Richard Clarke's story corroborated

[MTAtech]

When Richard Clarke went on 60 Minutes on Sunday and said that, in contrast to the way Bush is marketed, the reality was that the Administration ignored terrorism and was hyper-focused on Iraq, the Bush Administration started a character assassination - claiming he was a disgruntled employee, was politically motivated and wanted to sell his book.

Dick Cheney, ... said, that Mr. Clarke was "out of the loop." (What loop? Before 9/11, Mr. Clarke was the administration's top official on counterterrorism.) 1

Today, other people are coming forward that supports Clarke's view. “One ally, Mr. Clarke's former deputy, Roger Cressey, backed the thrust of one of the most incendiary accusations in the book, about a conversation that Mr. Clarke said he had with Mr. Bush in the White House Situation Room on the night of Sept. 12, 2001. Mr. Clarke said Mr. Bush pressed him three times to find evidence that Iraq was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The accusation is explosive because no such link has ever been proved. 2
“Kenneth Pollack told "Frontline," "there was a group of people, both inside and outside the administration, who believed that the war on terrorism . . . should target Iraq first.” Mr. Clarke simply adds more detail. 3

"I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything," Mr. Clarke writes that Mr. Bush told him. "See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way."

Mr. Cressey cast Mr. Bush's instructions to Mr. Clarke less as an order to come up with a link between Mr. Hussein and Sept. 11, and more as a request to "take a look at all options, including Iraq."

Another ally of Mr. Clarke, Thomas R. Maertens, confirmed the outlines of Mr. Clarke's critique of the White House. Mr. Maertens, who served as National Security Council director for nuclear nonproliferation on both the Clinton and Bush White House staffs, said that Mr. Clarke had repeatedly tried to warn senior officials in the Bush administration about the growing threat of Al Qaeda.

"They really believed their campaign rhetoric about the Clinton administration," Mr. Maertens said. "So anything they did was bad, and the Bushies were not going to repeat it. And it's disgusting to see the administration now putting a full-court smear on Clarke — for being right." 4

Did the Bush administration ignore terrorism warnings before 9/11? Justice Department documents obtained by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, show that it did. Not only did John Ashcroft completely drop terrorism as a priority — it wasn't even mentioned in his list of seven "strategic goals" — just one day before 9/11 he proposed a reduction in counterterrorism funds.

Did the administration neglect counterterrorism even after 9/11? After 9/11 the F.B.I. requested $1.5 billion for counterterrorism operations, but the White House slashed this by two-thirds. (Meanwhile, the Bush campaign has been attacking John Kerry because he once voted for a small cut in intelligence funds.) 5

[Pexster]

More on the timing issue -- Clarke pointed out last night on The News Hour that the book would have been out months ago if not for the White House lawyers dragging their feet in vetting it. It's interesting to me that our "liberal" media has been focused much more on various White House responses to his charges than on the charges themselves. They're bending over backwards to give the administration the benefit of the doubt on this.

[aldtech]

Great post, we will be hearing more about this in the days to weeks to come but will it last long enough to get to November?

One note though: your links go the New York Post and require a logon, no problem to me but you know all the Bush supporters will not log in there. Maybe that is because they think, or know, that the site is monitored by elements in the Republican Party which cross references login ID's with party membership rosters. Any positive matches and their party membership is revoked.

AL

That is a joke by the way.

[MTAtech]

First, it's the New York Times. Second, I put as much of the article in the post that I could without violating the Time's copyrights.

If people don't want to check my references, it's ok by me.

(I don't put it past Ashcroft to do the match.)

Thanks Pex for the info on The News Hour. I'll see if I can get a transcript and forward it to my buddies at www.bushcentral.com

[Pexster]

Here's the transcript of the News Hour interview. Another general thought on the "disgruntled ex-employee" theme. Many of these people are as labeled precisely because their former boss was an incompetent boob. So the label does not make them wrong -- just gone. I'm sure many here can relate to this personally at one one time or another in their lives.

[Mykex]

Ten questions for Richard Clarke:

Question number 1: Mr. Clarke, the first time the Sudanese government offered bin Laden to the United States, exactly what advice did you give Bill Clinton?

Question number 2: Mr. Clarke, the second time the Sudanese government offered bin Laden to the United States, exactly what advice did you give Bill Clinton?

Question number 3: Mr. Clarke, the third time the Sudanese government offered bin Laden to the United States, exactly what advice did you give Bill Clinton?

Question number 4: When Al-Qaeda attacked our barracks in Saudi Arabia, Mr. Clarke, what exactly advice did you give Clinton for striking back at them?

Question number 5: Mr. Clarke, when Al-Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, what advice did you give Clinton for striking back at them?


Question number 6: Mr. Clarke, when Al-Qaeda attacked the USS Cole in 2000, what advice did you give President Clinton for striking back at them?

Question number 7: Mr. Clarke, when Al-Qaeda attacked the two U.S. embassies in North Africa, weren't you one of the experts who advised Clinton to bomb the pharmaceutical factory in Sudan?

Question number 8: Mr. Clarke, when Clinton was slashing the defense budget in the face of these Al-Qaeda attacks, did you advise him against it?

Question number 9: Mr. Clarke, when Clinton undermined the CIA in the face of all these takers, did you advise him against doing that?

Question number 10: Mr. Clarke, isn't it true that you and your colleagues in the Clinton administration generally were complete and miserable failures in defending this nation for eight years, and isn't it a little weak of you to now come forward and say that what Bush didn't do in the first nine months of his term, is pathetic?

[Pexster]

Mykex, the answers to most of your questions are simple. He advised Clinton to attack and bomb al-Qaeda hideouts. Clinton wouldn't do it.

[RADAR1797]

And Bush has.

-RADAR

[MTAtech]

Question number 8: Mr. Clarke, when Clinton was slashing the defense budget in the face of these Al-Qaeda attacks, did you advise him against it?

That's like asking, "when did you stop beating your wife?"

The question presumes that Clinton slashed defense spending, which is a frequent right-wing line. But, like most right-wing lines, they are false:

see: http://slate.msn.com/id/2082499/
see also: http://www.brook.edu/views/articles/...n/20031101.htm

Question number 10: Mr. Clarke, isn't it true that you and your colleagues in the Clinton administration generally were complete and miserable failures in defending this nation for eight years, and isn't it a little weak of you to now come forward and say that what Bush didn't do in the first nine months of his term, is pathetic?

Complete and miserable failures? I don't recall any large loss of life by foreign hands during the Clinton Admin. By that standard, they did a great job. In Kosovo the military loss was zero.

[Bill in SD, CA]

Ahhhh ........ didn't Clinton's only military repsone to al Qaeda come on the day that Monica Blewinsky was going to testify?

Wag the Dog so to speak?

Invetsor's Business Daily Editorial 9/1/98 "We took President Clinton's word that bombing Sudan and Afghanistan was necessary and that our forces punished the right people. We should have known better. His original story, as usual, isn't holding up to scrutiny. On Aug. 20, three days after half-confessing to lying about Monica Lewinsky, Clinton ordered our military to pump as many as 20 Tomahawk missiles into a plant in Sudan, a Muslim nation with which we have heretofore had no major quarrel. Clinton ordered another 60 or so Tomahawks launched against six camps near Khost, Afghanistan. To justify its attacks, the White House invoked the specters of nerve gas and a gathering of international terrorists. Yet over the past 11 days, press reports have put the lie to several statements made by Clinton and his officers to justify the two attacks. As these statements have become inoperative, officials have spun new justifications - further raising suspicions the attacks were ordered to shift attention from Clinton's personal woes."

And that's just one of many editorial quotes from this page.

http://www.alamo-girl.com/0113.htm

Bill