Richard Clarke - Against All Enemies

This is off topic, but I was curious what the charge was with Ritter, since the "minor" involved was a cop and therefore an adult. Is the charge solicitation of a minor? Intent to solicit?

 

The neocons are on the run, the Bush Administration is hysterical, all because of one man armed with the simple truth.

“One shudders to think what additional errors (Bush) will make in the next four years...”--Richard Clarke

By Mick Youther

Counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke managed to escape the Bush Whitehouse with his integrity still intact, and has written a book about the failure of that administration to deal with terrorism and their obsession with going to war against Iraq. Clarke gave an interview to Leslie Stahl, which aired on 60 Minutes on March 21, 2004—a date that may forever be remembered as “Black Sunday” on the NeoCon calendar.

These statements are from Mr. Clarke’s interview, unless noted otherwise:

• “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 to stop 9/11.”

• “ [At a meeting in April, 2001] I began saying, ‘We have to deal with bin Laden; we have to deal with al Qaeda.’ Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, said, ‘No, no, no. We don't have to deal with al Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.’”-

• “The alerts of the early and mid-summer[2001] -- described by two career counterterrorist officials as the most urgent in decades -- had faded to secondary concern by the time of Bush's extended Crawford vacation. As late as Sept. 9, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld threatened a presidential veto when the Senate proposed to divert $600 million to counterterrorism from ballistic missile defense.”-- Barton Gellman, Washington Post, 5/17/02

Even if you give the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt and concede that any arrogant, incompetent administration could have failed to take the terrorist threat seriously enough to stop the attacks; it still doesn’t explain what they did AFTER 9/11.

• “They were talking about Iraq on 9/11. They were talking about it on 9/12.”

• “I think they had a plan from day one they wanted to do something about Iraq. While the World Trade Center was still smoldering, while they were still digging bodies out, people in the White House were thinking: 'Ah! This gives us the opportunity we have been looking for to go after Iraq.’”

• “Now [Bush] 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.”

• “Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq....We all said, ‘but no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan, and Rumsfeld said, ‘There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.’ ...I thought he was joking.”

• “In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI ...The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the attacks.”-- Dana Milbank, Washington Post, 3/22/04

• “The facts are that within six months of the first bombs falling on Afghanistan, this administration was diverting military and intelligence resources to its planned war in Iraq, which allowed Al Qaeda to regenerate.” --US Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), 3/21/04

• “Nothing America could have done would have provided al-Qaida and its new generation of cloned groups a better recruitment device than our unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country.... One shudders to think what additional errors (Bush) will make in the next four years to strengthen the al-Qaida follow-ons: attacking Syria or Iran, undermining the Saudi regime without a plan for a successor state?”-- from Clarke’s book, “Against All Enemies”

By the time you read this, Clarke’s book will be out, and he will have testified before the 9/11 Commission. The Bush machine will be in full spin-cycle, trying to make it appear that Richard Clarke is personally responsible for all the terrorist attacks during the past 15 years, and that he performs abortions in his spare bedroom. Bush’s defense is, “If only the terrorists would have let me know the date, time, and place of the attacks; I would have done everything in my power to stop them.”

So remember as you watch the parade of Whitehouse minions attack Clarke’s character, and you hear Limbaugh and Hannity and O’Reilly tell lie after lie about him. Remember—it was Richard Clarke, who stayed behind in the evacuated Whitehouse to run the government’s crisis response operations while Bush, Cheney, and Rice sat out the attack in their respective spider holes.

Posted March 25, 2004



Mick Youther is an Instructor in the Department of Physiology at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, IL. You can email your comments to Mick@interventionmag.com

 

I'm sorry my friend, but you are sadly mistaken if you think that the Bush Administration had a "handle" on terrorism as they came into power.

First off, it is a fact that Attorney Gerneral John Ashcroft was cutting Anti-Terrorism Funding the week of 911. That is a fact, and I challenge you to prove otherwise.

Secondly, National Security Advisor Condi Rice has no background whatsoever in issues of terrorism and I dare anyone here to prove me wrong on that as well. She is an expert on the Soviet Union. I repeat: She is an expert on the Soviet Union.

Furtherrmore, Ms. Rice is an "academic" without any of the kind of experience that someone like a Richard Clarke has. Remember, Clarke was the #1 advisor on terrorism. His tenure reigned over 4 presidential administrations, with 3 of them being Republican.

Thirdly, Clarke's book was no real surprise to the Bush Administration. They have had a copy of the book for quite some time and have had the luxury of preparing a response to Clarke's comments. In otherwords, his book was of no surprise to people "in-the-know" including the Bush Administration.

As for Colin Powell, he was totally unaware that the British intelligence dossier that he used on February 5th in his speech to the UN was plagiarized from a graduate student who was writing about Iraq, circa 1991!

In January, Secretary of State Powell was asked by an ambassador as to what the evidence was like on Iraq. He replied that he "didn't know, and hadn't seen it yet." In the first few days of February leading up to his UN speech, Powell spends 4 days at CIA headquarters "cramming" like a college freshman for an "exam". And guess what? Much of the evidence was being supplied by the Vice President's office, in the person of Scooter Libby, and Rumsfield along with Wolfowitz. This, in and of itself is amazing because the Vice President of the United States, the Secretary of State or the National Security Advisor has ever come up to the CIA for a working visit. Never.

As for George Tenet, he is a very troubled man.

First of all, he is so thankful to President Bush for not being fired over dropping the ball on 911 that he will do anything for the President. And this is where the problem is . . . the CIA has no independence and has been corrupted and prostituted by their lack of independence. The Secretary of State and Condoleezza Rice and VP Cheney convening in CIA headquarters to sit around a table and help with analysis . . . Oh My F-ing God! This never happens. And yet it did under George Bush.

Just my 2 cents.

 

In case you have never been to CIA Headquarters, there is an inscription at the entrance that is chiseled into marble that reads: "You Shall Know The Truth, And The Truth Shall Set You Free."

In otherwords, the CIA is a place where they seek the truth and are able to report on that truth without fear or favor. They don't go running around having to defend State Department policies. The CIA is independent, and is the one place in Washington where the President can turn to for an "unvarnished" truthful answer to a delicate policy problem.

This did not happen under George Bush and George Tenet.

As I have said on several occasions before this, the CIA was "prostituted" by the Bush Administration and for that, we are paying dearly now, and will continue to do so in the future for our intelligence agency has been "compromised".

 

Clarke is a very convincing and polished performer on TV. Of course, he has gone only on shows where he has been lobbed softball questions and encouraged to vent about how evil Bush is. Given his background however, one is forced to take his accusations seriously. This is not John Kerry or Howard Dean, but a seasoned pro with a huge load of vitriol.

Looking at his complaints objectively, I think they suffer from the absolute clarity of hindsight. Let's assume he is telling the truth and the Bush people were more concerned about Iraq than Al Qaeda when they took office. Was that irresponsible? Or was it a reflection that on the scale of potential harm to our interests, a madman armed one day with nuclear weapons and threatening the world's oil supply was a bigger threat than some small scale terrorists?

He seems very upset that the White House looked for a Saddam/9/11 link. Why was that so irrational? Wouldn't that be a very logical question? He admits no one told him to manufacture evidence, but he "thought" that's what they wanted. So mind reading is also one of his skills?

He objects to the Bush response to OBL and compares it unfavorably to Clinton. This is the hardest to understand. Bush launched a full scale invasion of Afghanistan and coopted the Paki's into at least grudging assistance. He deposed the Taliban and put OBL and Al Qaeda on the run and imprisoned many of their fighters/terrorists. By contrast, Clinton fired off a few cruise missiles but apparently refused numerous offers to be given OBL because of legalistic concerns.

Reduced to its essentials, Clarke's main objection ssems to be the adoption of a neo-con mideast agenda. He disagrees with that vigorously on policy grounds. No doubt his antipathy has been hardened by decades of battles with the Israeli lobby, which has enjoyed a veto power over US mideast policy for decades. But Clarke was not a policy maker. He was an analyst and coordinator. Those who are shouting his praises should understand they are supporting the Pat Buchanan middle east policy.

I'm not convinced the neo-con middle east pacification strategy will work. But having a problem with that is far different from saying that Bush has not worked effectively against terror and Al Qeada.

One has to wonder if Clarke isn't engaging in score settling with Condi Rice and her superiors. Clearly he fell from favor, and clearly this is a man with an enormous ego who, like many government staffers, bitterly object to the fact that they are not allowed to make polciy without the inconvenience of actually running for public office. His timing, his overly personal tone and his connection to the Kerry campaign all undermine the case he tries to make, just as the seeming illogic of it raises questions of motive.

On balance, it is hard not to conclude that he is a despicable opportunist who is trying to profit from the tragedies that occurred on his watch and settle personal vendettas along the way.

 

This is nonsense and you should know it. The CIA's assessment on Iraq's WMD program was consistent with every other major country's intellignece service. It was consistent with that used during the Clinton administration, and various members of that administration are on record years before saying exactly what Bush said regarding Iraq. Indeed, even a pacifist like Kerry said something along those lines.

There is no evidenc whatsoever that Bush made up these claims, and loads of evidence to the contrary.

What was in dispute was the appropriate response. That is something that is fair game for argument, I believe, but let's not invent a historical record that is simply fantasy.

 

While you focus on his personality, and his motives I have only one question.

Is what he said true or false?

That seems to me to be much more important than why he is telling the truth or telling something false.

Is he telling the truth?

Is Condi telling the truth?

Who will go under oath?

Who won't?

 

AAA:
>He objects to the Bush response to OBL and compares it
>unfavorably to Clinton. This is the hardest to understand.
>Bush launched a full scale invasion of Afghanistan and
>coopted the Paki's into at least grudging assistance. He
>deposed the Taliban and put OBL and Al Qaeda on the
>run and imprisoned many of their fighters/terrorists. By
>contrast, Clinton fired off a few cruise missiles but
>apparently refused numerous offers to be given OBL
>because of legalistic concerns.

Not to defend the spineless on foreign policy Clinton administration here, but to compare what Clinton did in Afghanistan to what Bush did post 9/11 is a very BIG case of apples and oranges.

Bush clearly would NOT have done what he did in Afghanistan WITHOUT 9/11.

JB

 

ART:
>Who will go under oath?
>
>Who won't?

And that I find SOOOOOOOOOOO telling.

JB