The CBS 60 Minutes Richard Clarke Interview

President's critic had hailed him in letter

By James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A former U.S. counterterrorism expert who in his new book accuses the Bush administration of bungling the war on terror had praised the president in his letter of resignation.
The White House released the letter yesterday in an attempt to stop any damage that Richard A. Clarke's "Against All Enemies" could inflict on Mr. Bush's record as a wartime leader.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday presented the letter, dated Jan. 30, 2003, at his daily press briefing as evidence that it "runs counter to what [Mr. Clarke] is now asserting."
"It has been an enormous privilege to serve you these last 24 months," Mr. Clarke wrote. "I will always remember the courage, determination, calm and leadership you demonstrated on September 11 ... I will also have fond memories of our briefings for you on cybersecurity and the intuitive understanding of its importance that you showed."
Mr. McClellan said the letter shows that "when [Mr. Clarke] was leaving, there was no mention of the 'grave concerns' he claims to have had about the direction of the war on terrorism or what we were doing to confront the threat posed by Iraq."
White House spokesmen have accused Mr. Clarke of timing his book's release to damage Mr. Bush's re-election chances and to coincide with his testimony tomorrow to the special commission investigating the intelligence leading up to the September 11 attacks.
"The fact is, he chose to release it at a time and in a way where he could maximize coverage to sell books and at a time when he could have the greatest impact to influence the political discourse," Mr. McClellan said.
Mr. Clarke said on ABC's "Good Morning America" yesterday that he is not surprised that the White House has moved aggressively to discredit him.
"I say in the preface of the book that I expect it," Mr. Clarke said. "They've got lots of people ?- on taxpayers' dollars, by the way ?- out refuting these charges."
Mr. Clarke's most explosive accusation in the book is that Mr. Bush ignored his warnings about al Qaeda before the September 11 attacks and put the United States at greater risk of more terrorist strikes by invading Iraq.
Democrats have rallied to Mr. Clarke's side.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, accused the White House of trying "to destroy the reputation of those who tell the truth."
He said Democrats will meet soon to discuss their strategy on the issue.
Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security, said in a statement yesterday that Mr. Clarke's previous testimony to the committee made clear that "his concerns about the government's response to terrorism long preceded the current administration."
"Indeed, if we're going to start assessing blame for 9/11, then one must consider that the Clinton administration had eight years to confront the al Qaeda threat and the Bush administration less than eight months," Mr. Kyl said.
• Jerry Seper contributed to this report.

Report cites bin Laden's escapes

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Faulty and incomplete intelligence prevented three military attacks against al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 1998 and 1999, according to a commission investigating the September 11 terrorist attacks.
A staff report made public yesterday during a hearing of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States also disclosed that a 1998 order by President Clinton minimized the use of military forces to go after al Qaeda in favor of law enforcement and diplomacy that ultimately failed.
"The paramount limitation on every proposed use of military force was the lack of 'actionable intelligence,' " the preliminary report said.
Former Sen. Bob Kerrey, a commission member, criticized the Clinton administration for failing to take military action against al Qaeda despite the group's declaration of war against the United States. One cruise-missile attack after the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa was ineffective and missed killing al Qaeda members in Afghanistan.
"I keep hearing the excuse we didn't have actionable intelligence. Well, what ... does that say to al Qaeda? Basically, they knew ?- beginning in 1993, it seems to me ?- that there was going to be limited, if any, use of military and that they were relatively free to do whatever they wanted," said Mr. Kerrey, Nebraska Democrat.
Former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen yesterday said the Clinton administration on several occasions "called off" military action against bin Laden when it determined the intelligence wasn't good enough to ensure success.
Mr. Cohen said that in one of the incidents, a target believed to be bin Laden "turned out to be a sheik from [the United Arab Emirates]," and another incident involved a plan to shoot down an aircraft that was believed to be carrying bin Laden, but the intelligence was uncertain.
The testimony came during the first of two days of hearings with senior officials from the Bush and Clinton administrations, who told Congress they viewed al Qaeda as a serious threat before September 11, but had different approaches to dealing with the terrorist group.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the congressionally mandated commission that President Bush had rejected the Clinton administration's "fly-swatting" approach to dealing with terrorism and defended the Bush administration against charges by critics that the White House was too slow to develop policies for stopping bin Laden and his group operating in Afghanistan.
"We wanted to move beyond the rollback policy of containment, criminal prosecution and limited retaliation for specific terrorist attacks," Mr. Powell said. "We wanted to destroy al Qaeda."
According to a second commission staff report made public yesterday, the Clinton administration relied on law enforcement and diplomacy in its efforts to thwart the Islamist terrorist group. After the embassy bombings in Africa in August 1998, President Clinton ordered cruise-missile attacks on terrorist camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan in response.
The report said that diplomatic efforts to work with the Saudi Arabian and Pakistani governments to pressure the ruling Taliban militia in Afghanistan to expel bin Laden were unsuccessful. "All these efforts failed," the report said.
The staff also reported that the day before September 11, the Bush administration had decided to make one final diplomatic push before attempting to overthrow the Taliban Afghan government in a strategy expected to take three years.
The hearings come amid charges from former counterterrorism official Richard L. Clarke, who worked in both administrations, that the Bush administration failed to take his warnings about the danger of al Qaeda seriously.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the commission that he did not believe that killing bin Laden in the first months of the Bush administration would have prevented the September 11 attacks, which killed about 3,000 people.
"Killing bin Laden would not have removed al Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "Moreover, the sleeper cells that flew the aircraft into the World Trade towers and the Pentagon were already in the United States months before the attack."
Former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright told the commission that former "President Clinton and his team did everything we could, everything we could think of, based on the knowledge we had, to protect our people and disrupt and defeat al Qaeda."
Mrs. Albright said the Clinton administration was unable to confirm that al Qaeda was behind the USS Cole bombing in 2000, and therefore did not take military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
However, commission member John Lehman, a Republican, told the hearing that intelligence in November and December 2000 indicated that al Qaeda had carried out the attack that killed 17 sailors and nearly sank the ship as it refueled in Yemen.
According to the staff report, intelligence indicating that bin Laden was open to attack resulted in military planning by the Clinton administration on three occasions.
In December 1998, bin Laden was reported to be staying at a location in Kandahar, Afghanistan; however, CIA Director George J. Tenet doubted the intelligence and a strike by cruise missiles or bombers was called off.
Then in February 1999, bin Laden was targeted in a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan's Helmand province, but the CIA was worried that a visiting official from the United Arab Emirates would be killed in an attack.
The CIA's field officer was quoted in the report as saying the intelligence was "very reliable" that bin Laden was in the camp. "The field official believed that this was a lost opportunity to kill bin Laden," the report said.
A third attempt to kill bin Laden, who had been seen in the same place for five nights, was missed in May 1999. However, U.S. military officials worried that an attack might kill innocent civilians.
Mr. Rumsfeld said the war against al Qaeda will be difficult and that another attack on "our people" is imminent.
"That reality drives those of us in government to ask the tough questions: When and how might that attack be attempted? And what will we need to have done today and every day before the attack to prepare for it and, if possible, prevent it?" he said.
Additional witnesses are scheduled to testify today, including Mr. Tenet, Mr. Clarke, former Clinton National Security Adviser Samuel Berger and Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage.
The commission's staff has spent months interviewing Clinton and Bush administration officials and poring over documents. Its preliminary findings will be considered by the 10-member panel, which plans to issue a final report this summer.

THE COMMISSION
Ten members and an executive director of the bipartisan September 11 commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, created by Congress in November 2002:
•Thomas H. Kean, Republican chairman. President of Drew University in Madison, N.J., former governor of New Jersey. Appointed by President Bush after Henry Kissinger resigned in December 2002 over potential conflicts of interest.
•Lee H. Hamilton, Democratic vice chairman. Director of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, former U.S. representative from Indiana. Appointed by Democratic congressional leaders in December 2002 after former Sen. George Mitchell resigned, citing a reluctance to leave his law firm.
•Richard Ben-Veniste. Democrat. Partner in law firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw. Former Watergate prosecutor, co-author of "Stonewall: The Real Story of the Watergate Prosecution" (Simon & Schuster).
•Fred F. Fielding. Republican. Senior partner at law firm of Wiley, Rein and Fielding. Former counsel to President Reagan and deputy counsel to President Nixon.
•Jamie S. Gorelick. Democrat. Partner at law firm of Wilmer Cutler and Pickering, former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration.
•Slade Gorton. Republican. Attorney at Preston, Gates & Ellis, former U.S. senator from Washington state.
•Bob Kerrey. Democrat. President of New School University in New York City, former U.S. senator from Nebraska. Appointed by Democratic congressional leaders in December 2003 to replace former Sen. Max Cleland, Georgia Democrat, who left to become director of the Export-Import Bank.
•John F. Lehman. Republican. Chairman of J.F. Lehman & Co., a private equity firm, former Navy secretary under President Reagan.
•Timothy J. Roemer. Democrat. President of the Center for National Policy, former U.S. representative from Indiana.
•James R. Thompson. Republican. Chairman of the law firm Winston & Strawn, former Illinois governor.
•Philip Zelikow, executive director. History professor and director of Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Co-author with Bush National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice of 1995 book, "Germany Unified and Europe Transformed."
Source: The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

ANTITERRORISM EFFORTS
Here are preliminary conclusions about U.S. diplomatic efforts against terrorism before September 11, 2001. They are contained in a statement issued yesterday by the staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States:
•From spring 1997 to September 2001, the U.S. government tried to persuade the hard-line Taliban regime to expel Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan to a country where he could face justice and that would not be a sanctuary for al Qaeda, his terror network. Inducements, warnings and sanctions were employed, but the efforts failed.
•The U.S. government also pressed two successive Pakistani governments to demand that the Taliban cease providing a sanctuary for bin Laden and his organization and, failing that, to cut off their support for the Taliban. Before September 11, 2001, the United States could not find a mix of incentives or pressure that would persuade Pakistan to reconsider its fundamental relationship with the Taliban.
•From 1999 through early 2001, the United States pressed the United Arab Emirates, one of the Taliban's only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off ties and enforce sanctions, especially related to air travel to Afghanistan. These efforts achieved little before September 11, 2001.
•The government of Saudi Arabia worked closely with top U.S. officials in major initiatives to solve the bin Laden problem with diplomacy. On the other hand, before September 11, 2001, the Saudi and U.S. governments did not achieve full sharing of important intelligence information or develop an adequate joint effort to track and disrupt the finances of al Qaeda.

Clarke's questionable timing doesn't take away from the truthfullness of his statements. I am tempted to believe him, as his explanation is the only plausible story I have heard so far.

The idea that the Bush Administration outright lied about Iraqi WMD's and terrorist connections is pretty farfetched. So is the idea that it was all due to a fundamentally flawed intelligence agency.

I have long thought that there is only one plausible explanation: The Bush administration - due largely to Bush's wrongheadedness and his advisors eagreness for war - selectively intrepreted the data to support an invasion of Iraq. Clarke has only confirmed this.

And I would believe the Director of Central Intelligence over whatever this Clarke guy has to say. Clarke's is a lone voice without many others to back up his assertions. There are too many other people who consider his assertions pure unadulterated horse puckey.

Clarke's questionable timing doesn't take away from the truthfullness of his statements. I am tempted to believe him, as his explanation is the only plausible story I have heard so far.

The idea that the Bush Administration outright lied about Iraqi WMD's and terrorist connections is pretty farfetched. So is the idea that it was all due to a fundamentally flawed intelligence agency.

I have long thought that there is only one plausible explanation: The Bush administration - due largely to Bush's wrongheadedness and his advisors eagreness for war - selectively intrepreted the data to support an invasion of Iraq. Clarke has only confirmed this.

The one part I have a problem with is where he said that Rice acted like she had no clue who Al Queda (?)

From what I've heard, every intelligence agency in the world that had any information at all about Iraq was absolutely convinced that Saddam had WMD.

JOSCHKA FISCHER ( Translated ): We owe the Americans our democracy. They are very important for stability and peace especially. We Germans would never have been able to free ourselves from the Nazi regime without America. The Americans allowed us to build up our democracy, but in this democracy my generation has learnt... ( in English ) You have to make the case, and to make the case in a democracy, you have to be convinced yourself, and excuse me, I am not convinced. This is my problem and I cannot go to the public and say, "well, let's go to war because there are reasons and so on," and I don't believe in that.

Tarantulas wrote:

From what I've heard, every intelligence agency in the world that had any information at all about Iraq was absolutely convinced that Saddam had WMD.

That is just plain not true, its pure wishful thinking. Its the favoured line of defense over WMD from the White House right now: well, how could we have thought anything else from what we thought, didnt everyone think so? And then preferably underpinned with quotes from Kerry, Hillary, Pelosi, etc.

How does the administration 1) explain the mistake and 2) sufficiently rebound? The first part turns out to be simpler than one would think, the question being whether non-partisans will accept it: The intelligence was bad. From the United States to the United Nations, from Great Britain to Germany, from Russia to France; from Kofi Annan to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush, from Tony Blair to Gerhardt Schroeder, from Vladimir Putin to Jacques Chirac. The United States wasn't alone in believing there were WMD in Iraq, just in being worried enough to do something about it.

The rebound is another story, a cause not helped by the president's disastrous appearance on Meet the Press. What really needed to be said simply couldn't by any man taking reelection more seriously than the idea of the buck stopping at his desk. What would have helped? Namely: "Under my watch, the military was sent into Iraq because all reliable intelligence from around the world suggested WMD were there. As of today, no WMD have been found. My administration will find out why the intelligence was faulty. In the meantime, if there is an American citizen who can look himself in the mirror and honestly believe America, Iraq and the Middle East genuinely aren't better off with Saddam Hussein out of power, then they should vote for John Kerry."

But the entire single point of the whole diplomatic flak over Iraq last year was that America's NATO allies were not convinced by the proof the US put forward about Iraq still having WMDs. Remember Powell's speech to the UN and how it fell flat? Remember the German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer famously telling Rumsfeld, wait, let me quote:

Quote:

JOSCHKA FISCHER ( Translated ): We owe the Americans our democracy. They are very important for stability and peace especially. We Germans would never have been able to free ourselves from the Nazi regime without America. The Americans allowed us to build up our democracy, but in this democracy my generation has learnt... ( in English ) You have to make the case, and to make the case in a democracy, you have to be convinced yourself, and excuse me, I am not convinced. This is my problem and I cannot go to the public and say, "well, let's go to war because there are reasons and so on," and I don't believe in that.

Considering Fischer's word choice, your assertion that "every intelligence agency in the world" was "absolutely convinced" Saddam had WMD is all the more misplaced. Governments around the world, forsure, suspected that Iraq still had WMD. There was enough evidence that he still had some the last time we looked, even if the bulk of it had already been destroyed during the years of weapon inspections (something the US government back then had proudly talked about). But most other governments, most NATO governments even, considered the proof that he still had WMD (let alone in any measure that would make Iraq into the purported acute threat to world security that warranted immediate warfare) absolutely insufficient.

Tarantulas makes a good point here.

Transcript: Richard Clarke August, 2002 Briefing

WASHINGTON ?- The following transcript documents a background briefing in early August 2002 by President Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke to a handful of reporters, including Fox News' Jim Angle. In the conversation, cleared by the White House on Wednesday for distribution, Clarke describes the handover of intelligence from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration and the latter's decision to revise the U.S. approach to Al Qaeda. Clarke was named special adviser to the president for cyberspace security in October 2001. He resigned from his post in January 2003.

RICHARD CLARKE: Actually, I've got about seven points, let me just go through them quickly. Um, the first point, I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration.

Second point is that the Clinton administration had a strategy in place, effectively dating from 1998. And there were a number of issues on the table since 1998. And they remained on the table when that administration went out of office ?- issues like aiding the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, changing our Pakistan policy -- uh, changing our policy toward Uzbekistan. And in January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years.

And the third point is the Bush administration decided then, you know, mid-January, to do two things. One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings, which we've now made public to some extent.

And the point is, while this big review was going on, there were still in effect, the lethal findings were still in effect. The second thing the administration decided to do is to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided.

So, point five, that process which was initiated in the first week in February, uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda.

The sixth point, the newly-appointed deputies ?- and you had to remember, the deputies didn't get into office until late March, early April. The deputies then tasked the development of the implementation details, uh, of these new decisions that they were endorsing, and sending out to the principals.

Over the course of the summer ?- last point ?- they developed implementation details, the principals met at the end of the summer, approved them in their first meeting, changed the strategy by authorizing the increase in funding five-fold, changing the policy on Pakistan, changing the policy on Uzbekistan, changing the policy on the Northern Alliance assistance.

And then changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course [of] five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of al Qaeda. That is in fact the timeline.

QUESTION: When was that presented to the president?

CLARKE: Well, the president was briefed throughout this process.

QUESTION: But when was the final September 4 document? (interrupted) Was that presented to the president?

CLARKE: The document went to the president on September 10, I think.

QUESTION: What is your response to the suggestion in the [Aug. 12, 2002] Time [magazine] article that the Bush administration was unwilling to take on board the suggestions made in the Clinton administration because of animus against the ?- general animus against the foreign policy?

CLARKE: I think if there was a general animus that clouded their vision, they might not have kept the same guy dealing with terrorism issue. This is the one issue where the National Security Council leadership decided continuity was important and kept the same guy around, the same team in place. That doesn't sound like animus against uh the previous team to me.

JIM ANGLE: You're saying that the Bush administration did not stop anything that the Clinton administration was doing while it was making these decisions, and by the end of the summer had increased money for covert action five-fold. Is that correct?

CLARKE: All of that's correct.

ANGLE: OK.

QUESTION: Are you saying now that there was not only a plan per se, presented by the transition team, but that it was nothing proactive that they had suggested?

CLARKE: Well, what I'm saying is, there are two things presented. One, what the existing strategy had been. And two, a series of issues ?- like aiding the Northern Alliance, changing Pakistan policy, changing Uzbek policy ?- that they had been unable to come to um, any new conclusions, um, from '98 on.

QUESTION: Was all of that from '98 on or was some of it ...

CLARKE: All of those issues were on the table from '98 on.

ANGLE: When in '98 were those presented?

CLARKE: In October of '98.

QUESTION: In response to the Embassy bombing?

CLARKE: Right, which was in September.

QUESTION: Were all of those issues part of alleged plan that was late December and the Clinton team decided not to pursue because it was too close to ...

CLARKE: There was never a plan, Andrea. What there was was these two things: One, a description of the existing strategy, which included a description of the threat. And two, those things which had been looked at over the course of two years, and which were still on the table.

QUESTION: So there was nothing that developed, no documents or no new plan of any sort?

CLARKE: There was no new plan.

QUESTION: No new strategy ?- I mean, I don't want to get into a semantics ...

CLARKE: Plan, strategy ?- there was no, nothing new.

QUESTION: 'Til late December, developing ...

CLARKE: What happened at the end of December was that the Clinton administration NSC principals committee met and once again looked at the strategy, and once again looked at the issues that they had brought, decided in the past to add to the strategy. But they did not at that point make any recommendations.

QUESTIONS: Had those issues evolved at all from October of '98 'til December of 2000?

CLARKE: Had they evolved? Um, not appreciably.

ANGLE: What was the problem? Why was it so difficult for the Clinton administration to make decisions on those issues?

CLARKE: Because they were tough issues. You know, take, for example, aiding the Northern Alliance. Um, people in the Northern Alliance had a, sort of bad track record. There were questions about the government, there were questions about drug-running, there was questions about whether or not in fact they would use the additional aid to go after Al Qaeda or not. Uh, and how would you stage a major new push in Uzbekistan or somebody else or Pakistan to cooperate?

One of the big problems was that Pakistan at the time was aiding the other side, was aiding the Taliban. And so, this would put, if we started aiding the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, this would have put us directly in opposition to the Pakistani government. These are not easy decisions.

ANGLE: And none of that really changed until we were attacked and then it was ...

CLARKE: No, that's not true. In the spring, the Bush administration changed ?- began to change Pakistani policy, um, by a dialogue that said we would be willing to lift sanctions. So we began to offer carrots, which made it possible for the Pakistanis, I think, to begin to realize that they could go down another path, which was to join us and to break away from the Taliban. So that's really how it started.

QUESTION: Had the Clinton administration in any of its work on this issue, in any of the findings or anything else, prepared for a call for the use of ground forces, special operations forces in any way? What did the Bush administration do with that if they had?

CLARKE: There was never a plan in the Clinton administration to use ground forces. The military was asked at a couple of points in the Clinton administration to think about it. Um, and they always came back and said it was not a good idea. There was never a plan to do that.

(Break in briefing details as reporters and Clarke go back and forth on how to source quotes from this backgrounder.)

ANGLE: So, just to finish up if we could then, so what you're saying is that there was no ?- one, there was no plan; two, there was no delay; and that actually the first changes since October of '98 were made in the spring months just after the administration came into office?

CLARKE: You got it. That's right.

QUESTION: It was not put into an action plan until September 4, signed off by the principals?

CLARKE: That's right.

QUESTION: I want to add though, that NSPD ?- the actual work on it began in early April.

CLARKE: There was a lot of in the first three NSPDs that were being worked in parallel.

ANGLE: Now the five-fold increase for the money in covert operations against Al Qaeda ?- did that actually go into effect when it was decided or was that a decision that happened in the next budget year or something?

CLARKE: Well, it was gonna go into effect in October, which was the next budget year, so it was a month away.

QUESTION: That actually got into the intelligence budget?

CLARKE: Yes it did.

QUESTION: Just to clarify, did that come up in April or later?

CLARKE: No, it came up in April and it was approved in principle and then went through the summer. And you know, the other thing to bear in mind is the shift from the rollback strategy to the elimination strategy. When President Bush told us in March to stop swatting at flies and just solve this problem, then that was the strategic direction that changed the NSPD from one of rollback to one of elimination.

QUESTION: Well can you clarify something? I've been told that he gave that direction at the end of May. Is that not correct?

CLARKE: No, it was March.

QUESTION: The elimination of Al Qaeda, get back to ground troops ?- now we haven't completely done that even with a substantial number of ground troops in Afghanistan. Was there, was the Bush administration contemplating without the provocation of September 11th moving troops into Afghanistan prior to that to go after Al Qaeda?

CLARKE: I can not try to speculate on that point. I don't know what we would have done.

QUESTION: In your judgment, is it possible to eliminate Al Qaeda without putting troops on the ground?

CLARKE: Uh, yeah, I think it was. I think it was. If we'd had Pakistani, Uzbek and Northern Alliance assistance.

Well, you have to pay attention to what people have said rather than simply asserting what you believe to be true. Observe:

Quote:

The first part turns out to be simpler than one would think, the question being whether non-partisans will accept it: The intelligence was bad. From the United States to the United Nations, from Great Britain to Germany, from Russia to France; from Kofi Annan to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush, from Tony Blair to Gerhardt Schroeder, from Vladimir Putin to Jacques Chirac. The United States wasn't alone in believing there were WMD in Iraq

Intellectual Conservative

So you're saying the German Foreign Minister was privy to his country's full intelligence evaluation? From what he said, he could just have been making himself a pain in the butt to oppose the US intentions.

There was a consensus of opinion worldwide that Saddam had WMD. Deny it all you want, but that doesn't make it untrue.

I have no doubt that Richard Clarke, the former National Security Council official who has launched a broadside against President Bush's counterterrorism policies, is telling the truth about every single charge. There are three reasons for this confidence.

First, his basic accusations are consistent with tales told by other officials, including some who had no significant dealings with Clarke.

Second, the White House's attempts at rebuttal have been extremely weak and contradictory. If Clarke were wrong, one would expect the comebacks?-especially from Bush's aides, who excel at the counterstrike?-to be stronger and more substantive.

Third, I went to graduate school with Clarke in the late 1970s, at MIT's political science department, and called him as an occasional source in the mid-'80s when he was in the State Department and I was a newspaper reporter. There were good things and dubious things about Clarke, traits that inspired both admiration and leeriness. The former: He was very smart, a highly skilled (and utterly nonpartisan) analyst, and he knew how to get things done in a calcified bureaucracy. The latter: He was arrogant, made no effort to disguise his contempt for those who disagreed with him, and blatantly maneuvered around all obstacles to make sure his views got through.

The key thing, though, is this: Both sets of traits tell me he's too shrewd to write or say anything in public that might be decisively refuted. As Daniel Benjamin, another terrorism specialist who worked alongside Clarke in the Clinton White House, put it in a phone conversation today, "Dick did not survive and flourish in the bureaucracy all those years by leaving himself open to attack."

Notice what these four statements dismiss: Law enforcement. Pinpricks. Rolling it back. Swatting flies. That was why Clarke couldn't get a hearing. His ideas were too partial, too ad hoc, too Clintonesque. Bush wanted a bigger approach: Comprehensive. Strategy. Eliminate. Different. His "comprehensive strategy" was delivered on Sept. 4, 2001. Is the White House embarrassed that it spent those six months studying the "many complex issues involved in the development of the comprehensive strategy" instead of swatting the "flies" that would kill 3,000 Americans a week later? No. It's proud.

But you know even the United Nations thought there were WMD in Iraq. Otherwise why would they have had inspectors there for so long? Many nations did believe the WMD were there, so a majority of delegates voted in the UN to send in weapons inspectors and keep them there for quite a while.