Excellent! Condi keeping the story alive!

[npincus]

Next, Richard Clarke will pop up (hopefully) on teevee, and his demotion and exclusion from high-level meetings, the B*sh admin. spurning his requests to meet, etc. will be rehashed AGAIN... this time, it will get some ATTENTION.

It's all in Clarke's book. Maybe Condi will do for Clarke, what Chavez did for Chomsky re: book sales!!!!! BRING IT ON!!!!



http://www.amazon.com/Against-All-Enemies-America-Terror/dp/0743260244


Few political memoirs have made such a dramatic entrance as that by Richard A. Clarke. During the week of the initial publication of Against All Enemies, Clarke was featured on 60 Minutes, testified before the 9/11 commission, and touched off a raging controversy over how the presidential administration handled the threat of terrorism and the post-9/11 geopolitical landscape. Clarke, a veteran Washington insider who had advised presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush, dissects each man's approach to terrorism but levels the harshest criticism at the latter Bush and his advisors who, Clarke asserts, failed to take terrorism and Al-Qaeda seriously. Clarke details how, in light of mounting intelligence of the danger Al-Qaeda presented, his urgent requests to move terrorism up the list of priorities in the early days of the administration were met with apathy and procrastination and how, after the attacks took place, Bush and key figures such as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Dick Cheney turned their attention almost immediately to Iraq, a nation not involved in the attacks. Against All Enemies takes the reader inside the Beltway beginning with the Reagan administration, who failed to retaliate against the 1982 Beirut bombings, fueling the perception around the world that the United States was vulnerable to such attacks. Terrorism becomes a growing but largely ignored threat under the first President Bush, whom Clarke cites for his failure to eliminate Saddam Hussein, thereby necessitating a continued American presence in Saudi Arabia that further inflamed anti-American sentiment. Clinton, according to Clarke, understood the gravity of the situation and became increasingly obsessed with stopping Al-Qaeda. He had developed workable plans but was hamstrung by political infighting and the sex scandal that led to his impeachment. But Bush and his advisers, Clarke says, didn't get it before 9/11 and they didn't get it after, taking a unilateral approach that seemed destined to lead to more attacks on Americans and American interests around the world. Clarke's inside accounts of what happens in the corridors of power are fascinating and the book, written in a compelling, highly readable style, at times almost seems like a fiction thriller. But the threat of terrorism and the consequences of Bush's approach to it feel very sobering.

[Justice]

1. Excellent Points: Keeping Story Alive/Book Sales

I chuckled during the Wallace interview over the number of times Clinton mentioned Clarke's book - thinking, Clarke and his publisher must love this. I am waiting to see if it has an affect on book sales - we will have to see if there is a spike (I've love it if the spike was like the "purpose driven life" spike, but won't hold my breathe.)

[C_U_L8R]

2. Who left the burning turd on White House doorstep???

Well done ! They fell for it.

[Coexist]

3. thanks - I purchased an extra copy to lend out to curious friends.

BTW - for those who haven't read it, there are used copies available at that link for $5.95 + shipping. What a deal!

[fasttense]

4. Wasn't Clark all over the news after 9/11 about this?

I swear he was making the rounds after 9/11 on how the repukes hadn't taken him seriously about the threat of bin Laden. I guess it just didn't sink in.

[npincus]

6. he was on "60 Minutes"

around the time that he was promoting his book, which (if memory serves me correctly) was right about the tme or shortly before he was called to testify before the 9-11 commission.

But, just as the revelations of a "blind and deaf" B*sh by Paul O'Neill in his book, "The Price of Loyalty" by Ron Suskind, seemed a small ripple that disappeared in the MSM (unlike the neverending, 2-year, headline grabbing Clinton blowjob) so did Clarke's assertions in his book disappear, shortly after publication.

But remember, it's all Clinton's fault, isn't it? Always and forever.

[oasis]

5. If Clarke or Kristin Britweiser go back on the talk circuit, it's curtains

for the GOP.:bounce:

[mucifer]

7. I wonder if Clinton's endorsement helped the book

also people should get Al Franken's book. He wrote about it in a bit of a comical way. oh and he's been talking about this on the radio for the past 2 years:

http://www.avatara.com/operationignore0.html

"Excerpt from:
Al Franken's book: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

Chapter Operation Ignore

Bill Clinton's far-reaching plan to eliminate al Qaeda root and branch was completed only a few weeks before the inauguration of George W. Bush. If it had been implemented then, a former senior Clinton aide told Time, we would be handing a war when they took office." Instead, Clinton and company decided to turn over the plan to the Bush administration to carry out. Clinton trusted Bush to protect America. This proved, nine months later, to be a disastrous mistake - perhaps the biggest one Clinton ever made.

Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger remembered how little help the previous Bush administration had provided to his team. Believing that the nation's security should transcend political bitterness, Berger arranged ten briefings for his successor, Condoleezza Rice, and her deputy, Stephen Hadley. Berger made a special point of attending the briefing on terrorism. He told Dr. Rice, “I believe that the Bush administration will spend more time on terrorism in general, and on al Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.''

Which brings me to a lie. When Time asked about the conversation, Rice declined to comment, but through a spokeswoman said she recalled no briefing at which Berger was present" Perhaps so, Dr. Rice. But might I direct our mutual friends, my readers, to a certain December 30, 2001, New York Times article? Perhaps you know the one, Condi? Shall I quote it? "As he prepared to leave office last January, Mr. Berger met with his successor, Condoleezza Rice, and gave her a warning. According to both of them, he said that terrorism-and particularly Mr. bin Laden's brand of it-would consume far more of her time than she had ever imagined.'' (Italics mine.)

When I read this, my instinct was to shout for joy and dance around the room, naked, celebrating the finding of a lie. And I did. "Badda Bing!" I cried, as I ran around the house, my genitals flopping wildly, embarrassing my wife and her bridge group.

After the dressing down from my wife, who really read me the riot act, it occurred to me that all I had really found was a contradiction between Time and the Times. Maybe The New York Times had it wrong. Maybe Dr. Rice, considered a paragon of integrity, had told Time magazine the truth-that her predecessor had never warned her about the impending threat from al Qaeda and its evil mastermind. It was time for the Franken investigative juggernaut to assert itself. I called Dr. Rice's office, prepared to pierce the infamous White House veil of secrecy with a lance of white-hot journalistic enterprise. I left a message, and they called me right back with the answer. A White House official told me that Dr. Rice had met with Berger at a briefing, and he had told her about the seriousness of the al Qaeda threat. Condi lied to Times! Badda Bing!

Anyway. After Berger left, Rice stayed around to listen to counterterrorism bulldog Richard Clarke, who laid out the whole anti-al Qaeda plan. Rice was so impressed with Clarke that she immediately asked him to stay on as head of counterterrorism. In early February, Clarke repeated the briefing for Vice President Dick Cheney. But, according to Time, there was some question about how seriously the Bush team took Clarke's warnings. Outgoing Clinton officials felt that "the Bush team thought the Clintonites had become obsessed with terrorism."...

[npincus]

8. I'm not counting on the MSM to do their job

but IF they do, they will debunk Condi's "Mushroom Cloud of Bullshit" in about 5 seconds.