All Clarke does is reinforce what you already believe. I can't for a minute believe that the present admin (unlike the last occupants of the White House) is not serious about fighting terror. If you believe Bush is a liar and other hairbrained leftist nutjob conspiracy theories, you point to him and say....."See, he is a liar. Terrorism is all Bush's fault. He lied about Iraq.....blah, blah, blah." He has an ax to grind and a friendly press that papers over his rough spots with wimpy interviews. One question I've been wanting to ask you liberals every time you recite about the "plan" that the Clintonistas had to destroy Al Queda and that Bush did not act on it is this: Why is Bush to blame for doing "nothing" in nine months when your guy had EIGHT years? Eight years and he sat on his ass.
Basso, I would like to particularly commend that Stephen Hayes article; he is doing an admirable job of attacking Clinton's 04 presidential campaign! of course, he doesn't refute any of Clarke's factual assertions, but hey, one battle at a time!
Nobody SAID he wasn't serious, just that he was WRONG. When Clinton got warning of a terror attack, the gov't went on full alert and busted up the LAX bombing. When Bush got warning of a terror attach, the gov't did nothing. Who gives a sh-t what Clinton did? He's NOT RUNNING FOR REELECTION.
He has an ax to grind and a friendly press that papers over his rough spots with wimpy interviews. One question I've been wanting to ask you liberals every time you recite about the "plan" that the Clintonistas had to destroy Al Queda and that Bush did not act on it is this: Why is Bush to blame for doing "nothing" in nine months when your guy had EIGHT years? Eight years and he sat on his ass. Question... How many Americans were killed, worldwide prior to 9/11 by Al-Qaeda? Can you refer me to where in the Bush 2000 campaign that he made direct reference to the "War on terror" and his terrorism policy?
Josh Marshall... _____________ Before this morning, the following occurred to me. Vice President Cheney has been out of sight for a long time. But of late he's been out a lot, doing media interviews, giving campaign speeches and so forth. Isn't it time someone asked him about the fact that senior members of his staff are at the center of a criminal investigation into the intentional leak of the identity of a clandestine operative at the CIA? He's doing a lot of press. Why is no one asking him about this? Now to the point at hand. Cheney was on Rush Limbaugh today fighting back against Richard Clarke. Now, I don't expect Limbaugh to ask the question above. But look what Cheney said about Clarke. RUSH: All right, let's get straight to what the news is all about now before we branch out to things. Why did the administration keep Richard Clarke on the counterterrorism team when you all assumed office in January of 2001? CHENEY: Well, I wasn't directly involved in that decision. 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. Cheney frequently gets a pass for what his aides later portray as unintentional misstatements of fact. But there are two or three levels of dishonesty involved in this response. The key one is timing. It's convenient that Cheney doesn't "recall the exact time frame" since the time frame puts the lie to his entire point. Clarke was put in charge of cyberterrorism (a pet interest of his); but that was after 9/11. He's saying that Clarke wasn't really so central to the terrorism big picture prior to 9/11 because he was tasked with dealing with cyberterrorism (which Cheney describes as something like a glorified version of Norton AntiVirus). But, as noted, this happened after 9/11 -- after Clarke's claims about the White House's inattention were in the past. Now, the conversation continues ... RUSH: Cybersecurity? Meaning Internet security? CHENEY: Yeah, worried about attacks on computer systems and, you know, sophisticated information technology systems we have these days and that an adversary would use or try -- RUSH: Well, now, that explains a lot, that answer right there. CHENEY: Well, he wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff, and I saw part of his interview last night, and -- RUSH: He was demoted. CHENEY: It was still -- he clearly missed a lot of what was going on. For example, just three weeks after the -- after we got here, there was communication, for example with the president of Pakistan laying out our concerns about Afghanistan and al-Qaeda and the importance of the -- going after the Taliban and getting them to end their support for the al-Qaeda. This is say within three weeks of our arrival here. So the only thing I can say about Dick Clarke is he was here throughout those eight years going back to 1993, and the first attack on the World Trade Center in '98 when the embassies were hit in east Africa, in 2000 when the USS Cole was hit, and the question that out to be asked is, what were they doing in those days when they -- when he was in charge of counterterrorism efforts? So Cheney's claim is that Clarke "wasn't in the loop ... on a lot of this stuff." Consider what that means. Clarke, as we've said, was the counter-terrorism coordinator at NSC. That means he ran the inter-agency process on terrorism issues. Cheney says Clarke wasn't in the loop; but that means that he actually ran the loop. If he was out of the loop on the central points of what the White House was doing on terrorism that means there was a complete breakdown of the interagency process. Saying Clarke was out of the loop is less a defense of the administration than an indictment of it. We'll be saying more on this. But I think we can already see from this and other defenses coming from administration officials that the White House's line on this is filled with clear distortions and misstatements of fact -- most of which are easily identifiable by people who have even a rough understanding of the timing and issues involved. If they're resorting to blatant distortions and untruths this quickly they must not have a good defense. -- Josh Marshall
They don't; look at the responses in this thread, the primary defenses are: media conspiracy, the oh so popular "Clinton's fault", to "well our head counterterror guy was out of the loop anyway" That's pretty awful. I don't really blame them though, Whenn your head counterterror guy says you've done a terrible job on the war on terror, there's really not a whole lot you can do about it.
follow up: how many direct attacks on the US military did al queda make during the clinton admin? follow-follow-up, how many terrorist traing camps did the clintonistas destroy in response, and what effect did their response have on the operational capabilities of al queda?
Even if you give them an absolute pass through 9-10, how they reacted during and after 9-11 still hangs over their heads.
Since you quoted Hayes quoting Frontline, here's another portion of that interview... By the time 1998 the embassy bombings occurred, I think everyone in the Clinton Cabinet would have said that Al Qaeda is a serious threat. In fact, if you look in retrospect at what the Clinton administration did after those embassy bombings through to the end of that administration -- since now most of it is public knowledge, lot of it was highly classified at the time -- if 9/11 had not happened, most Americans looking at what the Clinton administration did about bin Laden would have said, "What an overreaction. Why were they so preoccupied with bin Laden?" There was an enormous amount of activity that was carried on if you look at the predicate, prior to the attack on the Cole destroyer in October 2000. The predicate was Americans killed at two embassies in Africa. Yet there was this massive program that was initiated to go after bin Laden. It didn't succeed, but it tried very hard. It did prevent some attacks, and it delayed others. But looked at in vacuum, the Clinton administration activities, 1998 to the end of the administration against bin Laden -- if you look at that without knowing in advance that 9/11 is going to happen, if you can separate that in your mind, the Clinton administration activities against bin Laden were massive.
lovely, if 9/11 hadn't happened the clinton admin's response to terror could be seen as "massive" follow-follow-follow up: in light of the reality of 9/11, how can the clinton admin's response to terror in general, and al queda specifically, be seen? one word comes to mind: pathetic.
The point is not that Bush isn't concerned about terrorism NOW, it is that he wasn't AT ALL concerned about terrorism until 9/11, even after being given warnings that should have raised his hackles. Then, after 9/11, when the Bushies all of a sudden started focusing on terrorism, Clarke was told specifically to find a connection between Saddam and 9/11 even after CIA and FBI reported the same thing. The point is that Bush and his crew were itching to attack Iraq and did everything they could to manipulate and massage the "intelligence" to make the case for war. While I do think that they exaggerated the "intelligence," I do not think terrorism is all Bush's fault, nor do I believe that we would definitely have foiled 9/11 if GWB had heeded the warnings from the Clinton administration. You are putting words in the mouths of those you see as "hairbrained leftist nutjob(s)." The very fact that you used "blah, blah, blah" indicates that you simply tune out anything that doesn't fit with your twisted world view. It is called selective perception and can be cured by simply opening your mind to facts. It is nice to know that you really DO swallow everything from the Weekly Standard hook, line, and sinker. I see a guy who has worked to defend this country for over two decades through 4 different presidents and who calls it like he sees it. Once AGAIN, it is on me to note that Clinton spent more on terrorism than any president in history to that point. He did attack installations they believed were terrorist targets to be thanked by cries of "Wag the Dog" from the Republican Congress which, over and over, slashed Clinton's terrorism budget. As to your question, if Clinton HAD started a war, he would have been hamstrung by the "wag the dog" Republicans and would not have gotten the funding for such an endeavor. You act like Clinton did absolutely nothing about terrorism and that stance shows all to clearly how bad your selective perception really is. If I were president and had a plan of attack, I would not attack at the 11th hour of my presidency, after my VP had been beaten. I would have handed my plan off to the incoming administration, along with warnings in the strongest possible terms as to the size of the threat.
but i guess we shouldn't care about that now, since clinton isn't running for office? history only judges those involved in campaigns for president?
basso, if you are interested in the truth, how do you feel about the Vice President of the United States of America basically lying on a national radio broadcast, heard by millions of Americans. You think that's OK? The end justifies the means, right? This whole business is just sickening. I can't believe these clowns are running my country.
Basso, you simply have no credibility left. You want to hold the Clinton Administration responsible for an attack that was to occur in the future. And yet are able to rationalize every misstep by the Bush Administration. In the past this mindset might have made you and those like you annoying. Now, it makes you dangerous. The world didn't change on 9/11. It changed on the day that it became possible for a terrorist organization to obtain nuclear weapons/materials and Mutual Assured Destruction was no longer in effect. We no longer have the luxury of ideologically-driven foriegn and national security policy .
the WSJ, in it's lead editorial today, has some salient thoughts on this "kerfluffle." http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004850 -- Sins of Commission Behind the effort to blame Bush for September 11. Monday, March 22, 2004 12:01 a.m. It was always a terrible idea for the September 11 commission to drop its report in the middle of a Presidential election campaign, and we are now seeing why. That body is turning into a fiasco of partisanship and political score-settling. To be precise, Democrats are using the commission as a platform to assail the Bush Administration for fumbling the war on terror, implicitly blaming it even for 9/11. That's the clear message of the testimony to be offered this week to the commission by former Clinton officials, who conveniently leaked their opinions to the New York Times in advance. Conveniently, too, former anti-terror aide Richard Clarke has chosen this week to begin the media tour for his new book pushing the same anti-Bush theme. He's also scheduled to meet the commission this week. If you believe this is all a coincidence, you probably also believe that a reflective, nonpartisan look at the mindset that allowed 9/11 to happen is possible in today's Washington. It would be nice if it were. Democracies are notoriously bad at anticipating crises, and it would help future policy makers to have a thoughtful look at how and why we missed the al Qaeda threat as it was massing in the 1990s. In order to take such a detached view, the Pearl Harbor inquiry waited until after World War II to publish its findings. The 9/11 Commission has instead been driven from the start by meaner political calculations: To appease the demands of those (few) victims' families looking for someone to blame, and to provide a vehicle to embarrass the Bush Administration. That's the real reason Henry Kissinger and George Mitchell--two men who have acted in the past as statesmen--were hounded out as the original commission leaders on trivial conflict-of-interest grounds. Their replacements are the junior varsity and have been unable to lift the commission above narrow partisan scheming. Republican chairman Tom Kean, a former governor little schooled in defense and foreign affairs, is apparently oblivious to the political hardball being played around him. Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton, an ex-member of Congress well-versed in national security, is a better choice. But Mr. Hamilton has to contend with his fellow Democrats, who include hyper-partisans Richard Ben-Veniste, Jamie Gorelick and Tim Roemer. These three caucus weekly, reporting back regularly to Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle for political fine-tuning. Ms. Gorelick has her own clear conflict of interest: As Janet Reno's deputy attorney general, she had a major law enforcement role in combatting the terror threat. Her Administration's decision to handle the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 as a mere "law-enforcement" problem ought to be central to the commission's probe. She and Mr. Ben-Veniste also wouldn't mind being Attorney General in a Kerry Administration. Inside the commission, these Members have been pushing the argument that Clinton officials warned the Bush Administration about al Qaeda, only to be ignored by men and women who were too preoccupied with Iraq and missile defense to care. So having failed to contain al Qaeda during its formative decade, and having made almost no mention of this grave threat in the 2000 campaign, these officials now want us to believe that in their final hours they urgently begged the Bushies to act with force and dispatch. Sure. As for Mr. Clarke, he is now flacking his book by blaming the Bush Administration for failing to capture Osama bin Laden while offering the novel sociological insight (in last week's Time magazine) that "maybe we should be asking why the terrorists hate us." We'd take Mr. Clarke's words more seriously if, as America's lead anti-terror official from 1998 through Mr. Bush's first two years, he had warned someone that al Qaeda might have a strategy to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings. He already knew that an Egyptian had flown one plane into the drink and that al Qaeda was interested in flight training. Why didn't Mr. Clarke connect those dots? The author is also highly critical of both the Afghan and Iraq campaigns. But inside the Clinton and Bush Administrations, his main pre-9/11 counsel was to energize the proxy war in Afghanistan through the Northern Alliance to make life more difficult for the Taliban. This certainly would have helped in the mid-1990s when al Qaeda was massing in that country. But by 2001 it would have done nothing to break up the al Qaeda cells that were already operating in Florida and Germany and that carried out the 9/11 hijackings. As for Iraq, he and other Bush critics want to claim that the U.S. invasion has only created more terrorists--as if there weren't any before March 2003. And as if those terrorists are only striking at Americans and our allies in Iraq, not also at Turks, and Indonesians, French and Saudis. Mr. Clarke lambastes the White House for seeking links between Iraq and 9/11, even as he himself asserts that he knew in the immediate aftermatch that there were no such links. How could he have known that? Mr. Clarke fails to mention that Abdul Rahman Yasin, the one conspirator from the 1993 WTC bombing still at large, had fled to Iraq and was harbored by Saddam Hussein for years. In our view, a U.S. President who failed to ask questions about Iraq and other state sponsors of terrorism in the wake of 9/11 would have been irresponsible. There is a profound contradiction at the heart of this 20-20 hindsight. On the one hand, the critics want to blame the Bush Administration for failing to prevent 9/11, but on the other they assail it for acting "pre-emptively" on a needless war in Iraq. Well, which do they really believe? We'd guess it is the latter because when these same critics held the reins of government they failed to do much against al Qaeda beyond fire cruise missiles from hundreds of miles away. Their boast that after 9/11 they would have toppled the Taliban, as well as increased pressure on Saddam Hussein, is impossible to credit. Their criticism now, in books and especially through the 9/11 Commission, is a case of blaming the Bush Administration in order to absolve themselves of any and all responsibility. If the 9/11 Commission members really wanted to make a public contribution, they would shut down and resume their probe after the elections. Their final report is now due on July 26, two months after its original deadline and the same day that the Democratic Party convention begins in Boston. We doubt that's a coincidence either.
and who was president on that day? actually, you've completely missed my point. i don't necessarily believe you can hold clinton responsible for 9/11. however, if, in the midst of a fevered effort by clinton era officials and their echo chamber in the liberal media to pin 9/11 on bush's failure to take out al queda in the 8 months he was in office, one should also take a look at the actions of the previous admin. as i said earlier, you simply cannot have it both ways. you cannot absolve clinton of all responsibility, and blame it on bush. my own view is that this is nothing more than election year politicking, and the scale of the attacks was such that neither president should/can be blamed. if the point were simply to identify what went wrong and then fix it, i'd be all for it, but that's not what's going on here. the fact that so many of you are willing to indulge this sort of tripe, completely obliterates any claim to objectivity you may have.
