administration decision-making based on interviews with more than 20 participants. Instead, participants said, the decision to confront Hussein at this time emerged in an ad hoc fashion. Often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism. With the nation possibly on the brink of war, the result of this murky process continues to reverberate today: tepid support for military action at the State Department, muted concern in the military ranks of the Pentagon and general confusion among relatively senior officials -- and the public -- about how or even when the policy was decided. The decision to confront Iraq was in many ways a victory for a small group of conservatives who, at the start of the administration, found themselves outnumbered by more moderate voices in the military and the foreign policy bureaucracy. Their tough line on Iraq before Sept. 11, 2001, was embraced quickly by President Bush and Vice President Cheney after the attacks. But that shift was not communicated to opponents of military action until months later, when the internal battle was already decided. By the time the policy was set, opponents were left arguing over the tactics -- such as whether to go to the United Nations -- without clearly understanding how the decision was reached in the first place. "It simply snuck up on us," a senior State Department official said. The administration has embarked on something "quite extraordinary in American history, a preventive war, and the threshold for justification should be extraordinarily high," said G. John Ikenberry, an international relations professor at Georgetown University. But "the external presentation and the justification for it really seems to be lacking," he said. "The external presentation appears to mirror the internal decision-making quite a bit." Advocates for military action against Iraq say the process may appear mysterious only because the answer was so self-evident. They believe that Bush understood instantly after Sept. 11 that Iraq would be the next major step in the global war against terrorism, and that he made up his mind within days, if not hours, of that fateful day. "The most important thing is that the president's position changed after 9/11," said a senior official who pushed hard for action. "Saddam Must Go" A small group of senior officials, especially in the Pentagon and the vice president's office, have long been concerned about Hussein, and urged his ouster in articles and open letters years before Bush became president. Five years ago, the Dec. 1 issue of the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, headlined its cover with a bold directive: "Saddam Must Go: A How-to Guide." Two of the articles were written by current administration officials, including the lead one, by Zalmay M. Khalilzad, now special White House envoy to the Iraqi opposition, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, now deputy defense secretary. "We will have to confront him sooner or later -- and sooner would be better," Khalilzad and Wolfowitz wrote. They called for "sustained attacks on the elite military units and security forces that are the main pillar of Saddam's terror-based regime." In an open letter to President Bill Clinton in early 1998, Wolfowitz, Khalilzad and eight other people who now hold positions in the Bush administration -- including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- urged Clinton to begin "implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power." Many advocates of action were skeptical that Hussein could be contained indefinitely, even by repeated weapons inspections, and they viewed his control of Iraq -- and his possible acquisition of weapons of mass destruction -- as inherently destabilizing in the region. Many were also strong supporters of Israel, and they saw ousting Hussein as key to changing the political dynamic of the entire Middle East. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush and Cheney's position was not as clear-cut. In an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," about one year before the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney defended the decision of George H.W. Bush's administration not to attack Baghdad because, he said, the United States should not act as though "we were an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world, taking down governments." In the current environment, he said, "we want to maintain our current posture vis-à-vis Iraq." Bush, during the campaign, focused more on the dangers of nuclear proliferation than on the removal of Saddam Hussein. In a December 1999 debate among GOP presidential contenders, Bush backtracked when he said he'd "take 'em out" if Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Asked by the moderator whether he had said "take him out," Bush replied, "Take out the weapons of mass destruction." "Transformed by Sept. 11" In the early months of the Bush administration, officials intent on challenging Hussein sought to put Iraq near the top of the administration's foreign policy agenda. Many felt frustrated by the interagency debate. Defense officials seethed as the State Department pressed ahead with a plan to impose "smart sanctions" on Iraq and, in their view, threw bureaucratic roadblocks in the way of providing funds to the Iraqi opposition. "Even relatively easy decisions were always thrown up to the presidential level," said a Defense official. Meanwhile, at the White House, officials worked on refining the administration's Iraq policy, focusing especially on how to implement the official U.S. stance of "regime change" articulated by the Clinton administration. Bush was informed of the deliberations, but nothing had been settled when the terrorists attacked the Pentagon and World Trade Center. "Certainly, different people at different times were arguing for a more vigorous approach to Saddam," one senior official said. "But nobody suggested that we have the U.S. military go to Baghdad. That was transformed by Sept. 11." Iraq, and its possible possession of weapons of mass destruction, was on the minds of several key officials as they struggled to grapple with the aftermath of Sept. 11. Cheney, as he watched the World Trade Center towers collapse while he was sitting in front of a television in the White House's underground bunker, turned to an aide and remarked, "As unfathomable as this was, it could have been so much worse if they had weapons of mass destruction." The same thought occurred to other senior officials in the days that followed. Rumsfeld wondered to aides whether Hussein had a role in the attacks. Wolfowitz, in public and private conversations, was an especially forceful advocate for tackling Iraq at the same time as Osama bin Laden. And within days, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice also privately began to counsel the president that he needed to go after all rogue nations harboring weapons of mass destruction. But these concerns were submerged by the imperative of dealing first with Afghanistan. "I remember the day that we put the map on the table, and the color drained from everybody's face," one official said. "Afghanistan is not the place you would choose to fight." The Pentagon, while it was fighting the war in Afghanistan, began reviewing its plans for Iraq because of the secret presidential directive on Sept. 17. On Sept. 19 and 20, an advisory group known as the Defense Policy Board met at the Pentagon -- with Rumsfeld in attendance -- and animatedly discussed the importance of ousting Hussein. The anthrax attacks, which came soon after Sept. 11, further strengthened the resolve of some key administration officials to deal with Iraq. Cheney, in particular, became consumed with the possibility that Iraq or other countries could distribute biological or chemical weapons to terrorists, officials said. Though Cheney's aides said the vice president has been consistently concerned about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, others perceived a shift. "To his credit, he looked at the situation differently after Sept. 11 than he did before," one senior official said. Because the culprit behind the anthrax attacks has not been found, some administration officials still are convinced that Hussein had a role in the anthrax attacks. "It's hard to get away from the feeling that the timing was too much of a coincidence," one official said. Officials close to the president portray the Iraq decision as a natural outgrowth of concerns Bush raised during the presidential campaign, and they say he very quickly decided he needed to challenge Iraq after the terrorist attacks. But he didn't publicly raise it earlier because, in the words of one senior official, "he didn't think the country could handle the shock of 9/11 and a lot of talk about dealing with states that had weapons of mass destruction." "What a Fixation" In free-wheeling meetings of the "principals" during October and November, Rumsfeld and Cheney emphasized their suspicions of ties between rogue states, such as Iraq, and terrorists. Some of the conversations were prompted by intelligence, later discounted, that al Qaeda may have been on the verge of obtaining a "dirty bomb" that would spread radioactive material. By early November, Wayne Downing, a retired Army general who headed counterterrorism in the White House, on his own initiative began working up plans for an attack of Iraq, keeping his superiors informed of his progress. A Pentagon planning group also kept hard at work on possible options. "The issue got away from the president," said a senior official who attended discussions in the White House. "He wasn't controlling the tone or the direction" and was influenced by people who "painted him into a corner because Iraq was an albatross around their necks." After some of these meetings at the White House, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, skeptical of military action without the necessary diplomatic groundwork, would return to his office on the seventh floor of the State Department, roll his eyes and say, "Jeez, what a fixation about Iraq," State Department officials said. "I do believe certain people have grown theological about this," said another administration official who opposed focusing so intently on Iraq. "It's almost a religion -- that it will be the end of our society if we don't take action now." "Axis of Evil" Much of this activity -- and these concerns -- were hidden from the public eye. Bush barely mentioned Iraq in his address to the nation nine days after the Sept. 11 attacks. In fact, the administration did not publicly tip its hand until Bush made his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2002. Even then, officials did their best to obscure the meaning of Bush's words. Listing Iraq, Iran and North Korea, Bush declared, "States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred." "I will not wait on events, while dangers gather," Bush warned. State Department officials puzzled over drafts of the speech and ultimately concluded the words did not represent a policy shift, though some were worried the rhetoric would have diplomatic consequences. Powell "thought it rang an alarm bell since it would send waves out there to colleagues around the world," a State Department official said. Powell expressed concerns about the language to the White House, he said. "But he didn't push it hard." Briefing reporters at the White House, officials played down the importance of the "axis of evil." One senior White House official advised "not to read anything into any [country] name in terms of the next phase" of the war against terrorism. "We've always said there are a number of elements of national power" in the U.S. arsenal, the aide added, including diplomacy and sanctions. "This is not a call to use a specific element" of that power. Yet, in this period, Bush also secretly signed an intelligence order, expanding on a previous presidential finding, that directed the CIA to undertake a comprehensive, covert program to topple Hussein, including authority to use lethal force to capture the Iraqi president. Speculation continued to run high in the media that an attack on Iraq was imminent. But within the administration, some of the advocates were becoming depressed about the lack of action, complaining that it was difficult to focus attention on Iraq, especially as the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians spiraled out of control. In March, Cheney toured the Middle East on a trip dominated by questions from Arab leaders about the Israeli-Palestinian violence. But he also stressed the administration's contention that Iraq was a problem that needed to be addressed. "I Made Up My Mind" Then, in April, Bush approached Rice. It was time to figure out "what we are doing about Iraq," he told her, setting in motion a series of meetings by the principals and their deputies. "I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go," Bush hinted to a British reporter at the time. "That's about all I'm willing to share with you." At the meetings, senior officials examined new but unconfirmed evidence of Iraq's programs to build biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and considered connections between Baghdad and Palestinian terrorism. They argued over which elements of the Iraqi opposition to back, ultimately deciding to push for unity among the exiles and within the U.S. bureaucracy. By many accounts, they did not deal with the hard question of whether there should be a confrontation with Iraq. "Most of the internal debate in the administration has really been about tactics," an official said. Powell sent his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, who had signed the letter to Clinton urging Hussein's ouster, to many of the meetings. As a way of establishing Powell's bona fides with those eager for action, Armitage would boast -- incorrectly, as it turned out -- that Powell first backed "regime change" in his confirmation hearings. Serious military planning also began in earnest in the spring. Every three or four weeks, Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of U.S. Central Command, would travel to the White House to give Bush a private briefing on the war planning for Iraq. On June 1, Bush made another speech, this time at West Point, arguing for a policy of preemption against potential threats. "If we wait for the threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," Bush said. That month, two major foreign policy headaches -- a potential war between India and Pakistan and the administration's uncertain policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- were also resolved, freeing the White House to turn its full attention to confronting Iraq. Only later did it become clear that the president already had made up his mind. In July, the State Department's director of policy planning, Richard N. Haass, held a regular meeting with Rice and asked whether they should talk about the pros and cons of confronting Iraq. Don't bother, Rice replied: The president has made a decision.
I don't see that it contradicts it, the phrasing is confusing. Is he saying that "there was no plan" absolutely? Or his he saying that "there was no plan that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration Buck, I note you edited out the first part of the transcript, which I think is fairly important to the context ": This jibes almost exactly with his version of events: that they rejected Clinton's plan (because it was Clinton's) in favor of doing nothing while coming up with their own plan. See Will's slate column for more: http://slate.msn.com/id/2097681/ All in all, this is a pretty tortured attempt to hit at his credibility. Was a white house staffer poring over transcripts all night in order to release this vital piece of information (at our expense, of course)? I imagine they were. Finally, like Kaplan notes, not one of the attempts from the White HOuse directly refutes his allegations (which are now his testimony) as to the various facts and circumstances. Neither does this one, unless you abandon the last part of his sentence. Seizing on the confusing syntax of a press briefing? This is pretty weak, weak, weak stuff.
Looking into my crystal ball, I see more embarrassment for GWB during the Iraqi Intell investigations. I openly wonder how many books are being written now, that will be promoted during that investigation. Methinks more than the 9/11 investigation. It would be brain dead of Rove to not invent some reason to postpone starting the Iraqi Intel investigation until after the election. My crystal ball also says GWB will not debate Kerry.
The only thing with that is that that story (the Office of Special Plans, the Niger Uranium fiasco, etc) is largely already known. We know what happened with Iraq largely with accounts from Clarke, Beers, O'Neill, and other former officials that largely corroborate each other and have not been directly refuted.
