I'm pretty sure that you expressed the same sentiments in all the other commission threads (bush wants to stop the commission, won't appoint it, etc). I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure I had this argument with you.
seriously...i don't recall it. i don't even recall having those feelings. again...i'm not saying this is a liberal witchhunt...my concern is with this turning into a spin war by all sides.
Agreed, but I don't think that there are altruistic alternatives open to us about this. Secondly, in that this commission was A) Most hampered by Bush, and B) appointed by Bush, I donlt think that the threats of partisanship run equally both ways. We are in agreement, but the way ths was worded sounds vaguely sexual to me...
1. please understand that my criticisms of this are not so much specifically geared towards this commission, but just my frustration with politics in general right now in my country. 2. "i like men..i like big men...i like you." - Fletch
Clarke fights back... "The White House is papering over facts, such as in the weeks immediately after 9/11, <b>the president signed a national security directive instructing the Pentagon to prepare for the invasion of Iraq, even though they knew at the time -- from me, from the FBI, from the CIA -- that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11," Clarke said. </b> Clarke, a 30-year White House veteran who served under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton before the current president, referred to Bush's own comments to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, author of "Bush at War," in which the president said he "didn't have a sense of urgency" about Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda. "He is saying that," Clarke said. "President Bush said that to Bob Woodward. I'm not the first one to say this." "They're trying to divert attention from the truth here," he said. "... And they've got all sorts of people on the taxpayers' rolls going around attacking me and attacking the book and writing talking points and distributing them to radio talk shows and what not, around the country." But the facts, Clarke said, are that "the administration had done nothing about al Qaeda prior to 9/11 despite the fact that the CIA director [George Tenet] was telling them virtually every day that there was a major threat." http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/23/bush.clarke/index.html
This article throws a serious monkeywrench in the leftist's sad-sack attempt to give this disgruntled ex-employee credibilty. Seems he did think there was a link back in 1999 between Iraq and Al Qaida even though on 60 Minutes he said there was never any evidence. I'm sure the libs here will dismiss this as an "attack" against Clarke, but I'm tired of hearing all you in this little left-wing echo chamber repeat his lies as if it were fact. WAR ON TERROR In '99, Clarke saw Iraq-al-Qaida link But Bush critic told '60 Minutes' Sunday there was 'absolutely' no evidence 'ever' © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism official promoting a book critical of the Bush administration, insists Saddam Hussein had no connection to al-Qaida, but in 1999 he defended President Clinton's attack on a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant by revealing the U.S. was "sure" it manufactured chemical warfare materials produced by Iraqi experts in cooperation with Osama bin Laden. Richard Clarke Clarke told the Washington Post in a Jan. 23, 1999, story U.S. intelligence officials had obtained a soil sample from the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, which was hit with Tomahawk cruise missiles in retaliation for bin Laden's role in the Aug. 7, 1998, embassy bombings in Africa. The sample contained a precursor of VX nerve gas, which Clarke said when mixed with bleach and water, would have become fully active VX nerve gas. Clarke told the Post the U.S. did not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. "But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan," the paper reported. However, Sunday night in an interview with Lesley Stahl on "60 Minutes," Clarke denied Saddam had any connection to al-Qaida. Stahl pressed Clarke further, asking, "Was Iraq supporting al-Qaida?" Clarke replied: "There is absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al-Qaida ever." Clarke, who served under the Clinton and Bush administrations, has accused President Bush of ignoring threats to al-Qaida prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and focusing on Saddam Hussein at the expense of the war on terror. In an interview with Rush Limbaugh yesterday, Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed Clarke's criticism as coming from an ineffective former official. "He was the head of counter-terrorism for several years there in the '90s, and I didn't notice that they had any great success dealing with the terrorist threat," Cheney said. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had a similar reply in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America." "I really don't know what Richard Clarke's motivations are, but I'll tell you this: Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to." Clarke, the author of "Against All Enemies," is scheduled to testify tomorrow before the independent federal commission probing the 9-11 attacks. The "60 Minutes" interview Sunday has raised ethical concerns for not disclosing the connection between Clarke's book publisher, a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster, and CBS News. Both are owned by Viacom. At the time of the 1999 Post interview, Clarke occupied the newly created post of national coordinator of counterterrorism and computer security programs under President Clinton. The Post story concluded with Clarke affirming the U.S. strategy of fighting terror by legally prosecuting perpetrators of the 1993 bombing of the World Trace Center in New York. "The fact that we got seven out of the eight people from the World Trade Center [bombing], and we found them in five countries around the world and brought them back here, the fact we can demonstrate repeatedly that the slogan, 'There's nowhere to hide,' is more than a slogan, the fact that we don't forget, we're persistent – we get them – has deterred terrorism," he said. link
Ahh yes, the World Net Daily. I actually went down to my local newstand and tried to buy one the other day; shockingly enough they didn't have any copies. I guess that's what happens when you run a right wing blog out of your basement in Falls Church, VA and pretend like its a regular newspaper. Let's see, who knows more about the White House's terror strategy, the Chief Adviser on Counter-terrorism, or the guy who writes the World Net Daily from his basement....hmmm This isn't even a particularly good attack; it's quite possible for both his statements to the Post and his chronologically later statements to be true. Indeed, rigorous adherence to one set of beliefs to the exclusion of all others is one of things that he is criticizing. See yosemite, to identify a contradiction, you generally have to identify two statements that both cannot possibly have been true. It's quite possible that, while he may have seen certain intelligence in 1998, by the year 2004 he had formed different conclusions. Anyway, not really worth bothering with. I just bought Clarke's book and am eager to start reading. Who better to talk about Bush' War on Terror than Bush' head man on terror?
http://bbs.clutchcity.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=63422&perpage=30&pagenumber=2 (yes, it's a slow day at work.....)
you're absolutely right...i guess i did. sorry...wasn't trying to be deceptive...i really didn't remember discussing this at all. i think my views on this administration have changed a ton since August. by the way...i put you in charge of these hearings in that thread...how's it going so far?
See, right there you reveal your bias... His credibility isn't given to him because of his stance, but because of his position, experience, expertise, and access to information. Additionally, he is reporting on things which happened to him personally or in his presence, and for which there has been coroboration. This is getting pathetic.
hmm, clarke's got problems: http://nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley200403231433.asp -- March 23, 2004, 2:33 p.m. Clarke’s Problems He can’t have it all ways. It's hard to keep in coherent order the various complaints Mr. Richard Clarke, former anti-terrorism adviser, has been trying to make in the lavishly arranged welcome of his book. He got not one but (almost) two segments on 60 Minutes, the second affecting to give both sides of the question whether Mr. Bush was hypocritical and derelict in making policy both before and after September 11, but serving, rather, to fortify the case against Bush because the defense was ill-prepared. What Clarke is contending is that the heated desire of the administration to get on with a war against Iraq caused it to be indifferent to the case against al-Qaeda. This accusation is mysterious because it leans on the assumption that only al-Qaeda was guilty of terrorism, while Iraq was not: therefore, that an Iraqi-bent strategy brought on disproportionate diplomatic and military activity. Clarke's case rests in part on the failure of the United States to mobilize against terror before September 11, resulting in the shock and surprise with which we saw the Twin Towers come down. He cited, on 60 Minutes, the relatively alert Clinton administration, which had reacted to the earlier bombing of a Twin Tower. Clarke spoke specifically of a terrorist bound across the Canadian border bent on sabotage in the Los Angeles airport; the terrorist was detected as suspicious and carted away. The suggestion is that, in 2001, the national alert system was not properly pitched, and that the malefactors of September 11 might, otherwise, have been frustrated. Everybody should be willing to acknowledge that we didn't act appropriately on several leads left underdeveloped in 2000 and 2001. There were terrorists who were in the United States, taking flying lessons. And there was the terrorist in Arizona, spotted as suspicious but not pursued for reasons largely bureaucratic. A dilemma is posed here. Critics of Bush rail against the Patriot Act and the Guantanamo detentions and Homeland Security as impinging on First Amendment freedoms. Meanwhile, other critics are saying that Mr. Bush has not done enough. The two camps have in common only their disapproval of George W. Bush. It isn't easy to know exactly what the government might have done if the alert-level had been set higher than it was on September 11. There is a certain innocence in the United States, not unbecoming, about foreign aggression within our boundaries. As one analyst pointed out, the last time we were attacked on our own soil, before 9/11, was when the British burned down the White House in 1812. As a schoolboy during World War II, I spent many midnight hours staring at the sky looking out for Nazi bombers, which never materialized. But now we certainly need to be skeptical about young Arab males who want to come here to learn how to fly. If the objective of Mr. Clarke is to punish Mr. Bush for not being sensitive enough to security matters, let him get it said, but bearing also in mind that Bill Clinton, the predecessor, did not himself act very energetically on homeland security, bequeathing his own arrangements to George W. Bush when, in 2001, Bush came into office. A second preoccupation of Clarke seems to be the focus we placed on Iraq, instead of al-Qaeda. But we went promptly to war, and successfully, against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the terrorists' principal provisioner. The argument that, in the spring of 2003, we did not find weapons of mass destruction sitting there for us outside Baghdad has nothing to do with whether the strike against Saddam's Iraq, as hornet's nest of terrorism, was strategically justified. We know — the world knows — that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and had used them, in Iran and against the Kurds. The International Institute of Strategic Studies determined on 2002 that Iraq could have nuclear weapons within months if it obtained fissile material from abroad. The British historian-journalist William Shawcross has a valuable narrative of the hectic events of 2003 in his book Allies: The U.S., Britain, and Europe, and the War in Iraq. He has a keen eye for anomalies. M. Chirac had called Saddam "a personal friend and a great statesman.” Chirac is lucky never to have been a dissident general in Iraq. Bernard Kerik, former chief of the New York City Police Department, commissioned to organize a police department in Iraq, examined Iraqi police records and saw videos recording Saddam's tortures. These are said to have included "a tape of Saddam himself 'sitting and watching one of his military generals being eaten alive by Dobermans because the general's loyalty was in question.'” Why does Clarke insist that our enterprise in Iraq suggests indifference to the greater threat of al-Qaeda? We have had to guard against them both, and in certain matters, al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were indistinguishable. The Saddam-Iraq we have pursued under George W. with a large army is the same Saddam-Iraq we pursued twelve years earlier under George H. W., with an even larger army.
more questions for clarke: http://nationalreview.com/ijaz/ijaz200403230855.asp -- March 23, 2004, 8:55 a.m. A Dick Clarke Top Seven Questions for commissioners. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism czar in four successive administrations, testifies in front of the 9/11 Commission on Wednesday. But what should have been a serious inquiry into how a loosely knit gang of Islamic fanatics could rise to become one of history's most lethal and effective global terrorist organizations now promises to become a political spectacle. At the height of the presidential campaign season, Clarke has made irresponsible and untrue allegations that the Bush White House was indifferent to the threat posed by al Qaeda in the months leading up to the 9/11 attacks. Whether his charges are the result of a momentary lapse in judgment in an otherwise distinguished civil-service career, or the hallmark of personal ego and greed in trying to sell a book while settling scores with a Bush White House that demoted him, the 9/11 commissioners cannot be deterred in their task to find out the truth about what happened on his watch to America's counterterrorism efforts. The 9/11 commissioners have a thankless job of asking tough questions that nobody wants to ask. There will be a broad set of questions asked Tuesday and Wednesday of the various witnesses who appear. But when Clarke goes under oath, there will be a need to get down to specifics because the devil of understanding how 9/11 became possible is in the details of what Clarke did or did not do. If I were a 9/11 commissioner, there are seven very pointed areas of inquiry I would enter into with Clarke to understand exactly how the intelligence failures and policy missteps evolved: 1. Sudan's offer to hand over Osama bin Laden. Mr. Clarke, we know from news reports and the testimony of a former U.S. ambassador that a meeting took place at an Alexandria, Virginia, hotel in February 1996 between Sudan's minister of defense, El Fatih Erwa, Ambassador Timothy Carney, a career State Department officer, and a CIA official with oversight responsibility for African affairs. During that meeting, Erwa offered to have Osama bin Laden extradited to Saudi Arabia (an offer which President Clinton has admitted to and also said that the Saudi government declined when asked), and barring that, to have Sudan essentially baby-sit him with U.S. guidance (which we also turned down). Is it true that a second meeting took place a few weeks later in which Erwa and the CIA officer met alone? What can you tell us about that meeting? Did Erwa make an offer, however vague or oblique, to permit the United States to have access to bin Laden in a manner similar to the capture of Carlos the Jackal that Sudan orchestrated with France? If the CIA case officer received this offer, did he pass it up the chain of command and did you at the NSC see or review any notes of that meeting? If he did not, was this a result of the poor state of relations between CIA and the White House or just a bureaucratic snafu? How do you assess President Clinton's own view that the administration chose not to bring bin Laden to the United States because there were insufficient legal grounds for doing so? Why would he make such a claim if there were never any offer in the first place? 2. Sudan's counterterrorism offer. Mr. Clarke, in April 1997, a private U.S. citizen brought an unconditional offer from Sudan's president to cooperate on the intelligence data about various terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, to the vice chairman of this commission, the Honorable Lee Hamilton. On September 28, 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced after a five-month interagency review that the U.S. was sending a high-level team of diplomats back to Sudan to pressure the Islamist government there to stop harboring terrorists, and to have a look at Sudan's intelligence files on those terrorists it had harbored in previous years, including several of the 9/11 hijackers and several of the planners for the 1998 U.S.-embassy bombings. That decision was overturned on October 1, 1997. What role did you play in the reversal of that decision? Were you ever approached by Susan E. Rice, the former director of African affairs at the National Security Council and assistant secretary of state for East Africa, to assist her in making a case to Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger in overturning the Albright decision? If so, what were her reasons, and why did you agree with her assessment, if you did? Please tell us whether any officials other than you, Mr. Berger, and Ms. Rice were involved in that decision. 3. Iraq and al Qaeda — the Sudan connection. Mr. Clarke, are you aware of a February 1998 correspondence from Sudan's intelligence chief to FBI Regional Director for East Africa David Williams in which again an offer to share terrorism data was made by Sudan without conditions? Are you aware that bin Laden's chief deputy in Sudan made a trip to Baghdad to visit with Iraqi intelligence officials at about the same time in February 1998? If not, why not? How do you reconcile your categorical statement in a recent 60 Minutes interview that there was no relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq — ever, I believe is how you put it — with the fact that bin Laden's chief deputy was visiting Baghdad at the same time you were receiving repeated offers to explore Sudan's intelligence files? 4. The U.S. embassy bombings. Mr. Clarke, once the U.S. embassies had been attacked in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, Sudan's intelligence chief again contacted the FBI in a handwritten note that has been published, and offered to turn over to U.S. custody two of the key suspects who had taken up residence in an apartment overlooking the U.S. embassy in Khartoum. Why did the United States not pursue their extradition immediately? Were you aware of the offer? If not, why not? If so, why did you not, in your role as counterterrorism coordinator, make sure the FBI was given all support necessary from the White House to gain their extradition? 5. Retaliation: bombing the al-Shifa plant in Khartoum. Mr. Clarke, you then recommended bombing Sudan's al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant as the best response to the embassy attacks. Can you recount the evidence that led you to believe al-Shifa was producing nerve agents, and the evidence you had of its ownership and financing by bin Laden? Can you again help us to rectify your categorical statement now that there was no relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime, ever, when you previously argued that Iraq and Sudan were cooperating on the development of chemical and biological weapons at a pharmaceutical plant you claimed was owned and financed by bin Laden? 6. The United Arab Emirates offers help on capturing bin Laden. Mr. Clarke, press reports indicate that the government of the United Arab Emirates, for its own reasons, was interested in helping the United States get bin Laden out of Afghanistan during the summer of 2000. It is our understanding that you were involved in a similar effort already in late 1999 and that the effort failed for a number of different reasons before a second attempt was made to revive it. First, can you tell us precisely what is the nature of your relationship with the UAE ruling family? Are you aware of any threats that were made against the family by al Qaeda leaders during that period of time? Did you relay any U.S. intelligence on the nature of those threats to UAE officials at that time? Did any UAE official, including members of the ruling family responsible for defense and national-security affairs, make an assessment or an offer to find a way to get bin Laden out of Afghanistan? If so, did it involve the construction of an Afghan Development Fund for the Taliban regime in return for bin Laden's transfer to the UAE? Was onward extradition of bin Laden from the UAE to the United States ever discussed with you? Did you ever make the president aware that such a possibility to get bin Laden out of Afghanistan existed? Was it your view at that time that armed CIA predator drones, which would presumably identify and kill senior al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, were the most efficient tools available to the United States for dealing with the threat posed by al Qaeda? 7. Did al Qaeda get nuclear assistance from Pakistan? A Pakistani national, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, has now admitted to selling nuclear hardware and other materials for the construction of nuclear devices to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. The White House in which you worked was warned about Pakistan's nuclear black-market enterprise in August of 2000, and again in September 2000. You clearly had suspicions about the North Korean relationship very early on. Other troubling aspects of Pakistan's nuclear program were brought to Mr. Berger's attention as early as February 1996. Can you tell us today whether al Qaeda was able to get its hands on sufficient nuclear materials to be able to build a radiological device? Do you believe al Qaeda possesses a functional nuclear device? Did the Clinton administration have sufficient evidence to confront Pakistan's military regime about the illicit nuclear activities of its scientists? Why did you not act on the intelligence you had to stop Dr. Khan's network earlier? Factual answers to these questions, minus the political bluster and ad-hominem attacks aimed at scoring points with a potential future employer, would go a long way in restoring Richard Clarke's severely damaged credibility as an observer and participant in some of history's most important events. Our future generations deserve better than to watch catfights between grown adults charged with nothing less than providing for their safety and security. Just tell us the truth, Mr. Clarke. — Mansoor Ijaz is chairman of Crescent Investment Management in New York. He negotiated Sudan's offer of counterterrorism assistance on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden to the Clinton administration in 1997 and coauthored the blueprint for the ceasefire in Kashmir in the summer of 2000.
and we've been here before: http://nationalreview.com/flashback/york200403230919.asp -- March 23, 2004, 9:19 a.m. The Clinton Terrorism Blame Game Richard Clarke’s book is just the latest move. EDITOR'S NOTE: The new book by former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke is only the latest attempt by former Clinton administration officials to suggest that the September 11 terrorist attacks might have been prevented if only the new Bush White House had followed the advice of the outgoing administration. Former Clinton aides were playing the same game in August 2002, as the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approached, when Time magazine published a major article blaming Bush officials for not following the Clinton path on terrorism. But then, as now, their allegations didn't hold up. What follows is Byron York's report from the September 2, 2002, issue of NR: Saxby Chambliss is a little perplexed. The Republican congressman from Georgia is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security and a key player in the congressional investigation into the roots of the September 11 attacks. He knows a lot about the subject. Yet it was not until he read a recent issue of Time magazine that he learned that in late 2000 the Clinton administration came up with a new, aggressive, wide-ranging plan to topple the al Qaeda terrorist network. In an article headlined "Could 9/11 Have Been Prevented?" Time reported that top Clinton officials handed the plan to the incoming Bush administration, but, tragically, the Bush team chose not to act until it was too late. The heroes of the article were Richard Clarke, a top antiterrorism aide who is said to have put together the plan, and Samuel Berger, President Clinton's national-security adviser, who is portrayed as a tough-talking hardliner on terrorism. And that's what has Chambliss perplexed. "I've had Dick Clarke testify before our committee several times, and we've invited Samuel Berger several times," Chambliss says, "and this is the first I've ever heard of that plan." If it was such a big deal, Chambliss wonders, why didn't anyone mention it? Sources at the White House are just as baffled. In public, they've been careful not to pick fights with the previous administration over the terrorism issue. But privately, they say the Time report was way off base. "There was no new plan to topple al Qaeda," one source says flatly. "No new plan." When asked if there was, perhaps, an old plan to topple al Qaeda, which might have been confused in the story, the source says simply, "No." The Time article, which was the work of a team of 15 reporters, said that after the October 12, 2000, attack that killed 17 American sailors on board the USS Cole, Clarke began work on "an aggressive plan to take the fight to al-Qaeda." Clarke reportedly wanted to break up al Qaeda cells, cut off their funding, destroy their sanctuaries, and give major support to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. In addition, Time reported, "the U.S. military would start planning for air strikes on the camps and for the introduction of special-operations forces into Afghanistan." It was, in the words of a senior Bush administration official quoted by Time, "everything we've done since 9/11." According to the magazine, Clarke presented the plan to Berger on December 20, 2000, but Berger decided not to act on it. "We would be handing [the Bush administration] a war when they took office," an unnamed former Clinton aide told Time. "That wasn't going to happen." Instead, Berger urged his successor, Condoleezza Rice, to take action. To the Clinton team's dismay, the Bush White House did not come up with its own finished plan against al Qaeda until September 4, 2001. On its face, the story was a sensational indictment of the Bush administration's response to terrorism. But if the president's critics hoped it would inflict political damage on the Bush White House, it has instead had the opposite effect, backfiring on Clinton's defenders and causing them to back away from the story's main conclusion. Indeed, even a cursory look at the Clinton administration's record on terrorism raises questions about the article's premise. For example: If there was indeed such a plan, why did the Clinton team wait so long to come up with it? In the past, former Clinton officials have said that they moved into fully engaged anti-terrorism mode after the August 7, 1998, bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. More than 200 people, including twelve Americans, were killed, and an investigation quickly showed the attack to be the work of Osama bin Laden. In an interview with National Review last year, Daniel Benjamin, a former National Security Council official, said the Africa bombings were a turning point in the administration's response to terrorism. "I and a whole lot of people basically did very little else other than Osama bin Laden for the next year and a half," Benjamin said. At the time, top Clinton officials vowed a long, tough campaign. "This is, unfortunately, the war of the future," Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told reporters on August 21, shortly after the U.S. fired cruise missiles at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. "This is going to be a long-term battle against terrorists who have declared war on the United States." Other officials, including President Clinton, said similar things. So why, when by their own account the war unquestionably began in August 1998, did Clinton administration officials wait until December 2000, a few weeks before leaving office, to come up with a plan to fight it? Why was the plan created so late that it could not be implemented but was instead presented to the incoming Bush administration with the admonition, "Here — do this"? There's no answer in the Time story. In addition, the Clinton defenders' account is plagued by some internal contradictions. For example, Time says the Clinton administration was constrained from taking action in the aftermath of the Cole bombing because "the CIA and FBI had not officially concluded [that bin Laden was behind the attack] and would be unable to do so before Clinton left office." But the article also documents the frustrations of John O'Neill, a top FBI official who had "run afoul of Barbara Bodine, then the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, who believed the FBI's large presence was causing political problems for the Yemeni regime." Time says that "when O'Neill left Yemen on a trip home for Thanksgiving, Bodine barred his return." It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Clinton administration, for whatever reason, made the investigation more difficult and then claimed it could not act against al Qaeda because the investigation had not yielded conclusive results. It didn't quite make sense, and indeed, after the Bush White House denied the Time story, some former Clinton officials began to pull back on some of its claims. Now, one of them — who asks not to be named — says Time didn't have it quite right. "There were certainly ongoing efforts throughout the eight years of the Clinton administration to fight terrorism," the official says. "It was certainly not a formal war plan. We wouldn't have characterized it as a formal war plan. The Bush administration was briefed on the Clinton administration's ongoing efforts and threat assessments." That's pretty much what the Bush White House says happened. So why make all the headline-grabbing charges in the first place? More than anything, the article's appearance is evidence of the dogged determination of former Clinton officials to portray their administration as tough on terrorism. Sometimes that public-relations campaign has involved positive defenses of Clinton's record, and sometimes it has involved attacks on the Bush White House. The Time piece was the most spectacular example yet of the latter; it was, in Saxby Chambliss's words, "a full-bore shotgun blast at the Bush administration." And even though it missed, there will no doubt be more. For their part, Bush officials say they don't want to "get into this game." But they'd better get used to it.
you mean former Bush & Reagan administration officials? Basso, why did you lie about Kerry's terrorism policy in that other thread? Or were you just mistaken?
Yeah, basso. We know what the National Review thinks (shocking as that was, in triplicate). And we appreciate that you're not just quoting Rush now for your material. But answer Sam's question. You kept posting the untrue Rush-speak about Kerry's position even after I'd called you on it previously. So did you lie? Or did you simply make a mistake?
I've called him on several things; he rarely gets back to anyone who does. It's ok, though...in those instances he does, I could have written it for him beforehand. Long Live The Ostrich Brigade! ( Although the strategy can't be completely bankrupt: there are still ostriches on the planet, so avoiding what you dont want to see must work some times.)
kerry has said repeatedly that he views the war on terror as primarily a matter for intelligence agencies and the police. has his view changed? was it a flip, or a flop? was he lying then or now? what does he really believe??? i'm not sure continually referring to people you disagree with as "liars" is really that helpful, but then, that's the level of discourse to which we've sunk in the D&D, and in politics in general in this country.
Please provide some sourcing for this contention, particularly the "primarily" part of it. Please don't give me a soundbite from some comment he may have made in 1987, either, that counts no more than President/Candidate Bush's arrogant derision of nationbuilding. According to his official positions, and the speech he gave outining his strategy, this is mistaken.
