DESPITE WARNINGS, BUSH DIDN'T SEE TERRORISM AS URGENT

Blatham- Of course McG is quoting from a partisan site. Are you inferring that "Slate" is nonpartisan.

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flyboy

I quoted the Slate piece because it was the quickest means I had of providing Clark's own response to the charge. As he said elsewhere, "As a special assistant to the President, would you expect me to speak critically of the President to the press?"

And that's the elephant sitting in the room, yes? When in the employ, one serves at the pleasure of the President. But what does one do when one honestly believes that your President has gone badly off the rails? Just shut up and let that continue?

What would it take for McG to change his mind about this President? Colin Powell resigning, and saying what Clark has said? I'm confident even that wouldn't upset McG's certainty much.

But mostly, McG deserves criticism here for a lack of integrity as a student. He should find the source material (the hearings) and he should read more broadly than he's doing.

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Ultimately, I think it boils down to:

1. do you believe the words of a 30 year government employee who served at the request of four Presidents, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and the Kid, and has perfect conservative neocon credentials, or;

2. do you believe a reporter from FOXNews (GOP-TV?)

For me, it's simple: I believe Clarke. Although his politics are opposite of mine, he was actually there, and his career and credentials lend credibility to his charges about Bush and Rice.

Paul O'Neill, who recently wrote a book about his experiences as Bush's Treasury Secreatary, was similarly targted by the White House smear machine headed by Karl Rove because he dared to break loyalty and criticize the "King." They went after O'Neill like a hungry hyenna going after a defenseless fawn.

The behavior of White House smear machine is highly predictable. Whenever they're in trouble they call into question the sanity of the errant one. We saw this during the GOP primary. They tried to paint Senator John McCain as "insane" because he was a POW. Then, they turned their attention on McCain's wife, saying she was "crazy" because she smoked pot.

Now, both Paul O'Neill and Richard A. Clarke are, according to the Bush spinmeisters, totally whack. Of course, if this were true, then why were they hired in the first place? LOL!!!!

If the rumors about Colin Powell are true and he resigns and writes a tell-all about his experiences in the Bush White House, watch for a smear campign targeting him as well.

It's how these people operate. We saw the very same thing when uber-GOPer, Richard Nixon, was in power. Like the song lyric says, "paranoia will destroy ya...................."

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blatham wrote:

Scrat wrote:
Brand X - I was pleasantly surprised to see these comments of Clark's brought up on one of the major network newscasts tonight. (I forget which.) They aired the audio, displayed the text in question, and pointed out the discrepancy between what he said then as compared with what he wrote in his book and testified to yesterday. Seemed a fairly even-handed piece of journalism.

I just wonder how many people are going to ignore his earlier statements and the obvious questions they raise about his new version simply because they prefer the new version.

Didn't you guys even bother to watch the hearings?!

Yes, I have watched some. Why do you ask? Are you going to suggest that we can only attend to information from the hearings, and can't use reason to consider how what people claim in the hearings squares with what they have said in the past?

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scrat

Because he spoke precisely to that charge in the hearings. About one hour previous to Clark testifying, the White House released the document you refer to, and in questioning, a Republican committee member held up Clark's book in one hand, and the release in the other. It was a clear attempt to discredit, but Clark's response was both reasonable and very very honest.

By all means, reason is welcome in this discussion. And a well reasoned account here will acknowledge Clark's response, and deal with it reasonably, rather than ignore it, and forward the smear.

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I think it likely that if Bush had had bin Laden killed prior to 9/11, the following would have happened:

1. Al Qaeda would have vowed revenge.
2. 9/11, which had been in planning for years, would have still occurred.
3. The world would be interpreting 9/11 as Al Qaeda's revenge for the killing of OBL, and would, therefore, be blaming Bush for antagonizing the terrorists. I'm sure someone would be saying now that Bush might as well have "murdered" the 3,000 Americans in the World Trade Center.

I do think it would have been great had we killed OBL in early 2001, but, at the same time, I think that the scenario I outline above might well have been the consequence.

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blatham wrote:

Because he spoke precisely to that charge in the hearings.

I heard his response, and found it unconvincing. He claimed that his previous statements AND his recent statements are BOTH true, where it seems they are mutually exclusive.

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scrat

Come on...are you being purposefully dull on this point?

Did Ari Fliescher always speak the exact and complete 'truth'? Perhaps not. And if later he were to say, "The President knew he wanted to go into Iraq from day one, regardless of what we were saying at the time", would what he said while serving the president entail that his later statement is questionable?

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The problem with all of this is, the Administration gets hundreds if not thousands of indicators a week showing that this group or that group are going to threaten the country in some way.

If the President were to read and react to them all, the country would be frozen in terror over the constant 'warnings of imminent doom' and nothing would get done.

It's only AFTER something comes to pass that people look back on all the raw intelligence data and point to one or two items (among the thousands) and say'

But you had clear indications HERE <grabbing one paper among a 5 foot tall stack> look at this warning clearly states that some group may attack us with some sort of flying machine, some time in the near future. It's CRYSTAL CLEAR that you KNEW what was coming and didn't shut down the airlines and have all the flying planes blown out of the sky. Of course then we would have vilified you for interrupting our travel plans, but you cant win them all.

Hindsight is twenty twenty.

Foresight is only slightly more accurate than the Oracle at Delphi.

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No, I'm not being intentionally dense, and I will do you the courtesy of assuming that you aren't either. :wink:

Yesterday, when presented with the contradictions in his comments then and now, Clark attempted to portray his earlier comments as true, but skewed so as to create a positive portrayal of the administration's efforts.

That explanation would clear things up nicely, if it weren't for the fact that his previous statements and his current statements are mutually exclusive.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I'll copy and paste Neil Boortz's comments on this, as he hits the same points I would hit:

Quote:

Let's start with a statement Clarke made to the 9/11 Commission yesterday. Clarke told the commissioners that early on in the Bush administration he told the president: " ... and I said, well, you know, we've had this strategy ready ... ahh ... since before you were inaugurated. I showed it to you. You have the paperwork. We can have a meeting on the strategy anytime you want."

So .. there's Clarke telling the media and the commissioners yesterday that he had presented paperwork to Bush on a strategy for dealing with Al Qaeda and was ready to discuss it. But what did he say to Jim Angle in 2002? This: "I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush Administration."

Those two statements appear to contradict each other, but Clark stated before the commision that BOTH statements are true. I don't see how they can be. Do you read them differently?

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fedral

You are surely correct. I can't imagine how tough the job of data collection and data interpretation must be. Each of the speakers, without exception I think, made the point that you are making.

But as regards the charges from Clarke, this point is not relevant.

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"...the Administration gets hundreds if not thousands of indicators a week showing that this group or that group are going to threaten the country in some way. If the President were to read and react to them all, the country would be frozen in terror over the constant 'warnings of imminent doom' and nothing would get done." Fedral
LOL!!!

I saw this apology by fedral on another thread and ignored it, but since he's used it on my thread, I'm forced to reply to it. Here's the problem with Fedral's premise:

1. Bush 'reads?' Really? He's on record saying he doesn't even read the newspaper, for goodness sake. And Pokemon cards don't count.

2. Of course a genuine sitting President can't 'read' every warning that comes our way. That's why there's the State Department, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and now, the Dept. of Homeland Security.

3. Richard A. Clarke tried to get through to Condi Rice, Bush's National Security Advisor with a warning that a 9/11 scenario was imminent, but Condi, always busy on the Sunday morning blab circuit defending her boss, shuttled Clarke off to her Doppelganger, Richard Armitage, who wasn't particularly concerned either.

4. In the end, none of this really matters because Bush was obsessed with Saddam Hussein and settling the old family score.

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CHANCE TO WIN A FREE BOOK!!!

Quote:

Yesterday, on Hannity and Colmes, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said "the assertion that somehow the Bush administration wasn't paying attention when we came into office is just false." But, despite Rice's comments, we were unable to find a single instance where Rice, Vice President Cheney or President Bush said "al Qaeda" or "bin Laden" in public between Bush Inauguration and 9/11. (The closest thing we could dig up - despite extensive searches on Nexis and the White House website - was a routine written extension of an executive order dealing with the Taliban.) During the same period, however, we were able to identify roughly 400 times that Rice, Cheney and Bush publicly mentioned "tax relief" or "tax cut." Prove you're better than the Progress Report! Send any instance of Rice, Cheney or Bush uttering the words "al Qaeda" or "bin Laden" in public between 1/20/01 and 9/10/01 to [email protected]. The first person to submit a successful entry (which we can verify) will receive a free copy of "Deliver Us From Evil" by Fox News Anchor Sean Hannity signed by the members of the Progress Report team.

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=6228

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Quote:

But his account need not stand on his reputation alone. Clarke was not the only national security professional who spanned both the Clinton and Bush administrations. General Donald Kerrick served as deputy national security adviser under Clinton and remained on the NSC into the Bush administration. He wrote his replacement, Stephen Hadley, a two-page memo. "It was classified," Kerrick told me. "I said they needed to pay attention to al-Qaida and counterterrorism. I said we were going to be struck again. They never once asked me a question, nor did I see them having a serious discussion about it ... I agree with Dick that they saw those problems through an Iraqi prism. But the evidence, the intelligence, wasn't there."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1177418,00.html

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HOW TO TRIP OVER YOUR TONGUE WHILE LYING SO AWKWARDLY THAT QUESTIONERS WILL, OUT OF SYMPATHY, STOP ASKING THOSE DAMNED QUESTIONS....

Quote:

According to the 1/12/03 Washington Post (which quotes senior Administration officials) "six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2½-page document marked 'TOP SECRET'" that "directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq." This is corroborated by 9/4/02 CBS News report that five hours after the 9/11 attacks, "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq."

Q He's right that in October -- in October of 2001, when the President signed this directive, the President was directing the Pentagon to prepare plans for the invasion of Iraq?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's why I said, that's part -- that's part of his revisionist history.

Q That's not true?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's part of his revisionist history, that's what I'm saying --

Q Are you saying it's not true?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, that's right. I am.

Q You are saying that it's not true?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's part of -- that's just his revisionist history to make suggestions like that. He knows that at that point that our focus was on going -- was on Afghanistan and removing the Taliban and taking away the safe haven for al Qaeda.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/

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I thought they had made plans for invading Iraq on day one? Why would they need to start making more plans for invading Iraq on 9-12?

The left is getting all twisted up in it's lies.

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Quote:

...we were unable to find a single instance where Rice, Vice President Cheney or President Bush said "al Qaeda" or "bin Laden" in public between Bush Inauguration and 9/11.

Has anyone done a similar search to see how many times Clinton, Gore, or Sandy Berger said "al Qaeda" or "bin Laden" in public in the eight months prior to Bush's inauguration?

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So much for our "extra effort to capture the AQ heirarchy."
AQ says: "nyah, nyah, nyah, up yours!"

Quote:

New tape said to be bin Laden's deputy

Thursday, March 25, 2004 Posted: 4:21 PM EST (2121 GMT)

Ayman al-Zawahiri is believed to be No. 2 in the al Qaeda terrorist network.

(CNN) -- A new audiotape attributed to Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's top deputy, calls on Pakistanis to overthrow President Pervez Musharraf.

"Every Muslim in Pakistan must do his or her best in getting rid of this government, which cooperates with the enemies," the speaker on the tape says.

The Arabic news network Al Jazeera broadcast the taped statement Thursday.

The tape calls on residents of Pakistan's tribal areas to resist government forces sent to search for al Qaeda fighters.

The recording urges the northwest border region's largely autonomous tribes to fight government troops.

"These tribes, which defended Islam throughout all of its history, will not give up to one slave of America," the speaker says.

There was no independent confirmation that the voice on the tape was that of Zawahiri, an Egyptian-born physician who is al Qaeda's No. 2 figure.

The voice on the tape also calls Musharraf a traitor and "Muslim assassin."

"After he played his deceiving role in killing thousands of Muslims in Afghanistan, the Americans began giving him new duties," the voice says.

The speaker says Musharraf is helping the United States and its allies "suppress the Muslim nation" by cutting support for Islamic militants in Kashmir and betraying Pakistan's nuclear secrets.

In recent weeks, large numbers of Pakistani forces have moved into the mountainous tribal areas, where U.S. intelligence officials suspect Zawahiri and bin Laden may have taken refuge.

Last Thursday, Musharraf -- a key U.S. ally in the war on terrorism -- said Pakistani troops had cornered a "high-value target" in the region, and other Pakistani officials said they suspected that target was Zawahiri. But they backed away from those reports as the standoff and fighting continued through the weekend.

The voice on the tape does not mention the region where the fighting has been taking place, Waziristan, but it does mention two different tribes of the area.

In Washington, a U.S. official said the CIA is analyzing the tape to determine whether it's authentic. The official said the tape is being compared with other known examples of Zawahiri's speech, and a judgment is likely within two days.

The tape appears to have been recorded later than February, when Pakistan's military sent large numbers of troops into the mountainous tribal areas along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan in a crackdown against suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members.

The tape attempts to appeal to Pakistanis' pride by saying that surprise searches, arrests and other operations being conducted by the Pakistani military along the border are insulting, according to Octavia Nasr, CNN senior editor for Arab affairs, who reviewed the recording. The voice urges residents of the region to stand up for themselves.

The 52-year-old al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian national, is considered to be Osama bin Laden's closest adviser and is viewed by many analysts as the operational brains behind the al Qaeda terror network.

Al-Zawahiri is one of the most-wanted terrorists in the United States. He was indicted along with bin Laden for his alleged role as mastermind of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.

U.S. government sources also believe he played a significant role in the September 11, 2001, attacks.

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Of course the Bush administration was asleep at the switch before 9-11.

Donald Rumsfeld was on Capitol Hill on Sept. 9, threatening a veto of a $600 million diversion from Star Wars to counter-terrorism. Remember?

John Ashcroft cut funding to the Justice Department's anti-terrorism budget after 9/11. Remember, this is the man that began flying charter because of 'unspecified threats' in the months preceding 9/11.

'Important' it may have been, but 'urgent' it was most certainly was not.

Nor is it any secret that the administration used 9-11 from the get-go to do what it had always wanted to: take out Saddam Hussein.

Just as the fact Richard Clarke is under ferocious attack for stating both the obvious and the already known, the understanding that the war in Iraq has actually hurt the war on terrorism should not come as a blinding revelation.

We're mired in an unfolding catastrophe over there, and it has sucked resources out of the efforts to stop terrorists.

Of course, penalties for telling the truth in Washington these days are pretty steep.

Condoleezza Rice apparently does not know the meaning of the word "scurrilous." Senate majority Leader Bill Frist accused Clarke of perjury, and then took it back. Frist then denounced Clarke's apology to the 9-11 families, calling it "theatrical" -- meaning fake -- and then had the gall to claim it was not Clarke's "place" to apologize on behalf of the government. Since no one else had done so in two and half years, most of the families of the victims were relieved to find that somebody in government actually accept responsibility...

For those who are bored by history (like pre-9-11) and would prefer to know what is being done to prevent terrorist attacks now, last week's Time magazine is a must-read.

Among other things, it features a photograph of a Wyoming fire department in their haz-mat suits, bought by Homeland Security in case terrorists decide to strike at the vital center of Casper.

According to Time, $61 per citizen is being spent in Wyoming, compared to $14 per citizen in California; Alaska got $58 per citizen, and New York got less than $25. Evil or Very Mad

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Soooooo true.

Pre 9/11, Bush and Company were committed to paying homage to Saint Reagan by carrying on his Star Wars nonsense.

Of course, the 9/11 terrorist attacks changed the equation.

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DESPITE WARNINGS, BUSH DIDN'T SEE TERRORISM AS URGENT

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