Richard Clarke: Bush Admin Negligent in Antiterrorism

[The Mad Monk]

His politics don't matter -- it's clear he was looking in the wrong direction.

Sava, I know you like beating up on Giancarlo and all, but I suggest you read the two items I posted before you go and make an even bigger fool of yourself.

[DinoDoc]

He doesn't care, TMM. Just let him be and hope they don't spam the thread too much.

[MRT144]

trust the liars in the whitehouse or trust the liars that worked for the whitehouse...who has more to gain by lying?

[Agathon]

I don't get it. Clarke's overreaction about computer viruses at a time when most people didn't really understand these things is supposed to invalidate all his criticisms of the Bush administration despite the fact that he was a valued employee of various administrations for two decades?

[The Mad Monk]

His major criticism appears to have been that they weren't taking him seriously. Since he kept going on about cyberterrorism even after 9-11, I really can't find fault in that.

[Edan]

Why do I have a feeling of Deja Vu?

Oh yeah.

[rev]

The Bush administration is in a bind here: either Clarke is lying and they made terrorism their number one priority, as they claim they did, when they took office, or they turned a blind eye to terrorism in general and Clarke's telling the truth. The administration, via Dick Cheney, claims Clarke was 'out of the loop' on terrorism and doesn't know what he's talking about.

This administration's credibility on these claims, however, is lost to the fact that they downgraded Clarke's position from Cabinet-level and now claim that he, as the person responsible for reporting to Rice and Bush in regard to terrorism, was 'out of the loop'. That would represent a grand failure on the administration's part -- that's an interagency breakdown directly related to decisions made by upper-level administration officials.

Kerry is not a sensible politican nor is he bipartisan. He is nothing more than a mudslinging partisan who just looks to destroy America's intelligence networks and let terrorists flow into the country.

Are you referring to Kerry's Senate vote to lower funds dedicated to the intelligence services?

[notyoueither]

Who other than a secretary has ever been cabinet level? Isn't cabinet the President and all of the secretaries, maybe with the NSA advisor? That doesn't make any sense to me.

[rev]

IIRC, a Czar is cabinet-level, as well. Under Clinton, Clarke was the Terrorism Czar and could directly brief the President, just as the Drug Czar could brief the President, but doesn't answer to any specific advisor.

I'll look further into it to see if I can get a better explanation -- I'm just conjecturing in regard to your question.

[rev]

My source RE: Clarke's cabinet-level position is the Center for American Progress:

- The Administration is simultaneously claiming that it never downgraded counter-terrorism at the same time it is trying to discredit Richard Clarke by noting that the White House demoted his counterterrorism office from the Cabinet level position it occupied under the previous Administration.

Source: CNN

I don't quite understand how they got the Cabinet-level position information from that CNN article, but I'm much too lazy tonight to read the entire thing. I have, however, posed the question to several other web sites, so hopefully someone more knowledgeable than I can explain it better.

[notyoueither]

'Czar' is an official position within American government?

[The Mad Monk]

Counter-terrorism was taken over by the cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, wasn't it?

[rev]

I'm not sure, but I would assume so. The DHS, however, didn't come into being until well after 9/11, and both the Bush administration and Tom Ridge initially opposed its creation.

[rev]

I did some research and basically there are three classifications of "cabinet-level". The first classification is that of actual cabinet members, known by the official title of "Secretary". The second is "cabinet-level", which are people who are not members of the cabinet (which has the power to remove the President from power), but are allowed to attend cabinet meetings. Lastly, there are White House staffers, such as Condoleeza Rice, who serves as NSA. They, too, are allowed to attend cabinet meetings, but I am not sure what the official, narrow distinction is between staffers and second-tier cabinet-level members. I suspect that White House staffers must be invited to attend cabinet meetings, whereas cabinet-level members are expected or required to be at them.

So, Bush took Clinton's cabinet-level position of counterterrorism and downgraded it to cabinet-level, then ignored requests to meet with that advisor (Clarke) in regard to al-Qaeda until the week before September 11th. Clarke and other related counterterrorism advisors had been meeting with the cabinet and Clinton weekly.

[SpencerH]

Whats wrong with this picture?

The counterterrorism Tzar, who had a cabinet level post, the man with the responsibility for dealing with groups like AQ, who held that position through 3 presidents, has the gall to slam anyone else for HIS failures to deal with AQ.