The ethical thing to do.

Posted 3/24/2004 10:52 PM Updated 3/24/2004 10:53 PM
Clarke: Government failed 9/11 families
By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON ?- Until this week, Richard Clarke was a little-known federal bureaucrat. On Wednesday, Clarke overshadowed Cabinet secretaries in two days of hearings by a commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
And he did something those officials didn't do: He apologized to the families of those who died on 9/11.

"Your government failed you," he said in the most emotional moment of the hearings. "Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter, because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask ... for your understanding and your forgiveness."

Several dozen relatives of victims applauded.

Clarke's appearance came amid a Bush administration campaign to discredit his claim in a new book that officials ignored warnings about al-Qaeda and tried to pin the blame for Sept. 11 on Iraq.

"By invading Iraq, the president greatly undermined the war on terrorism," said Clarke, 53, who makes the charges in his book, Against All Enemies. The former top counterterrorism official under presidents Clinton and Bush has repeated his charges in interviews. The hearing was the first time he spoke publicly under oath.

Clarke, who resigned in February 2003, said the Clinton administration had "no higher priority" than fighting terrorism. By comparison, the Bush White House thought terrorism was "an important issue but not an urgent issue," he said.

Clarke said colleagues called him "obsessed" and asked why he made "such a big deal" about al-Qaeda when "only" 35 American deaths were linked to the organization during Clinton's eight years in office. "That's the kind of mind-set that made it difficult" to prod the bureaucracy at the Pentagon, FBI, CIA and Congress to take bolder action, he said. "It requires body bags sometimes to make really tough decisions."

Commission member Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, disclosed a letter Clarke wrote to Rice a week before the attacks.

"You urge policymakers to imagine a day after hundreds of Americans lay dead at home and abroad after a terrorist attack, and ask themselves what else they could have done. You write this on Sept. 4, seven days before Sept. 11," Roemer said.

"Yes," Clarke replied.

Clarke said U.S. intelligence agencies didn't recognize the existence of al-Qaeda until 1995. "Had we a more robust intelligence capability in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we might have been able to nip it in the bud," he said.

Commission member James Thompson, a former Republican governor of Illinois, held up a transcript of a briefing Clarke gave to reporters in August 2002 about the handover of intelligence from Clinton to Bush. At the time, it was delivered on the condition that the information would be attributed to an unnamed administration official. In an unusual but not unprecedented decision, the White House distributed the transcript Wednesday and said reporters could use Clarke's name.

Clarke told reporters in that briefing that the Bush administration acted quickly to change the policy from one of rolling back al-Qaeda to "rapid elimination" of the terrorist group.

"Which is true?" Thompson asked.

Commission member John Lehman, who was secretary of the Navy under President Reagan, said Clarke never mentioned Iraq when he recently gave 15 hours of closed testimony, "You've got a real credibility problem," Lehman said.

In that session, "No one asked me what I thought about the invasion of Iraq," he responded.

Former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey, a commission member, told Clarke he hoped he didn't take personally the "terrible phone messages and e-mail messages" he has received since criticizing Bush. "You are caught in one of those moments," Kerrey said, nodding to TV cameras jamming the room.

Replied Clarke: "I knew what the price would be."

Lash and McG
Lash and McG, it's amazing how facile you both are in twisting our words to claim we support terrorists and apologize for them. You should be ashamed of yourselves for such dishonesty. I have watched your tactics for a long time and never challenged you. But both of you crossed the line this time and I cannot remain silent.

You have said I support the terrorists and that I hate America. That is a damn lie and you know it. If that insult was from someone with the ability to think rationally, I would be insulted.

I understand that you are angry about the London attacks but that is no excuse for taking it out on A2Kers in the vile and bellicose manner of your posts.

Again, shame, shame!

BBB

Why do you object to someone bashing terrorists?

damn, I hope I don't have any more opinions (at least in the near future) I may get another cross burning in my yard. Well, you have to excuse me now, I have some work to do destroying america (it's not such a small country afterall)

Even before the first Gulf War, I often heard racists using the term "towel head". The meaning hasn't changed just because there are terrorists.

Re: Lash and McG


You asked me to guess why you couldn't make even a single post complaining about, yelling about, telling off the terrorists without including any derision about the US. I made a guess. I think it was pretty close to they mark though.

Perhaps you don't really hate America. It's really tough to tell from your contributions to A2K though. Seems like every post is insulting the President, the Republicans holding office or some American conservative issue.

Never have I seen a post saying what a jerk Osama is. Never have I seen a complaint about the terrorists killing the future for Iraq. Never have I seen you utter any disgust at what Islamic fundamentalism is doing to the middle east except that "what should we expect? The US is behind it!"

Responding to kicky's ridiculous story above--


I didn't say that.

Who decided the term towelhead couldn't be used?

I didn't get a vote.

Meanwhile, if a rapist has his way with a little girl and leaves her broken and dying, and I call him a towelhead, why would kicky expend so much energy condemning me?

Because you degrade an entire population by calling one bastard a towelhead.

You accused me of being a racist. You can't back it up so you change the subject.

McG
Mcg, I thought you were smart enough (even if misguided) to continue to through verbal garbage all over yourself for everyone to read.

The problem appears to be your extreme chauvanism toward the Republican Party and right wing conservatism that you care more about sustaining their power than you do in improving the general welfare of your country and certainly to the detriment of American security in an uncertain world. That's a very dangerous, narrow advocacy.

BBB

I accused you of being a racist because you defended Lash, saying that she wasn't being a racist, when it is plain to see that she was. Therefore I assumed that you approved of the term "towelheads", which makes you a racist in my book.

Now can you answer my question?

If I were a racist, I'd have a negative opinion about a race.

That is the fatal flaw in your contortions.

Hmmm - towel heads and ridiculous accustaions of living in the stone age. Hmmmmm - but NOT racist, of course. Yeah.

Littlek


Littlek, Lash's worst offense is not using the slur of towelhead, which surprised me that she would openly use it. What really shocked and disappointed me were the other comments in her post where she slurred an entire race (as you state), an entire area of the world, and an entire religion.

Lash's apology is owed to the millions of Muslims who deplore the actions of the terrorists, as I do, and are ashamed and distressed by their violence and the corruption of their religion.

No apology could erase from my memory the racism and hatred demonstrated in Lash's post unless it was to the people she slurred.

BBB

Can't you see how an inoccent, by-standing muslim would feel badly about you calling a bastard muslim a towelhead?