Aide's Book Faults Bush 9/11 Response-WP (fresh meat)

[TacticalPeek]

washingtonpost.com

Aide's Book Faults Bush 9/11 Response
Fingers Pointed at Iraq, Clarke Writes

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 22, 2004; Page A01

snip

Among the motives for the war, Clarke argues, were the politics of the 2002 midterm election. "The crisis was manufactured, and Bush political adviser Karl Rove was telling Republicans to 'run on the war,' " Clarke writes.

Clarke describes his book, in the preface, as "factual, not polemical," and he said in an interview that he was a registered Republican in the 2000 election. But the book arrives amid a general election campaign in which Bush asks to be judged as a wartime president, and Clarke has thrust himself loudly among the critics. Publication also coincides with politically sensitive public testimony this week by Clinton and Bush administration officials -- including Clarke -- before an independent commission investigating the events of Sept. 11.

snip

"Any leader whom one can imagine as president on September 11 would have declared a 'war on terrorism' and would have ended the Afghan sanctuary by invading," Clarke writes. "What was unique about George Bush's reaction" was the additional choice to invade "not a country that had been engaging in anti-U.S. terrorism but one that had not been, Iraq." In so doing, he estranged allies, enraged potential friends in the Arab and Islamic worlds, and produced "more terrorists than we jail or shoot."

"It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting 'invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq,' " Clarke writes.


more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13607-2004Mar21?language=printer

Includes new total lameness from Condi and Wolfie. Bwahahahahahahah!

:evilgrin:

[RamboLiberal]

1. Please don't lock this - It's a major newspaper and new info

eom

[TacticalPeek]

2. A01!

:)

[papau]

23. Better is the Guardian transcript of their interview with Clarke (below)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1175675,00.html

9/11 hijackers could have been stopped, says ex-aide

In an interview with the Guardian a former White House insider insists, over administration denials, that Bush took his eye off al-Qaida

Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday March 23, 2004
The Guardian

If the Bush White House had heeded warnings in early 2001 about the threat from al-Qaida at least two of the September 11 hijackers would "probably have been caught" and "there was a chance" the attacks could have been prevented, the president's former top counter-terrorism adviser told the Guardian yesterday. <snip>

Mr Clarke said that despite the extent of the support offered by Tony Blair, British influence in Washington was small. He conceded that without British pressure Mr Bush might not have issued a major policy statement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but dismissed this as a hollow gesture.

"He went out there and read the words like he was seeing them for the first time," Mr Clarke said. "There hasn't been a lot of follow through, and I don't think the Brits got very much. They got the minimum possible out of us." <snip>


The White House mounted a counter-attack yesterday, rebutting many of Mr Clarke's allegations. The national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said the administration had spent much of 2001 developing a strategy "to eliminate al-Qaida". But Mr Clarke said that plan had been inherited from the Clinton administration in January 2001, and that the White House had done little to act on it.

"The point is that it was done before they came to office and she never held a meeting on it," Mr Clarke said. "I asked - on January 24 in writing to Condi - urgently for a meeting on cabinet level, 'the principals committee', to review the plan and I was told I can't have that."

Instead Mr Clarke was told a meeting of deputy secretaries would be arranged to "frame" the al-Qaida issue for discussion. He said even that meeting did not take place until April - although the White House says it was in March - and a top-level cabinet meeting did not take place until September 4.

Instead the regular meetings of the national security "principals committee", which includes the heads of the CIA, FBI, state department and defence department, over the first eight months of the administration focused on what Mr Clarke considered to be cold war issues. <snip>


Read the full transcript of the interview http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1175790,00.html

[chelaque liberal]

7. I'm new to this. What is eom?

[UpInArms]

8. eom = end of message

n/t = no text

Welcome to DU! :hi:

[Catfight]

13. Welcome UpinArms

I'm a week old newbie now. Welcome

[calimary]

24. To both of you, WELCOME!

And don't you just LOVE that comment: "'It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting 'invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq,' Clarke writes."

My my my. Osama bin MIND-CONTROLLING!

WHOA!

I hope the Kerry campaign picks up on that, or at least their surrogates do...

[sadiesworld]

3. "..(9/11) marked the transition from neglect to folly..."

A large step toward the truth, finally.

[Kool Kitty]

4. Kick.

Just amazing stuff here.

[Old and In the Way]

5. "Aide's book"?

The guy had a cabinet level position before it was demoted.....certainly not an aide. Is this a way to lessen the impact of the author's importance?

[TacticalPeek]

6. Exactly.

AFAIK, Clarke was never an aide in Shrub's administration. A sleepy or sly headline writer on the job.

[chelaque liberal]

9. "There aren't enough targets in Afghanistan, let's bomb Iraq"

One of my favorite parts of the CBS interview was when Clarke said he thought Rumsfeld was joking about bombing Iraq after Sept 11. He compared it to Roosevelt deciding not to go after Japan after Pearl Harbor but to bomb Mexico instead.

[yardwork]

17. I was impressed by that as well.

Clarke spoke very well.

[Joanne98]

10. OBL controlling Bush's brain from a cave

So that's the problem with this mind. Somebody get the chimp a tin foil hat:)

[Cooley Hurd]

11. Why do they continue to send out their least credible...

...admin official (Condi) to rebut charges against the admin? I would put her into Cheney's hidey-hole until this thing blows, if I were them.

[Auntie Bush]

12. You're right about Condi

Just saw that repeated. She never discussed why we didn't stay in AFG and get Osama but instead went on to attack IQ. That's the question I wish she'd answer. But alas, I guess she can't!

Wait till Cheney comes out of his spider hole, then the lies will pile up like a load of meadow muffins.

[Catfight]

14. Spider Hole

Ha ha...Dick Lamey, comes out of his spider hole to spin his web of lies lies lies...

9 more days till the O'Franken Fair and Balanced reporting.

[yardwork]

18. Where is Cheney?

Haven't seen him lately. Is the Vampire sleeping?

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

15. Whats the status of the smear campaign?

Ive heard, on other online forums that its
a) sour grapes...Clarke was demoted & ignored & hes bitter

b) Clarke wasnt that sharp anyway...warning about a cyber-threat when we got something else instead, as well as making some other bad moves?

c) Clarke is a "hack" who might be jockying for a position anyway.

[yardwork]

19. Those are predictable responses.

The interesting question is - where is the credible rebuttal? Can the White House show that he is lying or mistaken? So far, they've done a very poor job of damage control.

Plus we have the facts - like the big white elephant in the living room - that Bush went ahead and invaded Iraq, found no WMD or connection to terrorism, and Osama is still at large.

These facts corroborate Clarke's statements. What does the White House have to say?

[skypilot]

25. I got a glimpse of Condi saying...

...that Clarke didn't know what he was talking about because he wasn't even present at most of their meetings. Dumb asshole. Isn't that one of the things Clarke was complaining about? The fact that he couldn't even GET meetings with top White House officials, including Rice. He was apparently always being fobbed off on deputies or some number two person. And of course there's the fact that he was demoted outright.

[proud patriot]

16. wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee !

Man I'm loving these stories today .

Perhaps we should all take time today
to call and write media and policy makers .
Simply showing curiosity about the accusation.

[Tellurian]

20. Responsibility for 9/11 lies squarely at Bush/Cheney's feet

Al Gore, personally, handed 'The Hart-Rudman Commission Report on Terrorism' to Dick Cheney before he left the White House. The report specifically outlined and made recommendations for prevention addressing the weaknesses in our domestic and international defense systems.

http://dir.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/09/12/bush/index.html

The Bush/Cheney personal agenda was how to get to Iraqi OIL-

They knew the only way was through the power and might of our military to successfully depose their no longer useful 80's protege, Saddam-

The Hart-Rudman Commission report provided confirmation an attack was eminent in the near future. All The Bush Administration needed to do was TO WAIT for opportunity to knock and eventually spin the threat to Iraq-

Case Closed-

[Tellurian]

21. "We Predicted it!"

http://dir.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/09/12/bush/index.html

[skypilot]

22. So, Bush looks for the "bumper sticker" description...

...of the problem.

"In his experience, Clarke writes, Bush's description by critics as "a dumb, lazy rich kid" is "somewhat off the mark." Bush has "a results-oriented mind, but he looked for the simple solution, the bumper sticker description of the problem."

Sounds "dumb" and "lazy" to me.

[snippy]

26. Clarke had access to Bush and Rice which proves he was out of the loop.

This is according to Cheney and Rice.