The Line (Will Pitt at Truthout.org)

[DemoTex]

Former White House Counter-Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke has managed to do something that defies modern political gravity. He has stayed in the news, hour after hour and day after day. He was hurled many days ago into the maelstrom of the 24-hour news cycle, which reports one moment on an incredibly important story, flings that story out beyond the Oort Cloud the next moment, and that story is never seen again. Clarke, somehow, has managed to maintain his position at the top of the news despite this process we mistakenly call 'journalism' for longer than any other ten major recent stories combined.

There are several reasons for this. First of all, Clarke's accusations are damning. According to him, the Bush administration ignored the threat of al Qaeda terrorism completely. After the attacks of September 11, the administration became obsessed with attacking Iraq, despite the fact that every intelligence organization in America was telling them Iraq had nothing to do with it. Clarke maintains that the war in Iraq is a dangerous distraction from the defense of the nation, a political war that has nothing to do with making America safer, and one that has cost us terribly in blood and treasure. Given the fact that Clarke was physically in the White House for all this, and that he has been in the anti-terrorism business since the days of Ronald Reagan, his accusations have long, sharp teeth.

There is also the fact that Clarke apologized for September 11. In the context of a White House that has battled the assembly of a September 11 investigation for two years, a White House that has slapped down every plea from the family members of those who died on September 11 to get this investigation rolling, a White House that tried at one point to put the investigation into the slippery hands of Henry Kissinger, a White House that has adamantly refused to hand over relevant data about September 11 to the commission they never wanted to see in the first place, a White House that won't allow National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly before this commission despite her central role in the administration, a National Security Advisor that would dance the Macarena on the Capitol dome if it could get her out of giving that testimony because she knows she will get clobbered with her own words, and finally a White House that never got around to saying they were sorry to the families of the September 11 victims, in the context of all that, Richard Clarke's heartfelt apology to those families instantly became the stuff of political legend. (More at Truthout)

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/033004A.shtml

[WilliamPitt]

1. Dupe (sorta)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1308267&mesg_id=1308267

Thanks, man. :)