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Richard Clarke: Bush Admin Negligent in Antiterrorism

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  • Richard Clarke: Bush Admin Negligent in Antiterrorism



    After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.

    "Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.

    "Initially, I thought when he said "There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan" I thought he was joking.

    "I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection."

    [...]

    Clarke then tells Stahl of being pressured by Mr. Bush.

    "The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he 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.

    "I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

    "He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

    Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'

    "I have no idea, to this day, if the President saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don't think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer."

    Clarke was the president's chief adviser on terrorism, yet it wasn't until Sept. 11 that he ever got to brief Mr. Bush on the subject. Clarke says, prior to Sept. 11, the administration didn't take the threat seriously.

    "We had a terrorist organization that was going after us! Al Qaeda. That should have been the first item on the agenda. And it was pushed back and back and back for months.

    "There's a lot of blame to go around, and I probably deserve some blame too. But on January 24th, 2001, I wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice asking for, urgently -- underlined urgently -- a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack. And that urgent memo-- wasn't acted on.

    "I blame the entire Bush leadership for continuing to work on Cold War issues when they back in power in 2001. It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier. They came back; they wanted to work on the same issues right away: Iraq, Star Wars. Not new issues, the new threats that had developed over the preceding eight years."

    Clarke finally got his meeting about al Qaeda in April, three months after his urgent request. But it wasn't with the president or cabinet. It was with the second-in-command in each relevant department.

    For the Pentagon, it was Paul Wolfowitz.

    Clarke relates, "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.'

    "And I said, 'Paul, there hasn't been any Iraqi terrorism against the United States in eight years!' And I turned to the deputy director of the CIA and said, 'Isn't that right?' And he said, 'Yeah, that's right. There is no Iraqi terrorism against the United States."

    Clarke went on to add, "There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever."

    When Stahl pointed out that some administration officials say it's still an open issue, Clarke responded, "Well, they'll say that until hell freezes over."

    By June 2001, there still hadn't been a Cabinet-level meeting on terrorism, even though U.S. intelligence was picking up an unprecedented level of ominous chatter.

    The CIA director warned the White House, Clarke points out. "George Tenet was saying to the White House, saying to the president - 'cause he briefed him every morning - a major al Qaeda attack is going to happen against the United States somewhere in the world in the weeks and months ahead. He said that in June, July, August.

    Clarke says the last time the CIA had picked up a similar level of chatter was in December, 1999, when Clarke was the terrorism czar in the Clinton White House.

    Clarke says Mr. Clinton ordered his Cabinet to go to battle stations-- meaning, they went on high alert, holding meetings nearly every day.

    That, Clarke says, helped thwart a major attack on Los Angeles International Airport, when an al Qaeda operative was stopped at the border with Canada, driving a car full of explosives.

    Clarke harshly criticizes President Bush for not going to battle stations when the CIA warned him of a comparable threat in the months before Sept. 11.

    "He never thought it was important enough for him to hold a meeting on the subject, or for him to order his National Security Adviser to hold a Cabinet-level meeting on the subject."

    Finally, says Clarke, "The cabinet meeting I asked for right after the inauguration took place-- one week prior to 9/11."

    In that meeting, Clarke proposed a plan to bomb al Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan, and to kill bin Laden.
    "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
    -Bokonon

  • #2
    Yet Bush continues to spout "Iraq" and "War on terror" in the same breath. He desperately needs the link that just wasn't there.
    "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." - Clarence Darrow
    "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain

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    • #3
      I've heard the, "there aren't enough targets in Afghanistan" line and it just sounds like something someone made up to me.

      I will agree however that the Administration did jump on thinking they might need to go after Iraq after 911. Rice even mentioned it.

      Predator drones had spotted Bin Laden in 2001 but at that time were not armed. The Bush administration pushed to have them armed so the next time one of the drones spotted Bin Laden, they could kill him.

      Part of the problem, everyone agrees, is bureaucratic infighting between the CIA and the Pentagon over who would pay and who would be blamed if something went wrong.

      After testing in June, the administration's plan was to send the Predator to Afghanistan in September.

      President Bush had said he was tired of “swatting flies.” Did his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, ever say, “September isn’t good enough — we have got to get this back up there"?

      “We did push very hard on getting the Predator back up,” insisted Rice, “But you always have to be careful to make sure that you're going to have something that works."
      We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. - Abraham Lincoln

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      • #4
        this corroborates Paul O'Neill's statement that the Bush admin was hell-bent for Iraq before 9-11...
        To us, it is the BEAST.

        Comment


        • #5
          Ted, are you implying that Bush did his job because he pushed for armed predators, just in case OBL is spotted again?
          In Soviet Russia, Fake borises YOU.

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          • #6
            Here is the White House response, which is pretty hard-hitting.



            I think Clarke is off base here, because he wasn't in a position to know as much as he thought he was. Don't know if Clarke's critique is politically motivated or not.
            I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891

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            • #7
              The following accusation seems more than a little bizarre.

              Clarke said that after debating for a week after Sept. 11 whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan, the administration decided that "they had to do Afghanistan first" because it was obvious that al Qaeda, which was based in Afghanistan, was behind the attacks. But he said the response "was slow and small" and the Bush administration did not go all out to send troops into Afghanistan and eliminate al Qaeda and bin Laden because it was holding back a larger effort for Iraq.

              "We should have put U.S. special forces in immediately, not many weeks later," Clark told ABC. "U.S. special forces didn't get into the area where bin Laden was for two months, and we tried to have the Afghans do it. You know, basically the president botched the response to 9/11. He should have gone right after Afghanistan, right after bin Laden. And then he made the whole war on terrorism so much worse by invading Iraq."
              What was the problem with deciding what to do and how to do it before sending our guys in? Wouldn't it be irresponsible to send them in without proper planning and support first?
              I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891

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              • #8
                Clarke is lying through his teeth. This is all about money and politics. Clarke wants to sell his book and he wants to bash Bush since he is part of the Kerry campaign. It is all political.
                'There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.'"
                G'Kar - from Babylon 5 episode "Z'ha'dum"

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by The diplomat
                  Clarke is lying through his teeth. This is all about money and politics. Clarke wants to sell his book and he wants to bash Bush since he is part of the Kerry campaign. It is all political.
                  Agree. There are some very close connections between him and someone on Kerry's staff. I can't think of the other fellows name. Anyone else hear that?

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by The diplomat
                    Clarke wants to sell his book and he wants to bash Bush since he is part of the Kerry campaign. It is all political.
                    Well, if registered Republicans are signing up for the Kerry campaign, Bush is in more trouble than we think
                    the good reverend

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                    • #11
                      Who ever said Clarke was a registered Republican?
                      “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
                      - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

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                      • #12
                        Clarke did.
                        the good reverend

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                        • #13
                          I wonder what he was before the 2000 election (he said he was registered Republican in 2000), or if what he is saying is true. Seems strange.
                          “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
                          - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

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                          • #14
                            Acknowledged by foes and friends as a leading figure among career national security officials, Clarke served more than two years in the Bush White House after holding senior posts under former Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He resigned 13 months ago Sunday.

                            Although expressing points of disagreement with all four presidents, Clarke reserves his strongest language for George W. Bush. The president, he said, "failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat from Al-Qaida despite repeated warnings and then harvested a political windfall for taking obvious yet insufficient steps after the attacks."
                            "Acknowledged by foes and friends as a leading figure among career national security officials..." Doesn't exactly call to mind Noam Chomsky.

                            This reminds me of what Lyndon Johnson said when he was asked why he didn't fire J Edgar Hoover: "I'd rather have him on the inside pissin' out, than on the outside pissin' in."
                            "When all else fails, a pigheaded refusal to look facts in the face will see us through." -- General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett

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                            • #15
                              Originally posted by DanS
                              I think Clarke is off base here, because he wasn't in a position to know as much as he thought he was. Don't know if Clarke's critique is politically motivated or not.
                              politically motivated? nah... the right wing smear machine is in action...

                              Clarke started under the Reagan admin... was promoted under Bush I, and is a registered Republican.

                              Sorry DanS... you got pwned
                              To us, it is the BEAST.

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