What's strange about Clarke' allegations is that they are about events that happen when Bush returned from Air Force One to the White House on 9/11. It would seem that the decision making process Clarke talks about would have been done while Bush was in the air, not after he got back hours later.
This has become the dirty little secret of the networks and the media empires that own them. Use supposed news shows to generate buzz about some book or movie one of their corporate siblings is pushing. And we though Walter Kronkite was a POS.
I did a little reading on the yahoo article about Dick Clarke. I see three very relevant facts. 1. He faults Bush for not chasing OBL and al qaeda vigorously enough, yet he was there apparently for the entire Clinton administration when Al Qaeda was running wild with no opposition from us. Now this guy criticizes Bush, who threw out the Taliban and reduced Al Qaeda to a bunch of guys kiving in caves? 2. He criticizes Rice as basically being dumb and out of her depth. Then we see the crucial phrase. he was "effectively demoted" by Rice. Knowing how these career bureaucrats operate and think, that pretty well explains everything for me. 3. His friend and former colleague is Kerry's national security advisor. No conflict there, right? From article: "... . It was the latest in what became a three-day cycle of broadsides, driven by Clarke's interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" in which he said Bush missed opportunities to rein in or thwart Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al-Qaida terrorist network while plotting to attack Iraq (news - web sites). Clarke, Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator, had said among other things that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), "looked skeptical" when she was warned early in 2001 about the threat from al-Qaida. "Her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before," Clarke wrote in his new book â "Against All Enemies" â that is scathingly critical of Bush's response to the 2001 terror attacks against New York and Washington. Clarke said Rice, who previously worked for Bush's father, appeared not to recognize post-Cold War security issues and effectively demoted him within the national security council. He said Rice has an unusually close relationship with Bush, which "should have given her some maneuver room, some margin for shaping the agenda." Clarke, expected to testify Tuesday before a federal panel investigating the attacks, recounted his meeting with Rice as support for his contention that the Bush administration failed to recognize the risk of an attack by al-Qaida in the months leading to Sept. 11, 2001. Clarke retired in March 2003 after three decades in the U.S. government. The Associated Press obtained a copy of Clarke's book before its Monday publication. Clarke said within one week of the Bush inauguration he "urgently" sought a meeting of senior Cabinet leaders to discuss "the imminent al-Qaida threat." Months later, in April, Clarke met with deputy secretaries. During that meeting, he wrote, the Defense Department's Paul Wolfowitz told Clarke, "You give bin Laden too much credit," and he said Wolfowitz sought to steer the discussion to Iraq. The White House responded that it kept Clarke on its staff after the election because of its concerns over al-Qaida. "He makes the charge that we were not focused enough on efforts to root out terrorism," White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said Sunday. "That's just categorically false." Bartlett said Clarke's memo to Rice in January 2001 discussed recommendations to improve security at U.S. sites overseas, not inside the United States. "Each one of these, while important, wouldn't have impacted 9/11," Bartlett said. Clarke harshly criticizes Bush personally in his book, saying his decision to invade Iraq generated broad anti-American sentiment among Arabs. He recounts that Bush asked him directly almost immediately after the Sept. 11 terror attacks to find whether Iraq was involved in the suicide hijackings. McClellan said Bush recalls no such conversation. "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," Clarke wrote. Clarke added: "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?" Sen. Joe Lieberman (news - web sites), D-Conn., said Sunday he doesn't believe Clarke's charge that the Bush administration â which defeated him and former Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) in the 2000 election â was focused more on Iraq than al-Qaida during the days after the terror attacks. "I see no basis for it," Lieberman said on Fox News Sunday. "I think we've got to be careful to speak facts and not rhetoric." And Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that while he has been critical of Bush policies on Iraq, "I think it's unfair to blame the president for the spread of terror and the diffuseness of it. Even if he had followed the advice of me and many other people, I still think the same thing would have happened." Presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry (news - web sites) said Sunday he asked for copies of Clarke's book to review. Kerry is vacationing at his Idaho home through Wednesday before returning to the campaign trail. "I would like to read them before I make any comment at all," Kerry told reporters. "I have asked for them." Kerry's adviser on national security, Rand Beers, is a close associate of Clarke's and held the job as terrorism adviser under President Bush during part of 2002. Clarke quotes Beers in the book as asking his advice when Beers considered quitting because "they're using the war on terror politically." Bartlett, the White House communications director, noted Clarke's friendship with Beers and the upcoming presidential election. "We believe the timing is questionable," Bartlett said. "When (Clarke) left office, he had every opportunity" to make any grievances known.
My personal belief is that our work in Iraq was the right thing to do. Perhaps in time I will be proven wrong. It is also my belief that Bush felt that he couldn't sell the invasion to the American people on it's REAL grounds (we can't afford another N. Korea) and had to OVERSELL the wmd's and 9/11 connection. To me Clarks words are just one more piece of that puzzle. Just watched a piece on the History Channel on the Clinton/Somalia fiasco and in spite of bad taste in my mouth for Bush's marketing tactics I at least applaud him for staying the course unlike Clinton (for whom I voted once). In the Presidential elections I select the candidate based on keeping the Supremes as close to the center as possible -- sometimes Dem and sometimes Rep. For that reason (and that reason alone) I tend toward Kerry this round, but if I get the sense that he will not reasonably stay the course in Iraq I will go for Bush another round. JB
OK, do you guys see why I say you should question what you see and hear. Make sure you know what the motive is of the source where you are getting your information. http://www.drudgereport.com/cbsrc.htm XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX MON MARCH 22, 2004 12:04:25 ET XXXXX NEWS FOR SALE: CBS PUSHED BOOK IT OWNS; '60 MINUTES' DID NOT REVEAL PARENT COMPANY'S FINANCIAL STAKE IN CLARKE PROJECT CBSNEWS did not inform its viewers last night that its parent company owns and has a direct financial stake in the success of the book by former White House terror staffer turned Bush critic, Dick Clarke, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal. 60 MINUTES aired a double-segment investigative report on the new book "Against All Enemies" -- but did not disclose how CBSNEWS parent VIACOM is publishing the book and will profit from any and all sales! ETHICAL BREACH CBS even used heavy promotion for the 60 MINUTES/book launch during its Sunday sports shows. It is not clear who made the final decision at CBSNEWS not to inform the viewer during 60 MINUTES how they were watching a news story about a VIACOM product. 60 MINUTES pro Lesley Stahl is said to have been aware of the conflict before the program aired. [CBSNEWS.COM did add a disclaimer to its Internet coverage of the book over the weekend: "Against All Enemies," which is being published Monday by FREE PRESS, a subsidiary of SIMON & SCHUSTER. Both CBSNews.com and SIMON & SCHUSTER are units of VIACOM." And CBS RADIO did carry a disclaimer in its news coverage of the book.] SIMON & SCHUSTER INFO-COMMERCIAL Earlier this year, it was Stahl who also profiled another author on 60 MINUTES -- for another book owned by VIACOMCBS -- without any disclaimer! "The Price of Loyalty" by former Treasury Secretary, turned Bush critic, Paul O'Neill was financed, produced and released [and rolled-out at CBSNEWS] by VIACOM's SIMON & SCHUSTER. Coming in future weeks, best-selling author Bob Woodward is set to release his PLAN OF ATTACK, a fresh look at the Bush White House. Will the Woodward VIACOMSIMON&SCHUSTER product debut on: VIACOMSIMON&SCHUSTERCBS's 60 MINUTES?
Yes, you will be proven wrong. The invasion of Iraq with go down as the biggest foreign policy fiasco of the first half of this century. Like Vietnam, there is no way out other than defeat, and continued death and destruction, until we leave with our tail between our legs. There is no "victory" to be had in Iraq, because we have no clear cut objectives.
CBS was extremely irresponsible in not making this clear, and it is another example of the problems with media ownership by large conglomerates. However....it does not detract from the fact that thank God there are people in government who will provide a voice of the opposition. Congress is supposed to provide us with that service in countering a sitting President. But where the hell is congress these days? Shelling out more pork. So don't damn Clark. You should be thankful that people like him are there to speak up.
Turok, I confess to not understanding how you could select Kerry based on your judicial test of keeping the Court grounded in the center. That sounds like a Court that will not go out of its way to make law and one that will respect both tradition, well-understood rights and the coordinate branches. I think the current Court is a frightening failure on that scale. This is the Court that somehow found a previously undiscovered constitutional right to homosexual sex, while at the same time being utterly incapable of understanding how banning politcal ads right before an election could infringe the First Amendment. It was a Court that upheld a state university's racial preferences with the observation that it would not be constitutional 25 years from now. I search the Constitution in vain for any suggestion that laws can ripen into unconstitutionality over time, like cheese. The common thread of these radical decisions is that they emanated from the Court's liberal wing. To put the Court back on course and avoid more such mischief in the future, it seems obvious to me that the power of this liberal wing should be curtailed, not augmented as Kerry would surely do.
Brilliant observation: i didn't realize until now that Bush makes the biggest mistake known in trading...
LOL. Very right. He made the entry based purely on gut, with no planned exit. A good lesson for every trader. Know exactly what you are getting into before you get into it, and know precisely where you are going to get out.